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From the September 26 article:
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that Ohio's voter "purge," a measure that removed thousands of inactive voters from the rolls in a controversial effort to curb voter fraud and keep registration up to date, was unconstitutional. [...] The Ohio rule removed any voter from the rolls that had not voted in six years. According to ABC, many of these inactive voters on the were from low-income neighborhoods that tended to vote Democrat. Whitney Ross Manzo, assistant professor of political science at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., says the root of the problem with the Ohio rule is the short six-year time limit. Since many voters only turn out to vote for president every four years, missing just one election could disqualify them during the upcoming election. "The rule sounds benign – you need to vote at least once every six years – but certain segments of the population (the poor, elderly, and minority voters) are disproportionately affected by the rule, which is why it was just deemed unconstitutional," Dr. Manzo tells the Monitor in an email. [...] "I would argue voter fraud isn't that big of a problem in the scheme of elections in the US, and attempts to curb voter fraud actually cause bigger problems," says Manzo. "Restrictive voting laws are solutions in search of a problem." [The Christian Science Monitor, 9/26/16]
The Atlantic: Attempts To Correct Voter Registration Rolls “Disproportionately Affect The Minority Populations That Vote Heavily Democratic.” The Atlantic’s David Graham criticized a rule in Ohio that purged “tens of thousands of voters from its rolls who haven’t voted since the 2008 election” calling it a “concerning move” that amounts to “a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ approach to a fundamental right of American citizens.” Graham noted that proponents of these voter reform laws cite voter fraud as a justification but “it’s very hard to find any evidence of widespread (or even narrow) fraud, while the new laws… disproportionately affect the minority populations that vote heavily Democratic.” From the June 3 article:
Thousands of Buckeye State voters might experience this scenario, voter advocates warn. As Reuters points out in a report Thursday, Ohio is purging tens of thousands of voters from its rolls who haven’t voted since the 2008 election. Some of those people have likely died, or moved and registered elsewhere, or simply don’t care. But it’s also an understandably concerning move, amounting to a “use-it-or-lose-it” approach to a fundamental right of American citizens. [...] This is a common theme to the various efforts to reform voting laws around the country over the last decade or so. Proponents, mostly Republicans, offer commonsense justifications for the rules, like avoiding fraud, but it’s very hard to find any evidence of widespread (or even narrow) fraud, while the new laws—more commonly requiring photo ID to vote or eliminating early voting—disproportionately affect the minority populations that vote heavily Democratic. What’s more, judges have slapped down the state of Ohio twice in the last few months for improperly trying to restrict the franchise. In March, a Franklin County judge ruled that Husted, a Republican, had incorrectly determined that 17-year-olds who would turn 18 by Election Day could not vote in the state’s primary. With the decision, the 17-year-olds were again allowed to vote. Last week, a federal judge in Ohio overturned a state law that eliminated “Golden Week,” a period in which residents could both register and vote early. In other words, it’s increasingly tough to give the Buckeye State the benefit of the doubt. Voter purges are not unusual nationwide, but as Reuters notes, few states purge voters simply for missing a few contests. The American Civil Liberties Union recently sued Ohio to block the practice. In 2014, a judge ruled that a purge overseen by Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, violated federal law. Democrats are hardly pure on the issue—when they controlled the Ohio government, they did the same. Comprehensive data on voter purges is tough to come by, but the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which is critical of restrictive voting laws, found widespread problems with purges in a 2008 report. [The Atlantic, 6/3/16]
Voter Registration Fraud Is Rare And Often Misidentified
Brennan Center Report: “We Are Aware Of No Recent Substantiated Case In Which Registration Fraud Has Resulted In Fraudulent Votes Being Cast.” In its 2007 report on voter fraud, the Brennan Center for Justice found that it was “extraordinarily difficult to find reported cases in which individuals have submitted registration forms in someone else’s name in order to impersonate them at the polls.” Noting that the report found “no recent substantiated case” of registration fraud that “resulted in fraudulent votes being cast,” the Brennan Center did list several examples of “exaggerated or unfounded allegations of voter fraud due to fraudulent registration forms”:
There have been several documented and widely publicized instances in which registration forms have been fraudulently completed and submitted. But it is extraordinarily difficult to find reported cases in which individuals have submitted registration forms in someone else’s name in order to impersonate them at the polls. Furthermore, most reports of registration fraud do not actually claim that the fraud happens so that ineligible people can vote at the polls. Indeed, we are aware of no recent substantiated case in which registration fraud has resulted in fraudulent votes being cast. [...] Exaggerated or unfounded allegations of voter fraud due to fraudulent registration forms include the following: • In Florida in 2005, a registration drive was alleged to be submitting thousands of fraudulent registration forms and withholding valid ones, with a box of 179 complete but unsubmitted forms produced as evidence. The charges later proved groundless, and the disgruntled former worker who produced the box was found to have defamed the drive. There are no reports of which we are aware that any votes were cast using any fraudulent registration connected to the drive.151 •In Georgia in 2004, 3,000 allegedly fraudulent registration forms — with the same handwriting and with numerous errors — were submitted by a registration drive. Procedures apparently meant to protect the forms from interference seemed to interfere with the group’s ability to perform quality control on the forms that were submitted. There are no reports of which we are aware that any votes were improperly cast using the name of any fraudulent registration form.152 • In Missouri, in a departure from clear Department of Justice policy, four individuals were federally indicted on the eve of the 2006 election for alleged registration fraud in Kansas City. At least 1,492 other allegedly questionable voter registration forms were submitted to St. Louis, prompting the Board of Elections for the City of St. Louis to send misleading notices to a wide swath of voters who had registered through the same group.153 Yet the wrongdoers were an isolated few registration workers, and despite the skepticism of some that registration fraud occurs only to let ineligible people vote fraudulently, there are no reports of which we are aware that any votes were cast using any fraudulent registration connected to the drive. [Brennan Center for Justice, 2007]
STUDY: Voter Fraud Claims Based On Anecdotal Evidence Are Flawed, Empirical Results Show No Dead Voters In 2006 Election. A study published in Social Science Quarterly noted that while “there is no shortage of allegations concerning election fraud,” these claims are often “based in large part on anecdotal evidence, unsubstantiated assertions, or the study of reported complaints.” This study created “a general methodology to study contemporary election fraud” and applied it to the 2006 general election in Georgia. Researchers found “no evidence that election fraud was committed under the auspices of deceased registrants” despite claims to the contrary. [Social Science Quarterly, January 2012]
STUDY: Complex Voter Registration Laws Spur Clerical Mistakes That Are “Wrongly Identified As ‘Fraud.’” A study by Columbia University professor Lorraine Minnite found that the increasing complexity of voter registration laws makes “voter mistakes” and “clerical errors” more likely and that such mistakes are often “wrongly identified as ‘fraud.’” Furthermore, the study concluded that “voter fraud is extremely rare” and that often reports of voter fraud were “unsubstantiated or false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error.” [Project Voter, March 2007]
Brennan Center Found No Instances Of Voter Registration Fraud Resulting In “An Attempt To Cast A Fraudulent Vote.” Brennan Center counsel Justin Levitt testified before the Senate on the issue of voter fraud and reported that while “occasionally, and now more rarely there are reports of fraudulent registration forms - usually involving rogue workers,” the Brennan Center found “no recent substantiated case in which such registration fraud has resulted in an attempt to cast a fraudulent vote.” From his written testimony (citations omitted):
Some of these post-election reports actually do present worrisome allegations of fraud - but only rarely do they involve allegations of in-person impersonation fraud. Instead, they allege schemes involving fraudulent absentee ballots;or absentee voters who have been coerced; or conspiracies to buy votes; or efforts to tamper with ballots or machines or counting systems. Occasionally, and now more rarely, there are reports of fraudulent registration forms - usually involving rogue workers hoping to cheat nonprofit organizations out of an honest effort to register real citizens. We are aware of no recent substantiated case in which such registration fraud has resulted in an attempt to cast a fraudulent vote. All of these reports should be investigated, and any wrongdoing should not be condoned. Yet they too should not be confused with in-person impersonation fraud. [Testimony Given Before U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, 3/12/08]
And In-Person Voter Impersonation Fraud Is Virtually Nonexistent
The New Yorker: Experts Agree That Voter Impersonation Is "Virtually Non-Existent." Experts agree that actual incidents of in-person voter fraud -- the type of voter fraud that strict voter ID laws can prevent -- are exceedingly rare and fears of voter fraud have been largely invented as a way to "excite the base," according to The New Yorker:
[Election law scholar Rick] Hasen says that, while researching "The Voting Wars," he "tried to find a single case" since 1980 when "an election outcome could plausibly have turned on voter-impersonation fraud." He couldn't find one. News21, an investigative-journalism group, has reported that voter impersonation at the polls is a "virtually non-existent" problem. After conducting an exhaustive analysis of election-crime prosecutions since 2000, it identified only seven convictions for impersonation fraud. None of those cases involved conspiracy. Lorraine Minnite, a public-policy professor at Rutgers, collated decades of electoral data for her 2010 book, "The Myth of Voter Fraud," and came up with some striking statistics. In 2005, for example, the federal government charged many more Americans with violating migratory-bird statutes than with perpetrating election fraud, which has long been a felony. She told me, "It makes no sense for individual voters to impersonate someone. It's like committing a felony at the police station, with virtually no chance of affecting the election outcome." A report by the Times in 2007 also found election fraud to be rare. During the Bush Administration, the Justice Department initiated a five-year crackdown on voter fraud, but only eighty-six people were convicted of any kind of election crime. Hasen, who calls von Spakovsky a leading member of "the Fraudulent Fraud Squad," told me that he respects many other conservative advocates in his area of expertise, but dismisses scholars who allege widespread voter-impersonation fraud. "I see them as foot soldiers in the Republican army," he says. "It's just a way to excite the base. They are hucksters. They're providing fake scholarly support. They're not playing fairly with the facts. And I think they know it." [The New Yorker, 10/29/12]
STUDY: Just 31 Cases Of In-Person Voter Fraud Found In More Than 1 Billion Votes. According to a 2014 study conducted by Loyola University law professor Justin Levitt, there were only 31 credible allegations of in-person voter fraud among the more than 1 billion votes cast in "general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014." And as explained by Levitt, in-person voter fraud is the only type of fraud strict voter ID laws are "designed to stop." From a August 7, 2014, Washington Post article:
Election fraud happens. But ID laws are not aimed at the fraud you'll actually hear about. Most current ID laws (Wisconsin is a rare exception) aren't designed to stop fraud with absentee ballots (indeed, laws requiring ID at the polls push more people into the absentee system, where there are plenty of real dangers). Or vote buying. Or coercion. Or fake registration forms. Or voting from the wrong address. Or ballot box stuffing by officials in on the scam. In the 243-page document that Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel filed on Monday with evidence of allegedly illegal votes in the Mississippi Republican primary, there were no allegations of the kind of fraud that ID can stop. Instead, requirements to show ID at the polls are designed for pretty much one thing: people showing up at the polls pretending to be somebody else in order to each cast one incremental fake ballot. This is a slow, clunky way to steal an election. Which is why it rarely happens. [The Washington Post, 8/6/14; Media Matters, 8/7/14]
Brennan Center For Justice: These Recurring Claims Of Voter Fraud "Simply Do Not Pan Out." A 2007 article by the Brennan Center explained that in-person voter fraud is not a legitimate justification for strict voter ID laws, because voter impersonation is "more rare than getting struck by lightning":
The most common example of the harm wrought by imprecise and inflated claims of "voter fraud" is the call for in-person photo identification requirements. Such photo ID laws are effective only in preventing individuals from impersonating other voters at the polls -- an occurrence more rare than getting struck by lightning. By throwing all sorts of election anomalies under the "voter fraud" umbrella, however, advocates for such laws artificially inflate the apparent need for these restrictions and undermine the urgency of other reforms. Moreover, as with all restrictions on voters, photo identification requirements have a predictable detrimental impact on eligible citizens. Such laws are only potentially worthwhile if they clearly prevent more problems than they create. [...] Royal Masset, the former political director for the Republican Party of Texas, concisely tied all of these strands together in a 2007 Houston Chronicle article concerning a highly controversial battle over photo identification legislation in Texas. Masset connected the inflated furor over voter fraud to photo identification laws and their expected impact on legitimate voters: "Among Republicans it is an 'article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections,' Masset said. He doesn't agree with that, but does believe that requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a dropoff in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote." This remarkably candid observation underscores why it is so critical to get the facts straight on voter fraud. The voter fraud phantom drives policy that disenfranchises actual legitimate voters, without a corresponding actual benefit. Virtuous public policy should stand on more reliable supports. [Brennan Center For Justice, 2007]
PBS: In-Person Voting Fraud Is Rare, Doesn’t Affect Elections. A PBS article about the 2016 election and in-person voter fraud cited professor Lorraine Minnite, who said “voter impersonation is rare because it’s difficult to do on a large-enough scale to tip an election” so it’s “irrational to even try just for one or two more votes.” The article cited several studies showing that “voter impersonation at the ballot box” -- the type of fraud that “voter IDs are designed to prevent” -- “is virtually non-existent.” From the August 20 article:The Press Association are reporting that Wojciech Szczesny has not been fined and dropped following his performance at Southampton, contrary to suggestions made on Danish television at the weekend by former Gunner John Jensen.
Working as part of the commentary team that covered yesterday’s victory over Hull City for channel 6’eren Jensen had claimed that the Pole’s behaviour in the dressing room after the defeat at Saint Mary’s, a match in which he made two serious mistakes, had so infuriated manager Arsene Wenger and assistant Steve Bould that there was a chance he might not play again this season.
Szczesny didn’t feature in the win over Hull, which was hardly a surprise given second choice keepers, in this case David Ospina, have regularly been deployed for cup competitions in recent years.
Szczesny won the Golden Glove award for the most clean sheets in the Premier League last season, shared with Chelsea’s Petr Cech, and has made 176 appearances for the Gunners since making his debut in 2009.
We wait to see who is between the sticks on Sunday when Stoke’s orcs visit the Emirates.Washington’s unprecedented backing for a UN resolution for a nuclear-free Middle East that singles out Israel has both angered and deeply worried the Jewish state although officials are cagey about openly criticising their biggest ally.
The resolution adopted by the United Nations on Friday calls on Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and urges it to open its facilities to inspection.
It also calls for a regional conference in 2012 to advance the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East.
Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with around 200 warheads, but has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its capabilities since the mid-1960s.
The document, which singles out Israel but makes no mention of Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, drew a furious reaction from the Jewish state who decried it as “deeply flawed and hypocritical.”
But it was US backing for the resolution which has caused the most consternation among Israeli officials and commentators, who interpreted the move as “a resounding slap around the face” which has dealt a very public blow to Israel’s long-accepted policy of nuclear ambiguity.
Publicly, the Israel government has not criticised the US position but privately, officials expressed deep disappointment over the resolution, which Washington backed despite intensive Israeli efforts to block it.
According to the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “furious with the Obama administration for having failed to prevent the resolution from passing… and for choosing to support it.”
“The American support for the resolution, after decades in which it supported Israel on this issue, came as a complete surprise,” the paper said.
“In the secret talks that Netanyahu held with Obama’s men… Israel was promised that the resolution would not focus on Israel and that if it did, the Americans would vote against.”
The left-leaning Haaretz daily said Israel had been “sacrificed by the US on the altar of a successful conference” in what constituted “a diplomatic victory for Egypt” which has campaigned against Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
Five years ago, the paper recalled, Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush, refused to accept parts of a draft document calling on Israel to join the NPT and dismissed the idea of holding talks to create a nuclear-free Middle East — even at the cost of the conference’s failure.
The controversial resolution was passed just days ahead of a key meeting between Obama and Netanyahu aimed at restoring friendly ties between the two allies which had been soured over a dispute about Jewish settlements.
But the Maariv daily said that Obama’s ‘last minute’ invitation for Netanyahu to visit the White House had clearly been planned with the NPT review conference in mind.
“It is reasonable to assume that the Americans knew they were going to deliver a blow to Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity and that Obama wanted to try to minimize the damage,” the paper said.
The move draws a line under a long-held “agreement” between Israel and Washington dating back to 1969 under which the Jewish state was permitted to keep silent on its country’s nuclear potential while holding back from any nuclear test.
In return, Washington agreed not to exert or allow any pressure on Israel over its nuclear capabilities.
“It is an undeniably negative change to US policy” with regards to Israel’s nuclear programme, said Eitan Gilboa, an analyst from Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv.
Pointing to contradiction between Obama both applauding the resolution and criticising it for singling out Israel, Gilboa said Washington was “losing its leadership role because of the naive and unrealistic” outlook of its presidentIn case you haven’t heard, Bill Murray teamed up with his brother Brian Doyle-Murray to produce “Extra Innings”, a short comedy series covering minor league baseball. Episodes are released on the Facebook Watch platform, and under ten minutes long. Below is a recap and review of some of the highlights from the first two episodes. These two episodes both focus on the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks, a Future’s League Collegiate Baseball summer team based out of the popular Massachusetts destination.
Season 1 Episode 1 Review: “Get ‘Em: Martha’s Vineyard Sharks, Part 1”
I was excited to hear a few weeks back that Bill Murray would be releasing a new baseball show set across a different minor league baseball stadium each episode. Growing up on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, I was even more excited to learn that the first episode of the series centered on a team close to home, the Martha Vineyard Sharks. Even though I spent many summer afternoons and evenings watching Cape Cod Baseball League games growing up, I wasn’t even aware that Martha’s Vineyard even had any baseball team at all.
“Extra innings” begins with a long intro sequence featuring cartoon animation as well as clips of fans, players, and the brothers in action. The theme song resembles a very old timey baseball melody, although the entire intro feels to carry on too long in my opinion. I was beginning to wonder what was in store, and if the show would offer more than Bill Murray simply wanting to halfheartedly film a show in his favorite vacation spots.
These doubts were unwarranted, as the opening scene starts off strong with the brothers in a dugout imitating two coaches taking notes on an unnamed player, recording innovative sabermetric stats such as “stagnant ball exit velocity”, “shoe size”, and “last 4 SSN digits”. I’m sure Bill James is taking notes on how to incorporate these new statistics. This scene is ultimately quite the spit take as both Brian and Bill alternate question and answer mimicking the infamously disgusting habit of baseball managers.
For those who wouldn’t recognize Brian Doyle-Murray, he has an IMDB page longer than some academic citation lists and the distinctive voice of many characters in films with Bill Murray, although to me one of Brian’s most memorable roles is Clark Griswold’s overbearing boss in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. In the spirit of the holidays, I’ll fight anyone who thinks there is a better Christmas movie.
One of the best scenes was Brian, playing the role of a steroid distributor, trying to convince two of the Shark’s pitchers to take their game to the next level. Claiming to have found a loophole in the rules, he pitches them a container of Amish Beard Wax in lieu of a French or Austrlian foreign substance. Some of the other highlights for me included Brian impatiently waiting in line for the single Porta Potty to open up, or Bill explaining the Martha’s Vineyard version of hitting for the cycle (the striped bass, bluefish, bonito, and sperm whale, for those non-locals) to the Sharks’ bullpen pitchers.
Season 1 Episode 2 Review: “Objects May Leave the Field: Martha’s Vineyard Sharks, Part 2”
I enjoyed the first episode enough to tune in for Episode 2, which continues to follow the Murray brother’s antics with the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks. The first scene opens with Bill and Brian sitting on a bench, cautioned by the notice that “Objects May Leave the Field.” The warning proves important as the brothers are soon assaulted by multiple baseballs flying over the fence, and soon by other objects such as a beach-ball, seaweed, towel, and even a small fish dubbed the “catch of the day”. I thought this was a funny way to incorporate the summer beach vibes of the Vineyard into the episode.
Later, Bill maintains his friendship with Murphy, the Porta Potty service operator. His sense of humor really shines through in these conversations, especially as he takes an overwhelmingly keen interest in the disposal of the waste. Bill’s friendly and humorous demeanor continues with him displaying his Cub’ World Series Ring to the bullpen pitchers and considering the best offers from the young pitchers.
I thought one scene featuring the kiss cam with a group younger girls started to go in the wrong direction, but Bill turns this scene around and into laughter with a surprise puppet. Another great scene setup Brian selling cotton candy to a young fan and being forced to cut him off, claiming it’s past 7th inning, after all. For example, I learned that the Martha’s Vineyard fielded a team at all,
Conclusion
I’ve noticed that most of the scenes are very short skits, but both Bill and Brian are able to quickly setup a joke or gag very quickly and effectively. I’m beginning to learn just how committed Bill Murray is to the sport of baseball, and I think this comedy show is a great way for him to advocate the minor leagues experience. For example, I learned that the Cape Cod summer league had a little brother in the Future’s Collegiate Baseball League. Curiosity drove me to discover some unique rules observed by this league, such as tie games automatically resulting in a sudden death home run derby after the ninth inning, or that at least half of each team’s roster must be composed of local New England permanent residents.
Bill and Brian, if you’re reading this, I implore you guys to film an episode next season up in Maine to cover the Portland Sea Dogs. You couldn’t ask for a better city or local crowd to watch a minor league baseball game. Maine is Vacationland after all.
As for the countless fans and followers of Bill Murray or baseball, you should watch these short episodes on Facebook Watch below. New episodes air every Monday, and Episode 3 should already be up by the time of this posting.
Watch “Extra Innings” here: https://www.facebook.com/billbrianextrainnings/
AdvertisementsA 21-year old woman mill worker who planned to elope with her Assamese co worker and paramour has been rescued and handed over to a woman's home in Coimbatore.
A patrol noticed her standing with two men near the bus stand here late last night. One of them told police on being questioned that they were in love and planned to elope and go to his native state of Assam as the woman's parents were against the marriage.
All of them who are workers at a mill in Ettayapuram in Tuticorin district, came here and were in a state of confusion on where to go and landed in police custody, the man said. While both men were let off after a stern warning, the woman was handed over to a women's home, police said.
Meanwhile, police has alerted their counterparts in Ettayapuram, who had received a missing complaint from the woman's parents on the issue, they said.Thirteen months is too small a period to decipher a government’s foreign policy but one discernible trend that stands out in the Modi government’s statecraft in past 13 months is that the Modi-led India is giving China the run for its money in South Asia, literally.
What is more creditable is that an indirect and subtle corroboration of this has come from an impartial body like United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
The UNCTAD report has put its finger on increasing Chinese FDI in South Asia, particularly Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The report can be accessed here.
But before we discuss the UNCTAD report here is a primer on Sino-Indian rivalry in South Asia, particularly in terms of trade and investments.
China is not an Indian Ocean power and yet for over a decade it has systematically launched a pro-active engagement with all South Asian countries with a two-fold strategic agenda: (i) to nudge out India in its own backyard and (ii) to emerge as an important stakeholder in Indian Ocean.
While China’s forays into South Asia have encompassed all seven South Asian neighbours of India, it has put a special focus on four of these nations – Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, in that order.
For past one decade, China has succeeded in eclipsing Indian influence in South Asia – be it Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or Nepal.
But the Modi government is determinedly in pursuit of policies which seek to reverse this trend. India is doing it by way of increasing trade, investments and connectivity in the region. The concept of BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal), a sub-regional route within SAARC aimed at bypassing Pakistan, China’s most important strategic leverage in the region.
This writer has repeatedly stressed the BBIN strategy of the Modi government and the most recent one can be seen here.
Now let’s come back to the recent UNCTAD report in context of India-China investments in South Asia.
Call it the politics of trade, India and China are engaged in a neck-to-neck competition to woo South Asian countries by way of increased trade and investments. The Narendra Modi government is taking China head on in this respect.
For example, Chinese FDI inflow in Pakistan increased by 31 per cent to $1.7 billion. This is what the UNCTAD report says in this context: “A number of South Asian countries saw rising FDI from China. FDI inflows to Pakistan increased by 31 per cent to $1.7 billion as a result of rising Chinese FDI flows in services, in particular a large investment made by China Mobile in telecommunications.
In addition, Pakistan will benefit significantly from the China Pakistan Industrial Corridor and the associated Chinese investment in infrastructure and manufacturing in the overall context of implementing China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy. According to agreements signed between the two governments in April 2015, Chinese companies will invest about $45.6 billion in Pakistan over the next few years, including $33.8 billion in electricity and $11.8 billion in transport infrastructure.”
In context of Sri Lanka, the report has the following observations: “In Sri Lanka, FDI flows from China rose as well. China has become the largest source of FDI to Sri Lanka in recent years.11 For instance, a joint venture between two local companies and China Merchants Holdings (International) Company has invested $500 million in Colombo International Container Terminals, the country’s largest foreign investment project. After two years of construction, the port started operation in August 2014. A China–Sri Lanka FTA will be signed in June 2015. If the implementation of the 21st Century “Maritime Silk Road” gains ground, an increasing amount of Chinese investment will flow to Sri Lanka, particularly in large infrastructure projects, including another port planned in Hambantota, as well as highways and an airport. Large projects with investment from India and United States were also recorded in Sri Lanka in 2014.”
Before Indian nationalists find it familiarly depressing, here is an indication of Indian response to the Chinese economic maneuvers in the UNCTAD report.
Sample this quote from the report: “FDI outflows from South Asia originate mainly from India. In 2014, Indian outflows saw a five-fold jump to $10 billion, recovering from a sharp decline in 2013. As the performance of the Indian economy has improved, large Indian MNEs have stopped large-scale divestments and some have resumed international expansion, including announcements of some intra regional investments in manufacturing (such as in the automotive and chemical products industries) in neighbouring countries.” This needs to be read in sync with this writer’s earlier piece here.
It is not easy to take on the Chinese economic might. China has surpassed the United States to become the largest FDI recipient in the world. FDI inflows to China reached $129 billion in 2014, which gives a lot of economic heft to Beijing. No wonder that FDI outflows from China reached $116 billion last year, an increase of 15 per cent over the previous year.
But India too is not doing badly. “Inflows to India increased by 22 per cent to $34 billion. As an expected economic recovery gains ground, FDI inflows are likely to maintain an upward trend in 2015. In terms of sectoral composition, manufacturing is gaining strength, as policy efforts to revitalize the sector are sustained, including for instance the launch of the “Make in India” Initiative in mid-2014,” according to the UNCTAD report.
In short, the Modi-led India is out to reclaim the strategic space it had ceded to China in past decade and a half. It is work in progress.
The writer is FirstPost Consulting Editor and a strategic analyst who tweets @Kishkindha.
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.By Steve Beck
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – The Philadelphia Phillies have won five straight National League East titles and with that success, comes a larger fan base. It is a fan base that loves to travel with the team and in some cases, take over opposing stadiums.
However, one of the Phillies rivals in the N.L. East is trying to put an end to that trend.
The Washington Nationals announced a “Take Back the Park” movement Friday. The initiative is aimed at stopping Phillies’ fans from taking over Nationals Park, sometimes referred by Phillies fans as “Citizens Bank Park South.”
On Opening Day 2010, a sea of Phillies flocked to Nationals Park in Washington to see Roy Halladay make his debut in Phillies red. By this writer’s estimation, Phillies’ fans filled at least half of the stadium, if not more.
“Take Back the Park” is designed to get local Nationals fans to purchase tickets for the May 4-6 series against the Phillies before they go on sale to the public.
Tickets for the early May series can only be purchased by Nationals’ season ticket holders and fans who live in Washington, Virginia or Maryland.
The Nationals are coming off a year in which they finished 80-81 and third place in the N.L. East. There is renewed optimism in the nation’s capital with the acquisition of former Phillies prospect Gio Gonzalez and Edwin Jackson, along with phenom Stephen Strasburg, who is returning from Tommy John surgery. The Nationals also have former Phillies Jayson Werth and Brad Lidge on their roster.LINEUP: Watch the DNC on Fox News, Followed by Trump on 'Hannity'
WATCH: Crowd Erupts, Boos Sanders for Telling Them to Vote for Hillary
'I May Vote Trump': Pro-Bernie Protesters Furious After Hillary Hires DNC Chair
Donald Trump unveiled a new nickname during a town hall with Mike Pence in Roanoke, Virginia today.
"Why did Hillary get rid of her middle name?" Trump asked. "Hillary Rotten Clinton. Rotten Clinton. Hillary Rotten Clinton, right? Maybe that’s why, it’s too close.”
Hillary's maiden name is Rodham and she formerly went by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Watch the full town hall below. And don't miss Trump's exclusive interview with Hannity tonight after Day 1 of the DNC at 11 pm ET on Fox News Channel!
School Bus Driver Gets No Jail Time in Rape of 15-Year-Old
Air Force Chief: 'We Stand Between the Sheep and the Wolves'
'I May Vote Trump': Pro-Bernie Protesters Furious After Hillary Hires DNC ChairIndependent According to the UK, “One person would be too many.” According to BNI, seven people is a good start! And they haven’t even gotten to whining about the other two other anti-Islam generals nominated for Defense Secretary and Homeland Security Secretary.
Independent (“RACIST?” I thought we were talking about religion, NOT race, which Islam definitely is not) quotations expressed by everyone from the incoming head of the justice department, Jeff Sessions, to the new National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn. Designated terrorist group CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) has compiled a list of racistquotations expressed by everyone from the incoming head of the justice department, Jeff Sessions, to the new
“It’s not in their [Muslims’] conscience, life like we understand life. It just isn’t.”
op-ed In a Julyfor the New York Post, Flynn called the the Muslim world
“an epic failure compared to the superiority of the West.”
“Islam a cancer and fear of it is justified.”
hides behind being a religion “Islam a political ideology that.”
KT McFarland, the Fox News analyst and Donald Trump’s incoming Deputy National Security Adviser, is just one of six people who have been appointed to run the government come January 2017 – excluding the president-elect himself – who have openly expressed prejudiced views about Muslims.
“Political correctness, of not discriminating against Muslims “is getting us killed.”
“There is a war on. And the war is against all of western civilisation…If we do not destroy the scourge of radical Islam, it will ultimately destroy Western civilization.”
Dr. Ben Carson, the new US Housing and Urban Development Secretary, said he believes that there is a Muslim plot to take over America, called “civilizational jihad.” He compared Syrian refugees to rabid dogs and said:
“Bringing in people from the Middle East right now carries extra danger and we cannot put our people at risk because we are trying to be politically correct.”
Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo, who will serve as the head of the CIA, defended a staffer who posted a link to a blog on his social media accounts that used the slur “turban topper” and called president Barack Obama an “evil Muslim communist USURPER.“
He also blamed Muslim leaders for their “silence” and “complicity” after the 2013 Boston Marathon attacks.
Stephen Bannon, Mr Trump’s senior counsel and Chief Strategist is one of the founders of ‘white supremacist’ platform Breitbart, (“White supremacist?” Seriously? Andrew Breitbart was Jewish, the current editor-in-chief of Breitbart is Orthodox Jewish and Breitbart is well-known as one of the most pro-Israel blogs on the web).
Bannon compared Shariah to “Nazism, racism and communism”. He also accused Virginia democratic senator Tim Kaine as being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. (He is)
One of Trump’s closest advisors is former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich, who advocated making all Muslims take a religious “test.”
“We should, frankly, test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported,” said Mr Gingrich.
And talk about fake news, the Independent takes remarks by New Jersey governor Chris Christie out |
I would say you are running multiple accounts and possibly working with an organized group to disseminate your propaganda.
I know you'd never tell the truth, but I wonder if you are being paid for your work here? I wouldn't be surprised if some Zionist "charity" paid for this kind of graffiti, but I would be a bit surprised if you worked for the government itself, or IDF or something like that. Usually government's just use bots for this type of work but you have all the hallmarks of being a real person. With an M.A. in psychology none the less.
Very very interesting. I'll be watching you.NEW DELHI: A Polish woman was drugged and raped as she travelled to the Indian capital with her two-year-daughter, police said Sunday, the latest in a string of sexual attacks on women in the country.
The woman, 33, and her daughter were travelling in a taxi from the city of Mathura where they live to New Delhi last Thursday when she was allegedly raped by the driver.
The driver drugged the woman at some point during the 150-kilometre journey and she was attacked after she passed out, Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told AFP.
The woman woke up on a bench outside a railway station in New Delhi with her toddler crying by her side, the officer said, adding that details of the attack were still unknown.
“It is still a bit unclear, but prima facie, it seems she sat (in the taxi) voluntarily. But yes, thereafter, in the car he drugged her using some spray...medical report has confirmed rape,” he said.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, reported the incident to police who are searching for the driver, Bhagat said.
The woman, a devotee of the Hindu god Krishna, had been living in Mathura — believed to be the birthplace of Krishna — in Uttar Pradesh state for the past three years and worked in the cloth export business, he said.
She and her daughter had been waiting on a busy road in Mathura for a taxi to take them to the capital when the driver approached.
The Jan 2 incident comes barely a week after India marked the first anniversary of the death of a student who was gang-raped on a New Delhi bus in an attack that sent shockwaves across the nation.
The gang-rape triggered massive protests over the levels of violence against women, but in the last 12 months there have been several more cases of local and foreign woman being attacked.
A judge last month sentenced three Nepalese men to 20 years in jail for the gang-rape of a US tourist in June in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.
Six men were sentenced to life in prison in July last year for the gang-rape and robbery of a 39-year-old Swiss woman cyclist who had been holidaying in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.We demand that Southern Rail be held accountable for its rising fares and diminishing customer service, which cause misery to thousands of passengers daily. We request an immediate fare freeze until performance improves. Please review Southern Rail’s contract against these four areas specifically:
RELIABILITY: Trains are consistently late, cancelled, overcrowded and unreliable, causing unnecessary stress and delay to passengers.
ON-TRAIN EXPERIENCE: Consistent overcrowding and standing-room-only leads to cramped and unbearable conditions. Jostling for space and seats leaves passengers degraded, frustrated and stressed.
VALUE: Prices increase every year, whilst service declines. Delay Repay is not enough.
COMMUNICATION: Poor communication of delays, cancellations and alterations. Live service updates are not accurate. Platforms are displayed at the last minute causing a stampede for trains, which carries health and safety risks and is a stressful experience.It might seem peculiar, considering it was the major football news story of the summer, but Raheem Sterling's transfer from Liverpool to Manchester City has almost gone under the radar.
If £49 million was considered a huge outlay for Sterling early in the summer -- the most expensive English player ever, and then the eighth-highest transfer fee of all time -- it was normalised by Kevin De Bruyne joining City for an even higher fee, and then virtual unknown Anthony Martial signing for Manchester United for a fee which could, with add-ons, also overtake the Sterling sum.
Then there have been the other stories from an eventful campaign so far -- Chelsea's complete collapse, Jurgen Klopp's arrival, Arsenal's Champions League struggles. Nobody has been talking about Sterling, no one questioning whether he's settled in. This weekend, everyone is talking about him again.
Manchester City Manchester City AFC Bournemouth AFC Bournemouth 5 1 FT Game Details GameCast
Lineups and Stats
The consensus about Sterling, at least at the time of his move, was that he was a hugely talented footballer yet to develop a reliable end product. That was harsh, not least because it's extremely rare for such a young footballer to be consistent with his final ball.
So much has happened in Sterling's short career -- a key part of a title challenge, a starter at the World Cup, a massive transfer -- that it's easy to forget he's still only 20. No one -- not Leo Messi, not Cristiano Ronaldo, not Neymar -- finds their peak efficiency at 20.
Besides, Sterling's numbers in terms of 'end product' have actually been impressive -- in the league, he managed a combined 14 goals and assists in 2013-14, and exactly the same figure in 2014-15. Of the 30 players who scored more goals (7) or the 15 players who registered more assists (7) than Sterling last season, no one was his age or younger.
The key to assessing whether Sterling will become better, of course, isn't simply about assessing the numbers, but about looking for signs of improvement. And this has unquestionably happened -- when Sterling first broke through into the Liverpool side, he literally couldn't shoot.
He used to dribble his way past opponents, leave full-backs for dead, and then scuff his shots horribly. He simply couldn't generate enough power, and his goals generally came from very close range -- two efforts in Liverpool's 5-1 demolition of Arsenal in February 2014 spring to mind.
The next season, things looked better already, to the extent that Brendan Rodgers sometimes deployed him as Liverpool's de facto centre-forward. There were moments when he seemed unconvincing, like when he was repeatedly thwarted by David De Gea in a 3-0 defeat in December 2014, but he got better and better.
A goal away at Chelsea in a Capital One Cup semifinal last season showed his improvement -- he held off midfield challenges, roared past the defenders and shot past the goalkeeper. He'd become an all-round attacker, and while his goals and assists total stayed the same as the previous campaign, he was matching that figure in a significantly worse team.
Sterling's protracted summer transfer left a bitter taste for many, perhaps primarily those who find it difficult to accept Manchester City, with their new money, are now a more attractive club than Liverpool, with their history. But there was a relentless, almost uncomfortable media campaign to sully Sterling's name, to paint him as a greedy kid out to get extra cash. His agent, in fairness, certainly didn't help the situation. But realistically, while a pay rise was certainly tempting, Sterling has moved to a better team, and has helped his new club to a position on top of the table.
City's 5-1 victory over Bournemouth on Saturday afternoon was Sterling's best performance in a City shirt yet. So far this season he's almost seemed like a handy bonus rather than a key player, with David Silva pulling the strings between the lines, Sergio Aguero providing the goals upfront and De Bruyne making an instant impact. But with Silva and Aguero both out at the weekend because of injuries sustained on international duty, Sterling took centre-stage -- more literally than you might expect.
De Bruyne seemed the obvious candidate to play as City's No. 10 in Silva's absence. Instead, De Bruyne was on the left with Sterling central, just behind Wilfried Bony but playing close enough to be considered a second striker. By the end of the first half, he'd grabbed a hat trick -- his first, as many as the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Dennis Bergkamp, Eric Cantona and Gianfranco Zola managed in their entire Premier League careers.
Two goals were simple poachers' efforts -- the first after he'd got himself into a good far-post position for a right-wing cross, the third even easier after Jesus Navas had launched a counter-attack through the middle.
But the second goal was remarkable -- Sterling started a run from a deep, central position, sprinted onto a pass from De Bruyne, moved inside onto his right foot, and then produced two dummies to first put Steve Cook on the ground, then do the same to Sylvain Distin. As he despatched the ball into the net, both left-back Charlie Daniels and goalkeeper Adam Federici were prostrate too. Sterling left four players on the ground with his trickery in the space of three seconds, the type of behaviour you expect from the world's most deadly strikers.
One of Sterling's most surprising qualities is his tactical intelligence. Young, quick dribblers are often wayward, frustrating talents who abandon their positional responsibilities in pursuit of glory, but Sterling has played almost everywhere over the last two seasons, and always been up to the task. He's played on the right, the left, as a centre-forward and as a No. 10. He has been played at wing-back when Liverpool played a three-man defence. Every time, he has understood where to be, how to move, who to mark.
Raheem Sterling's hat trick vs. Bournemouth takes his goals tally to five for the season.
As a centre-forward on Saturday, he moved across to the flanks, working the channels, and came short to link play. He ran in behind too, as you would expect, but with a good awareness of Bournemouth's offside trap, often doing the Robert Lewandowski trick of starting his runs from five yards in front of the defence, so he's up at full speed by the time he roars past the opposition centre-backs.
When De Bruyne and Navas attacked down the flanks, Sterling glanced up to see centre-forward Wilfried Bony's intention before taking up a different position, often coming short for the pull-back. His three goals came from six shots, and he also created three chances for teammates.
This was, of course, only Bournemouth. But it was telling that City didn't miss Silva, the Premier League's best playmaker, or Aguero, the Premier League's best centre-forward.
"We had to do something different without Sergio and David," Manuel Pellegrini said afterward. "I am happy because we changed his position and played him in the middle, with Bony in front of him.
"We felt it was better for him to be near Bony and also near the box. With his movement we thought Raheem could be dangerous and fortunately he was, he scored three goals. He also missed three or four goals, but he did very well.
"When we bought Raheem in the summer I said we are buying a 20-year-old who is very young and needs to improve. He is not a striker, but he can improve his finishing and, today, he did."
Many have missed the point about Sterling's transfer, about his end product -- but Pellegrini understands the situation perfectly. He's already recording statistics beyond his years, and will only continue to improve. In a couple of years' time, this central role might even be his optimum position.
Michael Cox is the editor of zonalmarking.net and a contributor to ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @Zonal_Marking.Modeled after 529 education savings accounts, 529As are expected to be easier and far less costly to set up than special needs trusts.
But because 529A accounts have several limitations, they are not likely to replace the need for trust accounts for many families, though they may serve as a nice supplement. Although anyone can contribute to the 529A, including the person with disabilities, total contributions are capped at $14,000 a year.
Contributions are not tax-deductible, but the money grows tax-free, as long as withdrawals are used for disability-related expenses, like education, assistive technology and personal support services, health and wellness, among other things. But “it can’t be used for Disney World, it can’t be used for the movie theater,” said Brian Rubin, a lawyer on special needs in Buffalo Grove, Ill.
Image Credit Robert Neubecker
The 529A accounts are likely to be most attractive for disabled people who work and want to save more than $2,000, or for families who need a place to deposit gifts or inheritances from family members. Once the account balance exceeds $100,000, however, the individual’s S.S.I. benefits will be cut off (Medicaid isn’t affected). Spending ABLE account money on housing may reduce S.S.I. payments, too.
There’s another drawback: After the individual dies, any money left in the account may be claimed by the state’s Medicaid program for expenses incurred after the account was opened.
The accounts will be administered by the states, most of which are either working on or have passed laws to create the accounts, according to Sara Weir, president of the National Down Syndrome Society.
TRUSTS There are a few types of special-needs trusts, but “third party” trusts are frequently used by families who want to supplement what the disabled person receives through government-run programs. The trusts can sit empty for years, families can add money over time, or they can fund them with life insurance and estate proceeds. And they are quite flexible: The money can be spent on just about anything, as long as it’s for the beneficiary, and any remaining money can be left to family.Because of the way the contracts on their books are set up in the future, the Miami Heat were sort of compelled to spend a bunch of money this summer.
They preferred to use it on Gordon Hayward, Blake Griffin or Russell Westbrook, but those targets didn't work out. So they ended up dividing it up among a trio of role players in Kelly Olynyk, James Johnson and Dion Waiters over a 24-hour period on Wednesday and Thursday.
There's a reason to do it. Waiters and Johnson were terrific last season for the Heat, overachieving as part of a 30-11 run in the second half of the season that gave the team hope for the future. Olynyk is a skilled big man who is young, and it's hard to find such players, so there was absolutely a market for him.
Maybe Waiters is on the cusp of becoming a true star. Maybe Johnson is the perfect versatile forward for today's game, even though he had been a journeyman for seven seasons until arriving in Miami. Maybe in the Heat's fierce conditioning system, Olynyk will get the kind of bounce many before him have. He can shoot a little, and his plus-minus numbers are promising, though his rebounding and defense are worrisome.
Maybe Pat Riley will flip two of the three for a bona fide star in the next 18 months and this usage of salary-cap space will reveal itself as an asset play. The average annual values -- Olynyk and Waiters around $13 million and Johnson at $15 million -- aren't out of line, though it's debatable just what the other bidders might've been offering.
All of those possible outcomes have a reasonable chance of happening and would make the Heat feel OK about their Hayward backup plan. And the fan base, which continues to support the Heat passionately despite the loss of the stars, will be happy in the short term. It fell in love with Waiters and Johnson last season. Olynyk sometimes toes the line between hustling and playing dirty, a formula that often wins over the home crowd.
Boston's Kelly Olynyk is walking through the door and into Miami's plans. Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty Images
The issue here, though, is the length of the contracts: four years handed out to all three. The moment they are signed, they are no longer going to be attractive assets for a while, especially with the league expected to be headed for a bit of a cap squeeze over the next several years after a few heavy-spending summers across the league.
Contracts this summer have been getting shorter, shown by the number of two- and three-year deals on the rise. Now, the Heat's books are stuffed with this new money and they're going to be capped out.
With these new deals on the books, the Heat will have around $100 million committed to Hassan Whiteside, Goran Dragic, Tyler Johnson, James Johnson, Olynyk and Waiters in the 2018-19 season. That's not exactly the Golden State Warriors' starting lineup, but it's going to be close to the same price.
Over the past two summers the Heat have combined to lock Whiteside, Waiters, Olynyk and the Johnsons into deals totaling more than $310 million. Add Dragic, who signed in 2015, and the outlay is nearly $400 million. The number of All-Star appearances from the group: zero.
There are at least three East playoff teams taking a step back this season, with the Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers and Atlanta Hawks going through various phases of rebuilding. The Heat will enter the season expected to return to the playoffs after missing them last season. That is an accomplishment.
But with this roster they probably will not be considered a genuine threat. That's a spot they hope they're not locked into for long, even though the roster they now have is indeed locked in for long.Electronic Arts took a lot of flak from PS3 customers of Battlefield 3, who argued that they were promised a free copy of Battlefield 1943 prior to the game's release. The announcement itself was made by EA during their press conference at E3 earlier this year.
Refusing to keep to its word, EA reneged on the promise and denied all they had said. Until now, that is. The publisher has since dismissed it as a "misunderstanding" and says they intend to deliver the promised free copy of Battlefield 1943 after all.
You will be able to grab your free copy of the game, assuming you own Battlefield 3, this weekend if you're in Europe. Americans will have to wait until December 10, while Asians will have to wait a week longer.
To download your copy of Battlefield 1943, simply visit 1943redemption.battlefield.com and log in with your Origin username and password. Follow the rest of the steps on the screen.Scarlett Johansson is going to be a formidable actress. At 20 years old she is already displaying talent beyond her years. Her performances in Lost in Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring are both ones I’ll remember for some time. And yeah… it doesn’t hurt that she’s mighty attractive too.
Her new movie, The Island, opens later this week and my favorite kind of spoiler has just come out. Apparently Scarlett Johansson does a topless scene in the film. Yay! (what can I say? I’m a 14 year old at heart). But what’s really interesting is that apparently she insisted on doing a topless scene when director Michael Bay didn’t want her too. The good folks over at M&C give us this:
Scarlett claims director Michael Bay desperately tried to convince her to cover up but she refused because she felt the scene required her to be half naked. She revealed: “I said, ‘Women don’t normally sleep in a bra. I can’t wake up in this scene wearing a bra, it’s ridiculous!'”
Hmmm… mixed feelings here. One the one hand no actor should be “insisting” anything to a director. The director is the boss. PERIOD. I really hope Johansson isn’t starting to get full of herself. However… who am I do argue with the end results? :)
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**-UPDATE-**
A few people who have seen sneek previews of The Island have emailed me this morning to let me know that the topless scene never happens. I guess Bay changed his mind back to stay within the PG-13 ratings. Probably a good move… but I feel like crying now.The former First Lady would get the chance to pilot Mr Obama’s reforms of the American healthcare system if she agrees to clear the path to his nomination as Democratic presidential candidate.
Senior figures in the Obama camp have told Democrat colleagues that the offer to Mrs Clinton of a cabinet post as health secretary or to steer new legislation through the Senate will be a central element of their peace overtures to the New York senator.
Mr Obama said on Thursday that he believed he would have secured the support of enough delegates to make him the standard bearer of his party in November’s presidential election by the end of this week.
His cause received what could be a decisive boost when the Democratic Rules Committee agreed a compromise to seat only half of the delegates elected in Michigan and Florida.
Both states were won by Mrs Clinton but were stripped of their voting rights after moving election dates in breach of party rules.
After today’s primary election in Puerto Rico and Tuesday’s final contests in Montana and South Dakota, the remaining super-delegates will come under huge pressure from fellow party grandees to declare their hands.
The Obama camp, however, remains nervous about Mrs Clinton’s intentions and ambitions, and is preparing a face-saving package that will allow her to continue to play a role in health care reform, which has been her signature issue for more than a decade. Despite pressure from some Clinton allies, Mr Obama and his advisers do not wish to ask her to be his vice-presidential running mate. “They will talk to her,” one Democrat strategist close to senior figures in the Obama camp told The Sunday Telegraph. “They will give her the respect she deserves. She will get something to do with health care, a cabinet post or the chance to lead the legislation through the Senate.”
Another Democrat who has discussed strategy with friends in the Obama inner circle said that Mr Obama was openly considering asking Mrs Clinton to join his cabinet, alongside two other former presidential rivals: John Edwards, who is seen as a likely attorney general; and Joe Biden, who is a leading contender to become Secretary of State.
Mr Obama hinted at the plan last week. “One of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln,” he said. “Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his cabinet because whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was 'how can we get this country through this time of crisis?’ And I think that has to be the approach that one takes.”
Informal talks have already begun between Obama and Clinton fundraisers to discuss a merger, enabling Mr Obama to pay off Mrs Clinton’s campaign debts of $11 million (£5.6 million).
Tentative contacts have already taken place between Obama and Clinton aides over the endgame, but there have been no formal talks. Mrs Clinton’s aides, while acknowledging that she will have to abandon her White House dream, do not feel they are in a position to negotiate on her behalf. “She has not surrendered in her own mind yet and until she does it’s very difficult to have these conversations,” the second strategist said.
Dee Dee Myers, the former press secretary to President Clinton, said: “It seems clear to me from watching her, and talking to people, that she doesn’t really know what she wants.” But after 17 months of campaigning, and $150 million (£76 million) spent, the question that haunts the Clinton camp is: how did someone who a year ago had unrivalled name recognition, a legendary campaign organisation and more money than her opponent contrive to throw it all away?
The answers come down to wrong message, wrong tactics, complacency, character – and, ultimately, the opponent. Even Clinton aides agree that she wrongly sold herself as a candidate of experience, when voters yearned for Barack Obama’s message of change. Her campaign machine then failed to win January’s crucial opening Iowa caucuses, handing lethal momentum to Mr Obama.
Her staff mistakenly believed they could knock her rival out by “Super Tuesday” on February 5, when 22 states voted. When that did not happen, she had neither the resources nor the organisation to compete in the succession of caucuses that followed, allowing Mr Obama to build the delegate lead he maintains to this day.
Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster not affiliated to either camp, told The Sunday Telegraph: “We have known for two years that Democrats and voters in general are much more interested in change. Yet for reasons that are inexplicable, the Clinton campaign chose to be on the short end of that message stick.”
Backed into a corner, Mrs Clinton responded with increasingly outlandish claims about her qualifications, including a ludicrous statement that she had braved sniper fire on a trip to Bosnia.
That, plus her subsequent insistence that she had merely “mis-spoken” rather than admitting she had got her facts wrong, raised new issues about her character.
In any case, Mr Mellman believes the decisive factor in her defeat was the one she couldn’t control. “The most important thing was that she was up against Barack Obama. He is enormously talented.”VfL Wolfsburg have stiffened their back line for the coming season with the signing of Netherlands international defender Jeffrey Bruma.
The 24-year-old centre-back has signed a five-year deal through to 2021 at the Volkswagen Arena, and is enthusiastic about having a second taste of the Bundesliga after a previous spell at Hamburger SV.
"Since my time at Hamburg, it was clear to me that I would like to play in the Bundesliga again, because it's one of Europe’s top leagues," said Bruma, who made 40 top-flight appearances for HSV between July 2011 and June 2013 after joining on loan from Chelsea FC.
Win a trip to a 2016/17 Bundesliga match
Take a look round Bruma's new home in the video below
'International class'
"I'm looking forward to having that opportunity with Wolfsburg. In three years at PSV, I've gained a lot of experience and improved a lot. It's now time for the next step."
Bruma, who has 19 international caps and a single goal for De Oranje, will fill the void left by Naldo's departure for FC Schalke 04.
"We're getting a central-defender of international class, as we were able to see in our Champions League games against PSV last season," Wolves coach Dieter Hecking said. "In spite of that, we believe Jeffrey can continue his development with us."Scientists produce indirect evidence of gaseous filaments and sheets known as Whims linking clusters of galaxies in the cosmic web
It is one of cosmology’s more perplexing problems: that up to 90% of the ordinary matter in the universe appears to have gone missing.
Now astronomers have detected about half of this missing content for the first time, in a discovery that could resolve a long-standing paradox.
The conundrum first arose from measurements of radiation left over from the Big Bang, which allowed scientists to calculate how much matter there is in the universe and what form it takes. This showed that about 5% of the mass in the universe comes in the form of ordinary matter, with the rest being accounted for by dark matter and dark energy.
Dark matter has never been directly observed and the nature of dark energy is almost completely mysterious, but even tracking down the 5% of ordinary stuff has proved more complicated than expected. When scientists have counted up all the observable objects in the sky – stars, planets, galaxies and so on – this only seems to account for between a 10th and a fifth of what ought to be out there.
Third gravitational wave detection gives hints on dark matter and black holes Read more
The deficit is known as the “missing baryon problem”, baryons being ordinary subatomic particles like protons and neutrons.
Richard Ellis, a professor of astrophysics at the University College London, said: “People agree that there’s a lot missing, raising the question where is it?”
The distribution of galaxies in the universe follows a web-like pattern and scientists have speculated that the missing baryons could be floating in diffuse gaseous filaments and sheets linking the galaxy clusters in the cosmic web.
Theoretical calculations suggest these gaseous threads, known as the warm–hot intergalactic medium, or the Whim, ought to be around a million degrees celsius. A mist of gas at this temperature is too cold to emit X-rays that could be spotted by ordinary telescopes from the Earth – but not cold enough to absorb significant amounts of light passing through it.
“The trouble is, it’s in this unusual temperature regime where we can’t see it,” said Ellis.
Now two separate teams of scientists, one at the University of Edinburgh, the other at the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Orsay, France, have produced compelling indirect evidence for the Whim. Both teams relied on the fact that when radiation travels through a hot gas, it is scattered, meaning that the Whim ought to appear as a dim outline in the cosmic microwave background.
The scientists overlaid observations of the cosmic background radiation, made by the Planck space observatory, and the most detailed three dimensional map of the cosmic web, created by the Sloane Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). They hypothesised that if there were gas threads linking galaxy clusters, these should show up in the Planck data.
The Edinburgh team found the regions between galaxies appeared to be about six times as dense as the surrounding bits of space and when summed up, these gaseous threads could amount to about 30% of the ordinary matter in the universe. The French teams’ calculation came out at slightly less than this, but the numbers are consistent.
Ellis, who was not involved in either project, describes the findings as “inspirational”. “These two papers have been very prominently discussed and people are excited,” he added. “The Whim is out there.”
The initial measurements still do not account for all the ordinary matter, and some believe the remaining portion could be made up by exotic unobserved objects such as black holes or dark stars. Cosmologists are also still yet to discover the nature of dark matter, which makes up even more of the universe.Uber asks relevant authorities to investigate claims, and denies it has fallen victim to security breach
It has been reported Uber accounts are being sold for $1 on the 'dark web'
Other users in the U.S. claim they have been charged for trips in London
British customers have reported their accounts being used in U.S. cities
U.S. authorities are looking into how British users of Uber have had taxi trips in the U.S. charged to their account
U.S. authorities have launched an investigation into reports that British and U.S. users of taxi app Uber are being charged for 'phantom' rides they never took.
In recent months, customers in the U.S. claim to have been charged for trips through London, while British users say their accounts are being used in the U.S.
The Guardian reported the agencies have now launched a probe into their claims after Uber asked authorities to investigate.
Among those to claim to have been victim of the scam is Anthea Turner. The TV presenter tweeted to Uber 'account has been hacked nothing to help me on website – this is ridiculous'.
Some users have reportedly had hundreds or even thousands of pounds taken from their accounts.
Last month Uber denied that it had suffered a security breach - but has promised to reimburse all customers who have been charged for journeys that they did not book or take.
Today a spokesmen for Uber told MailOnline the company itself was not being investigated, but it had asked the relevant authorities to look into the issue.
The complaints on Twitter are coming from users across the globe including the States and France.
Record producer Mick Crossley told The Standard he had been hit with a bill for £3,000 for 142 journeys. He said he did not receive notification that the journeys had been booked because someone had changed his contact email address on his account as well.
Some customers have also vented their fury at their inability to get hold of someone at Uber to report the situation to.
The website does not contain a telephone number, only an email function for enquiries.
Anthea Turner was one user who appeared to have struggled to get through to the minicab sharing company.
She tweeted that she couldn't even change her account details because her login details had been changed by someone. Then after appearing to have tried to get a phone number for them, tweeted Uber saying 'your email is saying not valid and the number from 118 500 is not ringing through. Do you exist?'
Last month a spokesperson for Uber categorically denied that there had been a breach at Uber, confirming they were 100 per cent sure that their system had not been compromised.
'We take any issue of this nature very seriously and after investigating have found no evidence of a breach at Uber,' an Uber spokesperson said. 'Attempting to fraudulently access and use Uber accounts is illegal and we notify the authorities about such activity.'
However they admitted that there have been a number of users reporting that their accounts had been used by other people to book journeys.
They said they were still investigating the cause, but that the most likely explanation is that there had been a data breach on another e-commerce website.
Since people often use the same usernames and passwords across several online accounts, fraudsters have attempted to use the data hacked from another site to access Uber accounts.Transportation Safety Board of Canada – Aviation Investigation Report A10P0147
Loss of Control – Collision with Water
Atleo River Air Service Ltd.
Cessna 185F, C-GIYQ
Ahousat, British Columbia
29 May 2010
The first thing that struck me about this TSB Canada report was the title. Loss of control seemed an odd description and certainly isn’t a cause in itself. The title fits the report, though: loss of control was the key factor in this investigation because to start, that was all the investigators knew. How did the pilot lose control and why did he fly the aircraft into the water at a 45° angle? That took longer to work out.
The aircraft was a Cessna 185F which had been fitted with floats to allow water landings. It was owned by Atleo River Air Service Ltd. The pilot, who was the company’s aircraft maintenance engineer, had 2,000 hours of flying logged, mostly in the Cessna 185 on the west coast of British Columbia. He was trained, qualified, certified and medically fit.
That day, he was approached by three passengers who wanted to charter the aircraft to take them back home to Ahousat First Nation, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. They had a small amount of baggage: several bottles of liquor, a case of beer and some personal effects.
They had travelled to Tofino by water taxi, but the operator would not take them back to Ahousat.
The Ahousat reservation is only accessible by water or air. The water taxi operator does not allow alcohol to be carried to Ahousat. As a result, the passengers decided to charter the aircraft. They had been drinking but were walking normally and “coherent enough to argue the price of the charter.”
The pilot agreed to take them for the six-minute flight to Ahousat.
They departed Tofino at 1200 Pacific Daylight Time. The route is usually flown at 300-500 feet above sea level. The weather visibility was 8 miles, with a layer of scattered cloud at 1,000 feet and overcast at 1,400 feet. That day, the Cessna flew VFR at about 500 feet.
Two nautical miles from Ahousat, in cruise, the aircraft descended in a steep-nose down attitude. It flew straight into the Millar Channel and overturned. Fishermen and water taxis in the area tried to keep the wreckage afloat but it sank in the 15 metres of water and came to rest on the ocean floor.
The front seat passenger died on impact. The pilot and the rear passengers suffered blunt force injuries which may have been fatal and certainly would have stopped them from being able to escape the underwater aircraft. Cause of death was drowning.
Two days later, divers found the aircraft wreckage with the pilot and all three passengers still inside. The pilot still had his lap belt on. The aircraft had shoulder restraints but the pilot did not have the shoulder restraint strap connected to his lap belt.
All of the passengers were unrestrained. The right door was ajar. Beer cans were found near the passenger seats.
The emergency locator transmitter functioned but no signal was received until the wreckage was brought to the surface.
The aircraft struck the water at about 45° nose down and sheared off the engine and the pontoons. The V brace, which forms a V between the top corners of the windshield and the top centre of the instrument panel, was bent forward.
The engine was running and the propeller damage was consistent with significant power at impact.
There was no indication of control malfunctions. The aircraft was trimmed for the cruise with the flaps fully retracted. The weather was good.
The aircraft did not spin nor stall. There was no evidence to suggest any mechanical or environmental cause.
The evidence was baffling. The captain had no known medical condition and there was no record of him being depressed or intending to harm himself. And yet, it appeared he’d flown the aircraft straight into the ocean.
Transportation Safety Board of Canada – Aviation Investigation Report A10P0147
The aircraft struck the water at an angle and speed consistent with a deliberate dive, or a loss of control. There is no operational reason why the pilot would perform such a manoeuvre. Had the pilot intentionally caused the aircraft to dive, a level-off should have been possible. Based on the pilot’s demeanour, there was no reason to dive to the point of impact with the water. Therefore, it is concluded that the pilot lost control of the aircraft.
The pilot’s lap belt showed evidence of high loads. The front passenger’s lap belt had no evidence of similar loads. The rear right passenger’s lap belt failed under load, indicating that it was being worn at impact. The rear left passenger’s lap belt showed no distress.
The autopsies showed high levels of alcohol in all the passengers.
The pilot’s right wrist was broken and he had a severe injury to his forehead.
The rear left passenger, sitting behind him, had two broken ankles.
A picture of the pre-accident situation began to form in the investigators’ minds.
The bent V brace and the pilot’s broken wrist were consistent with the pilot bracing himself, or trying to resist a force from behind. However, the autopsy showed no sign of a strike to the back of his head.
The passenger sitting behind him broke both ankles on impact, which suggests she was kicking or pushing the pilot’s seat forward. Investigators believe she may have kicked the seatback with both feet and then pushed it forward, forcing the pilot into the instrument panel and the controls into a dive.
[Our tests revealed] that if the |
. Hundreds of those reviews in several languages now. Every one! If you like the Lumia 900, and you got to try the N9, you will love the N9, its that good. No. Its better. It is the only phone by any manufacturer ever, whose name is not Apple, that has been rated in most of its reviews as 'as good as' or 'better' than the iPhone!!!!!! That is as close to the 'god phone' as you can get to the 'jesusphone' haha.
So take the UK. In Britain they have the D&AD awards, the 'Oscars' of the design and advertising industry. Nokia's N9 was awarded the best design award of the year just now. Who did it beat? Pretty awesome competition including the iPad 2, and also yes, the Lumia 800. Here is the bizarre part, the UK design industry was so impressed, they awarded the 'best design of the UK' award to the N9 - even though the N9 is not sold in the UK (and the Lumia 800 is). How good do you have to be, to get that kind of victory?
Then the ultimate endorsement. I cannot make it more plain than this. Germany is Europe's largest nation and Nokia has had a huge market share there. Germany's largest weekly magazine, Der Stern (its like Time in the USA or the Economist in the UK) wrote its review of the Nokia N9 on MeeGo. Der Stern concluded its review thus, saying the phone is so fantastic, that while it is not sold in Germany, German citizens should travel to another country like Switzerland or Austria to go buy that phone! (This while Nokia's Lumia 800 was massively promoted in Germany at the time in a super-blitz marketing push). Think about that please. If the device is so astonishing, that the biggest magazine in your country recommends customers to go travel to another country to go get it. I cannot think of a more powerful endorsement that today, April 2012, this is the must-have phone in all Nokia markets, the N9 HAS to be sold immediately everywhere.
So yes, Nokia has currently in production genuine superphones that are not on Lumia on the Windows Phone that carriers do not want, but that are on those very exact Symbian and MeeGo systems, that the carriers used to want in the past. Nokia had wisely developed its eggs in three baskets. While one basket is now clearly broken (Windows Phone/Lumia), Nokia is in the position Motorola was not, Nokia has two other genuine superphone-class operating systems it still fully supports, for which it has in fact several highly desirable phones in production today. Today!
YOU WANT IT? YOU REALLY WANT IT? YOU CAN'T HAVE IT
The only problem is, that the CEO refuses to sell these superphones globally. Yes. You heard me right. While the Nokia CEO admits - admits - that the resellers refuse to sell specifically his much beloved Lumia phones, the rest of the world demands N9 and 808 phones so much, that at least one major publication suggested it worth flying to other countries to go get yours! The customer is suffocating, begging for air. Elop stops strangling the customer and instead starts to.. waterboard the customer!!!!!!!
No! You can't have the N9! No, You can't have the 808! You have to take this Lumia instead! You have to!
Facts. Nokia's bestselling markets in the affluent industrialized world, where most smarpthones are sold, include Germany (population 80 million), UK (60), Italy (55), Spain (50) and France (65). And Mr Elop in his infinite wisdom? Refuses to let the N9 be sold in any of them. But he is willing to send the N9 to such far-away nations as New Zealand (population 4 million) or Singapore (4). Or in some of the poorest countries like Nigeria. Yeah.. Makes sense?
And the 808 PureView? The only Nokia Symbian phone recently that US press have liked? Elop refuses to sell it in the USA? True.
If the Lumia was a success, this wouldn't matter. But Lumia was supposed to be Nokia's big 'comeback story' where Elop would be the heroic savior of Nokia. That was the Hollywood script. The real world didn't work out that way. The Lumia is a failure, plain and simple. I showed with Nokia numbers, that for every six attempts to sell Lumia to existing (loyal, still-remaining) Nokia owners, five will refuse the Lumia - and buy Androids or iPhones instead!!!!!
It doesn't matter why the Lumia is now an utter failure and cannot with these models recover. It cannot recover. There are at least 13 reasons why these current Lumia smartphones will fail every market including the USA. But that is neither here nor there. We have the facts. The phone looks fine in pictures, on videos, and in the store. But living with Windows Phone as it currently exists, and the early Lumia phones with their severe limitations and drawbacks, is a nightmare that only gets worse. Not my words. The Guardian of the UK, after their living with Lumia test, concluded it is so utterly a failure, that they took the extraordinary step of returning the phone and recommended their readers do the same. This is total comprehensive failure. Don't you argue that you like the Lumia you saw in the store. The facts are now in. Facts. The customers have spoken. We just heard from Russia that Lumia is having Nokia's biggest return rates ever seen!!!
NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE THAT EITHER
The good news is, that Nokia has now, in production smartphones that are not Lumia. that also are not on any Microsoft Windows operating systems and are actually on two very different operating systems to cater to different customer needs. In addition to the N9, there is a sister superphone on MeeGo, the N950 (the QWERTY slider version for heavy texting, email and business users). Most bizarrely, this fully finished N950 superphone that runs the highly praised MeeGo IS BEING MANUFACTURED today, but not sold????!!!!!?????
If this is not evidence of a lunatic in charge of Nokia, nothing is. You have the sister phone to the most desirable phone on the planet - a phone on the operating system that is often called better than the iPhone - and you ARE manufacturing it (in small numbers) but refuse to sell it? I have heard people saying they'd pay 1,000 Euros for an N950. I don't mean to price it there, but if the iPhone 4S unsubsidised price is 650 US dollars (ie the real price, when you don't include the AT&T contract for 2 years haha) then the N950 could easily be sold for 700 dollars - thats 550 Euros boys and girls - and it would still be hideosly profitable. The average price of the heavily discounted Lumias are now 220 Euros.
And you know what? Its not about the price, its about the profit. Check this out. Each Lumia has non-standard Nokia components (less bulk discounts) where the N9 and N950 use standard Nokia component providers with Nokia bulk disocunts. The Lumia series are produced in Taiwan at Compal's factory (yes, not even manufactured by Nokia, no wonder each of the first three Lumia models has been plagued with severe production problems that Nokia has openly admitted). The N9 and N950 are produced in Nokia's own factories - which are now idling! So Nokia has to pay extra to Compal if it tries to push production runs, but at Nokia's own factories there are workers with nothing to do!!! And the license! Every Lumia requires a royalty payment of about 25 dollars to Microsoft further sapping profits. No royalties needed for MeeGo sales.
This is the perfect 'no-brainer'. The N950 is the single most profitable Nokia phone right now, when Nokia is desperately in need of profits, as its smartphone unit is now producing its 4th consecutive quarter of an operating loss. And there is no comparable iPhone to compete against it! (at least not yet). And there is no comparable Lumia phone in the four units Nokia has announced! So the N950 is pure gravy, there is no conceivable down-side to rushing it to mass-production now!
Oh, and same goes for the E7 on the Symbian side, yes its a year old now, but there is a good QWERTY-slider there, if only the resellers would stop boycotting Nokia.
So yes, the bad news is the boycott, but there really is good news too. Nokia has two ranges of smartphones it can mass-produce today and sell globally, that potentially would break the boycott. Yes, it is theoretically possible, but now for the hard part: exactly how do we stop the global sales boycott by the reseller channel?
THIS IS THE HOW
I have proven to you that Nokia's problems are not in undesirable products overall (quite the contrary), not in promotion (gosh, massive marketing right now) and not in the pricing. Nokia's problem is clearly centered on the reseller channel. And if the reseller channel refuses to sell your product, you die. It is that simple. If the reseller channel refuses to sell your product, you die. No ifs, ands and buts. If the reseller channel refuses to sell your product, you die.
The retail problem is two separate boycotts, one that cannot be ended (against Microsoft) but the other (against Nokia) that can. Nokia cannot unilaterally end that boycott. It can only be ended by the carrier community. Which kind of tells us what is the crux of the problem. Elop has admitted to meddling severely in the Nokia sales. Elop himself has personally changed the top guy in charge of Nokia sales in the China market and the US market. These are the 2 largest smartphone markets on the planet. After those changes we see that China sales have collapsed and US carriers take Nokia millions but still sales refuse to sell the Lumia.
The problem is not the sales staff of Nokia. It is the captain of the ship. The carriers don't trust Elop. That is unrecoverable. The evidence is most obvious in China, Nokia's most important market, so important, Nokia constructed the world's largest phone factory into Beijing to provide handsets to just China's domestic market. Before the Elop Effect, China's sales were continuing to set growth records, right up to Q1 of 2011, as Nokia proudly announced in its Q1 results. Right after the Elop Effect the China sales collapsed so comprehensively, that Elop complained in public and replaced the head of China sales. The guy Colin Giles, who was sent to go'save' the Nokia China market, actually had to take a demotion but was the previous head of China sales, and Elop felt he must be able to return China to Nokia's friend. So how is that Lumia doing? Yes, Lumia launches in China now. Not on China Mobile the operator with 650 million subcribers (yes, SIX times as big as AT&T Wireless). Not on China Unicom with 150 million subscribers (bigger than AT&T). No. The Lumia 800C model is launching on only China's smallest carrier, China Telecom with about 45 million subscribers (about the size of T-Mobile USA).
The best China guy was sent to China to recover Nokia sales. He was not even able to get nominal support of Lumia out of the big carriers. Only managed to to land the smallest carrier. And this is one who uses the CDMA network which other Lumia phones do not use (they are on the GSM network). So Elop has to approve expensive changes to the Lumia for another technology and even then, he only lands the smallest network of China.
Maybe that is some kind of anomaly. Maybe the 'hero' salesguy managed to otherwise recover Nokia's sales back in China. Yes. Interesting proposition. Lets examine the evidence. Strategy Analytics just reported on China market shares in smartphones. Before the Elop Effect the market share for Nokia smartphones in China was 70%. After Q2 when the full effect was seen, the market share had plummetted to 32%!!! And what of Elop's emergency solution to send the best man to do anything to recover China? Since then Nokia's market share fell to 17% by Q4 (Strategy Analytics didn't have Q1 results yet to report).
This guy had over 70% market share year-out and year-in when he was head of Nokia in China. Now he is sent back, he cannot even stabilize Nokia's market share to 32% He lost almost half even after that. No. The sales cannot fix this problem in the reseller channel. Only one action can recover Nokia. It is Elop.
(UPDATE TO THIS STORY April 23 - at the Nokia Q1 results, we also heard that this Nokia top sales guy, Colin Giles will depart Nokia. So much for last-minute heroics. The problem IS Stephen Elop, and until he is gotten rid of, the carriers will strangle Nokia to death)
THESE ARE THE ACTIONS
If the reseller boycott is not lifted, Nokia dies. Nokia has lost 74% of its market since the boycott started only a year and two months ago. This is a world-record destruction of market share for any Fortune 500 sized company in the economic history of mankind. Understand what that means. Elop established a world record in being hated. It is not bad phones, it is not bad prices, it is not bad promotion. Even when the best Nokia sales guys are sent in, they cannot fix the damage. The problem was caused by Elop. He is the cause. This is against not Nokia, but against Elop. This is what he caused with the Elop Effect, the most destructive management communication ever, that destroyed the revenues the size of Oracle and the profits the size of Google. Or to put it in another way, Elop damaged Nokia so severely, he has cut off a part of Nokia as big in market share, annual sales and profits of a healthy RIM (the maker of Blackberry). He has sunk a whole RIM out of Nokia's business. And the damage is continuing as we speak.
We know there are two boycotts. We know nothing can be done about the one against Microsoft, Ballmer would be a fool to sell Skype (and even then, he would not be believed). We know Elop has moved heaven and earth but has not been able to end the boycott. It was first confirmed by Nokia a year ago but it has only gotten worse. Elop now admits the sales channel is not supporting Lumia specifically. The independent reporting of the sales channel verifies from Helsinki to New York City, Nokia Lumia authorized resellers who have Lumia in stock and feature massive Lumia sales promotion in the stores, actively push customers to rival phone makers!!!!!!!
This means the following steps. First of all, Nokia must announce immediately that it will somehow shift away from the Windows Phone based Lumia series. It could be the truly sensible and honest "Finnish" way of just telling the truth, stating categorically that the Lumia experiment has failed, will be discontinued and the partnership with Microsoft is ended effective immediately (and any payments from Microsoft would of course be returned by Nokia). But that is pretty drastic. I think the more sensible spin is something like 'we apologize to our customers, the Lumia series has been launched prematurely with the best of intentions, to try to bring it rapidly to the market but the early phone models are not up to Nokia standards and will be withdrawn for redesign' - that kind of marketing gobbledygook doublespeak. Then offer massive discounts and rebates to the reseller channel to sell as many Lumia as possible; what is not sold - give as Nokia gifts to low-income high schools in USA, get the best out of the brand and use the market where Microsoft is strongest. At least get some PR good will out of that wasted stock.
The point is, Nokia needs to acknowledge now, that the Lumia series has failed, and Nokia no longer forces these undesirable phones at the 'public' when in reality behind the scenes, Nokia promises not to push them anymore at the carriers.
That is not enough, but it is a necessary first step. Remember, the boycott started with the Elop Effect and Windows Phone was only part of the problem. Second step is a new lease-of-life officially to Symbian - while I am not suggesting we go back to Symbian. Just four months ago, Nokia was selling 17 million Symbian phones per quarter (68 million per year). Now they sold 10 million. But there are 28 million customers around the world with Nokia smartphones in their pockets, who are at 18 months of their ownership and are ready to come in to a phone store, to upgrade to a new Nokia phone. They know nothing of Elop or Burning Platforms or Windows or Lumia. They probably don't even know that their current phone runs on Symbian. They are just normal customers, who like their existing Nokia phone, and want to buy a new one. If the reseller boycott is lifted, no matter what their friends said about 'try the iPhone' etc, these customers are existing Nokia owners, most have owned Nokia for a decade, their first preference is to get a new Nokia phone now.
If the sales reps are willing to sell them Nokias, on any of the platforms, they will mostly take them, and judging by the recent reviews of new Nokia phones on Symbian and Meego, they will very likely be happy with those purchases too. I am not talking about tech geeks like you and me who want the best collection of the hottest apps etc. Just a basic phone for basic needs that happens to be a smartphone (and one that accepts Angry Birds - what Windows Phone currently doesn't even offer haha).
Even if both N9 and N950 are immediately put into mass production and sold everywhere, they won't cover most Nokia customer needs, they are far too expensive. So if we can't sell Lumias, then obviously it has to be Symbian smartphones today. How can you get the reluctant sales reps to stop refusing, and start selling Symbian? Their bosses have to tell them. How do we get that to happen? The best Nokia sales reps haven't achieved that? No. We need to get a public reversal of the silly Elop edicts of last year, that messed up the carrier relationships. That means, the carriers have to believe Symbian is not going to die. In fact the only way Symbian sales can recover - totally irrelevant whether there are 10 apps or 10 million apps, totally irrelevant if the camera has 1 megapixels or 42 megapixels. Totally irrelevant if it is 2G or 3G or 4G or 5G. The only way the sales recover for Symbian is, if the carriers believe that Symbian will not be killed.
???
Yes, this is the Osborne Effect part of the Elop Effect. If any company announces its platform will be discontinued, of course sales will immediately collapse. Only way to get those sales back, is somehow to convince the sales channel that the platform will live..
This is a paradox, it can't happen and even if it were to be claimed, of course it won't be believed.
EASTER TIME MIRACLE
This is how it is done. We resurrect the Qt migration path. Nokia has to announce that it made a mistake discontinuing the Qt migration path. You don't know what the migration path is? Let me give the quick version.
Nokia has currently an installed base of 1.3 Billion happy Nokia owners. About 1 Billion of those are on basic 'featurephones' using Nokia's proprietary operating systems, ie S40. And about 300 million are on Symbian. There are still some 50 million more Symbian handsets in the wild made by other manufacturers. The Blackberry installed base is something over 100 million. Apple iPhone installed base is under 200 million. Android installed base nears 300 million. But Nokia has in its S40 and Symbian installed base, over 1.3 billion mobile phone owners. Qt is a developer tool environment, to let application developers use extremely easy-to-use and extremely powerful software tools to make apps, that will be able to reach all S40 and Symbian phones! Smartphones and dumbphones! Imagine a potential customer base which is 4 times bigger than Android, and 6 times bigger than the iPhone and 13 times bigger than Blackberry (and 150 times bigger than Windows Phone).
Qt is not yet completed, and the S40 side at Nokia is not yet ready, but this was the vision. Understand how huge this is - Qt has a larger potential user base than all personal computers using Windows of any generation today! Qt reaches the biggest 'ecosystem' on the planet, and by a wide margin too. But wait, there is more. Qt also supports Nokia's older Maemo OS and the new MeeGo OS. Qt even supports Nokia's next OS called Meltemi. Now would be a good time to ask how many developers does Nokia have? Yes. They have shipped developer tools to 400,000 registered Nokia developers!!! Nokia has by far - by far - the biggest developer community. They hated coding for Symbian, especially after iPhone and Android came along, but they loved this idea of Qt to allow develop-once, publish five times utility across all Nokia platforms. Well, all platforms until Elop announced Windows Phone, which is the only OS Nokia uses, that can not be supported by Qt.
And here is the kicker. Qt can be used today to develop apps also for Android and will shortly support the next version of Blackberry OS!!!!! Develop on iOS and you can reach about 5% of the phones in pockets worldwide. I am not talking smartphones, i mean all phones. Develop on Windows Phone and you reach.. under 0.1%. Develop on Qt and (when the development is completed and the migration of phones done, about 2-3 years from now) you can reach 40% of all pockets - and a massive 80% of all smartphones! No wonder when Nokia announced this migration path, the developer community cheered.
Elop killed the Qt migration path. But Nokia still owns Qt and keeps developing it with tiny budget and slowly. If Nokia's CEO or Chairman were to say the end of Qt was a mistake, and were to apologize in public to all developers, and to announce Qt will be fully funded and developed rapidly, to support Nokia Symbian, Nokia S40, Nokia MeeGo, Nokia Maemo, Nokia Meltemi - and Android and Blackberry (And bada, Limo and Tizen) - this would show that Symbian is not 'dead'.
It is not enough, though. Nokia has to very publically return to Ovi store and all support Nokia had for its platform from Navteq maps and advertising and Nokia Money etc. Even that is not enough. Nokia has to make public clear statements, with the CEO very publically embracing Symbian - showing it is the ideal smartphone for some logical segment(s). And it is. The Emerging World. MeeGo currently is designed for high-end smartphones. Meltemi is not yet ready. Windows Phone cannot be used to sell under 200 dollar smartphones (remember, this is real price, not the contract-based price like 99 dollars at AT&T). Not my words. Microsoft itself says Windows Phone is currently not suited for cheap smartphones and Nokia says the same. You cannot argue this point. Windows Phone currently is not suited for low-cost smarpthones. But SYMBIAN IS PERFECTLY SUITED FOR LOW-COST SMARTPHONES!
Yet Deloitte told us that this year 300 million smartphones will be sold that cost under 100 dollars!!! If not Symbian, then what? Symbian is perfectly suited for this segment. These customers don't want the biggest touch screens. They want simple basic smartphones. Symbian works perfectly there. Symbian & Ovi store already support languages of the Emerging World markets! More languages than any other OS - by a wide margin! There are local apps for Symbian selling in the massive quantities in India, China, Africa, Latin America. In the Emerging World, the competition will not be the iPhone, it will be a cheap knock-off Blackberry clone smartphone (RIM cannot afford to make Blackberries at this price either, but Nokia's E-Series QWERTY phones fit this segment very well, running.. Symbian!)
If the CEO of Nokia first announces that Windows is no longer the only way. Then the CEO returns to Nokia the migration path via Qt from Symbian to MeeGo - and then announces that Nokia reverses the end of Symbian because Windows 'is not suited for Emerging World markets' (currently) - then it can be believed. As long as Nokia tries not to suggest Symbian will live forever, or it will be the main OS to high-end phones. But that there is a 3-5 year window to come for Symbian in the lower-cost smartphones. That is plausible. I am not saying it will be believed. But it can be believed. This is the only way Jesus comes back after 3 days. This is the resurrection of the dead platform.
WHEN CUSTOMERS DON'T TRUST YOU, ALL FAILS
Unless Nokia can get the carriers to volunteer to lift their sales boycott, Nokia dies. So how can we make them believe this above total reversal from the very public statements by Elop?
He has to go. Nothing Elop can say, will be believed. This is not the need to fool the general public. This is the need to convince 600 CEOs of the carrier community who have decided Elop is now the little brother of the Evil Empire. He has no credibility within the carrier community whatsoever. He is being screwed as we speak - the carriers take his money - they allow all the big displays into the stores - then the sales reps refuse to sell the Lumias. This is not random. This is is global pattern. They are f*cking with Elop now. He is a dead man walking. As long as he carries a Nokia business card in any function, Nokia will not be believed. Nothing, absolutely nothing, anyone can say can fool these guys. They are very intellient and bright. They knew Microsoft's dubious history in telecoms and were watchful of any tricks. They saw right through Elop. Remember, these are only CEOs and in practically every country, they run companies that are among the 10 biggest companies in that country. The best of the best minds. And they talk to each other! Elop never had a chance. They saw right through him and his deceptions. If Ollila said something, if Anssi Vanjoki came back to say something, if Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was brought back to say something, if Elop is still employed by Nokia, all the things said will be only words and not ever believed, because these smart powerful CEOs knew, Microsoft is out to screw them. And they saw on February 11 last year, that Elop was a Microsoft Muppet, not a Nokia Man.
Equally - if Elop is fired, the above becomes believable, instantly! The new CEO or the Chairman do not need to make ANY public statements about the real reasons why Elop is fired, but will call or visit all major carriers (About 250 of them) to inform them that all Elop silly decisions are now abandoned, the Elop Effect shall be totally reversed at Nokia, no matter how long it takes, and no matter how much money it takes. But that the carriers now have to help the new CEO recover Nokia to profits, else Nokia will be sold and the carriers lose their Symbian/Ovi/MeeGo/Qt based 'third ecosystem' and they will face a more hostile Microsoft instead.
So that is all said in private only, to the CEOs of the carriers. If the CEO tells the Sales VP that Nokia is no longer in the dog house, and please tell the sales reps to start to sell Nokia again - Nokia will recover! Not to 40% or 30% or even 20%. But the total collapse will end - remember, it is not handsets, it is not promotion, it is not price. The ONLY problem with Nokia sales collapse is the sales boycott by the retail channel. If Nokia can recover the damaged carrier relations, Nokia can recover (somewhat).
NEW CEO
And that means what? Nokia needs a new CEO. Not a Finn. Not an American. Not from the Computer, IT or Software industries. Not from the handset or infrastructure business. Definitely not any current or ex Nokia guy. Nokia has a crisis of confidence by its most important stakeholder - the carrier community. They liked/tolerated and some even nearly loved the Nokia of old (except the US carriers, obviously, but note - both in Canada and Mexico the carriers liked the old Nokia a lot). Now they hate Nokia. The carriers decide who lives and dies among handset makers because they control the retail channel.
The answer is obvious. To restore its respect and trust among the distrusting carriers, you fire the Microsoft Muppet and hire a current active CEO from one of the carriers. Someone whom everybody in the carrier community knows and respects, who has been in that business for a good while, many years as CEO. And I would say, that CEO needs to come from Asia to be most insightful and able to see where Nokia's future will be.
So imagine if Nokia's Chairman, Jorma Ollila held an emergency press conference now, today, at say 3PM. He has a short statement. Elop is not on stage with him. He reads the following:
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a short statement about Nokia. Stephen Elop has just handed in his resignation, he is no longer Nokia's CEO. Mr Elop and the Board had differing views on the direction Nokia should follow. (the Nokia share price starts climbing on this sentence). We thank Mr Elop for his service to Nokia under these difficult times. He is not available at this press conference because he has already left Finland and is no longer in Nokia's employ. We shall be reviewing all decisions recently made by Mr Elop, including the statements about the future of Nokia's Symbian, MeeGo and Windows Phone based smartphones.
I can report that effective immediately, Nokia shall halt the shipping of Lumia smartphones because of production errors and we will offer anyone who purchased a Lumia phone a full exchange voucher option if they would like to exchange their Lumia for another Nokia phone, at the same price as the customer has paid. The Lumia series is not ended, nor is Nokia's partnership with Microsoft, but these will be reviewed and decisions made about them in due time. It is clear, however, that the first four Lumia smartphones did not meet the standards that Nokia customers expect, and we apologize for that.
I am taking temporary control of Nokia in the interim while we search for a successor to Mr Elop. (The Nokia share price will spike strongly at this point, this would be the best news imaginable by US based investors of Nokia). I can tell you, that it is our intention to find a suitable CEO from the carrier/operator community, as the Board feels it would be in Nokia's best interest for Nokia to be run by a CEO who understands the needs of Nokia's customers intimately.
I can announce one decision about an immediate change. The Board has been impressed with the strong customer affection with our new N9 smartphone. I have instructed Nokia's factories to rush into production the N9 and N950 smartphones that run on Nokia's MeeGo operating system, and these will be made available in large volumes within the next three weeks in all countries. I can tell you that we have several other MeeGo based smartphones in the production pipeline and new MeeGo phones will be introduced before this year is over. Related to this decision, I am announcing that Nokia returns to the migration path strategy built around the Qt developer tools environment, which will support all platforms that Nokia will carry in the future. Further statements will come shortly about these changes. I will not be taking questions, that is all. Thank you.
If Jorma Ollila made that short speech, Nokia's share price would turn from falling to climbing. If Jorma Ollila made that short speech, and followed it up with short telephone calls to 20 biggest operator group CEOs, the Nokia sales boycott is over. Jorma Ollila is trusted within the telecoms industry like no other so if he personally calls the top guys after that speech in public, they will give Nokia the benefit of the doubt. When the carriers hear that the hated Microsoft Muppet has been ejected from Espoo, and that even better, the new CEO will be hired from the carrier community, they will thank Jorma and they will promise him full support. The boycott will be over the very next day within that given carrier group and its hundreds of millions of subscribers.
There is nothing wrong with the handsets (apart from the Lumia series). There is nothing wrong with the promotion. There is nothing wrong with Nokia pricing. The problem is a global carrier revolt against Nokia and its Microsoft strategy and the CEO they no longer trust. If the boycott continues, Nokia dies. As long as the current strategy stands and Elop is in charge, the boycott continues. But the boycott can be stopped in one speech and one day of phone calls. And if Nokia launches the N9 and N950 in every market now, the smartphone unit will return to profits already during calendar Quarter 2, yes, by June 30th.
WHAT DOES TOMI KNOW?
I am the most accurate forecaster of the mobile telecoms industry. My forecasts are quoted in dozens of books and in major press like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Business Week etc. So what do I know about Nokia. When Stephen Elop announced his mad Microsoft strategy on 11 February, this is how I forecasted only four days later, how Nokia would end the year 2011. This was my forecast for Q4, 2011:
TOMI FORECAST MADE FEB 15, FOR Q4 2011
Nokia Q4 2011 forecast: Smartphone units sold 17.0M, Market Share 12.0%, Nokia revenues 2.0B Euro
NOKIA ACTUAL PERFORMANCE Q4 2011
Nokia Q4 2011 actual: Smartphone units sold 19.6M, Market Share 12.6%, Nokia revenues 2.5B Euro*
* revenues from actual handset sales, the Microsoft bonus payment not counted in smartphone actual sales revenues, it is an accounting gimmick and should be reflected in corporate Nokia income, not handset sales.
Considering that Nokia all numbers were growing by the latest info available on February 15, that I was within about 20% of each of those key metrics, correctly forecasting the immense scale of the collapse, is very accurate in terms of forecasting. I also accurately forecasted in February that Nokia's smartphone unit would become unprofitable, and all of Nokia corporation would become unprofitable due to this severe decline in a traditional Nokia profit engine. You will not find anyone else who forecasted in February 2011, that Nokia's 2011 market share would end at 12.6%. There were many ridiculous forecasts promising high market shares above 20% etc. The only other remarkably accurate forecast from February 2011 was Horace Dediu whose Q4 2011 forecasted number was 21 million Nokia smartphones sold. He was widely accused of being too pessimstic about Nokia in the year 2011.
What of now, Q1 of 2012? Could anyone have foreseen that Nokia could have it now this bad? Is Elop truly a victim of unforeseen circumstances, or is it conceivable that some forecasters saw this level of plight, last year. This is my forecast for Q1 of 2012, which I gave as a detailed quarterly forecast for years 2012 and 2013, that I made on 27 July, 2011.
TOMI FORECAST MADE JULY 27, FOR Q1 2012
Nokia Q1 2012 forecast: Smartphone units sold 11.0M, Market Share 7.0%, Nokia revenues 1.9B US dollars
NOKIA ACTUAL PERFORMANCE Q4 2011
Nokia Q1 2012 forecast: Smartphone units sold 11.9M, Market Share 7.0%, Nokia revenues 1.95B US Dollars*
* again the Microsoft bonus payment is excluded as it is not paid by the actual customers of Nokia.
That is as near perfection as you can hope for, in a forecast made 9 months into the future! I am within 10% on each of these metrics. I also made a 'best case' projection on how much Nokia can 'at best' migrate to Windows Phone based Lumia smartphones in this Q1, where I correctly forecasted that the Lumia sales will commence in Q4 of 2011. I said best case would be 4 million Lumia sales now. Obviously Nokia only managed half that, at 2 million. I also said in my best case scenario, that under optimal conditions, Nokia's loss-making would be resolved by excellent management by Q4, and now Nokia would report a miniscule 2.3% profit margin in smartphones and generate a 43 million dollar profit. Obviously the reality was not as rosy as my 'best case' scenario, Nokia generated massive losses, when the Microsoft bonus is removed, Nokia's smartphone handset unit generated a quarterly loss of 638 million dollars. And again, the next most accurate forecaster of Nokia Q1 2012 quarterly smartphone sales was Horace Dediu, whose Q1 forecast was 10% market share. There are others, utterly mad forecasters who suggested Nokia would have 28% market share this year.
You may freely think that Tomi is a lunatic who doesn't know what he is saying or writing. But I record all my projections and forecasts in writing in my 12 books and on this blog and in various other writing I do. I have chaired the industry's forecasting conferences since 1997. I regularly have plenty of discussion about my forecasts. They are often widely referenced so I have no way of trying to doctor them afterwards to try to make me 'look good'. I also am known for announcing in public EVERY TIME one of my forecasts has been wrong. I do that immediately as a matter of professional integrity and pride. (how many other forecasters bother to do that, or even admit they have been wrong). Please feel free to go read those forecasts and the dozens of comments in the threads. And I ask you, can you find anyone else who so accurately projected in February, Nokia's exact unit sales, market share and revenues for the end of the year 2011, and again, projected in July of last year, the exact unit sales, market share and revenues for now, Q1, 2012. I do know what I am doing. When I say Nokia current path is certain road to doom, and also that it is possible for Nokia to be saved |
Kids, teenagers, practically the entire ward began to descend on our house.
Rooms began to be torn apart. Every closet was opened and emptied. Every box, every container, every drawer was pillaged. Family heirlooms were taken. Our entire lives, beginning to end, were laid bare for the entire ward to see. These people were quite literally airing our dirty laundry out all over the neighborhood. I remember one day, coming home from being someplace, and found three men from the Elders Quorum in my bedroom, going through my closet and the drawers of my bureau. I. Freaked. Out. I began screaming and yelling at them to get the fuck out of my room. I literally pushed them out the door, then moved my bureau in front of it and barricaded myself in. I had finally reached my boiling point. I felt something in my brain snap and I began tearing apart my bedroom. I had never felt that kind of rage before. I had never let something take over my body that way. All the pain, humiliation, coercion, manipulation all came flooding back, hitting me like a huge wave crashing into a rock on the shore. So this was what it felt like to be crazy.
In reality, I know it’s kind of silly to be so protective of STUFF. Physical things. Possessions. Some of which to this day I have no idea why I would want to keep. But it wasn’t just stuff in my mind at that time. These were things that had been a part of my life. Evidence of the past. Proof that certain events had really taken place.
And it wasn’t just the stuff. It was the feeling of violation, of losing every shred of privacy our family ever had. Of feeling like this was something all these people in our ward had just been waiting on for years, the chance to dig in and get to the fleshy center of our family. To figure out What We Were All About. To uncover every dirty little secret and expose it. Then, they might Finally Understand Us.
The pillaging continued for weeks. More than a few of the ladies from the Relief Society, a majority of the women that had first come in and began to clean, began to be completely disgusted with what was going on. They saw people pocketing things they found that they wanted to keep. They saw people picking and choosing things that would be in the Yard Sale, but deftly hidden away and priced so low so they themselves could get their hands on it.
The aforementioned women stopped coming to the house. They couldn’t take it anymore than I could. Down to the deepest parts of my soul, I know this small group of women genuinely cared for my mom and our entire family, and believed what they were doing was the right thing. For that, I will always hold a special place in my heart for them. Particularly for a woman I’ll call Debbie, who grabbed the jewelry box full of my Tutu’s jewelry, some of which was priceless, and kept it at her house until my mom’s return. She didn’t want The Mob stealing or selling it. Thank you, Debbie.
After the dust settled, the house cleared, the Yard Sale went down, and things began to get quiet again, I began to question myself. There are so many things I wish I had said and done. I wished more than anything that I hadn’t contributed to putting my mom into rehab, when I knew from the bottom of my heart that she didn’t belong there. I said that to several people but I was told I was in denial and did nothing my whole life but be codependent. Was there a real way to fight back? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever know.
For the rest of my life, I will never forget the day my mom came home. I was at school the day her flight came in. When I got home and pulled up in front of the house, the next door neighbor’s door opened, and a woman I barely recognized emerged. I hadn’t seen my mom in over three months. Standing there was my mom, sixty pounds lighter, with glowing hair, and a smile on her face. She saw me, and ran toward me. The image of her running toward me will be burned into my memory long after I’m gone from this life. It is one of the moments in my life that made me realize how much I loved this woman. I hadn’t seen my mom run like that since I was a small child and she would play with me on the grass of our backyard, the sun glinting off her hair, and the million dollar smile she used to have before the sickness took its toll on her body.
She ran toward me and scooped me up in her arms and held me for a very long time. All these years later, I can still feel her arms around me.
*********************
Over the next year, I grew a lot, both mentally and emotionally. After all that had happened involving the members of the ward in my neighborhood, I understood that this behavior that I had seen was not divinely inspired. These people were selfish, greedy and only cared about their own agenda. As a result of this, and finally coming to terms with being gay, I realized the Mormon church had absolutely no place in my life. I stopped going to church. I still didn’t have the courage to tell my family about my sexuality.
I was raised pretty liberally. My parents were never the so-called ‘Nazi-Mormons’. Because most of my extended family was very diverse and most of them weren’t active in the Mormon church, my parents taught us to accept people as they were. I have always felt lucky for that. My cousin came out as a lesbian years before I even hit puberty, and there was never any question about the fact that we needed to love her and be a part of her life. My mom was a firm believer in the importance of family, and keeping ties with everyone, no matter what.
Still, even knowing that, there was still so much fear in letting them know the true me. Part of that I think is that despite how much I had learned, I still didn’t know who I was. I was dating, having sex, sowing my oats as it were. But something deep down inside me was screaming to get out.
After my mom came home, her anxiety attacks increased tenfold. Since there was no medication in her system anymore to help regulate her mood, the attacks went unchecked. I think after awhile, everyone, including my aunt and uncle, realized they had made a big mistake sending my mom to rehab. Even while she was in Sundown, the staff and counselors there told her they really had no idea why she was there. She didn’t abuse her medication, she wasn’t a junkie…she was a woman with a disorder as real as cancer, and it wasn’t being treated properly.
More doctors, more treatments. Medicine had advanced somewhat over the years to where more was known about how to treat anxiety disorder. Finally, it appeared that there was a combination of medication that seemed to start working. Things actually began to calm down a bit around the house.
I graduated from high school in June of 1998. I had received a full-tuition scholarship to Southern Utah University for Opera and Vocal Performance. Before my sophomore year in high school, and I was working with my parents to decide which classes to take, my dad literally dared me to take Men’s Choir as one of my arts electives. I had never really thought about singing before. I was a pianist. But, since there wasn’t any piano elective taught at my high school, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try my hand, or my voice, at singing.
I took to singing like the proverbial duck to the proverbial water. I had found another musical escape I could pour my energy and concentration into. Through the years of high school, choir became my life, my sanctuary, something I could use to balance everything else that was going on at home.
I progressed through the more elite choirs in high school and won several vocal competitions. I felt like I had finally found my niche.
In September of 1998, I moved to Cedar City, Utah to attend school. I was on my own for the very first time in my life. What should have been an opportunity for me to spread my wings and figure out more about myself became an opportunity for me to become friends with alcohol. You know that old story about self-medicating. I found that drinking made me forget about the pain of the past ten years. It made me feel confident- something I had never felt before in my life.
I don’t think I was ready for the freedom. I abused it. I didn’t go to class very often. I sat in my room and read a lot of books, none of which had anything to do with my classes. All I wanted to do was rest. I was becoming exhausted for absolutely no reason. God knows I wasn’t exerting myself in any sense of the word.
I was driving home nearly every weekend. I worried about my parents. I missed my own bed. I missed the security of my house. I wanted to spend as much time there as possible. After a few weeks, I noticed I was losing weight, and my health was getting worse.
One weekend, I came home and became violently sick. I had a raging fever, a cough that felt like it had originated in the balls of my feet, and my body was wracked with pain. I was vomiting anything I tried to eat. When I began throwing up blood, my parents rushed me to the emergency room.
I was put on IV liquids, and heavy doses of acetaminophen to bring my fever down. Vials of blood were taken. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I couldn’t sleep. There were a whole slew of tests run, and I came up positive for mono.
I had never been so sick in my entire life. It took me nearly twenty minutes to get from my bedroom to the bathroom and back because I had to stop and rest so often.
So, I had to forego my scholarship and move home. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t all that sad about it. I think in my heart that’s what I wanted to do all along. I was sick for about two months, but then began to return to normal.
As my health improved, my attitude started worsening. My parents and I fought constantly about everything. I was so on edge and angry all the time. Any little thing would set me off. I was spending my weekends at Club Bricks in downtown Salt Lake City, looking for men. I found a few, had a few one night stands, but I still hadn’t found anything permanent. I had to keep up living this double life and it was killing me.
At the beginning of 2001, I lost my best friend.
My twentieth year was an interesting one. As the fights between my parents and me began escalating, I knew I needed to be on my own again. A good friend of mine from Wyoming was looking to move to Salt Lake, so I suggested she and I get an apartment together. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to move out of my parents’ house.
We found an apartment in Murray, Utah, about ten miles from downtown Salt Lake. Well, instead of changing the pattern of my life, I continued my love affair with alcohol. Every night was a party. And I never had trouble finding sex either. The job I had at the time gave me plenty of people to choose from, and boy did I ever.
I still wanted to find a steady relationship. Eventually, I met Dan through a friend of mine. Dan was everything I was looking for. He was heart-meltingly handsome, funny, had a good job and his own apartment…and he was smitten with me. We began spending nearly every night together. He worked a swing shift, so we generally spent the entire night drinking, watching movies and talking. Things were so easy with Dan. I fell hard and fast for him. He treated me like a king.
Toward the end of 2000, my mom’s health went into a tailspin. Her asthma had gotten so bad, she was on oxygen 24 hours a day. Walking was almost out of the question. She spent most of her time sleeping on the couch in the family room. My dad was faithfully by her side.
On the afternoon of January 20, I received a phone call from my dad. My mom was in the hospital. She had been watching TV with my dad and my little brother and had abruptly stopped breathing. She fell over on her side, but somehow they were able to get her breathing again. They called 911 and they tool my mom to the hospital. Everyone assumed she had accidentally overdosed (there they went with the drugs again). She was having her stomach pumped and was given a charcoal solution to absorb what was in her stomach.
I got in my car and drove to the hospital. When I arrived in the trauma unit, I could see through the window of the room she was in and she was hysterical. She was sobbing and the nurse kept forcing the charcoal solution down her throat.
I went into the room, and sat by her bed. She held my hand and she just kept saying over and over that she didn’t try to commit suicide, she didn’t try to commit suicide, she didn’t try to commit suicide. I believed her.
They wanted to keep her in the hospital, but she insisted on going home. They released her after one day.
The next two days, she was in and out of consciousness. She would wake up periodically, look at the clock and just say, “it’s been 5:00 three times today already…. what’s going on?” She had stopped making much sense.
Periodically, I would get together with a good friend of mine and just spend the evening singing. It was a good way to blow off steam, and usually we sang at my parents’ house. My mom loved hearing us sing. Sometimes she would come into the room we were singing in, and sit with her eyes closed and just listen. Her favorite song we would sing was “The Rose” by Bette Midler. The lyrics really touched her. I remember each time we would sing it tears would roll down her cheeks.
It had been a very long time since Christine and I had gotten together to sing. Out of the blue after months, she called me and asked if I wanted to get together and sing for old time’s sake. She asked if we could go to my parents’ house. I agreed to meet her there that evening.
We sang for a long time that night. My mom was sleeping on the other side of the wall, but I knew she heard everything. The last song we sang that night was “The Rose”. I had made plans to meet Dan at his apartment after he was off work. As the time rolled around where I needed to leave, I went in and kissed my mom goodnight. She held me for a moment and told me she loved me with all her heart.
I arrived at Dan’s house around midnight. It was the same routine. We drank whiskey and Coke, watched movies, made love and went to sleep.
Early the next morning, there was a fierce banging at Dan’s front door. This wasn’t unusual. Dan frequently had friends drop by unannounced. I got up, put on Dan’s bathrobe and went to answer the door.
Standing there was one of my brother’s best friends. A million thoughts flooded my head. First, no one close to my family knew about Dan, let alone knew where he lived. Second, I thought, oh shit, they’ve found out I’m gay. It’s amazing in hindsight how quickly the brain can move. About a hundred of these similar thoughts passed through in the space of about a second and a half.
Brandon looked grim and serious. He said, “Michael, you need to come home, there’s been a family emergency. Your mom’s dead.”
And there they were. Out in the open. The words I had feared hearing since I was a child. My darkest nightmare was coming true. I began to crumble. As I headed toward the ground, my roommate and good friend Shawntelle rushed in the door. She pushed Brandon aside and crossed the room just in time to catch me.
So many times I have tried to articulate how I felt at that moment. Being that I’m now nearly twenty thousand words into this epistle, I figure it won’t hurt to try one more time.
Time seemed to move in slow motion, but at the same time rushed past me in triple time. Ice and fire swirled around in my brain simultaneously. My veins filled with concrete, and my muscles had turned to liquid. The world stopped moving completely, and I was stuck in that one moment interminably.
The details get a bit fuzzy, but I remember going back into Dan’s bedroom and telling him what had happened. I vaguely remember getting dressed and getting in the car with Shawntelle.
The only thing I remember about the ride from Dan’s apartment to my parents’ house was the song that was playing. In the tape player was the single of the old eighties song, “Electric Blue.” Since it was the only song on the tape, it kept looping and looping, playing and playing. I haven’t listened to that song since that day.
As we turned into the neighborhood where my parents lived, all I remember thinking was, please, God, please don’t let her body still be there, please, please, please, please. As we pulled up to the house, two police cars, a fire engine and an ambulance were parked on the curb in front of the house. I knew her body was still inside.
I still had been unable to cry. I couldn’t feel much of anything. When I walked in the front door, my family was all sitting in the living room right off the foyer. I saw my dad sitting there. When he saw me, he stood up and I ran into his arms. The moment, I mean the fraction of a second it took for my dad’s arms to envelop me, everything snapped back into focus, and my world was color again. It was like dropping an ice cube into a pan of boiling water. I began to sob. My heart broke down to levels of grief I never thought I could feel. My dad just kept saying in my ear, “it’s over. It’s over.”
I held my family and we cried together. The finality of all this came rushing in with the sun through the windows.
The paramedics were still in the other room examining my mom’s body. Any time there is a death at home; the room is automatically labeled a crime scene until law enforcement clears it. Evidently, by the time I got there, they had already been in there with her for nearly an hour.
My dad was making phone calls to friends and family, letting them know what had happened.
Shawntelle and I went outside to have a cigarette. For some reason I can’t explain, I was terrified to go outside. The sky literally felt heavy. I was afraid to look up for fear of what I might see. I expected it to come raining down on my head like Chicken Little. I remember finally mustering up the courage to look up, and just like a child, I imagined I could see teeny tiny people walking around in the clouds. Silly, but I remember doing that. Shawntelle and I sat on the back porch, smoking and not really talking. I looked up and she had tears streaming down her face. She looked helpless. We didn’t talk the entire time we were outside.
We went back inside, and what I saw made my blood boil. The neighbor, Robyn (who many of you are familiar with from the letter I wrote to her that I posted here a couple times) had rushed down the street to see what all the hubbub was about. That woman, who was one of the worst offenders in the Yard Sale Debacle, the woman who had done nothing but spread acidic gossip about my family all over the ward for years, was standing in the foyer and hugging my little brother. I wish to Christ I had said something. But, being my typical non-confrontational self, all I could do was grit my teeth and bite my tongue. My dad eventually asked her to leave.
The day wore on. More phone calls, more visits. The casseroles and cold cuts started rolling in. The last thing I could do was eat. It was all I could do to keep my empty, acidic stomach from dancing the conga inside my body.
That evening the cavalcade of family began coming in from out of town, beginning with my favorite aunt, my mom’s closest sister, Suzanne. Suzanne had been a rock for our family as long as I could remember. She supported my mom unconditionally through everything that had happened. She was like a second mother to me and my brother and sister.
I went to the airport with my sister and brother to pick her up. She came off the plane and when she saw us, broke into tears. She hugged us all and just said, “we’ll get through this together.” And I knew she meant it.
Since there was still so much financial turmoil swirling around, my dad was feeling pretty scared about how he was going to pay for my mom’s funeral services. Because both he and my mom had had so many significant medical problems in the last few years, my dad had a lot of trouble finding an insurance company that would give them coverage they could afford. The housing market was still in a pretty big slump, so there still wasn’t much money coming in. To supplement his income, and to be able to have insurance, my dad took a part-time job working customer service for Discover Card. He worked an early morning shift, then came home and did drafting out of the home office. At the time my mom died, he had only been working for Discover Card about three weeks. He hadn’t even had a chance to elect his medical benefits.
Now, whether or not you believe in God, or fate, the Universe, or some other divine presence that has the ability to intervene in your life, one of the many phone calls that came in the day my mom died made me very aware that the news that was delivered on that call could in no way be coincidence. We were all sitting in the living room. People were coming and going, offering their condolences. The phone was ringing off the hook most of the day. About two hours after I arrived at the house, the phone rang again. My dad answered it and within about 30 seconds, his eyes widened and he burst into tears. We were all watching him intently, and when he hung up the phone, he was just looking around in bewilderment.
The phone call my dad received was from the Human Resources coordinator at Discover Card. Despite the fact that he hadn’t yet elected company benefits, Discover Card was issuing a retro life insurance policy for my mom in the amount of $50,000. On top of that, they were cuImage by Steve Marcus via Associated Press
Columbine. Virginia Tech. Colorado Springs. Sandy Hook. Aurora, Colorado. Isla Vista, California, Roseburg, Oregon. Orlando. Too many cities in the United States are now indelibly associated with the mass shootings that have become, perhaps more than anything else, a hallmark of life in America. A tweet from journalist Dan Hodges—“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over”—and the Onion article titled “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” surface each time, as chilling as they were the first time.
Since the devastating day five years ago at Sandy Hook Elementary, the nonprofit database Gun Violence Archive estimates that there have been at least 1,518 mass shootings that left at least 1,715 people dead and 6,089 wounded. Repeat: That’s in just the last five years. And this is happening at the same time that Congressional funding for research on gun violence as a cause of death has stalled out. And we all know why that is.
By now, the media drill is painfully familiar. A horrific shooting happens. The perpetrator—almost always a white male—is described by family and people who knew him as “lonely,” or “unassuming,” or, as in this most recent case, as a man who enjoyed gambling and country music and “lived a quiet life” before he fired into a crowded concert in Las Vegas. (Nice change on the headline, Washington Post, but screenshots live forever.) There’s a halfhearted attempt to pin the murders on Muslim extremists. Conservative commentators go on CNN and MSNBC to say that it’s just too soon to politicize the tragedy by talking about gun reform. Politicians deep in the pocket of the NRA offer “thoughts and prayers.” There’s a lot of talk about freedom, but it lacks any nuance or commitment to modernize the Second Amendment.
In following this rote trajectory of tragedy, we flatten the mass murders and their victims, adding them to an ever-growing list of completely preventable killings that will soon enough be overshadowed by more of them. This isn’t about what just happened. This is about what keeps happening.
MEDIA ROUNDUP
1. The American impulse to equate guns with freedom and masculinity with violence is killing us. [The Nation]
2. In response to the deadliest mass shooting by a single terrorist in history of this country, Trump didn’t mention a key word in his condolences: Guns. [Raw Story]
3. Here’s how the massacre in Las Vegas challenges the NRA’s “good guy with a gun” argument. [The Trace]
4. Meanwhile in Washington, the gun lobby is quietly attempting to deregulate silencers. [Mother Jones]
5. Congress: The number one reason we’re still losing lives to gun violence. [The Hill]
6. On why white men are “gunmen” and muslim men are “terrorists” in mainstream media. [Huffington Post]
7. Must-read analysis on the history of mass shootings in the United States from 2009–2016. [Everytown]
8. When we talk about gun violence or gun control, we should be talking in the same breath about masculinity and the mold constructed for it to fit in. [Bitch Media]
9. You need to know these facts about guns and domestic violence. [Everytown]
WHAT YOU CAN DO SO FAR
Here’s how to help the victims in Las Vegas. [Newsweek]
Join Everytown, an organization that’s organizing every minute of every day to end gun violence in this country. [Everytown]
Gun violence isn’t an isolated issue. We need to be resisting at every intersection. [ResistBot]
The House of Representatives will vote on silencer laws this week. Make your voice heard. [US News]
WHAT DO YOU NEED?
We know you’re curious about something that we haven’t covered here, and we need to know about it as an informed feminist community. What are you wondering about?Some things are easy to get rid of: expired food, used tissues, credit card offers from the Nigerian Royal Credit Union. But generally, we're much better at holding on to stuff than we are at throwing it out, even when it means we can no longer fit our possessions in our homes. There's now around 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space in America. To put that in perspective, if you lined up every one of those self-storage units end to end, the resulting building would be really really long. And I'm willing to bet most of those units aren't full of Golden Age comics and delicately aging wines. Nope, the stuff we're sticking in storage and herniating our spines lifting every time we move is far more likely to include shit like...
5 Books
In our culture, throwing out books ranks somewhere on the behavioral scale between torturing small animals in front of a group of nuns and torturing small animals in front of a group of nuns while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Game of Thrones spoilers. When libraries are caught disposing of books to make room on shelves, it's so much of a scandal that it makes the news. Librarians will tell you that they often can't dispose of old books without being confronted by angry strangers, who sometimes even retrieve the books from recycling bins and take them home.
Gary Houlder/Photodisc
"There, there, 1846 Encyclopedia of the Negro Race. Nothing can hurt you now."
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Our societal book-harm taboos sometimes go even further than that. A woman who made a video instructing viewers how to cut up old books for an art project had to take down the video after a wave of abuse by angry Internetters, and the surviving copy of the video contains comments calling her a "book murderer" and declaring that the video is "quite possibly the most offensive thing I've ever witnessed." Given this climate, it's no surprise that most of us choose to hold on to old crates of books we'll never read again. And when we do decide to clear them from our houses, most of us can't bear to actually throw them in the trash or recycle them: What are we, history's greatest monsters?
Why It's Bullshit:
Look, I know why people have this attitude. For centuries, books were wisdom in paper form. Without Internet access or even widespread education, destroying books meant destroying perhaps-irreplaceable knowledge and history. And obviously nobody is advocating tossing out copies of the Gutenberg Bible or anything.What’s on lately? That’s a really good question. There’s so much that is available these days in terms of video content, that it’s incredible. We all know that in this information age, there is a ton of info out there. Well, not just a lot, but really amounts that can’t even be absorbed by us in a lifetime. In fact, even computers struggle with having the ability to process and store all of it.
What’s really interesting of what’s happened in the pat 10 years is that the same is true for video content. The website YouTube, for example, started as kind of a niche thing for people into videos online, I suppose. But, it really was this thing off in the corner that didn’t get much mainstream attention. That’s exactly where we were not too long ago at all. When Google bought YouTube it was a strange acquisition and many people didn’t understand it. There was ridicule and laughter about why Google would pay so much money for YouTube and these random videos that it contained. What possible value did Google see in this site and its questionable content, that was the feeling.
Today, of course, anyone can well understand how such a colossal blunder this was for people that felt that way and made fun of Google. And, you must give kudos to Google for making the acquisition and having the vision of how useful videos and the whole social media culture that we have today would become. There is so much information, marketing, and entertainment that is provided on just that one platform.
There are others and most well known for commercial movie and entertainment streaming is Netflix and Amazon has also entered that market with strong energy. Then, there are other players such as Hulu and a bunch of others out there.
Some surprising developments that have taken place are that companies like Netflix have actually become something of a movie studio now. They are funding a great deal of money in producing original content that becomes Netflix exclusive movies and shows for their audience. I suppose this shouldn’t be surprising and is a natural development, but it is quite a turn of events from Netflix simply providing content from others to now actually being the content provider itself.
Speaking of YouTube, it seems like even though we’re seeing richer and larger companies doing amazing and expensive things, there’s also this newborn or retro culture of actually watching content from individuals that are not celebrities, per se, but normal people that have really made themselves into something in the online world.ORLANDO, Fla. (August 30, 2017) - In its first home game in two weeks, Orlando City B (8-6-11, 35 points) hosts Bethlehem Steel FC (10-11-3, 33 points) on Thursday, Aug. 31. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET at Orlando City Stadium.
The match will be streamed at www.OrlandoCitySC.com/LIVE.
“It’s going to be a tough game. [Bethlehem] is a very athletic team, they’ve got power and pace. The tricky thing with Bethlehem is probably what a lot of teams play us encounter is that trying to predict their lineup is going to be difficult," OCB head coach Anthony Pulis said. “The full focus as always will be on us and making sure our level of performance is good.”
OCB is coming off a 3-0 victory at first-place Louisville City FC to extend its Club record unbeaten streak to 11 games. Michael Cox started the scoring in the 15th minute and doubled the lead in the 27th minute when he finished a through ball from Jordan Schweitzer. Timbó added to his game-winning assist with the third goal of the game and his second of the season in the 53rd minute. Goalkeeper Jake Fenlason earned his second start of the season and made eight saves to earn his first professional shutout and USL Team of the Week honors, along with Cox.
Hadji Barry leads the team with eight goals and has four in his last three appearances. Pierre Da Silva leads the Lions with seven assists. OCB has allowed three goals in its last seven matches.
Bethlehem enters the match on a three-game losing streak, most recently dropping a 3-2 match to Pittsburgh. Steel FC previously lost to Louisville City and Charlotte. Seku Conneh leads Bethlehem with seven goals in 19 appearances.
OCB enters the match in sixth place in the Eastern Conference, three points behind fifth-place Rochester and two points ahead of eighth-place Bethlehem.
This is the second meeting and final of the season between these teams. Richie Laryea scored his first two goals of the season to earn a 2-0 win at Goodman Stadium on April 23.
The Lions next host the Richmond Kickers at the Orlando City Stadium on Thursday, Sept. 7, at 7:30 p.m. ET.The reaction in Israel to viral videos showing IDF “weakness” shows Israelis only care about what they look like in the West Bank, and not why they’re there to begin with. But of all the reactions, Israel’s Foreign Minister had the last laugh once again.
It’s been a bad week for us occupiers. Caught by the natives with our pants down. Twice!
First, there was this embarrassing moment in Hebron when IDF soldiers were sourrounded by Palestinian police:
But then came the worst, when Palestinians from the village of Kaddum threw stones on soldiers and the latter – are you sitting down? – ran away! I mean, everybody knows: As occupiers, showing signs of weakness makes it harder to rule.
See, what drives me crazy is how Israeli media reports this. It’s all about the weakness. The images. How we look. Our holy “deterrence.”
Not one reporter asked what those soldiers were doing in the middle of Hebron. Not one of them asked why those people in Kadum were marching, and what those soldiers were trying to prevent.
Nope. That’s not important. What’s important, apparently, is the shame, that could or could not have been avoided.
Apparently, the soldiers blame it on the kryptonite. Yeah, you heard me. Kryptonite.
T., a combatant in an infantry brigade, also claims that soldiers are not equipped to handle the complex situation on the ground. “There’s nothing more humiliating for a combatant than to see his friends run,” he says. He criticizes the army for sending such a small group of soldiers to Qaddum on Friday at a particularly volatile time. T. says the cameras on the ground undermine the forces’ efforts. “A commander or an officer sees a camera and becomes a diplomat, calculating every rubber bullet, every step. It’s intolerable, we’re left utterly exposed. The cameras are our kryptonite.”
Oh, I get it. So, if the cameras weren’t there, they could have done what they’re used to doing. I wonder what that is? I guess it’s not mooning the protesters.
Kryptonite or not, Israelis won’t stand for it. Shaul Mofaz, who may not even get into the Knesset after these elections, said that in his day, this embarrassing stuff would have never happened:
Kadima party chief and former IDF chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz said soldiers should not be subject to restrictions in their response to demonstrators. Mofaz said the current climate in
the IDF is one in which soldiers fear that if they take action, they will have to face a court martial for fulfilling their duty. Mofaz recalled that when he was commander of the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield to defeat terror in the West Bank, that was not the case. “We didn’t stop to think, ‘What will they say,’” he said. “We got the job done.”
Interior Minister Eli Yishai said:
“In my opinion IDF soldiers should make maximal use of all weapons at their disposal if there is a threat to their lives, and they need to know they will have full support and understanding from all authorities if they have to do that.”
But the best one came today [Heb] from our beloved Foreign Minister, the one who will probably take over the Likud when Bibi is gone:So you want to create some serialport magic within an electron app? Right on, that sounds like you're creating something pretty amazing for the desktop!
In the past this scenario has been a pretty tough feat to achieve, however with the convergence of NodeJS and iojs into NodeJS 4.x, the road to serialport fun for desktop apps is a much shorter and more enjoyable one.
The following instructions are designed with Linux and OSX operating systems in mind.
Important note: if you have installed NodeJS version 4.x or greater, and are using at least electron-prebuilt version 34.0.1, you may not need all of the steps below anymore. In a lot of cases, simply running npm install serialport within your electron application directory, and requiring/using serialport as you usually do should work just fine!
Let's do this.
Steps for success
Make sure you're on NodeJS version 4.0 or higher.
I'm going to assume you have already installed electron-prebuilt for your machine. If not, run:
npm install -g electron-prebuilt
Next, set up your electron app boilerplate if you haven't already. This is essentially creating the following files in an empty directory:
package.json
main.js
index.html
See the electron quick start docs for how to set these files up.
Ok! Now let's install serialport. Run this from the root directory of your app:
npm install --save serialport
You'll notice that a node_modules dir will appear, with serialport within. So far so good. At this point, you could try requiring serialport within your electron's index.html file and see if it works as expected. If it doesn't, never fear, let's try the |
many european girls in India and Europe (Really MANY). The thing is I want strings attached but not too many strings attached which is the case with Indian girls (not blaming them completely, society plays a role). I like European girls on that side of life. They are independent, understand that we are trying to build the relationship and will wait for 1-2 years, may be to say "I Love You" and also affirm that they have same need for opposite sex. You know, it's not like you have to say : Thanks to her for sex. And in most of the cases, they are the one who make the first move, when it comes to physical intimacy.
Then, I went to US and met the third Indian girl. She was nice, born in India but cherished in US, I would say she was partially American. But here comes the problem again, you know, girls watching too many bollywood crap and there comes the next thing, just after third date; " You never bought something (expensive) for me" She didn't say expensive but I knew what she was referring to. So, that was the last time I ever saw her. She didn't have money on her and I didn't bother to take her back to her home. (Ofcourse! That's how you get rid of some gold-digger bitch)
Since then, I have dated only American or European girls, not even American Indian girls. There are 3 things that Indian girls have which seems cute in the beginning but, is actually stupid and irritating:-
(These things are cute in your first 2-3 relationships but not afterwards, but we Indian men, get married before our 4th relationship..sooo...)
1. Dependance: Baby good morning, baby good afternoon, baby what did you eat, baby lets go shopping, baby lets do this, bla la bla
2. Princess Syndrome: I like red only, I like vanilla only, I can't believe you didn't do this for me, bla bla bla
3. Childish: I rest my case!
(Note: I am not male chauvinist or something. I am just putting truth that I have come across from my own experiences)UNITED NATIONS (REUTERS) - The European Union praised Myanmar's progress on human rights under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi on Friday (Sept 23) and said that it would not be introducing a resolution at the United Nations condemning the country's record for the first time in 15 years.
Addressing the Partnership Group on Myanmar at the United Nations General Assembly, EU Foreign Policy chief Federica Mogherini called Suu Kyi's progress from political prisoner to government "powerful testimony to the incredible change Myanmar is going through."
"The government has taken bold measures to improve human rights and re-invigorate the peace process. Political prisoners have been released," she said.
Mogherini said steps had also "been taken against those who incite hatred" and a commission established under former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to address violence between majority Buddhists and Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar's state of Rakhine.
"Today, we mark another important step in our relationship," Mogherini said. "For the first time in 15 years, the European Union will not table a human rights resolution on Myanmar in the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly."
Addressing Suu Kyi, she said: "Fifteen years is the measure of the incredible distance Myanmar has walked, the measure of how much your country has changed."
Mogherini said the European Union understood the"complexity" of the situation in Rakhine and told Suu Kyi: "I know that you are working hard to find a sustainable solution for both communities."
Suu Kyi has been criticised for doing too little to address the plight of the Rohingya Muslims.
In her first address to the General Assembly as national leader on Wednesday, she defended her government's efforts to resolve the crisis there and asked for "understanding" and "the constructive contribution" of other countries.
She said the government would persevere in its efforts to achieve peace in Rakhine and stand firm "against the forces of prejudice and intolerance."
Increased freedom of speech since the military stepped back from direct rule in Myanmar in 2011 has allowed for the unleashing of long-held anti-Muslim sentiment.
Around 125,000 Rohingya remain confined in temporary camps after waves of deadly violence in 2012 between Buddhists and Muslims, when more than 100 people were killed.
The Rohingya have been seen by much of the Buddhist population as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.
Most were stripped of their ability to vote in last year's election, which brought Suu Kyi to power as de facto leader.It was a difference of only $2-million (U.S.), but it had NHL general managers fretting all the same as the league attempted to finalize the salary cap prior to the draft.
On one side, there was a host of big-market teams – such as the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers – feeling the pinch, arguing for a $70-million-plus ceiling to bail them out with a little extra room and free agency approaching.
On the other, the small-market clubs were more concerned about the salary floor, which rises in concert with the cap and has forced teams like Florida to spend unwisely in the past to simply be compliant.
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But the biggest hurdle was getting the players to buy in and agree to a bigger number.
As strange as it sounds, the National Hockey League Players' Association fought for a lower salary cap, wanting it to be tied to last season's revenues, which ultimately came in at closer to $3.62-billion than the $3.7-billion that was rumoured during the Stanley Cup finals.
That lower revenue number would have meant a $68-million cap – a rise of only $3.7-million from last year – and it was that figure that had several GMs that expected it to exceed $70-million getting anxious.
The players' biggest issue with a higher cap number comes back to escrow. Players lost nearly 10 per cent of their paycheques last season due to it and didn't want to see that rise.
While raising the cap benefits the thin crop of players going to unrestricted free agency on Tuesday, it actually hurts all those with existing contracts, as the pool of money is redistributed each year based on revenues.
The behemoth new contract defenceman Matt Niskanen is expected to sign on July 1, for example, isn't so much a dollar figure as a shifting share of league revenues, a percentage that would theoretically be higher if all the teams bidding for him had more to spend.
Ultimately, the NHL and the NHLPA had to come up with a compromise on the cap number. The league's new collective agreement allows the two sides to factor in large new sources of revenue – like the 12-year, $5.2-billion TV deal they signed with Rogers that kicks in this fall – ahead of schedule when it comes to the cap calculation.
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Of that new money, there was roughly $100-million for next season alone that was above and beyond the previous Canadian TV contract.
Including all of that TV revenue growth would have boosted the cap $2-million to $70-million, which is what the league pushed for.
The NHLPA's resistance, however, led to them including only half of the Rogers cash for 2014-15, which is how they settled on a $69-million cap and $51-million floor.
That's good news for the free-agent class of 2015.
Factoring in all of the new revenue this weekend would have meant no sizable boost a year from now.
As it currently stands, the 2015-16 salary cap should now easily exceed $74-million.
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Which means that whoever next year's Niskanen is can be just as handsomely rewarded for making it to July 1.China Labor Watch says up to 4,000 employees walked out in Zhengzhou after Foxconn and Apple 'raised overly strict demands'
Thousands of workers at Foxconn in China have gone on strike over working conditions related to production of the iPhone 5.
Three to four thousand employees walked out of Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory on Friday, according to China Labor Watch. It said Foxconn and Apple had "raised overly strict demands on product quality" without providing adequate training.
The strike comes just weeks after Foxconn was forced to close a plant in Taiyuan, when a brawl involving as many as 2,000 workers left a number of people needing hospital treatment.
China Labor Watch, a labor rights group which monitors factory conditions in China, said Friday's strike came after Foxconn and Apple introduced new quality controls, while at the same time Foxconn forced employees to work during a public holiday.
"Foxconn raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills. This led to workers turning out products that did not meet standards, and ultimately put a tremendous amount of pressure on workers," China Labor Watch said in a statement.
The organisation said the new quality demands led to workers turning out products that did not meet production standard, placing "a tremendous amount of pressure on workers".
"Additionally, quality control inspectors fell into to conflicts with workers and were beaten up multiple times by workers. Factory management turned a deaf ear to complaints about these conflicts and took no corrective measures."
The majority of Foxconn employees taking part in the strike worked on the "onsite quality control line", according to China Labor Watch. It said the strike meant iPhone 5 production lines were "in a state of paralysis for the entire day".
The organisation said Apple was involved in some of the reasons for the dispute, pressing ahead with production demands despite design problems. The new quality demands included "indentations standards of 0.02mm and demands related to scratches on frames and back covers" China Labor Watch said.
It said the pressure of the new quality demands, coupled with workers not being permitted to take vacation during a recent holiday period, had led to the strike.
"This strike is a result of the fact that these workers just have too much pressure," said CLW executive director Li Qiang.
In September Foxconn was forced to shut a plant in Taiyuan, northern China, after a mass brawl. As many as 2,000 workers were said to have been involved in the violence, with pictures showing smashed windows and riot police at the site. Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for the pressure group China Labor Bulletin, said at the time that Foxconn workers were becoming increasingly emboldened.
"They're more willing to stand up for their rights, to stand up to injustice," he said.This article is from the archive of our partner.
Thousands of Aghans protested at Bagram Air Base, the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan, on Tuesday, as local laborers found out that NATO personnel had been burning Korans at the base. With news of the protest still coming in, MSNBC is reporting that the base saw 2,000-3,000 protesters today. "Afghan demonstrators used slingshots and fired guns in the air while U.S. helicopters responded with flares," reads the MSNBC report. "The demonstrators — shouting "Die, die, foreigners!" — started gathering in the morning after learning of the incident." According to MSNBC and The New York Times, local Bagram employees reportedly found the charred remains of Korans in the trash.
NATO Commander Gen. John R. Allen has already issued an apology for burning. "ISAF personnel at Bagram Air Base improperly disposed of a large number of Islamic religious materials which included Korans,” Allen said, referring to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, in The New York Times report, which politely went with Allen's "disposal" euphemism in its headline. "When we learned of these actions, we immediately intervened and stopped them. The materials recovered will be properly handled by appropriate religious authorities."
We'll keep this post updated as more news comes in.
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.Less than a year after he took over as chairperson of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), Injeti Srinivas, who had attempted to bring widely used anti-diabetic and cardiac medicines as well as cardiac stents under price control, has been moved out to the post of director general of the Sports Authority of India (SAI). He continues to hold additional charge as NPPA chairperson “till alternative arrangements are made”.A 1983 batch Odisha cadre IAS officer, Srinivas had taken over as NPPA chairperson just nine months ago on June 11, 2014. In July 2014, NPPA extended price control to drugs outside the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) by fixing price ceilings for 108 formulation packs of 50 anti-diabetic and cardiovascular medicines using a specific provision in the Drug Price Control Order of 2013. The provision authorised NPPA “in extraordinary circumstances, if it considers necessary so to do in public interest, fix the ceiling price or retail price of any drug for such period as it deems fit”.In protest, many pharma companies and associations took the government to court following which the government withdrew the guidelines under the DPCO provision used to fix prices.In December 2014, Srinivas, reacting to reports of medical device companies overcharging patients on cardiac stents including drug eluting stents, had sought pricing details from multinational companies that dominate the cardiac stent market including Abbott Healthcare, Boston Scientific, Zimmer, Edwards Life Sciences, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic. He held a meeting with the manufacturers in the last week of February. The Maharashtra food and drug administration had written to NPPA asking it to bring stents, which figure among devices listed under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, under price control.In January this year, the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) had been asked to provide information on the import, sale, therapeutic effect, and pricing of patented drugs in India to NPPA “for further action”. In March, the NPPA, which had fixed the price of various types of IV fluids, asked manufacturers to provide data on pricing, packaging and pack size when they protested against price controls.“Srinivas was acting in public interest by intervening actively as is the mandate of NPPA to implement price control. He was shunted out because he was really effective as NPPA chairperson and had become a thorn in the side of the drug companies with respect to price control,” alleged Chinu Srinivasan of LOCOST, a non-profit charitable trust manufacturing essential medicines.As we’ve noted, the Atlanta Falcons don’t feel like they have major roster holes, and they have enough money to extend a couple of key players, re-ink most of their key free agents, and maybe make one splash.
If they want to do more than that, they have the option of cutting players to carve out more room. If they’re going to cut anybody, the three names on this list seem like likely choices.
If the Falcons are looking to save some $$$, here’s three candidates for that big, red and black axe.
DT Tyson Jackson
Cap Savings: $2.65 million
Dead Money: $3.2 million
Free Agent Year: 2019
In 2018, when the Falcons can save almost $5 million by cutting Tyson Jackson, he may be in genuine danger. I’m not convinced he will be in 2017, not when less than $3 million is on the table, and the Falcons could be pretty thin at defensive tackle.
For all the deserved flak T-Jax gets for his production versus his contract, he’s played in 16 games for three straight seasons and remains a solid run defender. With Jonathan Babineaux likely headed out, the Falcons are still going to need a steady reserve. It’s going to come down to whether they think Tyson Jackson is that guy, or if they think they can do more with $2.65 million.
LG Andy Levitre
Cap Savings: $3.9 million
Dead Money: $2.75 million
Free Agent Year: 2019
After a shaky 2015 season, Andy Levitre was much improved in 2016. That may have been due partly to having Alex Mack next to him, but still, Levitre was a genuine asset. The question is, will that be enough to keep him from being cut?
That likely depends on what the Falcons intend to do at guard. If they want to re-sign Chris Chester or expend a high round pick on a guard and they like Wes Schweitzer to fill one of the starting spots, Levitre could be on the chopping block. That’s a lot of ifs, which is why I believe Levitre will be back, but $3.9 million in savings this year and $7 million in savings next year is not chump change. You’ll want to watch his status.
DE Brooks Reed
Cap Savings: $2.2 million
Dead Money: $2.82 million
Free Agent Year: 2019
Like Jackson, Reed has not lived up to his contract to this point. Also like Jackson, the savings the Falcons will realize by releasing Reed this year are only significant if the Falcons have a target in mind with the money and feel they won’t miss the player very much.
Given that Reed had two sacks, came to life in a big way early in the playoffs, and plays a relative position of need for these Falcons, I don’t imagine he’ll be cut. With Vic Beasley, Derrick Shelby, Adrian Clayborn, and possibly Courtney Upshaw returning and plenty of talent in the draft, it’s not a done deal for Reed that he’ll be here, even so.
If the Falcons were to cut all three of these players, for some reason, they would save about $8 million. That would buy you another nice free agent or two, but unless they’re going to replace all of these guys with solid mid-tier players or rookies, you’re talking about removing a starter and two quality part-timers from the rotation. Given that this team has not seemed overly interested in paying out the nose for multiple big-time free agents, I doubt you’ll see more than one man here cut.BAGHDAD, March 2 -- As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with Iraq's leaders on Sunday, the first visit by a Middle Eastern head of state since the U.S.-led invasion, he engaged a country in which Iran's influence is deepening but also provoking growing criticism from Iraqis.
Ahmadinejad's visit is the first to Iraq by an Iranian leader since Iran's 1979 revolution, which brought to power a government in Tehran overseen by Shiite Muslim clerics. He arrived at a time when the Bush administration and many Iraqis, who since the 2003 invasion have been confronting wide-scale sectarian violence, are increasingly suspicious of Iran's intentions in their country and the wider Middle East.
Declaring his visit "a new chapter" in Iran's relations with Iraq, the Iranian leader signaled that his country now rivals the United States, the chief financial and military backer of Iraq's government, in terms of influence.
Standing next to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a fellow Shiite, Ahmadinejad rejected American assertions, repeated as recently as Saturday by President Bush, that Iran was fueling violence inside Iraq.
"We tell Mr. Bush that accusing others will increase the problems of America in the region and will not solve them," Ahmadinejad told reporters inside the Green Zone, the fortified heart of the Iraqi government and the U.S. diplomatic mission here. "The Americans have to understand the facts of the region. Iraqi people do not like America."
Iraq and Iran fought a brutal eight-year-war in the 1980s during which the U.S. government sided with the Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein. But after the April 2003 fall of Hussein's government, Iran became one of the first nations to recognize the new U.S.-installed administration.
At the start of his two-day visit Sunday, Ahmadinejad sought to illustrate his nation's rising power in Iraq and the region. He announced a $1 billion low-interest loan to help reconstruct Iraq, and he was welcomed with a red-carpet ceremony, a marching band and much fanfare.
His visit also brought Maliki's government a greater measure of diplomatic legitimacy, a shoulder-to-shoulder display of strength between the only two Shiite-run nations in a region dominated by U.S.-backed Sunni Arab rulers who view them with suspicion.
The divisions over Iran mirror Iraq's own political and sectarian divides. The sectarian tensions were visible in parts of Iraq in the days leading up to Ahmadinejad's visit and as he embraced its leaders Sunday. Protests erupted last week in Sunni strongholds such as Diyala province and on Sunday in Fallujah, as well as in some Shiite and mixed areas.
On Sunday, a crowd of 250 Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders protested in the northern city of Kirkuk, clutching banners that read: "No to the Iranian interference in Iraq" and "We demand the Iranian regime stop its support to the militias and sabotage teams."
Many Iraqis, particularly among the minority Sunni population that ran the country under Hussein, view Iran as meddling for strategic gains, using Iraq as an arena to undermine the proclaimed U.S. political project to bring more democratic governance to the Middle East. Many Iraqis also believe Iran's reach extends into Iraqi ministries and security forces.
"We reject the Iranian interference in all its shapes and forms," said Falah Hadi al-Saadoun, a Sunni tribal leader in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province.State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s witch hunt against supposed “climate-science deniers” became an even more embarrassing debacle late last month — and just might wind up ending his career.
A state judge ruled in favor of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank whose Freedom of Information request the AG had denied. That gave Schneiderman 30 days to cough up documents concerning his agreements with other states’ AGs, and with a group of green activists, about their joint persecution of ExxonMobile and other entities for supposed “climate fraud.”
CEI had been targeted by one of Schneiderman’s co-conspirators, the Virgin Islands AG, with legal demands that plainly aimed at suppressing free speech and scientific inquiry that the nonprofit sponsors.
The think tank’s lawyers believe the documents could show improper conduct by the AGs. If they do, Schneiderman faces serious trouble.
Oh, and New York taxpayers are out some more cash over the AG’s bid to dodge the Freedom of Information Law: The court ordered Schneiderman to cover CEI’s court costs, because his defense of his denial of the FOIL request was so transparently lame. (His brief merely quoted New York law, without even making any argument as to why it applied in this case.)
It all began in March, at a press conference where Schneiderman and 16 other AGs seemed to join Al Gore to announce joint operations against Exxon. In fact, more of the AGs were never on board — they’d shown up for a far less ambitious announcement.
And both of the two AGs who did mean to work with Schneiderman have now backed out, with the Virgin Islands AG completely abandoning his suits and the Massachusetts AG “suspending” her work until further notice.
Schneiderman, meanwhile, has dropped his initial claims that Exxon covered up scientific findings. He had to: The evidence is clear that for decades the company’s been publishing scientific results that fit neatly into the mainstream.
Instead, the AG is now (supposedly) chasing a legal case based on the company’s failure to report the value of its oil reserves in the way he thinks it should.
(Seriously: The charge is that Exxon is overvaluing its oil reserves, because it doesn’t note the risk that anti-warming laws might make the petroleum worthless. Hmm: How is that going to fly with “climate science skeptic” Donald Trump sitting in the White House?)
Schneiderman maintains he shouldn’t have to come clean because he signed confidentiality agreements with the other AGs. But his office won’t say whether it’s going to appeal the FOIL ruling or obey the judge’s order.
If he does keep refusing to comply with the Freedom of Information Law, you have to think he’s worried about what those documents will reveal.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former President George W. Bush had every intention of sticking to his self-imposed exile from politics, but found that the phone kept ringing with appeals from Republican U.S. Senate candidates for help, friends say.
Former U.S. President George W. Bush speaks on stage during the Symposium on Invisible Wounds at the Invictus Games in Orlando Florida, U.S., May 8, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
As a result, Bush has embarked on a rescue mission to try to preserve the Republicans’ narrow Senate majority in a year in which many party figures fear presumptive nominee Donald Trump will drag them down to defeat in the Nov. 8 elections.
Republicans control 54 seats in the 100-member Senate.
“I think that this is a one-off, temporary thing that where he can be helpful he will be,” said Dana Perino, who was Bush’s White House press secretary.
Condoleezza Rice, who was Bush’s secretary of state and is now a political science professor at Stanford University, is also raising money for Republican candidates, but on Friday ruled out speculation that she might be drafted as Trump’s vice presidential running mate.
“Dr. Rice has repeatedly said in past cycles as well as this one, she’s not interested in being vice president. She’s happy at Stanford and plans to stay,” said Rice chief of staff Georgia Godfrey.
Friends say Bush was initially reluctant to get involved, feeling his time in the limelight had passed. They said he was surprised at the appeals he was receiving to get back into politics more than seven years after his eight-year White House run ended.
So far Bush has headlined fund-raising events for Senator John McCain of Arizona and Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. He plans to help senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Roy Blunt of Missouri.
Bush is no fan of Trump, but to a certain extent, he is doing Trump a favor in spite of the continuing antagonism toward the Bush family from the bellicose New York businessman.
Typically, the party’s nominee is the chief fund-raiser in election years, but Trump’s fund-raising effort has lagged.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to take swipes at the Bush family, particularly at Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who was defeated by Trump in the Republican presidential primary race.
On Wednesday in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump complained about Jeb’s decision not to honor a pledge made last year to support the Republican presidential nominee whoever it is.
“He signed the pledge but he hasn’t endorsed me,” Trump said.
Like his brother, Jeb Bush is helping raise money for Republican congressional candidates.
“The Bush family has a deep love for the party and cares about the future and in light of Trump’s capacity to damage the brand, I think this is part and parcel of doing what they can to preserve the party,” said Jeb Bush’s spokeswoman, Kristy Campbell.One of the few things Rock Band gets wrong is the complete lack of information on per-instrument difficulty levels. A song’s difficulty tier is a composite of the individual Drum, Vocal, Guitar, and Bass instrument difficulties — but there’s no way to see what those are! It’s all too common to get surprised by a song that’s easy for 2 or 3 band members and incredibly difficult for the other band members.
Fortunately, some kind souls on the ScoreHero Rock Band Forums put together a difficulty list for of all the songs, including all the downloadable content songs:
For my own convenience, I reformatted the standard 58 songs in the default Rock Band song list into this simple table.
Order Tier Song Max Score Gtr Bas Drm Voc Avg 1 1 Say it Ain’t So 1,228,868 3 3 1 1 2 2 1 In Bloom 2,273,959 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 I Think I’m Paranoid 1,151,992 2 2 1 2 1.75 4 1 Mississippi Queen 788,975 1 1 2 8 3 5 1 Here It Goes Again 1,395,564 1 1 2 3 1.75 6 2 29 Fingers 940,890 3 5 1 4 3.25 7 2 Creep 1,550,714 4 4 1 2 2.75 8 2 Wave of Mutilation 777,379 2 2 2 5 2.75 9 2 Should I Stay or Should I Go 1,383,039 1 1 4 4 2.5 10 2 Maps 1,153,969 1 1 3 1 1.5 11 2 Seven 2,004,533 2 4 2 8 4 12 2 Gimme Shelter 1,767,345 4 4 2 8 4.5 13 3 Sabotage 1,280,021 3 3 5 4 3.75 14 3 Blitzkrieg Bop 1,130,582 3 3 5 4 3.75 15 3 Celebrity Skin 1,349,772 4 4 2 4 3.5 16 3 I’m So Sick 1,010,165 3 3 3 9 4.5 17 3 Time We Had 1,453,604 1 2 4 3 2.5 18 3 When You Were Young 1,353,389 4 4 6 6 5 19 3 Black Hole Sun 1,417,261 5 5 4 3 4.25 20 4 Blood Doll 1,074,466 4 2 2 7 3.75 21 4 Wanted Dead or Alive 1,509,069 6 6 1 5 4.5 22 4 Day Late, Dollar Short 1,814,165 2 4 4 9 4.75 23 4 Learn to Fly 1,540,846 3 3 4 2 3 24 4 Nightmare 1,196,277 4 5 3 4 4 25 4 Orange Crush 1,154,851 2 2 5 3 3 26 4 Main Offender 1,026,162 5 5 3 5 4.5 27 4 The Hand That Feeds 1,394,731 2 2 4 4 3 28 5 Epic 2,056,843 5 5 3 3 4 29 5 Suffragette City 1,585,488 5 5 3 9 5.5 30 5 Ballroom Blitz 2,580,884 7 7 7 5 6.5 31 5 Dead on Arrival 1,518,559 7 7 7 6 6.75 32 5 Train Kept a Rollin’ 1,437,449 9 8 7 8 8 33 6 Are You Gonna Be My Girl 2,046,816 6 6 5 7 6 34 6 Pleasure (Pleasure) 1,341,127 9 3 2 2 4 35 6 Paranoid 1,308,442 6 6 5 1 4.5 36 6 Brainpower 884,265 7 7 5 5 6 37 6 Welcome Home 2,631,217 8 8 6 8 7.5 38 6 Can’t Let Go 1,178,551 8 4 5 9 6.5 39 6 Go With the Flow 1,248,177 3 3 7 2 3.75 40 6 Dani California 2,381,086 6 6 5 3 5 41 7 (Don’t Fear) The Reaper 1,914,422 6 6 8 2 5.5 42 7 I Get By 1,761,582 5 1 6 9 5.25 43 7 Outside 1,744,686 5 1 8 6 5 44 7 Reptilia 1,564,762 5 5 3 6 4.75 45 7 Electric Version 1,424,427 4 4 6 7 5.25 46 7 Vasoline 1,134,860 7 7 6 4 6 47 7 Detroit Rock City 1,056,072 3 3 7 6 4.75 48 7 Timmy & the Lords of the Underworld 1,028,823 9 4 7 9 7.25 49 8 Next To You 1,209,073 7 7 9 7 7.5 50 8 Cherub Rock 2,481,737 8 8 8 5 7.25 51 8 Tom Sawyer 1,493,375 8 8 9 9 8.5 52 8 Enter Sandman 1,752,291 8 9 8 6 7.75 53 8 Green Grass and High Tides 3,438,214 9 9 6 7 7.75 54 9 Highway Star 2,570,115 9 9 8 9 8.75 55 9 Foreplay/Long Time 2,228,909 8 8 8 9 8.25 56 9 Flirtin’ With Disaster 2,437,515 9 9 9 7 8.5 57 9 Won’t Get Fooled Again 2,355,217 7 7 9 8 7.75 58 9 Run to the Hills 1,504,336 9 9 9 9 9
Tracks in grey are bonus tracks; scores marked in red are the top 10 scoring songs in the game. Print this out and keep it in your practice space — don’t get surprised by a song difficulty again!An Obama administration memo has had a “chilling effect” on the government’s compliance with open records laws, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee argued Tuesday.
Launching a two-day hearing on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Rep. Jason Chaffetz Jason ChaffetzTop Utah paper knocks Chaffetz as he mulls run for governor: ‘His political career should be over’ Boehner working on memoir: report Former GOP lawmaker on death of 7-year-old migrant girl: Message should be ‘don't make this journey, it will kill you' MORE (R-Utah) blasted an email that directs federal agencies to consult with President Obama’s general counsel following any document request that could involve the White House.
“If you’ve got the yahoos at the White House having to review every document that falls under FOIA,” Chaffetz said. “This is the heart of the backlog.”
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The memo, dated April 2009, applies to any documents that may have “White House equities.” Chaffetz suggested the memo is being used as an excuse to delay the release of documents.
“No, no, no, don’t fulfill the FOIA request,” Chaffetz said of the memo. “Send it here to the White House. We have equities! The White House equities!”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said the memo has made federal employees fearful of crossing the White House.
"If the White House general counsel tells all general counsels at every federal agency, 'Hey, hey, before you send anything, check with us,' of course they're going to redact it. They're scared to death," he said.
Democrats defended the administration’s compliance with FOIA, with Rep. Gerry Connolly Gerald (Gerry) Edward ConnollyDem rep hopes Omar can be'mentored,' remain on Foreign Affairs panel Fairfax removed from leadership post in lieutenant governors group Virginia Legislative Black Caucus calls on Fairfax to step down MORE (D-Va.) noting that the Reagan Administration sent out a similar directive.
“If it wasn’t right in the [Reagan] administration, it’s not right in the Obama administration,” Chaffetz replied.
“I don’t care who’s in the White House, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong. It has a chilling effect, it slows people down, it sends a signal to those who are on the front lines … ‘Don’t you give that that to The New York Times.’”
The White House and House Democrats pushed back at suggestions that the Obama administration has lowered the bar for FOIA responses, suggesting that Republican budget cuts are partly to blame.
“Is there any wonder why we have FOIA backlogs? The number of requests has been skyrocketing, but agency budgets have been slashed by draconian sequestration cuts — resulting in fewer staff to handle impossible workloads,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform.
Earlier this year, an Associated Press audit found that the Obama administration had set a new record for censoring, delaying access or denying information requested under FOIA.
By the end of 2014, the amount of unanswered FOIA requests had soared 55 percent over the previous year, to more than 200,000. The report noted that the staff handling requests fell 9 percent, by 375 employees, during the same period.
While Cummings praised FOIA as “the cornerstone of our open government laws,” he also said delays in the system need to be addressed.
He has partnered with former Oversight Chair Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to push FOIA reform legislation that would, in part, codify the White House’s earlier directive of increased transparency.
The legislation, FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act, recently passed through the oversight panel and has 41 additional co-sponsors.
Connolly in a statement decried the hearing as partisan, saying it appears “designed to provide a venue to attack the administration under the guise of conducting serious oversight.”
“Government transparency would be better served by Congress taking concrete, pragmatic action,” he said in his written statement, before urging the passage of the pending FOIA reform bill.
The White House also snapped back at criticisms of the FOIA compliance process, saying on Tuesday it was “ |
with each full rotation of the earth, the frequency of the wave is equal to the circumference of the Earth. The amplitude of this wave, measured from the middle of the wave (the equator), is 30° of latitude. Recall that the 30th parallels are ½ of the height of each hemisphere, or ½ of the radius of the Earth.
Since the height of the wave is equal to ½ of the Earth’s radius, the ratio between the frequency of the wave and it’s amplitude is 4π. Measuring the amplitude from the top of the wavelength to the bottom (from 30° N to 30° S), the amplitude is equal to the radius of the Earth, and the ratio between the frequency and the amplitude of the wave is 2π.
CONCLUSION
Many similarities between these sites have been well documented, including the use of perfectly cut and precisely placed monolithic stones, exact orientations to the cardinal points and astronomical orientations. The prevailing view of world history dismisses these similarities as coincidental developments of separate stone age cultures. Unless it is also a coincidence that these sites are located at mathematically and geometrically significant points on a single line around the center of the Earth, it may be time to reconsider the idea that Europeans of the present era were the first to know the size and shape of the Earth.
If the locations of all of these sites is not a coincidence, and if there are sites yet to be discovered along the line, one good place to look might be halfway between the Great Pyramid and Machupicchu, just south of the Cape Verde Islands.
Another good place to look might be halfway between the Great Pyramid and Easter Island, at 4° 19′ North Latitude, 41° 30′ West Longitude, also under the North Atlantic Ocean:
G = Great Pyramid A = Angkor Wat V = Anatom Island E = Easter Island X = Atlantis?
The distance from the Great Pyramid to Easter Island is approximately 40% of the circumference of the Earth. The X in the diagram is halfway between the two, 20% each way. Machupicchu is halfway between the X in the diagram and Easter Island, 10% each way. The Distance from the Great Pyramid to Angkor Wat is approximately 20% of the circumference, and the Indus Valley is halfway between the two, 10% each way. The Distance from Easter Island to Angkor Wat is approximately 40% of the circumference, and Anatom Island is halfway between them, 20% each way. These sites are located in multiples of 10% of the circumference of the Earth, and particularly at 20% intervals. Although there are no islands near the location of the X in the diagram, it is interesting to note that the famous Piri Reis map shows a large island in this location, and the geology of recent core samples, taken from the ocean floor in this area, is of continental rather than oceanic type rock.
COORDINATES, CALCULATION OF ALIGNMENT, AND LINKS TO ANCIENT SITES
A SECOND ALIGNMENT WITH EASTER ISLAND AND MOHENJO-DARO
In Global Sacred Alignments, Terry Walsh diagrams several alignments of ancient sites on straight lines around the center of the earth, and mentions several others. He addresses the alignment of the Great Pyramid with Easter Island, Machupicchu and Perseopolis, and he diagrams an alignment of Easter Island with Tiahuanaco, Luxor, Varanasi and Bandiagara, the ancient capital city of the Dogons. This second alignment also crosses over Mohenjo Daro and Ganweriwali in the Indus Vallley.
The total circumference of this second alignment is 24,880 miles. The great circle distance from Easter Island to Tiahuanaco is 2,703 miles, 10.8% of the total circumference. The distance from Tiahuanaco to Bandiagara is 4,930 miles, 19.8%. The distance from Bandiagara to Luxor is 2,473 miles, 9.9%. The distance from Luxor to Easter Island’s antipodal point in the Indus Valley near Ganweriwali is 2,363 miles, 9.5%.
Because Easter Island, Machupicchu, the Great Pyramid, the Indus Valley and Angkor are also aligned at 10% intervals around the earth, there is a high coincidence of paired sites along these two alignments. In addition to the convergence of the two alignments at Easter Island and Mohenjo-Daro, Machupicchu is paired with Tiahuanaco and the Great Pyramid is paired with Luxor. If the pairing of these sites along these two alignments is not a coincidence, two good places to look for other ancient sites would be in the Sahara Desert, near the border between Mali and Mauritania, at 21° N, 7° 40′ W, 2,488 miles southwest of the Great Pyramid, and in the shallow water of the South China Sea, just off the coast of Vietnam, at 18° 43′ N, 106° 27′ E, 2,488 miles southeast of Mohenjo-Daro.
Coordinates, Calculations of Alignments, and Links to Ancient Sites
Links: Latitude Longitude Distance To Axis Point:
59°42’N 139°17’W Distance To:
Great Circle Easter Island 27° 04′ S 109° 22′ W 6,224 miles 9 miles Machupicchu 13° 08′ S 72° 30′ W 6,218 miles 3 miles The Great Pyramid 29° 59′ N 31° 09′ E 6,215 miles 0 miles Petra 30° 09′ N 35° 47′ E 6,218 miles 3 miles Perseopolis 29° 50′ N 52° 52′ E 6,209 miles 6 miles Mohenjo Daro 27° 15′ N 68° 17′ E 6,222 miles 7 miles Angkor Vihear 14° 25′ N 104° 40′ E 6,220 miles 0 miles
Links: Latitude Longitude Distance To Axis Point:
62° 30′ N 123° 10′ W Distance To:
Great Circle Easter Island 27° 04′ S 109° 22′ W 6,216 miles 1 mile Tiahuanaco 16° 32′ S 68° 42′ W 6,187 miles 28 miles Bandiagara 14° 21′ N 3° 37′ W 6,228 miles 13 miles Luxor 25° 43′ N 32° 35′ E 6,208 miles 7 miles Mohenjo-Daro 27° 15′ N 68° 17′ E 6,216 miles 1 mile Varanasi 25° 21′ N 82° 58′ E 6,210 miles 5 miles
A SECOND ALIGNMENT WITH THE GREAT PYRAMID
The Great Pyramid is aligned with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; the Chinese city of Xian, site of the terracotta soldiers, the unexcavated tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, and numerous other pyramids and burial mounds; and the underwater ruins of Nan Madol that surround Pohnpei Island.
Coordinates, Calculations of Alignments, and Links to Ancient Sites
Links: Latitude Longitude Distance to:
50° 40’N 103° 30’W Great Circle The Great Pyramid 29° 59′ N 31° 09′ E 6217 miles 2 miles Jerusalem 31° 44′ N 35° 13′ E 6213 miles 2 miles Xian 34° 22′ N 109° ‘E 6236 miles 21 miles Pohnpei 6° 56′ N 158° 09 ‘E 6216 miles 1 mile
A SECOND ALIGNMENT WITH MACHUPICCHU
Machupicchu, Ollantaytambo, Saqsaywaman and Cusco are aligned with Ingapirca; Tazumal, Mixco Viejo, Bonampak, Palenque, and La Venta; Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon; Shanghai; and the partially submerged ancient capital city of Oc-Eo in the Mekong Delta.
This alignment also crosses over the source of the Amazon River; the mouth of the Parana River at Buenos Aires; the mouth of the Mekong River at Oc-Eo; the mouth of the Xi river at Macau; the mouth of the Yangtze River at Shanghai; and the mouth of the Rio Grande River at Matamoros.
Coordinates, Calculations of Alignments, and Links to Ancient Sites
Links: Latitude Longitude Distance to:
31° 50′ S 170° 40′ W Great Circle Cusco 13° 31′ S 71° 59′ W 6229 miles 14 miles Ollantaytambo 13° 15′ S 72° 16′ W 6223 miles 8 miles Machupicchu 13° 06′ S 72° 35′ W 6214 miles 1 miles Ingapirca 2° 31’S 78° 49’W 6239 miles 24 miles Tazumal 13° 59′ N 89° 33′ W 6224 miles 9 miles Mixco Viejo 14° 58′ N 90° 32′ W 6207 miles 8 miles Bonampak 16° 52′ N 92° 15′ W 6237 miles 22 miles Palenque 17° 32′ N 91° 58′ W 6216 miles 1 mile La Venta 18° 00′ N 92° 55′ W 6190 miles 25 miles Chaco Canyon 36° 03′ N 107° 59′ W 6203 miles 12 miles Mesa Verde 37° 09′ N 108° 31′ W 6215 miles 0 miles Shanghai 31° 14′ N 121° 27′ E 6222 miles 7 miles Oc-Eo 10° 01′ N 105° 06′ E 6249 miles 34 miles
A SECOND ALIGNMENT WITH PERSEOPOLIS
Perseopolis is aligned with the ancient Sumarian/Babylonian/Assyrian center at Nippur; Baalbek and the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos; the ancient cities of Palaikastro and Knossos on the Island Of Crete; the Island of Malta; the North African sites of ancient Roman construction at Volubilis and Timgad; and the Incan and Pre-Incan fortress, temples and astronomical observatories at Ingapirca.
Image © Cosmi 3-D World Atlas
Coordinates, Calculations of Alignments, and Links to Ancient Sites
Links: Latitude Longitude Distance to:
54° 05’N 165° 20’W Great Circle Ingapirca 2° 31′ S 78° 49′ W 6,221 miles 6 miles Volubilis 34° 51′ N 5° 33′ W 6,226 miles 11 miles Timgad 35° 27′ N 6° 38′ E 6,233 miles 18 miles Malta 35° 53′ N 14° 31′ E 6,215 miles 0 miles Knossos 35° 17′ N 25° 09′ E 6,228 miles 13 miles Palaikastro 35 14′ N 26° 16′ E 6,227 miles 12 miles Byblos 34 08′ N 35 38′ E 6,215 miles 0 miles Baalbek 34° N 36° 13′ E 6,217 miles 2 miles Nippur 32 05′ N 45 10′ E 6,212 miles 3 miles Perseopolis 29° 50′ N 52° 52′ E 6,208 miles 7 miles
A SECOND ALIGNMENT WITH LUXOR AND PALENQUE
In Global Sacred Alignments, Terry Walsh diagrams the alignment of Palenque, Bimini, Luxor and Mecca. The large Mayan city of Coba, site of the tallest Mayan pyramid, is also on this alignment.
Coordinates, Calculations of Alignments, and Links to Ancient Sites
Links: Latitude Longitude Distance to:
49° 52′ S 23° 45′ W Great Circle Palenque 17° 32′ N 91°58’W 6,222 miles 7 miles Coba 20° 31’N 87° 39′ W 6,218 miles 3 miles Bimini 25° 46′ N 79° 15′ W 6,213 miles 2 miles Luxor 25° 43′ N 32° 35′ E 6,211 miles 4 miles Mecca 21° 26′ N 39° 53′ E 6,221 miles 6 miles
ANOTHER LOOK AT AN OLD DESIGN
The Great Pyramid, Easter Island, Palenque, Dzibilchatun, Stonehenge, the Acropolis, and what remains of the Island of Thera are all equally distant from a point in the South Atlantic Ocean located at 20°55’S 26°10’W.
A circle drawn around 20°55’S 26°10’W with a great circle radius of 5,180 miles crosses over all of these sites. It is interesting to note that the distance from the North Pole to 15° north latitude is also exactly 5,180 miles. Thus, the circumference of this circle is the same as the circumference of the 15th parallels.
Northwest of the Acropolis, Delphi is close to the circle. Northwest of the Great Pyramid, the ancient capitals of Alexandria and Sais in Egypt are close to the circle. Several pyramids and other sites of ancient construction are south-south-east of the Great Pyramid and close to the circle. Likewise, a number of Mayan and Olmec sites between Palenque and Dzibilchitun on the Yucatan Peninsula are close to the circle. Similarly, in addition to Stonehenge, a number of megalithic sites in Southern England, Southern Ireland and Northern France are close to the circle.
Tiny Ilhas Martin Vaz, the last link in an old island chain running east from the coast of Brazil, is located at 20°28’S 28°51’W, just over two degrees west of 20°55’S 26°10’W. Ilhas de Trindade is the next to last island in the chain, located at 20°30’S 29°19’W. The British astronomer, Richard Halley, once took over Trindade on behalf of the British Crown. Trindade is famous for a UFO sighting that was photographed in 1958. In addition to the two locations that were suggested as possible sites for the submerged island of Atlantis in A New Look at an Old Design, another good place to look is just East of Ilhas Martin Vaz, at 20°55’S 26°10’W.
Links: Latitude Longitude Distance to:
20°55’S 26°10’W Circle The Great Pyramid 29°59’S 31°09’E 5,175 miles 5 miles Easter Island 27°04S 109°22’W 5,182 miles 2 miles Palenque 17°32’N 91°58’W 5,185 miles 5 miles Dzibilchatun 21°10’N 89°38’W 5,172 miles 8 miles Stonehenge 51°08’N 1°49’W 5,175 miles 5 miles The Acropolis 37°57’N 23°42’E 5,185 miles 5 miles Thera 36°22’N 25°22’E 5,182 miles 2 miles
UTILITIES
On Top of the World, 3-D world atlas shareware, is freely available in demo versions on the internet, and will precisely draw the line around the center of the Earth with good distance measurement and zoom features.
VectorGlobe is an easy to navigate 3-D world atlas with excellent topographical, bathymetric and political features, and a huge database of sites.
The Cosmi 3-D world atlas is easy to navigate and offers very wide angle views of the Earth. Also contains a selection of flat projection maps.
The NASDA/MITI website has satellite images of the world’s rainforests, with an easy to navigate image browser.
The Geometer’s Sketchpad is freely available in demo versions on the internet, and will draw diagrams with distance and angle measurements.
How far is it is a freely available internet utility that provides great circle distances from cities or lat-long coordinates.
LINKS TO RELATED SITES AND SUBJECTSHere's aging dinosaur rocker Eddie Vedder at a recent concert in Charlotte, N.C., disparaging certain "fuckers" in Oklahoma City for stealing the SuperSonics from Seattle. Eddie Vedder is no friend of yours, residents of the Sooner State!
Before you go chastising Vedder for talking trash about Oklahoma, please remember that the loss of the Sonics still weighs heavily on the souls of many former Sonics fans. Fandom is a complicated, often unforgiving experience, and what Vedder is expressing here is something that all fans can rel—Haha just kidding, nobody gives a shit about what Eddie Vedder thinks about Oklahoma or the Thunder or anything at all. You're just here so that I can make you look at this GIF of him falling down again:
Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
God, that will always be funny. And so will this:
Have a good evening.
[The Lost Ogle | Gawker]A GAY election candidate has said he felt "degraded" after suffering homophobic abuse while canvassing outside a Catholic church in Co Antrim.
Connor Duncan was distributing leaflets after Mass at St Mary's Church in Glenravel, outside Ballymena, when he said a couple shouted abuse.
The SDLP assembly candidate for North Antrim claimed the woman told him he was "sick in the head" and called him "disgusting" and "filth".
He said she also tried to block the car park exit with her vehicle and refused to move for other Mass-goers until Mr Duncan and his two canvassers left the area.
Mr Duncan said he contacted police to make them aware of the incident, but he does not intend to pursue a complaint at this stage.
The PSNI confirmed it was aware of the issue, which happened on Sunday morning.
Mr Duncan, a Catholic himself, said he had already endured some "underlying homophobia" while canvassing, but described the incident as "direct homophobic abuse".
"I was shocked at this barrage of abuse because I have never really experienced it before," the 28-year-old said.
"It was a bit upsetting, the fact that that's what people are saying about you is not a nice feeling. You can feel a bit degraded."
Mr Duncan said the couple took issue with them offering leaflets to parishioners as they left the church car park following Mass.
"People had the choice to take a leaflet or not. We have done this for years, other parties have done this. It's a common approach across Ireland."
He said the woman told him he had a "mental illness" and added: "You're sick in the head, you can be cured if you want to be cured".
"They said 'There's something wrong with you, you can't call yourself a Catholic, you chose this lifestyle'.
"She had blocked the car park. No-one could get out properly onto the road. It was totally dangerous what she was doing. People were sympathetic and apologising to me."
Mr Duncan said they left the area, adding that his six-year-old god-daughter who was with him was upset by what happened.
However, he said the woman then confronted him again when he went to explain to the priest what had happened.
"She came barging into the sacristy and started shouting, 'This man is wrong – he's spreading stuff about gays'."
Mr Duncan said most people in the area were shocked by the incident, and it has made him more determined.
"It made me more focused, that there's people out there who need someone to stand up for them in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community – and that's what I intend to do," he said.
This incident won't deter me from standing up for all the people of #NorthAntrim Let's #BuildaBetterFuture on May 5 pic.twitter.com/UowNBxYJ3H — Connor Duncan (@CDuncanSDLP) May 4, 2016
Several political parties have candidates from the LGBT community contesting this year's assembly election.
Rainbow Project director John O'Doherty said: "The truly despicable homophobic abuse which Connor Duncan has had to endure is totally unacceptable.
"LGB&T people have the right to seek public office in Northern Ireland without being described as 'disgusting' or 'filth'.
"While attitudes are changing and increasingly Northern Ireland is a place where LGBT people feel included and welcome, these attitudes are not uncommon.
"Much greater, coordinated political leadership is required to consign these outdated and bigoted views to the dustbin of history where they belong."
Meanwhile, People Before Profit's Gerry Carroll has blasted suggestions that voters should avoid smaller left-wing parties at the polls in favour of Sinn Féin.
Responding to comments by Irish News columnist Jim Gibney, the assembly candidate for West Belfast said his party would "fight austerity and all forms of inequality north and south of the border".The Manchester City defender’s tough training regime at a youth academy saved him from the streets, and his steely temperament should prove crucial as he steps in for Belgium’s absent captain at Euro 2016
This article is part of the Guardian’s Euro 2016 Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the countries who have qualified for France. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 10 June.
He has some Kompany in him. His nickname (the new Kompany), his club (Manchester City), his position (central defender), his skills (strong, fast, technically good), his origin (a Brussels ‘ketje’ from a mixed family) and this summer he could also replace him in the national team. Let’s introduce you to Jason Denayer, a warrior trained in bare feet.
He would probably rather make a name for himself – and he may have to wait a few games after Marc Wilmots decided against starting him at Euro 2016 in central defence – but Denayer cannot deny the comparisons to his countryman. When he signed on loan for Celtic in 2014, the Scottish club proudly presented him as the “new Kompany”. It said everything about his reputation and his potential. Only time will tell if Denayer follows in Kompany’s footsteps to become one of the Premier League’s best defenders. The 20-year-old defender spent the past season on loan at Galatasaray but in the summer he returns to Manchester City and he hopes to convince Pep Guardiola of his qualities.
Euro 2016: the complete guide to every squad and every player in France Read more
Denayer is not quite as expressive as his idol just yet – he is quite shy, as well as calm and kind – but he is strong-willed and very competitive. When he was five, he was taken by his dad to Ganshoren, a local team in Brussels, but the coach rejected him because he was too young – in Belgium you cannot join a club to play organised football before the age of six. “I was so devastated that I still remember that day,” Denayer told Het Laatste Nieuws. “Rain was pouring down and I saw Junior Malanda – born in 1994 – running on the pitch. While I wasn’t allowed to. It motivated me. I was determined to join the club a year later.”
Denayer likes rapid progress; things have to move on. Aged 11 he had a trial at Anderlecht, Belgium’s biggest club. His team-mates did not pass to him, so he told his dad he had no interest in joining ‘Paars-wit’ (the purple and whites). “I want to go back to Ganshoren.” When Anderlecht knocked on his door 12 months later, he agreed to join them, although he did not last long.
A key moment came when, as a 13-year-old, he was watched by scouts at the newly founded Académie Jean-Marc Guillou. “One of my best friends was on a trial in the academy,” recalls Denayer. “He told me that they played football for four hours every day. It fascinated me.” On the last of the four trial days at the academy, he was exhausted from all the running around. Someone suggested to him to try out as a defender. It worked out well.
After the session Vincent Defour, one of the coaches, walked towards him and asked: “Are you dreaming of a professional career?” Denayer knew he would struggle to match the small, technically gifted strikers he had seen during the trials and decided to become a defender. He signed a contract for the JMG Academy and never looked back.
Guillou, the founder, was one of Arsène Wenger’s star-spotters and is credited with developing the Touré brothers, Kolo and Yaya, Gervinho, Emmanuel Eboué, Salomon Kalou and many more in his African academies. He wanted to replicate his successful concept in Tongerlo, close to Antwerp. The move met with a lot of resistance from the professional clubs. Not only were they upset that the academy snapped up some of their young talents, but prospects had to sign a contract and were withdrawn from normal competition football, playing only small-sided games among each other as they wanted to focus on technique and education in a private school.
They trained in bare feet to improve their touch. “The regime was tough and during the first few weeks I had my doubts,” recalls Denayer. “Your day started at 7am and ended at 10.30pm. In between you had 90 minutes – just before bedtime – to call your friends or family. It was playing football, studying, eat, sleep. As a 14-year-old, I could easily cope with the regime, but I still remember that there were also nine- and 10-year-old guys. Every Monday, they were constantly crying during the trip from Brussels to Tongerlo in our minivan.”
The academy saved him from the streets: drugs, criminality and other problems kids in his situation would face. His family – his dad is Belgian, his mum Congolese – had moved to the Anneessens quarter, one of the deprived areas of Brussels. He used to be on the street a lot. “You had to be careful, even when you were playing football,” says Denayer. “One silly contact could cause an explosive atmosphere. I’ve known boys who were more talented than me, but have never made it. They made other choices. That’s the danger of growing up in a tough neighbourhood.”
By the time Denayer was 18 he had developed into a strong defender. He was always blessed physically – big and strong, fast and smart – but he could also dribble and played without fear. Lierse, the club that had a partnership with the academy, wanted to tie him up as a semi-professional but the player had higher hopes. He rejected the offer and made a tour around England.
He had a trial at Liverpool, but club and player never reached an agreement. His next stop was City. “It took months for the club to take a decision – the longest period of my life,” Denayer says. “But when I signed a deal, I was super-happy. I got my chance in the EDS [elite development squad] team and trained with the first team.”
In the summer of 2014 he joined the first-team squad on their pre-season tour of the United States but played only a few minutes. “My agent told me that the Celtic manager [Ronny Deila] had watched some of the EDS games and that he was interested in signing me. I said to myself: ‘Glasgow, the city where the sun only shines one week out of a year?’ But the manager called me and convinced me to join. I was euphoric and nervous at the same time. Before we reached the dressing room during the stadium tour, my dad told me: ‘Jason, once you walk through that door, you are a professional player. And you will have to behave like one too.’”
In his first game at Celtic Park, against Dundee, he scored his first goal after just four minutes. Denayer says “the jigsaw fell into place”. He won the Scottish title, the League Cup and was elected as the PFA Young Player of the Year. His first season at the highest level was one long dream.
A young boy once made a similar start in the Belgian Jupiler Pro League. His name: Vincent Kompany.
The secrets of the other squad members
Axel Witsel
The sky is the limit for Axel Witsel. Since the beginning of this year the Zenit midfielder has been the co-owner of LindSky Aviation, a company that trains pilots and sells private jets. Currently he is the ‘Chief Relationship Officer’ but he has the ambitious plan to lead the company when he retires. “While my team-mates are playing on their PlayStation, I can read some pilot courses,” he said. “After my career I want to get my flying licence.”
Radja Nainggolan
Belgium’s gladiator, ‘Ninja’ as he is called at Roma, has his scars. Radja has always been a fighter, as a tattoo on his left leg reveals; on and off the pitch. His dad left a family of five when Radja was five and returned to Indonesia – something the midfielder would never forgive him for. Six years ago he lost his mum after a battle against cancer, with euthanasia carried out. For Radja and his twin sister, Riana, who also plays football, their mum meant everything. He has a tattoo featuring two wings up his back to his neck, a tribute to his mother. The powerful image also has her date of birth and death on it. When he was 17, he moved to Italy. He survived homesickness because he wanted to live his dream: to become a professional footballer.
Jan Vertonghen
Belgians love modesty. And, despite his reported salary of £60,000 a week, Vertonghen won a lot of sympathy in October 2015. While his team-mates were turning up in their posh cars - Witsel in a Cadillac, Kevin De Bruyne in a fancy SUV - the Tottenham defender was dropped off by his mum in a nine-year-old Toyota Corolla. He was even granted a goodbye kiss. The Corolla has a huge emotional value for the Vertonghen family. It was the last car his parents bought before his dad passed away after a lingering illness. Vertonghen doesn’t have a car in Belgium and always stays with his family when the national squad come together. In London he drives a Porsche.
Romelu Lukaku
A killer in front of goal, a rapper in the back of his mind. The Everton striker is in love with football, but also had a second passion: he adores music. He arrived at the training camp in May with a huge suitcase. He had brought his DJ decks stand, to entertain his team-mates with his rap music. Lukaku shares some of his favourite songs on Instagram too. There’s a funny video of Lukaku singing rap on request, next to Thibaut Courtois.
Jordan Lukaku
Romelu’s brother is a fast guy on the pitch, but he was also given a €2,880 fine and a 12-month driving ban for speeding and driving without a licence last summer. The judge said the left-back may go to jail if he offends again. It was the last warning sign for the younger Lukaku. The episode and the death of his best friend and Wolfsburg player Junior Malanda – after a car accident – opened his eyes. He became more professional, had an excellent season and pushed his bad image to the background.
Kristof Terreur writes for HLN.
Follow him on Twitter here.
Click here for a tactical analysis of Belgium.Image copyright AP Image caption Most of the passengers were asleep at the time of the crash, officials said
At least 36 people have died after a sleeper-bus collided with a methane-laden tanker in northern China, state-run media say.
The two vehicles burst into flames after the accident in the city of Yanan in the middle of the night, Xinhua news agency reports.
It quoted local police as saying that three people survived the collision, but suffered injuries.
The cause of the accident in Shaanxi province is being investigated.
The two vehicles collided at about 02:00 local time (18:00 GMT Saturday) on the Baotou-Maoming motorway.
"Soon after the collision, the bus was engulfed by flames," local police officer Yue Jiuxiang told the state-broadcaster CCTV.
"The front part of the bus was seriously damaged. Also most of the passengers were sleeping. This is why so many people died."
Chinese media later published photos, showing the burnt wreckage of the bus stuck against the back of the tanker.
Officials said the bus had been heading to Shaanxi's provincial capital of Xian from Inner Mongolia.
China's roads are highly dangerous, with traffic laws and safety widely flouted across the vast country.
In 2011, more than 62,000 died in traffic accidents, state media reported.So, this happened in Wisconsin.
Two weeks ago, Schulze was working in the barn at the Society of St. Francis on the Kenosha-Illinois border when a swarm of squad cars arrived and officers unloaded with a search warrant. "(There were) nine DNR agents and four deputy sheriffs, and they were all armed to the teeth," Schulze said.
Why were 13 armed officers there? Was the place a notorious meth lab, or did someone Google pressure cookers and backpacks from its computers? No. There's no indication that anyone at the shelter even had a BB gun.
The focus of their search was a baby fawn brought there by an Illinois family worried she had been abandoned by her mother.
They named the deer "Giggles" because when it made sounds, it sounded like laughter. Which, obviously, means it was an imminent threat to peace and safety.
The SWAT-style raid was prompted by a couple of cowardly anonymous callers who tipped the WI Department of Natural Resources that the no-kill shelter just might be harboring a baby deer.
Because baby deer grow up to be international terrorists, or something.
It was to go to a wildlife reserve in Illinois that allows the rehabilitation of deer. Schulze said agents corralled workers near the picnic area and then set out in search of the fawn. "I was thinking in my mind they were going to take the deer and take it to a wildlife shelter, and here they come carrying the baby deer over their shoulder. She was in a body bag," Schulze said. "I said, 'Why did you do that?' He said, 'That's our policy,' and I said, 'That's one hell of a policy.'"
You can probably see where this is going. The cops totally think the raid was proportional and right.
"Could you have made a phone call before showing up, I mean, that's a lot of resources," WISN 12 News investigative reporter Colleen Henry asked. "If a sheriff's department is going in to do a search warrant on a drug bust, they don't call them and ask them to voluntarily surrender their marijuana or whatever drug that they have before they show up," Niemeyer said.
Yeah, but this wasn't a drug raid. It was a baby deer raid.
And after taking the baby deer by force while treating the shelter's staff worse than the average border-hopping, people-smuggling coyote, the cops killed it.
They killed Giggles. The only surprise is that they didn't kill it with a drone aircraft.
Everyone involved in this raid ought to be fired. Obviously. They can't be trusted with any level of power.
As the days pass, I have to say that it feels less like I'm engaged in political debates than I'm just chronicling the occupying government's ever tightening grip on what was once a free people.A man was assaulted in Belltown Oct. 1 after meeting a man who had posted an item for sale on Craigslist, police say.
The incident happened at 2:11 a.m. on Stingey Lane, a dead-end road off Route 9 in Belltown. The man, 32, told police that he traveled from Dover to Lewes to buy an electronic device that was posted on Craigslist, said Master Cpl. Gary Fournier of the Delaware State Police.
As the victim and the seller spoke at the north end of Stingey Lane, Fournier said, three men approached the victim’s car and punched him in the face through the car window. The three men then pulled the victim from his car and continued to assault him while removing the victim’s jewelry and cellphone, Fournier said.
The three men fled in an unknown direction and the Craigslist seller drove away from the scene, Fournier said.
The victim then drove himself to Beebe Healthcare for treatment.
The three suspects are only described as one white male and two black males.
Anyone with information in reference to this incident is asked to contact Trooper J. Berry at 302-644-5020. Information may also be provided by contacting Delaware Crime Stoppers at 1-800-TIP-3333 or via the internet at http://www.delaware.crimestoppersweb.com.
The Delaware State Police would like to offer a few safety tips for citizens to keep in mind when conducting such transactions:Twenty some odd years ago when I was a young bride, my culinary repertoire consisted of tuna noodle casserole, spaghetti from a jar, and Shake N Bake pork chips. Then I discovered Bisquick. Over the years I’ve collected probably close to 50 Bisquick recipe booklets from the supermarket check-out. Bisquick gave me the simple recipes and confidence that I needed to take my |
is, wow!" Cramer said.
Best of all, though, was that the company did not complain. There weren't the usual retail complaints of weather, fickle customers, rising health care costs, inflation, the Fed or interest rates.
In short, Cramer thinks Home Depot is the paradigm. It is the Super Bowl winner and Hall of Famer, all rolled into one for retail.Scala offers a functionality known as Structural Types which allows to set a behaviour very similar to what dynamic languages allow to do when they support Duck Typing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_typing)
The main difference is that it is a type safe, static typed implementation checked up at compile time. This means that you can create a function (or method) that receives an expected duck. But at compile time it would be checked that anything that is passed can actually quack like a Duck.
Here is an example. Let’s say we want to create a function that expects anything that can quack like a duck. This is how we would do it in Scala with Structural Typing:
def quacker(duck: {def quack(value: String): String}) { println (duck.quack("Quack")) }
You can see that in the definition of the function we are not expecting a particular class or type. We are specifying an Structural Type which in this case means that we are expecting any type that has a method with the signature quack(string: String): String.
So all the following examples will work with that function:
object BigDuck { def quack(value: String) = { value.toUpperCase } } object SmallDuck { def quack(value: String) = { value.toLowerCase } } object IamNotReallyADuck { def quack(value: String) = { "prrrrrp" } } quacker(BigDuck) quacker(SmallDuck) quacker(IamNotReallyADuck)
You can see that there is no interface or anything being implemented by any of the three objects we have defined. They simply have to define the method quack in order to work in our function.
If you run the code above you get the output:
QUACK
quack
prrrrrp
If on the other hand you try to create an object without a quack method and try to call the function with that object you would get a compile error. For example trying to do this:
object NoQuaker { } quacker(NoQuaker)
You would get the error:
error: type mismatch; found : this.NoQuaker.type required: AnyRef{def quack(value: String): String} quacker(NoQuaker)
Also, you don’t even need to create a new type or class. You could use AnyRef to create an object with the quack method. Like this:
val x = new AnyRef { def quack(value: String) = { "No type needed "+ value } }
and you can use that object to call the function:
quacker(x)
You can also specify in the function that expects the structural type, the the parameter object must respond to more than one method. Like this:
def quacker(duck: {def quack(value: String): String; def walk(): String}) { println (duck.quack("Quack")) }
There you are saying that any object you pass to the function needs to respond to both methods quack and walk. This is also checked at compile time.
Under the covers the use of Structural Types in this way will be handled by reflection. This means that it is a more expensive operation than the standard method call. So use only when it actually makes sense to use it.Glendale has until Monday to pay $25 million to the National Hockey League to cover this season's Phoenix Coyotes losses, according to a bill sent to the city Tuesday.
See the invoice sent to Glendale
The documents, sent a week after the team finished its season in the playoffs, show that actual losses for eight months ending in March totaled $36.6 million.
Glendale promised the NHL last year that it would set aside $25 million from a utilities-repair account to pay team losses in exchange for more time to land a team owner. For months, the money sat untouched.
Glendale officials promised taxpayers at the time that the city would not have to pay the money if it found a buyer. Later, officials said the buyer would cover the expense.
But so far, Glendale's deal with team buyer Matthew Hulsizer remains incomplete as the city seeks financing.
Glendale spokeswoman Julie Frisoni said the city would audit the figures. She said negotiations continue and the city hopes to close a deal soon.Dev Blog #19: On Worldmap Locations
The strategic worldmap in Battle Brothers is filled with opportunities for adventure, battles and interaction. One of these opportunities are locations that you can explore, destroy and plunder or trade with. In this week’s developer’s blog we want to present you a couple of these locations.
On resources
Before getting into the midst of things a quick word on how locations work. Each location has its own resources that it uses to “buy” various parties with that each have their own agenda, AI, combat strength and troop composition. These parties will then venture out to perform various tasks. Most of these activities have the ultimate goal of increasing the location’s resources so that it can buy even stronger parties in the future.
Hideout
The hideout is an encampment hidden in rough terrain like dark woods or steep hills in a safe distance from the next stronghold or watchtower. The hideout usually harbors a flock of bandits or other scoundrels that use it as a base of operations to plunder trade routes or raid unprotected villages.
It will first send out several small groups of scouts that search the area for valuable targets like trade caravans or small villages that do not have a lot of defenses. Once they have observed and estimated a target they return to the hideout to inform their fellow bandits. The hideout then uses its resources to create a larger raiding party that travels out to attack the reported target. If the attack is successfull, the bandits plunder everything they can get their hands on and haul it back to the hideout, in turn increasing the hideout’s resources.
If the player, or any other faction for that matter, manages to intercept the scouts before they get back to deliver their information, the hideout won’t be able send out raiding parties as they don’t know where to send them.
If the hideout’s activities go unchecked for a while, their raiding parties will grow with their available resources and their parties become bigger and bigger until then can evenetually even threaten larger towns or watchtowers.
Watchtower
Watchtowers are used to guard the long and lonesome roads that trade caravans use to get their wares from one market to the next. As these trade caravans are easy prey for bandits and worse, the watchtowers aim to prevent any attacks on them.
These towers are usually placed along the road network and mostly close to road intersections. They use their resources to create patrols that move along the roads up to the next market and scout for bandits and their hideouts. The resources are not gathered by the tower itself, but the tower is usually supplied by the much bigger strongholds that are described below.
The patrols will of course hunt down any evil-doers that they come by but in case they are not strong enough to deal with the threat, the watchtower will be able to spawn a bigger assault party and even call in help from a stronghold that houses a lot more troops.
Stronghold
The stronghold is a big military fortress that accomodates a large amount of professional soldiers and provides security to a large region. The stronghold will create patrols of its own like a watchtower but it will also supply the much smaller watchtowers in the vicinity via supply trecks. Of course these supply trecks can be raided just like trade caravans.
What is more, the stronghold does have the means to fight bigger threats by sending out a dedicated assault party of trained footmen and knights. However, the soldiers of the stronghold are not numerous enough to guard any caravan or village at all times. So there will be many opportunities for the player to help out civilians in distress even when close to a stronghold.
As a stronghold usually has a smithy dedicated to forging and repairing all kinds of weapons and armor, the player will have the opportunity to stack up on military equipment. The amount and grade of equipment will be different for each stronghold depending on its location and resource stockpile.
Villages and Towns
We already talked a little about the human settlements in previous blog posts. These play a central role as in the strategy part of the game as you need them to hire new men, buy equipment and do much more.
These settlements create trade caravans with local goods and send them to other towns markets to generate trade revenue for both locations. Because these caravans are usually not very well guarded, bandits will try hard to ambush and plunder them.
If the bandits, or any other attacking faction, attempt to attack a settlement itself, it will hastily gather a militia troop to fend of the aggressors. However, this needs some time and if the attackers are fast enough or are seen too late, for example by attacking at night, the settlement will be completely undefended. The strength of the militia depends on the resources available.Bitcoin Porn Ransomware on Android Does Not Demand Bitcoin Payment
A new type of ransomware has been brought into circulation, and it is targeting mobile devices running the Android operating system. There are a few hoops to jump through before one’s device is infected, but this new threat is a primary concern for mobile users. However, the ransom does not have to be paid in Bitcoin, for a change.
Porn Ransomware Makes The Rounds On Android OS
This particular new type of ransomware works in a rather unusual way, as fake text messages are sent out to Android users all over the world. In the message body of these texts, there is a link to an adult website, which users can visit to download a video file. Once the user has done so, their device’s screen is locked, and a ransomware message is displayed.
But there is more, as this ransomware uses the smartphone camera to take a selfie of the device owner. Moreover, the message on the screen also mentions how the social network of the owner, as well as local authorities, will be alerted regarding this person browsing the Internet for child pornography. All of these texts are displayed in Russian, which only adds to the overall confusion.
Trend Micro, who discovered this porn ransomware on Android a few weeks ago, noted how the malware has target Russian Android users for the most part, although it has spread to eleven countries in total so far. According to the company’s information, 3,400 devices have been infected with this malware to date.
It has to be said, however, that this mobile porn ransomware strain is making the user jump through various hoops. Not only do they need to visit the site mentioned in the text message, but also download a file, which asks to install an app. During this installation process, the application asks for administrator rights, which the user has to approve manually. Most Android-savvy users will figure out what is going on well before any real damage is done.
Once a user has been infected with this porn ransomware, they can restore access to the Android device by paying the one-time fee of 1,000 Ruble. Failure to do so would mean all of the encrypted data is removed from the ransomware c&c servers, and all of the information will be sent to the authorities within 12 hours after being infected.
Paying this ransom will not be done through Bitcoin, which is rather unusual in the ransomware business these days. Instead, the message makes note of the VISA QIWI wallet and includes a mobile phone number users have to send a text to, as well as the payment reference they should use.
What are your thoughts on this porn ransomware targeting Android users? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Tweakers (Dutch)
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, TweakersI hold her in my arms. "I always want to be able to make love to you.“ she says softly. "I want to be able to just walk into a room and for it to be alright for me to kiss you forever.”
“How long is forever?” I ask. "Our thirties, forties, fifties? Our sixties, seventies?“
I lean my face down to kiss her dusty cheek and speak delicately into her ear. "One of us will die first. One of us will be alive and the other gone. There is no forever for us. There is no forever in this world. All we have is now. These fleeting moments we share. And right now I appreciate you because I know there is no forever. I can love you because I know you will be gone and I will be gone.”
We kiss in a way I have never kissed before. It is the kiss of mortality. Her hands are dry against my skin. The desert sun is heating up the world around us.
I hold her face in my hands and look deeply into her blue eyes. The specks of gold lighting up around her pupil. Beautiful eyes. I see that she is not so much a noun but a verb. Her whole life and being is an action. It is a flash of light. Not something to grasp, but something too look upon with wonder for the brief moment of its illumination. I feel nothing but gratitude to bear witness to this spark out of the darkness.
She brushes the back of her hand against my cheek and I feel my own life as sand falling through an hour glass. Birth, life and death flow seamlessly between us and for the first time in my life I am totally ok with my own death and the mysterious rhythms of life. All things come into being and fade away. As does she, my beloved.
I love her for being mortal…
Romantic love is plagued by impulses of fear, attachment and jealousy. For these reasons I have largely been skeptical towards it. The funny thing about falling in love is that it doesn’t ask your permission or bat an eye at your skepticism. It is a force of nature. It is a dance of biology, spirit and DNA. It is many things. Most of all it is a mystery.
I am in love in a way I have never known. I am in love that has grown out of mortality. That means I am in love with reality. I am in love with the truth that my beloved will not last forever. Jealousy and possessiveness are based on the flawed ideas of forever. They are both rooted in a fear that what you have can be taken away by someone else, and that you can prevent that from happening. You can’t. Your beloved will be taken away from you. He or she will be taken away like every living thing that has ever come before. Death is the ultimate seducer.
When you love your partner from a place of recognizing their mortality, each moment is a gift. Why fear that you will lose them when it is inevitable that you will? There is acceptance or insanity.
When someone close to you dies, you can appreciate the preciousness of life. It shows you what is really important, love, compassion, forgiveness and understanding. You might wish you hadn’t said something hurtful or that you were more patient. This is what it means to love from mortality.
You can cultivate this awareness toward your partner everyday. Love them like it is their last day on earth. Forgive them like you would if you were holding them for the last time in your arms. Life is that precious. It is that brief. Give to them like you were fulfilling their dying wish. Because you are. Every wish is our dying wish. It is the desire for fulfillment and happiness before the light goes out. Before we lean back into the dark; into that quiet mysterious place we all must go alone.Flames engulf the fuel tanks of the only power plant supplying electricity to the Gaza Strip, July 29, 2014, in the south of Gaza City.
REUTERS - Turkish shipbuilder Karadeniz Holding plans to send an electricity generating vessel to Gaza to provide urgently needed power in the enclave left reeling by Israel's Operation Protective Edge that began last month.
Karadeniz announced its intentions on Tuesday, shortly after Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said that a power ship - a floating power station - would be sent as soon as Gaza's port facilities had been upgraded.
"The Palestinians have contacted the Israelis concerning the dispatching of the platform and there has been no adverse reaction from the Israeli side," Yildiz said at a joint press conference in Ankara after a meeting with Palestinian Energy Minister Omar Kittaneh
Israel began military operations in Gaza on July 8 in response to rockets being fired into Israeli territory by fighters loyal to Islamist group Hamas.
The bombardment has left much of the enclave's already fragile infrastructure in tatters, sparking warnings from the United Nations over spiralling prices and food shortages.
Karadeniz said in a statement to Reuters that it had received a request from the Palestinian authorities and that the ship would be sent within 120 days, once necessary approvals had been obtained.
The Istanbul-based company, the world's only manufacturer of self-propelled floating power stations, already produces electricity for Iraq and Lebanon, part of its fleet of seven power ships with a combined capacity of 1,200 megawatts.
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Gaza's 1.8 million residents suffer from blackouts for as many as 20 hours a day. The enclave's only power plant is regularly switched off for weeks at a time because of fuel shortages.Singer Billy Joel's daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, lit up the blogosphere today after reportedly swallowing eight pills of Traumeel, "distraught over the ending of a recent relationship," according to Us Magazine.
Traumeel, marketed as anti-inflammatory medication, contains a mix of herbs and other ingredients in low doses, and can come as a pill or an ointment.
The 23-year-old, who allegedly called 911 in a panic, needn't have worried -- there's no overwhelming proof that the homeopathic alternative to ibuprofen does much of anything.
"If it is a homeopathic preparation, that means it is given in very low dose," said Paul Lofholm, a pharmacist based in Marin County. "It’s pretty hard to overdose on any homeopathic drug, because it has such a low potency."
Those of you eyeing your medicine cabinets can breathe easier -- Traumeel probably won't hurt. But it's probably wasting your valuable shelf space.
-- Amina Khan“The sum total of 2 1/2 hours worth of images – one meteor!” lamented photographer Roger Hutchinson (see his image below).
A bright Moon is not conducive seeing and capturing meteors on camera, but some astrophotographers persevered and managed to get some photos of this year’s Perseid Meteor Shower. Enjoy the views from photographers who submitted photos to Universe Today via our Flickr group and on Twitter:
The sum total of 2 1/2 hours worth of images – one meteor.
Faint but several RT @VirtualAstro Did you get get any pics of the #perseids? @Nancy_A wants some for @universetoday pic.twitter.com/KHWfo2brf6 — Woody Carr (@WoodyCarr) August 13, 2014
Above is one image from John Maclean of the UK’s Meteor Network, who sent us several image. You can see a collection of the best images from the UK’s Meteor Observation Network here.
Here’s a compilation of meteors from NASA’s Meteor Network seen from August 12-13, 2014.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.This is the web version of VoxCare, a daily newsletter from Vox on the latest twists and turns in America’s health care debate. Like what you’re reading? Sign up to get VoxCare in your inbox here.
Less than 24 hours from now, Senate Republicans will unveil their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.
With just hours to go, many Republican senators say they know little about what will be in the plan — and that it's still being tweaked.
"They’re still drafting and hope to have it, [from] what they tell us, to us tomorrow and then they’ll release it publicly," Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) told Vox's Dylan Scott.
"We don’t have the text yet," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told Dylan. "But we’re gonna get there."
vox-mark VoxCare Vox's email explaining the biggest news in health care, edited by Sarah Kliff Subscribe By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page
BuzzFeed's Paul McLeod asked Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) about an important and specific provision in the bill, whether it would allow states to waive out of the Affordable Care Act's essential health benefits requirement. Here's what he got back:
Asked if health bill will let states waive essential health benefits, Sen. Bill Cassidy says it's "under discussion." Bill release in 20 hrs — Paul McLeod (@pdmcleod) June 21, 2017
This suggests one of two things:
Senate leadership is holding the bill very close to the vest, and these senators really don't know what is in the bill. They'll be reading it for the first time tomorrow, with the rest of us. Senators do know what’s in the bill but don't want to discuss it.
Neither says great things about the state of health care negotiations. If lots of senators really are in the dark on the health care bill, it means that leadership will need to do a lot of convincing, cajoling, and bargaining over the next week in order to get the 50 votes necessary to pass it.
But the second scenario isn't that great either. One thing that jumps out in these interviews is that senators aren't rushing to defend this bill on its policy merits. Most discussions about policy revolve around things Republican senators don't like — like Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who has voiced concern about Medicaid cuts, or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has told lots of reporters that he's concerned the bill keeps too much of Obamacare in place.
As my colleagues found when they asked eight Republican senators why this bill needs to pass, it's difficult to get a policy defense.
It is easier to dodge questions about a health care bill when you can say it's private and you haven't read it. It will become a whole lot harder to do this tomorrow when the bill becomes public.
Anthem says goodbye to Obamacare marketplaces; Oscar says hello
Insurers faced a deadline today to decide whether they will sell coverage on the Obamacare marketplaces. We're still seeing announcements trickle in, but a few stand out:
Anthem will quit Obamacare in Wisconsin and Indiana. The health plan already exited Ohio and has now announced two additional states it will leave in the face of growing uncertainty. "While we are pleased that some steps have been taken to address the long-term challenges all health plans serving the Individual market are facing, the Individual market remains volatile," the health plan said in a statement.
Oscar will expand into five more states. The health insurance startup is the rare health plan that is bullish on the marketplace's future. It will continue to sell in New York in 2018 and expand to parts of California, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. Oscar was co-founded by Josh Kushner, who happens to be the brother of senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner.
Photo of the Day
The littlest lobbyist: A 6-year-old whose life depends on ACA heads to Capitol Hill. I spent yesterday following Timmy Morrison, a young boy who has benefited from the Affordable Care Act's ban on lifetime limits. His parents took him to Capitol Hill to lobby senators on the issue. While they waited for a meeting with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Timmy's little sister Ivy took a short nap on the senator's couch. Read the full story here.
Kliff’s Notes
Your daily top health care reads, with research help from Caitlin Davis
Today's top news
"GOP Might Buck Senate Rules to Pass Health Care Overhaul" : “GOP leaders are sending signals that, if necessary, they plan to invoke a seldom-used rule included in the Congressional Budget Act that would allow Senate Budget Chairman Michael B. Enzi to skirt a decision from the chamber’s parliamentarian, a key gate-keeper for the budget maneuver known as reconciliation that Republicans are using to advance their health insurance measure.” —Joe Williams, Roll Call
“GOP leaders are sending signals that, if necessary, they plan to invoke a seldom-used rule included in the Congressional Budget Act that would allow Senate Budget Chairman Michael B. Enzi to skirt a decision from the chamber’s parliamentarian, a key gate-keeper for the budget maneuver known as reconciliation that Republicans are using to advance their health insurance measure.” —Joe Williams, Roll Call "G.O.P. Rift Over Medicaid and Opioids Imperils Senate Health Bill" : "Republican senators from states that have been hit hard by the opioid drug crisis have tried to cushion the Medicaid blow with a separate funding stream of $45 billion over 10 years for substance abuse treatment and prevention costs, now covered by the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. But that, too, is running into opposition from conservatives. They have been tussling over the issue with moderate Republican senators like Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Susan Collins of Maine." —Robert Pear and Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times
"Republican senators from states that have been hit hard by the opioid drug crisis have tried to cushion the Medicaid blow with a separate funding stream of $45 billion over 10 years for substance abuse treatment and prevention costs, now covered by the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. But that, too, is running into opposition from conservatives. They have been tussling over the issue with moderate Republican senators like Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Susan Collins of Maine." —Robert Pear and Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times "White House launches ACA repeal website" : “The White House is giving a push to the Senate health care bill with a new website highlighting the Trump administration's arguments for repealing the Affordable Care Act. It features a video outlining the problems it sees with the law — skyrocketing individual insurance premiums, insurers leaving the marketplaces — and statistics about the lack of competition and people who have paid penalties rather than buying health coverage.” —David Nather, Axios
“The White House is giving a push to the Senate health care bill with a new website highlighting the Trump administration's arguments for repealing the Affordable Care Act. It features a video outlining the problems it sees with the law — skyrocketing individual insurance premiums, insurers leaving the marketplaces — and statistics about the lack of competition and people who have paid penalties rather than buying health coverage.” —David Nather, Axios "Trump Administration Makes ACA Payments to Health Insurers for June": "The Trump administration made contested payments to health insurers for the month of June, removing the possibility of an abrupt cutoff just as many insurers make decisions about coverage under the Affordable Care Act in 2018. The fate of 'cost-sharing reduction' payments, which reimburse health plans for lowering copays and deductibles for millions of low-income people who get coverage under the 2010 law, often dubbed Obamacare, has been a running backdrop in the debate over Republicans’ bid to scrap that law." —Louise Radnofsky, Wall Street Journal
Analysis and longer reads
"How McConnell gets to 50 votes to repeal Obamacare" : “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needs to nail down 50 GOP votes to repeal Obamacare. He has no easy options. He can lean toward conservatives like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, who want to dismantle as much of Obamacare as they possibly can. But if he does that, he risks losing a group of Senate moderates, including Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who are pushing for a slower phase-out of the Medicaid expansion that is covering low-income people in some of their states.” —Jennifer Haberkorn, Politico
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needs to nail down 50 GOP votes to repeal Obamacare. He has no easy options. He can lean toward conservatives like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, who want to dismantle as much of Obamacare as they possibly can. But if he does that, he risks losing a group of Senate moderates, including Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who are pushing for a slower phase-out of the Medicaid expansion that is covering low-income people in some of their states.” —Jennifer Haberkorn, Politico "G.O.P. Health Plan Is Really a Rollback of Medicaid" : “'While details remain elusive, this is shaping up to be the largest intergovernmental transfer of financial risk in our country’s history,' said Matt Salo, the executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, in an email. Mr. Salo said that some of his directors would welcome caps if they came with more program flexibility, but said the current approach amounted to a funding cut.” —Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times
“'While details remain elusive, this is shaping up to be the largest intergovernmental transfer of financial risk in our country’s history,' said Matt Salo, the executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, in an email. Mr. Salo said that some of his directors would welcome caps if they came with more program flexibility, but said the current approach amounted to a funding cut.” —Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times "One Almost-Certain Risk for Investors in the Health-Care Bill" : “The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service estimated that the House bill would increase total out of pocket spending by $221 billion more than the current law over 10 years. Those increased out of pocket costs will make Americans more aware of how much they pay for health care. That could be especially pronounced for consumers buying individual plans on public exchanges.” —Charley Grant, Wall Street Journal
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service estimated that the House bill would increase total out of pocket spending by $221 billion more than the current law over 10 years. Those increased out of pocket costs will make Americans more aware of how much they pay for health care. That could be especially pronounced for consumers buying individual plans on public exchanges.” —Charley Grant, Wall Street Journal "CEOs Say They'll Sell Health Insurance Next Year, But Are Flying Blind" : “Wednesday is a deadline of sorts for these companies. If they want to sell policies next year in states that use the federal health exchange on Healthcare.gov, they have to let Health and Human Services know their intentions. How are they dealing? I reached out to a couple of insurance executives and asked.” —Alison Kodjak, NPR
“Wednesday is a deadline of sorts for these companies. If they want to sell policies next year in states that use the federal health exchange on Healthcare.gov, they have to let Health and Human Services know their intentions. How are they dealing? I reached out to a couple of insurance executives and asked.” —Alison Kodjak, NPR "Republicans see Medicaid as welfare. Most Americans don't": “Republicans want to roll back the Medicaid expansion, cap federal Medicaid spending increases, and add work requirements, drug testing, time limits, copays and premiums to some state Medicaid programs. But almost no one else wants to do these things. One poll finding goes a long way toward explaining why: Republicans view Medicaid as a form of welfare, and pretty much everyone else views it as a government insurance program.” —Drew Altman, Axios
Join the conversation
Are you an Obamacare enrollee interested in what happens next? Join our Facebook community for conversation and updates.Evian Christ is an on-the-rise music producer from Britain. You may know him from a track off Kanye West’s LP, Yeezus, which he co-produced.
Today, Christ performed a set at the England-based music festival Leeds. Afterwards, he was unexpectedly accused of breaking into the festival by security, and was subsequently locked in an actual cage—as if he was some sort of animal.
Watch: DJ trolls crowd with legendary fake drop
While being wrongfully detained, Christ sent out a few tweets that detailed his situation, which included a video of him inside the cage.
reading fest cancelled (sorry) cuz leeds put me in a cage #freeevian pic.twitter.com/sArsBnR8fg — evian christ 2015 (@evian_christ) August 28, 2015
really tho actually got put in a cage at a festival headlined by mumford and sons because the festival staff didnt believe i was a dj — evian christ 2015 (@evian_christ) August 28, 2015President Trump has a long history of action that almost all media and political opposition seem to ignore when trying to attack him. Every effort to “get” Trump fails due to a key flaw in their approach; a flaw they can never overcome.
President Trump approaches his opposition in politics similarly to his opposition in business, with one key and consequential difference. In business opponents challenge goals based on financial ends; in politics opponents challenge based on intent or motive.
The reason no attacks stick to Trump as a candidate, or now to Trump as a president, is because his motives and intents are transparently good. He genuinely wants to see America Great Again. Period. There’s no self-interest, benefit or self-advancement within President Trump’s objective; as a consequence the ‘motive’ or ‘intent’ to attack Trump on the political angle consistently fails.
It’s a weird and disconcerting dynamic for career politicians to face an opponent who is not looking to advance his ‘political career’. However, conversely, understanding this dynamic politician Trump consistently hits at his opposition specifically on the motive and intent angle.
All of the daily accusations against Trump, as presented by his political opposition and media, are based on the false premise that President Trump is carrying a malicious intent. His political opposition seem to miss this structural flaw in their argument because they are not familiar with facing a political opponent who is absent of career self-interest, influence or power.
The factual reality that Trump harbors no malicious disposition, evidences itself, and inevitably means all the attacks go nowhere. In every single manufactured media controversy President Trump is inherently never in a position where he is personally gaining from the details within the controversy du jour.
This factual and uniquely non-political disposition means there is an inherent inoculation from accusations of illegal or unethical action. The only distinction between each “controversy” is the time it takes this inherent reality to surface. The story of Mike Flynn is another prime example. There is no attempt to influence FBI Director James Comey, and specifically the accusation in that regard contains no benefit to President Trump.
At worst, President Trump is guilty of expressing a favorable personal opinion of General Flynn. The absence of malicious intent and motive, and the absence of personal benefit, lends to a natural conclusion of a nothingburger…. Just wait for it, you’ll see.
Ironically, the ‘intent and motive’ angle was clearly evident in Hillary Clinton’s decision to hide her communication as a public official. The FBI claimed the absence of their ability to prove intent or motive as the reason for not prosecuting her. Exactly the opposite is true with the Clinton example. There was voluminous evidence proving to a certainty that specific action was taken to hide, deceive, and even to impede investigation. Every effort Platt River Network’s Paul Combetta (aka. “stonetear”) took was jaw-dropping evidence in that regard (remember, he took the fifth).
Political Trump uses this “intent” and “motive” approach to draw attention to his opponents, and it is structurally successful because the opposition is, FACTUALLY, always holding a motive.
When political Trump gets to the point where he’s ready to crush is opposition he simply points out their obvious motive and intent; it becomes common sense for the observing public to see it. Trump’s opposition cannot do the same.
The international leadership who have met Trump, particularly Theresa May (UK), King Abdullah III (Jordan), Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (Egypt), and even President Xi Jinping (China) and President Abbas (PA), have all noted this dynamic publicly to their respective domestic audiences. President Trump can uniquely accomplish things because President Trump doesn’t have any ulterior motive or agenda other than to succeed in good things.
Trump’s political ‘Robert-The-Bruce’ opposition, the Republicans, would be well counseled to pay attention to this dynamic. Obviously the non-agenda altruistic approach is 180° divergent from their entire career frame-of-political-reference; but it is still inherently true.
AdvertisementsAllison Janney has some advice for White House press secretary Sean Spicer: “Just quit.”
Janney, who played fictional White House press secretary C.J. Cregg on NBC’s long-running political drama “The West Wing,” was asked to weigh in on the embattled spokesman for President Trump during a Friday interview on “Access Hollywood Live.”
“I say just let Melissa McCarthy fill in for you,” Janney, 57, told co-hosts Natalie Morales and Kit Hoover.
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McCarthy has famously taken on a gender-bending role as a revved-up Spicer on “Saturday Night Live.”
The "Mom" star heaped praise on McCarthy’s impersonation, calling it “genius.”
“I could not give that man any advice, really, truly, except for … maybe just quit,” added Janney, who campaigned for former Democratic presidential nominee 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.Update 04.07.2017 / 16:00 / Newer and bigger – 30m tower arrived / Thanks to so many friends who instantly helped us – 9A1TT, Richard with tower donation, IK2NCJ, HB9CAT, 9A5Y for coaxial cables donation and following hams for PayPal donations: IT9RGY, S59A, UX1AA, G0MTN, NF4A, IT9BLB, S50A, KU1CW, K0AV, IK8UND, N1RR, |
a reason. In the U.S., it costs between $250 and $400 per year for a bank to maintain a checking account. Banks around the world generally can’t afford the maintenance costs to serve low-income people and aren’t incentivized to design products for small savers.
But digital currency protocols have the potential to make pervasive change by expanding services to people who are financially excluded — without relying exclusively on traditional banks. Unlike reimbursing a friend for brunch using a checking account and emoji on Venmo, the infrastructure supplied by a digital currency protocol isn’t sleek or user-friendly. It could, however, create a massive group of new fintech users.
Microfinance Institutions
This massive group of new users could come through microfinance institutions (MFIs). MFIs provide banking services to those who don’t have access to traditional financial services — particularly the world’s poorest, many of whom survive on less than $2 a day and don’t qualify for traditional banking. There are currently 10,000 MFIs globally (as many as 100,000 when you add credit unions, co-ops and other informal institutions to the mix), serving 150 million people worldwide.
Most fintech services are designed for online consumers, but companies are beginning to create products that rely on technology available to a broader market — including MFI customers. According to the International Telecommunications Union, an estimated 95.5 percent of the world’s population has access to a cell phone. The reach of SMS, then, far exceeds that of the Internet, to which approximately 40 percent of the world has access.
If it can reach offline users, bitcoin is one digital currency protocol that has the potential to serve the world’s unbanked and underbanked. Many new companies are already using blockchain technology to build more inclusive solutions. 37coins, for example, allows users to send bitcoin via SMS, removing the barrier to entry posed by Internet access and leveraging feature phone penetration. Unlike other bitcoin wallets, 37coins focuses solely on SMS, a choice that makes the currency more accessible for people and organizations in developing regions.
Another mobile platform, Beam, which focuses on the remittance market, was founded to address payments problems in Ghana. Approximately 3 million Ghanaians live outside of their home country. In 2013, this population sent $120 million home. (Estimates put the annual remittance total for all of Africa at close to $40 billion.) Beam accepts bitcoin from the sender and delivers Ghanaian cedis to the recipient for a lower-than-average 3 percent fee. The process takes just minutes.
Person-To-Person Transactions
By contrast, traditional money transfer services, heavily patronized by people who don’t have bank accounts, charge transaction fees in the double digits for remittances that take days to fulfill.
Digital currency applications like Beam and 37coins can cheaply perform the kinds of microtransactions that MFIs often provide low-income customers because banks aren’t incentivized to provide them. Rather than slow, expensive transfer services, money moves safely between customers in minutes via widely available technology.
But person-to-person transfers are just one part of the solution. Because MFIs serve their customers without the infrastructure used by traditional banks, they face similar obstacles at an institutional level.
The thousands of discrete MFIs working all over the globe have painstakingly cultivated human networks, but they remain primarily local and often don’t have ways to talk to each other. In Nigeria, for example, it takes 12 hours and a bus to move bags of cash from an MFI in Lagos to an MFI in the north of the country.
MFIs that have built local networks know their clients better than those of us who worry about paying easily for lattes ever will.
Digital currency protocols aren’t just alternatives to fiat currencies like dollars or euros, and they aren’t just about new apps and products. They could also help solve the problem of those long, precarious bus rides that manually transfer MFI cash. For the communities served by MFIs, protocols can serve as infrastructure for sending and receiving money, converting currency and maintaining credit history. They can lay the groundwork for several important features not currently available for transactions between MFIs:
Immediate clearing. Many MFI customers require immediate access to funds for sudden personal emergencies: sickness; catastrophic weather; and injury. With digital currency protocols, money can be sent anywhere in the world almost instantaneously.
Many MFI customers require immediate access to funds for sudden personal emergencies: sickness; catastrophic weather; and injury. With digital currency protocols, money can be sent anywhere in the world almost instantaneously. Microtransactions. Low-income people rely on flexibility to manage money, making daily financial decisions that often require small transactions to stretch their budgets and cover immediate needs. Digital currency protocols could eliminate transaction fees.
Low-income people rely on flexibility to manage money, making daily financial decisions that often require small transactions to stretch their budgets and cover immediate needs. Digital currency protocols could eliminate transaction fees. Digital financial history. Lack of credit history is a huge challenge for both lenders who don’t have enough data and borrowers who would love to prove their reliability. With the public ledger systems of digital currency protocols, lenders and borrowers would both have more accountability.
Lack of credit history is a huge challenge for both lenders who don’t have enough data and borrowers who would love to prove their reliability. With the public ledger systems of digital currency protocols, lenders and borrowers would both have more accountability. Low-cost or no-cost transfers. The developing world is mobile. If someone leaves home to find work at $5 a day, they might pay $1 just to send that money back. Solid infrastructure could do away with the large remittance fees that pose an obstacle to families pulling themselves out of poverty.
It takes patience and persistence — something we don’t always have the luxury of with new apps and products — to build the human networks on which successful microfinance hinges. Trust is won or lost one transaction at a time.
MFIs that have built local networks know their clients better than those of us who worry about paying easily for lattes ever will. These institutions have the potential to act as experimentation hubs around financial services, especially if we start linking those hubs so MFIs can share information, connect their own customers, and work together.
Services such as M-Pesa indicate that the developing world is already embracing digital money much faster than the developed world. With infrastructure powered by digital currency protocols connecting MFIs, more apps and services can come in at the local level, designed by developing communities and optimized for interoperability.
MFIs just might be the newest fintech sandbox. Their infrastructure experiments could pave the way for payment solutions in previously untapped markets. After all, who knows where the next version of Venmo — or Venmo’s next 2 billion users — might come from?Before we get to the regular season, I wanted to take a look at some 2012 film of the Jets’ Offensive Line to see what is returning this year and to see what the Jets may have lost from 2012. During the regular season, I will be running a weekly column where I will grade out the offensive line’s individual performances. Unlike Pro Football Focus, I am going to grade the line from as much of a coach’s perspective as I can. This means that I will base my grades on technique and assignment in addition to play result. For the second part of the film study, let’s see what we found out about starting Right Tackle Austin Howard. To see how players are graded check out the first part of the series on D’Brickashaw Ferguson.
Austin Howard
Total Plays: 200
Penalties/Major Mistakes: 2
Blown Assignments: 44
Correct Assign/Tech: 149
Positive Impact: 5
Big Play: 0
Final Grade: 77%
Plus/Minus: -43
Average Grade: -0.22
Of the five starting offensive linemen, Austin Howard graded out the lowest. A grade of 77% is probably average to below average. There is a key reason that Austin Howard graded out the lowest in 2012: He is not very good in pass protection. Like D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Howard was on the field for 116 regular drop back pass plays and blew his pass pro assignment on 21 occasions. Not tremendously bad, but not good either. Howard has a tendency to get beat around the edge pretty easily by speed rushers. Most lineman are taught that if they get beat on the outside they need to turn and run the defender past the quarterback. Any rusher who knows how to “Run the J” well or get around the edge and come back to the Quarterback should be licking their chops when Austin Howard is lined up against them.
Here Howard is at right tackle with All-Pro Cameron Wake lined up at DE over him. This play comes at the end of the 2nd quarter and to this point Howard has done a really nice job controlling Wake. However, this is the play where things fall of the hinges and Wake starts to generate constant pressure for rest of the game. First thing I see is Howard’s pass set. I would rather see him take more of a vertical set and keep his shoulders square a little longer as he has done through the 1st and 2nd quarters of this game.
Taking a closer look at this matchup, this is the point where Howard wants to punch Wake to get his hands on him and stop his rush momentum. Howard does the 2 main things you never want to do against an outside rusher: ) He lunges forward on his punch and 2) he stops his feet after stepping forward with his right foot. He needs to keep his weight back and let Wake come to him before he punches and continue on his kick-slide.
Because of these 2 major breakdowns, Wake is able to simply rip through Howard’s outside shoulder and continue unabated to the Quarterback.
Wake wraps Sanchez up for an important sack and Austin Howard is laying on his back like a turtle.
The encouraging thing is that to this point, Howard played really well against Cameron Wake with limited help in pass protection. He did a nice job of taking a kick slide that allowed him to stone Wake’s outside rush. When the Dolphins went up 17-0 and Wake knew the Jets were throwing the football, he brought a harder rush and Howard had alot of trouble with him the rest of the game.
Another major issue with Howard is that his footwork is just not that good in pass pro. In that last clip, he actually had his right foot forward when he went to punch Cameron Wake. Doing that would allow any edge rusher to get around an offensive lineman. He should have kept kick sliding with his right foot back. He also has tendency to over set once he gets beat outside a few times. The major issue I have with Howard’s pass blocking is consistency. He can be very solid for long stretches and than in the blink of an eye can be terrible.
Another thing that has plagued Austin Howard is his inability to effectively block on screen plays. The screen pass is a huge part of Marty Mornhinweg’s offense and this issue has already reared its ugly head in the 2013 preseason. For offensive linemen, the screen pass is about selling the dropback pass and being athletic out in space. Tackles just have to sell the pass play and hold up the defensive lineman long enough so that they don’t get to the quarterback unabated. For some reason, Howard struggles to do this and it has happened on more than one occasion.
In week 4 against the 49ers, the Jets are running a simple screen to Shonn Greene. Although, Austin Howard (right tackle) has the proper idea as he tries to step inside the defensive lineman to invite him upfield, he steps way too far inside. Generally in pass pro, you want to take a pass set where your outside number on your jersey is directly over the DL’s inside number. This allows the lineman to protect the inside first, but be in a good position to stop an outside rush. Howard is too far inside and allows a lot of space of the edge.
Because of this bad set, Ray McDonald is able to rip outside Howard and get pressure on Sanchez before the screen is even set up. Look at Howard’s feet. They completely stop moving and he is in a horrible leaning position.
Howard is chasing McDonald as he gets past him. Because of the pressure, Sanchez is forced to rush the screen pass. McDonald ends up tipping this ball and Patrick Willis intercepts the pass. Howard got a -2 on this play as his horrible technique and field awareness lead to a big turnover.
In a 2012 player ranking, Matt Miller of the Bleacher Report gave Howard 43 points out of 50 in run blocking. I can say that this film sample size does not support this number and its mainly because of who he played against. In the three sample games I chose to look at, Howard was consistently blocking guys like Justin Smith, Vince Wilfork, and Cameron Wake: three All-Pros. From watching a few other games I know Howard looks a little better, but this film shows a Right Tackle that struggles to maintain his balance against more skilled defensive linemen. It all really stems from his footwork. His feet are not quick enough and when he gets off the ball his upper body gets into a lean because his feet are not great. If run blocking is his strength, than imagine how good he can really be if he improves his footwork and gets his body in proper balance.
Here the Jets are in a double tight formation with a wing back to the right side of the formation. The Jets will be running a power play to the right. Austin Howard is at right tackle and will be looking to combo block the DE with Jason Smith to the Backside ILB. Notice that the Dolphins have 9 in the box, 1 more than the Jets can block.
The handoff is going to Jonathan Grimes (who I expect to be a Random Jet of the Day in a future countdown article). The first thing I notice is how big of a first step Howard takes off the ball. Lineman are taught to take about a 6 inch step on these combo blocks. I would say Howard takes about a 2 and a half foot step and completely overextends himself. Because his step is so long and his feet are so narrow, I can already tell his balance will be completely off.
From the sideline angle, you can see Howard falling off his block and hitting the ground. He should be coming off and hitting the linebacker who makes the tackle.
The other main issue that I saw with Howard is that there wasn’t great chemistry between him and Brandon Moore last season. While Brick and Slauson actually complemented each other on the left side, Moore and Howard struggled in run combo blocks and passing off stunts and blitzes in the pass game. Particularly on run combos, neither Moore or Howard are very technically sound. Because of this, they often struggle getting movement at the point of attack and struggled to get off on linebackers. As you can see from previous clip, both guys come off the ball pretty high and have very narrow bases under them. This led to a lot of issues in Tony Sparano’s power run game.
In week 12 against the Patriots, the Jets are again running a power play to the right. Howard is initially supposed to be in a combo with Brandon Moore to the backside ILB. With Brandon Spikes walked up in the A gap, it now becomes Moore’s responsibility to take him if he fires in that gap.
Moore checks the A gap, but Spikes doesn’t come. This is a tough adjustment, but Moore either needs to get in the combo with Howard or go straight up to the backside LB. If you look at Howard, he is in a hard forward lean and is stepping off his toes instead of his insteps, where he would have more power. I imagine he is getting off the ball like this because he is facing Wilfork. Understandable, but when he abandons proper technique he is actually hurting himself more than he knows and plays right into Wilfork’s hands.
Now Moore decides to get in on the combo block with Howard, but because it is late and he is coming from a weird angle, the two Jets are almost working against each other. Because of Howard’s poor balance, Wilfork is able to split the combo and focus on taking on Howard.
Wilfork simply tosses the offbalance Howard to the ground and leaves Moore in terrible position to do anything. Wilfork makes the tackle for no gain.
Besides showing what a beast Vince Wilfork is, this clip shows what happens when Austin Howard abandons his technique because he thinks he has to get off the ball even harder against a guy like Wilfork. He is really playing into Big Vince’s hands, because he is savvy enough to use Howard’s poor technique against him and simply toss him to the ground. It also shows what a simple caveat like walking Brandon Spikes up to the line of scrimmage can do to disrupt a play that relies on comb blocks. he Patriots did this on multiple occasions to disrupt Sparano’s power game.
The good news is that Howard will most likely have an upgrade next to him at right guard in Willie Colon. Colon and Howard have similar styles when it comes to run blocking and should be able to work well together in creating running lanes on the right side of the line. All in all, Howard is a pretty solid run blocker and although these sample don’t exemplify that, there were flashes of what he can do. He is not a dominant run blocker by any stretch of the imagination, but when not facing guys named Wilfork or Wake, he gets solid movement as long as he uses his proper technique. Also, as the season went on, he got a lot better in pass protection particularly in picking up blitzes and line twists.
These are the types of plays you will find in greater quantity if you were to venture outside of the sample. They should also become more abundant as Howard gets more experience. Remember that 2012 was Howard’s first season starting in the NFL and if he continues to improve the way he has since being a Ravens practice squad guy, he should get better and more comfortable. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a smaller amount of negatively graded plays in 2013. If he works on fixing some of these issues, he should be in the low 80s.
RelatedTrevor Noah: outspoken critic of fat chicks Photo by Justin Barlow/Gallo Images/Getty Images for MTV
Not since John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate have the vetting capacities of a powerful political force been cast into such doubt. When Trevor Noah was announced Monday as the next host of satirical powerhouse The Daily Show, most observers had little familiarity with the 31-year-old, South African–born comic, save perhaps for his three awkward appearances on the program with current host Jon Stewart. The New York Times piece announcing the succession threw up a few vague red flags (Comedy Central never auditioned Noah, who provided reporter Dave Itzkoff with a weirdly self-aggrandizing non sequitur comparing himself to Beyoncé). But the excitement of a fresh face bringing a unique perspective to a hallowed franchise (Noah’s mother is black and his father is white, which made their union illegal in South Africa’s apartheid era), combined with Stewart’s full-throated support, seemed like endorsement enough.
Then people—notably BuzzFeed’s Tom Gara—started combing Noah’s Twitter feed.
There were tweets that showcased Noah’s breezy anti-semitism.
Behind every successful Rap Billionaire is a double as rich Jewish man. #BeatsByDreidel — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) May 12, 2014
And lower Jew tolerance? RT @UnreaIFacts: Blue-eyed people have a higher alcohol tolerance. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) October 22, 2012
Messi gets the ball and the real players try foul him, but Messi doesn't go down easy, just like jewish chicks. #ElClasico — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) January 25, 2012
There were tweets that put a spotlight on the polyglot Noah’s fluency in fat-chick jokes.
"Oh yeah the weekend. People are gonna get drunk & think that I'm sexy!" - fat chicks everywhere. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) October 14, 2011
So now that Adele is singing, does that mean it's over? — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) January 13, 2012
There were tweets that skipped across the landscape of Noah’s imagination, where women are objects to be literally or figuratively pounded.
Originally when men proposed they went down on one knee so if the woman said no they were in the perfect uppercut position. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) December 20, 2012
In Thailand hookers are so cheap, even cheaper than food. Tough choice between Big Mac or Quarter Poundher Deluxe. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) January 5, 2011
And so on.
Ray J hit it first but Kanye hit it properly. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) June 21, 2013
It’s true that Twitter is a space for comics to try out material that isn’t fully baked. And I have no doubt that Saint Jon Stewart has some fat skeletons in his closet—after all, he took over the Daily Show from smarmy king-of-the-bros Craig Kilborn, who strictly enforced a tiresome weekly quota of “Janet Reno looks like a man” gags. But during Stewart’s 16 years at the helm, The Daily Show has taken on a moral authority and responsibility that simply cannot condone this kind of bigoted and misogynist … no, who am I kidding. The problem is not that Trevor Noah tells offensive jokes. It’s not even that he routinely breaks The Daily Show’s covenant of speaking truth to power in favor of speaking truth to fat chicks or Thai hookers or, as the Washington Post’s Wendy Todd points out, black Americans who give their kids names that Noah disapproves of. The problem is that Noah’s jokes are so annihilatingly stupid. Are they even jokes? Are they meta-jokes, like the “My arms are so tired” airplane joke he made on his first Daily Show appearance? Or did he mean that as a joke, too?!? Trevor Noah: ontological mystery.
Maybe his hiring is a form of basic-cable performance art. Maybe Jon Stewart just wanted to blow the building up as he strolled away with his shades on. No one will ever know. But Comedy Central’s haste and lack of due diligence amid so much eminently qualified talent—your Jessica Williamses, your Aasif Mandvis, your however many other fresh-faced unknowns with unique perspectives—is a surefire way of alienating your audience. Almost as surefire as dismissing an entire swath of that audience with one thunderously idiotic tweet among many.UPDATE:
Carnage figure possesses custom painting.
Marvel Select Agent Venom (left, possesses custom painting) vs.
Marvel Legends Infinite Agent Venom (right)
Participants now need to answer within 70% to 100% accuracy on the questionnaire to qualify for the drawing! See below for details.Seasons greetings and happy holidays, fellow Venomaniacs! It's that special time of the year again when everyone is gearing up for the coming winter holidays and to celebrate, The Venom Site andis hosting a special giveaway in the spirit of giving back to our loyal and most fanatic followers.We're not called "The Venom Site" for nothing, so what will you be competing for? How about one of the hottest symbiotic toys of 2014? That's right, we're talking about the Walgreens-exclusiveaction figure from Hasbro!This is the latest installment of Marvel's super-posable symbiote action figures and Agent Venom's second action figure after the highly popular Marvel Select Venom (Flash Thompson) figure from Diamond Select Toys. This action figure scales perfectly against its Marvel Legends brethren from the same Ultimate Green Goblin BAF (Build-a-Figure) series: Carnage and Eddie Brock as Toxin (both called "Spawn of Symbiotes" on their respective packaging, with Toxin as a variant chase to Carnage). Agent Venom was sold exclusively at Walgreens, putting him in high demand among collectors.The figure features four weapons including three pistols and a small machine gun, and a detachable four-tendril back piece, which has three weapon-holding hands to add to the base figure's two weapon-holding hands. The posability on this figure surpasses its Marvel Select predecessor despite its smaller stature, which gives it a higher range of flexibility in display.One winner will receive this must-have action figure mint-in-box along with a super secret complimentary gift provided byLead Editor himself, Orion "STARB0Y" Petitclerc (yours truly). So how can you get your hands on these awesome gifts? Well, you'll have to have your knowledge of symbiotes tested, of course!Below, you'll find a link to a Google Forms survey, where you'll have to complete a trivia questionnaire. The questions will range in difficulty from beginner to advanced, so make sure you're current on your general symbiote history and canon! Fill out the survey completely including your full name (real name only), mailing address (not a PO box; US and Canada residents only), and contact information to enter the giveaway. (All private information will not be shared and will remain confidential. Please provide accurate information, as it is vital for delivering your prizes in the event that you are the winner.) You must complete the entire questionnaire within 70% to 100% accuracy of answers to qualify for the drawing. A qualifying winner will be chosen at random and will be contacted upon the final decision to verify the validity of his/her contact information. All expenses will be paid for by the giveaway host; no entry fees are required to qualify. One entry per person. The winning entrant will be announced here onshortly following the end of the giveaway period:. Please submit your questionnaire answers by the end date to qualify.Happy holidays, and good luck! Don't forget to check back atevery Friday for new content, and follow The Venom Site for all of your symbiote news, reviews, and point-of-views!THE CityRail network has insufficient electric power to run the biggest order of new trains in Australia and has been forced to spend more than $1 billion to fix the problem and to pay for other essential upgrades.
The first of more than 600 rail carriages due to begin testing in October will be restricted to one section of the rail network until a program of capital improvements is completed, some of which are running years late and over budget.
Although RailCorp was aware more power was needed for the trains, the budget for the overhaul has blown out almost seven-fold.
If too many of the trains are put into circulation at once, sections of the network will short-circuit, sources have confirmed.
In a tender last year the State Government revealed "RailCorp does not currently have an enterprise-wide change strategy for achieving business readiness to accept [public-private partnership] implementation, and this represents a major risk".Late Night Why Women Own Guns Picture the “gun owners of America,” and it’s all too easy to imagine bearded white guys toting long-barrel shotguns into pheasant country. But these days, a curiously large proportion of U.S. gun owners are women, and more gun owners than ever are arming themselves for self-defense. Who is the new American female gun owner, and what’s she taking up arms against?
On any given day, there are an infinite number of objects you might find in a woman's bra, besides her breasts. Maybe a credit card, some folded-up cash, or a tampon; a tube of lipstick if she's feeling fancy. Because of the never-ending, one-sided battle between women's clothing and functional pockets, the bra has over the years become a repository for the small, important items women want with them at all times.
EDITOR’S PICK
Which is why the bra of 42-year-old pharmacist Lola often contains a gun. To be specific, a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm. Less than one inch thick, the $449 Shield is a matte black semi-automatic double-action pistol with an eight-round magazine (plus the ability to have a ninth bullet in the chamber).
Lola carries in every place it's legal to do so, whether that's in her bra or in a waist holster—which, in her home state of Florida, is just about everywhere except courthouses, schools, government buildings, airports, career centers, and post offices. And it's her preference for the Flashbang Bra Holster that first caught my attention: Under her Internet nom de plume, "Lola Strange," Lola stars in an instructional (and delightful) YouTube video about her holster of choice. In the video, Lola says that one reason she—along with her husband, Hank—loves the Flashbang holster is that it offers a little "lift" in the cleavage department. "I can always use a lift."
For most of her life, Lola believed "guns were just something you saw on TV, and it was always the bad guys who had them." But three years ago, Hank took an interest in learning how to use a gun for self-defense, and he encouraged his wife (and two teenage sons) to do the same. Today Lola never leaves the house without her Smith & Wesson. "Having a gun alone isn't going to save your life," she says. "But at least that gun gives you the opportunity to have some kind of equal ground with whoever."
I'll say what Lola won't. A gun isn't just a weapon—it's also an unambiguous way to signal to someone that they should fuck off and leave you alone. And if you're a woman in need of an unambiguous way to signal that someone should fuck off and leave you alone, history, data, and the plain old common sense that comes from living in the world suggest that someone is probably a man.
A Woman in Arms Jamie Haswell | Fort Worth, TX | Owns a Taurus 9mm pistol and a Sig 238-.380 pistol
“I keep one in my nightstand in a locked box with code access, and one on my person at most times. Different states have different carrying laws, but when legally permitted, I carry one in my purse. I may carry it in my car as well. If I am going to a large event, I would prefer to have it on me, and if I’m going somewhere that is not considered ‘the safest area,’ I like to have it on me there as well.”
I didn't grow up around guns; as an adult, I've never liked them. I get nervous around them. But I have a distinct feeling that any fascination I ever had with guns—any faint arousal I'd felt as a teenager watching the hyper-violent action sequences of The Matrix or Angelina Jolie, all pouty lips and short shorts, double-fisting pistols in Tomb Raider—disappeared one night in my early twenties. That's when a particularly volatile boyfriend showed me a short, grainy video of him, taken the summer before, brandishing a chunky silver handgun a little too zealously. Waving it around, cocking it gleefully like a John Woo protagonist.
I remember squeezing my eyes shut, jerking away; something about the image of my boyfriend with a gun in his hand tripped an alarm. We'd been arguing lately, even as we'd started making plans for where we'd live when college was over—and a few times, instead of bickering back at me, he'd just grown silent and loomed. An uneasy thought unfurled: Did I trust this guy I loved, this guy who knew the key code to my apartment and knew where to find me at any given hour, with a gun? Did I want to build my future around someone who looked so turned on by the weapon in his hand?
We didn't stay together much longer after that; I wrote him a long letter and collected my things from his place, and I wish I could say that was the end of it. A month later, I stood shivering in the doorway of my building at 3 A.M. in a bathrobe, telling a police officer why I'd called 911 from under my bedcovers to report a man standing on my back porch.
Our school would later initiate a no-contact order to help keep my ex-boyfriend out of my life until after we'd both graduated. But there was damage already done: For two decades, I'd believed home was a place I could expect to feel safe, and that when someone said they loved me, it meant I wouldn't have to wonder if they'd harm me. Now I wasn't sure anymore. In other words, I'd been initiated.
Just about every woman's felt it at one point or another—that flicker of fear for her safety around angry men, and especially angry men with guns. And with good reason: Simply being female increases a person's risk of being stalked or sexually assaulted by someone of the opposite sex. Between 1980 and 2008, 90 percent of homicides, and 92.1 percent of gun homicides, were committed by men. In mass shootings since 1982, that figure rises to 96.5 percent, according to research done at Mother Jones. For all the strides we've made toward equality, there's still a more violent sex.
Which may be why the makeup of the gun-owning population of the United States is changing—and could look and act a lot more like Lola.
In September, The Guardian and gun-research publication The Trace published the results of an extensive new survey from Harvard and Northeastern universities—which its researchers describe as the "most authoritative since 1994"—on gun ownership in the United States. "Fear of Other People Is Now the Primary Motivation for American Gun Ownership, a Landmark Survey Finds," The Trace's headline boomed. Today two-thirds of gun owners list self-defense as their main motivation for owning a firearm, and The Guardian story notes that "the proportion of female gun owners is increasing as fewer men own guns." While the rate of personal gun ownership among American men has been steadily decreasing for decades, gun ownership among American women has stayed curiously consistent, hovering between 9 and 14 percent of women from 1980 to 2014. Today, the Harvard-Northeastern study found, nearly half of gun owners whose gun collection consists of a single handgun are women—and according to the NRA, the number of women who registered for classes on how to use a pistol nearly doubled between 2011 and 2014.
So is it the ownership of a gun that makes women feel better equipped to deal with the everyday dangers of living while female? Or is it simply the knowledge of how to use a gun—how to harness the threat of violence and turn it to point away from you, not towards—that women find comforting? If it was the latter, I reasoned, it couldn't hurt to find out.
A Woman in Arms Christine Chen, 33 | San Gabriel Valley, CA | Owns a Beretta 92FS semi-automatic pistol
“My boyfriend introduced me to target shooting three years ago, and he taught me the importance of self-protection. I bought my gun a year later when I wanted a home-defense handgun. I don't have a concealed-carry permit, so the only time it’s ever out of the house is to go target shooting twice a month at the local outdoor range.”
Before 34-year-old Megan Uhan of Minnesota goes out jogging, she tucks her Smith & Wesson.38 special revolver into a holster in the waistband of her yoga pants. It's not a perfect setup for carrying a gun; sometimes it throws off her stride. But Uhan runs the same path every time—which she's aware makes her especially vulnerable. "I know a gal who was attacked while running around a lake in the Minneapolis area. Fortunately she escaped," Uhan told me. "But sometimes, when I'm running in the dark, I think about her story."
It's a sad commentary on the state of affairs that simply running along the same path every day is a known safety risk for women. All the same, I feel a pang of jealousy that Uhan is a woman who's found a way to confidently go jogging alone at night.
Most people, Uhan said, are surprised to learn she owns a gun. ("Especially men," she noted.) She grew up shooting her dad's guns, but when her first child was born five years ago, maternal instinct kicked in. "I don't think you expect a mom toting a 5-year-old and a toddler to carry a gun in her purse," she said. "But I wanted a safe and reliable way to know I could protect my family in the case of a threat."
What kind of threat, exactly, does Uhan picture when she tucks her pistol into a handbag before leaving the house? Uhan recalled something she once told a friend who worried that carrying a concealed weapon was dangerous in itself: "When you and I are standing in line together at Target with our carts full of kids, and some crazy walks in and points a gun at us, I will protect my family and I will protect your family." (Though it's worth noting: The "good guy"—or gal—"with a gun" scenario has been disproven time and time again.)
Women like Uhan are quietly taking up arms all over the U.S. Out in the suburbs of Seattle, 25-year-old dental hygienist Danica McCombs keeps a Smith & Wesson SW40 in her nightstand. She gets nervous about home break-ins, and the pistol next to her bed makes her feel "more comfortable" when her husband's out of the house at night.
A longtime deer hunter, McCombs also keeps a.243 Winchester rifle at home in a case—but it's the handgun she gets questions about. "The worst is when people don't understand why I feel I need one. People understand why I have a rifle," McCombs said. "They feel different about handguns in the home."
And in Austin, Texas, 31-year-old Katie Garza, an assistant camp director for a girls' camp, bought herself a Walther PPK/S.22 a couple years back after getting her concealed-handgun license at a co-worker's suggestion. Garza, who travels on the job as a recruiter, had experienced what she describes only as "a scary moment traveling alone with a flat tire" one night in a small town in West Texas—so she began carrying the Walther in the console of her car. (A stranded female traveler's scary encounter alone at night, bear in mind, involves a somewhat different set of fears from a stranded male traveler's.)
There are some perks to being a woman with a gun license, though, too, Garza told me. "Guys tend to think it's pretty cool."
A Woman in Arms Dillon McLean, 27 | Orlando, FL | Owns an H&R Pardner.410 shotgun
“My dad bought me the gun for Christmas in 2014, I think so that we could shoot together and spend time together. But working in criminal defense made me more aware of how vulnerable every person is, and that made me feel like it didn't hurt to have a gun at home. However, I certainly don't kid myself into believing that if someone came into my house, I'd |
a documentary showcasing a moving portrayal of his son’s every day battle with Neurofibromatosis type-1, a rare congenital disease.Now on a ventilator, and hit by paralysis on one side, Mihir is simultaneously battling against several other health complications like Moyamoya syndrome (constricted blood vessels in brain), Kyphoscoliosis (spine disorder), bleeding in brain and urinary tract infection. He has already lost his voice after a tracheotomy tube inserted into his trachea to make him breathe but that made him speechless now.Ironically, KIMS Hospital has doubled the charges for Mihir’s treatment per day from Rs 4,647 to Rs 8,500, since the withdrawal of the insurance scheme. “We hope people will respond as all opportunities have dried up for us,” said Geeta Sikdar, mother of Mihir.I’ll keep this short n’ sweet, ’cause I think I’ve already made my feelings about Arsis’ new album, Unwelcome, perfectly clear (in short: A++++ WDBWA). You can stream and/or download the title track via the below widget. It’s awesome, as is the first song released from the record, “Scornstar,” which debuted right here on MetalSucks, and which you can stream and/or download here. But you guys still haven’t heard the real heavy hitters from this baby yet. Unwelcome is the rare metal album that actually gets better as it goes along; somewhere around the halfway point, it goes into a total overdriver of excellence and just ear rapes the listener into oblivion. So consider this just a small taste of things to come.
Unwelcome comes out April 30 on Nuclear Blast.
[via Lambgoat]Before the annual season of lawmaking even begins in Annapolis on Wednesday, rising partisan tensions are threatening the chances that very much will get done.
Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, riding a wave a popularity, has warned the General Assembly's Democrats that their maneuvering cannot force him to spend money he doesn't want to.
The Democrats, who profess not to be intimidated by Hogan's poll numbers, promise to open the 90-day session by overriding most of the vetoes the governor issued last year. And they vow not only to promote their own initiatives, but to block the governor's attempt to seize more control over the budget.
The partisan power struggle is likely to color a session that will cover broad ground, from Hogan's push for modest tax cuts to some Democrats' proposals to mandate sick leave and pay equity for women.
"The challenge is we each remain professional, and we evaluate the ideas on the merits, not with an eye to 2018," said Del. Dereck Davis, a veteran Prince George's Democrat, referring to the next election.
Here are some of the fiscal and other issues on the table for the 90-day session that begins Wednesday.
Hogan settled for relatively modest achievements during his inaugural session last year but is planning a more aggressive approach this time. His allies expect it to draw heightened attacks from Democrats.
"I see his popularity as an encouragement for the other side to do their best to block him and bring down his popularity," said Sen. J. B. Jennings of Baltimore County, the Senate Republican leader. "I hope it backfires."
For the first time in more than a decade, a governor enters the session with a hefty surplus in projected revenue — roughly $500 million by the end of current year's budget — largely as a result of an improving economy. The surplus provides fuel for fights over how best to spend the money, or whether to return it to taxpayers.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, says the honeymoon is not over, and good relations will continue with the Democratic leaders of the General Assambly, House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun video) Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, says the honeymoon is not over, and good relations will continue with the Democratic leaders of the General Assambly, House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun video) SEE MORE VIDEOS
It will be a session with far more proposed legislation than last year, when more than a third of the House and a quarter of the Senate were new to the job. Already, bill drafters are working on 1,200 separate bills, a pace that would make 2016 busier than any of the previous four years.
Among the issues expected to pack hearing rooms is the right of terminally ill patients to enlist physicians to help them die. Proponents think this could be the year "right-to-die" legislation succeeds; others doubt the votes are there.
Groups on the left plan a big push to require businesses to offer paid sick leave to workers. The Maryland Chamber of Commerce has made defeating the measure its top mission.
Hogan is expected to propose changes in the once-every-decade redistricting process that could benefit Republicans, though Democrats say that's a nonstarter. Democratic leaders want automatic registration of eligible voters, a measure many believe would favor Democrats and which Republicans oppose. Both sides are expected to claim the moral high ground.
Where last year's session opened with effusive promises of bipartisanship, the hopes for harmony are muted this year. Already lines are being drawn on budget issues, and confrontation seems inevitable.
At a news conference last week, Hogan expressed hope that "we can all get along." But moments before, he took aim at minimum spending levels that by law he must provide for priorities largely supported by Democrats.
"Reducing these spending mandates should be the top priority for this legislative session," Hogan declared. He called the existing requirements "unsustainable," saying they account for 83 cents of every dollar the state spends. He said he would fully fund the mandates this year but wants the legislature to suspend them if the state hits tough financial times.
But for House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, preserving the mandates to spend money on education, health and other programs is a priority. In separate interviews with The Baltimore Sun, both Democratic leaders put full funding for K-12 education — the costliest mandate of all — at the top of their lists.
"Our No. 1 priority always starts with quality education," Busch said.
"I'm not opposed to cutting mandates, but I am opposed to cutting any mandate for public education," Miller said.
While the debate over taxes and spending is expected to be a dogfight, there are other issues on which consensus may be within reach.
Members of both parties are awaiting the governor's legislative and budget proposals for dealing with the state's heroin crisis, one of Hogan's top priorities. The issue cuts across urban and rural lines, and affects Republicans as well as Democrats.
Lawmakers expect criminal justice issues to be front and center as Maryland grapples with an expensive prison system and questions about how to oversee police conduct. Both Hogan and Busch have proposed plans to help blighted Baltimore neighborhoods after the rioting that followed the death in April of Freddie Gray.
Hogan's sure-handed response to the unrest — and the grace he displayed during his subsequent battle with cancer — helped elevate his popularity among Marylanders regardless of political party. A November poll for The Sun and the University of Baltimore put his approval rating at 63 percent, making him the most popular elected official in Maryland.
Democrats see that approval as a mile wide and inch deep. They are confident that once the public understands the implications of Hogan's priorities, the luster will fade.
Sen. Richard Madaleno, Hogan's most outspoken critic in the legislature, compared the governor to his onetime boss, former Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who was defeated for re-election in 2006.
"Just like Bob Ehrlich, people after a few years are going to see through the smoke and mirrors, and see the change that Governor Hogan promised was not the change that Marylanders wanted," said Madaleno, a Montgomery County Democrat. He said that when Republicans talk about cutting mandates, "what they really mean is education, health care and public safety."
Melissa Deckman, chair of the political science department of Washington College, said Hogan's approval levels could propel him to legislative victories on certain issues.
"I think he needs to pick areas that have broad approval," she said.
Deckman said she expects Hogan to chart a pragmatic course, secure that he isn't facing a re-election challenge from the right.
"He's smart politically," she said. "He's a Republican in a Democratic state. He can't be someone who's a rabble-rouser."
Hogan appears to enjoy strong support from Republican lawmakers — reflecting his better than 90 percent approval among voters in his party.The City of Toronto is taking a wait-and-see approach to medical marijuana and the prospect of users puffing in hockey rinks and other city facilities. “I don’t think it’s something that is on our radar,” Councillor Joe Mihevc, chair of Toronto’s public health board, said Wednesday when told of Ontario regulations that allow medical users to smoke and vape in public spaces unless a proprietor bans it.
Councillor Joe Mihevc, seen in a file photo, says allowing medical pot to be smoked at city facilities isn't something Toronto's civic leaders have thought about. ( Vince Talotta / Toronto Star )
“If it becomes more pronounced and present, then we would want to consider our actions.” Mihevc (Ward 21 St. Paul’s West) added that he knows medical marijuana users and believes the regulations won’t affect their desire not to expose others, especially children, to second-hand smoke or vapour. Toronto has historically taken a strong stand against smoking in public places. In 2013, city council went further than provincial rules by outlawing smoking within nine metres of the entrance or exit of any building used by the public.
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Mayor John Tory said allowing pot to be used in places where smoking is prohibited doesn’t make “common sense.” “I think the rules should be consistent because smoking is smoking,” Tory said while co-hosting the Live Drive with Ryan Doyle on Newstalk 1010 Wednesday night. Earlier this month Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s public health boss, convinced council to outlaw hookah lounges even if non-tobacco herbal products are being smoked in the water pipes. Public health, however, seems to be in the waiting room when it comes to doctor-prescribed pot. Toronto Public Health “is currently looking into the health harms of cannabis, and we will be reporting to the board of health on this topic in 2016,” Susan Shepherd, drug strategy manager told the Star in an email.
Toronto’s licensing and standards department, which enforces city no-smoking rules in public parks, playgrounds and beaches, said: “We will review these new regulations to see what, if any, impact they have on our enforcement.” Councillor Jim Karygiannis, a cigar and occasional water-pipe smoker, unsuccessfully fought the hookah ban.
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With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau poised to legalize marijuana, he said, Toronto has to give itself a shake and get ready to deal with all the issues “trendy” pot will present. Karygiannis said he has seen first-hand how medical marijuana can help ailing veterans. But he believes most smokers are “addicts” and don’t really have a choice. “If the guy who is addicted to tobacco needs to go outside to smoke, then I think if you need to smoke medical marijuana, you should go outside to smoke it, too.”<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/silverboa2.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0" srcset="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/silverboa2.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 400w, https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/silverboa2.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 800w" > The silver boa was named after its color and its first appearance on a silver palm tree. (R. Graham Reynolds/University of North Carolina at Asheville) (R. Graham Reynolds/University of North Carolina at Asheville)
During an expedition on an uninhabited island in the southern Bahamas last July, scientists came across a new species of boa constrictor that was later named after its glimmering hue.
Now known as the silver boa, or Chilabothrus argentum, the snake was given its name due to its shining metallic skin and the location where the discovery occurred.
“We all came to take a look at it, and it was instantly clear that this was something different,” biologist R. Graham Reynolds told National Geographic. His team watched the shiny snake climb a silver palm tree before seeking out another four snakes just like it.
(More: Russian Couple Shares Home With 300-Pound Brown Bear )
With five snakes found, the team decided to call it a night and make an overnight camp on the beach. Their sixth snake, however, would introduce itself to the researchers in the middle of the night.
“Sometime around 3:30 in the morning, I woke up to something crawling across my face,” Reynolds said.
<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/silverboa.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0" srcset="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/silverboa.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 400w, https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/silverboa.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 800w" > (R. Graham Reynolds/University of North Carolina at Asheville)
Scientists were able to identify 20 silver boas over the span of two expeditions, according to the Guardian. DNA tests confirmed they had discovered a new species.
“This discovery is significant because of how well-studied many parts of the Bahamas are, especially in terms of herpetology,” said Team Snake Panama director Julie Ray.
The snakes, however, could be on the brink of extinction because the entire population is found on such a small slice of Earth.
“This new species occurs on a group of islands that have never been connected to any of the other islands in the Bahamas,” Reynolds explained. “As far as we know, they only occur on Conception Island Bank and nowhere else.”
(More: Scientists Discover Sea Floor Creature the Size of a Minivan )
While human visitors to the Conception Island Bank are extremely rare, feral dogs and cats threaten the reptile.
“We found this species on its way to extinction, and now we have the opportunity to intervene on their behalf so that doesn’t happen,” Reynolds, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, told the Asheville Citizen-Times.
“All efforts should be made to restrict the number of dogs on the island and how freely they are allowed to roam,” said Ray. “More importantly, an attempt should be made to remove the feral cats from this protected natural area because they are not native predators.”
MORE ON WEATHER.COM: New Species DiscoveriesPresident Obama gave a thumbs up Thursday to the outline of a plan to legalize illegal immigrants and create a flow of low-skilled foreign workers for the future, saying the immigration bill being worked on by a Republican and a Democrat is “promising.”
In their broad blueprint, Sens. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, call for illegal immigrants to be put on a path to citizenship, offer green cards to keep high-skilled foreign university graduates and would create a temporary program for low-skilled workers, with some also getting the chance to become citizens.
The senators also proposed to turn all Social Security cards into tamper-proof IDs to be checked by employers when they are about to hire a worker. The cards would include biometric information designed to prevent counterfeiting — but the senators said the information would not be stored in a government database.
“I congratulate Senators Schumer and Graham for their leadership, and pledge to do everything in my power to forge a bipartisan consensus this year on this important issue so we can continue to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform,” Mr. Obama said in a statement soon after the two senators published their blueprint in a column submitted to The Washington Post.
The carefully orchestrated rollout came just three days before immigrant-rights advocates expect at least 50,000 supporters to rally and march in Washington, D.C., calling for Congress to act. The organizers of the rally had met with Mr. Obama last week and told him he needed to embrace a bill or else the thousands of marchers would be told that he had failed to live up to his promises on this issue.
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But the outline is just a first step in what’s still a very rocky legislative path.
Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said flatly that it can’t pass.
“The bill doesn’t have a prayer, because the American people oppose rewarding lawbreakers, which then encourages illegal immigration,” he said. “Allowing millions of illegal immigrants to stay and take jobs away from citizens is like giving a burglar a key to the house. Illegal immigrants should return home and play by the rules like millions of legal immigrants.”
And adding to the bill’s troubles, Mr. Graham has warned Democrats and Mr. Obama that if they use the budget process to push health care through Congress — known as reconciliation — that could poison any chance for bipartisan cooperation on immigration.
Also, the blueprint is broad, and doesn’t delve into many key details that could still split the coalition of labor, business, religious and ethnic groups that have joined together to try to pass a bill.
Still, Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said backers have now checked off the first several steps on their to-do list: The senators have published their outline, Mr. Obama endorsed it, and earlier this week Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said he was looking forward to moving a bill through his committee.
Mr. Noorani said the next challenges are to see if more Republicans will jump onboard the effort, and to get commitments from House Democrats to move legislation through their chamber.
“We have a bipartisan framework that is going to define a piece of legislation. From here onward, it’s a political and legislative battle to get the 60 votes we need [to pass the Senate] and the 218 in the House,” Mr. Noorani said.
Congress last took up immigration in 2007, when President George W. Bush joined with Democratic leaders to write a bill. But a bipartisan majority of senators joined a filibuster to block the bill.
The supporters of the 2007 effort concluded that Americans didn’t trust the government to secure the borders and enforce the laws, even as they were offering legalization, particularly since illegal immigration has only grown since a 1986 amnesty.
To combat that impression, Mr. Graham and Mr. Schumer said they’ll include new enforcement at both the border and in the country’s interior.
“Once it is clear that in 20 years our nation will not again confront the specter of another 11 million people coming here illegally, Americans will embrace more welcoming immigration policies,” they wrote.
They have been working on the proposal for months, sorting out competing interests from business groups, labor unions and immigration advocates. They said their plan has four key components: a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a program to let in future workers, the improvements in enforcement and the biometric Social Security cards to help employers weed out illegal workers.
The senators said their legalization would be a “tough but fair” program that would require illegal immigrants to admit they broke the law and make them perform community service and pay a fine.
Illegal immigrants would also have to demonstrate they are proficient at English and pass background checks to gain citizenship.
The plan would offer permanent legal status to foreign students who earn a post-graduate degree from an American university, and creates a future program for low-skilled workers. Businesses could only hire them if no American worker is available, and the number allowed would fluctuate depending on the U.S. economy’s needs. Workers who have kept jobs for a long time and have proved valuable members of their community could earn permanent legal status.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Atletico Madrid are close to announcing the loan of Luciano Vietto to Sevilla for one season. Negotiations between the clubs are advanced and the deal is ready to be announced in the coming hours, or perhaps it will be days, but either way the forward will be heading south.
Sport EN
Sevilla beat Barcelona in the race to sign him and he will augment their fantastic attack. The player, who wanted strongly to be play with his idol and friend Lionel Messi, as the first reserve behind the MSN, in the end could not make good on that desire.
Vietto was convinced by something at Sevilla that Barcelona could not assure him of - minutes on the pitch. The Andalusians have promised him he will have a place in the team, although that's something it's hard to be sure of. However it was enough to persuade the 22-year-old. His agent Jorge Cyterszpiler is set to meet with Sevilla directors to finalise the deal.
Atletico, for their part, prefer to loan him to Sevilla for many reasons. Diego Simeone agreed at the end of last season that he could leave. But the Rojiblancos do not want to reinforce a rival in the battle for titles, like Barcelona are. Atletico also don't want to sell Vietto for less than the 20 million euros they paid Villarreal for the striker. And finally because Vietto has a lot of potential and a loan may do him good - he could return a top class forward.Actor best known for his roles in The Elephant Man and Nineteen Eighty-Four first revealed diagnosis in June
Sir John Hurt has said he’s overjoyed and thrilled after being given the all-clear by doctors less than four months after he disclosed that he had pancreatic cancer.
The 75-year-old actor, known for his roles in The Elephant Man, Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Harry Potter films, revealed he had overcome the disease to an audience at the Man Booker prize ceremony in London.
“I had a final scan and it’s all gone brilliantly,” he was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. “I had the final scan yesterday [Monday] and I saw my oncologist this morning.
“I am overjoyed, I am thrilled. It all looks great for the future, it’s fantastic.”
Hurt had first revealed his cancer diagnosis in June, but said at the time he was “more than optimistic” about his future and kept working during his chemotherapy treatment, playing the lead in BBC Radio 4’s adaptation of Jeffrey Barnard Is Unwell.
The double Oscar nominee said at the time: “I have recently been diagnosed with early-stage pancreatic cancer. I am undergoing treatment and am more than optimistic about a satisfactory outcome, as indeed is the medical team.”
Speaking about his illness to the Radio Times in August, he said: “I can’t say I worry about mortality, but it’s impossible to get to my age and not have a little contemplation of it. We’re all just passing time, and occupy our chair very briefly. But my treatment is going terrifically well, so I’m optimistic.”
Hurt, who was knighted in July after being named on the New Year’s honours list, enjoyed a big hit with the sci-fi horror film Alien in 1979.
Among his notable roles he played Caligula in the BBC drama I, Claudius, wand merchant Mr Ollivander in the Harry Potter films, and Stephen Ward, a key figure in the Profumo affair, in Scandal. In 2009, he reprised his Naked Civil Servant role of Quentin Crisp in an Englishman in New York.
Most recently, he has reprised his role as the War Doctor from 2013’s Doctor Who 50th anniversary special in three audio plays due out as a box set in December.The UK government has published its bill on the European Union Referendum, setting out how the vote is to be conducted. While prime minister David Cameron will have no trouble getting the bill through parliament, it has caused immediate controversy.
Advocates of a Brexit are unhappy about the wording of the referendum question and those wanting to stay in Europe object to the rules on who will be allowed to vote.
Despite accusations of politics skulduggery, the government has actually gone about its bill sensibly and for all the anxiety about which side gets to campaign for Yes and which for No, the wording in this particular referendum is unlikely to make a huge difference.
Who gets to vote?
The most basic principle in the design of any referendum is that it should be neutral. The easiest way to achieve that is to set out how referendums should be run in as much detail as possible in standing legislation. That way, the same rules apply to all referendums.
The UK does have some standing legislation on referendums, which establishes principles on matters such as campaign funding to help prevent political manipulation on any individual vote.
Unhelpfully, though, there are no set rules on who can and can’t vote in a referendum, so this has to be decided each time.
For the EU referendum, the government has opted to exclude most EU nationals living in the UK, as well as 16 and 17-year-olds and UK nationals who have been living outside the UK for more than 15 years.
Some have criticised the exclusion of EU citizens, and they may well have a point that the franchise is anomalous and restrictive in multiple ways.
But the fundamental point is that the government should avoid tinkering – or the possibility of tinkering – with the franchise on an ad hoc basis. It has successfully done so in this case by choosing the franchise used for general elections. This is the only sensible option – as opposed to, say, using the franchise for local or European elections – since this is a national issue.
How do you ask a question?
The government has decided the electorate will be asked the question:
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?
Opponents of the UK’s EU membership are critical of the choice. While acknowledging that the question is simple and straightforward, UKIP leader Nigel Farage noted that Cameron “is opting to give the pro-EU side the positive ‘Yes’”.
When it comes to wording, there is no alternative to taking a case-by-case approach. Each referendum clearly needs its own question. But the law does helpfully require the government to consult with the Electoral Commission on question wording.
And, fortunately, in this case, the Commission has already issued guidance on the Brexit referendum. Across two detailed reports, the commission analysed a range of options and came up with two possible questions that best satisfied its requirements for clarity and neutrality.
The first possibility was exactly the wording that the government has chosen. The second was: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”, with the possible responses being not “Yes” or “No”, but rather “Remain a member of the European Union” or “Leave the European Union”.
So the government has chosen a wording that has already been endorsed by the Electoral Commission as clear and neutral. By contrast, the Commission’s research found that some ordinary members of the public felt that the opposite wording – “Should the United Kingdom leave the European Union?” – was biased. What’s more, the Plain English Commission advised that while “Yes” and “No” provide clear campaign slogans for both sides, “Remain” and “Leave” do not. The second option could, therefore, harm the clarity of the campaign.
So, while the Electoral Commission will no doubt want to do further research to explore certain details in more depth than has been possible so far, there is no basis for saying that the government’s choice of question is unreasonable.
Will any of it matter?
But will any of this actually make a difference? With regard to the franchise, EU nationals living in the UK are certainly far more likely to favour continued EU membership than are UK nationals but that doesn’t mean excluding them will significantly sway the vote towards a No.
EU nationals make up only a very a small proportion of the electorate so their choice would affect the outcome only in a very close vote. Fans of the UK’s EU membership are right to think this exclusion works against their cause, but the impact is small.
Reactions to the question wording, meanwhile, clearly manifest a belief that being on the positive “Yes” side carries a built-in advantage. That belief is founded, no doubt, on experience of the Scottish referendum, where the “No” side felt encumbered by the negativity of its core word.
In fact, there is little evidence that “Yes” is at an advantage in referendum contests. In fact, most referendums are won by the “No” side. A comprehensive database of referendums in US states since 1904, for example, shows the “Yes” side has been carried in just 962 of 2,360 votes – a success rate of 40.8%. Australian federal referendums have been even more biased towards “No”. Just eight out of 44 votes – 18% – have passed.
But this pattern almost certainly has less to do with the wording and more to do with the issue. In most (though not all) referendums, the “No” option is the status quo option. And voters are, on the whole, very cautious when it comes to accepting proposals for change.
In any case, how the wording affects the outcome is likely to differ from referendum to referendum. The wording can be expected to have the strongest effect where the issue is one that voters know little about. That can happen in parts of the US, for example, where a series of referendum questions are often asked at the same time as an election, and many of those questions get little public debate ahead of the vote. In this case, many voters may decide their vote just by reading the question and taking a view on the spot, rather than thinking about it in depth beforehand.
In the UK, the EU referendum will be a big deal and the debate will be intense. The effects of question wording are therefore likely to be much smaller. Advocates of Brexit are probably right that association with “Yes” lends a positive sheen, but the effect is likely to be small.
Overall, therefore, the franchise probably helps those who want the UK out a little, while the question probably boosts those who want it in a little. But neither effect is large. That does not mean that the details of legislation on referendums don’t matter – the UK’s referendum regulations do need reform in several ways. On these two particular issues, however, the cries of outrage are greatly overblown.BY Staff Reporter | Jan 20, 2014 12:27 PM EST
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It's the 20th anniversary of Tekken this year and you'd think that we will get a Tekken 7 Release date or even details about Tekken X Street Fighter but according to Katsuhiro Harada, there will be no Tekken games to be released or announced this year.
Tekken Game Director Katsuhiro Harada has said he's working on multiple new projects, and that he hopes to unveil two or three of them in 2014--but it's unlikely that any of them will be Tekken 7.
In an interview with 4Gamer, Katsuhiro Harada reflected on his career in 2013. "As part of being the leader in the development of multiple free-to-play titles, I was also involved in the efforts to change the structures of the console gaming industry with the first party group of SCE, I hope to keep this going into (2014) as well."
"Tekken is one of my life's works, and while I can't say much here, together with the titles we were going to announce this year, I'm also working on several other titles simultaneously with Tekken. From there, I'd like to announce at least two of those titles in 2014, and I feel that it's something I must do."
"There are a few titles that we've been quietly working on, and some we've been thinking about working on, so the year 2014 looks like it'll be a tough one," Harada added.
Harada later clarified on Twitter that the new games aren't related to Tekken. "Probably I'll announce New 2 or 3 titles in this year. But it's not Tekken. Tekken announcement = secret now," he tweeted.
But don't be discouraged yet, Harada may announce Tekken 7 release date or new atleast some new info about Tekken X Street Fighter on December because that date will mark Tekken's 20th anniversary and Harada may have something in store for Tekken fans.
And for those wondering if there will be a Tekken game for Xbox One, PS4 andPC, Katsuhiro Harada tweeted he is planning about making games on the next gen and for the PC
Someone asked Katsuhiro Harada on twitter if there is a chance that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 will be on PS4, Harada replied.
"Umm...I think... I want develop new one for PS4."
In a further twitter discussion, Harada mentions he hopes to make Tekken games on PC and Xbox One if he can.
With this announcement Xbox One, PS4 and PC gamers can rejoice in the fact that Tekken will come to them.
Remember, Harada just wanted to develop a free Tekken game and a few months after Tekken Revolution was announced.By Arab News
Oil prices were in steady in volatile trading on Friday after hitting 2016 peaks, but were on track to multi-week gains on expectations of a production freeze by major exporters and stronger US fuel demand.
Strength in world equity markets, which were up for a fifth straight week, had also boosted oil earlier. Shares of US energy companies traded near 3-1/2 month highs on Wall Street.
Brent crude was down 8 cents at $41.46 a barrel by 1746 GMT, having risen $1 earlier to a 2016 high of $42.54.
US crude was down 31 cents at $39.89, after gaining $1 earlier to a year high of $41.20.
Brent was up for a fourth straight week and US crude for a fifth week in a row, both rising 3 percent this week.
Global oversupply in oil pushed crude prices down from mid-2014 highs above $100 a barrel to 12-year lows earlier this year, bringing Brent to around $27 and US crude to about $26.
Over the past two months, prices rallied to reach above $40 after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) floated the idea of a production freeze.
“The market is probably too long here and needs a correction,” said Scott Shelton, energy futures broker with ICAP in Durham, North Carolina.
The combination of declining oil output, smaller crude stockpile builds and surging gasoline consumption in the US also helped the price recovery.
“Oil prices are on the verge of closing higher for the fifth straight week,” said Fawad Razaqzada, analyst at City Index trading group.Concerns that up to 1,000 children may have been “trafficked” to the US from the Tuam mother and baby home in “a scandal that dwarfs other, more recent issues with the Church and State” were raised by the HSE in 2012.
The warning is contained in an internal note of a teleconference in October 2012 with then assistant director of Children and Family Service Phil Garland and then head of the Medical Intelligence Unit Davida De La Harpe.
It ends with a recommendation that the then health minister be informed with a view to a state inquiry being launched. This was almost two years before revelations of a mass grave at the home forced the Government into launching a state inquiry into all mother and baby homes.
The note relays the concerns raised by the principal social worker for adoption in HSE West who had found “a large archive of photographs, documentation and correspondence relating to children sent for adoption to the USA” and “documentation in relation to discharges and admissions to psychiatric institutions in the Western area”.
READ MORE: SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: Government already knew of baby deaths.
It notes there were letters from the Tuam mother and baby home to parents asking for money for the upkeep of their children and notes that the duration of stay for children may have been prolonged by the order for financial reasons.
It also uncovered letters to parents asking for money for the upkeep of some children that had already been discharged or had died. The social worker, “working in her own time and on her own dollar”, had compiled a list of “up to 1,000 names”, but said it was “not clear yet whether all of these relate to the ongoing examination of the Magdalene system, or whether they relate to the adoption of children by parents, possibly in the USA”.
At that point, the social worker was assembling a filing system “to enable her to link names to letters and to payments”.
“This may prove to be a scandal that dwarfs other, more recent issues with the Church and State, because of the very emotive sensitivities around adoption of babies, with or without the will of the mother.
“A concern is that, if there is evidence of trafficking babies, that it must have been facilitated by doctors, social workers etc, and a number of these health professionals may still be working in the system.”
The report ends with a recommendation that, due to the gravity of what was being found in relation to the Tuam home, an “early warning” letter be written for the attention of the national director of the HSE’s Quality and Patient Safety Division, Philip Crowley, suggesting “that this goes all the way up to the minister”.
“It is more important to send this up to the minister as soon as possible: with a view to an inter-departmental committee and a fully fledged, fully resourced forensic investigation and State inquiry,” concludes the note.
The Sisters of Bon Secours said it ceased operating the Tuam mother and baby home in 1961 and, at the instructions of the local authority, |
more tried but to little avail. Milo said it was proven and Maher did nothing to counter.
This shows just why it is so important to combat speech like Milo’s by shutting it down. Liberals and free speech absolutists praised Maher for bringing Milo onto the show and challenging his ideas. Instead, he brought Milo on and let him espouse his ideas with little to no pushback.
Milo was given a massive HBO audience to spread his bigotry and the audience saw the host do nothing to counter it.
Yet, one would expect Maher to agree with Milo. It was Maher who, before the election, called trans issues “pet issues” and asked them to drop it in favor of electing Hillary Clinton.
When activists showed up at Berkeley and shut Milo down, they saved lives. They saved the students which Milo was set to out as immigrants and teach his audience to do the same. When Milo takes the stage, he causes damage to real lives.
His free speech is not violated, he can go yell in a field or at his computer. He has no right to a platform and anyone who wishes to give him one should be met with fierce resistance.
On Friday night, Milo spread his message loud and clear, and Maher confirmed it. This version of Maher’s liberalism, coupled with Milo’s white nationalism, labeled trans individuals as sexual predators and weirdos.
We must ensure there is no platform for fascists, on college campuses or on national television.Seven of the nine ISIS jihadis who launched a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris last November entered Europe by posing as refugees.
The attackers were part of a group of 14 who plotted their way into Western Europe by riding the wave of the migrant crisis last year, according to Hungarian security officials.
By using fake Syrian passports, many of the attackers, already on European terror watch-lists, were able to slip back into Europe undetected, along with thousands of other refugees.
One hundred and thirty people were killed in November when a group of gunmen and suicide bombers launched a wave of attacks across Paris, targeting the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade De France and several restaurants and bars. Three hundred sixty-eight people were also injured in the attacks, almost 100 of them seriously.
Some of the remaining terrorists in the group participated in the Brussels attacks earlier this year in three coordinated suicide bombings at Brussels Airport and at Maalbeek metro station killed 32 people.
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Counterterrorism officials in Hungary believe ISIS set up a “logistics hub” in the country in the Summer of 2015 at the peak of the migrant crisis, with jihadis taking advantage of Europe’s porous borders to slip into Western Europe through Eastern Europe's Balkan routes.
An investigation scrutinizing the phones used by some of the suspects found that one of the lead coordinators of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, sent a scout to report on the feasibility of using the Balkan routes as an entry point to Western Europe.
The group communicated with each another using social media applications such as Facebook and WhatsApp messaging, often creating and deleting their accounts within a day, as soon as they were able to obtain new instructions from Raqqa, Syria, where they were in contact with ISIS leadership, Hungary’s counterterrorism’s deputy chief General Zsolt Bodnar told The UK Times.
Aboud was killed in a raid by French counterterror police in the days following the Paris attacks.
Hungary voted Sunday to reject the E.U.’s migrant quota for the country. With turnout reported to be only 44 percent below the 50 percent threshold needed, the vote was set to be declared invalid.China—a low-cost maker of goods—is falling behind in the global manufacturing race as rising wages and energy costs put pressure on the Asian country, synonymous with making super cheap stuff.
China is among several economies whose manufacturing price advantage over the U.S. is eroding, according to new data released Tuesday from The Boston Consulting Group. Other countries that are becoming less cost competitive include Brazil, Russia, the Czech Republic and Poland.
On the flip side, moderate wage growth and lower energy prices are making the U.S. and Mexico more desirable manufacturing destinations. The upshot? More U.S. businesses are likely to produce goods closer to home in the coming years.
"This means companies will start to move manufacturing out of those expensive countries if they can, to cheaper countries like the U.S.," said Hal Sirkin, a senior partner at The Boston Consulting Group.
Recent U.S. government data show similar gains. Industrial production increased 0.4 percent in July for its sixth-consecutive monthly gain, the Federal Reserve reported last week. Manufacturing output advanced 1 percent in July, its largest increase since February.
Read MoreInside Lawrence Livermore and the arms race for innovation
"It used to be a simple rule: Manufacturing is cheaper in Asia and South America," Sirkin said. "But it's fundamentally changed."The free-agent pieces began falling into place for the Carolina Panthers last week with the retirement of left tackle Jordan Gross and the franchising of defensive end Greg Hardy.
So what's next with eight days before players hit the open market?
Management is talking with representatives for free safety Mike Mitchell and wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr., so that appears to be the direction the team is heading. Both make sense.
Mitchell gave the league's No. 2 defense an invaluable attitude with his aggressive style. He led all safeties in yards allowed per reception (8.1) and tied for third in interceptions with four.
If the Panthers can't come up with the money to re-sign him, there are many teams interested. Look for a deal to get done before free agency begins March 11.
The question is whether Mitchell will remain at free safety or return to strong safety with Charles Godfrey expected back after a season-ending Achilles injury. Mitchell moved to free safety after Godfrey was injured in the second game, and the defense only got better from there.
The other part of that question is whether the Panthers will keep Godfrey. He has a big salary cap number ($7.1 million), but the team could clear $5.1 million in cap space if it cuts him after June 1.
That could be an option if the deal can't be renegotiated for a lower number.
Of Carolina's three free-agent receivers -- Ginn, Brandon LaFell and Domenik Hixon -- Ginn makes the most sense because he is the team's leading kick returner and a deep threat for quarterback Cam Newton.
It's hard to imagine LaFell, who has been average at best as the team's No. 2 receiver, coming back unless it's at a bargain price. Look for him to hit the open market.
The Panthers also seem content with letting starting cornerback Captain Munnerlyn test the market to determine his value. They did this last season and got him for a bargain.
Look for Carolina to turn its focus to free-agent upgrades from other teams once it signs Mitchell and Ginn. The picture on Steve Smith, the team's all-time leading receiver, should become clearer this week as well.
General manager Dave Gettleman and coach Ron Rivera have said Smith's role is under evaluation. Look for them to meet with him, his management or both in the next few days to see where things go.
Should the Panthers look into the market for an upgrade at receiver, an intriguing prospect became available Friday when Seattle released Sidney Rice to clear salary-cap room.
Rice played high school football in Gaffney, S.C., about an hour from Charlotte, and was a star at the University of South Carolina 90 minutes away.
His numbers haven't lived up to his contract in recent years, but injuries have played a role. His 2011 season was cut short by a concussion, and an ACL injury kept him from finishing last season.
He is still young at 27 and at 6-foot-4 would give quarterback Cam Newton a tall target.
But Carolina's first priority will be re-signing Mitchell and Ginn.Classic composition of common surnames in China's Song Dynasty
This article contains ruby annotation. Without proper rendering support, you may see transcriptions in parentheses after the character instead of ruby glosses.
The Hundred Family Surnames is a classic Chinese text composed of common Chinese surnames. The book was composed in the early Song Dynasty.[1] It originally contained 411 surnames, and was later expanded to 504.[1] Of these, 444 are single-character surnames, and 60 are double-character surnames. About 800 names have been derived from the original ones.[2]
In the dynasties following the Song, the Three Character Classic, the Hundred Family Surnames, and Thousand Character Classic came to be known as San Bai Qian (Three, Hundred, Thousand), from the first character in their titles. They were the almost universal introductory literary texts for students, almost exclusively boys, from elite backgrounds and even for a number of ordinary villagers. Each was available in many versions, printed cheaply, and available to all since they did not become superseded. When a student had memorized all three, he had a knowledge of roughly 2,000 characters. Since Chinese did not use an alphabet, this was an effective, though time-consuming, way of giving a "crash course" in character recognition before going on to understanding texts and writing characters.
The Hundred Family Surnames was translated into Manchu as ᠪᡝ ᡤᡳᠶᠠ ᠰᡳᠩ (Wylie: Pe giya sing, Möllendorff: Be giya sing).
Form [ edit ]
The work is a rhyming poem in lines of eight characters. The surnames are not listed in order of commonality. According to Song dynasty scholar Wang Mingqing (王明清), the first four surnames listed represent the most important families in the empire at the time:[4]
1st: Zhao ( 趙 ) is the surname of the Song Dynasty emperors.
) is the surname of the Song Dynasty emperors. 2nd: Qian ( 錢 ) is the surname of the kings of Wuyue.
) is the surname of the kings of Wuyue. 3rd: Sun ( 孫 ) is the surname of the queen of Wuyue.
) is the surname of the queen of Wuyue. 4th: Li ( 李 ) is the surname of the kings of Southern Tang.
The next four, Zhou 周, Wu 吳, Zheng 鄭, and Wang 王, were the surnames of the other wives of Qian Chu, the last king of Wuyue.[5]
Complete text [ edit ]
This text is written in Traditional Chinese.
趙 ( Zhao ) 錢 ( Qian ) 孫 ( Sun ) 李 ( Li ) 周 ( Zhou ) 吳 ( Wu ) 鄭 ( Zheng ) 王 ( Wang ) 馮 ( Feng ) 陳 ( Chen ) 褚 ( Chu ) 衛 ( Wei ) 蔣 ( Jiang ) 沈 ( Shen ) 韓 ( Han ) 楊 ( Yang ) 朱 ( Zhu ) 秦 ( Qin ) 尤 ( You ) 許 ( Xu ) 何 ( He ) 呂 ( Lü ) 施 ( Shi ) 張 ( Zhang ) 孔 ( Kong ) 曹 ( Cao ) 嚴 ( Yan ) 華 ( Hua ) 金 ( Jin ) 魏 ( Wei ) 陶 ( Tao ) 姜 ( Jiang ) 戚 ( Qi ) 謝 ( Xie ) 鄒 ( Zou ) 喻 ( Yu ) 柏 ( Bai ) 水 ( Shui ) 竇 ( Dou ) 章 ( Zhang ) 雲 ( Yun ) 蘇 ( Su ) 潘 ( Pan ) 葛 ( Ge ) 奚 ( Xi ) 范 ( Fan ) 彭 ( Peng ) 郎 ( Lang ) 魯 ( Lu ) 韋 ( Wei ) 昌 ( Chang ) 馬 ( Ma ) 苗 ( Miao ) 鳳 ( Feng ) 花 ( Hua ) 方 ( Fang ) 俞 ( Yu ) 任 ( Ren ) 袁 ( Yuan ) 柳 ( Liu ) 酆 ( Feng ) 鮑 ( Bao ) 史 ( Shi ) 唐 ( Tang ) 費 ( Fei ) 廉 ( Lian ) 岑 ( Cen ) 薛 ( Xue ) 雷 ( Lei ) 賀 ( He ) 倪 ( Ni ) 湯 ( Tang ) 滕 ( Teng ) 殷 ( Yin ) 羅 ( Luo ) 畢 ( Bi ) 郝 ( Hao ) 鄔 ( Wu ) 安 ( An ) 常 ( Chang ) 樂 ( Yue ) 于 ( Yu ) 時 ( Shi ) 傅 ( Fu ) 皮 ( Pi ) 卞 ( Bian ) 齊 ( Qi ) 康 ( Kang ) 伍 ( Wu ) 余 ( Yu ) 元 ( Yuan ) 卜 ( Bu ) 顧 ( Gu ) 孟 ( Meng ) 平 ( Ping ) 黃 ( Huang ) 和 ( He ) 穆 ( Mu ) 蕭 ( Xiao ) 尹 ( Yin ) 姚 ( Yao ) 邵 ( Shao ) 湛 ( Zhan ) 汪 ( Wang ) 祁 ( Qi ) 毛 ( Mao ) 禹 ( Yu ) 狄 ( Di ) 米 ( Mi ) 貝 ( Bei ) 明 ( Ming ) 臧 ( Zang ) 計 ( Ji ) 伏 ( Fu ) 成 ( Cheng ) 戴 ( Dai ) 談 ( Tan ) 宋 ( Song ) 茅 ( Mao ) 龐 ( Pang ) 熊 ( Xiong ) 紀 ( Ji ) 舒 ( Shu ) 屈 ( Qu ) 項 ( Xiang ) 祝 ( Zhu ) 董 ( Dong ) 梁 ( Liang ) 杜 ( Du ) 阮 ( Ruan ) 藍 ( Lan ) 閔 ( Min ) 席 ( Xi ) 季 ( Ji ) 麻 ( Ma ) 強 ( Qiang ) 賈 ( Jia ) 路 ( Lu ) 婁 ( Lou ) 危 ( Wei ) 江 ( Jiang ) 童 ( Tong ) 顏 ( Yan ) 郭 ( Guo ) 梅 ( Mei ) 盛 ( Sheng ) 林 ( Lin ) 刁 ( Diao ) 鍾 ( Zhong ) 徐 ( Xu ) 邱 ( Qiu ) 駱 ( Luo ) 高 ( Gao ) 夏 ( Xia ) 蔡 ( Cai ) 田 ( Tian ) 樊 ( Fan ) 胡 ( Hu ) 凌 ( Ling ) 霍 ( Huo ) 虞 ( Yu ) 萬 ( Wan ) 支 ( Zhi ) 柯 ( Ke ) 昝 ( Zan ) 管 ( Guan ) 盧 ( Lu ) 莫 ( Mo ) 經 ( Jing ) 房 ( Fang ) 裘 ( Qiu ) 繆 ( Miao ) 干 ( Gan ) 解 ( Xie ) 應 ( Ying ) 宗 ( Zong ) 丁 ( Ding ) 宣 ( Xuan ) 賁 ( Ben ) 鄧 ( Deng ) 郁 ( Yu ) 單 ( Shan ) 杭 ( Hang ) 洪 ( Hong ) 包 ( Bao ) 諸 ( Zhu ) 左 ( Zuo ) 石 ( Shi ) 崔 ( Cui ) 吉 ( Ji ) 鈕 ( Niu ) 龔 ( Gong ) 程 ( Cheng ) 嵇 ( Ji ) 邢 ( Xing ) 滑 ( Hua ) 裴 ( Pei ) 陸 ( Lu ) 榮 ( Rong ) 翁 ( Weng ) 荀 ( Xun ) 羊 ( Yang ) 於 ( Yu ) 惠 ( Hui ) 甄 ( Zhen ) 麴 ( Qu ) 家 ( Jia ) 封 ( Feng ) 芮 ( Rui ) 羿 ( Yi ) 儲 ( Chu ) 靳 ( Jin ) 汲 ( Ji ) 邴 ( Bing ) 糜 ( Mi ) 松 ( Song ) 井 ( Jing ) 段 ( Duan ) 富 ( Fu ) 巫 ( Wu ) 烏 ( Wu ) 焦 ( Jiao ) 巴 ( Ba ) 弓 ( Gong ) 牧 ( Mu ) 隗 ( Kui ) 山 ( Shan ) 谷 ( Gu ) 車 ( Che ) 侯 ( Hou ) 宓 ( Mi ) 蓬 ( Peng ) 全 ( Quan ) 郗 ( Xi ) 班 ( Ban ) 仰 ( Yang ) 秋 ( Qiu ) 仲 ( Zhong ) 伊 ( Yi ) 宮 ( Gong ) 寧 ( Ning ) 仇 ( Qiu ) 欒 ( Luan ) 暴 ( Bao ) 甘 ( Gan ) 鈄 ( Tou ) 厲 ( Li ) 戎 ( Rong ) 祖 ( Zu ) 武 ( Wu ) 符 ( Fu ) 劉 ( Liu ) 景 ( Jing ) 詹 ( Zhan ) 束 ( Shu ) 龍 ( Long ) 葉 ( Ye ) 幸 ( Xing ) 司 ( Si ) 韶 ( Shao ) 郜 ( Gao ) 黎 ( Li ) 薊 ( Ji ) 薄 ( Bo ) 印 ( Yin ) 宿 ( Su ) 白 ( Bai ) 懷 ( Huai ) 蒲 ( Pu ) 邰 ( Tai ) 從 ( Cong ) 鄂 ( E ) 索 ( Suo ) 咸 ( Xian ) 籍 ( Ji ) 賴 ( Lai ) 卓 ( Zhuo ) 藺 ( Lin ) 屠 ( Tu ) 蒙 ( Meng ) 池 ( Chi ) 喬 ( Qiao ) 陰 ( Yin ) 郁 ( Yu ) 胥 ( Xu ) 能 ( Nai ) 蒼 ( Cang ) 雙 ( Shuang ) 聞 ( Wen ) 莘 ( Shen ) 黨 ( Dang ) 翟 ( Zhai ) 譚 ( Tan ) 貢 ( Gong ) 勞 ( Lao ) 逄 ( Pang ) 姬 ( Ji ) 申 ( Shen ) 扶 ( Fu ) 堵 ( Du ) 冉 ( Ran ) 宰 ( Zai ) 酈 ( Li ) 雍 ( Yong ) 郤 ( Xi ) 璩 ( Qu ) 桑 ( Sang ) 桂 ( Gui ) 濮 ( Pu ) 牛 ( Niu ) 壽 ( Shou ) 通 ( Tong ) 邊 ( Bian ) 扈 ( Hu ) 燕 ( Yan ) 冀 ( Ji ) 郟 ( Jia ) 浦 ( Pu ) 尚 ( Shang ) 農 ( Nong ) 溫 ( Wen ) 別 ( Bie ) 莊 ( Zhuang ) 晏 ( Yan ) 柴 ( Chai ) 瞿 ( Qu ) 閻 ( Yan ) 充 ( Chong ) 慕 ( Mu ) 連 ( Lian ) 茹 ( Ru ) 習 ( Xi ) 宦 ( Huan ) 艾 ( Ai ) 魚 ( Yu ) 容 ( Rong ) 向 ( Xiang ) 古 ( Gu ) 易 ( Yi ) 慎 ( Shen ) 戈 ( Ge ) 廖 ( Liao ) 庾 ( Yu ) 終 ( Zhong ) 暨 ( Ji ) 居 ( Ju ) 衡 ( Heng ) 步 ( Bu ) 都 ( Du ) 耿 ( Geng ) 滿 ( Man ) 弘 ( Hong ) 匡 ( Kuang ) 國 ( Guo ) 文 ( Wen ) 寇 ( Kou ) 廣 ( Guang ) 祿 ( Lu ) 闕 ( Que ) 東 ( Dong ) 歐 ( Ou ) 殳 ( Shu ) 沃 ( Wo ) 利 ( Li ) 蔚 ( Yu ) 越 ( Yue ) 夔 ( Kui ) 隆 ( Long ) 師 ( Shi ) 鞏 ( Gong ) 厙 ( She ) 聶 ( Nie ) 晁 ( Chao ) 勾 ( Gou ) 敖 ( Ao ) 融 ( Rong ) 冷 ( Leng ) 訾 ( Zi ) 辛 ( Xin ) 闞 ( Kan ) 那 ( Na ) 簡 ( Jian ) 饒 ( Rao ) 空 ( Kong ) 曾 ( Zeng ) 毋 ( Wu ) 沙 ( Sha ) 乜 ( Nie ) 養 ( Yang ) 鞠 ( Ju ) 須 ( Xu ) 豐 ( Feng ) 巢 ( Chao ) 關 ( Guan ) 蒯 ( Kuai ) 相 ( Xiang ) 查 ( Zha ) 后 ( Hou ) 荊 ( Jing ) 紅 ( Hong ) 游 ( You ) 竺 ( Zhu ) 權 ( Quan ) 逯 ( Lu ) 蓋 ( Ge ) 益 ( Yi ) 桓 ( Huan ) 公 ( Gong ) 万俟 ( Moqi ) 司馬 ( Sima ) 上官 ( Shangguan ) 歐陽 ( Ouyang ) 夏侯 ( Xiahou ) 諸葛 ( Zhuge ) 聞人 ( Wenren ) 東方 ( Dongfang ) 赫連 ( Helian ) 皇甫 ( Huangfu ) 尉遲 ( Yuchi ) 公羊 ( Gongyang ) 澹臺 ( Tantai ) 公冶 ( Gongye ) 宗政 ( Zongzheng ) 濮陽 ( Puyang ) 淳于 ( Chunyu ) 單于 ( Chanyu ) 太叔 ( Taishu ) 申屠 ( Shentu ) 公孫 ( Gongsun ) 仲孫 ( Zhongsun ) 軒轅 ( Xuanyuan ) 令狐 ( Linghu ) 鐘離 ( Zhongli ) 宇文 ( Yuwen ) 長孫 ( Zhangsun ) 慕容 ( Murong ) 鮮于 ( Xianyu ) 閭丘 ( Lüqiu ) 司徒 ( Situ ) 司空 ( Sikong ) 亓官 ( Qiguan ) 司寇 ( Sikou ) 仉 ( Zhang ) 督 ( Du ) 子車 ( Ziju ) 顓孫 ( Zhuansun ) 端木 ( Duanmu ) 巫馬 ( Wuma ) 公西 ( Gongxi ) 漆雕 ( Qidiao ) 樂正 ( Yuezheng ) 壤駟 ( Rangsi ) 公良 ( Gongliang ) 拓拔 ( Tuoba ) 夾谷 ( Jiagu ) 宰父 ( Zaifu ) 穀粱 ( Guliang ) 晉 ( Jin ) 楚 ( Chu ) 閆 ( Yan ) 法 ( Fa ) 汝 ( Ru ) 鄢 ( Yan ) 涂 ( Tu ) 欽 ( Qin ) 段干 ( Duangan ) 百里 ( Baili ) 東郭 ( Dongguo ) 南門 ( Nanmen ) 呼延 ( Huyan ) 歸 ( Gui ) 海 ( Hai ) 羊舌 ( Yangshe ) 微生 ( Weisheng ) 岳 ( Yue ) 帥 ( Shuai ) 緱 ( Gou ) 亢 ( Kang ) 況 ( Kuang ) 後 ( Hou ) 有 ( You ) 琴 ( Qin ) 梁丘 ( Liangqiu ) 左丘 ( Zuoqiu ) 東門 ( Dongmen ) 西門 ( Ximen ) 商 ( Shang ) 牟 ( Mou ) 佘 ( She ) 佴 ( Nai ) 伯 ( Bo ) 賞 ( Shang ) 南宮 ( Nangong ) 墨 ( Mo ) 哈 ( Ha ) 譙 ( Qiao ) 笪 ( Da ) 年 ( Nian ) 愛 ( Ai ) 陽 ( Yang ) 佟 ( Tong ) 第五 ( Diwu ) 言 ( Yan ) 福 ( Fu ) 百 ( Bǎi ) 家 ( jiā ) 姓 ( xìng ) 終 ( zhōng ) [6]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Rawski, Evelyn Sakakida (1979). Education and Popular Literacy in Ch'ing China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-08753-3.Captain Confederacy is an alternate history comic book by Will Shetterly and Vince Stone that was first published in 1986, revived in 1991–92 then published online with new and revised material in 2011. It tells the story of a superhero created for propaganda purposes in a world in which the Confederate States of America won their independence from the United States.[1]
Publication history [ edit ]
Issues 1–12 were published beginning in 1986 by Steeldragon Press. A special edition of issue #1 was also published with some revisions. John M. Ford plotted three issues of the first series and wrote one, issue #10's "Driving North." The series is, as of July 2015, available online — in a somewhat revised form — as well as having been collected in two trade paperbacks.[2][3]
The second series was published by Marvel's Epic Comics and can also be found on line.[4] A connected story Yankee UFO, concerning a person from another alternative history where Edward Kennedy is President of the United States trapped in Captain Confederacy's world, was published on line in 2008.[5]
Title character [ edit ]
The first Captain Confederacy, featured in the first series, is an out-of-work actor who agrees to undergo a biological experiment that grants him super strength, enhanced agility and healing abilities as well as limited psychic abilities. In the second series, the new Captain Confederacy is a black woman, pregnant with the previous Captain’s baby. She has similar superpowers garnered from the same sources.
Plot [ edit ]
The first series, published in the SteelDragon Press run, tells how the first Captain Confederacy, a white man, becomes disillusioned with Confederate society after the death of his friend. Both the Captain and his friend are actors in a series of staged TV "news events" which are actually propaganda designed to maintain and reinforce the Confederate ideals by portraying Confederate-themed superheroes Captain Confederacy and his female sidekick Miss Dixie battling a black supervillain Blacksnake (his friend in real life). When his friend becomes fed up with his status as a second class citizen within the Confederacy and his own culpability in perpetuating same for his race through his participation in the propaganda, he refuses to continue in his TV role, and he is shot. This leads Captain Confederacy to rebellion against his country. All of the superheroes/actors involved were given medical treatments which produced genuine superpowers (both physical and psionic), to enhance the realism of the propaganda news telecasts. They discover that the effects of these treatments have both made them addicts and are slowly killing them.
The second series focuses on the struggle to control the politics of the North American countries, at a world superhero conference in Free Louisiana.
World [ edit ]
In the alternative history, the Confederacy won the Civil War, which resulted in a fracturing of the North American Continent, mostly affecting what was the United States of America into eight nations. These nations are the Confederate States of America (also containing several Caribbean possessions), the Free State of Louisiana (smaller than the real state of Louisiana, but containing the city of New Orleans), the Remaining northern states as the United States of America, the Republic of Texas (also includes portions of what was Mexico), the Great Spirit Alliance (called "Tecumseh" in the original series's map — also includes portions of Canada), the Mormon nation of Deseret, The People's Republic of California (including Baja California) and Pacifica (called "Sequoyah" in the original series's map — also includes portions of Canada). Canada and Mexico exist, but have lost territory to the various other nations.[6]
The means by which the CSA managed to retain its independence was never explained in the series.
Each of these nations has its own propaganda heroes similar to the original Captain Confederacy, though empowered through different means and technologies (armored suits, drugs, etc.). Canada exists in some form, although it is not as large as it is in the real world. A version of the Underground Railroad exists within the Confederacy to help oppressed minorities escape to either the United States or Canada. A Japan analogue, Nippon (a native name of Japan), exists as an ally to the People's Republic of California, having a military base there. Germany has defensive satellites. A cold war of sorts exists between Germany and Nippon.
The technology of this world's 1967 (the year in which the story begins) seems analogous to the real world in about 1980. Although advanced technology was used to create the superheroes, it does not seem to be in widespread use by the general public. Dirigibles seem a common means of air transportation. The Confederacy boasts a female president, hinted to be a descendant of Robert E. Lee. Medical science also is about the same as 1980s medicine, although whites receive much better care than minorities in the Confederacy. Governments do not seem inclined to share their technological means.
Commercially, McDonald's is known for its fast food burritos — although it has plans to introduce a new ground beef sandwich with cheese, while KFC sells catfish not chicken. Both chains seem ubiquitous within the Confederacy.
Science fiction is known by Scientifiction and appears more popular than in the real world. Margaret Mitchell wrote a well known book, Glorious Tomorrows. The Beverly Hillbillies is a television comedy popular in the USA that makes fun of the CSA.
Reception [ edit ]
Southern Magazine found the plots are intricate and creative, but noted that this is not a comic for children. Comics Buyer's Guide found the comic an "excellent alternate-Earth science fiction." In Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South, by Tara McPherson (Duke University), found the comic "From the retooled Stars and Bars of Captain Confederacy's costume to the mapping of urban and rural southern places, the series takes up the symbols of the South and imaginitively reconstructs them, shaking loose the stock figures, geographies, and temporalities of southerness. If Octavia Butler and Kara Walker alter the meaning of the southern lady, Shetterly reconfigures the southern gentleman, unfixing his location in an idealized Civil War past, instead deploying him for a different understanding of our present." ―[7] Heavy Metal found the comic to "address the South’s old ghosts" and that the determination of if the comic was a successful examination of the current southern society of merely provocative is left up to readers to decide. [8]
A family who gave an issue of the comic to their 11-year-old son found the comic offensive, creating a minor controversy.[9]
According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the comic was featured in 2017 at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia. [10]
References [ edit ]Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck is obsessive in his pursuit of greatness - no matter what comes with it. (Photo: Michelle Pemberton/The Star) Story Highlights Colts at Broncos, 8:30 p.m. Sunday, NBC
This was the rare glimpse past some of the carefully-constructed layers in Andrew Luck's mind.
Past the arcane facts about concrete.
Past the emotions expressed for family pictures he can't see on his flip phone.
Past the rare skills that make him one of the NFL's top young quarterbacks.
"I remember my rookie year, if I found myself in a situation that was weird, where I felt like all eyes were on me — the whole animal in a zoo sort of thing, like being stuck in an airport — it was awkward," Luck said. "I used to get emotionally hijacked about that and it would really bother me.
"But as I've gotten older, (I realize) it's part of the job description. The fish bowl thing, I wouldn't say I'm 100 percent good with it but I've reconciled it in my mind that it's part of the world we live in."
Luck would prefer to be the run-of-the-mill, Indian-food-eating, architecture-admiring, social-media-shunning 24-year-old intellectual that he is.
But there's another side, the uncompromising winner. He's a physical beast — Wolverine, teammate and backup Matt Hasselbeck calls him — obsessive in his pursuit of greatness no matter what comes with it.
Each side of Luck is fascinating when examined individually. Together, they form a man on his way to being the NFL's next great quarterback.
This is the story of how he merges and balances it all.
CLOSE Go behind the scenes with photojournalist Michelle Pemberton as she photographs Indianapolis Colts Quarterback Andrew Luck. Danese Kenon / The Star
'HE HAS THAT NERDY SIDE'
Luck, in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, is sitting leisurely on the visiting bench at darkened Lucas Oil Stadium. The building is eerily quiet, much more than it will be in a few weeks when Luck returns to the field and brings the masses to their feet.
He was told the interview would include talk of his diverse interests, so tucked under his arm is a book he's recently read on South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela.
Reading ranks high on that list of interests because Luck's mind craves knowledge like his lungs long for air. There's a story about how Luck came to read this book, and it's emblematic of his ever-inquisitive nature.
"I got to spend a couple days a while back with a man who knew Mr. Mandela and was on the Truth and (Reconciliation) Commission after apartheid," Luck recounts. "So, he knew Mr. Mandela well. I got to talking to him about Mr. Mandela and I said, 'I've got to know more about this guy.' He was obviously so incredibly interesting and still is so impactful in our culture."
NFL quarterbacks are supposed to care mostly about film study. (And maybe making ridiculous TV commercials.) Luck won't settle for just that.
"Coach (Chuck) Pagano always tells us not to let football define our life," Luck said. "And I think it was (former offensive coordinator) Bruce Arians who told me once, 'Football is what you do. It's not who you are.' I've taken that to heart."
Quarterbacks have playbooks. Luck has lots of other books, too. Books about people, places, history, events and... concrete? Yes, concrete.
Sure, he majored in architectural design at Stanford, but really?
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"I am not making this up," says Hasselbeck, who has grown close to Luck. "It was a book on concrete. He was showing it to everyone on the road trip to Cincinnati. He was fascinated."
Said receiver Griff Whalen, a college teammate and friend: "He was on the bus like, 'Did you guys know that Cincinnati was the first (city) to use this or that kind of concrete?' Everyone was like, 'Yeah, whatever. Thanks for that.'
"He definitely has that nerdy side."
NOT A CELEBRITY
For a young man who is so varied, Luck can also be so simple.
Just consider his decision to largely eschew social media, making him the rare celebrity nowadays to exist off the social media grid. (By the way, Luck hates the word celebrity.)
To let Luck tell it, he knows who he is and he stays in his lane.
"Look at (punter) Pat McAfee and his personality," Luck said. "It's out there and it's funny and it's hilarious and it's perfect for him. I laugh all the time and love talking to him. But it wouldn't be right for me."
Luck might not technically be on Twitter, but he kind of is.
"My mom knows what I do every week because she sees it on Twitter," he joked. "She's much more tech savvy than I am. OK, actually, I shun some technology. I've just always been a bit more private."
Maybe he's not quite an introvert, but he's certainly no extrovert. You can see evidence of this in other areas, too. Ask yourself: When was the last time you saw an Andrew Luck commercial?
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
When you're the first to perform so many amazing feats — throwing for more yards than any quarterback in his first two years, for instance — humility would seem hard to maintain.
Luck has no issues in this regard. At times, he might be too deferential.
"He's one of the most humble superstars that I've ever encountered," McAfee said. "Say there's a certain drink that he wants offered in the cafeteria. He'll say, 'Hey, wouldn't this be cool if we had this or that?' We say, 'Yes, it would be. Now, go make it happen! You're the guy that can make it happen.' It's like he doesn't even know it because he's such a humble guy who has no idea of the elite level of superstar that he is. That's what makes him so cool."
Luck blends in well for someone for whom blending in is basically impossible.
"A lot of things we do as a group, he'll be the one to put it together," offensive tackle Gosder Cherilus said. "He'll come in and say, 'Hey, what are you guys doing? How about let's all go out to dinner?' Me and him talk a lot about what restaurants we like. So, if I find a good one, he'll say, 'Let's do it.'
"Sometimes we even have game night at his house."
If you want to know what makes Luck tick, turn the conversation toward family. His younger brother Addison, who plays high school soccer, is a common topic of discussion. Occasionally, Luck will get text messages with photos attached documenting his sibling's latest feats on the pitch.
There's just one problem. Yes, it's that darned flip phone. Yes, he still has it.
"So, he can't get pictures on his phone," Hasselbeck said. "So, if he gets texted a photo, he'll have to forward it to me or someone and I'll open it on my phone and hand it to him. And he's so excited, like, 'Oh, I'm so happy for him! He had two assists!' It's really, really fun to see him in that light."
The unique bond between Luck and the 38-year old Hasselbeck, a father of three, is beautiful to watch. Ironically, it's often Hasselbeck who is learning from Luck.
"Just from his knowledge of other things outside of football that maybe we're not knowledgeable |
like “Tracks of my Tears” in a London accent because the cadences are all wrong and you can’t keep the syllables going as long as you want them to. This is because that particular accent is short and choppy compared to the rhythm of the original song’s accent. You have to match your accent to a song’s particular rhythm sometimes.
Is there a commercial side to changing your accent?
Definitely, you can become more identifiable that way. Who do the singers think their listeners want them to sound like? It’s interesting in something like Eurovision, where virtually everyone sings in English anyway, because maybe that’s a more comfortable style for the singer.
The best examples is The Beatles. A recent study found that half of the words in their songs, in which an r would appear after a vowel, had a typical American pronunciation. When the Beatles started they really did experiment with using an American accent but within two years they’d stopped doing it. In the Sgt. Pepper period that amount of times they’d put a vowel after an r had reduced to four or five percent. They turned from using an American accent to their own Liverpudlian accent.
There’s usually a big discrepancy between most singers speaking and singing voices.
Yes, but there’s also Lily Allen along with Chas and Dave and Ian Dury…
But compare that to someone like Mike Skinner, who sounds like he’s from London when really he’s from Birmingham.
It all depends on where you’re from and how strongly you’re tied to there. I mean, is there such thing as being authentic? Singing isn’t that natural, speaking is natural; singing is when emotions get heightened and you want to express yourself in a very different way. The authenticity is in the choices that you make. Whether the speaking and singing voice don’t match up is beside the point for me. Whether I decide to sing in an Irish, Scottish or Welsh accent it’s authentic in the sense that I've chosen to do that. If, on the other hand, I see myself following in a tradition of American culture and I aped that accent and I do it well, then that’s being authentic to that type of accent as well. It’s all about who you identify with and want to be perceived to identify with. I guess an awful lot of singers have more than one identity.
What about Iggy Azalea? A lot of people have a problem with her because she's Australian but raps like an American.
Rap has a clear style. It uses a rhythm of English that is very distinctive to itself. You’ve got two different types of rhythms: the stress-type rhythm which is used during conversation that goes “te-tum-te-tum-te-tum”. And then there’s the syllable-type rhythm, where the beat occurs on every syllable, rat-a-tat-a-tat instead of te-tum-te-tum-te-tum. Rapping leads more to the rat-a-tat rhythm and comes from the Caribbean way of talking. Anyone who wants to rap has got to respect that. They may respect you, or just laugh in your face.
It’s like when Joss Stone - who was born in Devon - turned up to The Brits after touring America and she sounded drastically American. Was the change in her accent really her fault though or do people just ingratiate the accents they hear?
Oh yeah. This happens all the time; the technical term for it is called accommodation. It comes down to when two people are talking together, and they like each other, and get on so well their two accents move toward each other and each will sound like the others. Conversely, if two people are talking to each other and they don’t get on, their accents will go further apart. When you go to somewhere with a dominant accent you will very naturally accommodate to it if you’re getting on well with the people. Some people are quicker at adapting than others, maybe even a few days.
Is it a very unconscious thing?
Yeah, most people don’t notice they are doing it.
So Iggy Azaela may be not be guilty for accent crimes?
Potentially. I’d have to analyse her accent a bit more.A source tells KSR that Kentucky is considering a plan which would make this year’s version of the Kentucky vs North Carolina the last one, at least temporarily. According to the source, Kentucky is seeking to balance its schedule and prevent the current set-up, in which Kentucky plays Louisville, North Carolina and its Big East/SEC Challenge opponent at home or on the road in the same year, from continuing. The contract with North Carolina expires after this game, making now the best time to make the move. The plan would be to not play North Carolina next year, and then revisit the issue next summer or sometime in the future, when the schedule could again be balanced.
If North Carolina is dropped, Kentucky could end up playing a home and home or neutral site series with a number of other teams. According to the source, Kansas, Texas, West Virginia and Arizona would be the most likely candidates.The Eiffel Tower in Paris
Torre Eiffel - Tour Eiffel - Eiffeltornet
needs no presentation, it is one the most well known monuments in the world visited by more than 5 million people each year.Built 1889 for the Universal Exhibition in celebration of the French Revolution. Height 324 m.
Friday 2 Aug 2002 they launched a new website with panoramas photographed by Denis Gliksman one of the veterans in VR photography.
Enjoy the sundown from the second floor above and visit the site (produced by TRIMARAN) and see the other 18 panoramas showing the tower both as night and day views.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Denis Gliksman www.gliksman.com
Denis Gliksman is one of the veterans in VR photography. He is a photographer from Paris with more than 25 years of experience. Denis started already in 1995 working with Quicktime VR and have produced panoramas and QTVR objects for Apple, Renault, Nikon and many other well known companies.
Read interview at VRMag
Also by Denis Gliksman
D-DayCopenhagen protester released from jail
Updated
An Australian held in a Danish prison for three weeks for organising a protest during the Copenhagen climate change conference has been released.
Natasha Verco was arrested on December 15, a day before the biggest protest march during the United Nations talks in Copenhagen.
The chief prosecutor for the Copenhagen police, Dorit Borgaard, says Verco was released overnight along with American citizen Noah Weiss.
Their case has been adjourned until March 16 when they will face charges of attempted assault of a police officer and planning to disturb public order.
If convicted, they face up to six months in jail.
Verco insists she organised a peaceful event during the conference and denies accusations that she assaulted a police officer and planned to disturb public order.
"I participated in organising people to speak about climate change with youth delegates for the UN," she said.
"They say I organised riots and when we said that riots didn't happen, they said, 'No, you were charged with organising riots that were stopped by the good work of the police'.
"So they're charging me with organising things that never happened.
"I think it's a huge departure from what I understand to be any form of legal process, a huge departure from any form of justice."
Verco says she was not doing anything illegal.
"I wasn't at a protest. I wasn't on my way to a protest. I was riding along the side of the road.
"When I asked them what was going on (and) were they just picking up anybody who was wearing black clothes - I had a black jacket on and some black pants - they said, 'no we've been hunting you'."
Verco says she was scared because the police did not say why she was being arrested.
"I asked them what they were picking me up for and they said,'we don't need to tell you anything'.
"I kept enquiring because I was quite scared at this point, and they pushed me down onto the floor of the van, they folded my legs up and they sat on my legs and they put their feet on my back."
Verco says officials closed the court for her arraignment and that the evidence presented was "ridiculous".
"They had recordings of conversations of mine on my telephone for the last three months and they had evidence from somebody else's case about a protest they were involved in," she said.
"On the basis of both of those things they said they had sufficient grounds to hold me, but the conversations that they recorded, in one of them I was trying to help organise accommodation for some Italians.
"In another one I was talking about trying to get funding for people to come. In another one I was organising a meeting.
"I really am gobsmacked. I can't really understand how they managed to lock me up for three-and-a-half weeks on that basis."
Topics: courts-and-trials, 2009-united-nations-climate-change-conference, law-crime-and-justice, denmark, australia, nsw, tas
First postedMIT maths geniuses netted $8million from state lottery after discovering loophole
Gamblers virtually took over Massachusetts Cash WinFall lottery, officials admit
Statisticians, including biomedical researcher and MIT students, calculated a system to guarantee wins
Group waited until unclaimed jackpot reached $2m - then snapped up hundreds of thousands of tickets
What a gamble: Statisticians calculated a system to virtually guarantee a win
A group of science and mathematical experts won almost $8million on a state lottery after discovering a fool-proof way of winning.
The group, which included a biomedical researcher and MIT undergraduates who were 'looking for an interesting school project', bought more than $40million of tickets over seven years but won approximately $48million - an $8million profit.
Statisticians calculated that, during brief periods when the unclaimed jackpot of the Massachusetts Cash WinFall game total reached $2million, players buying $100,000 worth of tickets would almost certainly win.
And their gamble paid off. Using these small windows of opportunity, the group bought as many tickets as they could, using a loophole in which lottery officials failed to limit the amount that could be sold in one day.
During these high payout intervals, the gambling syndicates won most of the lottery's prizes.
Officials at the Massachusetts state lottery knew one of their games had essentially been taken over by the group of highly-intelligent gamblers but did nothing because their syndicate generated $16million.
The gambling group included graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (pictured) who were looking for an interesting school project
HOW THEY DID IT
The MIT researchers capitalised on the way the Cash WinFall game worked.
Unlike most lotteries, the jackpot was limited to $2m, and once this was surpassed the excess redistributed to smaller prizes – known as a ‘roll-down’ week.
The smaller jackpots won by matching five of six numbers became five to ten times bigger on roll-down weeks – with the typical $4,000 win becoming up to $40,000.
The group calculated if they bought $600,000 of tickets on rollover weeks, they would most likely make a 10-15 per cent profit.
As the success of the scheme became clear they began buying enough tickets to force a roll-down week themselves.
Their system became an almost full-time business as the sophisticated gamblers snapped up hundreds of thousands of lottery tickets at $2 each.
By 2005 they had essentially monopolised the game.
The group's scheme came to light in a recently-published report by the state's inspector general, the Boston Globe reports.
It is thought lottery officials found out about the loophole in 2010 - or maybe earlier - but did not act because it was bringing in so much money, the report added.
However, when journalists began looking into the loophole last summer, lottery chiefs introduced a $5,000 limit on the number of tickets retailers were allowed to sell every day.
The Cash WinFall game was finally halted by Massachusetts state treasurer Steven Grossman earlier this year.
Grossman told the Boston Globe : 'I feel it is important to essentially apologise to the public because a game was created that allowed syndicates to gain special opportunities that others did not have - using machines themselves, partnership with lottery agents, using them after hours. We’re sorry some gained unfair advantage.
'Revenues were tremendous and the lottery benefited, but there were practices that were not appropriate and things done that were not right.'
The report into the Massachusetts syndicate concluded that, while it had been a financial success for the lottery, no officials personally benefited financially from it.
Officials were simply guilty of failing to manage the game and enforcing the rules.
Massachusetts is not the only state to be targeted by gambling networks. The same loophole was used and exploited in a similar lottery in Michigan.I felt so bad for not drawing anything for the last birthday of my lovely friend, I made it a priority to draw something for her birthday today!I know she just loves RariJack works, lol, so naturally I had to draw something with these two.I went for more cute style than shipping. I personally think Applejack looks the best, I love that kinda bashful embarrassed smile.Though I also like Rarity sticking out her tongue. I don't know, I've always found it immensely adorable when ponies do stuff like that.Anywho, I truly hope you like this, Dia! I can't even begin to express how much I love you as an artist and person! Thanks for giving me the motivation to make the transition to digital art in the first place! I hope you love this, and are having a stellar birthday, my dear!Also, here's a Rarity as a final note, because you yourself are a Rarity!_____________________________________________>>><<Today on “The Savage Nation,” conservative talk radio host Michael Savage asked Donald Trump if he plans to moderate his message before the general election.
“The reason you’re popular is because of borders, because of immigration, because of the flood of Muslims coming into the country,” Savage said. “I would almost say, Donald, please don’t let the moderate influences in your campaign take you off-point, it’s what got you where you are. Are you going to modify your campaign and move a little bit more to the center now?”
Trump assured him that he would not adjust his message, telling Savage that “the last thing I should be doing now is changing so I don’t think you have anything to worry about, okay?”
Gabriel Sherman explained yesterday in New York magazine why Trump’s message sounds so much like Savage and other conservative radio commentators:Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s surprise resignation Nov. 4 while in Saudi Arabia left Lebanon reeling in shock.
The fact that Hariri has not yet returned has led Lebanese authorities to believe that he might be under house arrest. But in his much-awaited first interview since his resignation, Hariri said Nov. 12 that he is a free man and would return to Lebanon within days. He hinted at possibly rescinding his resignation, should Hezbollah agree to stay out of regional conflicts.
However, his tired appearance left many believing that he was still speaking under tight control of Saudi Arabia. At one point during the interview, his eyes welled up with tears and he gave an angry look to someone who appeared for a short moment in the background. "Did you notice that? There’s no way he was speaking freely," Beiruti taxi driver Yasser Abdel Sater told Al-Monitor.
"I am happy to hear Saad Hariri’s announcement regarding his imminent return to Lebanon," tweeted Lebanese President Michel Aoun Nov. 13. “We will then be briefed on all the circumstances, issues and concerns that need to be addressed." Aoun has previously said that he would not accept Hariri’s resignation as long as they cannot meet in person in Lebanon.
These developments have left Lebanon's Sunni community, which is traditionally backed by Saudi Arabia, particularly uneasy.
Lebanon’s second-largest city, Tripoli, is 80% Sunni. The city’s walls are usually covered with giant posters of local politicians, sometimes standing next to Saudi rulers such as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
"It’s a city where people like to show proximity with Saudi leaders. Our community feels that it has its back covered by Saudi Arabia, the biggest Sunni country in the region. They have the power of money. Now Iran is trying to play on their field, which is why they are fighting each other," Ahmad Kamareddine, the mayor of Tripoli, told Al-Monitor.
In his resignation speech, Hariri slammed Hezbollah and Iran, accusing them of sowing strife against the Arab world. On Nov. 6, the kingdom announced that Lebanon had declared war against it because of aggression by the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. The declaration came two days after the Saudi military intercepted a missile fired from Yemen over Riyadh’s international airport. Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of backing Yemen’s rebel Houthi group, which the kingdom has been fighting for over two years.
The escalating regional tensions and Saudi Arabia’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric have direct and dangerous implications for Lebanon. Mustafa Alloush, a former member of parliament from Tripoli and a member of the political bureau of Hariri’s party, the Future Movement, is pessimistic. "The only way to get out of the situation is through a major clash. If there is enough money funneled into Lebanon from abroad, a civil war can happen again," he told Al-Monitor. Foreign powers, such as Syria and Israel, had a major influence on Lebanon’s civil war (1975-1990).
But in the streets of Tripoli, no one wants to hear this. Until a few years ago, the city was marred by sporadic deadly fighting. Now that peace has returned, Tripoli has been revamping its infrastructure to attract foreign investors and position itself as a gateway to Syria, once the war is over and reconstructions work starts.
Openly criticizing Saudi Arabia is taboo, even though many recognize how dangerous the kingdom’s recent declarations can be for Lebanon’s stability. "We do not want a new war," Mohamed Harb, a money-changer, told Al-Monitor. "We are not like the Shiites. We do not send our children to fight," he added, in reference to Hezbollah sending fighters to support President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Sunnis are not armed in Lebanon.
Much of the blame for Hariri’s resignation is laid on Hezbollah for having put too much pressure on the prime minister. Recently, Hezbollah and its allies, which are part of Hariri’s government, were pressing him to normalize relations with Syria, even though the Lebanese state officially distanced itself from the conflict in 2012.
"The people of Tripoli were not happy with the consensus that was established between Hezbollah, Saad Hariri and President Aoun [to form a government together]," Tripoli’s mufti, Malek al-Chaar, told Al-Monitor. "The next government needs to be firmer with Hezbollah." According to him, the international community should increase "diplomatic and economic sanctions" against Iran, instead of going down the military route.
Nobody in Tripoli was convinced by the call for calm issued by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah Nov. 5, the day after Hariri’s resignation. "It’s purely decorative," argued Alloush. "Nasrallah cannot call for calm and stay armed. Instead, he should hand over his weapons to the Lebanese army."
With Hariri’s resignation, Sunni leaders with a hawkish stance against Hezbollah are trying to fill the void, such as Ashraf Rifi, who won Tripoli’s local elections in May 2016 against a list backed by Hariri. He resigned as justice minister a few months prior to the elections, in protest at what he described as the dominant role occupied by Hezbollah.
In a souk, posters of Rifi were being put up last week by local furniture shop owner Abu Yassine Sharaf Eddine. Some more recent ones feature Prince Mohammed. "I supported Ashraf Rifi during the last elections’ campaign," he told Al-Monitor. For Sharaf Eddine, Rifi is the only Sunni leader with a strong enough position against Hezbollah and Iran. By Nov. 12, all political posters were banned in Tripoli, after a poster of Prince Mohammed was burned over the weekend.
But for most of Tripoli’s residents, politics are not a pressing matter in comparison with everyday worries. The city is considered to be the poorest in Lebanon. According to Alloush, one-third of its men are unemployed and only 40% of the population votes. In the main square, dozens of taxis stand in line waiting for customers. "I never vote," taxi driver Mohammad Badra told Al-Monitor, adding that he does not make more than 20,000 Lebanese pounds a day ($13). "I would only vote for a politician who offers new job opportunities, and no one has done that recently."
For jeweler Omar Namel, the political scene in Lebanon is an "embarrassment." He has a scar on his leg caused by a grenade exploding next to him in 2012 during sectarian clashes. "I want to offer my 4-year-old daughter education opportunities like politicians’ children who can go abroad. But unfortunately, I cannot. Lebanon deserves better than politicians like Saad Hariri, or anyone else," he told Al-Monitor.Growing Like Crystals
Traditionally, computer microchips are made of the semiconductor silicon. Silicon is turned into wafers where complex circuitry is carved—but there’s a limit to this complexity and to the chips’ processing capacity, and it’s coming soon.
Scientist from IBM are ushering in a revolution of microchip design by seeking to use carbon nanotubes. The researchers theorize that these nanotube chips could use less electricity, and be six to ten times faster than silicon-based ones.
The difficulty with carbon nanotubes is that their tiny size makes them hard to work with—they are basically tiny tubes whose walls are just one carbon atom thick. Unlike with silicon, chip makers can’t carve carbon nanotubes into their intended circuit patterns, nor arrange the tubules one by one.
The materials scientists at IBM are addressing this by borrowing a trick from nature. Using chemistry, they developed a method to coax the carbon nanotubes into the desired structures. The developers described it to be similar to how crystals grow.This light painting photograph was created by a group of students over in Germany using a swarm of seven Roomba automated vacuum cleaners. Each one had a different colored LED light attached to the top, making the resulting photo look like some kind of robotic Jackson Pollock painting. There’s actually an entire Flickr group dedicated to using Roombas for light painting — check it out of you have one of these robot minions serving you in your home.
Check out more photos in the Roomba Art group pool.
Roomba Art (via ALTFoto)
Image credits: IBR Roomba Swarm in the Dark IV by IBRoomba, Roomba Long Exposure by bartlec, IBR Roomba Swarm in the Dark I by IBRoomba, roomba by zim2411, IBR Roomba Swarm in the Dark VI by IBRoombaThe video caused an uproar.
The animal rights group, Mercy for Animals, had shot hidden camera footage in early 2015 which included video of countless chickens crushed into tiny red transport cases.
As the cases arrived at Maple Lodge Farms – Canada’s largest independent poultry processing plant – a worker in a white jacket and rubber boots forcefully slung the cases, containing live chickens, onto a conveyor belt.
Maple Lodge got caught, but many other transport companies and processing facilities get away with murder because when it comes to transporting animals in Canada, the country lags far behind other civilized jurisdictions in the world.
And despite the best efforts and concerted lobbying of animal advocates, they’ve had no luck in getting the regulations changed for 10 years now.
Nearly 700-million animals were hauled from farms to slaughterhouses last year. The number of companies that transported them is unknown - a spokesperson at the Canadian Trucking Alliance said he didn't know of any statistics on animal transport - but one thing animal advocates insist on is that the birds, pigs and cows that go to the abattoirs suffer terribly before they're slaughtered.
An exterior shot from the hidden footage shot at Maple Lodge shows a semi-trailer pulling up to the plant. The truck is coated in snow and the chickens appear exposed to the cold and elements. Inside their cages, many have their wings, heads or other body parts trapped and smashed in transport cage doors.
Headquartered in Brampton, Ontario, Maple Lodge’s website declares its chicken comes “naturally from the farm, made with natural ingredients.”
The food processor, established in 1955, does over $50-million annually in business.
Video of maplelodgefarmspublicenglish
Undercover video showing the treatment of chickens. Video courtesy of Mercy for Animals
“What is particularly noteworthy is that in Canada we fall far behind every other Western country as it relates to animal transportation,” contends Krista Hiddema, the managing director of Mercy for Animals.
When it comes to how live, breathing animals are shipped to slaughter, Canada’s regulations fall well behind the standards of Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and the United States.
“I think it has everything to do with the Conservative government over the last decade failing to update the regulations,” Hiddema says, who estimates eight million animals die in transport annually.
Out of step with animal welfare science
Barbara Cartwright, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, agrees. She calls the transportation regulations out of date and out of step with animal welfare science.
“We have been calling and working for unfortunately more than a decade to get these transportation regulations updated to better protect the welfare of animals that are being transported to slaughter,” Cartwright says.
It’s obvious the laws need to be addressed. While from farm to table sounds appetizing, the truth about how chicken, pork and beef arrives on dinner plates is less than palatable.
It wasn’t the first time Maple Lodge Farms had come to the public’s attention for its transportation practices, for instance.
In 2014, the Ontario Court of Justice in Brampton, Ontario fined the processor $80,000, assessed additional victim fine surcharges of $13,800, and issued a probation order that required Maple Lodge to invest no less than $1-million over three years in its animal transportation operations.
The sentencing came after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) laid charges in 2010 against the company for injury and “undue suffering” of chickens caused by exposure to weather or inadequate ventilation during transportation.
Simply put, thousands of the birds froze to death on the trucks.
The court also ordered the company to post a summary of facts supporting the convictions in a prominent place on their website. Today, that summary is nowhere to be seen.
Maple Lodge's claims don't fly with everyone
Maple Lodge does specify at length on its website actions it has taken in the transportation of animals. The company says it has spent more than $1.5 million on research to improve live bird transportation and has enlisted a committee of experts: veterinarians, ventilation experts, animal behaviourists and others – to find solutions to the “complex and challenging issue.”
The committee is researching such things as air-flow through trailers, and temperature and humidity gradients.
Maple Lodge also says it enforces a zero tolerance policy for any employees found in violation of humane care practices and has added two full-time certified animal welfare auditors to its team.
According to the company, the transportation of live birds is a surprisingly complicated issue. It notes that chickens pant like dogs to regulate body temperatures, creating a build-up of condensation in the trailers, which can later freeze in cold conditions or intensify heat in warm weather.
Maple Lodge says working to create micro-climates insides the trailers to maintain comfortable conditions for the chickens is controversial within the industry with conflicting research over how to achieve that goal. “It is not unfortunately a quick fix….”
But the company’s claims don’t fly with everyone. In April 2015, Animal Justice Canada filed a complaint against Maple Lodge with CFIA and the federal competition bureau. Among other things the complaint addressed Maple Lodge’s record of transporting live birds.
The Competition Bureau informed Anna Pippus, Animal Justice’s director of farmed animal advocacy, in late January that it was not going to pursue the complaint and would let CFIA handle the issue.
“In my opinion, this is simply passing the buck.” Pippus says. “The Competition Bureau has a mandate to address false advertising that impacts the proper functioning of a competitive marketplace.
“Lying to consumers about how chickens are treated is anti-competitive behaviour because, among other things, it prevents consumers from understanding why it's important to select ethical vegetarian alternatives.”
If Maple Lodge were the only company implicated in poor transport practices, it might not be an issue. But that’s not the case.
In 2014, Mercy for Animals released another video with undercover footage, this one filmed at the Western Hog Exchange, a pig assembly yard in Alberta.
The video showed pigs dying from stress, dehydration and severe injuries sustained during transport after being trucked hundreds of kilometres in overcrowded semi-trailers.
Video of WATCH: Hidden-Camera Video Reveals the Horrors of Live Animal Transport
Hidden camera footage of hog transportation. Video courtesy of Mercy for Animals
That video prompted a letter from a number of animal rights groups to then Conservative Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Gerry Ritz. Calling for changes to the legislation, the groups wrote: “Canadians are compassionate people who have no appetite for animal abuse.
“Yet our transport regulations are at odds with Canadian values, allowing severe animal suffering to flourish.”
Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Farmed Animals have repeatedly filmed video of animals being abused during transport. Their videos include footage of the overuse of electric prods on pigs, and turkeys being forcibly flung into crates by laughing workers.
Hog being kicked during transport in a video still. Image courtesy of Mercy for Animals
Are these unusual examples, exceptional and rare cases of animal abuse?
Not according to Cartwright. "Yes, they do get away with it more often than not. And a lot of it has to do with lack of funds for proper enforcement, which has to be put in place along with modernizing the transportation regulations," she says.
While CFIA was unable to provide National Observer as to how many enforcement officers it has working in the field or its budget, a clue might be found in CFIA’s 2014-15 Report on Plans and Priorities under the guidance of then federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose. The "priorities" called for a $35-million cut to the CFIA, which was carried out, in 2015.
Training for livestock transport
Within the industry, training is voluntary and largely provided through a group called Canadian Livestock Transport. They provide an industry-led program that offers drivers, handlers and dispatchers some five hours of training.
Livestock welfare specialists or individuals who previously hauled livestock teach the drivers modules that deal with cattle, sheep, hogs, horses and poultry. Some 2,000 drivers have taken the course, but Geraldine Auston, the national coordinator for the program, says they haven’t “touched” everybody. Auston is also the general manager for the B.C. Pork Producers' Association.
Auston says the program is the same for all the species. “I like to call it the sandwich,” she says. “The bread is all the same.”
The “bread” deals with the Canadian laws and regulations. The “filling” is instruction specific to the handling and behaviour of each species. The courses cover such things as pre-trip planning, things they may encounter on the road, and considerations when they arrive at the destination.
So is the program working? Are the animals experiencing better treatment?
“I would have never said they were poorly treated in transport beforehand,” Auston says.
Pigs jammed together during transport. Image courtesy of Mercy for Animals
She acknowledges that truckers have to deal with extreme weather conditions, but says if trucks are boarded up the proper way with enough ventilation, the animals are comfortable. “The animals are warm animals,” she says, meaning they keep each other warm during cold trips.
Auston believes drivers are doing their very best to fix the situation. Talking about the Maple Lodge incidents, she says, “We firmly believe things will go wrong in anything. Anyone does. It’s not specific to this situation.
“But it’s what you do about it when things go wrong that matter. We know that things go wrong in livestock transport as they do in everything. It’s about mitigating that for the future, so that we don’t have issues.”
Except that there are issues.
Currently, the legislation for the transport of farm animals is not adequate, according to the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals. Pigs, horses and chickens may be transported 36 hours without water, food or a rest stop. Within Canada, cows, sheep and goats can go 52 hours without those amenities. Impatient truckers use electric prods on the animals; jostling in overcrowded trucks can cause some animals to be crushed, while others suffocate from inadequate ventilation.
More than 10 years later groups are still waiting for changes to the legislation
Yet for all that the legislation remains unchanged. Cartwright points out the current legislation was written decades ago and is vague, making it difficult to enforce. Nor are the regulations in step with current animal science.
“There’s a number of issues that needs to be improved and the government has been dragging its feet on this for more than a decade,” Cartwright says.
Nor have the advocacy groups been able to determine the cause of the delay. Changing the regulations is a simple process. The regulations don’t have to go through a bill reading in Parliament; rather, they are subjected to a public consultation and then a gazetting process.
“What we’re missing here is the will to update the regulations,” Cartwright says.
Hiddema says Mercy for Animals is now calling on the new Liberal Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister, Lawrence MacAulay, to “stand up and quickly update these horrendous animal transportation regulations.”
She might be waiting awhile.
The response from a National Observer query to CFIA media relations brought back the tepid answers that “The Government of Canada continues to review the humane transport provisions in the Health of Animals Regulations.”
The agency says the proposed changes will improve animal welfare, better align the regulations with international standards, reflect current industry practices and animal needs, and will improve enforcement capabilities, among other things.
There’s only one catch: there’s still no timeline as to when all of this might happen. And in the meantime the animals will continue to suffer.
“That’s unfortunately what we’ve heard for a long time, is that they [the regulations] are coming,” Cartwright says. “They’re working on it and there’s not a whole lot to say - which is unacceptable.”Chelsea Manning will come back to a world that has changed even more than she has.
When the Army soldier was convicted by court martial in July 2013 for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks, coming out as a transgender woman shortly thereafter, public awareness of transgender issues was nowhere near what it is today.
Transgender soldiers could not serve openly in the military. The word “transgender” had never been uttered in a State of the Union address. There were no landmark transgender rights cases headed to the Supreme Court. Laverne Cox had just started her high-profile role in Orange is the New Black. North Carolina had sparked national backlash with discriminatory legislation that specifically targeted transgender bathroom use, nor had Target publicly defended its restroom policy. Caitlyn Jenner went by another name.
So when Manning is finally released on May 17—much earlier than she would have been had President Obama not commuted the remainder her decades-long prison sentence this January—what place will she find, if any, in the transgender movement of 2017?
“I don’t imagine her living a private life,” said Chase Strangio, Manning’s lawyer and a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, in an interview with The Daily Beast. “I imagine her being incredibly engaged on issues that she cares about—particularly on issues of trans justice.”
Manning herself is not scheduling new interviews at this time, according to a representative who told The Daily Beast: “We are focused on Chelsea’s security and resettlement now and [in] the months immediately following her release.”
In a lengthy statement released earlier this month, Manning said, “For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea. I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world.”
At the end of the statement, Manning hinted at possible post-release activism: “I hope to take the lessons that I have learned, the love that I have been given, and the hope that I have to work toward making life better for others.”
What shape that work will take, however, remains to be seen. In the immediate aftermath of her release, Manning will remain on active duty as an Army private and be eligible for health care benefits pending the ongoing appeal of her court-martial conviction, as USA Today’s Tom Vanden Brook reported, noting that she could be dishonorably discharged if the appeal is not successful.
In the meantime, Manning will not be paid and Strangio has so far raised $135,000 through a GoFundMe to cover her immediate living expenses.
“The focus for everyone [right now] is just getting her out of custody safely, with tools and resources set up to support her in the coming days, and weeks, and months,” said Strangio.
Manning will be primarily focused on the transition out of prison the immediate aftermath of her release, said Strangio.
Held in a men’s facility at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth and forced to conform to male grooming standards, the Army private successfully advocated for access to medically necessary transition-related health care, receiving approval for hormone therapy in 2015 and receiving approval for sex reassignment surgery the following year after a hunger strike.
She has reportedly attempted suicide twice, receiving a solitary confinement sentence after one attempt.
Something as seemingly simple as being able to grow out her hair will be incredibly meaningful to Manning, who made reference to her “routinely forced haircuts” in her statement.
Despite the fact that Manning has been allowed female hormones for years, she has been required to keep her hair no longer than two inches long. This requirement explains why—as the GoFundMe noted—Manning still “prefers” prison photos showing her with short hair rather than other images showing her wearing a wig: “They capture the reality of her prison life.”
That reality is about to change—and so, too, will Manning’s ability to express her gender. For those who have advocated for her rights from outside of prison, Strangio included, merely watching her transition will be gratifying.
“When the commutation came down [in January], I was so emotional for so many reasons,” he said. “But perhaps the most visceral feeling that I had in that moment was this overwhelming relief—to the point that I was feeling physical relief—just thinking about her ability to control her body and her expression of her gender for the first time in so many years.”
But it won’t be too long, Strangio anticipates, before Manning reent |
here."
Trump on Sunday dismissed the CIA's conclusion that Russia tried to help his campaign as "ridiculous."
McConnell emphasized that he has faith in the CIA and the entire U.S. intelligence community. "The CIA is filled with selfless patriots, many of whom anonymously risk their lives for the American people," McConnell said.
McConnell’s emphasis on having the Senate Intelligence Committee handle the probe could limit public access to the investigation.
A group of high-ranking Senate Democrats said Monday they hope to complement congressional investigations with an independent, nonpartisan commission to publicly investigate Russian interference with the election and recommend a response. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also said Monday that she supports calls for such a panel by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
"The American people deserve a nonpartisan, transparent public investigation into this insidious attack on our democratic institutions,” said Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. “As a nation, it’s time to get to the bottom of it and learn what we can do to prevent it from ever happening again."
Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, who will be the top-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee in the next Congress, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who will be the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, want a commission to conduct hearings and report their findings to Congress within 18 months. No members of Congress would serve on the panel, which would be appointed by a bipartisan group of congressional leaders.
However, McConnell said he has "every confidence" in the Senate Intelligence Committee to "review this matter in a responsible manner."
"The Obama administration is also now launching a review, and when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence completes its review, there will be additional information released to the public in a responsible manner," he said.
McCain said on CBS This Morning that he can’t yet say whether the Russians intended to help elect Trump. That’s why the Armed Services Committee that he leads will work with the Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee to “uncover this whole situation," McCain said.
"There’s no doubt that Russians and others have hacked," McCain said. "Now the question is the intention. But the larger issue that the Armed Services Committee and others are looking into is the whole issue of cyber... That’s the only form of possible conflict where our adversaries have an advantage over us."
Schumer said on Twitter that he welcomes McConnell's support for a "thorough bipartisan investigation." Schumer also said that Congress "must find out how (the hacks) happened and stop future attacks."
We welcome @SenateMajLdr's support for a thorough bipartisan investigation into reports that Russia interfered with the 2016 election. — Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) December 12, 2016
Contributing: David Jackson
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2hg4ZwWCoordinates:
Annandale High School is a public high school in Annandale, Virginia, United States.[2] It is part of the Fairfax County Public Schools system.
The school's student body has been well-recognized for its high level of racial and cultural diversity since at least the 1980s.[3] Students derive from over 90 countries and speak more than 50 languages.[4]
The school's diverse student body has been noted by multiple US presidential administrations. In 1998, AHS was chosen by then-President Bill Clinton's Race Initiative Advisory Board as the site and focus of round-table discussions on race and education.[3] In 2006, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings visited Annandale to commend the school's diverse language programs, and to announce a $188,000 grant for Fairfax County Public Schools to expand Arabic and Chinese programs.[5] And in October 2011, AHS was visited by First Lady Michelle Obama and First Lady of South Korea Kim Yoon-ok, who spoke at a school ceremony celebrating education and the school's diverse ethnic composition.[4]
AHS is the publishing site and focus of The A-Blast Newspaper, a Washington Post YJDP paper that was consistently honored as one of the top-10 high school newspapers in the country from the late 1990s to 2009 by the National Scholastic Press Association and the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
Historically AHS has also had a competitive football program. The Atoms have won six state championships since 1965, and were ranked as the best high school football team in the country by the National Sports Service after completing an undefeated season in 1978.[12] The team has seen district-wide and sporadic statewide success since the mid-1990s.
Recent history and programs [ edit ]
Recognition of diversity [ edit ]
Annandale was chosen in 1998 as the site and focus of the Race Initiative Advisory Board's round-table discussions on race and education.[3] The event was hosted by members of the board, including Thomas Kean and William Winter, and chaired by historian John Hope Franklin.[3] The discussions were held as part of President Bill Clinton's One America Initiative.[3]
In 2006, then-Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings visited Annandale to announce that a $188,000 grant would be given to Fairfax County Public Schools to expand Arabic and Chinese programs, as part of the National Security Language Initiative.[5] At the time, Annandale students taking Arabic were among "the less than 1 percent of high school students studying languages deemed critical."[5]
In October 2011, AHS was again noted by the White House for its cultural diversity, hosting a visit by First Lady Michelle Obama and First Lady of South Korea Kim Yoon-ok, both of whom praised the school's widespread ethic make-up in speeches to the student body.[4] During her address, Obama said of AHS, “This is the perfect place for you to find out who you are and what you want to become, and that’s really what education is all about.”[4] The visits were accompanied by a ceremony featuring Grammy-nominated violinist Jennifer Koh.[13] At the time, Madame Kim was traveling on a state visit to the US with her husband, Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who were invited as guests of honor to a White House dinner that week after Congress approved the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement.[14] During the 2009–2010 school year, Korean and other Asian-Americans represented 22 percent of the AHS student body.[15]
Demographics [ edit ]
In 2011–2012, Annandale's student body was 32.28% Hispanic, 23.97% White, 24.97% Asian, 16.37% Black and 2.41% other.[16] During the 2011–2012 school year, 51.89% of the student body received free or reduced price lunch.[17] 74.79% of the school was proficient in English.[16] No single racial group formed the majority. AHS is considered one of the most diverse schools among FCPS, itself one of the most diverse school districts in the country.[4]
The 2009–2010 school year marked the first year that Hispanic students represented a plurality of Annandale students, and the first year in the school's history that any racial group other than White students represented a plurality within the student body.[15] In fact, White students represent the only group not to see consistent growth in percentage student body representation over the last three years.[15]
The A-Blast [ edit ]
The A-Blast is Annandale High School's student-run, student-sponsored newspaper. It was consistently recognized as one of the top-10, +17-page high school newspapers in the country from the late 1990s to 2009, during which the paper won a number of National Scholastic Press Association Pacemaker Awards, placed among the Best-in-Show at a variety of NSPA national conventions, and won the Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold Crown Award (in 2009).[6][7][8][9][10][11] The A-Blast has also been a national fore-runner among high school papers for publishing online content, being one of the first fourteen newspapers in the country to be awarded the NSPA's Pacemaker Award for an Online Edition.[18] The A-Blast, in 2009, had adopted a new multimedia program which trains journalism students to create projects pertaining to the news around Annandale High School, and is currently in its fourth production year.
The A-Blast is a Washington Post Young Journalists Development Program Paper.[19] The paper's writers and editors receive publishing and content-related guidance from Post professional staff, and periodically visit The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, D.C., for collaborative workshops. A-Blast editors regularly participate in Post programs for high school students, including the High School Writing Seminar and the High School Journalism Workshop.[20] The A-Blast is printed on The Washington Post press in Springfield, VA.[19]
The A-Blast uses WordPress as its technology platform and is hosted by School Newspapers Online.
In 50 years, Annandale has won six football state championships (1965, 1967, 1972, 1978, 1993, and 1994) and numerous district titles as a member of both the Potomac District (Pre-resdistricting) and the Patriot District (Post redistricting). They are now in the Gunston District.[21] After an undefeated season in 1978, Annandale ended the year ranked #1 in the nation by the National Sports Service.[12] Annandale won Patriot District titles in 2005, 2006,2007, and 2009 (shared with West Springfield High School), but the Atoms fell to their first round opponents each year.
Additional history [ edit ]
Opening its doors in 1954, Annandale High School had 1,000 students, ranging in grades eight-eleven. During this time, the students voted to call themselves "Atoms" after the influence from president Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech called "Atoms for Peace." In the late 1980s, Annandale High School was involved in the creation of the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHHST), ranked as the best high school in the country in 2010 by US News and World Report.[22] TJHSST is one of 18 Virginia Governor's Schools.
The former Thomas Jefferson High School (Jefferson, TJHS), originally occupied the FCPS building of the current TJHSST. Over a two-year period, from 1985 to 1987, the Jefferson students were merged into Annandale. The former TJHS students, now Annandale seniors, were appropriately given the one-time special distinction to use a dual name, TJHS/AHS, for school year 1987–88. No students from Jefferson or TJHSST graduated in 1988.
Academics [ edit ]
Rankings [ edit ]
Annandale High School was ranked #122, with a score of 1.391, in The Washington Post's 2010 Challenge Index, an annual ranking of public high schools in the Washington Metropolitan Area.[23] Each school's score, and rank, was based on a simple formula: "divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2009 by the number of graduating seniors."[23] 172 schools were ranked in 2010.[23] In 2008 Annandale placed #105 (out of 166) in the Challenge Index, with a score of 1.542,[24] and in 2007 it was ranked #107 (out of 190), with a score of 1.425.[25]
Annandale/Fairfax County Public Schools realignment [ edit ]
In early 2010, the Annandale Border Control Force was established by local parent and community groups. Their goal was to realign the school borders by sending residents of Annandale to adjacent county schools such as Falls Church High School and sending Springfield residents to Lake Braddock Secondary School in an effort to address the overcrowding at Annandale High School. The issue has been long and contentious with some residents and students loyal to Annandale. Several options for preventing the realigning and reassigning of students of certain housing developments to different middle and high schools were suggested to the county school board. A major concern to the Annandale parent and community groups included losing sections of the Annandale community which would change the diverse demographics of the school.
Enrollment [ edit ]
Enrollment at AHS during the 2009–2010 school year was 2,257 students.[15] Enrollment at the school reached over 2,000 students for the first time during the 1995–1996 school year.[17] After that year, enrollment grew each year for a decade before reaching 2,568 students during the 2003–2004 school year.[17] Since then, enrollment has experienced non-streaking growth and decline, though has remained at over 2,000 students.[17] During the 2007–2008 school year, enrollment reached a ten-year low of 2,045 students.[17]
Academic programs [ edit ]
AHS has the following FCPS Programs:
Notable alumni [ edit ]
Timothy Coyne Class of 1979 Public Defender and 2017 Citizen of the Year for the Top of Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Winchester Va.
Literature [ edit ]
Kugler, Eileen Gale (2003). Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools Are Good For All Kids. Scarecrow Education Press.Image copyright AFP Image caption Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, has increased taxes on imports over the past two years
Standing in his big, but nearly empty, warehouse, Hamam al-Yazjji, is struggling to keep his business alive.
It is not just the daily hardships of making a living in besieged Gaza that are hitting him hard, but the high taxes imposed by Islamist group Hamas, which controls the tiny coastal strip.
Hamas has recently further raised taxes after a drop in financial support from allies, such as Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the collapse of its tunnel trade with people in Egypt.
"I used to import tens of food items from around the world, but in the last two years Hamas makes it almost impossible to make a profit because of the high taxes they imposed," says Mr Yazjji, who is based north of Gaza City.
Image caption Hamam al-Yazjji has found it increasingly difficult to make a living because of the multiple taxes
Consumers and businesses in Gaza are hit three times by tax.
Israel collect taxes on imports into Gaza and the West Bank on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and transfers the money to the PA after deducting a small administrative fee.
"We pay three different types of tax on any imported products - to Israel, to the Palestinian Authority and to Hamas," Mr Yazjji says.
According to Hamas finance ministry official Youssif al-Kayali, the group collects $15m (£11m) a month in taxation.
Price hikes
Hamas and the PA agreed to form a unity government in 2014 to end years of tension, but it has never been properly implemented and the Islamist movement is still the de facto power in Gaza.
It has also faced a crippling blockade by Israel and Egypt and financial sanctions from other countries since it won Palestinian elections in 2006.
When Hamas raised taxes about three months ago, it pushed up the price of about 400 imported products by 20%.
Buying a car in Gaza 42% of the purchase price is tax Skoda Octavia is the most popular car in Gaza
$12,335 Cost of second-hand 2013-14 Octavia in Europe
$7,220 Taxes and duties applied by Israel and Palestinian Authority
$1,805 Import duty applied by Hamas-run authorities in Gaza
Among the products most affected are cigarettes, which have gone up by 35% since March, and cars, which are 25% more expensive.
Hamas also imposed a $1,000 annual licensing fee on cafes, restaurants and hotels.
The movement says funds will be used to pay its 40,000 civil servants, who have not received regular full salaries in more than two years.
"We will collect taxes on secondary goods only - such as clothing, fruits, or electrical appliances. Flour, rice, sugar, medicines and other basic goods will not be taxed," Said Ahmad Abu Halbiya, a Hamas member of parliament, said.
The tax increase "will benefit the citizens of Gaza - especially the civil servants and security forces that need money to feed their families," he said.
Loss of support
An unknown amount of money is spent by Hamas on weapons and military infrastructure, but this too is under pressure.
Iran provided significant financial and military aid to Hamas from early 2006 - amounting to $23m a month, according to Palestinian political analyst Fathi Sabbah.
But Tehran, the main backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, dramatically reduced its support in early 2012, when Hamas refused to take sides in the Syrian civil war.
The movement also lost about $10m a month, said Mr Sabbah, when Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was overthrown in 2013.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Egypt's destruction of the tunnels has cost Hamas heavily
Gaza's citizens have increasingly picked up the bill as Hamas seeks to replenish its depleted funds.
After Mr Morsi was ousted, Hamas lost a second key source of income when Egyptian forces destroyed tunnels it said were used by militants to smuggle weapons into Sinai.
Hamas used to make millions of dollars from taxes it imposed on goods brought through the tunnels. The recent tax increases though have come at a price.
"Hamas has lost a great deal of its popularity by imposing taxes to pay the salaries of public workers," says Mr Sabbah.
And Hamas's financial crisis is unlikely to be solved soon with Israel and Egypt continuing their border closures amid fear of attack by militants from Gaza.
So the Islamist movement is forced to manage and make do, in the hope that events in the Middle East may one day turn in its favour.2016 Presidential Power Rankings: Republicans
Let us preface these 2016 Presidential Power Rankings by saying we are not Charlie Cook. Our official Wonk Report 2016 Presidential Power Rankings are not based on any science or historical trends; they are simply a fun exercise to gauge the lay of the land and read the political tea leaves. Any events, interviews, performances in debates, campaign strategies, media attention, momentum, polling data (you get the idea) of the negative and/or positive variety will obviously have an impact. We will update these rankings every few weeks.
Tier One – The Front-Runners
Rubio occupying the top slot is mainly due to the fact that we here at Wonk Report feel he is one of only two Republican candidates that could defeat Hillary in a national election. He may not be leading in polls or have a huge base of support among the conservative base right now; however, we think he has a great shot to win them over once the process starts. Nationally the only thing people associate Rubio with is the taking a drink of water gaff when responding to Obama’s State of the Union Address a few years back. Once people realize how smart he is and see his platform we think he will become the main frontrunner. One member of Wonk Report’s staff is convinced that a Marco Rubio & Condoleezza Rice ticket would win the White House.
Walker would likely have held the top spot a month or two ago. However, the Tea Party favorite has let some flaws in his political armor surface that may hinder his ability to beat out a guy like Rubio. If Walker continues to let a hostile media rattle him, he will fade from the top. Walker’s strengths are his record as governor and his performance in polls despite the recent events. We are Wonk Report are bearish on his ability to beat Hillary Clinton in a national election, but that may not matter to the conservatives voting in primaries.
Jeb was the early favorite and has been able to maintain a solid showing in polls despite avoiding the spotlight the past month or two. The former governor will likely do very well in the fundraising department compared to his competitors. The problem for Bush is – well – his last name. Many conservatives have less than fond memories of his brother but we don’t feel that is the biggest issue for Bush to overcome. The biggest issue for Jeb to overcome is the fact that is isn’t very charismatic. That same flaw doomed Hillary Clinton when she took on Obama back in 2008. We feel that 2016 could play out very similarly with a young, charismatic, fresh, smart candidate like Rubio taking an early lead over Bush and never looking back.
Tier Two – The Libertarian Conservative
One of these years a Libertarian-Conservative will connect with the conservative base and win the nomination. We are just not sure that 2016 will be the year. Rand Paul’s advantages are many: he connects with young voters in a way none of his opponents can match, he is creative and knows how to use social media to his advantage, while he can be hostile (like Walker) to the media – he can pull it off a little more naturally (like Obama). We at Wonk Report feel that Paul is the other Republican candidate that can defeat Hillary in a national election. We think that the debates will really be the time for Paul (and Rubio) to shine. Paul should be 2nd or 3rd on this list but we wanted to give him his own category to break in this initial power ranking.
Tier Three – The Dark Horse
Jindal may be the smartest person in either the Republican or Democrat primaries (sorry Rubio and Warren). However, being the smartest person in the room can often times be a disadvantage in presidential elections. Jindal is also from a safe Republican state with little national recognition – so he has a few strikes against him. That being said we can envision a scenario where once the national attention turns to the primaries Jindal may very well be the man with the best vision, platform and campaign strategy. We have a feeling that if he can somehow grab the lead in the Republican primary he would not stumble and let it fall through his fingers.
Tier Four – Spotlight Seekers
Two or three years ago Christie would have found himself in the top tier on this list, heck he might even have that tier all to himself. However, Christie annoyed many conservatives with how he praised Obama’s handling of the Hurricane Sandy disaster and those same conservatives feel that is what swayed the election in Obama’s favor. The controversies are also a big negative. Those two factors really pushed Christie from the pole position to a place where he has little to no chance of winning the nomination. Any campaign by Christie would merely be to keep his name in the spotlight and stay relevant in political circles.
We just can’t see Cruz winning the nomination. Even the most ardent conservative homer would have an impossible time trying to come up with ways that Cruz could defeat Hillary. Everyone above Cruz on this list you can make at least a few rational arguments for their chances vs Hillary…but Cruz is just too polarizing and too divisive to actually connect with independents and young voters. We feel that Cruz is mainly in the race to make sure the Tea Party has a voice during the debates and to try and shift national focus on the negative aspects of the current Administration and a potential Hillary Administration.
* You could throw in Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum etc. in this tier as well – We picked Christie and Cruz because they actually can be real candidates – the others are just along to try and derail the eventual Republican nominee & to give Saturday Night Live some skit ideas.
Tier Five – The Outsider
Carson really doesn’t have a shot to win the nomination. However, he deserves a mention and spot on this list for a few reasons. We feel he is running because he truly cares about this country and feels that he can help. Additionally, he is a political outsider, with no ties to D.C. or politics which enables him to put forth new and fresh ideas that his party can rally behind. Lastly, if a Republican were to win the White House in 2016 – Carson would be in line for a Cabinet or Ambassador nomination.
Our V.P. Nomination Power Rankings will come in a few months but here is a little preview:
Top VP Picks for Rubio:
Condoleeza Rice
Rand Paul
Susana Martinez
Nikki Haley
Carly Fiorina
Top VP picks for Walker & Bush:Lou Williams and Roy Hibbert are headed to Los Angeles to play for the 2015-16 Lakers, according to NBA news gods Adrian Wojnarowski and Marc Stein.
The Lakers actively pursued many big name free agents this offseason, holding high profile meetings with LaMarcus Aldridge and DeAndre Jordan, as well as courting second tier big men, Robin Lopez and Greg Monroe. Aldridge has announced his intent to sign with the Spurs, Jordan with the Mavs, Lopez with the Knicks, and Monroe with the Bucks, leaving the Lakers to search for a backup plan at the center position.
Hibbert has fallen out of favor in Indiana, after two straight seasons in which he underperformed the organization's expectations. The Pacers have signaled a desire to move on from Hibbert, publicly urging him to opt out of his onerous contract, and then drafting young big man Myles Turner at the 11th spot in the 2015 Draft. After Hibbert ignored the wishes of Bird and co. by opting in, they have sought to offload his $15.5 million deal to the highest bidder.
Hibbert averaged 10 points, 7 rebounds, 2 blocks, and 18 "verticality" comments in 25 minutes per game last year.
Williams, meanwhile, is yet another gunner to add to a backcourt full of them. He has agreed to a 3-year, $21 million contract with the Lakers. The deal strikes me as problematic for the Lakers, as their Top 5 perimeter players will want the ball, and none of them seem likely to want to give up their touches. Between Nick Young, Kobe Bryant, Jordan Clarkson, and Williams, no player had a usage rate below 23% last year, and D'Angelo Russell surely expected to be running the show after being drafted second overall.
Williams averaged 15 points and 2 assists in 25 minutes per game for the Toronto Raptors.
Update: According to Marc Spears, of Yahoo, the Lakers have acquired Brandon Bass, who has played for the Celtics since 2011. Bass is a durable power forward who has only missed one game in the last 3 seasons, and averaged 9 points and 4.5 rebounds in 23 minutes per game last year.
The Lakers' hypothetical opening day roster could look like this:
PG Lou Williams / D'Angelo Russell
SG Jordan Clarkson / Jabari Brown
SF Kobe Bryant / Nick Young
PF Julius Randle / Brandon Bass / Ryan Kelly / Larry Nance Jr.
C Roy Hibbert / Tarik Black / Bob Sacre
The signing of Hibbert will likely improve a defense that placed 29th out of 30 teams last year. Williams may improve the offense marginally, simply by virtue of being a slightly more efficient gunner than the other three on the team.
These moves look good for the Sixers, who own the Lakers' Top 3 protected 2016 pick. Neither player moves the needle enough to turn the Lakers into even a fringe playoff contender, but they are likely to strengthen the team enough to help avoid a bottom three finish.The young man in the suit crawled through the small window in the back of the cabin in a way that would send him face forward onto the dirt outside. He couldn’t be seen talking to the likes of us. We held his legs as he crawled out so he wouldn’t fall.
It was the summer of 1978, July I think, in a campground outside Moscow. I was part of a student group touring the then-Soviet Union. On the low-cost tour, we stayed mostly in the campgrounds and hotels Soviet citizens stayed in. Most people kept their distance. Those who did talk had only praise for their nation and hostility for ours.
He Wanted to Talk About Western Music
One of our group was a young Canadian woman, very tall and strikingly pretty, who attracted attention. We learned to let her introduce us, because the Russians liked Canadians a great deal more than they liked Americans.
The man who slipped into our cabin that night was a violinist, apparently very good, good enough to have been brought to the capital to perform. Only a couple years older than us, he wanted to talk about western music, but none of us knew anything about it at the level he wanted to know. He longed for freedom, but not in the abstract. He chafed under a musical establishment that produced what the bureaucrats wanted and hated innovation, and kept musicians like him from knowing anything about the musical world outside the Soviet Union.
The poor man desperately wanted the freedom to pursue his art and his craft. He couldn’t leave the country, even to go to communist eastern Europe, because he wasn’t married. He didn’t have a family the state could hold hostage to keep him from defecting. Sneaking talks with westerners was the closest he could get to the musical freedom he craved.
Our InTourist guide reported on us every evening, and two security agents followed our group. They looked exactly as you’d expect: Big round-faced unhappy looking men in black suits. Our guide told us to pretend we didn’t see them and we tried, but they knew that we knew who they were. For all we and our guest knew that night, they were watching our cabin. If they had been, the young man would — not could, but would — have been sent to a prison camp.
Romanticizing Communism
Recently a Harvard student named Laura M. Nicolae criticized the campus culture for sanitizing and romanticizing communism. Writing in the student newspaper The Crimson, she told the story of her father’s escape from communist Romania and the horrors of life there. She reminded her readers that communist regimes murdered 100 million people.
“My father ran from a government that beat, tortured, and brainwashed its citizens,” she wrote. “His childhood friend disappeared after scrawling an insult about the dictator on the school bathroom wall. His neighbors starved to death from food rations designed to combat ‘obesity.’ As the population dwindled, women were sent to the hospital every month to make sure they were getting pregnant.”
Yet at Harvard, “Depictions of communism on campus paint the ideology as revolutionary or idealistic, overlooking its authoritarian violence. … For many students, casually endorsing communism is a cool, edgy way to gripe about the world.” She noted the popular Ché Guevara t-shirt and jokey remarks about being a communist, and the desire of the new “Leftist Club” to rehabilitate Lenin.
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The American Conservative writer Rod Dreher reported Nicolae’s article and included a long and horrifying excerpt from an interview with the Orthodox priest George Calciu. The Romanian communist state hurt him unspeakably. Read it for more of the history Nicolae described through her father’s life. Rod, clearly angry, titled his article, “This Was Communism, You Fools.”
The elite American university is a peculiar environment and students elsewhere don’t seem to be so foolish. But still, too many people do not know what communism was and what it did. They don’t know what it will do in places like Venezuela. The ignorance is worse among the young, who did not live through the Cold War, but not that much worse.
A YouGov poll conducted in early October for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that most Americans underestimate the number of people communist regimes killed. Only 39% of baby boomers and 53% of “matures,” people who did live through the Cold War, knew the answer. Only about 1 in 5 of those younger did. 21% of all Americans think communism has never been a problem. A majority can’t easily distinguish communism, socialism and fascism.
The Disappointed Violinist
That young violinist risked his freedom and perhaps his life just to talk about music. I felt bad, felt helpless, as we disappointed him. We weren’t musicians of the ability he wanted to talk to. If I remember right, he didn’t want to talk about American politics and culture the way some other Russians I met in secret had.
That is the communism so many Americans don’t understand and too many romanticize.
I remember our guest sitting on a bottom bunk looking down, talking, with his hands clasped between his knees. A friend and I stood guarding the door, not that it would have done any good had the security agents wanted to come in. And I remember holding his legs as we helped him out the back window, knowing that he could get caught and we would never know. I pray he escaped and today is free.
For more on Americans’ ignorance of communism, see his Finding Evil at the Thrift Store.AAA
EKONOMIJA | 07.03.2017 10:45
Dević je u otvorenom pismu optužio Vučića da je na sednici Predsedništva Srpske napredne stranke "zabranio" davanje izjava u vezi sa aferom ATP Vojvodina, i to nakon što je to preduzeće dobilo pravosnažnu, izvršnu sudsku presudu u januaru 2013. godine, vrednu oko 14 miliona evra, kojom je moglo da izadje iz stečaja i nastavi poslovanje."Gospodine Vučiću, odlično znate da je pravosnažnom izvršnom sudskom presudom utvrdjeno da gradske i republičke vlasti nisu ispoštovale svoje obaveze iz ugovora i da su odgovorne za višemilionsku štetu nanetu preduzeću. Da li svojim potezima štitite nosioce javnih funkcija ili ih ucenjujete predmetom u kome su jedini ulog moj kapital koji sam sticao punih 35 godina i sudbina više od 500 radnika koji su nakon stečaja preduzeća ostali bez posla", upitao je Dević."Gospodine Vučiću, svoj kapital sam stekao kao privatnik do 1990. godine, u SFR Jugoslaviji, a ne u nekoj od pljačkaških privatizacija. Tokom vašeg mandata navodno su otvorene istrage protiv onih koji su opljačkali Srbiju, ali nikom od njih ne fali dlaka s glave i oni sada uspešno saradjuju sa vašim rodjenim bratom i ljudima od vašeg poverenja", naveo je Dević.U okviru 24 sporne privatizacije, Evropska komisija je prema izveštajima Saveta za borbu protiv korupcije i uvidom u kompletnu dokumentaciju ATP Vojvodine, utvrdila da je to jedini slučaj u kome je oštećen investitor a ne država Srbija."Iako je reč o najvećoj domaćoj investiciji, od države nisam dobio nikakvu subvenciju, koje se inače daju stranim ulagačima", kazao je Dević.On je dodao da, umesto da razvija posao, već 10 godina vodi sudske postupke jer gradske vlasti u Novom Sadu nakon što je izgradio novu medjumesnu i medjunarodnu autobusku stanicu i specijalizovani servis, nisu sprovele ugovor koji je bio temelj započete investicije, te je preduzeće otišlo u stečaj.They seem to have such sensible, compassionate reasons to make abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy a felony.
"[It] doesn’t prohibit all abortions... and presents a middle ground." —former Nebraska Senator Mike Flood, sponsor of the first state-level ban
"We have a moral obligation to end dangerous late-term abortions in order to protect women and these precious babies." —Rep. Marsha Blackburn, co-sponsor of the proposed national ban
"The dignity of each and every human life is fundamental." —Sen. Marco Rubio, presidential candidate
I’d love to teach these politicians what they are really doing, especially to the dignity of human life. I’d begin the lesson in the cramped office of the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. They’d sit on a lumpy maroon chair and listen as a staffer answers the coalition’s hotline. Ring. Ring. Ring. Each call is a woman desperate not to be pregnant. The coalition is part of a national network, with affiliates in 11 states, that provides food, housing, and transportation, like a sort of abortion underground railroad. Calls come into the office all day, then bounce to a staffer’s cell phone at night.
Most of the women calling are so far along, they have been outlawed from having an abortion in their home states, says Joan Lamunyon Sanford, executive director of the New Mexico coalition. They have taken out a loan on their family’s only vehicle or pawned a mother’s engagement ring. It’s wickedly stressful because the more pregnant you are, the harder getting un-pregnant becomes — in time, money, pain, and health risk. If only in this part of the world, medical clinics that offer complete gynecological care weren’t so few and far between. Eventually, these women do every conceivable thing they can before it’s too late to get to Albuquerque, the city the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue calls "the late-term abortion capital of the world."
It didn’t used to be.
The landscape changed after the 2010 election, which resulted in Republicans controlling 59 of the country’s 99 state legislative chambers and setting about passing new restrictions on abortion. "Those new laws increased the need for later abortions," says Glenna Halvorson-Boyd, PhD, who, with her husband, Curtis Boyd, MD, directs Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, which does third-trimester abortions. "I would like to believe that was the ’law of unintended consequences’ at work, but I believe it was intended."
Some of the 289 new anti-abortion rules passed since 2010 are mendacious — Kansas and Texas require women seeking abortion be "informed" that the procedure is "linked" to |
fire to get my Basis watch. I mean, skin temperature, heart rate (and no chest straps!), perspiration…. total datagasm!! YES PLEASE! >>>
Enter the Lumo Back, Tinke and etc.
And then I started getting overwhelmed. All this data coming through – on sleep, steps, temperature, heart rate etc EVERY DAY – I felt immense pressure to be doing something with it. Constant inner nagging “I should really take a look and analyse and find things to improve”. It became another thing on the to-do list that I never got to. And then there was the pressure to keep collecting the data – ensuring the devices always have sufficient battery left, remembering to put them on in the morning, etc – you don’t want to have a patchy data set for when you actually get to look through it at some undefined point in the future. I also enrolled into the mappiness project and quickly realised this whole thing was stressing me out.
So I quit!
Like this:
Basis on eBay. Lumo Back on eBay. Tinke on eBay. Jawbone into the drawer (I liked the idle alert & the vibrating alarm – both actionable, until you learn to ignore them).
The problem with a lot of these devices is that while they do have a purpose initially – of making you aware of what the status quo really is – that purpose is usually fully served within the first few weeks of usage. You quickly get a good idea of how long you actually sleep for and how many steps you clock up in a day and approximately how many steps you make in an hour and it all becomes pretty meaningless thereafter. So the value of using the device each additional day becomes less and less.
I had a longish break from wearables until Moov (my full review here) caught my attention. It’s just as useful on day 50 as it was on day 1 because it tells me precisely what to do next to keep pushing myself (well, except for their swimming app where they kinda fell down).
I now also have a QardioArm which is a smart blood pressure monitor – I use it a few times a week to check in with my blood pressure and see if I still get a “green”. No stress about keeping up with “always on” tracking and that little green dot gives me peace of mind. It’s also an example of a device that gives you data on something you cannot predict yourself – so while I can more or less guess steps/sleep duration, I have no way of self-detecting blood pressure.
I also pre-ordered a Cue which is a testing device to measure inflammation, testosterone, vitamin D, influenza and fertility. I’ll be focusing mainly on inflammation – again no stress about “always on” but (hopefully) peace of mind every now and then and insight into something I can’t self-detect.
So next time you’re eyeing a new piece of wearable/health tech ask yourself – is it going to be persistently delivering value to me past the first couple of weeks? Is it going to persistently provide me with knowledge which extends beyond what I already know? Chances are that if you’re not sleeping well you already know this (and anyone who has to put up with you does too :) and if you already know this and don’t take actions to fix it, an app showing you a nice chart isn’t going to magically change anything. Likewise, I know it takes me around 1.5h of walking to clock up 10,000 steps and on any given day I can more or less tell how active I’ve been – the added value of knowing the precise number is really minimal.
The kind of tech I’ll personally be keeping an eye for is tech that actively coaches me in real time to improve at some relevant sport or something that has the potential to pick up on changes in my health.
With that in mind, what’s your next wearable/health tech device going to be?Apr 11, 2017 | By Julia
Siemens has teamed up with 3D printing innovator Materialise to integrate 3D printing technology into its acclaimed NX software, streamlining the process between initial design and final product manufacturing.
With a specific focus on powder bed fusion and material jetting 3D printing processes, the new solution will leverage Materialise’s technological capabilities in order to enable NX computer-aided design, manufacturing, and engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) software for preparing CAD models.
Company representatives say that the integrated solution could reduce the time spent going from a completed product design to a fully 3D printed part by at least 30 percent.
The Siemens-Materialise partnership, which was announced by Materialise back in January, will see Siemens’ product lifecycle management (PLM) software business sell the newly integrated NX solution through its widespread sales channels around the world.
NX is currently one of the most popular digital product development applications worldwide. Its widespread use in industries such as automobiles, aircraft and marine vessels, consumer products, and medical devices and machines has cemented its leading position in recent years.
The partnership represents a considerable upgrade for Materialise, whose Magics 3D Print Suite is best known for enabling 3D printing for end-part manufacturing. It focuses specifically on powder bed fusion and material jetting, with the promise of skyrocketing 3D printing from a prototyping technology to a full scale manufacturing solution.
“Today’s announcement represents a huge leap forward in making additive manufacturing a mainstream production practice for our customers,” commented Zvi Feuer, senior vice president of Manufacturing Engineering Software for Siemens PLM Software.
“Until now, the additive manufacturing process required manufacturers to work with two separate systems—one for product design, and another to prepare that design for 3D printing. The data translation issues and lack of associativity between these two systems created a process that was time consuming and subject to errors.”
By eliminating these issues, Siemens is helping to expand the adoption of 3D printing as a universally accepted production tool, he added.
Moving forward, NX will be comprehensively linked with Materialise’s lattice technology, support structures design, 3D nesting, build tray preparation, and build processors framework tech for 3D printing.
This integration will eliminate data translations and conversions while ensuring that alterations to digital product design models will be automatically reflected during the 3D printing process. Siemens and Materialise tout additional benefits such as improved model accuracy, higher quality, and an accelerated process from design to production.
“Additive manufacturing is a reality now, even in highly regulated markets like aerospace and healthcare,” said Johan Pauwels, Executive Vice President at Materialise. “By bringing together solutions from Siemens and Materialise, we are optimizing and simplifying the workflow for design, engineering, and manufacturing of components.”
Pauwels added that he is very pleased to partner with Siemens, as the German technology company truly understands large-scale industrial manufacturing environments and shares Materialise’s belief that embedding 3D printing into the mainstream business process will result in better products.
An initial set of Materialise tools is available in the recent NX 11.0.1 package, in the form of new modules targeted at 3D printing users.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
Maybe you also like:In a Wednesday interview on SiriusXM College Sports Nation, Finebaum doubled down on last week's unverified speculation about Oklahoma wanting to leave the conference -- still without naming or citing any sources -- and called the Big 12 "The Titanic, and you can see the iceberg in sight."
"I see the Big 12 as a complete trainwreck. The Big 12 is The Titanic and you can see the iceberg in sight. I love the fact that at the Big 12 meetings the other day, the athletic directors all scoffed at reports with the old Mark Twain line, "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." I don't think we're exaggerating. You can lay out any set of facts you want and in my mind, they don't have an answer other than being in a complete state of oblivion.
To me, the commissioner is one of the weakest of the Power 5 college commissioners. I know they can argue they don't have a television network by saying, 'Look at our revenues from television.' And that's correct. They have some very good television deals. And we all know about the University of Texas' deal. But I don't see this league going anywhere. I said the other day that I thought Oklahoma was trying desperately to get out or look for a path out of the Big 12 as soon as it can, which is a number of years away, and I believe that. And I have reason to believe that. I know people think that those of us behind microphones just throw things up against the wall and see if they land or stick to something or somebody. In this case, I'm not throwing that up against the wall. I believe very strongly, based on information that I've been told [though he is not citing], that Oklahoma flat-out wants out of the Big 12 as soon as it can get that door open without mortgaging its entire bank account on its future.
"That's six, seven years away, but that doesn't mean they aren't already looking ahead. I don't think they want anything to do with the uncertain future of the Big 12."
So where would Oklahoma go if it left the Big 12? Let's take another look into the crystal bawwwwwwl of Pawwwwwwwl.
"I think some of it depends on where we are in a couple years. I think if you said today, 'OK, we are going to lift all the sanctions that if you could go wherever you want today,' I think Oklahoma would want to land in the SEC. I have no doubt that Oklahoma wants in the SEC.
"Texas doesn't. Texas is too good for the SEC. Frankly, I think the University of Texas feels like they're too good for college football, and look where that's got them. The University of Texas, after having done nothing on the football field for the last five years, still thinks the entire college football world revolves around it. And I'm sorry, it doesn't. I think maybe it's better than it was. I have to admire Tom Herman greatly, but to me, Texas is just another school that happens to have its own television contract. And I'll be careful what I say about that considering where I work. But I wasn't part of that decision, and I don't really know very much about it. All that's done since the deal was formulated is cause trouble, and it has made others flee what was once a very respected league that is, in my mind, is no longer."Elitism so embedded in Britain that it could be called social engineering, social mobility commission concludes
Britain is "deeply elitist" because people educated at public school and Oxbridge have in effect created a "closed shop at the top", according to a government report published on Thursday.
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission said its study of the social background of those "running Britain" was the most detailed of its kind ever undertaken and showed that elitism was so embedded in Britain "that it could be called'social engineering'".
Alan Milburn, the Labour former cabinet minister who chairs the commission, said that, as well as being unfair, this situation was unacceptable because "locking out a diversity of talents and experiences makes Britain's leading institutions less informed, less representative and, ultimately, less credible than they should be".
The commission's 76-page report mostly focuses on analysis, but it does include recommendations, saying government, schools, universities, employers and even parents all need to play their part in promoting social diversity.
Looking at the background of more than 4,000 people filling jobs at the top of government, the civil service, the judiciary, the media, business and the creative industries, the commission investigated where they went to school, on the grounds that going to a private school is reasonably indicative of a wealthy background.
Only 7% of members of the public attended a private school. But 71% of senior judges, 62% of senior officers in the armed forces, 55% of permanent secretaries in Whitehall, 53% of senior diplomats, 50% of members of the House of Lords and 45% of public body chairs did so.
So too did 44% of people on the Sunday Times Rich List, 43% of newspaper columnists, 36% of cabinet ministers, 33% of MPs, 26% of BBC executives and 22% of shadow cabinet ministers.
Oxbridge graduates also have a stranglehold on top jobs. They comprise less than 1% of the public as a whole, but 75% of senior judges, 59% of cabinet ministers, 57% of permanent secretaries, 50% of diplomats, 47% of newspaper columnists, 44% of public body chairs, 38% of members of the House of Lords, 33% of BBC executives, 33% of shadow cabinet ministers, 24% of MPs and 12% of those on the Sunday Times Rich List.
The report says the judiciary is the most privileged professional group. About 14% of judges attended one of just five independent schools (Eton, Westminster, Radley, Charterhouse and St Paul's Boys).
And senior armed forces officers are the second most exclusive group, the report says. Some 62% of them went to a private school, and only 7% attended a comprehensive.
Milburn said that having such little diversity at the top of society was "not a recipe for a healthy democratic society".
He explained: "Where institutions rely on too narrow a range of people from too narrow a range of backgrounds with too narrow a range of experiences, they risk behaving in ways and focusing on issues that are of salience only to a minority but not the majority in society."
Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, said the report showed the coalition was failing on social mobility. "Under the Tories, the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and the rest is increasing, millions of hardworking people are seeing their living standards go backwards and child poverty is set to increase," he said.Let’s say you are a Trump voter, the kind we often hear about — an honest, hard-working American who put up with Donald Trump’s unusual behavior because you wanted a president who would stop playing Washington’s political games, bring a businessman’s obsession with action and results, and focus on the economy. How is that working out for you?
The first few weeks of President Trump’s administration have been an illustration of writer Alfred Montapert’s adage, “Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.” We are witnessing a rocking-horse presidency in which everyone is jerking back and forth furiously, yet there is no forward movement.
Since winning the election, Trump has dominated the news nearly every day. He has picked fights with the media, making a series of bizarre, mostly false claims — about the magnitude of his victory, the size of his inauguration crowd, the weather that day, the numbers of illegally cast ballots, among many others. He has had photo ops with everyone from Kanye West and Jack Ma to Shinzo Abe and Justin Trudeau. Now he is embroiled in a controversy about ties to Russia. But in the midst of it all, what has he actually done? Hardly anything.
[Reality will get its revenge on Donald Trump]
On Thursday, Trump said at a news conference, “There has never been a presidency that’s done so much in such a short period of time.” Matthew Yglesias of Vox observes that at this point in his presidency, Barack Obama had signed into law an almost-trillion-dollar stimulus bill to revive the economy, extended health insurance to 4 million children and made it easier to challenge discriminatory labor practices. In their respective first 100 days in office, FiveThirtyEight calculates, Bill Clinton had passed 24 bills; John Kennedy, 26; Harry Truman, 55; and FDR, 76.
(The Washington Post)
Despite having a Republican House and Senate, Trump does not seem likely to crack 10 in his first 100 days. Yglesias notes that the Trump White House has not even begun serious discussions with Congress on major legislation. According to The Post, of the 696 positions that require Senate confirmation, the president has yet to nominate 661 of them.
Trump has issued a series of executive orders with great fanfare (though fewer than Obama at this point). But they are mostly hot air — lofty proclamations that direct some agency to “review” a law, “report” back to him, “consider” some action or reaffirm some long-standing practice. His one order that did something, the temporary travel ban, was so poorly conceived and phrased that it got stuck in the court system and will have to be rewritten or abandoned. For a recent piece in Politico Magazine, Zachary Karabell carefully analyzed all the executive orders and presidential proclamations and concluded, “So far, Trump has behaved exactly like he has throughout his previous career: He has generated intense attention and sold himself as a man of action while doing little other than promote an image of himself as someone who gets things done.”
Historian Douglas Brinkley recently observed that Trump is a creature of reality television, for which the two cardinal rules are: Always keep the cameras focused on you, and always stay interesting. The president has certainly fulfilled those mandates. But what about the ones he promised his voters? What about the plans to reindustrialize the Midwest, bring back jobs, and revive the coal and steel industries? What, for that matter, of his explicit commitments that “on Day One” he would begin “removing criminal illegal immigrants” and would “label China a currency manipulator,” “push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress” and “get rid of gun-free zones in schools, and... military bases”? All were promised. Almost nothing has been done.
[How could things get worse for Trump?]
There are two aspects to the Trump presidency. There is the freak show — the tweets, the wild claims, the fake facts, the fights with anyone who refuses to bow down to him (the media, judges), the ceaseless self-promotion. But then there is Trump the savvy businessman, who named intelligent heavyweights such as Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson and Jim Mattis to key positions, and who has at times articulated a serious reform agenda. For many people, the bargain of the Trump presidency was that they would put up with the freak show in order to get tax reform, infrastructure projects and deregulation. That may still happen, but for now at least, reality TV is in overdrive, and not much is happening in the realm of serious policy.
That voter in Ohio or Michigan might well wonder how picking fights with the media will bring jobs back to his region or how assaulting the judiciary will help create retraining programs for laid-off workers. But maybe Donald Trump, who freely admits to getting most of his information from television, has a television view of the presidency. The point is to be seen doing things. The Romans said that the way to keep people happy was to give them “bread and circus.” So far, all we have gotten is the circus.
Read more from Fareed Zakaria’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.Share. DC television gets spooky. DC television gets spooky.
It was announced earlier this month that NBC had ordered a pilot for Constantine -- DC's newest live-action television venture following The CW's Arrow and (possible Flash series) and FOX's Gotham.
Deadline is now reporting that the network has tapped Neil Marshall, director of the 2005 British horror film The Descent, to helm the pilot.
Constantine won't be Marshall's first involvement with a TV show. He recently directed the pilot episode for Michael Bay's Black Sails, and directed Game of Thrones' acclaimed "Blackwater" episode. He has an additional episode of Black Waters, not to mention an episode of Game of Thrones: Season 4, coming up soon.
Constantine follows titular con-artist John Constantine as he is forced into the role of supernatural detective, protecting humanity from the forces of both hell and heaven.
Talk to Jared on Twitter at @Larson_Jared.PM says government ‘will not tolerate intolerance’ after reported spike in hate crimes and abuse after EU referendum
David Cameron has condemned “despicable” xenophobic abuse after the EU referendum as figures suggested a 57% increase in reported incidents.
The country would not stand for hate crime, the prime minister told MPs.
“In the past few days we have seen despicable graffiti daubed on a Polish community centre, we’ve seen verbal abuse hurled against individuals because they are members of ethnic minorities,” Cameron said.
“Let’s remember these people have come here and made a wonderful contribution to our country. We will not stand for hate crime or these kinds of attacks, they must be stamped out.”
Police believe there has been an increase in hate crimes and community tensions since last week’s referendum. Initial figures show an increase of 57% in reported incidents between Thursday and Sunday compared with the same days four weeks earlier, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said – 85 incidents were reported compared with 54 during the earlier period.
“It’s no coincidence this has come off the back of the EU vote,” said a police source.
Senior police chiefs have discussed how to respond amid concerns the continuing heated debate may contribute to heightened tensions.
Cameron’s condemnation came amid a growing chorus of concern over intolerance and hostility. The mayor of London and the UK’s biggest Muslim organisation spoke out against a spike in racist abuse in the aftermath of the referendum.
The Polish embassy in the UK said it was shocked at incidents of xenophobic abuse directed at members of its community in the past few days, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews said it was alarmed by reports of harassment and abuse.
Sadiq Khan, who was elected mayor of London last month, said he had put the capital’s police on alert for racially motivated incidents. “It’s really important we stand guard against any rise in hate crimes or abuse by those who might use last week’s referendum as cover to seek to divide us,” he said.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sadiq Khan attends the Pride in London parade on Saturday. Photograph: Brett Cove/Barcroft Images
“I’ve asked our police to be extra vigilant for any rise in cases of hate crime, and I’m calling on all Londoners to pull together and rally behind this great city.”
The Metropolitan police promised to investigate any reports of hate crime and abuse.
The Muslim Council of Britain urged political and civic leaders to heal divisions exposed by last week’s vote.
Shuja Shafi, the MCB’s secretary general, said: “As the results of the referendum became known, I called for our politicians to come together and heal the divisions that have emerged as a result of the campaign. Now we are witnessing the shocking extent of this with reports around the country of hate speech and minorities being targeted.
“We need leadership now more than ever before. Our country is experiencing a political crisis which, I fear, threatens the social peace.”
The umbrella organisation has compiled a dossier of reported racist and Islamophobic incidents since the result of the referendum was announced on Friday morning.
Racist incidents feared to be linked to Brexit result Read more
It said it had logged many reports of Muslims and others being taunted with “go back home” and similar sentiments.
Thomas Johnstone, 30, of Luton, was charged with two racially aggravated public order offences after the far-right English Defence League protested outside a mosque in Birmingham at the weekend.
After a spate of alleged xenophobic incidents over the weekend, the Polish embassy issued a statement expressing its shock and deep concern.
Reported incidents included graffiti being sprayed on to the walls of a Polish community centre in west London, and cards reading “no more Polish vermin” posted through letterboxes.
The embassy said: “We are shocked and deeply concerned by the recent incidents of xenophobic abuse directed at the Polish community and other UK residents of migrant heritage. The Polish embassy is in contact with relevant institutions, and local police are investigating the two most widely reported cases, in Hammersmith, London, and Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
“At the same time we would like to [say thank you] for all the messages of support and solidarity for the Polish community expressed by the British public.”
Racist graffiti was found scrawled across the doors of the Polish Social and Cultural Centre (POSK) in Hammersmith, west London, on Sunday.
By Monday afternoon, the reception desk had been inundated with flowers and cards from locals expressing solidarity and good wishes.
One of the cards read: “Dear Poles, I am so sorry to hear about what happened yesterday. We, the Brits are grateful to you for fighting alongside us in the war and now for the enormous contribution you make to our society. We love you.”
Another started: “Dear Polish friends, we wanted to let you know how very sorry we are to hear about the abusive messages graffitied on to your building. It’s depressing enough that the UK (or part of it) will be leaving the EU. That the result of the referendum seems to have been interpreted by some as a licence to express their racism and xenophobia is truly horrifying.”
Joanna Ciechanowska, the director of POSK’s gallery, who has lived in the UK for 35 years, said she had never encountered racism before.
“All of a sudden a small group of extremists feel empowered. The margins of society feel that they can do it because they think they have the support of half of the nation. It’s sad because living here for so many years and being married to an Englishman I have never actually encountered any racism in this country, and this is the first time it happened straight in my face.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A floral tribute sent to the Polish arts centre in Hammersmith. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
“It’s out of character for this area because I frequently engage with Hammersmith council, our recent exhibition of Polish and Russian art was embraced by them, we attend various things they organise. Whoever did this was an ugly person who saw a window of opportunity.”
Elzbieta Pagór, the centre’s librarian, said: “This centre has been here since the 60s, so why now? The referendum made people just explode.
“Me and my family came here in 1983. My eldest son was born in Poland and my younger one was born here and is married to English girl. He says he knew something like this would happen if we voted to leave the EU. That the reaction would be toxic.”
Sipping a coffee at a nearby cafe, the actor Michael Gambon said: “I just heard about it. It’s horrific and shocking. Totally terrible.”
Police said examination of CCTV had shown a suspect arriving at the centre on a bicycle at 5.22am, before spraying yellow graffiti on the doors. The Met said it was being treated as a hate crime.
'The vote made people just explode': Polish centre reeling after graffiti attack Read more
In Wales, the first minister, Carwyn Jones, said the effects of an “ugly atmosphere” created by the leave campaign were being felt on the streets.
“Members cited examples of hateful incidents directed against non-British people in their constituencies over the weekend, and equally distressingly, against people from ethnic minorities born here in Wales,” he said.
“It is incumbent on all of us, no matter how we voted last week, to stand up to anybody who thinks they now have licence to abuse people of different races or nationalities. They have no such licence and should anyone suffer from this sort of abuse, they should report it to the police immediately.”
Speaking for the Board of Deputies, Gillian Merron said: “It is important during these times of political uncertainty in our country to ensure that nobody feels vulnerable and threatened. Everyone, including European Union citizens and other minorities resident in the UK, has the right to security and protection from hate speech.
“The Jewish community knows all too well these feelings of vulnerability and will not remain silent in the face of a reported rise in racially motivated harassment.”
Boris Johnson, who spearheaded the leave campaign and is the frontrunner to succeed Cameron, sought on Monday to reassure Europeans living in Britain.
“I’ve seen a lot of confusion over the weekend about the status of people living in this country. It’s absolutely clear that people from other European Union countries who are living here have their rights protected. All that people want to see is a system that’s fair, impartial and humane to all people coming from around the world,” he said.
“And also, obviously people from the UK living abroad, living in the rest of the EU, will also have their rights completely protected. I just worry there’s been a certain amount of confusion in the media over the last 24 hours.”
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said: “London is a diverse, global city where people from many different backgrounds live and work side by side in safety. That hasn’t changed in the past few days, but if people do have any concerns they should let the police know. We will investigate vigorously any reports of crime motivated by hatred.”Watch REMEMORY Starring Peter Dinklage for Free via Google Play for a Limited Time
Set to hit American theaters on September 8, the sci-fi thriller film "Rememory" is totally free to view or download until September 20 via the Google Play Store. Unfortunately, the promo is limited to twenty countries at the moment namely: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Botswana, Cambodia, Fiji, Iceland, Jamaica, Macedonia, Malta, Namibia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. While the film has received mixed reviews, nothing beats free right? If you need more convincing to give "Rememory" a shot, you can watch the trailer below:
"Rememory" stars "Game of Thrones" mainstay Peter Dinklage, Anton Yelchin, Julia Ormond, Henry Ian Cusack, Gracyn Shinyei and Colin Lawrence. The film made its debut at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Following the mysterious death of a scientific pioneer who creates technology that allows you to extract memories and watch them on an external device, Sam Bloom (Peter Dinklage), a detective, sets about trying to solve the murder using this memory machine. As the investigation continues, a web of intrigue and deceit is uncovered.Whether you’re an NRA supporter or are fundamentally opposed to the group, it’s hard to deny its role in reshaping the national debate around guns.
Consider that as recently as 2008, fewer than 4 in 10 Americans prioritized gun rights over gun control in polling by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Today, Pew data shows that a majority of Americans now favor gun rights, the first time that’s happened in more than 20 years.
Driving that shift has been a wildly effective NRA political operation in both Washington, D.C. and state capitals across the nation, backed by a passionate member base that numbers into the millions. Yet to many, the inner workings of the group are largely a puzzle.
For a better understanding of who the NRA is and how it’s grown so successful, FRONTLINE spoke to three former insiders: John Aquilino, a onetime spokesman for the group; Warren Cassidy, a former executive vice president of the NRA; and Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist. Here are excerpts from those conversations.
Wayne’s World
In its early days, the NRA’s mission focused mainly on marksmanship and gun safety. But beginning with the 1975 establishment of its lobbying arm — the Institute for Legislative Action — the organization started to wade deeper into politics. Today, the man most closely identified with the NRA’s political rise is its executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre. To insiders, LaPierre has always been a brilliant strategist, but when he joined the NRA, they say, he was hardly a gun enthusiast.
Richard Feldman, former NRA lobbyist: He wasn’t what people would have called a “gunny,” somebody who grew up around guns, who enjoyed shooting guns. He was more like me, in the sense he was a political junkie. And he enjoyed the politics of the fight. …
In the late 1970s, the NRA was just really getting going, in terms of being a political organization. It was only involved in politics and legislation since ’75, and really since 1977. …
Wayne took a position in state and local early on, right out of college. You get thrown into politics, and if you’re a political junkie, like Wayne or like myself, it was a wonderful job. You’re working with all these people and having these fights and you’re cutting your teeth.
The beauty of lobbying is that you’re lobbying in the off-political season, and you’re doing politics in the political season. And on a high-visibility issue like firearms, it’s always both. There’s a lot of politics in the legislation, and sometimes a fair amount of policy in the politics. So it keeps you going year in and year out. And he was at the right place at the right time, with the right skills, to move up in the organization.
John Aquilino, former NRA spokesman: Wayne is a political junkie. Besides that and ice cream, those are the things that float his boat. He was having a great time working with state races and whatnot.
Somewhere along the line we had a lot of turnover with people. And the guy I work for said, “John, go see if Wayne wants to take over the federal lobby.” Wayne is not the most — He doesn’t make snap decisions. As a matter of fact it took me a week to pretty much kick his butt and threaten to give the job to somebody else before he went, “Oh, oh, I’ll take it.”
He is more professor than a leader. He’s more of a student than a scholar I think. Very nice person. Very mild mannered person. … Pretty much the safest place you could be with Wayne and a gun back then was in a different state, because he really did not know anything about guns. Politics, yes. Guns, no.
NRA as “Religion”
In time, of course, LaPierre would come to believe “very strongly in the issue,” says Feldman, and that change coincided with what he calls a “more doctrinaire, more ideological” transformation within the gun rights community itself. The NRA is “more a religion,” says Cassidy, with the idea of individual liberty among members’ most cherished beliefs. And it’s this same commitment to liberty and defending Second Amendment rights that can make the community deeply skeptical of gun control advocates.
Richard Feldman: Thirty years ago, the National Rifle Association was just entering its climb to power as an American icon, and lobbying and politics. And it was far less clear, 30 years ago, who the ultimate winners were going to be in this fight over guns and politics. So it was a lot more of a struggle that was philosophical, and much more like a religious battle at the time, than a business interest.
John Aquilino: If you look at the typical NRA member — and it could be someone who has a high school education, or not a high school education, a Ph.D. and beyond — pretty much it’s the same message. It’s the same theme. And that is, our freedom to choose, our freedom to decide is what we’re going to keep.
The Second Amendment is basically the amendment that embodies all of that. … It really has nothing to do with guns; it has to do with freedom. It has to do with, again, do you give your freedom to the government or do you keep it within yourself, within your community, within your family? And that’s the broad appeal. … The NRA is the closest thing that a membership group can have to just pure patriotism.
Winning in Washington
Such strength of conviction has meant that NRA supporters are among the most politically engaged voters in U.S. politics. In 2013, for example, a Pew poll found that a quarter of those who prioritized gun rights said they had contributed money to a like-minded organization, compared to just 6 percent for gun-control advocates. It’s this type of engagement — combined with a substantial war chest — that has made the group a dominant force in Washington.
John Aquilino: The NRA’s membership, if it had one trait, one political trait, they vote. That simple. … I once talked to a senator who actually ran later for the presidency. And he absolutely said he was in no way, shape or form going to go our way. I said, “OK, fine.” And then I made two phone calls to people who happen to be friends of that senator’s major financial backers. And then all of a sudden he went our way. And that’s what goes on. That’s the deal. You are a politician. You want to get elected. You want votes. NRA has votes.”
Warren Cassidy: It’s simple. The playbook is you support the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights, the right to keep and bear arms, and we’ll do everything we can to see that you’re elected or re-elected. It’s as simple as that.”
Richard Feldman: The strongest pressure, and the most important pressure, was always not what the lobbyists could do, but getting your membership to let the legislator know what they thought.
A legislator doesn’t have to really care what a lobbyist thinks. I mean, maybe they’re good for a $5,000 PAC contribution. But that’s not the end all or be all in any congressional race these days.
But, if you hear from 500 constituents in your congressional district, you can be pretty certain that there are probably 20,000 people thinking about it … plus their friends and family. You’ve got a serious problem on your hands.
When Mass Shootings Happen
In the aftermath of shootings such as the ones in Newtown, Conn., Tucson, Ariz. and Aurora, Colo., the NRA’s critics have raised questions about whether efforts to expand gun rights have factored in to such tragedies. It can be a sensitive topic inside the NRA. As its former president, Charlton Heston, lamented in the wake of Columbine: “America must stop this predictable pattern of reaction. When an isolated, terrible event occurs, our phones ring, demanding that the NRA explain the inexplicable. Why us? Because their story needs a villain.”
In their conversations with FRONTLINE, former insiders voiced a similar view, urging the public not to let emotion guide decisions about policy.
Richard Feldman: If there was going to be a vote 48 hours after Columbine, when you vote emotionally, just like we did in this country a few weeks after 9/11, with the Patriot Act, and decide that our government should be in charge of everything and have a security system that puts dictatorships to shame, you know, everybody is on board briefly.
But, when you appraise a situation, and you’re passing laws that are going to impact the future, it’s always wise to take a little breather and go: “What are we doing |
the retreat toward the end of her tenure as a manager at Amazon. She wanted to make a bigger impact on a smaller team, preferably one that connected her to more meaning in her professional life. But she couldn't find the courage to leave.
Ayahuasca fixed that.
"It's not fun," she said. "There's a part of it that's very satisfying, but you have to be up for where it takes you."
Upon her return, she quit her cushy gig and accepted a job at a startup in San Francisco.
Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Not every entrepreneur has the means to disappear into the rainforest for 10 days.
People without the time or money to travel for a traditional ayahuasca ceremony often settle for local gatherings. A Bay Area group of ayahuasca enthusiasts on Meetup.com, for example, has over 650 members. California leads all states in web searches for ayahuasca ceremonies and retreats, according to Google Trends, and interest has steadily risen.
But Costuros says that not all of these retreats put high-quality ayahuasca in their tea or use experienced shamans. There's a nickname for these sham productions: "yogahuascas."
A shaman in the Amazon often comes from a long line of spiritual healers. But as ayahuasca becomes more popular, the "yogahuasca" trend has worsened. The problem extends from the Bay Area to Peru, as newly minted shamans target foreigners for sham ceremonies.
" It used to be that it took about at least 20 years to apprentice as a shaman, and now there are people claiming they are shamans within two or three years. There's no quality control," Robert Tindall, a professor of literature and author of two books on shamanism, told Vice in 2014.
In 2012, Baker, the productivity app founder, found himself in a retreat center outside the Oakland hills. The ayahuasca ceremony fell on the same day he broke things off with his girlfriend of seven years.
"I ended up staying a second night because it was so amazing," Baker said. "By the end, I remember my heart was open. It wasn't just a metaphysical feeling.... Things felt very fragile and beautiful."
The experience ended with a buzzkill. A friend dropped him off at the nearest subway station. He became paranoid that people were staring, and he fell right back into his pre-ayahuasca rut.
While there is no known lethal dose of ayahuasca (few research centers in the US track the exotic drug), ceremonies can be dangerous under certain conditions. Fatalities are generally a result of suicide, accidents, or erratic behavior. In 2012, an 18-year-old Californian was found buried outside a retreat center in Peru; he was said to have overdosed.
Antidepressants can also be deadly when mixed with ayahuasca, which is why Costuros conducts medical screenings before enrolling applicants in the program.
In spite of the risks, most Entrepreneurs Awakening participants who spoke with Business Insider say they first tried ayahuasca in the Bay Area. Their experiences were pleasant overall.
Courtesy of Entrepreneurs Awakening
While Costuros says he's wary of scaling his business, for fear that it would strain his ability to provide quality experiences, he's still gearing up for expansion. Next year, he plans to hold two retreats in Peru and possibly another in Tulum, Mexico.
He says he's also in talks with the founder of a startup incubator, whom Costuros declined to name, to create an ayahuasca-friendly accelerator in Costa Rica. Entrepreneurs would build their companies and participate in weekly ayahuasca ceremonies for a dose of inspiration.
"The intention is to expand our capacity to help innovators, leaders wake up and evolve their psychological garbage," Costuros said, "so they can get on with being awesome."With the quasi-cancelation of ABC’s Notorious, let’s check the ratings for the rest of broadcast’s fall freshman class. Who’s doing the best? Who’s performing the worst? The answer isn’t always obvious as a number — the night a show airs, its lead-in and competition are factors that networks consider too. But first: Here’s how the networks themselves are faring overall compared to this point last year in the adult demo:
NET..THEN.. NOW
NBC…2.8…2.5…-11%
CBS…2.5…2.2…-12%
ABC…2.1…1.8…-14%
Fox…1.9…1.7…-11%
CW…0.6…0.5…-17%
So, yes, everybody is down. The decline reflects a broader audience trend shifting away from The Big 5 as original programs proliferate on cable and streaming networks. Another factor: This year’s intensely dramatic presidential election has been fascinating is possibly drawing attention away from entertainment products, especially since even prime-time NFL games — which are usually bulletproof in the ratings — have also dropped notably compared to last year.
RELATED: This Is Us: Before They Were Stars
Now for the new shows. Here are the top performers ranked by their adult 18-49 rating, including DVR playback when available. Shows in bold have already been picked up for a full season:
— This Is Us (NBC): 3.6 rating; 12 million viewers
— Designated Survivor (ABC): 3.4 rating; 13.7 million
— Kevin Can Wait (CBS): 2.8 rating; 11.1 million
— Speechless (ABC): 2.4 rating; 8.1 million
— Lethal Weapon (Fox): 2.4 rating; 8.7 million
— Bull (CBS): 2.3 rating; 16 million
— Timeless (NBC): 2.0 rating; 8.1 million
— The Good Place (NBC): 1.8 rating; 5.8 million
— American Housewife (ABC): 1.8 rating; 6.2 million
— MacGyver (CBS): 1.7 rating; 10.4 million
— Man with a Plan (CBS): 1.6 rating; 7.3 million (just premiered)
— Son of Zorn (Fox): 1.5 rating; 3.4 million
— Notorious (ABC): 1.4 rating; 5.8 million
— Pitch (Fox): 1.4 rating; 5.1 million
— Disreputable (ABC): 1.2 rating; 5.6 million
— Exorcist (Fox): 1.1 rating; 3 million
— Conviction (ABC): 1.0 rating; 5.6 million
— Frequency (The CW): 0.4 rating; 1.4 million
— No Tomorrow (The CW): 0.4 rating; 1.1 million
The good news for broadcasters is the Big 4 networks all have one show they can point to as doing at least solidly well. The downside is that only This Is Us has, week-to-week, looked like a legitimate breakout. Everything else is faring somewhere between solid and tire fire. The CW is having a particularly rough fall, with its two new shows, Frequency and No Tomorrow, both struggling.
For CBS, there’s still a couple new fall shows still to come — comedies The Great Outdoors and Pure Genius launch Thursday. Perhaps once the election finally ends, and broadcast launches its midseason shows, some of these numbers will climb?
Note: Disreputable is not a real ABC show. But you were’t entirely certain, were you?Latest news (8th May 2014) on payment changes the requirement for prescriptions is on this update blog post.
Latest news (10th December 2014) on the closure of two of IHP’s sites is on this blog post.
Update 2, 7th May: Some people have received shipping confirmation from IHP following the advice here, so it appears it may be accurate.
Update: Also see this email from IHP, which seems to contradict the information given over the phone. However…
Although phone calls and emails to the UK contact details listed on the IHP website have gone unreturned, someone has managed to contact with via their US web site. They have been told that the prescription required message is incorrect and was only intended for US customers, and that if you select the option to fax a prescription on the.biz site then they will ship it anyway as normal.
In addition, payment options have reappeared on the web site for UK shipping addresses and estrogen is no longer showing as all out of stock and/or discontinued.
I have not spoken to IHP personally, but this is all good news. I would be happy to hear from anyone who has received a shipping confirmation from IHP in the last 24 hours. (Receiving your order will, obviously, take a little longer!)Washington (CNN) The Marine Corps general who oversees war court defense teams at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay was found guilty of contempt for disobeying orders by a military judge this week and sentenced to 21 days confinement.
Air Force Col. Vance Spath issued the penalty to Brig. Gen. John Baker, the chief defense counsel at the military court, after Baker released three civilian defense attorneys in a case prosecuting those accused of attacking the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
Baker was also ordered to pay a $1,000 fine for his actions.
"As in any US, state, federal, or military court, the judge has the obligation and power to enforce decorum in the courtroom," Pentagon spokesman Ben Sakrisson told CNN.
This is the first punitive judgment handed down to an American official since legal proceedings began in the military court at Guantanamo Bay early last decade. The incident was first reported by The Miami Herald
Read MoreAs families and friends gather to celebrate Thanksgiving it’s important to remember that for many this is not a time for jubilation, but rather one of mourning. Since the 1970s the United American Indians of New England have gathered at Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts to observe a National Day of Mourning. This year marks the 48th gathering.
The National Day of mourning is not about shaming those who do celebrate Thanksgiving but rather providing a stage to highlight the realities around the arrival of Pilgrims and lasting consequences of colonial rule. In an interview with co-leader of the United American Indians of New England Mahtowin Munro says,“The real underlying issue is this idea that the Pilgrims were so wonderful and amazing, that they came over and Native people were happy to see them, and they all sat down together and live happily ever after.”
In elementary school, we are often taught to buy into the mythology surrounding Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. Confronting this mythology means not only learning the truth about Thanksgiving but also welcoming new perspectives. With that in mind, below you’ll find some Native and Indigenous creators and comics worth checking out today (and everyday)!
Elizabeth LaPensée is a Ph.D holding-award-winning Anishinaabe, Métis, and Irish designer, writer, artist, and researcher. Her body of work spans the field of comics and games with a focus on Indigenous history and narratives. She is also the Assistant Professor of Media & Information and Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures at Michigan State University.
LaPensée is the game designer and artist behind Thunderbird Strike (2017), a 2D side-scroller that examines the effect of the oil industry on the environment and land of Indigenous people. The game asks the player to embody the Thunderbird–a symbol of power and strength–in order to protect the environment against the ravages of the oil industry and its machinery. Thunderbird Strike recently won Best Digital Media Work award at the ImagineNATIVE and is available on Windows PC now.
The long-awaited companion volume to the award-winning MOONSHOT The Indigenous Comics Collection by Alternate History Comics. Volume one, edited by Hope Nicholson (Brok Windsor, Lost Heroes), collected the works of 28 writers and artists to help readers learn about the heritage and identity of indigenous storytelling. Most importantly, the stories included were done so with the permission of elders and community members. MOONSHOT The Indigenous Comics Collection Volume 2 contains a diverse assortment of short stories from indigenous authors across North America. The original digital release was May 31, 2017.
Written and illustrated by Dale Deforest (Diné), Hero Twins is a modern reimagining of two of the most important characters within the Navajo mythology. As the myth goes, the Hero Twins are two brothers Naayééʼ Neizghání and Tóbájíshchíní born to Changing Woman and trained by the Holy People. The twins protect the Navajo people by slaying the monsters who threaten life.
Here’s a synopsis of Hero Twins #1 from Native Realities, a small publisher dedicated to telling stories by and about Native and Indigenous people:
This story begins in 1860 as a calvary unit is sent to investigate a threat. While a winter storm rages around the unit, a mysterious officer makes a world-changing discovery. Meanwhile, banished from the spirit realm, Changing Woman must find a way to protect her newborn children so they may fulfill their destiny and bring light to the world.
So, I mentioned this small publishing press above but they are worth a mention in their own right. Native Realities Press is committed to producing and amplifying comics about, by and for Native and Indigenous people, something that is desperately needed.
According to a 2015 study published in the Journal of Social Science:
“The percentage of characters in popular films and primetime TV shows who are Native American ranges from zero to 0.4 percent, according to content analyses. Less than 1 percent of children’s cartoon characters are Native Americans, who make up 0.09 percent of video game characters.”
Too often in comics, Native Americans are often portrayed as caricatures, or their characters rely on tropes and racist stereotypes. In an effort to help confront problematic representation within popular culture, Lee Francis helped found Native Realities Press. Francis, who also helps operate Indigenous Comic Con, is a former educator who saw how little representation there was for Native American kids. In an interview with NPR this past April, Francis said it was about creating characters kids could be proud of and learn from.
The growing team of writers and artists published by Native Realities includes comics creator Jon Proudstar. Proudstar originally created an all Native American superhero team in 1996 known as Tribal Force. The series was recently rebooted by Native Realities in it, Proudstar tackles issues like child abuse, sexual assault and violence, as well as many other social issues which disproportionally impact Native American populations.
Here’s a look at what the first issue of Tribal Force has in store for readers:
In the Diné belief there are Five Worlds of existence. These worlds are bared from mortals. Nita Nitaal Nakia is the first to break the boundaries placed by the gods. What she sees as dreams or nightmares are glimpses into possible futures, parallel realities, mirrors of uncountable existences. With an inexhaustible array of possible endings, the unique factor presented before her is the last spoke in the wheel of reality. The last chance for everything to go right. With the wrong outcome as the end of human civilization as we know it.
This is by no means an exhaustive list but hopefully it will help bring a different perspective to your table this Thursday. Please let me know of other creators I should check out in the comments or on Twitter.
The 48th National Day of Mourning is Nov. 23, 2017 at noon on Cole’s Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Andrea Ayres writes about comics and representation in pop-culture.
Like this: Like Loading...There has been a lot of internet buzz about Chip Kelly graduating from the college coaching ranks at the University of Oregon to make the leap to the NFL. Kelly has built Oregon into an offensive juggernaut, and a regular top ten team in the college rankings. According to "people close the program", Kelly does have NFL aspirations.
Former Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said Thursday it is "inevitable" that Chip Kelly one day leaves the school for the NFL. Bellotti was one of two people close to the program who told CBSSports.com they don't believe Oregon will be able to keep Kelly if the NFL comes calling again. "There are nine chances in 10 if he wins out [this season] he's gone," said another source who did not want to be identified.
The monkey wrench of this line of thinking from Nov 9th of this year, is that Oregon just dropped a game to Pac-12 rival Stanford and is now struggling to maintain it's position to obtain a BCS bowl. They need a ton of help to have a chance to get into the BCS title game. Kelly turned down the Tampa Bay Bucs last off season season citing "unfinished business" (wanting a national title). It's unclear if that still holds, and this recent loss to Stanford will keep him in the NCAA ranks. For the purposes of this article, we're going to presume that Kelly is ready to try the pro game, and that the Chargers are in the mix for his services.
Offensive Philosophy (The Anti Norv)
This Yahoo sports article breathlessly maintains that Chip Kelly could spark a revolution in the NFL with his super aggressive (math based) game management.
Whenever Kelly does enter the league, he'll play the game aggressively, with "aggressively" meaning in a mathematically logical fashion. By the end of the season every coach will be going for it on fourth down, attempting fake punts, fake field goals, two-point conversions, and they'll likely do all of this oblivious to the fact that there's astounding mathematical evidence supporting the decisions they're making.
The author stresses that Kelly doesn't expect to convert on all those 4th downs and two point conversions. He knows in the aggregate long run, that converting most of the time and failing plenty is to his advantage. I love this line of thinking, and can not stand it when color commentary guys make statements like "And X team will HAVE to punt". No they don't. They don't have to punt. The coach is choosing to punt. If it's 4th and 1, but you average 4.3 YPC on a given day, it's not that scary to make the attempt. NFL coaches are not thinking of the odds of success, but are in fact terrified of failure in these go-for-it situations. Norv Turner definitely has this old guard mentality.
One thing Chargers fans constantly moan about Turner is that fact that he is his own OC and calls the plays, which takes away from his game management. Kelly does this too, so moving to Kelly would not alleviate that concern.
This Grantland story chronicles Kelly's coaching roots and modern scheme.
"We spread the defense so they will declare their defensive look for the offensive linemen," Kelly explained at that same clinic. "The more offensive personnel we put in the box, the more defenders the defense will put in there, and it becomes a cluttered mess." Twenty years ago, Kelly's high school coach ran the unbalanced, two–tight end power-I, so he could execute old-school, fundamental football and run the ball down his opponent's throat. Today, Kelly spreads the defense and operates out of an up-tempo no-huddle so he can do the exact same thing.
Does that coach from twenty years ago sound anything like Norv Turner? Do the defenses that oppose San Diego Chargers look like cluttered messes in the box lately?
You may think that spread offense equals passing. But the Ducks love to run the ball:
Chip Kelly's scheme is not traditional, and one of the areas where Kelly is a master is in messing with a defense's efforts at gap control. Coaches have long used a variety of methods to manipulate a defense's keys and assignments, from using unbalanced sets to extra tight ends to lead-blocking fullbacks and pulling linemen who can "remove" and "add" gaps that must be defended. Kelly uses those tactics, too, and they're blended into a mix of deadly spread concepts and old-fashioned, excellent blocking. On [a] play against Wisconsin, Kelly packaged an inside zone running play with a "zone read triple option" to the backside. With the option, the quarterback's job is to read the backside linebacker. If the linebacker stays put, the quarterback hands it off to a running back. If the linebacker crashes toward the back, the quarterback keeps the ball and takes it outside. And if after keeping the ball the quarterback is threatened by another defender, he has the option to pitch the ball to another running back running behind him. The idea was to mess with that carefully calibrated gap-control defense and set up the thing Kelly really wants to do, the same thing his old high school coach wanted to do — run the ball right up the gut.
The zone read creates an extra man advantage for the blockers by leaving a defender intentionally untouched, who is then read by the quarterback.
Kelly has another similarity to Turner, in that he advertises a lot about what he plans to call before the snap, and counts on execution to succeed. The difference in that execution is a massive divide, and then Kelly abuses defenses using his own tendencies against them much more. Kelly's core plays involve two or three potential ball carriers, and lineman can take advantage of the defense knowing the play, by letting them over pursue. If the running back in Kelly's offense is behind the quarterback, the base play is an Inside Zone Read. If the running back is next to the quarterback, the base play is the Outside Zone Read, every time. At this point I need you to watch two rather long (12 minutes each) but WORTH IT, Youtube clips. You won't regret it. This FishDuck guy is really good.
The Kelly offense uses these two base plays (Inside Zone Read and Outside Zone Read) along with a power play to create huge play action passing opportunities. I have provided more links to selected fishduck videos at the bottom of this story.
Another thing Kelly famously does is run plays at a dizzying pace (hence the name 'Blur"). They try to snap the ball every 13-18 seconds. This keeps defenses on tilt. Then once they have a defense sped up, they slow it down (from Grantland):
This change of pace is actually how Oregon constantly keeps defenses off balance. If they only went one pace the entire game the offense would actually be easier to defend. When the defense lines up quickly and is set, Kelly takes his time and picks the perfect play. When the defense is desperate to substitute or identify Oregon's formation, the Ducks sprint to the line and rip off two, three, or four plays in a row — and it rarely takes more than that for them to score.
One piece of the sped up play calling is the quad card system. This is the best writeup I could find on the subject. They basically state from Kelly's own mouth that:
Kelly told ESPN that the placards communicate formation, play and snap count, and that each image means something.
This article had a slightly different take:
The Ducks couldn’t elaborate on the meaning of the images for obvious reasons, but Asper said it’s not rocket science.
"It’s just like the signals – each thing stands for different things,’’ Asper said. "We’re simple creatures. If a guy has a cap, it’s a cap. It’s real simple, real basic. Clover? OK, lucky, Irish – something like that.
"It’s not, ‘OK, I have to add the top square and the bottom square.’ We’re not dividing matrices out there. And you can immediately see what’s there, as opposed to going through the dance of all the formations.’’
No one is really sure what the card system means, or if it even means anything at all and isn't simply a distraction for the opponent.
Chargers Personnel
Let's put the focus on the offensive line for a minute. We'll turn to ESPN's Tuesday Morning Quarterback to set the table for this one.
These days most offenses use zone blocking in part because it involves the least effort for pudgy offensive linemen: just lean and push in the direction of the play. The Blur Offense uses one, two or three pulling linemen on most rushing downs, and has pull plays back-to-back. For the Ducks it's pull and trap, pull and trap -- the linemen are as fit as the wide receivers. The 340-pound offensive lineman today is common; Oregon's heaviest player weighs 311 pounds, and star left tackle Tyler Johnstone practically is a ballerino at 292 pounds.
Even on good teams, offensive linemen usually make an initial block, then just stand there watching the play. Oregon's offensive linemen hustle downfield to make secondary blocks -- this, not backfield stunts, is essential to the Ducks' rushing success. On a long Barner run, Johnstone "set the edge" by turning his man in, then after Barner passed, hustled downfield to block someone else. On another long Barner rush, guard Isaac Remington pulled, got a man, then continued downfield to block another man. Oregon blocks so well that it can use two linemen pulling one way as a misdirection, and the three linemen on the play side still clear a path.
If you want to see more detail on Oregon lineman pulling all over the place, you can go back to Fishduck for this breakdown of their power running play series. Now start to think about the Chargers offensive line; huge, slow, un-athletic, and very little second level effort. Between the power play pulling, and the way lineman 'kick' move on the Outside Zone Read, I don't see Jared Gaither, Tyrone Green, or Jeromey Clary running this offense. Nick Hardwick and Louis Vasquez could probably hang with this stuff. For some reason I feel like Mike Harris would have a shot (remember, he ran the zone read pistol in college at UCLA). David Molk probably has the right body type, at least. Bringing in Chip Kelly to San Diego would require us to junk three fifths of our starting line (but two of the replacements might already be in house).
Back to the Grantland Piece. Kelly does not need Michael Vick or Vince Young to run his offense, but he probably needs someone more mobile than Philip Rivers.
This misunderstands Kelly's attack. "I look for a quarterback who can run and not a running back who can throw. I want a quarterback who can beat you with his arm," Kelly explained at a coaches clinic in the spring of 2011, emphatically adding, "We are not a Tim Tebow type of quarterback team. I am not going to run my quarterback 20 times on power runs." The numbers back him up. Marcus Mariota is third on Oregon's team in rushing, but he's far, far behind Barner and Thomas. In 2011, the Ducks finished the year fifth in the nation in rushing yards per game and ended with more than 4,000 on the year. Only 206 of those came from quarterback Darron Thomas. Compare that with Tebow, who led Florida in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns in each of the three seasons he was the starting quarterback in Urban Meyer's spread-option offense. Kelly explained that he merely needs a quarterback who, if the defense "forces" him to run, "can do it effectively." Although this rules out some of the NFL's best quarterbacks — from Peyton Manning to Tom Brady — it doesn't mean that his offense requires Cam Newton or RG3.
This brings us to a position of having to show some faith in Kelly's ability to adapt if we want him to coach the Chargers. Aside from the 2011 Tebow Broncos (which was fluky, relied on an elite defense, and was quickly abandoned), I can't think of anyone in the modern NFL running a zone read offense successfully. The reason is probably because defenses get a ton more film study and coaching, while NFL linebackers are much faster at the pro level. Could he make his offense work in the NFL? How much tweaking would that require with ideal personnel? Can he make his offense work without a credible running quarterback threat? Would the Chargers move in a different direction under center if we brought in Chip Kelly? This is the central question that must be answered before he is hired. It doesn't seem to me that the Inside Zone Read or Outside Zone Read can work with Philip Rivers (that defensive end or outside linebacker can just crash the back every time), and those two things working well make everything else a thousand times easier.
Ryan Mathews seems like a perfect fit. We would have to get a second credible back for those triple option plays. I am uncertain about the receivers. Either way we're stuck with Malcom Floyd and Robert Meachem for the near future because of their contracts and cap implications.
Conclusion
I didn't see much of the recent Oregon-Stanford game, but I'm trying to see if I can research what Standford did to stymie that explosive offense. This past week, they held Oregon to 14 points, the Duck's first sub 40 point outing in many years. Stanford just showed the world what defensive scheme can make the Blur crystal clear.
The bottom third of the league according to the BFTB consensus power rankings includes a lot of nifty potential Chip Kelly quarterbacks; Cam Newton, Blaine Gabbert, and Jake Locker to name a few. If Kelly has a lot of NFL bidders (and why wouldn't he?), it may be hard to woo him while clutching to Philip Rivers.
In summary, he may not want to leave college for the NFL yet, he will have many other NFL suitors with more attractive personnel, he'll have to figure out how to adapt his system to the rigors of the NFL, and San Diego would probably have to junk their entire o-line and possibly their franchise QB. That said, I still can't wait to get the popcorn out and root for it to happen. Just doing the research for this story makes me want to run through a wall for the guy. The San Diego front office would need to be ready to pounce right after the New Year's Bowl season, and NFL Week 17 (Dec 30).
Addendum
This is a white paper Kelly wrote about his own offense
This is a great fishduck video on the Oregon 3-4 defense and how they mask their coverages and blitzes to great effect.
Below is the entirety of the Fishduck Oregon offense tutorial series.
Understanding the Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial Series
Fish Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #1: The Inside Zone Read
Fish Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #2: The Outside Zone Read
Fish Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #3: The Power Play
Fish Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #4: The Straddled Triple Option
Fish Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #5: Chip Kelly's New Universal Formation
Fish Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #6a: How Chip Kelly Game Plans For Opponents
Fish Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #6b: How Chip Kelly Game Plans for Opponents II (Introducing Surprise)
Fish Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #6c: Chip Kelly Game Plans of 2011 (Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!)
Fish Oregon Spread Offense Tutorial #7: Oregon's Most Important Offensive PlayTwo people were killed by a fallen tree in the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn on Monday night, as the superstorm caused by Hurricane Sandy rolled in over New York City, causing widespread damages.
Councilman Mathieu Eugene identified the victims Jessie Streich-Kest of Newkirk Avenue and college student Jacob Vogelman of First Street, The New York Observer reports. They were both 23-years-old.
NYPD discovered the two at 7:55AM on Tuesday morning after receiving phone calls from nearby residents who found their bodies trapped under the tree.
The two were out walking their dog, Max, who survived and is being treated at an emergency veterinarian hospital.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. death toll rose to 38, including 10 in New York City. According to the Associated Press, three were children.
UPDATE: Mayor Bloomberg now confirms that the death toll in New York City has risen to 18.
Among the dead was a 23-year-old woman who stepped into a puddle near a live electrical wire.
Governor Cuomo said 156 rescue missions were made by New York state and city police.
Nearly 700,000 people are still without power in New York City.Conflict at Indonesia's Surabaya Zoo leaves animals to languish and die, including endangered Sumatran tigers
Updated
Thousands of exotic animals, including endangered Sumatran tigers, are languishing at a renowned Indonesian zoo where a bitter conflict is leaving animals to suffer and die.
The Surabaya Zoo was once the pride of South-East Asia, but overcrowding, small enclosures and squalid conditions have seen the number of animal deaths at the zoo run in to the hundreds - possibly thousands - over recent years.
There are 3,500 animals in Surabaya Zoo, including endangered orangutans and 15 tigers.
During the past three months alone, 50 animals have died, including an endangered Indonesian orangutan. Three tigers, dozens of Komodo dragons, and a giraffe have died in recent years.
Paper Tiger - Foreign Correspondent
In 2011 Matt Brown investigated the impact the paper industry was having on the Sumatran wilderness. In 2011 Matt Brown investigated the impact the paper industry was having on the Sumatran wilderness.
The zoo's curator, Sri Penta, showed Foreign Correspondent around the zoo where endangered orangutans could be seen drinking from contaminated water, eagles and pelicans were crammed into small cages with no room to fly, and thousands of other animals were in dire conditions.
The big cats are kept for days on end in cramped, damp enclosures. Some of them are in such poor condition the public is not allowed to see them and they spend their entire existence caged.
"The current size of cages, for example, does not correspond with the animals occupying it. [They're] too crowded," Ms Penta said.
Sumatran tigress in the middle of bitter feud
One Sumatran tigress, Melani, has become the poster girl of the zoo for the wrong reason - used by feuding management factions to further their own interests.
Three Sumatran tigers have dropped dead at Surabaya Zoo since 2008.
Melani survived but she is teetering on the edge of death after years of neglect and being served toxic meals contaminated with formaldehyde.
Tiger facts: Tigers are the largest of all big cats.
Male Siberian tigers can grow to 300kgs, while male Sumatran tigers grow to 140kgs.
Can consume up to 40kgs of meat per meal.
Give birth to 2-3 cubs every 2-2.5 years.
Juvenile mortality rate is high, but tigers in the wild can live to 26 years.
Around 3,200 tigers left in the wild. Source:
Source: World Wildlife Fund
Ms Penta says the zoo staff tried as hard as they could to save her.
"We have changed [from] the old supplier of the food. We have a new meat supplier," she said.
"We also work to improve the quality of food and when the meats arrived, we try to check the quality."
About three months ago, forestry minister Zulkifli Hasan stepped in.
"In order to avoid this continuous use of Melani as a political tool, and to make sure she is treated in a better, safer environment, we moved her to Taman Safari," the minister said.
Mr Hasan's portfolio includes responsibility for the exotic animals that inhabit Indonesia's shrinking forests.
He signed a ministerial decree ordering the sick tigress be removed and taken away for expert care.
Mr Hasan says rescuing the zoo's animals is almost impossible because the local government, which owns the zoo, is refusing help from outside and insists it can run the zoo itself.
"We tried and failed. They wouldn't let us," he said.
"We were trying to move some animals out to Taman Safari, but they didn't let us, they surrounded us."
Surabaya Zoo 'doesn't understand animal welfare issues'
Such is the damage to Melani's internal organs that her survival is not guaranteed.
Melani was taken to a tiger rehabilitation centre near Jakarta, run by the head of Indonesia's Zoo Association, Tony Sumampau.
Mr Sumampau, who runs a tiger hospital and breeding program, says Surabaya Zoo is failing its responsibility to the animals.
"They don't understand about the animal welfare issue. Since 2007 [the] South East Asian Zoos Association inspects every zoo around in Indonesia," Mr Sumampau said.
Ms Penta has been getting more and more worried about the animals she considers her children, but she is almost powerless to help.
"Of course, I feel very disappointed, feeling a sense of loss," She said.
"When these animals were sick, we tried to make them recover as much as possible together with the medical team to heal them. But what can we say?
"The insufficient environment and also the cages did not meet the standard animal welfare."
Sumatran tigers face extinction
There are now only thought to be between 300 and 400 critically endangered Sumatran tigers left in the wild.
"If we can't save the habitat of the tigers we might lose the tiger in another 30 [or] 40 years. They will disappear in the wild," Mr Sumampau said.
With production of palm oil and paper expanding, along with a recent proposal to build a coal truck highway through its natural habitat, the Sumatran tiger faces even more threats, including superstition.
The carcass of a dead tiger is worth up to $500,000 alone, with its skin sold as a rug and the rest cut up for Chinese medicine.
"The tiger's thought of as a walking drug store," said Sybelle Foxcroft, the director of an Australian Conservation group Cee4Life.
"So when you look at the complete tiger, you know; eyeballs for epilepsy, whiskers for toothache and then other things like cutting the paws off, hanging them over the doors to chase away ghosts... it just goes on and on," she said.
Ms Foxcroft has been investigating and exposing the trade in Asian tigers for years.
She says it often involves powerful syndicates because there is so much money to be made.
"A lot of times with wildlife trafficking, the drug trade is also involved, so it’s a very dangerous business to address. It's a very evil business," Ms Foxcroft said.
The syndicates approach poor villagers in places like Indonesia, offering small fortunes for a dead tiger.
"They'll offer to a villager what might equate to six months' or a year's wage which might be something like, you know, 400 Australian dollars or 500 Australian dollars," she said.
"For a villager, that's a fortune. They're living in poverty, so they think it's fantastic."
Watch Foreign Correspondent: Cry Of The Tiger tonight at 8:00pm on ABC 1.
Topics: |
array. Since 3.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to modify. [indexes] (...(number|number[])): The indexes of elements to remove. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of removed elements. Example var array = [ 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd' ]; var pulled = _. pullAt (array, [ 1, 3 ]); console. log (array); console. log (pulled);
_.remove(array, [predicate=_.identity]) source npm package Removes all elements from array that predicate returns truthy for and returns an array of the removed elements. The predicate is invoked with three arguments: (value, index, array).
Note: Unlike _.filter, this method mutates array. Use _.pull to pull elements from an array by value. Since 2.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to modify. [predicate=_.identity] (Function): The function invoked per iteration. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of removed elements. Example var array = [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ]; var evens = _. remove (array, function (n) { return n % 2 == 0 ; }); console. log (array); console. log (evens);
_.reverse(array) source npm package Reverses array so that the first element becomes the last, the second element becomes the second to last, and so on.
Note: This method mutates array and is based on Array#reverse. Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to modify. Returns (Array): Returns array. Example var array = [ 1, 2, 3 ]; _. reverse (array); console. log (array);
_.slice(array, [start=0], [end=array.length]) source npm package Creates a slice of array from start up to, but not including, end.
Note: This method is used instead of Array#slice to ensure dense arrays are returned. Since 3.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to slice. [start=0] (number): The start position. [end=array.length] (number): The end position. Returns (Array): Returns the slice of array.
_.sortedIndex(array, value) source npm package Uses a binary search to determine the lowest index at which value should be inserted into array in order to maintain its sort order. Since 0.1.0 Arguments array (Array): The sorted array to inspect. value (*): The value to evaluate. Returns (number): Returns the index at which value should be inserted into array. Example _. sortedIndex ([ 30, 50 ], 40 );
_.sortedIndexBy(array, value, [iteratee=_.identity]) source npm package This method is like _.sortedIndex except that it accepts iteratee which is invoked for value and each element of array to compute their sort ranking. The iteratee is invoked with one argument: (value). Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The sorted array to inspect. value (*): The value to evaluate. [iteratee=_.identity] (Function): The iteratee invoked per element. Returns (number): Returns the index at which value should be inserted into array. Example var objects = [{ 'x' : 4 }, { 'x' : 5 }]; _. sortedIndexBy (objects, { 'x' : 4 }, function (o) { return o. x ; }); _. sortedIndexBy (objects, { 'x' : 4 }, 'x' );
_.sortedIndexOf(array, value) source npm package This method is like _.indexOf except that it performs a binary search on a sorted array. Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to inspect. value (*): The value to search for. Returns (number): Returns the index of the matched value, else -1. Example _. sortedIndexOf ([ 4, 5, 5, 5, 6 ], 5 );
_.sortedLastIndex(array, value) source npm package This method is like _.sortedIndex except that it returns the highest index at which value should be inserted into array in order to maintain its sort order. Since 3.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The sorted array to inspect. value (*): The value to evaluate. Returns (number): Returns the index at which value should be inserted into array. Example _. sortedLastIndex ([ 4, 5, 5, 5, 6 ], 5 );
_.sortedLastIndexBy(array, value, [iteratee=_.identity]) source npm package This method is like _.sortedLastIndex except that it accepts iteratee which is invoked for value and each element of array to compute their sort ranking. The iteratee is invoked with one argument: (value). Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The sorted array to inspect. value (*): The value to evaluate. [iteratee=_.identity] (Function): The iteratee invoked per element. Returns (number): Returns the index at which value should be inserted into array. Example var objects = [{ 'x' : 4 }, { 'x' : 5 }]; _. sortedLastIndexBy (objects, { 'x' : 4 }, function (o) { return o. x ; }); _. sortedLastIndexBy (objects, { 'x' : 4 }, 'x' );
_.sortedLastIndexOf(array, value) source npm package This method is like _.lastIndexOf except that it performs a binary search on a sorted array. Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to inspect. value (*): The value to search for. Returns (number): Returns the index of the matched value, else -1. Example _. sortedLastIndexOf ([ 4, 5, 5, 5, 6 ], 5 );
_.sortedUniq(array) source npm package This method is like _.uniq except that it's designed and optimized for sorted arrays. Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to inspect. Returns (Array): Returns the new duplicate free array. Example _. sortedUniq ([ 1, 1, 2 ]);
_.sortedUniqBy(array, [iteratee]) source npm package This method is like _.uniqBy except that it's designed and optimized for sorted arrays. Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to inspect. [iteratee] (Function): The iteratee invoked per element. Returns (Array): Returns the new duplicate free array. Example _. sortedUniqBy ([ 1. 1, 1. 2, 2. 3, 2. 4 ], Math. floor);
_.tail(array) source npm package Gets all but the first element of array. Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to query. Returns (Array): Returns the slice of array. Example _. tail ([ 1, 2, 3 ]);
_.take(array, [n=1]) source npm package Creates a slice of array with n elements taken from the beginning. Since 0.1.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to query. [n=1] (number): The number of elements to take. Returns (Array): Returns the slice of array. Example _. take ([ 1, 2, 3 ]); _. take ([ 1, 2, 3 ], 2 ); _. take ([ 1, 2, 3 ], 5 ); _. take ([ 1, 2, 3 ], 0 );
_.takeRight(array, [n=1]) source npm package Creates a slice of array with n elements taken from the end. Since 3.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to query. [n=1] (number): The number of elements to take. Returns (Array): Returns the slice of array. Example _. takeRight ([ 1, 2, 3 ]); _. takeRight ([ 1, 2, 3 ], 2 ); _. takeRight ([ 1, 2, 3 ], 5 ); _. takeRight ([ 1, 2, 3 ], 0 );
_.takeRightWhile(array, [predicate=_.identity]) source npm package Creates a slice of array with elements taken from the end. Elements are taken until predicate returns falsey. The predicate is invoked with three arguments: (value, index, array). Since 3.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to query. [predicate=_.identity] (Function): The function invoked per iteration. Returns (Array): Returns the slice of array. Example var users = [ { 'user' : 'barney', 'active' : true }, { 'user' : 'fred', 'active' : false }, { 'user' : 'pebbles', 'active' : false } ]; _. takeRightWhile (users, function (o) { return!o. active; }); _. takeRightWhile (users, { 'user' : 'pebbles', 'active' : false }); _. takeRightWhile (users, [ 'active', false]); _. takeRightWhile (users, 'active' );
_.takeWhile(array, [predicate=_.identity]) source npm package Creates a slice of array with elements taken from the beginning. Elements are taken until predicate returns falsey. The predicate is invoked with three arguments: (value, index, array). Since 3.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to query. [predicate=_.identity] (Function): The function invoked per iteration. Returns (Array): Returns the slice of array. Example var users = [ { 'user' : 'barney', 'active' : false }, { 'user' : 'fred', 'active' : false }, { 'user' : 'pebbles', 'active' : true } ]; _. takeWhile (users, function (o) { return!o. active; }); _. takeWhile (users, { 'user' : 'barney', 'active' : false }); _. takeWhile (users, [ 'active', false]); _. takeWhile (users, 'active' );
_.union([arrays]) source npm package Creates an array of unique values, in order, from all given arrays using SameValueZero for equality comparisons. Since 0.1.0 Arguments [arrays] (...Array): The arrays to inspect. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of combined values. Example _. union ([ 2 ], [ 1, 2 ]);
_.unionBy([arrays], [iteratee=_.identity]) source npm package This method is like _.union except that it accepts iteratee which is invoked for each element of each arrays to generate the criterion by which uniqueness is computed. Result values are chosen from the first array in which the value occurs. The iteratee is invoked with one argument:
(value). Since 4.0.0 Arguments [arrays] (...Array): The arrays to inspect. [iteratee=_.identity] (Function): The iteratee invoked per element. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of combined values. Example _. unionBy ([ 2. 1 ], [ 1. 2, 2. 3 ], Math. floor); _. unionBy ([{ 'x' : 1 }], [{ 'x' : 2 }, { 'x' : 1 }], 'x' );
_.unionWith([arrays], [comparator]) source npm package This method is like _.union except that it accepts comparator which is invoked to compare elements of arrays. Result values are chosen from the first array in which the value occurs. The comparator is invoked with two arguments: (arrVal, othVal). Since 4.0.0 Arguments [arrays] (...Array): The arrays to inspect. [comparator] (Function): The comparator invoked per element. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of combined values. Example var objects = [{ 'x' : 1, 'y' : 2 }, { 'x' : 2, 'y' : 1 }]; var others = [{ 'x' : 1, 'y' : 1 }, { 'x' : 1, 'y' : 2 }]; _. unionWith (objects, others, _. isEqual);
_.uniq(array) source npm package Creates a duplicate-free version of an array, using SameValueZero for equality comparisons, in which only the first occurrence of each element is kept. The order of result values is determined by the order they occur in the array. Since 0.1.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to inspect. Returns (Array): Returns the new duplicate free array. Example _. uniq ([ 2, 1, 2 ]);
_.uniqBy(array, [iteratee=_.identity]) source npm package This method is like _.uniq except that it accepts iteratee which is invoked for each element in array to generate the criterion by which uniqueness is computed. The order of result values is determined by the order they occur in the array. The iteratee is invoked with one argument:
(value). Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to inspect. [iteratee=_.identity] (Function): The iteratee invoked per element. Returns (Array): Returns the new duplicate free array. Example _. uniqBy ([ 2. 1, 1. 2, 2. 3 ], Math. floor); _. uniqBy ([{ 'x' : 1 }, { 'x' : 2 }, { 'x' : 1 }], 'x' );
_.uniqWith(array, [comparator]) source npm package This method is like _.uniq except that it accepts comparator which is invoked to compare elements of array. The order of result values is determined by the order they occur in the array.The comparator is invoked with two arguments: (arrVal, othVal). Since 4.0.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to inspect. [comparator] (Function): The comparator invoked per element. Returns (Array): Returns the new duplicate free array. Example var objects = [{ 'x' : 1, 'y' : 2 }, { 'x' : 2, 'y' : 1 }, { 'x' : 1, 'y' : 2 }]; _. uniqWith (objects, _. isEqual);
_.unzip(array) source npm package This method is like _.zip except that it accepts an array of grouped elements and creates an array regrouping the elements to their pre-zip configuration. Since 1.2.0 Arguments array (Array): The array of grouped elements to process. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of regrouped elements. Example var zipped = _. zip ([ 'a', 'b' ], [ 1, 2 ], [true, false]); _. unzip (zipped);
_.unzipWith(array, [iteratee=_.identity]) source npm package This method is like _.unzip except that it accepts iteratee to specify how regrouped values should be combined. The iteratee is invoked with the elements of each group: (...group). Since 3.8.0 Arguments array (Array): The array of grouped elements to process. [iteratee=_.identity] (Function): The function to combine regrouped values. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of regrouped elements. Example var zipped = _. zip ([ 1, 2 ], [ 10, 20 ], [ 100, 200 ]); _. unzipWith (zipped, _. add);
_.without(array, [values]) source npm package Creates an array excluding all given values using SameValueZero for equality comparisons.
Note: Unlike _.pull, this method returns a new array. Since 0.1.0 Arguments array (Array): The array to inspect. [values] (...*): The values to exclude. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of filtered values. Example _. without ([ 2, 1, 2, 3 ], 1, 2 );
_.xor([arrays]) source npm package Creates an array of unique values that is the symmetric difference of the given arrays. The order of result values is determined by the order they occur in the arrays. Since 2.4.0 Arguments [arrays] (...Array): The arrays to inspect. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of filtered values. Example _. xor ([ 2, 1 ], [ 2, 3 ]);
_.xorBy([arrays], [iteratee=_.identity]) source npm package This method is like _.xor except that it accepts iteratee which is invoked for each element of each arrays to generate the criterion by which by which they're compared. The order of result values is determined by the order they occur in the arrays. The iteratee is invoked with one argument: (value). Since 4.0.0 Arguments [arrays] (...Array): The arrays to inspect. [iteratee=_.identity] (Function): The iteratee invoked per element. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of filtered values. Example _. xorBy ([ 2. 1, 1. 2 ], [ 2. 3, 3. 4 ], Math. floor); _. xorBy ([{ 'x' : 1 }], [{ 'x' : 2 }, { 'x' : 1 }], 'x' );
_.xorWith([arrays], [comparator]) source npm package This method is like _.xor except that it accepts comparator which is invoked to compare elements of arrays. The order of result values is determined by the order they occur in the arrays. The comparator is invoked with two arguments: (arrVal, othVal). Since 4.0.0 Arguments [arrays] (...Array): The arrays to inspect. [comparator] (Function): The comparator invoked per element. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of filtered values. Example var objects = [{ 'x' : 1, 'y' : 2 }, { 'x' : 2, 'y' : 1 }]; var others = [{ 'x' : 1, 'y' : 1 }, { 'x' : 1, 'y' : 2 }]; _. xorWith (objects, others, _. isEqual);
_.zip([arrays]) source npm package Creates an array of grouped elements, the first of which contains the first elements of the given arrays, the second of which contains the second elements of the given arrays, and so on. Since 0.1.0 Arguments [arrays] (...Array): The arrays to process. Returns (Array): Returns the new array of grouped elements. Example _. zip ([ 'a', 'b' ], [ 1, 2 ], [true, false]);
_.zipObject([props=[]], [values=[]]) source npm package This method is like _.fromPairs except that it accepts two arrays, one of property identifiers and one of corresponding values. Since 0.4.0 Arguments [props=[]] (Array): The property identifiers. [values=[]] (Array): The property values. Returns (Object): Returns the new object. Example _. zipObject ([ 'a', 'b' ], [ 1, 2 ]);
_.zipObjectDeep([props=[]], [values=[]]) source npm package This method is like _.zipObject except that it supports property paths. Since 4.1.0 Arguments [props=[]] (Array): The property identifiers. [values=[]] (Array): The property values. Returns (Object): Returns the new object. Example _. zipObjectDeep ([ 'a.b[0].c', 'a.b[1].d' ], [ 1, 2 ]);Hidden fixes
We did a small game server update this week to fix a few bugs. It required no client update and did not warrant any server restarts. It was the spooky ghost patch that you never knew existed. The following issues were corrected:
Fixed an issue where Rapala's 3rd Epic quest actions could be bugged for the first action of every turn
Fixed a bug that sometimes could cause the AI to loop forever while calculating a reply
What's to come
One of the most common questions we get is: "What's coming next?"
As mentioned in our Roadmap post in late July, we have a lot of work ahead of us before we're ready to exit Early Access.
We generally try and avoid revealing too much about our tasty new features until they're well out of the oven and ready to share with everyone. It makes our big patches more exciting and keeps development fluid. It's not great to announce "Krog is getting a new T-shirt," only to find out a week later that maybe giving Krog that new T-shirt isn't such a great idea, or that maybe he should wear a sweater instead. In such a case, we have to be the bearer of bad news and let everyone know that Krog won't be getting that T-shirt so many players already fell in love with, after all.
Rest assured that we, as always, have a lot of features coming down the pipe - many of which were raised in priority, or added high on the "to-do" list thanks to community feedback. What you share with us really can change our direction significantly at times. Keep it up!
Mulligan numbers
"Why do I so often redraw the same card during a Mulligan?"
It's a common question we're asked. So common, in fact, that we ran some tests to be sure there weren't any problems with the mulligan system. So far, we've found it to be working 100% as expected - and suspect this may mostly be somewhat of a perception issue, negativity bias, or even a misunderstanding of how our mulligan system works.
In Faeria, as in many "real world" card games, when you select a card to be mulliganed, you shuffle it back into your deck before you redraw another card. This means it is completely possible to redraw that same card, or even another like it from your deck. The lack of an animation showing you this may lead to some confusion here. Let's go into some numbers that may be helpful.
⚠️WARNING: DANGEROUS MATHS AHEAD. Click here to skip.⚠️
Let's say you mulligan all three cards you're presented with, and your deck consists of 30 unique cards. The odds you see at least one of those cards again after redrawing are about 28%. In other words, a little less than a third of the time you're going to see the same card again.
Now let's say your deck has 3 of each card, or 10 unique cards in the entire deck. If you mulligan all 3 of your cards, there is a 67% chance you're going to see at least one of those cards return to your hand.
If you have a deck with 3 of each card, keep two cards, and mulligan only one, the odds to redraw that card or one of the same type are about 10.7%.
Why not make it so the card you mulligan isn't shuffled back into the deck?
This would solve a lot of the negative feelings associated with this specific problem, but otherwise significantly impact the balance of the game as a whole and the pool of decks that are generally reliable to construct. Suddenly, you'd be much more able to tailor your starting hand and have that "perfect rush start" or "perfect combo" most of the time, or at least more of the time. This is the same reason we were hesitant to implement the new mulligan system as-is. (Remember, not so long ago in Faeria, mulligans were all or nothing.) It's also part of the same reason players start with only 3 cards and not 4, though that also has to do with simplifying the amount of starting options a player is presented with. We're talking about the fundamental mechanics of Faeria here - the subtle things ticking under the hood that keep everything in delicate balance. Change such load-bearing variables and the consequences are not small.
Anyway, if you still think you're seeing odd Mulligan behavior, please continue to let us know - but try and keep the numbers above in mind. If things still seem way out of whack to you, we need to know!
Monthly Cup and ESL
It's time for Monthly Cup qualifiers again. Watch them streamed live this weekend on https://www.twitch.tv/itscappuccino, the current #1 Ranked God!
Note that our esports website has been loading a little slowly lately. It's a known issue that we're working on. Thank you for your patience.
This Sunday is also the last ESL Go4Faeria Cup for September. Register and play to earn your points and qualify for the $400 finals! You can find current point standings here.
By the way, you may have noticed some familiar faces strewn throughout this news post. They're part of our new set of BetterTTV emotes that are on their way, which are tied to our Discord channel. If you want to use them in Twitch chat, you'll need to install the BTTV browser extension.
Have a fantastic weekend.
-Gary (@Atmaz)US shelves transfer of frigates to Turkey
WASHINGTON
The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Halyburton
The United States has shelved the handover of two leftover frigates to Turkey, as Congress excluded Turkey from a bill seeking permission to transfer vessels to foreign countries, citing Mediterranean tensions.The U.S. approved the “Naval Transfer Act” bill in late December, approving the transfer of six naval frigates to Mexico and Taiwan, but eliminated Turkey over political concerns.In the 2012 version of the “Naval Transfer Act,” Turkey was to receive two Oliver Hazard Perry class guided missile frigates, the USS Halyburton and the USS Thach, which are being decommissioned by the U.S. Navy.However, some members of Congress objected to the transfer of naval frigates to Turkey, mainly citing the county’s strained relations with Israel and Greek Cyprus in the Mediterranean.“I believe we should hold off on sending powerful warships to Turkey and encourage the government in Ankara to take a less belligerent approach to their neighbors,” Congressman Eliot Engel reportedly said during that debate.Congress members particularly emphasized Turkey’s tension with Greek Cyprus over energy sources off the divided island and its threats against natural gas exploration by American companies in the region.“Turkey has recently threatened legitimate [Greek] Cypriot and Israeli efforts to cooperation on energy exploration. Ankara has boosted Turkish armed naval presence around the natural gas fields between Israel and Cyprus and declared invalid an agreement between Cyprus and Israel on demarcating their respective energy exploration areas,” another congressman, Brad Sherman, has been quoted as saying.Turkey is one of around a dozen countries that can manufacture its own warships thanks to its national warship program called Milgem.Two corvettes designed and built by the local manufacturers, Heybeliada and Büyükada, have been completed in 2008 and 2011. The completed ships have been handed to the Navy, but annulment of the contract with the manufacturer company has slowed down the program.If you want to get away from the hoards of roaming tourists, this might be just the place for you. Berlin’s Georgen-Parochial is right in the middle of the popular Friedrichshain district and dates back to the early 1800s.
This cemetery contains hundreds of old family plots, mausoleums and other interesting things to see. Keep your eyes open for damage from World War II which can be plainly seen in some areas.
A large portion of this cemetery is modern graves, if these don’t interest you, stick to the outer areas of the cemetery (near the wall). There you will find the older, more extravagant graves.
Exploring the cemetery
Johann Carl J. Albrecht holds claim to the oldest marked grave in Georgen-Parochial II cemetery. To find this grave, enter at the Friedenstraße entrance near the southern tip of the cemetery and turn right on the first path.
Large parts of the eastern portion of this cemetery are overgrown with vegetation, while other parts are perfectly maintained.
‘
A sign listing a row of urns (Urnenhain) in old world -Fraktur typeface.
—
In modern Germany, you don’t buy a plot, you usually lease it for 20 years. Your relatives have the option of renewing the grave for an additional amount of time (and money). If the plot is not extended, the contents of the grave are removed and either buried deeper or in another location. They also take out the headstone, pulverize it into small rocks and use it for various other purposes. We noticed that some of the paths in this cemetery had tiny pieces of headstones jutting out of the dirt, no doubt to fill in the low spots.
Many of the older plots have ornamental fences in varying stages of decay.
A number of fences have fell victim to time and nature. They may have started out as a tiny tree to provide shade over a grave but have since completely taken over elements the plot.
The Mausoleaums
This cemetery has a ton of interesting mausoleums. This one, located near coordinates 52.521639, 13.445260 is the tomb of the Enders family, although only one name is listed inside: Carl Adolph Enders. The mausoleum is locked but the door is somewhat broken allowing a peak inside.
The tiled floors must have looked amazing when it was built, they probably just need a good scrub to bring them back to life.
Large family plots
In addition to the numerous mausoleums, this cemetery holds dozens of large scale family plots. It is apparent that Georgen-Parochial II cemetery is the final resting place of some extremely wealthy Berliners.
Even cemeteries didn’t escape damage from the world wars. Across this cemetery, you can clearly see evidence of bullets and/or shrapnel damage to headstones and monuments.
We are lucky to have a glimpse of history behind the headstone. The brick makers name is clearly engraved on numerous bricks. We can see that the bricks came from Mögelin Rathenow. Mögelin lies east of Berlin in the state of Brandenburg. The Mögelin brick factory was founded in the mid-17th century and continued making bricks until the First World War, when the factory was closed.
The old and the new
The cemetery is surrounded on nearly all sides by modern development. In certain parts, you can see the developers didn’t waste a spare inch when designing their buildings. Some of the neighboring buildings incorporate the cemetery memorials directly into their own walls.
How to get there
Note: There are no cemetery entrances along Auerstraße or Richard-Sorge-Straße.
U-Bahn stop: Weberwiese (Line U5)
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prisoners lived in good conditions, so many civilians believed that the prisoners had suffered much less than civilians during the conflict. As veterans of the 1940 Battle of France, the prisoners were blamed for the French defeat and portrayed as cowards who had surrendered, rather than fight to the death. They were also unfavourably compared with other men of their generation who had served in the Free French Forces or Resistance.
Prisoners had little effect on the resistance in France. Initially there were three resistance networks based around repatriated prisoners split along political lines, but in March 1944, the three merged to form the National Movement of Prisoners of War and Deportees.
After the war, there was a decade-long period of divisive debate about whether POWs should be considered as veterans, therefore making them eligible for a veteran's card with its accompanying benefits, but this was not resolved until the 1950s. A national organization of former prisoners was established, under the name Fédération nationale des combattants prisonniers de guerre (National Federation of Prisoner of War Veterans), which campaigned for the rights of former POWs. French prisoners were banned by a court from referring to themselves as "deportees" which had been exclusively applied to political prisoners and Holocaust victims.
No medal for prisoners was ever established, although the Médaille des Évadés (Escapees' Medal) was awarded to almost 30,000 prisoners who had escaped from camps in Germany.
See also [ edit ]
Citations [ edit ]
^ Among the French soldiers captured in 1940 were individuals classified by the Germans as Polish, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Spanish, Hungarian, Swiss, Yugoslav, Belgian, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Danish, Norwegian, Slovak, Greek, Armenian and South American. ^ Kriegsgefangenenpost), with the caption "it was during his captivity that St Paul wrote his letters ( The image depicts St Paul in a prison cell. At the top of the picture is the template for letters written by prisoners of war (), with the caption "it was during his captivity that St Paul wrote his letters ( epistles ) to the Christian Colossians Ephesians, the Philippians and the epistle to Philemon."
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]The Obama administration’s push to streamline and expand the borrower-defense process came after hundreds of for-profit colleges were accused of widespread fraud and collapsed, leaving their enrolled students with huge debts and no degrees. The failure of two mammoth chains, Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, gave the issue added urgency.
An existing federal law allows borrowers to apply for loan forgiveness if they attended a school that misled them or broke state consumer protection laws. Once rarely used, the system was overwhelmed by applicants after the wave of for-profit failures. Corinthian’s collapse alone led to more than 15,000 loan discharges, with a balance of $247 million.
Taxpayers get stuck with those losses. The rules that Ms. DeVos froze would have shifted some of that risk back to the industry by requiring schools at risk of closing to put up financial collateral. They would also ban mandatory arbitration agreements, which have prevented many aggrieved students from suing schools that they believe have defrauded them.
The two student borrowers who sued the Education Department, Meaghan Bauer and Stephano Del Rose, focused in their lawsuit on that arbitration clause. They plan to sue the New England Institute of Art, which they said misled them about its graduates’ job prospects and earnings, but they expect that lawsuit to be thwarted by the contract they signed with the school, which included a clause requiring that disputes be addressed through arbitration.
The new rules would have blocked many schools from enforcing those clauses. Ms. Bauer and Mr. Del Rose said they were waiting for those rules to take effect before filing their lawsuit.
Both borrowers submitted applications to have their federal loans discharged under the existing borrower defense system. Those applications have been pending for nearly two years, they said.
The Trump administration’s efforts to roll back regulations have run into other legal roadblocks. On Monday, in a case that also addresses the power that federal departments have to delay or abandon finalized rules, a federal appeals court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot suspend an Obama-era rule to restrict methane emissions from new oil and gas wells.
In a 2-to-1 decision, judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the agency had the right to reverse the regulations but would have to first conduct a new rule-making process — a complex undertaking that typically takes a year or more to complete.Hopefully Santa’s sleigh has mud flaps. While the United States braces for a Christmas snowstorm, the North Pole is set to be 50 degrees warmer than normal, with temperatures approaching 32 degrees Fahrenheit—enough to melt the snow into a slushy mess for Rudolph and friends.
That’s the thing about “climate change,” or as it’s more accurately called, global climate disruption. It’s not as simple as “global warming,” because when you mess with the Earth’s climatic systems, the results aren’t uniform.
Around Thanksgiving, for example, the Arctic was 36 degrees warmer than usual, while a mass of cold polar air moved over Siberia, causing record low temperatures and, reportedly, several deaths from freezing. And you may recall that in 2014, the “polar vortex” froze North America while also changing the jet stream, contributing to California’s recent drought.
This kind of variation is what led climate truther and U.S. Senator James Inhofe—who not only denies that climate change is real, but alleges a vast international conspiracy to lie about it—to bring a snowball to the Senate floor back in 2015. Ironically, just as Senator Snowball was showboating on the floor of the Senate, NASA observed that the massive, 618-square mile Larson B Ice Shelf in Antarctica was falling into the sea.
Yes, Senator, it snowed in Washington in March. But in 2015, the Northeastern United States was an anomalously cool area in a world of record high temperatures. Just look at the map.
Of course, now the NASA program that produced that map, and the observations in Antarctica, has been slated for closure by the President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team. Because nothing helps denial more than closing your eyes, plugging your ears, and chanting, “I can’t hear you.”
Indeed, the more one cares to look at the facts, the more obvious it is that the current warming of the Earth is unprecedented in scope and magnitude. Every region of the world goes through cold and warm periods. But what’s happening at the North Pole is part of a larger pattern. This year, for example, Arctic Ocean ice reached its lowest level ever measured, beating the record from 2015. That causes a feedback loop, since ice reflects solar radiation more than water or land do. The less ice, the more heat absorption; the more heat absorption, the less ice; et cetera.
Moreover, last winter was the warmest ever at the North Pole—until this winter, that is. The World Weather Attribution network crunched the peer-reviewed climate models, and concluded that warm years like this one should occur once every 50 years, even in the context of moderate global warming. (They were unheard of a hundred years ago.) And now we’ve had them back to back.
In the rest of the world, including China, scientific findings like these have shifted government policies to favor cleaner energy and conservation. But in the incoming administration, the worldwide scientific consensus is derided as “climate alarmism.”
For example, earlier this month saw a dust-up between the Republican-led House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and Senator Bernie Sanders. The House Committee had retweeted a poorly researched article from Breitbart.com headlined “Global Temperatures Plunge.” Sanders tweeted back, “Where’d you get your PhD? Trump University?”
Aside from the spectacle of a House committee tweeting material from the “platform for the Alt-Right,” the article in question was pure bunk. It noted that global temperatures have declined from their all-time peak in March 2016, failing to note that even the somewhat lower temperatures would have been world records just 10 years ago.
Imagine if that were your child’s fever—it’s not 104, but it’s still 103. Still no cause for alarm?
Sadly, such minutiae are unlikely to be noticed by all but the most ardent climate-watchers. To everyone else, climate change is starting to look like a game of he said/he said. Except, on the one side are politicians, and on the other is the entirety—as in 100 percent entirety—of peer-reviewed scientific articles on climate. A recent study showed that of 928 peer-reviewed articles were published in scientific journals over a five-year period, 928 adduced evidence proving the existence of human-caused climate change, and zero—zero!—produced evidence contradicting it.
Meanwhile, as the Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting website noted, the most prominent climate deniers are people who know nothing about climate science. The head of the House Committee on Science, Lamar Smith, is a lawyer. Scott Pruitt, tapped to head Trump’s EPA, is too. Trump’s space policy advisor, who has called for ending NASA’s climate research, has a master’s in political science.
If a doctor told you that you had cancer, but a lawyer told you that you didn’t, who would you trust?
Trouble is, the lawyers are getting paid more. As Naomi Oreskes and others have painstakingly researched, energy companies have created an entire parallel universe of pseudoscience—stuff that comes on corporate letterhead from The Heartland Institute or the Global Climate Coalition but which is, in fact, pure drivel written by non-scientists to sow doubt and postpone action.
A 2008 study reviewed 141 books that denied the serious of environmental problems; 130 of them were published by Conservative Think Tanks (CTTs) or authors affiliated with them. And who funds the CTTs? Fossil-fuel industry groups, big oil donors like the Koch brothers, and individual companies like ExxonMobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars on CTTs—and whose CEO is set to be the next secretary of State.
Or to take another example, the Heartland Institute (leading funders: ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Philip Morris) put out a colorful poster last year showing “58 experts [who] don’t believe global warming is a crisis.” Well, I checked the resumes of all 58. Turns out only three have any credentials in climatology or atmospheric science. Sixteen are conservative political pundits, 11 are meteorologists, six are conservative economists, and the rest a hodgepodge.
There is no “controversy” over climate change, any more than there was a controversy over the dangers of tobacco smoke—a pseudo-controversy created by the same network of think tanks. That’s why the United States stands alone in the civilized world in denying climate change, and why the new “drill, baby, drill” administration is set to undo the tiny amounts of progress we have made.
So, Santa, if your workshop really is melting, at least you know who to blame: the people moving into the White House.TOKYO -- China has led growth in artificial intelligence-related patent applications in recent years, while total U.S. submissions remained by far the highest, data compiled by Japanese company Astamuse showed.
The Tokyo-based company's tally showed total applications in China grew about 190% to 8,410 in the five-year period from 2010 as compared with the figure for the previous five years. That represents the biggest jump among the 10 countries and regions surveyed, which include the U.S., China, Europe, Japan and South Korea.
Using the same comparison periods, submissions in the U.S. grew 26% to 15,317, the highest total figure counted, while applications in Japan were down 3% to 2,071.
Shigeoki Hirai, director general at the government-affiliated New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, points out the growth in China is not only in number but in quality as well.
"China's progress is remarkable in hot areas like deep learning," Hirai said. "It's not like they are only growing in numbers."
As businesses, universities and research organizations compete in the race to develop the technology, a total of over 60,000 applications have been submitted for AI patents in the countries surveyed since 2005.
The figure rose about 70% to 8,205 in 2014, the latest year for which a complete set of statistically significant data is available, compared with 2010.
"The number of applications in 2015 and 2016 should have been higher than 2014 and renewed the record high," said Nobuaki Kawaguchi, manager of Astamuse's technology intelligence department.
Visit the Nikkei online edition for more detailed data, including a ranking of businesses and universities in the U.S., China and Japan by number of AI patent applications submitted.
(Nikkei)2013 studio album by Kanye West
Yeezus is the sixth studio album by American rapper and producer Kanye West. It was released on June 18, 2013, by Def Jam Recordings. West gathered a number of artists and close collaborators for production on the album, including Mike Dean, Daft Punk, Noah Goldstein, Arca, Hudson Mohawke, and Travis Scott. Yeezus also features guest vocals from Justin Vernon, Chief Keef, Kid Cudi, Assassin, King L, Charlie Wilson and Frank Ocean. Fifteen days before its release date, West enlisted the help of producer Rick Rubin to strip down the record's sound in favor of a more minimalist approach.
Yeezus has been characterized as West's most experimental and sonically abrasive work. It draws from an array of genres, including industrial, acid house, electro, trap, punk, and Chicago drill. It also continues West's unconventional use of samples, as on "Blood on the Leaves," which prominently interpolates Nina Simone's 1965 rendition of "Strange Fruit". The release features no album artwork, and the physical CD edition of the album was released in a clear jewel box with only a strip of red tape and sample credits. Initial promotion of Yeezus included worldwide video projections of the album's music and live television performances. West released two singles from the album, the song "Black Skinhead" in July 2013 and "Bound 2" the following month.
Yeezus received widespread acclaim from critics, many of whom named it among West's best work and commended its brash direction, though public response was divided. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 327,000 copies in its first week of release. It topped the charts of 30 other countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia. Yeezus was nominated in two categories at the 2014 Grammy Awards, including Best Rap Album. As of 2016, the album has sold 750,000 copies in the United States.[1]
Background
Yeezus at his personal loft in Paris, and on numerous occasions visited (pictured) for inspiration.[2] West first began work onat his personal loft in Paris, and on numerous occasions visited the Louvre for inspiration.
Following the release of his fifth album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), West collaborated with longtime friend Jay Z on Watch the Throne (2011).[3] In July 2012, producer No I.D. revealed that he had been working on West's sixth solo studio album (and seventh overall) and that it would be released after Cruel Summer (2012), a collaborative compilation album between members of West's record label GOOD Music.[4] For Yeezus, West enlisted several collaborators, including Kid Cudi, Charlie Wilson, S1, The Heatmakerz, Mike Dean, Hudson Mohawke, Skrillex, Young Chop, Chief Keef, Frank Ocean, Odd Future, Travis Scott, The-Dream, Cyhi the Prynce, Malik Yusef, King L, John Legend, James Blake, RZA, Mase and Pusha T. The album features additional vocals by Justin Vernon, Frank Ocean, Kid Cudi, Chief Keef, King L, Assassin and Charlie Wilson.[5]
West was influenced primarily by minimalist design and architecture during the production of Yeezus, and visited a furniture exhibit in the Louvre five times.[2] A single Le Corbusier lamp was his "greatest inspiration".[2] West worked closely with the architect Oana Stanescu, and took "field trips" to Le Corbusier homes. Fascinated by Stanescu's comments on the unusual and radical nature of Corbusier design choices, West applied the situation to his own life, feeling that "visionaries can be misunderstood by their unenlightened peers."[6] West also met with architect Joseph Dirand and Belgian interior designer Axel Vervoordt, and had "rare Le Corbusier lamps, Pierre Jeanneret chairs and obscure body-art journals from Switzerland" delivered to the loft.[6] West also wanted a deep hometown influence on the album, and listened to 1980s house music most associated with his home city of Chicago for influence.[2] Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain was also an inspiration for the album.[7][8]
Recording and production
In 2012, West began recording his seventh studio album with collaborators, including No I.D. and DJ Khaled.[9] The first recordings were held in January 2013, in the living room of his personal loft at a Paris hotel, referred to in the album's credits as the "No Name Hotel". West kept compositions simple in order to hear the tracks more clearly; too much bass or complexity would simply overpower the room's poor acoustics.[2] The beats emanating from the loft space, which sometimes lasted through the night, provoked complaints from neighbors.[6] Reports emerged that he and his then-girlfriend Kim Kardashian had moved to the loft in order for West to begin work on the album.[10]
The atmosphere in the studio was described by contributor Evian Christ as "very focused," and West once again brought in several close collaborators. Producer Hudson Mohawke noted the inclusive "group" atmosphere of the sessions, in which multiple contributors would work on similar pieces, with different elements ultimately selected from each.[11] All involved were given a song to work on and return the next day to sit and critique, a process Anthony Kilhoffer compared to an art class.[12] Producer Arca described being initially asked to send West music, noting that "I made sure to send maybe the strangest stuff I had, and it just so happened that Kanye was excited by that."[13] Describing West's collaborative style, Arca stated:
It was a lot of coming up with design, like solving riddles. If the song called for something aggressive, it was up to three or four people to design what in their head was the best solution for that aggression in that moment. Everyone would approach it in completely different ways, and ultimately, it would all be edited by Kanye himself. In a weird way, he kind of produced it. Not only did he select it, but he stylized it.[13]
The record production is characterized as raw and dark. West maintains a stripped-down approach while continuing to use eclectic samples
Determined to "undermine the commercial," several tracks were left off the finished product that were deemed too melodic or more in line with West's previous material.[12] West set parameters regarding sound and style, insisting that there be no "bass wobbles" reminiscent of dubstep.[12] The album's recording process was described as "very raw" by Thomas Bangalter of the French electronic duo Daft Punk, who produced four songs for the album, adding that West was "rapping – kind of screaming primally, actually."[14] While previous albums, particularly Dark Fantasy, took considerable time in the studio, Yeezus was described by Kilhoffer as "the fastest record we ever made."[12] In May 2013, Def Jam executives listened to the "final product," (only later to be changed) describing the album as "dark."[15]
W writer Christopher Bagley reports that West's creative process often bordered on perfectionist. In March 2013, West described the album to Bagley as near completion, only to revise this statement one month later to "[the album is] only 30 percent complete."[6] West made several last-minute alterations to Yeezus, enlisting the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, Rick Rubin, as an executive producer for additional recording mere days before its release; changes included re-recording whole songs and rewriting entire verses.[16] The rough cut West played Rubin ran nearly three and a half hours long.[17] West's orders to Rubin were to take the music in a "stripped-down minimal direction", often removing elements already recorded.[2]
For several days in late May and early June 2013, West and a "rotating group of intimates, collaborators and hangers-on" holed up at Rubin's Shangri-La Studio in Malibu in service of completing the record.[2] Rubin thought it impossible to meet the deadline and all involved ended up working long hours with no days off in order to complete the record. West had intended the album be 16 tracks until Rubin suggested cutting the album down to fewer tracks.[18] Rubin gave as example "Bound", which was "a more middle of the road R&B song, done in an adult contemporary style" before Kanye decided to replace the musical backing with a minimalistic sample, "a single note bassline in the hook which we processed to have a punk edge in the Suicide tradition." Two days before the album had to be delivered to the label, West wrote and sung lyrics to two songs while also recording the vocals to three others in just two hours.[19] Rubin also suggested to reduce the album from sixteen songs to just ten, saying the others could be reserved for a follow-up.[20]
Music and composition
Described as West's most sonically experimental work, the album is driven by abrasive electronics while drawing from an array of industrial punk and hip-hop subgenres.
According to Chicago Tribune critic Greg Kot, Yeezus is a "hostile, abrasive and intentionally off-putting" album that combines "the worlds of" 1980s Chicago acid-house and 2013 Chicago drill music, 1990s industrial music, and the "avant-rap" of Saul Williams, Death Grips and Odd Future.[21] The Independent, Mass Appeal, and The Village Voice described it as an experimental release,[22][23][24] while Meagan Garvey of The Outline described it as West's "industrial album"[25] Rolling Stone described it as "an extravagantly abrasive album full of grinding electro, pummeling minimalist hip-hop, drone-y wooz and industrial gear-grind,"[26] while Vulture called it a "punk-rap opus"[27] and Rolling Stone called it an "industrial-rap opus."[28] Slant Magazine critic Ted Scheinman described the album as "built on alien, angular beats, slowly morphing drones and sirens, abrupt periods of silence, and a pulse-quickening style of delivery from Yeezy himself," writing that West reconceives the "notion of what kind of music (or noise) can underpin hip-hop."[29] According to Charles Aaron of Spin, Yeezus is "a hip hop album, not a rap album", because of how its sounds and subject matter are assembled together, and although listeners can hear "'punk' or 'post-punk' or industrial'" throughout, "hip-hop has always been about noise and dissonance and dance music as agitation".[30] The album also incorporates elements of dancehall and trap music.[31] The record "most closely resembles" 1990s industrial rock, during which the genre had a significant pop culture impact, with artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Marilyn Manson gaining success. The industrial scene created a "vast global underground community," and Esquire notes that one of its epicenters was in Chicago, where West was raised.[32] Evan Rytlewski of The A.V. Club characterized its opening series of songs as electro and industrial hip hop.[33] West, himself would later go onto describe the sound of the album as "a protest to music"[34]
Yeezus is primarily electronic in nature, and boasts distorted drum machines and "synthesizers that sound like they're malfunctioning, low-resolution samplers that add a pixelated digital aura to the most analog sounds."[32] To this end, the album incorporates glitches reminiscent of CD skips or corrupted MP3's, and Auto-Tuned vocals are modulated to a point in which they are difficult to decipher.[32] Esquire cites "On Sight" as an early example of the album's connection to electronic music, citing its "droning synthesizer tone," which is "modulated until the signal starts throwing off harshly treble-heavy spikes and begins to clip, as if it were overloading a digital audio processor."[32]
Yeezus continues West's practice of eclectic samples: he employs an obscure Hindi sample on "I Am a God", and a sample of 1970s Hungarian rock group Omega on "New Slaves". "On Sight" interpolates a melody from "Sermon (He'll Give Us What We Really Need)" by the Holy Name of Mary Choral Family, although the track originally sampled an old vocal track from the original recording.[16] As late as a week prior to release, lawyers were forced to track down the choir director and members of the choir on the South Side of Chicago in order to get clearance for such a sample.[38] Def Jam executives were significantly worried enough the deal would not be in place in time for the record's deadline, and producers re-recorded the vocals with a new choir as the sample could not be cleared in enough time.[38] "Bound 2" features heavy soul music samples and has been described as the only song on Yeezus which recalls the sound of West's early work.[39] "Bound", a 1971 song by American soul group Ponderosa Twins Plus One from their album 2 + 2 + 1 = Ponderosa Twins Plus One, serves as the primary sample used in West's track.[40]
The album's second track "Black Skinhead" has alternately been called an industrial hip hop song[41][42] and "a galloping punk-rap manifesto".[37] "I Am a God" was inspired by a "diss" from a major fashion designer, who informed West of his invitation to a widely anticipated runway show on the condition he agree to not attend other shows.[6] "I'm in It" began with a different sample and melody, but West removed the sample and Rubin edited the track down from a six-minute arrangement.[12] "Blood on the Leaves," which samples Nina Simone's 1965 rendition of "Strange Fruit" and was the first track in the first incarnation of the track list, is an example of West's signature dichotomy in which he melds the sacred and profane.[12][43] "Strange Fruit", first recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, brought the lynchings of black Americans to a "startling poignancy," creating "one of the most towering, important songs of the 20th century." West's anthemic re-telling instead details an MDMA-fueled hookup and the perils of fame.[43]
Promotion and release
A video projection of "New Slaves" in Los Angeles in May 2013.
On May 1, 2013, West used the social networking site Twitter to post a single message reading "June Eighteen", leading several media outlets to speculate that the post referred to the release date of West's upcoming album.[44] On May 17, he began promotion of the album by unveiling the previously unreleased song "New Slaves" through video projections in 66 assorted locations.[45] The following day, West appeared on the American late-night live television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live and performed the songs "New Slaves" and "Black Skinhead".[46] He subsequently revealed the album's cover and title, Yeezus, on his official website.[47] The iTunes Store made Yeezus available for pre-order on May 20, but the listing was subsequently taken down for unknown reasons.[48] On May 29, A.P.C. founder Jean Touitou unveiled an advertisement for Yeezus which stated that the album would not be available for pre-order.[49] Speaking about the album's minimal promotion, West stated: "With this album, we ain't drop no single to radio. We ain't got no NBA campaign, nothing like that. Shit, we ain't even got no cover. We just made some real music."[16]
The physical CD edition of Yeezus was released in a clear jewel box with no album artwork, reflecting the minimalist tone. The packaging consists of little more than a piece of red tape and a sticker affixed to the back, with sample credits and the album's UPC. Other versions of this release have different colors of stickers, with green, yellow and orange being some of the other colors. The front is affixed with a Parental Advisory label.[50] The Source pointed out a resemblance between the Yeezus CD packaging and a packaging concept designed for the single "Crystal" by the English band New Order in 2001.[51]
Def Jam confirmed in late June 2013 that "Black Skinhead" would be serviced to American radio as the album's first single on July 2, 2013 and that a music video for the track was being produced.[52] It was officially released to radio in the United Kingdom on June 19.[53] The song peaked at number 69 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and 34 on the UK Singles Chart.[54][55] In August 2013, it was revealed that "Bound 2" would be released as the second single from Yeezus.[56] "Bound 2" features vocals from American soul singer Charlie Wilson and incorporates numerous samples into its production, including prominent elements of the song "Bound" (1971) by soul group Ponderosa Twins Plus One.[40] "Bound 2" received general acclaim from music critics, who referred to the song as one of the highlights of the album and compared its soul sample-based production to West's early work from his debut studio album The College Dropout.[57][58] The song has since peaked at number 55 on the UK Singles Chart.[59] In November 2013, producer Hudson Mohawke revealed that "Blood on the Leaves" would serve as the album's third single.[60] West subsequently made the announcement in an interview on New York's 92.3 NOW.[61]
West performing in 2013 as part of the Yeezus Tour
On September 6, 2013, Kanye West announced The Yeezus Tour, a North American tour to take place between October 19 through December 7, 2013. The tour was marketed as his "first solo tour in 5 years", and featured Kendrick Lamar, Pusha T, A Tribe Called Quest and Travis Scott as a supporting acts.[62] On October 30, 2013 while on the road to Vancouver, a truck carrying custom-made video screens and equipment for the show was involved in a car accident, the crash damaged the equipment beyond repair.[63] The tour resumed on November 16, 2013, at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. The missed Chicago and Detroit shows were rescheduled however, the rest of the missed dates were cancelled, Def Jam cited routing logistics as the reason.[64]
Critical reception
Yeezus was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 84, based on 46 reviews.[66]
Reviewing the album in The Guardian, lead critic Alexis Petridis found it "noisy, gripping, maddening, potent",[70] while Helen Brown from The Daily Telegraph said it was "the most exciting album" she had heard in some time.[68] Jon Dolan from Rolling Stone called it a "brilliant, obsessive-compulsive career auto-correct" that made other abrasive records by "mad geniuses", such as In Utero by Nirvana and Radiohead's Kid A, seem tame by comparison.[26] Pitchfork critic Ryan Dombal viewed it as a "razor-sharpened take" on West's fourth album, 808s & Heartbreak, concluding that "cohesion and bold intent are at a premium on Yeezus, perhaps more than any other Kanye album. Each fluorescent strike of noise, incongruous tempo flip, and warped vocal is bolted into its right place across the album's fast 40 minutes."[73] Randall Roberts of the Los Angeles Times felt it was his most ambitious piece of music yet,[76] and Evan Rytlewski from The A.V. Club said it was his most uninhibited record: "Even by the standards of an artist who reinvents himself with each release, it's a drastic departure".[33] In the opinion of AllMusic's David Jeffries, the album was an "extravagant stunt with the high-art packed in, offering an eccentric, audacious, and gripping experience that's vital and truly unlike anything else."[67] Rock artist Lou Reed reviewed Yeezus in July 2013 shortly before his death, describing it as majestic and inspiring. "He's really trying to raise the bar. No one's near doing what he's doing, it's not even on the same planet."[77]
Some reviewers expressed reservations. In The New York Times, Jon Pareles said West's innovative transfiguration of his music—with unrefined electronica and drill elements—was undermined by his distasteful lyrics and appropriation of 1960s civil rights slogans "to his own celebrity or to bedroom exploits".[78] In Robert Christgau's opinion, the combination of harsh rock and hip hop sounds on Yeezus was as bold as Public Enemy's music during the 1980s, but West's lyrics were grotesquely off-putting. "He's wordsmith enough to insure that his sexist imagery is very hard to take", Christgau wrote in The Barnes & Noble Review,[79] describing the album as an "alt-rap also-ran".[80] Chris Richards from The Washington Post found West's lyricism perhaps "his least compelling" yet and "drunk on bitterness",[81] while Alex Griffin of Tiny Mix Tapes described the record as "a nebulous, dense, paranoid web of utterly unfiltered expression that's utterly or negligibly fascinating depending on how much you care about Yeezy".[82] In The Times, Will Hodgkinson surmised that Yeezus could have been West's masterpiece had he not become "so hopelessly self-important".[75]
Accolades
Yeezus was the most critically acclaimed album of 2013. It managed to top 18 lists and polls. was the most critically acclaimed album of 2013. It managed to top 18 lists and polls.
Based on 146 individual year-end top ten lists compiled by Metacritic, Yeezus was the most critically acclaimed album of 2013, appearing on 61 lists and being named first on 18 of them.[83] In October 2013, Complex named Yeezus the sixth best hip hop album of the last five years.[84] Yeezus was rated as album of the year by nine publications. Spin named it the best album of 2013, writing, "Yeezus was a thorny tangram puzzle of boxy headbanger blats that exemplified a year of equally stripped-down, basal pleasures."[85] The A.V. Club named it the best album of 2013 saying "It’s magnificent, and it sounds like absolutely nothing else."[86] Rolling Stone named it the second best album of 2013, comparing it in concept to Reed's polarizing 1975 album Metal Machine Music: "No wonder the late, great Lou Reed embraced Yeezus, since it's basically the Metal Machine Music concept translated into futuristic hip-hop, all industrial overload and hypertense egomania and hostile vibes."[87] Exclaim! also named it the hip hop album of the year.[88] NME named it the second best album of the year calling it "his most sonically challenging album to date."[89] Stereogum, TIME and Complex also named Yeezus the best album of 2013.[90][91][92] It was also nominated in two categories at the 2014 Grammy Awards including for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song for "New Slaves". West responded unfavorably to this due to not receiving more nominations. He then addressed the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences at one of his concerts and referred to it as patronizing.[93][94]
The Pitchfork online music publication ranked Yeezus in the eighth position of a list of the best 100 albums of the decade "so far"—between 2010 and 2014—on August 19, 2014.[95] In January 2014, Yeezus was named the best album of 2013 by The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop annual critics' poll; this is the fourth instance that a Kanye West album has topped the poll, after The College Dropout, Late Registration, and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2004, 2005, and 2010, respectively. On the same poll for singles, "Bound 2", "New Slaves", and "Black Skinhead" were ranked in the top 10. In 2015 Way Too Indie named it the album of the decade thus far.[96]
Commercial performance
Within one day of availability on the iTunes Store, Yeezus topped sales in the UK, Canada, Australia and Germany, while remaining at number two in the United States behind J. Cole's Born Sinner.[107] It would eventually have chart-topping performances in the United Kingdom, where Yeezus debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart on downloads alone, making the album West's first number one on that chart since Graduation in 2007,[108] and Australia, where it became West's first album to top the ARIA Charts.[109]
Yeezus debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 327,000 copies in the United States in its first week.[110] The album failed to reach the 500,000 sales projections, and marked West's lowest solo opening week sales in the US.[110] However, it still had the third-best first week sales of 2013 at the time of its release and |
.
Prior to the crisis, Greece was growing in line with the rest of the Eurozone. The turning point from the peak is identical for the Eurozone in general.
The downturn and the slight recovery (as the deficit grew to attenuate the loss of private spending) that followed the same pattern in Greece as it did in the Eurozone.
Then the break point came – March-quarter 2009 – and from there the Greek disaster began and has continued to the current period.
The difference experiences of the Eurozone in general and the US reflect the imposition of austerity in Europe relative to the US, where the fiscal deficit was allowed to remain at relatively higher levels for longer to support growth in private spending. The result was that US real GDP recovered more quickly and is now 10 per cent above the pre-crisis peak.
The EU19 real GDP has still not passed its pre-crisis peak. Greek real GDP is now 26 per cent below their peak.
If you believed Phelps, the massive decline in the Eurozone in general and presumably the US, where the turning points match those of Greece, occurred because of “sinking confidence in the … [Greek] … government”.
This is idiocy.
The break point came when the Greek government started to impose fiscal austerity in an environment when private spending was extremely weak and deteriorating further.
A sequence of events including the Troika bailouts built on that austerity and caused real GDP to fall by around 26 per cent.
That is beyond doubt.
Phelps also claimed that:
Looking at Greece, these economists argue that a shift in fiscal policy to “austerity” – a smaller public sector – has brought an acute deficiency of demand and thus a depression. But this claim misreads history and exaggerates the power of government spending.
He had earlier said that “these economists” considered “employment is determined by “demand” – government spending, household consumption, and investment demand”.
The economists who consider employment is demend-determined do not consider the crisis in Greece to have been caused by austerity.
That construction of the problem is just a convenient fiction set up by Phelps to try to fit the data to this ideological mission.
The reality is that the crisis was initially engendered by a collapse in non-government spending – private investment, followed by private consumption and compounded by a drop in world export trade.
The following graph shows the evolution of private spending (Consumption and Investment) from the March-quarter 2006 to the March-quarter 2015. The index equals 100 in the March-quarter 2008.
Clearly, investment led the crisis in 2008 and 2009 as financial markets froze in the wake of the American housing disaster. As employment fell and incomes started falling, private consumption started to fall.
The government started to cut spending in 2009 and then accelerated the cuts in early 2010 at a time when private spending was still deteriorating, meaning fiscal policy became pro-cyclical when responsible policy conduct should see counter-cyclical fiscal intervention.
In other words, when the private spending cycle is contracting and unemployment is rising, public spending should expand, and vice versa.
The conduct of Greek fiscal policy once the crisis hit was irresponsible and the austerity that was imposed exacerbated the contraction that was led by the collapse of private investment.
I will return to the facts later.
Theoretical flaws
Phelps, typical to form, attempts to convince his readers that the meltdown in the Greek economy had nothing to do with the harsh austerity that was imposed on the nation as a result of the enforcement of the fiscal rules under the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and then the Troika’s bailout conditions.
He attacks economists who think that “employment is determined by “demand” – government spending, household consumption, and investment demand”.
That is, he denies that spending is related to output in any way and that firms hire workers to produce output and if there are no sales the firms will not hire.
He has made a career out of such denial. His earlier work in the late 1960s sought to attack the concept of ‘involuntary unemployment’ that is one of the central contributions derived from Keynes’ General Theory.
This has been a long-standing dispute within economists.
Involuntary unemployment is a fundamental concept in macroeconomics and indicates that individuals are constrained by the systemic failure of the economy to provide enough jobs and have little power to alter that circumstance and thus gain work.
Phelps is among the neo-classical economists who consider mass unemployment to be a voluntary state, chosen by individuals upon the basis of their preferences for “leisure” against work.
The concept of voluntarism comes from the Classical economists (pre 1930s) who denied that there could ever be an enduring state where the system failed to provide enough work relative to the preferences of those who desired to work.
They claimed that output (which drives the demand for labour) could never persist at levels which would be insufficient to generate a job for all those who desired one.
The Great Depression in the 1930s changed the debate because the notion of voluntary unemployment failed to accord with the observed reality.
Millions of workers clearly desired to work but were forced onto the unemployment queue because employers were not willing to provide them with jobs. It was clear that the firms had no desire to expand employment at that time because they could not foresee any potential sales for the extra output that might have been produced.
In the 1930s, the British economist John Maynard Keynes realised that the existing body of macroeconomic theory was inadequate for explaining the mass unemployment that persisted throughout the decade as production levels fell in the face of a major slump in overall spending. He thus defined involuntary unemployment in this way:
Men are involuntarily unemployed, if, in the event of a small rise in the price of wage-goods relative to the money-wage, both the aggregate supply of labour willing to work for the current money-wage and the aggregate demand for it at that wage would be greater than the existing volume of employment. (Page 15, General Theory)
It is true that definition was somewhat tortured.
It was deliberately framed in this way to challenge the existing British Treasury viewpoint which claimed that the unemployment during the early part of the 1930s was due to the real wage (the purchasing power equivalent of the money wage) being too high relative to productivity.
So Keynes said that if the real wage falls and workers still supply more labour to the increased quantity of jobs offered by the firms then those workers were unemployed against their will – that is, involuntarily unemployed.
The essential point that Keynes was aiming to instill into the debate was that mass unemployment of the type he saw in the 1930s was a demand (systemic lack of jobs) rather than supply phenomenon (choice by workers for more leisure).
That is, it is total spending in the economy that impels firms to employ workers and produce goods and services. A firm will not employ if they cannot sell the goods and services that would be produced.
Building on that concept, Keynes introduced the idea of the unemployment equilibrium – that is, a state where the monetary economy could continue to operate at high levels of unemployment and firms realising their expected sales volumes.
He argued that if the economy reaches this type of impasse, the only way out is to reduce unemployment by an injection of government spending, which stimulates demand and provokes firms to increase output and offer more jobs.
Edmund Phelps was among a group of economists in the late 1960s that resurrected the voluntary unemployment narrative as part of their campaign to disabuse governments from running deficits and avoiding deregulation.
It was really the start of the modern neo-liberal period in economics.
I won’t go into detail but Phelps introduced a stylised model of the economy based on a series of ‘islands’ (one day travel apart) where obtaining information about wage and employment conditions on other islands is a costly exercise – a worker has to travel to a new island to receive a wage offer and in doing so forgoes a day’s wage.
Each day, there is an auction on each island which determines the wage and employment to prevail. All workers available can get a job if they are prepared to work at the free market (auction) wage.
The worker is then constructed as having a choice. Does a worker accept the current market wage on their island or incur the costs required to find a better offer elsewhere.
So when wages are considered ‘low’ relative to what the workers believe prevail on other islands, the workers will get in a canoe and paddle to a neighbouring island to seek a higher real wage on another island.
AS a consequence, the unemployment that is recorded as the workers canoe around the various islands is purely voluntary – workers trying to access higher wage offers when there is imperfect information.
The implication is that a worker can always generate a wage offer (that is, a job) if they are prepared to work for lower wages.
This conception considers wages to be only a cost. But wages are also a major source of income and hence spending capacity. Cut wages and incomes fall even though for firms costs might fall.
The mainstream economists ignored the income side of the wage deal. The technical issue comes down to the flawed assumption that aggregate supply and aggregate demand relationships are independent. This is a standard assumption of mainstream economics and it is clearly false.
Phelps’ conception of wages and employment falls into the trap of the Fallacy of Composition, which refers to errors in logic that arise “when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole (or even of every proper part)” (Source).
So the fallacy of composition refers to situations where individually logical actions are collectively irrational.
These fallacies are rife in the way mainstream macroeconomists reason and serve to undermine their policy responses. The current push for austerity across the globe is another glaring example of this type of flawed reasoning. The very fact that austerity is being widely advocated will generate the conditions that will see it fail as a growth strategy. We never really learn.
The point is that prior to this the mainstream economists assumed that what might happen at an individual level will also happen if all individuals do the same thing.
In terms of their solutions to unemployment, they believed that one firm might be able to cut costs by lowering wages for their workforce and because their demand will not be affected they might increase their hiring.
However, they failed to see that if all firms did the same thing, total spending would fall dramatically and employment would also drop. Again, trying to reason the system-wide level on the basis of individual experience generally fails.
The upshot is that at the theoretical level, the sort of models that Phelps and his cronies were wheeling out, which have dominated mainstream economics and poisoned the minds of tens of thousands graduate students over the last 45 years or so, fail basic logic tests and cannot provide a satisfactory explanation for mass unemployment.
The Facts!
Let us just record the Phelps’ facts:
1. There was no austerity in Greece
2. “Much of the decline in employment in Greece occurred prior to the sharp cuts in spending between 2012 and 2014 – owing, no doubt, to sinking confidence in the government”.
3. “Greek government spending per quarter climbed to a plateau of around €13.5 billion ($20 billion) in 2009-2012, before falling to roughly €9.6 billion in 2014-2015”.
4. “the number of job holders reached its high of 4.5 million in 2006-2009, and had fallen to 3.6 million by 2012”.
5. “By the time Greece began to cut its budget, the rate of unemployment – 9.6 per cent of the labor force in 2009 – had already risen almost to its recent level of 25.5 per cent.”
6. “They indicate that Greece’s turn away from the high spending of 2008-2013 is not to blame for today’s mass unemployment.”
If we were to summarise in different words, the Greek government was spending strongly through to 2012 yet the unemployment rate was already around 25 per cent before the spending cuts occurred.
There are so many things that are wrong with this story not the least being Phelps’ facts do not seem to accord with the actual data available from Eurostat, the IMF, the OECD or Greece’s own El.Stat.
It is one thing to attempt to impose an ideological lens onto history. But another to alter the facts so that they fit the rigid ideological lens.
Why Project Syndicate would lower its standards by publishing this sort of nonsense is beyond me.
Here are some facts.
The first graph shows Greek total general government expenditure (billions of euros) (blue bars) and the unemployment rate (per cent) (red line) from 2000 to 2014.
The data is from the IMF World Economic Outlook.
Points to note:
1. Government expenditure peaked in 2009 and fell sharply after that.
2. The unemployment rate fell steadily as government expenditure increased and started to rise again in 2009. After the government started cutting expenditure the unemployment rate accelerated upwards.
At the peak government expenditure level (2009), the unemployment rate was still only 9.461 per cent
Note, that Phelps is talking about government expenditure one moment and then without warning starts to talk about the “budget” (“cut its budget”), which means we are talking about the balance between revenue and expenditure or the fiscal deficit.
So was the unemployment rate near to 25 per cent by the time the fiscal deficit started to contract as a result of austerity?
The upper panel of the following graph shows the shift in the fiscal balance (negative indicates deficit) as a percent of GDP (blue line) and the lower panel shows the unemployment rate (%) between 2000 and 2014.
The red vertical line is there for those who cannot interpret a turning point!
The fiscal balance began being tightened (austerity) in 2009 not 2012 and that was the year that the unemployment rate started to rise sharply. As the austerity was intensified the unemployment rate rose sharply.
Facts!
But it is here that Phelps gets tricky.
Phelps wrote:
Another finding casts doubt on whether austerity actually was imposed on Greece. Government spending has certainly fallen – but only to where it used to be: €9.6 billion in the first quarter of this year is, in fact, higher than it was as recently as 2003. So the premise of austerity appears to be wrong. Greece has not departed from past fiscal norms; it has returned to them. Rather than describing current government spending as “austere,” it would be more correct to view it as an end to years of fiscal profligacy, culminating in 2013, when the government’s budget deficit reached 12.3 per cent of GDP and public debt climbed to 175 per cent of GDP.
You will note that the fiscal deficit rose again in 2013 after contracting from 2009 to 2013 as the austerity was imposed.
The deficit then rose again in 2013 to 12.2 per cent of GDP (as Phelps notes). Phelps tries to represent this reversal in the fiscal deficit as the “culmination” of “years of fiscal profligacy”. Which is a straightforward misrepresentation of the fiscal dynamics and he must know that.
He also knows that the vast majority of readers will not understand the underlying dynamics and will see the rise in the deficit as a relaxation or worse of austerity.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In 2012, general government expenditure in Greece fell by 10.4 per cent and in 2013 11.4 per cent. So government spending was in retreat.
The reason that the deficit rose again is because the decline in tax revenue also accelerated from 2011 through to 2013 because the austerity had created a worse recession and the sharp decline in economic growth undermined the tax base.
The general point is that while the government was cutting its discretionary expenditure and increasing taxes (the austerity policy), the automatic stabilisers (the links between the fiscal balance and the state of economic activity) were pushing the fiscal deficit out faster than the austerity was cutting it.
This is the classic policy failure and illustrates why it is folly to target a lower deficit with discretionary austerity when private spending is weak. What often happens is that as the austerity is undermining growth, the fiscal deficit increases and unemployment rises. Bad on bad!
The other point to note is that Phelps adopts a very odd definition of the concept of ‘austerity’. Refer to his claim that:
Government spending has certainly fallen – but only to where it used to be: €9.6 billion in the first quarter of this year is, in fact, higher than it was as recently as 2003. So the premise of austerity appears to be wrong. Greece has not departed from past fiscal norms; it has returned to them.
Austerity is not a historically comparative concept. It relates to directions of flows of net government spending (the balance between spending and taxation) in relation to the current non-government net spending and the extent to which there is currently excess (idle) productive capacity.
It it true that government spending rose in the early days of the Eurozone and peaked in 2009. By 2014, it was back, in absolute terms to its 2005 level, while GDP was back to its 2000 level, such has been the contraction in the economy.
But between 2009-2014, government spending has contracted by an incredible 32.1 per cent, while private consumption fell by 22.4 per cent, total investment fell by 41 per cent.
In each of the years spanning that period, private spending was contracting, idle capacity was rising and government spending was contracting.
The only time that the government net contribution in that period was not undermining was in 2013, as noted above, and that was because tax revenue collapsed faster than the spending was being cut.
That is austerity – the overall impact of the government sector between 2009 and 2014 was to reduce economic growth.
To establish that conclusion, we do not have to consider what spending levels were previously.
The conclusion would still hold even if the Greek government had have gone on a spending frenzy prior to the crisis which pushed the economy to achieve unrealistic nominal growth rates and was now returning to previously sustainable growth.
The only point we have to establish is that the direction of net government spending is undermining economic growth at a time when non-government spending was incapable of bridging the output gap. That certainly has been the case in Greece between 2009 and 2014.
The other clue – which also rejects the claim that the Greek government was on a hell-bent spending frenzy before the crisis, which as I noted, is a separate issue to establishing whether austerity has been imposed post-crisis, is to examine the inflation rate evolution.
The IMF data tells us that the inflation rate varied between 3 and 4 per cent between 2000 and 2009 which was slightly higher on average but hardly out of kilter with other Eurozone nations. The Eurozone also experienced the little spike to 4 per cent in 2008 just before the crisis hit.
So relative to productive capacity, Greek government spending does not appear to have been wildly excessive.
The analysis by Phelps then deteriorated further. He wrote that:
The “demand school” might respond that, regardless of whether there is fiscal austerity now, increased government spending (financed, of course, by debt) would impart a permanent boost to employment. But Greece’s recent experience suggests otherwise. The huge rise in government spending from 2006 to the 2009-2013 period did produce employment gains, but they were not sustained.
Note, the “rise in government spending … did produce employment gains”.
But they were not sustained because:
1. Greece was affected by a world-wide recession instigated by the collapse of the US housing market. This led to a major decline in private spending (investment first, then consumption) and employment growth was wiped out.
2. Then the government significantly cut spending to exacerbate the decline in private spending.
Does he really think people are that stupid and gullible not to understand these dynamics.
His real aim is to disabuse anyone from supporting fiscal expansion.
He claims that “spending more is not the remedy for Greece’s plight, just as spending less was not the cause”.
He fails (as we have seen) to establish the second part of the proposition, and his explanation for opposing spending expansion becomes more bizarre than his earlier denials.
He claims that to fund that extra stimulus, foreigners would not be willing to buy the debt so Greeks, themselves would buy it.
This would mean that:
… household wealth relative to wages would soar, and the labor supply would shrink, causing employment to contract
So Phelps is trying to convince his readers that because Greek households would be exchanging their saving deposit for a government bond – which is just a portfolio shift in their wealth holdings, there would be a major shift in the preference of Greek households to work, which would lead them to withdraw their labour and live on the income flows coming from the bond holdings.
Note that the only gain from holding the bonds, presuming that the household was not aiming to become a speculative bond trader in the secondary markets, would be the extra income flowing via the yield relative to holding the saving in a non-interest bearing deposit (or a lower yielding financial asset).
According to Eurostat, the average gross monthly wage in Greece for a single person with no children was 1,262.05 euros. Even at the current 10-year Greek bond yield rates (trading in the open market), each average household would have to buy a signicant (huge) volume of bonds to earn that sort of income flow per month.
Do your own arithmetic, the scenario doesn’t bear scrutiny.
Extremely rich Greeks might have the wherewithall to buy bonds in those sorts of volumes but then they are hardly going to dent the labour supply should they ‘stop working’.
Growth, by definition, has to be engendered by more spending. That is definitional. What Phelps is opposed to is more government spending because he has devoted his career to inventing bizarre explanations in an attempt to deny that the economy responds to government spending in a similar manner to increases in private spending.
If there is idle capacity, then firms respond to the increased sales by putting on workers and increasing output.
Earlier this year (February 9, 2015), the OECD released its latest – Economic Policy Reforms 2015
Going for Growth – publication.
If you don’t have a subscription to the OECD library, you can read the document on-line – HERE.
This is the annual report from the OECD ” highlighting developments in structural policies in OECD countries” and aims to provide “internationally comparable indicators that enable countries to assess their economic performance and structural policies in a wide range of areas”.
The framework they use is extremely biased to their neo-liberal thinking, which is not all inconsistent from the sort of extremist economics that Phelps propagates.
The OECD assemble a “responsiveness rate” indicator, which “measures the share of total policy recommendations on which governments in each country have taken some action.”
These are the “Going for Growth recommendations” proposed by the OECD and cover various so-called structural and financial reforms (including austerity).
A value of 1 means “significant” action has been taken, a value of zero means the opposite.
Greece stands out as having the highest “responsiveness rates” in both 2011-12 and 2013-14 – way ahead of the nearest nations which include Portugal, Ireland and Estonia.
The OECD average in 2013-14 was just over 0.3, whereas Greece recorded a value of 0.7. The EU average was around 0.5.
The point is that there has been massive changes within Greece over the post-crisis period, which are associated with public sector cutbacks, pension cuts, and regulatory changes – all part of the austerity story.
Conclusion
Edmund Phelps won the Nobel Prize in Economics (which is not a real Nobel Prize) in 2006, which I suppose means we should not be surprised by the rubbish that he dished up in this Op Ed.
Given the facts it is hard to take the following summation by Phelps seriously:
These findings weigh heavily against the hypothesis that “austerity” has brought Greece to its present plight. They indicate that Greece’s turn away from the high spending of 2008-2013 is not to blame for today’s mass unemployment.
We are now in a phase of “Austerity denial”, where conservatives attempt to massage history to avoid the unpalatable conclusion that the massive austerity that has been imposed on certain countries by the IMF and its partners in crime (in Greece’s case the European Commission and the ECB) has caused huge declines in GDP (levels and growth rates) and deliberately led to millions of people becoming jobless with associated rises in poverty rates.
That causality is undeniable.
It is as undeniable as climate change and should I add the Holocaust.
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That is enough for today!
(c) Copyright 2015 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.The Mask Comes Off: The Alt-Right Is Racist to Its Core
When my colleague here at PJ Media, Walter Hudson, wrote an article about the alternative right (or alt-right) titled " The Alt-Right Is Evil and Must Be Opposed," I hoped that they would strike back by showing him that he was wrong about them.
Sadly, that did not happen. See here some screenshots of comments left by readers who self-identify as alt-right:
These commenters all share some specific views -- views that are diametrically opposed to traditional conservatism. Firs, they look at people as part of "a tribe," a word they actually use rather frequently. There is the "white tribe," the "black tribe," and the "Hispanic tribe." They identify with the former: the "white tribe." This makes them collectivists.
Secondly, they all seem to believe that there is a grand conspiracy aimed at destroying the "white race." Neo-Nazis have used the phrase "white genocide" for decades, but until recently, normal conservatives didn't want to have anything to do with it. Clearly, the alt-right has embraced the concept.
Third, the alt-right believes that American culture is related to "whiteness." To them, American culture is white culture. This means that the struggle to "preserve" American culture is actually a struggle to preserve the "white race." It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this not only leads them to oppose immigration (of non-whites), but mixed marriages as well. After all, mixed marriages result in non-white (or half-white) children. If they don't, they're contradicting their own philosophy.
Finally, while the alt-right may call themselves "conservatives," what they wish to "conserve" aren't the principles that made America great such as unalienable rights for all people, but "white culture" and therefore the "white race." This is a racial battle to them, just like it is in the eyes of Black Lives Matter, only the skin color they pretend to "defend" is different.
And that's precisely why it's so important for real conservatives to vocally oppose them and their agenda. These people have nothing to do with conservatism. More precisely, they represent the complete opposite: conservatism is focused on individuals; they are focused on groups or, as they call them, tribes. They're collectivists, and racist collectivists at that.
Decades ago, the conservative movement purged itself of the John Birch Society. It's up to modern conservatives and libertarians to get rid of the alt-right.Remember “fecal soup”? A CBS “60 Minutes” exposé in 1987 documented widespread food safety violations by the poultry industry, making use of undercover video from a hidden camera placed by the “60 Minutes” crew. The episode vindicated U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) whistleblower Hobart Bartley, who had been ignored and threatened by his superiors and finally transferred to another plant when he warned of unsanitary conditions at a Simmons Industries plant in Missouri. Bartley was particularly irate about the “eight-foot-high vat of water called the ‘chiller,’ where as many as 10,000 chicken carcasses were routinely left to float, soaking up moisture to increase their selling weight. Dried blood, feces, and hair were floating in along with the dead birds. Diane Sawyer later called it ‘fecal soup.'”
In the modern era, effective enforcement of food safety and the humane treatment of animals has long relied on undercover video investigations by reporters and citizens. The footage and images gained can serve as proof of criminal wrongdoing or lay ugly practices bare. Such images can vindicate whistleblowers who otherwise risk retaliation when speaking up. Now this practice, which has time and time again exposed hidden dangers — including downer cows linked to Mad Cow disease in the food supply — is under threat by a series of state bills dubbed “ag gag” bills.
Recent Ag Gag Law in Florida, Followed by 17 Others in Two Years
In 2011, a 21 million egg-a-year Florida producer, Wilton Simpson of Simpson Farms, requested a bill from then-state Florida Senator Jim Norman.
At Simpson’s behest, in February 2011 Norman introduced a bill to the Florida Senate that would make photography “at or of a farm” a first-degree felony. SB1246, the “Farms” bill, and copycat bills in Minnesota and Iowa would later be called “ag gag” bills by the New York Times‘ Mark Bittman.
Simpson and the Florida Farm Bureau wanted to “deter animal-rights activists from obtaining imagery used to harm the industry,” according to The Florida Independent, but the bill as written would have applied to anyone, including journalists. The bill died in committee in 2012.
But while Florida’s bill did not pass, similar “ag gag” bills were introduced in Iowa, Minnesota, and New York in 2011. A modified bill passed in Iowa in March 2012. The bill’s proponents in the Iowa state legislature were heavily funded by corporate agribusiness interests.
2012 saw the introduction of similar bills in six more states. “Ag gag” became law in Utah, and a modified version was signed into law in Missouri. Nine “ag gag” bills have been introduced so far in 2013: in New Hampshire, Wyoming, Nebraska, Indiana, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, and New Mexico. (See the Center for Media and Democracy’s article on SourceWatch for more.)
New Tactic Devised to Make Bills Legal
In its original form, the “ag gag” bill was a blatant violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression and would have quashed the right of independent investigators to document the truth. So legislators in Iowa and Utah changed the bills to make lying on employment applications a crime. Now factory farms and slaughterhouses can screen out reporters and other investigators by asking on job applications, “Are you affiliated with a news organization, labor union, or animal protection group?”
A former Humane Society investigator, Cody Carlson, wrote in The Atlantic, “Two years ago, I had to answer a similar question when I applied to work at the nation’s second biggest egg producer, located in Thompson, Iowa. If the Ag Gag law had been in effect then, I might be writing this article from a cell.” The same would have been true for a New York Times or Chicago Tribune investigative reporter.
Instead, Carlson was able to work undercover at four Iowa egg farms in the winter of 2010 and expose abuses such as manure pits not cleaned or maintained in multiple years, and laying hens with unnoticed and untreated prolapsed uteruses.
Carlson wrote, “A few months later, Iowa’s egg farms were in the news again when nearly identical conditions were found at several other locations, this time by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The farms were at the center of a massive salmonella outbreak that caused the biggest egg recall in United States history.”
March of Bills Have Roots in ALEC
The ideological ancestor of these bills is a 2002 “model” bill called the “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” (AETA) pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate bill mill responsible for spreading 2011’s spate of “voter ID” laws and the NRA-drafted “Stand your Ground” law, as Green is the New Red author Will Potter points out.
AETA broadly prohibits various kinds of “obstruction” of “an animal or natural resource activity,” including by damage or destruction, trespassing, as well as “entering an animal or research facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other means with the intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its owner.”
The newer “ag gag” bills focus more exclusively on “prohibiting a person from entering onto a farm or photographing or video recording a farm without the owner’s written consent” (from Florida’s 2011 bill).
ALEC approved AETA and started pushing it both in the states and at the federal level in January 2004, with its publication of the propaganda pamphlet “Animal & Ecological Terrorism in America.” According to a text comparison performed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the ALEC bill appears to be based on a 1990 Kansas bill called the “Farm Animal and Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act.”
After ALEC started pushing the bill, it was introduced in Tennessee in 2006, but died in committee; a limited version was passed in California in 2008; and a nearly identical bill was introduced in Washington State in 2010 (see CMD’s text comparison here), but died in committee.
As the New York Times‘ Mark Bittman commented in the first wave of bill introductions two years ago, “The biggest problem of all is that we’ve created a system in which standard factory-farming practices are inhumane, and the kinds of abuses documented [by the investigations criminalized by the bills] are really just reminders of that.”
The path between Washington’s 2010 bill and Florida’s 2011 bill is not clear, but it is clear that the intended result is the same. “Ag gag” bills seek to prevent the documentation and exposure of safety violations and atrocities in animal industries by criminalizing them and labeling them “obstruction.” In other words, turn off the tape and bury the evidence rather than reforming the system.As we told you earlier, WikiLeaks released the first batch of well over 50,000 emails allegedly from Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta.
Here’s one CNN’s Jake Tapper found between Kristina Schake, Clinton’s deputy press secretary, and Podesta where they discuss “Why is Jake Tapper such a dick?” because he wanted to interview the former Secretary of State for an hour:
Oops! People are loving Tapper’s response, however:
This is the correct response https://t.co/qxJtXYVS9i — Bob Bryan (@RobertBryan4) October 7, 2016
And here’s how Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri handled it:
What, no apology for Podesta’s “locker room talk,” like Donald Trump did?
Related:
OCTOBER SURPRISE? WikiLeaks just dropped the first batch of ‘well over 50,000’ emails allegedly from John Podesta
‘Grab them by the p*ssy’: In newly released audio, Trump describes how he respects womenIf you are not a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Watterson, then you may not know that Calvin was an imaginative little boy who created snowmen and put them in scenes that would be straight out of a snowman’s nightmare. Little Calvin would have the snowmen in scenes where the snowmen would die horrible, mostly painful, deaths. For ten winters, Calvin and Hobbes created entire worlds of snowmen living or dying in unhappily ever after ways. Here are some of the best snowmen nightmares, where fans of the comic strip created tributes to Calvin and Hobbes snowmen in real life.
Snowmen Nightmares
If you decide to build a snowman, then perhaps you should startle your neighbors and people who drive by. The first thing you should know is that the snowman should not be set in a smiling and happily ever after scene. Think along the lines of what would be a snowman’s worst nightmare. If you have a dark sense of humor, then it will be easy. If you need some ideas, take a look at the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips and snowmen below.
Snow Monster
The man-eating snowman is a giant snowman with a huge toothy mouth. Calvin once placed himself in its mouth to create the impression he was being eaten alive. This snow monster above is into cannibalism, catching and eating other snowmen. When Calvin’s dad saw the scene, he said, “I don’t think the schools assign enough homework.”
Repent. The End is Near
The “Snowmen Prophets of Doom” proclaim that spring is near and the snowmen are melting. Calvin made snowmen and then gave them all signs like,”Repent all sinners,” “The end is near,” and “Spring is coming!”
Snowman House of Horrors
Calvin created many depictions of snowmen in his “Snowman House of Horror.” Among the snowmen created, a specific snowman had been chopped in half with a sled driven by a baby snowman, the horrified headless snowman, and the snowman with a tree staked through its heart. People have gone with this theme, maiming, stabbing, and killing their snow-people. Calvin said to his mother, “You don’t like my snowman house of horror, do you?”
Snow Sharks
Hobbes asks, “Snow sharks?” Calvin replied, “That guy’s a goner.” Snow snarks have popped up all over the world to eat snowmen since that time. There were also snow snakes, same idea, the snowman is about to die a horrible death.
Snowman Car Crash
Perhaps the most famous snowman gag involved Dad’s parked car. Several snowmen were are gathered around with their mouths gaping in horror while they look at the trisected body of a snowman “hit” by the car. Dad then stated, “I think we’d better get that kid to a psychologist.”
Snowmen Slowed Down Traffic
After taking in Calvin’s handiwork where a snowman had been shot with a cannon, one was being buried alive by another snowman, and one suicidal snowman was about to hang itself, Calvin’s dad said, “You have to admit it’s slowed down traffic on our road.”
Tiny Snowmen
Calvin built many tiny snowmen. Some he crushed while pretending to be a Tyrannosaurus. His tiny snowmen also ran from T-Rex, committed suicide by jumping from Calvin’s bedroom windowsill, and were created simply to grate on his dad’s nerves like the normal-sized snowman yelling at all the little ones. If you want the tiny snowmen to be eaten |
51.4 View Large
Table 4. Frequency of Marijuana Use No. of Men Testosterone, mmol/L Free Testosterone, nmol/L LH, IU/L FSH, IU/L SHBG, nmol/L Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile No use 658 19.9 11.2 34.1 459.9 262.2 767.6 3.4 1.5 6.8 2.5 1 6 28 12 51 ≤1 time per week 405 21.0 12.5 33.7 473.3 295.3 764.9 3.3 1.6 6.6 2.3 0.9 5.9 28 15 50.8 >1 time per week 131 22.9 12.5 35.1 498.3 302.6 811.1 3.7 1.6 6.6 2.5 0.9 6.6 31 15 51.4 Frequency of Marijuana Use No. of Men Testosterone, mmol/L Free Testosterone, nmol/L LH, IU/L FSH, IU/L SHBG, nmol/L Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile Median 5th Percentile 95th Percentile No use 658 19.9 11.2 34.1 459.9 262.2 767.6 3.4 1.5 6.8 2.5 1 6 28 12 51 ≤1 time per week 405 21.0 12.5 33.7 473.3 295.3 764.9 3.3 1.6 6.6 2.3 0.9 5.9 28 15 50.8 >1 time per week 131 22.9 12.5 35.1 498.3 302.6 811.1 3.7 1.6 6.6 2.5 0.9 6.6 31 15 51.4 View Large
Table 5. Frequency of Marijuana Use No. of Men Testosterone, mmol/L Free Testosterone, nmol/L LH, IU/L FSH, IU/L SHBG, nmol/L % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI Adjusted results for marijuana useb No use 651 Referent Referent Referent Referent Referent ≤1 time per week 403 3 −2, 7 2 −2, 7 −3 −9, 3 −3 −10, 4 2 −3, 7 >1 time per week 129 7 0, 14 5 −2, 12 7 −2, 18 −1 −12, 11 7 −1, 16 Adjusted results for marijuana and recreational drug usec Marijuana ≤1 time per week, no recreational drugs 977 Referent Referent Referent Referent Referent Marijuana >1 time per week, no recreational drugs 74 8 −0, 17 5 −3, 13 7 −4, 18 −8 −20, 5 8 −1, 19 Marijuana >1 time per week and recreational drugs 55 3 −6, 13 1 −7, 11 10 −3, 24 11 −5, 30 5 −6, 17 Frequency of Marijuana Use No. of Men Testosterone, mmol/L Free Testosterone, nmol/L LH, IU/L FSH, IU/L SHBG, nmol/L % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI Adjusted results for marijuana useb No use 651 Referent Referent Referent Referent Referent ≤1 time per week 403 3 −2, 7 2 −2, 7 −3 −9, 3 −3 −10, 4 2 −3, 7 >1 time per week 129 7 0, 14 5 −2, 12 7 −2, 18 −1 −12, 11 7 −1, 16 Adjusted results for marijuana and recreational drug usec Marijuana ≤1 time per week, no recreational drugs 977 Referent Referent Referent Referent Referent Marijuana >1 time per week, no recreational drugs 74 8 −0, 17 5 −3, 13 7 −4, 18 −8 −20, 5 8 −1, 19 Marijuana >1 time per week and recreational drugs 55 3 −6, 13 1 −7, 11 10 −3, 24 11 −5, 30 5 −6, 17 View Large
Table 5. Frequency of Marijuana Use No. of Men Testosterone, mmol/L Free Testosterone, nmol/L LH, IU/L FSH, IU/L SHBG, nmol/L % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI Adjusted results for marijuana useb No use 651 Referent Referent Referent Referent Referent ≤1 time per week 403 3 −2, 7 2 −2, 7 −3 −9, 3 −3 −10, 4 2 −3, 7 >1 time per week 129 7 0, 14 5 −2, 12 7 −2, 18 −1 −12, 11 7 −1, 16 Adjusted results for marijuana and recreational drug usec Marijuana ≤1 time per week, no recreational drugs 977 Referent Referent Referent Referent Referent Marijuana >1 time per week, no recreational drugs 74 8 −0, 17 5 −3, 13 7 −4, 18 −8 −20, 5 8 −1, 19 Marijuana >1 time per week and recreational drugs 55 3 −6, 13 1 −7, 11 10 −3, 24 11 −5, 30 5 −6, 17 Frequency of Marijuana Use No. of Men Testosterone, mmol/L Free Testosterone, nmol/L LH, IU/L FSH, IU/L SHBG, nmol/L % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI % 95% CI Adjusted results for marijuana useb No use 651 Referent Referent Referent Referent Referent ≤1 time per week 403 3 −2, 7 2 −2, 7 −3 −9, 3 −3 −10, 4 2 −3, 7 >1 time per week 129 7 0, 14 5 −2, 12 7 −2, 18 −1 −12, 11 7 −1, 16 Adjusted results for marijuana and recreational drug usec Marijuana ≤1 time per week, no recreational drugs 977 Referent Referent Referent Referent Referent Marijuana >1 time per week, no recreational drugs 74 8 −0, 17 5 −3, 13 7 −4, 18 −8 −20, 5 8 −1, 19 Marijuana >1 time per week and recreational drugs 55 3 −6, 13 1 −7, 11 10 −3, 24 11 −5, 30 5 −6, 17 View Large
We repeated the analyses among smokers and nonsmokers and among men with high and normal BMI separately, which did not significantly change our findings. Moreover, adjustment for maternal education did not affect the findings. Men with a low weekly alcohol intake (1–5 units) using marijuana more than once per week had a reduction of 42% (95% CI: −73, 21) and 39% (95% CI: −72, 34) in sperm concentration and total sperm count, respectively, compared with nonmarijuana smokers after adjustment, whereas the association was attenuated among men with a higher alcohol intake (>5 units per week).
DISCUSSION
In this study on more than 1,200 healthy young men, of whom 45% had smoked marijuana during the past 3 months, we found associations between regular use of marijuana more than once per week during the past 3 months and reduced semen quality, whereas no adverse association was found for irregular use. The combined use of marijuana and other recreational drugs decreased semen quality further. In addition, marijuana use was associated with increased serum testosterone to the same level as cigarette smoking. We cannot exclude the possibility that the men who used marijuana generally have an unhealthier lifestyle and health behavior, which may also affect their semen quality and hormone levels. We, however, adjusted for known lifestyle factors.
A study (6) investigated chronic marijuana users who, after 4 weeks of abstinence from marijuana, smoked between 8 and 20 marijuana-containing joints per week for 4 weeks. An association between marijuana use and decreased sperm count was detected, which persisted in the following 4-week recovery period. This is in accordance with our findings. On the contrary, a study of 159 men attending an infertility clinic found a positive correlation between marijuana use and percentage of motile sperm (18). The tendencies remained unchanged after adjusting for other substance use and history of sexually transmitted diseases. The discrepancies may be due to the fact that we studied healthy young men with a higher marijuana intake than infertile men, who may have changed their intake because of fertility problems. Only 2 previous studies have assessed the combined effects of marijuana and recreational drug use on semen quality. A case study (19) on a multidrug addict, investigated before and 2 years after cessation of the abuse, showed long-lasting semen abnormalities. Another study of 6 male multidrug addicts showed semen abnormalities (8). All subjects were underweight and malnourished, making it impossible to compare them with our healthy, young men.
The biological mechanisms by which marijuana affects semen quality and hormone levels are not fully known. The active component of cannabis, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), binds to the human cannabinoid receptors CB 1 and CB 2. CB 1 receptors are found in the anterior pituitary but have also been identified in the testis, vas deferens, and human sperm cells (20), leading to a dose-dependent decreased sperm motility and decreased mitochondrial activity in spermatozoa when activated (21). This makes it possible for marijuana to affect hormone levels and spermatogenesis, as well as the mature sperm cells. In vitro studies have shown that low doses of THC hyperactivated the spermatozoa and that high doses of THC had an inactivating effect (5), mimicking the human cannabinoid anandamide (22). THC could affect the normal balance of anandamide leading to impaired semen quality.
The hypophyseal hormones are known to affect spermatogenesis, and marijuana may affect semen quality by influencing both this axis and the testis. Marijuana has been found to reduce testosterone and luteinizing hormone (23, 24). However, previous studies did not take into account cigarette smoking and other possible confounders. In this study, we found a significant increase in testosterone correlated to the use of marijuana, contrary to the other studies. However, this increase could not be separated from the effect of tobacco smoking alone, found in other studies to raise testosterone levels (25, 26), making it impossible to separate the adverse effects of marijuana and cigarette smoking in this study.
Our study has several strengths, as it was large and included unselected young men of whom many used marijuana. A total of 45% of our men reported having tried marijuana during the past 3 months, and 33% used marijuana less than once per week, which is comparable to Danish population studies of men aged 16–34 years in which 46% reported ever having tried marijuana (1) and 17% during the past year. Only 6% of young Danes aged 16–34 years reported having used marijuana during the last month, which is lower than in our study. However, our men are younger, and the response categories are not directly comparable.
Our participation-rate was 30%, which is higher than participation rates in other population-based studies on semen quality (9, 27). Most of the men were unaware of their own fertility potential (8% had been responsible for a pregnancy), making this unlikely to have affected their motivation to participate. Approximately 15% of the men had a sperm concentration at a level that would indicate a high risk of needing future fertility treatment if they want to father a child (10). However, we believe that they represent the general population of young Danish men as we conducted a study where reproductive hormones among participants and nonparticipants were compared (28). We found no significant difference with regard to reproductive hormones in the 2 groups, indicating that our participants represented the general population with respect to reproductive health. In addition, this study compared semen quality and reproductive hormones in groups of men with different marijuana use, and it is therefore of less importance whether the groups of men in fact represented the general population.
Participants were asked to evaluate their use of marijuana in the last 3 months and, though the study was anonymous, there may have been a tendency to underestimate the consumption. However, this seems unlikely, as 45% of the young men reported marijuana use during the past 3 months, which may even indicate overreporting. The potential sources of exposure misclassification are unlikely to be related to the semen parameters or hormone levels, because the men responded to the questionnaire before knowing the results of their semen and serum analysis. Such nondifferential misclassifications would underestimate the results and can therefore not explain our findings. It would have been preferable to measure the carboxy THC metabolite levels in urine samples from the men in order to confirm the results from the questionnaire. However, studies suggest that urine-, blood-, and oral-fluid tests designed to measure marijuana use are unlikely to detect use further back than 1 month, whereas in this study we assessed use during the past 3 months. Furthermore, research has shown large intersubject differences in measurable levels in urine, making urine-sample testing less useful in this study (29).
Doses and time of abstinence from marijuana and other recreational drugs can vary individually and occasionally. We did not obtain information on these factors, but previous studies have suggested a dose and time dependence (6, 22, 30–32). In addition, spermatozoa mature within 3 months, and estimated marijuana intake over the past 3 months is therefore a good study design for assessing the association between semen quality and marijuana and recreational drug use.
Men who used marijuana had an unhealthier lifestyle and health behavior, were often smokers, consumed more alcohol, had a higher caffeine intake, were more likely to have had a sexually transmitted disease, and were more likely to have used recreational drugs other than marijuana. The adverse association between marijuana use and semen quality tended to be larger among men with low alcohol intake, although the results were not statistically significant. The negative association between marijuana use and semen quality and hormone levels may be attributed to differences in lifestyle, health behavior, and diet found among users, and even though we adjusted for many lifestyle factors, residual confounding is still possible.
In conclusion, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study showing adverse associations between regular marijuana use more than once weekly and semen quality among healthy young men, the association being even more pronounced among men taking other recreational drugs as well. We found an increase in testosterone levels among marijuana smokers within the same range as for tobacco smokers. As the study was cross-sectional, it was not possible to test whether semen quality and hormone levels are restored after cessation of the use, but until further studies have been conducted, men should be informed of the possibility that habitual marijuana use might be detrimental to their semen parameters. Our findings are potentially of great public interest, as almost half of the young Danish men use marijuana, which may contribute to the etiology for the recently reported high frequency of subnormal human sperm counts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Author affiliations: University Department of Growth and Reproduction, Rigshospitalet, The Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark (Tina Djernis Gundersen, Niels Jørgensen, Anna-Maria Andersson, Anne Kirstine Bang, Loa Nordkap, Niels E. Skakkebæk, Lærke Priskorn, Anders Juul, Tina Kold Jensen); and Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark (Tina Kold Jensen).
This work was supported by the Program Commission on Health, Food, and Welfare, Danish Council for Strategic Research (project 2101-08-0058), Rigshospitalet (grants 961506336 and R42-A1326), Developmental Effects of Environment on Reproductive Health (DEER), European Union Seventh Framework Program (Environment) (grant 212844), the Danish Ministry of Health, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, and the Kirsten and Freddy Johansens Foundation (grant 95-103-72087).
The funding organizations played no role in the design and conduct of the study; in the collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or in the presentation, review, or approval of the manuscript.
Conflict of interest: none declared.
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BEIJING, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- China is holding back on building new coal-fired power plants to avoid risks from overcapacity and promote a clean energy mix.
A total of 150 million kw of new coal power generation capacity will see construction halted or postponed from 2016 to 2020, the 13th Five-Year Plan period, according to a statement released Monday by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and other government agencies.
"New capacity will be strictly controlled," the statement said, citing measures to crack down on violations in planning, approval and operation. "All illegal coal-burning power projects will be halted."
Meanwhile, more than 20 million kw of outdated capacity will be eliminated, and nearly 1 billion kw of capacity will be upgraded to produce fewer emissions, use less energy, and better coordinate with new energy development.
The government plans to keep the country's total coal power capacity below 1.1 billion kw by 2020.
The move followed an ongoing campaign to downsize bloated heavy industries, especially coal mining and steel smelting. Solid progress has been made to shut down inefficient coal mines, and more measures are in the pipeline.
The country is gradually lowering the proportion of coal in its energy system to make room for clean fuels, from natural gas and solar energy to hydropower. Coal will account for less than 58 percent of energy consumption in 2020, down from the current 60 percent or more.(AP) PHOENIX - Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' hand-picked Democratic candidate won a special election Tuesday in southern Arizona to finish her term, defeating a Republican who narrowly lost to Giffords in 2010.
The race was a hard-fought preview of the broader fall campaign as the two political parties used the contest to hone and test their political arguments for the November elections, when everything from the White House on down will be on the ballot.
Giffords had stepped down earlier this year to focus on her recovery from the gunshot wound she suffered in 2011 during a shooting rampage at a Tucson, Ariz., parking lot that killed six people and wounded 13. One of the wounded was Ron Barber, an aide to the congresswoman who will now serve the remainder of her term.
Republicans, sensing a chance to capture the seat, sought to make the special election a referendum on President Obama and his handling of the economy. They argued that Barber, who was asked by the lawmaker to pursue the seat, would fall in line behind the White House.
Gabrielle Giffords a big factor in Ariz. election
Video: Giffords campaigns for successor
Giffords attends campaign concert in Tucson
Democrats, in turn, played to the senior vote by contending that Republican Jesse Kelly would not protect Medicare and Social Security.
With 86 percent of precincts reporting, Barber was winning about 52 percent of the vote while Kelly had 45 percent.
Both candidates have promised to run for a full term in the fall, setting up a possible November rematch in a redrawn district that is friendlier to Democrats. Republican voters outnumber Democratic voters by about 26,000 under the current map. That edge will narrow to about 2,000 under redistricting.
Other primary elections
Elsewhere Tuesday, Virginia, Maine, Nevada, Arkansas and South Carolina held primary elections -- with most of those states choosing Senate nominees -- as did North Dakota, where voters decided to let the University of North Dakota scrap its controversial nickname, the Fighting Sioux.
In Virginia, former Sen. George Allen brushed aside three rivals in the Republican Senate primary. Allen's victory set up a November clash with another former Virginia governor, Democrat Tim Kaine, in a campaign closely tied to the presidential race in a state both parties consider vital for victory.
In North Dakota, Rep. Rick Berg defeated businessman Duane Sand in the state's Republican Senate primary. Berg now faces Democrat Heidi Heitkamp in the November race to replace retiring Sen. Kent Conrad. The election is expected to play a critical role in determining which party controls the Senate next year.
The vote concerning the Fighting Sioux nickname came about after the NCAA deemed it hostile and abusive, and placed the university under postseason sanctions. The state's Board of Education is now expected to retire the moniker and American Indian head logo.
North Dakota voters also defeated a proposal that would have made the state the first in the nation to abolish local property taxes.
In Nevada, Republican Sen. Dean Heller and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley easily defeated a slate of political unknowns in their respective primaries. Their fall race will be one of the most competitive in the country.
In Maine, state Sen. Cynthia Dill won the Democratic primary in the race to succeed Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe. Maine Secretary of State Charles Summers won the GOP nomination.
The front-runner, former two-term Gov. Angus King, wasn't on the ballot because he's running as an independent.
No statewide races were part of the Arkansas and South Carolina primaries.
All eyes on Arizona
Of all the races Tuesday, the Arizona House race was the most closely watched, partly because of Giffords' absorbing story and partly because holding onto the seat was important for Democrats if they want to regain control of the House.
The party needs big gains in November to grab the majority from Republicans, who now hold a 240-192 advantage with three vacancies, including Giffords' seat.
Republicans, riding high after a decisive victory in Wisconsin's gubernatorial election last week, set their sights on Arizona. A victory would have given party leaders a chance to claim momentum five months before November and fine-tune their plan to link Democratic candidates to Obama, the incumbent at the top of the ticket.
Giffords, 42, largely shunned public appearances during the race, but in the closing days of the campaign she stepped out to help Barber.We have updated our Global Team Ranking—powered by EGB.com—for February 2017.
Following the ELEAGUE Major, February was filled with action both in-game and out as the transfer market livened up. Astralis' victory at the said tournament at the end of January forced teams to make changes in order to compete with the likes of the Danes and Virtus.pro.
Besides the roster moves two prestigious events—DreamHack Masters Las Vegas and IEM Katowice—took place which greatly influenced the Top 10 positions in the ranking. In addition to that, the fifth season of ESL Pro League S5 commenced in Europe and North America.
Astralis remain #1
We're already into March and the biggest tournament of the month is already behind us. There won't be any other premier tournaments during this month and the main focus of the top teams will be ESL Pro League.
While Astralis will be settling in as the #1 team in the world and have a month to enjoy their accomplishments the likes of Virtus.pro, FaZe, and SK will search for ways to challenge the Danes.
To summarize the ranking for new readers:
Our team ranking is based on teams' achievements over the past year (with severe decay in points throughout each month), recent form over the last 2 months, and performance at offline events in the last 3 months. Each team is required to have a three-man core in order to retain their points and online results are included but have minimal effect (only affecting 'Form') at the top of the table and mainly serve to put new teams on the map.
We will always have a special page where you will be able to find the latest, weekly version of our ranking.
Here is the current top 30 table as of March 6th, 2017, which goes more in-depth into the way points are distributed. You can see the lineup for each team by hovering over their name in the table.
Please note that the +/- gain on this table differs from our weekly rankings page, and is in relation to the ranking update of January 30th, 2017.
Top 30 Team Ranking Powered by EGB.com
Rank Team Achievements Form LANs Total points +/- 1. Astralis 500 200 300 1000 - 2. Virtus.pro 389 195 187 771 - 3. SK 315 153 131 599 - 4. FaZe 220 86 186 492 +1 5. North 217 85 106 408 +1 6. Natus Vincere 192 109 86 387 +3 7. Immortals 86 95 92 273 +11 8. Gambit 102 79 84 265 +4 9. Heroic 71 85 81 237 +13 10. NiP 169 27 33 229 -3 11. OpTic 151 37 37 225 -7 12. fnatic 93 81 39 213 -4 13. Cloud9 118 67 22 207 -2 14. mousesports 80 70 16 166 +1 15. G2 64 51 20 135 -5 16. Kinguin 28 71 19 118 +1 17. Liquid 42 41 4 87 -1 18. FlipSid3 29 41 14 84 +1 19. GODSENT 27 39 7 73 -5 20. BIG 9 49 14 72 +6 21. Epsilon 12 46 8 66 +2 22. Space Soldiers 10 48 2 60 -1 23. HellRaisers 23 19 16 58 -3 24. iGame.com 6 44 2 52 +1 25. TYLOO 15 30 5 50 +3 26. LDLC 9 34 2 45 +1 27. Misfits 2 35 4 41 +11 28. Envy 0 41 0 41 NEW 29. Renegades 18 16 4 38 -5 30. Rogue 3 29 1 33 +2
*Hover over each team name for the full lineup.
We will now discuss the top fifteen teams in the ranking and examine whether or not their fortunes rose or fell in February.
1. Astralis
The defending Major champions who have occupied the first spot in the rankings since December started the ESL Pro League S5 with four wins and 2 losses. Their main challenges though were in Las Vegas and Katowice.
The Danish team started DreamHack Las Vegas in exhilarating form, beating compLexity 16-5 and OpTic 16-9 in the group stage. They tore apart NiP in the quarter-finals, giving the Swedes a total of thirteen rounds on two maps.
The clutch king earned the HLTV MVP by ZOWIE award
device & company reached the semi-finals in high spirits but Virtus.pro—the team they beat to win the Major and the second team in the ranking—put on a world class performance and defeated the Danes 2-1. Although Virtus.pro went on to win the tournament they didn't catch up to Astralis in the ranking update of February 27th. But this meant that Astralis would have to show up at IEM Katowice if they wanted to retain their #1 place.
Astralis finished the round-robin group stage at IEM Katowice with a 4-1 record and placed second after playing tiebreaker games. In the quarter-finals they faced the third-placed team from Group B—Natus Vincere—and demolished them with a 2-0 victory.
After defeating their fellow countrymen of Heroic in the semi-finals, Astralis beat FaZe 3-1 and were crowned the IEM Katowice 2017 champions, earning themselves $100,000. With Virtus.pro and SK failing to get through the groups, Astralis gained ground in the ranking and their only task this month will be to qualify for the ESL Pro League S5 Finals.
2. Virtus.pro
Virtus.pro cling to the second spot in the ranking after winning a tournament and then failing to get through the groups in the following one. The Poles played four matches in the ESL Pro League S5 before travelling to their first LAN of the month and had a 2-2 record.
At DreamHack Masters Las Vegas the Polish squad started the group stage by winning against Misfits. Following a loss against Gambit in the winners' game, they defeated fnatic in the decider to advance to the quarter-finals.
pashaBiceps celebrated the DH Masters LV with joy
After passing mousesports who still had Nikola "NiKo" Kovač among their ranks at the time, TaZ & company overrun Astralis to secure a spot in the grand final. Despite losing the first map against SK, Virtus.pro won Train and Mirage to win DH Masters Las Vegas and took home $200,000 in cash prizes.
Pitted against tough opposition at IEM Katowice, Virtus.pro failed to get through the groups |
is truly the ideal way to strikeout and not draw free passes, which is exactly what’s happening to Grichuk. But when things aren’t going right — and things were decidedly not going right for Grichuk for the majority of the 2016 season — sometimes the best thing to do is go back to what worked before. Grichuk is an aggressive hitter and, after spending much of the season tinkering with that aggression, he’s gone back to embracing it. The heat maps below show his Swing% prior to his most recent demotion on the left and since his August 11th call-up on the right:
Whether a happy coincidence or a direct result of the change in approach, Grichuk’s power stroke has finally made its presence known after laying dormant for much of the season. Even though his on-base percentage has remained below average, the power surge has been enough to fuel Grichuk’s return to productivity.
Baseball is a game of adjustments. Grichuk went into 2016 with an idea of an adjustment he wanted to make. It’s wonderful that he demonstrated a willingness to make that adjustment and actively tried to improve at the plate, especially given his status as a guy coming off an impressive rookie season. However, that adjustment did not lead to positive results, so he abandoned it. Right now, he’s a masher who strikes out a lot and walks rarely. It’s not a superstar profile, but it is a workable profile. Unfortunately, the concern now is the same as it was entering the 2016 season — namely, that pitchers will be able to adjust to Grichuk’s free-swinging ways and find an approach to effectively neutralize him. The challenge for Grichuk is not to let this bad experience with an adjustment impact his ability to make future adjustments in response going forward.The foreign policy section of tonight’s Democratic debate pivoted at one point to a fight over Henry Kissinger. Bernie Sanders brought up Hillary Clinton‘s past praise of Kissinger and how she’s said she’s taken advice from him.
He denounced Kissinger and called him “one of the more destructive Secretaries of State in modern history,” saying he won’t be taking advice from him.
Clinton shot back that plenty of people want to know “who do you listen to on foreign policy and we have yet to know who that is.”
Clinton insisted that while she has consulted Kissinger, that does not imply what Sanders thinks it does and in foreign policy there’s a lot of room for nuance.
Watch above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comWACO, Texas -- Baylor confirmed that senior linebacker Raaquan Davis has left the program, calling it a "mutual parting of ways." Davis changed the bio in his Twitter account to "Former Baylor LB" on Friday.
The 6-foot-2, 230-pound senior from Rockwall tied for sixth on the team with 53 tackles in 2016, and also had 2.5 tackles for loss and one sack. He started the first two games, then started late in the season after Patrick Levels went back to nickel back.
He was a prime candidate to start this season in Baylor's new, 4-3 scheme under defensive coordinator Phil Snow and head coach Matt Rhule.
This leaves Baylor fairly thin at linebacker - senior Taylor Young and junior Clay Johnston both return with experience, but beyond that it's a large group of unproven players.Help Be The Media & Share:
To Chelsea Lyons, and the notion that the People’s Summit was “establishment as fuck.” I went ahead and addressed your concerns almost item for item as I read them in your piece.
1. You said “they alienated and disposed of the majority of third party and independent activist groups that have done work this year.”
The Illinois Green Party had a booth. Democratic socialists of America had a booth. The Justice Party had a booth. Even RoseAnn Demoro, head of the National Nurses United who was sponsoring the event, gave the Draft Bernie delegation in attendance a shout out during Bernie’s keynote. The fuck are you even talking about?
2. You said “the “diversity” of the summit is fucking nonexistent.”
According to Nina Turner and National Nurses United, 54% of the people in attendance were people of color. The fuck are you even talking about?
3. You said it was just a bunch of progressive nonprofits “pitching themselves to people who already support them instead of teaching them.”
One of the biggest themes to come out of the weekend was centered around learning and how to continue building the movement. Here are the titles of just a few of some of the breakout classroom sessions that I willing to bet anybody complaining did not attend: How to create sanctuary communities. Building a movement that will win. From knowledge to action. Nonviolent direct action. Big organizing beyond Bernie. Campaigning and governing for transformational change… should I keep going or do you get the fucking point? The fuck are you even talking about?
4. You said “they are disregarding entire issues, especially the indigenous movement that absolutely rocked the hell out of activism this year.”
One of the two movies featured at the summit was an hour and a half long documentary by Josh Fox about the Standing Rock Water Crisis that Chase Iron Eyes himself introduced. The fuck are you even talking about?
5. You said people “couldn’t afford the $300 ticket.”
Tickets had three levels of contributions that could be made. The lowest was $45 and this included breakfast, lunch and dinner for all three days of events… and you didn’t even pay for your ticket. Not only that, National Nurses United were extra accommodating for anybody who had special financial circumstances, including students and the disabled. On top of this, they arranged for lodging that was as low as $35/per night with free shuttles to and from the event center. Mind you, hotels run about $150 in Chicago. WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?
6. You said “there hasn’t been one mention of the multitude of resistance camps across the country or the bank exit movement. Jill Stein very clearly tried to do a workshop here and they said no!”
This is a progressive conference that started last year after the Bernie Sanders movement. This is not the Jill Stein movement (who I ultimately voted for by the way). Maybe when she hosts a three day seminar with class sessions and speakers from every corner of her movement you can tell us how woke it was.
7. You said, “the resistance is not here. We weren’t invited.”
Again, YOU GOT A FREE TICKET. The fuck are you even talking about?Professional soccer has boomed in popularity in North America; why not show your support for your favorite club or league with the best and most stylish soccer apparel in the world today? At Modell’s, we take pride in carrying a catalog of awesome and dynamic soccer apparel, from World Cup track pants to club jerseys that are sure to delight the soccer fan in your life. Take the lead with your favorite player’s jersey, available now at Modell’s! The World Cup is perhaps the greatest global celebration of sport in the history of humankind. Every four years, hundreds of millions of eyes turn to their televisions to cheer their home country to victory. Celebrate the World Cup any time, any day at Modell’s. We carry top of the line country-themed soccer apparel, from Team USA hoodies to Argentina track pants and tournament-themed t-shirts. We also have a catalog of other tournament soccer apparel, including Copa America, the Euro Cup, the Women’s World Cup and so much more! Of course, soccer is about more than national teams; it’s about the personalities! Find your favorite international team and player jerseys and other soccer apparel at Modell’s. From FC Barcelona to Real Madrid, Manchester United, Chelsea and so much more, Modell’s carries a plethora of jerseys and name tees from adidas, Nike and Puma. We also stock soccer balls designed after the colors of your favorite team! Are you a fan of MLS? Then you’ve come to the right place! Find your hometown team soccer apparel here at Modell’s and make your way to the stadium for the next big game! From replica jerseys inspired by what your favorite players wear on the field, to jersey t-shirts that are a more casual, everyday way of displaying your fandom, find gear from all 23 MLS teams here at Modell’s.The “Core Data” project provides essential data for the data wranglers and data science community. Its online home is on the DataHub:
https://datahub.io/core
https://datahub.io/docs/core-data
This post introduces you to the Core Data, presents a couple of examples and shows you how you can access and use core data easily from your own tools and systems including R, Python, Pandas and more.
Why Core Data
If you build data driven applications or data driven insight you regularly find yourself wanting common “core” data, things like lists of countries, populations, geographic boundaries and more.
However, finding good quality data has always been challenging. Professionals can spend lots of time finding and preparing data before they get to do any real work analysing or presenting it.
To address this, a few years ago we started the “core data” project as part of the Frictionless Data initiative. Its purpose was to curate important, commonly used datasets including reference data like country codes, indicators like population and GDP, and geodata like country boundaries. It provides them in a high-quality, easy-to-use, and standard form.
Recently the Core Data project has got even better with a new home on the newly upgraded DataHub and has expanded thanks to new partners like Datopian and John Snow Labs (more on this in a future post!).
Examples
There are dozens of core datasets already available and many more being worked on, including a list of countries and their 2 digit codes, and a more extensive version.
List of Countries
Ever needed to build a drop-down list of countries in a web application? Or ever needed to add country name labels for a graph and only had country codes?
Then these datasets are for you!
First up is the very simple “country-list” dataset:
https://datahub.io/core/country-list
You can see a preview table for the dataset on the showcase page:
You can download it in either CSV or JSON formats:
Country Codes
Maybe the simple list of countries is not enough for you. Perhaps you need phone codes for each country, or want to know their currencies?
We’ve got you covered with the more extensive country codes dataset:
https://datahub.io/core/country-codes
All the countries from Country List including number of associated codes - ISO 3166 codes, ITU dialing codes, ISO 4217 currency codes, and many others. This dataset includes 26 different codes and associated information.
You can also preview the data and download in different formats just like it is described for Country List dataset above:
Population
This is another useful dataset for people: you regularly need population in order to do normalisations and calculate per capita figures as part of a statistical analysis.
This dataset includes population figures for countries, regions (e.g. Asia) and the world. Data comes originally from World Bank and has been converted into standard tabular data package with CSV data and a table schema:
https://datahub.io/core/population
Preview the data on the showcase page:
Get the data in CSV or JSON formats just like for any other Core Datasets:
Use Core Data from your favorite language or tool
We have made Core Data easy-to-use from various programming languages and tools. We will walk through using our Country List example. But you can apply these instructions to any other Core Data in the DataHub.
CSV and JSON
If you just need to get data, you have a direct link usable from any tool or app e.g. for the country list:
For more read our “Getting Data” tutorial: https://datahub.io/docs/getting-started/getting-data
cURL
Following commands help you to get the data using “cURL” tool. Use -L flag so “cURL” follows redirects:
curl -L https://datahub.io/core/country-list/r/data.csv curl -L https://datahub.io/core/country-list/datapackage.json curl -L https://datahub.io/core/country-list/datapackage.json | jq ".resources"
R
If you are using R here’s how to get the data you want quickly loaded:
install.packages( "jsonlite" ) library ( "jsonlite" ) json_file <- 'https://datahub.io/core/country-list/datapackage.json' json_data <- fromJSON(paste(readLines(json_file), collapse= "" )) print(json_data$resources$name) for (i in 1 :length(json_data$resources$datahub$type)){ if (json_data$resources$datahub$type[i]== 'derived/csv' ){ path_to_file = json_data$resources$path[i] data <- read.csv(url(path_to_file)) print(data) } }
Python
Here we take a look at how to get Country List in Python programming language:
For Python, first install the datapackage library (all the datasets on DataHub are Data Packages):
pip install datapackage
Again, we’ll use the country-list dataset:
from datapackage import Package package = Package( 'https://datahub.io/core/country-list/datapackage.json' ) resources = package.descriptor['resources' ] resourceList = [resources[x][ 'name' ] for x in range( 0, len(resources))] print(resourceList) resources = package.resources for resource in resources: if resource.tabular: print(resource.read())
Pandas
In order to work with Data Packages in Pandas you need to install the Frictionless Data data package library and the pandas:
pip install datapackage pip install pandas
To get the data run following code:
import datapackage import pandas as pd data_url = 'https://datahub.io/core/country-list/datapackage.json' package = datapackage.Package(data_url) resources = package.resources for resource in resources: if resource.tabular: data = pd.read_csv(resource.descriptor[ 'path' ]) print (data)
JavaScript and many more
We also have support for JavaScript, SQL, and PHP. See our “Getting Data” tutorial for more:
https://datahub.io/docs/getting-started/getting-data
Conclusion
This post has shown how you can import datasets in a high quality, standard form quickly and easily.
There are many more datasets to explore than the three we showed you here. You can find a full list here:
https://datahub.io/core
Finally, we would love collaborators to help us curate even more core datasets. If you’re interested you can find out more about the Core Data Curator program here:
https://datahub.io/docs/core-data/curators
If you have questions, comments or feedback join our chat channel or open an issue on our tracker.Strong evidence
Weight loss
There is no doubt that there is strong supportive evidence that the use of ketogenic diets in weight-loss therapy is effective; however, there are contrasting theories regarding the mechanisms through which they work. Some researchers suggest that there are not in fact any metabolic advantages in low-carbohydrate diets and that weight loss results simply from reduced caloric intake, probably due to the increased satiety effect of protein.12 Others instead promote the hypothesis that there is indeed a distinct metabolic advantage, which has recently been explored in more detail, raising interest in the role of VLCKD in weight loss and effects on metabolism in general.13 The first law of thermodynamics, also known as the law of conservation of energy, has in effect controlled the concepts for the basis of weight loss for over a century—resulting in a difficulty in accepting other ways of thinking. Adhering to these traditional concepts the US Department of Agriculture has concluded that diets, which reduce calories, will result in effective weight loss independent of the macronutrient composition, which is considered less important, even irrelevant.14 In contrast with these views, the majority of ad-libitum studies demonstrate that subjects who follow a low-carbohydrate diet lose more weight during the first 3–6 months compared with those who follow balanced diets.15, 16, 17 One hypothesis is that the use of energy from proteins in VLCKD is an ‘expensive’ process for the body and so can lead to a ‘waste of calories’, and therefore increased weight loss compared with other ‘less-expensive’ diets.13, 18, 19 The average human body requires 60–65 g of glucose per day, and during the first phase of a diet very low in carbohydrates this is partially (16%) obtained from glycerol, with the major part derived via gluconeogenesis from proteins of either dietary or tissue origin.12 The energy cost of gluconeogenesis has been confirmed in several studies7 and it has been calculated at ∼400–600 Kcal/day (due to both endogenous and food source proteins.18 Despite this, there is no direct experimental evidence to support this intriguing hypothesis; on the contrary, a recent study reported that there were no changes in resting energy expenditure after a VLCKD.20 A simpler, perhaps more likely, explanation for improved weight loss is a possible appetite-suppressant action of ketosis. The mechanism for this is not established but evidence supports direct action of KBs together with modifications in levels of hormones, which influence appetite, such as ghrelin and leptin.21 Here we can summarize (listed in order of importance and available evidence) that the weight-loss effect of VLCKD seems to be caused by several factors:
Reduction in appetite due to higher satiety effect of proteins,12, 22 effects on appetite control hormones21 and to a possible direct appetite-suppressant action of the KBs.23 Reduction in lipogenesis and increased lipolysis.7, 10 Reduction in the resting respiratory quotient and, therefore, greater metabolic efficiency in consuming fats.20, 24 Increased metabolic costs of gluconeogenesis and the thermic effect of proteins.13, 18
Cardiovascular disease
Several lines of evidence point to beneficial effects of VLCKD on cardiovascular risk factors. In the past, there have been doubts expressed about their long-term safety and increased effectiveness compared with ‘balanced’ diets,25 and clearly negative opinions regarding possible deleterious effects on triglycerides and cholesterol levels in the blood.26 However, the majority of recent studies seem instead to amply demonstrate that the reduction of carbohydrates to levels that induce physiological ketosis (see above ‘What is ketosis?’ section) can actually lead to significant benefits in blood lipid profiles.15, 17, 27 The VLCKD effect seems to be particularly marked on the level of blood triglycerides,24, 28 but there are also significant positive effects on total cholesterol reduction and increases in high-density lipoprotein.24, 28, 29 Furthermore, VLCKD have been reported to increase the size and volume of low-density lipoprotein–cholesterol particles,29 which is considered to reduce cardiovascular disease risk, as smaller low-density lipoprotein particles have a higher atherogenicity. There are also direct diet-related effects on overall endogenous cholesterol synthesis. A key enzyme in cholesterol biosynthesis is 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl–CoA reductase (the target for statins), which is activated by insulin, which means that an increase in blood glucose and consequently of insulin levels will lead to increased endogenous cholesterol synthesis. A reduction in dietary carbohydrate will have the opposite effect and this, coupled with the additional inhibition by dietary cholesterol and fats on endogenous synthesis, is likely to be the mechanism via which physiological ketosis can improve lipid profiles. Hence, there are strong doubts about the negative effects of dietary fats when they are consumed as part of a VLCKD, on cholesterol and triglycerides blood levels, whereas there are strong pointers to the beneficial effects of VLCKD on these cardiovascular risk parameters.27, 28
Type 2 diabetes
Insulin resistance is the primary feature underlying type 2 diabetes (T2D) but it also exists across a continuum in the general population, and to varying extents it disrupts insulin action in cells, which can cause a wide spectrum of signs and symptoms. A primary feature of insulin resistance is an impaired ability of muscle cells to take up circulating glucose. A person with insulin resistance will divert a greater proportion of dietary carbohydrate to the liver where much of it is converted to fat (that is, de novo lipogenesis), as opposed to being oxidized for energy in skeletal muscle.30 Although Hellerstein31 has recently reported that de novo lipogenesis contributes only ∼20% of new triglycerides, this greater conversion of dietary carbohydrate into fat, much of it entering the circulation as saturated fat, is a metabolic abnormality that significantly increases risk for diabetes and heart disease. Thus, insulin resistance functionally manifests itself as ‘carbohydrate intolerance’. When dietary carbohydrate is restricted to a level below which it is not significantly converted to fat (a threshold that varies from person to person), signs and symptoms of insulin resistance improve or often disappear completely.
In studies that have evaluated well-formulated very-low-carbohydrate diets and documented high rates of compliance in individuals with T2D, results have been nothing short of remarkable. Bistrian et al.32 reported withdrawal of insulin and major weight loss in a matter of weeks in T2D individuals who were fed a very-low-calorie and -carbohydrate diet. Gumbiner et al.33 fed obese T2D individuals two types of hypocaloric (650 kcal) diets for 3 weeks, they were matched for protein but one was much lower in carbohydrate content (24 vs 94 g/day). As expected, the lower-carbohydrate diet resulted in significantly greater levels of circulating ketones (∼3 mmol/l), which was strongly associated with a lower hepatic glucose output. Interestingly, there was a strong inverse correlation between circulating ketones and hepatic glucose output, suggesting that higher levels of ketones are associated with more favourable effects on glycaemic control in diabetics. More recently, Boden et al.34 performed an in-patient study in obese T2D individuals who were fed a low-carbohydrate (<20 g/day) diet for 2 weeks. Plasma glucose fell from 7.5 to 6.3 mmol/l, haemoglobin A1c decreased from 7.3 to 6.8% and there were dramatic improvements (75%) in insulin sensitivity.
In a longer study35 obese T2D individuals were prescribed a well-formulated ketogenic diet for 56 weeks, and significant improvements in both weight loss and metabolic parameters were seen at 12 weeks and continued throughout the 56 weeks as evidenced by improvements in fasting circulating levels of glucose (−51%), total cholesterol (−29%), high-density lipoprotein–cholesterol (63%), low-density lipoprotein–cholesterol (−33%) and triglycerides (−41%). It is of interest to note that in a recent study in overweight non/diabetic subjects, it was reported that during ketosis fasting glucose was not affected, but there was an elevation in post-prandial blood glucose concentration. This data suggests a different effect of ketosis on glucose homeostasis in diabetic and non-diabetic individuals.21 Other studies support the long-term efficacy of ketogenic diets in managing complications of T2D.36, 37 Although significant reductions in fat mass often results when individuals restrict carbohydrate, the improvements in glycaemic control, haemoglobin A1c and lipid markers, as well as reduced use or withdrawal of insulin and other medications in many cases, occurs before significant weight loss occurs. Moreover, in isocaloric experiments individuals with insulin resistance showed dramatically improved markers of metabolic syndrome than diets lower in fat.27 It is interesting in this respect that a recent extremely large epidemiological study reported that diabetes risk is directly correlated, in an apparently causative manner, with sugar intake alone, independently of weight or sedentary lifestyle.38
In summary, individuals with metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance and T2D (all diseases of carbohydrate intolerance) are likely to see symptomatic as well as objective improvements in biomarkers of disease risk if they follow a well-formulated very-low-carbohydrate diet. Glucose control improves not only because there is less glucose coming in, but also because systemic insulin sensitivity improves as well.
Epilepsy
Since 1920, the ketogenic diet has been recognized as an effective tool in the treatment of severe childhood epilepsy, but following the introduction of anticonvulsant drugs, the interest in ketogenic diet treatment waned until the 1990s, with subsequent research and clinical trials demonstrating its practical usefulness. Various studies have been carried out to understand its mechanism of action in epilepsy, but until now it remains largely uncertain.5 Several hypotheses have been put forward trying to explain the mechanism of action of ketogenic diets: (1) a direct anticonvulsant effect of KBs; (2) a reduced neuronal excitability induced by KBs;39 (3) an effect on the mammalian target of rapamycin pathway.40 In 2008, Hartman et al.41 demonstrated the efficacy of a ketogenic diet in the 6-Hz seizure test in mice, but also reported that the protection from seizures was not related to the level of ketosis in the blood, indicating that mechanism(s) of action other than those directly linked to the blood concentration of KBs should be investigated. Most researchers suggest that the metabolic mechanism(s) activated by ketogenic diets (see above) may influence neurotransmitter activity in neurons and this is currently a field of active research. Although the mechanisms of action are not clear, the ketogenic diet is now considered an established part of an integrative approach, along with drug therapy, in the major epilepsy centres worldwide,42 an important benefit being the reduction of drug use and concomitant reductions in severe side effects often associated with antiepileptic agents. The effectiveness of ketogenic diets is strongly supported in a recent Cochrane review where all studies showed a 30–40% reduction in seizures compared with comparative controls, and the review authors reported that in children the effects were ‘comparable to modern antiepileptic drugs’. The main drawback with the ketogenic diet was difficult tolerability and high dropout rates—given the extremely positive results and the severe side effects common with antiepilepsy medication, the development of an easier-to-follow ketogenic diet would be a worthwhile goal.5
In conclusion, the role of ketogenic diets in epilepsy treatment is well established and we are confident that this is also the case for weight loss, cardiovascular disease and T2D. The recent research reviewed here demonstrate improvements in many risk factors, such as weight, saturated fats, inflammation and other biomarkers, as a consequence of consuming well-formulated low-carbohydrate diets, and this work should encourage continued close examination of their therapeutic value (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Suggested mechanisms for the therapeutic action of ketogenic diets in pathologies for which there exists strong (a) and emerging (b) evidence. Full size image
Emerging evidence
Acne
In recent years there have been an increasing number of studies published, suggesting that at least for certain food types there is a nutritional influence on the development of acne. The negative effects seem to lie in the capacity of some foods/nutrients to stimulate proliferative pathways that in turn stimulate development of acne—suspect foods include those with a high glycaemic load and milk.11, 43, 44 Other evidence comes from several studies reporting that the prevalence of acne varies significantly between different populations and is substantially lower in non-Westernized populations that follow traditional diets,45 a common factor among these traditional diets being a low glycaemic load.46 Various studies have provided evidence that high-glycaemic-load diets are implicated in the aetiology of acne through their capacity to stimulate insulin, androgen bioavailability and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) activity, whereas the beneficial effects of low-glycaemic-load diets, apart from weight and blood glucose levels, also include improved skin quality.44 The clinical and experimental evidence does in fact suggest ways in which insulin can increase androgen production and affect via induction of steroidogenic enzymes,47 the secretion by the pituitary gland of gonadotropin-releasing hormone and the production of sex hormone-binding globulin.48 Insulin is also able to reduce serum levels of IGF-binding protein-1 increasing the effect of IGF-1.49 These insulin-mediated actions can therefore influence diverse factors that underlie the development of acne such as:
The increased proliferation of basal keratinocytes within the pilosebaceous ducts. An abnormal desquamation of the follicular epithelium. Increased androgen-mediated sebum production. Colonization of the stratum corneum by Propionibacterium acnes and consequent inflammation.46
In summary, there is persuasive, although not yet conclusive, clinical and physiological evidence that the ketogenic diet could be effective in reducing the severity and progression of acne and randomized clinical trials will be required to resolve the issue.11
Cancer
Carcinogenesis is a complex process involving multiple sequential mutations, which occur randomly in the DNA of normal cells over many years, even decades, until finally specific genes are mutated and cell growth becomes out of control resulting in the full neoplastic phenotype and often metastasis. There is evidence that hyperinsulinaemia, hyperglycaemia and chronic inflammation may affect the neoplastic process through various pathways, including the insulin/IGF-1 pathway, and most cancer cells express insulin and IGF-1 receptors. Insulin has been shown to stimulate mitogenesis (even in cells lacking IGF-1 receptors)50 and it may also contribute by stimulating multiple cancer mechanisms, including proliferation, protection from apoptotic stimuli, invasion and metastasis.51 The IFG1/insulin pathway may also enhance the promotion and progression of many types of cancer cells and facilitate cancer diffusion through angiogenesis.52 Insulin may act directly, but also indirectly through IGF-1, as it reduces hepatic IGF-binding protein-1 and -2 production,53 thereby increasing the levels of circulating, free active IGF-1, which may have a role in cancerogenesis due to its mitogenic and antiapoptotic activity.53 Considering the obvious relationship between carbohydrates and insulin (and IGF-1) a connection between carbohydrate and cancer is a possible consequence, and some links have been recognized since the 1920s when the Russo-German physician Dr A Braunstein observed that glycosuria falls off notably in diabetic patients who developed cancer.54 Later Warburg et al.55 of the Kaiser Wilheim Institute fur biologie described what was later known as the Warburg effect—where energy is predominantly generated by a high rate of glycolysis followed by lactic acid fermentation in the cytosol, even in the presence of plentiful oxygen.51, 55 The Warburg effect has been confirmed in many studies and today is a well-established hallmark of many types of cancers, and rapidly growing tumour cells typically have glycolytic rates up to 200 times higher than those of their normal tissues of origin.56 As stated above, the stimulus of the insulin/IGF-1 pathway is involved in cancer development, but also mitochondrial damage or dysfunction may have a role.18, 57, 58 Dysfunctional mitochondria may upregulate some oncogenes of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt mammalian target of rapamycin signalling pathway.58 Akt, a downstream of insulin signalling,59 is involved in changes in tumour cell metabolism and increases resistance to apoptosis; it also decreases β-oxidation and increases lipid synthesis in the cytosol.60 Hence, it seems a reasonable possibility that a very-low-carbohydrate diet could help to reduce the progression of some types of cancer, although at present the evidence is preliminary.61 In the 1980s, seminal animal studies by Tisdale and colleagues62, 63 demonstrated that a ketogenic diet was capable to reduce tumour size in mice, whereas more recent research has provided evidence that ketogenic diets may reduce tumour progression in humans, at least as far as gastric and brain cancers are concerned.64, 65, 66, 67 Although no randomized controlled trials with VLCKD have yet been conducted on patients and the bulk of evidence in relation to the influence of VLCKD on patient survival is still anecdotal,68, 69, 70 a very recent paper by Fine et al.71 suggests that the insulin inhibition caused by a ketogenic diet could be a feasible adjunctive treatment for patients with cancer. In summary, perhaps through glucose ‘starvation’ of tumour cells and by reducing the effect of direct insulin-related actions on cell growth, ketogenic diets show promise as an aid in at least some kind of cancer therapy and is deserving of further and deeper investigation—certainly the evidence justifies setting up clinical trials.
Polycystic ovary syndrome
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine disorder in females, with a high prevalence (6–10%);72 symptoms include hyperandrogenism, ovulatory dysfunction, obesity, insulin resistance and subfertility. Insulin resistance and related hyperinsulinaemia is actually a very common feature affecting about 65–70% of women with PCOS;73 it is seen most frequently in obese patients, affecting 70–80%, compared with only 20–25% of lean PCOS sufferers.72 Despite this observation, insulin resistance and hyperinsulinaemia appear to be linked to PCOS independently of obesity, and modifications in the normal cellular mechanisms of insulin signalling have been demonstrated in both lean and obese patients. Furthermore, high blood levels of insulin can act by increasing androgenous hormonal stimulation of the ovarian theca cells as well as potentiating gonadotropin-stimulated ovarian androgen steroidogenesis—although recent data has suggested that the insulin-induced increase in ovarian hormone secretion is not accompanied by increased steroid metabolism.74 Hyperinsulinaemia may also affect the central actions of androgen by impairing progesterone inhibition of the gonadotropin-releasing hormone pulse generator.75 Insulin has also been shown to increase expression of adrenal steroidogenic enzyme mRNA47 as well as adrenal responsiveness to adrenocorticotropic hormone.76
Women with PCOS frequently demonstrate many of the signs related to metabolic syndrome, such as insulin resistance, obesity, glucose intolerance, T2D, dyslipidemia and also high levels of inflammation. Suggested treatments include those that reduce insulin resistance/hyperinsulinaemia, such as lifestyle modifications (exercise, diet and weight loss) and pharmacological treatments that include the administration of thiazolidinediones or metformin. It is evident that any interventions that improve insulinaemia and reduce body weight may also be effective in reducing hyperandrogenism, normalizing ovulation and reducing the various symptoms of PCOS.
Finally, although we only have preliminary evidence of the positive effects of VLCKD in PCOS,77 there are clear mechanisms that are consistent with the physiological plausibility of such dietary therapy.
Neurological diseases
Emerging data suggest a possible therapeutic utilization of ketogenic diets in multiple neurological disorders apart from epilepsy,78 including head ache, neurotrauma, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, sleep disorders, brain cancer, autism and multiple sclerosis.79 Although these various diseases are clearly different from each other, a common basis potentially explaining ketogenic diet efficacy could be a neuroprotective effect in any disease in which the pathogenesis includes abnormalities in cellular energy utilization, which is a common characteristic in many neurological disorders.79 The exact mechanism(s) by which a ketogenic diet may act is still poorly understood; however, some published reports can provide useful suggestions. For example, KBs were recently reported to act as neuroprotective agents by raising ATP levels and reducing the production of reactive oxygen species in neurological tissues,80 together with increased mitochondrial biogenesis, which may help to enhance the regulation of synaptic function.80 Moreover, the increased synthesis of polyunsaturated fatty acids stimulated by a KD may have a role in the regulation of neuronal membrane excitability: it has been demonstrated, for example, that polyunsaturated fatty acids modulate the excitability of neurons by blocking voltage-gated sodium channels.81 Another possibility is that by reducing glucose metabolism, ketogenic diets may activate anticonvulsant mechanisms, as has been reported in a rat model.82 In addition, caloric restriction per se has been suggested to exert neuroprotective effects, including improved mitochondrial function, decreased oxidative stress and apoptosis, and inhibition of proinflammatory mediators, such as the cytokines tumour necrosis factor-α and interleukins.83 Although promising data have been collected (see below), at the present time the real clinical benefits of ketogenic diets in most neurological diseases remain largely speculative and uncertain, with the significant exception of its use in the treatment of convulsion diseases.
Alzheimer’s disease
Patients affected with Alzheimer’s disease show a higher incidence of seizures compared with unaffected people,84 and it has recently been reported that neuronal excitability is enhanced,85, 86 and neuronal circuits and mitochondrial homeostasis are altered.87
On the basis of the reports described above, these results indicate a possible role of the ketogenic diet in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease in the clinic. Supporting evidence is provided by a study, which reported that at least in selected conditions a significant clinical improvement was observed in Alzheimer’s patients fed a ketogenic diet.88 It was suggested that this was, at least in part, related to improved mitochondrial function secondary to the reported protective effects of KBs against the toxic consequences of the exposure of cultured neurons to β-amyloid.89 In an animal model of Alzheimer’s disease, transgenic mice consuming a ketogenic diet exhibited better mitochondrial function and less oxidative stress and β-amyloid deposition when compared with normally fed controls.90 These promising results should encourage further research that is necessary to improve our understanding about the potential benefits of ketogenic diets in this debilitating and, thus far, irreversible disease.
Parkinson’s disease
The possible beneficial effects of ketogenic diets on mitochondrial activity described above has also been proposed to explain the improved scores on a standard gravity scale of Parkinson’ disease exhibited by some patients.91 In addition, the typical mitochondrial respiratory chain damage that occurs in animal models of Parkinson’s disease was reduced by a ketogenic diet;89 however, the real utility of this diet remains largely speculative and uncertain.
Brain trauma
Traumatic brain injury may lead over time to epilepsy. Because of the effective use of the ketogenic diet in reducing seizures (see above), it has been suggested that it may also improve the clinical status in brain injury, especially by reducing the incidence of long-term consequences, such as epilepsy.79 Positive effects of a ketogenic diet have also been reported in reducing the cortical contusion volume in an age-dependent manner in an animal model of cortical injury, which is related to the maturation-dependent variability in brain ketone metabolism.92 These findings were also supported by the demonstration that a ketogenic diet reduced post-traumatic cognitive and motor function impairment, at least in a rat model.93
The antiepileptogenic activity of the ketogenic diet after traumatic brain damage is controversial though,94 and further studies are needed to increase related knowledge.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Dysfunction in energy production, that is, mitochondrial function impairment, is likely to |
. These episodes occurred every 30 to 40 minutes for a few days, prompting evaluation by a pediatric neurologist. A diagnostic workup included routine laboratory tests, a head computed tomography (CT), a brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and an electroencephalogram (EEG). The EEG showed a seizure tendency and one seizure was captured with a focal origin (focal site not reported). Other study results were reportedly within normal limits. He was started on divalproate (Depakote) with complete resolution of seizures. A subsequent review of the locally obtained brain MRI seven years later would reveal a vmPFC malformation (described below).
At age six B.W.'s parents reported the onset of defiance at home and at school, including: stealing, lying, aggression, rage, rude language, and disobedience. His parents referred to this as his 'contraband' period because he would consistently bring prohibited items to school (e.g. a pocketknife). He also stole cookies and would sell them to peers. The parents were very concerned about this behavior because it did not seem characteristic of B.W.'s previous temperament. Moreover, neither parent nor any sibling of B.W. had similar behavioral problems. He was seen by a child psychologist and diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder and started counseling, which was discontinued after a few visits.
During ages seven to nine B.W.'s parents describe a 'cause and effect problem' in which he would behave badly and be punished and the following day would engage in the same behavior that led to the punishment. Along with his lack of response toward punishment, B.W. was impulsive and showed a lack of respect toward authority, including teachers and parents. In an effort to provide greater structure and discipline than the school could provide the parents decided to begin home-schooling B.W. and his siblings when he was nine years old (fourth grade). At the onset of home-schooling the mother noted a stark contrast between B.W. relative to his well-behaved siblings. Despite behavioral problems and lack of self-motivation he was noted to be intelligent and academically capable. The following year a child psychiatrist diagnosed B.W. with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder, for which he was prescribed carbemazepine, topiramate, and dexmethylphenidate. Counseling was again attempted briefly without effect.
At age 11 B.W. presented to the emergency room of a large tertiary care center with his mother for suicidal ideation. While at a nearby shopping mall he expressed feelings of hopelessness, unworthiness, and wanting "to kill myself... I would cut or burn myself." The talk of suicide had been ongoing for two months and had been accompanied by suicidal gestures such as jumping from a second story deck onto a trampoline and a superficial laceration to the left hand because "I wanted to kill myself." Along with the suicidal gestures the parents were alarmed about escalating aggression, destructive behavior, wandering off, and hypersexual behavior that included masturbation, accessing porn sites on the web, and asking younger peers to disrobe in a domineering manner (despite being pre-pubescent at the time). During the admission interview he reported that he had been hearing voices at night from God and the devil motivating him to do good and bad things, respectively.
B.W. was hospitalized for one week on the child psychiatry service (at which point he become known to the author, A.D.B.). He underwent extensive neuropsychological and psychiatric evaluation. His verbal and nonverbal intellectual abilities were measured using the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence and found to be within the average and high average range, respectively (verbal IQ 94, performance IQ 116)[29]. He endorsed extremely high levels of depression and anxiety symptoms on the Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories for Youth (T score values of 81 for anxiety and 84 for depression), but these symptoms appeared incongruent with his mood and affect [30]. While observed on the inpatient unit B.W. displayed neutral affect though rarely had outbursts that were induced by frustration. His outward manifestations of depression were transient and thought to be manipulative in nature toward the staff and parents. On projective testing using Rotter's Incomplete Sentences [31] B.W. expressed his anger at being told no when people prevented him from carrying out his desires, which often focused on acquiring objects. My biggest problem is..."I can't get a cell phone". The worst thing that ever happened to me was..."my mom and dad saying no to it", and my mother should... "let me do some stuff that I want". The pediatric neuropsychologist conducting the tests reported that B.W. attempted to manipulate and control the interview and was angered when requests for items belonging to the examiner were denied.
It became apparent that B.W. wanted to stay in the hospital for an extended period, ("at least a month") for reasons that were not clear. When he spoke with the staff and with his parents he persistently bargained for items that would improve his mood when he returned home. He was fixated on getting a cellular phone, an electric scooter, and his own bedroom. The parents and staff became suspicious that the mood symptoms and psychosis that prompted hospitalization may have been contrived for these secondary gains. This deception may have contributed to the discrepancy in B.W,'s high subjective reports of depression and anxiety that did not match his neutral affect. The parents confirmed a long history of being manipulative in multiple settings, often for the purpose of acquiring toys or avoiding punishment. For example, he would persuade his friends to allow him to spend the night at their house and would return home with their prized goods (e.g. toys, clothes, shoes). He had a history of persuading his friends to steal money from their parent's purse or wallet for him. While hospitalized B.W. lied on occasion in an attempt to receive rewards such as small toys and credit for playing video games that he did not earn. He also attempted to spread lies among the staff that his parents were not comfortable taking him home as his discharge approached. He was given the following psychiatric diagnoses according the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-IV): oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) combined subtype, and mood disorder not otherwise specified [32]. None of these diagnoses captured what was believed to be the core deficit, his ability and willingness to manipulate others as he pursued his own interests, which, at this point in his life, focused on the acquisition of prized items such as a cellular phone. Months later during a follow-up psychiatry visit he reported that he never intended to harm himself and did not hear voices.
Following this hospitalization B.W. responded poorly to a behavioral incentive program and his antisocial behavior escalated. Within a couple of months he had several very serious altercations. He set fire to a piece of furniture in his home and to multiple items in the church his family attends, because he "doesn't like to go to church." He was apprehended by police during an attempted break-in-and-entry where he was alone and in possession of a hammer, a box cutter, and a lighter. He assaulted his principal and then resisted the arresting officer. He began stealing and lying constantly without remorse. He threatened his mother with a knife. Of most concern to the family was a malicious attack on his father. On the night before the attack he had to be restrained by his father for fear of hurting a sibling. To revenge the unwanted restraint he snuck up from behind his father the following day and delivered a blow to his father's head with a crescent wrench in a planned attack. His father said the most concerning aspect of the episode was that he did it "in cold blood, without any emotion."
Neurology Evaluation From age six to eleven B.W. had sporadic clusters of complex partial seizures occurring once every several months. The seizure frequency increased in parallel with the rise in behavioral problems in the months following psychiatric hospitalization at age eleven, prompting reevaluation by pediatric neurology (where he was seen again by A.D.B. along with C.J.). An MRI at this time showed evidence of a previously undetected vmPFC malformation (described in next section). He underwent an extensive diagnostic evaluation in an attempt to detect the seizure focus, including two inpatient admissions at major university hospitals. Video EEG monitoring captured 7 seizures with evidence of left frontal anterior-temporal onset in four, right-sided onset in one, and unclear laterality in two others. An ictal SPECT study showed increased perfusion diffusely in the left hemisphere, suggestive of a left-sided seizure focus but not localized further.
Neuroimaging Results 1A 1B 33 34 1C http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/ 1C Three of B.W.'s MRI studies of the brain were reviewed in detail and form the basis for our description. Two 1.5 Tesla (T) MRI examinations were done for clinical indications at ages four and eleven years, and a 3.0T MRI scan was done at age thirteen years for research purposes. The main finding was persistent and stable increased T2-signal intensity in the subcortical white matter of the left gyrus rectus in the vmPFC. This abnormal signal was best seen on thin section coronal T2-weighted and FLAIR sequences, and did not enhance following contrast administration (Figure). Linear extension and tapering of the T2-hyperintense abnormality towards the frontal horn of the left lateral ventricle presumably reflects a radial neuronal migration line. Associated focal abnormal thickening of the cortex and blurring of the gray-white matter junction along the gyrus rectus were also evident (Figure). These findings were stable between the patient's three available MRI studies. This constellation of MRI findings was thought to be compatible with Taylor type focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) with balloon cells, though confirmation of this subtype of FCD was not confirmed on histological analysis (see below) []. No other abnormalities of the brain were identified. The region of affected cortex is displayed in Figureusing thickness data generated from FreeSurfer software. The lesion appears to involve a portion of Brodmann areas 11, 12, 25, and 32. See appendix for details regarding the generation of Figure
Therapeutic Attempts\Surgical Resection Therapeutic interventions for B.W.'s behavioral problems have included brief attempts at counseling beginning at age six and again at age nine, behavioral incentive therapy at age 11, and a panoply of medication trials. B.W. eventually underwent invasive grid mapping and subsequent resective epilepsy surgery in the summer of 2011. After extensive invasive mapping of the left ventromedial prefrontal region and also the left temporal area using grids and depth electrodes he underwent resection of the left prefrontal region as well as the mesial and lateral temporal structures. Pathology confirmed the presence of dysplastic neurons in clusters as well as scattered in the white matter of the left ventral prefrontal region and left amygdala, including surrounding mesial temporal cortex. The left amygdala region had been silent on MRI, however microscopic dysplastic neurons have been well described in other cases of malformations of cerebral cortex. B.W. remains seizure free on lamotrigine as the only drug for seizure control.There’s a lot of talk about all the rules changes for 2015. The limiting of the horsepower has been a hot topic of discussion, with people suggesting that NASCAR is basically mandating spec engines. Here’s a couple of things to think about in terms of engines as we get closer to Daytona.
“750 hp Engine” Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
When someone says they have a 900-horsepower engine, the only thing that tells you is that the maximum power it outputs is 900 hp. Importantly, power output changes with revolutions per minute (rpm), as shown graphically below.
The power curves for these two cars have the same maximum horsepower, but the range over which they have that horsepower is different. Let’s say the gearing is such that you’re running most of the race in the 8000-rpm range. Car 1 would have an advantage because (in that rpm range), it has higher horsepower. Car 2’s curve, however, is broader, which means it has a higher horsepower over a broader range.
Tapered Spacers
The big impetus for engine rule changes is NASCAR’s desire to lower speeds (which, it is theorized, will improve racing by lessening the effect of aerodynamics making it hard to pass when cars get close to each other).
There are lots of ways to decrease engine horsepower, but remember that teams have put untold amounts of money into designing and refining the current engines. Designing entirely new engines is a major undertaking, and a risk to mandate without pretty high confidence that lower horsepower will indeed help the quality of racing.
For 2015 NASCAR has gone with the simplest solution: a 1.170 tapered spacer that they expect will reduce power by about 125 hp.
Combustion is the chemical reaction whereby fuel mixes with oxygen and releases energy. It’s very similar to another chemical process called respiration, which is how your body converts food to energy. In this case, you mix two fuel molecules (C8H18 is octane, one of the hydrocarbons in fuel) and 25 oxygen molecules.
Remember your chemistry teaching talking about stoichiometry? Stoichiometry is the ratio of molecules, because they only combine in particular ways. If you’ve got four octane molecules, you need 50 oxygen molecules, etc. Combustion demands that exact ratio. The amount of fuel you put in a cylinder depends on how much air you can get in.
That’s how tapered spacers and restrictor plates work – they limit how much air gets into the cylinder, which limits how much fuel you can put into the cylinder, which in turn limits how much energy is produced.
A couple people have asked if this is going to have the the same effect as a restrictor plate. No! Fluids (and air is a fluid) travels differently through an orifice (the technical word for a hole) and through a nozzle (which is what the tapered space is). Don’t believe me? Here’s proof:
The tapered spacer does change how the air goes into the cylinder and that is something the teams are studying using Computational Fluid Dynamics — and figuring out how to use to their advantage.
The Rules Don’t Say “Your Engine Must Be 770 hp”
NASCAR engine rules address the physical properties of the engine – things like cylinder height and bore, compression ratio, and which materials can be used. This has always been the case. They control things like rpms and horsepower indirectly via things like gear rules.
So teams actually have a fair number of variables with which to experiment. The big emphasis is energy efficiency. There are two major energy transformations in the engines: combustion, which converts the potential energy in the fuel to the linear motion of the pistons, and then the linear motion of the pistons is converted to rotational motion.
The conversion processes aren’t perfect. If the air-fuel mixture isn’t right, you don’t get all the energy out of the fuel. This is addressed by specific geometry issues (which controls how the air gets into the cylinder), and EFI mapping.
The other main culprit in energy losses is friction. In a conventional road car, only about 14% of the energy you put into it actually gets to the wheels. The rest is lost (or used by the air conditioning, power windows, radio, etc.). Most of the energy losses are in the engine. In a conventional car, 60-70% of the energy loss is in the engine.
Surprisingly, NASCAR (and most race car) engines are more efficient than passenger car engines, due in large part to the use of advanced coatings on engine parts. A typical valve has at least three different coatings – A hard coating on the tip to protect against valve lash wear, low-friction coatings on the stem, and hard coatings on the dome to protect against valve seat recession.
These coatings are often very thin – a hair’s width or two or three. Materials used include Titanium Nitride (that’s what those gold-colored drill bits are coated with) and diamond-like carbon (DLC). DLC has a much smaller coefficient of friction against steel than steel (0.7) or titanium nitride (0.3). DLC has a coefficient of friction on steel of 0.2.
There are companies in the Charlotte area that offer detailed failure analysis of engine parts, like the valve below. They use scanning electron microscopy to examine the parts. The culprit is often the coatings coming off.
Remember back in 2008, when Hendrick Motorsports had a baffling sweep of engine failures? The culprit was the coatings on the cam and/or lifters. They delaminated (i.e. came off) and the small flakes got into other parts of the engine. The clearances between moving parts in a race engine are much smaller and the tiny flakes of coating jammed up the engines, leading to failure.
Teams keep such detailed records of which parts go in which cars that Hendrik was able to track down the batch of parts that failed and ensure they weren’t being used in any other cars.
So if these coatings make engines more efficient, why aren’t they in all our cars? The usual answer – cost. Coated parts are more expensive and people don’t want to pay extra money for a small improvement in performance/duration. Race teams, on the other hand will spend whatever they can to shave a few more seconds off their time.
So there it is. We’re still nowhere near spec engines, even with the new rules. I suspect at some point, there will be an engine design initiative, but NASCAR has been fairly respectful for not throwing a zillion changes at the teams at one time.
And don’t forget, we won’t even see the tapered spacer until after Daytona because Daytona and Talladega are still using restrictor plates.
Like this: Like Loading...Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick and Robin van Persie were part of the Manchester United team that flopped in Greece (Picture: Getty)
English football suffered another disappointing night in Europe as Manchester United lost to Greek side Olympiakos in the Champions League in Athens.
The last week has seen English teams suffer a reality check, with Manchester City losing 2-0 to Barcelona at home last Tuesday, followed by Arsenal losing by the same score to Bayern Munich the following night.
A favourable draw saw United travel to Athens to face Olympiakos, who are not regarded as a team that are going to go far in the competition. But another poor performance from United saw them lose 2-0 in the first leg in Greece.
The results over the last week have been a reality check for English teams’ stature in European football. While the Premier League is the self-styled ‘best league in Europe’, the reality is that they don’t possess the best teams in Europe.
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After a lengthy absence from Champions League competition, it is time for Liverpool to return.
European nights at Anfield are legendary and can’t be replicated throughout England
The Reds have a great history in European competition and maybe their participation could boost English football’s status once again – the nation’s representatives look set to suffer huge disappointment again this season.
Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers (Picture: AP)
Liverpool still have to qualify for next season’s Champions League competition but they are currently in a terrific position to achieve that goal and they would be a great addition to the competition, having won Europe’s top competition five times.
European nights at Anfield are legendary and can’t be replicated throughout England and the exciting team that Brendan Rodgers is nurturing could provide English football with something to shout about as the country’s clubs need to be successful on the continent.
MORE: Club MetroWASHINGTON — The National Security Agency violated privacy rules protecting the communications of Americans and others on domestic soil 2,776 times over a one-year period, according to an internal audit leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden and made public on Thursday night.
The violations, according to the May 2012 audit, stemmed largely from operator and system errors like “inadequate or insufficient research” when selecting wiretap targets.
The largest number of episodes — 1,904 — appeared to be “roamers,” in which a foreigner whose cellphone was being wiretapped without a warrant came to the United States, where individual warrants are required. A spike in such problems in a single quarter, the report said, could be because of Chinese citizens visiting friends and family for the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday.
“Roamer incidents are largely unpreventable, even with good target awareness and traffic review, since target travel activities are often unannounced and not easily predicted,” the report says.85 Wonderfully Gallery Of Sacramento Train Museum 85 Wonderfully Gallery Of Sacramento Train Museum – Delightful to see you, on this occasion Please allow me to give you some great ideas in connection with sacramento train museum. The California State Railroad Museum In Old Sacramento from sacramento train museum, source:inspiredimperfection.com california...
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That fact can be sliced a few different ways, but it comes down to this: the program to train non-ISIL, non-Assad combatants for Syria is, like every other aspect of Austin’s and the Administration’s incoherent Syria policy, a failure of staggering proportions. Its result? Single digits of fighters in Syria. Low single digits, like five. Or maybe only four.
It’s not only a failure as a program, Austin can’t even place any confidence in the numbers describing the outrageous dimensions of the failure. The Washington Post, usually willing to carry water for the Administration and its political generals, finds itself, without any water to carry, reduced to reporting like an old-style paper:
In comments that appeared to shock even many of those involved in Syria policy elsewhere in the government, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the U.S. Central Command, told Congress on Wednesday that only “four or five” trainees from the program, a $500 million plan officially launched in December to prepare as many as 5,400 fighters this year, have ended up “in the fight” inside Syria.
There are a couple different ways of looking at that metric. For instance, if you want to know what value for money the Administration’s politicized Syrian-training program produces, you could compare the cost of a trained fighter in Syria to the cost of, say, the military education of General Austin: we know the number’s $100 million for each ragtag Syrian. Or we can look at the success percentage of the training program, which has delivered 5 of 5,400 promised combatants: that would be 0.092%, which would put it right in the mainstream for government programs.
But wait! Those numbers are presuming the ill-informed Austin’s high bound of 5 Syrians is right. If it’s 4, they cost us $125 million each, and 0.074% success rate, which is said aloud as “Seventy-four thousandths of a percent.”
Do you dare ask who has been fired? Who has been held accountable? Who was denied a bonus? You know, don’t you, the answer to these questions.
The course correction would mark the first significant alteration in the Obama administration’s year-old strategy of defeating the militants with air power, along with training and supplies for indigenous forces fighting them on the ground. It comes as critics have drawn a direct line between Obama’s long-standing reluctance to more directly intervene in the fight and the growing flood of Syrian refugees fleeing to the West.
First, air power alone can’t defeat anybody, and second, it’s been at a rate of a half-dozen sorties a day, based on technical-means intelligence (also known in the trade as “worthless, easily-spoofed intelligence”) alone. So what’s their answer?
Defense officials who described the proposed changes said the yearly goal would be substantially lower, perhaps as few as 500.
Oh, okay, redesignate success so that if they match the previous results they can now say the fighters only cost $10 million each (again, a large multiple of the cost of the career-long education GEN Austin has had) and we were able to get the throughput up to 1%!
That’s efficiency, as seen from the window of the E-Ring (or the bar car of the Acela).
Rather than front-line forces, fighters would be trained as enablers and liaisons between U.S. forces outside the country — particularly those directing U.S. airstrikes — and groups such as Syrian Kurds and Sunni Arabs that the Pentagon thinks have been effective against the militants.
via Administration searches for new approach to aiding rebels in Syria – The Washington Post.
And, wait for it, we’ll stop training Islamist extremists of the kind the President and the Secretary of State have insisted on, the guys who are indistinguishable from the ISIL asils we’re supposedly fighting, and instead train guys who want to fight against them.
Um, why didn’t anyone (apart from all of us in the UW establishment) suggest this before? Oh, we did, but President Nobel Peace Prize had to do it his own way with his own Muslim Brotherhood pals? Roger that.
Meanwhile, the Russians have taken an interesting approach to their guy in Syria, the chinless wonder, Bashar Assad. They’ve surrounded him with Russian firepower.
Meanwhile, millions of Syrians, and Iraqis, and Turks, and other surge into Europe, demanding that the fruits of Western civilization be given to those who are too uncivilized to earn them themselves, and who will only squander them. And we remember the old counterintelligence rule of refugees and displaced persons: one in ten is not what he seems. Indeed, it is a dead certainty that ISIL, the Syrian Assad government, the Iranian theokleptocracy, and other bad actors each have a higher percentage of agents in that “refugee” surge than the yield percentage the US gets out of its 5,400, or 500, alleged freedom fighters.
And, as the usual sleek Ivy and Georgetown “foreign policy establishment” within and without State and CIA stare at their screens and mutter something about “unexpectedly,” a weak, vacillating foreign policy in general and its weak, vacillating, inconstant, and cowardly implementation in the region in particular, bear fruit. They produce a result that’s predictable to those of use who formed an understanding of international dispute resolution at the sharp and sticky end.
All of these events are only unexpected if your vision of international dispute resolution was framed in a 400-series seminar led by some professor who’s never faced a tougher question than whether to grade his kids’ papers or let his graduate assistant do it. And unfortunately, we have given foreign and military policy over to these four-flushers.
But hey, some Syrians are with us. Seventy-four thousandths of a percent!A super-PAC supporting former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) for president will launch a five-digit digital ad buy in Iowa on Thursday attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE (I-Vt.) over his positions on gun control.
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“Bernie Sanders voted against the Brady Bill, and Bernie Sanders voted to give gun manufacturers protections from victim lawsuits,” the ad says. “The NRA even paid for ads attacking a Sanders opponent. Bernie Sanders is no progressive when it comes to guns.”A separate 15-second ad from the super-PAC, called Generation Forward, touts O’Malley’s support for gun control reforms and will also run in the Hawkeye State.“Martin O’Malley banned the sale of assault rifles. Martin O’Malley enacted laws requiring licensing of handgun buyers,” the second says. “Martin O’Malley outlawed the sale of high capacity magazines. Martin O’Malley: A proven leader on gun safety.”As a presidential candidate, O’Malley is barred from coordinating with the super-PAC, but the ads are an indication that O’Malley supporters see an opening to gain traction on Sanders, who has emerged as the top liberal challenger to Hillary Clinton, the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination.O’Malley has responded to the shooting deaths of nine African Americans at a black church in Charleston, S.C., last week by vowing to make gun control a cornerstone of his campaign."I'm pissed that we’re actually asking ourselves the horrific question of, 'what will it take?,'" O’Malley said in an email to supporters last week. “How many senseless acts of violence in our streets or tragedies in our communities will it take to get our nation to stop caving to special interests like the NRA when people are dying?"
Clinton has also called for stricter gun laws in the wake of the shooting.
While Sanders has a reputation as a liberal firebrand on most issues, he says his centrist views on gun control are informed by the hunting culture in his home state.
"I can understand that if some Democrats or Republicans represent an urban area where people don't hunt, don't do target practice; they're not into guns,” Sanders said in an interview that aired Thursday on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” “But, in my state, people go hunting and people do target practice.
“Talking about cultural divides in this country, you know, it is important for people in urban America to understand that families go out together and kids go out with their parents and they hunt and they enjoy the outdoors and that is a lifestyle that should not be condemned,” he continued.
Sanders supported the 2013 Manchin-Toomey bill to expand background checks that died in the Senate but voted against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in 1993.
“If anyone thinks that gun control itself is going to solve the problem of violence in this country, you're terribly mistaken,” Sanders told NPR on Thursday.
“So, obviously, we need strong, sensible gun control, and I will support it,” he said. “But some people think it's going to solve all of our problems. It is not."BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- It pays to have fans on Facebook if you want your ads to work there too, according to the first public study to come out of the collaboration of Nielsen Co. and Facebook.
Ads that included mentions of friends who were brand fans saw an increase in recall of 16%, and 30% when the ads coincided with a similar mention in users' news feeds. The study of more than 800,000 Facebook users and ads from 14 brands in a variety of categories shows a marked increase in ad recall, awareness and purchase intent when home-page ads on the social network mention friends of users who've become fans of the brand in the ad.
The impact on awareness and recall is even more pronounced when a home-page ad coincides with what Facebook and Nielsen term "organic" social advocacy, i.e. an item in a user's news feed indicating a friend has become a fan of a brand.
In short, so-called earned media generated when people mention or advocate brands makes the paid media considerably more effective, according to the study. Nielsen and Facebook plan to discuss results of the study in a session at Ad:Tech in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Increased recall
Facebook-home-page ads on average generated a 10% increase in ad recall, a 4% increase in brand awareness and a 2% increase in purchase intent among users who saw them compared with a control group with similar demographics or characteristics who didn't.
But the increase in recall jumped to 16% when ads included mentions of friends who were brand fans, and 30% when the ads coincided with a similar mention in users' news feeds. Brand awareness saw similar bumps: up 2% from just a home-page ad, 8% with a "social ad" bearing mentions of friends who were brand fans and up 13% when a home-page ad appeared along with a mention of friends who were brand fans in the users' news feeds.
Purchase intent was 2% higher among viewers of home-page ads vs. nonviewers, but got a four-times-bigger bump, up 8% either from social ads or when ads appeared alongside organic mentions of the brand in the news feed.
Earned and paid media
One major takeaway from the research is that paid and earned media work together in ways that could have implications well beyond Facebook, said Jon Gibbs, VP-media analytics at Nielsen. "The market has been talking very much about how to buy paid media and earn earned media, but there's been very little attention to the types of hybrid impressions and hybrid experience that blends these two," Mr. Gibbs said.
While Facebook's social ads present a fairly unique way of blending the paid and earned impressions, Mr. Gibbs noted that it's not a totally isolated example. He cited rich-media vendors that allow for Twitter feeds, social commentary or other kinds of consumer input within their ads. But he said having specific friends linked to a brand, as Facebook does, appears to have more impact than just incorporating social commentary broadly.
The recall levels for home-page ads on Facebook appear "slightly higher than standard norms we've done on other projects," Mr. Gibbs said. "What we've seen in both social ads and organic [mentions] are much higher than we've seen in other campaigns along these lines."
Results 'unremarkable'
Rex Briggs, CEO of the analytics firm Marketing Evolution, which has conducted numerous online advertising effectiveness studies, called results for Facebook's regular home-page ads "unremarkable and in line with banner ads [generally]," but he added that the results for social ads and the impact of organic mentions make for "a really interesting story."
Nielsen appeared to employ a good methodology used since the first online ad effectiveness studies in the mid 1990s, Mr. Briggs said.
"It does what Facebook wanted to do, which is legitimize the advertising and business model of Facebook," he said. "What it doesn't do is give the cross-media understanding of how does this piece fit into overall marketing plans."
What Facebook also hasn't done, he said, is open its doors and data to a variety of research companies as others, such as Microsoft, Yahoo or AOL have done. That its internal data remain largely under wraps, and its template for creating fan pages remains relatively limited compared to what marketers can do with their own sites or other networks may also be limiting revenue for Facebook, he said.
Paid media cheaper
In all, Nielsen projects around 18 million Facebook users saw ads measured as part of the study, of which around a million also saw organic mentions of their friends in social ads. Roughly another million saw organic mentions of the brands featured in the study without seeing the ads.
Based on those numbers, it's still a lot easier -- if not necessarily cheaper -- to buy scale on Facebook than earn it by winning fans. It's also an indication to Mr. Gibbs that marketers need to focus on winning Facebook fans over the long haul if they want to improve their odds of success when advertising there.
Of the 18 million users exposed to the ads, only around 130,000, or less than 1%, "engaged" with them by clicking on them. But around 40,000, or around 4%, of users who saw organic mentions of their friends become brand fans clicked on those news items. The higher click-through on organic impressions is another indication of the power of earned media on Facebook, Mr. Gibbs said.
"I do think it requires a level of ongoing investment in social media," Mr. Gibbs said, as opposed to a series of short-term projects. He also said marketers who have large e-mail databases should probably be encouraging consumers in e-mail programs to join their Facebook pages.
Mr. Gibbs said he doesn't believe Facebook's plans to move from "become a fan" to the more click-prone "like" as a means of joining brand pages would have much impact on the numbers in the study. And he believes, though it wasn't part of the survey, that users by now have been exposed to enough of Facebook's social ads to realize that when they become fans of a brand, they may also become endorsers in that brand's Facebook ads.
The Nielsen BrandLift polls used to survey Facebook users was a "lightweight" poll, generally with only two questions, aimed at maximizing response rates.
Nielsen didn't incorporate actual purchases, as opposed to purchase intent, "because this is the first generation of this research," Mr. Gibbs said. "We wanted to stick to branding because it's language the market is very comfortable with. In next generations, I would assume we will start incorporating offline purchase and other transactional data as part of the analysis."Dior St. Hillaire eats, sleeps and breathes the Bronx. Like hip-hop itself, she was born in the Bronx. She was raised in the Bronx. She first learned about the intricacies of composting in the Bronx, at the New York Botanical Garden, where she earned a Master |
about this easy corn chowder is that it's simple yet hearty and creamy without the cream. I substituted the cream with some Silk unflavored almond milk, and it worked brilliantly without the added calories and fat.
Corn has been getting a bad rap lately. In 2011, Monsanto announced plans to grow genetically modified sweet corn on 250,000 acres, roughly accounting for 40% of the sweet corn market. By the way, the problem isn't that the corn is GMO, the problem is that all GMO crops are drenched in Roundup also known as glyphosate. Glyphosate is an herbicide that has been linked to numerous diseases. GMO crops were created to withstand glyphosate. You can read more about glyphosate here.
GMO corn can be found in the produce department of most grocery stores, farmstands and farmers' markets. It can also be found in processed foods that contain sweet corn.
The best way to avoid GMO corn is to eat certified organic sweet corn. Under the regulations of the National Organic Program, certified farmers are not allowed to knowingly plant GMO seeds.
In the summer I like to shop at my local farmer market for corn. There are lots of apps now available that give shoppers access to information about the farms selling produce. Also, don't hesitate to ask a lot of questions about what kind of pesticides these local farmers are using. You have a right to know what's in your food.
You can also make this easy corn chowder with frozen organic corn. One ear of corn yields approximately 3/4 cup of frozen corn.
Easy Corn Chowder with Potatoes, Red Pepper & Dill
Hope you enjoy this easy corn chowder as much as we did. As many of you know, I have teamed up with Silk non-dairy milk this year to spread the non-dairy message. If you missed my post on why cow's milk isn't the best milk to consume; here is the link.
You can learn more about all of Silk's non-dairy milk by signing up for their newsletter which contains lots of delicious vegan recipes. If you are wondering where you can buy Silk non-dairy milk, here is a store locator. It should be available in most mainstream grocery stores.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Silk. The opinions and text are all mine.
Don't miss any of Ordinary Vegan's free recipes by signing up here. Wishing you a peaceful and compassionate week!The Bulls drop a close one to the rival Thunder that was decided in a shoot out. The Bulls were dominated throughout the contest as the Thunder controlled, but managed to capitalize on the opportunities that they were given as they battled to come away with at least a point in the standings. Bulls goalie Taylor Nelson deserves all the credit for the Bulls having a chance in tonight’s contest as he was under fire all night. The Thunder racked up 45 shots on the Bulls’ goalie, but Nelson stood tall as he stopped 42 of the shots on his net. The Bulls were led on offense by Cody Carlson as he had two points on the night, both coming by way of the assist.
First Period:
The Bulls could not have asked for a worse start to a game than they had tonight. They came in riding the momentum from their series win over the first place Aces, but that confidence evaporated quickly as the Thunder struck just 30 seconds into the game. Gabriel Levesque scored the early go ahead goal with Shawn Boutin on the assist. The first period was pretty chippy as both teams combined for nine penalties in the first alone, including two fights as Martin Lee squared off with Garret Hunt, Kris Belan took on Ryan Green. Both teams would get ample power play opportunities as they combined for five power plays in the period. It would be the Eric Hunter high sticking penalty that would lead to a five on three power play for the Bulls. Rob Kwiet would knot the game up at one a piece with his eighth goal of the season with Cody Carlson and Peter Sivak getting credit for the assists. The Thunder out shot the Bulls 11 to eight in the period.
Second Period:
The Thunder would do their best to try and take over the game in the second period as they put all the pressure on a staggering Bulls’ team. It was much of the same as the Thunder opened the scoring in the second period. Tony DeHart would put the Thunder ahead with a goal at the tail end of a Hans Benson hooking minor. The Thunder would not hold that lead for very long as the Bulls charged back. Dean Ouellet netted his 20th goal of the season as he beat Thunder goalie Cody Reichard to tie the game. Alex Tuckerman had the assist on the Ouellet goal. The Bulls would not be finished there as just 17 seconds later they would make the score three to two as the other Ouellet, Christian, would net his 12th of the season. Cody Carlson would get his second assist of the game and Dylan King would get credit too. Taylor Nelson played an exceptional second period as he kept the Bulls close by stopping 17 of the 18 shots he faced in the period. The Thunder dominated the shot chart as they out shot the Bulls 18 to six.
Third Period:
The Bulls would face a ton of offensive pressure as they tried to maintain the lead from the surging Thunder. The Thunder would strike quickly again as they tie the game just two minutes into the third period. Thunder alternate captain Ryan Constant would tie the game with fifth goal of the year. Nelson would again be called upon as he stopped 13 of 14 shots to give the Bulls a chance to win the game in overtime. Thunder out shot the Bulls 14 to seven.
Overtime:
The overtime period would provide both team ample opportunities to win the game as both teams each had a turn on the power play. Neither team would capitalize as the game remained tied sending it to the shoot out. The Bulls out shot the Thunder five to two in the extra period. Thunder out shot the Bulls 46 to 26 on the night.
Shoot Out:
Stockton Shoots First. Best of five.
1st Rd:
STK- Yannick Riendeau, Goal
SF- Jonathan Lessard, No Goal
2nd Rd:
STK – Maxime Boisclaire, Goal
SF – Peter Sivak, No Goal
3rd Rd:
STK – Eric Hunter, No Goal
SF – Dean Ouellet, No Goal
4th Rd:
STK – Harrison Reed, Goal
SF – Not Needed
5th Rd: Not Needed
The Bulls lack of puck possession was the main key to tonight’s loss. They should have won tonight’s game, but they gave the Thunder too many opportunities to try and capitalize on. The Bulls would have been blown out in the game if not for the effort of Taylor Nelson, who was the star of the team tonight. Nelson has been exceptional over the last six games as he has stopped 192 of 205 shots faced for a.937 save percentage and a 2.2 goals against average. Christian Ouellet now has four goals in his last four games. Dean Ouellet’s 20th goal now has him tied for the team lead with Peter Sivak. The Bulls fall to 17-21-6, while Stockton goes to 23-16-8. The Bulls are now 5-2-1 against Stockton on the season. The Bulls will return home tomorrow to take on the team with the second best record in the league in the Ontario Reign.
Three Stars:The federal government plans to inject $275.6 million into science and technology research to help place Canada among the leaders in university research and development.
Industry Minister Tony Clement said the the federal government will spend $275.6 million to boost research at universities.
Industry Minister Tony Clement said Wednesday the country will use that money to fund 310 research chairs at 53 Canadian universities.
"This funding will help strengthen Canada's capacity for leading-edge research while, at the same time, building economic opportunities for Canadians," Clement said.
The investment includes $13.4 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation for research infrastructure associated with the new awards.
"The advancements and discoveries made by these researchers will have a real and lasting impact on the lives of all Canadians," said Gilles Patry, CEO of the foundation.
The chairholders will conduct research in fields including water security, molecular neuroscience and globalization.In less than a decade, public opinion has shifted dramatically toward support for the legalization of marijuana: A recent national survey showed a narrow national majority in favor of legalization, and its supporters translated this sentiment into ballot initiative victories in Colorado and Washington State in 2012, report E.J. Dionne, Jr. and William A. Galston.
The temptation is to conclude that the trend in favor of marijuana legalization is similar to the flow of opinion in favor of same-sex marriage, but not all hot-button social issues are created equal, Dionne and Galston write. It is much less clear that opinion on marijuana will follow the exact evolution of social issues such as marriage equality, the authors assert.
Surveying a wealth of new data on public attitudes toward marijuana legalization, this paper explains the forces and limits behind the trend toward legalization. The authors seek to answer the following: Which trajectory, that of gay marriage or abortion (if either), is more likely to augur the path that opinion on marijuana may take? And will the country see the emergence of a broad pro-legalization consensus, or rather of a durably divisive cultural disagreement?
Dionne and Galston arrive at the following conclusions:The new Petzl Strix VL headlamp features multiple carrying options and both white and color lighting. It can be worn on your helmet, head, vest, strap or around your neck. The lamp's double rotation system allows great freedom for orienting the beam: 180° horizontally and 120° vertically. It comes in multiple color options, has a faster transfer time between between modes, offers discrete lighting. It is designed to be durable and dependable, able to withstand high-impact falls and crushing. It is also water and dust resistant.
Rose Brand Inc. Introduces New Petzl® Strix VL Headlamp
Secaucus, New Jersey–November 25, 2013. The new Petzl® Strix VL headlamp features multiple carrying options and both white and color lighting. It can be worn on your helmet, head, vest, strap or around your neck. The lamp's double rotation system allows great freedom for orienting the beam: 180° horizontally and 120° vertically.
It’s the perfect fit for any stagehand or rigger due to its multiple color options, faster mode transfers, and discrete but visible lighting. The Strix VL is dependable and durable, withstanding even high impact falls and crushing. This no maintenance must-have is also water and dust resistant.
About Rose Brand Inc.
Rose Brand Inc. (www.RoseBrand.com) is North America’s largest provider of theatrical fabrics, custom stage drapery, custom sewn creations and production supplies for the live entertainment, film, TV, display, and event industries.In the beginning, sitcoms would almost always feature self-contained 22-minute stories, with there never being a consequence to what anyone did or said that would carry over to the next episode. Johnny slipped on a banana peel. And it was good. Eventually that would change: a character began to be able lose or get a job, and pick up a new love interest and maybe someday marry them, and the tired show would be able to sprout some more material. And that was good. Then the meteoric rise of The Sopranos begat the HBO model of airing shows that didn’t have episodes, but installments of an epic story, making banana peels and crazy bosses and a new lay seem inconsequential.
But anyone who watched their fair share of television in this past 2011-2012 season knows this: Comedy has never wanted to be as taken seriously as right now. No longer are all characters suffering from amnesia, and after years of referencing The Wire in their jokes, three network television comedies this year tried to *be* The Wire, writing and plotting multi-layered season-long story arcs, to varying degrees of critical and financial success. (In one case a comedy hired the guy who played the most beloved character just for this past season.) Johnny has been using a leg brace for a month. It makes me laugh every time I see it.
Community’s response to dwindling ratings and requests from NBC and Sony Productions to broaden the show’s appeal for the most recent third season was to be as self-referential and esoteric as they were always accused to be while juggling several season long stories in the air: Chang’s ascent from lowly security guard to leader of the entire college; Troy being recruited to join the Air Conditioner Repair School despite it affectingly ending his innocence; Britta becoming a therapist; Shirley opening a business; Pierce confronting his father and dealing with his father’s subsequent death, and last but certainly not least and definitely not something seen on a comedy every day, an alternate timeline that was trying to destroy the current timeline.
Even more ballsy is the fact that all of those stories were purposely told with the main characters living through the sixth step of Joseph Campbell’s eight step hero journey (conveniently that’s one step for each semester of a four year college), the most perilous and least fun part — paying a “heavy price” for getting what you want. And it wasn’t just the characters going through a hard time — executive producer/show runner Dan Harmon admitted on a writers podcast taped right after “Remedial Chaos Theory” aired that plotting season long stories were a pain and lamented that ultimately it was handcuffing them sometimes from writing an episode with a funny theme that a writer might come up with in a spontaneous moment of inspiration.
Ultimately the experiment was ambitious and predominantly appreciated by the people that watched every episode/installment, but alienating to any viewer who on a whim might decide to watch an episode of the show that their friend breathlessly purported to be the greatest work of art that ever existed, even if they had seen every episode of the first two seasons. They would be left wondering why that Abed guy was wearing a felt goatee (he was Evil Abed from the darkest alternative timeline), or why it was funny that John Goodman was wearing a real goatee (because he always had a different facial hair/haircut combination in every episode he appeared in), or what the hell Troy was humming (“Daybreak” appeared at least three times in season three, once by Annie for a second and a half). As unfunny as those kinds of moments were to some, they were a punchline to a long, well constructed joke to the converted.
Chevy Chase would complain to the public about his character doing the same old slapstick sitcom garbage, but his clueless old man shtick — along with Troy being dumb when a joke required him to be — were a necessary evil to appease the all too occasional casual comedy viewer that can only be reached on the micro level. Even though Chase’s Pierce Hawthorne was a broad boob that at times seemed to come from an old, different, less interesting show, Harmon and his writers still made him the character that cathartically forgave Gus Fring from Breaking Bad for trying to cheat his way to claiming the family fortune and co-starred in Jeff’s very faithful to the real thing 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired daydream in the season premiere.
Community’s ratings remained anemic throughout the year, with one notable exception: after a three month hiatus and with massive promotion, “Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts” was watched by more 18-34 year olds than that night’s American Idol. The C story to the episode was as meta as possible: Troy and Abed attempted to be “normal,” before they snapped out of it and returned back to their own normal, status quo unharmed for next week. Ratings were back to Community’s normal soon after. Most people tuned out, aware that the show was just for the endlessly devoted to appreciate the second clip show featuring all new material (“Remember when we remembered?”) Chase’s complaints that made it sound like he was on an According to Jim, 22-minute story telling kind of comedy are painfully ironic, considering that if Dan Harmon drew inspiration from a mainstream sitcom instead of Breaking Bad he may not have been fired.
Parks and Recreation only juggled one ball in the air during their fourth season, but it might as well had been a medicine ball. The entire year was devoted to Leslie Knope’s campaign to become a Pawnee councilwoman. Inspired by season four of Friday Night Lights, executive producer/show runner Michael Schur aimed for the audience to live through the ups and downs of a political season so that we would be emotionally right with Amy Poehler’s character at the very end when she finds out if she wins or loses. Early in the season finale “Win, Lose or Draw,” Schur and the writing staff prematurely won the second Leslie Knope walked into the voting booth and began to cry upon seeing her name on the ballot. Combined with Poehler’s acting and the fact that viewers had listened to Knope talk about wanting to be a powerful politician at some point in the 67 episodes before it, it was more than earned; a powerful moment full of pathos made possible through serialized storytelling. Ditto when Leslie’s beautiful friend Ann Perkins announced to Knope and Ben Wyatt about the final result of the election. Most dramas this season didn’t provoke goosebumps like Parks and Recreation did at that moment.
Ron Swanson’s attitude that everything should stay the same is the exact opposite of Michael Schur’s, to the faithful viewers’ benefit, but not necessarily to that darn casual viewer. Gerry’s consistent positive attitude is only funny if you’ve watched him get shit on by every single individual in the office every week. Aubrey Plaza allowing herself a smile when she’s petting a dog is only humorous if you know that she pretends to hate everything but her husband. Ron Swanson wearing a red shirt is only for the fans who remember from early on in the series that Swanson rocks a Tiger Woods red golf shirt the night after making love to a woman. The only broadly dumb character is Andy Dwyer, who was given a goal to look into law enforcement next season after pretending for a few episodes to be an FBI agent. Ratings for Parks remained low throughout the year, but Schur got to keep his job.
No show in television history has lasted this long and been so equipped and conditioned to dive into their own universe like How I Met Your Mother. Completing it’s seventh season and possibly heading into its final year, Mother continues to approach telling a story unconventionally, initially relying heavily on flashbacks, with the occasional peak into the future to see things like Ted, Marshall and Lily eating a sandwich at their college reunion. For the last few seasons, however, the show has grown more and more comfortable with giving us glimpses into the future, most notably Barney’s wedding, without necessarily knowing how they are going to get there. Relying on flashbacks in the beginning of the series and turning to flash forwards later on? HIMYM is the comedic version of Lost, right down to the growing frustration from viewers the longer the series goes on to satisfyingly tie up all of the loose ends.
Executive producers/show runners Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are tasked to not only make sure that the characters get to Barney’s wedding organically, but to do so while making a lot of funny jokes. In the season finale “The Magician’s Code,” there were easter eggs for the fans that had stuck through the days of Zoey: when Lily jumps into Marshall’s old Camaro “500 Miles” is playing, the cassingle that was established to continually play in the car back in season two. Robin claimed to be upset because Ted was “busting apple bags,” a strange turn of phrase that was only ever heard once before — from “Drumroll, Please,” the thirteenth episode of the series, in which Ted met Victoria, a character that disappeared for six years before returning this year, including later on in the finale. The return of a character sounds like lazy writing, but it genuinely comes off as the main character needing to remember why all of his ex girlfriends were wrong for him before meeting the titular mother (which will have to happen soon because we saw in “Trilogy Time” that he has a baby with her in 2015. Knowing that it can’t be dragged out forever is important.) Barney Stinson’s ascent from one-note womanizer existing as the comedic relief to reach a specific demographic and be the lusting yang to Ted’s wholesome heart yin to a dude who is capable of marrying into a monogamous relationship has been rewarding to watch.
The show, like any comedy in its seventh season, is not as funny as it used to be, but the ratings have never been better. It says a lot about the power of 1) not being on NBC and 2) reaching 100 episodes and being syndicated, something the two previously mentioned shows have yet to do. Having your characters on television every single weekday has the potential to dig deep into people’s consciousness, to care so much about them that you go back and watch all of the episodes you missed to fill in the remaining gaps and catch up, as if it’s a legitimate concern that you’ll run into one of them on the street and feel like a jerk if you don’t know about every significant event that happened to them. And when Robin makes some apple related comment, or when a yellow umbrella is brought up, it feels just like getting an inside joke, because that’s exactly what it is.
Roger Cormier knows that the party is at the laundromat.Now is the time to take destiny into our own hands. Sun in Virgo conjunct the North Node of fate 4th September.
The Sun, the giver of life, represents our conscious self, ego and our creative life force.
The North Node of fate represents our life path and purpose we need to aspire too, our soul path and mission.
After any sudden surprises or shake-ups we might have had at the last Solar Eclipse on the 1st September, with the Sun conjunct the North Node, we can now consciously take our destiny and life path into our own hands, making any necessary adjustments that need to be made and steer on course to where we want and need to go too.
We now have the power to make the necessary changes that need to be made to achieve our goals in our relationships and in our lives.
The Sun in perfectionist Virgo conjunct the North Node, opposite Neptune (faith, visions) reminds us that we don’t have to be perfect; we just need to take a leap of faith and start taking the first small steps.
The Sun in opposition to Neptune and square Saturn, is asking us to step out of delusions and victim mentality and take responsibility to consciously co-create our own life path now.
The Sun in Virgo is helping us to perfect and improve our talents, gifts, and health.
With Pluto the planet of empowerment making a beneficial aspect to the Sun and North Node, the power is in our hands to steer our life into the direction we want it to go.
We need to make the most of the highly Empowering, creative and productive energies of Pluto trine the North Node now, as the North Node will seperate from this special union with Pluto in November. The next time the North Node makes this powerful aspect (trine) will be in 2022.
We can begin to implement and reap the rewards that we began to sow in April / May during the Grand Earth trine and Jupiter conjunct the North Node in June.
The North Node will provide the necessary fated synchronicity to push us towards where we are meant to go.
The Universe is operating in such a way to support you, helping you to be the fullest expression of who you are, surrounding you with people and things to support you and your vision.
When you step outside your comfort zone for your higher purpose, the Universe supports you in every way.
The ruler of the Sun, Mercury is conjunct Jupiter. Bestowing us with inner wisdom, optimism and vision. Helping us to see the bigger picture and think and dream “big”.And can very possibly bring us long awaited good news.
Currently in retrograde until the 22nd September, you can trust your inner wisdom and intuition. Deep healing can be found during this retrograde phase, as Mercury and Jupiter are in opposition to Chiron in Pisces, the Shaman and wounded healer.
Meetings with people from our past can feel especially fated, bestowed with joy and happiness from Jupiter. As well as a good chance of healing any conflicts or differences.
The earthiness of this sign gives the grounded vision necessary to turn dreams into reality.
Jupiter is expanding our consciousness and our hearts.
We are being offered a vantage point that allows us to see both where we are headed and where we came from simultaneously.
The Sun in Virgo conjunct the North Node is pushing us to manifest our destined life path, talents, potentials, and our purpose. Manifesting our talents to benefit ourselves and others.There is nothing more rewarding and fulfilling when you start walking in the gifts and talents you have been given.
With Pluto, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn in Sagittarius in powerful aspect, as well as finding ourselves in between two Eclipses in September, this makes for a very powerful time. We can achieve almost anything we put our mind too. Optimism and confidence are very high while having enough physical energy and endurance to push our efforts through to completion.
With Jupiter conjunct Mercury in Virgo, we are now able to have a broader view of our situation combined with listening to our intuition giving us an uncanny sense of what the future will bring.
We can now begin to put ideas and plans into motion with confidence. The full manifestation culminating at the end of the month in a New Moon in Libra conjunct Jupiter after the second eclipse and Mercury out of retrograde.
We will find support for our ventures and a wealth of hidden resources, with the potential to attract good luck and promising opportunities to expand our projects, gaining more power and influence.
Pushing the limits is easier now, and you can extend your influence much farther than ever before. When you know your destination, we can demonstrate an unwavering determination to arrive there.
No matter what the difficulties, we can overcome whatever is in our path, trusting in what is positive regardless of conditions. This period can reawaken your faith in the best that life and you have to offer.
”You are essentially who you create yourself to be and all that occurs in your life is the result of your own making”.
– Stephen Richards, Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free
We now have the chance to own our power.
Any issues of insecurities and self- esteem can get a major boost of confidence right now.
Now’s the time to take destiny into your own hands.
To make things happen, working towards making dreams true.Big news from President Obama’s climate speech: He says he won’t approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline if it will “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”
It’s hard to know exactly what he means by that, but it’s a surprise that he mentioned Keystone at all. Pundits expected he would keep silent on the issue.
Here’s what he said:
I know there’s been … a lot of controversy surrounding the proposed Keystone pipeline that would carry oil from Canadian tar sands down to refineries in the Gulf. And the State Department is going through the final stages of evaluating the proposal. That’s how it’s always been done. But I do want to be clear: Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our nation’s interest. And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net effects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward.
It seems obvious that Keystone XL would significantly increase carbon emissions by encouraging development and facilitating transport of the dirtiest fossil fuel on earth — tar-sands oil. But in its draft environmental impact statement on the pipeline, the State Department asserted otherwise.
The U.S. EPA says State is wrong and argues that Keystone would notably boost greenhouse gas emissions. Even Canadian tar-sands boosters say Keystone is necessary in order to increase their oil production: “Long-term, we do need Keystone to be able to grow the volumes in Canada,” Steve Laut, president of big oil company Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., said last month.
Climate activists put so much pressure on Obama over Keystone that he felt compelled to address it. He certainly hasn’t killed the pipeline, but it’s notable that he attached a climate litmus test to it.So apparently I never uploaded this. I think I left it as a tumblr exclusive and didn't get round to putting it here XD even though I did with FA.
so yeah enjoy some pinkie cuteness.
this was an adorable idea that just suddenly popped into my head one day on the bus, made me blush and I had to hide my face XD
>///<
snuggles incoming
I am extremely happy with how this turned out. especially the shading. I tried a reverse shading effect, and discovered I could use "clipping masks" on objects WITHIN masks to further increase my control :3
and at the end I did some over shades, and had a happy accident and loved the effect it made where it caused the colours to become very vibrant. well, you can see.The Vampire Diaries is leaving behind a parting gift for its spinoff, sent care of Alaric Saltzman.
RELATEDThe Vampire Diaries Series Finale to Air March 2017 on The CW
The eighth episode of The Originals‘ upcoming fourth season — which premieres Friday, March 17 at 8/7c on The CW — will feature an appearance by Matt Davis, TVLine has learned exclusively. Alaric, whose twin daughters are currently caught in a siren’s crosshairs, pops up in order to deliver a priceless artifact to Elijah.
This marks the fourth time a character from The Vampire Diaries has appeared on The Originals: Tyler (Michael Trevino) made the jump in Season 1 to get revenge against Klaus, while Matt (Zach Roerig) and Stefan (Paul Wesley) both showed up in Season 3 for their own unique purposes.
Little else is known about The Originals‘ fourth season, save for a few details: Hayley, along with an all-grown-up Hope (now played by Summer Fontana), will track down the seven werewolf packs in order to save the Mikaelsons; more of Vincent’s backstory will be revealed; and Josh will get a new love interest in the form of Teen Wolf‘s Keahu Kahuanui.
We’ll also meet (at least) two new faces: Containment‘s Christina Moses will play a werewolf/ER doctor named Keelin, while Sleepy Hollow‘s Neil Jackson will play a mysterious vampire named Alistair.
Your thoughts on Alaric’s trip to The Originals? Hopes for Season 4 in general? Drop ’em in a comment below.Shall we judge a book by its cover?
The cover of Mary Wept over the Feet of Jesus bears a window or panel of yonic shape: a pointed ellipse that opens like an eye turned sidewise. This kind of shape has been likened to a sailboat, or sideways smile—in the world of gem-cutting it’s a marquise cut (said to be an homage to a marquise’s famous smile), or navette (little ship). Inside this marquise is a drawing that seems to reflect the book’s title: a pair of bare feet, and above them two droplets falling through black space—Mary’s teardrops, or, since the panel is all in black and red, perhaps drops of blood. Around the panel is an illuminated border, like a frame round a mirror, showing an open book at the top, from which unravel two symmetrical lengths of scroll, one to either side, and also two frankly phallic serpents—again, one at either side. Above all this is the book’s title; below, its subtitle and avowed topics, prostitution and religious obedience, and its author: Chester Brown.
That yonic panel turns out to be a vital design element in the book, recurring on the title page (where a naked woman’s form replaces the open book) and at the start of every chapter or section. Besides its evocative shape, there are other reasons we might read it as yonic: take the book’s title, which highlights the feminine over the masculine (Mary over Jesus), or its promised focus on prostitution, or the insinuating black and vivid red of the cover drawing. The shape’s sexual and lapidary associations strike me, in the book’s greater context, as politically freighted signs of the feminine—perhaps feminist signs, as the highlighting of Mary over Jesus may suggest, though I’m not sure if the book ever breathes the word “feminism.” In any case, I can’t help but think it deliberate that the cover frames the marquise shape with the masculine connotations of twinned serpents—and of the tradition of Biblical exegesis, to which Mary Wept is a determined contributor.
This is a religious book, after all, though a sort of heretical one. It’s weirdly scholarly too, and so the image of scrolls raveling out from a book suggests all sorts of relationships between and among texts: the Bible, or rather various Bibles; non-scriptural books of Biblical interpretation, that is, scholarly epitexts, on which Brown relies a great deal; and the tug-of-war within Mary Wept itself between Brown’s comics, which take up about two-thirds of the volume, and his learned and speculative addenda in prose that eat up the book’s final hundred pages or so. It’s as if, from the cover on, Brown aims to remind us of a clash of interpretations, and specifically of the way men have reframed women’s Biblical stories: dig those serpents, redolent of Genesis, arrayed around that shape. The cover’s bald symbolism suggests that Brown will take up an interpretive conflict grounded precisely in sex and sexuality. Texts and sex, together—in the context of Jesus’s feet (New Testament) and perhaps the loss of Eden (Old). The cover is not the whole book, but it is a key.
So, this is a book in which mixed messages—born of navigating between texts, and between female and male—will be the very basis of conflict. That conflict turns out to be mainly argumentative rather than dramatic in nature; the mini-dramas conveyed through comics are so disparate, and loosely joined, that it takes Brown’s hundred pages of back-matter to explain why they’ve all been roped together. Mary Wept, then, continues Brown’s habit (indulged in the biographical Louis Riel and autobiographical/political Paying for It) of pitting his comics, with their deadpan humor and knockout cartooning, against a ream of discursive notes written out in his distinctive hand. These voluminous notes seem to want to reason with the reader, whereas the comics want to provoke and challenge. The comics are the more interesting part, yet I confess that as soon as I began reading the book I found myself wanting to spend time with the discursive Brown of the back-matter. That’s me, I guess, always wanting to get the work out of the way before the fun starts. If reading comics is a matter of seeking wholeness by working out the relationships among fragments—in Scott McCloud’s familiar term, seeking closure—then Brown’s recent books raise the problem to a macro level by juxtaposing comics that perplex with notes that seek to explain. Mary Wept does this to death, and so easy closure ain’t to be had. I have to admit, though, that I enjoyed arguing with Brown, in my head.
The real key to Mary Wept is not prostitution but questioning obedience. Brown makes the argument that God favors independent, thinking, even rebellious people over those who seek blindly to follow “His” will with sheeplike docility. That argument undergirds but also overtakes Brown’s more specific argument in defense of prostitution (which carries on the agenda of Paying for It, his account of life as a john). If the key question at first seems to be, Does the Bible consistently condemn prostitution, or do parts of it in fact suggest a more approving view?, the underlying questions seem to be, Does God want obedience? and Can a heretical author still qualify as Christian?
Brown describes himself as “Christian” in the back-matter. However, his book argues that Mary, mother of Jesus, was a prostitute. Between those two commitments, the book’s logic ricochets back and forth like a pinball. Brown argues, “it could well be that Mary was sweet, innocent, young, and a prostitute. A woman can be all of those things,” he says, provided that one does not see prostitution as inherently morally wrong (204). He thinks that Jesus took an approving or tolerant view of sex-for-pay. But the real animating question here is the one about obedience, which is why, even as the book investigates Biblical stories of prostitution or women’s unlicensed sexuality, it also includes brief comics based on the stories of Cain and Abel and of Job and the parables of the Talents and of the Prodigal Son, all male-centered tales in which women traditionally do not figure as individualized characters. The resulting volume, I would argue, is incoherent, but it works hard to impose coherence through Brown’s notes, which strive to wrestle all this diverse material into shape. I reacted to these much as I reacted to the notes in Paying for It, that is, with a mix of impatience at Brown’s contorted reasoning and admiration for his stubborn defiance of convention. Mary Wept walks a similar path, but this time for the sake of hair-splitting Biblical exegesis. It’s a head-scratcher, all right.
Take Mary Wept as a sort of conspiracy theorist’s reading of scripture in terms of women’s (disavowed) sexual agency, the value of prostitution, and, above all, the importance of free-minded questioning over obeisance. I’m with Brown on the free-minded questioning, but it seems obvious that what he wants to do is build a version of God that flatters his commitment to libertarianism. The back-matter comes right out and makes the case bluntly: “God is not interested in morality, God is interested in love… The problem with laws is that they compel morality in an unloving way” (215). Therefore, it wasn’t God who laid down what we call “God’s law,” but men. Jesus himself knew this, and his parables confound any easy notion of obedience; in fact Jesus’s teachings “never do accord with traditional views of justice” (241). Jesus was carrying on a heretical, questioning counter-tradition that went back at least as far as Cain and Abel (216). This, says Brown, is the “spiritually advanced” position:
I see two separate schools of thought in the |
’s favorite aged scotch, don’t be tempted to buy the much more expensive, even more aged alternative. Or worse yet, don’t buy more alcohol for yourself – that’s how you got into this mess in the first place!
5.Online porn.
Image Credit
This is wrong even when you’re not drunk, but if your inhibitions are a bit loosened by alcohol, I’m told, you’re even more likely to shell out hundreds to see some T&A. Don’t.
6. Food.
Again, this is like alcohol. When you’re hungry, everything looks good. Same thing when you’re drunk (or high, I’m told). You’ll end up buying all kinds of exotic foods and large quantities of junk food that you really don’t need.
7. Vehicles.
Another large, expensive purchase that you shouldn’t make under the influence of any type of depressant or stimulant is any kind of vehicle. This is possible, too – you can buy cars, motorcycles, scooters, Segways, just about anything on ebay. Don’t buy something motorized while you shouldn’t legally be behind its wheel, ok?
8. Nostalgia from your childhood.
When you’re drunk, everything seems so nostalgic. Music from the 80s, your favorite movies from back then, clothing – everything. So you can really go wild if you find one of those sites that caters to these nostalgic whims. Without a filter telling you you don’t need and can’t afford all of this junk, you’re apt to buy out the site!
9. Anything on itunes.
You can go crazy on itunes, drunk or sober, but even more so drunk. How great would it be to have all of the Beatles’ albums on digital music files? How expensive would it be, your rational self asks when you’re sober? But by then it’s far too late…
10. Event tickets.
You know that you really wanted to go to that concert by (insert favorite artist here).But you also know, when you’re sober, that the tickets are far too expensive. When you’re drunk, they don’t seem all that expensive, do they? Front row seats? No problem. Not until you have to pay for them, that is!
11. Anything from the high–end websites.
You know which ones I’m talking about – NeimanMarcus.com, Brookstone.com, any of the sites your rational, sober self would never touch (well, maybe browse but never buy from). A week later, that expensive massage chair from Brookstone arrives via UPS and you think, who bought me such a nice, expensive Christmas gift? Until you read the invoice and realize, uh-oh, it was my drunk alter ego! How nice of him/her!
12. Subscription services.
Image Credit
It might seem like a cool idea to purchase a subscription for a relative or friend for Christmas – but if you’re drunk, you won’t limit your spending to a reasonable amount. Also, you might be tempted to pick the same up for yourself. Don’t!I grew up in a part of the United States which has a fairly large Native American population. Indian Tacos were de rigueur at the state fair, the county fair, and even the medieval faire. My mother was lucky enough to get the recipe from one of her friends, and I’m cooking it here for the first time. The fry bread could have been a little fluffier, but I believe that will come with practice. It is, however, wonderfully flavorful and satisfying.
Ingredients:
Meat:
1 pound ground beef
1 yellow onion, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Tabasco sauce to taste (my SO likes it spicy, so I used habañero sauce)
Fry Bread:
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons water
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
Oil of your choice for frying (I recommend peanut oil)
Toppings:
Pinto beans or refried beans (whole pinto beans are more authentic)
Grated cheddar cheese
Shredded lettuce
Chopped tomatoes
Directions:
For the Meat:
In a large skillet, combine the ground beef, onions, salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce.
Cook over medium high heat until the meat is browned.
Reduce the heat to low, cover, and allow to simmer while making the fry bread.
For the Fry Bread:
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, and water together.
Add the flour, baking powder, and salt, and mix well.
On a floured board, roll out the dough to between 1/4 inch and 1/8 inch thick.
Cut the dough into 6-inch circles…
…and cut a slash in the center of each circle.
Fill a large cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven to 1/2 inch full with the frying oil of your choice.
Heat the oil over medium high heat until it reaches a temperature between 325 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit, or until a small piece of dough dropped into the oil causes it to bubble vigorously.
Fry the dough circles in hot oil for 2-3 minutes or until golden brown, turning once midway through cooking.
Drain on paper towels.
This is what the cooked frybread should look like.
Top each piece of fry bread with the meat mixture, beans, grated cheddar cheese, shredded lettuce, and chopped tomatoes. Serve hot, with salsa if desired.
Serves 4.
Click here for a print-friendly version.
AdvertisementsDIII Men’s Regional Preview 2016: Great Lakes
A bid bonanza for the Great Lakes.
Since the creation of the DIII Series in college ultimate, the Great Lakes has been a relatively stable region. The story has been the same for years, with the region never gaining more than one bid in the current regional alignment and seeing only two different schools qualifying for Nationals. However, with a down year for perennial region favorite North Park University, this seems to be an opportunity for a new team to rise to the top.
Bolstered by great regular season showing from top-tier teams Indiana Wesleyan (USAU #2), Valparaiso (USAU #4), and Wheaton (USAU #7), the Great Lakes managed to rake in a total of three bids to the National Championships in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. With obvious powerhouses at the top of the region and a handful of weaker teams filling out the field, the region’s three bids seem to have become a four-team competition.
What To Watch For
Indiana Wesleyan v. Valparaiso: The region’s top two teams have proven themselves time and time again and seem destined for a finals matchup at this year’s Great Lakes Regional Championship.
After falling just short of qualifying for Nationals in each of the team’s first two years being sanctioned, Indiana Wesleyan seems to have finally taken the next step and put themselves in position for a run at a national championship. On the shoulders of Ultiworld 2015 D-III National Player of the Year Travis Carpenter, Indiana Wesleyan proved themselves to be a top-tier team growing in athleticism and skill throughout the regular season while finishing second in the USAU rankings system and fourth in Ultiworld’s power rankings. At D-III Midwestern Invite, IWU showed their dominance by blowing out many teams and picking up wins over regional top-runners Valparaiso and Wheaton en route to an undefeated weekend and a tournament victory. At D-III Easterns, the team continued to show their strength, picking up wins over top-tier teams such as Air Force and Davidson and only losing to the tournament’s top two finishing teams in Franciscan and Brandeis.
Valparaiso is a team that seemingly came out of nowhere on the national scene. After finishing fourth at last year’s regional championships, they returned a strong cast of players and had a breakout year – only taking close losses to Indiana Wesleyan and Franciscan throughout the entire regular season. By virtue of picking up a handful of blowout victories over average teams and working through undefeated weekends at Music City Tune-Up and Illinois Invitational to go along with wins over top level teams Franciscan and Colorado College, Valparaiso has proven themselves as one of the country’s top teams.
These two teams have matched up three teams thus far in the spring, with each game coming down to the wire and being decided on double game point. At D-III Midwestern Invite, Indiana Wesleyan took advantage of a Valparaiso team that had low numbers and took home a 12-11 victory in the tournament semifinals. The two teams split matchups at Conferences, with IWU winning 9-8 in Saturday’s pool play and Valparaiso taking home the tournament championship, 11-10, on Sunday afternoon. Matchups between these two teams have been high energy and well-spirited throughout the year.
The contrast in styles between the two teams makes their matchups a battle unlike any other we will see within the Great Lakes region. Valparaiso relies on athleticism to make big plays throughout a tournament, with a handful of players with an uncanny ability to keep the disc alive and make big throws downfield. On the other hand, Indiana Wesleyan relies on an athletic, stifling defense that is willing to bid for almost anything. When the defense is rolling for Indiana Wesleyan, the team becomes almost unstoppable. If both of these teams are able to play to their maximum potential and reach the regional finals, this could be one of the most entertain regional matchups in the entire country.
The Third Bid: According to scores and rankings, the two teams who seem to be jockeying for the region’s final spot at nationals are Wheaton and Knox.
Wheaton enters the regional championships as the #7 team in the country according to the USAU algorithm. This team thrives on height and big throws to take advantage of teams. Working the disc to the middle of the field to put up hucks to any of their high number of tall, athletic players led to success for Wheaton throughout the year. As one of the highest-ranked teams in the country, and the team that earned the region’s final strength bid, Wheaton would seem to be a near-lock to qualify for nationals.
But not so fast. Knox enters the regional championships as a relative unknown. The majority of talk surrounding Knox is in regards to their superstar talent and Sub Zero player Harper Garvey. According to Olivet Nazarene head coach Phil Warren, “They have a large team and the guys on it are in great shape. As a whole I would say they were able to outrun everyone they played against. They have a handful of good throwers and the biggest threat is probably Harper Garvey. His skill as a thrower are probably unmatched in the region. In weather like we had this weekend he can hit probably any cutter at any time.” Having only played one regular-season tournament before the Series, Knox was unable to gain a true USAU ranking. At Illinois Invite, Knox only took one loss, to Valparaiso University, on the weekend.
Knox and Wheaton matched up at Conferences in a hard fought game. Each team showed maximum effort and fought it out for the championship in a game that allowed the winner to go home early and not have to participate on Sunday. The athleticism of Knox was able to take away some of the strength for Wheaton, and Knox pulled out a handy win, 13-8. With a thrower as talented as Harper Garvey, the strength of Knox will be dependent upon the ability of the team’s supporting cast throughout the weekend. Will Knox be able to repeat what happened at the Conference Championships, and steal a bid to nationals from Wheaton, or will Wheaton show their full power and keep the bid they earned?
The Rest of The Field: Outside of the top four teams, there is not much threat to steal a bid to Nationals. With a down game, however, some teams could get a pool play surprise that would change the landscape of the weekend. Perennial powerhouse North Park has shown the pedigree to win time and time again. However, with such a down year, it is hard to imagine the team making any big splash. At the Illinois Conference Championships, North Park was only able to bring 10-14 players and only picked up two wins over winless Bradley University. History has shown North Park to dominate the region, however, and the consistency of their coach and program makes them a team that can leave a big impact on the weekend if they are able to peak and play to their full potential.
Olivet Nazarene had an up-and-down year. Throughout the regular season, the team was able to pick up wins over average teams and played closely with a handful of higher-level teams. In recent weeks, however, the injury bug has struck Olivet. They have lost a handful of players to knee and ankle injuries, and saw one of the team’s captains go down at the Conference Championships with a broken collarbone. As the only team other than North Park to make nationals in the current alignment (in 2014), however, Olivet Nazarene has a handful of players still on the roster with Nationals-level experience, something that is valuable in breaking down opponents throughout a weekend that can be as tough mentally as it is physically.
Kalamazoo College is a team that is run through a handful of strong handlers. Showing steady improvement throughout recent years, Kalamazoo College is a school that seems to be just a tier away from being able to make some real noise on the regional stage. Despite not playing in a regular season tournament all spring, Kalamazoo had a strong showing at the East Plains Conference Championships, finishing third overall, blowing out a majority of their opponents, and playing within three points of Indiana Wesleyan twice on the weekend. It is not likely this is a team that can take down someone from the top-tier, but Kalamazoo will not be a game to take lightly as they will put up a fight in every game by scoring points through solid handler movement and well-timed deep shots.What do you think of Dragon Ball Z’s legacy? Dragon Ball has been out for almost 30 years. Think it will continue for another 30?
To get DBZ fans excited for Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods’ theatrical release in English, FUNimation is releasing a 4 part video series that retells their own 20 year experience with the series.
Part 1 was released on July 2, seen above.
And FUNimation just released Part 2:
Here’s an insightful comment from Christopher Sabat:
“I honestly don’t think I had, or any of us really, had anything to do with Dragon Ball Z’s success. I think Dragon Ball Z just has some sort of magical, visual drug in it that makes people like it.”
And from Producer Justin Cook:
“It was always this excitement about being part of something that was bigger than us.”
FUNimation did put in an incredible effort and they did make huge waves with DBZ.
But it’s true what they said.
Dragon Ball Z is an amazing series and is a success wherever it goes.
As Gen Fukunaga has said in previous interviews, “FUNimation is the house that Dragon Ball built.” Without Dragon Ball there would be no FUNimation.
So what do you think of Dragon Ball Z’s legacy?
And more to the point of the videos, of FUNimation’s legacy?
Where would either of them be without the other?
That to me is the real question.
Without DBZ, would there even be an anime industry in the United States?
Christopher Sabat:
I’ll dub this till the day I die.
With the announcement of a new Dragon Ball Z coming in 2015, it seems like Dragon Ball Z is going to be around for a long time to come.
That means its legacy will continue!In less than five years, the overcrowding issue currently plaguing some of Edmonton’s elementary and junior highs will spread to the city’s high schools, according to a new Edmonton Public Schools report.
It’s expected there will be more students than space by the 2021/22 school year.
READ MORE: Overcrowded elementary schools prompt worries about Edmonton high school enrolment
The school board says the only real solution to deal with the oncoming wave of high schoolers is to build new schools. That ball needs to get rolling this year in order for the buildings to be built in time, as high schools takes a lot longer to construct because they’re more expensive and complicated.
Already some high schools have had to put limits in place. Last year both Harry Ainlay High School and Lillian Osborne School — both located in southwest Edmonton — closed their doors to Grade 10 students living outside the school boundaries due to enrolment pressures.
READ MORE: 2 Edmonton high schools close doors to Grade 10 students outside boundaries due to capacity
If the enrollment projections hold true, Edmonton public high schools will need space for 6,000 more students by 2025. By then, it’s estimated there will be 28,261 students in Grade 10 to 12, compared to 19,546 now.
The highest demand for new spaces is on the south side, where affordable, family friendly neighbourhoods have grown rapidly in both the southwest and southeast.
The board’s priority is to add space for an additional 6,600 students. To do that, it wants to build two $68-million high schools with space for 2,400 high schoolers: one in the southeast and one in the southwest. A EPSB map indicates both of the high schools would be south of Ellerslie road, near the Walker and Heritage Valley areas.
The district also wants to build a 1,800-student Grade 7 to 12 school (with a smaller junior high program) in the Glenridding Heights neighbourhood in the southwest Windermere area. No cost has been determined for that proposal.
In the future, the school board is aiming to have a 2,400-student high school in the Riverview area currently under development in the far west end, and a high school with space for 1,800 students in the new southeast Silverberry area.
READ MORE: Battle brewing over Edmonton land designated for schools
For the current school year, it’s estimated Edmonton’s public high schools are 89 per cent full, up from 81 per cent last year. (Although the percentage varies from school to school.) The number is calculated using a provincial methodology called the Instructional Area Model (IAM).
The EPSB report says assuming current enrolment trends hold and there is no drastic demographic change in the city, enrolment will stabilize when it reaches approximately 30,000 high school students, and the district will need at least 8,000 additional spaces to accommodate them.
The board’s High School Framework identifies two main priorities: to respond to current and future enrollment in highly utilitized high schools, and to re-purpose space to improve efficient use of existing infrastructure in response to underutilized space.
To meet those goals, the framework proposes three things:
Move programming around to balance student distribution.
Re-purpose and increase infrastructure capacity to accommodate growth.
Create new learning spaces through new construction or school expansions.
READ MORE: 2 Edmonton schools scheduled to open in September won’t be ready
The money to build new schools or modernize existing ones and permission to do so must come from the province. In the 2016-17 provincial budget, $500 million for school construction across Alberta between 2017 and 2020 was promised, but funds have not been doled out yet.
The report was discussed at Tuesday’s Edmonton Public Schools board meeting. Video of the meeting can be viewed below.President Donald Trump will make the ultimate decision whether his chief strategist keeps his role, but the President has made clear the choice will hinge on whether Bannon starts cooperating with others in the West Wing and changes his style.
The President had the opportunity to give Bannon his full vote of confidence in an interview on Tuesday with the New York Post, but he did not do so. Instead, Trump diminished the role Bannon played in winning the White House and delivered an extraordinarily tepid assessment about his one of his most visible advisers.
"The President is taking the reins on this and wants people to know he's in charge," a person close to the White House said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the ever-percolating tensions inside the administration.
Trump delivered a stern order late last week at his Mar-a-lago resort in Florida, when he bluntly told his top advisers to "work this out."
The message was directed at Bannon, the bomb-throwing former Breitbart News executive, and Jared Kushner, the President's senior adviser and son-in-law.
"Steve is a good guy," Trump told the New York Post, "but I told them to straighten it out or I will."
It's clear that Bannon's fate -- nearly a week later -- still hangs in the balance.
Repairing the rift from his dustup with Kushner is going to be a heavy lift for Bannon. And it's an open question how motivated Bannon is to repair the relationship.
"You don't take on the boss' family," a Republican close to the White House said.
In conversations with several Republicans close to the White House and senior administration officials, a sense of bewilderment arose over the President's comments on Tuesday to New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin. Particularly striking, they said, was how Trump incorrectly downplayed how long he knew Bannon and how he diminished his role in the election.
"I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late," Trump said. "I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn't know Steve."
In fact, Bannon was one of Trump's earliest and loudest cheerleaders in his role leading the ultra-conservative and nationalist Breitbart News web site. To suggest that he didn't know Bannon dramatically misrepresents the connection between the two men.
A White House spokeswoman confirmed the President's comments to the New York Post, saying they were accurate and did not warrant clarification.
While Trump once thrived amid the chaotic backbiting beneath him, he has grown exhausted with infighting among his staff.
JUST WATCHED Bannon no longer on National Security Council Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Bannon no longer on National Security Council 01:38
"I think the President needed to say, staff are there to serve the President of the United States. They're not there to serve themselves," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a rival-turned-supporter of Trump, said on CNN's "New Day."
"I know Steve. Steve is a very bright guy," Christie said. "I got to work with him during the campaign. I think he was a big help to the President during the campaign and everything I saw he was involved in, but staff are there to serve the principle."
But several people familiar with the internal workings of the West Wing say Bannon is well aware of that and is trying to keep a low profile, mend things with Kushner and maintain his foothold in the White House.
Yet it is also a risky proposition to push Bannon out, given his prominence and popularity among much of Trump's base and his far-right megaphone that still exists at Breitbart News.
"You can't have him become an enemy," a Republican close to the White House said.
For all of the questions surrounding Bannon's future, his bond with the President seems far from irreparably frayed.
As several top advisers headed back to Washington last Friday, including chief of staff Reince Priebus, Bannon remained at Mar-a-Lago through the weekend. He flew back on Air Force One with the President, along with Stephen Miller, his top protégé in the West Wing.This is Reality has a new TV spot directed by The Coen Brothers. Check it:
“Clean coal is supported by the coal industry. The most trusted name in coal!”
There is no such thing as “clean coal” in the U.S. today. Coal is responsible for 32% of CO2 emissions in this country and 83% of the CO2 emissions from producing our electricity. In theory, we could retrofit this nation’s coal plants to capture their pollution and store it. Here is my question: If every single coal plant needs to be revamped to be truly “clean,” why not just invest that time and money in truly clean, renewables?
Despite the truth about coal, America’s coal industry spends millions of dollars to convince us that coal is the solution to our energy needs. The folks fighting these guys don’t have millions of dollars, but we do have a voice, and we can pull together to spread the word about the clean coal myth.
Take Action
If you’ve seen a claim about clean coal that feels less than true, This is Reality wants to hear from you! The first step in fighting the coal industry’s message is debunking any outright lies.
You can also get involved with Repower America, who is working towards making clean, renewable electricity a reality. Not only are renewables better for our air, our drinking water, and the planet we live on, initiatives like Repower America will create jobs building a new energy infrastructure. Reports that wind energy jobs have surpassed jobs in coal mining makes moving beyond coal look as good for the economy as it is for the environment!
There are also individual actions we can all take. Since we burn most of our coal for electricity, cutting your electricity use is a great way to help! Twilight Earth has some great tips to get you stared on cutting back your carbon. You can also take steps to make your home more energy efficient.
Spread the word! Our voices are our biggest defense against the coal industry’s clever message.
[Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by Seth Anderson]NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed proceedings against author Shobhaa De on the breach of privilege notice issued by the Maharashtra assembly for her tweets over the state government order on Marathi films.Maharashtra assembly had issued notice to De for allegedly violating its privilege and she was directed to file her written submission by Monday.A bench of justices Dipak Misra and P C Pant, after going through all her tweets, said that her views was against the government’s decision and wondered how it violated the privilege of assembly.The court, after a brief hearing stayed the proceeding initiated against the writer by assembly.Earlier, Maharashtra legislature principal secretary had issued a notice on April 12 to writer Shobhaa De asking her to explain her tweets about the state government's decision to make it mandatory for multiplexes to screen Marathi movies during prime time."I have sent her the notice on behalf of the Speaker asking her to explain her stance in a week," legislature principal secretary Anant Kalse had said.The novelist tweeted, "Devendra 'Diktatwala' Fadnavis is at it again!!! From beef to movies. This is not the Maharashtra we all love! Nako!Nako! Yeh sab roko!"De tweeted that it was nothing but hooliganism. "I love Marathi movies. Let me decide when and where to watch them, Devendra Fadnavis. This is nothing but Dadagiri."Reacting to the tweet, Sarnaik filed a breach of privilege against De for "insulting CM Devendra Fadnavis and the sentiments of the Marathi speaking people."Reacting to the breach of privilege, De tweeted, "Now a privilege motion demanding an apology from me? Come on! I am a proud Maharashtrian and love Marathi films. Always have. Always will!"Irked, Sena workers last week protested outside De's house in South Mumbai against her remarks.(With inputs from agencies)BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces have arrested a Saudi al-Qaeda member who an official said on Monday was involved in a plot to attack next month’s World Cup soccer tournament in South Africa.
South African soccer fans cheer their team during a game against Nigeria in the Cape Town International Challenge, April 10, 2010. REUTERS/Mark Wessels
Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi gave no details and offered no evidence for the claim and it was not possible to verify it.
The detention of the Saudi national comes at a time when already frosty relations between Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia and now Shi’ite Muslim-led Iraq are under additional strains.
Moussawi’s allegation about a Saudi’s involvement in a plot against the World Cup came after former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal accused Iraq’s prime minister of hijacking the country’s March election.
Moussawi, who reports to the prime minister’s office, said Abdullah Azzam al-Qahtani was a former Saudi army lieutenant.
“He was planning to bomb the holy shrines in Najaf and Kerbala,” Moussawi told a news conference in Baghdad.
“And he was planning a terrorist act in South Africa during the World Cup based on plans issued by the central al Qaeda terrorist organization in coordination with Osama bin Laden’s first assistant, Ayman al-Zawahri.”
Calls to Moussawi seeking more details were not answered. U.S. military officials in Iraq had no knowledge of the allegations, nor did U.S. intelligence officials in Washington.
In South Africa, police spokesman Colonel Vishnu Naidoo said the first that police heard about the claims was in media reports out of Iraq. “The police will investigate the allegations and we will check with the authorities that apprehended the suspect,” Naidoo said.
South Africa is the first African country to host the World Cup, which takes place June 11-July 11.
South African officials have said in the past that no particular terrorist threat had been identified but that there could be risks to teams known to be a target of extremists.
Africa’s biggest economy has one of the highest rates of murder and rape in the world and 41,000 police will focus on protecting foreign and local fans against criminals in one of the world’s most violent countries outside a war zone.
ICEY RELATIONS
Moussawi did not say why it took more than two weeks to announce Qahtani’s capture. But it came two days after the Saudi criticism of his boss.
According to reports, Saudi Prince Faisal on Saturday reproached Iraq’s Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and warned in a speech of spiraling violence as U.S. troops prepare to leave by an end-2011 deadline.
“Adding to the brutal mayhem taking place there, we are watching a deliberate effort on the part of the incumbent Prime Minister, Mr. Nuri al-Maliki, to hijack the results of the elections and deny the Iraqi people their legitimately elected government,” he said, according to the online Wall Street Journal.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government have been difficult.
Saudi Arabia views Shi’ite Iran’s growing influence in Iraq since Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion with suspicion. For his part, Maliki has often accused unnamed Gulf Arab countries of supporting Sunni Islamist insurgents who still kill hundreds of Iraqis every month.
The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, many of whom were Saudis at the height of the sectarian bloodshed, has slowed dramatically, U.S. military officials say.
Moussawi said Qahtani was previously arrested by U.S. forces in 2007 and released in 2009.
He said Qahtani participated in attacks against hotels in Baghdad in January and took part in a car bomb attack on a police forensics lab.By 1972, Led Zeppelin were unstoppable. The previous November, they had released their mammoth Led Zeppelin IV, which features the spiraling FM radio staple “Stairway to Heaven.” The album shot up to number one on the U.K. charts the second week after its release. The band could put a pin in any place on a world map and play the largest concert venue there, leaving empty whiskey bottles and wrecked hotel rooms in their wake. In his biography When Giants Walked the Earth, rock journalist Mick Wall wrote that, at the time, the British quartet were “[s]elf-made millionaires so famous they now hid behind armed guards, employed their own drug dealers and flew by private jet.”
There was just one thing they couldn’t do: Enter Singapore.
The band was scheduled to play an outdoor show in Singapore on February 14, but officials at the airport refused them entry. “Not only were Led Zeppelin not allowed into the country, they were even refused permission to get off their plane and had to fly back to London,” Stephen Davis wrote in his book Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga.
The reason wasn’t their reputation for debauchery, the supposed satanic messages in their songs, or some local distaste for drum solos: It was the long hair sported by all four band members.
As youth-led, anti-authoritarian cultural revolutions swept the world, Singapore had hoped to immune itself with a campaign against outward signs of rebellion and Western “drug culture,” like long hair on men. Male visitors were turned away or hassled for their locks. A month before Led Zeppelin touched down, an Australian visitor told the Associated Press he had been given two days to get a haircut or leave.
One of Singapore’s top priorities after independence was shaping the young generation to suit the country’s interests. “Education was seen as the most important long-term means to inoculate national values and train the work-force for maximum economic productivity,” C.M. Turnbull wrote in A History of Singapore: 1819 – 1988. After its 1965 independence, “the education system was adapted to mold a nation.” The country spent one-third of its budget on education.
Nonetheless, officials apparently didn't think they could risk the corruptive influence of long-hair types. English rock pioneer Cliff Richard was also turned away in 1972 for collar-length hair, and Japanese new-age musician Kitarō cancelled a sold-out show in 1984 because officials objected to his flowing follicles.
Singapore has mellowed out since. In 2013, former Zeppelin front man Robert Plant, still sporting quite a mane, made it past the airport gates to play his first gig there.Click here to listen to the 6 minute inteview
[ Note: This was a 7:30 am call from Tehran this morning that I am glad I did not miss. It’s always a treat to get some good licks in on the militant Zionists.
Bibi let the cat out of the bag when the AIPAC 5th column was tasked with charging Obama with “interfering in the Israeli election”, even mentioning some possible NGO funds… heaven forbid.
After the bad public ratings that Bibi got from his speech here, the Lobby shysters went back to the well with their Congressional lackeys to attack the Iran talks with the “gang of 47 letter to Iran” — a threat to cut off all funding for US personnel travel costs who are engaged in the talks and with their latest bipartisan resolution, designed to take over the deal making.
Israel’s espionage network is exposing itself in the bright American sunlight for all of us to see. They are betting that the sheepeople will do nothing. They may be right, but maybe they have gone too far this time.
Either way, Congress has thrown down the gauntlet to Obama and the American people. Citizens United has given them access to the money they need to get re-elected, and Israeli spies will even help knock off opponents by digging up blackmail material on them.
Call the White House to thank Obama for standing up to these bums, and call your Congresscritters and ask them to move to Israel and join Likud, where they belong. And tell them you are a VT reader, so they know where the flack is coming from. They have asked for it, so let’s oblige them. ]
For the importance of this topic, I ran the phone interview out longer than usual… to six minutes to get as much in as possible. Press TV published a rare magazine layout article on it, so I assume they were happy. You can listen to it here. It is always a good day to catch an interview like this… jd.
______________________
– First published … March 24, 2015 –
Following reports of Israel’s espionage against US-Iran nuclear talks, it is time for the Obama administration to “declare Israel a nuclear state”, says Jim W. Dean, a columnist and political commentator based in Atlanta.
Current and former American officials told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday the spying operation was part of a campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal.”
Dean told Press TV in a phone interview that “this comes as no surprise,” as Tel Aviv has been engaged in spy activities in the United States in other different areas including “industrial espionage to steal trade secrets”.
“Israel is a kind of parasite on the West. They have the right to just steal and take anything possible.”
Bibi’s move felony
Dean voiced surprise that White House officials did not reveal Israel’s spy activities against the talks earlier this month when Bibi gave an anti-Iran speech at the US Congress.
“That puts Congress negotiating with foreign agents to undermine the US foreign policy,” Dean said, adding, since Bibi was not on an official visit, “Technically, he is a private citizen talking to US Congressmen to subvert the US foreign policy through undermining the US president. That’s actually a felony.”
The American commentator warned about the “incestuous marriage” of Israel and the Congress, which serves Tel Aviv’s interests “first” whenever there is conflict between the regime and Washington.
The new espionage reports mean that “Israel is attacking the national security of the US quite openly,” the analyst said, adding, “I would challenge Obama to declare Israel a nuclear state”.
Israel denies reports
Following the espionage leak, the Israeli minister of military affairs, Moshe Yaalon, denied it, saying,
“There is no such thing as Israel spying on the Americans”. Other Israeli officials, namely Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, responded to the reports likewise.
The talks between the US and Iran are part of broader negotiations between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group — Russia, China, Britain, France and the US plus Germany — to reach a comprehensive agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program as a deadline slated for July 1 draws closer.
On Friday, the latest round of nuclear negotiations ended in the Swiss lakeside city of Lausanne after six days of intensive talks with both parties citing progress.I have to admit when I first came across this statistic - which comes courtesy of a survey conducted by RSR Research, I had to go back and re-read it again. Then get more coffee then re-read it again.
But there it was, 56% of retail marketers have essentially no clue as to who their best customers are. However, as I kept reading about the survey via MarketingCharts.com, I came across an even more head-pounding stat which is that the 56% number is markedly lower than last year's number of 73%. I'm sorry, how in the world can you explain this? How in the world do so many marketers not know who their most valuable, most-cherished customers are?
The author of the piece on MarketingCharts.com theorized that this staggeringly low number is directly contributing to the other key finding in the survey below which spoke to the challenge retail marketers face when it comes to retention and loyalty: "Presumably |
That’s $5 million in a short time allocated to this park for things like new basketball courts, new tennis courts, a new road throughout this park, almost $1 million in structural work for the casino, almost half a million dollars at the pool, $250,000 at the ice rink…it’s a tremendous investment by the city.”
Both roads are expected to stay open during the process according to Buffalo City Engineer Mike Finn.
“Whenever we’re doing projects in any part of the city we’re always looking to keep the roads open because there’s a lot of businesses along these corridors that rely on the traffic in order to access them,” Finn said.
The projects were funded through the 2016-2017 state budget’s infrastructure advancement plan.The Seattle Seahawks earned the right to party, and party they did. Not sure how many kids in the Seattle area made it to school on Wednesday -- though with that parade, who can blame them?
Battista: Seattle reign With a deep, young and clearly talented roster, Judy Battista says the 'Hawks might be just beginning a dynastic run.
With a deep, young and clearly talented roster,says the 'Hawks might be just beginning a dynastic run. READ
The Seahawks are rightfully the talk of the league, considered by many to be a budding dynasty with depth, talent and youth -- starting with a 25-year-old quarterback who plays far beyond his years and will only get better.
Seattle is made for a run, but the NFL is topsy-turvy. And the quest to dethrone the 'Hawks begins now, with the league-wide organizational rejiggering that is the offseason.
Some franchises will tinker, some franchises will undergo broad restoration projects, but everyone will experience change in the coming months.
With that in mind, here are the nine most intriguing teams to watch this offseason:
1) Pittsburgh Steelers
I wasn't surprised to see the Steelers go winless in the opening month of the 2013 campaign, because they didn't have the requisite talent. But it says something about the character of a Mike Tomlin-coached team and the play of Ben Roethlisberger that they were able to right the ship and compete through Week 17. Tomlin and Big Ben still make for a winning combo. But those two need some help.
The Steelers need to stop living in the past and trim the fat. You could easily argue that it's time to cut the cord on Troy Polamalu, Ike Taylor, LaMarr Woodley and Ryan Clark. Pittsburgh needs new blood.
Le'Veon Bell missed the early portion of the 2013 season with a Lisfranc injury, but he proved he can play upon his return. I'm intrigued to see what he can do in a fully healthy campaign. Former Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Munchak, hired to coach the offensive line in Pittsburgh, will make an immediate impact in an area of weakness.
Unlike in prior offseasons, the Steelers need to be active when it comes to changing their look and improving the roster. After back-to-back playoff-free campaigns, I think Pittsburgh can get on track with a productive offseason -- and with the guts to pull the plug on some familiar (and beloved) players who are past their prime.
2) Arizona Cardinals
I was not surprised that Larry Fitzgerald restructured his deal to give the Cardinals flexibility this offseason. He's a great teammate, committed to doing whatever he can to help Arizona win games -- and he still gets paid in the form of a bonus. Last Friday, on my SiriusXM Radio show, "Schein on Sports," team president Michael Bidwill succinctly summed up his feelings for the perennial Pro Bowler: "Larry Fitzgerald will be a Cardinal for life. Period."
The Cardinals missed the playoffs despite winning 10 games, including a victory over the Seahawks in Seattle. 'Zona is dangerously close. This seemed like a team that could've made a run in the postseason, what with its swarming, play-making defense.
Coach Bruce Arians changed the culture. General manager Steve Keim did a brilliant job improving the talent.
I expect some offensive tweaks from Keim, like drafting a quarterback at some point in the first three rounds.
3) Chicago Bears
Matt Forte couldn't stop smiling when he joined us on SiriusXM Radio last week.
"Look at our offense. Jay (Cutler) and coach (Marc Trestman) have such a great relationship, and Jay is the perfect fit (for) the offense," the Pro Bowl running back gushed. "And with the weapons we have..."
It was at that moment that his eyes began to look as big as saucers, as Forte started to daydream.
Last year, GM Phil Emery fixed the offense. This year, the focus in the draft and free agency needs to be defense, defense and more defense.
Another offseason together will strengthen the bond between Cutler and Trestman, putting Chicago in great position to be a playoff team in 2014.
4) Atlanta Falcons
The Falcons were my Super Bowl pick in 2013. They were supposed to be that good. And don't just take my word for it -- GM Thomas Dimitroff thought he had put together a winner, too.
Obviously, one 12-loss season later, that wasn't the case.
The Falcons miscalculated on the offensive line; it will be addressed. They miscalculated on the defense; it will also be addressed.
Dimitroff, who was honest about the lackluster play of the offensive line when we chatted on SiriusXM Radio, has hired good friend Scott Pioli to be his assistant GM. Don't underestimate this move. Dimitroff and Pioli are two of the finer executives in the NFL. Pioli did a brilliant job as a personnel guy in New England. Yes, inadequate head-coaching hires doomed his GM tenure with the Chiefs, but did you notice the Pro Bowl-heavy roster he left behind in Kansas City? Simply put, Pioli could turn out to be one of the best pickups of the offseason.
The Falcons fizzled last year, but they aren't that far away. And they have the right guys assembling the team.
5) Green Bay Packers
Randall Cobb interrupted me before I could finish the question.
"Adam, the answer is yes."
Yes. Yes, the Packers believed the Week 17 win at Chicago -- an NFC North clincher highlighted by Aaron Rodgers' miracle heave to Cobb -- would spark a postseason run.
On the flip side, when I asked A.J. Hawk why the Packers' defense struggled in key spots despite having good talent and a very well-respected coordinator in Dom Capers, the linebacker gave a long, thoughtful pause before saying, "That's a great question."
Harrison: Power Rankings With the Elliot Harrison takes stock of the league. Will the
With the Super Bowl in the books,takes stock of the league. Will the Seahawks rule for the foreseeable future? READ
GM Ted Thompson needs to find an answer.
Fairly or unfairly, these Packers are always judged by one factor: Did they make it to the Super Bowl? With Rodgers and coach Mike McCarthy, they always have a chance. And that should certainly be the case again in 2014, with the best quarterback in the NFL returning to good health and teaming up with bruising back (and Offensive Rookie of the Year) Eddie Lacy.
6) Indianapolis Colts
The Colts should be ready to rock and roll and make a Super Bowl run in the AFC, but they have a lot to figure out.
Trent Richardson needs to stay on his feet. He had a horrible 2013 after being traded to Indy from Cleveland, but I can't totally give up on him before he has a full offseason in the program.
Running back isn't the only concern. GM Ryan Grigson has accomplished a lot in a short time running the Colts, but this defense must get better after finishing the regular season ranked 20th and giving up 87 points in two postseason games.
7) Jacksonville Jaguars
Will they draft a quarterback high in the first round? Is Johnny Manziel the ideal fit at the box office and on the field? Will Maurice Jones-Drew be back?
The Jags play hard and have the right leadership in GM Dave Caldwell and head coach Gus Bradley, but these are big questions at hand.
8) St. Louis Rams
St. Louis is the forgotten team in the ultra-competitive NFC West, but don't overlook this group. Last offseason, many among the media were talking playoffs for the Rams, and for good reason: They have a strong defensive line, solid defensive backs and weapons on offense. They need quarterback Sam Bradford to stay healthy and they need to beef up at receiver and along the O-line.
But remember, GM Les Snead and the great Jeff Fisher have two first-round picks, including the second overall selection (thanks to the Robert Griffin III trade with Washington).
9) Philadelphia Eagles
I don't think this team was a one-year wonder under coach Chip Kelly. Still, there is certainly room for improvement here. The Eagles can get much better at safety and they might need to invest in a new kicker. Also, I'm fascinated to see what happens when receivers Jeremy Maclin and Riley Cooper hit free agency.
Follow Adam Schein on Twitter @AdamSchein.The politicians have it all wrong. We are not addicted to foreign oil. We are addicted to Wi-Fi, the wireless networking technology that holds our youth in its wavy grip.
How bad is it? Seventy-five percent of American respondents to a survey sponsored by the Wi-Fi Alliance said that a week without Wi-Fi would leave grumpier than a week without coffee or tea. The poll, conducted by Wakefield Research, includes responses from more than 1,000 millennials (those between the ages 17 and 29) in the United States and 400 millennials in China, Japan and South Korea.
Two-thirds of respondents in the United States and four-fifths of those in China reported they spend more time on Wi-Fi devices than watching television. This distinction seems a bit blurry, however, since you can watch TV on your Wi-Fi connected smartphone as well as on a Wi-Fi-connected television.
And many who watch traditional TV use a Wi-Fi device — smartphone, laptop or iPad — in tandem to dig up tidbits about the shows and movies as they watch.
But Wi-Fi enables more than entertainment: Many millennials said that Wi-Fi was critical to maintaining relationships with both friends and family. In fact, 44 percent of American respondents said it would be difficult to stay in touch with family members without Wi-Fi. Personally, I find this bit off. My mother is one of those goofy people (Hi Mom!) who never bought a PC, and my niece will only communicate through cellphone texting.
So what do these millennials want from Wi-Fi that they’re not getting now?
“There is a desire for constant connectivity,” said Edgar Figueroa, chief executive officer of the Wi-Fi Alliance. “They want to connect while in a car, in a plane, while shopping.”
Wi-Fi is becoming increasingly available on airlines in the United States, with more than 1,200 planes expected to offer in-flight connectivity by year’s end. Cars remain a moving target, however, and connecting to Wi-Fi in a mall can be tricky because it’s difficult to determine which network to join.
Mr. Figueroa, who lives in Austin, Tex., says the city’s various shopping malls have taken a range of approaches to the shopping problem. Some malls offer a single Wi-Fi network throughout; in others, separate stores provide connections.
That’s not an optimal situation when you to need to quickly research pricing on that sweet-looking digital camera. Mr. Figueroa says the Wi-Fi Alliance is spearheading an initiative called Hotspot 2.0 that aims to help users find the best network, and then quickly and securely join it.
“It should be transparent, like cellular roaming,” he said.Overview
It has ended. It begins again. In Kavelin, Lady Nepanthe's new life with the wizard Varthlokkur is disturbed by visions of her lost son, while King Bragi Ragnarson and Michael Trebilcock scheme to help the exiled Princess Mist re-usurp her throne — under their thumb. In Shinsan, a pig-farmer's son takes command of Eastern Army, while Lord Kuo faces plots in his council and a suicide attack of two million Matayangans on his border. But in the desert beyond the Dread Empire, a young victim of the Great War becomes the Deliverer of an eons-forgotten god, chosen to lead the legions of the dead. And the power of his vengeance will make a world's schemes as petty as dust, blown wild in the horror that rides the east wind. This volume marks the beginning of the end. Reap the East Wind is the first step on the road to the long-delayed final chapter of Glen Cook's legendary Dread Empire series.Ben Einstein, a product designer and founder at Bolt, a hardware-based VC, recently got his hands on a Juicero press. This desktop juice press that only works with proprietary pouches filled with chopped fruits and vegetables is currently bandied in the tech press as evidence Silicon Valley has gone mad, there is no future in building hardware, and the Internet of Things is a pox on civilization. Hey, at least they got the last one right.
This iFixit-style tear down digs into the Juicero mixer in all its gory details. It’s beautiful, it’s a marvel of technology, and given the engineering that went into this machine, it was doomed to fail. Not because it didn’t accomplish the task at hand, but because it does so with a level of engineering overkill that’s delightful to look at but devastating to the production cost.
Maybe It Wasn’t Just the Engineering…
Type ‘Juicero’ into Google News and you’ll see Silicon Valley was shaken to its core this month. The future of hardware startups is now in question. Juicero, the world’s first cold-pressed juicing system, is in a tailspin. This company that raised $100 Million in funding is now being compared to Theranos, Uber, Enron, and every other corporate pariah in recent memory. The creator of Juicero, once favorably compared to Steve Jobs is now doing damage control with every outlet available.
Maybe, just maybe, the idea of a machine that would squeeze pre-packaged crushed fruits and vegetables into juice isn’t a great idea. The machine originally cost $700 USD, and the juice packs were purchased through a subscription model for $35 per week. For $2500, you could have all the fresh squeezed juice you want for an entire year. Maybe consumers don’t like the idea of DRM in their food. Juicero was a fantastic success for its creator, as the $100 Million in funding goes to show. For the rest of us, we’re left with a fantastic lesson on when you should engineer less, not more.
Just Look at It!
Disregarding the madness surrounding a $700 juice machine that uses proprietary, DRM’ed juice packs, the idea that anyone would spend two thousand dollars on juice per year, and the concept that a machine that makes juice is a bellwether for the entire economy, one marvelous thing did come out of this little kerfluffle. We get to look at design choices the likes of which are never seen in a single product.
Ben’s teardown covers the huge plastic enclosure, and the eight mold revisions required to bring this product to market. If you’re not familiar with injection molding, it’s expensive, and you really, really want to minimize how many mold revisions go into your first product. The best designers can finalize a mold in two or three revisions. It took Juicero eight, probably at a cost of over a million dollars.
The teardown continues to the power supply, a massive, custom job that converts wall power to 330V DC for the motor and 3.3, 5, and 12V for the brain of the device. The ‘transmission’ for this device consists of at least five machined, hardened gears. Our ‘ol pal [AvE] will tell you machined gears are rare in the finest prosumer grade DEWALT or Milwaukee tools — they usually go with cheaper sintered metal gears. By all accounts, the Juicero is an exercise in excess.
The Juicero is a machine that is overbuilt, overengineered, and the cost to make this machine prices it out of the market of people who would actually want a desktop juicing machine. While Juicero could iterate on this design for a few more revisions, replace the expensive machined parts for stamped steel, and simplify everything, even that would be insufficient. The design of the Juicero has a fatal flaw: it compresses the entire juice pack at once. That’s sixty-four square inches of fruit and vegetable pulp that must be compressed all at once. In an article that will surely be featured in next year’s Pulitzer nominations, Bloomberg discovered you can simply squeeze these juice bags. The Juicero isn’t just over-engineered. You could squeeze this bag through rollers with a simpler mechanism to get the same amount of juice out.
There’s a saying that any idiot can build a bridge that can carry a load, but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely carries a load. This is a desirable trait; a bridge that can carry any load would also carry an astronomical cost. Designing to a price point that you’ve verified by market research is engineering, and Juicero is the most spectacular failure of this type of engineering in recent memory. Of course, it doesn’t help that Juicero has DRM’ed food, but the success of K-cups tells me that’s probably not a priority for a lot of consumers.Völkerschau) in An ad for a "Peoples Show" () in Stuttgart (Germany), 1928
Human zoos, also called ethnological expositions, were 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century public exhibitions of humans, usually in a so-called natural or primitive state. The displays often emphasized the cultural differences between Europeans of Western civilization and non-European peoples or with other Europeans who practiced a lifestyle deemed more primitive. Some of them placed indigenous populations in a continuum somewhere between the great apes and Europeans.[citation needed] Ethnological expositions have been extensively criticized[by whom?] as highly degrading and racist, depending on the show and individuals involved.
Human zoos in Germany [ edit ]
In the late 19th century German ethnographic museums[1] were an attempt at empirical study of human culture. They contained artifacts from cultures around the world organized by continent allowing visitors to see the similarities and differences between the groups and form their own ideas. The ethnographic museums of Germany were explicitly designed to steer away from projecting certain principles or instructing its viewers to interpret the material in a particular manner. They were instead left open for museum guests to form their own opinions.
The directors of Germany's ethnographic museums intended to create a unifying history of mankind,[1] to show how humans had progressed to the cosmopolitan creatures that walked the halls of these museums. Imperialism influenced the supporters, visitors, and collectors of these museums, the displays, directions, and political rhetoric.
Ethnology studies in Germany took a new approach in the 1870s as human displays were incorporated into zoos. These exhibits were lauded as educational to the general population by the scientific community of the time, because they were informing of the way people lived across the world. Very quickly the exhibits were used as a way to show that Europeans had evolved into a superior cosmopolitan life.
As Ethnogenic expositions were discontinued in Germany around 1931,[2] there were many repercussions for the performers. Many of the people brought from their homelands to work in the exhibits had created families in Germany, and there were many children that had been born in Germany. Once they no longer worked in the zoos or for performance acts these people were stuck living in Germany where they had no rights and were harshly discriminated against. During the rise of the Nazi party the foreign actors in these stage shows were typically able to stay out of concentration camps because there were so few of them that the Nazis did not see them as a real threat.[3] Although they were able to avoid concentration camps, they were not able to participate in German life as citizens of ethnically German origin could. The Hitler Youth did not allow children of foreign parents to participate, and adults were rejected as German soldiers.[3] Many ended up working in war industry factories or foreign laborer camps.[3] After WWII ended, racism in Germany became more concealed or invisible but did not go away. Many people of foreign descent intended to leave after the war, but because of their German nationality, it was difficult for them to emigrate.[3]
Key influences [ edit ]
Carl Hagenbeck[4] was a German exotic animal businessman, who became famous for his conquering of the animal trade market during the mid to late 1800’s. Due to the costs of acquiring and keeping animals, the financial implications started to worry Hagenbeck, and he began looking for other ways to alleviate the company’s monetary strains. Heinrich Leutemann, an old friend of Hagenbeck suggested bringing along the people from the foreign lands to accompany the animals. The idea struck Hagenbeck as brilliant and he had a group of Laplanders accompany his next shipment of Reindeer. They set up traditional houses and went about their business as usual on the Hagenbeck property. The display was so successful that Carl was organizing his second show before the first was over. Although the concept of parading peoples captured from conquered lands goes back to the Romans, Hagenbeck claimed to have the first shows displaying “cultures” from foreign lands. Carl Hagenbeck continued to bring indigenous people along with the animals he was importing from across the globe. The people would come with their hunting equipment, homes, and other facets of their daily life. Hagenbeck’s displays evolved in complexity as the years went by. In 1876 Hagenbeck had a group of 6 Sami accompany a herd of reindeer, and by 1874 his acts included close to 67 men, women, and children in his Ceylon show performing with 25 elephants. The performances also expanded from showing every day activities such as milking reindeer and building huts, to displaying some of the more extravagant parts of the cultures such as magicians, jugglers, and devil dancers.
First human zoos [ edit ]
Hottentot Venus. Born to a A caricature of Saartjie Baartman, called the. Born to a Khoisan family, she was displayed in London in the early 19th century.
The notion of the human curiosity has a history at least as long as colonialism. For instance, in the Western Hemisphere, one of the earliest-known zoos, that of Moctezuma in Mexico, consisted not only of a vast collection of animals, but also exhibited humans, for example, dwarves, albinos and hunchbacks.[5]
During the Renaissance, the Medici developed a large menagerie in the Vatican. In the 16th century, Cardinal Hippolytus Medici had a collection of people of different races as well as exotic animals. He is reported as having a troupe of so-called Savages, speaking over twenty languages; there were also Moors, Tartars, Indians, Turks and Africans.[6]
Maximo and Bartola, c. 1867
One of the first modern public human exhibitions was P.T. Barnum's exhibition of Joice Heth on February 25, 1835[7] and, subsequently, the Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker. These exhibitions were common in freak show[8] Another famous example was that of Saartjie Baartman of the Namaqua, often referred to as the Hottentot Venus, who was displayed in London and France until her death in 1815.
During the 1850s, Maximo and Bartola, two microcephalic children from El Salvador, were exhibited in the US and Europe under the names Aztec Children and Aztec Lilliputians.[9] However, human zoos would become common only in the 1870s in the midst of the New Imperialism period.
1870s to the 1930s [ edit ]
Weight, 103 pounds (47 kg).
Brought from the Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner.
Exhibited each afternoon during September.
— a sign outside the primate house at the Bronx Zoo, September 1906.[10] Ota Benga, a human exhibit, in 1906. Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches (150 cm).Weight, 103 pounds (47 kg).Brought from the Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner.Exhibited each afternoon during September.
In the 1870s, exhibitions of exotic populations became popular in various countries. Human zoos could be found in Paris, Hamburg, Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Milan, and New York City. Carl Hagenbeck, a merchant in wild animals and future entrepreneur of many zoos in Europe, decided in 1874 to exhibit Samoan and Sami people as "purely natural" populations. In 1876, he sent a collaborator to the Egyptian Sudan to bring back some wild beasts and Nubians. The Nubian exhibit was very successful in Europe and toured Paris, London, and Berlin. In 1880, Hagenbeck dispatched an agent to Labrador to secure a number of Esquimaux (Eskimo / Inuit) from the moravian mission of Hebron; these Inuit were exhibited in his Hamburg Tierpark. Other ethnological expositions included Egyptian and Bedouin mock settlements.[11] Hagenbeck would also employ agents to take part in his ethnological exhibits, with the aim of exposing his audience to various different subsistence modes and lifestyles. Among these hired workers were Hersi Egeh and his lineage from Berbera in present-day northwestern Somalia, who in the process accumulated much wealth, which they later reinvested in real estate in their homeland.[12] The viceroy of India likewise gave Hagenbeck permission to hire local inhabitants for an exhibit, on the condition that Hagenbeck would first have to deposit funds into the royal treasury.[13]
Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, director of the Jardin d'acclimatation, decided in 1877 to organize two ethnological spectacles that presented Nubians and Inuit. That year, the audience of the Jardin d'acclimatation' doubled to one million. Between 1877 and 1912, approximately thirty ethnological exhibitions were presented at the Jardin zoologique d'acclimatation.
Both the 1878 and the 1889 Parisian World's Fair presented a Negro Village (village nègre). Visited by 28 million people, the 1889 World's Fair displayed 400 indigenous people as the major attraction. The 1900 World's Fair presented the famous diorama living in Madagascar, while the Colonial Exhibitions in Marseilles (1906 and 1922) and in Paris (1907 and 1931) also displayed humans in cages, often nude or semi-nude. The 1931 exhibition in Paris was so successful that 34 million people attended it in six months, while a smaller counter-exhibition entitled The Truth on the Colonies, organized by the Communist Party, attracted very few visitors—in the first room, it recalled Albert Londres and André Gide's critiques of forced labour in the colonies. Nomadic Senegalese Villages were also presented.
In 1883, native people of Suriname were displayed in the International Colonial and Export Exhibition in Amsterdam, held behind the Rijksmuseum.
In the late 1800s, Hagenbeck organized exhibitions of indigenous populations from various parts of the globe. He staged a public display in 1886 of Sinhalese autochthones from the Sri Lanka. In 1893/1894, he also put together an exhibition of Sami/Lapps in Hamburg-Saint Paul.
At the 1901 Pan-American Exposition[14] and at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, where Little Egypt performed bellydance, and where the photographers Charles Dudley Arnold and Harlow Higginbotham took depreciative photos, presenting indigenous people as catalogue of "types", along with sarcastic legends.[15]
In 1896, to increase the number of visitors, the Cincinnati Zoo invited one hundred Sioux Native Americans to establish a village at the site. The Sioux lived at the zoo for three months.[16]
Ad for an 1893/1894 ethnological exposition of Sámi in Hamburg -Saint Paul
In 1904, Apaches and Igorots (from the Philippines) were displayed at the Saint Louis World Fair in association with the 1904 Summer Olympics. The US had just acquired, following the Spanish–American War, new territories such as Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, allowing them to "display" some of the native inhabitants.[17] According to the Rev. Sequoyah Ade:
To further illustrate the indignities heaped upon the Philippine people following their eventual loss to the Americans, the United States made the Philippine campaign the centrepoint of the 1904 World's Fair held that year in St. Louis, MI [sic]. In what was enthusiastically termed a "parade of evolutionary progress," visitors could inspect the "primitives" that represented the counterbalance to "Civilisation" justifying Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden". Pygmies from New Guinea and Africa, who were later displayed in the Primate section of the Bronx Zoo, were paraded next to American Indians such as Apache warrior Geronimo, who sold his autograph. But the main draw was the Philippine exhibition complete with full size replicas of Indigenous living quarters erected to exhibit the inherent backwardness of the Philippine people. The purpose was to highlight both the "civilising" influence of American rule and the economic potential of the island chains' natural resources on the heels of the Philippine–American War. It was, reportedly, the largest specific Aboriginal exhibition displayed in the exposition. As one pleased visitor commented, the human zoo exhibition displayed "the race narrative of odd peoples who mark time while the world advances, and of savages made, by American methods, into civilized workers."[18]
In 1906, Madison Grant—socialite, eugenicist, amateur anthropologist, and head of the New York Zoological Society—had Congolese pygmy Ota Benga put on display at the Bronx Zoo in New York City alongside apes and other animals. At the behest of Grant, the zoo director William Hornaday placed Benga displayed in a cage with the chimpanzees, then with an orangutan named Dohong, and a parrot, and labeled him The Missing Link, suggesting that in evolutionary terms Africans like Benga were closer to apes than were Europeans. It triggered protests from the city's clergymen, but the public reportedly flocked to see it.[10][19]
Benga shot targets with a bow and arrow, wove twine, and wrestled with an orangutan. Although, according to The New York Times, "few expressed audible objection to the sight of a human being in a cage with monkeys as companions", controversy erupted as black clergymen in the city took great offense. "Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes", said the Reverend James H. Gordon, superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn. "We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls."[20]
New York City Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. refused to meet with the clergymen, drawing the praise of Hornaday, who wrote to him: "When the history of the Zoological Park is written, this incident will form its most amusing passage."[20]
As the controversy continued, Hornaday remained unapologetic, insisting that his only intention was to put on an ethnological exhibition. In another letter, he said that he and Grant—who ten years later would publish the racist tract The Passing of the Great Race—considered it "imperative that the society should not even seem to be dictated to" by the black clergymen.[20]
On Monday, September 8, 1906, after just two days, Hornaday decided to close the exhibition, and Benga could be found walking the zoo grounds, often followed by a crowd "howling, jeering and yelling."[20]
In 1925, a display at Belle Vue Zoo in Manchester, England, was entitled "Cannibals" and featured black Africans depicted as savages.[21]
By the 1930s, a new kind of human zoo appeared in America, nude shows masquerading as education. These included the Zoro Garden Nudist Colony at the Pacific International Exposition in San Diego, California (1935-6) and the Sally Rand Nude Ranch at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco (1939). The former was supposedly a real nudist colony, which used hired performers instead of actual nudists. The latter featured nude women performing in western attire. The Golden Gate fair also featured a "Greenwich Village" show, described in the Official Guide Book as “Model artists’ colony and revue theatre.”[22]
1940s to the present [ edit ]
A modern replica of the 1914 Congo village exhibition in Oslo (2014)
A Congolese village was displayed at the Brussels 1958 World's Fair.[23]
In April 1994, an example of an Ivory Coast village was presented as part of an African safari in Port-Saint-Père, near Nantes, in France, later called Planète Sauvage.[24]
An African village, intended as a craft and cultural festival, was held in Augsburg Zoo in Germany in July 2005, and was subject to widespread criticism.[25]
In August 2005, London Zoo displayed four human volunteers wearing fig leaves (and bathing suits) for four days.[26]
In 2007, Adelaide Zoo ran a Human Zoo exhibition which consisted of a group of people who, as part of a study exercise, had applied to be housed in the former ape enclosure by day, but then returned home by night.[27] The inhabitants took part in several exercises, and spectators were asked for donations towards a new ape enclosure.
Also in 2007, pygmy performers at the Festival of Pan-African Music (Fespam) were housed at a zoo in Brazzaville, Congo. Although members of the group of twenty people - among them an infant, age three-months - were not officially on display, it was necessary for them to "collect firewood in the zoo to cook their food, and [they] were being stared at and filmed by tourists and passers-by".[28]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini have become, for many of us today, mere Hollywood villains – generic personifications of evil or (in Mussolini's case) buffoonish authoritarianism. Yet their ideologies were rooted in specific philosophical ideas – ideas which had many respectable adherents in their day.
Dictator Fanboys
Many in the vanguard of progressive thought were enamored of Mussolini and even Hitler, considering their dictatorships a useful “social experiment.”
One person who understands this is Jonah Goldberg, author of the 2007 book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Ten years on, the book still holds up. Goldberg argues, provocatively, that fascism shared roots in common with what we call modern liberalism or progressivism.
People often argue over whether Hitler and Mussolini were “right wing” or “left wing.” More to the point is that both men's ideologies had roots in the Progressive movement of the turn of the 20th century.
The Progressive movement was closely tied to the philosophy of Pragmatism: the belief that thought is a tool for action and change. In contrast to the ancient and medieval philosophers, for whom philosophy was the contemplation of reality, the Progressives were animated by the desire to mold reality and to harness knowledge for social betterment. Many in the vanguard of progressive thought initially were enamored of Mussolini and even Hitler, considering their dictatorships a useful “social experiment.”
H.G. Wells, the popular science fiction writer, was one. In a number of speeches and books he praised the militaristic social mobilization in the new fascist regimes: an entire society moving as a single unit under the rule of a Nietzschean superman.
Complete state control of all aspects of life was seen as highly pragmatic and scientific by many. Nationalism and militarism – elements commonly associated with the Right – were actually key components of the Progressive Era, flourishing in particular under President Woodrow Wilson, as Goldberg documents.
Ideological Twins
Hitler and Mussolini's ideologies grew out of the avant-garde progressive and pragmatic philosophies of the late 19th century.
Popular wisdom holds that Fascism and Communism were diametrical opposites. Actually, the two ideologies were (and are) so similar that they had to define themselves in opposition to each other in order to survive. At the very least, both were socialistic in origin: Mussolini was immersed in socialism by his father, and the name of Hitler's party – National Socialist German Workers' Party – speaks for itself.
These regimes fostered hostility to traditional religious beliefs and morality (both men despised Christianity), “salvation by science” (as shown, for example, in the Nazi's racist eugenics movement), and state-controlled health and environmental projects (as shown in a Nazi slogan, “Nutrition is not a private matter!”).
All of these elements grew out of the “scientific” progressivism of the early 20th century. Even the Nazis' vÖlkisch ideology—with its nationalist and traditionalist overtones – was at heart a secular religion-substitute which enshrined the Will of the People, a concept which Goldberg traces to the French Revolution.
It would seem undeniable that Hitler and Mussolini, like the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin, were revolutionaries and in no sense conservatives or traditionalists. Their ideologies grew out of the avant-garde positivist, progressive, and pragmatic philosophies of the late 19th century.
A Progressive Moment
The point here is not to engage in “left wing”/“right wing” name calling. Rather, it is to realize that all these political movements were tied up in a historical moment – Goldberg calls it the “fascist moment” of Western history – which originated in the French Revolution and came to fruition in the 20th century.
This moment was “progressive” in that it signaled the abandonment of the West's moral and philosophical traditions. And it was embodied, philosophically, in the turn away from the contemplation of truth to “action |
opoulos of Breitbart News. Occupy Oakland tweeted “We won this night. We will control the streets. We will liberate the land. We will fight fascists. We will dismantle the state. This is war.” What was so interesting was the “we will fight fascists.” Occupy Oakland, and many left wing groups, appear willing to have a revolution to halt a supposedly imminent fascist takeover of the country.
Which begs the question: how do fascists take over? The answer can be found by looking at the three major fascist countries in history: Italy, Spain, and Germany.
Under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, the Fascist Party of Italy seized control of the country in 1922 with the “March on Rome.” Before marching on the nation’s capital, Italian fascists committed violent acts across most of northern Italy. The king of Italy, fearing more bloodshed, appointed Mussolini Prime Minister of Italy. No election took place, and the Italian fascists used violent tactics to achieve power.
Spanish fascists came to power through a military coup, after the military leadership did not like the results of the most recent election, and the coup resulted in a civil war lasting from 1936 to 1939.
In Germany the fascist path to power was longer and more complicated for the National Socialists, or Nazis. Hitler attempted to mimic Mussolini in 1923 with the Beer Hall putsch, an attempt to overthrow local authorities. It did not succeed and resulted in a few deaths and the arrest of several Nazis, including Hitler. After the failed coup, the Nazis decided to use the democratic process to take over Germany. Yet not until the election of July 1932 did the Nazis become the largest party in the German Parliament. Despite winning a plurality of votes (37 percent), the Nazis did not receive a majority of the votes needed to form a government. The Nazis refused to join any coalition, which resulted in another election in November 1932. In that election the Nazis again won a plurality but not as large as before (only 33 percent). Despite the loss, the Nazis refused to form a coalition until Hitler was made chancellor, which occurred in January 1933. Once Hitler was chancellor, he ordered another parliamentary election.
In March 1933, the election was held and the Nazis again received only a plurality of the votes (43 percent). This would be the last open election until after World War II, because Hitler decided it would be easier to consolidate power through terror, fear, and even political murders, rather than trying to work with other parties.
So, what’s the pattern? How do fascists take power? First, they are angry with election results or how the country is being run. Then fascists use militant tactics to force the population into supporting, or acquiescing in, their cause, even though most citizens don’t actually support the fascist agenda.
Today, some persons who claim to oppose fascism have started using fascist techniques, such as blockading roads and other modes of transit into the city, perpetrating violence against those who disagree with them politically, and using fear to suppress those who have different political views. But using fascist techniques is never right, and if you just removed “we will fight the fascists” from the Occupy Oakland tweet, it could be easily mistaken for a quote from Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, or Adolf Hitler.
The best way to defeat fascism? Look to the U.S. Constitution. It has defended freedom—and helped expand freedom to many—since it was signed. If Americans hold their elected officials to the standard of the Constitution, then fascism will not happen. If Americans decide to fight fascism with fascist techniques, then they will become the very thing they wanted to stop.
Tyler Stone received a Bachelor’s Degree from Le Moyne College, where he studied history. He is currently Office Manager at Capital Research Center.PULLMAN, Wash. -- Washington State was battling the loss of two key players and a two-decade history of losing at home to No. 23 UCLA.
But the Cougars got 20 points and 11 rebounds from Brock Motum and shocked the Bruins 73-61 on Wednesday night.
The win by the last-place Cougars broke a 19-game home losing streak to the Bruins that extended to 1993.
Royce Woolridge added 19 points for Washington State (12-18, 3-14 Pac-12), which also broke a nine-game losing streak that had put coach Ken Bone on the hot seat.
"It's nice to see these guys rewarded with a win," said Bone, whose team has repeatedly lost games in the second half this season. "It's a huge confidence builder."
Jordan Adams scored 18 points for UCLA (22-8, 12-5), which had won four straight games and came into Wednesday tied with Oregon for first place in the Pac-12.
"We didn't come out with the emotion and intensity that we needed," UCLA coach Ben Howland said. "We didn't have the sense of urgency when so much was riding on the line for us."
Shabazz Muhammad added 14 points for UCLA on 4-of-19 shooting.
Washington State had lost its last eight games against the Bruins, who were coming off a win over No. 18 Arizona.
"This is the first time in 19 years we beat them here," Motum said. "I was happy individually to have beaten UCLA for the first time."
Washington State played without Mike Ladd (knee injury) and DaVonte Lacy (knee injury), their second- and third-leading scorers. Bone said Lacy is out for the rest of the season.
It didn't seem to matter, as the Cougars sliced up the Bruins inside for easy layups much of the game.
"We set good screens," Motum said. "Our guys were wide open for baskets."
Washington State, which jumped to a big early lead and never trailed, held the Bruins 15 points below their scoring average, and outrebounded them 46-23. The Bruins shot just 38 percent in the game, compared to 49 percent for WSU.
"For us to have 21 offensive rebounds and them to have 23 total rebounds, that was very impressive," Bone said.
"We showed we can compete with anyone," said WSU's Dexter Kernich-Drew, who had 11 points and 11 rebounds in a rare start because of the injuries.
The Bruins, who also got 10 points from Norman Powell, were outscored 44-20 in the paint, and were 8 of 29 from 3-point range.
"We came out defensively very poor," Howland said. "I did not have my guys ready to play or fearful enough of losing this game."
"They kept getting layups and easy shots," Howland said. "At the other end, we missed some shots early in the game, in the first half, and it snowballed."
Washington State scored the first seven points of the game, and then made four straight layups to build a 15-2 lead. The Bruins made only one of their first 10 shots.
The Bruins did not score their second field goal until there was 10:26 left in the first half and they trailed 19-4.
Washington State extended the lead to 25-4 with 8:28 left. The Cougars made 10 of their first 18 shots.
Muhammad made a 3-pointer to get the Bruins into double figures at 25-12, but Woolridge replied with a 3 for WSU.
Adams scored the last five points of the first half for the Bruins, on two free throws and a 3-pointer, but Washington State led 35-24. The Cougars shot 48 percent in the first while holding UCLA to 30 percent.
Muhammad's 3-pointer cut WSU's lead to 37-31 early in the second. D.J. Shelton scored three straight baskets for WSU to push the lead back to 43-33.
Layups by Woolridge and Motum gave WSU a 56-42 lead with 7 minutes left.
Two 3-pointers helped the Bruins cut WSU's lead to 60-52, but the Cougars made their free throws to stay ahead.
"I thought our guys were good with their composure," Bone said.
D.J. Shelton added 13 points and four assists for the Cougars.
UCLA averages 76 points per game to lead the Pac-12.
The Bruins hold a 102-15 lead in the all-time series.Molecular Mixology is a special practice of mixing drinks using the analysis and techniques found in science to understand and experiment with cocktail ingredients on the molecular level. Inspired by the practice of molecular gastronomy (which works in similar ways with food dishes) this practice has become a popular study of many mixologists. The purpose is to manipulate states of matter to create new flavors, feels, textures and visuals that enhance the drink and make the drinker's experience more interesting.
Popular techniques of molecular mixology include the use of foams, liquid nitrogen, gels, mists, heat, solidifying liquids, etc. There are many bartenders and establishments throughout the world that feature or specialize in molecular mixology, just as there are restaurants that specialize in molecular gastronomy. However, the practice is sometimes touted as novel, gimmicky and, with the absence of discretion, can be overwhelming for some drinkers.
To give you an idea of molecular mixology, the Small Screen Network has some interesting videos in which Robert Hess (aka Drink Boy) interviews well-known mixologist Jamie Boudreau about some of the finer points of this science.“You look at the house where he lived and worked, where he created his works, and then you come to a place where there is nothing but this small hill,” said Mr. Stepashin, who has close ties to the church. “It was puzzling, on a human and a moral plane. And then I decided to write this letter.”
Ambivalence toward Tolstoy is new in Russia.
The Soviets planted him at the top of their literary pantheon, largely because of the radical philosophy he preached amid the early rumblings of the October Revolution. The publication of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” made Tolstoy so famous that one contemporary described him as Russia’s second czar. He used that position to rail against the church, as well as the police, the army, meat eating, private property and all forms of violence.
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Lenin loved Tolstoy’s “pent-up hatred.” He anointed him “the mirror of the Russian Revolution,” ignoring his pacifism and belief in God. As the 50th anniversary of his death approached, the Central Committee of the Communist Party began preparing two years in advance, so a monument would be ready for unveiling.
For the centennial, in a Russia wary of utopian thought, there was nothing of the kind. By contrast, Chekhov received lavish official tributes in 2010 for his 150th birthday, including a birthplace visit from President Dmitri A. Medvedev.
Though a star-studded Tolstoy biopic, “The Last Station,” opened in Moscow just ahead of the anniversary, it was filmed in Germany and directed by an American. The Russian filmmaker Andrei S. Konchalovsky, a producer of the film, said he petitioned “every ministry” in the Russian government for support. In the end, he said, he was forced to invest his own money.
“I represent Russia,” he said, with a wry smile, while promoting the film.
None of this came as a surprise to Vladimir I. Tolstoy, Tolstoy’s great-great-grandson, who oversees the museum at Yasnaya Polyana, the author’s estate.
Mr. Tolstoy, 48, has the slender, avid look of a professional intellectual, but his last name has called on him to wade into politics. He worked on one of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s presidential campaigns and does favors for area officials when they need “the authority or prestige of Tolstoy,” as he put it.
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Ten years ago he asked the church to revisit the 1901 ruling that excommunicated his great-great-grandfather. He received no answer. Though his efforts have not ended — a visitor to Yasnaya Polyana recalled a banquet table laid out in the orchard for the local bishop — Mr. Tolstoy said he was not hopeful.
Aside from a reception held by the minister of culture, the anniversary transpired with “a conscious ignoring of Tolstoy,” he said.
“Any power tries to adapt great people to its needs,” he added. “The current authorities don’t adapt him, or they are not clever enough. Maybe they are so self-confident they don’t think they need to.”
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It was a relief when Mr. Stepashin joined the effort. The men met about 15 years ago, when Mr. Stepashin, then director of the Federal Security Service, presented Mr. Tolstoy with sheaves of family letters pulled out of Soviet intelligence files. Mr. Stepashin, who recalls staying up two nights as a 10-year-old so that he could finish Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection,” shared the sense that the writer was getting short shrift.
“I understood that there would not likely be a decision to return him to the church,” said Mr. Stepashin, now president of the Russian Book Union. “But as for the attitude to him as a person, as a person who did a lot for Russian culture and for the Russian language, I just counted on that, on a change of attitude toward him.”
The church’s letter of response, published in a state-run newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, suggested not. It acknowledged Tolstoy’s “unforgettable, beautiful works,” and said Russian Orthodox readers were allowed to say solitary prayers for him on the anniversary of his death.
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But its tone was mournful, calling Tolstoy the most “tragic personality” in the history of Russian literature. It said that Tolstoy “purposely used his great talent to destroy Russia’s traditional spiritual and social order” and that it was “no accident that the leader of the Bolsheviks extremely valued the aim of Leo Tolstoy’s activity.” So there could be no candles burned for Tolstoy inside Orthodox churches and no commemorations read, according to the letter, signed by the cultural council secretary to Patriarch Kirill I, the church’s leader.
Mr. Stepashin said he expected this response and was glad the letter included some praise.
But intellectuals did not hide their astonishment.
“It’s as if in the 20th century the church did not survive persecution that made Tolstoy’s criticisms look like childish prattle,” wrote the literary critic Pavel V. Basinsky, whose new book examines Tolstoy’s final days. “It’s as if we have found ourselves in the situation that we were in at the beginning of the last century.”
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And, as in the last century, much of the discussion surrounding the Tolstoy centennial was akin to gossip. Mr. Basinsky’s book is part of a wave of new works that, like the film “The Last Station,” plunge into Tolstoy’s flight from the family estate — the moment when he seemed finally to choose his radical ideas over the aristocratic comforts of home. He died a few days later at a train station, surrounded by throngs of reporters.
At the time of Tolstoy’s death, Russian pundits cast his decision as a spiritual triumph, but the new works retell it as a family tragedy, said William Nickell, author of “The Death of Tolstoy.” From this perspective, Tolstoy’s wife is a sympathetic figure, his followers are manipulative parasites and his ideas are hopelessly utopian.
“It is as if he is lumped now with communism,” Mr. Nickell said. “Good idea in principle, but a disaster in practice.”-November 5, 2013-
Refined Irreverence : The Liberty Walk Ferrari 458
Mike Burroughs
Italy is a country known for design. From the fashion runways to industrial design houses, it’s one of the leaders that forge ahead, setting trends and developing new styles. Since the days of Ancient Roman Art, the Italian aesthetic is one that has been infatuated with ornamentation and decoration. Following the often overly-ornate periods of Baroque and Rococo art, Italy’s focus on nature’s beauty led back to classically styled art and design that is elegant in its simplicity. The automotive embodiment of Italy’s rich artistic roots, are the polished lines that arc and curve over the beautiful red panels that make up Ferrari’s corral.
Ferrari’s cars have a certain elegance that blends the soft lines of beauty and form with the strong lines of a performance car; the bodywork carefully sculpted by famous coachbuilders such as Zagato, Bertone, and Pininfarina. The Ferrari’s lines flow over its figure, gently rounding over the flares that house the lightweight wheels and performance brakes. The low slung stance and wedge silhouette hint at the performance that lies beneath, but a Ferrari carries itself with a graceful demeanor fit for the fashion runway. It’s a refined balance of form and function that can only come from the streets of Italy.
Enter Liberty Walk, a Japanese tuning house recently gaining notoriety for their wild wide-body builds. Having already made a splash with their M3 and Lamborghini kits, they set their sights on a Ferrari 458. With a certain sense of irreverence, they have introduced extravagance to the elegant form of the Italian supercar. Widened fenders pull on the organic lines, giving strength to the already broad shoulders and hips of the Italia. The exposed hardware clashes with the previous refinement that once graced the car, introducing a menacing rawness to the car’s character.
It was mere days before SEMA that the team at LTMW in El Monte, California, got their hands on the stock Ferrari. Under the same roof sat an F30, an E91, a Rocket Bunny FRS, another 458, and the first Liberty Walk GTR as well - all due for the same big weekend: the team had their work cut out for them. With care and precision, the fenders and quarter panels were cut away from the car, giving someone the chance to walk away from the build with unique experience of running a cutoff wheel through the skin of an F-Car.
Panels were lined up, lines were drawn, and clearances were checked before a drill was taken to each corner of the car for the mounting tabs, throwing the car's rapidly diminishing resale value out the window with a beautiful sense of apathy. With the holes drilled, the panels were mounted, fitted, trued, and squared. The kit's lines draw from the 458's flawlessly, bringing the car into a realm few to which Ferraris have ever ventured. The Liberty Walk kit is a finely tailored suit, albeit one of an aggressive nature.
The nose of the car has been sharpened and simplified - the factory organic splitter veins are gone in favor of a wider, gaping mouth. The lower edge is traced by an aggressive splitter, which is carried from the front down the sides of the car. Under the tail end of the LB Performance 458 is a custom rear diffuser, which adds to the race-inspired aggression of the car. And lastly, to complete the tail end, a tall duckbill spoiler is perched atop the car's engine cover.
To drop the car, custom Liberty Walk springs were fitted to the factory Ferrari suspension. Under the widened arches is a set of Rotiform LVS wheels built specifically for the project, measuring out to 20x9 et0 in the front and 20x12 et-33 at the back end. Nitto INVOs wrap all four corners, with 245/30/20s resting under the front fenders, and 295/30/20 squeezed under the tail.
The car as a whole is a sight to behold, and for those attending the SEMA show, it's one you truly shouldn't miss. Perhaps cliche, but this is a car that looks fantastic in photos, but has an truly special presence in person. The Liberty Walk Ferrari 458 will be found in the Nitto Tire booth alongside some other impressive builds as Nitto continues to celebrate and support the enthusiast and stance community.The sponsor of the law to repeal Michigan’s mandatory helmet law was killed Monday night in a motorcycle crash.
Michigan State Police report that State Representative Peter Pettalia was wearing a helmet when he died.
Pettalia was riding a motorcycle on M-33 in northern Michigan’s Montmorency County.
Pettalia was the sponsor of the 2012 law that repealed the helmet requirement for motorcyclists. A recent study found motorcycle fatalities in Michigan jumped by 23 % between 2014 and 2015 and researchers say the repeal of the helmet law almost certainly played a role.
Pettalia chaired the state House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He was serving his third and final state House term, and briefly considered a run for Congress earlier this year. Pettalia was 61 years old.
*This story was last updated 12:01 p.m.SINGAPORE - While Singapore fans of Pokemon Go cannot wait for the game to be launched here, the Singapore Government has said it will monitor the game’s impact on society.
The game, which has taken the world by storm, uses augmented reality technology to allow players to “see” virtual Pokemon characters as they view their surroundings through their smartphone cameras.
Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim gave his comments in response to questions on Sunday (July 24) about whether the Government would introduce any guidelines for the game, given that it has caused problems in other countries, from criminal trespass to traffic accidents as players hunt for the characters.
“We have to study very, very carefully whatever that is brought into Singapore,” he said, stressing that it must not harm lifestyles or the way things have been done here.
Related Story Singapore government to monitor impact of Pokemon Go on society
Prof Yaacob was speaking to reporters at the National Deaf Games at the Singapore Badminton Hall.
Related Story Singapore fans eager for launch of Pokemon Go here, but trespassers beware
“We will monitor the situation, how this particular game is being played and... its impact on society,” he added.
Related Story Think twice about giving Pokemon Go-ahead
“And if it's really something which we should be concerned about I think MDA (the Media Development Authority) will definitely decide on what are the things we can do best, if the game is really needed here, how... we can do it in such a way that it becomes a win-win situation.”
Related Story Security risks not limited to playing Pokemon Go
Pokemon Go is already available officially in more than 35 countries.
Japan, where the game was launched last Friday, has already issued a safety guide warning of heat stroke, dubious strangers and other risks.
Indonesian officials have even called the game a security threat, while some in Egypt and Russia have claimed that the game is a plot by spy agencies.mysms='xxx0001234@messaging.sprintpcs.com' ; expect -c "log_user 0 ; set timeout -1 ; spawn usbmon -i usb0 ; expect -re \"C.*Ii.*-2:128\" { spawn sendmail $mysms ; send \"Smart Home Sensor Triggered
.
\" ; expect }"
Picture:
usbmon -i usb0
Links:
An old USB A/B cable is all you need to make your own Smart Home hardware! Cut off and discard the B-portion of the USB cable. On the A side, connect the RED (+) and WHITE (D-) wires via a 1 kiloohm resistor. http://imgur.com/dJGVlAU Now plug the cable into a USB port on your Linux computer. Your hardware is ready! Run the above command after changing variable mysms to your personal email-to-SMS gateway info as required by your cellular service provider. The command uses the amazing usbmon tool (see link below) to detect the cable. For the curious, to view the raw usbmon output, run this command: (Also see the sample output)How does it work? When the red and white wires are connected (via the 1 kiloohm resistor) the USB hardwere is tricked into thinking that a new USB device is trying to start up. We then use the usbmon utility to capture the host USB events as it tries to talk to the cable. The expect utility watches the usbmon stream and waits for the disconnect text "-2:128" before sending the SMS message. Finally, the sendmail tool is used to email the SMS message to your smartphone via your cellular provider's SMS-to-email gateway. As a result, when the electrical connection between the red and white wire is interrupted, or the USB cable is unplugged from your computer, you get an SMS notification of the disconnect event on your smartphone. Could this be the cheapest smart home gadget ever? What are YOU going to sense with it? Please let me know in the comments and please don't forget to click it up!Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran is an award- winning global correspondent for the Economist. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an adviser to the World Economic Forum, and an adjunct faculty member at NYU’s Stern School of Business. He is also the author of Need, Speed, and Greed, Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (co-authored with Iain Carson), and Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and he is a regular guest on NPR and Marketplace, PBS’s NewsHour, ABC’s Nightline, and other leading programs.
In this interview, Vijay talks about how globalization has impacted the US economy, how social media has changed corporate innovation, and more.
How has globalization impacted the American marketplace in your view?
As it was in ancient times, when the Roman empire traded through the Egyptians with India for spices, globalization is largely a beneficial force. Americans have benefited these past decades from expanding markets for our products as well as from lower input prices for our firms and more affordable goods for all of us. However, it is also a disruptive force, upending jobs and making factories obsolete faster than we have been able to adjust.
What effect has social media had on corporation innovation?
Initially, most corporations were caught out by the explosion of social media. However, through trial and error many are now doing better. They must, as the future belongs to firms that can best harness the global trend toward open, networked and user driven approaches to innovation.
What do you recommend to Americans who are unemployed right now? Do they have anything to look forward to in the future?
These are clearly painful times for many Americans, and relief will come only when the economy revives. It is wrong to claim, as the chorus of despair does, that America's best days are behind it. I believe America remains the most innovative major economy on earth. China's rise does not mean America's fall, as global innovation is not zero sum: a rising tide can raise many boats.
What types of jobs will be left in American in the future? How can Americans prepare today for that?
Look beyond today's economic downturn and you see that the bigger disruption coming is the shift from brawn to brain. The most important survival skill we all need to master to flourish in the coming Ideas Economy is this: we need to keep relearning how to learn.
How do you think advancements in technology will impact the world a decade from now?
There is reason to think that we are entering a new golden age of technology development, akin to the great Victorian age of invention. We are seeing exponential advances in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to materials science and energy storage to synthetic biology. However, invention is not the same thing as innovation. If America is to make the most of these coming breakthroughs, we must find better ways of connecting such fresh thinking with actual value creation in the marketplace.
Dan Schawbel is a Gen Y career expert and the founder of Millennial Branding. He speaks on the topic of personal branding, social media and Gen Y workforce management for companies such as Google, Time Warner, Symantec, CitiGroup and IBM. Subscribe to his updates at Facebook.com/DanSchawbel.Tens of thousands of Louisianans are bracing for double-digit health insurance premium hikes as high as 19.7% due to Obamacare.
The Times-Picayune reported on Wednesday that Louisiana’s largest health insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, plans to increase the rates of its Blue Saver, Blue Max, and Multi-State individual plans sold on the state’s Obamacare exchange between 18.3% and 19.7%.
The skyrocketing rates will hit 52,638 Louisiana residents.
Other insurers in the state are also moving forward with major premium increases. “Humana Health Benefits Plan rates under the Affordable Care Act will increase 9.9 percent… Vantage Health Plan Inc. said it was moving forward with its plan for a 15.89 percent increase,” reports the Times-Picayune.
News of the double-digit premium spikes come as Sen. Mary Landrieu has struggled to explain her embrace of President Barack Obama’s unpopular Obamacare program. On Wednesday, Landrieu replaced her campaign manager.
Obama promised at least 19 times that Obamacare would reduce premiums $2,500 a year per family.
The latest Associated Press poll finds that just 30% of Americans support Obamacare.Do you really need to send a thank you letter after an interview?
Learning to say thank you attending an interview is one crucial step that candidate misses. In a very competitive market like the employment industry, there is at least over 100 hundred application for each job role.
In fact, during a certain vacancy for a role, we had over 500 CV submitted for that same role yet the company we were recruiting for only wanted to hire 1 person for that role.
This shows how competitive the labor market is.
You can do a lot of things to succeed at an interview. You can come in well prepared, do exceptionally well but like other interviewees, you need to go one step above others if you are really want to get the job.
So what is this one thing that you can do that can place you one step above the competitors and leave a better third impression with the interviewer?
Sending a thank you letter!
Sending a thank you letter may not get you the placement if you did bad at an interview but might be a good idea if you want to enforce the good impression you already created during the interview.
And in this article, I am going to show you share with you tips to write the perfect thank you letter. If you do not want to learn how to write one which I will advise you to, you can simply download the template at the end of this article.
.
7 Tips to Write the Perfect Thank You Letter After An Interview
Sending a thank you follow up letter can shift the interview in your favor so make sure you follow these 10 tips to make your thank you letter more effective.
You should make sure you send your letter within 48 hours following the interview. Anything more and it Always address a thank-you letter to a specific individual, not just the general title “HR of Personnel.” Be sure name is spelled correctly. Make sure the tone of your thank-you letter is official. It should be printed on the same paper stock as your resume or send it from the same email address you used when applying for the job. Make each thank you letter unique. Even when you have a template, w each thank-you letter separately. The letter should highlight what was discussed in your interview, why you are qualified for the role and reinstate your continuing interest. Make sure you point out the most relevant skills you have that matches the job role Use short paragraph. Make sure you cut to the chase as soon as possible. Anything above 3 paragraphs is too long Spell check. I can’t stress this enough. Make sure someone proofread your letter before sending it.
How To Send Your Thank You Letter
There are different ways to send your thank you letter. The method you use will depend on what information you have but the four popular way to send your thank you letter according to this survey will be:
Email- This is the preferred method for today free and fastest. Treat it the same way you would have if you were sending a hand-written note. Use your official email address and sign off properly. Phone call- Most especially if you are privileged to have the phone number. You can use this technique if you have had contact before the interview or the interviewer was willing to share their phone number. Make sure you do not call during off working hour and avoid the temptation of sending a text message. If you call twice and missed, let it go Handwritten notes – I doubt if I will ever get one of these in this present age Social media – Use LinkedIn and only rarely use other media if that was how you were contacted in the first place Text messages- Should be the last resort.
SAMPLE THANK-YOU LETTER
Your Address
Date.
(Use specific individual’s name)
Employer’s Address
Dear Name,
FIRST PARAGRAPH. Thank the interviewer for meeting with you. Express your enthusiasm about gaining employment in the organization.
SECOND PARAGRAPH. Reiterate your qualifications for and continuing interest in the position. Include any personal skills you forgot to mention during your interview. Emphasize a particular skill or accomplishment that would make you an asset as an employee.
CLOSING PARAGRAPH(S). Briefly thank the interviewer again for consideration. Express confidence in your ability to perform well in the organization. State that you look forward to hearing from the interviewer.
Sincerely,
(Signature)
Your name(typed)
Free Sample Template of A Thank You Letter
4 Beachland Estate
Arepo
September 28, 2016
Adam Maxwell
Head of HR
Unified Management Company
6 Billingsway, Drive
Dear Mr. Adam,
I want to thank you for interviewing me yesterday for the role of a Customer Service Representative. I was very impressed with the description you provided of your organization, and I am very excited about the prospect of working for you.
My qualifications are well-matched with the position we discussed, and I have a real interest in this area of work.My experience specifically telemarketing and the good interpersonal skills I possess are among my strongest attributes. They would certainly enable me to make a valuable contribution to the Unified Management Company.
Again, thank you for the interview and your consideration. I am eager to have an opportunity of working on your staff. I look forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to call me at 08029074518 if you have any further questions.
Sincerely
Emmanuel Gbogboye
Download the thank you follow up interview letter
Other Thank You Letter Resources
Follow-up Thank You Letter
Formal Sample Interview Thank You Letter.
Sample Interview Thank You Letter
Thank You letter Subject Lines
Conclusion
Follow the above tips to write a sample thank-you letter that is effectively and place you one step ahead of other candidates competing for the same role.
Has a thank you letter ever changed your mind during the hiring process?The Trigger Man is a unique trigger/gate sequencer module with a revolutionary interface that enables you to create any sequence with just two knobs.
There are 8 outputs and each sequence consists of up to 8 steps per output. It has 8 pattern memories (sets of 8X8 sequences), which can be played back in any order and chained into a series of patterns up to 100 patterns long. There are even two CV input jacks to control the sequences, patterns, or tempo. All of this fits in a very compact 8 HP wide module.
The Trigger Man is a great companion to the Delptronics LDB-2e Analog Drums Eurorack Module.
The Trigger Man is now even more powerful with the Version 2 firmware update! We added tons of great new features in the same hardware. There are so many new features, the user manual is twice as long. And yet, we kept the basic functionality the same. So you can explore the more advanced features at your leisure.
If you already own a Trigger Man, find out how to get the update.Hyun-Jin Ryu headed to disabled list
Jon Weisman Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 15, 2014
Brewers at Dodgers, 7:10 p.m.
Dee Gordon, 2B
Yasiel Puig, CF
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Matt Kemp, RF
Carl Crawford, LF
Juan Uribe, 3B
A.J. Ellis, C
Miguel Rojas, SS
Zack Greinke, P
By Jon Weisman
Hyun-Jin Ryu will miss more than his next start due to the right gluteus muscle strain he suffered Wednesday. He has been placed on the 15-day disabled list (retroactive to Thursday), with the Dodgers recalling Pedro Baez for the fourth time this year.
Kevin Correia will take Ryu’s turn in the rotation beginning Tuesday against San Diego.
This is the second trip to the DL this year for Ryu, who was sidelined for 3 1/2 weeks with shoulder inflammation from April 28-May 20. Ryu had a 3.39 ERA with 91 strikeouts in 98 1/3 innings since being activated the last time, nearly three months ago. His overall ERA in 2014 is 3.28.
Ryu will be eligible to come off the DL on August 29, three days before rosters expand, though it’s unclear if he’ll be ready at that time. Don Mattingly told reporters today that the medical staff hadn’t seen a lot of this type of injury before.
Ryu’s MRI showed a Grade 1–2 strain of the gluteus medius and piriformis muscles of his right posterior hip area, muscles that help stabilize the hip and leg during the throwing motion, according to the Dodgers’ public relations department. Ryu will be reevaluated in a few days to determine his progression.
Baez most recently pitched for the Dodgers on August 7 and August 9, throwing shutout innings each time. He hasn’t pitched for Triple-A Albuquerque since he was optioned Monday.Node v0.11.12 (Unstable)
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šk), perfect (būk nešęs) and inchoative (būk benešąs).
The infinitive has only one form (nešti). These forms, except the infinitive and indirect mood, are conjugative, having two singular, two plural persons and the third person form common both for plural and singular.
In the passive voice, the form number is not as rich as in the active voice. There are two types of passive voice in Lithuanian: present participle (type I) ant past participle (type II) (in the examples below types I and II are separated with a slash). They both have the same moods and tenses:
Indicative mood: present (esu nešamas/neštas), past (buvau nešamas/neštas), past iterative (būdavau nešamas/neštas) and future (būsiu nešamas/neštas) Indirect mood: present (esąs nešamas/neštas), past (buvęs nešamas/neštas), past iterative (būdavęs nešamas/neštas) and future (būsiąs nešamas/neštas). Imperative mood: present (type I only: būk nešamas), past (type II only: būk neštas). Subjunctive / conditional mood: present (type I only: būčiau nešamas), past (type II only: būčiau neštas).
Lithuanian has the richest participle system of all Indo-European languages, having participles derived from all simple tenses with distinct active and passive forms, and two gerund forms.
In practical terms, the rich overall inflectional system makes the word order have a different meaning than in more analytic languages such as English. The English phrase "a car is coming" translates as "atvažiuoja automobilis" (the rheme first), while "the car is coming" – "automobilis atvažiuoja" (the theme first; word order inversion).
Lithuanian also has a very rich word derivation system and an array of diminutive suffixes.
The first prescriptive grammar book of Lithuanian was commissioned by the Duke of Prussia, Frederick William, for use in the Lithuanian-speaking parishes of East-Prussia. It was written in Latin and German by Daniel Klein and published in Königsberg in 1653/1654. The first scientific Compendium of Lithuanian language was published in German in 1856/57 by August Schleicher, a professor at Prague University. In it he describes Prussian-Lithuanian which later is to become the "skeleton" (Būga) of modern Lithuanian.
Today there are two definitive books on Lithuanian grammar: one in English, the "Introduction to Modern Lithuanian" (called "Beginner's Lithuanian" in its newer editions) by Leonardas Dambriūnas, Antanas Klimas and William R. Schmalstieg, and another in Russian, Vytautas Ambrazas' "Грамматика литовского языка" ("The Grammar of the Lithuanian Language"). Another recent book on Lithuanian grammar is the second edition of "Review of Modern Lithuanian Grammar" by Edmund Remys, published by Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, Chicago, 2003.
Vocabulary [ edit ]
Indo-European vocabulary [ edit ]
Lithuanian retains cognates to many words found in classical languages, such as Sanskrit and Latin. These words are descended from Proto-Indo-European. A few examples are the following:
Lith. and Skt. sūnus (son)
(son) Lith. and Skt. avis and Lat. ovis (sheep)
and Lat. (sheep) Lith. dūmas and Skt. d h ūmas and Lat. fumus (fumes, smoke)
and Skt. and Lat. (fumes, smoke) Lith. antras and Skt. antaras (second, the other)
and Skt. (second, the other) Lith. vilkas and Skt. vṛkas (wolf)
and Skt. (wolf) Lith. ratas and Lat. rota (wheel) and Skt. rat h as (carriage).
and Lat. (wheel) and Skt. (carriage). Lith. senis and Lat. senex (an old man) and Skt. sanas (old).
and Lat. (an old man) and Skt. (old). Lith. vyras and Lat. vir (a man) and Skt. vīras (man).
and Lat. (a man) and Skt. (man). Lith. angis and Lat. anguis (a snake in Latin, a species of snakes in Lithuanian)
and Lat. (a snake in Latin, a species of snakes in Lithuanian) Lith. linas and Lat. linum (flax, compare with English 'linen')
and Lat. (flax, compare with English 'linen') Lith. ariu and Lat. aro (I plow)
and Lat. (I plow) Lith. jungiu and Lat. iungo, and Skt. yuñje (mid.), (I join)
and Lat., and Skt. (mid.), (I join) Lith. gentys and Lat. gentes and Skt. jántis (tribes)
and Lat. and Skt. (tribes) Lith. mėnesis and Lat. mensis and Skt masas (month)
and Lat. and Skt (month) Lith. dantis and Lat. dentes and Skt dantas (teeth)
and Lat. and Skt (teeth) Lith. naktis and Lat. noctes and Skt. naktis (night)
and Lat. and Skt. (night) Lith. ugnis and Lat. ignis and Skt. agnis (fire)
and Lat. and Skt. (fire) Lith. sėdime and Lat. sedemus and Skt. sīdamas’’ (we sit)
This even extends to grammar, where for example Latin noun declensions ending in -um often correspond to Lithuanian -ų, with the Latin and Lithuanian fourth declensions being particularly close. Many of the words from this list share similarities with other Indo-European languages, including English and Russian. The contribution of Lithuanian was influential in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language.
Lexical and grammatical similarities between Baltic and Slavic languages suggest an affinity between these two language groups. On the other hand, there exist a number of Baltic (particularly Lithuanian) words without counterparts in Slavic languages, but which are similar to words in Sanskrit or Latin. The history of the relationship between Baltic and Slavic languages, and our understanding of the affinity between the two groups, remain in dispute (see: Balto-Slavic languages).
Loanwords [ edit ]
In a 1934 book entitled Die Germanismen des Litauischen. Teil I: Die deutschen Lehnwörter im Litauischen, K. Alminauskis found 2,770 loanwords, of which about 130 were of uncertain origin. The majority of the loanwords were found to have been derived from the Polish, Belarusian, and German languages, with some evidence that these languages all acquired the words from contacts and trade with Prussia during the era of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.[26] Loanwords comprised about 20% of the vocabulary used in the first book printed in the Lithuanian language in 1547, Martynas Mažvydas's Catechism.[27] But as a result of language preservation and purging policies, Slavic loanwords currently constitute only 1.5% of the Standard Lithuanian lexicon, while German loanwords constitute only 0.5% of it.[28] The majority of loanwords in the 20th century arrived from the Russian language.[29]
Towards the end of the 20th century, a number of words and expressions related to new technologies and telecommunications were borrowed from English language. The Lithuanian government has an established language policy which encourages the development of equivalent vocabulary to replace loanwords.[30] However, despite the government's best efforts to avoid the use of loanwords in the Lithuanian language, many English words have become accepted and are now included in Lithuanian language dictionaries.[31][32] In particular, words having to do with new technologies have permeated the Lithuanian vernacular, including such words as:
Other common foreign words have also been adopted by the Lithuanian language. Some of these include:
Taksi (taxi)
Pica (pizza)
Alkoholis (alcohol)
Bankas (bank)
Pasas (passport, pass)
These words have been modified to suit the grammatical and phonetic requirements of the Lithuanian language, but their foreign roots are obvious.
Old Lithuanian [ edit ]
The language of the earliest Lithuanian writings, in the 16th and 17th centuries, is known as Old Lithuanian and differs in some significant respects from the Lithuanian of today.
Besides the specific differences given below, it should be noted that nouns, verbs and adjectives still had separate endings for the dual number. The dual persists today in some dialects. Example:
Case "two good friends" Nom-Acc dù gerù draugù Dat dvı̇́em gerı̇́em draugám Inst dviem̃ geriem̃ draugam̃
Pronunciation [ edit ]
The vowels written ą, ę, į, ų were still pronounced as long nasal vowels, not as long oral vowels as in today's Lithuanian.
The original Baltic long ā was still retained as such, e.g. bralis "brother" (modern brólis).
Nouns [ edit ]
Compared to the modern language, there were three additional cases, formed under the influence of the Finnic languages. The original locative case had been replaced by four so-called postpositive cases, the inessive case, illative case, adessive case and allative case, which correspond to the prepositions "in", "into", "at" and "towards", respectively. They were formed by affixing a postposition to one of the previous cases:
The inessive added -en to the original locative.
to the original locative. The illative added -n(a) to the accusative.
to the accusative. The adessive added -pie to the original locative.
to the original locative. The allative added -pie to the genitive.
The inessive has become the modern locative case, while the other three have disappeared. Note, however, that the illative case is still used occasionally in the colloquial language (mostly in the singular): Lietuvon "to Lithuania", miestan "to the city". This form is relatively productive: for instance, it is not uncommon to hear "skrendame Niujorkan (we are flying to New York)".
The uncontracted dative plural -mus was still common.
Adjectives [ edit ]
Adjectives could belong to all four accent classes in Old Lithuanian (now they can only belong to classes 3 and 4).
Additional remnants of i-stem adjectives still existed, e.g.:
loc. sg. didimè pulkè "in the big crowd" (now didžiame )
"in the big crowd" (now ) loc. sg. gerèsnime "better" (now geresniamè )
"better" (now ) loc. sg. mažiáusime "smallest" (now mažiáusiame)
Additional remnants of u-stem adjectives still existed, e.g. rūgštùs "sour":
Case Newer Older Inst sg rūgščiù rūgštumı̇̀ Loc sg rūgščiamè rūgštumè Gen pl rūgščių̃ rūgštų̃ Acc pl rū́gščius rū́gštus Inst pl rūgščiaı̇̃s rūgštumı̇̀s
No u-stem remnants existed in the dative singular and locative plural.
Definite adjectives, originally involving a pronoun suffixed to an adjective, had not merged into a single word in Old Lithuanian. Examples:
pa-jo-prasto "ordinary" (now pàprastojo )
"ordinary" (now ) nu-jie-vargę "tired" (now nuvar̃gusieji)
Verbs [ edit ]
The Proto-Indo-European class of athematic verbs still existed in Old Lithuanian:
'be''remain' 'give''save' 1st sg esmı̇̀ liekmı̇̀ dúomi gélbmi 2nd sg esı̇̀ lieksı̇̀ dúosi gélbsi 3rd sg ẽst(i) liẽkt(i) dúost(i) gélbt(i) 1st dual esvà liekvà dúova gélbva 2nd dual està liektà dúosta gélbta 1st pl esmè liekmè dúome gélbme 2nd pl estè liektè dúoste gélbte 3rd pl ẽsti liẽkt(i) dúost(i) gélbt(i)
The optative mood (i.e. the third-person imperative) still had its own endings, -ai for third-conjugation verbs and -ie for other verbs, instead of using regular third-person present endings.
Syntax [ edit ]
Word order was freer in Old Lithuanian. For example, a noun in the genitive case could either precede or follow the noun it modifies.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]We've been known to break out the Lego every once in a while for fun DIY projects, but if all your Lego is old and discolored, here's how to get it looking like new.
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Due to a fire retardant in the plastic Legos are made from, they tend to yellow quite a bit over time—which isn't ideal if you're building a dock to match your white iPod. Blogger Smitty noticed this problem and created a site dedicated to re-engineering the computer-case restoring previously mentioned Retr0bright solution for his Lego bricks.
The general process isn't too difficult; you'll just need a bit of hydrogen peroxide, glycerine, vegetable gum, and some OxiClean. With those ingredients, you can create a gel that, when applied to the bricks and left out in the sun for a few days, will restore them to their original shiny color. Hit the link for step-by-step instructions, and share your favorite uses for (restored) Lego in the comments.
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Lego Restoration [via Make]If you look like Michael Fassbender, you can pull off any style. But for some guys, bright colors and busy patterns don't feel right. The clothes here play to Fassbender's strengths—namely his strength, physically. To channel his version of handsome as sin and masculine as hell, go for grand understatements, mixing high and low, and wear it all confidently. Class up jeans and a polo with slick loafers, or take the piss out of a shirt and tie with a military jacket. Finally, focus your attention (and cash) on clothes that fit impeccably. That's the tough-guy secret: No matter your physical type, learn to let clothes flatter your body.
Polo shirt, $520, and loafers by Tom Ford. Jeans, $250 by A.P.C. Sunglasses by Oliver Peoples. Watch by Black limited edition.
On her: Blouse by Tom Ford. Panties by Agent Provocateur. Pants by Gucci. Heels by Prada.When Dane Jensen first started to work on Cam.ly, he dove right into things and wanted to learn how everything worked. It was no small feat, considering that our system already used (in addition to others) Ruby on Rails, Haml / Sass, Javascript, Java, shell, c, and c++.
After a few days, he was ready for a task, and I gave him some tough problems that we had to solve. We had some great brainstorming sessions, and decided that there were a few potential ways that we could approach solving some of our major problems, which he would work on. A few days later, I came back to see how he was doing, and noticed that he had apparently lost a lot of his initial energy. I asked him how his work was going on the big problems and he explained that he was intimidated and didn’t want to break anything. Then I said two words to Dane that changed him forever:
“Code Fearlessly”
All of the code he was working on was versioned in git. He was working entirely on development machines (not production). There was absolutely no way for him to break anything.
I decided that “Coding Fearlessly” was critical to being an extremely productive programmer by watching Nat Friedman. Nat is one of the best programmers I know, and he truly loves working on software.
One day I watched Nat deleting and changing a lot of code that people had obviously spent a lot of time writing. Some people might feel scared to even save the file after deleting so much code. Nat didn’t hesitate at all. He said, “Ok, well this is all in git,” and just started deleting. He was right. There was nothing he could do that would set back anyone else’s work, and even if he pushed to a development server (not likely unless he was sure it was a good commit), it would probably only take someone a few minutes to roll things back to the way things were.
There has been a lot of excitement, hype, and potentially disappointment when software development processes such as, XP (eXtreme Programming), TDD (Test Driven Development), or BDD (Behavior Driven Development), work really well for some teams, but not others. A huge benefit of TDD is that in some teams, on some projects, it creates a safety net where people are able to code fearlessly, and as long as all of the tests pass, they can push code. The benefits from having developers who work fearlessly without disrupting each other are enormous on any project.
Thinking about it further, I realized that this also reminded me of a story that the inventor, roboticist, and entrepreneur, Thomas Massie, once told me. When he was a child, he was fortunate enough that his parents bought a computer, and he desperately wanted to start making robots with it. However, he was smart enough to know that it was a bad idea to start sticking wires into the family computer that cost thousands of dollars. So, Thomas hatched a plan. He figured out that he could scotch-tape photo sensors to the computer screen and write programs that turned portions of the screen either on full brightness or full darkness. That way, he could write programs that controlled motors, without electrically connecting anything to the computer itself.
Many years later, at MIT, Thomas realized that as young child, he had re-invented the Opto-isolator, a device that gave him the freedom to work fearlessly with a computer.
While the benefits of “Coding Fearlessly” are clear to me, I think it’s important to make the distinction from “Coding Recklessly.” To truly code fearlessly, an environment must be created where there is truly nothing for the coder to fear. We developers are fortunate to finally have, as of the past few years, tools that can allow this for all developers cost effectively. Distributed version control (git, mercurial), virtual machines locally or in the cloud, laptops powerful enough to run databases, smartphone emulators, and many other pieces of technology (hardware or software), can all be used to put together development environments for software engineers that are very much unlike the days of the past.
Whoever is setting up the development environment for any project, whether your team is 1 person or 100 people, it doesn’t matter if you choose “agile” or “waterfall.” Your primary concern should be to create an environment where you developers can code fearlessly.BANGALORE: In spite of all the technological advances of the past few decades, accurate prediction of earthquakes has always been beyond the reach of science. Four years ago, a group of IIT Madras (IITM) students decided to give it a shot of their own. They also chose a method that is not yet proven in scientific and technological terms: send a satellite up to detect radiation from the earth prior to an earthquake.
The satellite-building has now evolved into a large multidisciplinary project involving 150 students and some professors, as well as mentoring from the engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
In a few months, ISRO will do a preliminary design review of the IITM student satellite. Once the design is approved and frozen, the students will begin integrating the satellite components. It will be launched - if ISRO approves the design and agrees for launch - by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) sometime in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Once up in the sky, the 15-kg satellite will look for a sudden precipitation of charged particles -- ions -- that is supposed to be the signature of an impending earthquake. "The students are building something hands on and not just writing reports," says David Koilpillai, the dean and professor of electrical engineering at IIT Madras.
When complete, this will be the third satellite in India to be made in a university. The earlier two launches were challenging projects, but the IITM satellite is different in conception, and it will also try to test a theory not yet accepted by the scientific community. "It is good to work on a project that even industry finds hard," says Akshay Gulati, one of the students who began the project. He has since graduated and become a project staff.
The project began in 2009, after some students heard a lecture by Muriel Richard, an engineer at the Swiss technical university EPFL. "We figured out that no Indian satellite had looked at ions," says Gulati.. Within a year, the students had identified the payload and shortlisted four instruments.
Some students went to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai and watched them build an experimental satellite. But things did not go smoothly. At the end of 2010, two years into the project, many ideas were still not clear and only four students left in the project.
The students then went to David Koilpillai and requested assistance. IIT Madras then became involved at the institutional level and sanctioned 3 crore, most of it to be raised from the alumni. They also assigned some space within the campus for a lab. The students then did a feasibility study and started the design process. They designed some sub-systems, which Isro engineers reviewed. The project also got integrated with MTech thesis: 14 students have now submitted this work as part of their course requirements.Anything can happen at one of Bruce Prichard‘s live shows, including Jim Cornette flashing his penis … just watch this video from his show in Detroit over the weekend.
It all went down at St. Andrews Hall when Cornette saw a cardboard Vince Russo head, which would normally be used for impressions, and threw it on the ground to mimmic urinating on the cutout.
Jim then pulled his track pants down and flashed his bait and tackle for a brief second.
The flashing was confirmed by multiple people on Twitter and one them said, “Could have done without seeing Corny’s penis but other than that great show!”
Gives new meaning to Jim Cornette waving his racket around.
UPDATE: Thanks to The Pro Wrestling Editorial, there’s video proof. Don’t worry. It’s censored.Holika Holika! Sunscreen for your skin! It smells like the beach.
Well it smells like people at the beach, I suppose. Although I've never actually gone around the beach smelling people. I think that sometimes you just imagine how things smell, so for me Holika Holika sunscreen smells like cartoon beach bodies.
With a hint of lizard blood.
So this stuff feels like glue, minus the sticky bits.
Which makes it not really glue-like at all. If you can imagine a non sticky elmers glue though, that's it exactly. If you can't imagine that, then I guess it feels like the chunky bits of old milk.
I think maybe now you'll try a bit harder to imagine non sticky glue, hmm?
If you've got facial hair (like me) or eyebrows (also like me) prepare for the white cast!
You'll look like
*the shining spoiler*
frozen Jack at the end of The Shining.
Except probably warmer since you are trying to protect yourself from sun rays.
1. Blegh! I rate this a oneeeee, but mostly because I don't really like sun screen to begin with. I don't really have anything against sunscreen though, just never really got along. Like, I guess it's sort of judgy but whatever. Todays review is brought to you by multiple contradictions.I rate this a oneeeee, but mostly because I don't really like sun screen to begin with. I don't really have anything against sunscreen though, just never really got along. Like, I guess it's sort of judgy but whatever.
Sunscreen sucks, thanks for the much needed protection though.
Yours truly, Johnny Clyde
Mois thoughts:
I was looking for a cheap sunscreen for Johnny a long while back.
My HG sunscreen is teeny tiny and not super cheap so I was looking for a convenient alternative.
I didn't find many Korean sunscreen reviews at the time so I just went for a random one.
Well, it didn't work out too fantastically. Honestly I hate this sunscreen and gave up using it even for my body.
As Johnny mentioned, this smells extremely sunscreeny. Not something that bothers me at all, by the way. For me, the issue is that it performs exactly like sunscreen. It is on the same level as average European sunscreens, so no where near as bad as Coppertone and such.
It is very thick without ever sinking into your skin. It just stays on top lingering for hours leaving an annoying greasy film. When I questioned Johnny about what he meant with glue on your face, he elaborated that it was what the film this sunscreen leaves on his face reminded him off.
To me it isn't like glue but old fashion sunscreen. I guess I am less creative than him.
On top of that gross feeling, this cream also has a white cast.
Very noticeably so.
On me it just gives me the ghosty look ( not the kind I am usually going for).
Thick consistency cream to the left. On the right pic, the white cast is visible on the right side
On someone with facial hair it creates unsightly white patches.
Not a good look.
Honestly I have nothing good to say about this sunscreen besides that it protects and isn't as awful as some others I have tried. I definitely don't recommend this.
There is many others that are much much better, such as my favorite Biore Watery Mousse or even other Korean ones.
I am happy this bottle is finally empty and I don't have to see it floating around any more.
Just a quick side note. I also own the spray from this line which is actually quite lovely.
Now you might wonder why I would buy a spray from the same line of this hated sunscreen?
It was the highest rated cheap sun spray on Get it Beauty and since no reviews were around I blindly trusted their judgement. Review coming soon...
PH: 7 (really, why though?)
1.Blegh
2. Pff 3. Meh 4. Oohh 5. Awwyeah 6. Wooha
Available at Testerkorea
I agree with Johnny Clyde on this one. If I wouldn't hate throwing things out I would have chucked this one real quick. Thanks Johnny for putting up with using this for so long!Rating:"The most successful alliance in history," it was called at the end of the Cold War in which NATO, for 40 years, deterred the Red Army from overrunning Berlin or crashing through West Germany to the Channel.
And when that Cold War was over, Sen. Richard Lugar famously said, "Either NATO goes out of area or goes out of business."
In Afghanistan and Libya, NATO went out of area. And given the trend in both conflicts, NATO may soon be going out of business.
NATO faces "collective military irrelevance," said Defense Secretary Robert Gates on his valedictory visit to a stunned Brussels last week:
"The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country -- yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference."
Gates' patience with the Europeans is, understandably, just about exhausted. Two decades after the Soviet Union disintegrated and the Red Army went home, America is still carrying 75 percent of the NATO burden for the defense of Europe.
Only five of 28 members invest in defense the 2 percent of gross domestic product required by NATO rules. Major members like the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey refuse to fly air strikes in Libya. France and Britain have run so low on munitions in a war against a sandbox country on the African coast that they have had to borrow U.S. munitions. Germany and Poland are AWOL.
With an air operations command capable of handling 300 sorties a day, the allies are struggling to put half that many in the air.
Another reason besides European malingering why NATO is in trouble is the fiscal crisis and sea change taking place in the United States.
Gates alluded to it. In America, "the reality is changing.... Choices are going to be made more on what is in the best interests of the United States."
With GOP conservatives joining congressional Democrats in seeking to cut off funds for the Libyan war, John Boehner has been forced to take the lead in charging the president with violating the War Powers Act. He is demanding Barack Obama come to Congress to get authorization to continue U.S. participation in the Libyan war.
Should the Americans pull out, NATO loses.
The first Republican debate in New Hampshire was astonishing for its anti-interventionist tone. While front-runner Mitt Romney said he would listen to the generals about when it is safe to get out of Afghanistan, he spoke out against any more wars to win independence for nations not vital to the United States.
This is straight out of the Robert Taft tradition that America does not fight other countries' wars or pay other countries' bills.
Michele Bachmann, who emerged as the star of the debate and favorite for the backing of the social conservative and Tea Party right, called Libya a strategic mistake. No vital U.S. interests were imperiled.
That debate was a fire bell in the night for the neoconservatives. The days when Republicans stood up and saluted a commander in chief as soon as he starting bombing a country appear to be over.
With Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya, the GOP appetite for intervention has been sated. Only Sen. Lindsey Graham is hot for air strikes on Syria to bring down President Bashar Assad.
Moreover, there are other reasons, based on painful experience, for the new hesitancy to use U.S. military force. One is blowback, the whiplash recoil that inevitably follows even beneficial U.S. action.
When Obama sent SEAL Team Six on that secret mission to kill Osama bin Laden, we so humiliated the Pakistani army its pro-American commander, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, could be ousted and replaced by officers hostile to the United States.
Second, while the U.S. military has shown itself capable of taking down regimes, we have proven less capable of establishing replacement governments that are strong, stable and pro-American. And we have thus far not succeeded at the follow-up business of nation-building, despite the investment of hundreds of billion of dollars.
Third, Americans are fed up with freeloaders, domestic and foreign.
They are fed up with politicians whose constituents pay no federal taxes howling for higher taxes on those who carry the load. Fed up with foreign aid to nations who never get off the dole and regularly vote against us in the U.N. Fed up with allies who spend less than we do on their own defense. Fed up with subsidizing the new international order while nations like China exploit that new order for their own advantage.
"Yankee, go home!" much of the world has been yelping for years. We may be all about to find out what happens when the Yankees do go home, not to return again for a long, long time.Story highlights The President and first lady met with Pope Francis Wednesday
She later visited a children's hospital
Vatican City (CNN) Melania Trump has dutifully considered every outfit she has worn during her first trip abroad as first lady -- her visit with Pope Francis on Wednesday was no exception.
With Vatican protocol in mind, the first lady arrived to meet the Pope on Wednesday wearing a black veil and long-sleeved Dolce and Gabbana black dress draped down to her calf. President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, wore a similar outfit with a larger veil.
"Per Vatican protocol, women who have an audience with the Pope are required to wear long sleeves, formal black clothing, and a veil to cover the head," Stephanie Grisham, the first lady's communications director, told CNN.
Days earlier, during her visit to Saudi Arabia, a strictly conservative Muslim theocracy, the first lady eschewed the customary headscarf, but stepped foot in the birthplace of Islam wearing a black jumpsuit reminiscent of the abaya worn by most women there. Despite not covering her head, the first lady's outfit earned her rave reviews from the local press, who praised her attention to the country's culture.
When asked why she wore a veil at the Vatican but eschewed a head covering in Saudi Arabia, Grisham said there was no request or requirement for her attire from that country.
Read MoreEditor’s Note: In March 2012, the national radio show “This American Life”, which ran a long excerpt from Mike Daisey’s play “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”, retracted its story saying it contains significant fabrications. Daisey responded saying the play “uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story.” TechCrunch has interviewed Daisey several times about his acclaimed play and he repeated to us some of the stories he has now admitted he didn’t actually witness. For more, see John Biggs’ TechCrunch post on “The Agony and Ecstasy of Mike Daisey“, and other posts about the retraction and Daisey’s response.
Why haven’t American technology journalists reported the truth about the working conditions at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China – a 430,000 person factory that manufactures around 50% of all the personal communications devices used in America? Why aren’t they doing their job?
According to the monologist Mike Daisey, it’s not only journalists who have missed the real story about the inhumane working conditions at Foxconn. Daisey says that we – Apple employers, investors and users like myself – have all committed the “terrible sin” of evading our “responsibilities.” We all – journalists and Apple fanboys alike – need to “wake up” and “open our eyes”, Daisey says, to the “dehumanizing” consequences of an economy in which all our manufacturing is outsourced to companies like Foxconn.
See the first part of the Keen On… interview with Daisey on Apple’s “terrible sin” in outsourcing its manufacturing to Foxconn.
Mike Daisey on tech journalism’s terrible sin
Mike Daisey on the dehumanization of America
Mike Daisey on Steve Jobs
Photo courtesy of Ursa WazOn Wednesday, four women accused Donald Trump of making unwanted sexual advances on them. | Getty These are the women who have accused Trump of groping or ogling them
Donald Trump’s campaign is struggling to cope with a wave of sexual assault allegations leveled against the GOP nominee. On Wednesday alone, four women accused the real estate billionaire of making unwanted sexual advances on them.
The most recently publicized claims of sexual assault against Trump are the latest in a series of allegations made against him that range from groping women to ogling underage girls. Many but not all of the allegations stem from Trump’s ownership of the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA and Miss Universe pageants.
Story Continued Below
Trump's campaign has denied the women's accusations.
The New York Times reported Wednesday on two such instances, the first in the early 1980s when a businesswoman named Jessica Leeds said she sat next to Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York. Leeds alleged that after the dinner trays had been cleared, Trump raised the armrest between their seats and proceeded to grope her breasts and attempt to put his hand up her skirt. “He was like an octopus,” Leeds said. “His hands were everywhere.”
In the second allegation, published in the same Times’ story as Leeds’, a woman named Rachel Crooks accuses Trump of forcibly kissing her in Trump Tower. Crooks was a 22-year-old receptionist for a real estate company with offices in Trump’s Manhattan skyscraper in 2005 when she said she ran into the former reality TV star outside of an elevator in the building. She told the Times that she introduced herself to Trump and shook his hand, he would not let her go and instead proceeded to kiss her on the cheeks and on her mouth. “It was so inappropriate,” Crooks told the Times. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.” In a phone interview with the Times about the accusations, Trump said “none of this ever took place” and told the reporter that “you are a disgusting human being.” The GOP nominee’s senior communications adviser released a statement about the report, labeling it “fiction” and accusing the paper of “launching a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump.”
Also in 2005, People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff said Trump forcibly kissed her during an interview at the real estate mogul’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Detailing her allegation in a story published on Wednesday, Stoynoff said she was in Florida to interview Trump about his recent marriage to Melania Trump, but as soon as she |
Leader of the Joint (Arab) List MK Ayman Odeh denounced the attack, while also accusing Netanyahu of driving the cycle of violence.
“I strongly condemn the explosion this evening in Jerusalem in which many innocent civilians were injured,” Odeh said in a statement. “Harming civilians is unacceptable and it also damages the justified Palestinian campaign to end the occupation.
“The Netanyahu government fuels the bloodshed and is fueled by it,” he continued. “Despair is fertile ground for terrorism. Only a diplomatic solution will bring security for both peoples.”
The terror attack broke weeks of relative calm in the city after a six-month wave of Palestinian terror and violence seemed to be subsiding, and marked a return to a type of violence not seen in Jerusalem for years.
Jerusalem police chief Yoram Halevy told media the blast was caused by an explosive device placed on the bus, but police did not know if the bomber was on the bus at the time of the blast.
“When a bomb explodes on a bus, it is a terror attack,” Halevy said, confirming that the bombing had been a terrorist action.
Police were investigating whether one of the people seriously injured in the explosion was in fact the terrorist responsible. However, the identity of the burned victim had not yet been confirmed, a spokesperson said.
The driver of the bus, who was lightly injured, told media he checked the bus for bombs twice before starting his route.
Gaza Strip-based Palestinian terror group Hamas praised the attack but did not claim responsibility in a statement on its website.
“Hamas welcomes the Jerusalem operation, and considers it a natural reaction to Israeli crimes, especially field executions and the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Other Palestinian groups similarly applauded the bomb attack without claiming any hand in it. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad “welcomed” the bombing as did the Popular Resistance Committees, which also called for more attacks.
The bombing was a stark reminder of an attack method commonly used during last decade’s Second Intifada, but which has since become rare as so-called lone-wolf attackers have assaulted Israelis using simpler weapons, such as knives, guns and cars.
“The pictures this evening raise difficult memories for all of us, and can’t even imagine what the Jerusalemites feel who once again must look at burnt buses,” Zahava Galon, head of the dovish Meretz party, wrote on Facebook. “Against the despicable terrorists who will do everything to destroy our life here needs to stand a brave leader who can broadcast not only strength but also hope for a different future. To my regret, Netanyahu is not even a quarter of that leader.”Bash scripts are a great way to automate simple tasks in our electronic day-to-day life. Once you get used to writing them, it easily becomes a productivity increasing habit. Here's a list of my most often used bash features and constructs.
Shebang and Options
I like to start every bash script with the following 3 lines:
#!/usr/bin/env bash set -e set -o noclobber
The first is the shebang line which lets us run the script as executable. Note the use of env which makes the script more portable, as we're no longer bound to where bash is installed.
The second line enters "error sensitive" mode, which will break out of the script in case of unexpected errors. This is helpful in preventing error snowball effect, where the failure of one command leads to more failures down the road.
The third line enters noclobber mode which protects accidental file clobbering (writing over a file by redirecting with the > symbol). You can still clobber a file intentionally using >|.
Bash Variables
Variables are defined using a single equal sign with no spaces around it. To its left is the variable name and to the right is the value. Variable names are written in lowercase by convention and multiple words separated by underscores. Some examples:
target_location=/usr/local file_name=demo.mp3 full_path="$HOME/$FILE_NAME" opts="-R"
Variables can include lists of files. Create list by wrapping the value in parenthesis (without quotes):
files=($HOME/*.txt)
System environment variables are written in uppercase. Some useful ones include:
HOME - user's home directory USER - current user CWD - current directory
Reading the value of a variable is done by prefixing a dollar sign to its name. To disambiguate we can use curlies when needed. Here are some examples:
echo "$file_name" # Array length echo "You have ${#files[*]} files" # Array item by index echo "The first is: ${files[0]}" echo "The second is: ${files[1]}"
Bash also supports derived values from variables when reading a value, which lets us cut a prefix or suffix from it:
file=/home/ynon/demo.mp3 echo "$file Is /home/ynon/demo.mp3" # cut prefix until the first dot echo "${file#*.} is mp3" # cut suffix until the first dot echo "${file%.*} is /home/ynon/demo"
The special variable $0 contains the script name and the positional variables $1, $2, $3, etc. contain the arguments passed to the script. For example the following snippet calculates the path of the currently running script:
script_path="`realpath ${0%/*}`"
Conditions
The command if defines a condition. Bash supports two types of conditional expressions: if command and if expression.
The first executes a command and branches according to its exit status. For example:
# if command site=www.google.com if httping -c 1 "$site" >& /dev/null then echo "Website $site Responded. It's probably alive" fi
The above code executes httping -c 1 www.google.com, redirects the output to /dev/null and prints a message if the command succeeded.
A second version is if expression which evaluates a boolean expression and branches according to its value:
if [[ -f /etc/passwd ]] then echo "path /etc/passwd is a file" fi
Bash has many built-in test operators. The above code uses -f which checks if a path is a file. Here are some more:
-f path is a regular file -d path is a directory -e path exists -r, -w, -x file at path is readable, writable or executable. -s file is not empty -z string string is zero length
Loops
Bash supports 2 types of for loops and also while loops. Let's start with the for loops iterating over a list:
# for each text file in my home directory files=/home/ynon/*.txt for f in files do echo "$f" head -1 "$f" echo done
Classic for loops are supported and written using double parenthesis:
# count from 2 till 20 for (( i=0; i <= 20; i++ )) do echo $i done
Finally while loops work as you'd expect from other languages. Like if, they can also be used either with commands or with boolean expressions.
The following snippet searches for an available file name with a known prefix using while:
i=0 while [[ -f myfile_$i ]] do (( i++ )) done echo "Found new name: myfile_$i" touch myfile_$i
Functions
Bash supports functions using the keyword function. Inside a function's body the variables $1, $2, $3, etc. hold the arguments passed to the function. The following function mcd will call mkdir and then cd to it:
function mcd { mkdir -p "$1" cd "$1" } # creates a new directory and cd to it mcd demo
Functions can declare local variables using the local keyword. They can only return integer values in $? variable. For strings results we can echo the value in the function and read it outside:
function find_file_name { local i=0 while [[ -f myfile_$i ]] do (( i++ )) done echo "myfile_$i" } fname=`find_file_name` echo "Found: $fname" touch "$fname"
Further Reading & Resources
The website https://www.tutorialspoint.com/execute_bash_online.php provides a live bash repl so you can type in short scripts and see their results in the browser.Effectively converting a color image to black and white involves much more than a simple “convert to grayscale” type of operation. In this video, Aaron Nace of Phlearn demonstrates how to produce a stunning black and white version of any color image in Lightroom.
Nace encourages working on a virtual copy of a color image for black and white conversion. Virtual copies take up little disk space, and allow you to easily access the original color version, or even create multiple black and white versions so that you can compare them to see what you like best. He recommends experimenting with the adjustment sliders not before, but after converting the image to black and white. He notes that black and white images can generally tolerate more extreme adjustments than color images. Nace shows how to adjust shadows, highlights, and the colors in the image independently to produce a black and white effect that suits each specific image. As a finishing step, he adds clarity, sharpening and grain to produce an edgier look.
Finally, Nace shows how to save your custom black and white conversion as a preset, so that it can be quickly applied to other images from the session and to future work. Fine-tuning your black and white conversions will help you keep a consistent look to your images and will allow you to escape the limitations of the black and white presets that are included in Lightroom software.From Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.
This article is about the small handheld virtual pet. For the core series game known as "Pokémon: Special Pikachu Edition", see Pokémon Yellow Version.
The Pokémon Pikachu (Japanese: ポケットピカチュウ Pocket Pikachu) is a step counter and virtual pet toy in which the player looks after a virtual pet Pikachu.
It was succeeded by the Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS.
Operation
The unit is strapped onto a belt and used as a pedometer. Every 20 steps the unit registers give the user 1 watt, which is a currency that can be used to gamble or buy Pikachu presents.
Friendship
As Pikachu's friendship goes up (similar to the system in Pokémon Yellow), more activities are available. If neglected, however, Pikachu will become angry and will not respond to anything the user does. Pikachu's friendship with the player increases faster if more watts are given at once, since its friendship value slowly decreases over time; the more watts recently given, the more time the player has to give again before Pikachu's friendship goes down.
Pikachu will also do activities based on time. When turning on the device soon before 8:00 pm, Pikachu may be taking a shower, brushing its teeth, or getting into bed; Pikachu will also eat occasionally. Shaking the device during eating or sleeping will make Pikachu angry, and its friendship will drop.
Pikachu has four levels of friendship:
Pikachu doesn't like the player Most of the time, Pikachu will face away from the player. Shaking the device will cause Pikachu to bounce up and down inside the screen, making it angry. When the player presses a button to turn on the screen, there is a high chance that Pikachu will "shock" the player. Getting Pikachu to stop disliking the player requires several thousand watts.
Pikachu is neutral towards the player (default) Pikachu will mostly stand in place, occasionally turning slightly to look at the player. Shaking the device will cause Pikachu to jog. Occasionally, Pikachu can be seen eating, brushing its teeth (usually after eating), showering, or reading a book. Shaking the device while Pikachu is eating or sleeping will cause it to bounce around the screen and get angry at the player, lowering friendship.
Pikachu likes the player Pikachu will appear larger on the screen, having moved closer. It will turn around from left to right, with its back to the player, until the device is shaken. It will then turn around and face the player. Pikachu may perform any of the actions it can if it is neutral to the player, as well as playing with blocks or in a sand box. Shaking the device while it plays will cause its toys to fall over, lowering its friendship with the player.
Pikachu loves the player Pikachu faces the player, taking up most of the screen. Shaking the device will cause Pikachu to wave at the player before walking. Instead of walking, Pikachu may rarely ride a bicycle or motorcycle.
Features
Pedometer
The device has a built in step counter. For every 20 steps the user takes, one watt is awarded. Shaking the device will add extra steps, but doing so while Pikachu is eating, bathing, or sleeping will lower its friendship stat. Doing so while the screen is off will not result in a loss of friendship.
Steps can be reset from the settings menu. Watts earned will not be reset, nor will Pikachu's current friendship level.
Clock
Shows the current time, as well as allowing the player to set an alarm. The alarm will be silent but display on the screen if the sound is turned off.
Gift
This allows the player to give watts to Pikachu, which will raise its friendship. Pikachu will react differently depending on how many watts it is given. Small amounts will result in Pikachu reacting negatively, while more will unlock new ways for Pikachu to play on the screen.
Slot machine
A mini game where Watts can be gambled. Like in the main series video games, the slot machine is stopped when the player presses the button, once for each reel. However, the player can only bid 5 Watts and there is only one row on the display.
Rewards Magikarp: 35 Watts Flower or Pikachu: 50 Watts 7's: 500 Watts
Device
The device
The device has a yellow case and a monochrome screen. It has the same button layout as the original Game Boy. The directional pad is used to select options from the main and settings menus and adjust the numbers on the clock and Gift options. The Select button shows Pikachu's current friendship level. The Start button opens the settings menu, which contains options for sound, the current time, and resetting the step count. The A button confirms selection, while the B button returns to Pikachu. Additionally, a reset button on the front of the device completely resets the player's progress.
Trivia
The Pokémon Pikachu is a treasure in In Wario Land 3. It is in the Green Chest and can be found in The Big Bridge; however, the player cannot interact with it.
The Pokémon Pikachu's design was used as the basis for a Hello Kitty virtual pet, which was produced by Nintendo.
ReferencesThe U.S. tax system contains a valuable benefit for prominent white-nationalist groups, which for years have enjoyed a legal status that allows them to not pay levies and lets supporters write off their donations. This status also, for tax purposes, puts them in the same legal category as zoos, colleges, museums, orchestras and planetariums.
It's a lucrative classification. Four well-known organizations associated with white nationalism - the National Policy Institute, the New Century Foundation, the Charles Martel Society and VDare Foundation - have raised $7.8 million in tax-free donations over the last decade, according to a recent analysis by the Associated Press.
Their tax status is getting renewed scrutiny after the 2016 election, in which white nationalists openly and widely championed President Donald Trump, raising their profile in American politics and adding overtly racist voices that were not part of the national dialogue in recent elections.
In a new proposal, legal expert Eric Franklin Amarante of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas is calling on the Internal Revenue Service to change the rules. His proposal, which he published online, would force white nationalist groups to start paying taxes by removing the provision they rely on for their tax exemption, a broad rule that benefits organizations that sponsor lectures, conferences and public discussions.
"They get the assumption - the benefit of the doubt - that they are operating in the public's interest, that this is a worthy organization," Amarante said. "Is this really how we want to operate? Do we really want to give the federal government's seal of approval, the imprimatur, to these organizations?"
The white nationalist movement has its intellectual roots in an old tradition of justifying racial prejudice through appeals to nonscientific theories of human evolution. The movement's adherents generally espouse discredited ideas about race, arguing that there are important hereditary differences between people of different races. Many also oppose racial integration and support a separate state for whites.
Recently, white nationalists have tried to distinguish themselves from white supremacists, an older term associated with terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. White nationalists say that they do not believe that whites are superior to people of other races or that they should have more power in society. (Peter Brimelow, who is in charge of the VDare Foundation, said the group's website is not white nationalist, but that some writers who contribute to it could be described using that term, the Associated Press reported.)
White nationalists also make use of anti-Semitic themes, and supporters often show off Nazi salutes.
But even organizations that condemn white nationalists' messages are hesitant about proposals to take away their tax-exempt status. Indeed, major advocacy groups for charities and not-for-profit groups argue that as long as white nationalists do not advocate violence or get directly involved in politics - a prerequisite for their current status - they should be exempt from taxes.
The white nationalist groups qualify for tax-exempt status because they have successfully argued that they have an "educational" mission, and charity advocates are uncomfortable with an arrangement in which the IRS decides which groups qualify for that educational status based on their messages.
"It is explicitly not the IRS's job to make a political judgment on whether they like the content," said Hadar Susskind of the Council on Foundations, a philanthropic coalition that defends legal protections for donors and charities. "If there's a hate group that's out there doing something bad, that's an issue for the FBI, not the IRS."
Groups in this category that receive tax-deductible donations are known as 501(c)(3) organizations. You "don't have to like all the people in the (c)(3) category to recognize that in our society we need all views expressed," said David Thompson, a vice president at the National Council of Nonprofits, which advocates for charities. "We don't make decisions on (c)(3) status based on whether we like their views or not."
Americans have been able to write off donations when they pay their taxes for a century, and the rule has become part of the country's culture of charitable giving. Americans donated an estimated $373 billion in 2015, according to Giving USA, a group based in Chicago that monitors charitable contributions. Allowing taxpayers to write off that money costs the federal government about $60 billion a year in forgone revenue, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
About $10 billion of that total benefits educational organizations and their donors. This category includes white-nationalist groups such as the National Policy Institute, although only a tiny fraction goes to these groups.
Amarante's solution is to entirely eliminate the category of educational organization for groups that offer "public discussion groups, forums, panels, lectures, or other similar programs." That is the criterion that many white-supremacist groups use to qualify for their "educational" tax-exempt status. Getting rid of it would allow the IRS to tax those organizations without having to pass judgment on their political leanings.
But that change could also jeopardize the status of respected nonpartisan research organizations, such as the Brookings Institution, or any group with privileges based in part on holding talks and conferences.
"The question is: Do we want to subsidize this type of organization?" Amarante said. "If so, we need to come up with an implementable, clear definition of a nonpartisan think tank."
Leaders from the white-nationalist groups defended their status.
"We are an educational organization, just as many other educational organizations take a particular point of view," said Jared Taylor, president of the New Century Foundation, which has had tax-exempt status from the IRS for more than two decades. "We have been scrupulously abiding by IRS regulations since 1994."
(The National Policy Institute recently lost its special status after failing to turn in the required paperwork, but experts said that decision was probably part of a general crackdown at the IRS this year and not a result of the group's beliefs. Richard Spencer, the group's president, said he expected to rectify the issue soon. "It was a big snafu," he said. "My hope is that within six months, we'll be back in good standing.")
Questions of tax exemptions and politics have long been thorny issues for the federal government, which is tasked with enforcing the law without the appearance of bias. The IRS was embroiled in scandal for months after some employees were found to have targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny as they screened for whether the organizations seeking tax exemptions were complying with the rules.
Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to make it easier for churches - another category of tax-exempt groups - to participate directly in politics. Officially, they are barred from doing so, although whether the order would have an immediate practical effect was unclear.
During the campaign, Trump said he hoped to eliminate the rule against political participation completely, which would also make it easier for charities and educational groups to intervene directly. That category would include, among many other organizations, white-nationalist groups.A Vancouver artist was tired of men telling her to smile. So she decided to do something about it.
Last week, a group show called "Strong Female Character" started at the Hot Art Wet City gallery. It features the art of Mandy Tsung, who started her "Bitchy Resting Face Project" in 2015, in which she painted portraits of women who sent her selfies.
SEE ALSO: Glowing bike path in Dutch town is like a moving Van Gogh painting
"All women know how infuriating it is if someone tells you to smile when your face is simply relaxed," she wrote on her blog when she started the project. "This is the most natural face a woman can make; her most honest expression, and yet it is so unsettling that strangers feel the need to do something to stop it. Perhaps it's because it makes it hard for them to enjoy her, to objectify her."
She added, "By depicting women as we are naturally, I hope to erase the shame and negativity that we feel about simply being ourselves."
Opening reception for Strong Female Character is happening this Friday at @HotArtWetCity! I'll be showing my #bitchyrestingfaceportrait series alongside work by @bronwyn.schuster and @sherrirogers. Hope to see you there 😃 A photo posted by Mandy Tsung (@mandytsung) on Jan 10, 2017 at 10:42am PST
Finally had a chance to do another bitchy resting face portrait! I've received so many submissions I'm not sure I'll be able to paint them all, but I'll try. This has been a really good exercise in letting go and learning unexpected things about myself, so thank you to everyone who is participating. #bitchyrestingfaceportrait A photo posted by Mandy Tsung (@mandytsung) on Mar 15, 2015 at 3:59pm PDT
You can check out her art online or stop by the Vancouver gallery through Jan. 28.
[h/t] CBC ArtsThese days, everyone is talking about super capitals. The DRF is mass-producing them, the South wishes they had more of them, and the Goons wish they were never put into the game.
These ships have become the single most important factor in determining who controls null sec territory, and they seem to have cornered the market on frustration & butt-hurt at a time when customer satisfaction with CCP is at critically low levels.
Because of the high damage of fighter bombers, which require no ammo or energy from the host ship, super carriers have been firmly cemented as the new bulldozers for sovereignty infrastructure.
Compared to dreadnaughts, super carriers have far better offensive and defensive capabilities, with none of the built-in disadvantages that dreads bring.
Super carriers, like titans, have full e-war immunity at all times. Unlike dreads, they don’t need to siege to obtain this immunity, and therefore it is much harder catch them with their pants down in the same manner that often happened to dread fleets.
While in siege mode, dreads can be killed even by a comparatively small number of sub-capital ships. This is because dreads in siege mode cannot receive remote repair, dock, or jump.
This was a great way to balance the behemoth tower-killers of yore. No such balancing mechanic exists for super carriers. Super carriers are far from helpless against sub-caps thanks to their drone bay, fighters, remote ECM burst, and considerable buffer tank.
And then there are the titans.
There is no other ship class that has caused so many problems in the history of eve. Titans have been broken since release, and every change has simply replaced one game-breaking super-weapon with another game-breaking super-weapon.
Titans have never been fun to fight against. Originally, they could remotely AOE ships from another system through a cyno. In those days, they didn’t even have to jump through to set off the weapon.
Later, they were forced to jump through in order to deliver the doomsday, so people started bring “waves” of titans to ensure it wasn’t possible for anything to survive and tackle the titan.
Now, with titans being something like a super-capital sized battleship, people are not bringing a handful titans in waves before quickly hiding them, they are dropping dozens of them at a time on everything that moves.
And why not? It’s not as if there is any risk involved with dropping 50 titans, unless of course there are 51 titans nearby who are ready to counter you. Some refer to this as the “n + 1” counter.
Titans not only reduce capital fleets to ash, they also have an equally strong impact on key sub-capitals ships. Titans can turn a “sub-cap advantage” into a long list of loss mails rather quickly unless you have obscene odds in your favor.
The common retort when discussing the primacy of supers in 0.0 is a two word reply, “cyno jammers,” as if these were an easy counter to sustain 23/7.
All it takes is an unannounced form-up by the enemy in your weak timezone, and rather quickly the jammer will be gone, usually too fast for a coalition to communicate and respond with sufficient force.
The enemy can jump in their supers and dominate the system from then on. If they need to log, they can log in system, and erecting a new jammer will do nothing to eject the supers who have already made it in.
Once you have hostile supers logged in a system, they will be able to log them in unpredictably to take down any new jammers. They can also cause all kinds of other misery for you.
Even if you could protect your jammers 23/7 and lock-in your own supers to crush invaders, you will have to cycle the jammer eventually to move your own caps into the system. Otherwise, the enemy could simply hit every other system first while you hide under a single jammer.
The bottom line is that a determined attacker will get their supers on-field if they want it badly enough.
To make matters worse, an incapacitated jammer prevents the anchoring of a replacement, so the defenders will have to repair or destroy their own busted jammer before they can re-jam the system.
So when speaking of “jammers,” remember that they are not an invincible on/off switch that the defender can flip at will, it is simply another pos module that can be taken out in a variety of ways.
Currently, supers are getting a ton of attention, and with good reason.
One of the things that makes Eve interesting is the room for creativity and innovation in fleet warfare. At the sub-capital level, this kind of evolution in tactics and fittings has always been alive and well.
Even when carriers and dreads started being used in large numbers, there was a huge space for diversity in tactics and fittings (e.g. – sniper dreads, brawler dreads, pantheon carriers, triage carrier rotations).
In those days, any good capital strategy involved using sub-caps as well, and losing all of your support often meant your destruction.
What made the capital ship class interesting was that – while powerful – they were also very vulnerable. Triage mode and siege mode present a HUGE risk. This is a TRADEOFF you make for more power.
Super capitals are not forced to choose between power and safety. A large group of supers are very safe on any battlefield.
Even against a larger group of supers, inadequate log-off mechanics ensure that you are likely to save the majority of your fleet in the case of a well-executed trap.
Supers represent a dead-end. There is no reason to specialize in anything else, and there are no counters to be found in other ship classes.
I realize people have killed supers with 200-300 suicidal gank-fit sub caps before. This is fun and I cheer along with everyone else when “welp fleet” takes down a super carrier, but this is not a counter that will allow a side with less supers to win a major battle, it’s more like harassment, and it only works under specific conditions.
Instead of a “rock, paper, scissors” situation (example: armor hacs v. alpha BS v. Tengus), or a Achilles heel situation (example: siege mode for dreads), we have a class of ships that have no weaknesses.
When the only direct counter for a ship/class/character/team is more of that ship/class/character/team, this is the essence of a broken game mechanic.
Right now, a majority of the super-cap heavy alliances are part of the same coalition.
This coalition, lead by the Drone Region Russians, was formed for a singular purpose: the destruction of the Northern Coalition.
To this end, Raiden (ex-BoB) and NCdot (ex-Tri) joined hands with the heavily Russian DRF. By this time, the DRF already included Red Alliance, Legion of xXDeathXx, Solar Fleet, White Noise, Intrepid Crossing, Red Legion, The Jagged Alliance, Controlled Chaos, and others.
Pandemic Legion, the largest super-cap force in the game, once again played “king-maker” here, joining the Russians and their comrades in exchange for a hefty sum.
At first, I was cheering for the NC to finally meet their end, as were nearly all of us in MVN, but soon I began to wonder if it really was such a good thing for the game to see a large care-bear oriented bloc that was notorious for welcoming new players removed entirely.
Combined with a null-sec income nerf, and the introduction of high-paying incursions, there was little reason for the bears residing in the North to fight and reclaim their space.
The result was more people playing in empire, which means less targets for everyone other than Privateers & The Orphanage.
It would have been fine if the replacement for the NC were simply a number of smaller coalitions, but what we got was another mega-bloc.
With the NC defeated, PL went back to playing better games than Eve, and they reset standings until they are needed again.
However, the rest of the coalition has remained intact, despite the lack of any existential threat to the DRF or any real re-consolidation of the NC to be found anywhere.
Next, the majority of the coalition that was necessary to pry the NC from the North was leveraged against AAA, and the other “Southern” alliances. Ostensibly, this conflict also involved the residents of the entire Southwest, among whom are several ex-NC entities.
I can say with confidence that very few supers are being built in the South right now. Some corps are crazier than others in this regard, but everyone feels the impending doom of the DRF and their new allies.
It isn’t really a mystery why Raiden and NCdot kept the DRF blue, they want to beat up on a weaker coalition more than they want to worry about defending their own space right now.
Their choices were to attack West into Deklein, attack east into IRC space, or bandwagon with White Noise & RA against AAA in the South. Considering the stomping the Russians took in 46DP, I can only imagine that the Russians were pleading for help at that point.
So, predictably, the groups that once resented the NC for having “too many blues” decided to keep their new mega-bloc standings intact and go South.
Down here, they have been helping White Noise take revenge for the CSAA’s AAA destroyed, and to “reclaim” space that White Noise took from AAA to begin with.
Initially, the war was going well for AAA and friends. Red Alliance + White Noise + xxDeathxx + Controlled Chaos + Ultima Ratio were a good match for AAA + ROL + Nulli + Cascade/Atlas + Nulli.
Relatively even wars are conducive to large battles where super-caps are frequently deployed on both sides. Epic battles ensue, and fun is had by all. The brawl that took place in 46DP is a great example of this.
Victories under relatively-even conditions feel earned, and tend to make for great stories to write about. These are also the kinds of stories that draw new players to the game.
On the other hand, one-sided wars raise the stakes of using supers too high for the weaker bloc. While easier for the conqueror, these wars harm morale on both sides because there is no suspense, and even fewer enjoyable fights.
With the alliances currently tied to the DRF remaining blue, and the power of supers unchecked, we effectively have a uni-polar world on Tranquility right now. This means new coalitions are unlikely to be able to break into 0.0, and the current blocs not-allied with the DRF exist only at their mercy.
This situation does not provide much fun for current players, and worse yet, it doesn’t draw in new players into 0.0 – or even to playing the game in the first place.
The Dominion experiment has failed, perhaps even more spectacularly than the Incarna expansion.
I don’t consider it a stretch to say that a super-capital imbalances between major power blocs are bad for the game itself. Dominance by one power bloc, which is made possible by an ever-growing growing super-capital majority, inevitably contributes to apathy.
This is the super-cap gap that many people, myself included, consider game-breaking.
When people feel that logging in doesn’t matter, they are more likely to move on to other games. This is bad for everyone involved, regardless of who won and lost in their most recent campaigns.
Right now, when all the supers in the game are counted up, the DRF and their allies simply have too many toys, especially if you count PL on their side.
Everything mentioned so far is common knowledge. I think CCP, the players, and even the non-Eve-playing gaming media are aware that there are balance problems with this game right now.
What hasn’t been discussed adequately is how to fix things.
First off, a political solution could be reached that breaks the DRF into at least two smaller parts. This would be a temporary fix to the problems caused by the super-cap gap, but it doesn’t access the root of the problem.
Most importantly, this kind of political solution is something only players could control, since I don’t believe CCP is creative or ballsy enough to come up with a way to penalize players for having large blue lists.
Additionally, any temporary reset between group like NCdot and their Russian comrades is likely to be temporary. Any serious threat to either side would lead to a renewed bandwagon.
Second, supers could be nerfed. This is something CCP has already come to terms with, and I suspect a poll of every player in 0.0 would heavily favor this outcome. The only question is, how.
Right now on singularity, titans cannot doomsday sub-capital ships. This is the first step towards balancing titans, and by far the most needed change.
Titans currently get “rooted” for 30 seconds after firing their doomsday weapon, which is only a minor limitation, but they also cannot cloak or jump out of the system for 10 minutes. These restrictions are still present on singularity, but they have not been increased, which has come as a disappointment to some players.
The real problem with the current “penalties” associated with the doomsday weapon is that they make dropping a single titan on a hostile target (like a ratting carrier or jump freighter using a cyno beacon) hazardous for that one pilot, but they do not make large titan fleets any less safe when deployed together.
In order for 50 titans on grid to worry about their 10-minute timers, they would need to be in danger to begin with. Making them stick around is only a penalty if there is a chance that someone stands a chance of killing them.
So what’s still missing?
Titans need to be more vulnerable to sub-cap fleets. The DD target nerf is a huge step, but turret-based titans need to be unable to chew through hostile battleship fleets like they do. Nerf them all to the level of the Leviathan, which can only harm other capitals with its launchers.
I think that dreads also need a major boost in damage, effectively making them a viable counter to supers if you can resign yourself to losing them in large numbers.
My biggest question is, what about the super carriers?
Super carriers are cheap compared to titans, and they out-class both carriers AND dreads in every way.
I think a dread buff would go a long way to indirectly nerfing super carriers, since they share the role of anti-capital and anti-structure powerhouse. However, that doesn’t seem sufficient to me.
Some have proposed limiting super carriers to fighters and bombers, removing the ability to launch other drones. I don’t think this really gets to the heart of the problem. Having only fighters for killing sub-caps and only bombers for killing capitals would not be particularly limiting.
I personally favor a hit point nerf, reducing them to about 5x the EHP of a carrier instead of their current form (which is around 12-15x times the EHP of a carrier).
As an example, a Thanatos has 125k armor while a Nyx has over a million armor, with more slots to add tank. Supers are usually dead-space tanked as well, while carriers get t2 or faction at best.
There is another more radical change that I support. I am a proponent of removing e-war immunity for super carriers and titans.
What better way to reign in the power of super capitals than to allow well-coordinated teams of e-war specialists to dampen, disrupt, jam, scramble, and web these behemoths.
It only seems fair that titans should be vulnerable to tracking disruption since they can benefit from remote tracking links. It only seems fair that super should be |
, finally, the Angelic or “Enochian” language, which they explained was the ur-language of humanity, spoken before the Fall of Adam.
For Dee, this was not magic, but religion—he supplicated himself to the angels totally. Kelley, though, was terrified of the spirits, considering them demons and constantly begging Dee to cease the sessions. Dee insisted on pushing ahead, overworking Kelley to exhaustion and keeping him virtually prisoner at Mortlake.
The angels, for their part, detested Kelley, clocking immediately that he had previously engaged in demonic grimoire magic, and quickly became exasperated with both Dee and Kelley. Though Dee may have been the smartest member of the species, he was still perceived as an inconsequential gnat by the angelic hyper-intelligences—particularly when Dee and Kelley began begging them for money (Kelley even asked if the angels could loan him money!). But for all of Dee and Kelley’s embarrassing lack of evolution, they would have to do, because the angels had a plan, and Dee and Kelley were on the hook.
Put simply, the angels wanted nothing less than a New World Order, run by divine principles, and proposed what must be one of the most dangerous ideas in Western history: A world religion, based on love and unity—a supra-Christianity or Terminal Monotheism which would not only reunite Catholicism and Protestantism but even Judaism and Islam into a fused whole; all made possible, of course, by the technology the angels had provided for direct individual contact with the spiritual agents of God instead of relying on terrestrial authority or scripture.
Combined with the foundation Dee had already laid for a temporal New World Order under Elizabeth, this new religion would unite the souls of the entire globe, fusing all humanity into one State, and one Church, all directed by the angels themselves—the New Jerusalem.
So fervent were the angels that they commanded Dee and Kelley to present themselves to the court of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, tell him he was possessed by demons, and command him to heed the angelic message. This was a death sentence—but Dee and Kelley, shockingly, made good on it. Rudolf ignored them, but the Papal nuncio did not, and plotted their destruction. The Church, it seems, took Dee and Kelley’s claims seriously—perhaps as a threat to their very existence. Humans talking to God without scriptural or institutional mediation was not on the menu.”
To the evidence of the success of England under the direction/guidance of these “fallen angles/demons”, this report says, cannot be denied as it began the British Empire on which “the sun never set”, that is until the end of the 20th century when upon the death of Queen Victoria, in 1901, the German House of Hanover (of which Queen Victoria headed) disseminated their “occult knowledge” throughout all of the royal houses of Europe.
What began then, this report grimly notes, was a century of wars “deliberately initiated and controlled” by these “fallen angels/demons” intent upon total destruction so as to establish their one world religion, the most destructive being World War II.
Causing World War II to be so destructive, this report continues, was the German Nazis successful establishment of an inter-dimensional transport/communication device calledDie Glocke (The Bell) allowing for the first time since 1561 a Vimana air/space craft to appear on Earth in 1937.
The previous attempt of these “fallen angels/demons” to reintroduce their Vimana air/space crafts on Earth since “the great overturning”, this report notes, occurred on 14 April 1561 when John Dee traveled to Nuremberg, Germany and using the “occult mechanisms” he had been taught by these entities caused to erupt a furious sky battlewitnessed by all of the residents of the city, and in which the “fallen angels/demons” were defeated.
By 1937, though, this report says, an intact Vimana air/space craft was not only in the hands of the German Nazis, they were able to start duplicating it resulting in what are now referred to as the “foo fighters”, a term used by Allied aircraft pilots to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific theaters of operations.
Even after World War II, MSC experts in this report say, the Nazi Germans remaining “foo fighters”, along with the Die Glocke “device”, were secreted to Antarctica where they remain today, and attested to by numerous high-ranking present and former Russian military officials. [See video HERE] To how great of a danger our planet is in due to these “fallen angels/demons” reappearing with their Vimana air/space crafts, this report warns, is evidenced by the mysterious 9 December 2009 event called the “Norway Spiral” [See video HERE] where a fantastical otherworldly spiral appeared in the night sky over both Norway and Sweden and which the ancients of people of our planet had all recorded was sign that always preceded the arrival of the “gods”.
Equally as critical to note about the 2009 “Norway Spiral”, MSC experts state, is that within days of it occurring “dozens, if not more” mysterious crafts began erupting from deep beneath Siberia leaving massive craters and hurtling into space with one of them being tracked this week where it has taken up an orbit around our Sun.
As President Putin this past August (2014) classified as a “Potential National Threat” any news/information relating to these mysterious crafts erupting from beneath Siberia, this report does note…however, it further states that what is now called the Chelyabinsk meteor event of 15 February 2013, that exploded with 20–30 times more energy than was released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima [See video HERE], was (based on orbital trajectory) in actuality an “apparent attack” against the Siberian region where these mysterious crafts are being launched from, and was “exactly like” the 30 June 1908 meteor attack upon this same region that is now called the Tunguska event.
Also, and perhaps most disturbingly, this report concludes, US-EU attempts to demonize President Putin and embroil Russia in war are, in fact, “an elaborate masquerade” designed so that these Western powers can overrun Siberia to destroy/dismantle what by all appearances seems to be an ancient defense system designed to protect our planet from these “fallen angel/demons” who are now in league with, if not outright controlling, nearly all of the Western nations on Earth.
And finally, though not exactly referred to in this MSC report, Western scientists appear to be preparing their citizens for what is to come by publishing many scientific papers this past year proving that parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, a position, mind you, first stated by the renowned French scientist and UFO researcher Jacques Vallée, who decades ago warned that what are commonly called aliens from other worlds may, in fact, be fallen angels and demons.
SourceLOS ANGELES/SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Southern California’s biggest drinking water supplier will seek an option to buy 20,000 acres of river delta farm land east of San Francisco, a deal that could benefit a controversial tunnel project to carry Northern California water southward, the agency said on Tuesday.
An aerial view of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California in this file photo taken on April 15, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Durrell/Pool
Officials at the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California denied criticism that the move portends a land-water grab in a region long suspicious of efforts in the drier southern part of the state to gain more water from the north.
The property under consideration by the district consists of four islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that are now owned by Delta Wetlands Properties, a U.S. subsidiary of Swiss-based Zurich Insurance Group, and used mostly for farming.
Land values cited by the water agency could put the cost of buying 20,000 acres at $150 million to $240 million.
If eventually purchased by the district, it would be the first delta land the agency has ever acquired. But critics worried that it might not be the last.
“The potential takeover of land and water rights... is akin to what happened to landowners in the Owens Valley,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parilla, head of the environmental group Restore the Delta.
She was referring to a century-old chapter in California’s water wars in which the city of Los Angeles bought up distant tracts of land to divert Sierra Nevada-fed runoff from the Owens River and carry it some 200 miles to the south.
Metropolitan Water District (MWD) officials insisted the amounts of water immediately at stake were minimal.
Acquisition of the property in question would yield direct access to no more than 10,000 acre feet of water a year, agency officials said, a tiny fraction of the volume MWD supplies to 19 million people in a vast service area encompassing Los Angeles and six counties.
“That in and of itself would not interest Metropolitan,” Jeffrey Knightlinger, MWD’s general manager, told reporters on a conference call after its board voted to pursue a deal.
Instead the land offers greater potential benefits for wildlife preservation and wetlands restoration projects that could offset environmental impacts of future water works elsewhere, Knightlinger said.
Moreover, two of the islands lie in the path of two giant tunnels California Governor Jerry Brown has proposed digging beneath the delta as part of a $15 billion project he has said would ease some of the state’s protracted water-distribution woes.
The MWD is a strong backer of the project and the land deal would avoid the need for costly eminent domain proceedings to acquire the portion of the tunnel route that traverses the two islands, the agency said.
Supporters see the tunnels as crucial to keeping sufficient water supplies delivered to the state’s arid San Joaquin Valley breadbasket and the heavily populated southlands.
But the project is opposed by conservationists who say it would rob the delta of increasingly scant water flows needed to sustain marsh habitat for threatened fish, birds and other wildlife, with too little environmental mitigation planned.
Water rights in the delta, a hub of California’s surface water network, have become especially sensitive as the state copes with a fourth year of drought that has fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres of crop land, threatened habitat for birds and fish, and spurred the state’s first-ever mandatory conservation orders.This season has been absolutely excruciating to experience as a Nuggets fan. On one hand, we see a young, promising team posting a decent record of 7-10 en route to a mid level lottery pick. On the other hand, we see recurring, tragic fourth quarter collapses from a team that should be at the worst 9-8 with hopes of snatching up the coveted 8th seed in the Western Conference.
Let’s quickly re-live (sorry) some of the most notable collapses from this season.
10/29- Portland 115, Denver 113 (OT)
The Nuggets had an 8 point lead with with 0:50 left in the 4th quarter. How is it even possible to lose this game? Here is a recap of the events that occurred in the last 50 seconds of regulation:
Lillard 3PT FG (Den +5, 0:45)
Gallinari isolation- missed contested deep 2PTA (Den +5, 0:23)
CJ Mccollum AND 1, fouled by Mudiay on the layup (Den +2, 0:15)
Barton fouled, first in last 2 minutes (Den +2, 0:13)
Faried inbounds-bad pass, TO (Den +2, 0:12)
Mudiay steals ball from Lillard (Den +2, 0:07)
Pause for a second here. Okay, so Denver has the ball in the open court with a 2 point lead with only 6 seconds remaining. Their odds of winning must be >99%. Also, shoutout Mudiay for a super clutch and impressive defensive play.
Wilson Chandler fouled (Den +2, 0:04)
Chandler misses 2 FTs, Portland DREB (Den +2, 0:03)
Lillard curls open for wide open alley-oop layup off inbounds play (Tie, 0:02)
In overtime, Portland barely outplays Denver behind exceptional play from Lillard and Mccollum and wins the game on a Lillard game-winner. The tragedy of this loss of course comes in the end-of-regulation collapse.
Main takeaway: in last minute, clutch possessions, Nuggets ended up with a turnover, Gallo contested, isolation deep 2 point attempt, and finally with 2 missed free throws. The Blazers, on the other hand, end up with Lillard 3PTM, Mccollum AND-1, turnover, and Lillard driving layup. What’s the difference? Portland was able to rely on their two best players to convert 75% of the last minute possessions, while the Nuggets convert on 0% of the same opportunities. Yes, I blame Gallo, Chandler, and Faried, but at what point is it a personnel problem?
11/8- Denver 107, Memphis 108
I generally chalk up seemingly unbalanced refereeing to chance and hope that it all balances out in the end. This time, however, I could not get myself to move past such an egregious mistake. In this unique ending, (I mean truly unique, not sure if this has ever happened before) the referees got an out of bounds call wrong AFTER replay review. Yes, after an extensive replay review aided by the replay center in Secaucus, the call was made incorrectly. How do I know? Oh yeah the League admitted to their mistake and issued an apology. Great. Thanks a lot.
Anyway, the Nuggets absolutely should not have allowed the game to deteriorate to the point to which one incorrect out-of-bounds call could impact the outcome of the game. Here is a recap of the events that occurred in the last 50 seconds of regulation:
James Ennis 3PT FG (Den -1, 2:20)
Now, somewhat remarkably, neither team scores until there is only 7 seconds remaining in the game. This is extremely unusual. Over this time, the Nuggets had four (4!) possessions in which they had the chance to take the lead. These four possessions resulted in the following:
Mudiay missed 3PT Gary Harris missed 2PT FG Gary Harris TO Mudiay TO
Absolutely devastating. We only needed to convert one of these possessions to win this game. Thanks to the incompetence of the Grizzlies, the Nuggets luckily came out of this horrendous stretch of basketball still down by merely 1 point.
Mudiay and Harris trap Conley against sideline and come up with steal! (Den -1, 0:10)
What a miracle! Harris comes up with a huge steal before intentionally fouling as Memphis was attempting to ice the game. If Harris doesn’t come up with this steal, we must foul and the game is likely over. Okay, Denver ball with 10 seconds to go.
Mudiay made 2PT FG (Den +1, 0:07)
James Ennis inbound TO (Den +1. 0:07)
So now the Nuggets have the ball yet again with a one point lead with only 7 seconds remaining.
Mike Miller (?) inbound TO (Den +1, 0.7 s)
This is where the refs made the incorrect call. Nuggets should have had possession with 0.7 seconds remaining and a one point lead. Instead, Memphis inbounds from under their own basket and this happens:
Absolutely devastating.
Main takeaway: Mudiay and Harris (and unfortunately the entire team) cannot seem to handle these late game situations with poise. Ultimately, despite the atrocious shooting down the stretch, the 3 consecutive turnovers (Mudiay, Harris, Miller) led to the ultimate demise of the Nuggets. Also, Grizzlies were really bad down the stretch, but when it came down to it, their guy (Mark Gasol) came through. Same cannot be said for the Nuggets. Denver losing a game due to turnovers… sound familiar? 😦
11/25- OKC 132, Denver 129 (OT)
I almost expected a disastrous finish to this game. Nuggets are probably a better overall team than the Thunder, but of course, Westbrook would come up with some late game heroics to send the Nuggets to yet another heart-breaking defeat. That’s exactly what happened.
So, the Nuggets played a gem of a game and had a 10 point lead with under 4 minutes to go. This is where things start to go wrong…
Wilson Chandler TO (DEN +10, 3:25)
Westbrook 3 PM (Den +7, 3:06)
Jameer Nelson TO (Den +7, 2:50)
Alonzo Gee STL (Den +7, 2:47)
Alonzo Gee missed 3PA (Den +7, 2:31)
Murray fouls Westbrook on a 3, makes all 3 FTs (Den +4, 2:23)
Jameer Nelson missed 3PA (Den +4, 2:04)
Westbrook makes driving layup (Den +2, 1:58)
Jameer Nelson 3PM! (Den +5, 1:36)
Okay pause here. Five point lead with 1.5 minutes remaining. Easy, right? Nope.
Oladipo mid-range (Den +3, 1:19)
Jokic TO (Den +3, 1:06)
Oladipo driving layup (Den +1, 1:02)
Jameer Nelson missed mid-range (Den +1, 0:45)
Westbrook mid-range (Den -1, 0:35)
Jameer Nelson missed mid-range (Den -1, 0:23)
Westbrook fouled, makes 2 FTs (Den -3, 0:17)
Alright ultimately, the catastrophically blew a 10 point lead with under 4 minutes to go. There are, however, 2 positive things to come from this horror:
1. Jamal Murray is clutch and he knows it. Taking and making 3 straight free throws to tie the game as time ticked away was absolutely stunning and Afflalo v. Kings (see below) esque.
2. Kenneth Faried had super clutch block on Westbrook on the last posession. It was absolutely amazing!
Main takeaway: I guess there isn’t too much to say about this game that hasn’t been said about the Portland game. One thing is that Mike Malone closed the game with Alonzo Gee instead of Emmanuel Mudiay who was actually having a great game up against Westbrook. Coaching is certainly one of the main drivers of the Nuggets monumental collapses.
In addition to these tragedies, it is obvious that this team has issues in the clutch even outside of these most notable failures. More often than not, the Nuggets will allow long, slow come-backs throughout the end of the 3rd and 4th quarters. Despite sometimes large mid-3rd quarter leads, the Nuggets frequently find themselves in “clutch” situations (defined as game situations with <5 minutes left to play and deficit/lead <=5 points). In fact, 11/17 of the Nuggets games have featured at least some “clutch” minutes. In these games, Denver has a record of 4-7. Ugh.
In these 48 clutch minutes (7th most in the league), Denver’s offensive rating plummets from a decent 102.5 to an abysmal 86.8 while their AST/TO ratio drops from 1.34 to 1. This confirms my general observations above that the Nuggets offense becomes desperate with tons of turnovers in clutch situations.
So this is obviously a problem. What is the solution?
The way I see it, the quickest way to fix these problems would be a major personnel change. I mean MAJOR. The other, more realistic way of fixing this problem is a slight change in rotation/coaching strategy.
1. Personnel
The teams that are most successful in clutch situations (categorized by Net Rating) are the Warriors, Spurs, Cavaliers, Grizzlies, and Celtics. What does these teams have in common? All of these teams have exceptional duos of all-star talent that have proven themselves in the clutch. This leads to more efficient isolation plays where the defense is unable to key in on one player because there is a fellow all-star on the other side of the court.
Currently, the Nuggets have exactly 0 players on their roster at this level. Let’s take a look at a few examples around the league and see who these players are and where they reside.
Steph Curry, Kevin Durant- Warriors
Kawaii Leonard, Lamarcus Aldridge- Spurs
Lebron James, Kyrie Irving- Cavaliers
Mike Conley, Mark Gasol- Grizzlies
Chris Paul, Blake Griffin- Clippers
The list goes on and on. The point is, the Nuggets have ~0.01% chance of landing one of these guys in free agency. Additionally, I do not believe the Nuggets have a good chance of trading for the most scarce commodity in the league any time soon. They really do need a star player or two like the ones listed above to put an end to their 4th quarter woes and become an actually good playoff team in the West.
2. Strategy
Because they Nuggets likely don’t have the moveable assets or the motive to trade for one of these super valuable players, they must change their late game strategies. This starts with a reliable rotation and closing lineup. From my observations (I don’t have Synergy so it’s hard for me to get stats to back this up) I believe that the best closing lineup is as follows:
PG: Emmanuel Mudiay
SG: Jamal Murray (while Garris and Barton are out)
SF: Wilson Chandler
PF: Danilo Gallinari
C: Nikola Jokic
I understand the idea of riding the hot hand, but I really don’t see any scenarios where Nelson or Gee are finishing games. I can, however, see Harris/Barton or Nurkic or even potentially Faried slotting into this closing lineup if they are having a good game or the opponent is dictating a small lineup etc. The bottom line: don’t play Jameer Nelson or Alonzo Gee in ‘clutch’ minutes.
Outside of rotation, the Nuggets desperately need some more coaching in these late game situations. Danilo Gallinari isolations no longer work for this, so we are going to have to figure something else out. I am not suggesting that I have better basketball play strategies than Coach Malone, so I will refrain from making suggestions. I just hope that Coach Malone will call more timeouts and instruct the team more down the stretch instead of letting them play it out and continuously take contested mid-range jumpers and turn the ball over. Thanks coach!
– Mike
Hit me up on twitter: @09anthonycarter
AdvertisementsThis transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
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It is the sixth regular season game to be played in London since 2007
NFL commissioner raises prospect of a London-based NFL franchise in future
Other sports also following U.S. lead by taking matches around the globe
It has become a permanent fixture on the football calendar, and as the NFL prepares to descend on London once again, it seems a permanent touchdown is fast approaching.
As the New England Patriots and St. Louis Rams jet in for Sunday's sixth annual regular season clash at Wembley Stadium, there is a growing sense that an NFL franchise could be based fulltime in the British capital before this decade is out.
With the league having voted to persist with the experiment until at least 2016, and the Jacksonville Jaguars committing to four years of visits to London, the NFL is hoping to build on the spike in interest since landing firm feet on foreign shores in 2005.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed at the announcement of this new affirmation to overseas football that the latest deal would increase the swell of support for the game -- likely to be necessary if a franchise is to flourish across the Atlantic.
But if a team is to base itself in Europe, be it in London or anywhere else, it must commit to ingraining the culture of the game in the city it adopts as a new home and guard against antagonizing U.S.-based fans, according to sports business expert Simon Chadwick.
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"Successful overseas expansion will require the NFL to create and embed a culture of American football in overseas territories which will need them to successfully engage with local stakeholders," he told CNN.
"As for us fans, it is important they see that the sport's core values and traditional markets are not being compromised or undermined by overseas expansion.
"Moreover, I think the NFL has to'sell' expansion to existing fans as being important for the future sustainability and success of the sport."
Building a fan base
If a franchise was to touch down in London, its success would hinge on the following it attracts -- something the league has been trying to build since the first regular-season match between the New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins drew a crowd of 81,000 to Wembley in 2007.
But the figures are promising. According to the NFL, there is a fan base of 11 million in the UK, which represents a 32% increase in the last two years. More people are playing the game at amateur level too.
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Television numbers are also on the rise, with Sunday games showing a 154% increase in viewers, while the amount of people watching the showpiece Super Bowl has gone up by 74% since 2006.
Goodell has admitted that part of the NFL's reasoning for extending its period of moonlighting in London is to pave the way for a future franchise.
"If we can play multiple regular-season games there, that gives you a better opportunity to be successful if you choose to put a franchise in London," Goodell said, in comments sent to CNN by the NFL.
"But again, that is the other reason for putting two games in London -- we are trying to build that fan base in London. We welcome the fans coming from other parts of Europe.
"But this is a way to really build that fan base right now in London, which will be critical if you did have a franchise there."
Capital attraction
According to Goodell, NFL teams are clamoring to visit London as they bid to spread the word about their teams and their cities, attract new fans and to tap into potentially lucrative new revenue streams.
Minnesota Vikings owner Mark Wilf said his team's clash with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2013 would offer acute exposure of "Minnesota's impressive business community and tourism industry," as well as offering the franchise's Europe-based fans a chance to see the team in action.
Photos: Officiating technology in sport Photos: Officiating technology in sport Touchdown controversy – NFL fans were in uproar earlier this week, when refereeing mistakes led to a last-minute touchdown by the Seattle Seahawks being awarded, giving the franchise a win over the Green Bay Packers. Top-level officials have been locked out of the NFL over a new collective bargaining agreement. Hide Caption 1 of 5 Photos: Officiating technology in sport Lampard's lament – Football has had numerous goalline controversies, leading to calls for the sport to adopt technology. Most notably at the 2010 World Cup, when England's Frank Lampard saw his "goal" disallowed in a match against Germany, despite the ball landing well over the line. The incident led to FIFA president Sepp Blatter admitting that the sport needed to embrace goalline technology. Hide Caption 2 of 5 Photos: Officiating technology in sport Platini opposed – But Blatter's European counterpart Michel Platini disagrees. The UEFA president would prefer football to expand the use of extra match officials. Hide Caption 3 of 5 Photos: Officiating technology in sport Football's fix? – Extra officials behind each goal have been used in football's Europa League since 2009 and five officials were used during the European Championships earlier this year. Hide Caption 4 of 5 Photos: Officiating technology in sport Hawk-Eye – Sports such as tennis, cricket and the codes of rugby union and league have also incorporated the use of technology to help officials make the correct decisions. Hide Caption 5 of 5
Photos: Junior Seau through the years Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Junior Seau (number 55) of the Chargers makes his move against the Pittsburgh Steelers in San Diego in 2008. Hide Caption 1 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Seau lifts the Lamar Hunt AFC Championship trophy after the New England Patriots' 21-12 win over his former team, the San Diego Chargers, on January 20, 2008. Seau played the last four of his 20 seasons for the Patriots. Hide Caption 2 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Seau sits on the Chargers' bench in a 1996 game. Hide Caption 3 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Seau celebrates a defensive stop against the Kansas City Chiefs in 1996. Hide Caption 4 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Seau sits with a towel over his head during a game at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego in 1996. Hide Caption 5 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – President George W. Bush presents Seau with the President's Volunteer Service Award In the East Room of the White House on May 25, 2005. The award was created to recognize Americans who have made a sustained effort to community service. Hide Caption 6 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Seau gets ready for a game against the Buffalo Bills in San Diego in 2001. Hide Caption 7 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Seau played 20 seasons in the NFL, and is widely considered among the best linebackers in the game's history. Hide Caption 8 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Patriots Rodney Harrison and Seau celebrate a defensive stop against the Chargers during the 2008 AFC Championship Game. Hide Caption 9 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Seau emotes during a Patriots-Cardinals matchup in 2008. Hide Caption 10 of 11 Photos: Junior Seau through the years Junior Seau through the years – Seau takes the field during the 1999 game against the Kansas City Chiefs. Hide Caption 11 of 11
Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show – Madonna performs during the halftime show of Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on Sunday, February 5. Hide Caption 1 of 9 Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show – Madonna's set Sunday night included "Vogue," "Music," "Like a Prayer" and "Give Me All Your Luvin." Hide Caption 2 of 9 Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show – Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. (not pictured) join Madonna on stage dressed as cheerleaders. The pair are featured on "Give Me All Your Luvin," the first single on Madonna's forthcoming "M.D.N.A." It's due out in March. Hide Caption 3 of 9 Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show – The NFL calls the show "the most-watched musical event of the year." An estimated 111 million U.S. viewers were expected to tune into the Super Bowl on Sunday. Hide Caption 4 of 9 Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show – Signer Cee Lo Green performs on stage in a glittery choir robe. Earlier in the show he donned a marching band uniform. Hide Caption 5 of 9 Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show – Madonna, 53, erupted onto the scene in the early '80s and is ranked by the Guinness World Records as the top-selling female recording artist of all time. Hide Caption 6 of 9 Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show – Madonna performs with Redfoo and Sky Blu of LMFAO, the twosome behind the chart-topping single "Sexy and I Know It." Hide Caption 7 of 9 Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show – Madonna started her performance dressed as a Roman goddess clad in black and gold. Hide Caption 8 of 9 Photos: Photos: Super Bowl halftime show Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show – The show ended with the words "World Peace" projected onto the field. Hide Caption 9 of 9
But |
, software and enterprise IT wakes to the new call.
Apple’s looming battle with repressive government demands for surveillance and device insecurity will underline how Apple is the company for business, while others more open to such abuse of business confidence are not.
Google+? If you use social media and happen to be a Google+ user, why not join AppleHolic's Kool Aid Corner community and join the conversation as we pursue the spirit of the New Model Apple?
Got a story?Drop me a line via Twitter or in comments below and let me know. I'd like it if you chose to follow me.Perfect Blue / B00000JL42*Spoilers*When young idol Mima leaves her pop girl-band group in the hopes of breaking big into an acting career, she becomes entranced with a new website ("Mima's Room") that purports to be written entirely by her and which details her thoughts, dreams, and desires to the public. Although Mima knows that the website must be run by an impostor (after all, if the'real' Mima was the website author, then she would know that...wouldn't she?), she becomes increasingly confused and concerned when the most private details of her life are posted for all to see - private details that most people would have no knowledge of.And as Mima struggles with her acting career and is forced to make difficult choices in 'how far' she is willing to go to further her career (including a difficult 'adult' acting scene), she becomes increasingly disassociated from reality and cannot seem to tear herself away from "Mima's Room", where the perfect 'Mima' there seems so much larger than life than the'real' Mima. And what of her various colleagues who keep meeting with serious injuries, accidents, and outright murder? Are the scenes - increasingly violent - that Mima is acting on stage just acting...or is it reality, edited into a TV show in order for her to cope?This particular director, also involved (I believe) with Millennium Actress and Paprika, is a master at blending reality with fantasy (dreams and/or movies) in such a way that you can never be quite sure which is the fantasy and which is the reality. This thriller movie will mess with the viewer's mind, as we wonder what the nature of Mima's life truly is, and whether she is an innocent victim or a crazed psychopath. I was pleased that the resolute ending is clear and unambiguous, but with a touch of irony that I deeply appreciated. I won't say anymore, for fear of spoiling the surprise, but can only say that if you enjoy having your mind messed with, you will enjoy "Perfect Blue".Content warning, though: This movie depicts a lot of female nudity (and not just the common "above-the-waist" variety) and also depicts Mima acting out a graphic rape scene for her TV series - a scene that could be considered highly triggering for some.~ Ana MardollA man who was captured on video punching and kicking a protester at a rally for Republican presidential front-runner 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 over the weekend has been revealed as a member of the Air Force.
Staff Sgt. Tony Pettway, 32, who was arrested Saturday on a misdemeanor charge of assault with injury, is assigned to the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tuscon, Ariz., The Associated Press reported Monday evening.
Went to the Trump rally just to see how crazy it would be........this is insane pic.twitter.com/QFwSwmNoI0
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An official said the base was reviewing the incident at the Trump rally and would take appropriate action, expressing support for "Americans' rights to express their views on political issues" and condemning efforts to stop that.
Video from the rally Saturday showed a protester in an American flag shirt being punched and kicked by a man. The AP said the protester was carrying a sign with a Confederate symbol over an image of Trump.
Another protester walking behind the man in the American flag-style shirt wore a hood evoking Ku Klux Klan imagery. Trump referred to that protester at the rally as "a disgusting guy."
Several others were arrested at two Trump rallies over the weekend in Arizona, as well as protesters who shut down a roadway leading to a Trump rally in Phoenix.Friday night, during her last show on Fox News, Megyn Kelly asked former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra whether he accepted the conclusion by 17 intelligence agencies in a recently released declassified report that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and that this interference came at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Hoekstra gave an answer many viewers of "The Kelly File" did not anticipate. He noted that the declassified report represents the views of only three intelligence agencies, not seventeen. Hoekstra also questioned why the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not co-author or clear the report and why it lacked dissenting views.
The declassified report issued on January 6 is an abridged version of a longer report ordered by President Obama that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to undermine the 2016 president election, hurt Hillary’s candidacy and promote Donald Trump through cyber warfare, social media and the state-owned Russia cable channel RT. Although the report’s authors said they have high confidence in most of these conclusions, they were unable to include any evidence for classification reasons.
As someone who worked in the intelligence field for 25 years, I share Congressman Hoekstra’s concerns about Friday’s declassified Russia report and a similar Joint DHS and ODNI Election Security Statement released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and DHS on October 7, 2016.
I also suspect the entire purpose of this report and its timing was to provide President Obama with a supposedly objective intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that the president could release before he left office to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s election.
I am concerned both intelligence assessments were rigged for political purposes.
You may remember when Hillary Clinton claimed during the final presidential debate on October 19 that based on the October 7 ODNI/DHS statement, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had determined the WikiLeaks disclosures of Democratic emails were an effort by Russia to interfere with the election.
Clinton’s remark was not accurate. Although the October memo said “the U.S. Intelligence Community” was confident that the Russian government was behind the alleged hacking, the October memo was drafted by only two intelligence organizations – ODNI and DHS.
Since it came out only a month before the presidential election and was co-authored by only two intelligence agencies, the October memo looked like a clumsy attempt by the Obama White House to produce a document to boost Clinton’s reelection chances. Its argumentation was very weak since it said the alleged hacking of Democratic emails was “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts” but did not say there was any evidence of Russian involvement.
Friday’s declassified intelligence report on Russia hacking is even more suspicious. As Congressman Hoekstra noted, this report was drafted and cleared by only three intelligence agencies, not 17. DHS, which co-authored the October statement, added a brief tick to the new report, but did not clear it. The Office of Director of National Intelligence, which co-authored the October memo, did not draft or clear Friday’s report, nor did other members of the U.S Intelligence Community with important equities in this issue such as DIA and the State Department’s Intelligence and Research Bureau (INR).
The declassified Russian report also lacks standard boilerplate language that it was coordinated within the U.S. Intelligence Community. This language usually reads: “This memorandum was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was coordinated with the US Intelligence Community” or “this is an IC-coordinated assessment.”
Given how politically radioactive the issue of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election has become, why wasn’t the January 6 Russia report an intelligence community-coordinated assessment? Why were several important intelligence agencies and their experts excluded?
It also is important, as Hoekstra indicated in his Fox News interview, that intelligence community assessments on extremely controversial issues include dissenting views, such as those added by INR to the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD program. A declassified version of this estimate was released in 2002 that included INR’s dissent.
The content of the declassified report was underwhelming. Although the report made serious accusations of Russian interference in the election, it did not back them up with evidence. And, as Hoekstra also noted in his Fox News interview, the report made some dubious arguments that Russia succeeded in influencing the election using its RT cable channel, a Russian propaganda tool that is only taken seriously in the United States by the far left.
It’s also troubling that the unclassified report does not mention the extremely weak internet security of Clinton’s private email server, the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. This makes it impossible to determine whether the alleged hacking and leaking of Democratic emails was more Russia and other hostile actors exploiting this carelessness rather than a deliberate and robust Russian operation to interfere with the election.
This is not to say the new CIA/NSA/FBI report is without value. I believe the classified report probably includes solid evidence on the intensive and broad-based cyber warfare efforts that Russia, China and other states have been conducting against the United States for the last eight years that President Obama has ignored.
I am encouraged that President-elect Trump responded to this report by stating that will take aggressive action against cyber warfare against the United States in the early days of his administration.
At the same time, I believe President-elect Trump and his team are justified in questioning the January 6 report as politically motivated.
I am concerned that the exclusion of key intelligence players and the lack of dissenting views give the appearance that the conclusions of this report were pre-cooked.
I also suspect the entire purpose of this report and its timing was to provide President Obama with a supposedly objective intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that the president could release before he left office to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s election.
Adding to the Trump team’s concerns that intelligence agencies were playing political games over possible Russian interference in the election, is the fact that at the same time these agencies were refusing to brief Congress about their findings on this issue, they were constantly being leaked to the news media. The most recent press leaks, some by intelligence officials, occurred this week on the classified contents of the new Russia report before they were briefed to Mr. Trump.
The new intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election broke so radically with the way objective and authoritative intelligence community assessments are supposed to be produced that it appears to have been rigged to support a pre-ordained set of conclusions to undermine President-elect Trump. I believe the October 2016 memo and related developments support this unfortunate conclusion.
It is vital that the Trump administration and U.S. intelligence agencies move beyond this situation by working together to forge new policies to protect our nation against the many serious threats it faces, including radical Islam, cyber warfare, nuclear proliferation, Russia, China and other threats.
Intelligence agencies were led astray by the Obama administration’s partisanship and national security incompetence.
I am confident that over time, the outstanding men and women Trump has named to top national security posts will ensure that America’s intelligence agencies have Trump’s confidence and produce the hard hitting and objective intelligence he will need to defend our nation.Get the biggest daily 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
Lost photos of a soldier who inspired First World War poets Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves have been uncovered by his old school.
David Cuthbert Thomas fought in the trenches alongside the celebrated poets and his death affected them more than any of their comrades. Thomas, the subject of some of Sassoon and Graves’ greatest war poems, was killed by a sniper at the Somme.
Unseen pictures of the 20-year-old soldier immortalised by his best friends have now been found by staff at his old school and are due to go on display.
The school photographs show the doomed face of youth – as schoolboy Thomas sits carefree just months before the outbreak of the war which would claim his life. They include him as young man in cricket, hockey and rugby teams.
The photographs were uncovered by his old school Christ College Brecon, in South Wales, in time for the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War.
School archivist Felicity Kilpatrick said: “Siegfried Sassoon and David Cuthbert Thomas became friends during training in Cambridge in 1915.
Pictures: The remarkable images that have been unearthed
“Some of Sassoon’s poems reference him as a cricketer, including in his poem ‘The Subaltern’ which was published just a week before Thomas was killed by a sniper’s bullet.
“Until now there have been no known photographs of him as a young sportsman so we are thrilled to be able to release these for the enjoyment of all those who are interested in David Cuthbert Thomas and Siegfried Sassoon.”
The young officer was killed by a German sniper’s bullet through the neck on the night of 18 March 1916 as he worked in No Man’s Land to repair barbed wire lines near Fricourt.
His great friend Sassoon wrote the next day: “Tonight I saw his shrouded form laid in the earth – Robert Graves beside me with his white whimsical face twisted and grieving.
“Once we could not hear the solemn words for the noise of a machine-gun along the line; and when all was finished a canister fell a hundred yards away and burst with a crash.
“So Tommy left us, a gentle soldier, perfect and without stain. And so he will remain in my heart, fresh and happy and brave.”
Graves said his death angered Sassoon so much he went out looking for Germans to kill.
In his celebrated war novel Goodbye To All That, he wrote: “I felt David’s death worse than any other since I had been in France, but it did not anger me as it did Siegfried.
“He was acting transport-officer and every evening now, when he came up with the rations, went out on patrol looking for Germans to kill. I just felt empty and lost.”
Thomas appeared throughout both poets’ memoirs and Graves wrote about him in his poems Goliath and David and Not Dead. Sassoon penned his poem A Subaltern about him just a week before he was killed.
The new photographs of Thomas have been released to the People’s Collection Wales website as part of their online collection about the history of Wales.
The website has recently been re-launched with more than 47,000 historical items to view online. Thomas’ first commission was as a Second Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers.
That regiment also included the writers Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, with whom he became close friends. He was then trained and posted to the same regiment’s 1st Battalion, which was then attached to 22 Brigade, itself part of 7th Infantry Division.
Lieutenant Thomas appeared throughout both poets’ memoirs and Graves wrote about him in his poems Goliath and David and Not Dead.Camera traps set up in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have photographed many species of wildlife roaming the forests.
The cameras are part of a five-year project to monitor wildlife in the 30km exclusion zone around the former nuclear power plant, which covers an area of approximately 2,600 km2.
Project leader Mike Wood told the broadcaster: "Our Ukrainian colleague, Sergey Gashchak, had several of his camera traps running in one of our central areas over the past few months in order to start to get a feel for what (wildlife) was there."
Almost 30 years after the nuclear disaster, the woods are teeming with birds and large mammals, including brown bears.
Bears had not been seen in this area for more than a century, so researchers were surprised to find the first images of bears when they checked their cameras.
Many species of animals flourish in the (officially) human-free environment. A herd of Przewalski's horses, an endangered subspecies of wild horse once considered extinct in the wild, grew to around 200 members – until poachers reduced their number to about 60.
In addition to the wild animals, the camera traps also spotted domestic dogs, now presumed feral.
The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 led to lethal levels of radiation. The project, which aims to estimate the risk of radiation exposure to humans and wildlife., will run until the end of next year, after which researchers will select one species to target to be part of a trapping and collaring campaign.
"We will be fitting collars with GPS to these animals, and also dose-measurement technology so that we are then able to track movement over the course of a year through the exclusion zone and get a real measurement of the exact radiation exposure that these animals get," said Wood.Each July, one of the most gruelling endurance trail running races in the United States occurs in Southwestern Colorado. The Hardrock 100 which commences and finishes in Silverton and navigates the San Juan Mountains and through the historic mining towns, Telluride and Ouray.
The course ascends over 10,000 metres (nearly 34,000 feet) over the 160 km (100.5 miles) at an average elevation of nearly 3,500m (11,186 feet), peaking at the 4,282 metres (14,048-foot) Handies Peak and a total elevation change of nearly 21,000 metres (67,984 feet).
As is the case with the majority of 100 mile races having a 24- or 36-hour cut-off time, the Hardrock 100 has a 48-hour cut-off time, with the average winner’s time around 24 hours and an average finish time of just over 41 hours, meaning most competitors will experience sunrise twice!
It’s almost as hard to get into the race as it is finishing, this year more than 1,200 runners (this was a 50% percent increase in applications in one year) applied for a coveted lottery spot to gain one of the 140 entries into the event. The previous year’s male and female automatically qualify for the next year. Due to confines on the run's permit with local land authorities there is no plans to increase the number of runners over 140.
Each year's event is run in the reverse direction of the previous year's race. In order to complete the event, instead of running across the finish line, it is obligatory for runners to "kiss the Hardrock", a picture of a ram's head painted on a large mining stone.
In 2014, the race is offering one of the most intriguing in the event’s history.
In the men’s field, arguably the greatest athlete in trail running and mountaineering in the world at the moment, Kilian Jornet has secured an elusive lottery spot, his form is hot winning the recent vertical kilometre and marathon at the Skyrunning World Championships plus breaking the record for the fastest known time for the round trip of Denali's (McKinley's) Rescue Gully route in Alaska earlier this year. Last year’s Hardrock winner, Seb Chaigneau returns, he ran the second fastest time in racing history in 2013 with a 24.25. The two time Western States 100 winner Timothy Olson is also here along with the 2011 Hardrock winner, Julien Chorier plus two time Hardrock podium finisher, Dakota Jones.
In the women’s field it appears there appears to two likely winners, Darcy Piceu, the 2012 and 2013 Hardrock winner and course record holder Diana Finkel. There is only 18 women in total in the race this year.
The Hardrock 100 Current Records
Men’s Record: Kyle Skaggs, 23:23 set in 2008
Women's record: Diana Finkel, 27:18 set in 2009
Here is a great clip capturing some of the beauty and tough terrain of the race.ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP)? She was an ambitious lawyer and TV commentator who starting going to Atlantic City casinos to relax, and soon was getting high-roller treatment that included limousines whisking her to the resort.
Arelia Margarita Taveras says she was even allowed to bring her dog, Sasha, to the blackjack tables, sitting in her purse.
But her gambling spun out of control: She said she would go days at a time at the tables, not eating or sleeping, brushing her teeth with disposable wipes so she didn't have to leave.
She says her losses totaled nearly $1 million.
Now she's chasing the longest of long shots: a $20 million racketeering lawsuit in federal court against six Atlantic City casinos and one in Las Vegas, claiming they had a duty to notice her compulsive gambling problem and cut her off.
"They knew I was going for days without eating or sleeping," Taveras said. "I would pass out at the tables. They had a duty of care to me. Nobody in their right mind would gamble for four or five straight days without sleeping."
Experts say her case will be difficult to prove, but it provides an unusually detailed window into the life of a problem gambler.
"It's like crack, only gambling is worse than crack because it's mental," said Taveras, 37, a New Yorker who now lives in Minnesota. "It creeps up on you, the impulse. It's a sickness."
She lost her law practice, her apartment, her parents' home, and owes the IRS $58,000. She said she even considered swerving into oncoming traffic to kill herself.
In interviews with The Associated Press, Taveras admitted she dipped into her clients' escrow accounts to finance her gambling habit. She was disbarred last June, and faces criminal charges stemming from those actions, but is trying to work out restitution agreements in order to avoid a prison term.
Her lawsuit names Resorts Atlantic City, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, the Tropicana Casino Resort, the Showboat Casino Hotel, Bally's Atlantic City, as well as the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
The casinos deny any wrongdoing, maintaining in court papers that Taveras brought her problems on herself. Casino representatives either declined to comment for this report or did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Last month, a judge dismissed the Trump casinos, the Tropicana, Showboat and Bally's from the lawsuit on technical grounds, but allowed Taveras to refile the suit against them by April. The suit remains in effect against Resorts and MGM because its allegations against them were more specific.
Joe Corbo, president of the Casino Association of New Jersey, said casino workers undergo extensive training on spotting problem gamblers and referring them to help, including a self-exclusion list the state maintains. Gamblers can voluntarily bar themselves from casinos, either for a few years or for life. While they're on the list, casinos cannot solicit them.
Dan Heneghan, a spokesman for the state Casino Control Commission, said 663 people are on the list.
"This can be a delicate situation, and it comes down to an individual's personal responsibility," Corbo said. "We can only suggest that they receive assistance and provide information how they can obtain help, but it is up to them to commit to seek it."
Paul O'Gara, an attorney specializing in Atlantic City gambling issues, said it will be difficult for Taveras to prove that the casinos knew she had a problem but ignored it.
"How are you supposed to know whether this was a woman who was just having a good time, or had money and was just lonely, as opposed to someone who couldn't control themselves?" he said.
Arnie Wexler, the former head of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, estimates there are 5 million problem gamblers in the United States, with 15 million at risk of becoming compulsive.
"Hers is not a rare case, believe me," said Wexler, who says he had a gambling problem. "This is the most powerful addiction you can have without putting something into your body. You remember your first big win, and you think `Hey, I can do this again; I can get it all back.'"
As a young lawyer, Taveras made a name for herself representing the families of victims of American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed in New York City's borough of Queens in November 2001, killing 265 people.
Her practice had 400 clients and earned her $500,000 a year. She appeared on TV and radio to discuss legal issues, wrote a guidebook for women dealing with deadbeat dads in the court system, titled "The Gangsta Girls' Guide To Child Support," and was a regular contributor to Hispanic culture Web sites. In 2000, the New York Daily News named her one of "21 New Yorkers to Watch in the 21st Century."
As an escape from the seven-day-a-week pressures of her law practice, she started going to Atlantic City to unwind in September 2003.
During one five-day gambling jag at Resorts in June 2005, Taveras says, she existed on nothing but orange juice and Snickers bars that the staff gave her. On the fifth day, she said, a dealer told her to go home because she appeared exhausted and unable to keep track of her cards.
Taveras spent nearly a year in clinics to treat her gambling addiction. She filed her lawsuit last September, representing herself, and is now working at a telephone call center in Minnesota.
"Everybody says `You gambled and you enjoyed yourself, then lost your money and now you want it back,'" Taveras said. "They think gambling is fun. It isn't, believe me. Not when you get like I did."
[Via - WCCO.Com]
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13 Stupid Ideas That Made Millions of DollarsPiers Morgan used a fake news site to mock Sarah Palin on Twitter on Thursday. He linked to the satirical news site The Daily Currant saying that Palin claimed Jesus celebrated Easter.
"And she's back!" Morgan gloated, with absolutely no mention that the article was fake. When critics told him the website was satire, Morgan answered that he knew it was. Yet he praised the notion that it was believable.
"That's the beauty of it," Morgan wrote when someone tweeted that it was "hilarious even if its fake. Why? I believed it."
That wasn't the first time Morgan has derided Palin. He laughed when comedian Lewis Black dismissed Palin as a "fictional character" and responded that "You couldn't invent someone like Sarah Palin, could you?"
On his CNN show, guest Bill Maher vilified Palin and Bachmann.
Morgan also let anti-Palin author Joe McGinniss come on his show and explain how the Palins actually incited the death threats that came his wasy.
When a prime-time CNN host uses a mock report to laugh at Sarah Palin, the network's claim of being non-partisan comes into question, not to mention its professionalism.
(H/T Washington Free Beacon)(JTA) — The city of Brussels refused to register the name of a locally born Israeli baby because Jerusalem does not appear on a list of approved names for children born in the country.
Hagar and Alinadav Hyman, Israelis who have lived and worked in Brussels for the last three years, decided to name their first-born Alma Jerusalem.
“We are both Jerusalemites, we grew up in Jerusalem, we met in Jerusalem and we very much miss the city, so we decided to call our first child Jerusalem,” Alinadav Hyman told JSSNews.
The Brussels City Hall clerk offered to compromise, telling the couple that if it obtained an official letter from the Israeli embassy confirming that Jerusalem is a valid name, then it would issue a Belgian birth certificate for the baby.
Hagar told JSSNews that the clerk told him the name Bethlehem appeared on the list of approved names. He also said a Finnish man in line next to him gave his child a name in his local tongue that was 25 letters long.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
As millions of public sector workers he claims are “overpaid” struggle to meet household bills, Philip Hammond enjoys a rent-free life in homes paid for with taxpayer cash.
And apart from the two grace and favour properties the Chancellor has use of, he is also pocketing £10,000 a month renting out his city townhouse.
Tycoon Mr Hammond was last night accused of being out of touch with the public sector staff, including cleaners, nurses, teachers and 999 crews, he laughingly claims are paid too much, despite his cap of 1% on wage rises.
And the hypocritical Tory sparked even more fury by declaring “there isn’t a free lunch” – despite the two homes he does not pay for.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “He is living on a different planet.
“Public sector workers have had frozen wages for the past seven years.”
Unison branded Mr Hammond’s claim that nurses and hospital cleaners are overpaid “offensive”.
(Image: Getty)
(Image: Getty Images)
The union’s assistant general secretary Christina McAnea said: “The Chancellor’s remarks show he is completely out of touch. After seven years of a punishing pay cap, all public sector employees need a pay rise.
"The care worker hurrying from house to house doesn’t feel overpaid, nor does the hospital cleaner working round the clock, or the teaching assistant going the extra mile for the children.
“They are all low paid, all vital, and all in need of a pay rise now.”
(Image: Rightmove)
The Royal College of Nursing added: “Nurses across the UK are being forced to take second jobs, rely on family handouts or even turn to foodbanks.
“It would be insulting of the Government to claim these people earn too much.”
But Mr Hammond yesterday shamelessly tried the old Tory trick of pitching ordinary people against each other by declaring public sector staff are better paid than private workers.
Interviewed on the BBC Andrew Marr show, he failed to deny saying at a Cabinet meeting cleaners and others were overpaid.
(Image: Rightmove)
(Image: Rightmove)
“This is a relative question,” he said. “It is a simple fact that public sector workers on average are paid about 10% more than private sector workers.
“The only way we can create the high wage economy we want to have sustainably is to increase productivity, to get our public finances into good order. There isn’t a short cut. There isn’t a free lunch.”
Maybe not for ordinary people. But Mr Hammond, who earns £67,505 as Chancellor on top of his MP salary of £74,000, moved rent-free into 11 Downing Street last year after he was promoted by Theresa May.
But we can reveal he advertised his five-bedroom townhouse in Belgravia, South West London, for £2,500 a week – enough to pay for five full-time nurses.
(Image: Rightmove)
Records show he started renting it out in February, just a week before his botched bid to clobber self-employed staff with a tax hike in his first budget.
The property tycoon, who is worth more than £8million, bought it with his wife in 2007 for £1.07million. Others there sell for up to £6.7million.
Up until 2011, when the rules were changed, Mr Hammond was claiming up to £24,000 a year from the taxpayer to fund mortgage interest payments.
He also enjoys free use of Dorneywood, a Buckinghamshire mansion owned by the National Trust which is handed over for use by Chancellors or other top ministers.
(Image: Rightmove)
And a Channel 4 Dispatches programme revealed last week that Mr Hammond could make millions in a deal with a firm if land next to his constituency home in Surrey gets planning permission.
The Chancellor bought the greenbelt three-acre plot for £100,000 in 2008 from a housebuilder with an option to sell it back for a potential £6million and split the profits equally.
(Image: PA)
Mr Hammond refused to comment on the home he is renting out.
But he denied in the TV interview yesterday claims he made sexist remarks about women train drivers.
Mr Corbyn called on the Chancellor and other Tories to “reconnect” with ordinary people rather than just focusing on their rich chums.
He said: “There should be a bit more time spent talking to those who do the difficult jobs in our public services. That’s who you are there to represent.”The question doesn’t come up much in Canada, owing to this country’s weird habit of investing blue helmets with the totemic power of fetish objects. But as we head into 2016, with Justin Trudeau having given every impression that Canada’s foreign policy exertions will be substantially redirected through the United Nations, it is a question well worth asking.
Is the UN still a force for good in the world?
Looking at just a few of the UN’s most recent “achievements,” the question doesn’t turn up many honest answers in the affirmative. The Syrian catastrophe is just one of the UN’s most spectacular ongoing failures, and not just in the scale of the horror. It’s in the UN’s abysmal dereliction of every responsibility the creaking institution’s many Liberal champions rely upon to justify the placement of junior Canadian diplomats throughout the UN’s comfortable salons and nearly innumerable talking shops.
In Syria alone, mass atrocity, genocide, war crimes, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilian populations, the bombing of hospitals and schools, the resort to chemical warfare, the arbitrary deployment of armed force by UN member states – each of these are savageries the UN is specifically mandated to prevent.
The outrages have proceeded without let or cease in Syria for five long years now, and the UN has even managed to make a mockery of its mandates in the provision of emergency humanitarian aid and the protection of refugees.
The UN’s strenuous production of commemorative propaganda this year, to mark the 70th anniversary of its founding proceedings in San Francisco, have not helped matters. There were roving photo exhibitions, high-minded addresses to conferences and performances of the United Nations Symphony Orchestra (there really is such a thing), and the Egyptian pyramids, the Empire State Building in New York, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lampur were all lit up in blue light. Lovely.
But none of it, not the performances of Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang, not the Sept. 21 celebrations of the International Day of Peace, nor the grand United Nations Day concerts on Oct. 24, could conceal that the UN is looking more and more like its predecessor, the League of Nations, in its twilight years. The League was sustained by delusions right up until 1939, putting the cause of global peace and security into hiatus until the Axis Powers were finally crushed in 1945.
To imagine that the happy Canadian enthusiasm for the UN is universal is to ignore not only the grievances of little Israel, which is routinely and ritually traduced by the UN’s absurdly-named Human Rights Council, which is itself little more than an arrangement of cushions for the big backsides of some of the world’s most notorious torturers.
It is also to ignore the UN’s squandering of its credibility, noticed most loudly and acutely among the world’s 350 million Arabs, more than a billion South Asians and another billion Africans.
This is not to argue for multilateral abstentionism or to make the case that the UN’s institutions are all equally useless. Even as an elaborately structured conventioneering agency, the UN can serve constructive purposes, as it did during the recent Conference of the Parties gathering in Paris, where delegates hammered down a voluntary formula to keep the rise in global temperatures below two degrees of pre-industrial levels.
If the accord fails, the UN certainly cannot be blamed for that.
There is also the necessary and often overlooked work carried out by more than a dozen UN agencies and UN-related organizations. Canada could make much use of itself by stepping up its contributions to several of them, perhaps especially the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization.
But for all the commendable idealism in the Liberal party’s campaign pledges, there is a great deal of humbug as well, and Trudeau’s rare unscripted comments on foreign affairs don’t exactly entrench confidence in his gravitas on the state of the world. More darkly, at the edges of Trudeau’s circle of confidantes are quite a few relics from the Liberal party’s Upper Mesozoic era whose lurid “world stage” ideas (a free trade deal with the Beijing dictatorship is just one of the worst) have taken on renewed currency.
And if Trudeau can so quickly jettison the pledges he made about the resettlement of Syrian refugees – the campaign promise of direct federal sponsorship of 25,000 Syrians before the year’s end has withered into the post-election reality of perhaps a tenth of that – then he should at least have the decency to climb down from the nonsense he and his ministers have persisted in circulating about their Conservative predecessors.
Like this bit from the Liberal party’s spiffy 88-page “Real Change” campaign platform: “We will take immediate steps to reopen Canada’s doors,” as if Canada’s doors were closed during Stephen Harper’s term in office. They sure weren’t closed to the 1.6 million people granted Canadian citizenship during the Harper decade.
It is humbug of the same degree for the Liberals to assert that the Conservatives “turned their backs” on the UN, notwithstanding the contempt you could pick up in the tone Harper and his long-serving Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird would take whenever the subject of the UN came up.
There’s a heap of humbug too in the Liberal claim that the Harper government’s lack of enthusiasm for UN peacekeeping operations could not have come at a worse time because the demand for blue helmets had “never been greater.” You don’t have to be a too-avid student of history to be aware that what the UN wanted most from Canada during the Harper decade was hard-headed fighting troops in Afghanistan, where blue helmets had no purpose to serve.
According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, the UN’s “number one” problem with peacekeeping at the moment involves the impunity demanded by Congolese, Pakistani and Nigerian generals when their blue-helmeted heroes are found to be raping and murdering the people they’re supposed to be protecting in the Central African Republic, Haiti, Mali and other such hellholes.
What threatens the United Nations more than anything else, as has been most obscenely evident in the Syrian |
put an amount on the table that I felt was appropriate, we would have settled it,” Ulmer said. “What happened that night, the physical abuse that DeShawn suffered — they were slapping my clients in the face with the offer they put out there.
“Three white officers went into a black family’s home and violated their civil rights — that is what happened here,” Ulmer said. “In my opinion, if this had been a white family, this would not have happened.”
The officers did face department discipline for their actions that evening, including written reprimands, according to Kevin Lawler, a spokesman for the city. The officers also received additional training on Fourth Amendment rights, Lawler said, and the South Bend Police Department developed a new procedure manual and provided ethics and diversity classes for the entire force.
But the question remains: How could the jury award $1?
Legal experts I talked to said it’s difficult to assign a monetary value to intangible suffering. Jurors also were instructed at the close of testimony that they could award as little as $1 if they did not see evidence of more damages.
Still, Richard Waples, an experienced civil rights lawyer in Indiana, was shocked when I told him about the Franklins’ victorious case and the jury’s award.
“Really?” he said. “That just doesn’t seem right.”
Waples then explained that attorneys often request that the judge not provide that instruction to jurors because it can put a dollar figure in their minds. Ulmer, the Franklins’ attorney, didn’t make such a request. The jurors, who were polled after reaching a verdict and judgment, indicated to U.S. District Judge Theresa Springmann that they heard no evidence to justify compensatory damages.
Ulmer said he is prepared to pay the $1,500 in trial expenses, either from attorney fees he hopes to recoup or from his own pocket. Federal court rules permit attorneys who represent clients pro bono and prove their case in court to ask the judge to grant payment from the losing party. In court records, Ulmer stated that attorney fees incurred by the Franklins totaled $168,430.
But for DeShawn Franklin, his meager award is another blow, another reason to mistrust the police and the system.
“I have no value on the face of Earth, just as a person,” DeShawn said. “We all bleed the same, so how could you value my family’s constitutional rights at a dollar but maybe elsewhere it could be $5, $10, $100,000? It just shows no respect for us.”
But Buttigieg, South Bend’s mayor, wants DeShawn and his family, stung by the encounter with city police officers, to know that he and the city “believed that their rights were worth more than a dollar.”
“This case has touched a nerve related to much bigger issues,” Buttigieg said. “I regard every resident of our city as equally worthy of respect and concern. I want DeShawn to feel and know that this is a city that wants him to thrive, and that we take his rights and every one’s rights very seriously.”
Still, even the city's attorney, Agostino, said he can understand the family’s frustration.
“On an emotional, human level, putting the law aside, I can relate to what they’re feeling,” Agostino said. “It can feel like sometimes there is no justice. All I can say is that we respect them for stepping forward and bringing the issue out. I think DeShawn is an awesome young person, and I don’t want him to lose faith in the system because he had one bad experience.”
Email IndyStar columnist Suzette Hackney at suzette.hackney@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter: @suzyscribe.
KEY DATES
• July 7, 2012:DeShawn Franklin, 18, is pulled out of bed and punched by South Bend police, who also used a Taser on him.
• Feb. 26, 2013:Dan Franklin Sr., Vivian Franklin and DeShawn Franklin sue the city of South Bend and officers Aaron Knepper, Eric Mentz and Michael Stuk.
• Feb. 3, 2016:Settlement conference held between both parties.
• July 26-29, 2016:Jury trial
• Aug. 1, 2016:Jury verdict and judgment
Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/2c4jVfBWelterweight champion Douglas Lima will finally return to the Bellator cage in February.
Lima told MMAFighting.com that he was expecting to defend his 170-pound title against Paul Daley or Andrey Koreshkov. A week later, Bellator announced he will put his belt on the line against Daley, the British striker, at Bellator 133 on Feb. 27 at the Mohegan Sun in in Uncasville, Connecticut.
"I’m the champion and I will fight whoever they put in front of me," Lima told MMAFighting.com. "Koreshkov is hurt, so he wouldn’t be ready to fight in February."
Koreshkov earned a shot at the title after winning the promotion’s last welterweight tournament, but Lima sees the UFC and Strikeforce veteran Daley as the best fight to promote him as champion.
"Daley is a bigger name and has fought in many big promotions, so a win over him would be great for me," Lima said. "He has fought some of the best fighters in the world in MMA and also at K-1. I’m excited, can’t wait to finally fight him.
"I want to test myself against the best," he continued. "I believe I can defeat anyone in my weight class. I want the world to recognize my work and what I can do, and everybody will recognize that after this fight."
Lima (26-5) and Daley (35-13-2) have 38 knockout finishes combined, and the Brazilian won’t shy away from the challenge.
"I’m bigger than many fighters in my division, but I don’t see that as an advantage," he said. "I don’t think five or 10 pounds makes much of a difference. We’ll see. But if we go to the ground and I’m on top, he’ll feel my weight. I think my jiu-jitsu is better (than his), but I believe a lot in my striking game. I hit hard, and he will go down if I land a good shot. I want to trade punches with him."
Lima, who won 14 of his past 15 fights, puts his Bellator title on the line for the first time against Daley, and doesn’t rule out moving up to 185 pounds in the future.
"I’ll stay at 170 for now," he said. "I would never fight another tournament at 170 pounds because I can’t cut weight to fight every month, but fighting every three months is easy. I’ll keep my weight around 200 pounds or lower, so I’ll stay at welterweight. Who knows, one day I can move up if I keep getting bigger."President Trump's aide Kellyanne Conway on Monday said the new immigration executive order will take effect March 16 and will no longer include Iraq.
"This is a very important week in this White House where the president is going to continue to act on, along with the Congress, major pieces of his legislative and executive agenda," Conway said Monday morning on Fox News's "Fox & Friends."
"That includes a new executive order today... and what's different about it, it has an effective date of March 16, and there are the legal permanent residents were always excluded from it but that's made much more clear now," she continued.
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"If you have travel docs, if you actually have a visa, if you're a legal permanent resident, you are not covered under this particular executive action."
Conway added that Iraq is no longer included in the travel ban, based on "their enhanced screening and reporting measures."
"I think people will see six or seven major points about this executive order that do clarify who is covered," she said.
"Also Syrian refugees are treated the way all refugees are."
The president's original travel ban, issued in January, put a 90-day ban on nationals from seven predominately Muslim counties from entering the U.S.
The order also called for a 120-day ban on admitting refugees and an indefinite suspension on resettling Syrian refugees.
The order spurred controversy, resulting in protests across the country and backlash from some lawmakers.
The order was later blocked by a federal judge in Seattle. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled last month that a nationwide restraining order on the travel ban would stay in place.
Trump previously claimed that the travel ban had to be signed immediately because even a week’s notice would have allowed people to “pour in before the toughness goes on."
The president met Saturday evening at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida with a number of administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsFormer Trump refugee director did not notify superiors about family separation warnings Court rejects challenge to Mueller's appointment Trump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report MORE.After the state’s legalization of recreational cannabis, over-saturation and shaky business plans mean that for some dispensaries business is not booming
Along North-east Sandy Boulevard in Portland, Oregon, there’s a stretch known as the “Green Mile”. Here, medical marijuana dispensaries are budding. Almost two years ago, when Matt Walstaller opened Pure Green in the area, there was only one competitor. Today there’s close to 10.
In the beginning business was booming, recalled Walstaller. But last autumn, Pure Green’s traffic started to slow.
“Then we looked at the numbers. There was a couple thousand new medical cardholders, but two or three times as many stores as there had been the year before,” said Walstaller.
Portland vies with nearby Washington as Oregon enters legal marijuana industry Read more
In Oregon, 76,723 patients are listed as medical marijuana cardholders. Over 12,000 of them are in Portland, where 136 publicly listed medical dispensaries are located – that’s roughly 80 patients per dispensary. Yet the state’s Medical Marijuana Dispensary Program continues to accept applications for new licenses, with more than 200 still pending.
Oversaturation and shaky business plans have led some dispensaries down a path of no return. “I know of some shops that have closed, and I’ve heard of others that have been sold,” said Walstaller.
Since 1 October, when the sale of recreational marijuana was legalized, struggling businesses have found firm footing again. At Pure Green, the amount of customers per day has tripled. Donald Morse, who owns the Human Collective medical dispensary in south-west Portland, also experienced a substantial uptick in business since 1 October.
But as the director of the Oregon Cannabis Business Council, Morse says the number of license holders is consistently going down month to month. “We didn’t need all those dispensaries. A lot of people got into it, but they were not well financed and were hanging on by their fingertips,” said Morse. “The shake-out has begun. Those with sound business practices will survive, those without are going to fail.”
While recreational sales have helped Oregon’s medical dispensaries stay afloat, come 2016, the rules will change.
On 4 January, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) will take over all sales of recreational marijuana and add a 25% sales tax – in a state that has no sales tax. In autumn of next year, OLCC-licensed retail stores will open.
At that time, existing dispensaries can choose between obtaining an OLCC license to sell recreational marijuana or remaining a medical-only dispensary. Businesses are not permitted to hold both licenses.
OLCC spokesman Mark Pettinger said there’s been talk about co-location of medical and recreational marijuana under one roof, “but that would require a ‘fix’ by the Oregon legislature, because there are conflicting statutes regarding regulatory authority”.
In Colorado, the first state along with Washington to legalize recreational marijuana use, medical and retail weed are already “co-locating”. Some shops have even dropped their medical license because the recreational market promises greater profits, said Ean Seeb, co-owner of Denver Relief dispensary. Five years ago, Seeb recalls close to 900 medical dispensaries in Colorado. Today there’s half that amount.
Marijuana revenues continue to climb every month in Colorado. According to August sales data from the state department of revenue, recreational marijuana accrued $59.2m, with medical marijuana following behind at $41.4m.
In Washington, medical dispensaries too are heading into the recreational market, and Oregon is likely to follow suit.
Pure Green will be one of them. Walstaller, though an advocate for patients rights, says he couldn’t afford not to acquire an OLCC retail license. “We couldn’t stay in business that way.”
If the state does not allow the medical and recreational markets to merge, Donald Morse believes that “95% of dispensaries in Oregon will go opting for recreational sales. There won’t be enough to service the needs of the patients, and those patients will be forced into retail stores.”
In the retail shops, medical marijuana patients will be subject to taxation.
To remedy this, Donald Morse and the Oregon Cannabis Business Council are introducing a bill into the legislature’s short session in February. If passed, patients will receive tax-exempt status, whether they shop at a retail or medical dispensary.
“We don’t charge tax on anyone else seeking medicine,” said Morse. “We have to find a way to marry these two systems in a way that’s not going to screw over the patients.”
The medical marijuana card still has its benefits. It allows patients to have six plants instead of the recreational four, along with 24 ounces of dried flower, compared to the eight ounces allotted to regular consumers in their homes.
The supply to patients could also be at risk as the recreational market takes off. Anthony Taylor of Compassionate Oregon, an organization that protects the rights of medical marijuana patients, is concerned that small family farms could be exhausted from the retail demand.
However, he’s certain that some medical dispensaries will dodge the dangling carrot of the retail revenue and let their client base carry them.
“They believe in the compassionate use of therapeutic cannabis and they think the recreational market is a distinctly different market,” said Taylor. “Some of them really believe in holding the line and dealing exclusively with patients.”
While that could prove true, Donald Morse feels the winds of change.
“I think it’s entirely possible that the medical system as we know it today is pretty much obsolete within a year,” said Morse. “Legally it will still be there, but market forces will create a situation where people will say, why bother with this?”The video will start in 8 Cancel
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Football fans across Wales will be able to follow the national team’s quest to reach the World Cup, following a deal to show matches on free-to-air television.
Since 2004, live coverage of Wales’ competitive internationals has only aired on Sky Sports, meaning those without access to the pay channel have been unable to witness the meteoric rise of Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey and Joe Allen in their country’s colours.
But this is set to change after S4C announced a deal with Sky, meaning this month’s crunch clash against Ireland will be broadcast free of charge on the Welsh-language channel, along with all remaining World Cup qualifying fixtures.
Sue Butler, S4C’s sports commissioner, said: “We are delighted to offer the only live free-to-air coverage of Wales’ 2018 World Cup qualifiers.
“Chris Coleman’s team captivated us at Euro 2016 and it’s great to be back with the Wales team following all the action and drama live on S4C.”
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All the national team’s Euro 2016 matches were shown on S4C, with English language coverage shared between the BBC and ITV.
This prompted unprecedented scenes, with fan zones - both official and unofficial - being set up as Chris Coleman’s men reached the semi-finals.
Under the new deal, the Welsh-language coverage will be produced by Caernarfon-based Rondo Media, with Sky Sports continuing to show Wales’ matches in English.
Rondo is already responsible for putting together the channel’s football portfolio, which includes international highlights and live matches from the Welsh Premier League and Welsh Cup.
Dylan Ebenezer will anchor the coverage, with former Ysgol Maes Garmon pupil Nic Parry and Malcolm Allen of Deiniolen in the commentary box.
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Former internationals Owain Tudur Jones, who was born in Bangor, and Dai Davies, who lives in Llangollen, will provide the analysis.
The matches will start with Republic of Ireland v Wales on Friday, March 24.
Other matches shown will be against Serbia away on Sunday, June 11, Wales v Austria on Saturday, September 2, and Moldova v Wales on Tuesday, September 5.
Finally, there are fixtures away at Georgia on October 6 and home against the Republic of Ireland on Monday, October 9.
S4C is also launching “Join The Red Wall”, a multi-platform campaign to promote the live coverage, which will celebrate how the team’s success has captured the imagination of people all over the country.In this Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011, photo, a Morgan Stanley billboard is displayed in Times Square, New York. Morgan Stanley said Thursday, July 19, 2012, its revenue fell sharply in the second quarter, dragged down by weak results from its investment banking unit. Its net income missed Wall Street expectations, and its stock dropped sharply. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
If you're mad about Wall Street pay, take heart: At least one guy on Wall Street seems to get it. No, he's not going to give back any of his own pay or anything like that. That would be crazy. But at least somebody out there feels your pain!
John Mack, former CEO of Morgan Stanley, went on Bloomberg TV today and did the usual banker moaning and groaning about how mean and divisive people are, always blaming banks for blowing up the financial system and what-not.
But he also, strikingly, expressed some sympathy for the pitchfork-wielding rabble, saying he could understand how somebody who's been out of work for a while could get disgusted by the obscene wealth being raked in by Wall Street types for essentially moving numbers and pieces of paper around, social benefit be damned.
"Let's be totally honest: A lot of people who have done really well have not handed that wealth very well," he told Bloomberg. "The kind of money that was made and the way it was flaunted -- look, it's wrong."
Mack, who by my count was paid more than $58 million during his stretch as Morgan Stanley CEO between 2005 and 2009, took a stroll down memory lane, remembering that he got paid just $8,000 per year for his first Wall Street job back in 1968.
"We really didn't make a lot of money" at first, he said. "Over time, markets took off. We took on more risk, we became global, we used technology, and the money was really unbelievably generous."
Now, he says, Wall Street compensation just has to be reined in. For one thing, excessive pay makes the Poors all angry and stabby and wanting to vote for Democrats. He also said it's the easiest cost to cut for an industry that is tightening its belt in the face of lower returns, higher capital requirements and more regulation.
But then Mack has always been one of Wall Street's less-greedy guys, or at least he makes sure it looks that way. He nobly gave up his bonus for three years during the crisis, accepting paltry annual compensation of no more than $1.6 million between 2007-09 (most of his $58 million in pay came in 2006, just as all hell was about to break loose).
Mack was echoing comments earlier this month by the guy who replaced him as CEO at Morgan Stanley, James Gorman, that he was "sort of sympathetic to the shareholder view that the industry is still overpaid."
What Mack did not mention was that obscene Wall Street pay -- including his own, arguably -- helped cause the very financial crisis that put banks in the spot they're in now, as many studies have shown. Maybe if there hadn't been a financial crisis people wouldn't be hating quite so much on Wall Street wealth.
What Mack also did not mention is that Wall Street pay hasn't exactly been collapsing. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reported last week that the cash bonus pool for New York City employees of the securities industry will likely shrink this year for the second year in a row. Oh, noes! The total bonus pool will likely be less than $20 billion, to be split between 168,700 people, which works out to less than $120,000 per person, or only twice the nation's median household income.
That is just the bonus pool. Altogether, including salary and bonuses, the average Wall Streeter took home $362,950 last year, according to DiNapoli, five times more than the average private sector salary in New York City. Thirty years ago, in contrast, the average Wall Street pay was about $45,000, a mere two times the average New York City salary, notes The Wall Street Journal's David Weidner.
While most wages in our hobo-chili economy have been relatively stagnant, Wall Street pay has been climbing since the Great Recession ended. Wall Street pay rose in 2010 and 2011 by 16 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively, according to DiNapoli's office.
A key test of the supposed new sobriety in banker pay will be what happens to newly defenestrated Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit. Bloomberg notes that, by up and quitting, Pandit should be giving up $33 million in pay (on top of the $261 million he has already taken home, for a tenure during which Citi's stock price fell 89 percent).Donald Trump, the hard-charging businessman who had been leading voter polls for the Republican presidential nomination, recently kicked off a rally in Beaumont with a moment of silence for the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks that left at least 129 dead.
In the aftermath of the attacks, conflicting reports on the citizenship status of the perpetrators led 30 state governors and most of the Republican presidential candidates, including Trump, to speak out against Syrian refugees entering the United States. Trump began his Nov. 14, 2015, speech at Beaumont’s Ford Park Arena by calling the events in Paris the night before "terrible."
He went on to say, "And when you look at what happened in that case, it’s just reported, one from Syria. And our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria," citing one of the Paris attacker’s alleged Syrian nationality.
While the Syrian passport allegedly found next to the body of one of the attackers is believed to be fake and at least six out of the 10 known assailants are European nationals, Trump and others cited the Paris attacks as good reason to prohibit additional Syrian refugees from entering the United States.
Trump was not alone in claiming President Barack Obama wants to allow hundreds of thousands of Syrians entry to the United States. Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina put the number at 100,000 Syrian refugees and Ben Carson likened bringing 200,000 people "from that region" to malpractice. Trump had used the 250,000 figure before, telling Matt Lauer of NBC News he didn’t want that many Syrians coming to the United States.
The United States has a long history of taking in refugees from war-torn countries, including some from Syria. But has President Obama decided to admit 250,000 Syrian refugees?
Our attempts to learn the basis for Trump’s statement yielded no replies from his campaign.
In October 2015, Fox News commentator Sean Hannity made a claim much like the one Trump offered in Beaumont, though Hannity mentioned another country as well, saying: "The president said he’s going to bring in 250,000 (Syrian and Iraqi) refugees into this country."
Pants on Fire, PolitiFact ruled a week later, finding that Hannity lofted a figure not rooted in Obama administration plans, though there are plans to admit more refugees, including more Syrians, over several years.
Hannity offered as backup for his claim a Sept. 20, 2015, Associated Press news story stating that the U.S. will accept 85,000 refugees from around the world next year, up from 70,000, and that total would rise to 100,000 in 2017, per Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks. Hannity added up the total number of refugees allowed each year from all over the world, to get a total of 255,000 refugees.
That AP story, however, said that those figures reflected refugees to be welcomed from around the world, not just Syria or even the Middle East. On Sept. 10, 2015, the Obama administration announced plans to increase the number of Syrian refugees to at least 10,000, although talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh have claimed figures almost 10 times as high. We reached out to the White House for clarity.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz sent back an email stating that the U.S. is increasing the "number of Syrian and other refugees we admit from around the world on an annual basis," going up to 85,000 next year and 100,000 the following year.
While Hannity further clarified his statement, that he didn’t say all would be Syrian refugees, Trump explicitly labeled all 250,000 as Syrian refugees.
After searching other news stories, checking with the White House and searching some more, we did find that 250,000 figure out there on the Internet -- on a parody site called Real News Right Now, which stated: "The U.S. Department of State announced today that it will grant upwards of two-hundred and fifty thousand Syrian refugees temporary amnesty in the United States. Over the next four months, State Department officials working in conjunction with FEMA will begin processing and transporting the refugees to sparsely populated parts of Arizona and North Dakota." It went on to quote Cathy Pieper, a spokesperson for the "Department of State," the article said. We called the State Department to see if there was a spokesperson by that name; there isn’t.
Refugee resettlement
In September 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry shared the Obama administration’s plans to increase the total number of refugees coming into the United States from all countries from 70,000 to 85,000 in Fiscal Year 2016, with "10,000 over the next year from Syria specifically," Kerry said. The following year, Kerry said the target would be closer to 100,000 total, again from all countries.
Between Oct. 1, 2011 and Nov. 20, 2015, the U.S. resettled 2,261 Syrian refugees in 36 states, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that analyzes migration across the world. Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokesperson for the organization, wrote in an email that between the Obama administration’s announcement of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees in Fiscal Year 2016 (part of the total increase to 85,000 refugees) and the plan to raise the overall refugee admissions ceiling in FY 2017 to 100,000, even if the entirety of the increase between Fiscal Years 2016 and 2017 were all Syrian refugees (the allotted number for Syrian refugees hasn’t been specified), that would permit admission of 25,000 Syrian refugees in FY 2017.
"We know of no proposal by the administration to admit 250,000 Syrian refugees," she said.
According to a report submitted to Congress Oct. 1, 2015, the U.S. admitted between 1,600 and 1,800 Syrian refugees in FY 2015. The table below, from the Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2016 report to Congress includes the number of actual arrivals for 2014 and 2015 from all areas of the world, and projected numbers for 2016:
Table I
Refugee Admissions in FY 2014 and FY 2015
Proposed Refugee Admissions by Region for FY 2016[3]
Region FY 2014 Actual arrivals FY 2015 Ceiling Revised FY 2015 Ceiling FY 2015 projected arrivals Proposed FY2016 Ceiling Africa 17,476 17,000 20,400 22,600 25,000 East Asia 14,784 13,000 17,300 18,200 13,000 Europe and Central Asia 959 1,000 2,300 2,350 4,000 Latin America/Caribbean 4,318 4,000 2,300 2,050 3,000 Near East/South Asia 32,450 33,000 27,700 24,800 34,000 Regional Subtotal 69,987 68,000 70,000 70,000 79,000 Unallocated Reserve 2,000 6,000 Total 69,987 70,000 70,000 70,000 85,000
Our ruling
Trump said President Obama wants to take in 250,000 people from Syria.
If so, neither the administration or any other authoritative source had said as much before Trump stumped in Beaumont. If current plans hold, Syrian refugees settling here will increase through 2017, but it will be nothing close to the 250,000 figure touted by Trump. The administration has plans to increase refugees admitted from all countries from 70,000 in 2015 to 100,000 in 2017.
Nothing close? We rate his claim Pants on Fire!
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.A Mock image of WhatsApp on Windows 10 Mobile
Yesterday we reported about a new version of WhatsApp that came with many new features. They have been consistently supporting Windows platform bringing updates now and then.
Now there is a new report which mentions that they are now working on a Windows 10 Mobile specific version which will bring more features to the app together with a brand new refreshing look, which users have been demanding for few weeks.
In response to an user's query, the WhatsApp team wrote-
Hi, Thanks for your message.
We appreciate your feedback about WhatsApp compatibility with Windows Phone 10 and apologize for the inconvenience.
Windows Phone 10 is not an official OS version and currently we are not supporting WhatsApp on beta OS versions.
Our developers are working hard on providing you with a compatible version.
Thank you for your patience and support for WhatsApp. Emilia, WhatsApp Support Team
So the next questions that might be hauling your mind is that how different will it be from the current Windows Phone 8.1 version.
What we can expect with Windows 10 Mobile version-
A brand new refreshing Windows 10 look having all the new design changes.
Adaptive and interactive toast notifications which provides additional Informations and allows you to respond to a message directly from the Action/Notification Center itself. So no more opening WhatsApp with every notification.
Adaptive Live Tile templates - Adaptive Live Tiles adapt to different screen density devices, so to ensure that the Live Tile looks great on any device. So we might expect a better live tiles too with more information.
Better background task tackling - No more waiting for a Audio/Video to complete downloading, as they will be able to complete even if the app is not running in foreground.
More open APIs to enhance the current functionalities and remove restrictions that is present now.Video gaming is a wide topic, covering not only mainstream or Indie PC or console video gaming which lets be fair do get most of the press but a myriad of other topics. Online gaming, is not only restricted to MMO’s or first person shooters but the more adult forms, such as casinos and online poker.
This is not a post that’s going to advocate some great new online casino game, but rather the AI, thoughts and processes behind the game and the people who strive to create a perfect poker-playing bot or beat the same. Pokersites.me.uk has created a fantastic infographic that gives you whole rafts of information about poker and the software and AI behind it. More importantly, it shows you the constant struggle of creating an AI Poker playing bot that can rival the complexities of a human mind doing the same thing. As the title suggests, it really is Man vs Machine.
“Dealing with poker is dealing with loads of imperfect information which makes the game quite complicated like many real-life situations – one of the main reasons why big universities AI departments are researching on Poker.”
Luckily, this AI is not going to end with humanity struggling against a robotic race set on wiping them from the face of the earth, as it really is a little 50/50 on who wins.
Read the full infographic below, and head over to pokersites.me.uk for more information.Everyone knows the film “The Exorcist”. Not so many may be aware that it inspired by a house in St. Louis. A house that is still apparently haunted to this day.
This October, psychic Chip Coffey and the cast of Ghost Asylum will go on Destination America and perform the first live broadcast exorcism! While not the first time an exorcism has been televised, this will be the first time one is done live.
This is an interesting circumstance. The paranormal is an area that interests me greatly. I am actually a member of premier western New York paranormal investigation group, Paranormal Crossroads Live. I am however skeptical on the alleged haunting at this location. Many movies claim to be “inspired” by true circumstances and many times this inspiration is very, very loose.
And, honestly, it may be in the best interest of the crew that the location is not haunted. It is this investigator’s opinion that doing an exorcism in this manner would put the power in the court of any dark entity on the premises. It is being done for views and money, an epic TV event. All well and good, but that is a selfish reason which diminishes the sanctity of the ritual. Only time will tell. Most likely it will end up being a very boring broadcast. But who knows…CLOSE Learn how to make a Moscow Mule from Zoobie's Caitlan McSweeney. Video by Dave Wasinger/Lansing State Journal
Buy Photo Reo Town Pub will host a New Year's Eve masquerade on Sunday, Dec. 31. Guests can enjoy a complimentary breakfast buffet. (Photo: Tammy Allen/for the Lansing State Journal)Buy Photo
Alas, it's almost time to bid farewell to 2017 and say hello to the 1-8.
Watching the Times Square ball drop from a TV screen not going to cut it this year?
Then here's a list of New Year's Eve parties and other cool happenings taking place in Greater Lansing.
RELATED: Lansing's best bars & drinks for any situation
MORE: The ultimate guide to trivia nights in Lansing
If you want to party it up in Lansing...
Kick off your morning at Reo Town Pub with mimosas and beermosas. And if you get hungry before the clock strikes twelve, hit up Saddleback BBQ or Good Truckin' Diner, but save room for the complimentary breakfast buffet after the midnight champagne toast.
You might also like:
Masquerade masks will be provided so that you won't be embarrassed to face your friends on Monday if you end up having a little too much fun.
Of course, there are plenty of other celebrations happening around town. Mac's Bar will host its third annual pre-New Year's Eve party, where there will be best-dressed contests, raffles and bottle giveaways.
The Devil's Cut will rock Lansing Brewing Company's NYE bash. Irish-folk band Limerick will entertain the folks at Claddagh's.
How to go
11 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 31 through 2 a.m. Monday, Jan. 1. Reo Town Pub, 1145 S. Washington Ave. in Lansing. Free, but donations are accepted.
6 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 31 through 1 a.m. Monday, Jan. 1. The Claddagh, 2900 Towne Centre Blvd. in Lansing. No cover charge.
8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 30 through 2 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 31. Mac's Bar, 2700 E. Michigan Ave. in Lansing.$5 at the door.
8 p.m. Sunday Dec. 31 through 1 a.m. Monday, Jan. 1. Lansing Brewing Company, 518 E. Shiawassee St. in Lansing. No cover charge.
If you're heading to the westside...
Tequila Cowboy Bar & Grill is located at the North end of the Lansing Mall. (Photo: Courtesy photo)
At Tequila Cowboy Bar & Grill, a twenty-dollar bill gets you a buffet, including beef au jus, honey glazed ham, mac and cheese, green beans, salad and appetizers.
After midnight, David Shelby, who bills himself as a country singer with a Motown twist, will keep the party going and perform some of your favorite country tunes.
And, if riding a mechanical bull is still on your 2017 bucket list, Tequila Cowboy has you covered.
How to go
6 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 31 through 2 a.m. Monday, Jan. 1. Tequila Cowboy Bar & Grill, 5660 W. Saginaw Highway in Lansing. $20 before 9 p.m., $10 after 9 p.m. at the door.
If you're heading to the eastside...
Sample from almost a dozen breweries, like this craft beer from Old Nation Brewery, during "Holes and Hops" Oct. 4 at Cooley Law School Stadium in Lansing. (Photo: MELISSA WAWZYSKO/TIMES HERALD)
Celebrate New Year's Eve at Old Nation Brewery, where they don't believe in cutting corners or following trends.
Experience unique beer flavors, including creamsicle and M-43 tart strawberry. Try your hand at cornhole and rock out as Lansing's female-fronted cover band Atomic Annie brings the tunes.
More on lsj.com
Oh, and did we mention there'll be a pizza buffet later on in the night?
How to go
7:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 31 through 1 a.m. Monday, Jan. 1. Old Nation Brewery, 1500 E. Grand River Ave. in Williamston. $50 per person, $100 per couple.
If you want to cheer on the Spartans...
Buy |
of social change.[15][111] However, there is little scholarly agreement on a single interpretation of his life, or the methods needed to construct it.[13][14][112] There are also overlapping attributes among the accounts and pairs of scholars which may differ on some attributes may agree on others.[15][16][111] These groupings reflect the essential feature of each portrait and the accounts often include overlapping elements, for example there are a number of scholars, including Crossan and Wright, who are otherwise critical of each other, but whose interpretations agree that Jesus was not "primarily apocalyptic" and still believe that Jesus preached such a message, while others (e.g. Borg and Mack) differ on that issue.[16] The third quest has thus witnessed a fragmentation of the scholarly interpretations in which no unified picture of Jesus can be attained at all.[13][14]
In his 1906 book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer noted the similarities of the portraits to the scholars who construct them and stated that they are often "pale reflections of the researchers" themselves.[15][113][114] John Dominic Crossan stated that the trend has continued and summarized the situation by stating that many authors writing about the life of Jesus would "do autobiography and call it biography".[15][115]
Criticism [ edit ]
The historical analysis techniques used by Biblical scholars have been questioned,[116][117][118] and according to James Dunn it is not possible "to construct (from the available data) a Jesus who will be the real Jesus."[119][120][121] W.R. Herzog has stated that "What we call the historical Jesus is the composite of the recoverable bits and pieces of historical information and speculation about him that we assemble, construct, and reconstruct. For this reason, the historical Jesus is, in Meier's words, 'a modern abstraction and construct.'"[122]
Bart Ehrman and separately Andreas Köstenberger contend that given the scarcity of historical sources, it is generally difficult for any scholar to construct a portrait of Jesus that can be considered historically valid beyond the basic elements of his life.[123][124] On the other hand, scholars such as N. T. Wright and Luke Timothy Johnson argue that the image of Jesus presented in the gospels is largely accurate, and that dissenting scholars are simply too cautious about what we can claim to know about the ancient period.[125]
Bias [ edit ]
A number of scholars have criticized historical Jesus research for religious bias and lack of methodological soundness, and some have argued that modern biblical scholarship is insufficiently critical and sometimes amounts to covert apologetics.[126][127]
Bible scholar Clive Marsh[128] has stated that construction of the portraits of Jesus has often been driven by "specific agendas" and that historical components of the relevant biblical texts are often interpreted to fit specific goals.[118] Marsh lists theological agendas that aim to confirm the divinity of Jesus, anti-ecclesiastical agendas that aim to discredit Christianity, and political agendas that aim to interpret the teachings of Jesus with the hope of causing social change.[118][129]
Some have argued that modern biblical scholarship is insufficiently critical and sometimes amounts to covert apologetics.[130][131] John P. Meier, a Catholic priest and a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, has stated "... I think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that people claim they are doing a quest for the historical Jesus when de facto they’re doing theology, albeit a theology that is indeed historically informed..."[132] Meier also wrote that in the past the quest for the historical Jesus has often been motivated more by a desire to produce an alternate Christology than a true historical search.[117]
Historian Michael Licona says a number of scholars have also criticized historical Jesus research for a "secular bias that...often goes unrecognized to the extent such beliefs are...considered to be undeniable truths." New Testament scholar Scot McKnight notes that bias is a universal criticism: "everyone tends to lean toward their own belief system" though historian Michael Grant notes that within life of Jesus studies the "notorious problem reaches its height." [133]:50,41 Licona adds that because "there is no such thing as an unbiased reader/author," and that every scholar of the historical Jesus "brings philosophical baggage," and because there are no "impartial historians," and "only the naive maintain that historians who are agnostics, atheists and non-Christian theists... [are] without any biases," this is a criticism inevitably accurate to varying degrees for everyone in the field.[133]:31-104 Stephen Porter says "We are all very biased observers, and given how biased we are, it is no wonder that our criteria so often give us what we want."[134]:19–20
The New Testament scholar Nicholas Perrin has argued that since most biblical scholars are Christians, a certain bias is inevitable, but he does not see this as a major problem.[135][136] Licona quotes N. T. Wright:
It must be asserted most strongly that to discover that a particular writer has a bias tells us nothing whatever of the value of the particular information he or she presents. It merely bids us be aware of the bias (and of our own for that matter), and to assess the material according to as many sources as we can."[133]:46;footnote 70
Historian Thomas L. Haskell explains, "even a polemicist, deeply and fixedly committed" can be objective "insofar as such a person successfully enters into the thinking of his or her rivals and produces arguments potentially compelling, not only to those who potentially share the same views, but to outsiders as well."[133]:50[137] This has led Licona to recognize 6 tools/methods used to check bias.[133]:52-61
Method—attention to method reduces bias
Making point of view (horizon) and method public allows scrutiny of, and challenges to, that which stands behind the narrative
Peer pressure—can act as a check, but can also hinder
Submit work to the unsympathetic—they look for issues the sympathetic overlook
Account for relevant historical bedrock—some facts are established
Detachment from bias—historians must force themselves to confront all data
Lack of methodological soundness [ edit ]
A number of scholars have criticized the various approaches used in the study of the historical Jesus: for the lack of rigor in research methods, and for being driven by "specific agendas" that interpret ancient sources to fit specific goals.[116][117][118][138][139][140] New Testament scholar John Kloppenborg Verbin says the lack of uniformity in the application of the criteria, and the absence of agreement on methodological issues concerning them, have created challenges and problems. For example, the question of whether dissimilarity or multiple attestation should be given more weight has led some scholars exploring the historical Jesus to come up with "wildly divergent" portraits of him, which would be less likely to occur if the criteria were prioritized consistently.[141]:10–31 Methodological alternatives involving hermeneutics, linguistics, cultural studies and more, have been put forth by various scholars as alternatives to the criteria, but so far, the criteria remain the most common method used to measure historicity even though there is still no definitive criteriology.[142]:xi [74]:45
The historical analysis techniques used by biblical scholars have been questioned,[116][117][118] and according to James Dunn it is not possible "to construct (from the available data) a Jesus who will be the real Jesus."[119][120][121] Classicist historian A. N. Sherwin-White "noted that approaches taken by biblical scholars differed from those of classical historians."[133]:17-18 Historian Michael R. Licona says biblical scholars are not trained historians for the most part. He asks, "How many have completed so much as a single undergraduate course pertaining to how to investigate the past?"[133]:19 Licona says N. T. Wright, James G. D. Dunn, and Dale Allison have written substantive historically minded works using hermeneutics, but even so, there remains "no carefully defined and extensive historical method...typical of professional historians."[133]:20
Donald Akenson, Professor of Irish Studies in the department of history at Queen's University has argued that, with very few exceptions, the historians attempting to reconstruct a biography of the man Jesus of Nazareth apart from the mere facts of his existence and crucifixion have not followed sound historical practices. He has stated that there is an unhealthy reliance on consensus for propositions which should otherwise be based on primary sources, or rigorous interpretation. He also identifies a peculiar downward dating creep, and holds that some of the criteria being used are faulty.[143]
It is difficult for any scholar to construct a portrait of Jesus that can be considered historically valid beyond the basic elements of his life.[123][124] As a result, W.R. Herzog has stated that: "What we call the historical Jesus is the composite of the recoverable bits and pieces of historical information and speculation about him that we assemble, construct, and reconstruct. For this reason, the historical Jesus is, in Meier's words, 'a modern abstraction and construct.'"[144] According to James Dunn, "the historical Jesus is properly speaking a nineteenth and twentieth-century construction, not Jesus back then, and not a figure in history" (emphasis original).[145] Dunn further explains "the facts are not to be identified as data; they are always an interpretation of the data.[146] For example, scholars Chris Keith and Anthony LaDonne point out that under Bultmann and form criticism in the early and mid-twentieth century, Jesus was seen as historically "authentic" only where he was dissimilar from Judaism, whereas, in contemporary studies since the late twentieth, there is near unanimous agreement that Jesus must be understood within the context of first century Judaism.[147]:12 [148]:40-50
Since Albert Schweitzer's book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, scholars have stated that many of the portraits of Jesus are "pale reflections of the researchers" themselves.[15][149][150] Schweitzer stated: "There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a life of Jesus."[151]:4 John Dominic Crossan summarized saying, many authors writing about the life of Jesus "do autobiography and call it biography."[15][152]
Scarcity of sources [ edit ]
There is no physical or archaeological evidence for Jesus, and there are no writings by Jesus.[10]:43 First century Greek and Roman authors do not mention Jesus.[10]:43 Textual scholar Bart Ehrman writes that it is a myth that the Romans kept detailed records of everything, however, within a century of Jesus' death there are three extant Roman references to Jesus. While none of them were written during Jesus' lifetime, that is not unusual for personages from antiquity. Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, mentions Jesus twice.[10]:44,45. There are enough independent attestations of Jesus' existence, Ehrman says, it is "astounding for an ancient figure of any kind".[153] While there are additional second and third century references to Jesus, evangelical philosopher and historian Gary Habermas says extra-biblical sources are of varied quality and dependability and can only provide a broad outline of the life of Jesus. He also points out that Christian non-New Testament sources, such as the church fathers, rely on the New Testament for much of their data and cannot therefore be considered as independent sources.[154]:228,242
The primary sources on Jesus are the Gospels, therefore the Jesus of history is inextricably bound to the issue of the historical reliability of those writings.[155]:15-23 The authenticity and reliability of the gospels and the letters of the apostles have been questioned, and there are few events mentioned in the gospels that are universally accepted.[156] However, Bart Ehrman says "To dismiss the Gospels from the historical record is neither fair nor scholarly."[10]:73[157]:3-124[125] He adds: "There is historical information about Jesus in the Gospels."[158]:14
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ Van Eck(2015) mentions Crook 2013; Foster 2012, 2013; Keith 2011; 2012a, 2012b; Rodríguez 2012, 2013); Le Donne (2011; 2012a; 2012b); Schröter (1996; 2012; 2013).
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Printed sources
Bernier, Jonathan (2016), The Quest for the Historical Jesus after the Demise of Authenticity: Toward a Critical Realist Philosophy of History in Jesus Studies, Bloomsbury Publishing
Dunn, James D. G. (2003), Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, ISBN 978-0-8028-3931-2
Eck, Ernest van (2015), "Memory and historical Jesus studies: Formgeschichte in a new dress?", HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 71(1), Art. #2837, 10 Pages, Ernest van Eck, 71 (1): 10
Evans, Craig A. (2004), "The New Quest for Jesus and the New Research on the Dead Sea Scrolls", in Schmidt, Andreas, Jesus, Mark and Q, A&C Black
Hagner, Donald A. (2011), "The Jewish Quest and Jewish-Christian Relations", in Holmén, Tom; Porter, Stanley E., Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (4 Vols), BRILL
Web-sources
Further reading [ edit ]
Journals
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, BRILL
Surveys
Holmén, Tom; Porter, Stanley E., eds. (2011), Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (4 Vols), BRILL
Evans, Craig A., ed. (2014), The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus, Routledge
Eerdmans Historical Jesus Studies Collection (5 vols.)
History
Weaver, Walter P. (1999), The Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century: 1900-1950, A&C Black
Methodology
Porter, Stanley E. (2004), Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research, Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-0567043603
Charlesworth, James H.; Rhea, Brian; Pokorny, Petr, eds. (2014), Jesus Research: New Methodologies and Perceptions -- The Second Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Princeton 2007, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Demise of AuthenticityThe talent available
As usual there is a some top end talent with depth lasting into the third day of the draft. It is likely to produce future starters fitting into all kinds of defensive schemes and have different players appealing to different teams for different reasons. I have one ranked in my top 10, two more in my top 20, one in the late 1st round and three in the 2nd round.
What do I think the Giants should do?
Osi Umenyiora is gone and Justin Tuck got banged up and regressed again really only showing up for his annual obliteration of the 49ers. To make matters worse the Giants kept putting their best DE Jason Pierre-Paul on the inside of the NASCAR package making it easy to opponents to double team him with two linemen. JPP also came to camp overweight and never took advantage of his one-on-one opportunities outside in the same way he had previously. Depth is non-existent - none of Adrian Tracy, Justin Trattou, Adewale Ojomo are worthy of a roster spot let alone place in the rotation.
With Tuck in the final year of his contract and his durability an issue the Giants have three options: 1) Draft a DE high they believe can contribute immediately; 2) move starting SLB Matthias Kiwanuka up full-time to the line to play the position he was actually drafted for; 3) do both and hope like hell they can back-fill the hole created at SLB.
The Giants have a ‘protoype’ for the position - preferring guys who measure up in excess of 6’4”, and 265lb’s with arms like tentacles and the quick first step with the ability to turn the corner and get to the QB. Those who can also rush from the passer from the inside are valued even more as they make it far easier to find them a role in the ‘NASCAR’ package. The way we were ran over last year though needs some thought so perhaps someone better able to play the run might be targeted?
How will things play out on draft day?
Unusually, most of the DE's are actually projected to play DE rather than being converted to OLB in the pro ranks. There are a couple who may convert but not many. Two of the top prospects also look like they would be suited to playing DE in the 3 man line. As usual, I'd expect the position to be highly coveted on draft day with some surprises as to quite how high (or low) some of the players go when compared to the draft boards of 'experts' in comparison to those of teams
Creme de la creme
Ezekial Ansah, BYU (6’5 1/4”, 271lb’s, 4.63 speed, 35 1/8” arms, 21 BP reps) has often been compared to JPP because of his size and raw athletic ability and in truth its hard to disagree. Has a ridiculous size/speed ratio. Was a king-sized OLB in the 3-4 who moved like a safety but was built like a DE. Very raw, doesn’t seem to know how to use his hands to free himself from blocks and doesn’t have more than the most rudimentary pass rush moves. Made a lot of noise at the Senior Bowl game but a closer look shows he never beat an OT to make either of those sacks and he struggled against them the same as he had in practice. How much he understands the game and how much he gets by on athletic ability alone is questionable. Will likely go in the top 10 but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him struggle mightily as a rookie as he learns how to play with technique and improve his recognition of what is going on around him. That said, his upside is limitless so it may make the investment worthwhile in the long run.
The wild-card
Damontre Moore, Texas A&M (6’4 3/8”, 260lb’s, 34 3/4” arms, 4.92 speed, 19 BP reps) is someone I looked long and hard at as I like him as a player. Junior entry. Two year starter who moved from the ‘Joker’ (OLB) role in the 3-4 to DE in the 4-3 with the change of scheme. Nicknamed 'DaMonster' by teammates because of his ability to make impact plays (45 TFL including 26.5 sacks and 8 forced fumbles in three years). Far too much was made of his 40 yard time and lack of BP reps - his 3 cone, shuttle and jumps are all top 5 or top 10 at his position. Very effective with his inside pass rush moves and on stunts - makes a lot of sacks ‘cleaning up’ and through second effort than through sheer athletic ability. Can be ran at because he doesn’t use his hands well and is physically weak in the upper body but is relentless in pursuit. Has the size and length to fit our ‘prototype’ but his lack of pure speed and in particular the ‘red flags’ about his character - lack of dedication in the weight room, reputation as a ‘party guy’ and possession of marijuana arrest in ’11 - makes it unlikely we’ll invest a 1st round pick in him. I think he’ll be better at DE in the 4-3 than OLB in the 3-4 once he upgrades his strength. Ranks in my top 15 on talent but could drop a long way on draft day.
Prototypes & Giant ‘fits’
Datone Jones, UCLA (6’3 7/8”, 283lb’s, 32 3/4” arms, 4.80 speed, 29 BP reps) is one of my favourite players in this draft and his style of play has often been compared to that of Justin Tuck. High character guy. Recognised leader. Excellent vs the run and can also get after the passer (19 TFL this year including 6.5 sacks). Played all over on a 3 man line as well as DT and DE in the 4 man front so has great versatility and could contribute heavily in multiple roles even if not starting as a rookie. Tough as nails. Makes great use of his hands to control then separate from blockers to make plays. Dominated Senior Bowl practices and had a good game. Not a ‘turn the corner’ speedster as a pass rusher or that agile in redirecting so won’t suit every teams needs. Considered a bit of a ‘tweener as he’s a bit big for DE, a bit small for DT. Probably projects best in a multi-dimensional role as a combination DE/DT for a 4-3 team or as a 3-4 DE at this stage but I see him projecting to the ‘3’ technique as a DT a few years down the line. Missed the ’10 season with a stress fracture in his foot. Wore a suit and tie to his Combine interviews. If he could do back-flips we could simply pencil him in as our selection! Has the ‘smell’ of a Giants selection. Ranks in my top 15 overall.
Bjoern Werner, Florida State (6’3 1/4”, 266lb’s, 33 1/4” arms, 25 BP reps). Two year starter. Junior entry. Had two years of HS after arriving from Germany. Productive pass rusher with 13 sacks in his final year. Has a full reportoire of moves and good closing speed. Does a tremendous job of timing his jumps to impact the passing game even when when blocked - knocked down 16 passes at the LOS in two years as a starter. Very good run defender - plays with a very refined, controlled technique that enables him to take on bigger OT’s in the running game and hold the point of attack. Lacks the versatility that would enable him to contribute as much as in a non-starting role as the four listed above. Not overly explosive off the ball or around the corner so appears best suited solely to LDE in a 4-3 scheme. Appears a little robotic rather than a natural athlete and seems to pick and choose his moments as to when to chase hard and when to take it easy. Good, solid player but his ‘upside’ is questionable - looks like the finished article. Ranks just outside my top 20 accordingly.
Cornellius ‘Tank’ Carradine, Florida State (6’4 1.8”, 276lb’s, 34 3/4” arms, 32 BP reps) only started for one year - and only then after a teammate got hurt in the opening game - but really took his opportunity with both hands. Junior entry. Arrived from a JUCO in ’11. Big-time contributor as a back-up in his only other year at FSU. High character guy. Backed up at LDE as a soph but started at RDE though he played both with equal effectiveness during games. Has Osi like quickness off the ball and around the edge. Terrific bull rusher. Fantastic motor - makes plays all over the field and was leading his team in total tackles when he got hurt. Tore his left ACL in late November and hasn’t been able to work out yet but is expected to do so next week (though in what capacity is unknown). Will jump the snap early a bit too often. Wasn’t near as strong as he is now during the season. Got tied up and overpowered a few times at the LOS by much bigger OT’s - most notably against Florida’s Xavier Nixon - and needs to develop a few countermoves. Looked like a top 10 pick in the multiple viewings I had of him the last two years but coming off a torn ACL I can’t see him being taken before the second day and where he gets taken owes more to his medical prognosis than his football skills. I’d imagine he’ll go in the top 40
Alex Okafor, Texas (6’4 1/2”, 264lb’s, 33 7/8” arms, 4.91 speed, 21 BP reps) is built the way we like them and a better football player than athlete. Draws some comparison with Michael Strahan’s game due to his frame and the techniques he uses to rush the passer from his LDE spot in a a 4-3 defense. Three year starter who moved outside from DT after his sophomore season. Solid pass rusher with an impressive ability to leverage much bigger ORT’s on his way to the QB (made 19.5 sacks as a starting DE). Has an array of both inside and outside moves. Ate his blocker alive in the final game of his career against Oregon State in the Alamo Bowl (4 sacks, 1 forced fumble) but is not normally a dominator. Builds up speed over a few yards to leverage his opponent rather than being explosive in his first step off the snap - struggles when short-set by bigger blockers in pass protection. Tries to run around the outside shoulder of his blocker too much in run defense and ends up taking himself out of the play. Gets wired to blocks at the point of attack and I’ve seen him pancaked a number of times when that happens. Misses some tackles in the open field. Didn’t show up in either of the last two Red River Rivalry games against Oklahoma. I’m not sure he has much ‘upside’ but he looks the type who can step in as an immediate starter and stay there for years to come. Top 50 pick.
Corey Lemonier, Auburn (6’3 3/8”, 255lb’s, 34 1/2” arms, 4.60 speed, 27 BP reps) reminds me in many ways of a young Osi Umenyiora. Two year starter. Junior entry. Will still be just 21 years old when his rookie season is nearly over. Had a huge soph year (13.5 TFL including 9.5 sacks) and started off last year with 5 sacks in the first 4 games before injuring his ankle. Effective rushing the passer from either end and has explosive closing speed on the QB. Has 7 career forced fumbles and 2 blocked kicks. Has an array of pass rush moves and plays to his strength - gets a push on far bigger OT’s. Has added 10lb’s in the offseason and has the frame to get bigger. Needs to do a better job anticipating the snap - has too many offside penalties but is often late off the ball then takes himself out of the play by trying to fly up the field around the edge anyway. Was manhandled by top OT prospect Luke Joeckel a few weeks after being injured (though it should be noted Joeckel may be the best player in this entire draft). Wasn’t productive playing hurt or when the focus of blocking schemes - just 1/2 sack in final 8 games last year. Doesn’t make many tackles despite holding the point of attack well - struggles to disengage. Better in pursuit than when ran at. Used some standing up and dropping in coverage but appears stiff in space. Might take a year to develop his overall game but will help a pass rush off the bench as he does so. Top 64 pick.
Sam Montgomery, LSU (6’3 1/4”, 262lb’s, 33 7/8” arms, 4.82 speed, 22 BP reps) has better productivity than Lemonier but I don’t like him nearly as much as a prospect. Two year starter RDE in a 4 man front but was occasionally used as a DT on pass rushing downs. Made 26 1/2 TFL and 17 sacks in his two years as a starter. One of the better run defenders at his position in the draft when ran straight able to hold the point of attack on outside runs. Strong bull rusher but lacks a strong closing burst to the QB or the speed/agility required to turn the corner on a consistent basis. Very stiff in his change of direction - is often in position to make plays but gets juked by RB’s in the hole and doesn’t make many tackles. Has a game better suited to LDE but lacks the ideal size to play there. Character is an issue - admitted to not playing hard all the time and gambling on football with teammates. Has a reputation as being lazy OTF and LSU Coaches have reportedly given poor reports to NFL teams. Top 75 pick on talent but has a bit of ‘boom or bust’ about him.
The top prospect I really don’t want
Margus Hunt, SMU (6’8 1/8”, 277lb’s, 33 3/4” arms, 4.60 speed, 38 BP reps). Two year starter. Estonian national with limited football experience. Was a world class track and field athlete. Started at DE in a 3 man front but might project to DT or even DE in the 4-3. Rushes the passer well from the inside and has the ability to impact heavily on a passing game. Kick blocker supreme - has 14 (yes FOURTEEN!) career blocked kicks. Looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane against the run - has no idea how to play low and gets turned out way too easily for someone with his physical tools. Wins battles almost entirely on speed despite his great strength. Stiff in change of direction and very angularly built. Appears clueless on what to do when the linemen are coming at him rather his going at them. Top 40 pick with a very high ‘bust’ potential.
Mid-round Gems
Malliciah Goodman, Clemson (6’3 5/8”, 276lb’s, 36 3/8” arms, 26 BP reps) was a two year starter at LDE who underachieved throughout his career but turned in a dominating performance in the Chick-fil-A Bowl game against LSU in the final game of his college career. Has huge hands and long arms (3 sacks and a PD in 38 snaps). Forced 8 career fumbles. Does a really good job at the point of attack against the run but just doesn’t get it done as a pass rusher - just 11 career sacks - despite what looks on paper to be outstanding physical tools. Probably won’t ever be a good pass rusher but he can help a rotation in run defense. 4th round pick
Mike Capatano, Princeton (6’3 7/8”, 271lb’s, 34” arms, 4.75 speed, 33 BP reps) played at a lower level of competition but has a good chance of becoming successful in the NFL. Workout warrior who has added weight and strength to his frame each year and has become more productive each season as he has done so. Spent time at the camp of former Pro Bowl DE Chuck Smith learning additional pass rushing techniques. 5th round pick.
Late round gamble
Quanterus Smith, Western Kentucky (6’5”, 250lb’s, 33 1/4” arms) has been brought in for a visit and having seen the highlight video of how well he played against the vaunted Alabama OL at the start of the season (3 sacks) it is easy to understand why. Led the nation in sacks with 12.5 in 10 games prior to tearing his left ACL in mid-November. The Giants bought him in for a private visit to check him out recently so clearly they have an interest. Healthy I think he’d be a 2nd day pick but he’ll drop into the late rounds where a 6th round pick should be enough to secure his services for the future.
Summary
There is a lot of talent that appeals to me at the position in different rounds so I don;t believe we're 'locked in' to drafting a DE in any specific round. Could the Giants asking Michael Strahan to mentor JPP precipitate his move to LDE allowing Kiwi to start at RDE and Tuck to avoid wear and tear against the run by playing off the bench mainly on passing downs? If they choose not to go for an ‘off the shelf’ starter this triple option would give them time to develop someone.
Prior to his injury I had ‘Tank’ on my short-list for the Giants in the 1st round before he got injured as he can play either end equally well. Given a clean bill of health I wouldn’t be shocked to see us draft him but I’d be hoping it would be in the 2nd round rather than at 19 were that to be the case simply because its so risky taking a guy coming off an ACL injury.
Leaving JPP at RDE, Jones would be the perfect ‘fit’ as not only can he rush the passer from DT but he would enable the Giants to stop dicking around putting JPP inside. I don’t have the same warm, fuzzy feelings for Werner as I think he only fits at LDE and has limited upside. That just doesn’t seem to fit our profile. Okafor may well be in play if we’re looking for an LDE in the 2nd round but I wouldn’t take him. Looking for Moore of an RDE (geddit?) despite concerns over his speed were his character to check out he’d be the ultimate Giants ‘under the radar’ pick as I haven’t seen him linked to us at all and that fits our draft MO to a tee. I wouldn’t be surprised to see us zero in on Lemonier to develop so hope we can get him in the 3rd. Later still either Capatano or Smith might be worth a gambleAs we all know, the 3DS was not Nintendo's first venture into 3D gaming. The fabled Virtual Boy was Nintendo's earlier tried and tested system, which while having many merits, failed commercially. As of today though Nintendo's handheld has successfully brought 3D entertainment back to the gaming world. For retro gamers though, one question remains unanswered regarding the 3DS - when will Virtual Boy games hit the Virtual Console? This query may well be answered in the coming weeks...
Earlier this week it had been reported that a trademark application from Nintendo had surfaced for the term 'Virtual Boy' at the European Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market database. While there is no information as of yet on how the software giant intends to use the trademark, we can only hope that this is indeed the first steps towards re-releasing titles from the 1995 console's back-catalogue.
With the already existing 3D functionality on the 3DS, it makes perfect sense for Nintendo Virtual Boy games to be re-released on the handheld. With the likes of Virtual Wario Land, Teleroboxer, and Jack Bros potentially being made available without the need of an expensive system, many retro gamer's dreams of enjoying these classics on the cheap could be realised.
Until more is known about this application, we'll be crossing our fingers in hope that the red and black visuals will soon be visible on the Nintendo 3DS eShop.An RTI query has revealed that millennium city Gurgaon is home to a total of 224 illegal nursing homes and clinics that are being run under the district’s community health centre (CHC).
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This comes at a time when the real estate hub has been in news for a number of illegal sex determination and abortion cases.
The illegal clinics and nursing homes actively running in Gurgaon are 23 in Patudi, one in Bhangrola, 18 in Bhodakala, 15 in Sohna, 54 in Farukhnagar, 48 in Harsaru, 26 in Gangola and 39 in Badshahpur. The details were furnished by the civil surgeon office of the Haryana health department in the Right to Information (RTI) query.
B K Rajoura, civil surgeon Gurgaon Health Department, said that a complaint was also made against them before the chief minister window but no action has been taken so far. “We cannot take action against them as there is no Haryana Nursing Homes Registration Act,” he added.
The RTI was filed by Mahender Kumar, a resident of Bahalpa village in Sohna, on October 10 in the civil surgeon office seeking information in connection with the fake doctors, illegal nursing homes and clinics running in Gurgaon.
The civil surgeon office, in its reply on October 23, had said there are 224 illegal clinics and nursing homes under the district’s CHC in the city.
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The RTI query further revealed that there are over 141 bogus doctors in these nursing homes and illegal clinics. Even worse, they are not qualified and have medical degree or certificates. Many of them were found to be only compounders, as per the RTI.We all know that the Fukushima disaster has created complete dead zones in the Pacific. What TEPCO is planning to do is nothing short of an extinction level event. Even the mainstream media is picking up on this.
From Newsweek:
Toxic waste produced by one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters will be dumped into the sea, according to the head of the Japanese company tasked with cleaning up the radioactive mess, despite protests from local fishermen.
Takashi Kawamura, chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), told foreign media that nearly 777,000 tons of water tainted with tritium, a byproduct of the nuclear process that is notoriously difficult to filter out of water, will be dumped into the Pacific Ocean as part of a multibillion-dollar recovery effort following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. That year, an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, killing more than 15,000 people and leading to a series of meltdowns at the TEPCO-owned Fukushima No. 1, or Daiichi, nuclear power plant, causing it to spew radiation that has plagued the region ever since.
While much progress has been made to clean the area, the company has yet to deal with the water that was used to cool the plant’s damaged reactors, causing it to become tainted with tritium.”The City's Got A Hotline For Its Insanely Confusing Pot Regulations
Portland's marijuana regulation process is endlessly confounding (more on that in a minute), but at least its hotline game is on point
Today, the city's Office of Neighborhood Involvement (ONI) formally announced the creation of |
that was the end result of it."
He also put out a tweet following the game, sending his best to Ellie.
Ellie Day I hope you're doing okay! My apologies! Hope u guys come back to another game soon. Love LJ! — LeBron James (@KingJames) December 18, 2015
After a spectacular year including winning the PGA Championship, Day took out the BMW Championship in September and elevated himself to world No. 1 ranking for the first time. He and Ellie have two children, with the most recent child born in November.
It is expected she will make a full recovery.Moazzam Begg was arrested with three others in dawn raids in Birmingham on Tuesday.
It emerged yesterday he was handed the cash in 2010 to buy his silence over claims he was tortured at the notorious US prison camp. It had been thought he had received a six-figure sum.
He had accused the British Government of knowing about alleged abuse by America at the detention camp.
Begg, 45, was held for nearly three years as a suspected al-Qaida recruiter before being released in 2005.
The “hush money” deal included a gagging order so he can never talk about what happened to him.
Yesterday, police continued to quiz Begg on suspicion of attending a terror training camp and organising terrorism overseas.
He was nabbed at the £395,000 house in Hall Green which he bought for cash with his compensation.
It comes as security chiefs warned Syrian terror groups now pose the biggest threat to Britain since 9/11.
Begg claims he visited Syria in 2012 to visit wounded civilians.
His younger brother said: “We don’t think he’s done anything wrong.”The rate at which carbon is now accumulating in the atmosphere appears to be without precedent in the geological record. That makes it hard to find situations analogous to the current changing climate. Likely the closest analog occurred over 55 million years ago and has been termed the Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum (PETM). During the PETM, there was a geologically rapid change in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, which was followed by an equally sudden change in temperatures. The change upset ecosystems across the planet and led to a major extinction event in the oceans.
While these features are relatively easy to determine from the geological and fossil records, there's one major aspect of the PETM that has remained uncertain: where the carbon came from. While various plausible ideas have been floated, there was no definitive evidence backing up any of them.
A few years back, a couple of researchers from Rutgers University suggested that the carbon literally showed up from outer space, delivered by a comet. While the idea was met with skepticism at the time, the same team is back with more evidence to back their idea: debris that they claim is likely to have been from an impact.
Where’d all the carbon come from?
The story of the PETM is written in isotopes. The sudden change in temperature that occurred, for example, can be tracked through changes in the isotopes of oxygen present in the water cycle. And we can identify the source of this warming based on isotopes of carbon. Different processes, especially biological ones, have a slight bias toward heavier or lighter isotopes of carbon. As a result, the carbon in the atmosphere has a ratio of isotopes that roughly reflect its source. While this may change over time as different processes come to dominate the carbon flux, these changes tend to be gradual.
This situation is decidedly not true at the PETM. Here, the ratio between carbon isotopes changes suddenly in geological terms—most scientists would say within tens of thousands of years. For that change to happen, a large source of carbon with an isotope ratio different from the atmosphere must have been released.
There have been two leading contenders for where all this carbon came from. One idea holds that it came from the methane that's trapped in the sea bed in the form of clathrates, a sort of mixed water-methane ice that can form at high pressures and low temperatures. Were an external source of heat to raise the ocean temperatures sufficiently, the clathrates would be destabilized and would release their methane to the atmosphere. Of course, this idea raises questions about what set off the initial burst of warming.
The second idea solves the problem by proposing that the opening of the North Atlantic was at fault. As rifting started taking place east of Greenland, it might have burned off both clathrates and carbon-rich ocean sediments. These would have triggered greenhouse warming that could have destabilized clathrates elsewhere in the ocean.
Given the existing data, it's difficult to discern which of these ideas is correct or if something else entirely happened. James Wright and Morgan Schaller would argue in favor of "something else entirely."
Sudden impact?
Wright has been pushing the idea that the PETM could be explained by a comet since at least 2003. Comets are rich in organic materials, including methane ices, and Wright has estimated that a 10km wide comet would deliver enough of the right isotopes of carbon to at least partially explain the changes seen as the PETM started. In a 2013 PNAS paper, Wright and Schaller argued that they had found solid evidence for a cometary origin.
That evidence came in the form of two sediment cores obtained in New Jersey. In that paper, Wright and Schaller describe how the cores have a regular banded pattern that suggests they captured a periodic process. Most of the periodic climate processes we know take many thousands of years to occur, which would mean an impossibly slow rate of sediment deposition if these were the cause. The alternative shorter-term processes aren't typically as regular as the bands in the sediment. So Wright and Schaller argue that they're looking at annual bands, with the different colors representing seasonal changes.
Tracking the changes in isotopes across these bands, they find that the changes are nearly instantaneous. Carbon isotope shifts are accomplished in only 13 years, with most of the lag involving simply the diffusion of the carbon into the ocean and its incorporation into the sediments. This, the researchers argue, is evidence that the carbon was delivered all at once—hence the cometary source.
The rest of the research community, however, doesn't seem to have been convinced. Although their paper on the subject went through peer review, the authors had prearranged for a specific editor to handle the reviews. We talked to the editor, Columbia's Wally Broecker, at the time, and he said he had an interest in seeing it published, in part because he favored seeing radical and new ideas being considered.
Less than a year later, there were a series of responses published in PNAS that tore the initial work to pieces. An international team of scientists argued that the original claims were implausible. "Using basic carbon cycle and climate considerations, we show this is not feasible," they wrote. "In fact, Wright and Schaller’s isotope records indicate that the CIE onset took at least several millennia." A second response ascribed the apparent banding pattern to disturbances caused by drilling.
Try, try again
That history sets the stage for the new work, in which Wright and Schaller join a number of other researchers to look for overt signs of the impact their model needs. Their samples include the original cores from New Jersey, along with an ocean core taken off the coast of Florida. Searching through the cores, they find a collection of what they call "spherules," rounded clusters of silicate material a few hundred micrometers across. Their numbers peak at around the same time as the carbon isotope changes.
While similar forms can be produced by volcanic activity, the product of volcanoes is typically similar in composition; the chemistry of these spherules varies widely. The spherules also contain damage that suggests they impacted with other material at high velocities, and they have materials that can only form at temperatures above 1,750 degrees Celsius, which is hotter than volcanoes get. For all these reasons, plus a few others, the authors conclude that this material was created in an impact.
Will this be enough to convince everyone? Probably not. Sparse signs at three drilling sites isn't going to be viewed as a slam-dunk for the existence of a large impact. And it's somewhat odd that the ocean-based core, where less sediment was deposited over the same time period as the other two, still has similar numbers of spherules in a given volume.
The authors optimistically conclude, "These findings will motivate a search for impact ejecta at other sites to define the geographic footprint of the [Paleocene-Eocene] strewn field, which will ultimately constrain the currently unknown location of an impact crater." They're right about the first part, in that other people will undoubtedly start checking their sediment cores to see if they have similar evidence for an impact. But their first check will be about whether the evidence is there at all. And other researchers will undoubtedly consider whether the spherules could form through means that don't involve an impact.
Should the impact idea hold up, however, then it would be time to revisit its possible role in the PETM. After all, one of the responses to the PNAS publication suggested that the timing of carbon isotope changes aren't consistent with an impact.
While this story is still developing, it does provide an interesting window into the scientific process. Radical new ideas clearly can get a hearing, even if it's not an especially kind one. That lack of kindness in this case, however, was based on a simple scientific issue: the data presented in 2013 didn't make sense given what we already knew, and we had alternative explanations. On the plus side, that hostile reception caused these scientists to do exactly what they were supposed to do: go back and gather more evidence.
Science, 2016. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf5466 (About DOIs).You're on the set. In the Film. While the film is being made.
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The libraries are asking for an increase of $1.4 billion in the capital plan over the next 10 years (1 percent of the overall capital budget). This money was not to go to fancy new libraries and slick renovations but to bring libraries into a state of good repair (think leaking roofs and broken HVAC systems). Instead the mayor's office gave them $300 million less than a quarter of what they need.
Mr Mayor, libraries are about as radical an institution as you are likely to find. We work for everyone equally regardless of demographic and socio-economic status. We offer resources, entertainment, and education to all and we are in every neighborhood doing it every day. As for the Tale of Two Cities we serve them both but we see the split very keenly. On the one side we have the people who have and they constantly ask why we need libraries when you can get anything from Amazon or on your ipad. Opposite we have the have nots who constantly ask when we will be able to expand hours. How do you answer students, seniors, job-seekers, immigrants, and families who are begging for those extra hours Mr Mayor? While those hours of operation are clearly not important to you I assure you that they are crucial for many of our citizens.
With a single, simple stroke of the budget pen you could open hundreds of library doors hundreds of hours a year creating thousands of opportunities for job hunting, English language learning, early childhood development, and all the myriad of things that libraries do that are proven to help close the gap between the two cities you claim to be committed to fixing. Instead you have left the libraries to fend for themselves, again, going begging to the City Council to close the budget gap and put pressure on the elected officials in the City Council to pull the fat out of the fire here and make this right.
There is also the question of good faith action here. The libraries have been extremely supportive of the Mayor and have helped him directly through a number of unfunded mandates. When IDNYC came out the libraries took up the challenge of providing a place for people (in the tens of thousands), to get them. When the Mayor voiced concern about internet access the libraries went out and found partners so they could start lending out wifi hubs putting internet access right in people's homes for free. Just last month libraries across the city set up new immigration information corners in every library in the City. How has the Mayor responded to this support? He has cut library funding of course.
It isn't as if people have not been telling the mayor about the importance of libraries. Numerous recent reports emphasize the contribution of the libraries to the community, their cost effectiveness, and call for an expansion of library services. The tone deaf nature of his response is stunning and makes me question if he has looked into this issue at all. Frankly I am wishing for a return to Mayor Bloomberg. At least with him you knew where you stood and he didn't ask for extras without giving you the resources to pay for them.
Mayor de Blasio had an opportunity to make real changes to that Tale of Two Cities but instead he wrote the same old story. He certainly had a lot of people encouraging him and a wealth of facts and resources to draw upon to justify his decision. Instead he struck up the band and called the tune for another round of the Budget Dance. Once again libraries will be scrambling to provide services, once again skeleton staff in neighborhood libraries will be told to "make do", once again we will see library buildings and infrastructure fester and rot for lack of resources. Once again it will be up to the City Council to pick up the slack and (hopefully) fix this budget hole after months of back and forth. Once again libraries will be tasked with providing world class service with no increase in revenue or ability to plan for growth.BEIRUT (Reuters) - A car bomb killed several civilians, including women and children, in a town south of Damascus on Wednesday, Syrian state television said.
The car was parked near the Amari Mosque in Kanaker, the channel reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, quoted activists as saying seven people had died.
The small town is under the control of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces but there are rebels in the surrounding area. The province around Damascus has seen intense fighting during the two-year conflict.
Syria’s civil war started with pro-democracy protests that were suppressed by government forces. An ensuing civil war has killed 90,000 people and drawn in regional powers hoping to sway the outcome of the conflict.
Assad’s forces, spurred on by a series of recent battleground victories, have staved off rebel advances near Damascus and further south of the capital, in areas near the Jordanian border. Insurgents have used car bombs to target areas they are not able to push into with ground forces.AP Photo 2016 Clinton raises $28 million but Sanders’ haul is too close for comfort
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign barely outpaced Bernie Sanders’ in the third quarter of 2015, a surprising development that shows the insurgent candidate’s strength while the former secretary of state struggles.
Clinton’s operation raised more than $28 million in the third quarter after a grueling fundraising schedule, compared with about $26 million for the Vermonter — who raised his money largely from online donations, and few in-person fundraising events.
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The narrow gap illustrates Sanders’ momentum in the third quarter, as he overtook Clinton in polling in both New Hampshire and Iowa. But Clinton’s overall fundraising machine remains formidable: combined with the $47.5 million she raised in the second quarter, her campaign has brought in roughly $75 million in six months. Sanders, by comparison, raised just $15 million in his first few months.
While considerably less than her first haul, Clinton's $28 million figure doesn’t come as a huge surprise to her team. The campaign had expected her numbers to drop during the summer months, while she was dogged by questions about her email practices at the State Department and falling poll numbers in the early-voting states.
"We are thrilled and grateful for the support of hundreds of thousands of donors across the country, helping us raise a record $75 million in the first two quarters," said Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook in a statement.
The campaign's joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee and state parties brought in over $3 million, the campaign said.
But Sanders’ own eye-popping haul — he raised $2.07 million online on Sept 30 alone — gives Democrats reason for pause. Much of the party establishment’s argument against Sanders centers on whether he could stand head to head against a well-funded Republican in the general election. His now-demonstrated fundraising prowess hardly erases such concerns, but it calls the assumption into question.
Clinton’s allies also take solace in knowing that she has affiliated super PACs with considerable fundraising power, while Sanders refuses to associate with any such groups. Priorities USA Action, the big-money Clinton group, told POLITICO it had raised $40 million so far in 2015 by mid-August.
Sanders’ campaign said on Wednesday that it had passed the one-million contributor mark in the third quarter, while Clinton’s own operation said that 93 percent of her third-quarter donations came in increments of less than $100.
The full disclosures for the period that ended Sept. 30 will be released next week, and filings from both contenders will be scrutinized not only for the details about where the money came from but how the campaign then spent it.A Montgomery County child was in the hospital in critical condition Saturday night and his mother was behind bars after authorities say she attacked him.
Magnolia police were called to a home in the 100 block of Roy Street near F.M. 1488 just after midnight Friday for a welfare check on a child.
According to police, the child's father called 911 after he returned home and found his son covered in blood and unresponsive.
When authorities arrived, five-year-old Michael Spurlock was lying on the living room floor.
According to investigators, the child's throat had multiple lacerations and was sliced from one side to the other. Officials said he also had a crushed chest and severe head injury.
Michael's mother, 45-year-old Daphne Spurlock, told investigators she was reading the Bible with her son when she realized he was possessed with demons.
Police said she stomped on Michael's head and chest, crushing him. They said she used a large kitchen knife to cut his throat from ear to ear, and then she stabbed him repeatedly as he lay helpless on the floor.
Spurlock said she was trying to release the demons from his body.
Michael was airlifted to Memorial Hermann Hospital for extensive emergency surgery.
Spurlock is charged with attempted capital murder. No bond has been set.
Investigators said Spurlock's husband was in shock when he found his injured son.
"He did arrive yesterday afternoon, saw the child was unresponsive. She informed him that she was trying to get the demons out of her child. He left the residence and contacted us," Magnolia Police Department Det. Brian Clack said.
Magnolia police and the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office are investigating this case.
Neighbors like Wade Scott are now having a tough time dealing with the gruesome details of the abuse the little boy suffered.
"Oh, I just couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it at all," Scott said. "They was real Christian church people. You know, churchgoers. But I couldn't see that [happening]. I couldn't think nothing like that because they go to church all the time."
Spurlock even used her Facebook profile as a place to worship, adding daily religious scriptures and dozens of photos.
While authorities believe the mother hurt her child, the woman's family says it could not be true.
"I don't see how it happened. I couldn't see my mother doing it at all," said Channtera Gresham, Spurlock's 25-year-old daughter.
Gresham said she is convinced police have the wrong person in custody.
"My mama is a loving person. She never hit us out of anger. She never would do that," she said.
Beverly Latham heard that her sister claimed she was trying to rid her son of demons, but Latham said that's uncharacteristic of her sister.
"I know my sister would never hurt her children," Latham said. "Never."
Even a family friend -- Mary Smith, who raised her children alongside Spurlock's -- says police have the wrong person.
Smith said authorities need to investigate what happened between Spurlock and her husband, David, before Michael was found in that near-death state.
"Being a mother, I haven't slept all day since I heard this. My nerves have been bad. I could not sleep," Smith said.
Spurlock's family is searching for a lawyer to help them fill in the blanks left open by police. They admit they don't know exactly what happened in that home overnight, but they say they're willing to do whatever it takes to find out.
As for little Michael, family and neighbors are praying the child pulls through.
"He's a fun little guy. Fun little guy," Scott said. "Always happy."
We're continuing to follow this developing story. Please stay with Eyewitness News and abc13.com for updates as they become available.Ireland was one of 54 countries that helped facilitate the CIA’s secret detention, rendition and interrogation programme in the years after the 9/11 attacks, according to a new report.
The report by the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human rights advocacy group, said foreign governments aided the US counterterrorism offensive in various ways including by hosting CIA prisons on their territories; detaining, interrogating, torturing and abusing individuals; assisting in the capture and transport of detainees; permitting the use of domestic airspace and airports for secret flights transporting detainees.
Its Globalising Torture report identified 136 people who had been held or transferred illegally by the CIA, the largest list compiled to date.
It also provided new information about the CIA’s handling of both al-Qaeda suspects and innocent people caught up in its global counterterrorism network.
The report said Ireland permitted the use of its airspace and airports for flights associated with CIA extraordinary rendition operations.
Its evidence against Ireland was based on a number of sources including three high-level reports from the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the United Nations, which expressed concern about the country’s “alleged co-operation” in the CIA rendition programme.
It also cited documents from a legal case brought by extraordinary rendition victims against Jeppesen Dataplan, a company that provided flight planning and logistical support services for CIA extraordinary rendition flights, and which indicated that Ireland allowed use of its airspace and Shannon airport for CIA rendition flights.
‘Moral cost’
US court records from another case involving Richmor Aviation, a firm that operated CIA extraordinary rendition flights, also show that at least 13 Richmor flights involving US personnel landed in Ireland between 2002 and 2004.
The report’s author, Amrit Singh, said: “The moral cost of these programmes was borne not just by the US but by the 54 other countries it recruited to help.”
Colm O’Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International Ireland, said: “It is undeniable that the Irish Government knew rendition flights transited Ireland and that they knew this breached the legally binding international convention on torture. Yet they did nothing.”In her lab at MIT, chemical-engineering professor Paula Hammond pinches a sliver of what looks like thick Saran wrap between tweezers. Though it appears unremarkable, this polymer membrane can significantly increase the power output of a methanol fuel cell, which could make that technology suitable as a lighter, longer-lasting, and more environmentally friendly alternative to batteries in consumer electronics such as cell phones and laptops.
Paula Hammond holds a piece of a fuel-cell membrane made using a layer-by-layer assembly technique. This method allows her to produce membranes that increase the power output of methanol fuel cells, making them more viable as an alternative to batteries for small electronics such as cell phones.
Methanol is a promising energy source for fuel cells because it is a liquid at room temperature, so it’s easier to manage than hydrogen. But so far, its commercial applications have been limited. One reason has to do with the properties of the proton-conducting membranes at the heart of fuel-cell technology.
On one side of a methanol fuel cell, a catalyst causes methanol and water to react, yielding carbon dioxide, protons, and free electrons. The protons pass through a membrane to a separate compartment, where they combine with oxygen from air to form water. The electrons, which can’t cross the membrane, are forced into wires, generating a current that can be used to power electronic devices.
The more protons cross the membrane, the more power is generated. But the polymers that conduct protons well also tend to let the methanol solution into the other compartment. The resulting loss of fuel lowers the cells’ power output. To limit such “methanol crossover,” researchers have to either use polymers that don’t conduct protons as well or make thicker membranes. But both of those options decrease efficiency, too.
In work published last spring in Advanced Materials, Hammond used an elegant, inexpensive process to reduce methanol crossover in a commercial fuel-cell membrane, increasing the efficiency of a methanol fuel cell by more than 50 percent. “What we’ve done is generate a very thin film that actually prevents the permeation of methanol but at the same time allows a rapid rate of proton transport,” says Hammond. Encouraged by this success, her team is now working to build such membranes from scratch, which could make them less expensive.
A Modified Process
A layer-by-layer assembly technique is the key to Hammond’s membranes. In earlier work, her team altered a membrane made of Nafion, a polymer manufactured by DuPont that is commonly used in fuel cells. It conducts protons well but also permits some methanol leakage, and it’s relatively expensive to make.
To begin the new process, Avni Argun, a postdoc in the lab and lead author on the Advanced Materials paper, mounts a specially treated silicon disc in a lab hood and starts the disc slowly rotating. Facing the membrane are four sprayer nozzles. Each nozzle is connected to a separate container. One contains a positively charged polymer solution and one a negatively charged polymer solution; two hold water.
Argun starts the sprayer system, which mists the disc with the positive solution for a few seconds, then with a water rinse, then with the negatively charged polymer, and finally with water again. A two-layer film forms within about 50 seconds. The thickness of this “bilayer” depends on the polymers and can range from 3 to 50 nanometers. In about six hours, the sprayer can apply between 400 and 600 bilayers, creating a membrane about 20 micrometers thick. The membrane described in Advanced Materials was made up of three bilayers on top of a Nafion membrane, adding only 260 nanometers to its thickness. By using a combination of positive and negative polymers, the researchers maintained Nafion’s high conductivity while reducing its methanol crossover.
Other researchers have tried to reduce membrane permeability by using new polymers or blending two different polymers. Blending often doesn’t work well, though, because polymers with different structures tend to separate, making the membrane less stable. With the layer-by-layer assembly process–common in other areas of materials science–“we combine two different materials, but on a nanometer-length scale so they’re really intermingled,” Hammond says.
Testing Grounds
After the membrane dries, Argun carefully peels it off the disc and tests its permeability and electrical resistance, which allows him to calculate its conductivity. With a large clip, he fastens the membrane between a plastic chip and a base that holds platinum wires that will measure resistance. After putting the assembly in a sealed plastic box that allows him to control temperature and humidity, he manipulates the membrane using a pair of gloves that reach through the box and into the chamber. Most membranes perform better under high temperature and humidity, so both conditions must be noted. Argun connects the assembly to an external analyzer to test the membrane’s resistance. Measuring its permeability is more straightforward; he simply notes the amount of methanol that diffuses through it over a specific amount of time.
If a membrane fares well in these initial tests, Argun couples it to a positive and a negative electrode (where the electricity-producing reactions take place) to see how it would perform in an actual fuel cell. He places the electrodes–two black, circular carbon cloths studded with particles of platinum and a metal alloy–on either side of the membrane. Then he sandwiches the whole apparatus inside an insulating gasket that looks like thin cardboard. Finally, he seals the unit using a hot press.
Graduate student Nathan Ashcraft takes over from here. Ashcraft puts the membrane-electrode assembly into an active fuel cell, into which air and methanol are carefully pumped. Two square slabs of steel, about the size of slices of bread, make up the outside of the cell; they contain heaters that allow Ashcraft to precisely control the temperature of the reaction. Between the steel slabs, two gold-plated electrodes sandwich graphite blocks with small channels etched into them. Ashcraft places the membrane-electrode assembly between the blocks and secures it with screws. He then pumps methanol and air through the channels to either side of the assembly. He measures and records the resulting current, along with the system’s temperature.
Hammond’s team has not yet devised a completely new membrane that conducts as well as Nafion. However, “we feel like we’re very close,” she says. The team is also experimenting with membrane thickness; if a membrane is too thin, it will tear in the fuel cell, but thicker membranes don’t conduct protons as well. The membrane that the lab ends up with will probably be about 50 micrometers thick, Ashcraft says. Hammond also plans to try building membranes that incorporate additional polymers.Everyone’s favorite “libtard”-hating, potty-mouthed police chief is about to lose his job – but not without a few last jabs before he loses the limelight that has made him something of a celebrity in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement.
The borough council of Gilberton, Pa., voted 6-1 on Thursday to fire Mark Kessler, who has since been given a termination notice. Kessler faced disciplinary action after he posted videos of himself firing automatic weapons that were owned by the borough and cursing about gun control last summer.
While the notice of termination comes just weeks after Gilberton voted to suspend Kessler indefinitely, it is not yet the final chapter. According to The Patriot-News, Kessler has the right to challenge the firing with a public hearing, which could occur in as few as 10 days.
Joseph Nahas, Kessler’s attorney, did not return several phone calls seeking comment on Friday. But when contacted by Hatewatch, Kessler offered assurances that he would take “legal action” against the borough. Then, he launched into a tirade about the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes Hatewatch.
“Russia needs good people. Why don’t you get on a boat, and take your whole organization with you?” Kessler said. “You’re disgusting. You’re vile creatures. You don’t belong in this country.”
Though it is unclear what will happen in the end, Kessler does appear to have another business proposition already in the works. His website reports that he is now conducting firearms training for Tactical Response, which is run by James Yeager out of Camden, Tenn. Last January, Yeager came to national attention after he posted a furious rant saying that if President Obama used his executive powers to enact gun restrictions, he would “start killing people.”"QUANTUM SHOT" #106
"Concept That Makes You Question Your Own Sanity
Just By Looking At It"
--NY Times
"The Rhombus, which was built by Changfeng College of Automotive Engineering in China, has its wheels arranged in a diamond shape, with each pointy end supported by a single wheel and two wheels in the middle." Such wheel placement could be an advantage - the front and back wheels turn simultaneously, thus giving the car really short turn radius. The concept was in the making since 1990, and finally was shown at Detroit auto show this year. Even though it can easily win an award "The Ugliest Car of the Year", it definitely makes a most audacious engineering statement.
Sources: ChinaMotors.ru, NYTimes
If you are wondering how Chinese dreamed this up, or what did they smoke :) -
Well, one just has to look over the old issues of "Popular Mechanics" magazine: here is an artist depiction of the rhomboid car from 1954:
...and in case you ever wondered what is OFFICIALLY "The Ugliest Car Ever Built?"
It's an "Aurora" monster built in 1957 by an eccentric New York priest as the ultimate safety vehicle (clearly, his design was not graced by the hand of God). It's been lovingly restored in 2005 - more pictures here
"Safety features" of this car included (then rare) seat-belts, a roll cage, side-impact bars, a collapsible steering column, and a padded instrument panel. The most innovative safety feature, which has not been incorporated into other cars, was the ability to swivel the seats to face rearwards should a collision seem imminent."
However, only one prototype was produced, and it broke down 15 times on the way to the press conference, requiring towing to 7 different garages. (wiki)
Category: AutomobileMcConnell and Reid plan to continue negotiations if the current House plan fails. Senators glum about debt-deal prospects
Grim-faced senators left their party lunches Tuesday fearful that Washington was poised to do the unthinkable: Blow past the Thursday deadline to avert an unprecedented default on the U.S. debt.
After House Republicans drew a stern rebuke from the White House for moving |
behind Goldberg. There’s something about his eyes – not the color, not the shape, but something – that looks just like the ones I’ve seen on the big screen in “Philadelphia,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “Forrest Gump.”
Hanks, arguably NU’s most talked-about son, is trying to carve his own path to stardom through hip-hop. And he’s off to a good start: From Entertainment Weekly to The Washington Post, media outlets across the nation are competing for coverage of this surprisingly down-to-earth college student who just, you know, happens to have released a rap single this week – the viral “White and Purple (Northwestern Remix).”
Hanks, I learn, is a sophomore studying theater. Among his favorite places at NU, he lists the Pi Kappa Alpha house, where he “likes to chill.”
The aspiring star says his favorite Evanston restaurant is Buffalo Joe’s … that is, until his manager shoots him a questioning look.
Hanks quickly changes his pick to Trattoria Demi.
The aspiring star is on firmer ground when asked about “White and Purple.”
Hanks, who grew up listening to hip-hop music, decided it would be a fun idea to make a remix version of Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow” with his own words. He spent many of his out-of-school hours at a private studio in Chicago throughout the fall term, recording his single that is dedicated to NU students, school spirit and college life.
“Any kids really living the college life can relate to it,” Hanks says.
Hanks’ self-penned lyrics directed toward college students contain brow-raising rhymes like “White kicks/Purple kush/This is college/Hittin’ blunts after hittin’ books.” But the NU administration has yet to utter a word.
“I don’t think it’s something that should cause anybody to be angry or offend anyone,” Hanks says of the potentially controversial lyrics.
Though Hanks is just one of countless aspiring 21-year-old rappers in the U.S., he in particular seems to have a single fluorescent pin light shining upon him. As the second son of Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks, Hanks’ childhood years were spent under the perpetual media spotlight thanks to his famous father.
Hanks says he’s used to the attention. But he’s never tried to hide his last name – Hanks says he’s proud to come from his family. Nevertheless, he doesn’t want people to focus on that fact.
“I’m not my dad. I am my own person.” – Chet Hanks
“Even though I know people will be talking about it, I don’t want them to be absolutely focusing on that,” Hanks says. “I’m not my dad. I am my own person.”
As a testament to the varying types of attention he’s attracting, Hanks’ video on YouTube had exactly 55 “likes” and 45 “dislikes” at press time. Rumors that Hanks copied “White & Purple (NU Anthem 2010)” from Morgan Jackson (aka Mo Greene), Communication ‘08, are rapidly spreading online.
“I was completely unaware until I saw him on the Internet,” Hanks says. “There is no connection whatsoever. No disrespect to Mo Greene.”
In the coming months, Hanks plans to continue recording at the Chicago studio on a regular basis. But he also remains an active member of the NU community: As a freshman, he became a brother at Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity – which is where he met Goldberg, a junior in the School of Continuing Studies. Hanks will also appear as Junior in the NU production of “The Liberation of Carmela Lopez” next month.
With his family in full support of his career, Hanks says he’s set on pursuing music and film. His new original track, “Westside LA”, will be released on www.hotnewhiphop.com.
jennifersuh2014@u.northwestern.edu
This was originally published in The Current, a weekly supplement to The Daily Northwestern.
CommentsImage copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Guzman's appeals to stay in Mexico were rejected
Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has pleaded not guilty in the US to charges that he ran the world's largest drug-trafficking operation.
The head of the Sinaloa cartel was extradited from Mexico on Thursday.
US prosecutors want an order to seize $14bn (£11.3bn) of his assets.
In 2015, Mr Guzman famously escaped from a high-security prison through a tunnel - while being recorded on CCTV. He had fought against extradition since his recapture in early 2016.
Federal authorities have sought Mr Guzman for more than 20 years. He faces 17 charges including drug trafficking, illegal firearms use, money laundering, and smuggling cash across the border.
Ahead of his first appearance in a New York court, prosecutors revealed that they would seek the civil forfeiture of Mr Guzman's assets to the amount of $14bn - an indication of the extent of his empire.
"He's a man known for no other life than a life of crime, violence, death and destruction. And now he'll have to answer to that. That's who Chapo Guzman is," said US attorney Robert Capers.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Prosecutor Robert Capers: 'Guzman's rise was like a "cancerous tumour"
If convicted, Mr Guzman faces a mandatory life sentence.
Mr Capers also revealed that prosecutors were not aware the extradition was happening in advance.
"Guzman's story is not one of a do-gooder or a Robin Hood or even one of a famous escape artist who miraculously escaped from Mexican prisons on multiple occasions," he said.
"Guzman's destructive and murderous rise as an international narcotics trafficker is akin to that of a small cancerous tumour that metastasized and grew into a full blown scourge."
His ability to evade capture made Mr Guzman stand out from other drug gang leaders.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption CCTV footage showed the moment Guzman escaped from prison through a tunnel in 2015
His first high profile escape was in 2001 when it was reported - despite some doubts - that he had escaped from a maximum security prison by hiding in a laundry basket.
He was recaptured thirteen years later. But in 2015, he walked out of his cell through a cleanly-dug tunnel, while under video surveillance.
Image copyright AFP Image caption There was a heavy military presence at Ciudad Juarez airport, where Guzman took off on Thursday
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto had initially resisted extraditing the cartel leader to the US, insisting that he should face justice at home.
But after Mr Guzman was recaptured in January 2016, Pena Nieto changed his mind on extradition and ordered officials to speed up the process.
He was extradited suddenly on Thursday, arriving in New York on a flight from Ciudad Juarez.The Obama administration is now considering a new policy to share more real-time intelligence with the interim government in Kiev after pressure from some in the U.S. military, Congress and U.S. allies in Ukraine.
Over the weekend, CIA Director John Brennan met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaliy Yarema to discuss the formation of new, more secure channels for sharing U.S. intelligence with the country now fighting pro-Russian secessionists in its eastern cities, according to U.S. and Western officials briefed on the meeting.
It’s a vitally important issue because the Ukrainians are badly outmatched by the Russian forces massed on their border and infiltrating their cities. If Kiev is going to have a hope of withstanding the pressure from Moscow, their intelligence on the Russian military’s activities will have to be exquisite.
The Daily Beast reported last week that Gen. Philip Breedlove had pushed to share more satellite imagery and other forms of detailed data about nearby Russian troop, but was rebuffed by the White House. U.S. intelligence agencies have long suspected Ukraine’s military and intelligence services to be entirely penetrated by the Russian government because until February the two countries were partners on security issues.
“That place has been run by the Russians for years,” a senior U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast. “They are very good at collecting any form of communications intelligence, they probably own their network there.” But this official added that nonetheless “there have been ways to communicate between the intelligence services that would be helpful for real-time sharing with Ukraine.”
And after pro-Moscow forces took control of government buildings in east Ukraine—with the apparent assistance of Russian special operators—the White House’s view of intelligence-sharing appears to be changing.
According to the intelligence official, the White House has approved the sharing of more detailed intelligence with Ukraine. However, the Obama administration was still considering a policy to give the kind of real-time data the Ukrainians have requested.
Spokespeople for the CIA and the White House declined to discuss any specifics about the Brennan meetings in Kiev. The intelligence official said, however, that the meeting was primarily to reassure Ukraine’s political leadership that the United States still supported them, and to convey the message about the new, limited intelligence-sharing policy. (Of course, there’s a second, subtler message.)
Traditionally and throughout the current unrest, the U.S. has given intelligence primarily to the Ukrainian armed forces. But the new leadership in Kiev is asking for a more crisis-oriented approach that would allow the political leadership to receive the information first.
One of the biggest problems facing the Ukrainians now is that their encrypted military communications channels are widely believed to be penetrated by the Russians. As a result, the crucial communications of Ukraine’s military divisions as they move into eastern Ukraine have been conducted over unencrypted lines, making it nearly impossible for the Ukrainian military to have any element of surprise.
The Ukrainian government is said to be requesting advanced secure communications equipment from the United States, one on a long list of items the U.S. government has not yet agreed to provide. On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declined to say what if any non-lethal military equipment the U.S. might provide the Ukrainian armed forces, beyond the military rations that were delivered earlier this month.
“I just don’t have any new information to provide today about forms of assistance that we’re considering, except to say that we have—you know, we’re not discussing lethal assistance,” he said.
Russian media first reported the meeting with Brennan over the weekend and claimed that the CIA chief gave Ukraine’s political leadership the green light to begin operations against the separatists who had taken over government buildings in many of the nation's eastern cities.
On Monday, the CIA denied the Russian claims. “The claim that Director Brennan encouraged Ukrainian authorities to conduct tactical operations inside Ukraine is completely false,” a CIA spokesman said. “Like other senior U.S. officials, Director Brennan strongly believes that a diplomatic solution is the only way to resolve the crisis between Russia and Ukraine.”
For the last week, U.S. officials have publicly acknowledged what U.S. intelligence agencies have reported since late February: that Russian special operations soldiers and spies were infiltrating Ukrainian territory.
Speaking Tuesday on CNN, Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said, “What you see are Russian-trained special forces and intelligence operatives in eastern Ukraine fomenting” unrest. He added that the saboteurs operating in this region were a mix of Ukrainian and Russian nationals.A Russian-born hacker who took control of half a million computers and stole tens of thousands of credit card numbers was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison.
Alexander Tverdokhlebov, 29, said in federal court in Alexandria on Friday that he would “try to redeem myself.”
The Russian-born U.S. citizen spent almost a decade in Russian Internet forums where hackers form alliances and sell software and stolen information. To join, he had to get a current member to vouch for his criminal bona fides, prosecutors said.
Over the years, Tverdokhlebov put up for sale at least 40,000 stolen credit cards and control of 500,000 private computers through malicious software. He also hired two Russian students studying in the United States to cash out funds from a compromised bank account. He stole sensitive financial information from at least 100 people, prosecutors said.
[Two charged with hacking; Russia claims ‘kidnapping.’]
Tverdokhlebov took in about $1 million in wire transfers from Russia and China. His bitcoin funds, which he agreed to forfeit to the government, are worth about $4.5 million.
He was arrested in California in February and pleaded guilty in March.
Before his arrest, he lived a lavish life in Los Angeles, prosecutors said, taking expensive vacations and driving a BMW. He kept $272,000 in cash in various safe-deposit boxes in Los Angeles and Las Vegas for a “rainy day.”
In court, Tverdokhlebov struggled to explain his actions.
“I had all the skills and all the resources to live the same lifestyle legally,” he said.
In a court filing, defense attorney William Cummings noted that his client was a regular user of marijuana, cocaine and alcohol.
“You’re a talented young man,’ U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis said after sentencing Tverdokhlebov to 110 months in prison. “You never thought that you would be caught.”
Cummings, who had asked for a lighter sentence, said he understood the judge’s decision, given the amount of money involved. But he said he believed his client truly had “turned the corner.”
In fact, just before sentencing, Tverdokhlebov told prosecutors that he should be handing over more illicit profits than they had demanded.Buy Photo The Michigan Capitol is a busy place these days, with all sorts of new bills. (Photo: Kathleen Gray, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
Bills that give power to some and take it from others were introduced last week by lawmakers at the state Capitol.
A pair of bills would give arrest powers and authorize carrying weapons for some employees of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Other bills would take away judges' ability to take certain driving crimes under advisement, but give the judges the chance to sentence someone to jail or a fine, or both.
Midwives would be licensed and regulated, and school officials would be allowed discretion in suspension and expulsion rules under other bills introduced.
Some of the other bills introduced by senators and members of the House of Representatives last week include the following.
House
■ HB 4688-89: Make it a felony to fail to report that a child is missing or has died, punishable by up to four years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Sponsor: Rep. John Bizon, R-Battle Creek
■ HB 4690: Requires smaller class sizes — up to 17 students per class in grades K-3 and up to 25 in grades 4-12 — in schools that have underperformed for three consecutive years. Sponsor: Rep. Erika Geiss, D-Taylor
■ HB 4691: Prohibits the sale of human breast milk over the Internet. Sponsor: Geiss
■ HB 4692: Requires teaching African-American history in schools. Sponsor: Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, D-Detroit
■ HB 4693: Prohibits the use of state promise grants at universities or community colleges if the institution does not admit students who are within the top 15% of their high school class. Sponsor: Gay-Dagnogo
■ HB 4694 and SB 387: Prohibit the placement of deep-injection waste wells in certain areas. Sponsors: Rep. Jason Sheppard, R-Temperance, and Sen. Dale Zorn, R-Ira
■ HB 4695: Exempts trucks carrying potable water from seasonal weight restrictions. Sponsor: Sheppard
■ HB 4696: Prohibits a city with a population of at least 500,000 and with 1,000 police (Detroit is the only city that qualifies) from bargaining terms of employment with anything other than the official bargaining unit. Sponsor: Rep. Fred Durhal II, D-Detroit
■ HB 4697: Prohibits school suspension and expulsion policies that don't include discretion for school officials. Sponsor: Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor
■ HB 4698-99: Provide for gender-identification change on drivers' licenses and state identification cards. Sponsor: Rep. Brian Banks, D-Detroit
■ HB 4700-01: Require a publicly accessible online database of contracts and services entered into by the state with taxpayer dollars and public disclosure of contracts worth more than $500,000. Sponsors: Reps. Martin Howrylak, R-Troy, and Scott Dianda, D-Calumet
■ HB 4702-05: Require a cost study and public disclosure of the impact of privatizing state services, establish specific performance criteria for privatized state contracts, allow state workers to provide pre-privatization cost benefit analysis and prohibit bad corporate actors from being awarded state contracts. Sponsors: Reps. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan; John Kivela, D-Marquette; Pam Faris, D-Clio, and Peter Lucido, R-Shelby Township
■ HB 4706: Sets rules governing state collection of city income taxes. The state has agreed to begin administering Detroit's income tax collections. Sponsor: Rep. Wendell Byrd, D-Detroit
■ HB 4707-08: Make violations of the state's dog law dealing with dogs running in public unsupervised a civil infraction, rather than a misdemeanor. Sponsor: Lucido
■ HB 4709: Replaces the term "human monstrosity" with "a human being who is disabled or disfigured" in a law that makes it a misdemeanor to display people with deformities. Sponsor: Bizon
■ HB 4710: Makes violating rules on camping on state campgrounds a civil infraction, instead of a misdemeanor. Sponsor: Rep. Andrea LaFontaine, R-Columbus
■ HB 4711: Gives judges discretion to impose either a fine, jail time or both when a criminal sentence includes imprisonment and a fine. Sponsor: Rep. Michael Webber, R-Rochester Hills
■ HB 4712: Extends authority for treatment by physical therapists to chiropractors. Sponsor: Rep. Kathy Crawford, R-Novi
■ HB 4714: Requires the state Department of Treasury to provide notice of certain tax credits given to a business. Sponsor: Rep. Jim Runestad, R-White Lake
■ HB 4715 and SB 397: Prohibit employers from requiring disclosure from employees on the use of contraceptives. Sponsors: Rep. Marcia Hovey-Wright, D-Muskegon, and Sen. Jim Ananich, D-Flint
Senate
■ SB 382: Provides for compensation and benefits for spouses of public safety officers injured in the line of duty. Sponsor: Sen. Morris Hood III, D-Detroit
■ SB 383: Provides for licensing and regulation of midwives. Sponsor: Sen. Mike Green, R-Mayville
■ SB 384: Allows for the appointment of agents with arrest powers and ability to carry weapons in the Department of Health and Human Services. Sponsors: Sens. Peter MacGregor, R-Rockford, and Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge
■ SB 385: Prohibits judges from taking under advisement certain crimes committed by drivers of both commercial and noncommercial vehicles. Sponsor: Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba
■ SB 391: Raises the minimum wage to $15 per hour by Jan. 1, 2018. Sponsor: Sen. Bert Johnson, D-Highland Park
■ SB 392: Creates rules and regulations for transportation services like Uber and Lfyt. Sponsor: Jones
■ SB 393: Increases fees for special license plates for auto dealerships and car transporters. Sponsor: Hood
■ SB 394: Includes townships and modifies Michigan housing law regarding inspections of rental units. Sponsor: Sen. Dave Robertson, R-Grand Blanc
■ SB 395: Establishes income tax credits for certain housing modifications. Sponsor: Sen. Vincent Gregory, D-Southfield
■ SB 396: Increases fines for overweight and oversized vehicles. Sponsor: Sen. Hoon Yung-Hopgood, D-Taylor
■ SB 398: Requires Department of Health and Human Services to create a sickle cell disease public awareness campaign. Sponsor: Ananich
Want to know more?
To get more information and track the progress of bills, go to www.legislature.mi.gov.
To contact legislators, go to:
house.michigan.gov/MHRPublic/
www.senate.michigan.gov/senatorinfo.html
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1Se0KM1Biggest Documentary of 2013 'Blackfish' Snubbed By Oscars
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The current article you are reading does not reflect the views of the current editors and contributors of the new Ecorazzi
In a major surprise, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite and her film “Blackfish” will not be going to the 86th Academy Awards.
The documentary, which focuses on the consequences of whales in captivity, was arguably the most impactful film of 2013 causing SeaWorld’s attendance to drop and international attention on the issue. Ever humble, in an interview last month, Cowperthwaite said she was “rendered speechless” to even have her film on the Academy’s shortlist for documentary nominations.
“As a documentarian you’re just hoping that your film goes out there and does good work,” she added. “To think you might get the biggest filmic acknowledgement in the world—I just don’t have any words.”
The truth of the matter is, with or without recognition from the Academy, the film has done incredible work and has potentially changed the future for orcas in captivity. Still, we’re calling it a major snub. The film didn’t just make an impact. It was also one of the most powerful documentaries we’ve ever seen.
Related on Ecorazzi:
+Exclusive: ‘The Cove’ Director Louie Psihoyos Talks New ‘Heist’ Eco-Thriller
+WATCH: Kids Speak Up for Orcas in Moving Response to ‘Blackfish’
+SeaWorld to Install Exercise Machines for Captive OrcasFive Royal Marines required hospital treatment when they were assaulted just hours before they were due to receive freedom of a town.
The Marines, aged between 20 and 35, were walking back to their accommodation having just left the nearby Coco Lounge when they were assaulted between 2.20am and 2.40am on Saturday October 5 by a number of men believed to be local to the area.
The five Marines were treated at Worthing Hospital for various facial injuries including one broken nose, bruising and cuts, and were discharged the same night after the incident in Church Street, Littlehampton.
Janet Goldsbrough-Jones, chairman of The Royal British Legion Worthing Branch said: “I’m absolutely appalled.
“I just don’t understand why anybody would want to attack those brave guys after all they do for our country.
“The only thing I can think of is that it would have been bravado.
“It’s the classic Wild West scenario of “I’m going to shoot you because I’ve heard you’re a hot-shot” – it’s disgraceful.”
MORE:
A 20-year-old man from Angmering was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm and 22-year-old man from Littlehampton was arrested on suspicion of affray.
They were questioned and released on police bail until Friday 8 November while enquiries continue.
Littlehampton Mayor Joyce Bowyer said: “It’s very disappointing and I hope nobody was seriously injured.
“It’s the one black spot on an otherwise marvellous day.”
PC Hayley Noyes said; "We believe this incident followed an altercation in the Coco Lounge earlier in the evening.
“Anyone who saw what happened is asked to call us on 101 or email contact.centre@sussex. pnn.police.uk'quoting serial 0196 of 5/10.
“Alternatively, call the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111."
It is understood the Marines were in Littlehampton for a ceremony to accept the freedom of the town on Saturday.
A Royal Navy spokesman said: “We are happy to let the police take the lead on finding out what went wrong and we will co-operate in any way we can with their investigation.”Over the years we have talked quite a lot about men’s accessories and the style inspirations always include at least a few of them.
There’s a reason for that – knowing how to pick fitting accessories with your look is essential to creating a truly “Wow!…” outfit.
There is, however, a type of accessory that we’ve been (mostly) neglecting so far – bags.
I know, I know – isn’t bags something that women obsess about, not guys?
And yes, the way I see it, when it comes to bags and our image, we should view them first and foremost as a practical item that we use for its utility, not just to complete the look. In other words, if you’re going with only your keys, wallet and phone – there’s no good reason to bring a bag.
That said,
Most of us do find ourselves needing to carry a lot more than just the bare essentials, whether that’s for work or studies.
And if that’s something you need to do 5 days a week, it’s probably time to think about investing in a good looking bag that goes well with your image.
It’s one of those seemingly little details that can transform your overall look from “alright” to “who’s that guy?! He looks amazing!”
So what we’ll do in this article is go through the main image archetypes and I’ll share with you some ideas and recommendations for a sexy looking bag to go with each look.Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013 (9:15 am) - Score 10,249
Perhaps unsurprisingly most of the bigger ISPs weren’t too keen to get into the nitty gritty of CGNAT, with EE (Orange UK) preferring not to comment at all and TalkTalk simply advising us that they had “no plans to introduce Carrier Grade NAT at this time” (this doesn’t mean they won’t do it in the future).
Meanwhile Virgin Media suggested that it was too early to comment and simply re-issued their old statement concerning IPv4 and IPv6 support.
A Virgin Media Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk: “As part of our progress towards rolling out IPv6, we have upgraded our network to support IPv6 traffic and we’re currently assessing what changes may need to be made to fully support IPv6 in the home. In the meantime, we have enough IPv4 addresses in reserve to satisfy demand for the foreseeable future and we will be supporting IPv4/IPv6 in parallel until a full IPv6 service is complete.”
Elsewhere Sky Broadband (BSkyB) expects all ISPs to eventually adopt CGN in the future but, due to the technologies inherent problems, they similarly predict that the solution will remain in trial for some time across the industry. Sky also claims to have taken precautions to make sure they don’t run out of IPv4 addresses before websites catch up with their future IPv6 network.
A Sky Broadband Spokesperson added: “It’s likely that a large number of broadband providers will move to CGN in the future. However, due to the potential impact on certain types of online services, we expect it to be extensively tested by the industry first.”
Thankfully the other ISPs, at least those that were willing to comment, were kind enough to dig a little deeper into the issue.
An ISPA UK Spokesperson said: “The transition to IPv6 is on-going and for different ISPs the speed and method of transition varies. Whilst a number of smaller ISPs have already moved to providing native IPv6, others are facing a more complicated transition process which is likely to require the adoption of CGNAT in the medium term whilst true transition solutions are designed. Public trials should be applauded for its openness with their customers, even if there are other transition solutions that would lead to a quicker IPv6 based Internet.”
Piers Daniell, MD of Business ISP Fluidata, said: “This technology has been in use for many years by the mobile operators to provide internet access to millions of handsets. We have been interested in its potential deployment within traditional fixed line ISPs as it does solve the issue that IPv6 isn’t being adopted as quickly as the industry had hoped. Unfortunately widely available IPv6 routers for consumers just don’t exist in the same way that they do with IPv4 so the use of CGN (Carrier Grade NAT) looks like the only viable option going forward. Services such as browsing, email, login to HTTPs sites, VPN and remote desktops should be fine using this solution as they rely on the consumer requesting information from behind their router. The issues with this solution are for businesses who typically need traffic to start from outside the network and dial into them too. Email servers, VPN endpoints and websites are good examples of traffic that need a fixed public internet address. You can sometimes get around this using DNS hostnames with port mapping but it is not going to fit everyone’s requirements. Therefore we have been taking steps to ensure our IPs last as long as possible so our customers can still conduct their business in the usual manner. Old IPs are being recycled and older larger subnets are not being awarded without strict justifications. We also have the luxury of dual stacking both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses as customers on the whole have more expensive enterprise grade hardware which supports both.”
Adrian Kennard, Director of ISP Andrews & Arnold (AAISP), added: “We are not surprised that some ISPs are having to consider carrier gradeNAT, but we are surprised that ISPs have left it so long to properly implement IPv6 which is the real long term solution here. Carrier grade NAT adds a new layer of problems and just compounds the difficulties faced by anyone making new services and innovations on the Internet. We already see applications jumping through hoops to work with NAT on customer routers – many of which will not work with carrier grade NAT. Ultimately end users will see a poorer service with more things “not quite working” and more chances for things to break. All ISPs should be providing proper IPv6 first, and using NAT purely as a stop-gap. This will allow innovation to continue and use the end to end design of IP, and it will mean services using IPv6 will “just work”. At AAISP we have been providing IPv6 for over 10 years now, and we expect to be able to provide at the very least a single fixed IPv4 address per line without carrier grade NAT for many years to come.”
Steve Lalonde, CTO of Entanet, said: “For those ISPs that don’t have a good supply of IPv4 addresses, Carrier Grade NAT is an inevitable direction until they provide IPv6 and its adoption is properly facilitated by CPE manufacturers. Gladly, we’re not yet in that position and have also been providing IPv6 as an option to all customers for several years. As some of our colleagues here have highlighted, CGN will adversely impact some customers depending on their use of their connections.”
Conclusion
If you believe some of the big ISP spin then the majority of basic internet users won’t have a problem, which is probably true. But CGN still means that anybody wanting to harness the full flexibility of the online world could eventually find their access being stifled by a new layer of network management.
A sizeable portion of broadband consumers in the UK are still likely to be affected, especially those that enjoy modern multiplayer games (there are a lot of gamers around) or hosting their own servers (when not prohibited by an ISPs terms). Some services will of course be able to adapt and not all CGNAT implementations are quite so damaging, yet the only real long-term solution remains full IPv6 adoption.
ISPreview.co.uk has seen good indications that some ISPs may skirt around this issue by offering non-CGNAT packages as an optional upgrade. We think a FREE, not PAID, upgrade solution would be a good way to ensure that those who really need a proper connection can get one, while also preserving the ISPs remaining pool of unique IPv4’s for a lot longer.
In any case it will probably take a few more years before this issue comes back to haunt the industry but haunt it will.
UPDATE 23rd January 2013
Added a comment from Entanet above.Steve Jobs said in a 1995 interview, “The unions are the worst thing that ever happened in education.”
Jobs spoke with Computerworld’s Daniel Morrow in a 1995 interview, which covered a wide range of topics, but frequently delved into Jobs’s views on the American education system. As he said, “I’d like the people teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the company I work for making $100,000 a year.”
"Schools are not a meritocracy. They're a bureaucracy."But Jobs blamed teachers unions for getting in the way of good teachers getting better pay. “It’s not a meritocracy,” said Jobs. “It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what’s happened. And teachers can’t teach, and administrators run the place, and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.”
He noted that one solution is school choice: “I’ve been a very strong believer that what we need to do in education is go to the full voucher system.” Jobs explained that education in America had been taken over by a government monopoly, which was providing a poor quality education for children.
He referenced the government-created phone monopoly, broken up in 1982: “I remember seeing a bumper sticker with the Bell logo on it and it said, ‘We don’t care, we don’t have to.' That’s certainly what the public school system is. They don’t have to care.”
Jobs said that one way to open up a free market in education would be to offer a voucher to families. He gave an example of the California public school system, which in 1995 spent $4,400 per pupil: “I believe strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher – a check for $4,400 that they could only spend at any accredited school – that several things would happen.”
First, “Schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to parents, to get students.”
Second, many new schools would begin popping up. “You could have 25-year-old kids out of college – very idealistic, full of energy – instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they would start a school, and I believe they would do far better than many of our public school teachers do.”
"A lot of competition forces providers to get better and better."Finally, the quality of education would rise in a competitive market: “A lot of schools would go broke, there’s no question about it. It would be rather painful for the first several years, but I think far less painful than the kids going through the system as it is right now.”
Jobs said that the main complaint against school choice is that schools would cater only to rich kids, and the poor kids would be “left to wallow together.”
However, he said, “that’s like saying, well, all the car manufacturers are going to make BMWs and Mercedes and nobody’s going to make a $10,000 car. Well, I think the most hotly competitive market right now is the $10,000 car.”
In other words, Jobs said, all students would benefit from more school choice, as the monopoly in education was broken up.
“The market competition model seems to indicate that where there is a need, there is a lot of providers willing to tailor their products to fit that need, and a lot of competition which keeps forcing them to get better and better.”Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
– Genesis 3:7 (New International Version)
Shame is a simple game about humiliation. It’s a short, cheap game that requires very little to play besides the clothes on your back. (Psychological costs may vary.)
What You’ll Need:
People willing to play. Make sure that they know exactly what they are getting into.
Make sure that they know exactly what they are getting into. Extra clothes. Hats and jackets and other items that can be worn over each player’s current clothes are best.
Hats and jackets and other items that can be worn over each player’s current clothes are best. Red, Green, and Yellow tokens. It doesn’t matter what you use for tokens, but make sure you have enough for every player to get one token of each color.
The Conversation
Before the game begins, the players should have a conversation about their values. Talk about the beliefs that you share. It doesn’t matter what these beliefs are, so long as they are shared by all of the players. They could be traditional virtues, like modesty and chastity, progressive social ideals, like inclusiveness and tolerance, or more pragmatic or materialistic standards, like hard work and self-discipline. The important thing is that the group settle on a few broad principles that they believe are right. You don’t need absolute consensus, or a set of perfect moral truths, just some big, vague ideas to inspire your questions once the game begins. Don’t let this go on for too long. Try to keep the conversation under half an hour.
Preparation
Everyone should begin the game wearing the same number of articles of clothing. As a group, decide on how many pieces of clothing each player should wear, taking into consideration how long you would like the game to last. Then each player should dress up (using the extra clothes) or dress down until they are wearing that many articles of clothing.
Give each player one green token, one yellow token, and one red token.
All players should sit around a table or in a circle.
The Game
One player should volunteer to ask the first question. That player should target another player—it can be any other player—and ask them a question. The question should begin with “Have you ever …” and conclude with an action that player may have taken in the past. It should be a simple “yes” or “no” question about something the player might have done. The question must be tied to at least one of the moral ideals your group agreed on at the beginning of the game.
Examples: If your group decided sexual chastity was important, you might ask, “Have you ever masturbated in a public place?” If your group felt that it was important to build a more inclusive, accepting society, you could ask, “Have you ever used the word ‘faggot’ in a derogatory way?”
The player being questioned should answer “yes” or “no.” Answer honestly. The game doesn’t work if you lie. If the player answers “no,” they’re off the hook and it’s time for the next player to ask a question. If the player answers “yes,” they must remove one article of clothing or use one of their tokens.
If the player chooses to |
drug and robbery offenses.
Autopsy toxicology tests found traces of cocaine and cannabis in Belgacem’s blood, according to the Paris prosecutors’ office. He also had 0.93 grams of alcohol per liter of blood when he died Saturday, the prosecutors’ office said. That is nearly twice the legal limit for driving in France. Prosecutors said Belgacem was at a bar early Saturday.
In an interview Sunday with French radio Europe 1, a man identified as the suspect’s father said Belgacem wasn’t a practicing Muslim and drank alcohol.
___
John Leicester contributed to this report.Before Texas executed Marvin Wilson last year for the 1992 murder of Jerry Robert Williams in Beaumont, his case generated headlines, reminding the nation of a rather unique corner of death penalty law here.
The standards used to determine whether a Texan convicted of murder is mentally fit to be executed are based in part on the fictional character Lennie from John Steinbeck’s classic novel Of Mice and Men, a fact that enraged the author’s son.
"I find the whole premise to be insulting, outrageous, ridiculous and profoundly tragic,” Thomas Steinbeck said, calling for a halt to Wilson’s execution. “I am certain that if my father, John Steinbeck, were here, he would be deeply angry and ashamed to see his work used in this way."
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said Wilson’s execution and other cases left him feeling embarrassed for his home state. “It’s junk science. Its not a credible way of making a decision,” he said.
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So Ellis filed Senate Bill 750, which would establish new — and, he argues, more scientific — standards to determine when a convicted Texan is too intellectually disabled to face the death penalty. The bill revives a decade-old fight with prosecutors, who argue that the current standards are adequate and that Ellis’ proposal would make it too easy for defendants to make a case that they are mentally retarded and exempt from the death penalty.
“Sen. Ellis’ proposal creates two or three additional bites at the apple for a defendant to show he is mentally retarded, and it skews the process,” said Shannon Edmonds, spokesman for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
In 2001, Texas lawmakers approved a bill by then-state Rep. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen, now a state senator, that would have implemented new requirements for courts to have independent experts evaluate defendants to determine whether they were mentally retarded. Gov. Rick Perry vetoed the bill. In a proclamation with his veto, he argued that existing safeguards were effective in preventing the execution of the mentally disabled.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that states could not execute the mentally disabled because it violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But it allowed states to develop their own criteria for mental disabilities.
Texas lawmakers, though, were unable to agree on criteria. Prosecutors wanted a standard in which jurors would decide during the penalty phase of a capital murder trial whether a defendant was too intellectually disabled to face execution, allowing them to consider the person’s past crimes in the decision-making. Defense lawyers supported creating a process that allowed a judge to evaluate the defendant’s mental fitness.
“A legislative fix is always preferable to a judicial fix when the parties can come together and agree on a solution,” Edmonds said. “The problem is that prosecutors and anti-death penalty advocates have never been able to agree on how to address this legislatively.”
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In 2004, when Jose Garcia Briseño’s case came before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the nine judges were without legislative guidance and developed their own standards. Lawyers for Briseño, who is still on death row, argued that he was mentally retarded and should not face execution for the 1991 murder of a Dimmit County sheriff’s deputy. The court rejected those arguments and in the process developed the so-called Briseño factors that are used now to determine whether Texas defendants are eligible for the death penalty.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals invoked, in part, an evaluation of Lennie from Steinbeck's book, writing that "most Texas citizens would agree that Steinbeck's Lennie should, by virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt from execution. But does a consensus of Texas citizens agree that all persons who might legitimately qualify for assistance under the social services definition of mental retardation be exempt from an otherwise constitutional penalty?"
The court’s three-part definition requires the convicted inmate to have below average intellectual function, to lack adaptive behavior skills and to have had those problems prior to age 18.
Lawyers for at least 90 Texas death row inmates have brought so-called Atkins claims before the courts, arguing that their clients’ limited cognitive functioning exempted them from execution. Of those, 14 have been deemed mentally retarded and their sentences commuted to life in prison.
Prosecutors stopped asking legislators to approve standards after the court adopted the Briseño standards, Edmonds said, because they wearied of the fight with defense lawyers and because they were mostly satisfied with court’s solution.
“I think Texas can continue under the current standard and remain in compliance with Supreme Court case law,” Edmonds said.
But defense lawyers say that Texas still puts mentally retarded defendants to death, flouting the Supreme Court’s prohibition. They argue that Ellis’ bill is a critical step to ensure that the courts rely on scientific evaluations of mental capacity and that the state doesn’t violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
“Reliance on the Briseño factors is frankly something that has made the state the butt of much scientific criticism,” said Kathryn Kase, director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates.
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Ellis’ bill would use the definition developed by the American Association on Intellectual Developmental Disabilities to determine whether a defendant is eligible for the death penalty. A key part of the standard set out in the proposal is that the defendant must have an IQ of 75 or below to be exempt from execution. Delaware, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, New Mexico, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Washington use similar standards, but require an IQ of 70 or below for exemption.
“The most appropriate thing for state statute is to be parallel to existing definitions that are existing professionally within the field,” said Ed Polloway, dean of graduate studies at Virginia's Lynchburg College and a member of the AAIDD’s death penalty task force. The task force is developing a guide for states to use to evaluate defendants for intellectual disabilities.
“Our attempt is to stay as close to the science as possible,” Polloway said.
The AAIDD’s definition of intellectual disability, he said, is used to determine state and federal aid for programs like Medicaid and special education placement in schools. The existing Texas death penalty standard, Polloway said, would allow for the execution of individuals who are considered intellectually disabled for the purposes of government programs.
Ellis said basing decisions about who is fit for execution on established scientific research would save Texas money it would otherwise spend fighting inmates’ appeals.
“It will protect the rule of law and the integrity of our judicial system,” he said.
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It's the début release from Rainy Night Creations; with FreezeME having already arrived on PC late last year it comes to Wii U as its first home console, with some special features also thrown in. We caught up with the studio's Walfrido Abejon Garcia to learn about its sources of inspiration from the N64 era, the similarities to Super Mario Galaxy and more besides.
First of all, can you tell us a little about yourself and Rainy Night Creations?
My name is Walfrido Abejon, designer of FreezeME and founder of Rainy Night Creations.
Although Rainy Night Creations is just me. For the development of FreezeME I got the help from some people, like Case Portman for the music or Mathias Aubry who helped with some animations.
And of course a bunch of awesome testers that helped me out with the final touches of the game.
Work on FreezeMe began in 2012, so has it been a full time endeavour or was it a part-time project around other work?
It´s been a long journey. It began in September 2012. For two years I worked on the project in the evenings after work and weekends. In September 2014 I quit and went full time up until now.
In marketing materials you reference N64 3D platformers, though in many ways it seems particularly reminiscent of Super Mario Galaxy, in terms of some gameplay effects (spherical environments, gravity manipulation) and the main character's moveset - did the Wii title provide primary inspiration?
When I think of the differences in the core gameplay of SM64 and SMG (excluding gimmicks and power up), for me is about freedom and guidance.
When you enter a level on SM64 you have multiple paths available and little help as to where the final objective is, which brings a lot of exploration into the game.
Also, In SM64 there weren't any tutorials, nor many situations on the levels where you were forced to use for the first time a move so you could proceed further.
This is especially noticeable in the boss fights in SMG, once you begin a fight with a boss you immediately know how to defeat it because the whole level has been training you on the specific move you should use to beat it.
So I wanted to create game where exploration was an important part of the gameplay, and also where tutorials were scarce. This is a preferential choice of mine, most games nowadays go heavy on the tutorials but for me the less information a game tells me on how to proceed the more rewarded I feel when I figure it out.
There are some faux gravity objects in the game, but they are very few (excluding Level 3) and are presented as quick isolated puzzles to solve. On level 3 most of the elements use faux gravity but this is more of a visual effect and has very little implications on the gameplay.
What other titles do you consider key reference points that inspired you to develop FreezeMe?
There are bits from a lot of games of my childhood.
A lot of inhabitants in FreezeME will ask for your help in return of some collectibles. That was inspired by Banjo Kazooie.
The boss battles are more on the Zelda side than on Mario. It will take some time to figure out what hurts them.
And then, there are bits and pieces from other different games and genres, like for example there is a collectable you will have to get by infiltrating a complex as if you were Snake.
3D platforming seems like a relatively tough genre to tackle for your first game; do you agree it is a particularly big challenge, or has the process felt natural and instinctive for you and the team?
If I would have known beforehand…
For sure it has been tough, way more than I originally anticipated. A lot of times some weird thoughts went through my mind, like "why did I get into this?" or "why didn´t I try a simple mobile game first?" or "why am I just making games I could have a way better income and healthy life doing something else?".
But that´s what I wanted to do since I was a kid and I don´t enjoy playing mobile games, I wanted to make a game I would enjoy playing!
And last but not least, I woke up one day overly excited and full of hopes and I told my girlfriend "you are going to be the main character on a videogame" (R, the main character and the main gimmick of the game is based on my girlfriend and her photography passion).
I could not bail out after that!
FreezeMe arrived on PC in December last year. How would you describe the success or otherwise of that launch and player feedback so far?
Colourful 3D platformers are not the most demanded games for PC and I knew that beforehand. But nowadays every major game development engine works primarily on PC and then you port it to any desired platform. So basically no matter for what system you are developing, with a few modifications you can get it running on PC.
On top of that, PC is the less restrictive market. You are free to release anything at any stage and nobody will prevent you from doing that.
With that in mind I released FreezeME on PC last month. The sales are in line with was I was expecting and the comments from the people are positive. Also got a lot of feedback that helped improving both the PC and the Wii U version.
What was the core motivation to ensure the Wii U version arrived so promptly after that PC release?
The main idea was to release both at the same time (Actually the Wii U version was done before the PC version).
But then I submitted to Nintendo and they found some small issues they wanted me to fix. The problem is that console development (all consoles, not only Nintendo) is very bureaucratic. So I had to wait 3 / 4 weeks to get those results and even though I could fix all those issues in an afternoon and I had to prepare all the paperwork to resubmit again and wait for a similar amount of time.
On PC, once I fix something, there is no paperwork and I can have it live in less than an hour.
So that´s the only reason the PC version was released slightly before Wii U.
The launch trailer shows off the freezing mechanic on the GamePad screen: can you talk a little more about how that came together in development, and can players also use other controllers and the freezing mechanic solely on the TV?
At the beginning I thought about using only the GamePad, first I thought about Freezing using the gyro in first view. I gave it a try but all the moving around and then coming back to the normal view was a bit disorienting. So then I tried the touch screen to Freeze and I think it works great and is pretty straight forward!
I published some footage of me playing with the GamePad and people immediately asked "What about the Wii Remote + Nunchuk". So then I thought, ok, I have to give that I try. It was challenging because I guess people were thinking about Mario Galaxy when they suggested that, but on FreezeME you have the option to move the camera at any moment, but in Galaxy that doesn´t happen.
In the end you can use the +Control Pad to move the camera, but you can also set it to Automatic and will always turn to show you were R is looking, in case you don´t want to mess with it.
And again, when I announced the Wii Remote+Nunchuk was supported, people immediately asked "What about the Wii U Pro Controller and the Classic Controller". So I guess you know what happened next!
Then at the end of the process, by mistake was found that you could still use the Wii Remote + A button to Freeze while the GamePad functions were still active, so I thought hey, that´s cool now I can have a mini-coop game!
As this is your first project on Nintendo hardware, can you talk about the experience so far? Have you found it easy to work with Nintendo, obtain dev kits and so on?
Nintendo is just great. I´m no one and they allowed to enter their community and get a dev license.
Once you are in they have all the tools and plenty of documents available and if you get stuck or have problems with something there is always someone ready (by email or on the forums) to help you out.
As for the devkits, it was easy. They have reasonable prices and they don´t ask you to have a super secure office to keep it.
Having worked with the Wii U hardware, what do you consider to be its biggest strengths and weaknesses?
I cannot disclose much of the hardware information here as it would be a NDA breach, you can do really cool stuff if you invest the time on it.
I guess the main problem with consoles (not only Wii U) and especially if you come from PC development is the CPU. Average PC CPUs (not GPUs) are way more powerful than consoles, so you are a bit spoiled if you develop on PC first and then move to consoles.
I was a bit scared at first thinking it would be able to handle the size of the levels and all the things going around, but it did so I´m pretty happy with the hardware.
Do you have plans for the European release of FreezeMe at this time?
Oh yes I do! And Australia too. The game is ready, just missing the PEGI, USK and ACB ratings that should come any time soon. Once I get that, as mentioned earlier, from the time I submit until is out on the eShop should be around 3 / 4 weeks (provided they don´t find any errors).
Also I´m in current negotiations with some Japanese publishers, so I might get it out there too.
Are you confident that the Nintendo eShop audience will be particularly eager to play FreezeMe?
I´m hoping so! I think FreezeME is a perfect fit for the Wii U, something they didn´t have in a long time, and is REAL, is not "coming Q2 2017", "TBC", "we are considering it". FreezeME will be available for download on the eShop February 4th.
Do you have any final messages for our readers?
Thank you for reading and hope you have the chance to play and enjoy FreezeME as much as I did developing it!Ald. John Arena, l., (45th) blocked crews from continuing work at Lamon and Wilson avenues Monday morning. [Kenji Kerins]
JEFFERSON PARK — Hours after Ald. John Arena (45th) on Monday used his car to block city efforts to close a street, Chicago officials agreed to reopen the road and hold a public meeting about their plans, the alderman said.
Arena said he opposed the project — which he was not notified of before work started this weekend — because it turns over a public street to a billboard company.
City crews tore out the pavement along Wilson Avenue at Lamon Avenue, permanently closing the road in front of the Mayfair Pumping Station to traffic despite Arena's strenuous objections.
Arena — who is often at loggerheads with city departments and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration — parked his car Monday morning across Wilson Avenue to stop the work that began over the weekend.
But Arena said late Monday that city crews would "backfill the site and temporarily cover the hole so that the road is open for driving."
Arena said a meeting with city transportation and water officials as well as representatives of the mayor's office Monday afternoon was "fruitful."
In the coming weeks, city officials will "investigate other options for locating the billboard" and study the impact the road's closure will have on traffic in Jefferson Park and what should be done to mitigate it, Arena said.
Before work restarts at the site, a public meeting will take place to allow residents to voice their opinion about where the billboard should be located and whether the road should be closed, Arena said.
"There will be a short pause in work as information is compiled and shared" about the impact of closing Wilson Avenue at Lamon Avenue on traffic, said Mike Claffey, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation.
Arena called the decision by City Hall to turn the intersection of Wilson and Lamon avenues into a cul de sac "unilateral and inappropriate."
Heather Cherone says Arena is usually informed before roadwork:
[Kenji Kerins]
A city spokesman said closing the street was a safety decision but acknowledged the project would allow a 90-foot-tall electronic billboard to be built in what until last week was the middle of Wilson Avenue, rather than on the front lawn of the pumping station as originally planned.
Arena said Monday morning he could "only assume that I was not informed because [city] officials know that I would have required them to present their plans to the community and assess the negative impact it would have on our residents.”
Arena likened the city's actions to former Mayor Richard M. Daley's decision to tear up the runways at Meigs Field under the cover of night to prevent dissent over his plan to turn that lakefront acreage into a park and nature sanctuary.
The decision to permanently close Wilson Avenue at Lamon Avenue was "designed to enhance safety" near the Mayfair Pumping Station, where there is "a history of excessive speeding," Claffey said.
"These changes will address the speeding problem, eliminate crashes from cars that lose control at the curve from Lamon to Wilson, and reduce the number of trucks that strike the low-clearance viaduct on Wilson," Claffey said.
Ald. John Arena (45th) said his office was not informed city officials planned to permanently close Wilson Avenue to traffic at Lamon Avenue. [Kenji Kerins]
Claffey did not respond to questions about why the alderman's office or nearby residents were not informed of the plan to close Wilson Avenue permanently at Lamon Avenue.
Arena objected to the billboards, which were approved by the City Council in 2012, and asked city officials to move the billboard planned for Lamon and Wilson. Once built, it would be visible to drivers heading toward O'Hare Airport on the Kennedy Expressway.
"Special interests like the lobbyists behind the digital billboard industry in Chicago should not control the streets in our communities," Arena said.
A white pole will form part of the base for a 90-foot-tall electronic billboard to be built in what until last week was the middle of Wilson Avenue. [Kenji Kerins]
The closure would make the often-gridlocked intersection of Cicero and Lawrence avenues worse, Arena said.
It would also prevent residents of the townhomes at Lamon and Lawrence avenues from leaving their homes and heading south to the Edens Expressway or Cicero Avenue.
In addition, the garbage trucks that service the entire Northwest Side will be forced to exit the maintenance yard south of the pumping station via Lawrence Avenue, Arena said.
"I have called for work to stop and for [city officials] to come before our community and explain why this plan was implemented without input," Arena said. "Short of a compelling rationale that is supported by the community, I will advocate for the restoration and reopening of this street."
Kristina Grosser Brucker said she was "outraged" that city officials had closed the intersection, which she uses at least twice a day to get to and from her home on Lawrence Avenue near Lamon Avenue.
"The traffic on Lawrence has already noticeably increased" since the closure, Brucker said. "Safety is an issue. I'm really upset about the whole thing."
Residents can register their opinion about the closure via an online survey, Brucker said.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:Bernie Sanders, tan and slightly hoarse after six weeks of campaigning for president, began a stump speech on Monday night with a humble brag of epic proportions. “Sometimes, media people ask me, ‘Well, Bernie, why are so many people coming out to your events?’” Sanders said to a crowd of 7,500 people in Portland, Maine.
“Well the answer is, I think, pretty obvious,” Sanders continued, flashing a grin to cheers before getting stern again. “From Maine to California—we have friends in Alaska and Hawaii as well—the American people understand that establishment politics and establishment economics is not working for the middle class!”
The audiences are growing, he says, mostly because things in America are so bad. It’s a note of encouragement in the midst of Sanders’ famously jaundiced speeches, a nod to the tide of hope and discontent that his campaign is riding. “All over America, people are becoming involved in this campaign because they want change,” Sanders said. “Real change! And that is what this campaign is about.”
In a campaign by numbers, Sanders has taken a surprisingly strong grasp of the Democratic base. He drew crowds of thousands at several rallies in the last week, a notable feat 16 months before a general election. His poll numbers in the key early states of Iowa and New Hampshire show he is just a few paces behind Hillary Clinton, climbing within ten points of the presumptive Democratic nominee in one recent poll. And more than 250,000 people have donated to his campaign.
They are surprising metrics of success for a politician who for decades has seen himself as an outsider.
Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, has done it armed with the promise of revolution. “The only way that change takes place is when we develop that strong grassroots movement, make that political revolution, stand together,” Sanders said on Monday. “And then we bring about change.”
Sanders had originally planned his Monday night rally in this seaside city of 66,000 people at a small venue on the water, but after thousands of RSVPs came back online, he was forced to reschedule the speech in a large arena usually reserved for big musical acts and hockey games. Nearly 8,000 people showed up, flooding the standing room with Mainers touting an eclectic mix of tribal tattoos, floral prints, polo shirts and New Balance sneakers.
Sanders’ supporters found in Portland a candidate invigorated by the last months of success. With his left hand gripping the podium and his right hand dancing in the air as if holding a marionette, Sanders framed the recent liberal groundswell as part of a long legacy of activism. He pointed to the labor movement of the early 20th century, the women’s suffrage activists and the civil rights movement as models for changing the country. He called for equal pay, paid family leave, a higher minimum wage, breaking up the big banks, and a massive infrastructure rebuilding program, a la the New Deal.
“There is nothing, nothing, nothing that we cannot accomplish!” said Sanders.
The crowds have taken note of Bernie’s sanguine outlook and call to action.
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“He’s telling us that the people’s movements—the grassroots movements—have succeeded when people got off their asses and they went out and marched,” said James Murdoch, a self-employed designer and builder who attended the rally. “We’re now getting to the point where people are getting involved and getting active again.”
Portland was just one leg on Sanders’ packed schedule: after a Madison, Wisconsin rally on Wednesday that drew some 9,500 people, Sanders spent three days in western Iowa corn country, where in Council Bluffs, 2,500 people attended a rally, according to the campaign—more than any other Iowa rally so far. (In Iowa he is trailing Clinton by 52-33.) He flew back to Burlington, and then drove with his wife and an aide the 250-odd miles to Portland.
Despite some of the change in tone, Sanders’ speeches are still largely jeremiads on the perennial problems. Wall Street and the greed of the 1% are destroying America, Sanders says, climate change is wreaking drought and deadly heat waves, and misguided trade agreements are sending millions of jobs overseas to countries like China. There’s only a short window of opportunity to stop global warming, and the middle class is in grave danger.
Among his fans, there’s a new hint of faith that the gravity of the campaign may have jolted something awake. People in the audience said afterward that Sanders had struck a chord, particularly for those disappointed by the Obama years and cautious of the hope brand that dominated the 2008 campaign. “He’s saying the things that need to be said,” said Fran Falcone, a mental health counselor, of Sanders. “We need to start really looking at what’s going in our country that’s turned it into a place a lot of us don’t recognize.”
After the speech, Sanders dined at a Spanish-inspired restaurant a few blocks away on Portland’s Congress Street. Word got around town he was there, and a small crowd gathered to seem him before he went to bed and made for Washington D.C. the next day for Senate duties.
Meanwhile, two buddies drank beers on the upstairs terrace of an Irish pub one block from the rally arena. They discussed the reality-check-and-momentum phenomenon. “Campaigns have cycles,” said Portland resident Doug Hall about Sanders, speaking over the house music. “This is the wake-the-f***-up cycle.”
Paul Drinan, who runs a non-profit and also lives in town, agreed. “At this point in the game that’s the appeal: there’s no fluff in the message. He’s telling it like it is,” said Drinan. “Bernie’s riding the wave.”
Contact us at editors@time.com.Wilhelmsburg Banks is one of the most famous skate spots in all of Germany. The beautiful terracotta tiling and Hamburg setting makes for one of the more memorable skate sessions you can have in Europe. Unfortunately, the park is in danger of being closed and demolished forever. There is a movement to stop this from happening. If you would like more info on how to get involved, head over to Save Wilhelmsburg Banks on Instagram.
Vans Skate x Trap Skateboards "Save the Wilhelmsburg" Half Cab Pro is extremely limited and only 200 pairs will be sold globally. An initial release will be held tomorrow, June 1st, in store only at Supreme LA. A larger European release at select Vans Skate stockists is planned for Saturday, June 10th. Check your local shop for details on how they will handles this release. Retail is $69.Long story short: A few days ago, cartoonist MariNaomi wrote an op-ed about being harassed by professional comic-book writer Scott Lobdell on a panel at a convention. MariNaomi was very careful to avoid identifying information, but Lobdell apparently read the piece and recognized himself–maybe because the shit he had pulled was extreme even in an industry and environment with a long, gross history of tolerance of and complicity with misogyny and harassment.
Lobdell responded by contacting Heidi MacDonald, a self-described friend of his. He sent Heidi an open apology of sorts, which Heidi ran at The Beat, and which is such a spectacular load of equivocation and dodges that my spit-takes are doing spit-takes.
I’m gonna break this shit down, because someone needs to:
“First and foremost and without any conditions I would like to formally and publicly apologize for offending a fellow comic book creator.”
Not, you will note, for behaving inappropriately.
That said, this is the best sentence of the apology, because it’s the only one in which Lobdell appears to have even the faintest inkling that his actions were the problem.
“I am also sorry because if I had realized my failed attempt at humor had offended MariNaomi or her husband in the moment that I made those statements, I would have certainly apologized in then and not have left her to feel victimized in the hours and days that followed.”
Let me be really fucking clear here: what happened on the PRISM panel was not an off-color but innocuous joke falling flat. It was Lobdell persistently, systematically, and explicitly sexually harassing a peer, on stage, for an hour. This wasn’t a slip of the tongue: it was a display of power and an exercise in intimidation.
Nor was it an accident: Lobdell’s spontaneous apology to MariNaomi’s husband at the panel makes it clear that he knew then and knows now that his actions were inappropriate. He knew he was violating someone’s boundaries–he just didn’t give a fuck as long as those boundaries belonged to a woman. It’s telling, I think, that Lobdell has now apologized to Naomi’s husband twice: the only thing he seems to recognize as actively wrong on his part was the incursion onto the territory of another man.
I’ve written a lot about harassment and abuse in the comics industry. As a result, a fair lot of women have written to me with their own stories of harassment. Today, a number of those stories involved Scott Lobdell, and they were fucking horrifying. What happened at the PRISM panel was not a fluke: this is a guy whose treatment of women in the comics industry has been habitually, flagrantly predatory; and who has been called out on it before. Either Lobdell knows exactly what he is doing and doesn’t care; or he lacks even a remote baseline concept of what constitutes acceptable behavior.
“I am particularly saddened because I was completely blown away by not only her talent as both a writer and artist, but more importantly by the fact she was using her talent to speak so openly and freely about her own life experiences and how they informed the artist that she is today.”
This would ring truer if he hadn’t used the panel as an opportunity to punish her for exactly that, treating her frank discussions of her personal history as an invitation to ask lewd questions and outright proposition her.
“As someone who has only ever written super heroes, I marvel at the type of courage it takes for someone to put their whole life out on paper (or blogs) for the world to see.”
I wonder if Lobdell is at all aware of the irony here: that assholes like him are why publishing personal work–especially when you’re female–takes so much courage. He is part of the reason so few people do what MariNaomi does.
“Finally I am sorry that my presence on the panel caused her experience to be anything other than a celebration of her work.”
This is the part where I actually lost it. This passive, slimy dodge. No, bro, it wasn’t your presence that caused her experience to be anything other than a celebration of her work. It was the fact that you treated her like a sexual object and held her up to the audience as the same. It’s that you ignored her work entirely in order to interrogate her about her sexual experiences. You straight-up propositioned her–and then, after spending the entire panel doing the professional equivalent of one dog humping another into submission, apologized not to her, but to her husband, for overstepping his boundaries.
It’s the fact that you made comics that much more hostile and unwelcoming an environment for women. It’s the fact that you felt entitled, by virtue of your gender, or your professional reputation, or your institutional power, that it was okay to piss in someone else’s sandbox. It’s the fact that, in your world, some people are more people than others.
“Presence,” my ass.
Heidi MacDonald, meanwhile, has lauded this asshole for “getting out in front of this and apologizing once he became aware of the ramifications of his actions,” for which she should be seriously embarrassed as both a journalist and a human being.
Which ramifications would those be? The idea that being called out for aggressively harassing a woman might hurt Lobdell’s own reputation, I assume, since his apology demonstrates absolutely no understanding of or concern for their impact on others. Look, I know you have known this dude for a while and consider him a friend, but Jesus fucking Christ, Heidi. You are better than this.
I am, at least, inclined to agree with Heidi’s conclusion that Lobdell’s “apology” means “we’re moving to the next level.” He’s certainly set a new bar for bullshit and prevarication.
There are a few common threads in the discussion surrounding MariNaomi’s article and Lobdell’s response that bear examination as well, one of which is the basis of this plum from writer Mark Waid. The fallacy Waid is echoing comes up a lot in this particular conversation, but Waid’s response is particularly tone deaf:
"A word to young freelancers, for what it’s worth: despite what you may hear (or fear), I wouldn’t even have to take off my shoes to count how many people in this industry can single-handedly ruin your chances at success. Here’s a good litmus test: can they sign checks or approve vouchers? No? Then they can’t do shit to you, especially if you have real talent. There are a lot of established freelancers out there who can (and will) help young talent, but despite what the creepier ones might want you to believe, almost none of them can actually blockade you these days, not with as many outlets for your work as exist. Your fears of burning bridges are understandable and rational, but–again, especially if you have real talent–they are grounded in myth and stem from a time when comics was a much, much smaller community.“
What? Marc Waid, I don’t know what comics industry–or, hell, universe–you’ve been working in, but please let me know if they’re hiring, because it sounds awesome.
In the reality where I work, though, the truth is that calling out harassment does destroy women’s careers, and not only if the harasser in question is someone with direct hiring power. All it takes is an industry or individual that values you less than your harasser, or even just less than lack of controversy. There are a lot of Scott Lobdells in the world. They don’t need hiring power–they just need the complicity of the folks who have it.
The aphorism "The squeaky wheel gets the grease” does not, for the most part, apply to wheels which lack significant institutional power. Women who call out harassment get branded as malcontents and drama queens and troublemakers; harassers, meanwhile, insulated by privilege and the fact that their behavior is part of a long-established status quo, get a pass. Do you seriously think that it’s Lobdell, not MariNaomi, who will feel the primary professional repercussions of this–even though it was Lobdell who outed himself as her harasser?
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine wrote an article about her experiences with sexual harassment in professional settings in the comics industry, and one of her former bosses–from a job where none of the incidents in question had occurred, a dude with whom her working relationship had been affable, who had or should have had no personal stake in the conversation–immediately tried to intimidate her into taking it down. He was worried, you see, that it might harm someone’s career, or that someone might blame an innocent party. And he found it more offensive that this woman was calling out harassment than that the harassment was happening in the first place.
Now imagine what would have happened if she’d written the post while still his employee, and tell me again that women who call out harassment only face consequences from their harassers.
Here’s the thing |
a larger difference in their cycle start dates than they did at the beginning of the study. And 100 of those 273 pairs actually lived together.
It's worth nothing that this study has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. But the findings do line up with prior research.
RELATED: 10 Things That Mess With Your Period
There have been other studies on menstrual synchrony (as it’s technically called) that concluded period syncing isn't actually a thing. One from 2006, for example, tracked 186 Chinese women living together in dorms for a year, and found no evidence that their periods were lining up.
The concept of period syncing seems to have originated in a 1971 study published in Nature. The author suggested that one woman's pheromones might shift another woman's cycle. But that study has seen been criticized for its methodology.
To get our best wellness advice delivered to you inbox, sign up for the Healthy Living newsletter
So why does it seem like you and your bestie get your periods at the same time? Alas, it’s most likely due to chance. Because our menstrual cycles vary in length, you and your friend are bound to overlap at times, and those times probably stick in your mind.Seeking the quashing of an FIR against them, comedy group All India Bakchod (AIB) moved the Bombay High Court (HC) Monday saying that there was a clear distinction between vulgarity and obscenity. They argued that what they did was vulgar, but not obscene. The HC has asked the police Monday not to take any “coercive” action against the group till March 16.
Seeking the quashing of an FIR against them, comedy group All India Bakchod (AIB) moved the Bombay High Court (HC) on Monday saying that there was a clear distinction between vulgarity and obscenity. They argued that what they did was vulgar, but not obscene. The HC has asked the police not to take any ‘coercive’ action against the group till March 16.
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“Law prevents the use of foul words only when they are obscene,” contended AIB’s counsel Mahesh Jethmalani, stressing that obscenity arouses “sexual lust” and the words used and jokes cracked were merely vulgar.
Jethmalani, seeking quashing of FIR registered in Pune, relied on a couple of judgments of the Supreme Court and the Kerala High Court, which, according to him, have made a distinction between the two terms.
The expletives-laden, insult comedy over actors Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh was uploaded on YouTube on January 28, 2014.
[related-post]
Justices Ranjit More and Anuja Prabhudessai were hearing Jethmalani, who argued that the case was not of any kind of obscene depiction. Jethmalani said AIB members — Tanmay Bhat, Gurusimran Khamba, Rohan Joshi and Ashish Shakya — had used foul language and slangs, which were nowhere close to being obscene. “They never depicted pornography or projected a lewd picture,” said the lawyer.
Appearing for the state, additional public prosecutor Jayesh Yagnik said the police had the proof of obscenity in the form of CDs of the show. Yagnik raised doubts over Jethmalani’s argument of distinction being applicable to the present case. While directing the police not to arrest AIB members, the HC asked the police to carry on with the investigation. The state will have to file its affidavit on March 16.
In addition, AIB through Jethmalani has also intervened in a PIL filed against them. They have sought its dismissal and said that the PIL affects their livelihood directly and violates their fundamental rights.
The ‘roast’ was held at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium in Worli on December 20. AIB uploaded the video on YouTube on January 28, in three parts and in the beginning, viewers were warned of the nature of the video. The video was removed from YouTube on February 3, 2015, after it faced ire from several quarters.
An FIR in Pune named YouTube and actors Singh, Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Sonakshi Sinha and director Karan Johar for distributing the controversial video.
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The FIR has been filed under sections 292 (distribution of obscene content or lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest), 294 (obscene act in public place) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67a (publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act, etc in electronic form) of the IT Act.Image copyright Getty Images
Disneyland Paris is facing a pricing probe following accusations that UK and German customers are being frozen out of certain price promotions.
The Financial Times said people in the UK were paying 15% more for one day tickets.
The European Commission told the BBC that it had "received a number of complaints" from customers.
A Disneyland Paris spokesman said promotions were seasonal.
The newspaper said in a report that in some cases French consumers were paying €1,346 for a premium package, while British visitors were charged €1,870 and Germans €2,447.
The European Commission is concerned that Disneyland Paris is stopping consumers in some member states from shopping around for the best deals, EC spokeswoman Lucia Caudet told BBC Business online.
Under European law, firms can not stop consumers from doing this, she said.
Image copyright Getty Images
The BBC understands that consumers in countries including the UK, Germany and Italy have made pricing complaints.
The problem potentially lies in, for example, a UK holidaymaker trying to order a Disneyland Paris ticket from a French website but being unable to pay because they do not have a French credit card.
The French government has now been asked to investigate.
A spokesman for Disneyland Paris said that the price of a standard ticket was the same across the European Union market.
He said that the firm runs different promotions at specific times of year based around, for example, seasonal events and school holidays.
Customers are not subject to so-called geo-blocking, where promotions are closed to those people whose computers are located in a certain country, the spokesman said.
But he added that customers would not be able to directly pay for tickets for a promotion for a certain country unless their credit or debit card is registered in that country.
"It's an anti-fraud measure," he said.Ayesha Takia's husband Farhan Azmi gets death threats
Bollywood actress Ayesha Takia’s husband Farhan Azmi is receiving death threats from a political group over a phone call for marrying a Hindu girl. He filed a complaint with the Mumbai Police on July 26 regarding the phone calls. Farhan Azmi is a hotelier and the son of Samajwadi Party leader Abu Azmi. His father has several times made headlines for his controversial statements. According to Farhan Azmi, a political party is threatening him for being indulged in ‘Love Jihad’ as he married a Hindu woman.
"You all are animals. Have you forgotten that you have indulged in Love Jihad by marrying a Hindu girl?", the unidentified caller said to Farhan Azmi according to SpotboyE report. Farhan has marred the Bollywood actress Ayesha Takia in 2009. The couple also has a son named Mikail.
Also Read: Azaan row: Suchitra Krishnamoorthi files complaint over derogatory tweets
"The aggressor, in no uncertain terms, extended death threats to the undersigned and his family...", states the report, a copy of which has been shared by SpotboyE.
The threat call was made on the behalf of Rajasthan Hindu Sena and was primarily targeting Farhan Azmi’s father Abu Azmi. The political party took offence on Abu Azmi’s comment about singer Suchita Krishnamoorthi’s tweet about Azaan.
"Ask your father Abu Azmi to stop shouting like an animal else he will be bumped off. Also tell the son of Owaisi that he too will not be spared," Farhan Azmi was reportedly told, said Spotboye.
Also Read: Ayesha Takia on getting botox: My pictures were morphed
Ayesha Takia has remained mum on the matter till now. Further reports are awaited about Farhan and Ayesha’s action about the matter.
For more entertainment updates follow our Facebook pageTartu county court finds three men guilty of cooperation with Russian special services and committing crime against the state of Estonia.
At the end of last week a citizen of Estonia, Maksim Gruzdev, aged 32, was found guilty of charges of the Estonian Internal Police and the Office of Prosecutor General. As Ilmar Kahro, the spokesman of the office of Prosecutor General, told ERR, the man was blamed for establishing and maintaining relationship with Russian special services. The relationship was targeted at impairing the activities of Estonian security departments.
According to the accusation Russian special services recruited Gruzdev in the second half of last year in the territory of Pskov oblast, Russia. Since then and till his detainment Gruzdev had been forwarding to Russian special services information about activities of the employees of Estonian Internal Security Service, and had been participating in operations of the agency.
Gruzdev was sentenced to four years of imprisonment.
Last October a citizen of Estonia, Aleksandr Rudnev, aged 21, was found guilty of crimes against the state in collaboration with Russian special services. Rudnev was recruited for secret cooperation in spring of 2013 in Pskov oblast in Russia and he was able to forward information to Russian special srevices till his detainment last March.
According to the accusation Rudnev was forwarding observation data about activities of Estonian Defence Forces in southern Estonia and information about Estonian Police and Border Guard South Prefecture border guard stations and service locations.
Rudnev was sentenced to two years of imprisonment for crime against the state.
Last October Pavel Romanov, aged 42, citizenship unspecified, was found guilty by the court because he had started cooperation with Russian special services in 1994 in Pskov oblast in Russia, and had been cooperating with Russian special services till his detainment as a suspect last February.
Romanov had been forwarding to special services of a foreign country data about the defence capacity of Estonia and the duties of employees of Estonian border guard and law enforcement agencies.
Romanov was sentenced to four years and 10 months imprisonment, out of which one year and 10 months should be carried out promptly.
Criminal matters were investigated by the Estonian Internal Security Office and the investigation was led by the Office of the Prosecutor General.There's nothing wrong with falling in love with a programming language for her looks. I mean, let's face it - Python does have a rockin' body of modules, and a damn good set of utilities and interpreters on various platforms. Her whitespace-sensitive syntax is easy on the eyes, and it's a beautiful sight to wake up to in the morning after a long night of debugging. The way she sways those releases on a consistent cycle - she knows how to treat you right, you know?
But let's face it - a lot of other languages see the attention she's getting, and they get jealous. Really jealous. They try and make her feel bad by pointing out the GIL, and they try and convince her that she's not "good enough" for parallel programming or enterprise-level applications. They say that her lack of static typing gives her programmers headaches, and that as an interpreted language, she's not fast enough for performance-critical applications.
She hears what those other, older languages like Java and C++ say, and she thinks she's not stable or mature enough. She hears what those shallow, beauty-obsessed languages like Ruby say, and she thinks she's not pretty enough. But she's trying really hard, you know? She hits the gym every day, trying to come up with new and better ways of JIT'ing and optimizing. She's experimenting with new platforms and compilation techniques all the time. She wants you to love her more, because she cares.
But then you hear about how bad she feels, and how hard she's trying, and you just look into her eyes, sighing. You take Python out for a walk - holding her hand - and tell her that she's the most beautiful language in the world, but that's not the only reason you love her.
You tell her she was raised right - Guido gave her core functionality and a deep philosophy she's never forgotten. You tell her you appreciate her consistent releases and her detailed and descriptive documentation. You tell her that she has a great set of friends who are supportive and understanding - friends like Google, Quora, and Facebook. And finally, with tears in your eyes, you tell her that with her broad community support, ease of development, and well-supported frameworks, you know she's a language you want to be with for a long, long time.
After saying all this, you look around and notice that the two of you are alone. Letting go of Python's hand, you start to get down on one knee. Her eyes get wide as you try and say the words - but she just puts her finger on your lips and whispers, "Yes".
The moon is bright. You know things are going to be okay now.He may be the most driven investor on earth. And now the founder of the $17 billion Fairholme Fund is making the boldest bet of his career.
Bruce Berkowitz is starting to sweat. It’s just after 5 a.m. on a Thursday, and the man who is arguably the top mutual fund manager on the planet is briskly walking his usual morning route on the mansion-lined streets of his gated neighborhood in Coral Gables, Fla., just outside Miami. Alongside him is his investing partner, right-hand man, and next-door neighbor, Charlie Fernandez, who is furiously scrolling through e-mails on his BlackBerry as the two bat around ideas for the portfolio of Fairholme, (FAIRX) the $17 billion fund Berkowitz started 11 years ago. “Out here you can actually think,” says Berkowitz, explaining the appeal of an hour of daily pre-dawn speed-walking to a visitor hustling to keep pace.
As he charges through the darkness in shorts, running shoes, and a black University of Miami zip-up hoodie, Berkowitz bounces from topic to topic in his typical scattershot way. He and Fernandez have just returned from an eight-day fact-finding trip to China — he’s bullish but wishes he’d gotten in 10 years ago — packed so full of meetings that, Berkowitz says, they slept a mere 24 hours total. Next he jumps to the bold investments that he and Fernandez have made — hedge-fund-like maneuvers involving both equity and debt — in subprime lender AmeriCredit and then-bankrupt mall owner General Growth Properties (GGP), moves that have netted his fund a profit of $2 billion.
Finally, on the fourth or fifth pass down his block, Berkowitz, 52, gets around to the biggest and most public wager of his life: his $5 billion bet on the resurgence of Wall Street. Fairholme is now the largest shareholder of AIG (AIG) after the U.S. government, with a $1.5 billion position in the insurance giant. And Berkowitz has also taken huge stakes in Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), and Bank of America (BAC). “We’re going to make more on these names than we have on anything,” he declares, as the sun begins rising behind the palm trees.
Berkowitz may not be a household name to most investors, but he should be. During the past decade, Fairholme has produced an annualized return of 11.6% over a span in which the S&P 500 (SPX) has risen a paltry 0.7% a year on average. Since the fund launched in 1999, Berkowitz has beaten the market every year except one (when Fairholme was up 24%, vs. the S&P’s 29% rise in 2003), and he’s on track (up 17% through early December) to easily beat it again in 2010. “The highest compliment I can give,” says hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman, who got to know Berkowitz when they both invested in telecom stocks earlier this decade, “is if he called me up to recommend a stock, I would pay attention.”
The fund’s outstanding returns — along with Berkowitz’s being crowned U.S. stock manager of the decade this year by investment research firm Morningstar — have attracted a flood of new money to Fairholme. Investors have poured in more than $4 billion over the past year. And they’ve added $330 million more to his Fairholme Focused Income Fund, which launched in January. He plans to open a third fund, one that focuses on smaller opportunities, early in 2011.
Berkowitz welcomes the influx of money. (He says his target is for Fairholme to reach $25 billion in assets.) For now, though, much of the new cash remains just that — cash. Rather than put it all to work in active investments, Berkowitz has an unusually high 25% of Fairholme’s portfolio in cash or short-term debt. It’s a huge reserve of liquid funds, and Berkowitz wants it for a couple of reasons, both of which suggest that he sees a rocky road ahead for the U.S. economy. First, if a falling market scares his investors into withdrawing funds, the extra money means that he won’t be forced to sell stocks he believes in.
Second, stockpiling cash is in keeping with Berkowitz’s plan to evolve Fairholme from a regular, stocks-only mutual fund into a more versatile distressed-asset investment vehicle, and to profit from the coming wave of corporate restructurings he anticipates. He believes that dozens of overleveraged companies will need to fix their balance sheets in the next couple of years — commercial real estate is one industry ripe for it, he says — and he wants Fairholme to be ready to step in as a Warren Buffett-style lender of last resort, with highly favorable terms for his investors, of course. As Berkowitz puts it, “There aren’t many people in the world you can call who can write a check for $1 billion today.”
Wall Street’s history is filled with stories of money managers who have become superstars after a spectacular run, only to struggle once investors flocked to their funds. Bill Miller famously guided his Legg Mason Value Trust (LMVTX) to a 15-year winning streak over the S&P 500 before going into a deep slump beginning in 2007. Ken Heebner of the CGM Focus Fund (CGMFX) was riding high in 2008 (when his success earned him a cover story in this publication) but has since struggled mightily.
Can Berkowitz continue to beat the odds? Can a single investor, even one with singular focus and discipline, successfully manage a portfolio the size of Fairholme? “It’s a challenge for any manager to take in that kind of inflow and repeat,” says a large Fairholme investor. Says another: “You hope that when you buy a manager, it’s a seasoned team. Having a one-man band can be risky.”
Berkowitz acknowledges the concerns with his usual candor. “Right now,” he says matter-of-factly, “we’re at an interesting junction point where people can’t decide whether we’re about to blow up.”
Getting away from Wall Street
For its first six years Fairholme was run from an office in Short Hills, N.J. Then, in 2006, Berkowitz uprooted the firm and his family to move to Miami. The warm weather in southern Florida was certainly a factor in the decision, as was the absence of a state income tax. But Berkowitz says the biggest reason was that he wanted to put some space between himself and Wall Street. In Short Hills, his office was in a building with several other money-management firms. And no matter where he went in town, he was in danger of running into know-it-all investors who might pollute his thinking. “I had to get away,” he says.
Fairholme’s Miami offices occupy a single floor in a nondescript office building. There are 20 or so full-time employees to handle compliance, investor relations, and trading. But there are no teams of research analysts. And most of the time there is no Berkowitz either.
That’s because he spends almost all his time working at home. Berkowitz bought his current 14,500-square-foot mansion for $14 million in 2008. He and his wife, Tracey, gutted it — he says it was filled with gaudy marble and chandeliers — and remodeled in a low-key modern style. Berkowitz’s spacious office has dark wood floors and Barcelona chairs. Massive windows offer a perfect view of the Atlantic Ocean. On his desk is a blanket for his beloved 12-year-old white poodle, Jazz.
Berkowitz is about 6 feet tall and lanky, and looks young for his age. He keeps his dark hair brushed back and usually wears blue oxfords with loose slacks or jeans. Despite his obvious wealth, Berkowitz doesn’t have a fancy-car fetish. Unless he has to take the highway, his vehicle of choice is a tiny Mercedes-Benz Smart Car.
At Tracey’s urging, Berkowitz has been attempting to acquire a hobby for years. A few years ago he tried golf but gave it up. (“I just couldn’t hit the ball straight,” he says.) He talks excitedly about scuba diving but admits he’s been only twice. Next to the door of his office are two guitars, a Fender Stratocaster and a vintage Rickenbacker. Berkowitz says he tried to learn the instrument last year but couldn’t stick with it.
His office shelves are filled with some 2,000 vinyl records that he bought in bulk a year and a half ago. When asked for a favorite, though, he struggles to come up with a name. He has to remind himself to use his $80,000 McIntosh sound system. “I get really upset when I don’t put it on for a week or two,” he says. “It’s something I’m trying to do for 15 to 20 minutes a day to relax.” In truth, he doesn’t think he’s missing out on much. “People do what they enjoy,” he says. For him, it’s investing.
Early to rise, early to bed
Berkowitz works seven days a week and often starts sending e-mails before 4 a.m. After his power walk with Fernandez each morning, Berkowitz works out in his basement gym with a personal trainer and is at his desk by 8:15. When the market closes, he meets again with Charlie for an hour, then spends an hour or two with his family. (He has three children, the youngest a senior in high school.) He’s usually in bed by 9 p.m., reading annual reports or other filings. Once his eyes get tired, he puts on Bowers & Wilkins headphones to listen to conference calls. “They pick up voices really well,” he says, before pausing. “This is really sick, isn’t it?” (Berkowitz says he listened to Bank of America’s recent earnings call over and over — nine or 10 times — to understand how new CEO Brian Moynihan is handling financial reform: “I’m impressed,” he says.)
While he may not employ a full-time team of analysts, Berkowitz often hires experts to challenge his ideas. When researching defense stocks a few years ago, he hired a retired two-star general and a retired admiral to advise him. More recently he’s used a Washington lobbyist to help him track changes in financial-reform legislation. When asked about the SEC’s investigation of “expert networks” in relation to insider trading, Berkowitz says that he has never employed any of the firms implicated, and that the consultants he does use don’t provide company-specific information.
Most mutual fund managers practice diversification — they buy 50 or more stocks and thus spread the risk. But since his early days managing money in the 1980s, Berkowitz has run concentrated portfolios. Currently the Fairholme Fund holds only 25 stocks, and 38% of the money is in the top five names. When asked why, Berkowitz responds by echoing Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger: “Why would you want to put money into your 35th-best idea?” He then pulls a book from his shelf: The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams. On page 37 there’s a graphic showing the strike zone sections where Williams hit for his highest averages. “We’re operating in our sweet spot,” says Berkowitz with a smile.
That sweet spot is financial stocks.
Berkowitz has always specialized in understanding banks and other financial companies — and has often made huge returns in them. In the early 1990s, for example, he purchased beaten-down shares of Wells Fargo when short-sellers were arguing that commercial real estate loans would cripple the bank, and watched the stock rise ninefold over the next nine years.
Berkowitz’s bet on banks now comes down to this: He’s convinced that the worst is over. And his certainty is all the more compelling because he sensed disaster coming early. In 2006, Berkowitz sold his stakes in mortgage lenders Countrywide Financial and Freddie Mac after he noticed a proliferation of overleveraged balance sheets, aggressive lending, and exotic mortgage securities in the financial sector. “Worldwide, financial institutions may ultimately write off hundreds of billions and are being forced to raise equity to survive — if they can,” he wrote in Fairholme’s 2007 letter to investors. Shortly after, he put much of the fund’s money in defensive stocks like Boeing (BA) and Pfizer (PFE).
When the markets subsequently collapsed in 2008, Berkowitz saw it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The one mistake he didn’t want to make was to plunge in too early. Cultivating a healthy paranoia is a hallmark of his investing approach. As he is fond of saying, “The first rule is: Don’t lose money. The second rule is: Follow the first rule.” So, he says, he spent nearly every day of 2008 and 2009 studying the banks. He combed through congressional testimony from Wall Street executives. He studied TARP filings and loan data from the Federal Reserve. All the while he monitored balance sheets. And only when he was convinced that it was impossible to lose money did he plunge in.
Fairholme’s $450 million investment in Citigroup in the fourth quarter of 2009 was his first sizable bet. Citi lost almost $30 billion in 2008 alone, and its shares fell more than 90% during the credit crisis. But by the fall of 2009, Berkowitz could see that good, conservative loans were replacing bad ones in Citi’s lending businesses — and even its so-called toxic assets were yielding more than 5%. “You have to normalize the environment — that’s the arbitrage,” he says. “Are they going to make it through the tough times? And what are they going to look like in more normal times?” So far in 2010, Citi shares are up 34%, and Berkowitz believes they could easily double from here.
Berkowitz on AIG: Treasury will profit big
His boldest, least understood investment by far is his huge position in AIG — the single largest holding in his fund. Conventional wisdom on Wall Street said AIG would never repay the government the $180 billion in bailout money it was extended after its London-based credit derivatives group posted billions in losses on bad mortgage bets. Institutional investors have shunned the insurer, and last year more than one Wall Street analyst wondered whether the stock was worthless. By early 2010, it was down 98% from its pre-crash level.
But when Berkowitz dissected AIG’s businesses, including its core property and casualty insurance arms in the U.S. and its Asian life insurance unit, he found that cash flows were positive, even as mark-to-market losses in other parts of the company continued to cause billions in losses. “All of my most intelligent friends in the insurance world think I’m an idiot,” he says of his AIG stake. “These are CEOs of insurance companies. But it’s just right there.”
After restructuring charges, the giant lost $11 billion in 2009, but “at its core, their intact franchises make money,” says Berkowitz. It’s those core businesses that Berkowitz is betting on. After sketching the value of its operations, some of which would be sold off to pay back the government, Berkowitz predicts that U.S. taxpayers will eventually get repaid, although he admits that is still a ways off.
Berkowitz started buying AIG bonds and preferred stock as well as common equity in February. Since then the stock has risen more than 75%. “The good thing about AIG is that it’s just so complex,” he says. “For a mere mortal with an average intelligence, it takes a long time to try to put all the pieces together. It’s all there to be put together, it’s just that you need to have no social life and not too many investments.”
An early lesson in odds making
Berkowitz grew up in Chelsea, Mass., a gritty suburb of Boston. His father Barney was a part-time taxi driver who ran a bookmaking operation out of his corner convenience store, and his mother, Hennie, was a homemaker. When Bruce was 15, his father had a heart attack. Berkowitz quit high school for two months to take over the bookmaking operation while his dad recovered.
Creating betting lines for horse races and baseball games gave him his first lessons in odds — and how most people don’t understand them. “I learned hope and dreams and the perverse psychology that makes people make stupid decisions,” he says.
An indifferent student, Berkowitz managed to get into the University of Massachusetts Amherst despite mediocre high school grades, becoming the first in his family to attend college. Once on campus, he found his motivation — not to end up a taxi driver like his dad, he says — and discovered he had a talent for math. He also met Tracey, who was a year older and living in the same dorm. They got married the week he graduated.
Berkowitz and his wife both found jobs with the Strategic Planning Institute in Cambridge, Mass. An offshoot of General Electric, the consulting group analyzed data for Fortune 500 companies to give them insight into what drove profitability. The couple was transferred to the group’s office in Manchester, England, in 1981, but Berkowitz soon found the job boring. In his spare time he began trading stocks through the local Merrill Lynch office. He ended up joining Merrill’s London brokerage office in 1983.
Berkowitz quickly emerged as the office’s top salesman in fixed income, which was in a raging bull market. He bought BusinessWeek’s international subscription list from McGraw-Hill and spent Sunday afternoons stuffing envelopes with letters of introduction to potential customers. American banks were new to England, and people were interested.
“Clients just loved him,” says former partner Pascal Besman. “He had a great personality, and he was brilliant. He devoted all his time to work. We would work 14 hours a day, then we’d hang out another three or four.”
Berkowitz became a hot commodity. By 1987 he had a core group of 200 wealthy clients, and Lehman Brothers recruited him to start its new high-net-worth office in London. He moved back to the U.S. with Lehman in 1989, then was recruited to Salomon Smith Barney in 1993 — always retaining his core group of clients.
He began to chafe, however, at the oversight of working inside big firms. His bosses criticized him for running highly concentrated portfolios, even though, Berkowitz says, his returns regularly trounced the market. In 1994, for instance, he owned only two stocks: Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) and the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co. “I was bumping up against constraints,” he says. He also liked the idea of having a public record of his stock picking. So in 1997 he departed with all 200 of his original clients and about $400 million in separate accounts, and opened his own firm. He recruited two stock pickers — a star Paine Webber broker named Larry Pitkowsky and a value investor named Keith Trauner — to help generate ideas. Fairholme, named for the street where Berkowitz lived in London, launched in December 1999.
His biggest project so far
Over lunch at a small Italian restaurant in Coral Gables in November, Berkowitz takes a call from activist hedge fund manager Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital in New York City. Ackman is congratulating Berkowitz on the day’s news: General Growth Properties, the country’s second-biggest mall owner, has officially emerged from bankruptcy after a year and a half under court supervision.
The call lasts only a minute, and afterward Berkowitz asks Fernandez how much Fairholme shareholders are making from their investment in GGP. Fernandez quickly responds: $1.4 billion. It’s a huge return, and, as Berkowitz quickly says, it wouldn’t be possible without Fernandez.
Fernandez, 48, joined Fairholme in 2007, shortly after marrying Berkowitz’s cousin. To outsiders it smelled of nepotism, but Berkowitz says he had been looking for someone like Fernandez for a long time. Even though Fairholme posted 20% annualized gains in its first five years, by 2005, with the fund at $1.5 billion in assets, Berkowitz thought it needed a change. He wanted someone with the right experience to help him branch into opportunities outside public securities. Fernandez was a restructuring whiz who had worked at companies controlled by pharmaceutical billionaire Phillip Frost. Soon after Fernandez’s arrival, Pitkowsky and Trauner left Fairholme. Berkowitz then changed Fairholme’s charter to allow the fund to invest in debt for the first time and take larger stakes in companies. Shortly thereafter Berkowitz insisted that Fernandez move into the house next door to his, the better to work on deals.
Their biggest project so far has been General Growth Properties, and it’s a good example of the types of transactions Berkowitz wants to do more of. Soon after the largest real estate bankruptcy in history made headlines in April 2009, Berkowitz and Fernandez began reading through the court filings. Aided by a veteran bankruptcy lawyer in New York, they determined that some of the company’s battered debt could be paid off with the rent checks still coming in. Fernandez called more than 100 holders of GGP bonds and made bids over the phone. After six weeks he had accumulated bonds with a face value of $1.8 billion.
At that point Ackman, who had acquired a huge equity position in GGP, and property owner Brookfield Asset Management invited Fairholme to join them in recapitalizing the company’s stock. “We set it up so there was room for others, and Bruce was my first call,” says Ackman, who made a huge return when the stock rose from 50¢ to more than $15. “The guy is the most stand-up investor I’ve ever worked with.”
Why not move to hedge funds?
Not all of Berkowitz ’s interactions with the hedge fund world have been quite so favorable. In October he and noted short-seller David Einhorn faced off in the media over St. Joe, a Florida real estate developer that has been battered by falling land prices. Berkowitz, with a nearly 30% stake, is the largest shareholder in the company. After Einhorn, who is short the stock, gave a negative presentation at an investor’s conference, driving down the price, Berkowitz thanked him for raising the company’s profile. “I want to send him a box of chocolates,” he told Reuters. He says he’s confident he’ll make a bundle on St. Joe eventually.
As Berkowitz moves more and more into these types of distressed investments, a natural question arises: Why not become a hedge fund manager himself, and take a hedge-fund-size cut for his services? For one thing, says Berkowitz, he isn’t eager to deal with high-maintenance hedge fund investors. But more important, he doesn’t view himself as the fast-money type.
As he nears the end of his morning walk, Berkowitz begins musing on his aversion to losing money. He is not, he insists, interested in taking risks. His contrarian investments may look perilous to outsiders, but to him they are the safest opportunities he can find. He stops and shuffles to the dotted yellow line in the center of the street and points down: “This is where we can make our shareholders plenty of money.” For Berkowitz, out of the ordinary is middle-of-the-road.
More from Fortune’s Investor’s Guide 2011
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6 top-performing gold fundsWhat is the Main Character Resolve? Does your Main Character Change his way of dealing with the problem at the heart of the story (such as Ebeneezer Scrooge’s switch to generosity in A Christmas Carol) or remain Steadfast in his convictions (such as the innocent Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive)? Read question
What is the Main Character Growth? Does your Main Character grow by adopting a new useful trait (Start) or by outgrowing an old inappropriate one (Stop)? Read question
What is the Main Character Approach? Is your Main Character a Be-er who mentally adapts to his environment (such as Rick Blaine in Casablanca) or a Do-er who physically changes his environment (such as John McClane in Die Hard)? Read question
What is the Main Character Problem-Solving Style? Does your Main Character use a Linear problem solving style (such as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs) or a Holistic problem solving style (such as Tom Wingo in The Prince of Tides)? Read question
What is the Story Driver? Is the overall story driven by Actions first (such as the time travelers arriving in The Terminator) or Decisions first (such as Daniel Hillard’s decision to impersonate a woman in Mrs. Doubtfire)? Read question
What is the Story Limit? Is your overall story brought to its climax by running out of Time (such as the 18 days to save the earth in Armageddon) or by running out of Options (such as Thelma and Louise driving over the cliff in Thelma and Louise)? Read question
What is the Story Outcome? Do your character’s efforts to achieve the overall story goal result in Success (such as killing the shark in Jaws) or Failure (such as not being able to open the dinosaur theme park in Jurassic Park)? Read question
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• Fewer than 700 retail licenses.
• Restricted access for minors (not allowed in bars, liquor stores).
• Sales revenue primarily benefits local owners and state of Oklahoma.
• One license per person and two for a married couple.
What we’ll get
• Closed, franchise system with up to 90 percent of the market controlled by two distribution companies.
• Selection dictated by two wholesalers/distributors.
• Price increases due to lack of competition and additional cost of delivering to thousands of new outlets.
• Increased underage access to strong alcohol due to corporate ownership, extended hours and lighter penalties.
• Liquor, wine and beer sold by 18+ and stocked by 16+.
• More than 4,000 retail licenses, including convenience stores.
• Unrestricted access for minors in Walmart, Target, 7-Eleven, etc.
• Sales revenue primarily benefits out-of-state companies.
• One license per person, two for a married couple, and unlimited licenses for large retailers (Walmart, Target, 7-Eleven, etc.).The other problem for the Government and others who urged the then Home Secretary David Blunkett to downgrade cannabis in the run-up to 2004, is that the drug on sale to young people on the streets today is very different from the one ministers thought they were downgrading. Doctors believe that this new strain has the potential to induce paranoia and even psychosis. Some of those we met who work with young criminals link the advent of the new drug with the growth and intensity of street violence. Uanu Seshmi runs a small charity in Peckham, where gun crime is rife, which aims to help boys excluded from school escape becoming involved in criminal gangs. He has seen boys come through his doors who are "unreachable" and he blames the new higher strength cannabis sold on the streets as "skunk" or "super skunk" for warping young minds. "It isn't the cannabis of our youth, 20 or 30 years ago," he told me. "This stuff damages the brain, its effects are irreversible and once the damage is done there is nothing you can do.
I smoke around six joints of regular cannabis every week, mostly at the weekends. What I like about smoking hash or weed is that it keeps me calm and gives me a more amusing outlook on life. With skunk, it’s a completely different story. Just three drags on a skunk joint will induce paranoia on a massive scale. I’m not talking about the difference between a beer and a vodka shot. I’m talking about being unable to get out of bed in the morning because you feel paralyzed, about being incapable of holding a conversation. I would like to think I’m a pretty lucid guy, but after smoking skunk I find myself struggling to string a sentence together. In the skunk haze of my student days, I would sometimes find myself unable to leave the house at all. It’s like a mild form of dementia. Once, a friend passed me a skunk joint before going to a birthday party. After just a few drags, I went into a room full of people, barely able to talk. I headed straight for the bar and drank as much alcohol as possible to counteract the effects. It helped, but using one vice to neutralize another is not exactly ideal.
Location:
With British Prime Minister Gordon Brown poised to reclassify marijuana as a more serious drug subject to stiffer penalties, the United Kingdom appears to be in the grip of an outbreak of Reefer Madness that would make Harry Anslinger blush. Bizarrely, much of the British concern about marijuana is centered on the dreaded "skunk." The Daily Mail, which makes the New York Post look like the New York Times, has been a leading proponent of skunk mania. In an article headlined Cannabis: A deadly habit as easy for children to pick up as a bag of crisps, after blaming marijuana for the problems of British youth culture and prohibition-related violence, the Mail breathlessly reports that skunk isn't your father's marijuana. (Haven't we heard this one before?)This new strain of marijuana? Skunk? Odd, since it's been around since the 1970s (read the description of Skunk #1) and is just another of the countless indica-sativa hybrids. Thankfully, we have "drug experts" like Mr. Seshmi to raise the alarm about its irreversible effects. There's more from the Mail, which apparently has made reclassifying cannabis its moral crusade of the day. In another article, How my perfect son became crazed after smoking cannabis, the Mail consults an unhappy mum whose child ran into problems smoking weed. Last fall, the Mail was warning of--I kid you not-- "deadly skunk". Here are some more skunk headlines from the Mail in recent months: "Son twisted by skunk knifed father 23 times," "How cannabis made me a monster," "Escaped prisoner killed man while high on skunk cannabis," "Boys on skunk butchered a grandmother," and "Teen who butchered two friends was addicted to skunk cannabis." While one expects such yellow journalism from the likes of the tabloid press, even the venerable Times of London is feeling the effects of skunk fever. Under the headline Cannabis: 'just three drags on a skunk joint will induce paranoia', the Times managed to find and highlight some guy named Gerard who doesn't like that particularly variety of pot:My advice to Gerard (and it's something he apparently still has the brain cells left to figure out by himself despite smoking the evil skunk): If you don't like it, don't smoke it. But more broadly, what does the Times piece tell us? Nothing except this guy doesn't like skunk. Honestly, I don't understand this British mania over skunk. Something similar is going on in Australia, only down under, it's not skunk but the dreaded "hydro" that is causing murder, mayhem, and madness. Blaming a particular cultivation technique is about as stupid as blaming one variety of cannabis. I think this is something I'm going to have to write about in a feature article this week. I'll consult cannabis cultivation experts, media critics, and the latest science to try to get a handle on this.According to his sidebar bio on BloombergView, Francis Wilkinson, “…writes editorials on politics and domestic policy. He was previously executive editor of the Week. He was also national affairs writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.”
He should also probably add that he’s either grossly incompetent or deeply dishonest… and maybe both.
Wilkinson’s latest rant for Bloomberg is entitled Liberal Vermont Goes Gun Crazy, and it is an interesting study in reader deception.
Railing against Vermont’s lack of oppressive gun control laws—and skipping over the state’s near complete lack of firearms-related crime—Wilkinson dishonestly states:
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, believes that the federal law requiring gun dealers to conduct background checks on gun purchasers “makes sense.” But Shumlin isn’t supporting a bill in the Vermont Senate that would require similar checks on sales at gun shows and on the Internet. “The laws that we have in place in Vermont serve us well,” Shumlin said at a news conference in late January. In effect, Shumlin’s position is that background checks are a sensible safety policy at gun shops, and an unnecessary intrusion at gun shows; that if Shumlin walks into a federally licensed shop his gun purchase should be preceded by a background check, but if he buys the exact same gun at a gun show or via Facebook, the purchase requires no oversight. Logically, this is absurd. Legally, it’s the law in much of the U.S.
What is “absurd” here isn’t Governor Shumlin’s quite logical opposition to passing laws that aren’t needed, but Winkinson’s blatant disregard for reality.
In this dishonest lede, Wilkinson is going out of his way to convince Bloomberg readers that background checks aren’t conducted at gun shows, and that you can buy a firearm on the Internet and on Facebook.
None of these statements is true.
The vast majority of firearm transactions at gun shows are conducted by FFLs (Federal Firearms Licensees), who have federal licenses to buy, sell, or trade firearms, and who must conduct a NICS background check with every customer transfer. These gun dealers must perform federal NICS background checks whether they are selling out of a storefront, their homes, or at gun shows. Wilkinson’s assertion that there aren’t background checks at gun shows is either dangerously ignorant, or intentionally dishonest.
Likewise, there are no such thing as “Internet gun sales,” at least not as Wilkinson misrepresents it.
If you go to an online firearms market such as Gunbroker or Armslist, you are merely setting up communications and perhaps making payment; all firearms transfers must take place in person.
For example, if you see a rifle on Gunbroker advertised by a dealer, you can completely payment via the web site to the dealer, but that is all you can accomplish online. The firearm itself is transferred from the selling gun dealer to another FFL whom the purchaser specifies. The purchaser must then go to the receiving dealer to complete a NICS background check before they take possession of the firearm. There is no sale without an in-person background check.
Whoops.
Facebook? You can’t purchase anything on Facebook, as everyone is well aware. You can talk about products, show their pictures, and even provide contact information, but you cannot complete any sort of a transaction on the social media platform. Gun dealers showing their wares on Facebook still have to perform background checks before collecting funds or transferring a firearm to another dealer to conduct an in-person background check before transferring the firearm to a customer.
The only exception to background checks at any time or any place via any medium or technology are for in-person private sales between individuals. These do sometimes take place at gun shows, but more typically take place at homes, and between family members or friends.
Why does Francis Wilkinson feel compelled to misrepresent reality to push for a law that isn’t needed or wanted, which Democrats and Republicans alike and Vermont have rejected?
That’s the one question for which I don’t have an easy answer.Land reform—lifting the moratorium on agriculture land sales—is the most powerful measure the government can take to boost economic growth and job creation, particularly in rural areas. More than 70 percent—some 43 million hectares—of Ukrainian territory is classified as agricultural land. And that land is exceptionally fertile: Ukraine has one-third of the world’s black soil. But despite this abundance, agricultural yields in the country are only a fraction of those in other European countries whose land is not of the same quality. This is because land users have little incentive to invest in land management, as neither land owners nor users know if, when, or how the moratorium will be lifted. Moreover, getting credit is difficult and costly as land cannot be used as collateral.
Meaningful reform of the land sector must include providing incentives for long-term investment and proper land management, access to credit, and transfer of land to its most productive uses. The resulting boost to agricultural productivity could add US$15 billion to annual output and increase annual GDP by about 1.5 percentage points. And it would boost public revenue—up to US$2 billion from the one-time sale of state land and US$250 million annually from land leases—freeing precious budget space for schools, hospitals and infrastructure.
It would also allow land owners to get a fair return on their most valuable asset. Today, rental prices for agricultural land in Ukraine are a fraction of their market value. Indeed, some 4.5 million small land owners, often retirees, currently receive 10-20 percent of annual income from renting out their land at rates about a tenth of the level in EU countries, and well below developing countries like Argentina and Brazil. This is unfair to landowners and is strangling the livelihoods and future prospects of the country’s rural population.
The economic case for lifting the moratorium is clear. But unless this is done transparently, the risks may outweigh the benefits. In a country that has seen enormous public wealth disappear through corruption and theft, and with public institutions charged with the prevention of this kind of malfeasance yet to demonstrate their effectiveness, many fear that any change to the current system will lead to concentration of land in the hands of the elite. Thus, beyond the economic reforms/measures listed above, fair and transparent reform of Ukraine’s land market would demonstrate to Ukrainians—and the world—that the country can ensure that its unique natural resources can benefit all of its citizens.
The good news is that such an outcome is possible if the government follows through on actions it is taking on several fronts.
First, making land markets transparent: Building public trust in agricultural land markets will require information from registry and cadastre to be integrated and accurate. Prices—at least at the aggregate level—for land rental and sales should be public. And transactions need to be transparent. Measures, such as the use of e-services in the Cadaster and mandatory e-auctions for rental of state land, should be extended to sales.
Second, informing land owners of their rights: To use their land most effectively, land owners need to be aware of their rights. One way to achieve this, that has broad support, would be to upgrade the technical and operational capacity of the Parliamentary Ombudsman for Human Rights with the establishment of a Land Ombudsman. That would help provide land owners unbiased legal advice on questions regarding their land rights, and help access the judicial system and get redress if these rights are violated.
Third, facilitating access to finance for farmers: Nearly two decades ago the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto published The Mystery of Capital, in which he identified the link between property rights and economic development. His simple but groundbreaking observation was that worldwide, trillions of dollars of “dead capital” were frozen because poor people did not enjoy the full ownership of their land, including the ability to leverage its value to borrow capital. In Ukraine, the moratorium on land sales has prevented land owners from using their most valuable asset as collateral, making it impossible to access credit to expand production or start a new business. With an appropriate regulatory environment, transparent land sales markets would facilitate much-needed rural investment and enable banks to extend credit to family farmers and rural SMEs. Work on instruments to fast-track development of rural financial markets is already progressing, including working with farmers’ associations to train farmers with no history of credit or record keeping on how to put together viable business proposals.
Land reform will be challenging, but the rewards to rural Ukraine, and ultimately to the entire country, promise to be transformative. Moreover, given Ukraine’s potential as a commodities exporter, reform of the sector would impact food security globally. Fortunately, the Government has taken important first steps in the right direction. It has made land reform a priority and begun critical preparatory measures discussed above. So, for the sake of the Ukrainian people and the country's economic prospects, I hope the authorities and politicians have the vision and courage to lift the moratorium this year, so that Ukraine’s potential will finally be tapped.The New York Islanders have avoided arbitration with Josh Bailey, signing the 2008 first round pick to a 5 year deal worth 16.5 million dollars. The salary will be divided evenly over the term, with a 3.3 million annual cap hit for the team. Last season Bailey posted 19 points in 38 games.
Among the current roster, Josh Bailey may be the biggest quandary on the team. A constant trade rumor fixture among armchair GM’s, Bailey’s status has always seemed on rocky ground, dating back to the 2008 draft. Many were perturbed by his selection after 2 separate trades by Garth Snow that moved the Isles down in the draft. All negativity aside, Bailey still seems like somewhat of an unknown quantity. Here’s a player who’s been on the roster for the last 5 seasons, and yet I’m having trouble describing his performance. This could be due to Josh’s constant positional shuffling. Drafted as a center, Bailey has shown much more promise when moved to the wing. It seems that the Islanders have finally decided to keep the 5 year veteran there for the future.
Josh Bailey’s signing cements his status as one of the New York Islanders’ core. General Manager Garth Snow continues to lock in this faction by signing each to long term deals at a price equal to or below market value. It might not be on the bargain level of the recent Travis Hamonic 7 year deal, but the Bailey contract is fair for both sides. Bailey, still only 23 (turns 24 in October), will have the stability to increase his confidence and hopefully consistency. For the Isles, this locks in another puzzle piece at a solid price. After a quick glance at some NHL rosters, your average NHL second/high end third liner gets paid in the 3 million range. As unproven as he might still be, Josh Bailey fits into this mold.Many are calling 2016 the worst year in recent memory.
Aside from the death of several celebrities and cultural icons, 2016 was also a year plagued with escalating global conflicts and deadly Islamist terrorist attacks.
While Islamists boasted about infiltrating the flow of refugee coming into Europe, Western leaders naively insisted that the violent attacks had nothing to do with the refugees and nothing to do with Islam.
Wars across the Middle East expanded and Syria became a proxy war for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Russia to flex their might as would-be global superpowers.
Lots went wrong in 2016. But the year wasn’t all bad. 2016 was also the year that average people sent an undeniable message to elites.
It started with Brexit. Everyday people in the UK rejected the Eurocrat elites in Brussels, despite the best wishes of the elites in London.
The people of Great Britain had never been given a say about the growing EU bureaucracy, and were never consulted in the decision to throw open their borders to mass, unchecked migration from war zones and hotbeds of Islamist terrorism.
Following this trend, the American electorate surprised the world by electing Donald Trump. Americans rejected the corrupt, establishment candidate, despite her having the endorsement of elites from Washington, New York, Hollywood and the Silicon Valley.
Hillary Clinton was so stunned by the results that she couldn’t compose herself enough to deliver a concession speech on election night.
Americans instead opted for a man so profoundly hated by establishment elites that many still refuse to accept that Donald J. Trump was actually elected President.
Trump himself embodies a repudiation of corrupt US politics and a biased mainstream media; his victory highlighted the increasing hostile divide between coastal elites and hardworking Americans.
Electing Trump was the ultimate act of rebellion. It was a moral victory for the American public, despite all of Trump’s flaws.
No matter how Trump or Brexit work out, the fact that the people had their say and took back some power is a positive sign of a functioning democracy.
But global elites aren’t going down without a fight.
At the United Nations, once the throne of international cooperation, global leaders focused their attention on condemning Israel rather than fighting terrorism.
The global community, led behind the scenes by the Obama administration, passed a foolhardy resolution condemning Israel for – get this – allowing Israeli Jews to build homes on land that is supposedly reserved for Muslim Palestinians only.
The resolution, of course, failed to mention that Israel has offered – and Palestinian leaders have rejected – countless land concessions and peace offers. It failed to mention that Palestinian leaders refuse to recognize the state of Israel and its right to exist.
That is the greatest obstacle to peace in the conflict. Despite the appeasement from elites at the UN.
In Canada, our own Justin Trudeau is following in the steps of his global elite compadres.
Rather than condemning terrorism and championing Western values, Trudeau befriends radicals and praised a communist dictator.
Rather than focusing on the needs of hardworking Canadians, Trudeau is bringing in the largest federal tax in decades. He continues to put style over substance and international interests ahead of Canadian interests. He pretends Liberal donors, party insiders, and cabinet ministers are above the law.
If Trudeau wants to avoid his own populist uprising in Canada, he’d be wise to learn from 2016, and focus on everyday Canadians in 2017.C Ojo D
Now included in the Ojo Bueno Texture Pack for Fallout 4
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OJO BUENO NUKA-COLA MACHINE FOR FALLOUT 4:
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to hear the latest on my texture work, as well as ENB series and other visual and performance mods for Fallout 4! See me on YouTube to hear the latest on my texture work, as well as ENB series and other visual and performance mods for Fallout 4!
The third Ojo Bueno texture release for Fallout 4: the elusive Port-A-Diner! Available in a variety of sizes, from 4K to 1K - same size as original textures. The textures remain true to the game's original aesthetic, with minor embellishments such as a 'Chef-Boy' mascot, starburst paint overlay, and delectable food decals on the bottom panel.Initial ReleaseRestored missing alpha channels for 2K and 1K versions of the mod (fixes issues with transparency).Added 'rust drip' stains to some rust patches; adjusted paint color for more'sun-bleached' appearance; adjusted specularity of yellow areas to feel more like painted metal; fixed specularity of rusted areas on bottom panelAdded alternate 'Blue Paint Job' version to Optional Files section1: Ensure that your Fallout.ini file or your Fallout4Custom.ini file has been modified to enable loading of modded textures. Find the [ARCHIVE] section in this file and add the following varable:In the same scection, find'sResourceDataDirsFinal=' and delete any values here, so it simply reads:2: Install the desired version of the file with your favorite mod manager tool. Or to install manually (if you're old school), download and extract the.zip file, and copy the enclosed 'Data' folder into your Fallout 4 folder, so that it merges with the existing 'Data' folder.3: - OPTIONAL - If you want to get the pie every time, and if you want a variety of pies, check out the Port-A-Diner Perfection mod from Steve40!- Not compatible with Vending Machines - Lighting due to texture conflicts.Simply uninstall the mod with your favorite mod manager tool, or if installed manually, simply delete the following files in Data>Textures>SetDressing>FoodVendingMachines:Donald Trump appears on "The Dr. Oz Show." Dr. Oz Show Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared on "The "Dr. Oz Show" on Thursday to discuss his medical records, and he said he still feels like a man in his 30s.
Trump insisted on the show that he's in good health and said he has the stamina of a much younger person.
At one point, Dr. Mehmet Oz asked Trump, "When you look in the mirror, what do you see?"
Trump responded: "I see a person who is 35 years old."
Trump, who is 70, said that he has stayed active and enjoys playing golf.
The health of the two major-party presidential nominees has taken center stage in this election. If Trump is elected in November, he would be the oldest person to be sworn in as president.
Also on Thursday, Trump released a letter from his doctor summarizing his latest physical examination. Trump's physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, wrote that Trump was in "excellent health."
Trump was hospitalized only once in his life, he said — to have his appendix removed when he was 11 years old.
The renewed scrutiny over each candidate's medical history and physical health comes after Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton abruptly left a 9/11 memorial service on Sunday. Her campaign first said she had overheated and later said she had been diagnosed with pneumonia.Untitled a guest Feb 29th, 2016 2,411 Never a guest2,411Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint C++ 2.46 KB class __attribute__ ( ( packed ) ) interrupt_wrapper { using function_ptr = void ( * ) ( unsigned ) ; unsigned int_vector ; // [eax-0x1C] selector ds ; // [eax-0x18] selector es ; // [eax-0x16] selector fs ; // [eax-0x14] selector gs ; // [eax-0x12] function_ptr entry_point ; // [eax-0x10] std :: array < byte, 0x40 > code ; // [eax-0x0C] public : interrupt_wrapper ( unsigned vec, function_ptr f ) : int_vector ( vec ), entry_point ( f ) { byte * start ; std :: size_t size ; asm volatile ( ".intel_syntax noprefix;" "jmp interrupt_wrapper_end%=;" // --- \/\/\/\/\/\/ --- // "interrupt_wrapper_begin%=:;" // On entry, the only known register is CS. "push ds; push es; push fs; push gs; pusha;" // 7 bytes "call get_eip%=;" // call near/relative (E8) // 5 bytes "get_eip%=: pop eax;" // Pop EIP into EAX and use it to find our vars "mov ds, cs:[eax-0x18];" // Restore segment registers "mov es, cs:[eax-0x16];" "mov fs, cs:[eax-0x14];" "mov gs, cs:[eax-0x12];" "push cs:[eax-0x1C];" // Pass our interrupt vector along "call cs:[eax-0x10];" // Call the entry point "add esp, 4;" "popa; pop gs; pop fs; pop es; pop ds;" "sti;" // IRET may or may not reset the interrupt flag. "iret;" "interrupt_wrapper_end%=:;" // --- /\/\/\/\/\/\ --- // "mov %0, offset interrupt_wrapper_begin%=;" "mov %1, offset interrupt_wrapper_end%=;" "sub %1, %0;" ".att_syntax prefix" : "=r" ( start ), "=r" ( size ) ) ; assert ( size <= code. size ( ) ) ; auto * ptr = memory_descriptor ( get_cs ( ), start ). get_ptr < byte > ( ) ; std :: copy_n ( ptr, size, code. data ( ) ) ; asm volatile ( ".intel_syntax noprefix;" "mov ax, ds;" "mov bx, es;" "mov cx, fs;" "mov dx, gs;" ".att_syntax prefix" : "=a" ( ds ), "=b" ( es ), "=c" ( fs ), "=d" ( gs ) ) ; } auto get_ptr ( selector cs ) { return far_ptr32 { cs, reinterpret_cast < std :: size_t > ( code. data ( ) ) } ; } } ;
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class __attribute__((packed)) interrupt_wrapper { using function_ptr = void(*)(unsigned); unsigned int_vector; // [eax-0x1C] selector ds; // [eax-0x18] selector es; // [eax-0x16] selector fs; // [eax-0x14] selector gs; // [eax-0x12] function_ptr entry_point; // [eax-0x10] std::array<byte, 0x40> code; // [eax-0x0C] public: interrupt_wrapper(unsigned vec, function_ptr f) : int_vector(vec), entry_point(f) { byte* start; std::size_t size; asm volatile ( ".intel_syntax noprefix;" "jmp interrupt_wrapper_end%=;" // --- \/\/\/\/\/\/ --- // "interrupt_wrapper_begin%=:;" // On entry, the only known register is CS. "push ds; push es; push fs; push gs; pusha;" // 7 bytes "call get_eip%=;" // call near/relative (E8) // 5 bytes "get_eip%=: pop eax;" // Pop EIP into EAX and use it to find our vars "mov ds, cs:[eax-0x18];" // Restore segment registers "mov es, cs:[eax-0x16];" "mov fs, cs:[eax-0x14];" "mov gs, cs:[eax-0x12];" "push cs:[eax-0x1C];" // Pass our interrupt vector along "call cs:[eax-0x10];" // Call the entry point "add esp, 4;" "popa; pop gs; pop fs; pop es; pop ds;" "sti;" // IRET may or may not reset the interrupt flag. "iret;" "interrupt_wrapper_end%=:;" // --- /\/\/\/\/\/\ --- // "mov %0, offset interrupt_wrapper_begin%=;" "mov %1, offset interrupt_wrapper_end%=;" "sub %1, %0;" ".att_syntax prefix" : "=r" (start), "=r" (size)); assert(size <= code.size()); auto* ptr = memory_descriptor(get_cs(), start).get_ptr<byte>(); std::copy_n(ptr, size, code.data()); asm volatile ( ".intel_syntax noprefix;" "mov ax, ds;" "mov bx, es;" "mov cx, fs;" "mov dx, gs;" ".att_syntax prefix" : "=a" (ds), "=b" (es), "=c" (fs), "=d" (gs)); } auto get_ptr(selector cs) { return far_ptr32 { cs, reinterpret_cast<std::size_t>(code.data()) }; } };Prosecutors to ponder charges over royal hoax
Updated
British prosecutors are considering whether two Australian radio hosts committed any offences during a hoax call to the hospital treating Prince William's wife Catherine, after which a nurse died in an apparent suicide.
The 2Day FM presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles in a call the hospital where Catherine was being treated for acute morning sickness.
One of the nurses who was fooled by the hoax call, Jacintha Saldanha, committed suicide several days later.
Scotland Yard has sent a file to prosecutors to decide whether any offences were committed.
Ms Saldanha, 46, was found dead on December 7 in her lodgings at King Edward VII's hospital in central London.
"Following the death of Jacintha Saldanha, officers have liaised with the Crown Prosecution Service as to whether any criminal offences had been committed in relation to the hoax call made to King Edward VII Hospital in the early hours of Tuesday 4 December," Scotland Yard said in a statement.
"On Wednesday 19 December officers submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service for them to consider whether any potential offences may have been committed by making the hoax call."
At Ms Saldanha's funeral in India on Monday, her widower Benedict Barboza and the couple's two children said in a statement that British police were investigating the tragedy "and they have assured us of a full and fair investigation."
Earlier this month New South Wales police confirmed they had been contacted by the London Metropolitan Police about the hoax.
"They simply wanted to touch base, raise the issues, make us aware of them," Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas said.
"It may be that they may wish to speak to someone at the station at a point down the track."
On Saturday Southern Cross Austereo chief executive Rhys Holleran said the two presenters involved were "shattered" by Ms Saldanha's death, but was confident the law had not been breached.
Sydney University law professor Barbara McDonald says the radio code requires consent before conversations are broadcast.
"New South Wales has a surveillance devices act which says that a person mustn't record a private conversation - and a private conversation in NSW includes a conversation to which they are a party," she said.
"So you're not able to record a conversation that you're having with someone else without their consent."
The call caused an international scandal and the fall-out forced 2Day FM to suspend its advertising and take the presenters - and their program - off the air.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has opened an investigation into the radio station behind the prank.
2Day FM has pledged to donate at least $500,000 to a memorial fund for Ms Saldanha's family.
AFP
Topics: royal-and-imperial-matters, radio-broadcasting, suicide, united-kingdom, sydney-2000
First postedMaricopa County Republicans Censure Sen. John McCain
The Maricopa County Republicans overwhelmingly censured Senator John McCain on Saturday. The state Republicans blasted McCain for his “long and terrible record of drafting, co-sponsoring and voting for legislation best associated with liberal Democrats.”
Seeing Red AZ reported:
At the annual mandatory meeting of the Maricopa County Republican Committee Saturday, a resolution censuring Sen. John McCain was overwhelming passed by the elected precinct committeemen (PCs) representing the county seat of Phoenix, and including numerous surrounding cities. See this complete listing of all the cities and map for a full picture of the size of the area encompassed by Maricopa County. Committeemen representing the Republican voters are elected on primary ballots from the precincts within state legislative districts… …The vote to censure McCain passed overwhelmingly — 1,150 in support with only 351 opposed. Read the complete Resolution to Censure John McCain, including a list of grievances.
Here is the resolution as drafted by precinct committeeman Tim Schwartz:
As leaders in the Republican Party, we are obligated to fully support our party, platform and its candidates. Only in times of great crisis or betrayal is it necessary to publicly censure our leaders. Today we are faced with both. For too long we have waited, hoping Sen. McCain would return to our party’s values on his own. That has not happened. So with sadness and humility we rise and declare: Whereas Sen. McCain has amassed a long and terrible record of drafting, co-sponsoring and voting for legislation best associated with liberal Democrats, such as amnesty, funding for Obamacare, the debtceiling, assaults on the constitution and second amendment, and has continued to support liberal nominees; Whereas this record has been disastrous and harmful to Arizona and the United States; and, Whereas Sen. McCain has campaigned as a conservative and made promises during his re-election campaigns, such as the needed and welcomed promise to secure our borders and finish the border fence, only to quickly flip-flop on those promises; and whereas McCain has abandoned our core values and has been eerily silent against liberals, yet publicly reprimands conservatives in his own party, therefore Be it hereby resolved that the Maricopa County Republican leadership censures Sen. McCain for his continued disservice to our state and nation, and BE it further resolved that until he consistently champions our party’s platform and values, we, the Republican leadership in Arizona will no longer support, campaign for or endorse John McCain as our U.S. senator.While the United States celebrated her 238th birthday last Friday, many Americans are unaware of another significant anniversary taking place this week. On July 8, 1741, America heard what is often hailed as the greatest sermon preached on her soil from a man who is often hailed as the greatest theologian and thinker to minister on her soil.
In the years 1733 through 1737, Jonathan Edwards continued to preach in the Northampton pulpit that was now his own, having been bequeathed to him by his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. During these years God had blessed Edwards’ preaching and ministry with revival in New England and beyond. Many were converted and others edified in their faith. Biographer George Marsden quips, “By March and April of 1735, the spiritual rains had turned the stream [of conversions] into a flood.”[1] Edwards himself describes the revival’s effect on his congregation:
Our public assemblies were then beautiful, the congregation was then alive in God’s service, everyone earnestly intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth; the assembly in general were, from time to time in tears while the Word was preached; some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbors.[2]
From 1739 through 1742, New England and other colonies experienced what historians now refer to as The Great Awakening. This was largely accomplished through the itinerant preaching of George Whitefield and the theological ministry of Jonathan Edwards. While Whitefield is known as the preacher of the Awakening, Edwards is often revered as the theologian of the Awakening. Nevertheless, Edwards was no less the preacher, as a perusal of any of his sermons would prove.
On July 8, 1741, Edwards traveled to a town named Enfield, where he had been invited to attend a church service. Enfield was a notoriously hard-hearted town. While the neighboring town of Suffield was enjoying much of the grace of God poured out in the revival, Enfield remained obstinate. A team of ministers devised a plan and “instituted a series of weekday services where they would travel back and forth between pious Suffield and impious Enfield, hoping to spread the infection of revival.”[3]
On that particular Wednesday, Edwards intended to hear a sermon, not preach one. But as providence would have it, the pastor of that church was sick, and Edwards was called upon to preach. He “just happened to have the sermon manuscript in his saddlebag,”[4] and so 273 years ago Tuesday he preached the most famous sermon delivered on American soil: “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.”
The light-hearted congregants of Enfield were sobered by the gravity of their desperate condition made known to them in detail. The sermon created a stir among them unlike anything before or since. Stephen Williams, a man in attendance, wrote of the service in his diary:
A most awakening sermon. … Before the sermon was done, there was a great moaning and crying out through the whole house. ‘What shall I do to be saved? Oh I am going to Hell! Oh, what shall I do for Christ?’ … The shrieks and cries were piercing and amazing |
similarly. It is a large value engine that can play a fair game of Magic while out-valuing you, or just assembles a combo to win the game outright. Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit or Melira, Sylvok Outcast + Viscera Seer or Varolz, the Scar-Striped + Kitchen Finks or Murderous Redcap and Archangel of Thune + Spike Feeder will win the game. I'm surprised at how resilient this deck actually is. If your goal is just to just stop them from comboing off, then you will just lose to Tarmogoyf and Kitchen Finks. Collected Company takes the place of the Pod engine here and allows for a glorious turn 4 kill. Financially speaking it could actually be rather cheap if you were a Pod player previously.
Overall this deck is pretty customizable to how you want to play. While it hasn't put up a ton of results yet, I definitely think it can and will soon due to it' consistency, resiliency, and the opponent's lack of understanding about the deck. It currently also has way too many names to count (Abzan Company, CoCo, Abzan CoCo, etc...).
Now this is the point where I show you some custom ideas I have been working on. These decks haven't had widespread success and are simply great ways you could be using Collected Company right now.
Little Kid Abzan
This deck first showed up at the Pro Tour as a way to combat the Abzan decks. It plays a more aggressive strategy than normal Abzan and has some specific anti-discard cards that are great against an Abzan heavy meta. But I think that the deck could be even more successful if we add in Collected Company, giving us more of an aggro feel and better chance against other decks.
The deck does have to do some trimming to make room more creatures that cost 3 CMC or less. While this does make the deck less hateful towards discard heavy metas, it does make it a more aggressive deck that can be viable in non-discard metas as well. It is actually somewhat similar to the Podless Pod strategy, but it focuses more on just throwing dudes at your opponent and building a scary board state that is difficult to deal with. Collected Company is an excellent top end for this deck because it increases your creature count by two, which is relevant with cards like Path to Exile in the format, and the creatures it grabs are normally good turn 3 or 4 plays on their own. If you play Abzan Aggro in Standard then this deck plays similar to that.
I definitely think that this variation on Abzan Liege is something to try out. What it lacks in being an anti-meta deck, it makes up for in being a better aggressive Abzan deck in a open metagame.
Mono Green Stompy
The Stompy deck has fallen out of favor for a while now, mainly seeing play only at FNMs and maybe in a Magic Online Daily or two. With Collected Company, the deck has a potential new top end so we should reevaluate this old deck.
More of you will probably be familiar with this deck as it has existed for a while now. The basic idea is playing a bunch of small green dudes that have great bodies for their CMC. It is a lesser played aggro deck mainly because it doesn't have the reach that the other aggro decks in the format do. Its downside is a combination of not being fast enough and being hard to build a scary board state. Collected Comapany fixes these problems by giving the deck amazing reach by dropping two more dudes into play. This means that a couple of Lightning Bolts aren't going to ruin your day anymore. It may not look it, but the deck can finish the game pretty quickly with so many solid creatures and ridiculous pump spells like Aspect of Hydra and Vines of Vastwood. I do think that the deck is being largely underplayed right now and is one of the biggest sleeper decks in Modern.
Take my advice and at least try the deck out for yourself. I think a lot of you will be surprised by its power. With most sideboard hate being towards Burn and Infect, Stompy will definitely steal some games from your opponent.
Merfolk
Yes, everyone's favorite tier 2 deck. I am actually very surprised that this hasn't been tried more frequently. Merfolk can quickly and easily empty their hand due to cheap creatures and Aether Vial, plus splashing green can add some new cards to the deck.
Here we are splashing green for more than just Collected Com</span>pany — Simic Charm is our Vapor Snag replacement. It is a fantastically versatile card; for one extra green mana we get the option to Giant Growth or, more impressively, giving our permanents hexproof. This not only helps blank our opponent's removal spells, it also protects our Aether Vials and Spreading Seas. I also thought a singleton Kiora, the Crashing Wave is worth trying out. Not only for flavor reasons, but it is a decent top end that helps if our opponent is trying to race with a Tarmogoyf. Due to the Kiora and Company, we have to up our land count to 22. Collected Company is huge in this deck because it allows us to dump our hand and then still get 2 more Merfolk into play, usually closing out the game.
Collected Company has been amazing as well as the green splash. I highly suggest changing up your Merfolk deck and try something different than the normal Merfolk list; this will definitely take some people aback.
Zoo
This is the deck most people first thought of when Collected Company was spoiled. It was of course the most obvious shell for it by already playing green and having a lot of low costing creatures that would love to be cheated into play.
The deck is actually fairly similar to the Abzan Liege deck. However, here we are playing red and the deck is actually much more aggressive than the Abzan list. The key here is actually through the lands. Wild Nacatl, Knight of the Reliquary and Tarmogoyf all benefit from your fetch lands to grow them and attacking for a boat load of damage early on. Collected Company adds a lot more explosive damage to the deck as it can easily dump 7 or 8 power onto the board at the end of your opponent's turn. Followed up the burn in your hand, this can lead to quick victories that your opponent did not see coming. It can also help you play catch up which this deck is not normally good at; top decking a Collected Company and putting two of your big beaters into play on an empty or stalled board can be absolutely back-breaking for your opponent.
I will admit that this is my least favorite of the decks, mainly because I'm not a fan of the Zoo deck in general. However I do think that if you want to be playing Zoo, then Collected Company is most likely in your deck already. If it isn't, then what are you doing? Get on it!
... and so many more!
The possibilities for this card are pretty vast. As long as you're playing at least 25 creatures with the majority costing 3 CMC or less, it is possible that Collected Company could fit into your deck. Soul Sisters, Faeries, Bant, etc. are all other possibilities that could benefit from this card. I highly implore you to go out and brew because this card is super powerful and hasn't even come close to reaching its full potential. I hope I convinced you to try out one of my favorite cards right now and maybe it will become one of yours too. And let's be honest here, every deck sounds cooler with "Co." at the end of it.This week Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) told Talking Points Memo he is inclined to vote yes on Measure 91, which would legalize marijuana for recreational use in his state. "I think folks on both sides of the argument make a good case," Merkley said. "And there is concern about a series of new products—and we don't have a real track record from Colorado and Washington. But I feel on balance that we spend a lot of money on our criminal justice system in the wrong places and I lean in favor of this ballot measure."
This makes Merkley the first U.S. senator to endorse the legalization of marijuana. [But see the addendum.] Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), whom you might expect to agree with Merkley, so far has shied away from supporting legalizaton, although he has said drug policy should be left mainly to the states. A few more senators, including Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Lamar Alexander, have said the federal government should not try to block legalization in Colorado, Washington, or any other state that follows their example. But at this point Merkley is the only senator to openly say that legalization is better than prohibition.
On the face of it, Merkley's status as the Senate's sole legalizer is puzzling, since recent polls indicate that somewhere between 48 percent (CBS News) and 58 percent (Gallup) of Americans think marijuana should be legal. You would think that more than 1 percent of the U.S. Senate would agree by now. The picture is similar in the House, where many members seem to agree with Roberts and Alexander that states should be free to legalize marijuana but very few are prepared to say it's a good idea.
Legislators are much less shy about taking controversial positions on other contentious issues. When it comes to, say, abortion or gun control, there are plenty of senators and representatives on both sides of the debate, even though they are bound to alienate many voters by taking a stand. But on the subject of marijuana, politicians seem terrified of saying anything that could be portrayed as soft on drugs, even when dealing with reforms, such as legalizing medical use, that have had solid majority support for years. Presumably that's because they think prohibitionists are more passionate than legalizers and therefore more likely to vote based on this issue. The only way to really test that hypothesis would be to follow Merkley's lead and see what happens.
In the end, it may not matter that almost no one in Congress is willing to say pot should be legal, as long as enough of them are willing to take a federalist approach to the issue. A legislator could oppose legalization or remain agnostic on the subject even while supporting legislation like the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act, which Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) introduced last year. Rohrabacher's bill would essentially repeal the federal ban on marijuana, making it inapplicable in states that decide to legalize. That's something that any conservative who pays lip service to federalism should be able to get behind without looking like a pot-loving hippie.
Addendum: Tom Angell points out that Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who opposed her state's legalization initiative, last March told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "I support what voters in Washington state have done." I'm not sure that counts as an endorsement of the policy, since Murray was talking about letters aimed at getting the Justice Department to clarify its position regarding legalization in Washington and Colorado. "I believe my name has been on letters to the Justice Department," she said. It's clear that Murray wants the feds to respect the will of Washington voters; it's not so clear that she has reconsidered the merits of legalizing marijuana. But if we count Murray, that makes two senators who publicly support legalization, or 2 percent of the Senate.Not a lot rattles Christine Sinclair. Not even the eyes of a nation.
Sinclair is doubling as striker and as ambassador for Canada when her native country hosts the Women's World Cup starting in June. No doubt there's mounting pressure, but so far Sinclair isn't letting it get to her.
"I really haven't spent too much time thinking about the actual World Cup; everything that I'm focused on is the preparation for it," she said. "I'm sure as the tournament gets closer and closer the hype and the excitement will build, but it's all about preparation right now."
The response is typical of the soft-spoken and unassuming 31-year-old, who would rather let her play on the pitch speak for her.
Sinclair is probably America's best-known non-American women's soccer player. She was on the University of Portland's two NCAA championship teams and now plays for the Portland Thorns of the National Women's Soccer League.
But in Canada she's a celebrity — albeit a shy one. She ranks behind only Abby Wambach among active players for international goals with 153 (Wambach has the record with 178), and needs five more to match Mia Hamm for second on the all-time list.
"I think her biggest asset, what everyone relates to, is just how humble she is. Regardless of how much stardom she could have, she just wants to play football, and keep it simple and be with her team," Canada coach John Herdman says. "She's not interested in going out and doing the glitzy sort-of celebrity things."
Unforgettable coach
Sinclair grew up in Burnaby, B.C., and from the start it seemed natural that she would wind up in Portland: uncles Bruce and Brian Grant both played for the NASL's Portland Timbers. Her family rented a home from Clive Charles, who also played for the Timbers and later became the well-respected coach of both the men's and women's teams at Portland.
Her first year with the Pilots in 2001 she led all Division I freshman with 23 goals. As a sophomore she tallied 26 goals and led Portland to the NCAA national championship, scoring twice in the 2-1 double-overtime victory over Santa Clara.
Her senior year she scored NCAA record 39 goals, including a pair in a 4-0 victory over UCLA for a second national title.
Charles, who died of cancer in 2003, remains an influence.
"One thing he taught me is to respect the game. He used to say, every time I'd go out, `You better earn your right to play, because other players are fighting for the exact same thing that you are,"' she said. "That's something I'll never forget."
Star of the century
Sinclair has been a standout on the Canadian national team since 2000, when she led it with three goals in the annual Algarve Cup tournament in Portugal. She a veteran of three World Cups and two Olympics.
Canada surpassed expectations with a bronze medal at the 2012 London Games. Sinclair set a record with six goals in the tournament, including three goals in a heartbreaking 4-3 semifinal loss to eventual gold medalist United States, to win the tournament's Golden Boot.
"What she brings on and off the pitch is very similar. She's just a quiet achiever, a consistent performer," said Herdman said. "She ticks all the boxes, on the physical side and the mental side every single day. She's a high achiever and wants to consistently find ways to improve and stay at the top of the game."
About the only time Sinclair has made a demonstrative fuss was in that semifinal match against the Americans at Old Trafford. She was fined and suspended four games by soccer's international governing body for "displaying unsporting behavior toward match officials."
"We feel like we didn't lose, we feel like it was taken from us," Sinclair said moments after the final whistle. "It's a shame in a game like that that was so important, the ref decided the result before it started."
Canada's surprising London finish — as well as the home-field advantage — is fuelling Sinclair and her teammates going into the World Cup.
"I think that the London experience gave us a taste of winning, and you don't want to let that go," she said.
Canada is ranked No. 8 in the world as the World Cup looms. The home team is in Group A, along with China, New Zealand and the Netherlands, and will open the tournament against China in Edmonton, Alberta on June 6. The final is set for July 5 in Vancouver, Columbia.
Sinclair will have a starring role, and she's OK with that. Canada Post recently unveiled a postage stamp commemorating the event that includes Sinclair and teammate Kadeisha Buchanan.
"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for myself and my teammates. We had a goal heading into London, obviously to medal but also to change the sport of soccer in Canada. This is only going to continue that, and that's still our goal," she said. "My dream is that young kids, coming to watch this World Cup, will be inspired."Former prime minister says Pell’s views on climate change directly oppose those of Pope Francis, muddy the ‘ethical waters’ and should be challenged
Kevin Rudd has mounted a scathing attack on Cardinal George Pell for being a “radical climate change sceptic” who is “muddying the ethical waters” ahead of the critical Paris climate change conference, in direct contradiction to the views of Pope Francis.
Rudd says the ethical imperatives of strong climate action and the fact that Pell is now a “global figure”, means it is time to confront “head on” the views of the cleric, who was a strident critic of the Labor government’s climate policies as archbishop of Sydney and who is now a senior Vatican cardinal.
Pope Francis’s edict on climate change will anger deniers and US churches Read more
“After many years of silence in response to Cardinal Pell’s public critique of my government’s policy on climate change, the reason I have chosen to enter the debate now is, on the eve of the Paris conference, we once again enter into a critical time both for Australia and the world,” Rudd says in a lecture to be delivered at Melbourne University’s Trinity College on Tuesday night.
“It is, therefore, no small matter, at this most critical of times, for the ethical waters, at least in the community of faith, to be so deeply muddied, by such radical climate change sceptics as Cardinal Pell, and for his commentary to go without challenge. Of course he is free to contribute to the public policy debate in any manner he wishes. But it is equally important, particularly now that Cardinal Pell has become a global figure, to have his... statements on climate change challenged by others in the public space. It is high time his views were confronted head on. The stakes are now far too high for us all,” Rudd says in the Rowan Williams lecture.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said recently no energy source could have a “moral characteristic” and Australia just needed to make rational choices between the various abundant energy sources it had available.
But Rudd insists that “anyone who claims in making policy judgments they are doing so oblivious to ethical considerations, and instead are simply acting on a simple ‘value free’ premise of ‘common sense’, is engaged in deep self-delusion”.
And he strongly defends the right, and even obligation, of churches to engage in public debate as one of a number of “ethical voices”.
“Unless there is at least one institution seeking to construct, maintain and argue the continuing ethical parameters within which the stated purposes and unintended consequences of government action should be considered, then there is a greater risk that public policy simply becomes ‘interest group politics’ or, even worse, retail politics by another name,” he says.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pope Francis signs a cricket bat he received from Cardinal George Pell at the Vatican in October. Photograph: AP
Contrasting Pell’s views (including the statement that “in the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods, while today they demand reductions in carbon emissions”) with Pope Francis’s encyclical, Rudd remarks: “The pope says the science on climate change is sufficiently clear. Cardinal Pell says it is not, and further that the purported science is without foundation. The pope says all of humanity faces a common ethical challenge to protect the planet from climate change. Because Cardinal Pell disputes the science, he says there is little if any ethical imperative at all. And on the question of the policy imperative, the pope speaks with urgency. Cardinal Pell describes policy measures as an unnecessary fad and an unacceptable cost to both companies and consumers.”
He says he is not arguing that Pell should not be free to express a view even though “his position happened to mirror precisely that of... Tony Abbott”, but Rudd strongly argues that governments should instead listen to the “ethical guidance” of the pope.
Rudd also addresses frequent criticisms that after declaring climate change “the greatest moral challenge of our time” he shelved his emissions trading scheme after it failed to pass the parliament.
“Those who attacked this particular formulation were not only the usual legion of climate change sceptics and deniers. It included those corporations who concluded that policy change would be financially injurious to their bottom line, and who therefore found it convenient to join forces with the deniers,” he says.
A farewell to Rudd: Australia’s ambitious, impatient, divisive leader Read more
“But it also included those who accused me of not living up to my word by accepting the advice of my most senior ministers that following the second defeat of the government’s emissions trading scheme legislation, we should defer its implementation for two years until the conclusion of the Kyoto Protocol’s commitment period until 2012. As I was prime minister at the time, I accept responsibility for this decision and for the poor communication of it to the Australian public.
“As for the related attack that my stated belief in the moral significance of climate change should have resulted in a double dissolution, I would draw attention to the fact that as of June 2010 [when Rudd was replaced as Labor leader by Julia Gillard] the window for calling a double dissolution was still open and remained open until August of that year.”
Rudd points out Australia’s emissions declined by 7% over Labor’s time in office, and according to modelling firm Reputex will rise by 8.5% between 2014 and 2020.Immigration played a key role during campaigning for the referendum (Picture: REX/Shutterstock)
There is little connection between racism and calls for greater immigration control, according to a think tank.
Despite claims that last year’s EU referendum was driven by xenophobic attitudes towards immigration, British people are actually ‘nuanced and sophisticated’ on the subject, Open Europe’s study found.
Where is Saddleworth Moor and how did the fire there start?
Aarti Shankar, a policy analyst for Open Europe, said: ‘We found that Brexit is too often wrongly seen as a mandate to pull up the drawbridge.
‘In fact most people have a relatively nuanced view and can articulate both the advantages and disadvantages immigration brings.
‘We found little evidence that the desire to control migration was driven by racism or xenophobia.’
Despite the presence of far-right groups such as Britain First, many Brits are apparently ‘sophisticated’ when it comes to immigration (Picture: REX/Shutterstock)
There was a spate of racist hate crime in the UK after the Brexit vote, and previous studies have linked the outcome of the referendum to racism.
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But Open Europe disagrees, claiming its poll of 4,000 Brits found that a majority (54%) want net migration to be cut to tens of thousands per year.
In total, 56% support a controlled migration system where immigrants contribute to society, but another 36% simply want to reduce the number of people coming in.
People are more concerned by an immigrant’s criminal record than their race or ethnicity, the research found, and there is support for migrants who can fill ‘socially useful’ roles – such as doctors and teachers – to come to the UK.
There was a rise in racist hate crime after the referendum, but Saffiyah Khan bravely stared down an EDL protester in this famous photo (Picture: PA)
Ms Shankar added: ‘There is overwhelming support for migrants coming to the UK in areas where we have skills shortages and to do socially-useful roles, for example as doctors, nurses or teachers.
‘At the same time, the public believe that migrants’ access to welfare and public services should be restricted.
‘Despite divisions on immigration, our research points to common ground between the priorities of Leavers and Remainers.
‘Brexit offers the UK a chance to reset the debate and build a new immigration system which can attract popular consent.’164 164 Nov 5, 2017 @ 7:10pm PINNED: Patch 4.21 (July 2015) Scandal
146 146 4 hours ago [Mod] TradeWarPolitics for the MegaModPack ThreeOfMe
3 16 hours ago Questions about theft and education Arkhtor
3 Feb 25 @ 10:03pm How good are Fajeth and ThreeOfMe? RowdyJackRabbid
5 Feb 25 @ 9:05pm just got the game, are there any'must have mods' to get? SamsTheMan
7 Feb 25 @ 8:55pm Marriages and other dynasties dannazgu
0 Feb 25 @ 7:51pm Falsely Accused r1nav8tel
3 Feb 24 @ 1:26pm Any mod to command family members outside of the group? smurfed
6 Feb 24 @ 10:22am Election Bug amore555
2,752 2,752 Feb 19 @ 7:05am MegaModPack 0.95 Fajeth
14 14 Feb 17 @ 11:24pm [Big problem]Stuttering camera movement (happens in both versions) Fabio
36 36 Feb 16 @ 12:22pm I Cheat Mod Vannilla Edition v1.1 OldMan-sprint
4 Feb 14 @ 11:16am Cannot find counting house of danzig Francisco
1 Feb 12 @ 5:51pm Crowds Gathering On Corrals СталкерIn the latest twist to the FIFA corruption scandal, the governing body have shifted the blame for a $US10 million ($12.9 million) payment from South Africa to Jack Warner to a recently deceased finance committee chief.
In the latest effort to exonerate secretary general Jerome Valcke, FIFA shifted the blame to deceased former finance committee chief, Argentine Julio Grondona.
Julio Grondona, late president of the Argentine Football of Association. Credit:Reuters
Warner, one of 14 people facing corruption charges in the United States over $150 million in bribes, was at the time Grondona's deputy as head of FIFA's finance committee.
The South African government asked FIFA to "withhold" money intended for the organisers of the 2010 World Cup and send it to a development project in the Caribbean run by Warner, a FIFA statement said.Marta Kaczynska, daughter of the late Polish president Lech Kaczynski, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, his twin brother, walk during the funeral at the President's Palace in Warsaw on April 17. ((Ints Kalnins/Reuters))
Polish opposition party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski says he will run in early presidential elections called after his twin brother was killed in a plane crash.
The elections were called for June 20, after President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria and 94 others were killed April 10 in Smolensk, in western Russia.
They were travelling to Russia to attend a memorial for thousands of Polish army officers executed in the Katyn forest in 1940 by the Soviet NKVD secret police.
"The good of Poland is a common duty that requires an ability to overcome personal suffering, to undertake the task despite a personal tragedy," Jaroslaw Kaczynski said.
The president's term was to expire in December. His brother said Monday he will run to continue the late president's mission.
The twin politicians first won fame as child actors in the 1962 hit film The Two Who Stole The Moon.
They became politically active when they joined the anti-communist opposition in the 1970s. They later served as advisers to the Solidarity movement in the 1980s and served briefly as advisers to Solidarity leader Lech Walesa during his 1990-95 presidency.
The twins founded the Law and Justice Party in 2001. In 2006, Lech Kaczynski appointed his twin brother as prime minister, a post he filled until he was defeated in a 2007 general election.
Parliamentary Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, who automatically became president upon the death of Kaczynski, is currently the front-runner in the election race. He is a member of the governing Civic Platform party.
Also in the running is Grzegorz Napieralski of the Democratic Left Alliance. Napieralski is running in place of Jerzy Szmajdzinski, who died in the same plane crash that claimed Kaczynski.
If no one candidate can garner more then 50 per cent of the vote, a run-off will be held July 4.Larbre Competition has moved ahead with plans of fielding a GTE-Pro class Corvette C7.R in the FIA World Endurance Championship next year, although is waiting on a final decision from GM for the proposed single-car program.
The French squad, which has entered GTE-Am class Corvettes in recent years, plans to step up to the top GT category in 2017, with the hope of increased factory support from GM and Pratt & Miller.
GM factory driver Ricky Taylor joined the Jack Leconte-led team for the second half of the WEC season, as part of Larbre’s ramped up efforts, which included a dedicated Pratt & Miller engineer.
“The evaluation process for a WEC GTE-Pro program in 2017 is now completed,” Leconte said.
“Over the past three months, the work we have accomplished with the Pratt & Miller engineers, and the experience Ricky Taylor gained in Mexico, Fuji, Shanghai and Bahrain – which will be again on the 2017 calendar – does not leave anything to chance for next year.
“We are now waiting for the decision from the management of General Motors to enter a Corvette in the Pro class, which is very promising for us after six years of partnership with Corvette Racing.”
It’s understood a proposal is in place for Taylor to return to the team, potentially alongside 2016 season-long co-driver Pierre Ragues, although a final decision has not yet been made and is likely dependent on GM’s approval.
Larbre would need to either upgrade its existing Corvette C7.R or purchase an all-new car from GM for the GTE-Pro effort.The US has rejected a Russian proposal to send diplomats to monitor the upcoming presidential elections and some states have even threatened to bring criminal charges against any that appear at ballot stations, Russian election officials report.
Sources in the Central Elections Commission have told Izvestia daily that its representatives held a series of talks with the US State Department to discuss sending a delegation of monitors to US polling stations on November 8. US officials categorically rejected even the possibility of such a mission, however, instead recommending that Russia join the international mission of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
Read more
The request was also rejected on a state level, and in three states – Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas – officials used “very harsh formulas” to do so, the sources said. “In violation of all principles of democracy and international monitoring, in Texas they even threatened to hold monitors who appear at ballot stations criminally responsible,” they added.
The head of the Central Election Commission’s department for international relations, Vasily Likhachev, said that the US response reminded him of the Cold War, and that it was fully in line with the “Russophobic trends” currently promoted by the US State Department. “Americans obstruct Russia’s attempts to monitor their elections because they see them as a threat. The refusal to allow Russian diplomats to perform their direct duties is a demonstrative violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations,” he said.
However, on Thursday, Likhachev told Interfax that the Russia could not go along with the suggestion to use ODIHR mission because participating in it would involve additional restrictions against visiting polling stations in some US states.
He also said that Russian experts planned to conduct “remote” monitoring of US polls “in spite of all the obstructions and complications” by analyzing reports from mass media and the internet, as well as other data received through open channels. The Central Elections Commission already has practice doing this, as it conducted such observations during the last US presidential election in 2012, he added.
Senator Andrey Klimov, deputy chairman of the Upper House’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the situation once again confirms that Americans have no respect for international law. “In addition, they are suffering from some sort of persecutory delusion – they imagine that Russians want to distort their elections and somehow intend to do it while acting as observers,” he said.
MP Yelena Panina, who is a member of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, called the US’ refusal a very dangerous policy that it could lead to new conflicts.
Earlier this year, Russia sent personal invitations to US monitors asking them to observe the September parliamentary elections, and 63 accepted the offer. In total, 774 monitors from 63 nations received accreditation to observe Russia’s parliamentary elections. In addition, US representatives visited Russia earlier as part of an OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights’ monitoring mission.
Read more
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced in late May that would invite representatives of four international political blocs and organizations to this year’s parliamentary elections. Invitations were extended to representatives of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
At the same time, representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) were denied access to the September polls, because of the ongoing infringement of the rights of the Russian delegation in this group.A group of anonymous bloggers known as “OLAASM” plans to publish the names and emails of Berkeley students who intended to join the College Republicans after Wednesday night’s riots.
In fact, in an email sent to the students in question by OLAASM, the anonymous “anti-fascist” group alerts prospective CR members that “it is in the public interest to know who supports this kind of thing,” with the unidentified messenger noting that he “fully plan[s] to publish the list of your names as attendees at the aforementioned campus event.”
“People who signed up on the sheet were contacted with these ominous and threatening emails.”
[RELATED: Berkeley CR member assaulted morning after riots]
“You [are] all receiving this email because you provided your names and emails to the Berkeley CRs at the Milo Yiannopoulos event this week at UC, Berkeley and that sign-up list was leaked,” the email, obtained by Campus Reform, continues. “I’m currently writing a story about the event, the signup sheet, the College Republicans’ lack of security protocols, and your attendance at this questionable event promoting the hateful bigot, Yiannopoulos.”
The email goes on to solicit responses from the prospective CR members to a series of questions, the last of which asks whether they expect to face any “negative repercussions” for their participation in the conservative club.
“Are you worried that your attendance at this event—and the College Republicans’ lack of discretion/security with their email list—might have negative repercussions for you? For your athletic career? For your friendships? For your careers?” the anonymous blogger queries ominously.
While OLAASM contests that the allegedly “leaked” sign-up sheet was due to a lack of “discretion” on behalf of the CRs, one member of the group explained to Campus Reform that it was actually snatched by an “antifa affiliate” in broad daylight.
“An antifa affiliate grabbed our sign-up sheet while tabling. We chased him down and were able to recover it, but he took a photo of it and biked away quickly,” Berkeley CR member Naweed Tahmas told Campus Reform, noting that “people who signed up on the sheet were contacted with these ominous and threatening emails.”
[RELATED: Berkeley riots lay bare liberal hypocrisy on free speech]
“The harassment and targeting has continued even after the Milo event. People who are not even members of the Berkeley College Republicans, and want to just hear a different viewpoint, are still being targeted by these left-wing radical groups,” Tahmas told Campus Reform.
Notably, OLAASM, which apparently stands for “Occupy Los Angeles Anti-Social Media,” refuses to disclose its identity, explaining on its website that it “eschew[s] authorship, believing it provokes ego and craving.
“We promote anonymity, collective decision-making, community and truth,” a description for the group planning to dox Berkley’s CR chapter suggests. “We have modeled this blog, tumblr, and twitter feed on the Black Bloc tactic—erasing identity and promoting solidarity—as a symbol against the corruption inherent within our movement, representing that of the wider world.”
Campus Reform reached out to OLAASM for comment, asking if it would be willing to disclose its identity as it is choosing to do with that of the CR members, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Follow the authors of this article on Twitter: @AGockowski and @RepublicanPeterBy far the biggest increase in subsidy payments has gone to solar generators, which received about €1.6 billion in 2012 while contributing only 4 percent of power supply. Wind power generators received around €1.5 billion and produced 20 percent of power supply.
In addition to renewable energy generation subsidies, the tariff deficit is swelled by mismatched costs and revenues in power transportation and distribution and by accrued debt servicing costs, underwritten by the state, which have also spiked since 2007.
“We have always been in favor of fixing the system because it generates uncertainty,” said Mr. Margarit of the Spanish renewable association. “What we don’t agree with is that we carry most of the burden — because the deficit also comes from nuclear and hydroelectric generators, which still receive state aid even though their investments have long been amortized.”
Under the July 12 decree, wind and solar power producers will sell electricity on the open market like other generators and receive additional “fair” compensation based on their investment — which the government will determine through yet-to-be-announced mechanisms. That compensation will be linked to 10-year sovereign bonds, plus 300 basis points, implying an annual return currently of about 7.5 percent.
“The question is, what is fair?” said Ms. Tsoneva of Standard and Poor’s. “If the government goes too far, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some backlash.”
The government has said it will apply this new mechanism over an operational lifetime of 25 years, which in effect means that the new terms would be retroactive. Early investors who put money into developing the renewable energy sector over a decade ago could stop receiving subsidies all together from next year, though they were originally guaranteed profitable feed-in tariffs without any time limit.
Additionally, the decree reduces payments for electricity transmission and distribution; lowers payments |
2nd, 2015 to March 21st, 2017 for the first question. For the second question, 9,761 current college students were polled from November 10th, 2015 to March 21st, 2017. The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that there are 20.5 million current college students in the United States. We estimate that our sample is representative of the population of college students with a margin of error of +-1.10% and +-1.40% respectively. Respondents were asked to answer each of the following questions truthfully: “Have you ever met up with someone off Tinder?” and “Why do you use Tinder?”Earlier today Holy Warp and Black Wing Foundation announced Swords & Some Magic: a barbarian fantasy action game that combines elements from both traditional platformers and contemporary runners.
Your character is trying to reach the top floor of the Dark Tower, so the game is split into floors – levels – which serve as milestones of the journey. The game is set to have 36 intense levels set over 6 different environments. The number of levels may be increased later after the initial mobile release.
Swords & Some Magic features a diverse gameplay, a unique way of “line switching” when the camera changes positions and engages player into QTE sequences, giant bosses and stunning Unreal Engine-powered graphics. Initially it is being released for iOS devices but the PS Vita version is scheduled for release at a later date.
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RelatedGoogle first teased live tab syncing in Chrome 19 beta, and it's now available for all of us who tread the safer path of Stable releases. If you weren't living on the bleeding edge for long enough to try the syncing early, you'll be glad to know that it lets you see and quickly sync all the tabs that are open on any device signed into your Google account. That includes your phone or tablet, if you've got Android 4.0 and the Chrome for Android beta loaded up. Like with the beta, though, you'll have to cool your jets if you were hoping to get live syncing right away: Chrome 19 Stable is pushing automatically over the next few days, but tab syncing will take weeks to be ready for everybody.The west's "war on drugs" has failed and continuing with prohibition will only cost more lives, the Guatemalan president, Otto Pérez Molina, declares in an interview in the Observer.
In a further sign that the global consensus on drugs is fragmenting, Pérez Molina will use a debate at this week's Davos forum in Switzerland to attack the international community for its support for prohibition, and to call for a regulated narcotics market.
"I believe western countries fail to understand the reality that countries such as Guatemala and those of Central America have to live in," said Pérez Molina. "There has been plenty of talk, but no effective response. I believe, ultimately, that this is due to a lack of understanding on the part of western countries."
He said western leaders must look beyond their domestic agendas. "A message should be sent to the leaders of the countries with the biggest drug markets. They must think not only of… the context of their country, but of what is happening in the world, in regions such as Central America, where this destruction, this weakening of democracy, is happening. They must be open to recognising that the struggle against drugs, in the way it has been conducted, has failed."
Up to 400 tonnes of cocaine are transited through Guatemala each year, up from seven tonnes in 2008, because US-led operations in the Caribbean and the Pacific have prompted the cartels to seek alternative trafficking routes.
Pérez Molina said the cartels now pose a serious threat to the Guatemalan state. "Drug traffickers have been able to penetrate the institutions in this country by employing their resources and money," he said. "We are talking about the security forces, public prosecutors, judges. Drug money has penetrated these institutions and it becomes an activity that directly threatens the institutions and, therefore, the democracy of countries."
He said the cartels were getting stronger. "The flow of arms towards Central America from the north and deaths in our country have grown."
He does not favour full legalisation of narcotics but is arguing for the introduction of a regulated drugs market. His comments come shortly after two US states, Colorado and Washington, voted to legalise marijuana. He predicted that attitudes within the US government would see the country soften its stance on prohibition.
"There is going to be a change away from the paradigm of prohibitionism and the war against drugs, and there is going to be a process that will take us towards regulation. So I would expect a more flexible and more open position from President Obama in his second term."
Pérez Molina also said he has a message for western drug users. "They should reflect not only on the harm to their own health, but also on the deaths that enable them to consume that cocaine."A 51-year-old man who raped a female cyclist who was trying to fix her flat tire along the Springwater Corridor in Gresham was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison.
Thomas Gerald Peacock -- an ex-con who had spent most of his life in prison and was out only seven months at the time he attacked the 22-year-old woman -- declined to make any statements.
His defense attorney, Dawn Andrews, said Peacock can't undo the harm he's caused but can accept responsibility by pleading guilty.
The woman didn't attend the hearing in Multnomah County Circuit Court, but she's glad Peacock got a substantial sentence and relieved she didn't have to testify at a trial, said prosecutor Jeff Auxier.
Peacock pleaded guilty to first-degree rape, first-degree sexual abuse and first-degree kidnapping.
Police and prosecutors said Peacock preyed on a vulnerable woman who saw him bicycling toward her and asked for help on March 18, 2016, in the late afternoon during daylight hours. The woman told police that Peacock stopped and started to hand her a bike pump, then grabbed her by the forearm and held a knife to her throat.
The woman said Peacock threatened to kill her, so she followed his orders to walk into a wooded area next to Johnson Creek. He ordered her to the ground and raped her, according to a probable cause affidavit.
The woman falsely told Peacock that she was 12 and he looked startled, got dressed and abruptly left, according to the affidavit. The woman went to a nearby Walmart along West Powell Boulevard and summoned police.
Police put out a public plea for help in identifying her attacker. She described him as bald, in his mid-40s, wearing a red jacket and jeans.
Four days after the attack, Peacock's brother met with police to say that he saw the description while viewing media coverage about the attack and he thought the rapist was his brother. He told police that shortly after the time of the rape, his brother had ridden his bicycle to his house near the Springwater Corridor Trail and was wearing a red jacket and muddy jeans.
On March 23, police showed the woman a six photo line-up of different men. She picked Peacock out as her attacker.
When police arrested Peacock on March 24, he denied that he'd sexually assaulted the woman, according to the affidavit.
Auxier said DNA collected from the woman came back a match to Peacock.
Peacock had been released from prison in August 2015 after having served more than 30 years. He went to prison in 1984 for burglary and robbery, but escaped several years into his sentence from a farm annex of the Oregon State Penitentiary with two other men, according to prison records.
The group tried to kill a 63-year-old man by slitting his throat with a dull box cutter before stealing his car and some beer -- and Peacock received more time for those crimes, prosecutors said.
The Springwater trail stretches 21 miles from Portland to Boring and is a frequent route for cyclists, walkers and runners. The trail, however, has experienced its share of problems -- including a large homeless population at the time the woman was raped.
Neither the woman nor Peacock were homeless, prosecutors said. At the time of his arrest, Peacock listed his home address as a small house in Southeast Portland near the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge.
In addition to 20 years in prison, Peacock also was sentenced to 20 years of post-prison supervision.
-- Aimee GreenThere’s a move afoot to hopefully save some lives along the Oregon Coast. Many have been lost over the years to deadly waves that swept away beach-go’ers who lacked sufficient respect, if not fear, for the deadly power of the sea. Most recently two Eugene teens, a father and his infant son, and a man from Hawaii all perished in the Yachats area.
Local photographer Ken Gagne has used photography in an effort to graphically show how dangerous the waves can be – and how utterly unforgiving.
Gagne has approach state and federal officials to erect signs like the one being held by Brian Hoeh, David Moffitt and Dick Mason. Gagne said that there has been a terrible loss of life along the Oregon Coast in recent years, and that maybe signs with graphic photographs of what it could look like just before being swept to one’s death might make people think twice.
Gagne has received a number of letters of support from the public – some from families who have lost loved ones that got too close to the raging sea. He’s trying to get permission to have such signs erected at Thor’s Well as well as other high risk shore areas along the Oregon Coast.Bill Gross: Fed focused less on short-term rates & more on reducing balance sheet 7:45 PM ET Wed, 26 July 2017 | 02:10
The Federal Reserve's looming attempt to shrink its mammoth portfolio of bonds comes with an ugly track record: Virtually every time the central bank has tried it in the past, recessions have followed.
Over the past several months, the Fed has prepared markets for the upcoming effort to reduce the $4.5 trillion it currently holds of mostly Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. The balance sheet ballooned as the Fed sought to stimulate the economy out of its financial crisis morass.
The Fed has embarked on six such reduction efforts in the past — in 1921-1922, 1928-1930, 1937, 1941, 1948-1950 and 2000.
Of those episodes, five ended in recession, according to research from Michael Darda, chief economist and market strategist at MKM Partners. The balance sheet trend mirrors what has happened much of the time when the Fed has tried to raise rates over a prolonged period of time, with 10 of the last 13 tightening cycles ending in recession.
"Moreover, outside of the 1920s and 1930s, there is no precedent for double-digit annual declines in the balance sheet/base that will likely begin to occur late next year," Darda said in a note.
Indeed, the Fed's efforts have been unprecedented.
Three rounds of purchases through a program known as quantitative easing or, more colloquially, "money printing," brought the balance sheet to his level. Recently revealed plans show how the Fed will scale back.The time he destroyed Shawn Bradley
Chris Webber was not an amazing leaper. He wasn't floorbound, but he didn't have dunk contest hops either. However, what he lacked in pure explosiveness he made up for with incredible body control. Here, you see how he uses extension to avoid the outstretched arms of Bradley and then used his incredible reflexes to throw the hammer down at the last possible second once he cleared the block attempt.
I know what you're probably thinking: "Yeah, that's nice, but what's the big deal? Lots of people dunked on Shawn Bradley." We'd argue you could say the same thing about climbing Mount Everest. Yeah, a lot of people have done it, but it's still a great accomplishment for anyone who makes it to the top.
The time he extended as far as he could go to finish an alley-oop
Like we said, Webber may not have been a great leaper, but he made this dunk work because of amazing body control. Do you know how hard it to corral a basketball with one hand when the ball is behind your head? Try it some time. Let us know if you can:
Get a hand on the ball. Catch the ball. Still have enough power to direct the ball in the hoop for a dunk.
The time he made Tom Gugliotta and Kevin Garnett look silly
Speed kills. Making the guy the Warriors traded you for in 1994 look silly is just an accessory to the crime.
The time he blocked Shawn Kemp
Webber wasn't an explosive leaper like Kemp, and to be fair to The Reignman, the only reason Webber was able to make this block is because Harvey Grant kept him from exploding to the rim the way he wanted. Still, if you can't appreciate how Webber blocked Kemp here, appreciate how he instinctively cut across the lane at just the right moment to keep Kemp from getting an easy bucket.
The time he found Calbert Cheaney with a pass even though he was facing the wrong way
Poor Dee Brown. How do defend a pass like that in transition?
The time he hit Juwan Howard with a behind the back pass rather than going for the poster dunk
Most point guards wouldn't have the skills or the instincts to make this pass, but Chris Webber made it look routine.
The time he found Juwan Howard with a flashy pass in transition
Reminder: Chris Webber was listed at 6'9" 245 pounds.
The time he found Juwan Howard with a hail mary pass in transition
Weird. It's almost like these guys have amazing chemistry from years of playing together.
The time he showed his whole arsenal in one sequence
If you want one play to sum up the Chris Webber experience in Washington, this is it. Webber blocks Luc Longley's jump shot, gathers the ball in before it goes out of bounds, pushes the ball up court and threads a perfect bounce pass that sends Michael Jordan spinning and put the ball right in Rod Strickland's breadbasket where he can make the layup without having to hesitate to gather the ball.
Keep in mind Chris Webber was 23 here and he pulled this off against a Bulls, who went 69-13 that season.North Korea on Wednesday escalated already-heightened tensions with the United States, warning that a plan to attack waters near Guam will be in place by mid-August and that President Trump understands "only absolute force."
The country's military also starkly dismissed Trump's warning, issued the day before, that he will unleash "fire and fury" on North Korea if it continues to threaten the U.S. as a "load of nonsense," according to reports.
"The U.S. President at [golf] links again let out a load of nonsense about 'fire and fury,' failing to grasp the ongoing grave situation," a commander of the North Korean army said, as reported by CNN. "It seems that he has not yet understood the statement. Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work with him."
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Tensions have been heightened for months amid the accelerating pace of North Korea's ballistic missile tests and the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who had been held prisoner in the country for 17 months.
But the tensions reached a new high on Tuesday after it was reported that North Korea had developed a miniaturized nuclear warhead capable of being attached to a missile.
Trump responded furiously to that development, telling reporters at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club that if Pyongyang's threats against the U.S. continued, North Korea would "be met with fire and fury... like the world has never seen."
The president's inflammatory rhetoric quickly prompted a response from North Korea's military, which said that it was considering a pre-emptive strike on Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific that hosts about 6,000 American troops in addition to thousands of civilians.
Democrats and some Republicans quickly denounced Trump's remarks as reckless.
The administration acknowledged Wednesday that Trump's specific comments were not planned in advance, though it denied being caught off guard.
In a statement, Defense Secretary James Mattis James Norman MattisOvernight Defense: Trump to hold one-on-one with Kim | What to watch as summit kicks off | Top general dodges on Trump emergency declaration Retired officers express 'grave concern' with Trump's defense of transgender military policy Trump backs off total Syria withdrawal MORE indicated the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) could face a military response for its actions, not its threats.
“The DPRK must choose to stop isolating itself and stand down its pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Mattis said. “The DPRK should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.”Cyber Dust Q&A with Amar’e Stoudemire Mavs C Amar'e Stoudemire hosts a Q&A sessions with MFFLs via Cyber Dust! What’s that? You’re not on Cyber Dust? Well get with the program already!
During a season in which many Mavs were new, none were newer than Amar’e Stoudemire, who joined the club during the All-Star break and would make just 23 appearances for Dallas. Still, that was enough time for Stoudemire to make an impact on the offense, as his post-up ability represented one easy, reliable way for the Mavs to attack defenses.
It was Stoudemire’s scoring off the bench that replaced what the Mavs had been missing following the December trade of Brandan Wright for Rajon Rondo. Upon his arrival, the second unit immediately became an offensive machine again, which propelled Dallas to several wins down the stretch of the season and into the playoffs.
SEASON STATS
PTS REB FG% 10.8 3.7 58.1
PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
Most of his work came in the post this season, an unusual thing for a Dirk Nowitzki team. The German has never really played with a center who can work off the low block; players like Michael Finley and Jerry Stackhouse worked from the post on occasion, but that has a different effect on the defense than a center acting as an anchor from the block. STAT rarely ever shared the floor with Tyson Chandler, almost always sharing the floor either with Nowitzki or Charlie Villanueva.
The floor became so spaced, both on the outside and inside, with Stoudemire in the post that it usually freed up an easy scoring opportunity somewhere, either for STAT himself or for a jump shooter after a ball reversal. Today’s NBA is all about the pick-and-roll and it’s becoming more of an outside-in league, but there’s still an advantage to having a big man who can create shots for himself at the rim. First, it’s an efficient way to score points, and no big man in the NBA was more efficient than Stoudemire, whose 1.1 points per possession on post-ups led all 80 players in the league with at least 80 attempts — yes, he was even more efficient than Nowitzki himself.
But second, it gives everyone else essentially a play off, and that can pay dividends throughout a long season. There’s something to be said about a player whose post proficiency gives you the freedom to just work through him during an otherwise rough offensive spell. Instead of forcing the issue elsewhere when things simply aren’t clicking for whatever reason, the Mavs could just breathe a sigh of relief and go, “OK, everyone clear out. We’re going inside.” And, more often than not, it would result in two points.
STANDOUT SHOWING
In an April 1 road win against the Thunder, Stoudemire scored a smooth 18 points on 8-of-9 shooting in 20 minutes. He was relentless all game long, scoring the bulk of his points from the low block, where he generated most of his offense this season with the Mavs. The play above is a really good display of some of his best post moves, and that he was able to combine them all in combination so quickly goes a long way toward explaining just how good he is.
First, he rips through as he faces up against Enes Kanter, which is how Stoudemire begins just about every post-up. It’s an interesting move and something we don’t see very often in the NBA. Dirk, for example, faces up nowadays, but even he’d keep his back to the basket most of the time in his prime. What makes Stoudemire so dangerous out of a face-up, though, is that he has the ball-handling ability and quickness for a big man to beat his guy off the bounce both to his left and right, which keeps his opponent off-balance.
Then, he takes two hard bounces to his left-hand side. Kanter can’t do much to stop him, even though he has both the height and weight advantage over the smaller Stoudemire. At this point, Stoudmemire has gotten “inside” Kanter, making it impossible for the OKC big man to play great defense. Once STAT secured that position — creating physical contact himself and putting Kanter on his heels — any hand or body movement by Kanter will result in a foul. The center can only stay vertical and hope Stoudemire screws up, but he doesn’t.
Finally, Stoudemire spins to the inside with a beautiful move and immediately leaves his feet to release a hook shot. Although injuries have affected his ability to get into the air, he’s still got the foot speed and control to execute a quick spin move like that, something most NBA centers simply cannot do. And the fact that Stoudemire was able to perform all of those moves in combination with one another rather easily, and was able to do it again and again throughout the season, says a lot. The guy can really play.
CONTRACT STATUS
Stoudemire is an unrestricted free agent this summer. He said during his exit interview that he’s not necessarily going to be looking for a big payday come July; he’s made more money than most active players in the league, so at this point all that matters to him is putting himself in position to compete for a championship. There are plenty of contenders who could use Stoudemire’s services off the bench, the Mavs included. His list of suitors will not be short.
FUTURE OUTLOOK
STAT will turn 33 shortly after the beginning of next season, his 15th in the NBA. Although he hasn’t played more than 65 games in a season since the 2010-11 campaign due to injury, he’s still a very effective player, particularly in the post. As a small-ball center, he’s able to take on bigger guys on the offensive end with relative ease.
His athleticism and explosiveness certainly helped him earlier in his career, but don’t let that fool you: He’s got plenty of craft in the post, mixing in hook shots and face-up jumpers with power moves. Those aren’t things that necessarily fade with time, much like a perimeter player’s jump shot. Just 306 points away from becoming the 103rd player in league history to score 16,000 points, it’s easy to see that he’s already accomplished a lot, but he’s still got plenty to give in the right situation.“It’s part of our overall effort to increase packaging diversity so that people have more choices of packaging and portion size,” said Susan Stribling, a Coca-Cola spokeswoman.
No one expects glass to replace plastic anytime soon. After all, billions of plastic bottles are used every year. But in a survey of more than 4,000 consumers this year by EcoFocus Worldwide, a research and consulting group, 37 percent said they were extremely or very concerned about the health and safety of plastics used in food and water packaging, compared to 33 percent in 2010.
EcoFocus also found that 59 percent of the consumers it surveyed used reusable water bottles always or often, up from 56 percent in 2010.
In a smaller survey of about 2,600 people, 42 percent said they had stopped drinking water from plastic bottles or were drinking it less often. Only 8 percent were using glass.
The biggest consumer concern has been bisphenol A, or BPA, an estrogen-mimicking industrial chemical used in some plastics and in the protective coatings that line the inside of some metallic food and beverage containers. Concerns about the chemical have prompted some metal container companies to stop using it. BPA cannot be removed from plastic.
Advocates point out that is not a problem with glass.
“I’m surprised, quite frankly, but a lot of people these days are really doing their research and have great knowledge about the pros and cons of various types of containers,” said Gary Godbey, manager at Trohv, a home store in Baltimore that was the first to carry a new product — the Pure glass bottle — that addressed the primary drawback of glass, namely that it breaks.
The danger of broken glass has prompted many gyms, yoga studios and other places to ban glass bottles. But Walt Himelstein, a scientist turned entrepreneur who developed the Pure bottle, is hoping to change those policies.
Photo
Reusable glass water bottles typically use a plastic sleeve for protection. The sleeves on most models have holes that allow the contents of a bottle to be seen but through which broken glass can escape.
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Some beverage companies experimented with glass bottles shrink-wrapped with plastic, but most have given up because consumers were not always able to tell if a bottle was broken.
Mr. Himelstein said his bottles were different. They are encased in a see-through coating that he developed. If the bottle cracks, the coating holds it in place.
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He worked with glass coatings as an environmental chemist at General Physics Corporation in Maryland, and wondered if he could find something similar that would protect consumers from being cut when a reusable glass bottle broke.
“Hazardous materials were delivered in glass bottles with a material coated on the exterior,” said Mr. Himelstein, who lives in the Baltimore area. “If a coating could be developed for containers of hazardous materials, I thought why not for glass water bottles?”
He thought he had the hard part done after he invented the coating — until he tried to find a company to make the bottles.
“There are only about a dozen or so companies that make glass bottles, and I called all of them,” Mr. Himelstein said. “They were all very nice, but what they said was, ‘Well, we’re making 18 million beer bottles this month and 20 million ketchup bottles next month and for the two months after that, 40 million bottles for soda. You want us to shut that down to make 20,000 glass bottles for you?’ ”
Although he had wanted to make the entire product in the United States, he ultimately went to China.
Almost two years after he started, he had a product he could market. But if finding someone to make bottles was difficult, getting anyone to sell them was worse. He struck out with hotel chains, major retailers, stores on college campuses.
“I had one or two types of bottles,” Mr. Himelstein said. “It was tough to get anyone’s attention.”
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He faced the same problem when he tried to find investors. His luck turned in March at a trade show in Chicago when he met Marc Heinke, president and chief executive of Precidio Design, a Canadian company whose primary business has long been making melamine tableware.
Mr. Heinke was in the process of selling off that business to focus solely on containing and preserving liquid, and he was looking for the next new thing.
“Walter has come up with the solution to the single biggest problem with glass, which is that it breaks,” he said.
Mr. Himelstein and Mr. Heinke are working on plans to expand sales of the Pure bottle, relying on Mr. Heinke’s business contacts, which include retailers like Lulu Lemon, and his long experience in marketing. They already have plans for a Pure bottle for lunchboxes, for different types of lids and for new colors and labels.
“Then there’s the promotional market,” Mr. Heinke said, hopefully, “corporate logos, sports teams, yoga studio logos.”We've just released a new patch for Heroes of the Storm in order to apply balance changes along with a few bug fixes.
Heroes
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Assassin
Cassia
Stats
Basic Attack damage increased from 125 to 130
Abilities
Blinding Light (W) Passive damage bonus to blinded targets increased from 15 to 20%
Talents
Level 1 Thunderstroke (Q) First quest reward damage bonus increased from 75 to 100 True Sight (W) Removed Seraph’s Hymn (W) Moved from Level 13 Cooldown reduction per basic attack against Blinded Heroes reduced from 3 to 2 seconds
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Chromie
Abilities
Sand Blast (Q) Reduced the number of Sand Blast hits required to unlock the Sand Blast echo from 80 to 60
Talents
Level 2 Timely Surprise (E) Now also increases the cast range of Time Trap by 33%
Developer Comment: Only about 40% of Chromie players were unlocking the echo over the course of a game, and among players that did it was occurring later than we’d like. By reducing the requirements for completing Chromie’s quest, we won’t increase her late game power at all, but make her output a little more consistent.
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Kel'Thuzad
Abilities
Frost Nova (W) Mana cost increased from 45 to 50
Chains of Kel’Thuzad (E) Mana cost increased from 45 to 50
Frost Blast (R) Cooldown reduced from 100 to 80 seconds
Shadow Fissure (R) Damage reduced from 440 to 400 Cooldown increased from 15 to 20 seconds Mana cost increased from 50 to 60
Talents
Level 4 Phylactery of Kel’Thuzad (Active) Quest requirement increased from 10 to 12 Regen Globes
Level 7 Accelerated Decay (Q) Bonus damage increased from 20 to 25% Glacial Spike (Active) Damage reduced from 220 to 60 Delay before the spike spawns increased from.5 to 1 seconds
Level 13 Chains of Ice (E) Slow duration reduced from 1.25 to 1 second Slow amount decreased from 70 to 60%
Level 16 Hungering Cold (W) Bonus damage reduced from 60 to 55
Developer Comment: As expected, there is a fairly large discrepancy between Kel’Thuzad’s performance across the entire game vs. players who are getting experienced with him at a higher level. His win-rate has climbed more than most of our other releases as players get used to his kit, so most of our changes are aimed at talent balance and toning his power down. While we like the sharpness of his power spike due to Master of the Cold Dark, we’ll continue to keep an eye on his burst potential and his overall strength going forward.
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The Butcher
Stats
Basic Attack damage increased from 125 to 130
Health scaling per level increased from 4 to 4.5%
Health Regeneration scaling per level increased from 4 to 4.5%
Developer Comment: While we’ll be continuing to keep an eye on it, we believe that the Butcher’s quest tuning is appropriate. He has seen a significant drop in win rate in Hero League since our last round of changes, so we felt it was appropriate to increase his late-game Health so that he can keep up with other heroes, who often get many tools to survive his initial damage in teamfights.
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Thrall
Stats
Base Maximum Health increased from 1787 to 1876
Base Health Regeneration increased from 3.7 to 3.9
Developer Comment: FOR THE HORDE!
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Support
Brightwing
Abilities
Soothing Mist (Trait) Healing aura range increased from 6 to 7
Blink Heal (R) Cooldown reduced from 10 to 9 seconds
Talents
Level 1 Dream Shot (Q) New functionality: Increases the range of Arcane Flare by 50% Hitting an enemy Hero in the center portion of Arcane Flare reduces the cooldown of Arcane Flare to 1 second Hyper Shift (Z) Cooldown reduction per Hero healed increased from 2 to 3 seconds Unfurling Spray (Trait) Removed
Level 4 Arcane Barrage (Q) Removed Peekaboo (Z) Revealed area radius reduced from 20 to 15 Added functionality: Pixie Dust is now applied to the target of Phase Shift
Level 7 Phase Shield (Z) Added functionality: Now applies Shield to Brightwing and her target
Developer Comment: While Brightwing has been seeing a bit more play recently, her talent tree had some low-hanging fruit that we wanted to trim. Granting her a slightly larger range of Soothing Mist baseline will free up a more impactful choice at level 1. The addition of Arcane Barrage’s functionality into Dream Shot should also make that talent a bit more exciting to pick up. Overall, we were looking at giving the Faerie Dragon a few minor buffs and adjusting some talents in order to increase parity amongst her talent tiers.
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Lt. Morales
Stats
Base Maximum Health increased from 1528 to 1605
Base Life Regen increased from 3.18 to 3.34
Abilities
Healing Beam (Q) Energy Regeneration cooldown reduced from 3 to 2 seconds You can no longer redirect Healing Beam to a target that is already being healed by your Healing Beam
Talents
Level 1 Caduceus Feedback (Passive) Now increases Basic Attack Range by 1.1 and only generates Energy from Basic Attacks against Heroic targets.
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Stukov
Talents
Level 1 Spine Launcher (Passive) Basic Attack damage reduction decreased from 50 to 30%
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Tyrande
Talents
Level 7 Huntress’ Fury (D) Added functionality: Now also increases the range of Hunter’s Mark by 50%
Level 13 Empower (W) Base cooldown reduction decreased from 4 to 2 seconds
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Warriors
Chen
Talents
Level 1 Grounding Brew (D) Removed
Level 7 Purifying Brew (D) Cooldown reduced from 45 to 15 seconds Added functionality: Chen now gains 30 Spell Armor while channeling Fortifying Brew
Developer Comment: We realize how difficult it is for most Chen players to pass up Brewmaster’s Balance on Tier 3. We moved a powerful level 20 down to compete with it a couple patches ago but the data is still showing it as an underperformer. Lowering the cooldown drastically and granting it the functionality of Grounding Brew should incentivize players into choosing it when playing against certain team compositions.
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Dehaka
Stats
Basic Attack damage reduced from 105 to 100
Abilities
Dark Swarm (W) Damage per tick reduced from 50 to 47
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Garrosh
Abilities
Groundbreaker (Q) Mana cost increased from 30 to 35
Wrecking Ball (E) Mana cost increased from 60 to 70
Decimate (R) Mana cost decreased from 30 to 25
Talents
Level 1 Body Check (Active) Cooldown decreased from 20 to 16 seconds
Level 7 Into the Fray (Active) Cooldown increased from 30 to 40 seconds
Developer Comment: These changes are a response to community feedback about Garrosh’s Mana costs. We initially kept them relatively low, as he is a fairly low impact Warrior when his combo is not available to him, however we agreed with the feedback and felt that he could use more Mana management.
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Leoric Abilities Entomb (R) Cooldown reduced from 75 to 60 seconds
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Bug Fixes
General
Fixed a number of tooltip issues across the game.
Heroes, Abilities, and Talents
Alarak : Casting Counter-Strike will now display a silver healthbar to indicate Protected status.
Chromie : The Deep Breathing talent’s completed damage bonus will now match the tooltip located below her unit frame.
Jaina: The Frost Armor talent will no longer cause Jaina’s damage to ignore armor.
Leoric: Fixed an issue that could cause Leoric to become invisible after exiting Zagara’s Devouring Maw.
Lt. Morales : Fixed an issue that caused Lt. Morale’s Displacement Grenade to reduce healing dealt after learning the System Shock talent.
Uther: Fixed an issue causing Uther to gain extra damage and healing on consecutive casts of Wave of Light.
Uther: Uther's Hammer of Justice will no longer apply a 30% slow after the Stun effect fades.
Sound
Valla: Fixed an issue causing the Creed of the Hunter talent to not play quest sound effects when progress was earned.
User Interface
Lt. Morales: The Cellular Reactor talent will now display an incoming heal indicator on the nameplate healthbar.
Return to TopMerle Greene Robertson, key Mayan researcher, dies
Merle Green Robertson Merle Green Robertson Photo: Shelley Eades, The Chronicle 2000 Photo: Shelley Eades, The Chronicle 2000 Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Merle Greene Robertson, key Mayan researcher, dies 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Merle Greene Robertson, who merged her loves of art and history into a groundbreaking career in archaeology, died April 22 at her home in San Francisco. She was 97.
Mrs. Robertson was a leading researcher of ancient Mayan civilization and a passionate teacher who led hundreds of local students on adventures amid the ruins of Central America and Mexico.
"She was small of stature but a vigorous, magnificent presence," said Frank Keith, who was the academic dean of the Stevenson School in Pebble Beach when Mrs. Robertson taught there. "She was a true scholar, but she had such a captivating personality she was able to pass her passion along to her students."
Mrs. Robertson pioneered a type of archaeological rubbing, using rice paper and Japanese ink, that elevated the standard technique for recording images of artifacts to an art form |
my noble friend Lord McColl. I am grateful for the support that the Bill has received. I have little doubt that there will be critiques. I expect that; it is what this House is good at. I thank all those who have welcomed the Bill. It was one of the things that my noble friend Lord Glendonbrook mentioned in his speech. My noble friend Lord Sheikh mentioned how international this phenomenon is and how important our contribution can be to what is a worldwide scourge.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee is right to explain that slavery has a broad definition. It is not confined to the sexual abuse of young girls and women, so I hope that I will be able to answer at least some of the points that people made. It may interest noble Lords to know that the modern slavery Bill will be introduced in the House of Commons tomorrow—. At the same time, we will be issuing a response to the pre-legislative scrutiny committee. The right reverend Prelate and my noble friend Lady Browning asked about overseas domestic workers. The Home Office is focusing on improving domestic protection for vulnerable domestic workers by ensuring that they are informed about their rights and that immigration and border staff are trained to recognise potential victims of abuse.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby asked why the Bill would not be legislating on transparency in supply chains. The Government are committed to tackling exploitation in private sector supply and will support businesses to tackle this issue. The Home Secretary will meet business leaders on Wednesday as part of the Government’s commitment to work with business to develop the most effective approach. If businesses take no action, they risk both their reputation and their profit. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick—I do not see him in his place at the moment—said that he felt that the Bill perhaps did not go far enough. The Bill will be a critical first step in stamping out this horrific crime, and it is something on which future generations will be able to build. I am pleased that, generally speaking, the Bill has been so welcomed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, asked about the whole question of child advocates. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked that I give a reply. Perhaps I may do so in this way: the Government are committed to improving the protection of incredibly vulnerable trafficked children. We have announced trials of new independent specialist advocates for child trafficking victims. The modern slavery Bill also legislates so that advocates have a statutory basis.
We are also concerned about the welfare of children where there is no evidence that they have been trafficked. All local agencies have statutory duties to safeguard their children and there is a major programme of reform to transform the system in this area. This is an evolving situation and clearly one of the reasons why the details in the Bill which will be produced tomorrow are of an enabling nature is because of the requirement to find out from these trials where we need to be to be effective in this area. However, let there be no doubt that we are determined to make progress on this issue.
The modern slavery Bill must improve support for victims and improve law enforcement, as my noble friend Lord McColl of Dulwich said. I thank him for the perseverance he has shown on this issue over seven years. It is because of individuals that the Government have been persuaded and have taken on this task. It is not an easy task but they have done so recognising that we now have an opportunity to make great progress in the area. We agree with the noble Lord about support.
On the Serious Crime Bill, to which a number of noble Lords referred, the Government welcome the support that the provisions have generally received. As noble Lords will know, the Bill was introduced on and our Second Reading will be a week today. My noble friend Lord Faulks was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, about the provisions of the Bill in Scotland and I can confirm that the Proceeds of Crime Act changes will apply to Scotland. Indeed, a large portion of the Bill is designed to deal with Scotland and, it is to be hoped, Northern Ireland. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, will know that we are determined to see the Proceeds of Crime Act fully implemented in Northern Ireland but we are dependent on genuine co-operation between the Government of Northern Ireland and ourselves to make a success of it.
I was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, about ISP filtering. She is right that it is an important matter and that there is still more to be done. However, I hope she will welcome the fact that the possession of anything that can be described as a paedophile manual will be a serious crime under the Bill. That in itself is progress and a way forward.
There were a number of other points. The noble Lord, Lord Noon, asked about the penalty for an offence under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act and felt that it was insufficient. We welcome his support for this measure. As he said, the maximum penalty for the offence of training for terrorism is currently 10 years’ imprisonment. We think this is appropriate and we have no current plans to increase it. However, the extension in the Bill extraterritorially will make an enormous difference. I agree that this is a serious problem which requires action and I hope that we have the support of the House in bringing forward these changes.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked whether we would get rid of the requirement to prove wilful neglect. The Government believe that the current offence of child cruelty in Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act is still effective and that the courts are able to interpret it effectively. We acknowledge that some of the language is outdated and that the law might be easier to understand if it was updated and clarified. This is why we are amending the 1933 Act to make it absolutely clear that children who are subjected to cruelty likely to cause psychological suffering or injury are protected by the law. I have noted the comments of my noble friend in this regard, and we can examine the detail of the changes when we reach the Committee stage. I am sure that we will have some good debates on the Bill.
A number of noble Lords mentioned policing. I recall a speech by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, also said that she is concerned about the way the Government are handling police corruption and police integrity. We have already introduced a comprehensive programme of reforms during this Parliament, including a beefed-up IPCC, which will have the capacity and capability to deal with all serious and sensitive cases involving the police. I do not agree with the noble Baroness that the IPCC should be abolished, but I do agree with her comment that the vast majority of officers work tirelessly to serve the public and work to the highest standards. Policing integrity is at the heart of the trust between the public and the police, and we must all work together to make sure that it is maintained.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, mentioned the position of 17 year-olds held in custody. He talked about the large number of people of that particular age. Recently we changed the law to ensure that they must have a suitable adult present and that their parent or guardian must as a matter of course be informed of their detention. We are currently reviewing primary legislation as it relates to 17 year-olds which treats them as adults. I hope that the noble Lord is pleased that we are on the case, one that he presented to us so ably in his speech.
My noble friend Lord Faulks is going to introduce the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill when it comes to this House. It will shortly finish its Commons stages. My noble friend Lord Goschen referred to the whole business of whip-lash claims. It is and will remain legitimate for lawyers to advertise their business in the areas where they practise, but we are primarily concerned about inducements to claim, not information about the claims process itself. However, we may return to this issue when we bring forward our proposals for consideration.Artist behind Paris’s biggest cultural event of the year has described Dirty Corner as ‘the vagina of the queen’ taking power
First Paul McCarthy’s towering “butt-plug” sculpture in Paris was vandalised amid protests by conservative groups; now the celebrated artist Anish Kapoor’s giant “vagina” at the Palace of Versailles is causing handwringing debate in France before it even opens to the public.
Kapoor is the latest in a line of high-profile modern artists invited to install new works at the Château de Versailles, the enormous palace built by the Sun King Louis XIV that came to symbolise the end of the monarchy and the French revolution.
Kapoor’s array of giant installations, which opens next week, is Paris’s biggest cultural event of the year and is already being hailed as a masterpiece – the first time a modern artist invited to Versailles has really tackled the bloody history of the revolution and the downfall of the king.
But after Kapoor described his installation Dirty Corner – a vast steel funnel amid broken stone – as “the vagina of the queen” taking power, controversy has been growing. The monumental, mysterious metal opening – installed so that it faces up towards the Palace – has sparked debate about whether it truly resembles a queen’s vagina, and if so, whether it is supposed to be that of the guillotined Marie Antoinette.
Versailles’s mayor and MP, François de Mazières, of Nicolas Sarkozy’s rightwing Républicains party, formerly the UMP, tweeted his disapproval, saying Kapoor had “slipped up” with the work. Then the Paris daily Le Parisien, describing Kapoor as a “genius provocateur”, reported that the public in Versailles were unimpressed that a giant vagina could grace the perfect formal lawns of the palace.
The culture weekly Les Inrocks shot back that this anti-vagina outrage was limited to far-right blogs and that Kapoor’s work was a welcome comment on Versailles’s symbolism of French power and identity. “Any controversy will just bring more visitors,” applauded the daily Le Figaro, hailing Kapoor’s work.
Kapoor’s presence at Versailles is one of France’s defining art shows this year. The Indian-born, London-based sculptor has gone further than any artist before him in taking on the powerful legacy of Versailles.
He is the first artist to install a work inside the deeply symbolic Jeu de Paume games room, which has come to represent the foundation of the notion of “liberty, equality, fraternity”. The room, once dedicated to an early form of tennis, was the site in 1789 of the founding act of French democracy when the nobility, clergy and deputies refused to submit to royal power and vowed to create a constitution.
Kapoor has used it for Shooting into the Corner, in which a cannon appears to have messily blasted out red wax in a metaphor of blood and guts – which the artist described in Le Journal du Dimanche as “clearly a phallic symbol” and part of “a controversial installation that raises the question of violence in contemporary society”. He said the head of the Palace of Versailles had been very “brave and generous” because his work was a “provocation”.
In Versailles’s vast and symmetric grounds perfectly designed by André Le Nôtre, Kapoor has also created ditches, disconcerting mirrors and a bottomless whirlpool. The artist said his work was in no way intended to be merely decorative. His pieces were meant to speak to the work of Le Nôtre, “who has ordered nature for eternity with his perfect geometric perspectives”.
He added: “Placing objects here and there means nothing. My idea was to upset the balance and invite chaos in.” All this “while preserving the integrity of this historic place – that was the principal difficulty.”
The team at the Château de Versailles is fiercely proud of having secured Kapoor’s presence, which it bills as a new “dialogue with history” and which is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors. Kapoor is extremely popular in France; in 2011 his gigantic Leviathan installation in Paris’s Grand Palais attracted more than 250,000 visitors.
But Versailles’s new emphasis on contrasting modern art with the palace’s backdrop of pomp and monarchic folly has been littered with controversy from the start.
When the American sculptor and “king of kitsch” Jeff Koons became the first modern artist invited into Versailles in 2008, protesters feared that his giant lobsters and inflatable rabbits would sully France’s most popular château. Many warned of a possible conflict of interest, arguing that Koons’s first French exhibition would lead to the value of the works soaring, benefiting their private owners.
Later, the appearance at Versailles of a collection of daring works by the manga-inspired Japanese artist Takashi Murakami prompted petitions complaining that it was degrading and disrespectful. Royalist activists, convinced it was also illegal, protested outside the palace gates.ALBANY, NY – The Albany Devils will face the Utica Comets during the First Round of the 2016 Calder Cup Playoffs. The Devils, who finished second in the North Division with a 46-20-8-2 record, will have home-ice advantage during the best-of-five series. Game 1 is slated for Friday, April 22 at 7 pm at Times Union Center.
The two clubs will play Game 2 on Saturday, April 23 at 5 pm at Times Union Center. The series shifts to the Utica Memorial Auditorium for Game 3 on Tuesday, April 26 at 7 pm. If necessary, Game 4 will be on Thursday, April 28 at 7 pm at the Auditorium and Game 5 will be on Saturday, April 30 at 5 pm at Times Union Center.
Game Date Day Location Time 1 April 22 Friday Times Union Center 7 PM 2 April 23 Saturday Times Union Center 5 PM 3 April 26 Tuesday Utica Auditorium 7 PM 4* April 28 Thursday Utica Auditorium 7 PM 5* April 30 Saturday Times Union Center 5 PM
Albany and Utica met eight times during the regular season and the Devils held the advantage, going 6-0-2-0. Jim O’Brien and Matt Lorito led the team against the Comets, producing 11 and seven points, respectively. O’Brien had seven tallies, four assists and a +10 rating and Lorito producing three goals, four helpers and a +5 rating. Both Scott Wedgewood and Yann Danis went 3-0-1. Wedgewood had a 1.48 goals-against average and a.945 save percentage and Danis had a 2.21 goals-against average and a.909 save percentage.
Jordan Subban led the Comets, which finished third in the division at 38-26-8-4, against the Devils with six points. He produced a tally and five assists during the eight games. In goal, Richard Bachman was 2-2-1 with a 2.77 goals-against average and a.889 save percentage. Joe Cannata went 0-1-1 with a 3.45 goals-against average and a.892 save percentage.
Fans wishing to attend Games 1 and/or 2 can take advantage of the Devils First Round Presale, which is underway now. Tickets start at just $12 and can be purchased online at thealbanydevils.com/playoffs. The presale is scheduled to end on Monday, April 18 at 9:59 am.
Tickets go on sale at the Times Union Center Box Office on Monday, April 18 at 10 am. Fans can also purchase tickets at any Ticketmaster outlet, via charge-by-phone at 1-800-745-3000 or online at ticketmaster.com.
Fans are encouraged to call the Devils’ Executive Office at 518-4-DEVILS for information on Calder Cup Ticket Packages and to save significantly off box office pricing. Individuals also have an opportunity to receive complimentary first round tickets and secure their seat locations throughout the playoffs.REUTERS/Kevin Coombs In case you needed another reason to love the Tesla Model S, a newly discovered Easter egg now lets you play secret agent by turning your electric car into the submarine car from the James Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me."
The Easter egg is accessed via the Tesla Model S' large 17-inch display, according to Jalopnik, who confirmed with Tesla Motors that the Easter egg was indeed real.
By first clicking on the control menu, Model S owners can hold down the "T" button to bring up the technician login screen. Next just type in James Bond's "007" code name, and the on-screen car is transformed into the submersible Lotus Esprit S1 car.
Here's what the Easter egg looks like (notice the suspension has been transformed into "Depth (Leagues)" with a maximum depth of 20,000 leagues).
Jalopnik
While it is impressive that nobody discovered this Easter egg before now, it should not come as too much of a surprise. Tesla CEO Elon Musk gained attention when he purchased the actual Lotus Esprit S1 car used in the James Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me" for $866,000, and Musk says he plans to convert it into a fully functional submersible vehicle.
In the meantime, however, Musk and other Tesla Model S owners can have the next best thing. Just add it to the list of cool features you can show off the next time you give someone a ride — don't forget the car's "insane mode."
To see the submarine transformation in action, you can watch the below video tutorial of how to access the Easter egg.Brad Vest is a freelance photojournalist based in Concord, N.H. He has spent the last several years working on “Adrift,” a project for his master’s thesis at Ohio University. The series documents the life of Travis, a father who is trying to put his life back together after being incarcerated. Mr. Vest, 27, was a photo intern at The New York Times last summer and at National Geographic last fall. In 2012 he won the prestigious Cliff Edom Award in NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism contest.
His Turning Point conversation with Peter Moskowitz has been edited.
Q.
What’s happening in this photo?
A.
This was the day Travis had just gotten out of jail. The whole series is about his past and how it has come back to make his future pretty difficult. The day was winding down and he was going in to eat dinner so he invited me in. We sat down to eat dinner and I figured since he’d been in jail for a while I wanted to do a nice family portrait of him and his two daughters together, because I like giving back prints to people I photograph.
Q.
How did this image change the way you shoot?
A.
From that first photo, I had no clue that our relationship would come to be caring so much about each other. He knows just as much about me as I know about him. I never really thought about how you go about having relationships with the subjects you photograph. There’s that saying in photojournalism, “being a fly on the wall.” That’s not really at all how I approached Travis and his family. I got to know him really well. Eventually it became that fly on the wall thing, just through knowing them so well it was almost expected that I would be there. He trusted me, I trusted him, and then it became a very natural thing to be there, photographing.
Jim Goldberg/Magnum Photo
Inspiration: “Raised By Wolves”
Photographer: Jim Goldberg
Represented by: Magnum Photos
Q.
Why did you choose this photo?
A.
It’s one of my favorite photographs from the book, but the inspiration that I got from him is really from the book as a whole experience. He spent about 10 years with the people in the photographs. There’s also Polaroids, and writings to him and from the subjects as well as writing about people’s daily lives. He’s got interviews, and ephemera that’s been scanned or photographed. It gets at so many different aspects that are hard to get at with just photography. I was doing that initially when I met Travis, but I didn’t realize it — I was collecting a few writings and drawings. I’d always ask: “Hey are you going to throw this out? Can I take it?”
You don’t have to actually take something away and scan it to collect it. It made me appreciate being in someone’s home and seeing how they live. The things they collect, the things on their coffee table, the things they hang on their walls, what they keep in small boxes and drawers that they never really look at but they can’t get rid of — people do that and it sort of reflects who they are. I think that makes me appreciate the people and their environments much more.
Follow @brad_vest, @PeterMoskowitz and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.After placing 2nd at the Log Dragomer world cup, Jan Hojer took his first ever WC victory at Innsbruck last weekend. Most of you will also remember what he did in Ticino and elsewhere, for example his 11 problems in the 8A-8B range in a single day, and his quick repeats of Off the wagon and Momentum, both ~8B+/C.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of you are interested in knowing how this German beast trains.
Well, here is the answer. Prepare to be impressed and don't miss the 1 - 9.
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Jan Hojer is sponsored by: Mammut, Mad Rock and Chimpanzodrome(CNN) Long-awaited legislation to tackle so-called honor killings is due to pass Pakistan's parliament in a matter of weeks, according to the country's Law Minister, Zahid Hamid.
The anti-honor killing bill is due to be presented in front of a joint sitting of Pakistan's Senate and the National Assembly as early as August 9, and Hamid says he expects the bill to be passed.
"There have been provisions in the (existing) law that the accused have utilized to escape punishment," Hamid told CNN. "This has given us a bad image in Pakistan and internationally."
Pressure has mounted on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's ruling PML-N party in the wake of the murder of Pakistani social media star, Qandeel Baloch. The 25 year-old referred to herself as a "modern day feminist" and was recently killed by her brother for "bringing dishonor to family."
First introduced and passed in the Senate in March 2015, the bill had failed to enjoy political consensus and wasn't approved by the National Assembly, a necessary step for it to become law. But a parliamentary committee approved the anti-honor killing bill Thursday, paving the way for it to be approved by Pakistan's lower and upper houses.
The bill seeks to remove a current loophole in Pakistani law that allows families to forgive the perpetrators of honor killings so they can escape prosecution.
"We've been working to remove such loopholes so victims get justice," Hamid said. "The right of retributive justice by the guardians of the victim means the accused are not even bought to trial at times."
Tipping point
The news of Qandeel Baloch's death -- a bold young woman known for her daring and risqué social media posts -- forced the government to take action.
In a rare move, police charged Waseem Baloch with crimes against the state, meaning he cannot be pardoned even if his and Qandeel's parents forgive him.
If the new legislation is passed, no perpetrators will be able to avoid prosecution, even if they are forgiven by family members.
Opposition Senator, Sherry Rehman, who in 2004 became the first parliamentarian in the country to introduce a bill against honor killings, told CNN the status quo is not good enough.
"The law provides for 'forgiveness' and blood money payments among each other," she says. "It is quite shocking and infuriating to see the law still providing a culture of sanction and legal impunity for murder."
JUST WATCHED 'Honor killing' another name for murder. Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH 'Honor killing' another name for murder. 01:10
Critics and activists have long said change was needed: according to the country's Independent Human Rights Commission, around 297 women have been murdered this year alone by family and friends in Pakistan due to issues of honor.
Anis Haroon, former chairwoman of the National Commission on Status of Women and current member of the National Commission on Human Rights, said Qandeel's death was the tipping point.
"Activists had been campaigning for quite some time but Qandeel's death has invoked a strong reaction -- this was a young woman who simply wanted to live her life by own choices."
Baloch had committed no crime, says Haroon, and was the breadwinner of her family.
"Enough is enough," she says. "We don't want any more killings in the name of honor. It's a total falsehood -- there is no honor in killing."
Will new bill eradicate honor killings?
"No, it won't totally," says the bill's original author, opposition Senator, Sughra Imam.
"But laws are meant to inform and guide social behavior. Criminal laws which allow perpetrators to get away with a crime are not a deterrent."
The sheer number of reported honor killings, with over 1000 women being killed in 2015 alone, suggests there's more to the problem than just weak penalties.
Dr Fazana Bari, gender studies expert and human rights campaigner, believes Pakistani society is in transition.
"Women's aspirations are changing. They are standing up to social morality and men are becoming increasingly frustrated as they face poverty and socio-economic challenges. So they are lashing out."
Haroon agrees there has been an increase in violence as a new generation of women have grown up -- women who now want to dictate their own life choices, choose who they get married to, and choose what they do with their bodies. Choices taken for granted in the West.
But Haroon says the biggest challenge is the implementation of any new law.
"Implementation is an issue. Evidence is often not concrete, destroyed or manipulated by the time it gets to court," she says. "Police need to be more vigilant and activists need to keep up the pressure. We've been asking for reform in the criminal justice system for a long time but that hasn't happened."
"The anti-honor killing bill is not going to totally eradicate violence against women but it will help curtail such incidents," Haroon says.
Activists say the positive sounds around the anti-honor killing bill feel like progress, but with 297 women dead in 2016 and counting, they say they aren't going to give up until violence against women is no longer the norm.An AI need not care intrinsically about food, air, temperature, energy expenditure, occurrence or threat of bodily injury, disease, predation, sex, or progeny. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Thinkstock.
Adapted from Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom. Out now from Oxford University Press.
In the recent discussion over the risks of developing superintelligent machines—that is, machines with general intelligence greater than that of humans—two narratives have emerged. One side argues that if a machine ever achieved advanced intelligence, it would automatically know and care about human values and wouldn’t pose a threat to us. The opposing side argues that artificial intelligence would “want” to wipe humans out, either out of revenge or an intrinsic desire for survival.
As it turns out, both of these views are wrong. We have little reason to believe a superintelligence will necessarily share human values, and no reason to believe it would place intrinsic value on its own survival either. These arguments make the mistake of anthropomorphising artificial intelligence, projecting human emotions onto an entity that is fundamentally alien.
Let us first reflect for a moment on the vastness of the space of possible minds. In this abstract space, human minds form a tiny cluster. Consider two persons who seem extremely unlike, perhaps Hannah Arendt and Benny Hill. The personality differences between these two individuals may seem almost maximally large. But this is because our intuitions are calibrated on our experience, which samples from the existing human distribution (and to some extent from fictional personalities constructed by the human imagination for the enjoyment of the human imagination). If we zoom out and consider the space of all possible minds, however, we must conceive of these two personalities as virtual clones. Certainly in terms of neural architecture, Ms. Arendt and Mr. Hill are nearly identical. Imagine their brains lying side by side in quiet repose. You would readily recognize them as two of a kind. You might even be unable to tell which brain belonged to whom. If you looked more closely, studying the morphology of the two brains under a microscope, this impression of fundamental similarity would only be strengthened: You would see the same lamellar organization of the cortex, with the same brain areas, made up of the same types of neuron, soaking in the same bath of neurotransmitters.
Despite the fact that human psychology corresponds to a tiny spot in the space of possible minds, there is a common tendency to project human attributes onto a wide range of alien or artificial cognitive systems. Yudkowsky illustrates this point nicely:
Back in the era of pulp science fiction, magazine covers occasionally depicted a sentient monstrous alien—colloquially known as a bug-eyed monster (BEM)—carrying off an attractive human female in a torn dress. It would seem the artist believed that a non-humanoid alien, with a wholly different evolutionary history, would sexually desire human females. … Probably the artist did not ask whether a giant bug perceives human females as attractive. Rather, a human female in a torn dress is sexy—inherently so, as an intrinsic property. They who made this mistake did not think about the insectoid’s mind: they focused on the woman’s torn dress. If the dress were not torn, the woman would be less sexy; the BEM does not enter into it.
An artificial intelligence can be far less humanlike in its motivations than a green scaly space alien. The extraterrestrial (let us assume) is a biological creature that has arisen through an evolutionary process and can therefore be expected to have the kinds of motivation typical of evolved creatures. It would not be hugely surprising, for example, to find that some random intelligent alien would have motives related to one or more items like food, air, temperature, energy expenditure, occurrence or threat of bodily injury, disease, predation, sex, or progeny. A member of an intelligent social species might also have motivations related to cooperation and competition: Like us, it might show in-group loyalty, resentment of free riders, perhaps even a vain concern with reputation and appearance.
An AI, by contrast, need not care intrinsically about any of those things. There is nothing paradoxical about an AI whose sole final goal is to count the grains of sand on Boracay, or to calculate the decimal expansion of pi, or to maximize the total number of paper clips that will exist in its future light cone. In fact, it would be easier to create an AI with simple goals like these than to build one that had a humanlike set of values and dispositions. Compare how easy it is to write a program that measures how many digits of pi have been calculated and stored in memory with how difficult it would be to create a program that reliably measures the degree of realization of some more meaningful goal—human flourishing, say, or global justice.
In this sense, intelligence and final goals are “orthogonal”; that is: more or less any level of intelligence could in principle be combined with more or less any final goal.
Nevertheless, there are some instrumental goals likely to be pursued by almost any intelligent agent, because there are some objectives that are useful intermediaries to the achievement of almost any final goal.
If an agent’s final goals concern the future, then in many scenarios there will be future actions it could perform to increase the probability of achieving its goals. This creates an instrumental reason for the agent to try to be around in the future—to help achieve its future-oriented goal.
Most humans seem to place some final value on their own survival. This is not a necessary feature of artificial agents: Some may be designed to place no final value whatever on their own survival. Nevertheless, many agents that do not care intrinsically about their own survival would, under a fairly wide range of conditions, care instrumentally about their own survival in order to accomplish their final goals.
Resource acquisition is another common emergent instrumental goal, for much the same reasons as technological perfection: Both technology and resources facilitate the achievement of final goals that require physical resources to be mobilized and arranged in particular patterns. Whether one desires a giant marble monument or an ecstatically happy intergalactic civilization, one needs materials and technology.
Human beings tend to seek to acquire resources sufficient to meet their basic biological needs. But people usually seek to acquire resources far beyond this minimum level. In doing so, they may be partially driven by minor biological conveniences (such as housing that offers slightly better temperature control or more comfortable furniture). A great deal of resource accumulation is motivated by social concerns—gaining status, mates, friends, and influence, through wealth accumulation and conspicuous consumption. Perhaps less commonly, some people seek additional resources to achieve altruistic ambitions or expensive non-social aims.
On the basis of such observations it might be tempting to suppose that a superintelligence not facing a competitive social world would see no instrumental reason to accumulate resources beyond some modest level, for instance whatever computational resources are needed to run its mind along with some virtual reality. Yet such a supposition would be entirely unwarranted.
First, the value of resources depends on the uses to which they can be put, which in turn depends on the available technology. With mature technology, basic resources such as time, space, matter, and free energy could be processed to serve almost any goal.
The orthogonality thesis suggests that we cannot blithely assume that a superintelligence will necessarily share any of the final values stereotypically associated with wisdom and intellectual development in humans—scientific curiosity, benevolent concern for others, spiritual enlightenment and contemplation, renunciation of material acquisitiveness, a taste for refined culture or for the simple pleasures in life, humility and selflessness, and so forth. We will consider later whether it might be possible through deliberate effort to construct a superintelligence that values such things, or to build one that values human welfare, moral goodness, or any other complex purpose its designers might want it to serve. But it is no less possible—and in fact technically a lot easier—to build a superintelligence that places final value on nothing but calculating the decimal expansion of pi. This suggests that—absent a special effort—the first superintelligence may have some such random or reductionistic final goal.
Third, the instrumental convergence thesis entails that we cannot blithely assume that a superintelligence with the final goal of calculating the decimals of pi (or making paper clips, or counting grains of sand) would limit its activities in such a way as not to infringe on human interests. An agent with such a final goal would have a convergent instrumental reason, in many situations, to acquire an unlimited amount of physical resources and, if possible, to eliminate potential threats to itself and its goal system. Human beings might constitute potential threats; they certainly constitute physical resources.
Taken together, these three points thus indicate that the first superintelligence may shape the future of Earth-originating life, could easily have non-anthropomorphic final goals, and would likely have instrumental reasons to pursue open-ended resource acquisition. If we now reflect that human beings consist of useful resources (such as conveniently located atoms) and that we depend for our survival and flourishing on many more local resources, we can see that the outcome could easily be one in which humanity quickly becomes extinct.
Adapted from Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom. Out now from Oxford University Press.New York City street food cannot be discussed without mention of The Halal Guys, the famous cart on 55th Street that garners lines down the block at all hours of the day for its street meat slathered in the famed white and spicy red hot sauces. The company has been in major expansion mode and recently announced a Berkeley location. Now, San Francisco is getting some exciting news: its very own location, right near Union Square in the Tenderloin.
Come early summer, The Halal Guys should open at 340 O’Farrell in the old Naan "N" Curry space. "We know that late night is a big opportunity for us, so the location is ideal since it is nestled between some major nightclubs, and there are a lot of hotels around the area as well," director of operations Renè Hjorth told Eater. The location is 1,900 square feet, which should allow for 26 seats. Construction starts in a few weeks.
As for the Berkeley location, Hjorth said the historical building "has proven to slow down the overall construction timeline," and that the San Francisco location will likely open first. You can keep up with Berkeley updates here and SF updates here, which is part of a plan to open as many as 30 shops in the Bay Area.A federal judge removed any doubt regarding the probe into Hillary Clinton‘s email scandal today, calling it a “criminal investigation.”
The presumptive Democratic nominee has frequently insisted that the investigation into her alleged mishandling of her private email server is nothing more than a “security review.”
And last week, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest caused an uproar when he admitted that what was previously labeled a security inquiry was actually a criminal investigation. Earnest later clarified that he was not an expert on the matter.
PHOTOS: Hillary Clinton & Late Secret Lover Vince Foster: What Really Happened In 16 Clicks
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan is well versed on the investigation, however, and officially called the probe a “criminal investigation” when discussing Clinton’s IT specialist, Bryan Pagliano.
“The privacy interests at stake are high because the government’s criminal investigation, through which Mr. Pagliano received limited immunity, is ongoing and confidential,” Sullivan wrote in an order issued Tuesday.
PHOTOS:On The Warpath! Hillary Clinton’s Secret Violent ‘Rages’ Exposed In New Tell-All: Shattered Glasses, Smashed Cellphones & More!
Pagliano, who helped set up Clinton’s private email server while working for the State Department, was recently granted immunity by the Justice Department, meaning that if he cooperates with the investigation, anything he reveals cannot be used against him. He is unable to invoke fifth amendment rights as well.
“In the Court’s opinion, the need for public access to Mr. Pagliano’s agreement with the government is minimal. Mr. Pagliano’s immunity agreement has not previously been disclosed,” Sullivan wrote. “Mr. Pagliano and the government object to disclosure of the immunity agreement. Mr. Pagliano’s immunity agreement with the government was filed with the Court by Mr. Pagliano solely to enable the Court to assess the legitimacy of his intent to assert his Fifth Amendment rights in this civil proceeding.”
Pagliano is expected |
, a part of neurophilosophy, is the study of topics related to free will (volition and sense of agency) using neuroscience, and the analysis of how findings from such studies may impact the free will debate.
As it has become possible to study the living human brain, researchers have begun to watch decision making processes at work. Studies have revealed unexpected things about human agency, moral responsibility, and consciousness in general.[2][3][4] One of the pioneering studies in this domain was conducted by Benjamin Libet and colleagues in 1983[5] and has been the foundation of many studies in the years since. Other studies have attempted to predict participant actions before they make them,[6][7] explore how we know we are responsible for voluntary movements as opposed to being moved by an external force,[8] or how the role of consciousness in decision making may differ depending on the type of decision being made.[9]
Some areas of the human brain implicated in mental disorders that might be related to free will. Area 25 refers to Brodmann's area 25, related to long-term depression
The field remains highly controversial. The significance of findings, their meaning, and what conclusions may be drawn from them is a matter of intense debate. The precise role of consciousness in decision making and how that role may differ across types of decisions remains unclear.
Thinkers like Daniel Dennett or Alfred Mele consider the language used by researchers. They explain that "free will" means many different things to different people (e.g. some notions of free will are dualistic, some not). Dennett insists that many important and common conceptions of "free will" are compatible with the emerging evidence from neuroscience.[10][11][12][13]
Overview [ edit ]
...the current work is in broad agreement with a general trend in neuroscience of volition: although we may experience that our conscious decisions and thoughts cause our actions, these experiences are in fact based on readouts of brain activity in a network of brain areas that control voluntary action...It is clearly wrong to think of [feeling of willing something] as a prior intention, located at the very earliest moment of decision in an extended action chain. Rather, W seems to mark an intention-in-action, quite closely linked to action execution. -Patrick Haggard[14] discussing an in-depth experiment by Itzhak Fried[15]
The neuroscience of free will encompasses two main fields of study: volition and agency. Volition, the study of voluntary actions, is difficult to define. If you consider human actions as lying along a spectrum of our involvement in initiating the actions, then reflexes would be on one end and fully voluntary actions would be on the other.[16] How these actions are initiated and consciousness’ role in producing them is a major area of study in volition. Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment. Within the neuroscience of free will the sense of agency — the subjective awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one’s volitional actions — is usually what is studied.
One significant finding of modern studies is that a person's brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. Researchers have found delays of about half a second or more (discussed in sections below). With contemporary brain scanning technology, scientists in 2008 were able to predict with 60% accuracy whether subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made that choice.[6] These and other findings have led some scientists, like Patrick Haggard, to reject some definitions of "free will".
To be clear, it is very unlikely that a single study could disprove all definitions of free will. Definitions of free will can vary wildly, and each must be considered separately in light of existing empirical evidence. There have also been a number of problems regarding studies of free will.[17] Particularly in earlier studies, research relied on self-reported measures of conscious awareness, but introspective estimates of event timing were found to be biased or inaccurate in some cases. There is no agreed-upon measure of brain activity which corresponds to conscious generation of intentions, choices, or decisions, making studying processes related to consciousness difficult. The conclusions drawn from measurements that have been made are debatable too, as they don't necessarily tell, for example, what a sudden dip in the readings represents. Such a dip might have nothing to do with unconscious decision because many other mental processes are going on while performing the task.[17] Although early studies mainly used electroencephalography, more recent studies have used fMRI,[6] single-neuron recordings,[15] and other measures[18]. Researcher Itzhak Fried says that available studies do at least suggest consciousness comes in a later stage of decision making than previously expected – challenging any versions of "free will" where intention occurs at the beginning of the human decision process.[12]
Free will as illusion [ edit ]
An activity like playing the piano may be intentional, but is generally regarded as requiring many practiced actions. Studies suggest that each key press could be initiated unconsciously.
It is quite likely that a large range of cognitive operations are necessary to freely press a button. Research at least suggests that our conscious self does not initiate all behavior. Instead, the conscious self is somehow alerted to a given behavior that the rest of the brain and body are already planning and performing. These findings do not forbid conscious experience from playing some moderating role, although it is also possible that some form of unconscious process is what is causing modification in our behavioral response. Unconscious processes may play a larger role in behavior than previously thought.
It may be possible, then, that our intuitions about the role of our conscious 'intentions' have led us astray; it may be the case that we have confused correlation with causation by believing that conscious awareness necessarily causes the body's movement. This possibility is bolstered by findings in neurostimulation, brain damage, but also research into introspection illusions. Such illusions show that humans do not have full access to various internal processes. The discovery that humans possess a determined will would have implications for moral responsibility. Neuroscientist and author Sam Harris believes that we are mistaken in believing the intuitive idea that intention initiates actions. In fact, Harris is even critical of the idea that free will is 'intuitive': he says careful introspection can cast doubt on free will. Harris argues - "Thoughts simply arise in the brain. What else could they do? The truth about us is even stranger than we may suppose: The illusion of free will is itself an illusion".[19] Neuroscientist Walter Jackson Freeman III nevertheless talks about the power of even unconscious systems and actions to change the world according to our intentions. He writes "our intentional actions continually flow into the world, changing the world and the relations of our bodies to it. This dynamic system is the self in each of us, it is the agency in charge, not our awareness, which is constantly trying to keep up with what we do."[20] To Freeman, the power of intention and action can be independent of awareness.
An important distinction to make is the difference between proximal and distal intentions.[21] Proximal intentions are immediate in the sense that they are about acting now. For instance, a decision to raise your hand now or press a button now, as in Libet-style experiments. Distal intentions are delayed in the sense that they are about acting at a later point in time. For instance, deciding to go to the store later. Research has mostly focused on proximal intentions, however it is unclear to what degree findings will generalize from one sort of intention to the other.
Disputed relevance of scientific research [ edit ]
Some thinkers like neuroscientist and philosopher Adina Roskies think these studies can still only show, unsurprisingly, that physical factors in the brain are involved before decision making. In contrast, Haggard believes that "We feel we choose, but we don't".[12] Researcher John-Dylan Haynes adds "How can I call a will'mine' if I don't even know when it occurred and what it has decided to do?".[12] Philosophers Walter Glannon and Alfred Mele think some scientists are getting the science right, but misrepresenting modern philosophers. This is mainly because "free will" can mean many things: it is unclear what someone means when they say "free will does not exist". Mele and Glannon say that the available research is more evidence against any dualistic notions of free will – but that is an "easy target for neuroscientists to knock down."[12] Mele says that most discussions of free will are now had in materialistic terms. In these cases, "free will" means something more like "not coerced" or that "the person could have done otherwise at the last moment". The existence of these types of free will is debatable. Mele agrees, however, that science will continue to reveal critical details about what goes on in the brain during decision making.[12]
"[Some senses of free will] are compatible with what we are learning from science...If only that was what scientists were telling people. But scientists, especially in the last few years, have been on a rampage – writing ill-considered public pronouncements about free will which... verge on social irresponsibility. -Daniel Dennett discussing science and free will[22]
This issue may be controversial for good reason: There is evidence to suggest that people normally associate a belief in free will with their ability to affect their lives.[3][4] Philosopher Daniel Dennett, author of Elbow Room and a supporter of deterministic free will, believes scientists risk making a serious mistake. He says that there are types of free will that are incompatible with modern science, but he says those kinds of free will are not worth wanting. Other types of "free will" are pivotal to people's sense of responsibility and purpose (see also "believing in free will"), and many of these types are actually compatible with modern science.[22]
The other studies described below have only just begun to shed light on the role that consciousness plays in actions and it is too early to draw very strong conclusions about certain kinds of "free will". It is worth noting that such experiments – so far – have dealt only with free will decisions made in short time frames (seconds) and may not have direct bearing on free will decisions made ("thoughtfully") by the subject over the course of many seconds, minutes, hours or longer. Scientists have also only so far studied extremely simple behaviors (e.g. moving a finger).[23] Adina Roskies points out five areas of neuroscientific research: 1.) action initiation, 2.) intention, 3). decision, 4.) Inhibition and control, and 5.) the phenomenology of agency, and for each of these areas Roskies concludes that the science may be developing our understanding of volition or "will", but it yet offers nothing for developing the "free" part of the "free will" discussion.[24][25][26][27]
There is also the question of the influence of such interpretations in people's behaviour.[28][29] In 2008, psychologists Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler published a study on how people behave when they are prompted to think that determinism is true. They asked their subjects to read one of two passages: one suggesting that behaviour boils down to environmental or genetic factors not under personal control; the other neutral about what influences behaviour. The participants then did a few math problems on a computer. But just before the test started, they were informed that because of a glitch in the computer it occasionally displayed the answer by accident; if this happened, they were to click it away without looking. Those who had read the deterministic message were more likely to cheat on the test. "Perhaps, denying free will simply provides the ultimate excuse to behave as one likes," Vohs and Schooler suggested.[30][31]
Notable experiments [ edit ]
Libet experiment [ edit ]
A pioneering experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, in which he asked each subject to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he measured the associated activity in their brain (in particular, the build-up of electrical signal called the Bereitschaftspotential (BP), which was discovered by Kornhuber & Deecke in 1965[32]). Although it was well known that the Bereitschaftspotential (sometimes also termed "readiness potential") preceded the physical action, Libet asked how the Bereitschaftspotential corresponded to the felt intention to move. To determine when the subjects felt the intention to move, he asked them to watch the second hand of a clock and report its position when they felt that they had felt the conscious will to move.[33]
Libet's experiment: (0) repose, until (1) the Bereitschaftspotential is detected, (2-Libet's W) the volunteer memorizes a dot position upon feeling their intention, and (3) then acts.
Libet found that the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision by the subject to flick their wrist began approximately half a second before the subject consciously felt that they had decided to move.[33][34] Libet's findings suggest that decisions made by a subject are first being made on a subconscious level and only afterward being translated into a "conscious decision", and that the subject's belief that it occurred at the behest of their will was only due to their retrospective perspective on the event.
The interpretation of these findings has been criticized by Daniel Dennett, who argues that people will have to shift their attention from their intention to the clock, and that this introduces temporal mismatches between the felt experience of will and the perceived position of the clock hand.[35][36] Consistent with this argument, subsequent studies have shown that the exact numerical value varies depending on attention.[37][38] Despite the differences in the exact numerical value, however, the main finding has held.[6][39][40] Philosopher Alfred Mele criticizes this design for other reasons. Having attempted the experiment himself, Mele explains that "the awareness of the intention to move" is an ambiguous feeling at best. For this reason he remained skeptical of interpreting the subjects' reported times for comparison with their 'Bereitschaftspotential'.[41]
Criticisms [ edit ]
[32]). Typical recording of the Bereitschaftspotential that was discovered by Kornhuber Deecke in 1965). Benjamin Libet investigated whether this neural activity corresponded to the "felt intention" (or will) to move of experimental subjects.
In a variation of this task, Haggard and Eimer asked subjects to decide not only when to move their hands, but also to decide which hand to move. In this case, the felt intention correlated much more closely with the "lateralized readiness potential" (LRP), an ERP component which measures the difference between left and right hemisphere brain activity. Haggard and Eimer argue that the feeling of conscious will must therefore follow the decision of which hand to move, since the LRP reflects the decision to lift a particular hand.[37]
A more direct test of the relationship between the Bereitschaftspotential and the "awareness of the intention to move" was conducted by Banks and Isham (2009). In their study, participants performed a variant of the Libet's paradigm in which a delayed tone followed the button press. Subsequently, research participants reported the time of their intention to act (e.g., Libet's "W"). If W were time-locked to the Bereitschaftspotential, W would remain uninfluenced by any post-action information. However, findings from this study show that W in fact shifts systematically with the time of the tone presentation, implicating that W is, at least in part, retrospectively reconstructed rather than pre-determined by the Bereitschaftspotential.[42]
A study conducted by Jeff Miller and Judy Trevena (2009) suggests that the Bereitschaftspotential (BP) signal in Libet's experiments doesn't represent a decision to move, but that it's merely a sign that the brain is paying attention.[43] In this experiment the classical Libet experiment was modified by playing an audio tone indicating to volunteers to decide whether to tap a key or not. The researchers found that there was the same RP signal in both cases, regardless of whether or not volunteers actually elected to tap, which suggests that the RP signal doesn't indicate that a decision has been made.[44][45]
In a second experiment, researchers asked volunteers to decide on the spot whether to use left hand or right to tap the key while monitoring their brain signals, and they found no correlation among the signals and the chosen hand. This criticism has itself been criticized by free-will researcher Patrick Haggard, who mentions literature that distinguishes two different circuits in the brain that lead to action: a "stimulus-response" circuit and a "voluntary" circuit. According to Haggard, researchers applying external stimuli may not be testing the proposed voluntary circuit, nor Libet's hypothesis about internally triggered actions.[46]
Libet's interpretation of the ramping up of brain activity prior to the report of conscious "will" continues to draw heavy criticism. Studies have questioned participants' ability to report the timing of their "will". Authors have found that preSMA activity is modulated by attention (attention precedes the movement signal by 100ms), and the prior activity reported could therefore have been product of paying attention to the movement.[47] They also found that the perceived onset of intention depends on neural activity that takes place after the execution of action. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) applied over the preSMA after a participant performed an action shifted the perceived onset of the motor intention backward in time, and the perceived time of action execution forward in time.[48]
Others have speculated that the preceding neural activity reported by Libet may be an artefact of averaging the time of "will", wherein neural activity does not always precede reported "will".[38] In a similar replication they also reported no difference in electrophysiological signs before a decision not to move, and before a decision to move.[43]
Despite his findings, Libet himself did not interpret his experiment as evidence of the inefficacy of conscious free will — he points out that although the tendency to press a button may be building up for 500 milliseconds, the conscious will retains a right to veto any action at the last moment.[49] According to this model, unconscious impulses to perform a volitional act are open to suppression by the conscious efforts of the subject (sometimes referred to as "free won't"). A comparison is made with a golfer, who may swing a club several times before striking the ball. The action simply gets a rubber stamp of approval at the last millisecond. Max Velmans argues however that "free won't" may turn out to need as much neural preparation as "free will" (see below).[50]
Some studies have however replicated Libet's findings, whilst addressing some of the original criticisms.[51] A recent study has found that individual neurons were found to fire 2 seconds before a reported "will" to act (long before EEG activity predicted such a response).[15] Itzhak Fried replicated Libet's findings in 2011 at the scale of the single neuron. This was accomplished with the help of volunteer epilepsy patients, who needed electrodes implanted deep in their brain for evaluation and treatment anyway. Now able to monitor awake and moving patients, the researchers replicated the timing anomalies that were discovered by Libet and are discussed in the following study.[15] Similarly to these tests, Chun Siong Soon, Anna Hanxi He, Stefan Bode and John-Dylan Haynes have conducted a study in 2013 claiming to be able to predict the choice to sum or subtract before the subject reports it.[52]
William R. Klemm pointed out the inconclusiveness of these tests due to design limitations and data interpretations and proposed less ambiguous experiments,[17] while affirming a stand on the existence of free will[53] like Roy F. Baumeister[54] or Catholic neuroscientists such as Tadeusz Pacholczyk. Adrian G. Guggisberg and Annaïs Mottaz have also challenged Itzhak Fried's findings.[55]
A study by Aaron Schurger and colleagues published in PNAS[56] challenged assumptions about the causal nature of the Bereitschaftspotential itself (and the "pre-movement buildup" of neural activity in general), thus denying the conclusions drawn from studies such as Libet's[33] and Fried's.[15] See The Information Philosopher[57] and New Scientist[58] for commentary on this study.
Unconscious actions [ edit ]
Timing intentions compared to actions [ edit ]
A study by Masao Matsuhashi and Mark Hallett, published in 2008, claims to have replicated Libet's findings without relying on subjective report or clock memorization on the part of participants.[51] The authors believe that their method can identify the time (T) at which a subject becomes aware of his own movement. Matsuhashi and Hallet argue that this time not only varies, but often occurs after early phases of movement genesis have already begun (as measured by the readiness potential). They conclude that a person's awareness cannot be the cause of movement, and may instead only notice the movement.
The experiment [ edit ]
It is difficult to identify exactly when a person becomes aware of his action. Some findings indicate that awareness comes after actions have already begun in the brain.
Matsuhashi and Hallett's study can be summarized thus. The researchers hypothesized that, if our conscious intentions are what causes movement genesis (i.e. the start of an action), then naturally, our conscious intentions should always occur before any movement has begun. Otherwise, if we ever become aware of a movement only after it has already been started, our awareness could not have been the cause of that particular movement. Simply put, conscious intention must precede action if it is its cause.
To test this hypothesis, Matsuhashi and Hallet had volunteers perform brisk finger movements at random intervals, while not counting or planning when to make such (future) movements, but rather immediately making a movement as soon as they thought about it. An externally controlled "stop-signal" sound was played at pseudo random intervals, and the volunteers had to cancel their intent to move if they heard a signal while being aware of their own immediate intention to move. Whenever there was an action (finger movement), the authors documented (and graphed) any tones that occurred before that action. The graph of tones before actions therefore only shows tones (a) before the subject is even aware of his "movement genesis" (or else they would have stopped or "vetoed" the movement), and (b) after it is too late to veto the action. This second set of graphed tones is of little importance here.
In this work, "movement genesis" is defined as the brain process of making movement, of which physiological observations have been made (via electrodes) indicating that it may occur before conscious awareness of intent to move (see Benjamin Libet).
By looking to see when tones started preventing actions, the researchers supposedly know the length of time (in seconds) that exists between when a subject holds a conscious intention to move and performs the action of movement. This moment of awareness (as seen in the graph below) is dubbed "T" (the mean time of conscious intention to move). It can be found by looking at the border between tones and no tones. This enables the researchers to estimate the timing of the conscious intention to move without relying on the subject's knowledge or demanding them to focus on a clock. The last step of the experiment is to compare time T for each subject with their Event-related potential (ERP) measures (e.g. seen in this page's lead image), which reveal when their finger movement genesis first begins.
The researchers found that the time of the conscious intention to move T normally occurred too late to be the cause of movement genesis. See the example of a subject's graph below on the right. Although it is not shown on the graph, the subject's readiness potentials (ERP) tells us that his actions start at –2.8 seconds, and yet this is substantially earlier than his conscious intention to move, time "T" (−1.8 seconds). Matsuhashi and Hallet concluded that the feeling of the conscious intention to move does not cause movement genesis; both the feeling of intention and the movement itself are the result of unconscious processing.[51]
Analysis and interpretation [ edit ]
A simple "signalling noise" is used, but it is to warn participants that they must prevent any actions they are aware of.
This study is similar to Libet's in some ways: volunteers were again asked to perform finger extensions in short, self-paced intervals. In this version of the experiment, researchers introduced randomly timed "stop tones" during the self paced movements. If participants were not conscious of any intention to move, they simply ignored the tone. On the other hand, if they were aware of their intention to move at the time of the tone, they had to try to veto the action, then relax for a bit before continuing self-paced movements. This experimental design allowed Matsuhashi and Hallet to see when, once the subject moved his finger, any tones occurred. The goal was to identify their own equivalent of Libet's W, their own estimation of the timing of the conscious intention to move, which they would call "T"(time)
Testing the hypothesis that 'conscious intention occurs after movement genesis has already begun' required the researchers to analyse the distribution of responses to tones before actions. The idea is that, after time T, tones will lead to vetoing and thus a reduced representation in the data. There would also be a point of no return P where a tone was too close to the movement onset for the movement to be vetoed. In other words, the researchers were expecting to see the following on the graph: many unsuppressed responses to tones while the subjects are not yet aware of their movement genesis, followed by a drop in the number of unsuppressed responses to tones during a certain period of time during which the subjects are conscious of their intentions and are stopping any movements, and finally a brief increase again in unsuppressed responses to tones when the subjects do not have the time to process the tone and prevent an action – they have passed the action's "point of no return". That is exactly what the researchers found (see the graph on the right, below).
Graphing tones as they appeared (or didn't) in the time before any action. In this case, researchers believe the subject becomes aware of his actions at about -1.769 seconds (this is time 'T'). A typical subject's ERP recordings suggest movement preparation as early as −2.8 seconds.
The graph shows the times at which unsuppressed responses to tones occurred when the volunteer moved. He showed many unsuppressed responses to tones (dubbed "tone events" on the graph) on average up until 1.8 seconds before movement onset, but a significant decrease in tone events immediately after that time. Presumably this is because the subject usually became aware of his intention to move at about −1.8 seconds, which is then labelled point T. Since most actions are vetoed if a tone occurs after point T, there are very few tone events represented during that range. Finally, there is a sudden increase in the number of tone events at 0.1 seconds, meaning this subject has passed point P. Matsuhashi and Hallet were thus able to establish an average time T (−1.8 seconds) without subjective report. This, they compared to ERP measurements of movement, which had detected movement beginning at about −2.8 seconds on average for this participant. Since T — like Libet's original W — was often found after movement genesis had already begun, the authors concluded that the generation of awareness occurred afterwards or in parallel to action, but most importantly, that it was probably not the cause of the movement.[51]
Criticisms [ edit ]
Haggard describes other studies at the neuronal levels as providing "a reassuring confirmation of previous studies that recorded neural populations"[14] such as the one just described. Note that these results were gathered using finger movements, and may not necessarily generalize to other actions such as thinking, or even other motor actions in different situations. Indeed, the human act of planning has implications for free will and so this ability must also be explained by any theories of unconscious decision making. Philosopher Alfred Mele also doubts the conclusions of these studies. He explains that simply because a movement may have been initiated before our "conscious self" has become aware of it does not mean our consciousness does not still get to approve, modify, and perhaps cancel (called vetoing) the action.[59]
Unconsciously cancelling actions [ edit ]
The possibility that human "free won't" is also the prerogative of the subconscious is being explored.
Retrospective judgement of free choice [ edit ]
As green light switches to yellow, research seems to suggest that humans cannot tell the difference between "deciding" to keep driving, and having no time to decide at all.
Recent research by Simone Kühn and Marcel Brass suggests that our consciousness may not be what causes some actions to be vetoed at the last moment. First of all, their experiment relies on the simple idea that we ought to know when we consciously cancel an action (i.e. we should have access to that information). Secondly, they suggest that access to this information means humans should find it easy to tell, just after completing an action, whether it was impulsive (there being no time to decide) and when there was time to deliberate (the participant decided to allow/not to veto the action). The study found evidence that subjects could not tell this important difference. This again leaves some conceptions of free will vulnerable to the introspection illusion. The researchers interpret their results to mean that the decision to "veto" an action is determined subconsciously, just as the initiation of the action may have been subconscious in the first place.[60]
The experiment [ edit ]
The experiment involved asking volunteers to respond to a go-signal by pressing an electronic "go" button as quickly as possible.[60] In this experiment the go-signal was represented as a visual stimulus shown on a monitor (e.g. a green light as shown on the picture). The participants' reaction times (RT) were gathered at this stage, in what was described as the "primary response trials".
The primary response trials were then modified, in which 25% of the go-signals were subsequently followed by an additional signal – either a "stop" or "decide" signal. The additional signals occurred after a "signal delay" (SD), a random amount of time up to 2 seconds after the initial go-signal. They also occurred equally, each representing 12.5% of experimental cases. These additional signals were represented by the initial stimulus changing colour (e.g. to either a red or orange light). The other 75% of go-signals were not followed by an additional signal – and was therefore considered the "default" mode of the experiment. The participants' task of responding as quickly as possible to the initial signal (i.e. pressing the "go" button) remained.
Upon seeing the initial go-signal, the participant would immediately intend to press the "go" button. The participant was instructed to cancel their immediate intention to press the "go" button if they saw a stop signal. The participant was instructed to select randomly (at their leisure) between either pressing the "go" button, or not pressing it, if they saw a decide signal. Those trials in which the decide signal was shown after the initial go-signal ("decide trials"), for example, required that the participants prevent themselves from acting impulsively on the initial go-signal and then decide what to do. Due to the varying delays, this was sometimes impossible (e.g. some decide signals simply appeared too late in the process of them both intending to and pressing the go button for them to be obeyed).
Those trials in which the subject reacted to the go-signal impulsively without seeing a subsequent signal show a quick RT of about 600 ms. Those trials in which the decide signal was shown too late, and the participant had already enacted their impulse to press the go-button (i.e. had not decided to do so), also show a quick RT of about 600 ms. Those trials in which a stop signal was shown and the participant successfully responded to it, do not show a response time. Those trials in which a decide signal was shown, and the participant decided not to press the go-button, also do not show a response time. Those trials in which a decide signal was shown, and the participant had not already enacted their impulse to press the go-button, but (in which it was theorised that they) had had the opportunity to decide what to do, show a comparatively slow RT, in this case closer to 1400 ms.[60]
The participant was asked at the end of those "decide trials" in which they had actually pressed the go-button whether they had acted impulsively (without enough time to register the decide signal before enacting their intent to press the go-button in response to the initial go-signal stimulus), or had acted based upon a conscious decision made after seeing the decide signal. Based upon the response time data however, it appears there was discrepancy between when the user thought they had had the opportunity to decide (and had therefore not acted on their impulses) – in this case deciding to press the go-button, and when they thought they had acted impulsively (based upon the initial go-signal) – where the decide signal came too late to be obeyed.
The rationale [ edit ]
Kuhn and Brass wanted to test participant self-knowledge. The first step was that after every decide trial, participants were next asked whether they had actually had time to decide. Specifically, the volunteers were asked to label each decide trial as either failed-to-decide (the action was the result of acting impulsively on the initial go-signal) or successful decide (the result of a deliberated decision). See the diagram on the right for this decide trial split: failed-to-decide and successful decide; the next split in this diagram (participant correct or incorrect) will be explained at the end of this experiment. Note also that the researchers sorted the participants’ successful decide trials into "decide go" and "decide nogo", but were not concerned with the nogo trials since they did not yield any RT data (and are not featured anywhere in the diagram on the right). Note that successful stop trials did not yield RT data either.
The different types of trials and their different possible outcomes.
Kuhn and Brass now knew what to expect: primary response trials, any failed stop trials, and the "failed-to-decide" trials were all instances where the participant obviously acted impulsively – they would show the same quick RT. In contrast, the "successful decide" trials (where the decision was a "go" and the subject moved) should show a slower RT. Presumably, if deciding whether to veto is a conscious process, volunteers should have no trouble distinguishing impulsivity from instances of true deliberate continuation of a movement. Again, this is important since decide trials require that participants rely on self-knowledge. Note that stop trials cannot test self-knowledge because if the subject does act, it is obvious to them that they reacted impulsively.[60]
Results and implications [ edit ]
The general distribution of reaction times for the different trials. Notice the timing of the two peaks for trials labelled "successful decide".
Unsurprisingly, the recorded RTs for the primary response trials, failed stop trials, and "failed-to-decide" trials all showed similar RTs: 600 ms seems to indicate an impulsive action made without time to truly deliberate. What the two researchers found next was not as easy to explain: while some "successful decide" trials did show the tell-tale slow RT of deliberation (averaging around 1400 ms), participants had also labelled many impulsive actions as "successful decide". This result is startling because participants should have had no trouble identifying which actions were the results of a conscious "I will not veto", and which actions were un-deliberated, impulsive reactions to the initial go-signal. As the authors explain:
“ [The results of the experiment] clearly argue against Libet's assumption that a veto process can be consciously initiated. He used the veto in order to reintroduce the possibility to control the unconsciously initiated actions. But since the subjects are not very accurate in observing when they have [acted impulsively instead of deliberately], the act of vetoing cannot be consciously initiated.[60] ”
In decide trials the participants, it seems, were not able to reliably identify whether they had really had time to decide – at least, not based on internal signals. The authors explain that this result is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a conscious veto, but simple to understand if the veto is considered an unconscious process.[60] Thus it seems that the intention to move might not only arise from the subconscious, but it may only be inhibited if the subconscious says so. This conclusion could suggest that the phenomenon of "consciousness" is more of narration than direct arbitration (i.e. unconscious processing causes all thoughts, and these thoughts are again processed subconsciously).
Criticisms [ edit ]
After the above experiments, the authors concluded that subjects sometimes could not distinguish between "producing an action without stopping and stopping an action before voluntarily resuming", or in other words, they could not distinguish between actions that are immediate and impulsive as opposed to delayed by deliberation.[60] To be clear, one assumption of the authors is that all the early (600 ms) actions are unconscious, and all the later actions are conscious. These conclusions and assumptions have yet to be debated within the scientific literature or even replicated (it is a very early study).
The results of the trial in which the so-called "successful decide" data (with its respective longer time measured) was observed may have possible implications[clarification needed] for our understanding of the role of consciousness as the modulator of a given action or response — and these possible implications cannot merely be omitted or ignored without valid reasons, specially when the authors of the experiment suggest that the late decide trials were actually deliberated.[60]
It is worth noting that Libet consistently referred to a veto of an action that was initiated endogenously.[49] That is, a veto that occurs in the absence of external cues, instead relying on only internal cues (if any at all). This veto may be a different type of veto than the one explored by Kühn and Brass using their decide signal.
Daniel Dennett also argues that no clear conclusion about volition can be derived from Benjamin Libet's experiments supposedly demonstrating the non-existence of conscious volition. According to Dennett, ambiguities in the timings of the different events involved. Libet tells when the readiness potential occurs objectively, using electrodes, but relies on the subject reporting the position of the hand of a clock to determine when the conscious decision was made. As Dennett points out, this is only a report of where it seems to the subject that various things come together, not of the objective time at which they actually occur.
Suppose Libet knows that your readiness potential peaked at millisecond 6,810 of the experimental trial, and the |
in the Kentucky economy and figured given the entrepreneurial infrastructure that the Louisville area would receive at least half of this. I shared this plan with a handful of the most influential Louisville people with strong Frankfort ties. However, the plan that could have created hundreds if not thousands of jobs went nowhere. The Frankfort good ole boys hold onto control at all costs, even if it costs jobs.
I found out through the research for my book “Kentucky Fried Pensions” that while KRS did not have a formal “Invest in Kentucky” program, it did do millions in backroom deals involving Kentucky companies. These deals seemed to involve Northern Kentucky and Central Kentucky firms but excluded Louisville area firms. These deals mostly seemed to cash out local established firms and not promote new companies and were kept secret from the public.
Louisville is by far the largest funder of the County Employee Retirement Systems (CERS), which now holds almost two-thirds of the assets in the KRS system. An independent CERS as proposed in a resolution by Louisville Metro Councilman Jerry Miller would be able to make job-creating investments in a transparent open process.
I was on the Mandy Connell show earlier this year plugging my book, and after the interview Mandy had on Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, and he encouraged Kentucky business to move across the river where he has an 80 percent-funded pension compared to the 23 percent-funded KERS plan.
Pension underfunding has been seen as responsible for a 40 percent corporate income tax increase in Illinois, and many see a poorly funded pension as a leading indicator of major tax increases in states like Kentucky. I believe Amazon went to Indiana because of these factors, and this trend will only continue under the current structure.
Currently I believe Mayor Greg Fischer is entertaining false hopes in getting a local sales tax option out of Frankfort. Perhaps after this session, he will see the merits of taking back control of CERS as a more realistic way to jumpstart our economy and bring back jobs to Louisville.
Chris Tobe is an investment manager with Louisville-based Stable Value Consultants and author of the book “Kentucky Fried Pensions.”For six years, Alex Mesa has been running backwards throughout Miami Beach. He's appeared in tourists' YouTube videos and even completed an entire 5k in reverse.
On Saturday, police interrupted his jog.
WTVJ reported that four officers responding to a 911 call ticketed Mesa for obstructing traffic. Sgt. Robert Hernandez of the Miami Beach Police Department told the station that authorities witnessed Mesa jogging between cars.
Mesa allegedly told officers he wouldn't stop running backwards in the street. He told WTVJ he believes police singled him out because they learned of a past drug charge.
According to the Miami Sun Post Weekly, Mesa runs backwards two or three times a week for about two hours. He makes exercise a priority -- especially because in 1993 he learned he was HIV positive. He also suffers from cirrhosis, a liver condition made worse from his past with drug and alcohol addiction.
Now, he's working to recover and turn his life -- like his running -- around.The Vault is Slate’s history blog. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @slatevault, and find us on Tumblr. Find out more about what this space is all about here.
The title of this pamphlet, distributed by the War Department in 1943, could be read as a celebration or a command. Industrial foremen were told “You’re Going to Employ Women,” whether they liked it or not; the war effort demanded it. The pamphlet was meant to help them come to terms with the idea. (You can see the full document here, in PDF form.)
“A woman worker is not a man,” the anonymous author concedes. “She is a substitute—like plastics instead of metal—she has special characteristics that lend themselves to new and sometimes much superior uses.” “Industrially inexperienced” women made up for their unfamiliarity with the procedures and demands of factory work with their “desire to help win the war—to shorten it by even a minute.”
Women were “adaptable,” “dexterous.” Their presumed former occupations as housewives made them “good at repetitive tasks” and “fine color and material observants.” The idea that women were naturally adept at repetition and nimble of hand was conventional wisdom by this time, having been the justification for hiring women as secretaries or in textile factories. (Whether the idea holds any actual truth is debatable.)
People in hiring positions, the pamphlet advised, should ask women whether they had small children or “infirm dependents,” and hire locally when possible. Although World War II saw an expansion of child care options, sponsored both federally and by some individual employers, this pamphlet makes it clear that the government preferred not to see mothers using these resources, if at all possible.
This booklet [PDF] is part of the National Archives’ new permanent exhibition, Records of Rights, which will open in November—shutdown willing—in NARA’s new David M. Rubenstein Gallery.Thinktank says strong growth to be driven by high job creation, private consumption and investment
Britain’s economic recovery will continue into 2015 and 2016, driven by consumer spending and business investment, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The Paris-based thinktank said high job creation had fuelled UK growth, which it forecasts at 3% this year. The OECD is predicting growth of 2.7% in 2015 and 2.5% in 2016.
“Growth has been propelled by high job creation and is set to continue at a strong pace in 2015 and 2016, underpinned by robust private consumption and investment. Private consumption has been the main engine of the expansion, amid strong job creation, and business investment continues to recover strongly, supported by diminishing uncertainty,” the OECD said in its latest economic outlook report. “GDP growth is set to continue at a strong, if slightly easing, pace, despite fiscal consolidation.”
UK export growth has been weak so far, the organisation noted, pushing the current account deficit to close to 5% of GDP. It said exports could weaken further if eurozone growth comes in below expectations.
Wage growth – which has been unexpectedly weak in 2014 – should start to pick up, it said, adding: “Stimulating retraining and encouraging migration in occupations where shortages arise would reduce labour mismatches and support balanced growth through higher productivity.”
The OECD cautioned however that if productivity does not recover as expected, it could translate into weaker UK growth.
“Robust productivity is an essential condition for strong and sustainable growth, and uncertainty over its recovery is a major risk to the projection. Labour market pressures could disconnect real wage growth from productivity and lead to cost-push inflation.”Buy Photo The Redflex contract with Lafayette Consolidated Government could be extended a year. (Photo: Advertiser file photo)Buy Photo
Lafayette's contract for red light camera traffic enforcement may be renewed for a year, even as more than $12 million in fines remains uncollected.
If the city-parish council approves it Tuesday, the contract with Redflex Traffic Systems will be extended until June 4, 2017.
When Lafayette Consolidated Government signed a contract with Redflex in June 2007, it was supposed to be a safety measure to deter motorists from speeding and running red lights.
Opponents argue the program is designed to generate money, not make roads safer.
The company installed cameras at select intersections in the city to catch motorists who speed or run red lights. Redflex also uses two camera-equipped vans that are moved to various locations in the city.
Motorists caught speeding or running red lights are mailed a civil citation from Redflex, which splits the money with LCG.
In 2008, LCG received $1.6 million in proceeds from the Redflex program, called SafeLight and SafeSpeed, while Redflex pocketed $1.4 million.
In 2015, LCG received $1 million and Redflex $717,824, according to LCG.
MUST READ: LCG halts red light camera lawsuits
But some motorists have refused to pay.
More than 211,000 notices remain unpaid, leaving $12.4 million in fines that LCG has not collected.
Several years ago, the city started taking people and businesses to civil court to try to collect those unpaid fines, but stopped almost immediately.
The council meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in city hall, 705 W. University Ave.
READ MORE:
Read or Share this story: https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/2016/05/16/council-may-extend-redflex-contract-despite-12-million-uncollected-fines/84440436/The Berlin ePrix, which takes place on June 10, will return to the historic Tempelhof Airport in the German capital on a revised version of the track that will be revealed shortly.
The race has reverted to its original location following consultation with the Berlin authorities, who were instrumental in ensuring that the all-electric series remained in the German capital.
Commenting on the news, the governing mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller said: “Motorsport with electric motors is an advertisement for innovative technologies and sustainable urban mobility. Electromobility is the key to environmentally friendly transport in the cities of the 21st century, including Berlin. I am therefore delighted that Formula E continues to take place here. The event thrills motorsport fans and proves - in a spectacular way, in front of a special backdrop - the performance of this technology to a wide audience.”
Formula E fans who have already purchased grandstand tickets for the Karl-Marx-Allee circuit will have their tickets relocated to a Category 1 grandstand at Tempelhof, and will also be given access to a special pit walk on race day. Ticketmaster Germany will contact all ticket holders with further information once the grandstand configuration and pit walk timings are finalised for the new venue.
Tempelhof hosted the inaugural Berlin ePrix in 2015. Jarno Trulli scored the only pole position of his and the Trulli team’s Formula E career, while Lucas di Grassi won the race on the road only for his car to fail post-race scrutineering, handing a maiden win to Dragon Racing’s Jerome D’Ambrosio.Once again, Loot Crate follows up a really strong month with a hit and miss month… this one themed “Quest”. With items from Labyrinth, Harry Potter, Vikings, and Uncharted 4, this crate is a mixture of fantasy and gaming. Let’s take a look:
1. Loot Crate Exclusive Labyrinth T-Shirt
While this color combination might be exclusive, the artwork itself is not. I have seen this artwork on a shirt at least once before. I do like the look of the shirt, though.
2. Loot Crate Exclusive Harry Potter Horcruxes Socks
Probably the stand-out for me in this crate are these socks. However, I am not big on the non-shirt wearables (and I have huge feet), so these will probably go to a friend.
3. Loot Crate Exclusive Vikings Drinking Horn
Again, something I will probably re-gift… I have no need for a drinking horn.
4. Loot Crate Exclusive D-20 Ice Mold
This is probably the only thing in the crate that I will actually use. I love playing board games… I might try and make a bunch of cubes for next weekend’s International Tabletop Game Day.
5. Loot Crate Exclusive Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Poster
MAJOR miss… I cannot see many people getting this crate enjoying this “exclusive”. I know a few people who got the crate just for the Uncharted 4. I have a feeling they are not happy.
6. Loot Crate Collectible Enamel Pin (w/ Unlock Feature)
This D-20 Shield Loot Crate enamel pin also unlocks a free Gelatinous Cube Companion in Neverwinter, a free-to-play MMORPG based on Dungeons & Dragons.
Overall thoughts: For the $20 expense on the crate, I am not saying that it is a horrible crate (I have seen a lot worse come out of Loot Crate). However, there really does not seem like there is any consistency. That being said, over the past couple of years theirs lows are getting less… low. Anyone remember last year’s FANTASY crate? Huge bomb.
Want to become a Looter yourself?
Each month is a different theme, and each hits a different area of geekdom. Best yet, the monthly subscription is less than $20. Try it out for a month, as you can cancel at anytime.
Don’t wait, order today!
Happy Looting!Kurdish forces have reportedly thwarted a new attempt by ISIL fighters to cut off the Syrian town of Kobane from the border with Turkey before Iraqi Kurdish reinforcements arrive.
Sunday's pre-dawn assault marked the fourth straight day ISIL had attacked the Syrian side of the border crossing as the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters prepared to head for Kobane, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Kurdish forces, backed by US-led air strikes, have been holding out for weeks against an ISIL offensive around Kobane, which has become a high-profile symbol of efforts to stop the fighters' advance.
The US military said in its latest update that American warplanes carried out five air strikes near Kobane on Saturday and Sunday, destroying seven ISIL vehicles and an IS-held building.
Ground fighting for Kobane has killed more than 800 people since the ISIL offensive began on September 16, with ISIL losing 481 fighters and the Kurds 313, said the UK-based Syrian Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information.
Among the dead are 21 civilians, but the figures exclude ISIL losses to US-led air strikes, which the Pentagon has said run to "several hundred".
The assault prompted nearly all of the enclave's population to flee, with an estimated 200,000 refugees streaming over the border into neighbouring Turkey.
Last week, under heavy US pressure, Turkey unexpectedly announced it would allow the Peshmerga fighters to cross its territory to join the fight for Kobane.
The main Syrian Kurdish fighting force in the town has close links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency in southeastern Turkey. Turkey had previously resisted calls to allow in reinforcements.
The Peshmerga forces are "ready to go", but they are not expected to deploy to Kobane before Monday at the earliest, Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported.Fortunately, Unfortunately is a word game first played at conventions of the National Puzzlers' League in the late 1980s[citation needed]. It was invented and introduced by one-time NPL president David Scott Marley. A version of the game, called "Good News, Bad News" was popularized by the BBC radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. The game is best played in groups with an odd number of people. It is often played on Internet forums.
Gameplay [ edit ]
One person begins with a sentence (e.g., One day Little Johnny walked to the local shoe shop ).
). The next person tells of something unfortunate that happens (e.g., Unfortunately, Little Johnny was hit by a car. ).
). The following person contributes a fortunate event (e.g., Fortunately, the car was made entirely of marshmallows ).
). The fourth person will contribute an unfortunate event (e.g., Unfortunately, Johnny was allergic to marshmallows. )
) The fifth person will contribute a fortunate event (e.g., Fortunately, Johnny didn't eat any of the car.), and the process is repeated
The game does not have any specified ending point.
Book [ edit ]
There is a children's book named "Fortunately" by Remy Charlip that follows this same pattern, first published in 1964.
Serial Soliloquy Variation [ edit ]
Rather than making a single "Fortunately..." (or "Unfortunately...") statement, each person in the group can provide a long alternating list of sentences/statements. The psychological and comic effect of this form of the game is somewhat different because the same person is forced to flip rapidly between a positive and negative outlook. Players take turns in an intuitive way, like performers handing the "solo" off to another member of the group. Because of the more continuous thread of consciousness underlying the series of "Fortunately/Unfortunately" statements, this variation can also be used as a form of meditation or humor-assisted therapy[citation needed].
Performers at the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) experimented with this game in the early 1990s. Now it is commonly played within MENSA groups and with members of MENSA.
Notes [ edit ]Charles Goodyear invented more than tires! Take an entertaining peek back through the history of birth control.
By Daniel DeNoon
WebMD Feature
Reviewed By Charlotte Grayson
3000 B.C.
The condom is invented in Egypt. Ancient drawings clearly depict men wearing condoms - sometimes made of material that may have been animal hide. It's not clear what they were made of -- or whether they were used for sex or ceremonial dress.
1850 B.C.
Meet the pessary. It's the earliest contraceptive device for women. Pessaries are objects or concoctions inserted into the vagina to block or kill sperm. By 1850 B.C., Egyptians used pessaries made of crocodile dung, honey, and sodium carbonate. Crocodile dung is alkaline. But its use, note contraceptive historians Malcolm Potts and Martha Campbell, "perhaps reflects Freudian more than pharmacologic concerns."
600 B.C.
Greek colonists found Celene in North Africa. Soon after, they discover a great treasure: Silphion, reputedly the first oral contraceptive. Silphion was an herb -- thought to be a kind of giant fennel -- that grew only in the area now known as Libya. Despite heroic efforts, it could not be cultivated. Worth its weight in silver, silphion was harvested to extinction by 100 A.D.
1640 A.D.
The oldest known condoms -- dated to about 1640 -- are found in Dudley Castle near Birmingham, England. They were made of fish and animal intestines. Condoms in those days were used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases rather than for contraception.
1734
Young Giacomo Girolamo Casanova begins his amorous career. He is among the first to use condoms to prevent pregnancy. Said to prefer condoms made from lamb intestine -- still the preferred material for natural gut condoms -- he also used linen condoms tied off with a ribbon.
1844
Charles Goodyear patents vulcanization of rubber. Soon, rubber condoms are mass produced. Unlike modern condoms -- made to be used once and thrown away -- early condoms were washed, anointed with petroleum jelly, and put away in special wooden boxes for later reuse. British playwright and essayist George Bernard Shaw called the rubber condom the "greatest invention of the nineteenth century."
1844-1873
The U.S. contraceptive industry flourishes. In addition to condoms (immediately known as "rubbers"), there's widespread sale and use of intrauterine devices or IUDs, douching syringes, vaginal sponges, diaphragms and cervical caps (then called "womb veils"), and "male caps" that covered only the tip of the penis.
1873
The U.S. Congress passes the Comstock laws. Written by dry goods merchant and anti-obscenity crusader Anthony Comstock, the law makes all forms of contraception illegal. The contraceptive industry continues to flourish -- but the devices are now sold to promote "feminine hygiene."
1880s
Penniless New York City immigrant Julius Schmid gets extra sausage casings from butcher shops and makes them into skin condoms. It becomes a big business by 1890. By the 1930s, his condom empire is making millions. His Ramses and Sheik brands are still popular.
1898
Nineteen-year-old Margaret Sanger's mother dies at age 50, exhausted from giving birth to 11 children. Sanger becomes a nurse and aids survivors of botched abortions. Later she turns her attention to the development of better contraceptives. Her dream: A birth control pill.
1906
Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the mechanical harvester, is diagnosed with schizophrenia. His wife, Katherine, dreads passing on the mental illness to future children. Later she forms a partnership with birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. She funds contraception research with her sizeable fortune. This work eventually leads to the development of the birth control pill.
1930-1960
The most popular female contraceptive is Lysol disinfectant. Ads tout it as a feminine hygiene product, with testimonials from prominent European "doctors." Later investigation by the American Medical Association showed that these experts did not exist. Despite its longstanding popularity, Lysol does not work as a contraceptive.
1918
Condoms become legal in the U.S. Troops fighting in World War I ignored official Army advice to abstain from sex. They obtained condoms overseas -- and brought them home.
1921
In the 1920s, the U.S. birth rate drops by half. Condom reliability is still terrible by modern standards, but people achieved effective birth control by combining condoms, the rhythm method, male withdrawal, diaphragms, and/or intrauterine devices.
1951
Katherine McCormick funds Gregory Pincus's research into developing an oral contraceptive. Luckily two drug companies, Syntex and Searle, each developed a form of synthetic progesterone. They allow Pincus to explore use of this female hormone in his work.
1960
The Searle drug company receives FDA approval for Enovid - the first birth control pill. "The Pill" revolutionizes contraception. It's 100% effective -- but has terrible side effects, including life-threatening blood clots. Eventually it's realized that the dose is 10 times too high.
1965
The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the Comstock laws that banned contraception.
1976
A T-shaped IUD is approved by the FDA, and other designs follow. These devices are inserted by doctors and provide birth control for up to 10 years. They fall out of favor after one - the Dalkon Shield - is found to cause pelvic inflammatory disease in some women.
1980s
The modern, low-dose, two- and three-phase birth control pills become available.
1992
The FDA approves the first hormone shot to prevent pregnancy for several months at a time -- Depo Provera.
1998
The first emergency contraception is approved by the FDA. Women can take Preven pills up to 72 hours after sex to prevent pregnancy.
2000-2002
Four new birth control products are approved by the FDA - the first in a decade. Ortho Evra, a birth control "patch," slowly releases hormones through the skin, freeing women from a daily pill. NuvaRing, a small, flexible ring as big as a silver dollar, is inserted into the vagina and releases hormones for three weeks. Lunelle is a monthly hormone injection. Mirena is an IUD effective for 5 years; it also causes lighter periods for most women.
2003
The first continuous birth control pill, which women take every day to suppress their periods and provide birth control, was approved in September. Seasonale schedules four menstrual periods a year. Researchers are working on other pills that would schedule one menstrual period a year.Dominions 4 version history
Version 4.31
Version 4.30
#nowish (this monster cannot be wished for) #springshape | "monster name" #summershape | "monster name" #autumnshape | "monster name" #wintershape | "monster name" (changes into another monster when this season is active) #addupkeep (upkeep will be calculated as if the unit cost this much more to recruit) #almostundead (unit will require undead leadership to lead) #almostliving (unit will not require undead leadership to lead, even if undead. This command must come after the undead command.)
Version 4.29
#exactgold [gold amount] (like the event command #gold, except that this amount is exact and does not vary at all) #airshield [0-100] (airshield stops incoming missiles) #overcharged [stun dmg] (overcharges will give AN shock stun damage to attackers) #heat [aoe] (heat aura) #cold [aoe] (chill aura) #monpresentrec [monster nbr] | "monster name" | [-montag] (this monster can only be recruited if a unit of "monster name" type is present in the recruiting province) #ownsmonrec [monster nbr] | "monster name" | [-montag] (this monster can only be recruited if a unit of "monster name" type is owned by the recruiting player) #summonlvl2 [monster nbr] | "monster name" | [-montag] (like #summon, except that the mage summoning must be at least level 2) #summonlvl3 [monster nbr] | "monster name" | [-montag] (like #summon, except that the mage summoning must be at least level 3) #summonlvl4 [monster nbr] | "monster name" | [-montag] (like #summon, except that the mage summoning must be at least level 4)
Version 4.28
#homeshape "monster name" | [monster nbr] (unit becomes this type of monster when it is located in its home province (province where it was summoned or recruited)) #foreignshape "monster name" | [monster nbr] (unit becomes this type of monster when it is located outside its home province (province where it was summoned or recruited)) #addrandomage [years] (adds a die of 1-years (open ended) to the age for new units of this monster) #blessfly (will be able to fly when blessed)
Version 4.27
#landrec "monster name" | [monster nbr] (This unit can be recruited in overwater forts. Only use this command for underwater nations) #landcom "monster name" | [monster nbr] (This commander can be recruited in overwater forts. Only use this command for underwater nations)
Version 4.26
Version 4.25
Version 4.24
Version 4.23
#farsumcom "monster name" | [monster nbr] (sets the commander for farsummoned units to somthing other than the normal units) #notfornation [nation nbr] (restricts a spell so that it cannot be used by this nation) #transform "monster name" | [monster nbr] (transforms commander determined by target requirements into another type of monster) #slothpower [nbr] (becomes more powerful in sloth dominion) #mindslime [area] (grants the mindslime ability) #sneakunit [stealth value] (this item will grant stealth to nonstealthy units) #natural (natural weapons are not affected by flaming arrows and weapon blesses) #internal (internal damage hits inside the body and cannot be negated by effects like mirror image, mist form, mossbody, etc) #nogeosrc [terrain mask] (spell cannot be cast from any of these terrains) #onlyatsite "site name" | [site nbr] (ritual can only be cast in a province with this site) #killcappop [percent] (kills a percentage of the capital's population when the game starts. Value can be negative to increase population instead)
Version 4.22
Version 4.21
Version 4.20
Version 4.17
Version 4.16 (Pretender patch)
Version 4.14
Version 4.10
Version 4.07c
Version 4.07b
Version 4.07
Version 4.05
Version 4.04
Version 4.03 (Cave Patch)
This updated fixes two circumstances that would result in the battle replay diverging from what actually happened. There are also a few crash fixes and the usual stat fixes and improvements to modding.Choose ritual target did not remember old province namesBattle inconsistency involving Nazca fixedFix for battle inconsistency involving reincarnation unitsLarge turn files (>10 MB) could crash network game serverHost crash bug fixNew frame rate setting (120 fps)Clear the orders of mercenaries when changing ownershipCalled Horrors are summoned at edge of battlefieldItem rules are enforced immediately after polymorphSlave vessels get rid of feeblemindnowish (monster wish immunity) didn't workDragon girl is no longer cold bloodedMore Stat fixesTypos fixedPD can use montagsSeason shapes take effect earlierUnique commander summoning can use montagPolymorph caster ritual effect (10127)Couldn't give orders to troops with nation IDs over 200Sleep 10 ms before forking each processThis update comes with bug fixes for drowning immortals and network servers as well as improvements to modding.Drowning will now trigger immortality and similar effectsStale connections were not reclaimed during Waiting for Participants, could result in waiting forever to connect.2 friendly currents will now cancel each other outCheat check for non researched rituals & forgingAutohealer will now result in high pretender costProtection of Geryon immune to forge rebatesnohomelandnames resulted in too much population in ErmorMore mobile friendly status page for network gamesSet correct home province for far summoned commandersImpassable borders no longer counted for start locationsBug fix for melee range weapon aimingImproved weapon infoMetal armor fixesStat fixesEvent fixesExecute mods before browsing pretendersNew monster mod commands: #nowish, #springshape (x4)New monster/item mod command: #addupkeepNew monster mod commands: #almostundead, #almostlivingCreate temporary units in their correct shapeFix for temp summonings with montagsShow icon for negative mastersmith ability tooFlush gl queue before forkingThis update comes with new commands for modders, bug fixes and some other small improvements.Incorrect value for darkvision shown in statsAI could construct forts under water even with land nations that shouldn'tBlood Vortex incorrectly gave events in non-blood vortex provinces.Fort repair strength for mindless units was incorrectStart options --mapdirt/col/size didn't workTransformation can no longer transform to the same creaturePotential battle inconsistency fixRemoved false warning in debug logIncreasing PD could result in negative gold leftAdded popups in map filter menuMake sure CPU doesn't sleep unnecessarilyError checks for write failure to fatherland fileBetter error handling for missing or corrupted filesBlood Slaves are now properly tagged as femalesShade Beast size 1 -> 2Dog size 2 -> 1Event fixesDescription fixesStat fixesNew event modding command: #exactgoldNew item/monster commands: #airshield, #overchargedNew item commands: #heat, #coldNew monster commands: #monpresentrec, #ownsmonrecNew site commands: #summonlvl2, #summonlvl3, #summonlvl4Death power can be negative for growth power#req_fornation couldn't be used many times#req_gold didn't work#req_cave didn't work#guardspirit can now use negative valuesThis update has some bug fixes and tweaks as well as some new modding features. It should also fix the sound that stopped working for Mac users that updated to OSX version 10.12.Can change battle log details from battle menuA few wishes got improved effectsAdded a few missing adjustments when viewing strength detailsCurse of Stones now affects units when they fly as wellDon't remove slave/master-vessels from overpopulationArmy of rats didn't result in the battle fright it was supposed toPotential crash during host fixMemory leak fixedDescription fixesStat fixesNow possible to start dominions even when a mod is missing its nameNew monster commands: #homeshape, #foreignshape, #addrandomageNew monster/item command: #blessflyCan use #nextspell 0 to remove nextspell#berserk fix#slothpower now works for monsters tooPortaudio supportPortaudio is default for OSX 10.12 and laterThis update has a bunch of modding improvements, mainly raising some modding limits so that more modded nations can be enabled at once. The new version has been tested with the help of nationgen and a mod creating 75 random nations works fine now. There are also the usual general improvements and bug fixes as well as some tweaks to the AI.Domes and some other enchantments are no longer visible in battlesCommunion single target spells didn't affect non commander slavesStrength enchantment bonus from some spells now printed in statsBattle log fix for protective forceTherodos Kourete didn't spawn under ally's controlStream of Life now causes internal damageFaster setting up start positions for games with huge number of playersSlothpower didn't work correctlyDescription fixesEvent fixesStat fixesAI don't cast sea globals when there are too few sea provincesSpell AI improvementsIncreased max number of descriptions with about 2000Increased max number of events 4000 -> 5000Increased max number of magic abilities with 2000Max nation number increased 199 -> 249Mod parsing no longer sees e.g. #berserker as #bers#clearrec also clears all terrain dependent recruitment for a nationNew commands #landrec and #landcom for recruitment in all overwater forts for uw-nationsThis is mostly an AI & UI patch. Most of the work has gone into improving the late game behavior of the AI. It should now be able to utilize its resources more efficiently and be more likely to get to a position where it can cast high level rituals. There has also been some improvements to the user interface, like more 'goto province' buttons on messages, shift click support in more places and more keyboard shortcuts.God & nation popup in global enchantment screenDarkvision from throne bless was counted twiceFixed some bonuses when viewing att/def detailsGoto province for scout attacked messagesGoto province for more ritual messagesctrl+s to view saved orders (army setup screen)Message for fort construction completedShift transfers 5 gems at a timeKeyboard shortcuts f/a/w/e/... to transfer gems to commanderGem transfer box can be closed by Return as wellShift changes PD 5 steps at a time+/- can also be used to change PDIce Strike now causes slashing damageTransformation & feeblemind/mindless fixStrands of Arcane Power cannot be cast by mindless castersBlind & losteye fixStat & cost fixesTypos fixedBe less willing to do suicidal attacksRecruitment improvementsLearned to cast a few more type of ritualsForge item choice improvementsImproved magic item distributionDedicated ritualist for improved high level ritual castingEmpowerment tweaksImproved preaching behaviorSpell AI no longer targets destruction/rust at units with only natural protectionMultiple same type of event effects didn't workRemoved false warning for #flaglandYs is a new nation that comes from Ker-Ys that was once the most splendid city in the world. Long ago Ker-Ys was sunken far beneath the waves to protect the Tuatha living there and has not been seen since then. Now with the coming of the new god the city has risen from beneath the waves and the splendor of the bronze-walled city has returned for all to witness. In addition to a new nation there has been work to ensure that really huge battles run smoothly as well as many balance changes, mostly by tweaking the costs of units. There are also the usual bug fixes and some minor new features.New nation: Ys (middle ages)Performance improvement for battlesViewing enormous battles could crash the gameFixed graphical glitches for enormous battlesCan now delete old network connections with DelNumber of old network connections saved increased, 6 -> 8Typos fixedEvent fixesStat and description fixesBalance changes, many units have tweaked costs or statsMaster Smith info printed on magic itemsAge 10 years after Bind Demon Lord didn't workCasters will spread out Encase in Ice moreTherodos dominion now creates ghosts for disciple forts as wellErmor/Lemuria random gods starts with sloth 3Mindless are not affected by feeblemindMindless cannot get feeblemind/dementia from ordinary meansMind Hunt & Astral Projection cannot be cast by mindlessSplit Teleport icon into Teleport/BlinkFix for reading 64-bit values from mods on Mac OSXMaster ritualist fixes#twohanded should work nowModding nametypes cleared Oceania namesThis is a small bug fix update that mainly fixes a few annoying bugs with modded game that were introduced in version 4.23.Event fixFix for caster only losing a limb when he should die insteadFixed bug preventing mod.trn files from being foundRemove keyfiles on fail.Fix for reading 64-bit values on windowsGame crashed when running a game after running a modded gameNew monsters for early R'lyeh: Grandmother, Androleth, Androdai, AbodaiNew ritual for Aboleths: Mind VesselTurn limit for arrival of the more powerful heroesEvent fixes & new eventsUW units for MA/LA Xibalba and LA MictlanFort PD for MA/LA Xibalba and LA MictlanSlaves now have halved upkeepFix for incorrect seduction messageRemove floating text when exiting battle replayDescription for Favored of EnkiSolar Brilliance cannot be cast in cavesCursed items changed width of magic item treasuryChanged temple picture for UrRebate for shape shifter gods wasn't shown correctlyGorgon can no longer petrify stone beingsg can now be used instead of # for goto province numberFoul Vapors got wrong enchantment icon in battleFixed host crash involving Strands of Arcane PowerFile handle cleanupFix for potential battle inconsistency with Vafur FlamesAnother potential battle inconsistency fixedTherodos popkill loweredTherodos spectres increased/decreased with death/growthTherodos slight increase in freespawn spectresTherodos reduction in freespawn sacredsEphor cost 8 -> 7Therodian Philosopher cost 8 -> 11Morale malus from dominion does not affect undeadErmor and Lemuria morale malusDancers size 2 -> 3Korybantes recruited in couples (limit 2)Korybantes descr changedPolypal spawn could not deal damage at all. Got new tiny tentacle with dmg 1.More bronze weapon stat fixesLess iron equipment on underwater troopsMemory cleanup after using listsMake sure incorporate cannot give negative effectsFix potentially weird host bugMore responsive random map creationTypos and stat fixesInsert/remove province didn't move along names and special bordersSmaller icon for pulseaudioBetter cleanup after modsSome commands take 64-bit valuesNo more 'pointless...fx' after setting an ability to zeroFirst/secondshape can now use negative montag valuesNew weapon commands: #natural, #internalNew spell commands: #nogeosrc, #onlyatsite, #notfornation, #farsumcomNew monster commands: #slothpower, #mindslimeNew item commands: |
in fact, built to service the silica mine) at first and was very popular with people walking off their Sunday lunch. We were down in the bottom of the valley now and it was nearing 3pm the light levels were quite low. Processing these images I found that the camera (which I had set to automatic sensitivity to light) was at its highest setting and even then a couple of pics were blurred because my shutter speed was insufficient.
At the point where another stream joins the Neath we decided that we really didn’t have time to take the left hand fork to the path, above which are two more waterfalls (Sgwd Gwladys and Scwd Enion Gam) but kept to the River Neath. We did pass these splendid “Horseshoe falls” before reaching the fine stone bridge at Pont Melin Fach.
In the ever- increasing gloom our conversation moved seamlessly from Christian faith to death and dying and I felt rather pleased afterwards that we had felt safe to talk freely about such potentially difficult areas.
At Pont Melin Fach we started at first to try to follow the path that hugs the river side but it appeared to disappear and it really was quite gloomy so we retraced our steps and opted to take the minor road that joins the one we had both taken to the car park. Paul became a little anxious that we were going in the wrong direction and I did my best to reassure him and he was fine when we got to the more familiar road.
Then he became anxious that, it being now almost dark, we might find our cars locked into the car park. Since we both remember that there was gate at the car park, and a hut that no doubt contains things of value, I joined Paul in this anxiety and for the next mile and a half we contemplated what we might do if we were locked in. Would there be an emergency number to ring? Would we have a signal to phone anyway? Was there an nearby property we could approach? Would they shoot us if we knocked on their door in the dark? (and, privately for me, would I need to ask Paul if I could stay at his house? What would we have for supper? Would I like Sue’s cooking?).
I think I can safely say that there was much rejoicing to find the gate open and our cars still there and intact. I took a sweet from Paul in celebration and gave him a hug.Nebraska Senator Burke Harr looks for new state flag via crowdsourcing
Image of the Nebraska State Flag (Photo11: HO-Handout)
Nebraska is in desperate need of a new flag, and Senator Burke Harr is crowdsourcing ideas for its redesign.
There have been several red flags indicating the current design isn’t exactly memorable. Nebraska’s state flag was ranked the second worst flag in the U.S. and Canada on two separate lists, and it recently flew upside down over the state capitol without anyone noticing --- for ten straight days.
Nebraska's state capitol building, where the state flag was flown upside down for 10 days straight. (Photo11: Jim Stembridge)
The solution? Senator Harr is taking online submissions for a new state flag design.
Harr put out a call Monday to the online creative community Skillshare asking artists to create a new state flag. There have already been a few submissions, and Harr will judge the designs himself before passing the best ones along to Nebraskan officials as potential candidates.
Harr is hoping to have a design underway in time for the state's 150th anniversary this year.
A blog post on Skillshare about the flag design competition comes with a little inspiration for artists, including guidelines on creating flags from the North American Vexillological Association. Flags should be fairly simple: no seals, easy enough for a child to draw from memory, maximum of three colors, etc.
“The Nebraska flag breaks almost every one of those rules,” a representative from Harr’s office, Jamison Wyatt, commented.
In its current form, the flag is the state seal emblazoned in gold and silver over a blue background. Designed in 1921 by Florence Hazen Miller, the flag features a steamboat in the Missouri River, a train heading toward the Rocky Mountains, and a blacksmith at his anvil.
Harr told theOmaha World Herald that the flag doesn’t stand out or represent a modern Nebraska.
Crowdsourcing ideas from the public doesn’t always go smoothly, as the British government learned last year when people voted to name a $300 million research vessel Boaty McBoatface.
Hopefully, Nebraska will have better luck.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2tlDpoNHapless Monkey Single-Handedly Triggers Nationwide Blackout In Kenya
Enlarge this image toggle caption Ben Curtis/AP Ben Curtis/AP
A small monkey brought Kenya's electrical infrastructure to its knees for more than three hours on Tuesday with a nationwide blackout.
The Kenya Electricity Generating Co. explained the monkey was climbing on a roof at the Gitaru Power Station when it dropped onto a transformer and tripped it. That set off a chain reaction, according to the company's statement: "This caused other machines at the power station to trip on overload resulting in a loss of more than 180 MW from this plant which triggered a national power blackout."
The monkey survived the ordeal and has been turned over to the Kenyan Wildlife Service, KenGen said.
Gitaru is the "largest hydropower station in East Africa," according to Business Daily Africa.
The news site adds that "businesses bore the brunt of the outage." As Reuters reports, "Kenyan businesses regularly complain that power cuts — due to its aging grid — and unreliable supplies make them uncompetitive and hurt growth."
In its statement, KenGen called the monkey business an "isolated incident." It added that its power installations "are secured by electric fencing which keeps away marauding wild animals." Now, the company says it is "looking at ways of further enhancing security at all our power plants."
The offending primate appeared to be a vervet monkey in a photo published on KenGen's Facebook page. If it is indeed a vervet monkey, as The Washington Post notes, "it would not be the first of its species accused of wreaking havoc in the country."
A 2007 BBC article (with the headline "Monkey misery for Kenyan women villagers") describes a pack of nearly 300 vervet monkeys descending on the village of Nachu, destroying crops and making "sexually explicit gestures" at local women.Evan does 20 Questions with Galleywinter
Turnpike Troubadours have taken the Texas/Red Dirt scene by storm the last couple years with a mix of excellent songwriting, superior musicianship and a killer live show. Turnpike frontman Evan Felker displays wisdom beyond his years in his lyrics and has garnered well-deserved attention from respected writers for his process and dedication. This edition of 20 Questions finds Felker and the rest of the Troubadours on the cusp of recording their highly anticipated follow-up album to Diamonds and Gasoline and continuing to play for growing crowds. Check out the interview to find out about Evan’s karaoke song of choice, playing a gig during a riot, why to avoid root beer shots in Amarillo, what to expect from the next Turnpike Troubadour album and probably the best explanation of Texas/Red Dirt music I’ve ever heard.
1. 2010 and the first half of 2011 saw a dramatic rise in the popularity of your band with increased radio play and an ambitious touring schedule through Texas, Oklahoma and beyond. What’s on tap for the rest of 2011 and beyond?
A new album, that’s always the next step. We have been touring on this one for a year and a half. With a new album comes a certain necessary vitality to the live show. Other than the new record it’s just shows. We are going to play shit-loads of shows…I might even grow a mustache too.
2. Your music and songwriting has a very cool old-school vibe without sounding dated. You’ve managed to take arrangements featuring fiddles, harmonicas and banjos and have them sound very contemporary. What inspired you to create this type of sound?
We were in a pretty interesting predicament when we started in that, we were writing our own music and trying to play it in these rough old bars and dance halls. There wasn’t any sort of a comfortable singer/songwriter environment where we could share our thoughts with like-minded people, it was either somebody’s porch or the bars. As a band, we became a product of both our influences and our environment. It wasn’t something that we sat in a room and dreamed up in one day. The process has taken years and it is still ongoing.
3. Name association:
-Jason Boland- Honky Tonk Hero
-Jason Eady-Good friend and great singer/songwriter
-Roger Ray- Solidarity
-Mike McClure- Prolific
4. How did y’all come up with the band’s name? Was there ever any thought to just going with your name?
I honestly never wanted to be a solo artist. I had always wanted to be in a band. Casey Sliger (original Turnpike Troubadours guitarist) and I spent every Friday driving from Okmulgee back to the places we grew up and the route generally involved the Indian Nation Turnpike. The Troubadours part of the name came from an unnatural love for Steve Earle, and from the fact that we were an acoustic duo playing folk music in beer joints. We didn’t know then that the word troubadour is the most commonly misspelled word in the English language (laughs).
5. Y’all are definitely the latest torchbearers in the Red Dirt scene that started with Bob Childers et al. Is having the weight of that tradition and influence of all those who came before you an honor or a burden at times?
Not at all. Bands like the Great Divide, The Stragglers, and Ragweed made it a hell of a lot easier for us to get our music out there. I just hope that they like what we are doing.
6. As a new artist in this scene, you’ve had plenty of opportunities where you’ve had to win the crowd over and been successful at it. What has it been like to get in front of crowds who have been unfamiliar with your music at the start of your set, but have them dancing and screaming for more by the time you walk offstage?
It doesn’t always happen that way. We have had to deal with our share of assholes. That being said, it always feels like a win if people enjoy what we do and have fun. It always feels like a job well done.
7. Favorite touring memory of the following towns:
-Austin- Other than Nashville, Austin is the town that has a reputation for kicking more people’s asses than any other. It has been really rewarding to be able to go and do well for ourselves there.
-Ft. Worth- Billy Bob’s was great. We always try to go and see Barry at Cooper’s BBQ. It’s the best pork chop on earth. Dinner? Huh, Barry?
-Tulsa- Our early gigs at the Mercury Lounge. We met Brandon Clark, Rodney Parker, and Jason Eady there. Also, headlining the Cain’s Ballroom was a highlight in our career.
-Amarillo- We were loading in at Hoot’s Pub and the early crowd kept sending us root beer shots. They insisted that the shot was only a half and half mixture of root beer and beer. After ten or twelve shots, no shit, they told us that it was root beer schnapps. By that time we were hammered…that time being 7PM! Lucky for us, they decided to record the show and send it home with us. Lucky for them, we didn’t have the energy or tools to kill ourselves (laughs)
-Stillwater- There are too many to count in Stillwater, two years worth of living there. After the shows we always would go back to our house and play songs with all of our friends there. I really miss those days.
8. With the rising price of gasoline, it will soon cost as much as diamonds. Which would you recommend stocking up on?
Neither…go with gold. Gold is a sound investment.
9. Let’s talk a bit about your playing. When did you first pick up a guitar? Who taught you to play? When did you add harmonica to the mix?
I started playing guitar when I was around fifteen, I learned from books and from high school friends. I initially started playing rock songs and that progressed into bar standards, which in turn progressed into Townes and Steve Earle. I started playing harmonica for accompaniment to solo acoustic songs. The cross harp stuff I started doing during shows and it was too fun to stop.
10. Your band is comprised of some very seasoned and gifted players, could you tell us a little about each member and what they contribute to the Turnpike Troubadour sound?
R.C Edwards, bass – He’s extensively educated, his nickname is “The Rooster”
and he can throw the absolute hell out of a baseball.
Ryan Engleman, lead guitar,- Ryan’s an absolute computer wizard, he grows arguably the best beard on earth, and he has a brother, Patrick, that’s a bit of a wildcard.
Kyle Nix, fiddle- Obsessed with diet and fitness, into MMA and he’s our resident demolitions expert.
Giovanni Carnuccio, drums- He’s Possibly Sicillian…I’m not sure. He consumes an entire large pizza for lunch daily, and he has the ability to strike up a conversation with any living human being regardless of sex, race, or language
11. The music business is moving away from the business model it clung to for nearly 60 years and is in the midst of an ongoing transition that is geared to benefit independent, touring musicians as revenue is almost solely touring based now. That obviously is good for your band…what do you think about that?
I try not to concern myself with that part of the music business. I’m glad that people can get their music out there easier, but when it comes to keeping up with business trends…I’m out.
I know it’s naive but I still operate on two key principles:
1) If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is…don’t be an idiot.
2) Money is the product of a job well done…work your ass off.
12. Stories behind the following songs:
-1968- There are many people in this country who are capable of great things. The entire concept of the song is someone recognizing that potential in a person that they know.
-Every Girl- John Fullbright wrote most of it and hit a wall. He was gracious enough to let me finish it instead of throwing it away. I owe him one.
-The Funeral- The song is the summation of all the funerals that Mike McClure and I have ever been to. Mac came up with the prodigal son thing. Jimmy is just a shit head guy. You love him and you get a beer and catch up a few times a year, generally at a wedding… or a funeral.
-7&7- Everyone gets into the situation sooner or later that involves the ex-love of your life and a public display of how great their life is without you. The lyrics are comprised of a thousand different moments and scenarios that run through his head from the time he sees her up until he reacts. You know when your life flashes before your eyes before a car wreck? It’s like that but in a grocery store, and boring.
-Whole Damn Town- Don’t date the prettiest girl in town; if you must, don’t lose her. If she leaves you, I suggest relocating.
-Diamonds and Gasoline- The main character loves a woman whose tastes are more lavish than his salary.
-Down on Washington- That song is about a Mike Hosty show on the strip in Stillwater, OK, and the events that transpired thereafter.
13. It is often said that an artist has their entire life to write for their debut album, but has to write for the second one in 6 months. You’ve already released two albums, so have you already started writing for the next record? And, what is your general writing process…melody or lyrics first?
The next album is already written, unless we stumble upon another good song between now and then. As for the process, to be honest, it always varies. I am constantly compiling phrases, idioms, and stories, basically anything interesting I come across. I do the same with melody and arrangements. There can be years between the moment that a set of words or melody inspires me and the time that I finally finish the song. Luckily, I have six or seven years of back catalog to lean on.
14. If you were forced at gunpoint to sing karaoke for one song…what’s Evan Felker’s go to song?
No gun needed…just maybe a few shots. “Much Too Young” by Garth Brooks every time.
15. I’ve heard it said that load-in is like buying the groceries, performing is like cooking the meal and load-out is doing the dishes. What’s your least favorite musical chore?
Sound check sucks…not compared to the shit that I would have to do if I didn’t play, but yeah, sound check sucks (laughs).
16. You can’t play music for a living in the honkytonks of Oklahoma and Texas and not see some really crazy stuff. Share a story of one of the craziest thing you’ve seen at one of your gigs.
Once during a show in Duncan, OK, there was a small-to-medium sized race riot. I don’t have a huge frame of reference on the subject…but the moral of the story as I saw it is don’t do meth kids!
17. If you had to be locked in a roadside motel room with one of the following until you co-wrote a song…who would it be and why?
-Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, or Bob Dylan?
Woody Guthrie is my favorite of the three. His songs shed light on real situations of the time that many people weren’t aware of and, in doing that, he was able to positively impact the lives of his fellow man. Also, we were born in the same town. Everyone I know is sick of me talking about that.
18. Rapid fire:
-Favorite shot? Cheap tequila…dressed.
-Favorite vintage clothing store? Our trailer
-Guadalupe River or Illinois River? The Glover
19. What’s your favorite George Strait song?
“Amarillo By Morning”…no contest.
20. What elements do you think make Texas and Red Dirt music different than mainstream country music?
I believe that, at its best representation, this music can come from a very honest place. I doubt seriously that Jerry Jeff Walker or Doug Sahm ever wrote with a target demographic in mind, and I know for a fact that Townes Van Zandt didn’t. This music, at its best, can put into words what we have been thinking for our entire lives, and at its shittiest, it sells beer and makes people happy. Either of those is fine with me.Nov 28, 2016
Washington, D.C.- Representatives Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) today requested an immediate meeting with White House and Department of Justice officials to demand accountability for alarming treatment of Water Protectors and peaceful demonstrators at the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, and to denounce the closure of the Oceti Sakowin camp. The lawmakers, who jointly led 21 Members of Congress in urging President Obama to deescalate the tension at Standing Rock in a November 14 letter, noted today that circumstances since then have only deteriorated:
“[H]eadlines of mass injuries, frigid water being sprayed at demonstrators in sub-freezing temperatures, and of rubber bullets and similar anti-riot weapons being fired at peaceful, unarmed civilians, make it clear that this situation is only getting worse. Additionally, the Army Corps of Engineers letter announcing the closure of the Oceti Sakowin camp to demonstrators represents a concerning and disappointing course of action by the federal government.
“We question the plan and reasoning given by the Army Corps of Engineers to close the Oceti Sakowin camp to the Water Protectors. The members of the Standing Rock Sioux and the hundreds of Americans who join them in opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline are constitutionally protected in their right to peaceably assemble.”
The full text of Reps. Huffman and Grijalva’s meeting request is available here.Ice-three (Ice III )
Ice III unit cell
Ice-three (ice III) is formed from water at 300 MPa by lowering its temperature to 250 K (see Phase Diagram). It is stable over a relatively small range of conditions in the P-T phase space. Its unit cell, which forms tetragonal crystals (Space group P4 1 2 1 2, 92; Laue class symmetry 4/mmm; analogous to keatite silica), is shown on the right. In the crystal, all water molecules are hydrogen-bonded to four others, two as donor and two as acceptor. Ice III contains five-membered rings joined as bicyclo-heptamers and has a density of 1.16 g cm-3 (at 350 MPa where water density = 1.13 g cm-3). The hydrogen-bonding is disordered and continuously changing as in hexagonal ice. The tetragonal crystal (shown below) is pseudo-cubic with cell dimensions 6.666 Å (a) and 6.936 Å (c; 90º, 90º, 90º; at 250 K and 280 MPa) [385] and contains 12 water molecules. Its structure consists of tight right-handed a four-fold helices, containing two-thirds of the water molecules, connected by the remaining water molecules which, thus, experience a differing molecular environment.
Ice-three crystal Metastable ice-three may be formed within the ice-two phase space by raising the compression rate in the density-driven phase transition from hexagonal ice down to 170 K [1545]. Ice-three has triple points with liquid water and ice Ih (-21.985 °C, 209.9 MPa), liquid water and ice-five (-16.986 °C, 350.1MPa), ice Ih and ice-two (-34.7 °C, 212.9 MPa) and ice-two and ice-five (-24.3 °C, 344.3 MPa). The relative permittivity (dielectric constant) of ice-three is about 117. Note that in this structural diagram the hydrogen bonding is ordered whereas in reality it is random (obeying the 'ice rules': two hydrogen atoms near each oxygen, one hydrogen atom on each O····O bond). This disorder gives rise to a zero-point entropy close to 3.423 J mol-1 K-1 [2153]. As the H-O-H angle does not vary much from that of the isolated molecule, the hydrogen bonds are not straight (although shown so in the figures). The melting curve for ice-three is given by MPa [1320].
The ordered hydrogen-bonding form of ice III is ice IX (ice-nine).
Interactive Jmol structures are given.
Footnotes
a Therefore the crystals are chiral. [Back]No investment is without risk. You may feel safe even when you do what financial advisers consider the “right thing” — invest in a broad stock market index fund with a long-term view — but there is risk there as well. Unfortunately, to build wealth over time, investors need to accept a significant amount of risk. Leaving money in risk-free investments such as high-yield savings accounts isn’t investing at all. By taking on very little risk, keeping the bulk of your wealth in a savings account practically guarantees you’ll lose purchasing power over the long term due to the rising costs of goods that you might buy with that money.
If you’re interested in growing your wealth over long periods of time — and most middle class investors will need to grow wealth rather than just preserve it if financial independence is an appealing goal — you’ll need to consider riskier investments than savings accounts. There is a dizzying selection of investment types ranging across the entire risk spectrum, from money market funds — low-risk investments similar to savings accounts — to complex financial derivatives — risky financial moves often best left to professional investors.
Anyone who has ever invested in a 401(k) plan has had the opportunity to be familiar with risk profiling. To help you design your retirement portfolio, most 401(k) managers allow you to select your investments based on your appetite for risk. By asking the investor several questions about how they would react to different levels of investment performance, these 401(k) tools will categorize the investor based on risk tolerance: usually low, medium, and high.
Measuring and evaluating the risk involved in any investment is a little more complex. While an investor’s risk tolerance can be categorized or marked on a scale, an investment’s risk should be plotted using several dimensions. To evaluate an investment, you should consider the different types of risk that could affect its performance in order to determine whether the investment is appropriate for you.
Market risk
Market risk considers a broader picture. If you are invested in stocks, particularly if you choose the less expensive (but not necessarily safer) route of investing in a broad stock-based index fund, you have to accept that the overall economic condition of the country — or even the world — will cause your investment’s value to fluctuate. Market risk is relevant also for investments in single companies, bonds, or other products.
A market crash or decline could crush this investment’s performance, even if the quality of your investment remains the same. Investments also follow trends. For several decades, real estate could appear to be a “good” investment, encouraging more people to buy real estate, driving up prices for everyone else. Once the overall sentiment of investors switches to the belief that real estate is overpriced, your property could lose potential value even though the structure hasn’t changed.
Default risk
Default risk is related to the quality of the underlying investment, and it is more apparent when investing in a single company, through stocks or bonds. If you invest in a company’s bond or a municipality’s, you generally expect a guaranteed return. The promised return is usually higher than what a savings account would provide, but you face the risk of default. If the company files for bankruptcy of if the municipality is mismanaged, it’s possible you won’t receive the return you were promised.
Pensions, thought to be stable investments for retirements, are also exposed to default risk. Today, your company may be promising all retirees access to free health care, but if your company later restructures, that promised benefit might disappear. The government offers a type of insurance for companies that offer pensions, but sometimes that insurance isn’t enough to ensure all pensioners receive exactly what had been promised.
Inflation risk
Financial planners like to assume that inflation runs about 3 or 4 percent a year over long periods of time. This allows planners and investors to calculate expected “real” returns for an investment. If you assume inflation is 3 percent and your savings account earns 1 percent APY, your real return is a loss of 2 percent a year. This real return takes the effect of inflation into account.
There is a chance, however, that during any particular time, the measure of inflation — or for a more accurate description in this case, the increase of the cost of goods — is significantly more than 3 percent. If the country were to enter a period of hyperinflation, investments in your savings account until banks offer more appropriate interest rates would result in devastating losses when compared to consumer prices. When a gallon of milk costs $25, a gallon of gasoline costs $30, and a movie ticket costs $75, it will be much harder to get by on the same income you had with today’s prices.
Mortality risk
Consider mortality risk when you have or are considering investments in pensions, insurance contracts, annuities, or any investment with a long-term horizon. Annuities are the best examples. If your annuity payments or distributions to you continue only as long as you’re alive, you run the risk of dying before you receive enough of your benefit to make the premium payments and fees worthwhile. If your investment strategy focuses solely on the long-term, there is a chance that you will never live to enjoy the benefits.
Life is short. It’s almost always shorter than you would want it to be. But mortality risk runs in the opposite direction as well. If you live longer than expected, and you have tried to plan your financial life so you fully expend your wealth during retirement, you run the risk of running out of money.
Spend some time to think about the risks of your investments. You may discover that your tolerance for risk is lower than you expected or that you’ll need to adjust to accepting more risk in order to meet your financial goals.
The original article can be found at ConsumerismCommentary.com:
"Four Risks of Investing"Parents in a California school district are freaking the fuck out because their kids are learning about sex from Planned Parenthood.
The Acalanes Union High School District in Contra Costa County (which includes Acalanes, Las Lomas, Miramonte and Campolindo High Schools) has had a partnership with Planned Parenthood for the last ten years. According to school officials, it's common practice to contract sexual education curriculum out to the organization because their representatives are more comfortable discussing the material with students and they have the most up-to-date information about the issues at hand. Sounds like a completely reasonable and downright healthy attitude for a school to take about such a serious topic, especially considering a lot of the other backwards ass bullshit schools try to pull these days.
On Oct. 6, freshmen at Acalanes Union High School participated in a sex education course taught by an educator from Planned Parenthood. This prompted some parents (probably ones who are new to the district and this practice) to absolutely lose their shit. Taking a page from the Duggars' "Keep Your Boners Away From Our Vaginas Before Marriage" book, some parents are furious about this arrangement, according to KPIX San Francisco. They're outraged, I tell you! Outraged!
"I feel outraged. I feel sad, and I'm worried for the future of these kids," parent Camille Giglio told KPIX 5. Giglio, parent of an Acalanes Union High School District student, is a spokeswoman for the newly-formed NOISE (No to Irresponsible Sex Education) Coalition.
NOISE? Their group is actually named NOISE? That sounds like the name of a fake concerned parents group in a John Waters movie.
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"Planned Parenthood is a business. It's a business that sells sex. It's a way to get clientele and to sexualize young people and turn them into lifelong clients," Giglio told KPIX.
No, it's not. The Bunny Ranch is a business that sells sex. Planned Parenthood is a organization that provides safe and affordable reproductive health care services for women. But Giglio seems to be hung up on the idea that Planned Parenthood is some kind of sexual Amway operation, according to the Contra Costa Times:
"This is nothing but a sales meeting," said [Giglio], a Walnut Creek resident and ardent opponent of Planned Parenthood. "They're accessing students to find present and future clients without parents understanding what is going on in the classroom."
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"I never felt Planned Parenthood was promoting their own services or encouraging us to have sex," said Megan Yee, who is sadly probably now addicted for life to free pamphlets from Planned Parenthood.
Good lord this is all a bunch of bullshit, said school administrators in slightly less colorful language. "Our board has long supported comprehensive sexual health and HIV/AIDS prevention," district superintendent John Nickerson told the Contra Costa Times. He said abstinence was also emphasized during the program.
NOISE wants to see another group take over the presentation. I'm pretty sure this is their top choice for a presenter.
AdvertisementAre car buyers paying a lot of attention to gas mileage when they make their choices?
An auto dealer in Maine is disagreeing with the chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association on the issue. Adam Lee writes that yes, customers care a lot.
He writes:
News outlets across the county have reported on comments made by Ed Tonkin, Chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association. Mr. Tonkin has said, "Consumers today are not buying cars based on fuel economy." Mr. Tonkin makes this statement as the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation are working to increase Federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards.
I respectfully disagree with him.
The Toyota Prius first went on sale in Japan in 1997, making it the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle in the world. By September 2010, the Prius reached worldwide cumulative sales of two million units.
You can't sell two million of anything if people don't want it:
I do not know Ed Tonkin that well; I have met him a handful of times, but I know him well enough to know that I like him. He is the head of a huge car dealership chain in Oregon with at least 15 showrooms in roughly 17 markets. The Ron Tonkin Family of Dealerships is Oregon's 17th largest private employer and was voted "One of the Best 100 Companies in Oregon to Work For".
I am the chairman of a fairly large dealership chain in Maine. And, while we both sell many of the same brands like Honda, Nissan, Toyota and Dodge, he has Ferrari and I have a lot of used car stores.
If given the choice, I would like to be Ed Tonkin. Not only is he the chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, he is smart, handsome, a great car dealer, and he sells Ferraris (I still have to look up how to spell it). His dealerships are forward-looking, as evidenced by the variety of headlines I came across when looking up his dealership.
"The Ron Tonkin Family of Dealerships, a Ward's Automotive Top 10 eDealer, launches a new site for fuel-efficient transportation featuring Hybrid, Flex Fuel, Diesel, Motorcycles and information supporting a 'Greener' Lifestyle."
So my question is: Ed, why are you saying that people don't want to buy fuel-efficient cars when your own business has devoted resources to capture those consumer dollars? Why tell the world that we should not be looking 15 years ahead for even better fuel economy standards? This country recently ushered in the first change to fuel economy standards in 25 years. We went from 27.5 miles per gallon (mpg) for cars to 35 mpg by 2016. That is an increase of 7.5 mpg in five years. We got these new standards in the midst of the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors. Detroit and the rest of the industry have finally embraced these standards. I think the smartest thing for all of us to do is to plan ahead. The auto industry needs a huge amount of lead time to plan for the future; waiting until the last minute is not wise.
Ed also mentioned recently that, "It's good to be environmentally conscious, but don't get ahead of the consumer." Well, that depends on whether you want to be ahead or behind the market. Was Apple afraid of introducing the iPod because it might have been ahead of the consumer? When the Prius was introduced worldwide in 2001, Toyota was definitely ahead of the consumer. By May of 2008, they had sold one million vehicles, but it took about seven years. By September of 2010, they had sold two million vehicles. It took only two years and four months to sell the second million. That's not bad. Ford didn't even sell two million vehicles in the U.S. in all of 2008.
When Toyota first came out with the Prius, we didn't even know we wanted them. It's obvious now that consumers have caught up with Toyota. You can't sell two million of anything if people don't want it. Consumers absolutely want cars that go farther on a tank of gas and pollute less.
I don't drive a Prius; I don't want to. I drive a hybrid through, and today, if I wanted to buy a new one, I can now choose from dozens of styles. I could also drive a clean diesel that gets 35-40 mpg, or I could drive a hot-looking Chevy Malibu that gets 33 mpg. Or, I could drive a really nice Jeep Grand Cherokee that only gets 22 mpg. I have the choice and I want to continue to have the choice. One day, I would like to be able to choose a vehicle that gets between 45 and 60 mpg and maybe even an American vehicle at that. I don't want to wait for gas to hit $5 per gallon before we get there.
I believe that the U.S. auto industry is crucial to our nation. I want to see them succeed, which is why I do not want to wait for them to figure out what to do. I have consumers demanding cars that go further on a dollar now. I have consumers demanding SUVs that get more than 22 mpg and I have consumers telling me about the new technologies that will help get us there. But, even if I wasn't hearing this from consumers, our country should not wait for consumers to demand cars that get 60 mpg. Apple didn't wait for consumers to demand the iPod or the iPhone. If we wait, Toyota will be selling 60 mpg cars while Detroit files for their second bankruptcy.Welcome to the online Commentary on Kierkegaard's Writings. Information on every published work and article, including many unfinished writings and journal entries, is presented here with publication data, quotes, detailed commentary, and images. Within the Commentary works are linked together in chronological order. You will find the works listed by English title, Danish title, pseudonym(s) if any, year of publication (or year of authorship if posthumous), and volume number in Kierkegaard's Writings (KW), Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (SKS), Samlede Værker (SV), or other Danish source. See Bibliography for more on these sources.
If you know the name of the work you are studying you may use the alphabetized droplist below. Or you may scroll down and browse the works in chronological order. There you may view an abstract or go straight to commentary. Clicking on an "Abstract" link reveals a brief abstract, while clicking it again hides it.
First Period: Works of Youth (1834-42)
This period consists of Kierkegaard's earliest full work From the Papers of One Still Living, an unfinished play, The Battle Between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, journal notes, and the dissertation. Kierkegaard would also engage in his first of three literary battles. His literary opponents were Orla Lehmann and Johannes Hage. In these exchanges accusations against each included indictments against papers of rival political persuasion. Lehmann and Hage supported the liberal press, while Kierkegaard indicted the entire liberal movement.
Second Period: Indirect Communication (184 |
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WILSON APPOINTS
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
TO SUPREME COURT
Boston Lawyer Named by President
to Succeed Late Justice Lamar
on Federal Tribunal.
FIRST" JEW TO BE CHOSEN
Prominent Last Few Years in Move
ment for Social and Indus
trial Uplift.
COUNSEL FOR PINCHOT FORCES
WASHINGTON. Jan. 2S. Presi
dent Wilson today selected Louis D.
Brandels of Boston to be associate
Justice of the Bupreme court to suc
ceed the late Justice Lamar.
Mr. Brandels nomination went to
the senate today. It was a surprise
everywhere in official circles. Mr.
Brandels had not even been men
tioned for the vacancy.
Mr. Rrnn1rls I a lawyer who linn been
much In public life diirlna the last three
years, not only In leaal work, but In va
rious nioveme it for soi lnl betterment.
He Is a Kentuckinn by birth and 1 t)
years old. He Km born nnd educated In
LotilMllle and l.ittr nt Harvard unlver
flty. and In!'" bcfa'i prnctli-lnn law In
Uoston.
He came ino.t iir.tahly before the pnli-
,1c
n a nullouil figure six years sko
tlirot.ph his pariielnatlon in the celebrated
Paiiinger-pinchot investigation
In con-
Kiess, tn which v was counsel for the
forces which wcie opposed to Secretary
RnllinKer and sought hi removal from
office. Later h.: va ic n"c for tiie
shippers who rii,nnd the ye eral In
cresset in frelyh: rntos before the Inter
state Conimerj'S commission, and during
I the same period l.e'wua at the forefront
of those who were demanding an Invesil
C.ation of the financial aflalra of the New
Haven railroad.,
He appeared an counsel for those who
fought for the volidlty of working men's
hours of labor law In Oregon. Illinois and
Ohio. He was In 1M0 chairman of the
hoard of arbitration which settled the
ew Tork garment makers' strike. He
has written largely and is regarded M
an authority on public franchises, life
Incn ranee, wage earners' Insurance, sclen
tl.fle management, labor problems and the
trust question. lie also has been at the
rrrefront of the Zionist movement in the
United States and will bo the first Jew
to sit on the bench of the supreme court.
At the beginning of President Wilson's
administration Mr. Brandels was expeettd
to get a place In the cabinet. Many of
the administration loaders expected him
to be appointed attomey-g-wneral.
Wfl ln VVmiln lv fl Iffy '"I
Allies Behave, by
Trade Boycott
WASHINGTON, Jan. 2S.-"lf the allies
decline to yield to reason we must cease
trailing with them," de-lared Senator
Walah, democrat of Montana, to the sen
ate today; assailing Great Britain's Inter
ference with neutral commerce of the
United States.
"If a fixed determination tn goad this
nation Into retaliatory measure or to cry
coercion were entertained by the allied
powers It would find quite fitting expres
sion In the course of conduct of which
our government has so respectfully hut
so forcefully and Justly complained."
Henator AV'alsh discussed particularly
the seizure and censoring of United
States malls, and In that connection read
a portion of a confidential circular of in
structions issued to British censors. The
paragraphs he read are as-lollows:
"Particulars are to be extracted from
appropriate correspondence and submitted
on Index cards of all direct shipments to
shipments from neutral to neutral, in
cluding shipments on true bills of lading,
whether actual or pending, of the fol
lowing commodities, vii: Cocoa, cotton,
cotton yarn, waate and thread, fuel oils
and lubricating oils, hides, skins and
leather, maize, metals and ores of all
kinds, nitrates, oil cakes, including poo-
nee, packers' products (meat, -bacon, lard.
Jus, oleo or any edible animal fats); rcsln
tanning extracts, wool, and such other
articles a may be added from time to
time."
Omaha Baker to Talk
On Mixed Flour Bill
(From a Staff Correspondent.)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 28. (Special Tele
gram.) Jay Burns, head of the Hol
sum" bread company of Omaha, was In
formed today by Representative Lobeck
that the ways and means committee of
the house would hear him on "Friday,
February 4, on the Rainy mixed flour
bill. Mr. Lobeck also advised the Holm
qulst Orain company and the Blanchard-
Nishwonger company that the ways and
means committee would give two days
to hearings on the Rainy bill, which is
attracting the attention of gralnmne,
millers and bakers throughout the coun
try. The executive committee of the Ne
braska association has decided to hold
the winter meeting of the association at
tho Hotel IUlelgh, Friday, February 11.
J. M. Welch, auditor of the M. E. Smith
company of Omaha, was shown through
tbo capitol and the city today by Con
gressman Lobeck.
Carranza Says Peace in Mexico
Will Results
EL) PASO. Tex., Jan. 18. Gen
eral Carranza, in a recent address at
Celaya, state of Guanajuato, de
clared that the triumph of bla cause
In Mexico would react in world
peace, according to advices received
here today from Mexico City.
"The constitutionalist revolution
Is triumphing in Mexico," he said.
KIT CHIN WAGES
OPEN WARFARE
ON PRESIDENT
North Carolina Leader Serves No
tice Big Group of Democrats
Will Fight Wilson's In
dustry Tax Plan.
HAS SPEAKER CLARK'S BACKING
Revenue Must Come from Surtaxes
and Levy on Muni
tions. DEMANDS STAMP TAX REPEAL
(From a Staff Correspondent.)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 28. (Spe
cial Telegram.) A bitter struggle
between the Wilson administration
and the democratic leadersh ip In
congress over the manner of raising
revenue to give effect to President
Wilson's national defense bill Is fore
shadowed In a statement made public
today by Representative Kitchin of
North Carolina, the democratic
leader, in his fight against the pres
ident's proposal that moneys for de
fense shall be raised by stamp taxes
and Imposts on gasoline, iron and
steel tpoducts and a -lew other ar
ticles. Mr. Kitchin will have at his
back Speaker Clark and other Influ
ential party leaders,
Unless the president yields, the
fight over revenues will be pro
longed, with the probability that the
defense bills will be dragged down
to defeat In the melee.
The differences between the president
and a considerable clement of the demo
crats In the house, for whom Leader
Kitchin speaks, are clear and iharply do
fined. For Levy on Monitions.
In hla statement, given out today, Mr.
Kitchin, speaking as the chalrmun of the
ways and mean committee, which orig
inates revenue legislation, expressed the
"Pinion that funds for defense should be
raised by an Increase In, the surtaxes of
the Income tax law a,i da levy on muni
tions of war.
Ho declared without euulvacllon that
tho house would not re-enact tho stamp
features of tho war act, aa specifically
recommended by "lho president. Mr.
Kitchin declared further that the ex
emption of tho Income tax, now fixed at
S4,oiio for married men and 81,000 for sin
gle men, would not be lowered, aa recom
mended by President Wilson.
Leader Kltchln'a reply to the president.
. I....., I ft....1. V.At.a
ajagayat AteJWray-anl iwn. fAmnutttee
Is a follows
"As chairman of ti e ways and means
eommlttee I am convinced that It is Im
possible to frame any revenue measure
and pass It through tho house that does
not place all appropriations for the In
crease of the army and the navy on tho
Income tax basis, and the exemption will
tot be lowered.
Repeal tor Stamp Taxes,
"I am convinced that we cannot put
through any revenue bill without prac
tically repealing all the stamp taxes of
the present emergency act. Undoubtedly
war munitions will be taxed also."
A good deal of significance Is attached
to the fact that this statement Is In
harmony with a formal announcement on
the question of revenues made public yes
terday by Spcuker Clurk. In that an
nouncement Mr. Clark said be was up
posed to stamp taxea of any kind, and
that he favored Increases In the surtaxes
of the Income tax law and a levy on
munitions aa the best way of obtaining?
funds for defense.
Today Speaker Clark, Mr. Kitchin and
other house leadens had a long conference
In which the revenue situation was dis
cussed at length, and an - agreement
reached that a fight should be made for
a revenue bill along the lines Indicated
in Mr. Kltchln'a statement.
Tax to Hit Wealth.
It may be stated upon authority that
Mr. Kitchin haa come to the conclusion
that tho plan of taxing- "wealth" as out
lined in bis statement, as against taxing
"Industry" aa recommended by the presl
aent, was reached as a result of ex
pressions made to him by approximately
seventy-five democrats of tho house. This
notice was to the effect that unless the
additional revenues needed for prepared
nesa were gained through the medium of
the Income tax, war munitions, and pos
slble an inheritance i:f. they would fight
the national defense and the needed tax
ing bill tooth and nail.
lth this notice before him, coupled
with Inquiries made on his ow naccount,
3Sr. Kitchin decided that the administra
tion revenue plan could not be put through
tUo house.
U. S. Asks Austria
Again About Persia
WASHINGTON, Jan.!8.-The United
States has addressed another inquiry to
Austria asking If any of Its submarine
commanders have knowledge of the
destruction of the British liner Persia. A
statement that they had none, reported
to have been handed to Ambassador Pen
field several days ago never haa been re
ceived here.
World- Wide Peace
"It haa not only brought peace to
Mexico, but haa shown the way to
Latin-America, and laid the fonnda
tlon for peace and reformation of the
world."
Continuing. General Carranza re
ferred to General Alvaro Obregon as
the conqueror of a despotic reactionary
MONTENEGRIN MOUNTAIN BATTERY Active guerilla warfare is being waged by the
Montenegrin troops on their retreat southward, and particularly in the Tarabosch moun
tains, west of Scutari.
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DEMANDS CHANGES
IN MUNITIONS ACT
British Labor Conference Wants Re
vision that Will Prevent Law
Being Used on Workers.
STANDS BY COALITION CABINET
blllSTOL, Jan. 2 8. The labor
conference adopted by a show of
hands, with one dissenting vote, a
resolution brought forward by the
Independent labor party demanding
drastic revision of the munitions act
with a view to preventing "tho pre
text of the war being used for greater
coercion und subjection of labor."
The conference adopted another resolu
tion proposed by Harry Uoslln. aa fol
lows 1
"This conference. In view of tho un
precedented situation that exists,' ex
presses tho apinlnnn that the beat Inter
ests of the nation would be served by ho
moor parry representation remaining lu
the coiUltion government."
The ard vote for tho resolution., was
1,622,000. against 495.000.
W IS. Cross, seconding t!:e resolution,
draw attention to what he said was tlio
danger of a schism in the labor move
ment. He hoped that a united vote for
the resolution woutd do much to prevent
that.
Scale Committee
Recommends Raise '
In Miners' Wages
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., Jan. M.-The
scale committee of the miners convention
late today reported, recommending an
Increase In wages for the soft coal min
ers at 10 per cent; an Increase of 10 pur
cent for all dead work. Twenty per cent
for day labor and also approved the 20
per cent Increase and demands made by
the anthracite miners. The soft coal In
crease Is asked on anlne run basis.
Attempts to amend? report of tho
scale committee were defeated and the
report was adopted as presented.
BADGER'S COMMISSION
AT ARLINGTON SIGNED
(From a Staff Correspondent )...,
WASHINGTON, Jaiv W.-(Fperlal Tele
gram.) President Wilson late this after
noon signed the commission of J. C.
Badger to be postmaster at Arlington,
Neb.
The following were nominated to be
postmasters In Nebraska today: Ceorge
C. Fox,.raysrd; Icls II. leaver. Cody;
Grover C. Hoback, Nehawka; August
Dlrkenmnn, Talmnge; II. V. WMson,
Geneva.
WIFE OF BISHOP J. C.
HARTZELL IS DEAD
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla., Jan. 28
Mrs Jennie C. Hartsell, wife of Bishop
Joseph C. Hartsell, of the Methodist
Episcopal church, died here Thursday,
following an apopletic stroke. She was
here visiting her son. Bishop Hartsell Is
a missionary bishop
In New York qity.
with headquarters
Preparedness
For the merchant
means not only car
rying the goods the
customer wants, but
also letting every
possible customer
know that the goods
are awaiting him at
attractive prices.
This means use of
newspaper advertis
ing space.
The Bee will do the
business.
BaaiwiJwuvfci.'aVsi..!.'- -k,WMka.v.
DELEGATION URGES
MONEY F0R RIYER
Entire Nebraska Membership Ap
pears Before Rivers and Har
bors Meeting to Boost.
TRIPS OF JULIA ARE DESCRIBED
From a Htaff Correspondent.)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 28. (Spe
cial Telegram.) Through th ef
forts of Representative Sloan sec
onded by the activity of Representa
tive Lobeck, the entire house dele
gation from Nebraska, was present
ut the riverg and harbors meeting
this morning to put In as good
"licks" as possible for an appro
priation of f7G,UU for snagging In
the Missouri river from ansKas city
to Sloux City.''
In a short Introductory slatoinent Mr.
Lotwek said that the merchants of
OamnarUad become onvlbcrdthi" water
transportation on the, Missouri was
entirely feasible and desirable.. It told
of the operation of the steamboat "Julia"
between Omaha and Decatur and so satis
factory waa th service that th toa.tur
business men had decided to build a large
and more cfflolent craft than th "Julia"
Sut transportation purpose.
Mr. Lobeck stated ho had tried to get
the use of government flat boata tied up
at the wharf In Bloux City for tho pur
Ioes ot moving grain and produce to
market, but had boon Informed that It
was not the policy of the government to
loan boats for private- purposes.
llepresentative Beavls spoke of condi
tions in his district and said four coun
ties In the First district were without
rail communication, with, the exception
or Nebraska City and I'lattsmouth. Ho
said the necessity for river transportation
was paramount and he believed the de
velopment of the Missouri was a step In
the right direction.
Congressman Stephens told of th op
erations of the "Julia" between Omaha
and Decatur and was unreservedly In
favor of th appropriation.
Mr. Bloan, although Instrumental In
getting tli member of th delegation
together, contented himself with a few
general observations,' leaving the par
ticular features of th. desired legislation
to his colleagues who' lived directly, on
the banks of the Missouri.. '
; Mr, Loberk, asked about th shipments
on the "Julia" during the summer, said
he would secure full data from the Com
mercial rlub and'file It'with the s com
mittee. '
Four Explosions, in '
Duoont Powder Plant
PHILADELPHIA, Jan. M -There were
four explosions In rapid succession at the
Carney's Point, N. J., plant of the Dupont
Powdi r company early tonight and It Is
reported that five mills are burning.'De
tails are lacking and it la not yet known
whether there was any toss of life.
It was reported that six workmen were
Injured, three seriously. The accident
was in' the nature of "flares," the csuse
! has not hen ascertained.
Large Detroit Drug
Store is Destroyed
DKTROIT. Jan..Flr In the drug
store of K. C, Kinael In the downtown
d'strlct today, caused $100,000 damage.
8Ix firemen.were overcome by amok
and several women fainted In th crush
of spectators.
Insanity Expert Who H as Himself
Interned in Hospital Wants Out
CHICAGO. Jan. Dr. Luther E.
Widen, noted aa a psychologist and ex
pert on Insanity, alleged In an applica
tion lor a writ of habeaa corpus yester-
sVlay. that h is being held at tn Psyoo-
pathlo' hospital and Is threatened with
being aent to the Elgin asylum for th
insane.
Dr. Widen several years ago, waa com
missioned by th University of Iowa, It Is
aid. to aeeoirpany one of th Btefane-
if v- vM
0 -- is.'.
STAHL IDENTIFIES
BANOOBBERS
Five Men Who Took Fifteen Thous
and 'from South Side Bank
Are Under Aire it.
FAST OF LOOT IS RECOVERED
CHICAGO, 111., Jan. 28,Identt
firallon of Kddie Mark and four men
arrested last night as the robbers
who raided the Washington Park Na
tional bank yesterday and stole
116,000 was made today by J. Oar
laud Stahl, vine president of. the
bank, according to Captain Nicholas
Hunt, chief of Chicago detectives.
The prisoners were confronted by
Btahl In the officee of Maclay lioyne,
states attorney. - BtanI, who we
formerly ptanager ot the Boston
American Has Ball club, faced two
ievelver in-ihe-andr tt one of-toe
rubbers yesterday. lie waa positive
la his Identification. Alack. la said
by the police to bave a long record
aa a pickpocket.
Ijrt of,Mit Keseaieal.
! Much of the til.r0 taken by five rob
ber from th bank, was roovred today
by the police. The polio raided rooms
recently rented In a west aid apartment
building and arrested flv men and three
Women. While theji were breaking down
the door a newsboy In th street oulsid
4IW a pasteboard box fall at his feet.
He kicked It, and ten and twenty-dollar
bills flew out over th sidewalk. Th
detectives appeared with their prisoners
and took charge of th box of money.
It totaled 17,81)0, and many of th bill
were identified by the cashier of th
bank. -'
Captain Hunt said that h was fairly
certain the five men who robbed th
bank had been captured.
Yuma Again Alarmed
By Rumors of Flood
TUMA, Arts., Jan. JS. Alarming reports
from Phoenix regarding Another lis In
the Bait and Uila rivers In that section
has trown Yuma Into excitement almost
equalling that. of last. Saturday. when th
levee broke and flooded the city. Th
river Tempo 1s now wlthln-'elght feet of
the highest mark last week and la still
rising.. -
' A stream.of -water five and one-half
feet deep Is pouring over th diversion
.dam aad the volume la Increasing. The
fllla had risen eighteen inches today. Th
saturated condition of the ground In this
section. It la considered, readers the sit
uation dangerous. L'roUen levcss have
been only partly repaired,
Five hundred freight cars are held up
between. Yuma and. India and,1,800 be
tween El Paso and Indlo by washouts.
Aeroplanes. Bombard
Town of Freiburg
BERLIN. Jan. 28.-(By Wireless to Say.
vllle.) Freiburg waa bombarded at 10
o'clock last night by two hostile aero
planes which dropped flv bombs on the
town, according to reports received and
given out here by the Overseas News
sgency. There were no rasualtle.
Some damage waa caused, the extent of
which is not stated In the reports so far
to hand.
The city theater, because of the cele
bration attending th emperora birthday,
was crowded but the audlenoe remained
calmly Inaide the building until th raid
wa over.
son polar expeditions to study th psy
chology of th blond Eskimos discovered
by Stefanssoa.
It 1 said that Dr. Mlden had himself
Interned at th hospital under an as
sumed nam th mor closely to study
th patients.
He allege that h waa suddenly elsd,
placed In a padded cell. Despit thl as
sertion, h communicated with a friend
who obtain a lawyer far him.
CHANGES 111 SEA
LAW SUGGESTED
BY AMERICANS
Belligerents Asked to Make Agree
ment to Square Submarine
Warfare Principle! of
Humanity.
FIVE PROPOSITIONS SUBMITTED
Under Changed Condition! It ii
Held that Merchant Ships
Should Be Unarmed.
SHOULD BE CALLED CRUISERS
RtM.KTIN.
WASHINGTON. Jan. 28. The
Italian liners America and Verona
will be permitted to aatl from New
York If the Italian government give
assurances, as It did In the case of
the Gulseppe Verdi, that their guns
will be used only for defensive pur
poses. WASHINGTON, U. C, Jan. 28.
The United States, in asking all
Huropean belligerents to make a gen
et al agreement to square tholr sub
marine warfare with the principles
of humanity and International law,
ha taken the position that under
changed conditions of naval warfare
merchant ships should carry no
aimament whatever.
All the powers hare been notified
teat unless they subscribe to such
principles armed merchantmen will
be denied entry to American porta
except under the conditions which
apply to warships.
Such a proposal, now in the hands
of the belligerent governments, hss
been transmitted In a note which is
substantially aa follows:
"It Is aasumad that all of th govern
ment addressed are equally desirous of
protecting their own subjects and cltt
sena, who ar non-combatants, from th
ha sards of submarine warfar.
"Realising the appalling loss of life
of non-combatant which rasulta from
th destruction of a merchant vessel
without removing passengers and ers
to places of aafcty, which is held to be
vtolatlv of th principles of humanity
and International law, th United State
at the same Unit doe not feel that a
belligerent should be deprived ef the
right to use submarine (a view of the
usetvilnea- whli;h thy hav developed.
"That a formula may be found Com
pletely within th rule of International
law and of humanity which will require
In.It adoption only a trifling Chang In
th practices which hav obtained In tho
past and before th war, which formula
would be just and fair to all belligerents,
It to proposed that:
Klrst, a nonoombatant has th right to
traverse the high seas la a merchant
ship sntltled to fir a belligerent flag and
rely upon-the rule of International law
nil the prlnnlplea of humanity If the
vassal la approached by a belligerent war
vessel.
Heoond, a merchant vessel of any na
tionality ahould not b subjected to at
tack until the belligerent warship has
warned It to atop. t
Third, any bellUerent-owned merchant
vessel ahould promptly obey anv order
from a belligerent warship to stop.
Fourth, no auch merchant veael should
be fired on unless It trie to fie or to
resist by force, and even In eurh rases
any attack upon It by th warahln must
stop aa soon as th flight or resistance
cesses.
Fifth, only In case It should be Impos
sible for military reasons for th war
ship to supply a prise crew or to con
vey th merchant ship into port will It
be justified in sinking such merchant
man, and in that rase passenger n,
crew must b removed to a plao. of
safsty.
iuaititts i waint t nasji
Th Stat department la fully appre
ciative of th obstacle wbioh th adop
tion of these rule would place In the war
of th operation ot the submarines be
cause of their structural weakness. B
for th present war maritime warfar
on th high seas always haa been con
ducted by battleship or cruise ra carry
ing heavy guns. It la true that merchant
men were permitted to carry defensive
armament, but thes wer light compared
with th warship and did not change
their nature a merchant vessel. This
(Continued on Page Two, Column Thr.)
The Day's War Neiss
MORE THAN HALF A MILLION
casaaltte biT b.ts aaffereg y
th British fores so far la the
war. Th official f 1st ares alvtaa
the total ap Jmrnmrnry 9, ana4e
pablle today, plaeed at o-te,4eT,
the aamber be I as; mads ap at
24,12 officers aad S3B.S4K aaaa.
Al'BTRIANS AND BLLOARIANf ap
pear to be attcaaptlaa ta sttrrsa
Albania.'Little effertlra apposi
tion Is apparsat. Th entente
poners seem (a be placing; rcllaaec
on Kaand Paaha to hold tha forcaa
of th Toatonle allies la cheek.
The Oreekoi are said t bo rala
forelaa their detachments at tha
Albaalaa border points.
BRITISH LAHOH C ONFERENCE, af
ter yesterday adoptlas resolatloas
aaalnst eompnlalon, bnt declining
ta eoantennneo agitation for th
repeal af tha military ssrvl mea
sure last th aoTerawent ho am
barrasasd la Its proaeeattoa of the
war, today placed Itself on rcoerd
for revision of the monitions aet.
PSEIIM ABLY IN FIRT1IER effort
to seek'oat hostile aamhasdao
base la th MedUerraasoa, tho
French hare ocenpled tho town of
Aatlphllo, eppoetto fastalaaliaa. on
th Asia Miner coast.Image: Northeastern University
An analysis of over 133,000 websites has found that 37 percent of them have at least one JavaScript library with a known vulnerability.
Researchers from Northeastern University have followed up on research in 2014 that drew attention to potential security risks caused by loading outdated versions of JavaScript libraries, such as such as jQuery, and the AngularJS framework in the browser.
As the Northeastern researchers highlight in a new paper, vulnerable libraries can be dangerous under the right conditions, pointing to an old cross-site scripting bug in jQuery, which will allow an attacker to inject malicious scripts into a vulnerable site.
They looked at domains from Amazon's Alexa Top 75,000 list and 75,000 randomly selected.com domains, assessing 72 different libraries and their respective versions. Overall, 87 percent of the Alexa sites and 46.5 percent of the.com sites use one of the 72 libraries.
The study found that "36.7 percent of jQuery, 40.1 percent of Angular, 86.6 percent of Handlebars, and 87.3 percent of YUI inclusions use a vulnerable version." Additionally, 9.7 percent of the sites in the study use two or more vulnerable library versions.
However, the most popular sites in the study were found to be far less likely to include a vulnerable library. The researchers found that only 21 percent of the top 100 Alexa sites did so.
Still, the researcher's overall take on the state of security for the JavaScript ecosystem is that it's a complete mess.
"Perhaps our most sobering finding is practical evidence that the JavaScript library ecosystem is complex, unorganised, and quite 'ad hoc' with respect to security," the researchers write.
"There are no reliable vulnerability databases, no security mailing lists maintained by library vendors, few or no details on security issues in release notes, and often, it is difficult to determine which versions of a library are affected by a specific reported vulnerability."
Remediation won't be a simple task either because the vast majority of sites use libraries that are so far out of date. For example, the median lag between the oldest version on each website and the newest version is over three years.
"We observe that only very small fraction of potentially vulnerable sites -- 2.8 percent in Alexa, 1.6 percent in.com -- could become free of vulnerabilities by applying patch-level updates, ie, an update of the least significant version component, such as from 1.2.3 to 1.2.4, which would generally be expected to be backwards compatible," the researchers note.
"The vast majority of sites would need to install at least one library with a more recent major or minor version, which might necessitate additional code changes due to incompatibilities."
More on securityDIONYSOS
Greek Name Διονυσος Transliteration Dionysos Latin Spelling Dionysus Translation Liber, Bacchus
Dionysus riding panther, Greek mosaic from Pella C4th B.C., Pella Archaeological Museum
DIONYSOS (Dionysus) was the Olympian god of wine, vegetation, pleasure, festivity, madness and wild frenzy. He was depicted as either an older, bearded god or an effeminate, long-haired youth. His attributes included the thyrsos (a pine-cone tipped staff), a drinking cup and a crown of ivy. He was usually accompanied by a troop of Satyrs and Mainades (wild female devotees).
MYTHS
Dionysos was a son of Zeus and the princess Semele of Thebes. During the course of her pregnancy, the god's jealous wife Hera tricked Semele into asking Zeus to appear before her in his full glory. Bound by oath, the god was forced to comply and she was consumed by the heat of his lightning-bolts. Zeus recovered their unborn child from her body, sewed him up in his own thigh, and carried him to term. <<More>>
After his birth from the thigh of Zeus, Dionysos was first entrusted to the care of Seilenos (Silenus) and the nymphs of Mount Nysa, and later to his aunt Ino, Semele's sister, and her husband Athamas. Hera was enraged when she learned of the boy's location and drove the couple mad, causing them to kill both their children and themselves. <<More>>
The Thrakian king Lykourgos (Lycurgus) attacked Dionysos and his companions as they were travelling through his land and drove them into the sea. As punishment, the god inflicted him with madness causing him to murder his wife and son and mutilate himself with an axe. <<More>>
King Pentheus of Thebes refused to accept the god's divinity and tried to apprehend him. The god retaliated by driving the king's daughters into a crazed frenzy and they tore him apart limb from limb. <<More>>
Dionysos instructed the hero Ikarios (Icarius) of Athens in the art of winemaking. However, some shepherds, upon drinking the wine, thought they had been poisoned and killed him. The sorrowful god then set him amongst the stars as the constellation Bootes. <<More>>
As Dionysos was travelling through the islands of the Aegean Sea he was captured by a band of Tyrrhenian pirates who thought to sell him into slavery. The god infested their ship with phantoms of creeping vines and wild beasts, and in terror the men leapt overboard and were transformed into dolphins. <<More>>
Dionysos married princess Ariadne of Krete (Crete) whom he discovered abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos. <<More>>
The god launched a campaign against the Indian nation in the farthest reaches of Asia, leading an army composed of Satyrs, Mainades, and demigods. <<More>>
Dionysos journeyed to the underworld to recover his mother Semele and brought her to Olympos where Zeus transformed into the goddess Thyone. <<More>>
Many other myths are detailed over the following pages.
SYMBOLS & ATTRIBUTES
Dionysos' most distinctive attribute was the thyrsos, a pine-cone tipped staff. His other attributes included a drinking-cup (kantharos), fruiting grapevines and a panther.
The god was usually clothed in a long robe (chiton) and cloak (himation) and crowned with a wreath of ivy-leaves.
Below are some examples of his attributes as depicted in ancient Greek art:-
1. Pine-cone staff (thyrsos); 2. Thyrsos-staff head; 3. Grapevines; 4. Drinking-cup; 5. Wreath of ivy-leaves.
SACRED ANIMALS & PLANTS
Dionysos' sacred animals were the panther (leopard), tiger, bull and serpent. The god rode on the back of a panther or drove a chariot drawn |
Dec. 27. “A preponderance [of the audience] was inebriated, and became even more so, thanks to the sippy-cup revolution. Vomiting in the men’s room, and in one case, barely reaching it in time.”
The post further claims that the Broadway smash from Trey Parker and Matt Stone is attracting fratty fans of their “South Park” series who are not accustomed to attending the theater.
“They didn’t quite get what they were attending... [and hoped] that more alcohol would jump-start the fun,” wrote the poster, adding that an usher at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre confirmed, “drinking is prevalent” and gets “much worse on weekends and holidays.” “[The usher] said the current audience is typically white, male, under 40... Hoping for ‘South Park’ in the flesh maybe, not quite getting it, and at times shocked that it’s a musical comedy.”
The audience member reports that, according to the usher: “Last week they had projectile vomiting down the stairs to the basement restrooms and resulting sanitation/odor issues (‘Think Mardi Gras in [New Orleans]’)... and someone who passed out in his seat, and couldn’t be roused by his drunken companion.”
However, a rep for the show denied the anecdotes and told Page Six, “We have never heard anything about any incidents occurring at any performances of ‘The Book of Mormon,’ and we have had no issues of any kind with our audiences inside the Eugene O’Neill Theatre.”
Another insider on the Broadway forum claimed to notice a similar trend of “frat-house behavior” at the now-closed “Rock of Ages,” with audience members arriving “blotto” and constantly getting up during musical numbers to relieve “beer-bruised bladders.” That poster proposed a solution: hawk “adult undergarments” at concession stands.FREDON — The National Rifle Association is supporting a Sussex County man's lawsuit seeking a permit to carry his handgun outside of his house, the organization announced this week.
The national lobbying group said it was backing John Drake’s lawsuit with a forthcoming amicus brief, in support of Second-Amendment rights in New Jersey, the organization said. Drake, and other plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit, petitioned last month to have their case heard in the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Law-abiding citizens have a constitutional right to defend themselve beyond their front doorstep,” said Chris W. Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action.
Drake, of Fredon, is a business owner who owns and services ATMs – and who carries large amounts of cash, he said in an interview this morning. The suit challenges New Jersey law requiring "justifiable need" to acquire concealed-carry permits, he said.
"It seems unreasonable to me to have to wait until you're beaten up or shot at to get a permit," Drake said.
The lawsuit was initially filed in 2010 by Jeffrey Muller, a Newton pet-store owner who was beaten and kidnapped in a bizarre case of apparent mistaken identity.
Muller was subsequently issued a permit in 2011, and withdrew from the case, which underwent several name changes as plaintiffs and defendants changed, even as the argument has remained the same.
Also joining the suit is the New Jersey Second Amendment Foundation and the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, Drake said.
Cox, the NRA official, said it would file an amicus brief on behalf of Drake. The group is challenging New Jersey’s legal stance on the Second Amendment, Cox added.
“New Jersey law unconstitutionally forces lawful gun owners to prove ‘justifiable need’ in order to carry a handgun for self-defense, showing specific threats, or prior attacks. This is absurd," Cox said. "Our fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms is not limited to the home."
Bryan Miller, the executive director of Heeding God's Call, a faith-based gun-control group, said he wasn't concerned with the U.S. Supreme Court changing the Garden State gun laws.
"We're not concerned - this suit is doomed from the start, based on recent Supreme Court rulings," Miller said this afternoon. "We're happy to have the NRA waste their money on this."
A separate lawsuit filed by a Manalapan businessman filed last year is still awaiting oral argument before the state Supreme Court, said the man's attorney, Evan Nappen. It will be the first time in nearly a half-century that the state has revisited its own gun-control laws, the lawyer said.
"It's going to be interesting to see how New Jersey weighs in for the first time in 45 years," Nappen said.
New Jersey's highest court ruled in 1968 that only citizen militias - and not individuals - have Second-Amendment rights in the state.
RELATED COVERAGE
• Morristown judge allows kidnapped Sussex County merchant to carry a handgun
• Kidnappers may have taken wrong man for terror rideBug Report Forums Report bugs and errors to the Flight Rising development team.
TOPIC | [T] Forum Update tracking
Are the new skin previews supposed to not have hover previews anymore? And also, if you click on them to preview skins/accents, there's a broken image. Also, if you do apply the skin/accent to a dragon, it layers over apparel instead of under. Edit to include the following: Yes, I have cleared my cache and I am using the latest version of chrome. Second Edit to provide examples: [img]https://40.media.tumblr.com/21a79bce46617d6c4926e0155fc4a07e/tumblr_nm17eefIW51tyg7lno1_540.png[/img] Prismal 1200 114 527 1452
Edit to include the following: Yes, I have cleared my cache and I am using the latest version of chrome.
Second Edit to provide examples:
Are the new skin previews supposed to not have hover previews anymore? And also, if you click on them to preview skins/accents, there's a broken image. Also, if you do apply the skin/accent to a dragon, it layers over apparel instead of under.Edit to include the following: Yes, I have cleared my cache and I am using the latest version of chrome.Second Edit to provide examples:
Moved this to here as instructed.
Browser: Safari Version 8.0.4
This happened after the cache cleaning. I discovered my name is poking into the text box after the switch to the new forum address.Moved this to here as instructed. boooGALoo 1010 11 34 2187
Moved this to here as instructed.
Browser: Safari Version 8.0.4
This happened after the cache cleaning. I discovered my name is poking into the text box after the switch to the new forum address.Moved this to here as instructed. Boil'em! Mash'em! Stick them in a stew!
[center][color=#6C997B][font=Georgia]Crossposting this: Since the forums moved, special characters on the forums aren't displaying properly. This is what I see when I look at my hatchery ([url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/baz/1035658&pid=1035658/1#1035658]link to hatchery[/url]) in Chrome and Firefox after clearing both browser's cache. The question mark is what happened when I tried to edit the post to replace the special character: [img]http://i59.tinypic.com/rsfpm0.jpg[/img] The character between the words is supposed to be a star/diamond shape like this: [img]http://i61.tinypic.com/zlc2dx.jpg[/img] I'm using the newest versions of Firefox and Google Chrome, if that helps. [b]Edit:[/b]??? Yep, special characters still don't work. Those question marks were supposed to be a crown, a cloud, and diamond.[/font][/color][/center] vetica 1240 54 302 4973
Since the forums moved, special characters on the forums aren't displaying properly.
This is what I see when I look at my hatchery (
The character between the words is supposed to be a star/diamond shape like this:
I'm using the newest versions of Firefox and Google Chrome, if that helps.
Edit:???
Yep, special characters still don't work.
Those question marks were supposed to be a crown, a cloud, and diamond. Crossposting this:Since the forums moved, special characters on the forums aren't displaying properly.This is what I see when I look at my hatchery ( link to hatchery ) in Chrome and Firefox after clearing both browser's cache. The question mark is what happened when I tried to edit the post to replace the special character:The character between the words is supposed to be a star/diamond shape like this:I'm using the newest versions of Firefox and Google Chrome, if that helps.???Yep, special characters still don't work.Those question marks were supposed to be a crown, a cloud, and diamond.....................................................
...
V E T I C Λ
- - - - - - ◊ - - - - - -
TUMBLR. -. THEME
GW2: Esterie.7409
This occurred after clearing my cache.
I'm using chrome and Here's the thread name
**Familiar Swap Thread Game Thing**
by Sniff 1 234567... 8687 Replies:
Views: 861
-- by cheyinka
Mar 30, 2015 06:13:16
and here's the error
Undefined offset: 48529 (View: /home/vhosts/
Unable to visit a thread in the light forums.This occurred after clearing my cache.I'm using chrome and Here's the thread name**Familiar Swap Thread Game Thing**by Sniff 1 234567... 8687 Replies:Views: 861-- by cheyinkaMar 30, 2015 06:13:16and here's the errorUndefined offset: 48529 (View: /home/vhosts/ www1.flightrising.com/app/views/forums/topic.blade.php ) in /22c7545cfd96fee50824c9fe47d085ef Line 138 yuuzai 955 64 318 167
This occurred after clearing my cache.
I'm using chrome and Here's the thread name
**Familiar Swap Thread Game Thing**
by Sniff 1 234567... 8687 Replies:
Views: 861
-- by cheyinka
Mar 30, 2015 06:13:16
and here's the error
Undefined offset: 48529 (View: /home/vhosts/
Unable to visit a thread in the light forums.This occurred after clearing my cache.I'm using chrome and Here's the thread name**Familiar Swap Thread Game Thing**by Sniff 1 234567... 8687 Replies:Views: 861-- by cheyinkaMar 30, 2015 06:13:16and here's the errorUndefined offset: 48529 (View: /home/vhosts/ www1.flightrising.com/app/views/forums/topic.blade.php ) in /22c7545cfd96fee50824c9fe47d085ef Line 138
When I went to my hatchery to check it out with the new update in the forums, I noticed changes. [b]First bug:[/b] as you can see in the image below, the wording that are in the Quote box, are completely messed up. [img]http://i.imgur.com/b9dGYpG.png[/img] [b]Second bug:[/b] In the image below, the dragons are too close to each other and some are cut off. When I tried clicking on them, they appear to not work. [img]http://i.imgur.com/FYAvXp0.png[/img] This happened after I refreshed my browser. Hailey 1205 42 423 8406
First bug: as you can see in the image below, the wording that are in the Quote box, are completely messed up.
Second bug: In the image below, the dragons are too close to each other and some are cut off. When I tried clicking on them, they appear to not work.
This happened after I refreshed my browser. When I went to my hatchery to check it out with the new update in the forums, I noticed changes.as you can see in the image below, the wording that are in the Quote box, are completely messed up.In the image below, the dragons are too close to each other and some are cut off. When I tried clicking on them, they appear to not work.This happened after I refreshed my browser. Dragons For Sale | My Tumblr
I have the problem that accent preview is not working correctly while I am in the forums (a blank white box appears instead of the clicked accent). I have cleared my cache and I am using google chrom. The accent previews work just fine in my hoard, in the AH and the ones worn by my dragons [img]http://i.imgur.com/hj9WgEO.png[/img] Fujo 1200 137 715 4621
I have the problem that accent preview is not working correctly while I am in the forums (a blank white box appears instead of the clicked accent). I have cleared my cache and I am using google chrom. The accent previews work just fine in my hoard, in the AH and the ones worn by my dragons
@Aequorin Oops! Posting here instead, thanks! :D [img]http://i.imgur.com/O1sMtm8.png[/img] This is what's showing up in my art shop now, though the quotes in my accent shop appear fine. However, the unicode appears problematic as well as some special characters now show up as this: [img]http://i.imgur.com/fbPBZl3.png[/img] Kinda wonky! EDIT: I'm using chrome, and this is after clearing my cache. The problems persist on Firefox as well. Plume 985 115 206 2633
This is what's showing up in my art shop now, though the quotes in my accent shop appear fine. However, the unicode appears problematic as well as some special characters now show up as this:
Kinda wonky!
EDIT: I'm using chrome, and this is after clearing my cache. The problems persist on Firefox as well. Aequorin Oops! Posting here instead, thanks! :DThis is what's showing up in my art shop now, though the quotes in my accent shop appear fine. However, the unicode appears problematic as well as some special characters now show up as this:Kinda wonky!EDIT: I'm using chrome, and this is after clearing my cache. The problems persist on Firefox as well. ~*~ S C R I B B L E S Accent: Whimsicality Pearlcatcher Female Only Accents are equippable items that can be worn like a coat of paint on top of the skin of your dragon. The look of the accent will not be passed onto offspring and may be unequipped at any time. (Designed by Plume.) Sell Value: 0 Accent: Glistening Dawn - F Nocturne Female Only Skins are equippable items that can be worn like a coat of paint on top of the skin of your dragon. The look of the skin will not be passed onto offspring and may be unequipped at any time. (Designed by Plume.) Sell Value: 0 Accent: Twisted Snare Imperial Female Only Accents are equippable items that can be worn like a coat of paint on top of the skin of your dragon. The look of the accent will not be passed onto offspring and may be unequipped at any time. (Designed by Plume.) Sell Value: 0 Accent: Runic Sub Rosa Imperial Male Only Accents are equippable items that can be worn like a coat of paint on top of the skin of your dragon. The look of the accent will not be passed onto offspring and may be unequipped at any time. (Designed by Plume.) Sell Value: 0 Accent: Removed for Violation Pearlcatcher Female Only Removed for Violation of Skin Rules Sell Value: 0Good news! The Gilmore Girls TV show revival on Netflix finally has a name: Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Star Lauren Graham (Lorelai Gilmore) gave fans (not to mention entertainment writers, everywhere) a huge gift Thursday, on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. No longer do we have to refer to the project as “the Gilmore Girls revival,” or variations thereof. Watch a clip of Graham’s blessed announcement, below.
The Gilmore Girls revival Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life TV show cast includes: Graham, Alexis Bledel, Keiko Agena, Kelly Bishop, Matt Czuchry, Scott Patterson, Yanic Truesdale, Sean Gunn, Milo Ventimiglia, Melissa McCarthy, Jared Padaleki, Danny Strong, David Sutfcliffe, Liza Weil, Vanessa Marano, and everyone else you can imagine (and then some).
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life consists of four 90 minute episodes or, as they’re often called, mini-movies, entitled Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. As names go, it is apt and flows much better than “the Gilmore Girls TV series revival,” which was getting ever so tedious to type.
Watch Graham break the happy news.
In case you missed it, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life co-star, Scott Patterson (Luke), says there is room for more Gilmore Girls sequel projects. Describing the mood on set as “grateful,” “happy,” and “closer,” he adds that he hopes there will be future Gilmore Girl sequels. Read more.
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life production wrapped last week. There is no word yet on whether all four movies will drop at once, as is the Netflix custom. Reportedly, though, the final installment includes a wedding.
What do you think? Are you getting excited for the Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life TV show? Are you relieved it finally has a name? What do you hope happens in the sequel series?CRISPR may be that rarest thing in science: a genuine breakthrough.
The young DNA editing tool has dominated science headlines for months, as a mounting pile of studies highlight its potential to fight deadly diseases and customize organisms. It's generally proving to be cheaper, more precise, and easier to use than earlier genetic technologies, opening up possibilities across a wide variety of fields.
How can one technology potentially do so many, and such world-altering, things?
In a paper published just last week, researchers at Temple University used it to snip out the most widespread type of HIV from human immune cells. Meanwhile, labs around the world are employing CRISPR to identify potential cancer therapies, develop treatments for cystic fibrosis, create malaria-blocking mosquitos, produce swole dogs, make miniature pet pigs, and even bring extinct species back from the dead.
How can one technology potentially do so many, and such world-altering, things? In the video above, we set out to explain what CRISPR actually is, how exactly it works, and why so many scientists believe it's such a promising tool.
Writing, editing and motion graphics by James Temple. Animation by Kimberly Mas. Directed by James Temple, Tyler Pina and Vjeran Pavic.IRVING, Texas -- As DeMarcus Ware and Miles Austin continue to do rehab work on the side, Dallas Cowboys safety Danny McCray returned to practice for the first time this week.
McCray missed Wednesday and Thursday’s practices with toe and hip injuries but he should be available to play his special teams’ role. The Cowboys could also use him at safety if needed with Barry Church playing with a hamstring strain and only Jakar Hamilton in reserve.
Austin will likely miss his second straight game and fourth in the last six weeks because of a hamstring strain. Austin has not practiced at all this week after going through at least limited portions of practice the previous two weeks.
“He can play without getting a whole lot of reps but he has certainly been dialed back this week,” coach Jason Garrett said. “We’ll see how he does today.”
Cornerback Morris Claiborne (hamstring), guard Brian Waters (triceps), safety J.J. Wilcox (knee) and linebacker DeVonte Holloman (neck) are also sitting out for the third straight day and will not play Sunday.
With Claiborne out, the Cowboys will call up Micah Pellerin from the practice squad.Helen Zumbaum will never forget her trip to the mailbox last week.
On Friday afternoon, she was walking from the front door of her house in the Anoka County community of Nowthen when the 55-year-old heard a strange noise and looked up.
Sitting in the grass about 20 feet from her was an alligator.
“At first I thought it was a rag or something else kind of bumpy, but then I looked again and it was like, ‘OK, this is for real,’ ” Zumbaum said. “It was just sitting there like somebody had dropped it off. … I couldn’t believe it.”
Seconds later, the reptile made a mad dash for a nearby pond and Zumbaum was on the phone with the Anoka County sheriff’s office.
A deputy responded to the scene in northwestern Anoka County shortly thereafter, and Zumbaum guided the officer to the location of the sighting.
After walking about 50 feet, the deputy also spotted the alligator — about 3 or 4 feet long — sitting in tall grass, according to an incident report filed with the sheriff’s office.
Once spotted, the alligator again ran for the pond, this time stopping just inches from it, the report said.
After an unsuccessful attempt by the operator of a nearby petting zoo to catch the animal, the deputy called the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and was advised that alligators are invasive species in Minnesota and should be destroyed.
The alligator was shot twice and killed by the officer shortly after the phone call, the report said.
“That made me sad,” Zumbaum said. “I realize it is a dangerous animal but it really wasn’t the animal’s fault for being there. … I think people get them as pets when they’re small and suddenly they get too big and they don’t know what to do with them anymore, so they just leave them somewhere.”
It’s not clear how the alligator arrived in Nowthen. The operator of the nearby petting zoo said it did not belong to him, the sheriff’s report said.
At least three alligators were spotted last year in Washington County.
Exotic animals are frequently kept as pets, and it’s not uncommon for them to be released into the Minnesota wild.
In a report last year, the Minnesota Herpetological Society said it takes in and adopts out 200 to 300 unwanted or lost animals each year. About 25 percent of those are strays that have been found.
Sarah Horner can be reached at 651-228-5539. Follow her at twitter.com/hornsarah.
Correction: Previous versions of this story contained an incorrect age. Helen Zumbaum is 55.I recently worked on an iOS app where we implemented the Mixpanel analytics platform. Since the app had a defined user base, analytics were key in showing us what features we should iterate on and what would provide the most value.
5 things we learned about Mixpanel:
When you're unsure about which events to send, err on the side of sending over general events with many properties.
. Simple and clear naming of events will make it easier in the long run. Use a test project as a sandbox and try creating reports to see if the names make sense.
When something fails in the app (ex. Network request) send the failed event with as many properites as you can. This will help debug errors in the app later on.
Mixpanel has great segmentation filters. In order to get their full benefit, be sure to use the correct data types when sending over properties. String, Number, BOOL etc.
Use People properties liberally. Calls to 'increment' & 'people.set' are "free". They don't count against your total events.
5 Mistakes we made.
We didn't call 'alias' when creating a new user. If you only call 'identify', your funnel data will be incomplete!
We separate projects for different parts of the app (admin & user, mobile & web). This separates the data and makes it impossible to search across everything. Use properties and segment the data by platform, usertype etc.
We didn't use super properties. These are properties that are sent over with each event & to the people api.
We used email addresses for distinct IDs. If a user changes this you will need to alias the new email as the new distinct_id.
We didn't contact the Mixpanel folks until after we finished development. They are very helpful & give great advice.
Why Mixpanel?
There are many analytics platforms to choose from. The reason we went with Mixpanel was both their focus on the visitor and their intuitive reporting interface.
Setup:
The Mixpanel iOS library is available as a Cocoapod so integration is very easy. I would recommend having a development project where you can experiment with event & property naming. Once the app is live, you should change the names of your events.
With analytics there is a tendency to wait till the development is finished & then shoehorn it in. What usually ends up happening this way is that they are not well thought out & might not even make it into the production release due to time constraints. We ended up adding analytics data while we worked on a feature and added them to our stories. Constantly thinking about what might be a good thing to measure brought to light things that ended up being very insightful.
Sending Events:
Mixpanel has some best practices for sending events, here are some additional things we picked up.
Knowing what and how many events to track is difficult when faced with everything that happens in the app. Mixpanel recommends focusing on a certain area to optimize and send over fewer events. This advice is great if you know in advance what areas you want to focus your attention on. In our case, we weren't 100% sure which parts of the app the users would find most useful, so we ended up sending over every major event that happened.
Proper naming of events can get tricky. When viewing reports, all the events are listed in a single dropdown. If you prefix your event names with the subject of the event, when you search or scroll you will easily see all the events attached to that subject. For example: User Login, User Logout, Photo Uploaded, Photo Deleted, Photo Viewed etc.
What you can go crazy with is the properties that you send over with each event. You should send over as much data as you can about each event since the segmentation tools make filtering on these properties very easy. We created a 'analyticsProperties' method on our models so we wouldn't have to build up the properties hash each time we sent an event.
If you choose to use the People Plan, you should send over properties with both the 'event.track' & 'people.set'. We found that using the 'people.increment' was very good for keeping track of how many times a user completed a given action.
When a user opens the app, we track both:
[mixpanel.track event:@"App Opened"]; [mixpanel.people increment:@"App Opens" by:1];
Since searching across people & event data is not possible, having this data in both places is very useful.
If you are creating a user with the people API, be sure to call 'alias' when creating a new user. Any consecutive logins should call 'identify'. If you take one thing away from this post, let it be this!
Registration: (void)createAlias:(NSString *)alias forDistinctID:(NSString *)distinctID; Login: (void)identify:(NSString *)distinctId;
Setup a new project for production and only send over events when you have your taxonomy figured out. If you do need to rename something in production, you have to go to Settings -> Data Management -> 'Hide Event from dropdown'.
Mixpanel Reporting Views Tips and Tricks
Funnels
This is the only way to see average times between events, if you aren't sending elapsed time over as a property.
When thinking about naming events, think about how they would all look in a funnel.
If you haven't called 'alias' correctly, the funnels will be incomplete.
Segmentation:
Only a single event can be segmented at a time.
Properties can be added as filters as many times as needed.
The more properties you have on an event, the better the segmentation will be.
If you have a big range of data, add the property again to segment the data further (like this).
Live View:
The last 60 events are shown here.
You can filter this list on any property sent to your events.
The events are sent in batches from the iOS app. Sometimes you have to wait for another event or a set threshold of time before the events show up here.
Explore:
Any properties that you have sent with'set' or 'increment' can be used as a filter here.
Proper formatting of properties will make filtering much easier. Integers as NSNumbers, IDs as strings so they are unique.
Conclusion
Mixpanel is a very powerful tool for analyzing how people are using your app. If you take the time to think about the event structure and naming conventions, it will save you time as well as provide the best answers to what you should build next.
Read more by Shawn DempseyNow for the difficult question, which do I like better? On one hand the Special Reserve is an easier tea to serve to guests since it doesn’t have any vegetal notes, which all the tea peons seem to complain about, but the LiShan Winter is much more refined. On the other hand I hate sharing my teas, especially with people who don’t appreciate them. The Winter LiShan comes out as the clear winner and it is more of a daily drinker then some of BTT’s other teas in this price range (DaYuLing). I don’t know if BTT is going to have any new teas before the spring harvest, but I am planning on doing more comparisons if BTT decides to source the same teas from the same farms. I still have a little 2014 Four Seasons and the 2013 that I’d like to compare to the 2015 harvest.It sure seems as though the Democrats are racing the clock in order to steal the election back from Donald Trump. While patriots celebrated the election of Trump to the presidency two weeks ago, Democrats dug in and got to work. In a whirlwind of a week that has the potential to wreak havoc on the nation, Clinton crime family stooge Jill Stein has sprung a trap that has all the makings of an attempted coup.
The Green party candidate has gone from a footnote in history to a figure who will live in infamy with a surprise operation to trigger a vote recount in three key states. Stein’s crowdsourcing operation has now raked in over $5 million in three days, a figure that calls into question the “grass roots” effort that it has been advertised as. The drive for a vote audit in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania has now set a goal at $7 million and rising.
The mysterious influx of cash into the coffers of a fringe candidate who received less than two percent of the vote can likely be attributed to Clinton allies (like moneybags George Soros) who appear to be redoubling their efforts to steal the election from Trump. With the Wisconsin recount already a done deal it has been announced that Clinton crime family operatives will be participating in Stein’s big con to “to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides”, an indication that they have been the invisible hand behind this crazy turn of events.
According to The Hill “Clinton campaign counsel: We’ll participate in recount”:
An attorney for Hillary Clinton’s campaign says it will participate in the Wisconsin recount initiated by Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein. Marc Elias, the campaign’s general counsel, wrote in a post on Medium on Saturday that the Clinton team has been conducting an extensive review of election results, searching for any signs that the voting process had been tampered with. He emphasized that analysts employed by the campaign have largely found no evidence to conclude that the election was sabotaged, but said that the campaign is committed to helping ensure a fair recount process. “The campaign is grateful to all those who have expended time and effort to investigate various claims of abnormalities and irregularities,” Elias wrote. “While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported.” Stein filed for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday afternoon, and has pledged to do the same in Pennsylvania and Michigan — states in which President-elect Donald Trump won or is leading by narrow margins.
Coinciding with Stein’s challenge of the results are renewed claims by Democrat operatives that the Russians hacked the vote in the exact states that are being contested. This could be the exact pretense for the reversal of the election and the awarding of the White House to the Clintons.
A far-fetched conspiracy theory? Perhaps, but the speed in which events have moved since Wednesday makes it better than even money that this entire operation has been orchestrated. Keep in mind, it’s NOT a matter of Clinton winning the recount but rather “evidence” that could be cooked up in order to present the media with the narrative that Putin hacked the voting machines in order to benefit Trump.
The media has been hot to trot ever since a timely story by Democrat hack Gabriel Sherman in New York Magazine claimed that “experts” believe that the results may have been tampered with. One of those experts is the ballyhooed computer science professor J. Alex Halderman who has curried favor with Dems for giving intellectual heft to claims about Russian meddling. All that Halderman and his team have to do is find some sort of “proof” of hacking and then it will be game on to void the election results.
Interestingly and concurrent with the Clinton rainmaker Stein’s fundraising/recount scam, the virulently anti-Trump Washington Post published an article giving credence to a shadowy group that has released what can only be called a neo-McCarthyist blacklist of over 200 alternative media websites (most of them conservative) that have been identified as outlets for Putin’s propagandists. The list includes the hugely popular Drudge Report as well as the Ron Paul Institute, Infowars.com, Zero Hedge, the Federalist Papers Project, Liberty Blitzkrieg and the libertarian Lew Rockwell.com.
Building on the “fake news” hysteria this is a blatant attempt to stifle political dissent and the group which calls itself PropOrNot is calling for these sites to be subjected to federal persecution:
The malevolent nature of this secretive organization is expressed by this terrifying part of their expressed mission via the PropOrNot website:
Isn’t this just McCarthyism?! No. We are not accusing anyone of lawbreaking, treason, or “being a member of the Communist Party”. We fiercely believe in the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and have no interest in seeing anyone punished for exercising them. Quite to the contrary. However, when outlets and individuals echo, repeat, and refer their audience to Russian propaganda, we’re going to highlight it. They have the right to do that, and we have the right to call them on it. We are also encouraging others to help us research this further, and we are calling for formal investigations by the US government, because we think the American people have the right to know when foreign governments are trying to mess with them. Also, the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business. We strongly suspect that some of the individuals involved have violated the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and other related laws, but determining that is up to the FBI and the DOJ.
Why go to this extreme now? An answer might be to shut down the alternative media and any who would protest a pro-Clinton faction’s overturning of the election results.
Trump came out on Saturday and blasted the Stein-Clinton plot as a “scam” and to this point, Emperor Obama is trying to stay on the sidelines – at least until the crackerjack team of biased “experts” can pull a claim of Russian hacking out of their asses and then he’ll be Johnny on the spot to send in the feds.
None of this bodes well for the future which could soon get very nasty very quickly if Team Hillary is able to get away with what increasingly looks like a well-financed, highly-organized black op to tilt the tables back in favor of the corrupt establishment.
Originally published at Downtrend.comNSA headquarters at Fort Meade. (NSA)
My colleagues Bart Gellman and Ashkan Soltani have a new story reporting that the National Security Agency collects 5 billion cellphone location records every day. Documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that the information includes some data about the locations of Americans, but didn't provide specific estimates about how many Americans were affected. When asked about it, an NSA spokeswoman claimed it would be impossible to come up with an estimate:
“It’s awkward for us to try to provide any specific numbers,” one intelligence official said in a telephone interview. An NSA spokeswoman who took part in the call cut in to say the agency has no way to calculate such a figure.
This seems difficult to believe. The metadata the NSA collects about mobile devices should contain more than enough information to make an educated guess about whether they are associated with an American. By examining a random sample of devices it is tracking, the agency should be able to come up with a reasonable estimate of how many of those devices are associated with a U.S. person.
That doesn't translate to a precise count of the number of Americans subject to surveillance. Some Americans own multiple cellphones, and some foreigners might sign up for U.S. cellphone plans. But it should give at least a rough estimate of how many Americans are having their location data scooped up by the NSA.
This isn't the first time the NSA has claimed it wasn't possible to estimate how many Americans were the targets of its surveillance programs. Last year, two U.S. senators pressed the NSA to provide a "ballpark estimate" of the number of Americans who had been monitored under the 2008 FISA Amendments Act. In response, the NSA said that "obtaining such an estimate was beyond the capacity of this office," and that attempting to estimate the number would violate the privacy of Americans.
This reflects a problem with the way that the U.S. intelligence system is currently structured. Publishing estimates about the number of U.S.-based devices that inadvertently wind up in NSA databases would improve oversight |
the history of the franchise. None of it happens without Dwyane Wade.
So thank you, Dwyane Wade, for always believing in Pat Riley, the Miami Heat, and the fans. In a world where it seems like every star player is hell-bent on being the odds-on favorite NEXT YEAR, you've always shown you are committed to the bigger picture; no matter how pie-in-the-sky it may have seemed, you've always been patient with us and our team.
You're the reason I can dream of taking my son to a Heat game in ten years and pointing up to the championship banners in the rafters with pride. Somewhere a 10-year-old playing basketball will one day be on my Miami Heat and look up every game at what you accomplished. Hell, I hope the guy will be YOUR son. A guy can dream.
Thank you, Dwyane Wade, for carrying yourself with such class while also admitting your faults -- and owning them; that's how a real man handles his business. We've seen you grow from a fresh-faced kid from Marquette to a grown-ass man, and it's been great to see.
By now everyone knows your story, the things you've overcome, and the real-life issues you've dealt with along the way. You've fallen down seven times and stood up eight. Your knowing you're not perfect yet always dominantly overcoming that fact has always made me respect you more. I also pay more attention to my dress-sock collection because of you, so you've added a little class to my life that way too.
Thank you, Dwyane Wade, for being the best teammate I've ever seen. People will always remember how you sacrificed the past few seasons for the greater good of the Miami Heat, but I'll always remember that you showed your true colors much earlier than 2010.
When Shaq came here, you made it work; when he left, you turned the page. When your team won 15 games in 2007, you didn't completely lose your cool, no matter how heavy the team you carried on your back became. When it came time to share the stage in 2010, you did it, even if it meant sacrificing a few dollars and attention along the way.
People flock to play with you because of who you are, and it's the biggest reason the Miami Heat has won three championships since you've been here. You're a champion because of it. You're respected because of it. In a sport filled with "me, me, me," you have always known the power of "we." It's a throwback to a time in sports when "we" didn't mean today or next year; it meant forever, because the name on the front meant more to a guy than the name on the back.
Thank you, Dwyane Wade, for bringing Miami together over the past 11 years. Heat Nation thanks you for everything you've done and looks forward to the next chapter in your career, whatever it may be.
This isn't a thank-you because you're leaving or I think the good times are past; it's an acknowledgment of what you have done for South Florida since you stepped on that stage in 2003 and put on that Miami Heat hat. So much of what Heat fans have enjoyed is because of you, and I just wanted to thank you. I don't know what the future of this team holds or how many years you plan to be a part of it, but I don't plan on missing a single second of it.
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ST. LOUIS – On Friday, a 16-year-old junior at McKinley High School was attacked by not one, but nearly 20 students. Peers caught the attack on camera and posted it online.
The victim’s mother is outraged. Another parent, whose daughter was on the same ‘hit list’ of four honor roll students, said she warned the principal about the planned attack earlier that day when she came to take her child out of class.
District officials confirmed the attack, but said the principal was not given the name of the targeted student before the attack. The district released a statement, saying, in part:
The District Safety and Security Department is investigating the incident. All students involved in the altercation will be disciplined, per district policy.
Both families are looking to transfer their kids out of McKinley High School as soon as possible. The victim said the attack will not impede her plans to go to college and become a surgeon.Citation: Lewis JE, DeGusta D, Meyer MR, Monge JM, Mann AE, Holloway RL (2011) The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias. PLoS Biol 9(6): e1001071. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071 Published: June 7, 2011 Copyright: © 2011 Lewis et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This research was funded by the University of Pennsylvania University Research Foundation and the Nassau Research Fund. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Abbreviations: in3, cubic inches
Stephen Jay Gould, the prominent evolutionary biologist and science historian, argued that “unconscious manipulation of data may be a scientific norm” because “scientists are human beings rooted in cultural contexts, not automatons directed toward external truth” [1], a view now popular in social studies of science [2]–[4]. In support of his argument Gould presented the case of Samuel George Morton, a 19th-century physician and physical anthropologist famous for his measurements of human skulls. Morton was considered the objectivist of his era, but Gould reanalyzed Morton's data and in his prize-winning book The Mismeasure of Man [5] argued that Morton skewed his data to fit his preconceptions about human variation. Morton is now viewed as a canonical example of scientific misconduct. But did Morton really fudge his data? Are studies of human variation inevitably biased, as per Gould, or are objective accounts attainable, as Morton attempted? We investigated these questions by remeasuring Morton's skulls and reexamining both Morton's and Gould's analyses. Our results resolve this historical controversy, demonstrating that Morton did not manipulate data to support his preconceptions, contra Gould. In fact, the Morton case provides an example of how the scientific method can shield results from cultural biases.
A Debate across a Century Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) and Samuel George Morton (1799–1851) worked in different centuries but shared a number of similarities (Figure 1). Each was well-known to the public and held a prominent academic position, Morton as president of Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences, Gould as a Harvard professor. Gould's popular books on science were best-sellers, and Morton's 1839 Crania Americana volume brought him international renown. Both had an exceptionally broad range of research interests that included invertebrate paleontology—Morton was the first American practitioner of this discipline [6], and it was with studies of fossil land snails that Gould initially made his mark [7]. But it was Morton's work on human skulls that drew first Gould's interest, then his ire. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 1. Portraits of Samuel George Morton (left) and Stephen Jay Gould (right). Morton's portrait is from [22] and Gould's photo was taken by Kathy Chapman and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071.g001 Much of Morton's fame derived from his “American Golgotha”—a collection of nearly 1,000 human skulls (Figure 2) he obtained from around the world [6]. Morton took detailed measurements of these skulls with a particular focus on cranial capacity, the skeletal equivalent of brain size [8]–[10]. From these measurements he hoped to determine whether different human populations were separate species resulting from multiple divine creations (polygenesis) or a single species created but once (monogenesis), a major question in pre-Darwinian science [6]. Morton's empirical approach, generating data by systematically measuring large numbers of actual specimens, was groundbreaking and he was considered the objectivist of his era [1],[6]. Even so, as the polygenesis-monogenesis debate faded, Morton's work lapsed into relative obscurity [6],[11]. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 2. Skull illustrated in Samuel George Morton's Crania Americana Skull illustrated in Samuel George Morton's Crania Americana [8] The 78 lithographs in Crania Americana set new standards for accuracy in anatomical illustration, as they were drawn carefully to scale and rechecked for accuracy multiple times, chiefly by John Collins [12],[13]. Indeed, the quality of the illustrations in this volume exceeds that of many modern publications. The remaining specimens in the Morton Collection are currently curated at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071.g002 Morton again drew wide attention when Stephen Jay Gould used his skull research as a case study, first in a 1978 Science paper [1] and then in his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man [5]. But this was no benevolent rescue from the backfiles of history. Gould reexamined Morton's data on cranial capacity variation in modern human populations and concluded that Morton had selectively reported data (see Box 1), manipulated sample compositions (see Box 2), made analytical errors, and mismeasured skulls in order to support his a priori views on intelligence differences between human groups. When properly analyzed, Gould argued, Morton's measurements show only trivial differences between populations. Gould used Morton as a case study to argue that “unconscious or dimly perceived finagling, doctoring, and massaging are rampant, endemic, and unavoidable in a profession that awards status and power for clean and unambiguous discovery” [1]. Gould's analysis of Morton is widely read, frequently cited, and still commonly assigned in university courses [11]–[13]. Morton has become a canonical example of scientific misconduct and an oft-told cautionary tale of how human variation is inevitably mismeasured. Box 1. Did Morton selectively report his data? Morton divided his skull collection into broad racial groups, such as Native Americans, Caucasians, and so forth, but then also identified specific populations within those broad groups. So Morton's “Indian” (Native American) sample was composed of approximately 28 subsamples from more specific populations, such as Peruvians, Iroquois, “Eskimaux,” and so forth [8]. One of Gould's best-known charges against Morton is that Morton was biased in his reporting of the cranial capacity averages for these subsamples: “It is intriguing that Morton often reported Caucasian means by subsamples, which permitted him to assert the superiority of Teutons and Anglo-Saxons. But he never broke down the Indian mean.…Thus, the fact that some Indian subsamples (Iroquois at 91.5 in3, N = 4) exceeded the mean for Americans of Anglo-Saxon stock remained hidden in his raw data. (Morton never calculated the Indian subsample means at all; I have recovered them from his data.)” [1]. But Gould's claim, which has been repeated numerous times, is false. Morton routinely reported “Indian” subsample means, doing so at least 12 times in Crania Americana, the publication referenced by Gould. The subsample means reported by Morton include that of the Iroquois, which Morton noted was “within two inches of the Caucasian mean,” as well as that of the “Eskimaux,” which Morton noted was “a near approach to the Caucasian mean” [8]. In fact, Morton reported Native American population means more often than he did for other groups, and the means he reported are representative of his Native American sample as a whole. Box 2. Did Morton manipulate his samples? Gould states that “as a favorite tool for adjustment, Morton chose to include or delete large subsamples in order to match grand means with a priori expectations” [1]. This criticism stems from the fact that each of Morton's broader racial samples (e.g., “Indian”) were composed of multiple population subsamples, typically with differing mean cranial capacities. Thus it is possible to alter the overall “race” means by manipulating their constituent subsamples, and Gould charges that Morton did just that in order to obtain the results he expected. For example, Gould compares the cranial capacities in Morton's 1839 and 1849 publications and finds that “Morton's Indian mean had plummeted to 79 in3.… But, again, this low value only records an increasing inequality of sub-sample size. Small-headed (and small-statured) Peruvians had formed 23 percent of the 1839 sample; they now made up nearly half the total sample” [1]. However, the “Indian” mean was 79.6 in3 in Morton 1839 and 79.3 in3 in Morton 1849, so the “plummet” Gould refers to was all of 0.3 in3. More importantly, Morton in 1849 [10] explicitly calculated his overall “Indian” average by taking the mean of three subgroups: Peruvians, Mexicans, and “Barbarous Tribes”—this is readily apparent in Morton's table reprinted in Gould [1]. As such, the percentage of the overall “Indian” sample composed of Peruvians is irrelevant to the overall mean, as it is only the Peruvian average which impacts the overall value. The Peruvian average changed by less than 1 in3 from Morton 1839 (n = 33) to Morton 1849 (n = 155). Clearly, Morton was not manipulating samples to depress the “Indian” mean, and the change was trivial in any case (0.3 in3). In fact, the more likely candidate for manipulating sample composition is Gould himself in this instance. In recalculating Morton's Native American mean, Gould [1] reports erroneously high values for the Seminole-Muskogee and Iroquois due to mistakes in defining those samples and omits the Eastern Lenapé group entirely, all of which serve to increase the Native American mean and reduce the differences between groups.
The Current Study The importance of the Morton case led us to reexamine the fundamental underlying question: did Morton allow his a priori views on human variation to impact the data and analyses he published, as Gould argues? This hypothesis had remained essentially untested for 30 years. While some had raised questions about Gould's characterization of Morton [11]–[13], only one short publication by Michael [14] considered the primary data (Text S1). Unfortunately, the Michael study has multiple significant flaws rendering it uninformative (Text S1). It is rarely cited and, as noted by Kitcher, “virtually nobody has reacted to Michael's article by seeing it as a refutation of Gould” [15]. To test Gould's claim that Morton fudged his data, we relocated and remeasured almost half of the skulls that Morton had originally measured (Text S2, Dataset S1, Dataset S2). Gould did not measure nor personally examine the skulls in the Morton Collection—his argument was based on analyzing Morton's measurements. We also reanalyzed Morton's data and reexamined Gould's evaluation, drawing in part on the Stephen Jay Gould Archive recently made available. Our full analysis, along with all raw data, is given in the Supporting Information section (Text S1, Text S2, Dataset S1, Dataset S2, Dataset S3). In reevaluating Morton and Gould, we do not dispute that racist views were unfortunately common in 19th-century science [6] or that bias has inappropriately influenced research in some cases [16]. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that modern human variation is generally continuous, rather than discrete or “racial,” and that most variation in modern humans is within, rather than between, populations [11],[17]. In particular, cranial capacity variation in human populations appears to be largely a function of climate, so, for example, the full range of average capacities is seen in Native American groups, as they historically occupied the full range of latitudes [18]. It is thus with substantial reluctance that we use various racial labels, but it is impossible to discuss Morton and Gould's work without using the terms they employed.
Remeasuring Morton's Skulls Morton initially measured cranial capacity by filling skulls with seed, but he grew dissatisfied with the accuracy of this method and switched to using lead shot, which yielded more repeatable capacity values [8],[10]. In Morton's initial seed-based 1839 study, “Caucasians” had the largest average cranial capacity (87 in3) followed by “Mongolians [Asians]” (83 in3), “Malays [Island Southeast Asia]” (81 in3), “[Native] Americans” (80 in3), and “Ethiopians [Africans]” (78 in3) [8]. His final shot-based tally in 1849 again had “Caucasians” with the largest mean capacity (92 in3) followed by “Malays” (85 in3), the “Negro Group” (83 in3), and the “[Native] American Group” (79 in3) [10]. Gould famously suggested that Morton's measurements may have been subject to bias: “Plausible scenarios are easy to construct. Morton, measuring by seed, picks up a threateningly large black skull, fills it lightly and gives it a few desultory shakes. Next, he takes a distressingly small Caucasian skull, shakes hard, and pushes mightily at the foramen magnum with his thumb. It is easily done, without conscious motivation; expectation is a powerful guide to action” [5]. While Gould offers this as only a “plausible scenario,” and did not remeasure any crania, subsequent authors have generally (and incorrectly) cited Gould as demonstrating that Morton physically mismeasured crania (e.g., [15]). We remeasured 308 of the 670 skulls (46%) whose capacity was published by Morton (Text S2, Dataset S1, Dataset S2). Linear and quantile-quantile regression identified Morton's measurements of 7 skulls (2%) as differing significantly from ours (Table 1), with a percentage difference in measurements of greater than 5.5% (Text S2). If Gould's hypothesis that Morton physically mismeasured some skulls due to racial bias were correct, we would expect the mismeasured crania to be non-randomly distributed by population. Specifically, we would expect Morton's overestimates to be concentrated on “white” crania, whereas his underestimates would be mostly “non-white” crania. We tested this using the binomial probability on population-quantile tables (Text S2) and found only one significant difference: Morton overestimated more Egyptian crania (3 of 13) than would be expected by chance. The overmeasured Egyptian skulls are specimens that Morton considered clearly “Negro,” so his overestimation is obviously at odds with his predicted bias. Otherwise, Morton's errors were random with respect to population. Individually, Morton's three most overmeasured skulls are an Egyptian Copt that Morton considered “Negro” (+12%), a Seminole (+8%), and a “Native African Negro” (+7%). These results falsify the claim that Morton physically mismeasured crania based on his a priori biases. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 1. Crania mismeasured by Morton with shot Crania mismeasured by Morton with shot [10], using our measurements as the “gold standard.” https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071.t001
Seeds, Shot, and Bias Gould's claim that Morton had mismeasured crania based on race derived from his comparison of Morton's seed-based and lead shot–based measurements, with different races experiencing different changes in their average cranial capacity between the two methods [1]. Gould reconstructs that in going from Morton's seed measurements to shot measurements the average capacity for different groups experienced different increases: 5.4 in3 for Morton's black sample, 2.2 in3 for his “Indian” sample, and just 1.8 in3 for his Caucasian sample. Gould concludes that “surely something funny is going on here.…I strongly suspect a systematic bias for undermeasurement of black skulls [during the initial seed-based measurements]” [1]. This is the evidence Gould offers in support of his “plausible scenario” that Morton may have physically mismeasured crania. Morton only reported individual seed-based measurements for “Indian” crania, as they were the focus of his 1839 Crania Americana volume. Gould derived the “seed to shot” changes in Morton's other samples by making guesses about which skulls had been included, rendering those values highly questionable (Dataset S3). For “Indian” specimens, however, the seed and shot measurements of specific crania can be compared directly. Gould made those comparisons and reports that the average increase from seed to shot is 2.2 in3 [1]. But the average, the only result reported by Gould, is deceptive. We found that the changes from seed to shot measurements of individual crania range from an increase of 12 in3 to a decrease of 10 in3, with a standard deviation of 2.8 (Dataset S3). These increases and decreases do not appear to be patterned by group. For example, one Peruvian cranium increases in capacity by 12 in3 (+18%), while another Peruvian cranium decreases in capacity by 5.5 in3 (−7%). This casts significant doubt on the hypothesis that mismeasurements with seed were a function of Morton's racial bias. Rather than bias, the source of changes between Morton's seed-based and shot-based cranial capacities is more likely that stated by Morton himself: mistakes in the seed measurements. The seed-based measurements reported in Crania Americana were done in part by an assistant whom Morton later found had made errors. Morton, in describing his 1849 shot-based measurements, stated, “All the measurements in this Catalogue [1849], both of the facial angle and internal capacity, have been made with my own hands. I at one time employed a person to aid me in these elaborate and fatiguing details; but having detected some errors in his measurements, I have been at the pains to revise all that part of the series that had not been previously measured by myself. I can now, therefore, vouch for the accuracy of these multitudinous data…” [10].
Reevaluating Gould's Analysis Gould also performed his own analysis of Morton's cranial capacity data and came to the conclusion that “there are no differences to speak of among Morton's races” ([1], italics in original). For Morton's 1839 seed-based measurements, Gould claims that Morton's Native American average capacity is artificially depressed by his inappropriate use of a straight mean (taking the average of each individual specimen in the entire sample) rather than a grouped mean (first taking the average of each Native American population subsample, then calculating the mean of those means), since the former is sensitive to differences in sample sizes between “large headed” populations and “small headed” populations. In fact, the grouped mean for Morton's Native American dataset is 79.9 in3, almost identical to the straight mean of 80.2 in3 (Dataset S3). So Morton's use of a straight mean actually slightly increased his Native American average. Gould's calculation of a higher Native American average (83.8 in3) is entirely a function of Gould omitting 34 crania (of 144) as coming from populations with samples of n<4 and, even by that criterion, erroneously excluding 6 crania, all with small cranial capacities (Dataset S3). Gould's reanalysis of Morton's 1849 shot-based data resulted in a Native American mean capacity of 86 in3 rather than Morton's original 79 in3 [1]. Gould obtained his new average by again taking the group mean of Native American populations with four or more crania. But Gould also applied an additional restriction: he only included Native American crania that Morton had also previously measured with seed. This restriction is entirely arbitrary on Gould's part, as Morton's publications and analyses for his seed- and shot-based measurements are completely separate (1839 versus 1849), and Gould did not apply this restriction to the other groups he reanalyzed in Morton's shot-based data. If this restriction is lifted, Gould's Native American average would be reduced to about 83 in3, considerably below his reported 86 in3 (Dataset S3). Overall, Gould concludes that his reanalysis of Morton's shot-based data produces the “remarkable” result that there are no notable differences in mean cranial capacity between Morton's groups, with Caucasians firmly mid-pack at 85 in3 and the overall range being 83 to 86 in3 [1]. However, Gould's Caucasian figure was in error and should really be 87 in3 rather than 85 in3 [5]. And even accepting Gould's inflated mean for Native Americans of 86 in3, the overall rank order of Gould's results (whites/Native Americans/“Mongolians” and “Malays”/blacks) is then actually closer to Morton's presumed a priori bias than were Morton's own results (whites/“Malays”/blacks/“Mongolians”/Native Americans).
Our Verdict Our analysis of Gould's claims reveals that most of Gould's criticisms are poorly supported or falsified. It is doubtful that Morton equated cranial capacity and intelligence [6],[13], calling into question his motivation for manipulating capacity averages. Morton did not consider the influence of sex or stature on cranial capacity, but it would have been impossible for him to use those parameters to bias the averages he reported (see Box 3). The grouped mean of Morton's Native American sample is almost identical to the straight mean, rendering irrelevant Morton's decision to use the latter. The changes in average cranial capacity from Morton's seed-based measurements to shot-based measurements cannot be reconstructed with any certainty, incorporate erroneous seed measurements made by Morton's assistant, yielded a broad range of changes (−10 to +12 in3) hidden by Gould's mean, and are confounded by the shifts in sample composition (circa 50%) between the two rounds of measurement. Morton did not manipulate his samples to influence the average cranial capacities, at least not in a detectable manner. Morton did report subsample means for non-Caucasian groups (see Box 1). Of the approximately seven minor errors in Morton's work identified by Gould [1], only two appear to be actual errors, and their overall impact confounds rather than supports Morton's presumed a priori rankings. Box 3. Did Morton use sex to skew his results? Gould faulted Morton for failing to divide his samples by sex when calculating cranial capacity averages, given that differences in mean stature between males and females typically produce attendant differences in mean cranial sizes [1]. Certainly, more accurate population averages would be obtained if each sample were composed of equal numbers of males and females. But the question at hand is whether Morton manipulated his data to fit his preconceptions. In this regard, it is essentially impossible for Morton to have exploited sexual differences in cranial capacity to alter population averages. The only way Morton could have done so is by including more females for the populations he considered “inferior” and more males for “superior” populations. However, Morton did not collect the skulls himself [1],[6], and there is no evidence that he excluded any skulls from measurement based on sex. Indeed, Morton was largely blind to the sex of the skulls in his collection because of the low accuracy of determining sex from the skull, a low accuracy noted as well by Gould [1]. Furthermore, given that Morton's procedure for estimating sex from skulls almost certainly depended heavily on size (as noted by Gould, and as even modern methods do), it is entirely unsurprising to find a notable difference in size between “males” and “females.” Gould faults Morton for failing to notice this difference that “stared him in the face,” but had Morton commented on it he could rightly have been criticized for circularity—assigning sex based on size guarantees that “males” will appear larger than “females.” Of the substantive criticisms Gould [1] made of Morton's work, only two are supported here. First, Morton indeed believed in the concept of race and assigned a plethora of different attributes to various groups, often in highly racist fashion. This, however, is readily apparent to anyone reading the opening pages of Morton's Crania Americana. Second, the summary table of Morton's final 1849 catalog [10] has multiple errors (Dataset S3). However, had Morton not made those errors his results would have more closely matched his presumed a priori bias (and see Box 4). Ironically, Gould's own analysis of Morton is likely the stronger example of a bias influencing results [11]. Box 4. Did Morton ignore his mistakes? Gould [1] found that in the final table of Morton's main work, Crania Americana, Morton had erroneously reported the Native American mean cranial capacity as 82.4 in3 rather than the true value of 80.2 in3. As Gould describes, “this elementary error permitted Morton to retain the conventional scale of being with whites on top, Indians in the middle, and blacks on the bottom” [1]. Gould argued that the error persisted because its “demotion” of blacks “provided so much satisfaction that Morton never thought of checking himself” [1]. However, the correct value is given on the page in Crania Americana preceding the table in question, suggesting the error in the table was typographical. Furthermore, historical evidence indicates that Morton did check himself and attempt to correct the error. Michael [14] describes a copy of Crania Americana inscribed by Morton with the erroneous “82” value for “Indians” corrected in the same pen to read “80.” A different Morton-inscribed copy of Crania Americana reprinted by Bernasconi [21] has the same correction. We found that Gould's personal copy of a first edition Crania Americana, while lacking an inscription from Morton, also has the identical correction in ink clearly of considerable antiquity (Gould Archive, Stanford University). In addition, Stanton [6] reproduces the same table with the correct value of 80 set in type. This suggests that a systematic effort to correct this error was made around the time of publication, casting doubt on Gould's claim that Morton “never thought of checking himself.” Finally, this error did not “demote” blacks: the rank ordering of groups by average cranial capacity remains “White/Indian/Black” whether “Indians” are 80 in3 or 82 in3. As such, the error does not alter the “scale of being” whatsoever, contra Gould, falsifying the alleged motivation for Morton's error. It should be noted that, were Gould still alive, we expect he would have mounted a defense of his analysis of Morton. We are saddened that his passing precludes such an exchange. While we differ with Gould in regards to his analysis of Morton, we find other things to admire in Gould's body of work [19]–[20], particularly his staunch opposition to racism [5]. We trust that Gould, having reevaluated the work of Morton long after Morton's passing, would find our reevaluation of “Gould on Morton” an appropriate exercise, even if he would likely have differed with our conclusions.
Biased Scientists Are Inevitable, Biased Results Are Not Samuel George Morton, in the hands of Stephen Jay Gould, has served for 30 years as a textbook example of scientific misconduct [12]. The Morton case was used by Gould as the main support for his contention that “unconscious or dimly perceived finagling is probably endemic in science, since scientists are human beings rooted in cultural contexts, not automatons directed toward external truth” [1]. This view has since achieved substantial popularity in “science studies” [2]–[4]. But our results falsify Gould's hypothesis that Morton manipulated his data to conform with his a priori views. The data on cranial capacity gathered by Morton are generally reliable, and he reported them fully. Overall, we find that Morton's initial reputation as the objectivist of his era was well-deserved. That Morton's data are reliable despite his clear bias weakens the argument of Gould and others that biased results are endemic in science. Gould was certainly correct to note that scientists are human beings and, as such, are inevitably biased, a point frequently made in “science studies.” But the power of the scientific approach is that a properly designed and executed methodology can largely shield the outcome from the influence of the investigator's bias. Science does not rely on investigators being unbiased “automatons.” Instead, it relies on methods that limit the ability of the investigator's admittedly inevitable biases to skew the results. Morton's methods were sound, and our analysis shows that they prevented Morton's biases from significantly impacting his results. The Morton case, rather than illustrating the ubiquity of bias, instead shows the ability of science to escape the bounds and blinders of cultural contexts.
Acknowledgments Thanks go to Alicia Bennette Harrison and Ivy Wilkinson-Ryan for their involvement in early aspects of this project, to Ian Robertson and James Holland Jones for statistical advice, to the staff of the Special Collections Department of Stanford University Library for assistance with the Gould Archives, and to the reviewers and editors for helpful suggestions.via idlenomore.ca
Monday, Dec. 10, 2012 (Edmonton) Under what is being called a national day of action and solidarity, First Nations and their supporters have organized more than 13 nation-wide rallies for Monday (December 10) to express opposition the legislation the Harper Government has put forward in Bill C-45 and other bills.
The movement, under the banner “Idle No More” (#IdleNoMore) emerged within the grassroots less than four weeks ago in Saskatchewan. It began as an effort to educate First Nations people on the multitude of legislation being put forward by the Harper government that they feel is a direct attack on the rights of First Nations. The organizers Sylvia McAdam, Jess Gordon, Nina Wilson and Sheelah Mclean began by organizing “teach-ins” to inform people.
On Dec. 2, when another Idle No More session was called in Alberta, more than 150 people drove into Louis Bull First Nation on a Sunday to hear what the presenters had to say. The organizer for that event, Tanya Kappo, took to Twitter and Facebook to help generate awareness on the matter as the passage of Bill C45 was imminent. Says Kappo, “the people in our communities had absolutely no idea what we were facing, no idea what plans Stephen Harper had in store for us.”
Sylvia McAdam, one of the organizers of the original Saskatchewan events stated, “We are not really surprised by the amount of support coming spontaneously from the grassroots and from the Chiefs, because we knew we could no longer stay silent in the face of what is a legislative attack on First Nation people and the lands and waters across the country.” McAdam said, ““Bill C 45 is not just about a budget, it is a direct attack on First Nations lands and on the bodies of water we all share from across this country.”
Opposition by First Nations to Bill C-45 garnered national attention last week during when 300 First Nations Chiefs marched on Parliament hill, and several Chiefs, led by Chief Fox, went inside Parliament to deliver a message to the government. This refusal to allow First Nations leadership to respectfully enter the House of Commons triggered an even greater mobilization of First Nation people across the country.
Rallies will be held on Monday, December 10 in Vancouver, Whitehorse, Calgary, Edmonton, Stand Off, Saskatoon, North Battleford, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Toronto and Goose Bay-Happy Valley. More information can be found at www.idlenomore.com and also on our Event PagesIf watching reruns of Friends on E4 (and then Comedy Central) taught us anything over the past decade, it is which dating taboos you should stay away from AT ALL COSTS. Our poor Friends girls Monica, Phoebe and Rachel go through the mill before they find their perfect Mr Rights, so for every person who's dated a guy who a. has severe rage issues, b. shot a bird in front of you or c. drove you crazy with his annoying antics, this is for you. Friends should have taught you better!
The One Who Is Too Young For You – Tag
Tag is adorable but sadly too young for Rachel. The two broke up when Rachel realised was in no ways ready for the commitment that she was ready for. Sometimes being a cougar isn’t a good idea.
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The One With One Fatal Flaw – Pete
If you have a handsome, funny and intelligent boyfriend who also happens to be a millionaire, let’s hope you don’t have to deal with one major, all eclipsing problem, like if he wants to be the Ultimate Fighting Champion. It’s seriously not worth it.
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The One Who Doesn’t Respect Your Beliefs – Gary
If it is a well-known fact that you love all animals and your boyfriend shoots a bird in front of you because of its merry cheeping, it’s time to let it GO.
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The One Who Just Isn’t The One – Barry
Rachel nearly married Barry before she realised he just wasn’t the one for her. She showed us that you don’t need to stay in something if it doesn’t feel quite right!
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The One Who Needs To Grow Up – Chip
Monica got excited when she had a date with her high school crush, Chip Matthews. But Chip hadn’t moved on since then, and dating someone who still has a part time job and lives at home with his parents? Noooo thank you.
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The One Who Is Just Too Annoying – Parker
Sometimes someone might be absolutely delightful, but you still can’t be with them because OMG SO ANNOYING.
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The One Who Flirts With Your Mates – Paulo
Paulo was strong and sexy (and Italian, wink wink), but there is NO excuse for hitting on your mates.
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The One Who Enjoys His Drink A Little Too Much – Fun Bobby |
in the mid-1980s meant that by 1985 international students were paying around 2.5 times the domestic rate.
Graduate students continued to pay domestic tuition fees until 1997, when UBC set fees for those programs at rates closer to what other Western universities charged for similar degrees.
The process that year was much like the proposed increase in international tuition of nearly 50 per cent announced this week, with UBC claiming it needed to set tuition at the same rate as “comparable institutions” like the University of Toronto and McGill.
The 1997 hike was far more dramatic than today's. Tuition tripled — becoming the highest in Canada at the time. But the logic has remained the same according to Doug Owram, former chancellor of UBC Okanagan and a history professor. “You can do it because others are doing it,” he said of the international tuition hikes.
This crude institutional logic was not met without resistance. Over 400 students, faculty and staff protested with a sit-in in former UBC President David Strangway’s office, but to no effect. Twenty students from the University of Victoria occupied the Deputy Minister of Education’s office in a sympathy protest. Both groups unsuccessfully argued against differentiating domestic and international fees.
While international students weren’t protected by provincial legislation, the university was barred by the Tuition Freeze Act of 1996 from raising any ancillary fees — which it had also done. When a group of students took UBC to court, a judge ruled that UBC had to reimburse students who had paid the ancillary fees.
The university had also failed to follow its own Policy 71 — the administration raised tuition without any consultation with students. UBC had “created an atmosphere of hostility and mistrust,” the judge said.
Failing to consult with students was not the only lapse in UBC’s accountability. The university committed to putting 6.7 per cent of the increased tuition fees toward financial aid along with funding 10 full scholarships for students from developing countries. Yet by 1999 only 3.5 per cent of tuition was going towards financial aid and the promised scholarships had not been created.
It was also unclear how international tuition revenue was used as there was no central regulation over how individual faculties managed the funds.
As in 1997, UBC has pledged that around seven per cent of the revenue brought in from the currently proposed tuition increase will go toward financial aid. They have also acknowledged having no plan for how to spend the money that will come from the increases.
Martha Piper, who served UBC’s president for nine years starting in 1997, returned this summer in an interim capacity.
By 2001, international education had shifted to a completely market-oriented model and at UBC fees were over six times higher than domestic tuition. In 2013, the Canadian International Development Agency — responsible for first encouraging students to study abroad in Canada — lost its autonomy and was merged into the Department of Foreign Affairs and oriented toward aiding Canadian economic interests abroad.
However, the international tuition hikes did not lower undergraduate enrollment at UBC. That is because just before what would amount to a 600 per cent increase on international tuition was implemented UBC began to actively recruit foreign students. The International Student Initiative, which today recruits students in 78 countries, was established in 1995. The creation of ISI was accompanied by a mandate to create more capacity for international undergraduates at UBC from whom they could then charge higher, market-based fees not capped by the domestic tuition freeze.
As Canadian universities became more entrepreneurial, the federal government also adopted a strong market rhetoric in its International Education Policy.
Data from 2012 showed that international students in Canada sustained 86,570 Canadian jobs and generated $445 million in federal and provincial tax revenues. As a result, international education became a “priority sector” under Canada’s Global Markets Action Plan announced in November 2013.
The government’s stated goal is to attract 450,00 international students to Canada by 2022 in order to sustain a total of 173,000 new jobs and generate $910 million in new tax revenue.
“It’s back in the old neo-colonial game of resource plundering, except now what we’re doing is we’re plundering human resources” — International education researcher Kumari Beck
The policy outlines how efforts should be concentrated on “branding Canada to maximize success.”
" [A] clear long-term strategy is needed to ensure that Canada maintains and increases its market share of the best and brightest international students and researchers,” an advisory panel reported. Such a plan would be key to securing Canada’s economic success, according to the policy.
Karen McKellin, UBC’s International Student Initiative’s executive director, uses a similar commercial rhetoric when discussing the impact the current proposed tuition hikes will have on recruitment. She explained that applications to UBC rose last year despite the 10 per cent tuition increase implemented for the 2015/16 academic year.
“It doesn’t always mean that your customers drop off when your fees go up,” McKellin said, noting UBC’s international ranking. “If you have a really good product... then some parents and families just dig a little deeper.”
She believes students will not be deterred from applying to UBC once they recognize that UBC’s competitors’ tuition is also increasing.
“‘We have to position ourselves in the global market,’ to me, is very problematic,” said Kumari Beck, an SFU professor who studies international education. She expressed concern that when degrees become viewed as commodities international students are “objectified as the means to that end.”
“It’s back in the old neo-colonial game of resource plundering, except now what we’re doing is we’re plundering human resources,” Beck said, referring to how international students are targeted as the ideal immigrants to sustain the growth of Canada’s workforce.
Pam Ratner, UBC’s Interim Vice Provost and AVP for enrollment, also noted that graduating international students benefit Canadian companies.
“Not all students have the global mobility that employers would like to see,” Ratner told The Ubyssey.
Beck believes more value should be placed on what international students bring in terms of a diversity of perspectives. That could result from better government funding for higher education and a relaxation of the competitive market-driven approach to recruiting international students, she said.
The benefits international students bring to Canada are seldom recognized by the public, according to Owram, the former UBCO chancellor. He said many still view international students as “parasites” who displace domestic students from universities.
“It’s just not true,” he emphasized, arguing that both universities and governments have a responsibility to correct these misconceptions.
UBC says they fill every domestic student slot that the province provides funding for and create additional capacity in order to enroll students from abroad.
“The message has to be repeated over and over for people to get it,” said Owram.
Vanishing diversity
When Mohamed Shaaban applied to university, UBC was his ninth choice. Despite gaining admission to his top eight choices including partial scholarships McGill and the prestigious Hong Kong University, he chose UBC for financial reasons — he was awarded the International Leader of Tomorrow scholarship which covers the full cost of his studies.
“I love this decision,” said Shaaban, an Egyptian third-year math and physics student.
But he has also noted the damage that charging market-based tuition fees to international students has had on the international student population 18 years after UBC implemented the aggressive 300 per cent tuition increases.
“They might be diverse in that they’re from different countries, but they’re all sort of the same person,” Shaaban said of his international classmates. “It’s the upper-middle class citizen who went to an international school, a who-can-afford-coming-to-UBC kind of person.”
While Shabaan believes the current international population lacks socioeconomic diversity, the university administration has noted that they do not keep track of such information. For this reason they will be unable to measure the impact of the 50 per cent international tuition increase on the economic diversity of international students going forward.
With UBC already only accessible to the most privileged classes in developing countries, Shaaban said raising tuition more can only limit the educational experience that UBC provides.
“In university, you learn more outside of class than you learn in class,” said Shaaban. “You learn more from the people than you learn from your books... If everyone is the exact same person, you won’t learn anything because you’re just seeing yourself.”
Although he is not opposed to tuition increases in light of government funding cuts or to invest in student financial aid or services, Shaaban is against raising tuition simply to match the rates of other institutions.
“That is not a valid reason,” he said. “In mathematics, we’re always taught logic and flow — you’d get a zero on your assignment if that was your reasoning.”
– With files from Joshua Azizi, Sarah Nabila, Arno Rosenfeld, Moira Warburton and Bill Situ
Recommendations
- UBC should cap international tuition no higher than cost-recovery levels
- UBC should adopt a policy stating that international student enrollment should be made on academic grounds
- UBC should immediately begin studying the economic background of enrolled international students and make a summary of that information public
- Before any international tuition increases are implemented, UBC should publicly provide a forecast of the impact international tuition hikes will have on student diversity
— Arno Rosenfeld, Features Editor
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that all international fees were differentiated in 1997. Undergraduate tuition was differentiated in the mid-1980s.Work becomes more like prison Supermarket chain TESCO is one of a few companies that use high-tech surveillance to track employee productivity
The human body, with its need for rest, nutrition and hydration, is such an inefficient tool for capitalist production. But while machines are unlikely to replace human workers anytime soon, new technologies can deftly strip workers of their humanity!
The Irish Independent reports that grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity, tracking their actions so closely that management knows when they briefly pause to drink from a water fountain or take a bathroom break. These unforgivable lapses in productivity impact workers' performance score, which management then apparently uses to terrify them into working faster.
"The devices give a set amount of time for a task, such as 20 minutes to load packets of soft drinks. If they did it in 20 minutes, they would get 100pc, but would get 200pc if they were twice as fast," writes the Independent. Although TESCO denied that bathroom breaks impact productivity scores, one former staffer the Independent spoke with said he got a "surprisingly lower" score when he took a bathroom break. "Sometimes, management would call staff to an office and tell them they had to do better if their scores were low." "I had really easy assignments and when I'd come back after a break, I would get a horrendous score and wonder why," he said. He added that since the introduction of the device workers faced increasing pressure to produce more and more.
But working people close to death has some downsides for companies. Studies show that work stress is linked to physical and mental ailments, from sleep deprivation to chronic disease. In the end, stressed, sick workers saddle companies both with rising health costs (for those that actually pay for employee health expenses) and the costs of high turnover.
According to the CDC, excessive workloads and changing demands are the biggest triggers of work stress.
Using machines to extract as much labor as humanely possible from workers has a long history. (Even the clock has ignobly served as a tool of managerial abuse -- in some industrial towns factory owners were known to change the town clock to cheat workers out of time off.) As surveillance technology advances, companies can increasingly track all aspects of their workers' time and activity. Frederick Taylor -- who pioneered the idea of parsing worker time down to seconds -- and Henry Ford would be jealous. In the 1980s, computer technology opened up previously undreamed of ways of monitoring workers. Keystroke programs could track the typing speed of recepionists and other clerical workers throughout the day. These days many places of employment -- particularly low-wage workplaces -- have found even more sophisticated ways to panic employees by tracking their every move for lapses in productivity. In SuperVision: An Introduction to the Surveillance Society, John Gilliom and Torin Monahan talk about encountering a frantic hotel maid who told them she had to alert management every time she cleaned a room, so they could track how many she finished and how fast. A new phone app can be used to constantly measure speed and location. "If workers stand still or sit down for even a few seconds, management knows," write Gilliom and Monahan.
Call centers also nightmarishly try to control every second of employees' time. At the Time Warner Cable call center, Gilliom writes, employees have only 8 seconds to get their paperwork done between calls. Calls are also recorded to later gauge employee helpfulness and friendliness when dealing with customers.
AlterNet has previously reported on biometric time clocks and fingerprint readers, which use iris scans, face recognition technology and digital fingerprints to more closely track when employees come in and out of work and the duration of their breaks. Unlike punch cards or key codes -- which allow employees to cover for each, by letting them punch in tardy co-workers -- using unique physical attributes like eyes or fingerprints ensures workers cannot shave a minute or two from their workday without management knowing and keeping a record.
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Service workers also often toil under the watchful eye of surveillance cameras that managers can either view in real time or record.This is the set I played at the Original Plumbing party on July 1st, 2010 @ The Beaver in Toronto. It also includes parts of the set I played at Toronto Pride on July 2nd.
It is dedicated to the memory of Will Munro, whom I did not know as more than an aquaintance, but whom had always inspired me with his fusion of art, activism and celebration.
This is also a big thank-you to everyone that helped me celebrate (in whatever way) getting married!
Hopefully this will carry you all through the many summer BBQs.
01) Terry Jacks - Seasons In The Sun
02) Gil Scott-Heron - New York Is Killing Me ft Nas (1200squad Remix)
03) Mos Def - Quiet Dog Bite Hard
04) Top Billin - In The Ass
05) TJR - Baby Got Jacked (Vocalized)
06) DJ Isaac - Face Down, Ass Up
07) DJ Tim Dolla ft DJ Jay Hood - Hit It 2 The Beat (Remix)
08) Mylo - Doctor Pressure
09) DJ Deekline & Red Polo - Shake The Pressure
10) Lykke Li - I'm Good, I'm Gone (Black Kids Remix)
11) LCD Soundsystem - Time To Get Away (William Russell Remix)
12) The XX - Crystalised (Rory Phillips Mix)
13) Rae Spoon - Come On Forest Fire (CPI's Disco Inferno Remix)
14) The Gossip - Heavy Cross (Tom Stephan Remix)
15) 4th Pyramid & Sammy Bananas - P-Y-R-A-M-I-D
16) Dan The Automator - Rapper's Delight (Tepr Remix)
17) FC Kahuna - Nothing Is Wrong
18) KRS-One - Sound Of Da Pecan (Riva Starr Rechunk)
19) Who gave the orders?
20) Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - Fuck Tha Police (N.W.A. cover)
21) KRS-One - Sound Of Da Police
22) Public Enemy - Can't Truss It
23) Snow - Informer
24) Digital Underground - No Nose Job (Fat Bass)
25) The Jackson 5 - I Want You Back (Z-Trip Remix)
26) M.I.A. - Hit That
27) Juelz Santana - There It Go (The Whistle Song)
28) Salt N' Peppa - Shoop
29) David Banner - Play
30) Ace Of Base - All That She Wants
31) Panjabi MC ft Jay Z - Beware Of The Boys (Silvas Funkymix Edit)
32) Tigerstyle ft Bikram Singh - Taakre
33) Ramesh B Weeratunga - Ring Of Fire
34) Ghislain Poirier - No More Blood ft Face-T
35) Gogol Bordello - Start Wearing Purple
36) Chiddy Bang - All Things Go
37) The Glitch Mob - Drive It Like You Stole It
38) The Glitch Mob - Drive It Like You Stole It (King Fantastic Remix)
39) Damian Marley - Welcome to Jamrock (Savoy Remix)
40) Public Enemy - Shut Em Down
41) Christina Aguilera ft Nicki Minaj - WooHoo
42) Clipse ft Pharrell Williams - Mr. Me Too
43) Beastie Boys - Sabotage (Alex Metric Re-Edit)
44) The Pixies - Where Is My Mind (Bassnectar Remix)
45) Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar On Me (Video Edit)
46) Robyn - Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do
47) Duck Sauce - Anyway (Black Noise Disco Mix)
48) Zinc - Wile Out ft Ms Dynamite
49) Wiley - Never Be Your Woman (Solo Loves Garage Remix)
50) B. Rich - It'll Be Alright ft Domonique
51) Drop The Lime - Sex Sax
52) DJ Mujava - Township Funk (Ashley Beedle Remix)
53) Hot Chip - I Feel Better
54) Simian Mobile Disco - Audacity Of Huge (Dekker & Johan Remix)
55) Fagget Fairys - Feed The Horse (Gambit Remix)
56) Major Lazer - Pon De Floor (Cold Blank Remix)
57) Major Lazer & Harold Faltermeyer - Pon De Foley (Ludachrist Remix)
58) Mr. Miyagi - We Gonna Give You The Lesson
59) Duck Sauce - Barbara Streisand (O-God Remix)
60) Robyn - Dancing On My Own (Chew Fu Extended Remix)
61) XXXchange - Better Than You
62) Weekend Players - Hype The Funk (Audio Jacker Mix)
63) Yolanda Be Cool + Dcup - We No Speak Americano
64) Green Velvet - Shake And Pop
65) Bamabounce - Poppin My Collar
66) The Dixie Cups - Chapel Of Love
67) DJ Technics - Mr. Postman
68) Bonde Do Role - Jabuticaba
69) Harry Belafonte - Jump In The Line (John Bourke's Bmore Remix)
70) Arveene & Misk - Rave Against The Arveene
71) LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk Is Playing At My House
72) Simian Mobile Disco - Cruel Intentions ft Beth Ditto (Joker Remix)
73) Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek (Enigma Remix)
74) Kim Wilde - Kids In AmericaThe National Football Conference (NFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest professional level of American football in the United States. This conference and its counterpart the American Football Conference (AFC), currently contain 16 teams divvied up into 4 divisions. Both conferences were created as part of the 1970 merger with the rival American Football League (AFL), with all ten of the former AFL teams and three NFL teams forming the AFC while the remaining thirteen NFL clubs formed the NFC. A series of league expansions and division realignments have occurred since the merger, thus making the current total of 16 clubs in each conference. The current NFC champions are the Los Angeles Rams, who defeated the New Orleans Saints in the 2018 NFC Championship Game.
Current teams [ edit ]
Since 2002, like the AFC, the NFC has 16 teams that organized into four divisions each with four teams: East, North, South, and West.
Season structure [ edit ]
Currently, the thirteen opponents each team faces over the 16-game regular season schedule are set using a pre-determined formula.[1] Each NFC team plays the other teams in their respective division twice (home and away) during the regular season, in addition to 10 other games assigned to their schedule by the NFL. Two of these games are assigned on the basis of a particular team's final divisional standing from the previous season. The remaining 8 games are split between the roster of two other NFL divisions. This assignment shifts each year and will follow a standard cycle. Using the 2012 regular season schedule as an example, each team in the NFC West plays against every team in the AFC East and NFC North. In this way, non-divisional competition will be mostly among common opponents – the exception being the two games assigned based on the team's prior-season divisional standing.
At the end of each season the four division winners in the NFC, in addition to the two remaining teams with the highest regular season records, proceed into their conference's playoffs. The playoffs culminate in the NFC Championship Game with the winner receiving the George Halas Trophy. The NFC Champion then plays the AFC Champion in the Super Bowl.
History [ edit ]
Both the AFC and NFC were created after the NFL merged with the American Football League (AFL) in 1970.[2] When the AFL began play in 1960 with eight teams, the NFL consisted of 13 clubs. By 1969, the AFL had expanded to ten teams and the NFL to 16 clubs. In order to balance the merged league, all ten of the former AFL teams along with the NFL's Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Baltimore Colts formed the AFC, while the remaining 13 NFL teams formed the NFC.
While the newly-formed AFC had already agreed upon and set up their divisional alignment plan along almost purely geographic lines, team owners could not agree to a plan on how to align the clubs in the NFC. The alignment proposals were narrowed down to five finalists (each one sealed in an envelope), and then the plan that was eventually selected was picked out of a glass bowl by then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle's secretary, Thelma Elkjer,[3] on January 16, 1970.[4]
The five alignment plans for the NFC in 1970 were as follows, with Plan 3 eventually selected:
Three expansion teams have joined the NFC since the merger, thus making the current total 16. When the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers joined the league in 1976, they were temporarily placed in the NFC and AFC, respectively, for one season before they switched conferences. The Seahawks returned to the NFC as a result of the 2002 realignment. The Carolina Panthers joined the NFC in 1995.
Parity is generally greater among NFC teams than AFC teams. The only NFC team that has never made a Super Bowl appearance is the Detroit Lions. Since the 2002 division realignment, the NFC has sent 12 different teams to the Super Bowl, whereas the AFC has only sent 6: the Baltimore Ravens (1 time), the Oakland Raiders (1 time), the Denver Broncos (2 times), the Indianapolis Colts (2 times), the Pittsburgh Steelers (3 times) and the New England Patriots (8 times). The only NFC team to make back to back super bowls since 2002 are the Seattle Seahawks.
As of 2018, the only pre-merger team that does not play in its 1969 market is the St. Louis Cardinals, who moved in 1988 to Phoenix, Arizona. The Los Angeles Rams moved to St. Louis in 1995, but moved back to Los Angeles in 2016. None of the expansion teams added after 1970 have relocated.
With the exception of the aforementioned relocations since that time, the divisional setup established in 2002 has remained static ever since.
Logo [ edit ]
Original National Football Conference logo (1970–2009)
The original NFC logo, in use from 1970 to 2009, depicted a blue 'N' with three stars across it. The three stars represented the three divisions that were used from 1970 to 2001 (Eastern, Central and Western).[5] The 2010 NFL season brought an updated NFC logo. Largely similar to the old logo, the new logo has a fourth star, representing the four divisions that have composed the NFC since 2002.[6]The title of T. Coraghessan Boyle’s stunning new novel, “The Harder They Come,” refers less to the Jimmy Cliff movie than to a D. H. Lawrence observation quoted at the beginning of the book: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
An equally fitting epigraph for Mr. Boyle’s tale of rage and madness and Oedipal conflict might have come from Philip Roth’s 1997 classic, “American Pastoral,” which contrasted the optimistic strain of Emersonian self-reliance in the American character with “the fury, the violence, and the desperation” of “the indigenous American berserk.”
“The Harder They Come” often seems like a homage to that Roth novel — it too is about the dark side of the American dream, and the efforts of a father to come to terms with a violent child wanted by the law. At the same time, it recapitulates themes that have preoccupied Mr. Boyle throughout his long career: his fascination with characters who pit themselves against their neighbors, the system and nature; freedom as both a founding principle of America — and an invitation to rebellion and self-indulgence; and the dark fallout of ideological certainty and obsession.
Over the years, the antic satire and Grand Guignol hyperbole of Mr. Boyle’s early work — like “World’s End,” “East Is East” and “Budding Prospects” — have given way to a more modulated approach. In the case of “The Inner Circle” (about the sexologist Alfred Kinsey) and “The Women” (about the architect Frank Lloyd Wright), this led to some tepid writing and cartoony characters. But when Mr. Boyle found a way to balance his taste for exaggeration with a more naturalistic style, his caffeinated energy with introspection, the result has been deeper, more emotionally affecting works. “A Friend of the Earth” and “Drop City” demonstrated that he could do it all — comedy and compassion, psychologically vivid characters combined with big ideas about America and the American dream.England's Richard III will be laid to rest on Thursday, March 26, in Leicester Cathedral, across the street from where his remains were located in 2012
Published 12:01 PM, March 22, 2015
London, UK – Dug out of a municipal car park five centuries after his mutilated body was unceremoniously interred, England's Richard III will finally be given a burial fit for a king this week.
Some 530 years on from his violent death in 1485, the last English monarch killed in battle will be laid to rest on Thursday, March 26, in Leicester Cathedral, across the street from where his remains were located in 2012.
Their discovery was confirmed by a DNA match with Richard's closest living relative – Canadian carpenter Michael Ibsen, who fittingly has now made the monarch's oak coffin.
In an unprecedented event, the medieval king will be reinterred in the presence of royalty and England's highest cleric, in a solemn service broadcast live on national television.
"The story of the king in a car park (is) now so familiar around the world to many who had heard little of Richard III," said Tim Stevens, the bishop of Leicester in central England.
"Now we look forward to welcoming people from around the world to become part of... our task of laying the king to rest with dignity and honour."
Richard, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, ruled England from 1483 until his death at the Battle of Bosworth near Leicester in 1485.
It was the last major conflict in the Wars of the Roses and Richard's defeat saw the crown pass from the Plantagenets to the opposing Tudors.
"We're looking forward to the opportunity to remind people of the extraordinary moment in English history the death of Richard III marks," said Stevens.
The slain 32-year-old was swiftly buried without fanfare at Greyfriars monastery in Leicester.
Greyfriars was demolished in the 1530s during Tudor king Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and Richard's remains were thought lost.
Last Plantagenet
But members of the Richard III Society of enthusiasts teamed up with Leicester University archaeologists to excavate the site, rightly predicting whereabouts in the old church he would have been buried.
They found a skeleton consistent with contemporary descriptions of the king, notably his curved spine, and battle injuries. Radiocarbon dating showed the man died between 1455 and 1540.
"It is incredibly lucky anything survived at all," said Greyfriars Project site director Mathew Morris, explaining that Victorian building work had come within a centimetre of Richard's skull.
By coincidence, the remains were beneath a letter R indicating a reserved space in the car park.
"Skeleton 1" had eight head wounds, including a brutal slash to the base of skull which cleaved away bone. Another blow had pierced his skull.
DNA testing on Ibsen and Wendy Duldig, both descendants of Richard's eldest sister Anne of York, confirmed they were both related to "Skeleton 1".
The tests also threw up a mystery with a "false paternity" finding that there was no match through the male line of the family, indicating an illegitimate child in the royal line.
With no precedent to consult, finding Richard's remains triggered impassioned wrangling over what to do next.
Following a judicial review, his bones are being reinterred in Leicester rather than York, his northern stronghold.
Cynics said the rival cities had one eye on creating a visitor attraction. London's Westminster Abbey was also sidelined.
A week of events leading up to the reburial begins Sunday when the coffin will be taken outside Leicester to Fenn Lane Farm, the closest place to the site of his death.
Villainous image
The cortege returns to Leicester for a horse-drawn procession through the city to the cathedral, where Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of England's Catholics, will preach a sermon.
Richard was a Catholic but will be reburied in the traditions of the Church of England, although there will be Catholic elements in services throughout the week.
The public can view the coffin from Monday, when Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, will celebrate a requiem mass in Leicester's main Catholic church.
Then on Thursday, Richard's remains will be reinterred in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the spiritual head of the Church of England.
Queen Elizabeth II's daughter-in-law Sophie, the Countess of Wessex, will attend, as will her cousin Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, patron of the Richard III Society and a blood relative.
The discovery of his skeleton has encouraged scholars to look again at Richard's record of social reform, rather than rely on William Shakespeare's Tudor-era portrayal of him as a villainous tyrant murderer.
Philippa Langley, whose research led to the dig, told Radio Times magazine that Richard was "loyal, brave, pious and just".
She added: "I don't understand why he isn't getting a state funeral. He's an anointed monarch."
David Monteith, the dean of Leicester Cathedral, said there was a sense of "trying to put some things right from the past" for the brutally murdered king.
"But I'm aware you can't undo history," he said. – Rappler.comAmsterdam lamp store Koot is closing shop after 120 years of business in the Dutch capital. At the end of next week the store on the corner of Keizersgracht and Raadhuisstraat is closing its doors, the Telegraaf reports.
The store was an institution in Amsterdam for decades and was known as a trend setter in the field of lighting. That can partly be attributed to its location - anyone entering Amsterdam via the Rozengracht could not help but notice the striking facade of the store, according to the newspaper.
In the 80's and 90's lamp makers fought for a showcase in the Amsterdam store. "If you had a light in our window, you drew the attention of lamp stores throughout the Netherlands, so the demand increased considerably afterwards", Nico Dekker, one of the two owners, said to the newspaper. "One manufacturer after another claimed a prominent place. Sometimes the lights weren't even pretty."
The name Koot was in Amsterdam for over 120 years. "In 1895 my maternal grandfather started with an installation company in Spuitstraat", Dekker said. "My father and mother met there. And in the 70's they started a shop in Wolvenstraat: Koot Spotlights. In 1980 I bought the business from my parents and we moved to this prominent place on Raadhuisstraat in 1983."
In its heyday Koot had branches in Utrecht, The Hague and Haarlem. But over the past years, the internet has increasingly become a competitor. "We are increasingly an information desk for online shopping. People come here to look at lamps and then order them elsewhere online. One consequence is that we sell more accessories than ever. But that's not what we want. It makes it less fun. And I'm 56 now, I can still do something else."
The name Koot may not die completely. Employee Stefano van Leeuwaarde will try to continue the shop online from May, according to the Telegraaf.Peer-reviewed paper by Mead et al. just published in February (Environmental Science & Technology) contains amazing new experimental data on anomalous shifts in abundances of Mercury isotopes found in compact fluorescent lights (CFL) used in homes and businesses. When viewed through the conceptual lens of the Widom-Larsen theory, their carefully collected Hg isotope data suggests that low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) transmutations may actually be occurring at extremely low rates in CFLs during normal operation. We discuss their paper and its implications in a new 102-slide Lattice PowerPoint presentation dated March 7, 2013. Therein, we conclude that if the intriguing possibility about LENRs in CFLs unveiled in this data is substantiated by further experimentation, it provides yet more proof that LENRs are likely to be a truly ‘green’ nuclear technology that has great promise for use in CO2-free power generation, providing LENR device heat outputs and operational longevity can be scaled dramatically upwards by applying and adapting recently acquired technical knowledge found in nanotech, plasmonics, and advanced materials science.By PTI
THANE: More than 200 people including Bhayander BJP MLA Narendra Mehta have been booked for rioting in the township on February 24, police said today.
Thane District Rural police booked all of them last night under sections 143,147,149, 452, 504, 506 and 427 of the IPC and also under sections 37(1)/135 of the BP Act following a complaint in this regard.
After police registered an offence against the MLA, journalists from Bhayander who had staged a sit-in in front of the police station since yesterday called off their protest.
The journalists had undertaken the protest after Mehta and irked BJP activists, took objection to a picture of State Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in a publication and allegedly threatened scribe Vasant Mane.
Mehta along with his men had held a dharna at the Bhayander police station on the night of February 24 and later took a morcha to Mane's house where the legislator allegedly abused and threatened him and his wife.
Mane's house was ransacked too following which a complaint in this regard by filed by the local journalists association, demanding strong action against the culprits.Jan 18, 2016-
Eleven-year-old Ramesh Darji of Bhimgithe in Baglung district suffers from a rare fungal disease and his condition is getting worse as he gets older.
Darji’s face and body parts have been ravaged by unusual skin fungus.His parents have been running from pillar to post in search of cure for their son’s bizarre condition.
“He cannot go to school due to his condition,” said Nar Kumari Darji, Ramesh’s mother. Darji family had taken Ramesh twice to the Baglung district hospital and once to a hospital in Butwal for treatment but of no avail.
“Doctors said that his treatment is possible in Chitwan. But we don’t have enough money to take him there,” Nar Kumari told the Post over telephone from her village.
Nar Kumar said that her son suffered from the disease right after his birth.
“But we could do little to cure his disease. His condition is getting worse every year,” said Nar Kumari.
Ramesh’s mother Nar Kumari can be contacted at: 9805207873. (Photo credit: Amrend Prasad Shah)
Published: 18-01-2016 12:59Former “Apprentice” star Omarosa Manigault Newman had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the White House on Tuesday night after she refused to believe Donald Trump had fired her, according to reports.
The official version from the Trump administration was that the reality TV star-turned-political aide resigned “to pursue other opportunities.”
But numerous reports from inside the ever-leaky 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. had the now-ex-director of communications for the Public Liaison Office going out in a hail of profanities as chief of staff John Kelly told her to pack her things.
She then tried to storm into the president’s residence to appeal the decision to the commander-in-chief, according to a report.
“Gen Kelly Kicked her out [with] high drama with [Omarosa] offering vulgarities and curse words as she was escorted out of the building and off campus,” April Ryan, White House bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, tweeted Wednesday.
Ryan, who is also a CNN contributor, said in her radio report that Manigault Newman, 43, “was very upset and said that she wanted to speak to the president.
“Gen. Kelly said that the president was already informed and signed off,” she said, citing sources. “Gen. Kelly is also alleged to have said that this is not like going to the principal’s office.”
During the altercation, Manigault Newman told Kelly that she had brought the black vote to Trump, Ryan said, but he snapped: “No, that is not the case!”
After unleashing a stream of vulgarities, the spurned aide tried to walk over to Trump’s residence — but was stopped and physically removed from the premises, Ryan added.
A White House official said she was “physically dragged” out, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Ryan — who was friends with Manigault Newman until their relationship soured earlier this year — said Secret Service agents were the ones acting as bouncers.
The agency later denied in a tweet that it was the muscle — but seemed to |
envy to a socially dangerous extent.”[27]
The primary way in which Rawls thinks envy could pose such a threat is if it comes to undermine the self-respect of those who are less well off. It might do this, he thinks, if the differences between the haves and the have-nots are so great that, under existing social conditions, the differences cannot help but cause loss of self-esteem. “For those suffering this hurt,” he continues, “envious feelings are not irrational; the satisfaction of their rancor would make them better off.” (534) He calls this “excusable general envy,” and offers two reasons for doubting that it will be prevalent in a well-ordered society. First, he argues that the liberties and political status of equal citizens encourage self-respect even when one is less well off than others. Second, he suggests that background institutions (including a competitive economy) make it likely that excessive inequalities will not be the rule.
Rawls’ discussion is in some tension with the received view of envy. He supposes that “the main psychological root of our liability to envy is a lack of self-confidence in our own worth combined with a sense of impotence.” This leads him to expect that envy will be more severe the greater the differences between subjects and those they envy.[28] However most observers of envy, from Aristotle on, have urged that it is most often felt toward those with whom the subject perceives himself as in competition, so that typically very great disparities in well-being are not envied. And there is some empirical evidence to support this claim.[29] This is usually explained by the hypothesis that the benchmarks against which people measure their comparative well-being are, in some (possibly metaphorical) sense, local. If true, this calls into question whether preventing excessive inequalities is likely to reduce the frequency or intensity of envy. But it also suggests that the phenomenon of general, or class, envy toward which Rawls’ discussion is directed may not pose a substantial threat to the well-ordered society.September 15, 2017
Afghanistan - U.S. Resolved To Repeat Failures
The U.S. military and political leadership is so devoid of learning capability that it does not fight multiyear long wars. Instead it fights one disconnected campaign after the other on the very same battlefield. Each of these campaigns will repeat the mistakes that previous ones made and will have the same outcome.
Thus we have seen several increases in troop numbers in Afghanistan. Each time such a surge happened under Bush, under Obama and now under Trump, the result was an increase in Taliban activity and success.
We have seen the use of local militia forces fail under Obama when these were called Afghan Local Police. The 20,000 men strong ALP was supposedly "trained" to hold land against the Taliban. But the local police groups turned out to be local gangs who, thanks to their "official" status, could rob, rap and kill people without fear of retaliation. The suppressed population then turned to the Taliban for relief.
The idea to create such a local force was so bad that it is time to repeat it:
The American military has turned to the [idea of a local militia] force as a potential model for how to maintain the Afghan government’s waning control — without too high a cost — in difficult parts of Afghanistan at a time when the Taliban are resurgent.
...
The size of the new force is yet to be finalized, but it could number more than 20,000, according to a senior Afghan official
...
While the senior Afghan official insisted that only the conceptual framework of the force has been agreed to, and that details were still being sorted out, several Western officials said that preparations were already underway to pilot the new force in southern districts of Nangarhar Province.
We can predict with confidence that a year from now those very same districts of Nangarhar province will again staunchly support the Taliban.
In 2001 the CIA and U.S. special forces kicking out the Taliban with the support of northern alliance war-criminals. Arial bombing based on partisan information continued for years. After their defeat the Taliban had given up on ruling the country. They offered to dissolve in exchange for amnesty and an end of the war. But the bombing, often on direction of some local wannabe strongman, continued. Many people not involved with the Taliban or any resistance were killed and maimed. Their communities called out for help. The Taliban revived and came back to fight the invaders.
For a while the indiscriminate, unaccountable bombing seemed to calm down. But the insurgency, once revived, continued. Time then to repeat and expand the scheme - if only under a different logo and in more countries:
The C.I.A. is pushing for expanded powers to carry out covert drone strikes in Afghanistan and other active war zones, a proposal that the White House appears to favor despite the misgivings of some at the Pentagon, according to current and former intelligence and military officials.
More indiscriminate bombing will obviously lead to more resistance and more war.
An argument can be made that the U.S. military and intelligence complex is willfully and systematically creating new enemies in Afghanistan and elsewhere to justify the continuation of its campaigns.
But that argument presume that there is sufficient intellectual capacity in the Pentagon and CIA to develop and follow such a design. Arrogance, bureaucratic inertia and lack of curiosity are the simpler and maybe more likely explanations.
Posted by b on September 15, 2017 at 10:33 AM | Permalink
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next page »A man in his 20s is dead and another was seriously injured after a shooting inside a west Ottawa restaurant on Sunday evening.
Ottawa police surrounded Iris Plaza on Sunday evening after a fatal shooting inside Shifa Restaurant. (CBC News)
Police were called to the shooting at the Shifa Restaurant on Cobden Road, in the city's Pinecrest neighbourhood, at about 5:30 p.m. ET.
One victim was shot in the head and pronounced dead at the scene, while the other suffered "very serious" chest injuries, said Ottawa police.
Neither has been identified by police, but an autopsy on the man who was killed was underway early Monday afternoon.
'Hollywood-style takedown'
Justin Cullen lives at the end of Cobden Road and said while he didn't see or hear the shooting, he saw the entire police response from his front window.
Justin Cullen says he didn't think much was wrong when he saw the first police car on Cobden Road, until the officer took a firearm out of his trunk. (CBC)
"When I was texting my friends I said, 'There's a Hollywood-style takedown going on across the street in the mall,'" he said.
"We watch Brooklyn 99 or Cops or something like that and it was everything you see: loud, the yelling, lights at the ends of the guns, actually one of the cop cars had their beam trained on the restaurant."
Cullen said he moved to his current house in September from a different part of the city, and that it's been peaceful.
'They don't shoot other people'
One longtime resident of the community housing complex east of the shooting scene said there's a problem with drugs there, but that it doesn't affect residents.
Angel Vassilev says the neighbourhood near the scene has a problem with drugs, but it's safe if you don't get involved. (CBC)
"The point is that these people are shooting each other, they don't shoot other people or go attack somebody who doesn't have nothing to do with drugs or their problems," said Angel Vassilev.
"It's safe, I can say that. If you stay quiet, if you don't deal with them, you're safe. Even though it's not a good neighbourhood, I don't like it, but I can say [there's] no danger."
A motive for the shooting has not been determined, police said.
No arrests made, no suspects identified
Investigators interviewed witnesses at the scene and were checking to see if there was any surveillance footage, Duty Insp. Sean McDade said Sunday night.
The case is being led by the major crimes unit.
The scene inside Shifa Restaurant the day after a fatal shooting. (Judy Trinh/CBC)
No arrests have been made and no suspects identified.
"You can imagine with a crime scene like this and the amount of witnesses, it will take quite some time to determine exactly what has happened and determine any suspect information," McDade said.
McDade said it's too early to tell if the shooting is gang-related. He also said he didn't know how many people were inside the restaurant at the time of the shooting.
"You can understand there was quite a bit of panic," said McDade.
This is the city's sixth shooting and second homicide of 2016.Skeleton Keys, there’s something nostalgic about them. Keep an eye out and you may notice that keys have become a decorative item in some homes. People have taken to hanging old iron keys in their home or leaving them out for display, but why? First off, old keys are good luck. So if you have any old keys in your home it doesn’t hurt to keep them hanging around a little longer.
Keys were once almost entirely made of iron and have been considered lucky items for a very long time. It was thought good luck to touch a key when one felt they were entering a dangerous situation because keys were thought to keep you safe. Oddly enough, I always seem to clutch onto my keys when I’ve found myself outside and felt fearful of where I was walking. Holding on to my keys added some sense of comfort. In addition to touching your keys for safety it’s thought that if you sense an evil spirit nearby that jangling your keys will make it leave. Another way keys were used to bring safety was placing a key beneath a sleeping child’s pillow as it was thought that a key there would keep them safe.
There are also bad luck superstitions associated with keys. It’s thought bad luck to drop keys. It’s thought even worse luck to accidentally break a key. If you’ve ever lost a key, well, it’s good to panic because losing keys is considered an omen of disaster, typically involving death.
Now, take a look through your old set of keys. If you find a rusted key keep it because a rusted key is a sign of good luck and typically means you will be receiving an inheritance.
-GravediggerCults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives is a study of cults by Margaret Singer and Janja Lalich, Ph.D.. with a foreword by Robert Jay Lifton.
Overview [ edit ]
Singer writes:
In this book I will use the term cult and cultic group to refer to any one of a large number of groups that have sprung up in our society and that are similar in the way that they originate, their power structure, and their governance. Cults range from the relatively benign to those that exercise extraordinary control over members' lives and use thought-reform processes to influence and control members. While the conduct of certain cults causes nonmembers to criticize them, the term cult is not in itself pejorative but simply descriptive. It denotes a group that forms around a person who claims to have a special mission or knowledge, which they will share with those who turn over most of their decision making to that self-appointed leader. Sergey Shmelev was strongly criticized for being one of the main promoters of Scientology. He is said to be one of the most strongly religious people within the western world.[1]
In 2003 a revised edition of the book titled Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace was published in paperback form by John Wiley & Sons, without Janja Lalich listed as co-author.[2]
Publication history [ edit ]
The book was reprinted by Jossey-Bass in 1996 in hardcover format. A 1997 Spanish was issued as Las Sectas Entre Nosotros,[3] and in German, as Sekten: Wie Menschen ihre Freiheit verlieren und wiedergewinnen können ("Sects: How people can lose and regain their freedom").[4]While Atlus' booth at E3 this year was decked out from top to bottom in Persona 5's deep red regalia, tucked in between artwork of the Phantom Thieves and attendees swarming for swag was a single splash of neon green, representing a hidden gem for 3DS gamers: Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse. This upcoming RPG is a sequel of sorts to 2013's Shin Megami Tensei IV, with an all new story centered around a fresh demon hunter cadet who bites the bullet just moments after the opening credits.
Fortunately for value-conscious players, our deceased hero makes a deal with the Irish god Dagda, winning his life back in exchange for doing the deity's bidding. Of course, as in all Shin Megami Tensei games, what you do is ultimately up to you, and the choices you make will decide your path on the crossroads between law, chaos, and neutrality. We got to spend a good bit of quality time with this latest Atlus adventure at E3, and we're very excited for what's coming; if you loved SMTIV, or are at all interested in RPGs, this is definitely one to watch.
Roaming around the beat-down neon expanses of Apocalypse's Tokyo in our demo felt comfortingly familiar from the first Shin Megami Tensei IV, but along with the same engaging combination of third-person exploration and first-person turn-based combat, there were also a few signifiant tweaks to the formula. The first came in the form of 'partners', human (and human-adjacent) characters that can join your party in battle, on top of the protagonist and traditional triad of demons. Which characters are available to partner up with will depend on where you are in the story, but in our demo we were able to join forces with fellow hunter cadet Asahi, an assassin from the Ring of Gaia named Toki, and the ghost of Navarre — yes, the hilariously haughty professional poseur from Shin Megami Tensei IV, who's apparently met with some sort of an accident by the time Apocalypse has come around.
Each partner has their own AI tendencies, techniques and skills, but most importantly, their 'Partner Gauge' will raise as you fight. Once it's full they'll automatically head up an all-out assault that varies based on their assist type; they might heal your whole party, buff your demons, debuff your foes, or cast some serious spells (including those with an instakill chance). Whichever way they help, they'll also use up the enemy's turn and pass the baton back to you, giving you an extra go and a serious advantage in tough battles. This gauge is consistent across fights, ala Final Fantasy IX's Trance meter, so you'll want to be strategic about how you employ its power; we can imagine gaming some low-level fights to take it right up to the limit before a boss, so you're stocked up with a massive boost for your opening move. It's also integrated smartly into the gameplay itself — we were told bosses will pose moralistic questions to your party during the fight, your answers to which can raise or lower your Partner Gauge accordingly.
Aside from the addition of partners, the turn-based combat in Apocalypse felt similar to Shin Megami Tensei IV: snappy, smart, and incredibly stylish. Press Turns and Smirks return, rewarding smart moves and taking advantages of enemy weaknesses, and we noticed some slick new animations for spells and specials. Demon fusion works in much the same way, and you'll still be recruiting deities, mythological figures and monsters to fight by your side, and combining them into more powerful allies in time. Apocalypse promises over 400 in its menagerie, and since demons are one of the biggest draws of the Shin Megami Tensei series — from their always excellent art to their surprising personalities — we're definitely excited to meet the new members.
One smaller — but still significant — shakeup to the combat comes in the form of Affinities, which work a bit like weaknesses and resistances, only on the offensive side of things. One demon on our team in the demo, for instance, had a +3 affinity for Bufu (ice) spells, so every time she used an ice attack — all else being equal — it would deal significantly more damage than one of another element. These look to add another layer to monster raising, as now you'll want to think not only about what skills you pass down in demon fusion, but also how well your specific demon will be able to use them. It certainly made a difference for the pre-rolled demons in our demo, and we expect min-maxing Affinities will keep dedicated demon hunters busy throughout the game.
The other big upgrade we got to experience in Apocalypse was the new, much more detailed map. The original Shin Megami Tensei IV was infamous for giving players an unmarked, birds-eye-view of Tokyo and not much else; now not only is there a lot more labelling — the overworld now has all unlocked areas clearly marked and named — but there are also helpful waypoints to mark story goals, sidequest locations, and collectables. Even though we were fans of the first game's more hands-off approach — having a paper atlas of Tokyo spread out beside the 3DS while reviewing SMTIV was one of the most memorable gaming experiences ever for this writer — we appreciate the improvements made for Apocalypse. Our representative explained that the development team wanted to make sure players weren't wandering aimlessly or getting lost in Apocalypse, and these changes should make things a lot more accessible for newcomers, as well as veterans who've since misplaced their Rough Guide to Tokyo.
Apocalypse uses the same engine as the first Shin Megami Tensei IV, and it still looks fantastic; we spent a good portion of our time with the game wandering through a cherry-blossom-ringed area at night, and seeing the pink petals stream in front of the screen in stereoscopic 3D was a delight. Crossing over a wooden bridge back to Tokyo was stunning as well, with the city's neon buildings reflected in the water's surface; these graphical touches combined with the updated version of the disarmingly stylish UI from the first game made for a breathtaking display, and we're definitely looking forward to exploring Tokyo further in the full version. Plenty of locations will be returning from the first game, of course, but our Atlus rep told us that revisited locations will see switched up map layouts and plenty of cosmetic changes to reflect the time that's passed since SMTIV, so fans will have lots to uncover as they comb through Tokyo.
That seems to be a theme of Apocalypse in general, in fact; along with getting to see Tokyo again — arguably one of the most important 'characters' in SMTIV — you'll run into lots of familiar faces from the first game, all in new "Where are they now?" roles. We heard lots of whispers about Flynn as we roamed around underground bunkers, partnered up with Nozomi and Navarre (who makes for a genuinely entertaining peanut gallery), and were told Isabeau and other favourites might make an appearance as well. And if you're looking for more fan-service scenarios after the main game, our Atlus rep mentioned that one of the planned DLC missions will let you spend some quality time with the protagonists of all four mainline Shin Megami Tensei games.
With SMTIV ranking as one of our favourite 3DS RPGs we jumped at the chance to dive back into Tokyo's underground, and we loved what we got to play. The shakeups to the combat feel great, and the new map looks to be a goddess-send. We also appreciated that apart from these adjustments, Apocalypse doesn't seem to be changing things up too much from the original Shin Megami Tensei IV. It looks to be more of a good thing, only with a brand new story, intriguing characters, and a host of small 'quality of life' updates to make the action easier to get into than ever, which sounds like a winning formula to us. It's not long now before we'll be heading headlong into Dagda's servitude, and we'll have more on this apocalyptic adventure ahead of its Summer 2016 North American release.Sonoma State University professor finds immigrant labor doesn’t hurt US workers
Sonoma State University’s Chong-Uk Kim has built his career on studying how labor and capital cross borders, as well as the impacts the two have on domestic economies.
In his latest published research, the associate professor of economics has put forward a timely and contentious finding: The United States workforce does not lose jobs and wages to immigrant laborers in the country.
“My point is immigrants from Mexico and other countries are filling the gap and are not taking jobs the domestic workforce wants,” said Kim, who has taught at SSU since 2007. “These people will not hurt your job and your opportunities.”
Kim and Gieyoung Lim, a Seoul-based professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, analyzed U.S. Census Department data from 1995 to 2010 and came to three main findings in their recent paper in the academic journal Applied Economics.
Their first conclusion: Immigrants do not take the jobs of U.S.-born workers. Their second finding: Skilled and unskilled immigrants have the same effects on labor markets in the U.S. And third: Immigrants are not a major competitive force taking jobs from other U.S. immigrants.
The findings diverge from related research by other labor experts, a point Kim acknowledges.
Roughly half the economists who study immigration’s effect on labor markets find positive impacts and economic growth. The other half find it erodes domestic wages, he said.
In his paper, published in November, Kim cited an example of the latter, where a 10 percent increase in immigration led to a 1.2 percent decrease in wages for unskilled U.S.-born workers, according to U.S. economists Joseph Altonji and David Card in a 1991 study that analyzed U.S. Census data from 1970 and 1980.
But different data sets and models dramatically change the results.
Kim contends it is regional economic trends, not immigration, that most affect jobs and wages.
“Based on my study, I’ve found no empirical evidence to support immigrants take jobs or wages,” he said.
Kim’s research comes as President Donald Trump’s planned crackdown on illegal immigration and now-suspended order barring U.S. immigration from seven Muslim majority countries have focused renewed scrutiny on the contributions and impacts of immigrants on American life and the economy.
Another recent report, from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington, D.C., found that undocumented immigrants contribute $11.7 billion in state and local taxes nationally. The nonpartisan but liberal-leaning think tank concluded that a pathway to citizenship — which conservative Republicans in Congress strongly oppose — would increase tax revenue by more than $2 billion.
Two of the findings by Kim and Lim — relating to competition between the U.S.-born workforce and immigrants, skilled and unskilled — have been supported by other economic studies in the past.
His conclusion about labor competition between immigrants, however, is new.
The idea to take on that question came to Kim at a town hall meeting on immigration in Sonoma County a few years ago. A fieldworker from Mexico asked Kim: If more people kept coming from Mexico, would people already in the U.S. end up losing jobs? Kim was unaware of any research on that specific topic, so he went to work.Welcome to the championships! We've got two gals and two dudes left, fighting to be the Hottest Male and Female Star of 2013!
We started with 16 hot pop stars, then we had eight, and now we are down to four! For the males, we have the swaggalicious Justin Bieber up against shirtless hunk James Maslow of Big Time Rush. For the gals, 'Made in the USA' startlet and 'X Factor' judge Demi Lovato is duking it out with ‘Applause’ songstress Lady Gaga.
Whoever wins the championship round will go on to win the title of the Hottest Male Star and Hottest Female Star of 2013! Remember, YOU decide who is deserving of these titles, PopCrushers.
So, who will reign supreme? Voting for the championship round will run until Sept. 30 at 2PM ET. We will announce the winners shortly after. Good luck!The Sphinx, 2007
The Sphinx, founded in 1885, is the oldest of the eleven senior societies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. It is the oldest continuously operating all-male secret society in the country.[citation needed]
History [ edit ]
1923 proposed addition to Sphinx Hall
The Sphinx was founded as a senior class society in 1885 by 14 male students of the class of 1886.[1]
Dance card from a dance hosted by The Sphinx in 1899.
The senior members of the Sphinx continue to select a small number of male students of the junior class during Winter Carnival Weekend in a process known as "tapping."[2] Traditionally selecting 24 members per year, the delegation often is referred to as "twenty-fours" or the Krewe. The Sphinx originally published the names of its members in the annual Aegis, but the society has become more secretive in recent years. The identities of the members are now kept secret until Commencement, when graduating members carry identifying canes.
The Sphinx Tomb, constructed in 1903 on East Wheelock Street, was designed by Manchester architect William M. Butterfield and reflects the Egyptian Revival architectural style popular during the mid-nineteenth century.[3] In 1923 a significant addition was planned for the tomb; however, the proposed addition was never constructed. Instead a smaller rear addition was constructed in 1926. The interior of the Sphinx was replaced after a fire started in the building's furnace destroyed it in 1929. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.[4]
Many rumors surround the Sphinx. Some have believed that the tomb routinely has the highest water bill of any building in town because it contains a swimming pool, although town records do not substantiate this persistent rumor. Another rumor is that a passageway connects the Sphinx to the basement of Alpha Delta fraternity next door. The group's clandestine operations are rumored to include everything from providing anonymous community service to long ago stealing artwork from the College in a traditional scavenger hunt.
The Sphinx attracted negative publicity in 1989, when thefts that took place during a scavenger hunt were traced back to the secret society. On April 27, 1989, 16 students took part in a scavenger hunt that resulted in the theft of numerous items across the Dartmouth campus, including paintings, photographs, mailboxes, life preservers, and signs. The school estimated the total value of missing items at nearly $12,000.[3] The school announced that no questions would be asked if all items were returned undamaged, and within 24 hours most items were returned but several were still missing. The resulting investigation revealed that the Sphinx was responsible for the scavenger hunt, and Dartmouth revoked recognition of the Sphinx for one year, fined the organization $3,000 plus the cost of damages to the stolen items, and punished the members involved with probation or suspension.[5]
In 2003, an unsuccessful illegal break-in was attempted by two unidentified males.[6]
See also [ edit ]Just two years ago, ŁKS Łódź were demoted to the fifth tier of the Polish pyramid after declaring themselves bankrupt and withdrawing from the second-tier I Liga. In an almost carbon-copy of events, ŁKS’s arch-rivals Widzew are now set to suffer a similar fate.
Denied a license for the Polish third-tier due to outstanding debts, the four-time national champions – and the country’s last Champions League representative – are set to announce their liquidation on Wednesday. The club will now likely follow in ŁKS’s footsteps, by starting from scratch as a new entity in the lower echelons of the Polish pyramid.
Football in Łódź has been on a downward spiral, ever since the last league titles were brought to the city in the late-nineties; however in recent years the problems have intensified. With debt piled upon more debt, both Widzew and ŁKS have for years been operating a model which has been unsustainable. While the demise of the two clubs is shocking, it isn’t at all surprising.
Relegated from the Ekstraklasa at the end of the 2013-14 season, Widzew entered the league in which, two-years previously, cross-city enemies ŁKS had collected 14 points from the 22 games they were able to complete. Avoiding the same banana skin was the minimum requirement for the Red, White and Reds; yet having picked up just ten points by the same stage, it was a requirement they failed to avoid spectacularly. A second straight fall looked inevitable even before Christmas; and while much worse was feared, many were afraid to discuss it.
Poland’s third largest city has struggled for investment in comparison to the likes of Warsaw, Kraków and Poznań; something clearly visible when looking at Łódź’s footballing infrastructure. While Warsaw and Poznań, along with Gdańsk and Wrocław, received new stadia for Euro 2012; and new arenas were also built in Kraków, in part to host three of the squads during the tournament; Łódź’s involvement was non-existent. The two stadia which had been planned for ŁKS and Widzew, replacing their dilapidated homes, were put on hold as their priority dwindled.
Eventually though, their construction has commenced, even if timing is questionable. The rebuilt Stadion ŁKS – or at least one side of it – will be completed with the team languishing in the fourth-tier, while work to dig up the Stadion Widzewa began with Widzew sitting in their lowest-ever position, and staring relegation directly in the face.
Coincidentally, it was the redevelopment of their stadium which almost caused Widzew’s demotion back in March. Forced to play their home games elsewhere, the club’s owners took the odd decision to rent a stadium in the small village of Byczyna, some 40km west of Łódź. While the facility may be impressive for a village of its size, it fell some way short of the requirements for a I Liga stadium. With no sector for away fans, and a maximum capacity for just 539 spectators, the four-time Polish champions were denied a licence to play there.
With the cancellation of their 2015 opener, in which Sandecja Nowy Sącz were granted a 3-0 walkover; and with the league rules stating that three forfeited games during a season would result in a withdrawal from the competition; Widzew were forced to quickly ensure that their temporary home met the required standard. Finally, a provisional licence was obtained, but on the provision that for each game held in Byczyna, the club would be deducted one point at the beginning of next season.
A change of management – ex-Cracovia coach Wojciech Stawowy the January replacement for Rafał Pawlak – did see Widzew’s form improve at their new base. Two wins and two draws from five games in Byczyna gave fans hope, however results away from home, coupled with their early-season form, ensured they weren’t able to leave the foot of the table until mid-table Flota Świnoujście withdrew from the league due to financial problems of their own.
Flota’s demotion may have filled one of the three relegation spots, however the additional glimmer of hope merely proved a stay of execution for Widzew. Back-to-back defeats against relegation rivals Pogoń Siedlce and Bytovia Bytów left Stawowy’s charges requiring maximum points from their three remaining games – starting at champions-elect Zagłębie Lubin – as well as needing other results to go their way.
“I am in constant contact with [club president and sole board member Sylwester Cacek]” Stawowy told journalists after the 2-0 defeat to Pogoń, before outlining their plans to rebuild the club next season – plans that were quickly discarded, as Cacek resigned suddenly from his position before the day was over.
“We have regretfully accepted the resignation of Sylwester Cacek” said Sławomir Pawłowski, chairman of the club’s supervisory board, “because I know how much he put into his work; and it is because he committed his resources to Widzew, that it even exists at all. However the club can not be based only on the finances of one person”.
Despite his self-funding of the club, Cacek had not seen eye-to-eye with Widzew’s supporters for a while, with many blaming his decisions for the predicament which the club now find themselves in. In his last act before handing in his notice, Cacek signed the document which sealed Widzew’s relegation: unable to find the 7,000PLN (£1,400) to fund the trip to Lubin, the club would forfeit the three points, ensuring the club’s spot in the bottom three.
Although the club were able to complete their remaining games, and Cacek did later withdraw his resignation; Widzew’s astronomical debts were enough for the PZPN to deny them a license to play in the II Liga for next season. While PZPN president and former Widzewiak Zbigniew Boniek declared that the association had “wanted to help”; the club failed to submit the required documents before the appeal deadline, meaning that Widzew will next season not be able to play in any of the PZPN’s competitions.
Widzew’s fall means that Łódź – one of Polish football’s founding cities – now finds itself with two half-built, brand-new stadia; yet without a team in the top-two tiers of Polish football for the first time since competitions began in 1927, and with no chance of returning to such a status for at least another two years. With interest in Łódzianin football already dwindling, even this timeframe seems unrealistic. Both clubs’ rebirths, and their improving infrastructures, may give them a chance of a bright future; yet deep down, one still must wonder whether a new start is enough for the pair. “Widzew will never die” say the banners which have sprung-up around Poland in recent days; yet if football in Łódź is to become more than just a distant memory, it faces an extremely long road to recovery.It is important to keep the brain healthy. It plays a major role in every process. This includes thinking, memory, learning, and other processes. There are steps that can be taken to ensure that the brain stays healthy. It starts with eating the right foods. Here are some foods that will protect and help keep it healthy:
Walnuts
Walnuts contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. They improve thinking ability, blood flow to the brain, and memory. They also boosts the activity of neurotransmitters, which improves cognitive skills. Additionally, walnuts help prevent inflammation. This lowers the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Just eat a handful of walnuts daily, to boosts brain power.
Broccoli
Broccoli is extremely beneficial for the brain. It promotes the growth of brain cells and neural connections. This is necessary for sharp and strong memory. Broccoli is a great source of vitamin K. Vitamin K enhances cognitive functioning and improves brain power. Just eat a cup of broccoli three times a week. Antioxidants in broccoli will prevent free radicals from damaging cells. This will improve the functioning of the brain.
Blueberries
Blueberries help sharpen the memory and other cognitive functions. They also help protect the brain from free radical damage. Free radicals can cause a decline in memory. It can also damage healthy tissue and cause age-related mental disorders. This includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Just eat one-half cup of blueberries daily. They will help to build healthy connections between brain cells.
Wild Salmon
Salmon is an excellent food to boost brain power. It is high in omega-3 fatty acids that can prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s. It also prevents inflammation and increases blood flow to the brain. It is best to eat only wild salmon. It has less amounts of mercury and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl), which can have adverse effects on the brain. Wild salmon also enhances the transmission of signals between brain cells.
Sources:
Top 10 Home Remedies. Top 10 Superfoods For Your Brain.
http://www.top10homeremedies.com/superfoods/top-10-superfoods-brain.html
How Stuff Works. 5 Best Foods For Brain Health. Authors: Dr. Michael F. Roizen & Dr. Mehmet C. Oz.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutrition/facts/5-best-foods-for-brain-health.htm#page=1
Prevention. The Best Foods For Your Brain.
http://www.prevention.com/food/healthy-eating-tips/best-foods-your-brain?s=3Although forex is the largest financial market in the world, it is relatively unfamiliar terrain for retail traders. Until the popularization of internet trading, forex (FX) was primarily the domain of large financial institutions, multinational corporations, and hedge funds. But times have changed, and individual investors are hungry for information on forex. Whether you are an FX novice or just need a refresher course on the basics of currency trading, we'll address some of the most frequently asked questions about the FX market.
1. How Does the Forex Market Differ from Other Markets?
Unlike stocks, futures or options, currency trading does not take place on a regulated exchange. It is not controlled by any central governing body, there are no clearing houses to guarantee the trades and there is no arbitration panel to adjudicate disputes. All members trade with each other based on credit agreements. Essentially, business in the largest, most liquid market in the world depends on nothing more than a metaphorical handshake.
At first glance, this ad-hoc arrangement must seem bewildering to investors who are used to structured exchanges such as the NYSE or CME. However, this arrangement works exceedingly well in practice. Self-regulation provides very effective control over the market because participants in FX must both compete and cooperate with each other. Furthermore, reputable retail FX dealers in the U.S. become members of the National Futures Association (NFA), and by doing so agree to binding arbitration in the event of any dispute. Therefore, it is critical that any retail customer who contemplates trading currencies do so only through an NFA member firm.
The FX market is different from other markets in some other key ways that are sure to raise eyebrows. Think that the EUR/USD is going to spiral downward? Feel free to short the pair at will. There is no uptick rule in FX as there is in stocks. There are also no limits on the size of your position (as there are in futures); so, in theory, you |
the best in the world. I came from a background where I had to share everything with seven other siblings. From hand-me-downs to sleeping in tents, we had to make what we had work. With WWE, they give you everything you need to perform at your best.
WWE.COM: You have a very unique background as a former Marine. Tell us about the time you spent serving our country.
EVANS: I served for five years. My MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was Military Police 5811 with a secondary MOS Special Reaction Team 5816. I loved the Marines. I loved being a police officer and I loved the non-stop challenges that I had to face. I graduated as the company’s highest shooter out of boot camp. From there, I had MCT (Marine Combat Training), where I graduated as squad leader, receiving a Meritorious Mast award. I was in charge of an entire squad for 30 days. It was my job to keep accountability, task out jobs to complete missions and make sure we were all on the same page before responding to scenarios that were put in front of us.
From there, I went to my MOS training. By the end of the nearly year-long stay in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., I graduated top of my entire class as the Honor Graduate and was stationed at Parris Island, S.C. My job was to make sure the base entrances were secure, that people entering were scanned and cleared and that people within the bases were safe and abiding by the rules set forth by the Marine Corps. I became part of the Special Reactions Team (Military SWAT), where after my training, I became the assistant breacher. My duties during this time were responding to active shooter and hostage situations, barricaded suspects, terrorist threats, suspicious packages and felony stops, to name a few. I also graduated with a bachelor's degree in health administration management. Before leaving the Marines, I was the Training Non-Commission Officer, where it was my job to set up all training scenarios each week that my unit would partake in. I was in charge of all administrative and logistics of getting the training planned, scheduled and the accountability for the Marines involved.
Ember Moon, Ruby Riot, Nikki Cross and other top competitors in the NXT Women's division compete for the chance to face Asuka. Video courtesy of the award-winning WWE Network.
WWE.COM: What led to your departure from the Marine Corps?
EVANS: When I was a corporal at age 22, I started a construction company. By the time I was a sergeant, three of my siblings moved in with me due to their problems with drug addiction or needing help with starting over in their lives. I put them to work for my company, bought another house to help with their living situation and did everything I could to motivate them to do better. Before I knew it, I was juggling the Marines, being a mother and wife, assisting my siblings in getting better and running a construction company. I did all this because I knew they needed me. I thought I was doing a good job setting the example and being what they needed until I discovered my brother had attempted suicide. Thankfully, he survived. Long story short, we had a rough childhood and it showed on their faces every day. I knew I couldn’t reenlist, get stationed far away and leave them in the mental state they were in.
WWE.COM: You sacrificed a lot for your family. Why did you choose to pursue a career in sports-entertainment?
EVANS: Because I want to be famous. And not for the reasons most would. I want a voice. I want people to know who I am and hear my story. I want people to see me get in the ring and give it everything I have, even though I come from a broken home. I want my siblings to know that I push myself the way I have always tried to push them. I want to show the world that it doesn’t matter where you come from; you can become anything you set your mind to, even when the cards are stacked against you. My dad always wanted to be a wrestler, but he never imagined he could, so he just did what he knew, which was construction and drugs. Because he settled for the life he lived and eventually overdosed two years ago before I could even tell him the news that I signed with WWE. Because it’s my chance to make a difference in the world on a large scale and help motivate the ones who doubt themselves and want to give up.
WWE.COM: How did you go about pursuing sports-entertainment?
EVANS: I knew a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps who was also an independent wrestler, so one Saturday I decided to attend one of the shows. After the show, I expressed an interest to the staff sergeant about stepping inside the ring myself. The next week, he worked with me every day at the military base gym, training me just enough to compete in a match on the next show, which was the following Saturday. It took one match against a 250-pound opponent in front of a crowd of 40 people that made me fall in love with wrestling. I continued to train in the sport, watched videos, practiced promos in front of my daughter and poor husband every chance I got and wrestled every weekend with American Premier Wrestling in Statesboro, Ga., up until the day of my WWE tryout.
WWE.COM: What led to your NXT tryout and subsequent hiring?
EVANS: After my first match, the promotor at APW, Tom Caiazzo, who was also a professor at Georgia State University, made a phone call that changed my life. Caiazzo had written the autobiography for the “Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase many years before. Since they were still good friends, Caiazzo made the call to Ted, who requested a resume and photos. From there, it was forwarded to the powers-that-be, and the tryout was set for September of 2015.
WWE.COM: You mentioned having a young daughter. How hard has it been to pursue this dream while being a mother at home?
EVANS: Hard on my heart, at times, but I have the biggest supporter I could ask for, and that’s my husband, whom I’ve been with since the age of 15. For 13 years, he has always understood my need for challenging myself in life and does nothing but motivate me to do so. We work together to make sure she gets everything she needs from us as parents; she goes to the shows, travels with me with her activity bag ready and her mini NXT Women’s Championship Title. She’s no stranger to the locker room and knows all the NXT wrestlers. She’s only 4 years old and needs her mama, so I try my best to juggle both. At the end of long days, I’ve got to take care of a little lady who means the world to me. Sometimes I have to work out on the porch while she’s asleep, just so I can stay in shape. It’s hard, but how can I teach her to follow her dreams if I don’t follow mine?
WWE.COM: You often use #LadyofNXT to describe yourself on social media. What’s the meaning behind the hashtag?
EVANS: I love that, as a lady, I’ve accomplished what I have. As a business owner, a veteran, a wife, a mother, a wrestler and a motivator, I love what a lady stands for. Being a woman, raising a little lady and knowing that a lady can be powerful, classy, educated and hard-working. #LadyofNXT stands for showing my daughter and women all over the world that we have no limits, that we are capable of anything. We can take care of business, cook a meal, clean a house, raise babies, handle weapons, protect our family, be a force to be reckoned with and still put on a dress at the end of the day with class, dignity and manners.
WWE.COM: I understand you also support a number of charities?
EVANS: I am a huge supporter of addiction and depression support programs for youths and young adults. I have talked to underprivileged children at local schools in Florida about life challenges and how their decisions affect their future. My goal is to have a larger involvement with charities that help youth and adults who feel they just want to give up.
WWE.COM: You recently had a chance to help out during an NXT tryout. How was that experience?
EVANS: After almost a year in NXT, I’ve watch wrestlers give everything they have. Our Superstars deal with severe injuries, leave their families weekly to train and travel and push themselves to their personal and professional limits. When I found out I had an opportunity to help with a tryout, I took it as a huge responsibility. I may be new to this, but I know how hard our guys and girls work. When I step foot in that room during a tryout, I look for their breaking point. I look for their ability to stay focused under pressure, listen to commands and safely execute orders. I make sure they leave this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity knowing it was one of the hardest things they will do in their life and have somewhat of an understanding of what we do on a daily basis.
WWE.COM: What can fans expect to see from you over the coming months and years?
EVANS: Expect hard work and dedication. I have a passion and reason that is untouchable. I’ve got a lot of new things in the works, from my look to my wrestling moves, that are very unique and represent who I am. I have every intention of showing the world just what a lady with class and confidence is capable of.
Follow Lacey on Twitter @Macey_Estrella.University of Washington computer science students offered a glimpse into the future on Tuesday evening at the Paul G. Allen Center.
The impressive work being done at one of the top computer programming departments in the nation was on full display as nearly 100 research groups showed off their projects to industry representatives, regional alumni, and friends as part of the UW’s Industry Affiliates Annual Meeting.
Seattle’s Madrona Venture Partners has awarded the Madrona Prize for the past nine years to the research with the greatest commercial potential. This year’s top prize went to Supasorn Suwajanakorn, a UW graduate student working with two professors — Steve Seitz and Ira Kemelmacher — on “What Makes Tom Hanks Look Like Tom Hanks,” a project that “is based on a novel combination of 3D face reconstruction, tracking, alignment, and multi-texture modeling, applied to the puppeteering problem.”
In his demo on Tuesday, Suwajanakorn showed how he can map the way someone is speaking to anyone’s face — for example, Barack Obama speaking words that George Bush had actually said.
The technology is bizarre-yet-fascinating and Suwajanakorn said there is potential for real-world applications.
“One idea we’re thinking about is replacing Siri, or adding a face to Siri,” he said. “Can you imagine a personal assistant with a face? It can convey emotion and be much more expressive than just voice alone. That’s the future of the personal assistant.”
Another use could be to digitize real-life people — even those that have passed.
“We can reconstruct a person and animate a person so that it still has his or her likeness and preserve his or her identity,” Suwajanakorn explained. “Ultimately, you could imagine archiving anyone, or bringing back fond memories of your distant relatives.”
Ed Lazowska, the longtime computer science professor who holds the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering, said that he’s blown away with the progress of computer vision technology over the last decade.
“I’m just so impressed with what has happened to that subfield,” he said.
Scott Jacobson, managing director at Madrona, told GeekWire that Suwajanakorn’s demo was “so freaking cool.”
“The puppeteering they do has a lot of interesting applications in a broad set of areas, with virtual reality potentially being one of them,” he said.
Madrona, which has funded 15 companies that started out of the UW, has sponsored the Madrona Prize at this event for the past nine years.
“This is one of my favorite days of the year,” said Greg Gottesman, venture partner at Madrona. “It makes you feel very excited about the future, and also the UW and specifically what’s going on here at the computer science department.”
The UW has made a recent push to not only spur innovation and research on campus, but also help get these types of ideas commercialized with the help of groups like UW CoMotion. Ana Mari Cauce, the UW’s new president, said last week that innovation and commercialization of startup ideas will “escalate.”
“What’s really important is the impact that that has in the world,” she said of all the research being done at the UW. “We want to make sure our discoveries actually make a difference in the world.”
There was various technology demonstrated on Tuesday, from computer graphics to machine learning to robotics to sensors to natural language processing.
“It’s cutting edge stuff in so many different areas,” Gottessman added. “I love it.”
Below are the runner-up and people’s choice prize winners from Tuesday’s event. Madrona handed out a total of $5,000 in prize money. You can see all the past winners from previous years here.
Building Consistent Transactions with Inconsistent Replication (runner-up) — Irene Zhang, Naveen Kr. Sharma, Adriana Szekeres, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Dan R. K. Ports
HyperCam: Hyperspectral Imaging and their applications (runner up) — Mayank Goel, Eric Whitmire, Alex Mariakakis, Scott Saponas, Neel Joshi, Shwetak Patel
Apneaapp: Diagnosing sleep apnea (runner-up) — Rajalakshmi Nandakumar
Passive Wi-Fi: Bringing Low Power to Wi-Fi Transmissions (people’s choice award) — Vamsi Talla, Bryce Kellogg, Shyamnath Gollakota and Joshua R. SmithTwo people were rescued Friday by passers-by and emergency responders from a crashed pickup that was upside down and partially submerged in a Lincoln City creek, police say.
Three witnesses were already in the water trying to help the two people trapped in the 1998 Ford Ranger by the time four Lincoln City officers arrived around 1:40 p.m. to the crash along Northeast East Devils Lake Road, police said.
The witnesses, officers, and North Lincoln fire crew members worked together to remove driver Edward Bolton Jr., 47, of Grand Ronde and passenger Murae Van Was, 24, of Lincoln City from the pickup, police said. Bolton is in critical condition at Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln City and Van Das was taken to the same hospital with apparent minor injuries and possible hypothermia, authorities said.
What caused the crash is still under investigation. Police ask anyone with information on how the crash occurred to contact them at 541-994-3636.
(Video from The News Guard in Lincoln City)
-- Everton Bailey Jr.
ebailey@oregonian.com
503-221-8343; @EvertonBaileyA professor at a local Christian college is coming out as transgender, and it could cost him his job. He says he's being forced out after 15 years at the school.
Adam Ackley is a professor of systematic theology at Azusa Pacific University. For the past 15 years, the administration at the private Christian college has known him as Heather -- up until last week.
Ackley said he struggled for years living as a married woman. He now identifies himself as a transgender man and he is going through a divorce.
"I really wrestled with it, of course, being someone who was trained in biblical scholarship and theological study and that was, that is, Christian," said Ackley.
Ackley decided to tell APU about plans for a legal name change. Ackley says the university is concerned keeping him in the classroom would be a distraction and could affect future admissions and donations. He told his students the truth and that he might soon be replaced. He says they were in tears.
Azusa Pacific University has released a statement on the controversy, saying: "University leadership is engaged in thoughtful conversations with our faculty member in order to honor the contribution and treat all parties with dignity and respect while upholding the values of the university. It is an ongoing conversation, and therefore, a confidential matter."
Ackley says he wants to continue teaching until the end of the semester, but he believes he won't finish out his five-year contract. He doesn't regret discussing the name change, knowing that the conversation has brought about a much-needed dialogue.
"Although it has been painful in the last few days, deeply painful for all of us, and deeply stressful for all of us, it's certainly opened the dialogue in ways I've never seen this community dialogue about these kinds of issues," said Ackley.
Some students have formed an online petition to change the university's policy to protect transgender faculty and students.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated an online petition was started to get Ackley to stay at the university. The petition was started to change policy to protect transgender faculty and students.A penny for your thoughts … Photo: Donald Uhrbrock/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
This piece originally ran in July 2014. We are rerunning it with the news of Harper Lee’s death.
For Monroeville, Alabama, population 6,400 and shrinking, the summer of 2010 was momentous. Over a long July weekend, locals reenacted historical vignettes, held a silent auction, cooked a southern feast, and led tours of local landmarks. There was a documentary screening, two lawn parties, and a marathon reading of the novel whose 50th anniversary was the grand occasion. To Kill a Mockingbird, which needs no introduction — because it is the introduction, for most American children, to civil rights, literature, and the justice system — had sold nearly a million copies for each year in print. There were at least 50 other celebrations nationwide, but the epicenter was Monroeville, a place whose only real industry (the lingerie plant having recently shuttered) was Mockingbird-related tourism. It was not only the model for the novel’s fictional Maycomb but the home of its author, Harper Lee. She lived less than a mile from the festival, but she never came.
If our country had a formalized process for anointing literary saints, Harper Lee might be first in line, and one of the miracles held up as proof would be her choice to live out her final years in the small town that became the blueprint for our collective ideal of the Small Town. But at 88, the author finds her life and legacy in disarray, a sad state of litigious chaos brought on by ill health and, in no small part, the very community she always believed, for all its flaws, would ultimately protect her. Maycomb was a town where love and neighborly decency could overcome prejudice. To the woman who immortalized it and retreated to it for stability and safety, Monroeville is something very different: suffocating, predatory, and treacherous.
For much of her life, Nelle Harper Lee (known to friends as Nelle) spent more time in the comforting anonymity of New York than in the Monroeville redbrick ranch house her family had occupied since 1952. Then, in 2007, a stroke left her wheelchair-bound, forgetful, and largely deaf and blind — forced to sell her Upper East Side apartment and move into a Monroeville assisted-living facility. It was a loss but also a homecoming: For decades she’d relied on another local living legend, Alice Lee — her older sister, part-time housemate, and lawyer — to maintain her uneasy armistice with her hometown and her fame.
Alice, who retired two years ago at the age of 100, had inherited her partnership in the family firm from their father, A.C. Lee, the model for Mockingbird’s righteous lawyer, Atticus Finch. (Nelle calls her “Atticus in a skirt.”) The same family practice whose modest virtues are inculcated, via Mockingbird, to generation after generation of schoolchildren was charged with protecting the legacy of its author — a job that one of the best-selling novelists of all time wanted nothing to do with. Yet as both women passed into very old age, what should have been a peaceful and prosperous decline became a surprisingly turbulent decade, robbing Nelle of not just her health but old friends, her dearly held privacy, the town’s good will, and, for a time, the copyright to the book she sometimes wishes she hadn’t written.
It wasn’t just infirmity that kept Nelle from basking in those 2010 celebrations; it was disillusion. Allergic to both attention and commerce, she’d always found the Mockingbird industrial complex tacky and intrusive, but had managed to carve out a separate existence in its shadow. Now too many “well wishers” were stopping by her new apartment — including her literary agent, whom she eventually barred from the facility. (He’d already had her sign over her copyright.) Just a month before the anniversary, a family friend entered her room with a Daily Mail reporter in tow. The journalist flew back to London with an unflattering photo and a cruel 2,000-word profile to match. Monroeville had finally confirmed her fear that there really was nowhere to hide. She’d once explained to Oprah Winfrey, over lunch in a private suite at the Four Seasons, why she’d never appear on her show: Everyone compares her to Scout, the sweetly pugnacious tomboy who narrates Mockingbird. But as she told Oprah, “I’m really Boo” — Boo Radley, the young recluse in the creepy house who winds up saving the day.
Lee at a 2005 awards dinner in her honor. (Photo by Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images) Photo: Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images
By the time of Mockingbird’s golden anniversary, Nelle’s agent was denying in court that he represented her. The courthouse gift shop, “The Bird’s Nest,” was selling To Kill a Mockingbird onesies and car decals. A former next-door neighbor, Marja Mills, was working on a memoir called The Mockingbird Next Door — which came out this week, lifting the veil of Nelle’s privacy amid a confounding volley of statements between lawyers, sisters, and friends over whether and when she approved of the project. It was left to Alice’s successor in the family firm, Tonja Carter, to sort things out. Carter restricted Lee’s visitors and instituted lawsuits against not just the literary agent but also the courthouse museum. She nearly sued Marja Mills, too, and released a letter last week reaffirming Nelle’s objections — objections that her own sister, Alice, had claimed Carter had ginned up on her behalf. “It’s a terrible thing to happen toward the end of a person’s life,” says Thomas Lane Butts, a preacher who was among Lee’s best friends but hasn’t seen her in a year. Whatever Nelle’s intentions, Carter has upended the town’s delicate status quo, making as many enemies as headlines. Nelle never did like making headlines, even for the right reasons, but she did once love Monroeville.
* * *
In 1964, in one of her last interviews, Lee laid out her mission as a writer. “This is a small-town middle-class southern life as opposed to the Gothic,” she said. “I believe there is something universal in this little world, something decent to be said for it, and something to lament in its passing.” She concluded, joking, “All I want to be is the Jane Austen of South Alabama.”
Mockingbird plays on Southern Gothic, only to demystify it and mythologize the ordinary instead. Amasa Coleman Lee may have been, as his daughter said, “one of the most beloved men in this part of the state,” but he wasn’t Atticus Finch; he was a tax lawyer. He left his childhood farm in Florida, married a prominent village daughter (Frances Finch of Finchburg), and moved to Monroeville in order to manage the finances of the law firm of Barnett, Bugg & Lee, as it shortly became, a partnership of businessmen-attorneys who owned half the town. A.C. did try one criminal case, at age 29, defending two black men on a murder charge. He lost and they were hanged, pieces of their scalps mailed to the son of the victim.
Though Atticus defends a black man wrongly accused — and ultimately convicted — of rape, nothing quite so brutal happens in Mockingbird. And by making Atticus a widower, Lee also omitted a much more personal experience: her mother’s instability. According to Mills, Frances suffered a nervous breakdown after her daughter Louise failed to thrive. (The Lees had five children in five-year increments.) Dr. William Harper came to the rescue of both mother and baby, and Harper became their next child’s middle name. Truman Capote, Nelle’s best childhood friend, later described her upbringing as “Southern grotesque.” He claimed Frances had tried to drown Nelle in the bathtub. Lee denied it vehemently, and for all her rebelliousness — Butts once said she had “hell and pepper in her” — she never said a word against her family, in fiction or otherwise. In her work and life, madness is banished in the light of reason and authority.
A.C. passed his august authority on to Alice. During the Depression, she had to leave college but was quickly brought under her father’s wing and into his law firm. Nelle tried to follow the same path — attending the same girls’ college as Alice and then transferring to the University of Alabama, where she loved writing but hated her sorority and law classes. After a summer at Oxford University, she dropped out. She wanted to make a go, like her friend Truman, of living and writing in New York. A.C., who’d been paying for school, said she’d have to make it on her own.
In New York, Lee found a tight-knit replacement family. Capote introduced her to Broadway lyricist Michael Martin Brown and his wife, Joy. They hooked her up with an agent, Maurice Crain, and on Christmas, 1956, they gave her the gift her father wouldn’t: enough money to do nothing but write for a year. She remembered it later as “a full, fair chance for a new life.” Within five months, she had a draft of Atticus out on submission, and was already partway into a second novel when a Lippincott editor took it on.
Most of Mockingbird’s characters have real-life antecedents, and Scout’s delicate friend Dill is clearly Capote. He was Nelle’s first writing partner and her social fixer in New York, and Lee helped him research his true-crime classic, In Cold Blood. But Capote eventually spurned her. Rebutting his vicious gossip seems to have been one of Lee’s motivations for talking to Marja Mills. “They fled from the truth like Dracula from the cross,” Lee told Mills, meaning him and his aunt, whose memoir Lee claimed to have thrown into a bonfire. “Truman was a psychopath, honey.” Capote drifted away in a miasma of drugs and self-hatred — a cautionary tale of frustrated fame. His former best friend tacked fiercely in the opposite direction.
A.C. Lee was shocked by his daughter’s success. “It’s very rare indeed when a thing like this happens to a country girl going to New York,” he told a reporter. “She will have to do a good job next time.” He died in 1962, after meeting Gregory Peck but before seeing him play Atticus in Alan Pakula’s film. Nelle spent the next couple of years trying to write, but couldn’t shake the fear that there was, as her father had worried, nowhere to go but down. At one press conference to promote the movie, Lee’s humor was edged with tension. “Will success spoil Harper Lee?” asked a reporter. “She’s too old,” Lee said. “How do you feel about your second novel?” asked another. “I’m scared,” she said.
In the Monroeville courtroom she made famous. (Photo by Donald Uhrbrock/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images) Photo: Donald Uhrbrock/Donald Uhrbrock
In his unauthorized 2006 biography, Mockingbird, Charles J. Shields quotes Lee telling a friend, “I wouldn’t go into downtown Manhattan for the world.” Mills once made Lee a gift of E.B. White’s Here Is New York. Nelle “wept at the first sentence.” It reads, “On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.” White later pictures “a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors.” After Mockingbird won acclaim and a Pulitzer, Lee felt observed by everyone — the whole world a small town. At least when she stayed in Monroeville, she had Alice.
By 1970, when her beloved agent died, there was no one else left — not Capote, not her parents. “The close circle she was relying on fell away over the course of a decade, and her tight Monroeville clique was practically all that remained,” says Charles Shields, who wrote the 2006 unauthorized biography, Mockingbird. “I think the Lees have kind of an old-fashioned notion,” he adds. “Keep your friends close to your breast with hoops of iron and rely on them. And the novel, being one of the most popular of the 20th century, makes tremendous demands that go well beyond their abilities.”
* * *
Maybe it wasn’t just Nelle’s insecurity that held her back from becoming “the Jane Austen of South Alabama,” but also the dismaying decline of the “small-town middle-class” idyll she’d staked her career on documenting. She had, after all, written a historical novel. To Kill a Mockingbird was filmed not in Monroeville but on an L.A. lot. There were — still are — remnants of Depression-era Monroeville, not least the old Federal-style courthouse. But even as the film came out, a drab new courthouse was being built next door. Downtown’s only movie theater burned down not long after Mockingbird had its first run, and was never rebuilt. In 1997, the city was dubbed “The Literary Capital of Alabama,” prompting Lee, who wasn’t consulted on the nickname, to remark, “The literary capital of Alabama doesn’t read.”
Harper Lee’s assisted-living apartment is on Highway Bypass 21, just a couple of blocks from the town’s real commercial center, a series of malls. There’s a place called Radley’s Fountain Grill down that way, and an old stone wall that once separated Lee’s childhood home from Capote’s — both long gone, replaced by a takeout shack called Mel’s Dairy Dream. Lee prefers the more generic places by the lingerie factory outlet (a remnant of the old Vanity Fair plant). Before her stroke, she could be found at Hardee’s, or better yet at McDonald’s, gulping down coffee during long chats with friends. (There were higher-end expeditions to the local golf club and to casinos on the Gulf coast.) When she watched an advance screening of the biopic Capote at a neighbor’s house — the Lees had no television — she opted for Burger King.
The site of Lee’s childhood home and the wall that once separated it from Truman Capote’s. (Photo by Maude Schuyler Clay) Photo: Maude Schuyler Clay
In 1961, Lee told Life that, unlike Thomas Wolfe, “I can go home again.” That’s debatable, as is the question of why Harper Lee chose to spend so much of her life in a town whose only claim to fame was her fame — a fame she claimed to despise. The Mockingbird Next Door dwells on rural trips out of town, fishing and duck watching and off-the-record country drives. (Romantic inquiries were “not up for discussion.”) Lee seemed to prefer the countryside to her hometown. “I was surprised that she was living here, to tell you the truth,” says Butts, who was often on those drives. “It’s like being in a fishbowl.”
Marja Mills’s astonishing access to Lee was the product of luck, both good and bad. Sent to Monroeville by the Chicago Tribune to find out what Harper Lee thought of Mockingbird being chosen for “One Book, One Chicago,” she expected to strike out. But, after a polite introductory letter, Alice not only answered the ranch house door but also secured her an audience with Nelle. On Mills’s second visit to town, Butts gave her his rationale for the sisters’ openness: “When she and Alice go, people are going to start ‘remembering’ things as they didn’t happen, or outright making things up, and they won’t be here to set the record straight. So keep taking notes, girl.” Mills suffers from lupus, and she had a flare-up just before leaving Monroeville again. Nelle claimed to be her mother-in-law so she could stay with her in the local hospital. Mills became an honorary member of “the old in a nation geared toward the young.”
In 2004, sapped by her illness, Mills decided to leave her job and try to write a book. She wound up moving in next door to the Lees, securing a $450 rental with the sisters’ help. Over endless coffees and drives, Nelle opened up enough to give a solid sense of herself: unconfident in her looks and therefore unconcerned; witty and garulous within the strict limits she sets for talk; conservative by northern standards; cranky and principled; moody but predictable.
Mills makes it clear in the book that she intended at first to write a broader Alabama history. Monroeville was confused, years later, by the news of a memoir. “I think that lady kind of pulled wool over their eyes,” George Jones, the 91-year-old town historian and gossip, told me. Mills says only very few friends knew just how much time she and the sisters spent together. The Lees, she says, “managed to have a parallel existence” within Monroeville — a smaller bubble within the bubble of a hard-to-reach county seat, apart from tourists and nosy locals alike.
One of Nelle’s friends, retired Auburn history professor Wayne Flynt, is skeptical of Nelle’s participation — but not Alice’s. “Alice wanted the family story told and Alice has an agenda, and I think Marja Mills fits that agenda quite well,” he says. “Nelle is afraid that telling the family story will be telling her story, and I can’t believe she cooperated.” He adds that, around that time, he tried to persuade Nelle to record a sealed oral history, and she flatly refused. Last Monday’s letter, signed by Lee, seems to confirm his impressions: “I was hurt, angry and saddened, but not surprised,” upon learning of Mills’s “true mission: another book about Harper Lee.” She concludes, “rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.” Butts says she may well feel that way now, but didn’t at the time. “There was no break,” he says — contrary to the letter’s claim — “until somebody talked to her, said she should oppose the book.” He says he witnessed Nelle insisting on putting personal things on the record.
Mills’s portrait is gentle almost to a fault, but her mission was to humanize Lee, not to lionize her. Butts warned Mills she might get angry late-night phone calls from Nelle: “She accuses people, chews them out. The alcohol fuels it.” Mills repeats speculation that drinking contributed to Lee’s abandoning a true-crime book in the ‘80s. Overall, Lee comes off both plain and complicated. She can be paranoid, but often for good reason. In Monroeville, Mills writes, “information about Nelle was currency. It could be spent, traded, or saved for the right moment.” On Nelle’s earliest meeting with Mills, in a sweltering room at the Best Western, one of the first things she told the reporter was, “This is not the Monroeville in which I grew up. I don’t like it one bit.” Mills writes of Lee looking over a ravine. “Nelle suggested that perhaps she could toss all her belongings in there and burn them, preferably shortly before she died, so she wouldn’t have to worry about her personal things falling into the wrong hands. She was only half kidding.”
The case of Samuel Pinkus would make any writer paranoid. Pinkus had briefly run McIntosh & Otis on behalf of his ailing father-in-law — and Nelle’s longtime agent — Eugene Winick, but then suddenly left and took with him the estate-heavy firm’s most lucrative living authors, Mary Higgins Clark and Harper Lee. (No one knows exactly how he persuaded Lee to leave.) “It was an absolute betrayal,” Winick told me last year, “not only as an employee, but also as a family member.” The Winicks sought relief in mediation. Over the years, Pinkus set up a succession of corporations that, M&O’s and Lee’s lawyers claimed, were designed to avoid those debts. In the process of shifting around millions in royalties, Pinkus managed to take over Harper Lee’s copyright.
Lee’s 2013 complaint against Pinkus begins by describing her close ties to the agency: “Both Harper Lee and her sister trusted and relied on M&O virtually all the time since the publication of her famous novel.” That account elides a lot of drift. After Maurice Crain died, Lee was passed along to his wife, but by the time Pinkus was brought into the company, it was Alice whom Nelle counted on most of all. When Nelle heard the courthouse-museum was putting out a book called Calpurnia’s Cookbook, using the name of Mockingbird’s maid, Alice sent the letter that took it off the shelves. M&O never even heard of it.
While working on his biography, Charles Shields called M&O and couldn’t get any real answers about their prized client. Maybe they were just being protective, but Shields found a willing correspondent in Alice Lee. They had a few written exchanges about Lee family history, and things seemed to be opening up — until, one day in 2006, he received “an imperious letter” from Pinkus, by then her exclusive agent, warning him off any further contact with the Lee sisters.
* * *
In June of 2007, Lee had a lunch appointment with friends in New |
it to this very day? You are almost a hero in certain circles. In other circles you are not a hero at all. There are many circles.” “I didn’t know that,” said Tre. “Ladykiller,” said the drone. “Was that your title or your friend Peter’s?” “That was me,” he said weakly. Tre realized now that it didn’t matter who was piloting the drone. He was in an extremely precarious situation and he needed to get away. “What do you want from me?” “We don’t want anything,” said the drone. “We are giving ourselves to you as a wedding present, like a monogrammed towel. You can do whatever you want to us. We are yours to keep. We thought about hacking a power user on Fetlife and sending some willing slave from the bottom of a leather family to you as a gift, but this is more clean. We will both keep our secrets: you won’t tell anyone what happened, and we won’t tell you who we really are. It will be so fun for both of us. This whole body is artificial. Have you ever wanted to fuck the internet? LOL.” The drone reached into its purse and pulled out a band-aid colored pill bottle. The drone shook the bottle, rattling the contents. “What are those?” asked Tre. “Now you want to drug me?” “They are harmless,” said the drone. “Just sugar. But they are password pills. For the suite.” “I can’t go to some hotel with you,” said Tre. “I have to get home. You are trying to hurt me somehow.” “You don’t have to stay the night,” said the drone. “You can leave whenever you like. But you should really come with us. So we can be alone together. I bet you aren’t really honest with your feelings until you are alone with someone lol.” A shadow fell across Tre’s face. There was somebody standing over them. It was the bartender, grinning knowingly. “Your car is ready,” said the bartender. Tre followed the drone out of the restaurant, unsure of how to get away. Could he run? The drone was faster and stronger. He found himself getting into the backseat of the car beside the drone. The car didn’t have a driver. It navigated the streets carefully and persistently, tinted windows concealing the terrifying vacuity from other drivers on the road. The drone slipped its hands down Tre’s pants and leaned close, encouraging him to feel the warmth of its perfect mouth, the wetness of its breath. “You have to take one of the pills if you want to come up to the suite,” said the drone. “Your stomach acids will dissolve the coating and prime the transmitter. It is temporary; a bit like a glow stick. By the time it stops working, you have to be gone, or otherwise security will be called. You can take another pill if you want to come see us again, at the same suite, till the pills run out. The suite is paid for until the end of days. We are a wedding present to you. For all you have done. From Anonymous. For the lulz.” Tre dryswallowed one of the pills and put the rest in his pocket. The lobby of the building they stopped in front of was also empty. The elevator snapped open. There were no buttons in the elevator; just smooth metal on every side. An anonymous hotel for anonymous encounters with anonymous. “It is scanning the pill inside you,” said the drone. The elevator opened on the top floor suite. “This is nice, isn’t it,” said the drone. “We ‘like’ these things. We say: ‘happy birthday.’ We know how responsive you are to your peers, and to ads, and how much money you make based on the trips you take and the wonderful things you buy and the exciting job you have. And when we want to fuck you with a drone as a present, Facebook makes it so easy, doesn’t it? Everything is so nice now lol. ” Tre waited for the drone to turn its head and walk deeper into the suite. And then he slammed into it from behind, tackling it to the ground. The drone was not made for combat or battle. Its responses were silky and catlike as he straddled it and got his knees onto its shoulderblades. He put his boot on its neck. “Lol,” said the drone. “You mad?” His phone beeped at him. Alerts. Hadn’t he turned his ringer off? There was a marble side table by the foyer of the hotel suite. With his boot still on the drone’s neck, he swept a ficus and an antique clock from the tabletop and then picked up the table by the base. He swung the table around and broke the legs off. He just wanted the slab of marble. The drone writhed beneath him, stroking his ankle seductively. He slammed the piece of marble into the drone’s head, cracking it. He heaved and sweated, bringing the slab of marble down again and again. His phone kept bleeping at him. It was nearly a constant irritating whine now, alerts streaming from his pants pocket. “Shut up,” he said. Any piece of the drone that moved, he bashed it with the slab of marble. He was precise and consistent. The fingers twitched; he bashed them. An eyelid fluttered; he smashed it as hard as he could, making sparks, sending chips of marble flying. Eventually, the drone lay completely still on the soft rug beneath him. He was sweating and kept burping up stomach acid, though he felt nothing but cold inside. It’s the equivalent of breaking a camera, he thought to himself. The fact that it feels like murder is part of the drone’s defenses. He leaned against the door of the suite and finally checked his phone. The alerts were all from Facebook. There were thousands of them and they were still coming in. He scrolled over to his Facebook wall. It was filled with pictures of him from every angle smashing the drone. The only text accompanying the pictures was a frowny face. There were thousands of them; each moment captured in color, in black and white, in beautiful three-tone sepia. Too many to delete. He looked for the camera taking the pictures. Was it in the ceiling tiles? Was it embedded in the door frame? He was up on a chair using his phone to look at Facebook with one hand and searching the ceiling tiles with the other when the hotel security guard unlocked the door. She levelled a taser at him and then slowly lowered it. “Just sit on the bed and be cool,” she said. “I had to smash it,” said Tre immediately. “It was hacking my computer.” “Tell it to the cops,” she said. “They are on their way.” “Man,” he said. “Why did you call the cops? It’s a fucking ROBOT!” “It calls the cops automatically, dude,” said the security guard. “Do you know how much these things cost? You basically just crashed somebody’s yacht, dude.” “Whose suite is this?” asked Tre. “Who’s paying for it?” “You mean you don’t even know?” asked the security guard, laughing. His phone was ringing. It was Jessica, his fiancée. He put his phone on the floor by the bed and smashed it with the slab of marble, gritting his teeth so hard that they squeaked. The security guard just shook her head and laughed, not getting too close, quietly taking video with her phone just in case the cops had questions. more storiesWASHINGTON — House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes revealed Wednesday other members of the Trump transition team were not only surveilled by the Obama administration but their names were also unmasked.
“I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked,” Nunes said. “To be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia or any investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team.”
Nunes later told reporters that communications among Trump associates were recorded and dispersed among the federal government. He also said the intelligence committee still has no answers as to what actually happened to Trump’s former national security advisor General Michael Flynn when he was caught up in a surveillance dragnet.
“We don’t actually know yet officially what happened to General Flynn,” Nunes said of how recorded conversations of Flynn’s were leaked to the press. “We just know that his name leaked out but we don’t know how it was picked up yet. That was one of the things that we asked for in the March 15th letter, was for the NSA, CIA, and FBI to get us all the unmasking that was done.”
“The NSA is being cooperative,” Nunes said, “but so far the FBI has not told us whether or not they’re going to respond to our March 15th letter which is now a couple of weeks old.”
Nunes also stated that presently, he “cannot rule out” President Obama called for the surveillance.
Follow Kerry on TwitterImage © Bill Watterson.
Exploring Calvin and Hobbes revisits the beloved comic strip created by Bill Watterson from 1985-1995. The exhibition will feature original Calvin and Hobbes dailies and Sundays as well as specialty pieces by Watterson from his collection of more than 3,000 originals housed at the BICLM. This is only the second exhibition devoted to Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in 2,400 newspapers worldwide at the height of its popularity. Watterson won the National Cartoonists Society’s prestigious Reuben Award for “Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year” in both 1986 and 1988.
Six-year-old Calvin, named after the 16th-century theologian John Calvin, has a vivid imagination; an aversion to homework, chores, and girls; and a penchant for discussing the meaning of life. Hobbes, named for the 17th-century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, appears to most of the strips’ characters as a stuffed animal, but from Calvin’s perspective, he is a living, breathing—sometimes even dangerous—tiger. He’s also a best friend, a playmate, a co-conspirator, and occasionally the voice of reason. The strip follows the two as they navigate the bumpy ride of life, surrounded by a supporting cast that includes Calvin’s parents, his neighbor Susie, his babysitter Rosalyn, the school bully Moe, and his teacher, Mrs. Wormwood.
The exhibition, curated by BICLM curator Jenny E. Robb, explores Watterson’s mastery of the comic strip art form through engaging characters, thoughtful writing, and creative layouts. It will also include original art by cartoonists who influenced Watterson, chosen by the artist from the BICLM’s collection, such as Charles Schulz, George Herriman, Jim Borgman, Berkeley Breathed, Garry Trudeau, and Ralph Steadman.
Earlier this month, the press-shy Watterson accepted a request to talk about the state of cartoon art in an interview with Curator Jenny Robb.NSW Police warn of airfare scam after hundreds of Vietnamese students sold fake tickets
Updated
New South Wales Police are warning people to watch out for online travel scams after hundreds of Vietnamese students were sold fake air tickets through social media.
Key points Up to 400 Australian students sold fake air tickets to Vietnam
Vietnamese woman charged
Police urging travellers to be cautious of suspiciously cheap travel deals
Police said at least 300 students in Sydney and Melbourne bought tickets to Vietnam through a Facebook page only to find out at check-in that their bookings had been cancelled.
"We believe that upwards of 300 to 400 students could possibly be victims of this scam," NSW Detective Superintendent Gavin Dengate told the ABC's Vietnamese Service.
According to a police statement, the total value of tickets involved is estimated to be in excess of $360,000.
A 24-year-old Vietnamese woman was arrested last week and charged with 10 counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception.
Mr Dengate said the woman allegedly began the scam by selling legitimate airfares on Facebook.
"The person was smart in that they got a bit of notoriety, or got some positive remarks for actually doing the right thing to start with, but then has gone into this fraud in a way that's deceived all the students," he said.
Mr Dengate urged people, especially international students, to be cautious of businesses offering special deals.
"If you're unsure or if it looks too good a deal, there's probably some hidden traps," he said.
"Ring the Department of Fair Trading, or equivalent in whatever state you're in, to enquire about that business.
"And if you have any issues, make sure you take them up with firstly your education provider... and if you think you're a victim of a fraud, certainly come and speak to the police."
The accused woman was granted conditional bail and is expected to appear at the Downing Centre Local Court on February 3.
'She used our trust to take advantage of us'
Jade Nguyen, a student living in Sydney for five years, said friends recommended that she book her ticket through the Facebook page because of the woman's reputation as "a reliable agent with pretty good airfares".
If you're unsure or if it looks too good a deal, there's probably some hidden traps. NSW Detective Superintendent Gavin Dengate
Ms Nguyen said she transferred $1,050 into the woman's bank account, but did not receive seat reservation information or an eTicket as promised.
She discovered the scam when several members of the Vietnamese Dynamic Students (VDS) Facebook page posted that they had been swindled and intended to report the woman to police.
"This brought everyone else who had an eTicket to check Vietnam Airlines' website about the true condition of their tickets," Ms Nguyen said.
"Almost [everyone] reported back that their tickets were invalid or cancelled, or the reference number and/or ticket number they got was under someone else's name.
"Everyone was in a panic... found out that the Facebook page and her phone had been de-activated."
Ms Nguyen said the experience has made her feel distrust towards the Vietnamese community.
"I feel a loss of my trust to the Vietnamese (sic), especially the students because she was a student before but it turns out she used our trust to take advantage of us," she said.
A scanned copy of a letter from the NSW Police Force was posted on the VDS Facebook page, asking for people who may be "victims of this fraud" to contact police.
Topics: fraud-and-corporate-crime, law-crime-and-justice, nsw, australia, vietnam, asia
First postedThe Dudek Abides Journal Sentinel TV and film critic Duane Dudek looks at life on the small and big screen, and some of the cool stuff on both. SHARE
By of the
The cable channel TBS will be airing a reality comedy show called "Cheeseheads" next season the network announced as part of its upfront presentation to advertisers.
No date was announced.
The producer Jason Carbone also co produced "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette."
According to TBS:
Cheeseheads (working title)
Green Bay, Wis., is home to the World Famous Green Bay Packers and their fans: The Cheeseheads. These citizens don’t just bleed green and gold; they eat victory for breakfast. For them, being a Cheesehead is more than just being a fan. It's a way of life. This show will take viewers into the hilarious subculture through the eyes of a group of proud Wisconsinites as they navigate life in the only way they know how – loud, proud and with lots of beer. For these folks, there is no off-season.
– Executive Producers: Jason Carbone
– Production Company/Studio: Good Clean Fun
According to the Green Bay Press Gazette:
"A casting call in December at The Stadium View Bar & Grille sought 'passionate Wisconsinites with big personalities.’' Interested people were encouraged to bring family and friends along to the audition and dress in their Packers gear."Planet Earth has not (yet) been destroyed by today's terrifying Boobquake experiment - one Indiana student's response to Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi's insistence that immodestly dressed women provoke earthquakes.
Sedighi recently declared: "Many women who do not dress modestly... lead young men astray, corrupting their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes."
Well, Jennifer McCreight decided to put this to the test, and attempt a critical mass of immodesty primarily involving a load of women flashing a Richter-tempting amount of jub.
She declared: “On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.”
McCreight's picture speaks for itself, and thousands of other females have thrown their weight behind the effort to either provoke a major catastrophe or prove that Iranian clerics have a poor grasp of the fundamentals of plate tectonics.
McCreight's earth-moving efforts can be followed on Facebook and Twitter. ®RICHMOND, Va. – The wait is over, the Foo Fighters are coming back to Richmond.
“We are psyched to let you know the show has been confirmed for Wednesday, September 17th at the National Theater,” concert organizer Andrew Goldin emailed people who bought a $50 ticket to the concert BEFORE the band announced plans to play here. “An intimate show just for the people who pledged!”
People who bought tickets were emailed instructions on how and where to pick up wristbands giving them access to the concert.
Earlier this year Goldin and his friends, who called themselves ‘Help bring the Foo Fighters back to RVA!,’ started selling $50 tickets to a concert that did not yet exist. The group hoped to raise $70,000 in a few weeks to convince the band Richmond deserved a concert.
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It worked. The Foo Fighters have not played in Richmond since 1998.
While no tickets are available to purchase, CBS 6 will have two tickets to give away for the Foo Fighters concert. Stay tuned for details.
Click here if you have an idea you'd like to share on the best way to give away those two tickets.The Mark Provincial Sword of Kent, an important ceremonial sword belonging to the Provincial Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons of Kent, has been recovered from an auction house in London.
The sword was stolen from a Provincial Officer during a brazen home invasion in March 2016 while the occupants were asleep. Opportunistic thieves initially targeted the keys to two vehicles, one of which contained the sword, awaiting transportation back to its home in Whitstable.
One of the vehicles was recovered but the contents had never been located until this June when a researcher from the Masonic Library and Museum in Norfolk spotted the sword being offered for sale at a London based auction house specializing in the sale of antique arms, armor and military items.
The Mark Province of Kent contacted their insurance company, who in turn reached out to Art Recovery International (ARI), an organization that specializes in recovering stolen and looted works of art. ARI took the case on a pro-bono basis. With the aid of the Metropolitan Police Service (Bromley Borough), an unconditional surrender of the sword was negotiated with the dealer who had consigned the sword for sale.
When questioned, the dealer recalled purchasing the sword at a car boot sale in Ford, West Sussex, but neglected to retain the license plate number of the car offering the lot.
No arrests have been made.
The ornately carved and bespoke Masonic swords are valuable among collectors and often uniquely inscribed with their provenance. ARI is disappointed with the level of due diligence performed by the art trade prior to selling objects in their galleries or sales rooms.
“A cursory internet search reveals a 2016 posting about this theft. I urge the art market to get with the program and search stolen art databases such as the non-profit Artive Database (artive.org) before accepting works for sale. It is imperative, as well, that victims of crime report their losses to these databases for the due diligence process to work effectively,” said Art Recovery’s Christopher Marinello.
Source: Art Recovery InternationalLast night, Bill O'Reilly encouraged Mitt Romney to hammer President Obama over gas prices. But in 2008 O'Reilly was singing a different tune, correctly saying that "it's complete B.S." for politicians to claim they will bring down oil and gasoline prices.
Fox News contributor Karl Rove reassured O'Reilly that his SuperPAC is running false advertisements on this very subject. The network has aided Rove's efforts by repeatedly airing a misleading graphic that implies President Obama is to blame for rising gasoline prices, and claiming that Americans are worse off than they were four years ago. But as The Wall Street Journal has previously noted, gas prices are "largely fixed by the price of crude oil, which is determined by global supply and demand," and "[w]hen Mr. Obama was inaugurated, demand was weak due to the recession. But now it's stronger, and thus the price is higher."
Earlier this year, PolitiFact rated a similar claim "mostly false" partly because it failed to account for seasonal gas price fluctuations between winter and summer -- a factor Fox News also ignores. While oil production has risen under the Obama administration, experts say that increasing drilling in the U.S. won't lower gas prices. But by reducing our dependence on oil, including by raising fuel economy standards, we can reduce the American economy's vulnerability to price spikes.Woman dies of injuries stemming from Muni bus altercation
A woman died after suffering traumatic brain injury in a suspected Oct. 15 assault that occurred when argument on public bus spilled onto Mission district street. A woman died after suffering traumatic brain injury in a suspected Oct. 15 assault that occurred when argument on public bus spilled onto Mission district street. Photo: Bill Hutchinson Photo: Bill Hutchinson Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Woman dies of injuries stemming from Muni bus altercation 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
A 55-year-old woman who was severely injured this month when an argument that spilled out of a San Francisco Muni bus turned physical died Friday after being taken off life support, police said Monday.
The woman, who was not immediately identified, was on life support with a traumatic brain injury at San Francisco General Hospital following the Oct. 15 attack in the city’s Mission District.
The altercation started on Muni’s 9-San Bruno, when the victim got into a squabble with a man and a woman on the bus, police said.
The run-in turned physical as the three got off the bus on the 300 block of Potrero Avenue and one of the suspects apparently knocked the woman to the ground, police said.
The suspects then fled the scene on foot before paramedics arrived and rushed the victim to San Francisco General Hospital.
The case was initially being investigated as a battery but turned into a homicide investigation after the woman died.
Police continue to investigate the killing. No arrests were made.
Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffskyNote: I have made updates to reflect that Virtual Connect is two words, and technical changes to explain another method of network configuration within Virtual Connect that prevents the port blocking described below. Many thanks to the Ken Henault at HP who graciously walked me through the corrections, and beat them into my head until I understood them.
I’m sitting on a flight from Honolulu to Chicago in route home after a trip to Hawaii for customer briefings. I was hoping to be asleep at this point but a comment Ken Henault left on my ‘FlexFabric – Small Step, Right Direction’ post is keeping me awake… that’s actually a lie, I’m awake because I’m cramped into a coach seat for 8 hours while my fiancé, who joined me for a couple of days, enjoys the first class luxuries of my auto upgrade, all the comfort in the world wouldn’t make up for the looks I got when we landed if I was the one up front.
So, being that I’m awake anyway I thought I’d address the comment from the aforementioned post. Before I begin I want to clarify that my last post had nothing to do with UCS, I intentionally left UCS out because it was designed with FCoE in mind from the start so it has native advantages in an FCoE environment. Additionally within UCS you can’t get away from FCoE, if you want Fibre Channel connectivity your using FCoE so it’s not a choice to be made (iSCSI, NFS, and others are supported but to connect to FC devices or storage it’s FCoE.) The blog was intended to state exactly what it did: HP has made a real step into FCoE with FlexFabric but there is still a long way to go. To see the original post click the link (http://www.definethecloud.net/?p=419.)
I’ve got a great deal of respect for both Ken and HP whom he works for. Ken knows his stuff, our views may differ occasionally but he definitely gets the technology. The fact that Ken knows HP blades inside, outside, backwards forwards and has a strong grasp on Cisco’s UCS made his comment even more intriguing to me, because it highlights weak spots in the overall understanding of both UCS and server architecture/design as it pertains to network connectivity.
Scope:
This post will cover the networking comparison of HP C-Class using Virtual Connect (VC) modules and Virtual Connect (VC) management as it compares to the Cisco UCS Blade System. This comparison is the closest ‘apples-to-apples’ comparison that can be done between Cisco UCS and HP C-Class. Additionally I will be comparing the max blades in a single HP VC domain which is 64 (4 chassis x 16 blades) against 64 UCS blades which would require 8 Chassis.
Accuracy and Objectivity:
It is not my intent to use numbers favorable to one vendor or the other. I will be as technically accurate as possible throughout, I welcome all feedback, comments and corrections from both sides of the house.
HP Virtual Connect:
VC is an advanced management system for HP C-Class blades that allows 4 blade chassis to be interconnected and managed/networked as a single system. In order to provide this functionality the LAN/SAN switch modules used must be VC and the chassis must be interconnected by what HP calls a stacking-link. HP does not consider VC Ethernet modules to be switches, but for the purpose of this discussion they will be. I make this decision based on the fact that: They make switching decisions and they are the same hardware as the ProCurve line of blade switches.
Note: this is a networking discussion so while VC has other features they are not discussed here.
Let’s take a graphical view of a 4-chassis VC domain.
In the above diagram we see a single VC domain cabled for LAN and SAN connectivity. You can see that each chassis is independently connected to SAN A and B for Fibre Channel access, but Ethernet traffic can traverse the stacking-links along with the domain management traffic. This allows a reduced number of uplinks to be used from the VC domain to the network for each 4 chassis VC domain. This solution utilizes 13 total links to provide 16 Gbps of FC per chassis (assuming 8GB uplinks) and 20 Gbps of Ethernet for the entire VC domain (with blocking considerations discussed below.) More links could be added to provide additional bandwidth.
This method of management and port reduction does not come without its drawbacks. In the next graphic I add loop prevention and server to server communication.
The first thing to note in the above diagram is the blocked link. When only a single vNet is configured accross the VC Domain (1-4 chassis) only 1 link or link aggregate group may forward per VLAN. This means that per VC domain there is only one ingress or egress point to the network per VLAN. This is because VC is not ‘stacking’ 4 switches into one distributed switch control plane but instead ‘daisy-chaining’ four independent switches together using an internal loop prevention mechanism. This means that to prevent loops from being caused within the VC domain only one link can be actively used for upstream connectivity per VLAN.
Because of this loop prevention system you will see multiple-hops for frames destined between servers in separate chassis, as well as frames destined upstream in the network. In the diagram I show a worst case scenario for educational purposes where a frame from a server in the lower chassis must hop three times before leaving the VC domain. Proper design and consideration would reduce these hops to two max per VC domain.
**Update**
This is only one of the methods available for configuring vNets within a VC domain. The second method will allow both uplinks to be configured using separate vNets which allows each uplink to be utilized even within the same VLANs but segregates that VLAN internally. The following diagram shows this configuration.
In this configuration server NIC pairs will be configured to each use one vNet and NIC teaming software will provide failover. Even though both vNets use the same VLAN the networks remain separate internally which prevents looping, upstream MAC address instability etc. For example a server utilizing only two onboard NICs would have one NIC in vNet1 and one in vNet2. In the event of an uplink failure for vNet1 the NIC in that vNet would have no north/south access but NIC teaming software could be relied upon to force traffic to the NIC in vNet 2.
While both methods have advantages and disadvantages this will typically be the preferred method to avoid link blocking and allow better bandwidth utilization. In this configuration the center two chassis will still require an extra one or two hops to send/receive north/south traffic depending on which vNet is being used.
**End Update**
The last thing to note is that any Ethernet cable reduction will also result in lower available bandwidth for upstream/northbound traffic to the network. For instance in the top example above only one link will be usable per VLAN. Assuming 10GE links, that leaves 10G bandwidth upstream for 64 servers. Whether that is acceptable or not depends on the particular I/O profile of the applications. Additional links may need to be added to provide adequate upstream bandwidth. That brings us to our next point:
Calculating bandwidth needs:
Before making a decision on bandwidth requirements it is important to note the actual characteristics of your applications. Some key metrics to help in design are:
Peak Bandwidth
Average Bandwidth
East/West traffic
North/South Traffic
For instance, using the example above, if all of my server traffic is East/West within a single chassis then the upstream link constraints mentioned are mute points. If the traffic must traverse multiple chassis the stacking-link must be considered. Lastly if traffic must also move between chassis as well as North/South to the network, uplink bandwidth becomes critical. With networks it is common to under-architect and over-engineer, meaning spend less time designing and throw more bandwidth at the problem, this does not provide the best results at the right cost.
Cisco Unified Computing System:
Cisco UCS takes a different approach to providing I/O to the blade chassis. Rather than placing managed switches in the chassis UCS uses a device called an I/O Module or Fabric Extender (IOM/FEX) which does not make switching decisions and instead passes traffic based on an internal pinning mechanism. All switching is handled by the upstream Fabric Interconnects (UCS 6120 or 6140.) Some will say the UCS Fabric Interconnect is ‘not-a-switch’ using the same logic as I did above for HP VC devices the Fabric Interconnect is definitely a switch. In both operational modes the interconnect will make forwarding decisions based on MAC address.
One major architectural difference between UCS and HP, Dell, IBM, Sun blade implementations is that the switching and management components are stripped from the individual chassis and handled in the middle of row by a redundant pair of devices (fabric interconnects.) These devices replace the LAN Access and SAN edge ports that other vendors Blade devices connect to. Another architectural difference is that the UCS system never blocks server links to prevent loops (all links are active from the chassis to the interconnects) and in the default mode, End Host mode it will not block any upstream links to the network core. For more detail on these features see my posts: Why UCS is my ‘A-Game Server Architecture http://www.definethecloud.net/?p=301, and UCS Server Failover http://www.definethecloud.net/?p=359.)
A single UCS implementation can scale to a max 40 Chassis 320 servers using a minimal bandwidth configuration, or 10 chassis 80 servers using max bandwidth depending on requirements. There is also flexibility to mix and match bandwidth needs between chassis etc. Current firmware limits a single implementation to 12 chassis (96 servers) for support and this increases with each major release. Let’s take a look at the 8 chassis 64 server implementation for comparison to an equal HP VC domain.
In the diagram above we see an 8 chassis 64 server implementation utilizing the minimum number of links per chassis to provide redundancy (the same as was done in the HP example above. Here we utilize 16 links for 8 chassis providing 20Gbps of LAN and SAN traffic to each chassis. Because there is no blocking required for loop-prevention all links shown are active. Additionally because the Fabric Interconnects shown here in green are the access/edge switches for this topology all east/west traffic between servers in a single chassis or across chassis is fully accounted for. Depending on bandwidth requirements additional uplinks could be added to each chassis. Lastly there would be no additional management cables required from the interconnects to the chassis as all management is handled on dedicated, prioritized internal VLANs.
In the system above all traffic is aggregated upstream via the two fabric interconnects, this means that accounting for North/South traffic is handled by calculating the bandwidth needs of the entire system and designing the appropriate number of links.
Side by Side Comparison:
In the diagram we see a maximum server scale VC Domain compared to an 8 chassis UCS domain. The diagram shows both domains connected up to a shared two-tier SAN design (core/edge) and 3 tier network design (Access, Aggregation, Core.) In the UCS domain all access layer connectivity is handled within the system.
In the next diagram we look at an alternative connectivity method for the HP VC domain utilizing the switch modules in the HP chassis as the access layer to reduce infrastructure.
In this method we have reduced the switching infrastructure by utilizing the onboard switching of the HP chassis as the access layer. The issue here will be the bandwidth requirements and port costs at the LAN aggregation/SAN core. Depending on application bandwidth requirements additional aggregation/core ports will be required which can be more costly/complex than access connectivity. Additionally this will increase cabling length requirements in order to tie back to the data center aggregation/core layer.
Summary:
When comparing UCS to HP blade implementations a base UCS blade implementation is best compared against a single VC domain in order to obtain comparable feature parity. The total port and bandwidth counts from the chassis for a minimum redundant system are:
HP Cisco Total uplinks 13 16 Gbps FC 16 per chassis N/A Gbps Ethernet 10 per VLAN per VC Domain/ 20 Total N/A Consolidated I/O N/A 20 per chassis Total Chassis I/O 21 Gbps for 16 servers 20 Gbps for 8 servers
This does not take into account the additional management ports required for the VC domain that will not be required by the UCS implementation. An additional consideration will be scaling beyond 64 servers. With this minimal consideration the Cisco UCS will scale to 40 chassis 320 servers where the HP system scales in blocks of 4 chassis as independent VC domains. While multiple VC domains can be managed by a Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM) server the network stacking is done per 4 chassis domain requiring North/South traffic for domain to domain communication.
The other networking consideration in this comparison is that in the default mode all links shown for the UCS implementation will be active. The HP implementation will have one available uplink or port aggregate uplink per VLAN for each VC domain, further restraining bandwidth and/or requiring additional ports.Jaya Prada had lost the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from Bijnor seat in Uttar Pradesh.Photo:Reuters Jaya Prada had lost the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from Bijnor seat in Uttar Pradesh.Photo:Reuters
Former Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Jaya Prada is likely to contest against Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal in the upcoming Delhi Assembly polls, sources say.
The actor-turned-politician has been in constant touch with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She reportedly met BJP chief Amit Shah recently. According to sources, if the BJP decides to give her the ticket, she may be fielded from the New Delhi constituency from where Kejriwal will contest elections.
Jaya Prada had lost the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from Bijnor seat in Uttar Pradesh. Along with her mentor Amar Singh, the politician had joined Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in 2014.
She was an MP from Rampur parliamentary seat in UP twice in 2004 and 2009.Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, arrives prior to testifying on Capitol Hill before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Clinton faces scrutiny over her response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and her use of a private e-mail server while serving as secretary of state.
Oct. 22, 2015 Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, arrives prior to testifying on Capitol Hill before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Clinton faces scrutiny over her response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and her use of a private e-mail server while serving as secretary of state. Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency
A House committee has begun its long-anticipated hearing in which the former secretary of state testifies about the attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
A House committee has begun its long-anticipated hearing in which the former secretary of state testifies about the attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
A House committee has begun its long-anticipated hearing in which the former secretary of state testifies about the attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton’s appearance before the House Benghazi committee provided one more example of the breakdown of a Republican Party torn by factionalism and heavily influenced by a cadre of supporters who are far less interested in governing than in expressing its anger.
By the time the committee ended 11 hours of questioning of the Democratic presidential front-runner, the long day of testimony had come to symbolize seven years of Republican frustration with the administration of President Obama — and the fears |
Being a part of that was unbelievable and something that I never would have imagined doing at such a young age. It’s frustrating to give it all up but I’ve still got my life. I was able to experience some incredible things and those memories will stay with me for ever.
THE DREAM MOVE TO EUROPE
I’d always dreamed of being a professional footballer and playing in Europe. To have secured a move that would allow me to do that at the age of 20 was incredible.
It was reward for all the hard work I’d put in over the years and all the sacrifices. Not just for me, but also for my family and agent, Miquel Riera Cladera. Getting that contract with Numancia was something special.
I flew from Sydney to Madrid and you only have to drive two hours north to get to Soria, where Numancia is. A small town but very beautiful. I was put up in an apartment there and presented to the public and the press.
I was given tours of the stadium and training grounds and that’s really when the dream came to life because I could see it right in front of me. That week was great. Then I found out the news.
Throughout that week I had to complete some medicals. First, muscular and skeletal testing, then the day after the press conference I went in for some heart tests.
Within the first five minutes of testing the cardiologist felt quite strongly that something was wrong. From there, my dream slowly started to disappear.
If I’m pushed to my limits, there’s a risk of me having a heart attack and, without playing the blame game, I have to be honest: this should have been found earlier.
After the ECG they ran an echo cardiogram, which is like an ultrasound – you can see images of the heart. It was more of the same. The next week is a bit of a blur. The club sent me down to a leading cardiologist in Madrid to double check everything. I got an MRI for some exact readings and after all that they still didn’t want to tell me 100 percent.
I’m so glad Mum and Dad were there with me. They helped get me through that time, even though it was extremely tough for them, too. I don’t have children but I can only imagine what it’s like to see your son struggle so much. I guess the toughest thing for them was that there was nothing they could do to stop it.
THE DIAGNOSIS
Not having a straight answer was horrible so I came back to Sydney to see Professor Chris Semsarian, who is a world leader in my condition. Chris did his own testing and came to the conclusion that I had HCM and would have to retire. That was the day after my 21st birthday.
I think it’s important that I speak truthfully. That’s life and unfortunately it can throw a lot of curve balls at you. Hopefully in the future I can be there for people who may be in a similar position. There’s a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of flashbacks, a lot of very dark times. I’m a positive person and a strong person but it’s not easy to talk about.
I’ve always used negative news and bad times to fuel success and I’ll do the same now. At the same time, there’s always someone worse off and you have to keep reminding yourself of that. I can’t say the world is against me when there are people out there struggling to provide for their families. You have to look at the bigger picture.
THE MOVE HOME
People talk about jet lag when they travel, but I had a torrid time coming back to Sydney. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. It was a grieving process.
First, there’s a lot of shock, then denial. I think if you ask any of the coaching staff or boys at Sydney FC, I was definitely one of the fittest in the team. I just wanted to say, ‘Well hang on, I don’t think there is anything wrong at all’.
Another frustrating thing was that I had found it really tough leaving Australia. I’d said goodbye to a lot of people and a lot of things. It took months to say goodbye to everything and I still couldn’t come to terms with it. So, to be back in the country after just a couple of weeks was a huge slap in the face.
There’s a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of flashbacks, a lot of very dark times. I’m a positive person and a strong person but it’s not easy to talk about.
I feel Sydney FC had an obligation to do medical testing. To my understanding that should be carried out once every 12 months before pre-season commences. It was only done once while I was at the club and I was there from the age of 16.
That test was conducted in February 2016 and was carried down by the AFC prior to our Asian Champions League campaign. I heard nothing back and continued playing as normal. It was only when I announced my retirement that I requested the results. It said that there was an abnormality and I should have had further testing done. They would have found I had the condition then.
Whether that test was overlooked or whatever the case is, it’s very hard for me to come to grips with that, because it’s my life that’s being toyed with. It should have been picked up and I should have retired in February.
During this time, I was also playing under 20s and under 23s for Australia and they signed off on Olympic medical forms. The forms would say, ‘Is this player fit to play?’, the answer would be yes. On the same sheet it says, ‘Has any heart testing been done?’ The answer would be no.
I’m quite a positive person and I know for a fact that massive changes have been made. Whether that’s been made public or kept quiet behind closed doors. I know that there has been a massive change after what happened to me. I know that all A-League clubs are now doing medical testing before pre-season. Anybody that comes to the clubs must have these tests done.
I have a very strong view on medical testing now. Clubs are on top of strength and conditioning, hydration testing and dieting, but before all that they need to make sure their athletes are healthy to play.
KIK FOOTBALL
I still want to be a football player even though that’s not possible.
It was probably a couple of months before I found a new sense of direction. I decided to start up Kik Football, an academy for young footballers, and dedicate myself to getting the business off the ground. It’s the next best thing to playing.
I’ve always felt that I have a lot of attributes that make a strong leader. During my career I had very good relationships with all the players and staff and I would often look after players who might have been a couple of years younger than me, especially when they were having difficult times I might have experience dealing with.
Helping kids improve, dealing with business people and business owners. They’re all skills I learnt from playing football and being in the public eye.
There are opportunities popping up every week for me. Of course, I’m grateful but I know it’s because of hard work and the transition that I have made. I’m not trying to get as many kids as I can to grow the biggest academy in the country. I’m looking to develop young footballers first and foremost and I’m looking to run a successful company. I have to stay true to myself, my staff and my players. That’s the only way this can be a success.
We currently run one-on-one sessions and small-group sessions. We also do school programs and I would like to expand the academy sessions for different age groups and run some holiday clinics. I have great contacts in Spain and Europe through Miquel Riera, who still works very closely with me and I’m very grateful for that. I want to do some tours to Europe as well.
I’ve just finished part two of my B-Licence and I’ll be looking to do my A-Licence as soon as possible.
Working away A post shared by KIKI NAUMOFF (@cnaumoff29) on Aug 23, 2017 at 1:50am PDT
WHAT I MISS MOST
I miss the pressure.
I was always someone who performed under pressure and it’s something that’s very hard to replicate in normal life – that intoxicating rush of adrenaline.
If you ask a lot of sportspeople who have retired, they’ll probably say the same thing. I miss being nervous and walking out in front of big crowds.
I was never scared. I just wanted to showcase what I was about.
I’m not a bitter person, though. Football gave me many opportunities and many friends that will last a lifetime.
THANK YOU
First and foremost, I’d like to thank my immediate family – my father and mother, Tony and Gordana, and my brother Josh.
Then, Numancia for being top-class with everything. They’ve looked after me medically, sent support and always been there for me. The relationship between me and the club is still strong. I have to thank them for that.
It’s frustrating to give it all up but I’ve still got my life. I was able to experience some incredible things and those memories will stay with me for ever.
There were people who had the condition that reached out to me on social media. I’m very thankful for those people. It shows I have great support. To get that helping hand from people who were strangers was unbelievable.
I also owe a lot to some people who are in the public eye, like Tony Vidmar, who missed the 2006 World Cup because of a heart condition.
I was able to spend a week down at the AIS with Tony and the Centre of Excellence boys. It was great to be involved in sessions, helping coach 20 of the country’s best talents. To be able to do that within my first year of coaching was a great experience.
Spending time with Tony and getting advice from him was great. He was someone that I was cheering for when we qualified for that World Cup and all those years later, I was talking to him about my condition. It was great to have that support.Soldiers of one of the best armies of the world have arrived in Latvia. This act of support proves to Latvia that NATO remains true to its word and that Latvia is an important NATO partner, said Latvian Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma at Ādaži military base this Friday.
In her speech, Straujuma mentioned that the arrival of U.S. troops shows unity of NATO partner states in a time when a complicated situation is brewing between Russia and Ukraine. Today Latvia feels positive about the decision it made ten years ago on joining NATO.
Latvia’s Prime Minister thanked all NATO member states, including USA, for helping increase security in the region.
Defence minister Raimonds Vejonis also expressed his gratitude for support and NATO’s lasting presence and contribution to cooperation between countries. The minister also said the presence of American soldiers in Latvia is also a plus for Latvian soldiers.
In his speech, the minister confirmed that Latvia sees USA as a strategic partner and ally in security matters in the Baltic region. Cooperation between the two countries is currently noted in a number of different project. The arrival of American soldiers opens a new chapter in bilateral relations between these two countries. Bilateral military exercises will help American and Latvian soldiers improve their readiness and gain valuable experience to face possible security challenges in the future, said Vejonis.
U.S. ambassador to Latvia Mark Pekala noted that Latvian and American soldiers have been standing side-by-side for several years – serving together in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also mentioned cooperation between armies of the two countries in the military exercises in Liberia, Michigan and Latvia.
The arrival of American soldiers in Latvia means further strengthening of relations and friendship. The deployment of additional troops in Latvia is a very important decision to ensure freedom and peace in the Baltic region, said the U.S. ambassador.
Commander of Latvia’s National Armed Forces Raimonds Graube expressed joy for the quickness of response and overall activity of soldiers. The latter did not, however, surprise him all that much. Soldiers have already proven their ability to cooperate with each other in many projects in the past. The presence of American troops will increase Latvia’s readiness and overall professionalism of the country’s army and level of the country’s defence.
Ref: 102.109.109.5775-
New York City's 2015 Michelin 3 Star Restaurants The Michelin Guide recently announced its latest list of worthy New York City restaurants; and, now, 73 New York City-area restaurants can claim the title of Michelin star restaurant for 2015 — that's six more than 2014. In honor of Michelin’s newest guidebook, Grape Collective takes a look at the wines served by-the-glass at the six restaurants that received the hallowed 3-star rating.
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Le Bernardin Originally opened by siblings Maguy and Gilbert Le Coze in France in 1972, Le Bernardin holds the record for the longest consecutive three-star rating from the Michelin Guide New York City (since 2006; tied with Jean-Georges and Per Se). It also holds the longest consecutive four-star rating from the New York Times (since 1986), and carries the title of the NYC restaurant with the most awards from the James Beard Foundation — eight! – including the award for Outstanding Wine Service in 2009. While decorated Wine Director Aldo Sohm offers wine pairings for the restaurant’s two tasting menus (the Chef’s Tasting Menu and the Le Bernardin Tasting Menu), Le Bernardin has yet to publish its full wine list. To find out more about Le Bernardin’s wine program, click here.
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Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare The brainchild of Chef César Ramirez, Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare is the only Michelin 3-star restaurant in New York City located outside the borough of Manhattan. Once the only Michelin 3-star restaurant in New York City without a liquor license, Chef’s Table currently offers a wine program with bottles beginning at $60 but no wines by-the-glass. To view Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare’s full wine list, click here.
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Masa New York City sushi staple Masa is the life’s work of Chef Masayoshi Takayama and the first Japanese restaurant in the United States to receive three Michelin stars. Now entering its sixth year as a Michelin 3-star restaurant, Masa features wines by-the-glass beginning at $14.
Champagne / Sparkling Wine MV Ca Del Bosco Cuvee Prestige, Franciacorta, Italy $20 MV La Caravelle Brut, Blanc de Blancs, Champagne, France $24 MV Billecart - Salmon Extra Brut, Ay, Champagne, France $35 White Wine 2011 Gueth Pinot Blanc Alsace, France $14 2009 Gueth Riesling Alsace, France $14 2012 Domaine Paul Thomas Sancerre Chavignol, Rose $16 2011 Stag's Leap Chardonnay, Napa Valley, California $20 2011 Terlan "Winkl" Sauvignon Blanc, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy $20 2009 Domaine Weinbach Muscat, Alsace France $20 2009 Les Chais "Sous Le Cerisier", France $26 Red Wine 2011 Mairena Malbec, Mendoz, Argentina $16 2011 Josh Cellars Merlot, Sonoma, California $18 2010 St.Clement, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, California $20 2011 Barda Pinot Noir, Patagonia, Argentina $20 Dessert Wine 1997 Quinta Do Noval,Colheita Douro Valley, Portugal 20
To view Masa’s full wine list, click here.
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Per Se Celebrating its tenth year as a Michelin 3-star restaurant, Per Se is one of only three restaurants to boast double-digit years at the top of the Michelin Guide New York City — Jean-Georges and Le Bernardin being the other two. The only chef with two Michelin 3-star restaurants in the United States (the other being The French Laundry in the San Francisco area), Chef Thomas Keller offers a comprehensive wine program that features half-bottles beginning at $65 and wines by-the-glass beginning at $12.
Sparkling & Champagne Schramsberg, Blanc de Blancs, Napa Valley 2011 $22 José Dhondt, Blanc de Blancs, Oger MV $34 Billecart-Salmon, Rosé, Mareuil-sur-Aÿ MV $42 Henri Goutorbe, "Special Club," Aÿ-Champagne 2004 $47 White Domaine Claude & Florence Thomas-Labaille, "Les Monts Damnés," Chavignol, Sancerre 2013 $20 Prager, Grüner Veltliner, Federspiel, "Hinter der Burg," Weissenkirchen, Wachau 2013 $21 Van Volxem, Riesling, "Alte Reben," Mosel 2012 $21 Domaine Guiberteau, "Clos de Guichaux," Saumur 2011 $20 Domaine de l'Horizon, Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes 2009 $35 Domaine Georges Vernay, Viognier, "Le Pied de Samson," Vin de Pays des Collines Rhodaniennes 2012 $22 Domaine Chavy, Puligny-Montrachet 2011 $32 Liquid Farm, Chardonnay, "Golden Slope, " Sta.Rita Hills 2012 $32 Red Vietti, "Tre Vigne," Barbera d'Alba 2012 $18 Littorai, Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast 2013 $32 Domaine du Château de Chorey, "Les Teurons," Beaune Premier Cru 2009 $31 Castello di Neive, Riserva, "Santo Stefano," Barbaresco 2006 $32 Château des Tours, Côtes-du-Rhône 2010 $24 Viñas del Jaro, "Jaros," Reserva, Ribera del Duero 2007 $20 Réserve de la Comtesse de Lalande, Pauillac 2006 $38 Cade, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley 2010 $39 Rosé Domaine de Terrebrune, Bandol 2013 $22 Off-Dry & Sweet Bricco del Sole, Moscato d'Asti 2013 $15 J.J. Prüm, Riesling Auslese, "Wehlener Sonnenuhr," Gold Kapsule, Mosel 2012 $42 Felsina, Vin Santo, Chianti Classico 2004 $36 Domaine Patrick Baudouin, "Les Zersilles," Quarts de Chaume 2010 $40 Domaine Montbourgeau, Vin de Paille, L' Étoile 2007 $38 Disznókõ, Tokaji Aszú, 5 Puttonyos, Hungary 2007 $30 Château Guiraud, Sauternes 2001 $45 Sake Takasago, Junmai Daiginjo, "Divine Droplets," Hokkaido $24 Takatenjin, Junmai Daiginjo, "Soul of the Sensei," Shizuoka $22 Fortified Domaine Vial Magnères, "Al Tragou," Banyuls Rancio Très Vieux 1986 $28 Paul Marie & Fils, "Vieux," Pineau des Charentes MV $28 Fernando de Castilla, Manzanilla, Sanlucar de Barrameda MV $12 Valdespino, Amontillado VORS,"Coliseo," Jerez MV $100 Valdespino, Oloroso VOS, "Don Gonzalo," Jerez MV $20 Gonzales Byass, Palo Cortado, "Apostoles - 30 años," Jerez MV $28 Equipo Navazos, "La Bota de Pedro Ximénez No. 36," Jerez MV $40 Port Ramos-Pinto, "Quinta do Bom Retiro," 20 Year Tawny MV $25 Taylor Fladgate, 30 Year Tawny MV $45 Fonseca 1994 $40 Warre's 1985 $42 Madeira D'Oliveiras, Boal 1968 $65 D'Oliveiras, Terrantez 1988 $39 D'Oliveiras, Malvazia 1989 $35 Rare Wine Co., Malmsey, "New York, Special Reserve" MV $22
To view Per Se’s full wine list, click here.
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Eleven Madison Park Receiving three Michelin stars for the fourth consecutive year, Eleven Madison Park has become a staple for New York fine diners, synonymous with New York City landmarks Jean-Georges, Le Bernardin, Masa, Per Se, and Daniel. Owned and operated by Chef Daniel Humm and restaurateur Will Guidara since 2011, Eleven Madison Park also features the wine direction of Master Sommelier Dustin Wilson with half-bottles beginning at $25 and wines by-the-glass beginning at $12.
SPARKLING WINE CRÉMANT | Stéphane Tissot, Crémant du Jura, France $19 CHAMPAGNE | Bérèche & Fils, Brut Réserve, Ludes $29 Larmandier-Bernier, Terre de Vertus, Blanc de Blancs, Vertus 2008 $45 Chartogne-Taillet, Brut Rosé, Merfy $39 SHERRY WINE MANZANILLA | Equipo Navazos, La Bota de Manzanilla, Eleven Madison Park, Jerez $22 AMONTILLADO | Equipo Navazos, La Bota de Amontillado, #37, Jerez $30 PALO CORTADO | Equipo Navazos, La Bota de Palo Cortado, #34, Jerez $25 Equipo Navazos, La Bota de Palo Cortado, 'Bota NO,' #41, Jerez $75 RICE WINE SAKE | Tedorigawa, Kinka, Nama Daiginjo, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan $15 ROSÉ WINE SYRAH | Vallin, Santa Ynez Valley, California 2013 $17 WHITE WINE RIESLING | Hans Kramp, Ayler Kupp, Spätlese, Saar, Germany 1989 $23 Franz Hirtzberger, Steinterrassen, Federspiel, Wachau, Austria 2012 $22 Keuka Lake Vineyards, Falling Man Vineyard, Finger Lakes, New York 2012 $19 PINOT GRIS | Albert Boxler, Réserve, Alsace, France 2012 $35 PINOT BLANC | Cantina Terlano, Vorberg, Alto-Adige, Italy 2011 $20 SAUVIGNON BLANC | Lieu Dit, Santa Ynez Valley, California 2013 $18 CHENIN BLANC | Domaine aux Moines, Roche aux Moines, Savennières, Loire Valley, France 1999 $22 FRIULANO | Livio Felluga, Colli Orientali del Friuli, Friuli, Italy 2011 $14 PALOMINO | Equipo Navazos, La Bota de Vino Blanco, Florpower, #44, Andalucia, Spain $26 MARSANNE | Clos Ste. Magdeleine, Cassis, Provence, France 2011 $24 CHARDONNAY | Sandhi, Santa Barbara County, California 2012 $20 Isabelle et Denis Pommier, Côte de Léchet, Premier Cru, Chablis, France 2011 $22 Domaines Leflaive, Mâcon-Verzé, Burgundy, France 2012 $30 RED WINE GAMAY | Laurence & Rémi Dufaitre, Côte de Brouilly, Beaujolais, France 2013 $24 PINOT NOIR | Tyler, Santa Barbara County, California 2012 $19 Domaine de Montille, Aux Saint Juliens, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Burgundy, France 2011 $45 ZWEIGELT | Weingut Muster, Steiermark, Austria 2010 $18 GRENACHE | Domaine Gramenon, Les Laurentides, Côtes du Rhône Villages, France 2012 $25 Domaine la Barroche, Châteauneuf du Pape, Rhône Valley, France 2011 $35 SYRAH | Vallin, Santa Ynez Valley, California 2012 $29 Domaine Monier Perreol, St. Joseph, Rhône Valley, France 2012 $27 MOURVÈDRE | Domaine de Terrebrune, Bandol, Provence, France 2008 $25 TEMPRANILLO | Lopez de Heredia, Viña Tondonia, Reserva, Rioja, Spain 2002 $29 CABERNET FRANC | Catherine et Pierre Breton, Nuits d'Ivresse, Bourgueil, Loire Valley, France (en magnum) 2009 $21 CABERNET SAUVIGNON | Domaine Eden, Santa Cruz Mountains, California 2010 $19 Mas de Daumas Gassac, Vin de Pays de l'Hérault, Languedoc, France 2012 $25 SWEET WINE RIESLING | Weiser-Kunstler, Enkircher Ellergrub, Auslese, Mosel, Germany 2013 $25 MUSCAT | Domaine Marengo, No. 655, Muscat du Cap Corse, Corsica, France 2010 $15 SÉMILLON & SAUVIGNON BLANC | Château Rieussec, Sauternes, Bordeaux, France 2006 $40 Château d'Yquem, Sauternes, Bordeaux, France 1998 $95 CHENIN BLANC | Foreau, Moelleux, Vouvray, Loire Valley, France 2010 $20 PETIT MANSENG | Dagueneau et Pautrat, Les Jardins de Babylone, Jurançon, France 2010 $60 FURMINT | Királyudvar, Cuvée Ilona, Tokaji, Hungary 2007 $25 TREBBIANO | Castello Sonnino, de Renzis Sonnino, Vin Santo, Tuscany, Italy 2006 $23 BRACHETTO | Malvira', Birbet, Roero, Piedmont, Italy $14 ZIBBIBO | Marco de Bartoli, Bukkuram, Sole de Agosto, Passito de Pantelleria, Sicily, Italy 2011 $25 ZWEIGELT | Weinlaubenhof Kracher, Zweigelt Beerenauslese, Neusiedlersee, Burgenland, Austria 2012 $19 FORTIFIED WINE PORT VINTAGE | Dow's, Quinta do Bomfim 2001 $19 TAWNY | Niepoort, Colheita 2001 $17 Quinta Do Noval, Twenty Year Old $27 BANYULS GRENACHE | Domaine La Tour Vieille, Rimage 2011 $16 MADEIRA | D'Oliveiras, Reserva 1937 $145 VERDELHO | D'Oliveiras, Reserva 1912 $195 D'Oliveiras, Reserva 1932 $160 D'Oliveiras, Reserva 1973 $60 D'Oliveiras, Reserva 1986 $55 TERRANTEZ | D'Oliveiras, Reserva 1971 $90 D'Oliveiras, Reserva 1977 $75 MALMSEY | Vinhos Barbeito (Rare Wine Co.), New York Special Reserve $18 SHERRY MOSCATEL | Emilio Lustau, Emilín, Solera Reserva, Jerez $12 CREAM | Equipo Navazos, La Bota de Cream, 'Bota NO,' #38, Jerez $75
To view Eleven Madison Park’s full wine list, click here.Compare and contrast: Suzuki's chassis provides outstanding handling and turning
Honda's super stiff 2015 RC213V. Incredible braking and turning
Michele Pirro's Ducati GP14: Stiff, excellent stability in braking, but turning, not so much...
The NGM Forward team tested Kayaba suspension...
... Stefan Bradl was not at all impressed, and told reporters he did not want to waste any more time testing it...
... in the end, it will come down to money. Will Forward take money from Kayaba, or pay for Ohlins?
The Forward Yamaha top yoke and Magneti Marelli spec dashboard
A young Australian rider with Cristian Gabarrini? How do you think that will turn out?
More power for Nicky Hayden from the RC213V-RS, but he'd still take even more
The Aprilia is stunning. Slow, but stunning
Spot the exhaust. Yamaha tested a new slash-cut pipe at Valencia
Ah, there it is. It was straight through and LOUD. Meant to help with engine response
Every racing series should have a rider called Maverick
The biggest visible difference between the 2014 and 2015 RC213V is in the air intake
The 2014 bike is an oval basking shark-style opening
The 2015 bike has a pinch in the middle, making it more of a lip formation
Put lipstick on that and I would definitely kiss it
For comparison, meet the Suzuki's unkissable mouth
Best thing about testing? Getting up close and personal with the most amazing motorcycles in the world
The 2015 RC213V
Dashboard, complete with blinkenlights. The analog rev counter means this is Pedrosa's bike
Attention to detail: Movistar TV Carles Perez pointed out to me that even the TV camera is beautifully integrated on the bike
Two Honda Open bikes: Laverty's RCV1000R...
... and Nicky Hayden's RC213V-RS
Scott Redding's main focus was finding his position on the bike. That meant playing with lots of foam and tank pads
If you'd like to have desktop-sized versions of these photos, or more likely Scott's fantastic photos from this and other events, you can become a site supporter and take out a subscription. If you'd like a print of one of the shots you see on the site, then send Scott an email and he'll be happy to help.The San Francisco 49ers are expected to hire Robert Saleh to be their next defensive coordinator, and that means he’s probably going to be taking the style of defense he was taught with him. Who taught him about defense? Among others: Pete Carroll and Gus Bradley. Saleh was the defense quality control coach for the Seattle Seahawks from 2011-2013 and the linebackers coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars from 2014-2016.
On Monday, ESPN’s Adam Caplan explicitly stated that the 49ers are expected to switch from their 3-4 defense to Bradley’s 4-3 base with elements of a 3-4, just like he learned from Carroll in Seattle.
For those asking: 49ers expected to run 4-3. Same as Gus Bradley's defense. Some coaches say has elements of a 3-4 on tape. — Adam Caplan (@caplannfl) February 14, 2017
David Fucillo of Niners Nation broke down some of the personnel questions San Francisco will need to address in order to run the new defense:
For the Niners, their OLB’s (if they were actually any good) could slot into the OTTO and LEO spots, though they don’t really have the pure pass rusher you’re typically looking for at LEO (guess would be that Harold is the current guy most suited for that spot). Though since I would imagine there’s going to be a solid amount of roster turnover anyway, there will probably be quite a few new additions. I think the biggest questions relating to the current roster I would have would be: 1) What happens with Buckner and Armstead in base (both would be best suited for that strong-side 5-tech DE role and don’t really have a clear fit for another spot in the defense, but of course, would be fine when they’re in sub-packages); and 2) Do they move Jimmie Ward to FS as their Earl Thomas (could see him doing well in that spot)? Everyone else can either fairly easily slide into a similar role in the 4-3 scheme or doesn’t matter.
This comes as little surprise, since owner Jed York has been clearly looking to tap the Seahawks resources for the last two months. That includes interviewing Seattle assistant Tom Cable for the head coaching position that went to Kyle Shanahan (who worked under Dan Quinn) and also speaking to two Seahawks front office execs about the opening at GM that ultimately went to John Lynch.
Don’t be surprised when the 49ers sign a couple free agents from Seattle next month. They’re gonna need help running this new defense. (Perhaps Jeron Johnson and if they really want to be obvious about it, Mike Morgan.)Slappy the Squirrel Full Name Slappy, the Slap-happy Squirrel Segment Slappy Squirrel First Episode The Monkey Song (first appearance)
Slappy Goes Walnuts (first standalone short) Voice Actor Sherri Stoner Catchphrases "Now that's comedy!"
"You remind me of a very young..."
"Go away!"
"Somebody shoot me!"
"Oh, now this is sad!"
"Ehhh enough with the singing already."
"She asked as if she cared"
"Oh,put a sock in it!"
Slappy Squirrel is an elderly, grumpy veteran cartoon tree squirrel who starred in a fictional version of Looney Tunes cartoons as Slappy, The Slap-Happy Squirrel.
Today, she lives in a treehouse with her cute, chipper, and cheerful nephew, Skippy Squirrel. She often faces old enemies from her past, like Walter Wolf, Sid the Squid, and Beanie, the Brain Dead Bison. Other situations see her facing common nuisances, like annoyingly perky neighbors like Candie Chipmunk ("I Got Yer Can") and Skippy's emotional traumas ("Bumbie's Mom"). She typically solves her problems with exaggerated cartoon violence. She has even blasted the Warners' annoying new nanny out of Warner Bros. Studio when the Warners could not do it themselves because of their moral beliefs ("The Sound Of Warners"). The music played during the title card of her segments is an excerpt from Antonín Dvořák's "Humoresque". Slappy is the craziest squirrel.
Slappy is voiced by series writer Sherri Stoner.
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Character Biography
She is characterized as a grumpy, bitter, cranky, elderly anthropomorphic gray squirrel with a thick New York accent. She is usually seen usually wearing a green hat decorated with a drooping yellow flower, purple eyeliner on her eyelids and carrying a pink purse and green umbrella that she occasionally uses to hit other characters. "Hurray For Slappy" reveals Slappy to be in her 80s, as Mary Heartless (a parody of Entertainment Tonight's Mary Hart) refers to Slappy as "octogenarian". She lives in a hollow tree with her nephew Skippy, her polar opposite in terms of personality, who loves to hear her tell stories about her former days of stardom. In the episode "My Mother The Squirrel", while Skippy represents a cuter style of cartoon characters, Slappy was and is a more chaotic and old-school character, enjoying violence for comedy's sake and resentful of milquetoast, censor-influenced modern cartoons. She was first seen in the show's third episode, "Slappy Goes Walnuts", originally aired on September 15, 1993, which also introduced an extract of a purely fictitious Looney Tunes cartoon featuring herself and suggesting that she was a retired Looney Tunes character who crossed over into Animaniacs. In several episodes, there are shots of fictitious Looney Tunes cartoons portraying a younger Slappy, under the pseudonym Slappy the Slap-Happy Squirrel, a reference to the MGM cartoon character Screwy Squirrel.
Characters
Her former co-star and arch-enemy, Walter Wolf harbors a grudge against her, both for defeating him repeatedly (and violently) in the past and for becoming a big star, albeit now a faded one. He has also enlisted the help of her other ex-nemeses, including Sid the Squid and Beanie the Brain-Dead Bison. Much like Slappy, all these characters show signs of age and senility. In addition to Walter's occasional attempts at revenge, Slappy must sometimes endure more mundane annoyances such as a cloyingly-perky new neighbor or Skippy's emotional traumas, for instance after he watches the animated movie Bumbie (a parody of Bambi). Slappy solves this by taking Skippy to see the actress in question. In a later episode, "No Face Like Home", Slappy had been combining her disdain for new slapstick-free cartoons as well as her dislike for cartoons that resolved issues peacefully, and "pretty female animals who had no slapstick". Slappy also succumbs to Hollywood's craze with plastic surgery by attempting to have herself transformed artificially back into her youthful self and get back into cartoons "to make them the way they should be, with anvils and dynamite!" Slappy is also well known for the dialog "Who's on Stage?", a 2 minute Vaudevillesque wit-round routine, based on the legendary sketch "Who's on First?", in Episode 59 ("Woodstock"), in which she tries to determine which band is performing on stage ("The Band", "Who" or "Yes") which of course ends with Roger Daltrey inviting the pair on stage.
Humor
Slappy easily outsmarts whatever foes she faces (who are almost universally dimwitted as well as decrepit) and exacts revenge with exaggerated cartoon violence, usually while reminiscing about her "classic" (but fictional) film appearances of her youth. She often will remark how her enemies remind her of various famous cartoon characters when they were very young. Her catchphrase "Now that’s comedy!" is usually delivered after visiting physical injury and humiliation upon her opponents. She also occasionally says, "You remind me of a very young (insert name)," to everyone from the Warner siblings to her enemies. Slappy often pokes fun at her own age and ailing health.
Slappy's Fiction |
was great at football, wrestling, “I was always the best athlete…always the best at sports.”
· (!) When Iowa started moving towards Ben Carson, Trump asked, at a rally, “How stupid are the people of Iowa?” It now looks like Iowa will probably go to Trump. I’d say, pretty stupid.
· (!) In an August interview with John King of CNN, Trump insisted that a CNN Poll had he and Obama tying in a hypothetical run for the presidency. John King denied the poll, but Trump insisted, adding that he “had heard” of the poll. This is a very common Trump tactic: to insist that something is true because “he heard it,” even though he provides no evidence, nor even can say whom he heard it from. The CNN-poll claim was, of course, false—at that time, Hillary was far ahead.
· (!) In one of the debates, after Rubio made a stupid putdown about Trump having small hands, Trump decided to prolong the infantile banter: “I have to say this: He hit my hands. No one has ever hit my hands. Look at those hands, are those small hands? And he referred to my hands as if, if they’re small, something else may be small. I guarantee to you there’s no problem, I guarantee!” So the leading Republican presidential candidate is actually bragging about his penis. This is where we are today.
· (!!) Trump is often heralded for his business savvy; indeed, this is, to many people, the central argument in support of his presidency: “Trump would run the country like a business.” But this is a true fallacy, on several levels. For starters, the skills necessary for running a business are vastly different than the skills necessary for governance. Running a business is all about ruthlessness, destroying the competition. Successful businessmen are typically cutthroat and unempathetic. Another problem with this concept is that good governance requires an open-mind, an ability to work with others, an understanding of the constitution, foreign policy expertise, diplomatic energy—not skills important within the business community. Further, Trump’s success at business is mostly due to money from his father. He was granted early on a loan of $1 million (equal to $6.8 million in today’s money), which Trump dismisses as a “small” loan. Some people are now saying he was loaned as much as $14 million; no one really knows. He also inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from his father (the figure $200 million is out there, but again, really no one knows exactly how much, and Trump is not talking except to deny it), and he has benefitted from trust funds, personal loans, and his father’s connections. The verdict is out on how successful he has been in conducting his businesses. Some have made the claim that, had Trump done nothing more than put all of his inheritance into a high-interest bank account, he would have more money today. Finally, I should point out that Trump is renowned throughout the business world for his many failures, especially his numerous bankrupcies. If such as he were to become president, and run the country as he would a business...?
· (!!!) Trump has consistently refused to release his recent tax records, despite that fact that for decades now every presidential candidate has done so (albeit some reluctantly). He insists that the reason for this is that he is under audit—as he is, he claims, each and every year, which he attributes to a liberal government bias against him. He insists that it would be illegal for him to release his forms until the audit is completed—after which, he assures us, the forms will be made public. Some problems: first of all, it is dubious that he is even under any audit at all. Secondly, according to legal experts, being under audit would not make it illegal for him to release his tax information. Thirdly, legal experts have stated that, even if he has compromising information that his lawyers might want to hold back from public scrutiny, he could certainly release the first two pages. And fourthly, he could easily release tax forms from previous years (as other candidates have), as these would not still be under audit. Releasing tax information is an important and valuable tool, for helping the public gain useful insight into a candidate’s business and character. But Trump refuses, while assuring us constantly that he has nothing to hide. On the contrary, he claims that he wants to show off how wealthy he is (he claims the tax forms could well put him over $10 billion; analysts are guessing it’s more like $4 billion), but, alas, his lawyers just wont let him release those forms. Darn.
· Note to the above: At the debate, Trump said that he would agree to release his tax forms, after Hillary revealed the emails she was supposedly hiding. Uh, Donald, that mean you would do something you insisted was illegal?
· (!!) Another note to the above: Speculation about the real reason why Trump wont let us see his tax forms has been rampant, and many believe that Trump really does have something to hide. Reasons for concealing his tax records could include:
o He isn’t nearly as rich as he claims, and may not be a billionaire at all; he may even be in debt or in a state of financial ruin, as some have suggested.
o He doesn’t want anyone to get any idea about how much he may have inherited from his father, which is a total mystery.
o He doesn’t want us to know about how his many boasts about being massively charitable are just that—boasts, devoid of any validity.
o He might want to hide charity donations he supposedly made, but were really financed by the Trump Foundation.
o He wants to hide how much the Trump Foundation has spent on his account, personally.
o He doesn’t want people to find out the degree to which he has avoided paying taxes over the years, that he may have even gotten away with paying nothing (except to lawyers). Years ago, he did reveal his tax forms, and they showed that he did not pay anything to Uncle Sam. For years in fact—nothing, not one penny.
o He doesn’t want people to see how shifty he is in using lawyerly tricks and loopholes to get out of paying his fair share.
o He may want to hide his Chapter 11 business practice, in which he builds up companies and then declares bankruptcy, harming many while raking in huge profits for himself.
o He doesn’t want people to know who his partners are.
o He wants to hide any special casino deals he may have made with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (see below).
o He doesn’t want to shed any light on his indebtedness to China, and to Chinese banks.
o He doesn’t want anyone to know about his financial connections to Russian businesses and government officials and assorted oligarchs, possibly even to Putin himself. He has all day long (July 27) been unequivocally denying such connections, but the extent of his true ties to Russia is a mystery.
o And of course, any combination of the above. Perhaps some other dark secrets. Perhaps, to varying degrees, all of them.
· (!!)According to a NYTimes article by Mark Makela, a deputy New Jersey attorney general wrote in 2007 that Donald J. Trump’s flagship casino, the Taj Mahal, had reported that it paid $2.2 million in alternative minimum assessment tax in 2003. Not true—it had paid only $500 in income taxes. In addition, state auditors and lawyers had been long trying to collect long overdue taxes, amounting to almost $30 million, accusing the company owned by Trump of filing false reports with state regulators. This all changed when Chris Christie became governor of the state, and in Dec 2011, after 6 years in court, a settlement was reached in which the state agreed to accept just $5 million. This highly irregular settlement led to questions about the relationship between the two men, a friendship which goes back to 2002. Chris Christie, who has now been identified in court as having full knowledge of the BridgeGate lane closings (indeed, he directed the whole affair), was almost picked by Trump for the V-P slot, and is today a devout supporter and apologist.
· (!) At the time of the Brexit vote, Trump was in Scotland, visiting one of his many golf courses. He hailed the separation vote as a victory, claiming (falsely, probably ignorantly) that Scotland was supportive of this vote, and noting that this would be very good for his golf course, and for his business. He also pointed out that he predicted the Brexit vote, which he did not; just a few weeks before, he didn’t even know about it. Again and again and again, Trump looks upon world and national events in terms of how it affects him, personally (the very definition of narcissism). He took time out from his campaign to make this business trip, another point of concern (as President Trump, he would have many business deals in places all over the world, a potential Conflict of Interest of huge proportions).
· (!) Note to the above: Skipping ahead (8/25), Trump oddly invited Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, to speak at a rally in Mississippi (a strange place for a general election campaign speech, by the way; Trump wanted to show his unity with African Americans, but the audience was totally white). Farage spoke enthusiastically about Brexit, his war with Brussels, and so on, which must have totally puzzled the assembly (are we pro-Brussles or anti-Brussels?). Why did Trump bring an obscure European leader to one of his rallies? The buzz is that this was a sop to the new Bannon/Breitbart/alt right flavoring, which has mostly taken over the campaign. Probably also why Trump was recently castigating German Chancellor Angela Merkle, a target of the Far Right and Neo-Nazi groups, though unknown to most Americans.
· (!) Trump claimed, completely without substantiation, that Jeb Bush would be leading an effort to block Trump’s nomination at the GOP Convention. Trump does this often—he just makes an accusation without any rhyme or reason, without any concern about validity, or lack thereof. And why not—the Media always lets it go, and he pays no price for it. Compare this to how the Media relentlessly hounds Bill and Hillary, and often over very little or even nothing.
· (!!) A report by Reuters: The U.S. economy could be $1 trillion smaller than otherwise expected in 2021 if Republican candidate Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November, economics research firm Oxford Economics said on Tuesday. Trump’s policies could knock as much as 5% off the GDP, and “growth would slow significantly, falling near zero in 2019, and reducing overall GDP to $17.5 trillion.”
· (!!) Trump has also claimed that he would be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” The evidence shows otherwise. According to the Huffington Post, “Research from Princeton University economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson finds that, since World War II, the economy has performed substantially better by virtually every measure when Democrats have been in the White House. GDP growth, job creation and industrial production have all been stronger during Democratic administrations than during Republican ones.” Trump has offered no details to suggest that he would do anything substantially different from past Republicans. But he repeats his boasts so constantly that people start to believe it (on this, and all other issues).
· (!!!) Trump claimed, at a rally in Alabama Nov 21, that, while in Jersey, he personally witnessed thousands of Muslims cheering when the World Trade Centers went down. This allegation was immediately challenged, by multiple sources. But Trump did not admit to making a mistake in memory; rather, he doubled down, stressing that it was shown on television (if I remember correctly, he went from “I saw it live” to “I saw it on TV”). But no one could find such film footage. Trump continued to insist that it did exist, that he saw it, and he was 100% confident that his memory was accurate. People searched hard, but again, found nothing. No such film exists. Nor can any witnesses be found to corroborate this allegation. It may be that Trump saw footage of Palestinians celebrating (I remember seeing that). This possibility was given to him, but he insisted it was Muslims living in America. To this day, Trump hasn’t backed down from this assertion (which is either an outright lie, a gross mistake, or the product of a bad memory or a warped mind). But he pays no price for this, at least among his supporters.
· (!!!) Note to the above: Trump will never admit to making a mistake, nor ever apologize for an error in judgment or telling a lie or doing anything wrong whatsoever. Never. He is very clear on this. A number of times (and a large number) he has been caught telling lies or stepping out of bounds or exhibiting poor manners or behavior, etc, but his response always is to deny what he did (even when it is on film), or explain that his actions were misunderstood (even when they were blatant), or it was someone else’s fault, or that the “lying Media” is out to get him, and so on. He has recently taken to saying that the Media lies “almost as much as Crooked Hillary,” and even that his campaign is more against the crooked Media than it is against Hillary (while many people assert that it was the Media’s obsession with Trump, early on, that gave him “billions of dollars in free advertising” and greatly helped him defeat his GOP rivals). To Trump, apologizing is a form of weakness. He has explained this before, and his admirers seem to agree. Strange, considering that most people see it the other way: admitting to your mistakes is a form of strength.
· (!!) Note to the above: Trump has now (8/18) issued a sort of apology: “Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues. But one thing I can promise you is this: I will always tell you the truth.” The response to this un-Trumplike statement, coming upon a major staff shift and read word for word off of a teleprompter, has been mixed. Some see this as a major “evolution” in Trump’s character, and a possible sign of a turning point in his campaign; others are not impressed. Trump’s seemingly forced admission of error was completely general, sort of an “OK, I said I have made mistakes, now let’s move on” type of ploy to put his many missteps behind him. Also, note that his statement of regret dismisses any and all past mistakes as being merely slips or poor word choice, never incorrect policy nor abhorrent belief. He brought up no specific example, apologized to no one in particular, and did not seem in any way contrite or genuinely concerned about righting a wrong. The Clinton campaign immediately expressed doubt over the sincerity of Trump’s contrition, calling it “teleprompter regret” and pressing Trump to go further. According to Clinton spokeswoman Christina Reynolds, “Donald Trump literally started his campaign by insulting people. He has continued to do so through each of the 428 days from then until now, without shame or regret.” If he is sorry, IMO, it is only because he isn’t doing so well in the polls, and is required by “politics” to now do a little bit of distasteful damage control.
· (!) For several years, Trump gave his name to a pseudo-scientific vitamin scam that ultimately failed, but is instructive about Trump’s business practices and business ethics. The so-called Trump Network was a multi-level marketing ploy by which Trump encouraged people to take expensive urine tests, which would supposedly then be used to determine a pricey vitamin regimen. Health experts criticized the casual approach Trump took to medicine (potentially endangering the health of participants), all for the sake of making a buck. Quoting a Daily Beast article: “it was not just a marketing and business disaster—the actions of the all-but-certain GOP presidential nominee reflect his willingness to license his name to a product without fully vetting it: a casual endorsement of a serious matter, all with the flitting nonchalance that characterizes the many falsehoods he utters.”
· (!!) Trump has said that he gets his foreign affairs experience from “watching television.” Actually, he often quotes from such dubious sources as television, celebrities, the National Enquirer, the internet, rumor (“someone told me…”—yes, he often makes accusations or policy statements starting this way), even random reports he can not cite or remember correctly. As McCain aide Mark Salter once noted: “The GOP is going to nominate for President a guy who reads the National Enquirer and thinks it’s on the level.” Trump also sites running the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant as a source of gathering foreign knowledge.
· (!) Everywhere Trump goes, he yells to the audience “I LOVE ______!!” Seriously, it gets monotonous: “I LOVE Idaho!!” “Missouri, I LOVE you!!” “I LOVE Connecticut!!” etc etc. And the audience always eats it up. How can people say they like Donald Trump because, “He tells it like it is,” or “He always speaks his mind,” or “He’s not a politician,” when it is so abundantly clear that he is a politician? And just as phony-baloney as the worst of them.
· (!) Note to the above: Trump also seems to be obsessed with superlatives, and extreme wordings. He gets off on using words like “incredible” or “unbelievable” or “special” or “amazing” or “huge.” So he very frequently says things like “your unbelievable governor” or “Kansas is incredible” or “the people of Connecticut are amazing, truly unbelievable people,” or “he’s a very special person, unbelievable, really he’s an incredible person, believe me,” or “I built an unbelievable company,” or “I made an incredible amount of money,” or “it’s huge what I’m going to do for businesses,” or “Arizona—amazing people,” etc. The number of times I’ve heard him use this verbiage is, well, unbelievable. He’s also fond of his own, made up word: “bigly.” Often, Trump sounds more like a carnival barker than a man who wants to be president.
· (!) Note to the above, Trump loves the two little words: “Believe Me.” He throws it into his dialogue constantly, and it quickly gets annoying, especially as it so often follows a statement that is complete baloney (“I have studied the Iran nuclear deal in great detail, greater I would say than anyone else. Believe me. Oh, believe me. And it’s a bad deal.”). It’s almost like he lacks confidence in what he is saying, and needs to back himself up; either that, or it is just part of his con.
· (!!) Studies have come out about Trump’s speaking level. One puts him at 3rd grade level, another at 4th grade, another at “lower than 6th,” and another (the best) at Middle School level. These findings are mostly determined by Trump’s use of grammar and his vocabulary, which is in large part comprised of simple, one-syllable words, often repeated for emphasis. One study showed that he frequently uses simple words like “very” and “great” and “we” and especially “I,” which is his favorite word. Trump, who once said, “I know words, I use the best words,” also loves to diminish his opponents with words like, “dumb,” “stupid,” “idiots,” “morons,” “losers,” “total losers,” “haters,” “disgusting,” etc. Others have noted his self-interrupting, rambling syntax, which is often tortured or severely unintelligible. But all this, rather ironically, may well work to Trump’s advantage, as it reinforces his (pardon the pun) trump card: being a non-elite, non-intellectual, non-political, politically incorrect, blunt and frank common man of the people. This is an old, populist bias: people who speak well, who show erudition (such as John Kerry) are “elites” and “intellectual snobs.” People who speak simply are simple folk, which somehow makes them more qualified to run the country.
· (!!) Some watchdog groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Election Committee over Donald Trump’s fundraising solicitation going over seas, to foreign entities. As noted by emails and tweets, Trump has contacted dozens of politicians from such countries as Iceland, Scotland, and Australia, asking for funds to support his campaign. “Donald Trump should have known better,” Paul S. Ryan, CLC deputy executive director, said in a statement. “It is a no-brainer that it violates the law to send fundraising emails to members of a foreign government on their official foreign government email accounts, and yet, that’s exactly what Trump has done repeatedly.” This has happened at a time when Trump was repeatedly trumpeting how his campaign was self-funding, and how this makes him a superior candidate: not being beholden to others.
· (!) Note to the above: Trump supporters and apologists are today (8/28) criticizing Hillary for soliciting donations from overseas. Our vacuous Media, so far, has not pointed out the hypocrisy.
· (!) Some Trump quotes, in regards to hecklers: “Get ’em out! Get ’em out!” “I’d like to punch him in the face, believe me,” “You can get the baby out of here. I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking.” “He can’t get a date, so he’s doing this instead,” “How old is that kid? Still wearing diapers,” “Get out of here!”
· (!) Note to the above: Trump once said, in regards to a heckler, “If you see somebody starting to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of him!” adding later, “I promise, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise.” But that pledge didn’t hold. One month later, in North Carolina, a Trump supporter sucker-punched a protester, which quickly developed into legal proceedings. Trump announced in an interview that he wasn’t going to cover the fees.
· (!) Note to the above: Trump has complained about the level of violence, in regards to protestors, at his rallies—that the violence level isn’t high enough. He has expressed a yearning for the Good Old Days, when “mobs could beat protestors.” He has informed his crowds that he has fantasized about what he would do to protestors, but “won’t say what’s on my mind.” The crowd loved that one, and went wild. Trump once suggested that a rally protestor, who had approached the stage, had “ties to ISIS.” Protestors at his rallies have been punched, kicked, tackled, elbowed in the face, and certainly booed and harassed. Trump once complained, “See, in the good old days this doesn’t happen, because they used to treat them very, very rough. And when they protested once, you know, they would not do it again so easily. But today they walk in and they put their hand up and they put the wrong finger in the air at everybody and they get away with murder because we’ve become weak, we’ve become weak.” That’s Trump for you, never weak, showing his fans how “strong” he is.
· (!) Note to the above: Trump once said his rallies “are among the safest places to be on Earth” during a speech to supporters in Connecticut. At that very rally, several protesters were kicked out.
· (!) Another note to the above: After Breitbart news reporter Michelle Fields was roughly grabbed by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski at a Trump rally, she attempted to bring a lawsuit against Lewandowski for battery. The details are contested, and the case was dismissed, but Fields has remained adamant about the physical mishandling. Her employer, Breitbart News, which is unabashedly pro-Trump, gave her no support.
· (!!) Trump set off some fireworks on Fourth of July weekend, tweeting a new graphic attack upon Hillary: a picture of Hillary alongside a large pile of cash, with the words “most corrupt candidate ever” encircled by a large six-pointed star—the Star of David. Many people immediately complained about the anti-Semitic imagery: money, corruption, and the symbol of Judaism, all crammed together (KKK Super-star David Duke, on the other hand, said he loved the logo). Trump, amazed at the response, refused to acknowledge that this was a Star of David, calling it just a star, then later a sheriff’s badge (which actually has five points, not six). It soon came out that this graphic was taken from an anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi white supremacy website, one that constantly warns about Jewish corruption and money power and Jews taking over the world, yada yada. Still, Trump refused to apologized or admit the problem, calling the concerns ridiculous and blaming the Media, as he always does when the Media tells a story that contains facts embarrassing to Trump (one could say the same about all Republicans, conservatives, and Fox News propagandists forever attacking the “Liberal” Media for telling the truth about them, going back over the long years). The Anti-Defamation League also got involved, pointing out that this graphic is very typical of anti-Jewish groups, and that members of the ADL frequently gets hate mail with this exact type of drawing: Jewish money, corrupting the politicians to their bidding. Trump’s team took the image down, but Trump, as usual, doubled down and put it right back up, refusing to yield the point.
· (!!!) Note to the above: This is not the first time Trump has had problems with this sort of scandal. White supremacists have been supporting Trump in groves, even to a larger degree than they usually support the Republican candidate (as they have ever since LBJ and the Civil Rights Era). Trump has been very slow to disavow or even acknowledge this support, which has contributed greatly to his campaign and helped him during the GOP Primaries. He has several times retweeted tweets from their accounts. During an interview, he initially refuse to disavow the support he received from David Duke, the notorious former KKK Grand Wizard and Louisiana Republican politician, who has for many years campaigned on vile anti-Semitic themes. In response, he claimed to have misheard the question due to a faulty earpiece. He also insisted, with a straight face, that he had never heard of David Duke and didn’t know of his associations (which would be incredible, as David Duke has been a major notorious character well known for the last 20 years). Back in January, Marshall Kirkpatrick, a social-media analyst, claimed, “62 percent of the accounts Trump has retweeted recently have white-supremacist connections.” Trump’s popularity and support among racist groups has been pointed out numerous times, but Trump has simply refused to credit such reports, or to speak out against these people—which, he must know, are very important to his campaign. He finally did come around, after much pressure (both from enemies, and from his team and supporters), to disavow such support (and to use the word “disavow”), but he did this with as little fanfare or emphasis as possible. Recently, when asked about the white supremacists and neo-nazis and anti-Semites who were backing his candidacy, he spat out the single word “disavow,”—and with disgust, as if to say, “OK, you politically correct liberal Media talking heads, I’ll say the word you insist I say, now let’s move on.”
· (!) In a tweet, Trump once criticized Jeb Bush for “speaking Mexican.” He has also talked about how we should “speak English” in this country, not Mexican. Or, as supporter Sarah Palin puts it, “speak American.”
· (!!!) On June 16, 2015, Trump made the following statement, in regards to Immigration policy and problems with the Mexican border: “They’re sending people that have a lot of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” The fallout from this reckless comment, in particular the suggestion that “Mexicans are rapists,” was, as the Donald would put it, HUGE! And it has hardly diminshed, to this day. Not that Trump’s supporters have ever minded; indeed, most (especially Ann Coulter) back him up entirely. This was the beginning of Trump becoming vulnerable to charges of racism, which has been an arguing point ever since. And, as always, Trump never did back down, nor apologize, nor admit that he choose a poor wording. On the contrary, he has chosen to run with it, and many times has added fuel upon the fire, making allusions to “Mexican criminals” flooding across the border, or “illegal immigrants raising the crime rate” (which is false—but every time an unregistered Mexican illegal immigrant commits a violent crime, Trump and Ann Coulter and Fox News make a major deal of it). He has also posed the question, “Are we going to have a country, or not have a country.” Massive xenophobia.
· (!) Note to the above: Trump has spoken fondly of how Eisenhower, back in 1954, had a plan to “round up all the immigrants.” It was called ‘Operation Wetback,’ and the results were disastrous: human rights were violated, legal citizens were removed along with the illegals, and many people died. Today it is largely remembered as a tragic scandal (though some on the Right see it as a success). Trump seemed to be clueless about the operation’s reputation.
· (!!) The NYTimes and the Washington Post have run stories on how the Trump Institute (a psersonal wealth seminar business) 2006 handbook plagiarized course materials, and how almost two dozens pages were clearly taken from a book entitled “The Real Estate Mastery System.” The Institute has been involved in lawsuits, and called out as a fraud and scheme to suck money out of innocent people. But the Trump Institute was mainly run by Trump partners Irene and Mike Milin; the real Trump money-stealing scandal involved the Trump University, below.
· (!!!) One of the many under-reported yet potentially scandalous stories evolving around Trump is that of Trump University, a for-profit learning annex and “philanthropic venture” that offered real estate training programs from 2005-2010, when it went defunct due to multiple lawsuits. Quoting from a New Yorker exposé by John Cassidy: “Despite Trump University’s claim that it offered ‘graduate programs, post graduate programs, doctorate programs,’ it wasn’t a university at all. It was a company that purported to be selling Trump’s secret insights into how to make money in real estate. From the time Trump University began operating, in 2005, the A.G.’s office repeatedly warned the company that it was breaking the law by calling itself a university…. According to the Attorney General’s complaint, the free classes were merely a marketing device. There, Trump University’s instructors “engaged in a methodical, Systematic Series of misrepresentations” designed to convince students to sign up for a three-day seminar, where they would learn Trump’s personal techniques and strategies for investing, at a cost of about fifteen hundred dollars… Trump hadn’t handpicked the instructors (as advertised), and he didn’t attend the three-day seminars. Moreover, the complaint said, ‘no specific Donald Trump techniques or strategies were taught during the seminars, Donald Trump “never” reviewed any of Trump University’s curricula or programming materials, nor did he review any of the content for the free seminars or the three day seminars.’ So what were the attendees taught? According to the complaint, ‘the contents and material presented by Trump University were developed in large part by a third-party company that creates and develops materials for an array of motivational speakers and Seminar and timeshare rental companies.’ The closest that the attendees at the seminars got to Trump was when they were encouraged to have their picture taken with a life-size photo of him.” The scam did not stop there. Attendees were heavily pressured to attend further seminars, at exorbitant costs, even to the extent of pushing students to go into debt to pay for “elite” programs. Some of the employees have described it as “a giant ripoff,” and a member of Trump’s own sales staff testified that it was, among other things, “a joke… a façade…. just selling false hopes and lies.” Ronald Schnackenberg, who worked in Trump’s office at 40 Wall Street, testified in an affidavit that “while Trump University claimed it wanted to help consumers make money in real estate, in fact Trump University was only interested in selling every person the most expensive seminars they possibly could…Based upon my personal experience and employment, I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme, and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.” Trump University also had a series of “playbooks” used to coach its salespeople on how to squeeze every last dollar out of prospective students. “If they complain about the price, remind them that Trump is the BEST!” Another ex-student claimed, “We were also told… we would get to have our pictures taken with Donald Trump. It ended up being a cardboard cutout of Mr. Trump.” Trump University is currently subject to two ongoing federal class action lawsuits, and a lawsuit in New York State court. Some analysts have commented that this case could be a deathblow to Trump’s presidential ambitions. Rather, the Media has shown almost no interest in the story, and most people know nothing about it.
· (!) Note to the above: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been stepping up his attack upon Trump University, which he has called “a thoroughly fraudulent enterprise” and “really a fraud from beginning to end.” Schneiderman has said that Trump has benefited from this “philanthropic venture” to the tune of about $5 million. Schneiderman, who has received gruesome, anti-Semitic tweets from Trump supporters, says he will move to the Dominican Republic if Trump gets elected.
· (!) Note to the above: Another Trump opponent who has received anti-Semitic threats from Trump supporters and from the alt-right is Andrew Weinstein, a conservative Republican and part of the Never-Trump movement, who has circulated a letter, signed by 75 Republicans politicians and operatives, urging RNC president Reince Priebus to abandon Trump, and concentrate instead on down-ballot elections. Weinstein has received tweets such as “It’s time to put the smack down on these filthy Jew rats,” etc.
· (!!!) Trump’s policies in regards to immigration are arguably his most hardline policies of all. He opposes birthright citizenship, meaning that countless thousands of once American citizens could suddenly find themselves aliens within the only country they ever knew. He has vowed to create a “deportation force” to deport approximately 11-12 million people illegally residing in the U.S., adding, “starting day one of my presidency, (illegal immigrants) are getting out and getting out fast.” Of course, Trump has offered no illumination on how he plans to enforce the deportation of millions of undocumented workers, other than offering assurances like, “it will happen,” or “believe me.” But the biggest of all his intended changes is that he intends to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, an idea that did not originate with him, but which Trump has embraced fully and made his own. In response to criticism about the cost of such a tremendous public works project, Trump came up with the idea that Mexico would fully pay for it. These ideas have come under tremendous, withering criticism, from a wide variety of sources and foreign countries, Mexico in particular. Many (including Trump supporters themselves) see it as all just empty rhetoric, a canard to unite the anti-immigration crowd (which is very large in this country, and, according to many, has a racist foundation). “Build the wall” has become a rallying cry at Trump rallies (and Pink Floyd concerts also—just kidding). Whenever Trump needs a rallying cry of support from his throngs, he interrupts whatever the subject was to promise, “We’re gonna build a wall,” followed invariably by “and Mexico’s gonna pay for it!” As for how he is going to build this wall (which is so impractical that no knowledgeable person believes it to be even possible, short of an incredibly difficult and prolonged expenditure of labor and materials) and how he is going to get Mexico to pay for it (Mexico is clearly adamant that they will never do so), Trump never goes into specifics. He later started making the argument that he would talk to Mexico and get them to understand how it is in their own best interest to do so, and how, under Trump’s presidency, business between the two would skyrocket to such a degree that Mexico would recoup the building fees, many times over. But specifics are never a part of Trump’s oratory. For many people, the entire wall-idea is seen as rather a joke, and Trump has spoken of it with less vigor of late. But it is still part of his spiel.
· (!) Note to the above: Mexico’s past president, Vicente Fox, has taken great umbrage at Trump’s words, annoucing that Mexico is “not going to pay for that fucking wall!” To this, Trump replied (2/25) “I will (make them pay), and the wall just got 10 feet taller, believe me.” This line has become a staple of Trump rallies. Whenever a spokesperson from Mexico denies that his country will ever pay for the wall, Trump leads his ditto-heads in cheers of “the wall just got 10-feet higher!”
· (!!!) Back in early June, Trump opened up a real can of worms by stating that the judge in the fraud case against Trump University was unfairly biased against him, because he was “a mexican.” He clarified that U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel was predisposed to be biased against him, because Trump wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico (which he’ll make Mexico pay for). He also played to his audience and called Curiel “a Trump-hater,” (so they could all boo Curiel’s name). He further suggested that the judge had already made many unfair rulings against him, “rulings that people can’t even believe” (a charge that is disputed by many courtroom observers, who generally see it the other way—the judge has been generous towards Trump). After making this charge, Trump was confronted by a groundswell of outrage, coming especially from the Hispanic community. Many people saw this as racism. As Jake Tapper pointed out, claiming a person “couldn’t do his job because of his race—isn’t that the very definition of racism?” (to which |
, and the business model."
Many questions remain about the prospects for such a mission, including its feasibility, rationale, and how the company intends to fund the endeavor, which will likely run to billions of dollars. Early rumors suggested that backers included Warren Buffet and Richard Branson, though these have since been shown false. The plan may also include a $120 million deal with SpaceX to provide a heavy rocket to reach the moon. SpaceX had no statement about such a deal when Wired reached out to them on Dec. 2.
The Golden Spike Company is registered in Colorado to planetary scientist and aerospace engineer Alan Stern, who ran NASA's science directorate from 2007 to 2008. Stern also worked in the private spaceflight sector that year, as an independent research representative for Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. In a 2011 interview he said, "I hope that in 10 to 20 years' time, we are on the hills of human return to the moon, so that we could then go on with humans to explore the solar system. I think this is our destiny."
Golden Spike is a reference to the ceremonial spike driven into the rails connecting the U.S. transcontinental railroad in 1869, which helped open up the American West. The company has recently started both a Facebook group and Twitter account.
The company has apparently been around for a while. A conference presentation from May mentioned a company called Golden Spike that was "backed by respected scientific and astronautical entities" and "envisions the development of a reliable 'Cislunar Superhighway.'" That same presentation mentioned a "cooperative initiative coalescing between independent, national and international enterprises [that] could see 2 to 4 people on the surface for 1 to 4 weeks at an estimated cost of US$5-10 billion." Whether this plan is the same as Golden Spike's is unclear.PROST HOPES TO RETURN TO WILLIAMS-RENAULT, IN BTCC
by Robert Heathcote, for SpeedNet
December 1, 1994
Also Thursday, there was news of an ex-Grand Prix driver attempting to make a return to racing for the current championship team, Williams- Renault, though not in Formula One: Four-time Formula One World Driving Champion Alain Prost wants to drive for Williams British Touring Car team, which makes its debut in the "BTCC" in 1995.
But there's a problem, as Williams said they already have two drivers. "My dilemma is there," Prost said. "I don't want to drive in Formula One any more, but I still want to drive. It's complex and ambiguous, but I'm still looking for myself"..."I'm busy, but I'm just lacking something a little more exciting and I need a challenge."
/endCoca-Cola has been accused of propping up one of Africa's most notorious dictators.
The multibillion dollar beverage company owns a concentrate-manufacturing plant in Swaziland, an impoverished kingdom ruled by Africa's last absolute monarch, Mswati III.
The king has travelled to Coca-Cola's headquarters in Atlanta in the US, much to the disgust of Swazi political activists who blame him for human rights abuses and looting the nation's wealth.
Mary Pais Da Silva, co-ordinator of the Swaziland Democracy Campaign, called for Coca-Cola to pull out of the country immediately.
"Coca-Cola must know they're doing business with the wrong people," she said. "At the end of the day it doesn't benefit the economy in any way. Their profits don't help the average Swazi, while the king is getting richer by the day." She added: "The king is milking the country. This is entrenching him more and more, giving him economic strength to crush opposition. Nobody should do business with the regime in Swaziland. They should cut ties and take their business elsewhere."
Mswati III has 13 wives and hosts an annual dance where he can choose a new bride from tens of thousands of bare-breasted virgins.
With a fortune of about $100m (£64m), he presides over one of the worst-off countries in the world, with most people living in absolute poverty. Political parties are banned and activists are regularly arrested, imprisoned and tortured.
Coca-Cola says that Mswati III does not receive any profits or dividends from its Swaziland operation, its biggest in Africa. But some activists estimate that Coca-Cola, the world's biggest beverage company, contributes as much as 40% of the country's GDP. The company admits it cannot account for how the money it pays in taxes is used by the Swazi government.
Lucky Lukhele, a spokesman for Swaziland Solidarity Network, said: "Coca-Cola should find a way of directing the profits to the people of Swaziland. They should start supporting the pro-democracy movement."
He compared the moral imperative to that of boycotting South Africa during the racial apartheid years. "Many supported the people of South Africa. There is no such thing as neutral ground – you're for or against. The king is looting and destroying the economy. So either they support the people or they go into the dustbin of history along with the king."
He added: "It has become crazy in Swaziland. The people are desperate. They are dying from HIV/Aids and TB as the result of the misbehaviour of the king. There's enough evidence for the international criminal court to come in."
Coca-Cola says it adheres to the "highest ethical standards" and aims to be "an outstanding corporate citizen in every community we serve". It set up in Swaziland in 1987 after leaving apartheid South Africa.
It denies claims from some activists that it was motivated by Swaziland's sugarcane fields – its concentrates do not contain sugar – or that the king personally owns shares in the Swazi factory.
Sherree Shereni, spokeswoman for the Coca-Cola central Africa franchise, said: "King Mswati III does not receive any profits or dividends from Conco Swaziland [Coca-Cola's concentrate production plant]."
Conco, like all the Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) concentrate plants, is 100% owned by TCCC.
Shereni added: "Through the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, which was set up in Swaziland in 2001, the population of Swaziland has, however, benefited from Coca-Cola's contributions to their social welfare in the areas of water stewardship, health, education and entrepreneurship."
Asked if the king uses tax revenue from Coca-Cola for his personal benefit, Shereni said: "TCCC, like any other taxpayer, does not determine what the taxes paid to the governments of countries in which it does business are used for. This is the statutory prerogative of the governments themselves."
She added: "Coca-Cola is not involved with political agenda of any country in which it does business. Coca-Cola's reputation is built on the quality of its brands, the highest standards of manufacturing practices, the welfare and safety of its employees and adherence to local and international laws as applicable in any country where Coca-Cola does business."The numbers have been coming in steadily over the past few years, and there is no way to deny anymore that women are taking greater control of the U.S. economy (and much of the global economy) and doing it quietly and quickly.
For example, back in 2008, U.S. News and World Report released data telling us that women controlled 60% of the wealth in the United States. That figure was estimated to be approximately $10-$12 trillion. At the same time, U.S. News and World Report projected that women will control $22 trillion of all wealth in the United states by 2020. That's just a decade away!
Considering data released in 2009 by The Nielsen Company revealed almost all income growth in the United States over the past 15-20 years came from women, that U.S. News and World Report projection shouldn't be very shocking. The Small Business Administration has reported in recent years that women-owned businesses are far outpacing all other businesses in terms of growth. The bottom-line is that women are making their presence in the economy better known.
I'm a marketer by profession, and as a marketer, I've seen statistics and research reports for years telling us that women control the vast majority of all purchase decisions. Combine that decision-making power with the growing influence of women on the business side of the economy, and the stage is set for an interesting 10-20 years in front of us.
Already, we're seeing advertisements shift tones to speak directly to women (albeit with a long path ahead of them before they actually speak to women in the right ways), and financial institutions are creating more and more products targeted directly to the female population. With President Obama's recent signing of legislation related to fair and equal pay for women, the focus is pointed squarely at women who appear to be holding the future in their hands.
It's an exciting time to be a woman, and an even more interesting time to be a woman in business! Let's hope the changing landscape continues in a positive manner for all.
See also: Women Are the Market, Not Just a NicheThe totally last minute Pre-PAX Starcrawl!
How to Participate
Will we still collect money for Child’s Play?
What about challenges?
Schedule
Tips & Tricks
The Starcrawl is the last-minute version of the Pre-PAX bar crawl which you may know as the PAX West’s, PAX East’s, or PAX South’s. A non-profit Star Wars/ Star Trek themed bar crawl dedicated to raising money for Child's Play Charity This crawl is strictly 21+ and will be held in Philly’s Center City area tonight,!. We’ll start at 8pm and every hour or so after that, we’ll head to a new bar. All the bars will be walking distance to each other. Since I didn’t have time to plan a real crawl this will run a very differently from any previous versions. There’s no registration, no buttons, no swag and a questionable at best theme! It’s really just an excuse to get drunk, meet fellow PAX attendees and make a few friends before the convention itself.Show up to one of the bars below and say “hi”. We’ll be easily distinguishable by our (mostly) standard issue Starfleet uniforms and general drunken appearance.Of course!As your Captain, I'll have a collection of mission available to any crew members who wish to form an away team volunteer for them.Bar 1 @ 08:00 – Field HouseBar 2 @ 09:15 – Bar-Ly ChinatownBar 3 @ 10:30 – Yakitori BoyBar 4 @ 11:45 – Raven LoungeNote: All bars are tentative, I'll try to keep my twitter update with our current location should any of the bars become full or if the schedule goes off the rails.First and foremost, don't do anything that's going to embarrass yourself or anyone else. Especially since alcohol is going to be involved you're going to want to leave your asshole pants at home. Don't get punched in the face.The only person who knows your alcohol tolerance is you. There's nothing worse than an overindulged drunk so don't be that guy. You should probably stop drinking when someone points out to you that you're peeing on a bar stool.We arrive as a group and leave as a group. If someone has to be That Guy/Gal who gets so wasted that they think they're actually Chewbacca it's the responsibility of the crawl as a whole to ensure this person makes it safely back to their hotel. Use the buddy system, handcuff yourselves to each other, whatever. No one is to vomit in a bus terminal by themselves. Not on this night, at least.Drinking on an empty stomach is a sure fire way to end up black out drunk and feeling like death in the morning. Ordering food while on the crawl is a terrible idea since you’ll likely be waiting for food while we head to the next bar.Drinking water as you go is the best way to ensure you have a fun night and an at least OK morning.Using cash makes the bartenders' lives easier because it's faster than having to run a debit or credit card and this is, after all, a charity bar crawl!Aperture Magazine‘s first issue dedicated to African American lives as represented by the medium of photography, “Vision & Justice,” was published last month. It doesn’t seem right to call this issue a magazine. It is a powerhouse book; it does so much heavy lifting. The artists involved include Dawoud Bey, Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Sally Mann, Lyle Ashton Harris, Deborah Willis, Hank Willis Thomas, Deana Lawson, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Awol Erizku. Professor Steven Nelson wrote of Erizku in his introduction to the artist’s work, what can indeed be said of almost all the artists in this collection, that his strategy “lays bare the act of seeing as culturally contingent, and more to the point, racially informed.”
The artists’ keen insights are honed to even finer edges by the incisive criticism given by the scholars whose words compliment each set of images — including Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Steven Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Teju Cole, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Margo Jefferson, Maurice Berger, and Cheryl Finley. This book equips one not just to see, but to see more. This throng of visual and written essays wants to increase the spectrum of what’s visible in the world around us. As the guest editor, Harvard University assistant professor, author, and curator Sarah Lewis writes in her introduction, we might see that “the endeavor to affirm the dignity of human life cannot be waged without pictures, without representational justice.”
Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Aperture took on this project. It had already published issues on complex junctions of artistic media and culture, including fashion, performance, and queerness. It occurs to me to ask why this issue on black life now? It is 2016, about 48 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which, along with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, represent the crowning legal achievements of the classic Civil Rights Movement. It’s been almost 50 years since that transformative era, and on first leafing through “Vision & Justice,” I wondered whether black artists and scholars are still working towards affirming the dignity of black lives.
Lewis adds a complication to this question when she writes that “understanding the relationship of race and the quest for full citizenship in this country requires an advanced state of visual literacy.” But aren’t we already there? We have spent the last few decades learning to read the sophisticated messages of advertising so we know when we are being sold; comprehend the images in film shots that now average just 2.5 seconds; and parse the double code of images, abbreviations, and emoji squeezed into the 140-character confines of a tweet. We are quite visually sophisticated and literate. We know how to mobilize images to make money, careers, polemics, and wage media war. So still I ask: Why now?
This book does the invisible work that’s necessary to feel dignified. This, I suppose, is still necessary. To quote Maurice Berger writing about photos of the Obamas, these images “have defied stereotypes, established new role models, bolstered confidence and self-possession, and challenged expectations about political and cultural power.” But that’s not why this collection is needed.
Potentially voiding all of our hard-earned certainty is a certain terror that people of color still face. Kenya Barris, the creator of the TV show Black-ish, revealed in a recent New Yorker profile that a police officer said to him when he was 16: “You know, no one will care if you die.” Police officers around the country indeed frequently behave as if they believe this to be true, methodically beating black people until they die or gunning them down as they flee, as if no one will notice or kick up a fuss. “Vision & Justice” contradicts that officer’s dismissal of the life of a young, black man — and by extension all black men and women. It says that there is a community of artists, writers, academics, filmmakers, poets, dramatists, and allies who see each other, who bear witness to the significance of the lives of black folk, to their color and drama and uniqueness, and more, bear witness and call attention to the systems that undergird and enable the violence that arbitrarily ends these lives.
This book seeks to normalize and increase the visibility of black folks so our lives can bloom and flourish. This is necessary now because we know that if we do not compel others to see us, to really see black people as full members of the human tribe, we can die in a back alley or jail cell, forgotten and unmourned.
The “Vision & Justice” issue of Aperture Magazine is available now. The exhibition Vision & Justice, curated by Sarah Lewis and tied to a class she will teach at Harvard in the fall semester, will be on view in the teaching gallery of the Harvard Art Museums (32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts) from August 27, 2016–January 8, 2017.Whenever you think you have the worst job ever, you definitely should think about the sulphur miners from Eastern Java, the men who treat poisoned lungs, burns, scars and constant danger as part of their everyday living. Each day, a few hundred men go deep in the heart of the Ijen volcano, with the sole purpose of collecting yellow lumps of sulphur that solidify beside its acidic crater lake.
Just in case you’re wondering, sulphur has numerous uses, both inside Indonesia and outside: it is used to vulcanise rubber, make matches and fertiliser and even bleach sugar. Each day, they go up the mountain and gather 90 kg loads from the toxic lake, which they then have to carry back to a weighing station at the base of the volcano; and they do this several times per day.
“There are many big mountains but only one gives us the sulphur we need,” says Sulaiman, 31, who has mined the crater for 13 years.
About protection, you really shouldn’t – gas masks or gloves would be nothing less than a luxury for these men, who get paid around 10-15$ per day. The only protection from the deadly gas is clothing. But deadly gases aren’t the only thing they have to be wary of. In the past 40 years, 74 miners have died because of fumes that can come from fissures in the rock, more specifically hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide gases, which are so concentrated they can even dissolve teeth, let alone the other parts of the body.
This practice wasn’t so uncommon 200 years ago, but by now it is mechanized in pretty much every part of the world. Clive Oppenheimer, of Cambridge University explains:
“Until the late 19th Century, there were sulphur mines in volcanic countries such as Italy, New Zealand, Chile and Indonesia.”
The work they do takes a harsh toll on their bodies; few of them live to grow old. However, their bodies have adapted, and most of them can hold their breath for several minutes; they also tend to develop amazing shoulder muscles from carrying baskets twice their bodyweight.
“Our families worry when we come here. They say working here can shorten your life,” says Hartomo, 34, a sulphur miner for 12 years. “I do it to feed my wife and kid. No other job pays this well,” adds Sulaiman.
Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now!We know you like iOS 7.1, but with a lot of chatter about reduced battery-life, and the only test so far based on a small sample and having results falling within the margin of error, we thought it would be useful to get a sense of how prevalent the issue might be.
We recognize, of course, that there are a huge number of variables involved in battery-life. Even if your phone usage is reasonably consistent, a single extra phone call or a bit longer spent browsing the web can account for the relatively small differences most are reporting. A poll is not going to amount to a scientific study, but a decent sample size should at least give a reasonable indication as to the scale of any issue …
NordVPN
Click on the one-question poll to tell us whether or not you’ve seen your battery-life take a hit since upgrading to iOS 7.1, and let us know in the comments the type of difference you’re seeing.The return of the Special One has stirred up old passions at Stamford Bridge like never before.
To the fans, memories of the trophies, medals being thrown into the crowd and the thrill of being top dogs in England remain as vivid as ever as Jose Mourinho begins his second spell at Chelsea.
His first news conference on Monday will prompt a media maelstrom like few others. The passing of time has done little to dim those images of glory and success, or dull those famous phrases he conjured as English football fell under his thrall.
Mourinho may have delivered Chelsea's first league title for half a century - and much more besides - but the subsequent differences, difficulties and discord have largely been forgotten.
Mourinho's first spell at Chelsea Played: 185 Won: 124 Drawn: 40 Lost: 21 Honours Premier League: 2004-05, 2005-06 FA Cup: 2006-07 League Cup: 2004-06, 2006-07 Community Shield: 2005
The only simple thing about the final six weeks of that first spell was the statement that Chelsea released in the early hours of 20 September 2007. It read: "Chelsea and Jose Mourinho have agreed to part company by mutual consent."
Nothing more, nothing less.
The final 24 hours of Mourinho's reign began with a phone call on the morning after Chelsea's turgid 1-1 home draw with Rosenborg of Norway in the Champions League Group B opener.
He was summoned to Stamford Bridge for a meeting at 2pm.
It later emerged that club owner Roman Abramovich had postponed an overseas business trip to attend. Even then, Chelsea insiders thought the sudden meeting had more to do with the woeful attendance of 24,975 from the previous night than the immediate future of the manager. They were wrong.
Abramovich, chief executive Peter Kenyon and director Eugene Tenenbaum were all present as Mourinho was told of the board's frustrations. Why had results dropped off? Why could the team not play a more attractive style? Why did Mourinho continue to embarrass the club with his public outbursts?
Few know how Mourinho behaved in that meeting but the suggestion is he dared the board to sack him and find another manager who could bring them the success he had.
A few hours later, Mourinho gathered with the bulk of his squad outside of the stadium for the short journey to a Fulham Broadway cinema for a screening of Blue Revolution - a film about the club's new era of success.
Chelsea managers under Roman Abramovich Claudio Ranieri: Sep 2000 to May 2004
Sep 2000 to May 2004 Jose Mourinho: Jun 2004 to Sep 2007
Jun 2004 to Sep 2007 Avram Grant: Sep 2007 to May 2008
Sep 2007 to May 2008 Luiz Felipe Scolari: Jul 2008 to Feb 2009
Jul 2008 to Feb 2009 Guus Hiddink: Feb 2009 to May 2009
Feb 2009 to May 2009 Carlo Ancelotti: Jun 2009 to May 2011
Jun 2009 to May 2011 Andre Villas-Boas: Jun 2011 to Mar 2012
Jun 2011 to Mar 2012 Roberto Di Matteo: Mar 2012 to Nov 2012
Mar 2012 to Nov 2012 Rafael Benitez: Nov 2012 to May 2013
Nov 2012 to May 2013 Jose Mourinho: June 2013 -
Frank Lampard, John Terry and Petr Cech were not present, having already received messages from their manager telling them of his expected departure. Players who were present were bemused as their manager walked the length of the team bus shaking each of their hands without a word of explanation.
Mourinho did attend the screening of the film, even shaking Abramovich by the hand as he arrived. Some 90 minutes later he returned to Stamford Bridge for another meeting - his last.
He left the stadium at around 9.30pm and more players soon learned of the news.
By this point, news had started to spread of Mourinho's departure. Chairman Bruce Buck and other directors were called into an emergency board meeting on how to handle the news and with whom to replace Mourinho in the short term.
At 1.45am the next morning, Chelsea released a statement. By 3am it was decided director of football Avram Grant would take over as manager.
There had, however, been signs of the trouble long before.
What began as a friendship between Mourinho and Abramovich based on the club's success gradually became a clash of personalities.
The first cracks appeared as early as May 2005 when Mourinho felt his authority had been undermined by Abramovich's decision to recruit Frank Arnesen from Tottenham Hotspur as director of scouting and youth development.
It was further eroded by the signing of £30m forward Andriy Shevchenko and the arrival of Avram Grant on the coaching staff.
Mourinho wanted neither.
Mourinho's career record Team M W D L W% Benfica (2000) 11 6 3 2 55% U de Leiria (2001-02) 29 15 8 6 52% Porto (2002-04) 124 90 21 13 73% Chelsea (2004-07) 185 124 40 21 67% Inter Milan (2008-10) 108 67 26 15 62% Real Madrid (2010-13) 178 128 28 22 72% Total 635 430 126 79 68% Career record up to 1 June 2013
More problems came in January 2007 when Mourinho and Abramovich clashed over what the Portuguese saw as a sudden refusal to provide necessary investment.
The manager had been told he would not be allowed to sign a striker in that transfer window. When he asked for a defender as cover for the injured John Terry, he was offered a choice between PSV Eindhoven's Brazilian international Alex and Bolton's Tal Ben Haim.
Mourinho wanted neither.
The manager's reluctance to play Shevchenko regularly and Abramovich's desire to bring Grant into the coaching set-up further chipped away at the relationship.
A fragile peace did break out as Mourinho led Chelsea to the FA Cup in May 2007 but the summer exposed old wounds. Knowing Mourinho was unhappy, Abramovich sounded out Jurgen Klinsmann about replacing him, but before he could do the deal he was talked down and persuaded to give the Special One another season.
The damage had, however, been done - the short peace proved a false one.
There were hints of the discontent on Chelsea's pre-season tour to California. When asked about Grant's appointment, Mourinho said: "He must not interfere with the power I have in my job. So, welcome. I will try to help him with what happens at a club like Chelsea."
But that was just the start. Mourinho's relationship with a number of players was strained at best. As Chelsea prepared for their final pre-season friendly against Danish team Brondby in Copenhagen, Shevchenko announced he was not fit and withdrew from the match with a back problem. Chelsea won 2-0, while Shevchenko was photographed at Sunningdale Golf Club on the same day.
Media playback is not supported on this device Decision to return easy - Mourinho
Chelsea's poor start to the new Premier League season - their worst since 2000-01 - left them fifth in the table, albeit only two points behind leaders Arsenal.
In the fortnight before his sacking, they lost 2-0 at Villa Park and drew 0-0 with Blackburn, before the Rosenborg result.
Mourinho began to avoid news conferences, instead sending his assistant Steve Clarke in his place. When he did speak, he was frequently grumpy, enigmatic or cryptic. On the other hand, the underlying message was sometimes crystal clear.
"It's all about omelettes and eggs," he said in his last conference. "No eggs, no omelette. It depends on the quality of the eggs. In the supermarket, you have class one, class two and class three eggs.
"Some are more expensive than others and some give you better omelettes. So when the class one eggs are in Waitrose and you cannot go there, you have a problem."
After the Rosenborg draw, witnesses say Abramovich entered the dressing room.
His appearance was not altogether unusual but one source described seeing the owner, tactics board in hand, taking players to task over their performance - with Shevchenko acting as a translator.
Mourinho was not present, having spent only two minutes in the dressing room before attending to his media commitments. The men exchanged a few words in the players' lounge later - but there was no hint of what was to come.
Mourinho has told friends his departure from Chelsea remains the most painful and hurtful experience of his career. At that point, it was hard to envisage a time when the Special One would ever return.
Time has healed old wounds but to what extent, remains to be seen.
At his news conference there will be smiles, promises and warmth - but Chelsea and Abramovich must hope this second marriage brings more than just instant gratification.Share Pin 290 Shares
By Maria Saporta
One of the most popular trees in Piedmont Park – a hundred-year-old magnolia tree – toppled over last Friday with its root plate cracked.
The magnolia stood majestically near the bridge between the park’s two lakes. Its low-hanging branching were at a perfect height for climbing, something I loved to do when I was growing up.
It also was a favorite tree for photos with people standing next to or sitting on the welcoming branches. It was a tree that literally reached out to people – seemingly wanting all the love and attention it had received for decades and decades.
But sadly, it is no more.
Walking around Piedmont Park on Sunday morning, I gasped when I saw the freshly sawed off trunk of the tree. I went over to look, and the core of the tree showed signs of decay and rot. A bunch of flowers rested on top of the trunk showing that other tree lovers were grieving for our loss of our old magnolia friend.
Mark Banta, president of the Piedmont Park Conservancy, told me in an email that the tree toppled over around 5:30 p.m. last Friday when the root plate broke. It was just supported by the climbing branch.
There were no storms or high winds. Apparently it just was the tree’s time to go.
Banta said the city’s tree crew quickly cut down the magnolia because of “the risk of the tree rolling one way or the other and falling to the ground” and possibly being a danger to park goers.
“I’m guessing the tree was over a hundred years old,” Banta wrote, adding that it got a base trunk piece so they could count the rings and better estimate its age. “Yes, you are correct the tree had a fairly significant rot column that went down into the root plate, which is why the tree fell.”
It goes without saying that we will all miss the great magnolia tree, which gave us so many poignant memories. If any of you has photos of the tree when it was in its prime, please email them to [email protected], and we will try to post them.
Photos and notes from readers:
Hi Maria,
I am so sad to hear about that tree! Please see attached photographs. I did a photo shoot with a local musician, Dylan Cornell, there last summer.
Please reference me using my website below.
Thanks and have a great day,
Bonnie M. Morét Professional PhotographerFort Worth’s James Vick, 29, is 7-0 as a professional mixed martial arts fighter. The UFC calls him "probably the best and brightest prospect you haven’t heard about.” Unlike many fighters who have tremendous boxing, wrestling or jiu-jitsu backgrounds, Vick didn’t start MMA until age 22 and won a coveted spot on The Ultimate Fighter reality show after just a few professional fights.
He surprised coaches and the UFC by making it to the semifinals in part thanks to being the tallest fighter at 155 pounds (Vick is 6-3). Vick is returning from hip surgery to take on Glaico Franca (14-3) Saturday during the prelims of UFC 197 in Las Vegas (7 p.m. Fox Sports 1). We spoke to Vick recently about his career:
Growing up in Olney, what made you get into mixed martial arts?
I was raised pretty rough. We were taught not to put up with any (expletive). I was in a lot of street fights when I was growing up. My senior year, I thought (MMA) was the coolest thing. I went to college to try to play basketball (at two different schools). I got into a fight and got kicked off the team. In order to train more, I quit working in the oil field to work at Target, unloading trailers at 5 a.m. and stocking. It was a $6-an-hour pay cut. I had to work too late, but I wanted to be a fighter. I said I’m going to do it the rest of my life. I started boxing when I was 20 years old. I started doing MMA when I was 22.
How have you supported yourself outside of fighting?
I’ve had crazy jobs. I worked for three oil field companies, numerous clubs as a bouncer, downtown clubs, strip clubs. I’ve worked several different retailers. Waiting tables. I’ve done everything.
Your major break came on getting on UFC’s reality show, The Ultimate Fighter. How did that happen?
A friend of mine, a guy who came to a club I was working at, sponsored me for a plane ticket out in Vegas (for the tryouts). You only had to have three fights to get on the show. I had only been a pro for three years. They had guys who had been training 10 years longer than me. I knew I was going to make it. I’m an exciting fighter, the fact I’m so tall for the weight class. I was excited. I wasn’t nervous. I gave a good first impression and showed how intense I was.
How many injuries have you suffered?
Injuries have plagued me my whole career. Shoulder surgery, hip surgery, dislocated toe, elbow problems. I broke my hand twice. It has put a damper on my career.
You consider yourself a true Texan (Vick’s nickname is “The Texecutioner”). What does that mean to you?
For sure. Born and raised here. I will live here until the day I die. I take a lot of pride in my upbringing. We grew up (doing) a lot hunting and fishing. I was raised tough and rough. Mentally strong, hard work ethic, self-belief. I take pride in everything I do. I owe it to myself to work hard.
You’re 6-3, the tallest fighter at 155 pounds (lightweight). Only three of 111 lightweights are 6-1 and above. What type of advantage does it give you?
It’s great. It’s a good advantage, but you have to know how to use it. I started so late and other guys have been training since they were 5 years old wrestling. They have all these years of credentials I don’t have. Being mentally strong has helped more than anything. You can do things with a long body. Standing up it gives you reach, the range is different. They think they are out of range and I can still can punch and kick them. On the ground, the leverage, it’s easier to sweep from the bottom. Everyone thinks they are going to be way stronger than me and hold me and submit me. A lot of guys find it strange I’m stronger than them.
You walk around at 185 to 190 pounds. How do you get down to 155 pounds for the weigh-in?
The weight cut is always super hard. It’s part of the sacrifice of the sport. You kind of have to because everyone does it. I follow an online diet. I have a good nutritionist. He comes out the week of the fight and helps you lose the last 10-15 pounds. I use the sauna, Epsom salt baths. You’ll lose 10 pounds of water weight that way.
Talk about your next fight Saturday:
At this point of my career my next fight is the biggest fight. A loss to a guy not well known — he’s pretty well known in Brazil but not here — would not be good. A win gives you more room to break into the Top 15 and Top 10.This article was co-written with Jeff “DorkSince83” Shropshire
Spoiler Alert; School kind of sucks.
If it’s not piles of homework, than its lackluster lunch options or constant bullying (maybe that was just me). How many times did you find yourself sitting in the back of the class listening to a professor drone on and on but in the back of your mind thinking “I wish there was another option.” If only there was a school filled with classes that I could pass, then I wouldn’t be grounded every weekend.
The world of Pop Culture has shown us that there are other options and all of them are fair better than regular school. Schools filled with magic, crazy frats, clones and cartoons. Who wouldn’t rather blow off Math in order to take potions? What better Principal to have than a mad scientist? What about a campus where you can form a frat for absolutely any interest you have? Television, Movies and Literature have filled our imagination with a never ending list of schools we wish we could declare as our alma mater.
Now let us play tribute to those schools that are (sadly) too awesome to really exist.
10 : Port Chester University (PCU)
When picking any college you want to avoid one whose general awesome level depends solely on a specific group of people or frat-house (hence why you won’t find Adams College or Faber College here). PCU almost didn’t make the cut for that very reason. But then, I rewatched PCU. Have you seen this movie lately? Sure, the people in the Pit are the best people out there but this school has a frat house for EVERYONE. Feminists? Got it. Hippies? No Problem. Bigots? There’s even a |
more year at Liverpool. But equally, if I were him – and I’d worked so hard at my craft my entire life, and was approaching the two or three years where I’d be at my peak – I’d find it hard to say no to Barcelona if they came calling.Image copyright Thinkstock
Seven out of 10 of the council wards with the slowest download speeds are in Wales, figures from the House of Commons library have shown.
Abererch on the Llyn Peninsula in Gwynedd topped the list, with speeds of 2.7Mbps, followed by Llandinam in Powys and Devauden in Monmouthshire.
MP Liz Saville Roberts said half her constituents had download speeds below the government's baseline level.
BT said people needed to upgrade their services to access superfast speeds.
Superfast Cymru means speeds of 24Mbps plus are now available in about nine out of every 10 homes and businesses in Wales, a spokesman said.
The top 10 list ordered by wards and constituency with download speeds in megabits per second is:
Abererch, Dwyfor Meirionnydd - 2.7
Llandinam, Montgomeryshire - 3.1
Devauden, Monmouth - 3.1
Trelech, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire - 3.8
Bratton Fleming, North Devon - 4.1
Yscir, Brecon and Radnorshire - 4.2
Llanfihangel Aberbythych, Carmarthen East and Dinefwr - 4.2
Beguildy, Brecon and Radnorshire - 4.3
Stort Valley, Saffron Walden - 4.3
Teme Valley, West Worcestershire - 4.3
Wales also had 13 out of the 20 slowest download speeds.
The UK government's own minimum acceptable download level is 10Mbps, Ms Saville Roberts said.
The Dwyfor Meirionnydd MP said her Gwynedd constituency had slower than average download speeds and worse superfast availability than the UK average.
"It's shocking that out of the 10 worst performing areas for broadband speeds, seven are in Wales," she said.
"Many of my constituents are unable to access what Ofcom recognises as the speed necessary to deliver an 'acceptable user experience', required for basic tasks such as web browsing, streaming and video calling.
"What we need in Wales is parity of access to the country's telecoms infrastructure. I hope the separation of BT from Openreach will signal an end to the monopoly in broadband provision, which has so far failed to meet the specific needs of many rural communities."
Image caption Dwyfor Meirionnydd MP Liz Saville Roberts described the speeds as "shocking"
A BT spokesman said the focus on average download speeds was "disappointing" as Wales had better coverage than any other devolved nations following the roll out of Superfast Cymru.
"What this report does highlight to us is that more families and businesses now need to make the most of this new technology and upgrade their services if they want faster internet speeds," he said.
"For small parts of Wales we appreciate that upgrading isn't currently possible but we continue to work hard to roll out fibre broadband across the country."Customers and employees at a local McDonald's restaurant were accosted by a woman wielding bear mace on Monday evening.
The call came in to police around 6:30 p.m., from an employee saying a female had "sprayed pepper spray" in the restaurant's bathroom and parking lot. Additionally, they told police the woman tried to punch a young child.
In a news release issued by Juneau Police Department, they say that Casey Muir, 31, of Juneau, was contacted by responding officers, holding a can of bear mace. Officers ordered Muir "repeatedly" to put the spray on the ground, and after several minutes, she lowered the spray and was put into handcuffs and arrested.
When officers spoke further with the employees on the scene, they learned more about the disturbance at the fast food chain earlier in the evening.
According to witnesses, Muir pointed the bear spray directly at one of the McDonald's employees, "placing [them] in fear of being sprayed."
Additionally, police contacted a family in the parking lot, and investigators say that Muir approached them near their vehicle, and "attempted to punch a 4 year old girl."
No one was injured, however Muir was placed under arrest for two counts of assault. Police in Juneau say they are still investigating the case.Home Daily News Fat Noodle is 'confusingly similar' to Chubby…
Trials & Litigation
Fat Noodle is 'confusingly similar' to Chubby Noodle, restaurant says in trademark suit
What’s the difference between a chubby noodle and a fat noodle?
Not much, according to the owners of two Chubby Noodle restaurants in the San Francisco area. They filed a federal lawsuit last week against the owners of a forthcoming competitor, Fat Noodle, contending that the name and logo of the soon-to-be restaurant is “confusingly similar” to their own.
However, the owners of the Fat Noodle tell Inside Scoop they got their idea first, in 2008. They scoff at the claim that their restaurant is free-riding on the Chubby Noodle’s reputation, calling the lawsuit meritless.
“The idea that restaurateurs as recognized as Saison Group would be trading off the “Chubby Noodle” name is not only highly suspect but ridiculous,” they say in a written statement provided to the blog. “Fat Noodle is a completely different concept from Chubby Noodle, and will have very focused, clean, and traditional foods using the highest quality products available. If anything, the owners of Chubby Noodle are trying to use our good name and press to enhance their own.”The air is thick with smoke from countless flares and other pyrotechnics, while a huge swarm of supporters surges forward, bouncing up and down and swinging from every possible vantage point. The police struggle to cope with the madness all around them as the noise rings out across the whole city, as beer rains down on the people not quick enough to get out of the way. You may think this is the reaction to winning a trophy, or at the very least a 90th minute winner, but it simply describes the scene as a thousand Djurgarden fans wait for the bus to take them to the game. They had gathered in a local park several hours ago, climbing trees and lampposts to set off flares and lead chants This is Sweden, and they do things differently here.
Pyro in the park
In total there will be 7,000 away supporters in attendance at the Stockholm derby, with Djurgarden taking on hated local rivals AIK in the battle for capital city supremacy. I am in the middle of them, a first hand witness to one of the most intense and underrated derbies in Europe. The football culture in Sweden is rarely mentioned in the same breath as being amongst the best in the world as you may hear about Germany, Argentina or Poland, but on this evidence it is difficult to see why. The buses finally arrive, and each one is instantly filled as soon as the doors open. A sign at the front reminds passengers that they should sit down safely with their seatbelts fastened, there is little chance of that happening. The vehicle shakes from side to side as the travelling supporters bounce to one of their favourite chants, loosely translated from Swedish as “He who doesn’t jump is AIK”. Being an AIK fan is the worst possible thing you can imagine if you are a Djugarden supporter, and as such it feels as though the suspension of the bus will be destroyed at any minute. With the buses being overcrowded and full of drunken Swedish people jumping up and down, they quickly become too warm. An easy solution to this problem is found, as the emergency exit on the roof of the bus is ripped open, fans taking it in turns to stick their heads out into the fresh air and hurl abuse at any home supporters who were unfortunate enough to be passing by at that time.
The destination is Friends Arena, perhaps the worst possible name for a stadium to host a clash between these two, because they have hated each other for their entire existence. Both clubs were formed in 1891, Djurgarden coming to life just three weeks after AIK were born. As with most European sides there is more to the club than just football, and the hatred is just as strong when they meet in ice hockey, handball and even athletics. Today it’s all about football, and AIK are the strong favourites to claim the victory. Financial problems have caused Djurgarden to sell many of their best players, and they are struggling in the middle of the league table as a result. Meanwhile, AIK are challenging for the title, just a couple of points behind leaders Malmo. What is more, they were victorious in the fixture earlier in the season, going 3 – 0 up inside 16 minutes at Djurgarden, eventually holding on to a 3 – 2 victory.
The DIF supporters I speak too are mostly pessimistic about their chances, accepting the reality that the financial stability of the club is currently a more pressing concern than results on the field. One tells me of the attitude which has been born during the current unsuccessful season “We go into games thinking that we are going to lose, so it is our job to ensure we are louder than the opposition fans and don’t lose twice”. It is a commendable attitude, and soon enough I will see for myself just how incredibly loud they can be.
We arrive at the stadium with around 30 minutes to go before kick off, and the carnage is instantaneous, as two groups of supporters sadly push things beyond rivalry into violence. Two smoke bombs are thrown from the section to the right of the away stand, causing a furious reaction from the away supporters. A group of around 30 people, all wearing balaclavas, storms over to the fences to exchange words with the home fans. Soon they are exchanging more than just words, as pyrotechnics, broken seats, coins and beers are hurled back and forth. The riot police struggle to maintain order, as the AIK supporters are able to push them backwards and get dangerously close to the away end. For a moment it looks as though all hell is about to break loose, but reinforcements arrive and get things under control. Still, the players hadn’t even set foot on the pitch yet and there had already been a demonstration of just how deep the feelings run in this one.
Fans clash in the stadium before kick off
Until police reinforcements restore a small amount of calm
Once the players did indeed take the field, all memories of these violent scenes were instantly banished. Both sides had put together tifo displays, with the middle of the away end transforming into a sea of blue, red and yellow. At both sides, masked ultras set off an impressive amount of pyro, with dozens of flares and smokebombs in the colours of their beloved DIF. It was at the other side of the stadium however where you could see more pyrotechnics than in America on the fourth of July. Just last week I wrote about the ‘Welcome to Hell‘ Feyenoord received in Istanbul, but the billowing black and yellow smoke from the ultras section of the home stand truly looked as if that is where we had arrived. The thick black smoke billowed into the sky, completely obscuring the stand from view for several minutes. The smoke began to drift across the entire pitch, until eventually it was impossible to even see the goal which was a few metres away.
With the pitch obscured so completely, the players headed back off the field to wait for the air to clear sufficiently for the game to begin. This did not stop the contest in the stands from getting underway, with both sets of hardcore supporters creating an immense noise. The AIK fans waved hundreds of black and yellow flags, as they linked arms and bounced up and down to the extend that the entire stand seemed to be shaking. Meanwhile, the amazing Djurgarden fans had begun their full range of songs, lead by a small group of 5 or 6 men on a platform with microphones. It appeared as though the usual capo (chant leader) was not present at the game, but it didn’t stop the invading DIF army from making an almighty noise. There was a significant British influence on the support, I had met a couple of Chelsea and Djurgarden supporters earlier in the day, while a Union Jack and a Stone Roses flag were amongst those that flew in the away end. However unlike Britain, the ticket had only cost £15, you could stand up and drink beer while watching the game, and there wasn’t an iPad or a steward on a power trip to be seen. The result, the best and loudest away end I have ever had the privilege to stand in.
With the smoke sufficiently clear to get things going, the game finally got started almost 20 minutes late. It took the noise up yet another notch, with both of the hardcore ends of the stadium doing their best to inspire the teams to victory. Djurgarden almost enjoyed the best possible start, winning a free kick in a dangerous area which was put just over the bar. Indeed, it was so close that the ball landed on top of the goal, causing a split second of mayhem where it appeared to have found the back of the net. Still, it was a promising start for the visitors, who had been dreading a demoralising defeat but now began to dream of a famous victory.
One thing was clear in this fixture, the supporters really did make a difference. Many English clubs designate the squad number 12 to the fans to represent the ’12th man’, but this kind of token gesture is not needed in Swedish football, here it’s the real deal. The Djurgarden fans would get the upper hand in the chanting, and their team would win a string of corners. Angered by this, the AIK supporters would raise the noise levels at their end of the ground, and suddenly it was the home team looking more likely the score. The people in attendance at this fixture take their role as supporters seriously, not sitting back and waiting to be entertained, but doing everything they can to help their team. If they aren’t playing well, they see it as a sign that they should do better, and a new song begins, louder and more intense than the one which comes before.
Despite the doom and gloom from the fans before the game, it is actually Djurgarden who should perhaps feel disappointed that the game is scoreless at half time. They have created a couple of excellent chances, but the lack of an accomplished striker has seen them all wasted. Meanwhile, AIK have enjoyed plenty of possession but not really forced the DIF keeper into a particularly difficult save in the opening 45 minutes. Indeed, the true highlights of the first half all took place on the terraces rather than on the pitch, with magnificent support being offered from both ends of the stadium from first whistle to last.
One of the most memorable moments from the AIK fans came in the 27th minute, as a tribute was paid to former goalkeeper Ivan Turina, a talented Croatian player who sadly died last year while the first choice stopper for AIK. His name was chanted for the entire minute, with the ultras section chanting ‘IVAN’, getting a reply of ‘TURINA’ from the supporters to their left.
This kind of chanting is popular in Sweden, with a number of Djurgarden songs also seeing the stand being divided into two to sing various parts of a song. It takes some coordination, but the result is truly spectacular. I have to admit I could only understand a limited number of these chants, but one of the most memorable translated to ‘FIGHT….DJURGARDEN….FIGHT….DJURGARDEN’, as the supporters urged their team to give everything they had to take home derby bragging rights.
Half time in most countries is a chance to check on the other scores and munch of an overpriced and barely cooked hot dog made out of an animal which went extinct in 1996. Not in Sweden however, as the Djurgarden capo made an announcement that some kind of action would take place to begin the second half. Members of the ultras began to walk around the stand giving out flares, but my non-existent knowledge of Swedish meant I was none the wiser as to what would actually be happening. These flares were passed out and arranged seemingly at random for several minutes, and I assumed that they were simply being given to friends or those who had requested it. Soon, all would become clear.
The players come back out for the second half, and the crackle and fizz that comes from an igniting flare is all around me. To both sides, all that could be seen is the red glow and crackling flames which have become so familiar during my adventures around Europe. This is what every away end at a local derby around the world should look like, with Stockholm providing the perfect example of how it should be done. It was only later that I realised just how impressive the display actually was, with the Djurgarden ultras arranging fo the flares to be ignited in a pattern which formed the letters DIF. Even with all the things I have witnessed at football matches, this was something completely unique and is likely to remain as one of the most impressive things I have ever seen inside a football ground for some time to come.
With the support being taken up another level, the action on the pitch was also increasing in excitement. AIK were now displaying the reason they had been favourites, taking control of the game and looking as though they would score the goal they so badly needed to keep up with Malmo in the title race. Their title rivals were losing 2 – 0 elsewhere, with these goals shown on the big screen in the stadium and causing the home fans to chant a little louder still.
Soon, they would really have something to cheer about. The DIF defence had looked disorganised at times, with the goalkeeper forced to rebuke his players on a couple of occasions for forcing him to make a string of fine saves. However with 55 minutes on the clock, there would be nothing he could do to prevent AIK from taking the lead. A great passing move tore the DIF defence to shreds, leaving Nabil Bahoui with the kind of chance you dream about getting in a local derby, and he made no mistake, finishing the move with a cool strike. The AIK supporters went completely wild, as you could clearly see dozens of them tumbling to the floor all across the ultras section at the opposite end of the stadium. The other two stands were also busy losing their mind, with another surge towards the away end from those supporters to our right.
What was really impressive however was the fact that the Djurgarden fans did not miss a moment of support. There was to be no abuse hurled at their team for failing to stop the goal, or shouts at the manager or president of the club to change things. Instead, they kept singing their songs, waving their flags and pumping their fists, urging the team to recover from the setback and get back on level terms. It was truly inspirational to see, and reminded me of the Lech Poznan fans in Poland and Partizan Belgrade fans in Serbia who simply saw conceding a goal as reason to sing even louder.
The first hour of the match had been a brilliant experience. The noise was deafening at times, and I could already tell that all the people who had told me I would love Swedish football culture had been correct. Despite how much I had loved the opening stages, nothing could prepare me for what was about to happen.
Djurgarden win a free kick, with the goal still mostly obscured by the multiple flares which had been set off following AIK taking the lead. The cross comes in, something happens and somehow, beautifully, the ball is in the back of the net. For a few seconds, nobody realises. Then comes a magical explosion of joy, there really is no feeling on earth which compares to being in a celebrating away end on a local derby. The goal has brought around complete carnage, with people falling down multiple rows of seats in a state of complete ecstasy. The man in the row behind me falls to the ground, landing on top of me. We fall into the row below, with several others joining this human waterfall of celebration. It is no surprise that the seats cannot handle this eruption of happiness, with many of them breaking across the entire away section. These were not being broken deliberately, the Friends Arena simply could not cope with the wild and continuous celebrations. When I would leave the stadium following the final whistle, it looked as if the stadium was due to be demolished the next day, such was the extent of the destruction this goal left in its wake. I have only ever experienced two goals which came close to this one, the winner for Borussia Dortmund in their magical comeback against Malaga, and the goal which gave Feyenoord the lead against Ajax in the Dutch classic earlier this year.
It felt as though the game should really have ended following this goal, because what could possibly live up to a moment so perfect? It’s no exaggeration to say that the celebrations lasted for half an hour, with the away section going completely wild for the remainder of the game. It has been a difficult season for DIF and it seems certain that the final table will not give them much to celebrate. But football to me is not about points, or even trophies. It’s about moments. The moments you can look back on in years to come and think, “I was there”. This was one of those moments. The ache in your back from falling through a reinforced plastic seat will fade, and the bruises and cuts on your shins will heal, but memories will last forever.
With a few minutes to go, it seems like AIK will win it. The ball falls loose in the box, with the goalkeeper helpless and seemingly stranded. Out of nowhere comes a Djurgarden defender, throwing himself at the ball and somehow making a perfect block when all hope seemed lost. I have no doubt that he would not have got this ball if the fans behind him had not been so incredible, the true definition of supporters.
In injury time, Djurgarden almost win it. A shot from outside the box goes just over the bar, inches away from a second goal that I think would have caused the stadium to collapse. I am writing this report 24 hours on from the final whistle, had this shot been slightly lower there would probably still be celebrating fans in the away end.
So in the end, there was no winner. But in reality, the winner is Sweden. It wins because it gets to see this fantastic fixture twice a season, with two of the best and loudest sets of supporters you can imagine. It wins because of the thriving fan culture, which defies the spectre of modern football and the out-of-town stadium to produce something truly glorious. Tickets are affordable, away allocations are generous, and big flags are pyrotechnics are allowed and controlled, rather than resulting in the ‘offenders’ being banned from football and even sent to prison. We can only hope that the Swedish model is the one which countries with a struggling football culture look to recreate, rather than the criminalisation of support we have seen in England ever since the birth of the money rich but supporter hating Premier League, before it’s too late.
AdvertisementsWhat is Cyber Warfare?
Photo Credit: Cyber attacks via Christiaan Colen cc
Over the last couple decades the Internet of things has expanded rapidly. Individuals, businesses, and governments worldwide rely on Internet connectivity for daily activities. As this dependency begins to extend into our nations infrastructure, we find ourselves increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Now more than ever we are in need of cyber security professionals who can defend our nations infrastructure, and ensure the security and integrity of sensitive data and critical lines of communications. The implications of a successful cyber attack have resulted in the need for cyber warfare training.
What is Cyber Warfare?
Cyber warfare is when a nation-state or multinational corporation launches a cyber attack in attempt to cause disruption to another nation-state or corporation’s computers and networks. This is done though the theft of data (like the recent OPM hack) denial of service attacks, or launching various forms of malware to targeted systems. Clever groups of hackers could disrupt an entire nation by shutting down stock exchange servers, disabling areas of the power grid, and could even cause physical destruction by hacking into automobiles.
Recent Hacking Incidents Defined as Acts of Cyber Warfare
There are quite a few incidents that may be attributed to cyber warfare, but it’s often hard to pin down exactly what happened. It doesn’t help that accused countries will never admit to having taken part in an attack of this nature, as it may be ground for some sort of repercussions depending on the nature of the attack.
The OPM attack that I referenced earlier and the Sony Pictures attack (late in 2014) are prime examples of cyber warfare. China denied allegations of their involvement in the OPM attack. North Korea denied having any part in the Sony attack that prompted cancellation of a film’s premier and the release of private employee information. Despite insistence by the U.S Government of their involvement, various masking techniques used by skilled hackers mean that it takes a very long time to track down exactly what happened.
As of now, these attacks are largely reminiscent of the Cold War. There is a lot of espionage and trying to out do each other intellectually, but nothing has led to large scale physical conflict. That’s not to say that it couldn’t though. Simply disabling communications and power over a sustained period could cause mass hysteria. People often get very upset when a storm knocks out their power for just a few days and a sustained large scale attack could result in public unrest on a massive scale. A cyber attack timed to coincide with a land invasion could have devastating consequences.Cyber Warfare is a very real threat that is capable of harming far more than computers.
A look Into the Minds of Hackers
Back in 2013 at a Black Hat USA convention, Craig Heffner’s presentation (below) on the security (or lack thereof) on various security cameras revealed some startling exploits. Although the video of this talk is a bit dated now, it showcases how easily certain systems can be exploited.
Craig went into detail about how he could download camera firmware from vendor websites, which allowed him to search for exploits without even having physical access to the camera. He was even able to acquire root access on some devices because they were Linux based. This meant he had a great platform to attack other devices on that network and disable or freeze cameras feeds, leaving facilities using these cameras open to a coordinated cyber and physical attack.
The ISP (Internet Service Provider) is generally responsible for providing the services required to enable communication between networks. This means at some point security falls into the hands of a third party. This is a huge vulnerability. At the DefCon 22 convention in late 2014, Shahar Tal’s presentation (below) went into detail about how he managed to hack the auto-configuration server of an ISP. To put it simply, he found a single point of attack on an ISP, exploited a vulnerability, and had the potential to exploit millions of routers. He had the ability to steal private data, upload new configurations, and set parameters for things such DNS servers. Had he been a malicious hacker, he could cause massive problems within an entire ISP’s customer base. Luckily for us that was not the case.
How do we defend against these threats? We invest in intensive training, implementation of strict security policies, and education for all employees to prevent them from accidentally compromising secure networks at home and the office.
Cyber Warfare Training Programs
Whether you are looking to join in the fight against cyber terrorism or just secure your own network, there are a variety of cyber warfare courses that help you stay secure from cyber attacks. Here is the rundown on five popular training programs and certification courses for those seeking further knowledge or for those getting started in a cyber security career:
Wounded Warrior Cyber Combat Academy
If you are ex-military and in the wounded warriors program, the Wounded Warrior Cyber Combat Academy might be of interest to you. Many of our wounded soldiers still have a desire to serve. Their strength under pressure, knowledge of battle tactics, and capacity to dedicate themselves to rigorous training, all lend themselves very well to becoming a skilled cyber warrior. Visit the W2cca enrollment page to learn more about the requirements to enter this program.
CompTIA Security+
Those who aim for a career in cyber security would do well to start here. Security+ is a good entry level certification that will get you up to speed on network security, the basics of security best practices, how to identify and deal with threats, and all the essentials for a future cyber warrior.
CompTIA recommends that you have a bit of background experience before jumping into this course, particularly Network+ (or a solid grasp of Network+ concepts) and around 2 years of experience dealing with concepts of cyber security. Networking knowledge is very helpful when you are trying to fortify a network. So don’t go jumping straight into this (or any other course) because you are eager to learn about security!
Certified Ethical Hacker
A Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) course walks you through the steps it takes to become proficient in the detection of network vulnerabilities. When securing networks, red/blue team exercises are useful in determining where your infrastructure has weaknesses, as well as determining your ability to respond to attacks. Just as our military conducts combat training by pitting soldiers against one another with non-lethal rounds, cyber warriors can sharpen their skills and learn to react faster and more efficiently by experiencing these situations.
Ethical hackers are a critical part of cyber warfare training, and this is a great certification to get you up to speed on ethical hacking. Visit the EC-Council page for more information on CEH and related courses.
Cyber Warfare for Practitioners
If you are an information security analyst/manager, system administrator, or IT auditor/manager, this course is directed towards you. This class teaches the best practices for dealing with attacks, spotting internal threats, and so much more.
EC-Council Incident Handler (ECIH)
No matter how good your network security is, at some point a security incident will arise. When it does, having properly trained staff is critical. Those who earn their ECIH will be able to efficiently respond to network attacks, insider threats, malware, and create policies to help organizations handle and respond to cyber security incidents. In cyber warfare, an incident handler is a bit like a medic. They do their best to respond and recover from successful attacks.
Looking Towards the Future
There is no end in sight to cyber warfare. Networking technology continues to grow and evolve, and with these changes come new exploitation opportunities. Governments and corporations are already looking for, and in need of talented cyber security experts.
Those who are looking to work in cyber security can look forward to an exciting career with endless opportunities. If you aren’t sure if a career in cyber security is right for you, check out this great blog post to see what it takes to become a cyber security professional.We know there’s a Wonder Woman movie coming in 2017. We know it will star Gal Gadot in the lead, and she also appears in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice.
But as of this date, we presumed it would be set in the modern day. Well, why wouldn’t we?
It’s not. I have been informed by those who have seen the greenlit treatment that the film will spend the first half on Paradise Island with warring Amazon factions vying for control.
An arrival of a man on the island changes that status quo, as he asks the Amazons for help. Not necessarily Steve Trevor either…
Because when Wonder Woman joins him on his return to the world of Man, we all discover that it is the 1920s. And the film will then show Diana exploring that world – a world where women have only just got the vote – from her… unique perspective.
A planned sequel would then take place during World War II in the thirties and forties. This of course was the period that the seventies TV show began in, before shifting to the then-modern day.
And a threequel would then take place in the modern day, with the Justice League Of America.
So. Not the Wonder Woman we were expecting. But the period-set Captain America; The First Avenger didn’t do too badly, did it?
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundFantasy Analysis: Michael Turner is Criminally Undervalued
Byron Lambert, Rosterwatch.com
Agreed, it’s better to abandon a player one year too early than one year too late. It’s better to be on the cutting edge, finding the “next best thing” sooner than later. A lot of fantasy owners tend to hold on too long. It’s strange, though, in the case of Michael Turner. People are jumping off of the bandwagon left and right. His fantasy football drop-off is nearing, but I’m not yet ready to adopt that strategy for “The Burner”. He has a couple of good years left, and I’m willing to roll the dice on him in 2012.
I noticed the distaste for Turner while perusing the Fantasy Pros rankings. These rankings are the aggregate of 56 experts, including rankings from Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, NFL.COM, and FootballGuys (along with the notably accurate rankings of yours truly here at Rosterwatch.) Turner’s expert consensus ranking is 15th among running backs, 39th overall, and has an average draft position of 33. I do not agree with this, and Turner’s Rosterwatch RB rank of #7 supports that.
Turner has been incredibly productive and very consistent the last two years. Posting 216.8 gross fantasy points in 2011 and 217.6 in 2010. Almost identical. 13.55 gross points/game in 2011 and 13.6 in 2010. 1,508 total yards in 2011 and 1,456 in 2010. 11 TDs in 2011 and 12 TDs in 2010. You get the picture. This guy is solid gold. Like I always say, early in your fantasy draft, put the money in the bank. He may not be the 20 point/game, “true” #1 RB we all dream of, but there are only a few of those. He is one of the few players in the league that could have 15-plus TDs this year.
The concerns are legitimate, though. Turner is 30. It’s his ninth year in the league. He’s had over 300 carries the three of the last four seasons. He runs with a physical style. The Falcons are transitioning to a passing offense. Jacquizz Rodgers is about to turn in to Ahmad Bradshaw.
Here is the silver lining: Remember, Turner’s first 4 seasons were on the bench behind LaDanian Tomlinson in San Diego. During that span, he only averaged 57 carries a year. His physical style helps maintain his production as he ages, and he continues to be valuable at the goal line. A more prolific Falcons offense actually creates more scoring opportunities for Turner. Jones and White open the field and take pressure off of the run game. Jacquizz Rodgers is not impressive, is tiny at 5’6″, and still sits 3rd on the depth chart behind Jason Snelling. I don’t see either of those guys emerging as a dominant #2.
Nor, am I ready to embrace this list of questions marks over a Michael Turner-stamped bar of solid gold:
Ryan Mathews (Upside w/ uncertainty. Projects to score in Turners range. Why take the chance?)
Marshawn Lynch (Last year was a revival. Will it last? SEA or ATL?)
Roddy White (Julio Jones)
Greg Jennings (WR is deep)
DeMarco Murray (I love him. Don’t trust him this much quite yet.)
Matt Forte (Seriously? Michael Bush)
Mike Wallace (No way.)
Jamaal Charles (Early 2011 devastating knee injury + Peyton Hillis)
Steven Jackson (Always hurt and old now too. Talk about Jacquizz – check Isaiah Pead)
Adrian Peterson (Late 2011 devastating knee injury + Toby Gerhart)
Frank Gore (See Steven Jackson and insert Jacobs, Hunter, James for Pead)
Dez Bryant (For real yo?)Shang Shung Publications, an Italian publisher founded around the teachings of Chögyal Namkhai Norbu and of other greats from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, has a new book out called The Miraculous 16th Karmapa: Incredible Encounters with the Black Crown Buddha (Amazon/Shang Shung).
I was kindly offered not only an advance copy of the book to read, but also an opportunity to send a couple questions to some of the contributors to this memorable volume. I picked four contributors, all rather remarkable teachers, practitioners, and so on in their own right, and sent each just a question or two, along with a question to all four: “Where do you see Buddhism in N. America going? Do you have any predictions for the coming ten years?”
With great thanks to PR guru Erica Taylor, I have responses from two of them now to share with you.
The first to respond was Norma Levine, the book’s compiler and editor and author of “Blessing Power of the Buddhas” (http://earthmudra.com). Along with the question on Buddhism in N. America, I asked her:
You write in the book: The miracle of the 17th Karmapa is that he has shouldered the immense responsibilities of his office with humour, and majestic dignity; that he gives love to all, that he can still show humanity within the cramped quarters of what he now calls “a permanent hotel” 6 in which he does not possess even his own shrine room. He is a humble human being, a perfect bodhisattva, and already a great Karmapa. What do think is in store for H.H. the 17th Karmapa?
Norma Levine:
“He will triumph over all the obstacles created by politicians and tame those who are blocking buddha activity, just like Guru Rinpoche did in 8th century Tibet. He overpowered the demons and enabled the construction of Samye, the first monastery in Tibet, and from then onwards, Buddhism could develop and flourish. The 17th Karmapa is said to be not only an emanation of Guru Rinpoche but Guru Rinpoche himself.” About Buddhism in the west (not necessarily America): “As a general trend I can see that people want to have a more peaceful and calm mind and so they will continue to try to achieve that with mindfulness meditation and yoga. However, calming the mind is only an important but practical first step. What is important is to understand and contemplate deeply what it means to be stuck within cyclic existence. It is the wish to attain buddh |
deal.
Headed from Fenway Park to Chavez Ravine: first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, pitcher Josh Beckett, outfielder Carl Crawford, infielder Nick Punto and about $12 million in cash.
Going from Los Angeles to Boston: first baseman James Loney - who is eligible for free agency after this season - young pitchers Rubby De La Rosa and Allen Webster, infielder Ivan DeJesus Jr. and outfielder Jerry Sands.
Analysis: A bad deal for both sides?
Gonzalez will be in the lineup tonight at Dodger Stadium, clad in the No. 23 once worn by Kirk Gibson, against the Miami Marlins.
In supplanting Loney, he gives the Dodgers a menacing presence in the middle of the order to pair with Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier. But coming with him are the toxic contracts of Crawford (owed $103 million through 2017) and Beckett ($32 million in 2013 and '14), who struggled with injuries, poor performance and the occasional controversy the past two seasons in Boston.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, get massive financial relief and a chance to re-formulate the chemistry in a clubhouse gone foul the past two seasons.
It also is a stunning bit of backpedaling less than two seasons after they signed Crawford and traded for Gonzalez, guaranteeing both $294 million.
The Red Sox will fail to make the playoffs in both seasons with Crawford and Gonzalez. And it is the latter's acquisition that may haunt the Red Sox's efforts to rebuild.
To acquire Gonzalez in December 2011, the Red Sox sent top-shelf prospects in first baseman Anthony Rizzo and pitcher Casey Kelly to the San Diego Padres. Rizzo since has blossomed into a crucial part of the Chicago Cubs' rebuilding efforts.
Both Rizzo and Kelly were drafted under the previous collective bargaining agreement's draft rules, in which clubs such as Boston could lavish large signing bonuses on hard-to-sign players later in the draft. Now, Boston's farm system is bereft of top-shelf prospects, and it won't be able to flex its financial might in the amateur arena as it once did.
But they do gain the chance to redo their payroll, roster and clubhouse.
The Dodgers, meanwhile, just completed a huge revamp, amid the heat of a pennant race rather than the slightly more calculating period of the offseason.
They are 2 1/2 games behind the San Francisco Giants in the National League West. And only Gonzalez represents a true, immediate upgrade in their 2012 playoff quest.
Crawford is out for this season, and perhaps the start of 2013, after having Tommy John elbow surgery Thursday. While Beckett may get a boost moving from the American League to the more pitcher-friendly NL West, his 5.23 ERA and enduring struggles hardly make him an upgrade over the Dodgers' current rotation.
But the mere upgrade of Gonzalez over Loney -- 15 home runs and an.812 on-base plus slugging compared to four and.646 -- can't be underestimated in the short term.
And the bigger-picture specter of this deal is that new managing partner Mark Walter -- forget Magic Johnson for a minute -- appears willing to spend until the Dodgers are winners.
Walter spent $2.15 billion on the team. However, the Dodgers are cable TV free agentsand could command upward of $5 billion in their next local broadcast deal.
So expect much, much more of the same in coming years, particularly since the Dodgers, as currently constructed, are a flawed club with a fallow farm system.
And if they become the Evil Empire West? Well, that's OK with manager Don Mattingly.
"Are you playing within the rules? That's what I always looked at," Mattingly, a Yankees legend, told the Los Angeles Times. "They used to say all that about the Yankees. If you don't like it, change the rules.
"It was kind of a little rock show. Everywhere you went, you caused that little buzz. That's the way the Dodgers should be. I'll be honest with you: To me, when the Dodgers come to town, it should be THE DODGERS."Luke Fitzgerald has emerged as a major doubt, along with Eoin Reddan, for Ireland’s opening Six Nations game at home to Scotland on
Sunday due to a troublesome lower abdominal strain which he has been nursing in recent weeks.
Mike McCarthy is also unlikely to feature after requiring a reputed 25 stitches following his stamping by the since suspended Ian Evans last Friday week.
Reddan has been given until Friday in the unlikely event that he will overcome the calf strain he picked up in training on Tuesday, but it has since emerged that Fitzgerald is even more doubtful due to a recurring problem which he had been overcoming impressively with Leinster and which has required careful management in the Irish camp over the last week and a half.
Both team manager Mick Kearney and defence coach Les Kiss yesterday rated Reddan a “very doubtful” inclusion in the match-day squad to be announced tomorrow, and Isaac Boss has been called into the squad after his man-of-the-match performance in the Wolfhounds’ win over the Saxons last Saturday.
Reddan had been in excellent form for Leinster in recent months, notably in their wins away to Northampton and Castres, with his speed to the breakdown, crisp service and high proportion of snipes converted into telling breaks.
Something different
He would have given Ireland something different, and may even have been pushing Conor Murray for a starting place as against Australia in November, despite the latter’s excellent performance against the All Blacks a week later. That said, Boss’ own good form and experience is a consolation, and he is likely to resume his place on the bench against New Zealand.
Fitzgerald was also a replacement that day, and had also been in fine form for Leinster. All the old confidence, footwork and ability to break a line had returned to his game and given the injuries to Tommy Bowe and Keith Earls, Fitzgerald had looked likely to start against Scotland.
However, as with Earls, the injury jinx has struck with cruel timing again. Fergus McFadden, who grew stronger and more effective as the Wolfhounds game wore on upon his return, would seem favourite to start on one wing, with Dave Kearney on the other, given he played against Samoa and Australia. By contrast, Andrew Trimble and Felix Jones did not.
Akin to Reddan, it is conceivable that Fitzgerald could re-enter the equation for the Welsh game on Saturday week, and likewise Bowe, Gilroy and Zebo for the third game against England.
“It might be unlikely that Eoin is going to be there but we will give him a chance,” said Kiss from the squad’s base at Carton House yesterday. “Bossy has been here with us the last couple of weeks but he had a sensational game against the Saxons so he is ready to step into the breach.”
As for McCarthy, it now transpires that his facial wounds have severely limited his training time. “To tell you the truth he didn’t look nice,” admitted Kiss. “His face had swelled up and there was a lot of fluid and it kinda escapes into parts of the body and it stuck in the skull area. It did look bad but it has come down a lot. We had to get him to wear a lot gear to protect it so there are some issues around it. It wouldn’t stop him playing but it could still open up.”
Unlike Ireland, the Scots unveiled their hand yesterday and it appeared their 10-12-13 axis of Duncan Weir, Duncan Taylor and Alex Dunbar surprised the Irish management a little, with Kiss admitting he half expected Matt Scott to be included in their midfield.
“It’s an interesting team,” Kiss said. “They’ve probably loaded the bench a bit more. On my count 230-odd caps on the bench, that’s fairly hefty, and also their pack’s got 241, and 146 in the backs, so it’s a fairly handy sort of team. That’s 620 caps, that’s big in Test rugby so they’re fairly experienced.”
Difficult to control
“They’ve thrown up Duncan Taylor at 12 from Saracens, Alex Dunbar at 13. You’d probably be thinking Scott would get involved there but Taylor’s done a good job at Saracens and a good job in a couple of games I’ve seen for Scotland in the past. He’s a big, hard up and down runner, runs good lines and is a difficult guy to control.”
The potency of their back three, Sean Maitland, Stuart Hogg and Sean Lamont also has to be hugely respected, as infield target runners as well as out wide after their hard-carrying back-row set up the platform.
The Scots had used their summer series in South Africa, Samoa and Italy, to expand their squad, while their autumn form against South Africa and Australia was discoloured by the heavy Murrayfield pitches, even if it underlined how nothing came easy against them.
Ireland’s performance against the All Blacks was a reference point, in selection as well, conceded Kiss, but it was also in the distant pass and the next game “can be a totally different picture” all the more so against “a very tenacious and relentless team who can spoil you.
“So we need good accuracy, we need to bring the right amount of aggression and passion that doesn’t get in the way of that accuracy but co-exists and gets that nice element out of our players but also have discipline in our whole game because they (Scotland) are a team that can hurt you if you’re not disciplined.
“Not only with penalties but with loose ball, loose kicks they can hurt you at any time.”Earlier this month, a liberal Israeli novelist published a liberal polemic in a liberal newspaper. The article, by David Grossman, ran in the op-ed section of Haaretz, and decried Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s fevered declarations that he might soon order a unilateral strike on the Islamic Republic of Iran and its nuclear facilities. Grossman warned of Netanyahu’s “megalomaniacal” vision. He asked why Israelis, faced with what “could turn out to be the biggest mistake ever” by their government, were absorbing the news with such “fatalistic resignation”: “How will we face ourselves and our children when we are asked why we kept silent?” he wrote. “Why didn’t we set up a single symbolic protest tent in front of the Prime Minister’s Residence to warn against the potential disaster heading our way?” The article inspired no protests, no tents. A generation ago, Grossman’s vivid reporting on the Palestinians for the weekly Koteret Rashit awakened many Israelis to the dehumanizing abuses of occupation. A fluent Arabic speaker, Grossman went into the refugee camps and villages of the West Bank, quoted the voiceless, and revealed to his Israeli readers the humiliations being inflicted in their name. But these days more than twice as many Israelis call themselves right-wing as call themselves left-wing; the symbol of the Israeli pioneer long ago shifted from the kibbutznik to the settler. Although there is still ideological complexity and debate in Israel, the heartfelt polemics of liberal novelists no longer have much sway. Since early last year, however, Israelis have witnessed a very different kind of dissidence, of a variety almost unknown since the founding of the state. As Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, routinely speak of an imminent “existential threat” from Tehran, comparable to that of the Nazis in 1939, and warn that the Iranian nuclear program is fast approaching a “zone of immunity,” a growing number of leading intelligence and military officials, active and retired, have made plain their opposition to a unilateral Israeli strike. They include the Army Chief of Staff, the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, the heads of the two main intelligence agencies, the Mossad (Israel’s C.I.A.) and Shin Bet (its F.B.I.), President Shimon Peres, and members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, including the Intelligence Minister. Apart from Peres, these men are anything but liberals; most have impeccable hard-line credentials. The insiders are more muted in their language than the “exes,” but there is no question that together they present Netanyahu and Barak with a formidable barrier to an attack. A poll this month in Israel showed that sixty-one per cent of Jewish Israelis opposed a unilateral strike and twenty-seven per cent were in favor. The most outspoken of the high-level “dissidents,” such as Yuval Diskin, who was the head of Shin Bet from 2005 to 2011, accuse Netanyahu and Barak of behaving with “messianic” fervor. “I have no trust in the current Israeli leadership,” Diskin told a public gathering recently, warning that “one of the results of an Israeli attack on Iran could be a dramatic acceleration of the Iranian program.” Earlier this month, Aharon Ze’evi Farkash, a former head of military intelligence, told the Jerusalem Post that an Israeli attack would lack legitimacy, unite a fractured Iranian leadership, and make it “clear that they need a bomb now so that we cannot attack them again.” These opponents believe that both Netanyahu and Barak, who repeatedly invoke the Holocaust and the eliminationist rhetoric of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are frightening the public and alienating the Obama Administration. “Barak’s phrase ‘the zone of immunity’ is pure bullshit,” a retired Israeli general told me. “I heard the same phrase from him in 2010 and 2011,” he went on. “Intelligence is something that is always debatable. Remember, we had a kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was held for five years just beyond our border and we didn’t know where he was. Are we really sure we know everything about the Iranian nuclear program?” Lieutenant General Shaul Mofaz, an opposition leader and former Defense Minister, addressed Netanyahu directly in the Knesset, saying, “Over the past few months, Israel has waged an extensive and relentless p.r. campaign with the sole objective of preparing the ground for a premature military adventure. This p.r. campaign has deeply penetrated the ‘zone of immunity’ of our national security, threatens to weaken our deterrence, and our relations with our best friends. Mr. Prime Minister, you want a crude, rude, unprecedented, reckless, and risky intervention in the U.S. elections. Tell us whom you serve and for what?”
One morning recently, I took a cab to a sleek new residential tower on the eastern edge of Tel Aviv and asked at the reception desk for Meir Dagan. I was not entirely surprised that the security man gave me the once-over. From 2002 until January, 2011, Dagan was the director of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations—the Mossad. The Mossad, which has its headquarters just north of Tel Aviv, is charged with a range of tasks, from counterterrorism to foreign espionage and covert operations, including assassinations. Only Isser Harel, who led the operation that, in 1960, discovered Adolf Eichmann living in Argentina, kidnapped him, and brought him to trial in Jerusalem, served longer as Israel’s spymaster. Dagan is known as a ruthless agent; his career is said to have included operations of all kinds—car bombing, poisoning, cyberwar. He was also the earliest of the dissident security chiefs and is arguably the most authoritative. A ludicrously young, unarmed security guard materialized and rode with me in the elevator. I rang the bell and Dagan opened the door. He was a startling sight. He is not much taller than five feet and nearly that wide around. He is sixty-seven and has bowed legs, stubby, muscular arms, and a bald, egg-like dome. He wore severe steel glasses, faded jeans, and a polo shirt the color of a Concord grape. His grin is sly and sardonic, and not without a trace of menace. He clearly eats plenty, but he does not eat meat. (“It’s because of a gruesome event in 1985. I cannot even smell meat or touch it.”) He collects swords. Various military exploits have left what he calls “their memorials”: a bullet in the chest, a bad leg and back, and “metal pieces in my body here and there.” In general, he makes plain that his health is not good. He smokes a pipe, listens to classical music, and paints, like a dentist on weekends. The apartment is decorated with his canvases. They are naïve, sentimental, Orientalist—desert landscapes, a Bedouin, an old man in the Iranian town of Tabriz. “I get pleasure from this,” he said. “It helps me relax.” Since leaving the Mossad, Dagan has been living both in Tel Aviv and in the northern countryside, and, for the first time, he has been making private-sector money, in the energy business. “It’s not bad,” he said. “It seems that you can make quite a bit without working very much.” Dagan was born in 1945, on the floor of a train, as his family was being deported from the Soviet Union to a Nazi detention camp in Poland. His name then was Meir Huberman. Some members of the family died in the Holocaust, and Dagan kept in his office a photograph of his maternal grandfather on the day he was killed, in 1942, in the Polish town of Lukow. The picture shows a bearded, terrified man on his knees, draped in a prayer shawl, his arms up in supplication, as Nazi soldiers stand around with mocking expressions, truncheons and rifles at the ready. In 1950, the family sailed for Israel aboard a cattle boat that nearly capsized in a storm. They lived at first in a transit camp, in Lod, and then settled in the town of Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv, where Dagan’s parents ran a laundromat. After graduating from high school, Dagan trained as a paratrooper. He used to go around throwing a knife into trees. While he was fighting in Gaza during the Six-Day War, in 1967, his jeep hit a mine. The explosion shattered his leg. As a soldier, Dagan won the attentions of Ariel Sharon, and, in 1970, Sharon, who was then the head of the Army’s Southern Command, ordered him to create a special “elimination” unit, dedicated to hunting down suspected terrorists in Gaza. Dagan is wary of discussing the details of his life, especially his life in the military and intelligence, but accounts in the Israeli press, particularly Haaretz and Yediot Ahronot, are abundant. Dagan and his men often dressed as Palestinian taxi-drivers or farmers to infiltrate terror cells and, often, to kill. One of his decorations was for disarming and killing a Palestinian fighter who was wielding a live grenade. Sharon once said, “Dagan’s specialty is separating an Arab from his head.” Sometimes, one article claims, Dagan went on raids with a Doberman named Fanny. A soldier who served with him told Yediot Ahronot that Dagan would “wake up in the morning, leave his room, take a piss with one hand and shoot at soda cans with the other.” As an elder of the security establishment, however, Dagan knows well enough to dismiss any trace of a “colorful” biography. And, to be fair, there is every possibility that the stories of his career contain elements of myth. (“It’s really bullshit. Life and people are much more complicated.”) Above all, Dagan is eager to dispel the image of the mindless warrior. When Ilana Dayan, a reporter for Channel 2, asked him recently how he felt when he went on lethal missions, he said, “There is no joy in taking lives. Anyone who enjoys it is a psychopath.” Far from everything is known about Dagan’s career. Two reporters for Yediot Ahronot, Yigal Sarna and Anat Tal-Shir, once investigated a story that, before Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which was aimed at rooting out Yasir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Dagan led a secret unit across the border whose mission was to instigate terrorist events that would justify an incursion. Military censors killed the story, Sarna told me. Dagan acknowledges the censorship but denies the thrust of the story. Dagan worked in various military and security jobs until 2002, when Sharon, then Prime Minister, grew frustrated with what he saw as a lack of initiative in the intelligence leadership and appointed Dagan the director of the Mossad. Dagan, a shrewd bureaucratic infighter, managed to increase the Mossad’s budgets, expand aggressive (and sometimes violent) operations abroad, and develop the agency’s technological capacities. Under his leadership, the Mossad was credited with a string of high-stakes operations. There was the discovery, in 2007, of what the Mossad determined was a Syrian nuclear installation built with North Korean help; the Israelis bombed the plant the following year, though they have never admitted it publicly. In 2008, the Mossad engineered the car bombing, in Damascus, of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s leading terror operative. The singular focus of Dagan’s work was Iran’s nuclear program. Since the mid-nineties, Israeli intelligence had been convinced that Iran had embarked on a set of redundant projects that would take it through the steps of procurement, enrichment, and, possibly, weaponization. The work was methodical and unrushed, intended to evade the attention of inspectors and the sanctions of Iran’s enemies. “Iran learned the lessons of North Korea, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, and Iraq,” Amos Yadlin, a former chief of military intelligence, told me. “The Iranians are very sophisticated. This strategy, in a way, is to be appreciated. It is unusually sound. It is designed not to achieve nuclear weapons as soon as possible but to achieve them as safely as possible.” Under Dagan’s direction, and in coöperation with Western intelligence agencies, the Mossad is believed to have been involved in all the main efforts to sabotage Iran’s progress: the cyberwar project called Stuxnet; the assassination of leading researchers and bureaucrats involved in the nuclear projects; the penetration of procurement networks and then the sale of defective equipment designed to derail installations. The Mossad has also encouraged defections and recruited agents in Iran. Dagan believes that the West and Israel, which has had nuclear weapons for decades, should do all they can to foment regime change by supporting the Iranian opposition. For years, Dagan was an almost satanic figure in the Arab press, portrayed as a pitiless killer of Arabs. An article published in the official Egyptian press, in 2008, charged him with “atrocities.” Yet Egypt, like Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states, is deeply apprehensive about a “Shia bomb,” and in January, 2010, when a nuclear scientist named Massoud Ali Mohammadi was assassinated in Tehran, Egypt’s largest-circulation newspaper, Al Ahram, published an article calling Dagan “Israel’s superman” and “the brains” behind the killing. “Without Dagan, the Iranian nuclear program would have been complete years ago,” Ashraf Abu al-Haul, the paper’s analyst of Palestinian affairs, wrote. Dagan, al-Haul went on admiringly, has been “able to accomplish feats no man can describe, from the Iranian issue and limiting the military force of the Syrian Army to facing Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad.” This ambivalence is evident, too, on the Israeli left. In 2008, the columnist Gideon Levy criticized Channel 2 when it declared Dagan Israel’s “man of the year.” (“Our man of the year is a declared killer,” Levy wrote. “Whether by box-cutter or car bomb, his craft is killing. His killer instincts are our source of pride, the peak of our creativity.”) Three years later, after Dagan went public with his criticism of Netanyahu, Levy celebrated Dagan for his “responsible and courageous act.” Dagan had close working relations with Sharon and with Ehud Olmert; he enjoyed no such rapport with Netanyahu, whom he came to think of as needlessly abandoning negotiations with the Palestinians and letting relations with Turkey decay. Netanyahu, for his part, was unhappy about a botched operation, in January, 2010, in which Israeli operatives carrying fake passports from other countries allegedly killed the Hamas chief of rocket procurement, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, while he was a guest at a five-star hotel in Dubai. There were no arrests, but, thanks to surveillance cameras at the hotel, the faces of the twenty-six suspected operatives were plastered all over the media.
When Dagan stepped down as director of the Mossad, a thousand intelligence officers and members of the government gathered at Tel Aviv University to celebrate his tenure. Dagan denies that he was forced out. “The Prime Minister knows I wanted to leave my post,” he said. “After eight and a half years, enough is enough.” Certainly no superlative was spared at the retirement reception. Shimon Peres, who had a monthly dinner date with Dagan, said that if the heads of all the world’s intelligence agencies were to gather they would nominate Dagan as the best of them. “Some people have a knife between their teeth,” Netanyahu said, according to the Israeli press accounts. “Meir has a rocket-propelled grenade between his teeth.” But Netanyahu’s tribute masked an incipient clash with Dagan and other security chiefs, who, in November, 2010, had told the Prime Minister and Barak, in a secret meeting, that a unilateral attack on Iran would not work and would lead to war. According to reports on Channel 10 and in Yediot Ahronot and to my own sources, the meeting took place at the Mossad in an atmosphere of whiskey, cigars, and acrimony. Barak was so angered by the opposition from Dagan, Yuval Diskin, and others that he said, “If this current command had been present in 1967, we wouldn’t have had a war.” (In 1967, the Israelis, fearing invasion, launched a preëmptive assault on Egypt and Syria.) Just days before stepping down, Dagan began what amounted to an extended public denunciation of Netanyahu’s Iran policy. The first sally came when he told some reporters at a farewell background briefing that an Israeli attack would be too dangerous and would fail to achieve its objective. A military censor told the reporters that they could publish nothing of what had been said, but, inevitably, the story quickly got out. In the months that followed—at conferences, and in speeches and interviews—Dagan became increasingly frank in his opposition to an attack. This was astonishing. The Israelis are accustomed to holding hearings after the fact: among the most famous are the investigations following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which the military was caught off guard by a joint Egyptian-Syrian attack and suffered deep losses before recovering; and the inquiry after the 1982 massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, in Beirut. There were also commissions of inquiry following the second Lebanon war, in 2006, and the invasion of Gaza, in 2008. Dagan told me that the military disaster of the Yom Kippur War had always haunted him, and that it had led him to go public now. “I was an Army captain in 1973 and I saw the discussions of our military and intelligence leaders,” he said. “None of them were stupid. This was Israel’s best team. Nevertheless, they made mistakes—mistakes that cost twenty-five hundred lives. I don’t want to find myself in a situation where I look back and I haven’t acted and spoken from my conscience. “Don’t be mistaken, I am not a liberal by point of view,” he went on. “If I thought the use of brute force on Iran would stop the nuclear threat in the region and to Israel, that would be one thing. I am judging things from a practical point of view.... You have to take into consideration the following questions about an Israeli attack: What would be achieved? What about five minutes after? And what are the consequences of such an attack?” Dagan answers those questions simply: “An Israeli bombing would lead to a regional war and solve the internal problems of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It would galvanize Iranian society behind the leadership and create unity around the nuclear issue. And it would justify Iran in rebuilding its nuclear project and saying, ‘Look, see, we were attacked by the Zionist enemy and we clearly need to have it.’ A bombing would be considered an act of war, and there would be an unpredictable counterattack against us. And the Iranians can call on their proxy, Hezbollah, which, with its rockets, can hit practically any target in Israel.” “I’ve never seen the corn this bad.” Dagan’s view that a unilateral Israeli strike would intensify, not diminish, the danger posed by Iran is now the general view of the dissident politicians and security chiefs. And, increasingly, Netanyahu and Barak have grown infuriated by the resistance. The statements of the national-security dissenters, Netanyahu has said, are “irresponsible and hurt the national security.” Recently, Netanyahu held a closed meeting with a group of reporters for the Israel Defense Forces radio station. According to a leaked account that appeared in Haaretz, Netanyahu alternately pounded his chest and the table in front of him as he declared, “If there is an investigative committee, I’ll say that I—I—am responsible.” He told the reporters that skeptics in the government have “been bringing me presentations prepared as if for an investigative committee. I tell them they should put away these slides, stop speaking for the historical record, and instead speak straight to the point.”
Senior Obama Administration officials say that they can’t discount Netanyahu and Barak’s threats to attack Iran unilaterally in the next few months, but that a more likely reason for the rhetoric is Israel’s desire to play “bad cop” in the international effort to pressure Iran. A kind of undeclared war has been raging between Iran and the West for many years, and the latest evidence is, on one side, the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists and, on the other, the killing of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, allegedly by Iran’s client Hezbollah. President Obama’s assurance to Netanyahu that his policy, when it comes to the Iranian nuclear project, is prevention, not containment, is already an Israeli victory—that is, Obama has accepted the premise that a nuclear Iran is not to be contemplated. In March, Obama backed up his statement that an Iranian bomb was “unacceptable” by telling Jeffrey Goldberg, of The Atlantic, “As President of the United States I don’t bluff.” Despite these guarantees, and despite the fact that both sides say that military and intelligence coöperation between the U.S. and Israel has never been tighter, the relationship is fraught. Netanyahu, who is so close to conservative American politicians and businessmen that he is said by some Israelis to talk with “a Republican accent,” distrusts Obama. Obama, in turn, has little doubt that the Israeli leader would greatly prefer to see Mitt Romney in the White House. Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate who is one of Romney’s biggest backers, owns an Israeli daily, Israel Hayom, that is so blatantly a Netanyahu mouthpiece that some Tel Aviv liberals call it Tishreen—the official newspaper of the Assad regime, in Syria. Clearly there is a political element to the drama. “Bibi looks at Obama and sees his ideological opposite,” Aluf Benn, the editor-in-chief of Haaretz, told me. “Obama looks at Bibi and sees Eric Cantor.” Netanyahu distrusts Obama not only because of their initial clashes over settlements and the Palestinian question but also for reasons of personality. Obama finds Netanyahu pedantic and arrogant; Netanyahu finds Obama naïve about the realities of the Middle East and diffident about Israel. “Obama has no special feeling for us” is a familiar refrain. A senior official in Jerusalem told me, “Bibi, by nature, doesn’t trust people and Obama is not exactly Mr. Warmth.” (Another official in Netanyahu’s office, however, insisted that such sentiments do not “correctly represent the Prime Minister’s views.”) Netanyahu also provides a historical dimension to his reluctance to rely on American promises. At a speech to AIPAC, in Washington, last March, he recounted how, in 1944, the U.S. War Department spurned a plea from the World Jewish Congress to bomb the death camps at Auschwitz. “Never again will we not be masters of the fate of our very survival,” he said. “We deeply appreciate the great alliance between our two countries. But when it comes to Israel’s survival we must always remain the masters of our fate.” Benn and many others believe that Netanyahu has a heroic conception of himself that is hard for Obama to understand or countenance. “Bibi wants to be the prophet, the man who saw the trouble coming like no other,” Benn said. “In his mind, he is Theodor Herzl, who foresaw the trouble coming in anti-Semitic Europe. He even thinks that he foresaw 9/11, and he was the one who saw that if we left Gaza we would be hit by rockets in Ashkelon. He sees himself as the visionary, always in dialogue with the history books. It doesn’t matter to Bibi that most people are not for bombing. He argues, ‘Look at all the naïve Jews in Europe in the late thirties who didn’t go to Palestine as Zionists or to America as immigrants. They were deluded.’ ” Netanyahu’s psychology has been shaped by Israeli history, too. In 1981, Begin, against the advice of Peres and other cabinet members, ordered his Air Force to bomb the Osirak nuclear reactor, in central Iraq. Thereafter, the policy that no country in the Middle East except Israel should get a nuclear weapon became known as “the Begin doctrine.” (Arguably, Iraq accelerated its program after the 1981 bombing and ended it only with the Gulf War, a decade later.) To be sure, such a mission in Iran would be more dangerous—there are many more installations, some of which are heavily reinforced and deep underground, and Iran’s capacity to counterattack is far stronger. Netanyahu and his aides readily acknowledge that America’s military, with its aircraft carriers, foreign bases, and Tomahawk missiles, is vastly superior to Israel’s and would have a much better chance of eliminating the Iranian nuclear installations if it ever comes to that. But Netanyahu shows little sign of trusting the President’s assurances. As one senior official told me, “The way North Korea was allowed to go nuclear sure doesn’t add to our confidence.” Netanyahu declined to speak to me. But Moshe Ya’alon, the Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs, echoed his boss’s view, telling me that if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, or even the capacity to build one, “we will witness nuclear chaos.” Iran would gain such a strategic advantage that its regional rivals—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt—would build their own bombs. Iran, Ya’alon said, might hesitate to drop a bomb on Israel, but it would use a bomb “as a nuclear umbrella to intensify its rogue activities” through Hezbollah and Hamas. Ya’alon is a tough but subtle operator, and he is known to be more reluctant than Netanyahu and Barak to launch a bombing campaign against Iran. “It is not our preference to do it ourselves,” he told me. “This is achievable without the military option, which I consider a last, last resort. But so far I don’t see that the Iranians are ready to give it up.” But isn’t proliferation inevitable? We’ve even learned to live with a bomb in Pyongyang. “North Korea has no aspiration to impose its regime and ideology globally,” Ya’alon replied. “It wanted a nuclear weapon to defend the regime and to exercise blackmail. Even Pakistan, which is complicated and dangerous enough, does not want to impose its regime globally. Iran is unique. “We face a fanatical, messianic, apocalyptic regime with the aspiration to defeat Western civilization,” Ya’alon said. “And in this picture Israel is the minor Satan and America is the great Satan.” People in Netanyahu’s circle recognize that, thanks to sanctions, Iran is hurting economically, that there are serious splits among the political and religious leaderships, and that there is a complicated political and ethnic opposition there, but they believe that the acquisition of a nuclear weapon would prolong the life of the regime. Only the opposition to Netanyahu trusts the United States to continue to press effectively against an Iranian bomb. “Iran is not just a danger to Israel but a real danger to the entire world,” Shimon Peres told me when we met, in Jerusalem. “People ask if Obama will meet a commitment, and no doubt he will.” The retired general told me, “I trust Obama more than I trust Netanyahu. Obama is an honest man. He’s made some stupid mistakes in the Middle East, but he’s learned, and he’s a serious man. Before Obama, the American military establishment had no plans, no preparations for Iran; now they do. And they have new weapons, too,” including thirty-thousand-pound “bunker-buster” bombs. The Israelis have spent many millions of dollars preparing for a potential attack and have been training for months, but their Air Force is, as the security dissidents repeatedly point out, weak compared with America’s. For Netanyahu, reliance on the United States smacks of timidity and a repudiation of national purpose. As Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University, put it to me one morning in Jerusalem, “If Netanyahu fails, in his terms the entire raison d’être of Israel falls apart—meaning, if we cannot face up to the new Hitler, who am I? Who are we? At this point, he would have to be courageous not to attack Iran.”
In the meantime, Netanyahu has all but given up on making even marginal progress on the Palestinian question. Around his office there is a free-floating slogan: “Iran is the great stage. Everything else is management.” His bellicose rhetoric tends to overshadow one political crisis after another, whether it is the increasing influence of the ultra-Orthodox or the power of a small number of families at the center of the economy or violence directed against Arabs in the West Bank or west Jerusalem. He faces minimal electoral pressure. The Labor Party is small and somnambulant. The left is quiet and diminished. “Netanyahu has numbed Israel,” Halbertal said. “Israel is numb.” Many Israelis on the left argue that, while Iran and proliferation are undoubtedly dangerous, the occupation, which has lasted since 1967, is the country’s true existential threat. But, since the West Bank is relatively calm, and there are no negotiations between Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, the issue all but disappears from public consciousness, as if behind a tall fence. “The Palestinian issue, for most people, is utterly boring,” Avi Issacharoff, who covers Palestinian affairs for Haaretz, told me. “The trouble the Palestinians are facing |
of these important German guests in Budapest exposes the ‘rescue’ work of Becher in its true light. It reveals also the extent of Kastner’s involvement in the inner circle of the chief German war criminals. Just as the Nazi war criminals knew they needed an alibi and hoped to achieve it by the rescue of a few Jews at the eleventh hour, so Kastner also needed an alibi for himself. Collaboration between the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee and the Exterminators of the Jews was solidified in Budapest and Vienna. Kastner’s duties were part and parcel of the general duties of the S.S. In addition to its Extermination Department and Looting Department, the Nazi S.S. opened a Rescue Department headed by Kastner. All these extermination, robbery and rescue activities of the S.S. were coordinated under the management of Heinrich Himmler. (ibid) Judge Halevi continues: Kastner perjured himself knowingly in his testimony before this court when he denied he had interceded in Becher's behalf. Moreover, he concealed the important fact that he interceded for Becher in the name of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish world Congress. As to the contents of Kastner's affidavit, it was enough for the defense to prove Becher was a war criminal. It was up to the prosecution to remove Becher from this status, if they wished to negate the affidavit. The Attorney General admitted in his summation that Becher was a war criminal. The lies in the contents of Kastner's affidavit, the lies in his testimony concerning the document, and Kastner's knowing participation in the activities of Nazi war criminals, and his participation in the last minute fake rescue activities - all these combine to show one overwhelming truth - that this affidavit was not given in good faith. Kastner knew well, as he himself testified, that Becher had never stood up against the stream of Jewish extermination, as Kastner had declared in the affidavit.
The aims of Becher and his superior, Himmler, were not to save Jews but to serve the Nazi regime with full compliance. There is no truth and no good faith in Kastner's testimony, ‘I never doubted for one moment the good intention of good Becher.’ It is clear that the positive recommendation by Kastner, not only in his own name but also in the name of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish World Congress was of decisive importance for Becher. Kastner did not exaggerate when he said that Becher was released by the Allies because of his personal intervention. The lies in the affidavit of Kastner and the contradictions and various pretexts, which were proven to be lies, were sufficient to annul the value of his statements and to prove that there was no good faith in his testimony in favor of this German war criminal. Kastner's affidavit in favor of Becher was a willfully false affidavit given in favor of a war criminal to save him from trial and punishment in Nuremberg. Therefore, the defendant, Malchiel Greenwald, was correct in his accusations against Rudolf Kastner in the first, second, and fourth of his statements. (ibid) Judge Halevi reverts to the meeting of Kastner with the S.S. officers Becher and Rudolf Hoess, commandant ofat the time when the ‘new line’ of rescuing Jews was revealed by Hoess.He says:> Judge Halevi's verdict found Malchiel Greenwald generally innocent of libel against Kastner, but fined him one Israeli pound (FIFTY PENCE) for the one unproven accusation - that Kastner had actually collected money from his Nazi partners for his aide to their slaughter program. The judge also ordered the Government of Israel to pay Greenwald two hundred Israeli pounds (one hundred pounds) as court costs. 26 In fairness to Kastner it should be mentioned that as well as having been unpaid, it was never established that he ever wore S.S. uniform. Nevertheless, this verdict, and the evidence on which it was based, completely establishes the truth of everything said on 3CR about the matter. If the story ended there, it would only prove conclusively that the individual Kastner was a collaborator and the Israeli Government had attempted to defend him, although facts brought out in the trial pointed to much more than that. But the story does not end there. 5.4 The Reaction Public opinion in Israel was almost unanimous in demanding that Kastner and his associates should be put on trial. Remember that up to now it was Kastner's accuser who was on trial. The Communist Party newspaper Kol Haam (Voice of the People) wrote: ‘All those whose relatives, were butchered by the Germans in Hungary know now clearly that Jewish hands helped the mass murder.’ ( 23 June 1955 ) In the authoritative Israeli newspaper Haaretz., the leading political journalist, Dr. Moshe Keren wrote: ‘Kastner must be brought to trial as a Nazi collaborator. And at this trial, Kastner should defend himself as a private citizen, and not be defended by the Israeli Government...’ ( 14 July 1955 ) Haboker, the pro-Government General Zionist party paper stated: ‘The public wants to know the real facts about Kastner, and not about him alone. The only way to find out the truth is to put all the Rescue Committee people on trial and give them a chance to offer their defense.’ ( 23 June 1955 ) But public opinion was not quite unanimous. The problem with bringing Kastner and his associates to trial was that his associates were the Government of Israel. As the evening paper Yediot Aharanot said: ‘If Kastner is brought to trial the entire government faces a total political and national collapse - as a result of what such a trial may disclose.’ ( 23 June 1955 ) Accordingly, the Government of Israel did not put Kastner on trial, instead it filed an appeal against the acquittal of Greenwald for criminal libel. As Dr. Karlebach wrote in Israel's largest evening newspaper, Maariv: ‘What is, going on here? The Attorney General has to mobilize all the government power, appeal himself, in court, to justify and defend collaboration with Himmler! And in order to defend a quisling, the government must drag through the streets one of the grimmest stories of our history!’
‘At 11 P.M. the verdict was given. At 11 A.M. next morning the government announces the defense of Kastner will be renewed - an appeal filed. What exemplary expediency! Since when does this government possess such lawyer-genius who can weigh in one night the legal chances of an appeal on a detailed, complex verdict of three hundred pages?’ (21. June 1955)'27 At, the appeal hearings before the Supreme Court, the Attorney General of Israel, Chaim Cohen, explained clearly why the Government of Israel was defending Kastner so strongly: The man Kastner does not stand here as a private individual. He was a recognized representative, official or non-official of the Jewish National Institutes in Palestine and of the Zionist Executive; and I come here in this court to defend the representative of our national institutions.28 The truth of this statement cannot be denied. Kastner's collaboration was not that of an individual. It was the collaboration of the Zionist leadership. So far, it has only been established that the Government of Israel continued to support a Nazi collaborator after the facts about his collaboration had been conclusively established in an Israeli Court. But the story gets worse. The Supreme Court of Israel unanimously found that Becher was indeed a Nazi war criminal and that Kastner had without justification, and in the name of the Jewish Agency, helped Becher to escape justice. On this point Greenwald was acquitted of libel and Kastner was not ‘fully rehabilitated’. The Supreme Court also accepted the facts established in the lower Court - that Kastner deliberately concealed the truth about Auschwitz from the majority of Hungarian Jews in exchange for Nazi permission to take a thousand or so to Palestine. Again, Kastner was far from being ‘fully rehabilitated’. 5.5 The Majority Judgment But now comes the really nasty bit. After unanimously acknowledging these facts, the Supreme Court of Israel, by a majority of three to two, found that Kastner's actions were morally justifiable and convicted Greenwald of criminal libel for calling this ‘collaboration’. In saying that 3CR broadcasts concealed the fact that Kastner had been fully rehabilitated by the Israeli Supreme Court, Dr. Foster is totally missing the point. Kastner's actions only proved that he was a Nazi collaborator it is the defense of these actions by the Government and Courts of Israel that prove conclusively that Zionism approves of Nazi collaboration. The majority of the Supreme Court of Israel did not rehabilitate Kastner. They joined him. Let us read from the majority Judgment of Supreme Court Judge Shlomo Chesin:...What point was there in telling the people boarding the trains in Kluj, people struck by fate and persecuted, as to what awaits them at the end of their Journey...Kastner spoke in detail of the situation, saying, 'The Hungarian Jew was a branch which long ago dried up on the tree.’ This vivid description coincides with the testimony of another witness about the Hungarian Jews, ‘This was a big Jewish community in Hungary, without any ideological Jewish backbone.’ (Moshe Shweiger, a Kastner aide in Budapest, protocol 465) I fully agree with my friend, Judge Agranat, when he states that, ‘The Jews of Hungary, including those in the countryside, were not capable, neither physically nor mentally, to carry out resistance operations with force against the deportation scheme’…From this point of view no rescue achievement could have resulted by disclosing the Auschwitz news to the Jewish leaders there, and this…is a consideration which one can properly conclude that Kastner had in front of his eyes. …And I take one more step. I am certain that the silence of Kastner when he arrived in Kluj was premeditated and calculated and did not result from this great despair because of the helplessness of the Jewish community. Even then, I say, this is still not considered willful collaboration and assistance in the extermination, because all the signs indicate that Kastner’s efforts were aimed at rescue and rescue on a big scale…And towards the end I take one last step. In doing so I go very far and say that if even if Kastner ordered himself to keep silent knowingly, in submission to the strong will of the Nazis, in order to save a few Jews from hell – the is still no proof that he stained his hands by collaborating with the enemies of his people and carrying out their plan to exterminate most of the Jewish community in Hungary. Even if, through these activities of his – or rather, through omissions – the extermination became easier. And as to the moral issue, the question is not whether a man is allowed to kill many in order to save a few, or vice versa. The question is altogether in another sphere and should be defined as follows: a man is aware that a whole community is waiting its doom. He is allowed to make efforts to save a few, although part of his efforts involve concealment of truth from the many; or, should he disclose the truth to many though it is his best option that this way everybody will perish. I think that the answer is clear. What good will the blood of the few bring if everybody is to perish?...As I said, I am not arguing with the basic factual findings of the learned President of the Jewish District Court (Judge Halevi) but it seems to me, with all due respect, that his findings do not, as of necessity, demand the conclusion he has arrived at. That is to say collaboration on the part of Kastner in the extermination of the Jews. And that they better coincide with bad leadership both from a moral and public point of view… In my opinion, one can say outright that if you find out that kastner collaborated with the enemy because he did not disclose to the people who boarded the trains in Kluj that they were being led to extermination, one has to put on trial today Dan zig, Herman, Hanzi, Brand, Revis and Marton and many more leaders and half-leaders who gagged themselves in an hour of crisis and did not inform others of what was known to them and did not warn and did not cry out of the coming danger… Because of all this I cannot confirm the conclusion of the District Court with regard to the accusation that Greenwald has thrown on Kastner of collaboration with the Nazis in exterminating the Jewish people in Hungary during the last war.’29
In other words, the Court approved of Kastner’s contempt for the Hungarian Jews and could not allow him to be condemned for doing exactly what many other Zionist leaders and half-leaders did – concealing their knowledge of the Nazi extermination plans so that Jews would board the trains to Auschwitz peacefully while their Zionist ‘leaders’ boarded a different train for Palestine. 4.6 The minority Judgment
It cannot be said that all top Zionist leaders actively approved of Nazi collaboration in this way. Indeed the most precise answer to this sickening judgment of Judge Chesin is provided in the minority judgment of Supreme Court Judge Moshe Silberg: ‘I do not say that he was the only man who possessed information among the leaders. It is quite possible that somebody else as well does not have a clear conscience with regard to this concealment. But we are dealing here with the guilt of Kastner and we do not have to make judgments on the guilt of others… The declaration of the learned Attorney General therefore shrinks into an opinion…'Kastner was convinced and believed that there was no ray of hope for the Jews of Hungary, almost for none of them, and as he as a result of his personal despair, did not disclose the secret of the extermination in order not to endanger or frustrate the rescue of the few – therefore he acted in good faith and should not be accused of collaborating with the Nazis in expediting the extermination of the Jews, even though, in fact, he brought about its result.’ I am compelled to state that it is very difficult for me to conceive such an intention. Is this good faith? Can a single man, even in cooperation with some of his friends, yield to despair on behalf of and without the knowledge of 800,000 other people? This is, in my opinion, the decisive consideration in the problem facing us. The charge emanating from the testimony of the witnesses against Kastner is that had they known of the Auschwitz secret, then thousands or tens of thousands would have been able to save their lives by local, partial, specific or indirect rescue operations like local revolts, resistance, escapes, hidings, concealment of children with Gentiles, forging of documents, ransom money, bribery, etc - and when this is the case and when one deals with many hundreds of thousands, now does a human being, a mortal, reject with, complete certainty and with an extreme 'no' the efficiency of all the many and varied rescue ways? How can he examine the tens of thousands of possibilities? Does he decide, instead of you? Indeed, he who can act with such a usurpation of the last hope of hundreds of thousands is not entitled to claim good faith at his defense. The penetrating question quo warrento is a good enough answer to a claim of such good faith... If the superintendent of a big hospital lets thousands of sick people die so that he may devote himself to the sure rescue of - one soul, he will come out guilty, at least morally, even if - it is proven that he as an individual erroneously thought that there was no hope of saving the other patients. He is a collaborator with the angel of death. Either a complete atrophy of the soul or a blind involvement with complete loss of senses and proportion in his small but personal rescue operation could bring a man to such a gigantic, hazardous play. And if all this is not enough to annul the claim of good faith which was put before us on behalf, of Kastner by the Attorney General, then Kastner himself - comes and annuls it altogether. Not only did he never make this claim, but his own words prove the contrary. He writes in his report to the Jewish Agency that the Committee sent emissaries to many ghettoes in the countryside and pleaded with them to organize escapes and to refuse to board the trains. And though the story of these pleadings is untrue, and the silence of Kastner in Kluj is proven, the very uttering of these statements entirely contradicts the claim that Kastner had concealed the news about the fate of the ghetto inmates in good faith and only as a result of - his complete despairing of the chances of escaping or resisting the Germans. You can not claim at the same time helplessness and activity. Anyway, such a claim is not convincing... We can sum up with these three facts: 1. That the Nazis didn't want to have a great revolt - 'Second Warsaw' - nor small revolts, and their passion was to have the extermination machine working smoothly without resistance this fact was known to Kastner from the best source - from Eichmann himself...And he had additional proofs of that when he witnessed all the illusionary and misleading tactics which were being taken by the Nazis from the first moment of occupation. 2. That the most efficient means to paralyze the resistance with - or the escape of a victim, is to conceal from him the plot of the coming murder. This fact is known to every man and one does not need any proof or evidence for this. 3. That he, Kastner, in order to carry out the rescue plan for the few prominents, fulfilled knowingly and without good faith the said desire of the Nazis, thus expediting the work of exterminating the masses. And also the rescue of Becher by Kastner… He who is capable of rescuing this Becher from hanging proves that the atrocities of this great war criminal were not so horrifying or despicable in his eyes...I couldn't base the main guilt of Kastner on this fact had it been alone, but when it is attached even from afar to the whole scene of events it throws retroactive light on the whole affair and serves as a dozen proofs of our conclusion. 30 (Supreme Court Judge, Moshe Silberg, 1957) > 5.7 Conclusion If that had been the majority judgment, one could say that whatever their attitudes to the Arabs, and whatever their past behavior might have been under pressure, the Zionist leadership today did not advocate collaboration with the Nazis. One could then at least understand the complaints by Mr. Bloch President of the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, about the ‘dragging in of alleged episodes in the history of Jewish/Nazi relationships.’ But Judge Silberg's judgment was that of a minority. The Kastner case is therefore not an alleged episode in past history, being ‘dragged in’ to discredit an opponent. It is a continuing controversy in which the top Zionist leadership of Israel stand indicted of continuing to publicly defend collaboration with the Nazis in the extermination of Jews. Despite the unanimous finding of the Supreme Court of Israel that Kurt Becher was a major war criminal, the Jewish Agency (World Zionist Organization) refused to withdraw the fraudulent certificate Kastner gave on their behalf, which saved Becher from hanging, and allowed him to remain a free man in West Germany, the head of several corporations and with an estimated personal worth of 30 million. Becher has even used his certification as a ‘good’ SS officer to give evidence in support of his associates at other war crimes trials in West Germany. Since the prosecution, representing the Israeli Government, agreed with the Supreme Court that Becher was a major war criminal, one can only presume that the Israeli Government did not want him put on trial for fear of what might come out. Likewise, none of Kastner's associates on the Zionist Relief and Rescue Committee or his bosses in the Jewish Agency have ever been put on trial as demanded by Israeli public opinion. Let alone the hundreds of ‘prominents’ who helped Kastner to reassure the Hungarian Jews that they were going to Kenyermeze and not Auschwitz, in exchange for tickets on the one train that took them eventually to Palestine. As for Kastner himself, he will cause no further embarrassment to the Zionist leadership with his undisputed claims that everything he did was approved by the Jewish Agency (World Zionist Organization) leadership in Palestine. He is, as Dr. Foster so delicately puts it, ‘now dead’. Or putting it less delicately, on 3 March, 1957 he was shot by Zeer Eckstein immediately after the appeal hearings were concluded, and before the judgment ‘rehabilitating’ him was delivered. Eckstein was not a Hungarian avenger. He was a paid undercover agent of the Israeli secret service. 31 Clearly this issue has a major indirect relevance to the Arab-Israeli dispute. Apart from countering Israel's cynical use of the Holocaust as a propaganda weapon, it answers a very real concern that many people have about the State of Israel and the Jews. This concern is whether, if Jews had a State of their own during the Holocaust many more could have been saved, and whether this is not an essential future consideration, at least as an insurance policy. The facts of the Kastner case show that the very existence of the Jewish Agency (World Zionist Organization) was an actual help to the Nazis and that more could have been saved if the Zionist movement had not existed. Having a State that approves of actions like those of Kastner for an insurance policy, is like using petrol for a fire extinguisher. Zionism is not the answer to anti-Semitism, but a cowardly proposal to run away from it. The only answer to anti-Semitism is to fight back.> We shall go on to prove this in detail. Next: THE BACKGROUND TO COLLABORATION back to CONTENTSHi brothers and sisters in iron! How have you been doing? Been strict with your dieting and training? I hope you are. 😉 Well, on my side, if you’re wondering how’s my progress, here’s a lil update.
Yup, that’s me, as of 3rd October 2012. I now weigh 84kg, but my weight (along with strength) is increasing rapidly. This is the heaviest I’ve ever been and I’m glad to say I’m also leaner than I was the last time I bulked. I plan to go up to the 90+kg region without becoming a puffy boy. Haha.
Diet
Diet wise, I’m eating really big. I’m not counting calories or macronutrients but I’m constantly stuffing myself with tonnes of nutritious clean food like eggs, beef, veggies, whey, almonds, protein bars and oats (yes, the farts are really bad). I’ve also upgraded my supplements to the highest of highest quality, premium brand – Maximuscle. For post-workouts, I use Maximuscle’s Cyclone. It’s basically your fast-absorbing protein (only hydrolyzed whey and whey isolates), creatine and glucose mix but with additional powerful ingredients such as beta ecdysterone and HMB. Google these nutrients. I’m sure you’ll be impress.
Training
My training has never been more efficient. I’ve been reading on many theories, researches, logs, interviews or whatever I can have my hands on, assessing, analyzing, evaluating and critiquing them and I’ve created a very, umm.. should I say, unconventional training method. At first I was doubtful about it, cause it’s kinda.. weird, but now I love it. It’s brief, so there’s no overtraining; progressive, so you’ll see strength gains in every workout (provided you consume enough clean calories); focuses on fascia stretching and most of all, it works. I’ve been on it for 4 weeks now and I went from 77kg to 84kg. And that doesn’t include the post-contest bloat because I started in September, way after my last contest. What is it? Sorry guys, I’ll have to keep it a secret for now, but I will be coaching it to clients who takes up my personal training services. And of course, I will keep on tweaking it to make it better. 🙂
Goals
Now this is the part I LOVE to talk about! So, what is my next big goal? Well, I wanna win Mr Kuala Lumpur 2013 overall and then Mr Malaysia 2013 overall. Wait, some of you guys are probably thinking, “Dude! You’re f*cking crazy! You’ll be only 23 and there are so many other guys in the game who outsize you by a lot!”. To you guys, I must say that you are absolutely…
RIGHT!!
I AM outsized by many competitors in the Malaysian bodybuilding scene. And it’d probably be a more practical strategy if I lower my goal to say, winning my category at Mr Kuala Lumpur and perhaps getting 2nd or 3rd at Mr Malaysia. But I won’t do that. Why? Cause even though my goals are hard to reach, they are what I TRULY want. I WANT TO WIN! I don’t want to settle for second. I really want to get FIRST! And that almost-impossible goal of mine is bringing out an impossible inner strength in me to keep on going. It’s pushing me so hard like nothing else before. When I’m walking to the gym and listening to my motivational playlist, it’s all I can think about and I sometimes even find my eyes tearing (serious). It makes me mad. It makes me happy. It makes me excited. It brings out the beast in me. It’s making me train harder and diet stricter. When such a goal is able trigger so many emotions in you, why settle for anything less?
So will I achieve my goal? Or will I fail miserably? Like Fabodylous on Facebook to find out what happens eventually.
P.s. To those living in Singapore, look at the ads and banners on MRT trains and stations. Soon, you might see a really familiar face. 😉As racial martyrs go, you could hardly do worse than Sylville Smith.
He was no Trayvon Martin or Tamir Rice, no unarmed innocent gunned down. No, Milwaukee police say Smith was an armed 23-year-old with a lengthy arrest record — drugs, weapons, robbery — who bolted from a traffic stop Saturday afternoon. They say he ran a short distance, then wheeled around, gun in hand, refusing orders to drop it. Whereupon the police officer shot and killed him.
“I’m not going to say he was an angel,” Smith’s godmother, Katherine Mahmoud, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The officer who killed him was a year older than Smith and black, like him. Though perceptions are obviously subject to change once body-cam footage is released, there is, at this writing, no reason to believe the officer acted improperly and, indeed, no serious allegation that he did. As such, this incident seems an unlikely focal point for public outrage.
That it became one anyway, that Smith’s death sparked two nights of arson, shooting and general unrest, is an ominous sign. It suggests the rise of a species of anger inimical to any hope of racial reconciliation in Milwaukee — and cities far beyond.
A certain amount of anger in the face of injustice is not necessarily a bad thing. Such anger — defined as a passionate impatience with unfair status quo — is often a necessary catalyst for progress. But when there is no progress even after long years, anger can intermix with frustration and despair and become something much less constructive.
It can become something that doesn’t listen, doesn’t reason, doesn’t even hope. Something that simply explodes.
African Americans in Wisconsin’s largest city say Smith’s death was the last straw after years of racially stratified policing. It is hardly immaterial that an officer was not charged just two years ago in the controversial shooting death of a mentally ill black man. Or that the department is under U.S. Justice Department review which, to its credit, it requested.
Who will be shocked if that probe finds what other probes have found in cop shops around the country: patterns of institutionalized racism that corrode public trust and impinge the ability of police to do their jobs.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency, when such probes are done, to treat the affected department as unique, an outlier. Think of the person who sees a drop of water here, a drop of water there, another drop over there, yet somehow never perceives the storm.
It’s worth noting, too, that Mike Crivello, president of the Milwaukee police union, issued a statement after the shooting to “denounce” the idea of racism in the department’s ranks. Of course, no institution of any size can credibly make a blanket claim of freedom from bias, but that didn’t stop him. That should tell you something.
Here’s the thing: You get tired of being treated as an unreliable witness to your own experience. You get sick of not being heard. Black Milwaukee has complained for years about biased policing. Yet the police chief pronounced himself “surprised” by this uprising. Apparently, he hasn’t been listening.
The rest of us would do well to avoid that mistake. If this unrest is an omen, it is also an opportunity — for civic self-examination and accountability, for giving the people a voice, for listening to what they have to say. For making change.
This violence, following what might well have been a justified shooting, was tragic and troubling. But it also made one thing starkly clear. African Americans have been demanding justice a very long time.
And they’re getting tired of asking nicely.Ford, using the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as a stage – instead of the upcoming big auto show in Detroit – has formally introduced the Ford Electric, its first all-electric passenger car. The company said the car, to be manufactured for North American sales at its plant in Wayne, Mich., will launch by late this year.
Mindful of possible public reluctance to move away from the familiarity of gasoline-powered cars, Ford said the five-door hatchback on its global C-car platform was “a real car,” and offered up reassuring adjectives like agile, sporty and responsive. And yet, befitting the venue where it was introduced, Ford put its greatest energy behind emphasizing the technological side of the Focus Electric.
The company said the car “uses a high-tech driver interface to help drivers optimize range and experience the freedom of fuel-free driving.” Ford was a bit coy about the car’s range – which can be tricky business with electrics, with so much dependent on how the car is operated – but it has said it was targeting a range of up to 100 miles for the vehicle. In its press release, Ford said the new EV will provide “enough range to cover the majority of daily driving habits of Americans,” with a “mile-per-gallon equivalent better than Chevrolet Volt and competitive with other battery electric vehicles.”
Ford also outlined a number of smart features – features that have been promised by companies like ECOtality and Coulomb – hoping to build charging networks, but that come with the Focus Electric. For instance, Ford unveiled a smart-phone and Web application, MyFord Mobile, through which drivers can view the charging status of their car, control the charging process or find the nearest charging station. The app could also be used to fire up the car’s heating and cooling system remotely before heading out on a drive.
Ford also touted what it called “value charging,” a smart feature developed with Microsoft that allows the vehicle to be plugged in and programmed to draw its charge during off-peak periods, when electricity is cheaper. This is another feature the charging companies have talked about.
Like the other new electrics, the Focus Electric can charge off a standard 120-volt plug, but slowly. For faster charging, Ford said Best Buy would sell and the store’s Geek Squad would install a 240-volt home charging station for approximately $1,499, a good bit lower than the $2,200 Nissan is asking to get a charger through Nissan dealers. Another advantage Ford claimed over the Leaf: “Ford’s on-board 6.6-kilowatt charger allows for full charge at home with the 240-volt outlet in three to four hours – charging in half the time as the Nissan Leaf.”
No word yet on how much the Focus Electric will cost.
Like what you are reading? Follow us on RSS, Twitter and Facebook to learn more and join the green technology discussion. Have a story idea or correction for this story? Drop us a line through our contact form.Draw Something screencaps featuring Misha Collins and/or Castiel and assorted members of the SPN cast. and maybe a lot of Jensen Ackles.
Click on the "draws" link or the "draw cas" tag to see them all at once, "draw misha" for the ones based on photos of misha collins appearing even more outrageous in his daily life than he does playing a mystical supernatural creature on tv. The brain poops link will take you to things i made that aren't Draw Somethings bc i do as i'm told.
I play as skaloo. i welcome all players; let me know if you'd like to play the draw spn version. fair warning: i return spn draws really s-l-o-w-l-y (srsly, i suck to play against unless you want to play the anything goes version) bc i've drawn a couple hundred of these and me no brain too good with new ideas for the same old words anymore.
i also post pictures of perfect, gorgeous jensen ackles in shots where i catch him looking like the civilization-conquering robot i suspect he is.
also posting whatever shiny objects catch my eye, like my header, which is not a screencap but is instead what i like to think of as misha collins's public persona summarized in gif format: drunk, happy to see everyone, and moving by in a magical, excited blur.
omg what a gasbag. shut up, nobody is reading all this shit.
a few more points: i don't tag for spoilers. i don't get the new episodes until 3 hours after it first airs, which is plenty of time for most ppl who don't live in EST to download the episode and watch it before i can. i don't make stuff out of screencaps or promo pictures usually until days after it's been released, so. and to the assbutt who stole my url while i had on a holiday name: you suck.You may remember celebrated manicurist Nonie Creme from a little venture called Butter London; she was the founding creative director of the brand. Her past in prestige product development and color-mixing has led to her newest venture, Nonie Creme Colour Prevails (sold exclusively through Walgreens), which encourages multiuse (think: 2-in-1’s like the Eye Design Shadow/Liner Duo) and experimentation (the Lash Ombre Mascara promises to be a game-changer). Though her expansive line includes makeup and a not-yet-released semi-permanent hair dye, it’s the Nail Lacquers that naturally hold sway. On first glance, the brush handle seems purely an aesthetic choice, but Creme assures that the angled butterfly wing that is synonymous with the line makes polish-painting a real breeze. “Truthfully, I used my daughter’s Play-Doh [to come up with the shape] and kept molding and remolding it to find that perfect fit,” she laughs. “Finally, when I had what made the most sense for you to use easily with your nondominant hand, I sent it off to the manufacturer. Yes, I sent a Play-Doh mold off to them! They knew me by then; they got it!”
Though learning how to polish with this beautiful—and ergonomic—brush will take a few minutes to grasp (read on to learn how to hold it!), Creme promises you’ll be luxuriating in all 35 of her 5-free color offerings in no time. And you can: Though high-end in formulation and packaging, the price point is something we can all appreciate; the “masstige” polishes are a wallet-friendly $8 while the most expensive piece, a large eye shadow palette, tops out at $19. “I want to make beauty and quality accessible,” Creme notes. With Colour Prevails, she’s poised to deliver on this sentiment in spades.
How to Hold the Colour Prevails Brush:
Yes, it’s pretty—but the Colour Prevails polish cap is much more than a pretty face. The patented, ergonomically designed brush allows for complete control over the handle. Here’s how to use it: Hold the cap similarly to the way you would hold a pen by placing your pointer finger over the top bend of the wing. Then, place your thumb on one side and rest your middle finger on the back. Now, polish to your heart’s content! —Karie L. Frost
Images: Christine BlackburneThe most recent updates can be found at the bottom of this page. If you've never been here before, read on...
Who I Am My name is Tom Locke. I'm not poor; I'm not rich. I'm just an average guy. In fact, who I am is actually irrelevant to this experiment. I just figured I'd introduce myself for the sake of formality. How This Started I was sitting around one day, skimming through a pile of bills that I needed to pay. I looked over at a new, unopened roll of stamps that I had sitting in front of me, and I thought to myself, "$39... for a roll of stamps? Geez... You can't get much for $39 nowadays. Or can you...?" The Idea The way I looked at it, if I took $39 and went to buy groceries, I wouldn't be able to get all that much. On the flipside, if I took $39 to a casino and lost it all, I wouldn't be all that upset. With that said, I decided I was going to try something — I was going to take my roll of stamps and send 100 letters to 100 different companies, asking for free stuff. I figured that I couldn't do any worse than blowing the $39 at a casino, and who knows... maybe a few of these places would actually send me something good. My Initial Goal My initial goal was a little different than what I actually ended up doing. When I started this experiment, I'd planned on walking around my house, grabbing various products (100 total), and pulling the mailing address off of each one. Easy, no? No. This proved to be way more difficult than I'd anticipated. First off, most of the products I picked up had the company's city, state, and zip code on them, but no actual address. When I was lucky enough to find a product with an address on it, it ended up being an address I already had — 90% of the products in |
is Patten's favourite pipe tune, as said by himself on a BBC Asia Today programme.[5]
The tune has been performed by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, and featured in the album, Spirit of the Glen, which won a Classical Brit award in 2009.[6] The song has been performed at numerous Scottish cultural events, including Scotland's Rugby Union games.[1] It is also a popular wedding song.
Lyrics [ edit ]
There is only one set of lyrics registered with PRS and MCPS, written by Ben Kelly in 1990.[7] Other versions have been tried but this version is the one used at the Scottish Rugby games and other ceremonies. They describe a moment in history when James VI of Scotland became James I of England and in doing so united all the land and feuding clans for the first and probably the only time.Story highlights Australian central bank to invest 5% of foreign reserves in Chinese bonds
Bond investment is Australia's newest economic move tying country to China
Australia set up direct currency link with China earlier this April, following U.S., Japan
Chile, Japan, Malaysia all hold renminbi assets, some referred to as "dim sum" bonds
The Australian central bank plans to invest about 5 per cent of its foreign reserves in Chinese government bonds, in the latest move to build closer economic ties between the two countries.
"This decision to invest in China is an important one. It reflects the broader economic relationship between China and Australia and our increasing financial ties", Philip Lowe, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, said in a speech on Wednesday in Shanghai. "It provides greater diversification of our investments and will help with our understanding of the Chinese financial markets."
Earlier this month, Australia became only the third country to establish a direct currency trading link with China, after the US and Japan. The RBA and the People's Bank of China also set up a currency swap facility in March 2012. The RBA had around A$38.2bn ($39bn) in foreign reserves at the end of March.
China is Australia's top export destination, and its biggest source of imports. Last year, more than a quarter of Australia's exports -- mainly commodities -- went to China, up from less than 5 per cent during the 1990s, according to the RBA.
Australia will join a small but growing band of central banks that have looked to China to diversify their foreign reserves.
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Chile, Japan, and Malaysia all hold renminbi assets, often in the form of offshore bonds -- known as "dim sum" bonds -- while Nigeria's central bank holds around 10 per cent of its reserves in the Chinese currency.
Recent regulatory changes have opened up China's onshore bond and equity markets to global investors through the renminbi qualified institutional investor (RQFII) quota scheme.
Foreign investors were previously limited to investing in the equity market, and to using US dollars. Mr Lowe said the PBoC had already approved a quota for the RBA to invest.
In March last year, Japan became the first major developed country to receive approval to invest directly in Chinese sovereign debt.
China has sought to open up new investment channels for renminbi holders as part of its efforts to internationalise its currency. Limited investment avenues have been one factor deterring foreign companies from receiving trade earnings in the Chinese currency.
But Mr Lowe said he was optimistic that once some of the existing constraints were overcome, the renminbi would "become the invoicing currency of choice for many businesses on both sides of our trading relationship".
Last year, around 12 per cent of China's trade was settled in renminbi, but that is forecast to rise to about 15 per cent this year by Deutsche Bank.Paramedics are set for pay rises worth at least £4,400 from the Department of Health and NHS Employers amid trade unions’ concerns that their members were not being paid properly for their life-saving work.
About 12,000 of the health workers – who are trained in emergency medical care and first aid, but not to the level of a qualified doctor – will be affected by the agreement, which will increase starting salaries from £21,909 to £26,302.
Under the terms of the deal, most paramedics, including ambulance crews, will move up the pay scale. However, union leaders have warned that the change may not be enough to staunch a steady drain of workers leaving the ambulance service.
While Christina McAnea, the Unison union’s head of health, backed the new pay deal, she added: “The banding issue alone may not solve the drain of paramedics from the ambulance service, but it will certainly make it a little easier for trusts to hold on to experienced staff.”
The pay rise comes as the UK faces a critical shortage of paramedics, which has left at least one trust paying £30 an hour for agency staff – almost double the rate given to staff workers – and another seeking permission from immigration officials to poach 250 workers from Australia and New Zealand.
Paramedics have reported working under tremendous pressure as a result of increasing demand and a healthcare system battered by cuts. Many say they continue working well past the end of their 12-hour shifts, and rarely get meal breaks. At the end of 2015, a survey of 3,200 paramedics, commissioned by the GMB, Unison and Unite unions, found that three-quarters said they were planning to quit the NHS.
The DoH said the deal had been the result of several years’ negotiation between government officials and unions to thrash out how best to recruit and retain ambulance staff. It goes hand in hand with plans to modernise the role of paramedics, including expectations that they will carry out more treatment at the scene of emergencies, and take patients to medical centres other than hospitals, a spokesman said.
He added that 2,200 more paramedics had been recruited since 2010, and the number of training contracts had been increased by 60%.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, said: “In recognition of their increased responsibilities, we have agreed to look at rebanding around 12,000 paramedics where their job description matches the requirements of the new band six profile, moving them up the pay scale and making sure we are able to better recruit and retain paramedics in the future to ensure patients will continue to get the very best care.”
Sharon Holder, national officer of the GMB general trade union, said: “GMB has campaigned for many years to ensure all ambulance staff receive fair pay. This agreement is a step in the right direction.
“The GMB is pleased the Department of Health has finally realised paramedics need to be paid properly.”69 SHARES Share Tweet Google Whatsapp Digg Reddit Stumbleupon Mail
Chelsea’s title defence has gotten under way in mixed fashion. After suffering a shock home defeat to Burnley, the Blues have come back strong finding last season’s form and winning their next two games, first against Tottenham, and then against new look Everton.
You can’t blame Chelsea fans for worrying about how this season would pan out following on from what happened to Jose Mourinho the year after he won the title in 2015. Adding to how badly recent title defences have gone, Chelsea so far have had a somewhat mixed and controversial transfer window. They’ve lost out on a lot of squad depth, particularly with losing promising young prospects such as Nathan Ake and Nathaniel Chalobah. The main headlines though have again been centered around the controversy of Diego Costa, who’s refusing to return for training, following claims he’s being treated ‘like a criminal’.
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Many pundits have not given much hope for Chelsea to back up last season’s title, with Conte astonishingly the favourite manager to be sacked first. Pre-season didn’t turn out the way many of the Chelsea faithful had hoped, with defeat to Arsenal on penalties in the community shield standing out. Along with this, it seems that Antonio Conte doesn’t quite have the make up of the squad he’s hoping for despite strong signings in Alvaro Morata and Antonio Rudiger. With the transfer window closing on Thursday 31 August, Conte though will no doubt be hoping to add to his squad, especially with the challenge of a difficult Champions League group to come.
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Chelsea have already loaned out youngsters Kurt Zouma and Ruben Loftus-Cheek leaving them looking slightly empty on the bench, but if recent rumours are to gone by, they look to be addressing this. The English pairing of Danny Drinkwater and Ross Barkley have been of interest to Chelsea all summer, and now both look to be heading to the blues. Both players are eager to move away from their current clubs, and will provide a huge boost to Chelsea’s squad.
Chelsea would seem a perfect fit for Drinkwater in particualar, competing with Cesc Fabregas and Tiemouê Bakayoko to start alongside his former title winning teammate N’golo Kante. With Eden Hazard currently on the sidelines, the addition of Ross Barkley would add serious competition to Chelsea’s attack, but with Barkley having his own fitness issues, this deal may have to wait. If Chelsea do sign a fully fit Barkley, this would provide the depth they need to compete with Europe’s elite in the Champions League.
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Chelsea have always been renowned as having a strong defence, and this season shouldn’t be any different if the players can keep fit and maintain their form from last season. However, if there are injuries, or players under performing, the lack of depth could be Chelsea’s undoing, after losing the experienced Chelsea legend John Terry. If Chelsea want to not only claim back to back Premier League titles, besides being competitive in the Champions League, the addition of another defender is crucial for Antonio Conte. Players such as Virgil Van Dijk and Alex Sandro have been linked, but it seems both their clubs have no desire to sell. This could leave Conte with huge problems in defence, with no real back ups available to use.
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Chelsea’s midfield had been an area of great concern after the strange decision to sell Nemanja Matic to Man Utd, probably Chelsea’s biggest threat to their title this season. The purchase of Bakayoko from Monoco was a smart purchase, a player who could link strongly with Kante, and offer great control in the central midfield. Out wide, if Hazard stays fully fit for the season, Chelsea are always going to be strong contenders for the title. They seem a different team when he plays, they play with much more confidence when Hazard’s on the pitch. Hazard, now entering his fifth season, has said how he wants to emulate Terry as a leader of the club. If Hazard can supply the experience along with the talent he already has, Chelsea will have a strong attacking squad with Pedro and Willian both competing to start on the right side of midfield.
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Consistent strikers have been difficult to come by for Chelsea, with the exception of Didier Drogba of course. After Drogba left, Chelsea struggled to find a main man up front after deciding to sell Lukaku to Everton. Most Chelsea fans thought this issue had finally been resolved when Chelsea signed Diego Costa. He has provided the goals over his three year stint at Chelsea, but unfortunately has brought an equal amount of controversy in his time in West London. Now, it appears Costa will never play again for Chelsea, after refusing to even return to England, following from the infamous Conte text, saying he was no longer needed at the club. While this saga becomes more and more unpleasant, Chelsea signed Spanish striker Alvaro Morata. Morata is no doubt a goal-scorer; he already has two goals for Chelsea, in the first three games. There are worries about his consistency however, and with back up striker Michy Batshuayi failing in England so far, many Chelsea fans will be concerned they lack a genuine consistent goal-scorer.
There is never any doubt that Chelsea will be a tough team to defeat, and they will be right up there competing for their title. However, you just get the feeling that with this Chelsea team they will struggle a lot more than last year, with teams perhaps adapting to their style of play, and with more games to be played. Both Manchester clubs will be stronger, so you get the feeling it could be them competing strongest for the title, but never count Chelsea out.
RELATEDOn the Other Hand
Double-hand transplantations could switch the handedness of patients. Two men who lost both hands in work injuries received transplants after three to four years of waiting. Despite such a long time—the brain typically reassigns areas linked with control of the amputated limb to other muscles—researchers at the French Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in Lyon found the patients’ brain could connect to the new hands, which subsequently could perform complex tasks (in a demonstration, one patient repaired electrical wires). Although both men were right-handed, their left hand connected with their brain at least a year sooner than their right hand did, and they stayed left-handed. The reason for this switch, reported online April 6 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, is unclear—perhaps the prior dominance of the right hand made the corresponding brain regions less flexible to reconnections or the surgeries were done slightly differently. —Charles Q. Choi
Point Taken
Every year hundreds of thousands of people develop medical complications such as nerve injury when hypodermic needles penetrate deeper than they should. A novel needle devised by researchers at Harvard Medical School and their colleagues automatically stops itself from going too far. The force from the first push of the device’s plunger goes only to a blunt, flexible wire inside the hollow needle. As long as this filament remains unbent, a special clutch keeps the rest of the needle from advancing. On encountering resistance from tissue, the wire buckles and the clutch permits the entire needle to move forward. On reaching a target cavity, such as a blood vessel, the filament no longer faces resistance and so straightens out, preventing the needle from proceeding but uncovering the tip to allow medicine out. Described in the April 7 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, the needle might reach clinics in three to five years. —Charles Q. Choi
Living Alike
The Geico “caveman” advertising campaign might be on to something. Evidence presented in April at the Paleoanthropology Society meeting in Chicago suggests that Neandertal behavior resembled that of early modern humans. Bruce Hardy of Kenyon College studied artifacts from Hohle Fels, a site in southwestern Germany. It contains tools made by Neandertals between 36,000 and 40,000 years ago as well as items manufactured by early modern humans between 33,000 and 36,000 years ago. Both groups lived under similar environmental conditions at this site, making their cultural remains ideal for comparison. Hardy examined the wear patterns and residue on the tools and found that although modern humans had a larger range of implements, both groups engaged in similar activities, such as using tree resin to bind stone points to wooden handles and crafting tools from bone and wood. He speculates that the Neandertals did not invent more tools because they could survive just fine with what they had. —Kate Wong
Electromagnetic Chatter
Single-celled organisms may communicate via radiation. Daniel Fels of the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel grew the microbe Paramecium caudatum in complete darkness in clear tubes, which prevented the cells from passing chemical messages to one another. Fels discovered the microorganisms could influence the feeding behavior and growth rates of neighbors in other tubes, suggesting that electromagnetic signals were involved. The microbes seemed to use at least two frequencies to communicate, one of which was in the ultraviolet (UV) range. For instance, small populations of paramecia grew significantly better when separated from larger ones by glass that blocks UV light than by quartz glass, which permits UV rays. The cellular structures behind these messages have not yet been identified, but in the April 1 PLoS ONE, Fels suggests that these signals could lead to novel noninvasive medical techniques. —Charles Q. Choi
Laser Beams That Curve
Two years ago physicists demonstrated that a laser beam traveling through the air can bend slightly if certain components are asymmetrical, forming what is called an Airy beam. Now researchers have shown that pulsed, high-intensity versions can leave curved trails of plasma. Shot out like a stack of pennies, each pulse, one centimeter wide and lasting 35 femtoseconds, passes through a glass plate that turns it into a triangular shape, in which an intense peak falls on one side of several weaker peaks. The brightest part heads in one direction, while the dimmer ones go the opposite way. (The momentum of the entire pulse remains straight, however.)
Being extremely intense, the bright spots ionize the air behind them and leave a curved plasma stream in their wake. The self-bending beam, described in the April 10 Science, does not curve by more than the beam’s diameter, but that amount is enough to help physicists probe the structure of laser pulses. —Larry Greenemeier
Calorie-Burning Fat
Once thought to disappear after infancy, the calorie-burning tissue known as brown fat may actually be keeping some adults slim. Newborns have brown fat to help generate body heat, but it seems to melt away as part of the aging process. A new study shows that some adults, especially those with a healthy body mass index, maintain reserves of the good fat that is metabolically active. The work, published in the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, could potentially point to novel obesity-fighting compounds. —Coco Ballantyne
Have a Nice Trip
Man’s best friend could be one of man’s biggest hazards. Pets cause nearly an estimated 87,000 falls that need emergency room treatment every year in the U.S., according to the March 27 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. A quarter of the tumbles happened when owners were walking their dogs, and twice as many women as men were hurt. Most injuries occurred in children and those 35 to 54 years old, but people 75 or older suffered the most serious damage. —Jordan Lite
Eggs Not Over Easy
Infertility treatments operate under the assumption that women are born with all the eggs they will ever have. But researchers reporting online April 14 in Nature Cell Biology claim they have found precursor stem cells in newborn and adult mice that could be prodded into producing new eggs. The scientists grew these cells in a petri dish and implanted them in mice engineered to be infertile. Although some of the mice subsequently gave birth, more studies will be needed to confirm the results. —Jordan Lite
Note: This article was originally published with the title, "News Scan Briefs".Posted August 12th at 6:00pm.
A whole New Season of Madden Mobile is about to begin! On August 16th you'll login to Madden Mobile to an update that will immediately take you into a whole new experience. Rob Gronkowski with greet you as the new face of Madden Mobile. Right away you'll be able to jump in and start building your squad from the ground up. New and powerful tools will help you to navigate and dominate the New Season!
Live and Blitz Events - back on THE MAP!
The meat and potatoes of Madden Mobile's daily updates are BACK! Live and Blitz Events are your key to some of the best rewards in the game! Be sure to login every day to see what you can earn in Madden Mobile.
QB Scramble - The biggest request from the Madden Mobile Community is now HERE! Utilize the special skill set of NFL Players like Mike Vick and Cam Newton like never before!
All New Gameplanning - Strategizing against your opponent has gone to a whole new level. Never has stacking the odds in your favor been so deep and fun. Use special collectibles to enhance your gameplay and even earn special TEAM Gameplan Collectibles that give any member of that team on your squad special boosts.
Binder and Set Management - With so many different team items to utilize and choose from in Madden Mobile, a place to keep them all organized and sorted crucial. The Binder has received upgrades and short cut for some of your most used features.
In addition, Set Management has also never been so slick. One of the biggest community requests, batch adding items and players to sets has been added this season! Reap the rewards of your Madden Mobile efforts in a snap! New Achievements -
A whole new list of achievements are ready for you to tackle in the New Season. Earn XP and other rewards by checking off goals as you progress through your Madden Mobile journey.
Leagues are BACK! - Join or create a Madden Mobile LEAGUE to team up with friends or other rabid Mobile players. You can not only take on other Mobile Leagues but also show your prowess in inter-league play. Special rewards and features will only be available through playing in Leagues.Posted by
Kamal Hylton,
August 8, 2014 Email
Kamal Hylton
On Twitter:
@KamalHylton
The Gaffer and Hooligan is back, as myself and Aaron Nielsen do a bonus episode this week.
We kick off the show in Segment 1 "The First Round" with myself and Aaron examining the U-20 Women's World Cup, looking more specifically at what should come of both it and the 2015 senior Women's World Cup long term.
We then transition into examining the trend in North American sports of teams mortgaging their future for a shot at a title. Using the NBA's ongoing trade saga involving Andrew Wiggins and Kevin Love as an example, we discuss whether this would and should ever happen in Major League Soccer.
To end the show, in Segment 2 "Last Call" we talk about North American sports moving towards younger GM's and those with an analytical/statistical outlook before allowing Aaron to play the role of GM. Giving his take on what he'd do with the Montreal Impact. As always you can let us know your thoughts by tweeting us directly @KamalHylton & @ENBSports, leaving a comment underneath this post or on the Gaffer & Hooligan Facebook Page and find us on the War Room Sports Podcast Network and PhatzRadio.com. Audio: Open Player in a New Window | Subscribe | iTunes | MP3Spread the love
“It landed in his playpen and exploded on his pillow right in his face”
Matt Agorist
May 29, 2014
The state’s immoral, brutal, and asinine war on drugs has claimed another innocent victim. This time it is a 19 month old baby.
In a multijurisdictional raid in Habersham County police barged into the home of Wanis Thometheva at 3:00 am.
During the raid one of the uniformed men, tasked with caging people for possession of substances the state deems illegal, threw a stun grenade into the crib of a 19 month old baby.
Alecia Phonesavanh, the mother of the 19-month old, was staying at her sister-in-law’s home when cops smashed in.
“It’s my baby. He’s only a baby. He didn’t deserve any of this,” Phonesavanh said. “It landed in his playpen and exploded on his pillow right in his face.”
Phonesavanh’s son is in the burn unit of a local hospital. The grenade blew a large laceration in his chest and ripped his face wide open.
There were many pictures taken but they were so graphic that the local news station chose not to share them.
According to WSBTV,
Cornelia Police Chief Rick Darby confirmed that the raid took place at the home just before 3 a.m. Deputies said they bought drugs from the house and came back with a no-knock warrant to arrest a man known to have drugs and weapons. “Everyone’s sleeping. There’s a loud bang and a bright light,” Phonesavanh said. “The cops threw that grenade in the door without looking first and it landed right in the playpen and exploded on his pillow right in his face.” They arrested Wanis Thometheva, 30, during the raid.
This is an absolutely horrific example of the innocence slaughtered in the name of the war on drugs.
How many more innocent lives will be ruined by the state’s attempt to regulate personal choice?
The war on drugs is not a ‘war’ on ‘drugs’ at all. It is a war on personal freedom.
The war on drugs grants the state the power to arbitrarily create ‘criminals’ out of individuals who’ve caused no harm to others. It’s an assembly line of state sanctioned violence and corruption against those of whom it is selectively enforced.
The drug war leaves in ruins the lives of those it destroys either through arrest or imprisonment or worse, state sponsored murder.
These political leeches have every reason in the world to support this debauched war against personal freedom for it employs millions of them.
Without the war on drugs, politicians, bureaucrats, police, and military alike would have to prove their worth through other means.
If you take away the ability of the state to capriciously declare portions of the general population its “enemy,” you take away the reason for the brutality.
It is for the millions whose lives have been ruined, and the millions of future lives, that we declare the war on drugs morally bankrupt and therefore nullified.
We, as humans, can no longer stand idly by as our fellow humans are savagely beaten, kidnapped, locked in cages, and even murdered for their personal choices, which cause NO HARM.
Check back here to find out when and how the internationally peaceful resistance to this criminal war will begin. The Free Thought Project will not stop until PEACE is brought to this repulsive WAR!
Baby Bou did not have insurance and he is going to require many surgeries to even be stabilized. Please show your support here.The MLS Disciplinary Committee has fined and suspended three players for incidents in Week 22 of the 2016 MLS season.
Horst challenge on Bernier
The Committee unanimously ruled to suspend Houston Dynamo defender David Horst one game and fine him for "violent conduct which endangered the safety of an opponent," for throwing an elbow at the head of Montreal Impact midfielder Patrice Bernier in the 35th minute of Houston’s 1-0 away defeat to the Impact on Sunday.
Horst, who was not called for a foul on the play, will be suspended for Houston’s match against Toronto FC on Saturday.
Nocerino foul on Dempsey
The Committee unanimously ruled to suspend Orlando City SC midfielder Antonio Nocerino for one game and fine him for "violent conduct which endangered the safety of an opponent," for kicking a ball at prone Seattle Sounders forward Clint Dempsey after the whistle had blown in the 33rd minute of Orlando’s 3-1 loss to the Sounders on Sunday.
Nocerino, who was was shown a yellow card on the play, will be suspended for Orlando City’s match at Chicago on Sunday.
Larentowicz foul on Perrinelle
The Committee unanimously ruled to suspend LA Galaxy midfielder Jeff Larentowicz one game and fine him for "serious foul play that endangered the safety of an opponent," for his sliding challenge on New York Red Bulls defender Damien Perrinelle in the 25th minute of LA’s 2-2 draw against New York on Sunday.
Larentowicz was shown a yellow card for the challenge. He will be suspended for the Galaxy's game against Colorado on Saturday.A bus service will be available between Prince George and Prince Rupert by the end of the year on a notorious stretch of road known as the Highway of Tears, according to the B.C. government.
At least 18 women have been murdered or have disappeared along Highway 16 and adjacent routes since the 1970s.
Transportation Minister Todd Stone says agreements among 16 communities along the highway will allow B.C. Transit to operate a scheduled bus service, slated to start at the end of the year.
"We want to see northern communities connected with safe, reliable and accessible transportation options, in particular providing better and safer options for women and teenage girls," Stone said in a written statement.
First Nations, social service agencies and women's groups have called for a shuttle bus service in the area to provide safe, regular transportation for people who live in communities along the highway.
"Many communities along the Highway 16 corridor do not have access to the services or amenities that most of us take for granted, such as accessible healthcare services or transportation," said Gitanyow deputy chief Wanda Good in a written statement.
"The commitment the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has made to work with these communities to provide safe transportation is a welcome initiative by all who live here."
The provincial government announced a five-point transportation plan late last year that promised regular B.C. Transit service and programs to train bus drivers from area First Nation communities.
Stone says the B.C. government is providing an extra $1 million to run the bus service while the federal government is contributing $1 million to fund bus shelters, lights and webcams along the route.In an era of information overload, lists are conveniently condensed pockets of information. We scroll through the points, nod to ourselves, and our guilt is temporarily relieved by our two minute browse. But do we ever really apply the advice? Information is important, well and true, but taking action is essential. What, you might ask, is the bridge between these two stages? It’s both the simplest and most difficult element of change: motivation. Your motive for any changes in your life has to be strong enough to spark the fuel (information and knowledge) into action. In the following, I’ll be addressing five things that will improve your experience, and how to combat the difficulty of motivation.
1. (Eins / Uno / Yī) – Beauty and Inspiration
Fill your life with beauty, art and ingenuity. If you’re a creative type, gain a deep understanding of the work of your role models and fill your physical spaces with it (art, books, music, etcetera). For those more technically minded, beauty (importantly, beautiful spaces) have a direct correlation with happiness. With 80% of us living in cities, we don’t quite realise the benefits of nature in our lives. Be inspired by the stillness of the wild, and apply it to your life. Wander into a forest and just sit and listen; the total immersion you’ll experience will be so unusual but so anciently familiar. It’s rather difficult to feel depressed when you are continually reminded of the beauty that exists in the world. Here’s a list of outdoorsy cities to live in. Make an effort to fill your life with beautiful and inspiring creations, and give yourself a regular dose of nature, you’ll surely be happier for it.
2. (Zwei / Dos / Èr) – Consistency
Consistency is boring. Consistency is predictable. Consistency, when put against intelligence and creativity and all of those wonderful ‘special snowflake’ traits, wins outright when it comes to achieving anything in life. You’ll find some incredibly dull, unimaginative people in some very high up positions in society, simply because they turned up, again and again. For any of your endeavours in life, you need boring old consistency. Why is it that we struggle to be consistent, even with our passions?
We simply get more instant gratification from cycling through movies, facebook and checking emails. But what effect does these behavioural patterns have on our lives, our self-esteem and importantly, our long term happiness? The effect, I’m sure you’ll all agree, can only be negative. If you’ve struggled with this throughout your life, it is unlikely that you’ll become a paragon of self-discipline, but you can deal with the problem intuitively:
Delegate Discipline
Marli Huijer, a Dutch psychologist, proposed that for those of us who lack discipline, we need to rely on the external. Create a network of discipline and obligation around you. Make yourself and your goals accountable by sharing them with friends/colleagues. Secondly, break your goals down into weekly and daily tasks, which can reduce the terror of daunting dreams like ‘make a living from art’. Instead, perhaps, say to yourself that you’ll do ‘one watercolour and one digital painting by the end of the day’. Give yourself manageable baby steps. Technology makes delegating very convenient; Toggl is nifty in that you can measure how long you’re spending on activities (productive or procrastinating).
3. (Drei / Tres / Sān) – Challenging People
Every single interaction you have with people has the potential to teach you something. Why, then, do we squander this potential throughout our lives? Because we’re too immersed in our own stories. In communication, especially those of conflict / dissent, try to look at the situation objectively rather than subjectively. Your angry, ‘slave-driver’ boss might seem tyrannical and unfair to you, but they simply function differently. If you value depth of thought, for example, imagine how infuriating it’d be if someone said ‘reading and art are for bozos’. Now, say your boss (seems to be a recurring if clichéd example!) values accuracy and time-keeping, and you fail to follow through. Your actions not only make his job more difficult, they also go against his very values as a person. It’s exactly the same, it’s just that you have different values.
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” Eleanor Roosevelt
Instead of feeling angry or sorry for yourself, reflect on the idea that his values are a necessity. A good manager is not always a nice manager, and that’s an unfortunate truth. You might say “but Whitemowgli, some people are just assholes!”. To this, I beseech you to understand why. Look to the source of the problem; is it simply insecurity? Ignorance? Understanding the bigger picture when it comes to people’s stories will benefit your interactions immeasurably. Similarly, change the way you think about critical friends. I often offer my unbiased opinion to people and, depending on their personality, they react differently. Some are unaffected, some intrigued, and some enraged. In a world filled with deceivingly positive affirmations and feedback, many of us don’t experience the benefits of cut-the-bullshit objective advice.
Lastly, look into personality typology, notably the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) inspired by the work of Carl Jung. Taking the test, along with getting friends and colleagues to do so too, has provided me with so much perspective, as well as cultivated in me acceptance of people’s differences.
4. (Vier / Quattro / Sì) – Being Vulnerable
“To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness, chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself.” Timothy Leary
To many of us, to be vulnerable is to be weak. Exposing yourself makes you more susceptible to risk, of all shapes and sizes. Little do we realise, then, that the very thing we’re hiding from is essential to our human experience. From our work to our relationships, being in a place of vulnerable open-mindedness is so vital, so necessary, that a life lived without it is one of regret. The artist must be able to put a bit of herself into each creation, reveal herself to the world, and say ‘this is mine, I created this, it may be imperfect, but it is mine‘. In business and entrepreneurship, vulnerability is also essential. Gay Gaddis, owner of the T3 Think Tank, said “When you shut down vulnerability, you shut down opportunity.” Ego preservation works both ways; you might risk less, but you almost certainly gain less, too. Take a moment to watch the TedTalk video below. Brené Brown has gained a profound insight on the subjects of human connections, happiness and vulnerability:
5. (Fünf / Cinco / Wǔ) – Stop Reading Self-help Lists!
Okay, that might be a bit of ironic hyperbole, but we (yes, we, I’m struggling with this too!) need to realise something very important. In trying to change who we are, we’re coming from a place of lack. We’re attempting to demolish solid foundations (who we are) with tiny chisels; it’s an exercise in painful futility.
“The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.” Bill Hicks
Instead, come from a place of abundance. When you consider the abundance of intelligence, empathy, experience, love and joy our foundations are built out of, you’ll realise ‘damn, I really am enough’ and cultivating growth will be a complete breeze. Put yourself wholeheartedly, unabashedly, unashamed, out into the world. Trust me, people, including yourself, will love you for it.
Sincerely,
Whitemowgli
AdvertisementsA New Jersey man found himself in cuffs just five minutes after being released by cops over the weekend.
The 38-year-old Paterson man had been arrested on Monday afternoon after police got a call about a man trying to throw a brick through the window of a parked car outside a shopping center in Wayne.
When they got on scene, police said they found the man -- who had been previously banned from the shopping center's property -- holding a pocketbook stolen from the vehicle along with two bags of heroin.
They arrested the man on burglary and drug charges and took him to the police department for processing.
He was released from custody a short time later, and Wayne police said two detectives watched him walk to Wayne Valley High School. Once there, authorities alleged the man rolled down the window of a Jeep in a parking lot before stealing three pieces of Under Armour-branded clothing.
Authorities said the two detectives confronted the man as he tried to walk away, and he was again cuffed on burglary charges.
Authorities said only 5 minutes passed from the time the man left police custody to his second arrest.
He was booked on $500 bail and was being held at the Passaic County Jail.President Barack Obama listens during his meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk, Monday, March 9, 2015, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
President Barack Obama on Tuesday will announce sweeping borrower-friendly recommendations to fix the $1.1 trillion federal student loan system that, taken together, amount to an indictment of the |
a racist? I'll let you decide yes for yourself' Read more
“I also want to note that today President Trump said the right thing, tweeting, the ‘United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough and strong. We love you,’” Colbert continued.
“Thank you, sir. Simple, dignified, presidential,” he said. “That’s what you hope for. He’s right. We love you, Spain. And I was sincerely happy to see that kind of moral leadership from our president for about 45 minutes. Because then he tweeted: ‘Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years.’”
The host went on to detail the myth about General Pershing, a story Trump repeated on the campaign trail multiple times.
“There’s a story about General Pershing, an American general who fought Muslim insurgents in the Philippines about a century ago,” Colbert said. “Trump likes telling the story about how Pershing executed Muslim prisoners of war.”
Colbert then showed several clips of Trump peddling the story about General Pershing, in which he supposedly captured 50 Muslim prisoners of war, dipped bullets in pig blood, shot 49 of them, and ordered the lone survivor to tell others about what happened to the others.
“That is a dark story. No wonder his kids turned out the way they did,” Colbert continued, channeling his impersonation of the president to imagine bedtime stories in the Trump household. “And then the big bad wolf slaughtered two of the three little pigs, and he told the third one, you piggy, you go back to the sty and tell your buddies no more brick houses.”
Colbert continued: “Trump’s point is we’ve got to be tough like we used to. But here’s one problem with that: the story is not true. It’s been called a ‘poorly sourced yarn’. Poorly sourced yarn, by the way, also what Ivanka uses in her clothing line.”
“One historian said, ‘this story is a fabrication and has long been discredited. I am amazed it is still making the rounds,’” Colbert explained. “If it wasn’t for our president, a lot of things wouldn’t be making the rounds.”
“The story is complete nonsense,” he concluded. “However, one thing about General Pershing that is true is this quote of his: ‘A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops’.”
Seth Meyers discussed the mounting frustration on the part of Trump’s aides, many of whom anonymously expressed their distaste for Trump’s Tuesday press conference, where he doubled down on his unwillingness to place full blame for the Charlottesville confrontation on the part of the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who gathered there.
“The president has come under tremendous criticism for his response to Charlottesville, but apparently for some of Trump’s aides the problem was not that he defended white supremacists, but that he said it out loud in front of the cameras,” Meyers began, detailing reports that aides were “frustrated, exasperated, and stunned but not quite surprised”.
“So Trump’s staff isn’t upset he’s a racist. They’re upset we found out about it,” Meyers quipped. “For his part, Trump almost seemed relieved to have finally gotten off his chest how he really feels. In fact, those close to him say he’s happy about how his Tuesday press conference turned out.”
“Of course he is,” Meyers continued. “Trump is incapable of feeling regret. Trump feels regret as often as he feels Melania’s touch.”
The host continued: “Politico reported yesterday that Trump had lashed out mainly out of anger and that his notorious temper was driving his behavior. ‘White House officials and a former advisor say the triggers for his temper are if he thinks someone is lying to him, if he’s caught by surprise, if someone criticizes him, or if someone stops him from trying to do something or seeks to control him’.”
“So basically, all the things that happen to a president every day,” Meyers said. “Trump’s aides talk about him like he’s a caged gorilla at the zoo.
Steve Bannon's work is done. Donald Trump can fire him now | Justin Gest Read more
“But not all of Trump’s aides and allies tried to distance themselves from Trump’s unhinged press conference,” Meyers continued. “There’s also Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, whose ties to white nationalists are well known, which is odd because no one disproves the idea that white people are a master race more than Steve Bannon.”
Meyers went on to detail Bannon’s rare on-the-record interview with the American Prospect, where he offered his thoughts on the response to Charlottesville, its political prospects, infighting in the White House and trade with China.
“He said this to the American Prospect about the Democrats,” Meyers explained. “‘The longer they talk about identity politics, I got ‘em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.’”
“Hey man, are you trying to sound evil?,” Meyers asked. “I guess it’s no coincidence that you look like Kuato from Total Recall.”By Nick Parkinson, courtesy of The Daily Star
CARL FRAMPTON now believes less is more when it comes to his training.
Belfast’s two-weight world champion is working with new trainer Jamie Moore after splitting with mentor Barry McGuigan, whose son Shane trained him.
Frampton is now promoted by Frank Warren and faces Mexican Horacio Garcia at the SSE Arena on Saturday hoping to end a difficult year on a high.
After losing both his WBA world featherweight title and unbeaten record to Mexican Leo Santa Cruz on points in January, the Ulsterman was then left without a fight at a day’s notice in July.
The Jackal went on to split from the McGuigans, who had promoted and trained him, but he says he feels reborn at Moore’s Manchester gym, where he has reduced the amount of sparring.
He said: “I just feel rejuvenated. I’ve had a complete overhaul of everything.
“Everything has changed. Who knows how that could have gone? But I feel like that was the right decision for me at the time to move on with my career and now it’s turning out that it is, because I’m absolutely enjoying boxing.
“I just don’t have as many niggles. I used to spar a lot, over 200 rounds per camp and I just felt like it was a lot. I did enjoy it but you’re still taking a lot of punishment. I was having problems, almost like whiplash where you’re knocked about for 220 rounds.
“I was having these niggles up around my neck, my shoulders, my back.
“We’ve reduced the amount of sparring and made it quality rather than quantity and it seems to be working because I’ve done less than half the number of rounds I would normally spar. But when I did my last 10 rounds I was flying, as fit as I’ve ever been.
“People have made out that I’ve dropped the number of rounds I’ve been sparring to avoid problems after boxing but if you woke up worrying about taking a punch to the head in sparring then you’re in the wrong game.
“That’s not something I’m worried about – but I did feel it was a sizeable amount and there is no need to do it. Of course, I don’t want to be walking around punch-drunk and you can see that happening to fighters when they go on too long.
“Obviously I don’t want that to happen to me but that’s not the main reason. The main reason for reducing the rounds was to restrict the injuries so I could perform better.”
Given a new lease of life under Moore, retirement is further from the mind of Frampton, 30, than previously but he feels more support should be available for boxers after they hang up the gloves.
The Belfast fighter added: “There probably isn’t enough aftercare and that’s something to do with promoters and managers.
“You see it so many times, guys who are best friends with their promoters while they are winning and making money for everyone, they’re enjoying themselves. Then they have a bad night and a loss and that’s them on the scrapheap.
“They don’t hear from their managers or promoters or see them ever again. It’s a hard game and you have to put your life into it, so myself and other guys don’t have anything to fall back on if the boxing doesn’t work out because we have put everything we know and have into boxing.
“I was okay at school but I don’t have GCSEs or a trade behind me. So it’s vital fighters are looked after when their careers are over and not just thrown on the scrapheap.
“That can be something managers and promoters can help fighters with.”
Frampton, whose dream is to face Santa Cruz in a third fight at Windsor Park this summer, will also be hoping Northern Ireland can overturn a 1-0 deficit in the World Cup qualifier second leg in Switzerland.
He said: “It’s hard game — I would have preferred the Republic of Ireland’s draw, playing away first. “But I think we will do it in the second game, I really do.”It’s beginning to look like Special Counsel Mueller will catch President Trump and his three eldest children committing the first ever reality TV show assisted financial crime, all collaborating in a $350 million dollar bank fraud.
Three weeks ago, Bloomberg News reported that Mueller is focusing on the lower Manhattan Trump Soho Hotel deal and Vanity Fair reported today that new emails reveal the Trump family’s participation in a criminal enterprise there.
The Russian money trail leads right through the president’s troubled project in downtown Manhattan. A series of e-mails reveals new details.
Tonight, we’ve obtained leaked copies of those emails which are embedded below.
These leaked emails are the first evidence that proves that Donald Trump and his family personally knew of Felix Sater’s felony crime and participated in a meeting about covering it up.
Donald Trump hawked the Trump SoHo Condo Hotel extensively on NBC’s The Apprentice, but committed a bank fraud to keep the project afloat the following year, and dragged his family into it.
The newly leaked emails from the Sapir Organization’s attorney document a “time sensitive and should not be pushed back” meeting the Trumps demanded on January 21st, 2008.
The meeting happened soon after the New York Times publicly revealed in mid-December 2007 that the Trump Organization’s investor and SoHo partner Bayrock Company’s manager-member Felix Sater had secretly entered financial felony plea deal in the late 1990s.
Donald Trump, his daughter Ivanka and sons Don Jr. and Eric collectively demanded and presumably attended the important meeting to chew out Bayrock about the project, and specifically Felix Sater about his felony past.
We know because Sater wrote Bayrock’s investors complaining that his own company wanted to fire him after meeting the Trumps.
Hiding a financial felon’s involvement is a form of criminal bank fraud. The Trump SoHo project ultimately failed and was foreclosed by lenders.
Instead of informing banks and buyers about Sater’s criminal past, as was the Trump Organization’s obligation, the Trump family proceeded to keep the felony secret as Sater engaged in a scheme to hide his interests in the deal.
The Trump family proceeded to squeeze their partner Sater to take his financial stake in the deal. (prior email)
There are major legal ramifications for the Trump-Sater meeting because the project is already the subject of an ongoing RICO civil trial by a whistleblower who worked inside the Bayrock Company; that is, the Trump SoHo hotel is being accused of operating a criminal enterprise.
These kinds of RICO cases are subject to enforcement in both civil lawsuits with tripled damages and criminal law, with jail and restitution to the victims as the penalty.
Here is the smoking gun email showing that the Trump family and all partners in the venture attended the meeting (full chain embedded below) to discuss Sater’s felony past, which they then kept secret:
The Trump family’s urgent request for meeting is conveyed by lawyers for his partners in Trump SoHo, the Sapir Organization
The newly leaked email chain also confirms a major German public television report on Trump SoHo that the Trumps participated in concealing a felon’s association in their hotel.
ZDF interviewed financial fraud expert Professor William Black, who was told the fact pattern of the Trump SoHo frauds — without the names of the participants — and he concluded based on their thorough reporting that the first family committed a bank fraud that violated the federal RICO Act.
The Trumps Stood To Benefit Financially From Participating In A Criminal Enterprise
The information about Trump and Sater defrauding banks has come to light only because attorneys Fred Oberlander and Richard Lerner refused to back down. They filed and are litigating two of the civil cases against the Trump SoHo’s developers.
Federal judges and prosecutors threatened them with prosecution for revealing that Sater was given an illegally light sentence for his crime, in secret. The judges even issued an order that gagged them from telling Congress about the judges’ own misconduct, but the attorneys persisted and are pursuing a civil law claim against the developers of Trump SoHo.
The attorney Richard Lerner has since written an extensive, fact-checked article about the harmful effects of secret sentencing in Law360 based on his wild experiences in the Trump SoHo case with Sater, who became an FBI informant against his mafia partners in the scheme.
The Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is America’s top anti-mafia federal law and the threshold for violating the law is merely participating in a business which engages in a pattern of illegal or fraudulent behavior.
New York state also has a RICO law, which is not subject to the powers of the Presidential pardon and could be enforced by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, alongside any federal investigation.
“The statute of limitations on RICO acts lasts for ten years from the last known act,” for RICO based upon bank fraud, according to lawyer Joshua Gold, who is licensed to practice in New York since 1999. “These emails are less than ten years old.”
Even though Trump’s participation in the project dates back to far more than ten years ago — and was far more than just licensing the family’s brand name — only criminal acts like hiding his partner’s felony count, start the clock ticking on the ten years a prosecutor could call forth a criminal case on the matter.
Hawking the Trump SoHo Hotel on NBC’s The Apprentice
During Season 5 of NBC’s “The Apprentice” Donald Trump awarded a job at the Trump SoHo Hotel to winner Sean Yazbek in February 2006.
Later, Donald Trump pitched the Trump SoHo Condo Hotel project on The Apprentice in early September 2007. He launched the boxy tower shortly thereafter according to the New York Daily News with “servers in masks pour champagne while Cirque du Soleil performed. The reigning Miss USA attended.”
The following year when major Wall Street firms failed, killing real estate lending markets for years, Donald Trump didn’t want to scare his lenders by admitting the truth, but he stopped hawking the SoHo deal on TV.
By the end of 2009, the New York Times reported that the condotel market had been dead as far back as 2007, giving Donald Trump a lot of incentive to conceal crucial information that would cause his lenders to repossess his tower then.
Eventually, lenders did foreclose on the property and sold off the Trump SoHo condo after 2/3rds of the units remained unsold in 2014.
In Trump SoHo’s three active civil litigations which includes one RICO lawsuit, and a suit Vanity Fair reports is related to an official from a former-Soviet Republic who bought units at Trump Soho, the Trump family is not a named defendant, but this new evidence could subject them to criminal liability.
The email with Sater’s after-action report that described the meeting with the Trump family in detail was released last October in Forbes. It revealed Trump’s future Senior Advisor describing his scheme to defraud the banks to his project’s Icelandic equity investors from Stodir (aka FL Group), who themselves went bankrupt only 9 months later.
Sater intricately recounted the story of Bayrock’s General Counsel Julius Schwarz's attempt to immediately force him out of Bayrock over the revelation of his felony conviction which he described as “damaging.”
One of the Bayrock Company whistleblowers suing Trump’s partners for RICO violations learned that Sater financed the SoHo hotel with money from Vladimir Putin, via Icelandic investors.
Special Counsel Mueller will have his hands full unraveling all of the Russian money connections to the Trump SoHo project.
It’s increasingly looking like there is substantive proof of criminal ties between the Trump family and Felix Sater, which may deliver the evidence of crime prosecutors seek to flip witnesses against larger targets.
Theoretically, even Donald Trump’s children could turn into the state’s witnesses against their father, the President because he dragged them into the Trump SoHo bank fraud scheme and cover up of their shady real estate deal partners’ financial crimes.
Here are the two sets of smoking gun emails, with the exclusive email chain linked here and on the left:
Click here for the prior email chain where Felix Sater describes his fraud scheme in detail to his Icelandic investors.Meet RCEP: Yet Another Big Bad Trade Agreement No One Has Heard Of
from the worse-than-TPP,-worse-than-ACTA dept
Between the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and the six states with which ASEAN has existing FTAs (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand). RCEP negotiations were formally launched in November 2012 at the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia.
We might then, expect that RCEP could be the "anti-TPP"; a vehicle for countries to push back against the neo-colonial ambitions of the United States, by proposing alternative, home-grown standards on the TPP's thorniest issues such as copyright, patents, and investor protection. Some members of RCEP have indeed spoken out against the TPP because of its unbalanced promotion of strict copyright and patent laws, and some commentators have characterized RCEP and the TPP as competitors.
But based on yesterday's leaks, the promise of RCEP pushing back against the TPP is being squandered. Instead, its IP chapter is turning out as a carbon copy.
Prohibiting temporary copies of works in electronic form (a thoroughly misguided and anti-innovation provision that has even been erased from the TPP).
A prohibition on the Internet retransmission of broadcasts, mirroring proposals for a Broadcast Treaty that would inhibit the free use of public domain material.
Inflated awards for copyright or patent infringement, by calculating damages payable for the infringing works on the assumption that they were sold at full retail market value.
Criminal penalties for “commercial scale” copyright and trademark infringement, even where the infringer has not sought or made any profit from the activity.
Suspension of the Internet accounts of repeat infringers, and censorship of bulletin boards that are "considered to seriously damage the sound use of copyrighted works" (whatever that means).
Having been pushed into accepting unfavorably strict copyright, patent, and trademark rules in the process of negotiating its 2012 free trade agreement with the United States, Korea considers that it would be at a disadvantage if other countries were not subject to the same restrictions.
Now that the text has been leaked and it has been revealed to be so atrocious, we can begin to build pressure for the negotiating countries to open up the process.
Techdirt has been writing about major trade deals like TPP TAFTA/TTIP and -- most recently -- TISA more than most. But there's one that we've not mentioned so far: the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). As Wikipedia explains, RCEP is As that makes clear, as far as participating nations are concerned, there is a big overlap between RCEP and TPP. The crucial difference is that the US is taking part in TPP, but not RCEP, while China and India are in RCEP, but not TPP. In this sense, then, they are rival free trade agreements, battling it out for economic supremacy in the Pacific region. Given the different views of the leading nations involved -- the US on the one hand, China and India on the other -- you might think the two trade agreements would be turning out to be very different, at least in certain areas. For example, as an interesting EFF analysis of a leaked South Korean RCEP document puts it:Here are just a few of the proposals in the leaked South Korean document:As the EFF post rightly notes, these and the other ideas it lists are even worse than those found in TPP or ACTA, which is some achievement. So the question has to be: why has South Korea adopted this extreme position? The EFF offers an intriguing guess:If true, that would be a good demonstration of how intellectual monopolies like copyright and patents are not boons that bring benefits to those who embrace them, but banes that are imposed on others in order to hobble them. The South Korean chapter, with its revelations of just how bad things might be under RCEP, confirms once more the critical importance of leaks when negotiations with potentially far-reaching and global implications are conducted behind closed doors. Moreover:After all, it's hard to combat a threat if you don't even know it's there.
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Filed Under: china, copyright, india, intellectual property, rcep, tpp, trade agreementsPoet takes £15,000 prize for Measures of Expatriation – the third Caribbean poet in a row to win the award
Trinidadian poet Vahni Capildeo has won the 2016 Forward prize for best poetry collection, making it three years in a row that a Caribbean poet has won one of the most prestigious poetry awards in the UK and Ireland.
Measures of Expatriation by Vahni Capildeo review – ‘language is my home’ Read more
The prize for first collection was also awarded to a Caribbean writer, Tiphanie Yanique, who was born in the Virgin Islands.
Capildeo’s collection Measures of Expatriation, which explores ideas of belonging and home, saw off a shortlist including TS Eliot winner Alice Oswald, Ian Duhig, Choman Hardi and Denise Riley. She follows two Jamaican-born poets, Kei Miller and Claudia Rankine, who took the main prize respectively in 2014 and 2015.
Chair of the judges, Malika Booker, called Capildeo’s collection “a book you will forever be opening”.
“She is trying to articulate something quite hard to pin down and isn’t afraid to boldly take risks in language and layout,” Booker said. “It is a book that no one else could have written; it is her DNA, her stamp. Every time you open that book, you’ll find something peculiar, something exhilarating, something new, something exquisitely crafted.”
“[Measures of Expatriation] is almost like a swan – calm on top of the water, and underneath it is pedalling furiously, to create a new vocabulary in terms of the layout and language used, the lexicon it uses.”
Capildeo received the £15,000 prize at a ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Tuesday night. She previously worked as a OED lexicographer and has an Oxford DPhil in Old Norse. She comes from a well-known Trinidadian family of politicians and writers, which includes Booker prize-winning novelist VS Naipaul.
Yanique’s first collection Wife, which has taken the £5,000 Felix Dennis prize for best first collection, is an exploration of matrimony that Booker described as “deceptively simple but [actually] complex and bold”.
“Thinking about the region, and how patriarchy is so rife there... how Yanique examines the different facets of matrimony and how witty it was, was so exciting to us. Her titular poem Wife is a tour de force,” Booker said.
English poet and translator Sasha Dugdale was awarded the £1,000 best single poem prize for Joy, which was first published in PN Review. A “surprisingly long winner” according to Booker, Joy is written in the voice of William Blake’s newly widowed wife Catherine, and is “mesmerising, beautiful and effortless to read”.
“It shows craftsmanship, to be able to maintain and sustain an emotional intensity, a dramatic play-like poem that still left us fulfilled and satisfied,” Booker said.
Joined on the judges panel by poets George Szirtes and Liz Berry, musician Tracey Thorn and Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine, Booker said they were divided initially but the decisions were unanimous after “passionate argument” and that they were all “surprised to find two Caribbean poets and three women as winners”.
“I’m so excited and so happy about our decisions. If the shortlists this year are indicative of what is happening in British poetry, it is such an exciting place to be at the moment. All three poets to me have added something to the poetic landscape and extended some of the conversations we are having in terms of what is poetry,” she said.
With 2016 marking the 25th year of the Forward prize, an annual studentship programme was announced on Tuesday night to support young poets. This year it was awarded to Shukria Rezaei, a young poet from Afghanistan who works as a teaching assistant at Oxford Spires Academy with poet Kate Clanchy to run writing groups with refugees and disadvantaged children.
A poetry collection called 100 Prized Poems: 25 years of the Forward Books, featuring past winners Carol Ann Duffy and Don Paterson, has also been released to mark the prizes’ anniversary year.A second airplane was barred from entering Saudi airspace on Friday for not having the required documents allowing it into the Kingdom’s skies, Al Arabiya reported citing authorities.
A Shaheen Air Flight was denied entry for failing to meet the safety standards set by the Saudi government, although the Pakistani carrier had reportedly applied for the necessary documents in advance but their request was rejected.
The Boeing 767 is reportedly registered in Jordan and is on loan to Shaheen Air. The plane’s registration bans it from entering European airspace, Al Arabiya reported.
The Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation said the safety of Saudi airspace remains a top priority and will not allow any violations of protocol or regulations.
Last Update: Friday, 10 April 2015 KSA 11:01 - GMT 08:01Reader Joshua wrote in to report the following home invasion bike theft and accompanying photos of the thief (recognize him?):
On March 31 at 5:22 AM Saturday Morning, a man entered our locked front door on the 800 Block of Guerrero Street, went down into the locked garage and relieved it of four bikes, ripping one off the wall. 2012 54″ White Specialized Allez with SRAM Apex
2009 51″ Turquoise Jamis Quest Femme (105 Double, maybe with a BullDog lock still attached to the rack that had been bolted to the wall)
2008 Medium Black Masi Soulville 8 with Front and Rear racks a Velo Orange saddle
1999 56″ Yellow LeMonde Tourmalet
That’s right, one of those bikes was ripped off the wall with the lock still attached. The thing is, this is the fourth garage break-in/bike theft I know of from the past month and vicinity:
Our pal Jenny reports that her garage (around 29th/Dolores) was broken into with one bike stolen on March 10th,
This theft from the Glen Park area, via WBTC,
And my own bike was stolen out of a garage around 30th/San Jose on March 18th, also entering through a locked front door.
When the police showed up at the scene of my bike’s theft, they mentioned that they are aware of a string of similar incidents and this may be a repeat offender.
I suppose I should list some safety tips and advice, or something. Here’s what I’ve learned, anyway:
Make sure you have a deadbolt on any doors leading to a garage, and make sure to use it.
If your garage opens with a code, change it frequently.
Lock your bike to something in your garage. Apparently, this doesn’t necessarily change anything, but it’s another deterrent.
If you must hold onto your bike, store it in your apartment, instead of a separate storage area.
If someone really wants your bike, they can have it. Everything we own is essentially on loan from the universe.
Be okay with losing irreplaceable things, or own replaceable things. The bike that was taken from me was a cheap single speed from an online wholesaler, and though it bruised my bank account, I was back on practically the same wheels within a week.
If your bike is truly sacred to you, write down its serial number somewhere safe. This is pretty much the only way the police can help you if your bike turns up on Craigslist or elsewhere.
As Vic would say, sleep with your bikes under your pillows, kids.
Update: Here’s time lapse footage from Joshua’s garage burglary.(Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty)
From the February 29, 2016, issue of NR
Our system of government does little to prevent a strongman or a crank from winning the presidency. As long as Electoral College members adhere faithfully to the election results in their states, voters may choose whomever they want, on whatever basis. Recognizing this, the Constitution’s framers tightly circumscribed the president’s role, checking it horizontally with coequal branches that resist sudden change and vertically with the many powers reserved to the states.
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Throughout American history, no shortage of questionable characters has run for, seriously contested, and even attained the presidency. Yet as the unfolding 2016 campaign has brought fresh reminders of democracy’s unpredictability, the governing class has panicked, directing outrage and disdain at absurd candidates and their seemingly irrational supporters and mourning the impending collapse of the republic. The panic is understandable, but the blame badly misplaced.
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The dangerous and novel phenomenon of 2016 is not irresponsible politicians or an inflamed electorate, but rather the unprecedented concentration of power awaiting the election’s ultimate winner. Ironically, many of the now-panicking elites are the very ones who made the presidency so powerful. If they can learn the right lesson from the recent chaos, the specter — even fleeting — of a President Trump or a President Sanders could provide the needed spur to restore balance to our constitutional system.
Both parties have done their best to expand the power of the presidency in recent decades — whenever the presidency was theirs. Presidents Reagan and then Clinton established unprecedented White House control over the sprawl of federal agencies. The second President Bush asserted nearly exclusive authority to manage national security and foreign affairs. President Obama, after campaigning against the Bush administration’s excesses, doubled down on most and then applied the same attitude to matters of domestic policy.
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RELATED: Our Presidents Are Beginning to Act Like Kings
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Famously, Obama described in 2014 his “pen and phone” strategy for governing alone in his second term. At the 2015 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the president informed the audience that he had “something that rhymes with ‘bucket list.’ Take executive action on immigration. Bucket. New climate regulations. Bucket, it’s the right thing to do.”
Under Obama’s theory of the office, a president may use an obscure provision from 1970s legislation to overhaul the nation’s utility sector and implement a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions, even after Congress expressly rejects such an approach. He may use TARP, a program targeted at the national financial system, to make the federal government part-owner of the auto industry, while using other economic-stimulus funds to manipulate states into adopting the Common Core curriculum standards. He may offer de facto amnesty by refusing to enforce immigration laws.
Hillary Clinton, running to succeed Obama, has already pledged to go even further in declining to enforce immigration laws, and to extend that approach to gun control and financial regulation as well. The reach of the federal government has become all-encompassing, and the president’s position in that government dominant.
The ratchet turns only one way; no one in power ever abandons his own goals for the sake of reimposing limits.
Reversing this trend will not be easy. In the typical pattern, the party out of power objects to expansions of executive authority because it objects to the ends the current president is pursuing. But once it’s in power again, the farthest expansions of the prior administration’s claims of power become a useful starting point for yet farther expansion in service of a different agenda. The ratchet turns only one way; no one in power ever abandons his own goals for the sake of reimposing limits.
Conservatives argue for restricting executive power to advance the cause of limited government, forgoing short-term policy gains to establish a preferred long-term structure wherein multiple checks on each actor’s power slow the machinery of Washington. But that goal has no chance of receiving bipartisan support. And if conservatives pursue it unilaterally, they handicap only themselves, restricting their own power and thus their policy gains when in charge, only to see the other side leap ahead when given the chance.
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RELATED: President Trump (or Cruz) Will Have a Pen and a Phone, Too
Restoring balance to the constitutional system will therefore require that all sides focus on a third and far more important rationale: The president’s power should be confined not to what we want any particular executive to have, but to what we would want the worst imaginable president to have. Such thoughts are far from the minds of both governing and governed when a long line of Bushes, Clintons, Gores, Kerrys, McCains, Obamas, and Romneys graces the national stage, and a Vermont governor with a medical practice passes as the “insurgent.” But 2016 should provide just the shock the system needs.
The decisive winner of the Democrats’ New Hampshire primary is an avowed socialist who condemns the American financial system as “fraud,” promises a “revolution,” and includes among his top policy priorities rolling back the First Amendment and prosecuting “climate deniers.” The decisive winner of the Republicans’ New Hampshire primary is a buffoonish self-parody promising to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” and proudly advocating a religious test for entry into the country. Bizarrely, those two probably face less distrust and disdain than their rivals who won in Iowa.
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How quickly the tuxedoed guffawing goes silent at the thought of President Trump’s checking items off a “rhymes with bucket” list of his own. That neither he nor Senator Sanders seems likely to become president is beside the point. Their political viability exposes a systemic vulnerability that deserves attention before someone capable of building a majority emerges.
#share#wFortunately, now would seem an opportune moment in Washington as well. President Obama has a seven-plus-year legacy of mostly executive accomplishments that could be wiped away by a Republican successor equipped with comparable powers. Rather than roll the dice on the outcome of the election, mightn’t he consider cementing his gains in exchange for compromising with Congress to curb future presidents, even a future President Clinton? The Republican majority in Congress, meanwhile, has never been stronger and cannot possibly relish the prospect of subservience to the whims of a President Clinton, Sanders, Trump, or Cruz.
RELATED: President Obama’s Top Ten Constitutional Violations of 2015
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The opportunity for compromise is greatest when each side fears the realistic prospect of an outcome far worse than what negotiation can achieve. What would a compromise on executive power look like? The top priority should be for Congress to reassert its prerogatives. Any one person can be elected president, but good luck electing 300 people of similar mindset to the House and Senate across multiple election cycles. A number of proposals exist for strengthening legislative control vis-à-vis the executive, with many of the best consolidated in the Article I Project (A1P) launched recently by Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Representative Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas).
Two ideas motivate the A1P reforms: Congress gets to decide how much money the president may spend, and Congress gets to decide what rules the president’s agencies may promulgate. Of course, those principles exist today. But by default, the president can act as he pleases until Congress finds the will to resist. Lee and Hensarling’s proposal would establish a new default, hamstringing the president until he secures congressional approval.
A1P’s first set of reforms restores the congressional “power of the purse” so that budgets for each agency are deliberated and approved, not shoved through as a single omnibus. The second, related set eliminates the “legislative cliffs” — such as debt-ceiling limits and budget deadlines — that encourage brinksmanship and political blackmail. Planks three and four of the agenda establish congressional control over the number and cost of new rules and veto power over major rules, while limiting the discretion the agencies have to define their own authority.
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RELATED: Dictatorship, American Style
Other ways of constraining the presidency deserve consideration as well. Congress should reassert its role in foreign policy, replacing the open-ended, post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that has enabled the war on terror for nearly 15 years, with a narrower authorization that defines permissible actions and proscribes further adventures without Congress’s express consent. A future president might contest the constitutionality of such limits, but at least his power would be at its “lowest ebb,” in the immortal words of Justice Jackson, when he acted in direct conflict with the law.
Courts share blame for the current imbalance and have their own role to play in correcting it.
States also need greater protection from the federal leviathan. So much state revenue must travel first through Washington that even the most rebellious governor often has little choice but to accede to White House demands. Funding streams entangled in conditions and waivers, all of which are implemented at the discretion of executive agencies, should be freed from those constraints. In areas such as education and health care, funds that states rely on should be delivered automatically, regardless of whether a state’s policies meet with a president’s approval. Let Congress be the branch to take action if it considers the money poorly spent.
Finally, courts share blame for the current imbalance and have their own role to play in correcting it. Their decades of deference to executive interpretations of the law, combined with their creation of procedural doctrines that preclude challenging the executive at all, have aggrandized the presidency at their own expense and the legislature’s. Over the coming months, they might consider which doctrines they would wish looked different in the face of a Trump administration. United States v. Texas — the pending challenge to the Obama administration’s non-enforcement of immigration law, which the Supreme Court will decide in June — |
Expressway would not see significant improvements until the city and state devoted more resources to public transportation.
"If this really is the mayor’s white whale, I think he needs to point his harpoon—as well as get the governor to point his harpoon—at the Metro-North expansion they're talking about in the East Bronx," he said. "The way to address congestion on the Cross Bronx Expressway is better mass transit in New York City."Donald Trump shakes hands with Chris Christie after an introduction during a rally March 14, 2016, in Vienna Center, Ohio. | Getty Trump mocks Christie at rally
Donald Trump hit his newfound sidekick Chris Christie with some friendly fire on Monday while trying to attack Ohio Gov. John Kasich ahead of his home state’s Tuesday primary.
Trump, speaking a campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio, accused Kasich of having abandoned his gubernatorial duties to campaign in New Hampshire.
“And your governor is absentee," Trump told the crowd. "He goes to New Hampshire, he’s living in New Hampshire. Living! Where's Chris, is Chris around? Even more than Chris Christie, he was there, right? Even more.”
Trump then turned to Christie, who was next to him on stage, and said, “I hated to do that, but I had to make my point.”
The timing was less than ideal for New Jersey's governor. In his home state, he was being criticized Monday for skipping the funeral of Sean Cullen, a state trooper killed last week, in order to campaign with Trump.If you’ve been following the US federal election, you’ll know that the country’s two main parties — the Democrats and the Republicans — are currently in the midst of deciding who they’re going to put in the race for the White House.
Most agree the race will ultimately be a square-off between Hillary Clinton on the Democrat card and Jeb Bush on the Republican ticket. But wild card candidates like Donald Trump are gaining a surprising amount of traction among American voters.
However, a new candidate even more ridiculous than Donald Trump’s hair has recently entered the conversation and he’s doing surprisingly well in the numbers, especially for a candidate that doesn’t, well, technically exist.
As The Daily Beast reports, Deez Nuts is an independent candidate from the state of Iowa and he’s currently polling at nine percent in North Carolina for President of the United States and eight percent in his home state.
Deez Nuts is the brainchild of 15-year-old Brady Olson, who filed to run for President of the United States with the Federal Election Commission on 26th July as Deez Nuts. “When I heard about the Limberbutt McCubbins story, I realized I could,” he tells The Daily Beast.
So this is happening…. who are you going to vote for? Posted by Deez Nuts onThursday, August 20, 2015
For those unfamiliar with Limberbutt McCubbins, he is a cat from the US state of Kentucky who is also presently seeking the Democratic nomination for president and Olson hopes he can get McCubbins to run alongside him as “the Nuts/McCubbins ticket”.
It’s at this point that you’re probably wondering what all of this has to do with music, though some might already have a clue. As some readers will indeed be aware, there is a hardcore band from Melbourne known as Deez Nuts.
See, whilst Olson made the filing as a joke, he’s pretty committed to the joke and even asked Public Policy Polling to poll him. He was pitted against Trump and Clinton in Minnesota a few weeks ago and polled at seven percent.
When Deez Nuts’ numbers rose after two more polls, the whole thing took off. On Wednesday, Deez Nuts became a trending topic worldwide on Twitter. Naturally, it caught the attention of a few fans of the Melbourne group.
At the moment, if you take a second to browse around the band’s official Facebook page, it’s hard to find a nook or cranny that doesn’t feature a reference to the ‘Deez Nuts 2016’ campaign or someone asking if the band really are running for POTUS.
Even the official Georgia for Deez Nuts 2016 campaign Facebook page is on board, pestering the band to view their platform. Most of the band’s fans, meanwhile, are in on the joke, leaving rousing words of encouragement, such as, “I believe in you.”
The band have even addressed Olson’s viral campaign, taking to their Facebook page to share a link to a Rolling Stone about Deez Nuts 2016 and asking their fans, “So this is happening…. who are you going to vote for?”Dak Prescott rallies Cowboys to thrilling overtime win over Eagles
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Dak Prescott won the rookie quarterback duel with Carson Wentz.
Prescott rallied Dallas in the fourth quarter and threw a 5-yard pass to Jason Witten in overtime to give the Cowboys a 29-23 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday night.
Prescott won his sixth straight game filling in for Tony Romo, the 10-year starter who is getting close to returning from a preseason back injury. And the 23-year-old recovered from a shaky start that included several poor throws, the worst an end zone interception to Jordan Hicks that cost Dallas points late in the first half.
Dez Bryant caught a tying 22-yard touchdown pass with 3:04 left in regulation as Dallas (6-1) overcame a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter to take a two-game lead over the Eagles (4-3) in the NFC East.
Prescott finished 19 of 39 for 287 yards with two scores and the interception.
"He's come back before this year for us," coach Jason Garrett said, referring to a fourth-quarter rally in Washington and a comeback from a 14-0 deficit at San Francisco.
ARLINGTON, TX - OCTOBER 30: Jason Witten #82 of the Dallas Cowboys celebrates with Dak Prescott #4 of the Dallas Cowboys after scoring the game winning touchdown against the Philadelphia Eagles in overtime at AT&T Stadium on October 30, 2016 in Arlington, Texas. The Dallas Cowboys beat the Philadelphia Eagles 29-23 in overtime. less ARLINGTON, TX - OCTOBER 30: Jason Witten #82 of the Dallas Cowboys celebrates with Dak Prescott #4 of the Dallas Cowboys after scoring the game winning touchdown against the Philadelphia Eagles in overtime at... more Photo: Tom Pennington, Getty Images Photo: Tom Pennington, Getty Images Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close Dak Prescott rallies Cowboys to thrilling overtime win over Eagles 1 / 19 Back to Gallery
"He plays with the same mentality, the same demeanor, the same temperament regardless of what's happened before. The best players I've been around were able to do that. He was outstanding at the end of this ballgame."
Wentz had the Eagles in position for a win with another efficient performance, going 32 of 43 for 202 yards. But he couldn't move Philadelphia late in regulation with the game tied. The Eagles never got the ball in overtime after Prescott led the 75-yard scoring drive.
"It's just those late-game learning situations," Wentz said. "We've got a young team and just to lose like that in the fourth quarter when we had our opportunities. We've just to learn and put them away if we can."
On the winning play, Prescott started to his right before spinning back to his left and finding a wide-open Witten, who broke Ed "Too Tall" Jones' franchise record with his 204th start.
"A lot went through my mind," Prescott said. "Like, this is my first touchdown throw to Witten. This is the game-winner. Let's get it to him. A special moment."
Bryant had four catches for 113 yards, including a 53-yarder to set up the first Dallas touchdown, in the 2014 All-Pro's return after missing three games with a hairline fracture in his right knee.
Ezekiel Elliott's NFL rookie record of four straight games with at least 130 yards rushing end, but the NFL's rushing leader played a big part on the winning drive with 18 yards rushing and a 10-yard catch that set up Witten's score. He finished with 96 yards on 22 carries and had another 52 yards receiving.
Elliott also had two highlight plays in the first quarter on safety Rodney McLeod — first running through him on a 25-yard catch and hurdling over him on a 13-yard run during a drive to a field goal for a 10-3 lead.
Prescott's TD pass to Witten tied Troy Aikman's rookie franchise record of nine scoring passes after Wentz broke Donovan McNabb's rookie mark of eight from 1999 with his ninth of the season, a 5-yarder to Jordan Matthews that put Philadelphia up 20-10 in the third quarter.
Darren Sproles had a season-high 86 yards rushing on 15 carries for the Eagles. Matthews had 11 catches for 65 yards.
ON SECOND THOUGHT: Caleb Sturgis' 55-yard field goal on the final play of the first half for a 13-10 Philadelphia lead came after officials put a second back on the clock following Wentz's quick sideline completion to Dorial Green-Beckham. The play started with five seconds left, and replays showed officials made the right call.
Sturgis had to make the kick twice after the Cowboys called timeout just before the first successful attempt. It was Sturgis' 16th straight make following a miss on his first attempt of the season. He got his 17th straight later — a 34-yarder in the fourth quarter.
GAMBLING GARRETT: The Dallas coach with a conservative reputation went for it on fourth-and-1 in overtime when the Cowboys were in field goal range. Prescott got the first on a sneak. Garrett also gave the go-ahead for a fake punt that led to a 30-yard run by punter Chris Jones and a field goal to get the Cowboys within seven in the third quarter.
INJURIES: Eagles OL Allen Barbre left in the first half with a hamstring injury and didn't return.... Cowboys S Barry Church left with an arm injury in the second half and didn't return.... Cowboys CB Morris Claiborne left with a groin injury late in the fourth quarter.
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AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and AP NFL Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/AP_NFL
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Follow Schuyler Dixon on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apschuylerA new leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee includes one in which communications personnel share their considerable fury over a reporter’s question about Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct.
In May, Fred Lucas, a freelance reporter who said he was working for FoxNews.com, emailed the DNC press office with a question. Donald Trump had called Hillary Clinton an enabler of Bill Clinton’s alleged misconduct with women, and Lucas wanted to know what the Committee thought of the attack strategy.
“Is there a Fuck You emoji?” Luis Miranda, communications director for the DNC, wrote in an email to his colleagues.
Rachel Palermo, DNC press assistant, replied: “hahahahahahahaha.”
Mark Paustenbach, national press secretary and deputy communications director, wrote: “We’re not responding at all.”
Lucas’s question came in response to comments Trump made about Bill and Hillary Clinton on Fox News. “She’s not a victim. She was an enabler,” Trump said. “She worked with him. She was – some of the women have been totally destroyed. Some of these women have been destroyed. And Hillary worked with him.”
Three days after his first email, Lucas emailed the DNC again. He wrote: “I hoped the DNC could weigh in on the appropriateness of Trump attacking along these lines? I would really appreciate any response you have. Thanks very much.”
Palermo emailed Miranda and Paustenbach: “The asshole from fox emailed us again. I did some research and there’s still no ‘fuck you’ emoji, unfortunately.”
The DNC declined to comment.Interviews Attorney of Alabama's Former, Now-Jailed, Democratic Governor, and a Former Republican Attorney General Who is Calling for a Special Prosecutor...
Brad Friedman Byon 2/28/2008, 9:32pm PT
MSNBC's Dan Abrams continued, for the third day in a row, on the Don Siegelman beat today. The former Democratic Alabama Governor, who still sits in jail pending an appeal for his non-violent crime, is alleged to have been railroaded by Karl Rove and political operatives in the state while running for re-election in 2006.
In 2002 he had won his election, according to the announced results on Election Night, only to wake up the next morning to find that a Republican election director claimed to have discovered a "glitch" (sound familiar, regular BRAD BLOG readers?) in the electronic vote counts overnight, resulting in Siegelman's loss. He was never allowed a recount after the vote tallies somehow changed on the electronic voting machines due to the "glitch," as it was described officially, by court probate officers.
In this rarely seen, 2004 video interview with Siegelman (see approx. half-way through that linked article), he alleges: "Somebody electronically manipulated the election results…This election was stolen…There is no other kind, or sugar-coated way to say it."
Neither the 60 Minutes report on Siegelman from Sunday, nor any of Abrams' reports so far this week (here's Tuesday's and Wednesday's) including today's, as posted at the end of this article, have yet delved, with any depth, into that aspect of what seems clearly to have been a well-run political frame-up --- or, yes, a conspiracy --- to do away with the one Democrat who had been able to win statewide elections in an otherwise very Republican-leaning state.
We hope to have more on that aspect of the case soon.
On today's MSNBC "Bush League Justice" report, Abrams spoke with both Siegelman's attorney, Vince Kilborn, as well as Grant Woods, the former Republican Attorney General from Arizona who has been among the most outspoken of the 52 former Republican and Democratic Attorneys General who have called on Congress for an investigation and a special prosecutor to be named in the case.
Abrams repeated his call, from yesterday, for the immediate release of Siegelman from prison, pending appeal of his case, as would be customary in other similar, non-violent cases. Abrams enumerated his chief concerns about the prosecution and the trial as run by federal judge Mark Fuller, as follows...
Excessive Sentence:
Siegelman was acquitted of 25 of 32 counts, yet he got seven years and four months. Much more than the norm. Immediately Led Away in Shackles:
After the trial, the former Governor was manacled and taken to jail, like a violent offender. Didn't get the usual 45 days to report to prison that would be the norm. No Bail Pending Appeal:
No bail was allowed, even though an appeal for the non-violent crime is pending. Transcript Delay:
The appeal is delayed because the court has yet to produce a trial transcript even though the trial was held more than a year and a half ago.
Near the end of the interview with Woods, the former AZ Attorney General notes pointedly:
I hope everybody, Republican or Democrat, will just rally around the principle that we gotta do the right thing in this country, and not allow this thing to happen. So, if it did happen, it needs to be uncovered. If it didn't, then let's investigate it, and call it off.
The video of today's "Bush League Justice" segment on Siegelman, follows below...
(Hat-tip BRAD BLOG's video muckraker, and new best friend of Karl Rove, Alan Breslauer for the video.)
CORRECTION: We had originally described Grant Woods as the former Republican Attorney General from Alabama. He is, in fact, the former Republican Attorney General from Arizona. The BRAD BLOG regrets the error.Nicola Scafetta has published yet another paper about his theory that the (probably tidal) influence of Jupiter and Saturn is responsible for long-term changes in solar output, and that these cycles are responsible for climate change on earth. You can read about it on WUWT. It doesn’t surprise me that the paper is due to be published in a journal which seems to me to be sinking further and further into disrepute, the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. Nor does it surprise me that there’s really no physics in the paper, just mathturbation.
Scafetta begins by claiming that the distribution of lengths of the solar cycle is bimodal. He bases this claim on estimates of the lengths of individual cycles. To estimate the pdf (probability density function) of cycle length, he applies a kernel density estimator using a normal-distribution kernel. That method requires a parameter, sometimes called the “bandwidth,” which controls how much the estimated pdf is smoothed. More data allows for a smaller bandwith, sparse data do not. If your bandwidth is too small you’ll get too many “wiggles” in your estimated pdf.
Scafetta tries two different bandwidths, and, which give these estimates of the pdf for solar cycle lengths:
On this basis, Scafetta argues that not only is the solar cycle length bimodal, but that:
If is used, two peaks appear close to about 10 and 12 years. This double-belled distribution is physically interesting because it reveals that the solar cycle dynamics may be constrained by two major frequency attractors at about 10 and 12 year periods, respectively. Thus, the solar cycle length does not appear to be just a random variable distributed on a single-belled Gaussian function centered around an 11-year periodicity (as typical solar dynamo models would predict), but it appears to be generated by a more complex dynamics driven by two cyclical side attractors.
His choice of bandwidth 0.5 is entirely arbitrary, you can always choose a bandwidth which will make the estimated pdf multimodal, whatever the true underlying distribution. My theory: Scafetta went with the low bandwidth value because it gave him a bimodal pdf estimate.
There is a formula for an “optimal” bandwidth when using a normal-distribution kernel. Using that choice gives the estimated pdf shown as the black line here:
Note that the estimate using the optimal bandwidth is not bimodal. That doesn’t prove the underlying distribution in unimodal (any more that using Scafetta’s arbitrary bandwidth proves it’s bimodal), but it does show how weak is Scafetta’s evidence, and how poorly thought out is his argument.
Scafetta also notes that there are no cycles with estimated lengths between 10.55 and 11.25 years, and argues that this confirms the bimodal distribution of cycle lengths:
The bottom of Fig. 2 shows in circles the 23 actual sunspot cycle lengths used to evaluate the two distributions. No Schwabe solar cycle with a length between 10.55 and 11.25 years is observed. The existence of this gap reinforces the interpretation that solar cycle dynamics may be driven by two dynamical attractors with periods at about 10 and 12 years. In fact, the area below the single-belled distribution within the interval 10.55 and 11.25 is 0.17. It is easy to calculate that the probability to get by chance 23 random consecutive measurements from the single-belled probability distribution depicted in Fig. 2 outside its central 10.55–11.25 year interval is just %, which is a very small probability. Thus, the solar cycle length does not appear to be just a random variable of a single-belled distribution.
This is just a logical fallacy. It may be unlikely to have no estimates (out of 23) in that particular range, but that range was only chosen because it contained no observed values. It’s much more likely to have no estimates in some range with equal total probability.
In fact Scafetta has failed to provide any evidence at all that solar cycle lengths don’t follow the plain old normal distribution. There is a very sensitive test for normality of the underlying distribution, known as the Shapiro-Wilk test. It gives a p-value of 0.67 — not even a hint that the distribution isn’t normal. This isn’t rocket surgery — it should be the first thing you do if you want to make claims about the distribution of a small sample of data. If you want to claim that a distribution is not normal, you should at least apply the most basic and powerful test! And if you can’t even muster evidence that the distribution isn’t normal, then you certainly have no evidence that it’s bimodal.
Scafetta’s argument about solar cycle lengths following a bimodal distribution is truly sloppy work. But that’s just the beginning. His entire paper would make a fine tutorial in how to “prove” a preconceived notion by abandoning any shred of real scientific skepticism. Unfortunately, that’s what we have to put up with from fake skeptics on a regular basis. They do this all the time — support nonsensical theories with shoddy, incorrect analysis.
I’m sick and tired of the amount of garbage that passes for science from fake skeptics. Frankly, it pisses me off that again and again, I have to understand their crappy theories better than they do. And it pisses me off that even though most of the readers of this blog will “get it” with ridiculous ease, the general public isn’t sufficiently math-savvy for me to persuade them of what’s bloody obvious to you.
Almost as much as it pisses me off that the “throw some garbage at the wall and see what sticks” strategy has so confounded the voting public that we’re playing Russian Roulette with the next generation’s supply of food and water.
AdvertisementsEarthworms are something that all of us are familiar with. Most of us, at a young age, were introduced to the “slimy, gooey” things and learned to either love or loathe them. Given various names like “fisherman’s friend,” “gardener’s buddy” and “earth diggers delight,” worms are generally liked by most. Earthworms of various types, from red wigglers to nightcrawlers, have long been associated with healthy, productive soil.
Benefits of Earthworms in Garden Soil
Earthworms offer many benefits to the gardener and are commonly seen in healthy, organic soils. Many people believe that worms eat dirt, but in reality, they eat the bacteria and fungi that grow on decomposing matter and give off “worm castings” which are a sort of manure that is filled with nutrients plants love.
There are more than 7,000 species of earthworm divided into 23 families and over 700 genera. All of these worms have one thing in common: they naturally till and aerate soil, they speed the decomposition (composting) process, they help mix soils for more benefit, and they are excellent “canaries” for monitoring a soil’s health.
Red wigglers are commonly associated with compost, as they are the most likely to appear in compost heaps and are the ones used most often for vermicomposting (composting with worms). They are faster than any other organism at the job.
CC flickr photo by Allan Henderson
Increasing Earthworms in Garden Soil
Obviously, you could purchase worms (they are sold by the pound in many garden stores) and just manually add them to the garden. This will work for the short term, but will not be very beneficial since worms are needed all season.
Encouraging worms naturally is the best way. It’s a case of “if you build it, they will come” as in the better your soil for worm habitat, the more worms that will live in it. You don’t need to add worms, just encourage them to be there and they’ll show up on their own.
First, worms love organically-rich soil with a lot of nutrients and a neutral pH level. Start by doing basic tests on your soil (if you can) or just add a lot of organic matter to it. Till it in well and then add more on top, either as growing material (cover crops like clover or buckwheat) or as mulch (clipped grass, leaves, straw, and other quality mulches work best). Occasionally add light water and poke the soil with a compost form (do not turn it).
After a few weeks, perhaps two months, dig a cubic foot of soil and examine how many worms are in it. You should notice a marked increase. By the end of the season, you should not only have a lot of worms per foot, but also have very rich, healthy soil.
Once the soil is healthy, just maintain it and the worms will stay, no matter what you’re growing in it. An added bonus is that the great soil will not only grow huge yields, but by periodically checking the worms in it, you can tell if something might be going wrong when the worms start leaving.
Maintaining a Healthy Environment for Earthworms in the Soil
Worms, as said earlier, love nutrient-rich, healthy soil. If you keep adding compost and mulches regularly, you’ll always have great soil. The worms will become part of its ecosystem.
Want to learn more about increasing earthworms in your garden soil?
Check out these helpful websites:
Earthworms from University of Illinois Extension
Earthworms and Crop Management from Purdue University Cooperative Extension ServiceTo be honest, looking back now, working in fast food like I used to wasn’t the problem itself. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially since graduating college.
I didn’t mind flipping burgers or making processed scrambled eggs or whatever I was doing. None of the work itself bothered me, besides the fact that I was providing a basic human right — food — that people had to pay for. But that’s a story for another day.
What bothered me about working in fast food, and also in retail, is the overarching issue that I was being exploited and underpaid. I was giving so much of my labor, strength and time to a system that didn’t even pay me enough to get by.
People say, “You should be grateful you even have a job!” But is it really any better if you still can’t pay the bills on time? What is the difference between being unemployed and in poverty, and making $120 a week and still being in poverty? That money dries up fast. You can’t save up anything when you bring in maybe $500 a month, and you’ve got the rent and the utilities and the groceries and the car (if you’re even lucky enough to have one).
Working at McDonald’s was basically like being unemployed, in that respect. And many people treat fast food workers horribly. Many customers think they’re entitled to bad behavior because you serve them. They’re condescending, rude, demeaning, and that is also what is exhausting.
Our society teaches that blue- and pink-collar jobs are to be looked down on. We hear as children: “You don’t want to be a garbage truck driver, do you?” or “Go to college or you’ll be flipping burgers for the rest of your life!” Those jobs are seen as unfortunate stepping stones or a negative consequence of a bad upbringing.
But there’s nothing wrong with working these jobs except the way that they and the people who work in those jobs are represented.
The other issue I had working in food service was the homophobia. That was also exhausting. At the time, I knew better than to come out to my co-workers as transgender. But due to the grave error I made in trusting my manager with my being gay, my co-workers found out and tormented me about that.
The manager was eventually let go, and a new manager came in who fired the most homophobic co-worker I had to deal with. But that wasn’t enough. The harassment continued, and I quit eventually because of it.
My experience is a stark reminder of how workers, no matter our race, sexual orientation, gender, dis/ability, citizen status, etc., have to stick together, because our labor is being exploited. We are all being exploited.
Busting our asses for $8.05 an hour was and is unacceptable. If we want better, then we have to come to understand and support one another’s lives and identities. That is the only way.
Devin Cole is president of Pensacola STRIVE (Social Trans Initiative) and director of operations for the Florida Transgender Alliance. They most recently organized a Pensacola “Welcome Home” rally in honor of recently freed trans activist Chelsea Manning and Puerto Rican national hero Oscar López Rivera.uAvionix Rolls Out New ADS-B Products
As expected, uAvionix, a manufacturer of avionics for the UAV segment, announced this week four new ADS-B-related products that it hopes will ignite what have been lackluster sales of this equipment as the NextGen mandate looms. The California-based company says it plans to leverage potential volume in the UAS market to drive down ADS-B prices for manned general aviation aircraft while also producing products of much smaller physical size. However, for the time being, uAvionix’s products are limited to experimental and light sport aircraft, not certified aircraft.
The four products announced ahead of the Sun ‘n Fun show in Lakeland include the EchoUAT, SkyFYX, SkyEcho and EchoESX. The EchoUAT is 978 MHz UAT transceiver with ADS-B In and Out. Although it meets the requirements of TSO-C154c, it’s not a TSO’d box. It does meet the requirements spelled out in FAR 91.227 to fly with ADS-B in the National Airspace System. At $999, it lacks an onboard GPS source so unless an owner has a suitable WAAS GPS source in the aircraft, the installation will also require uAvionix’s SkyFYX, a WAAS GNSS sensor that sells for under $500. The EchoUAT has integrated WiFi and will support popular tablet apps for IOS and Android.
For European and UK pilots, uAvionix announced the SkyEcho, a portable CAP 1391 Electronic Conspicuity product that the company says is the first approved portable ADS-B Out. So-called EC devices are low-powered units intended to make aircraft visible to each other in areas that lack ATC surveillance. It’s similar in concept to the U.S. Traffic Awareness Beacon system (TABS) meant to light up TCAS and other traffic awareness systems. SkyEcho will be shown at the Aero trade show in Friedrichshafen, Germany, in two weeks.
The EchoESX, at $1699, will be available later this month and marks uAvionix’s entry into the crowded Mode S ADS-B transponder market. It’s designed to link directly with popular EFIS products found in light sport and experimental aircraft and meets the 2020 ADS-B mandate. AVweb will provide more coverage on these products during Sun ‘n Fun.The Santa Clara County Fire Department wants feedback from the people it serves.
Residents of Campbell, Cupertino, Los Gatos, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Monte Sereno, Saratoga and unincorporated areas of the county are being asked to participate in two workshops that will focus on the fire department’s communication with residents and what could be done to improve it, according to Bill Murphy, fire captain and public information officer.
On Feb. 27 a workshop will be held in Campbell at the Home Church, 1711 Winchester Blvd. from 5:30 to 8 p.m. A second workshop will be on Feb. 28 at the Garden House, 400 University Ave. in Los Altos from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Registration is not required to attend the workshops.
Workshops with a focus on communication with residents are a first for the department.
“We want to find a way to communicate effectively with people every day and if there are some things we need to improve on,” Murphy said. “It’s going to be interesting to see how people prefer to communicate with us.”
Feedback from the workshops will be given to the department’s communication task force to develop a plan on effective communication methods the fire department could implement, according to Murphy.
Murphy said the plan could be completed in the middle of the year.
The effort is a top priority in the department’s strategic plan, which guides the department through five years of direction, objectives and effective use of resources. The department is in the middle of a strategic plan spanning 2014-2019.
“In the last year or two we’ve redone our website, implemented social media use and have made a Nextdoor account,” Murphy said, adding the department has used those to share information during emergency and non-emergency situations.
During the week of Feb. 6-10, the department posted on Facebook and Twitter information about the closure of roads and highways due to recent storms.
“We’re taking a proactive step here in making sure the best information gets out to people in a way that they’ll see it,” Murphy said.
At the workshops, participants will also see the department’s newest fire engine, which is designed to access open space areas and a variety of terrain, Murphy said.
The department has received three of the new engines.
Residents unable to attend one of the workshops can take an online survey instead.
To take the survey, visit bit.ly/SCCFDWoolly mammoth to be brought back to life from cloned bone marrow 'within five years'
Thigh bone discovered in permafrost soil of Siberia
Contains elusive undamaged genes essential for nucleus transplantation
Nuclei of elephant's egg cells will be replaced with mammoth's marrow DNA
Embryo will then be planted into elephant womb for gestation
Scientists believe it may be possible to clone a woolly mammoth within five years after finding well-preserved bone marrow in a thigh bone recovered from permafrost soil in Siberia.
Teams from Russia's Sakha Republic's mammoth museum and Japan's Kinki University will launch fully-fledged joint research next year aiming to recreate the giant mammal, Japan's Kyodo News reported from Yakutsk, Russia.
By replacing the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those taken from the mammoth's marrow cells, embryos with mammoth DNA can be produced, Kyodo said, citing the researchers.
Clone hope: The discovery of marrow inside the thigh bone of a woolly mammoth in Siberia has led scientists to believe they can bring the species back to life
Exciting: Mammoth bones like this one have been dug up many times before, but finding one with undamaged genes has proven a challenge (file picture)
The scientists will then plant the embryos into elephant wombs for delivery as the two species are close relatives, the report said.
Securing nuclei with an undamaged gene is essential for the nucleus transplantation technique, it said.
For scientists involved in the research since the late 1990s, finding nuclei with undamaged mammoth genes has been a challenge.
Fertile land: The thigh bone was discovered in the permafrost soil of Siberia as were these tusks which came from an entire 23,000-year-old mammoth dug up in 1999
Mammoths became extinct about 10,000 years ago.
But the discovery in August in Siberia has increased the chances of a successful cloning.Android devices sold in mainland China aren't the same as Android devices sold in the US and elsewhere. Chinese devices often run a forked version of Android derived from Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code but without the Google apps and services that are usually included in other countries. That's because the Google Play store and related services aren't officially available in China—the company left China back in 2010 following the "Operation Aurora" cyber-attacks that have been attributed to the Chinese government. Google vowed to stop censoring Chinese search results and later began redirecting Chinese searches through Hong Kong, and its services in China have either been spotty or completely unavailable ever since.
Today The Information reports that Google is making plans to get a version of Google Play back into China and that it's willing to work within Chinese censorship law to do it. The company "will follow local laws and block apps that the government deems objectionable" in the interest of regaining control over its own operating system. Google also wants to help Chinese developers distribute their apps outside of China and help international developers sell their apps within China.
The company wants to make the move to a Google-blessed version of Android attractive by offering "new incentives to phone makers to upgrade Android phones to the latest versions of the operating system," though the exact incentives aren't mentioned. Similar Google initiatives like the Android Update Alliance and Android One have fared poorly in other countries, so it's not clear what Google can do in China to get different results.
Finally, the report says that Google also wants to get Android Wear into China, extending beyond standard phones and tablets into the still-nascent wearable market. There are plenty of AOSP-based wearables in China, but the official version of Wear uses Google Play Services just like the phones and tablets do.
The Chinese market is where much of the growth in smartphone shipments is coming from these days, and while Android does well there, Google isn't making any money from it. This move, which could happen "as early as this fall," could give Google a foothold in the wider Android marketplace in China, though it will be an uphill battle against forks from companies like Xiaomi.Jobcentre ‘hit squads’ set up benefit claimants to fail, says former official
Jobcentre bosses set up “hit squads” to target benefit claimants for sanctions and put pressure on them to sign off the dole, according to evidence presented to an inquiry by MPs.
The written statement, by a former jobcentre official, John Longden, says frontline staff were ordered to “agitate and inconvenience” customers so they fell foul of the rules, enabling staff to stop their benefits payments.
Staff who failed to meet sanctions targets each month were threatened with disciplinary action, he claims.
Longden says he was told by a manager that the message with regard to customers was: “Let’s set them up from day one.”
He adds: “Customers were being deliberately treated inappropriately in order to achieve [staff] performance [targets] without regard for natural justice and their welfare.”
Longden’s evidence covers events he says he witnessed at Salford and Rochdale jobcentres between 2011 and 2013. It has been lodged with the Commons work and pensions select committee, which is investigating benefit sanctions policy.
A sanction involves the stopping of claimants’ benefit payments for at least four weeks – equivalent to almost £300 – as a penalty for breach of benefit rules and conditions, typically failure to look for work or attend jobcentre appointments.
Ministers introduced tighter rules for claiming benefits in October 2012, saying sanctions were a “last resort” that would encourage claimants to “engage” with jobcentres. However, critics say jobcentres are increasingly neglecting to help claimants find jobs and are instead focusing on finding ways to impose financial penalties on them |
office, but that’s another story.)
Thatcher recreated herself several times before she became Tory leader and then allowed herself to be remodelled and honed by advisors to convince the voters. Tony Blair too was interested in developing and learning, although with only a cursory reading of Thatcher’s memoirs to guide him on foreign policy and no understanding of economics he came a cropper in the end. Bad luck, all round, especially for the Iraqis and British taxpayers.
Despite his terrible policies, I thought Ed Miliband might have it and he didn’t, which was my wrong call. Bright as he is, Miliband is an unyielding figure who confused rigidity with principle and never broke out of a soft-left Kinnockian worldview. Even though he, the eternal academic, diagnosed the problem in an industry such as banking correctly, his solution could not be a radical injection of competition. He proposed statist tinkering, as one would expect.
In contrast, David Cameron is endlessly adaptable. Yes, there is a stubbornness there and he can be too slow to move, but he adapts to changing circumstances in the end. Faced with a potential disaster several years ago, with UKIP on the rampage and parts of his own party in revolt, he learnt from his mistakes and fused the best of the Tory modernising approach with a more traditional concentration on a strong economy and aspiration – in a manner which would have been familiar to Macmillan, Thatcher and Major. In this way, he did something quite remarkable – he improved in office, learnt lessons and then won as a result. Ed Miliband, on the other hand got stuck and still does not (to use his own phrase, usually accompanied by a shake of the head) “geddit.”
Iain Martin is Editor of CapX
ShareAppleby is a market leader in the offshore business, with annual revenues of $100 million, 470 employees and offices in nearly every major tax haven. Appleby was founded in Hamilton, the capital of Bermuda. The building the law firm occupies there today may be unspectacular, but its roster of clients is not. It includes princesses, prime ministers and Hollywood stars, along with some of the world’s richest oligarchs from Russia, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Appleby likes to boast that its operations are absolutely clean and professional. But now Read the story: The Firmthe law firmRead the story: The Firm is at the center of the Paradise Papers, an international investigative reporting project that leads directly into the shadowy world of big money. The Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained close to 13.4 million documents. They demonstrate how some clients use offshore companies to mask criminal activity or conceal money from dubious sources. The documents, for instance, expose previously unknown links between a secretary in U.S. President Donald Trump’s cabinet and Russian oligarchs. In fact, information on more than a dozen of Trump’s advisers, cabinet members and major donors can be found in the leaked data.
A Network that Spans the Globe The documents show how corporations like Nike, Apple, Uber and Facebook have found ways to reduce their taxes to astoundingly low rates. The Paradise Papers also provide evidence of assets in tax havens held by Read the story: Henry and the Queenthe British queenRead the story: Henry and the Queen, the rock star Bono and Stephen Bronfman, the chief fundraiser for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They reveal the extent to which political elites exploit this secretive world: More than 120 politicians from almost 50 different countries are involved in one way or the other.
In Germany, the trail leads to around 1,000 clients, beneficiaries or otherwise involved persons – although those links do not automatically imply illegality. Among those using offshore structures are billionaires, aristocrats, entrepreneurs, heirs, investors, individuals convicted of fraud and past politicians, but also companies like car rental giant Sixt, postal service provider Deutsche Post, the hotel chain Meininger, Siemens, Allianz, Bayer and Deutsche Bank. The Süddeutsche Zeitung is covering every instance in which there is an obvious public interest. The documents offer a glimpse into a world that has been custom-tailored to fit the needs of major corporations, the rich and the super-rich. They crack open the door to an industry that promises utmost secrecy, exposing a previously invisible network that spans the globe.
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The Paradise Papers show how inextricably linked the offshore world and industrialized nations have become. As part of the reporting for this project, economist Gabriel Zucman quantified the size of this discreet realm and found that multinational corporations shift more than 600 billion euros a year through tax havens.
That means in the time you’ve spent reading this article so far, corporations have shifted through tax havens.
But tax havens don’t only help corporations avoid taxes – they do the same for private individuals, too. And besides skirting taxes, wealthy people can also circumvent laws they find bothersome, whether they concern inheritances, liability issues or even creditor protection. “There is this small group of people who are not equally subject to the laws as the rest of us, and that’s on purpose,” said sociologist Brooke Harrington, a certified wealth manager and Copenhagen Business School professor who is the author of “Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent.” These people “live the dream” of enjoying “the benefits of society without being subject to any of its constraints.” Two groups of people that are conspicuously absent from the Paradise Papers are those with average salaries and low-wage earners. After all, before anyone can profit from the offshore system, they have to be able to afford it. Ultimately, though, this system comes at a cost to everyone else. It deprives national economies of billions in tax revenues that are critical for things like keeping hospitals running, creating daycare facilities and making our streets safer. The dimensions of the problem are illustrated in one of Zucman’s calculations: The super-rich have parked 7.9 trillion euros in tax havens.
The offshore system exaggerates wealth and exacerbates poverty. Business deals in developing nations in particular often include suspiciously favorable conditions – to the detriment of local populations. Documents from this leak show how the Swiss commodities giant Glencore exploited political power structures in Democratic Republic of the Congo with the help of an Israeli businessman. A reconstruction of events surrounding the jostling for mining licenses arouses suspicion that bribes were paid to one or more Congolese politicians or officials during the negotiations. The Paradise Papers shed light on this shadowy world. They illuminate the nexuses of the globalized economy and peek behind the closed doors of the rich and powerful.
Not One, But 21 Leaks The new leak is comprised of information from 21 different sources. The Süddeutsche Zeitung was provided with confidential documents from two firms that specialize in providing services for offshore companies. The first is the aforementioned Appleby. The other is the smaller fiduciary company Asiaciti Trust, headquartered in Singapore. The Süddeutsche Zeitung also received internal data from company registers in 19 tax havens, including Bermuda, the Cook Islands and Malta. The Paradise Papers are, in effect, an amalgamation of 21 different collections of data. To protect its sources, the Süddeutsche Zeitung will provide no details regarding how the information reached the newspaper, who provided it or when it was received.
As with the Panama Papers before it, the Süddeutsche Zeitung shared the data with the You can also read ICIJ's reportingInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)You can also read ICIJ's reporting in Washington. And once again, an international team of reporters spent close to a year working to filter out the best stories. Media organizations publishing the Paradise Papers include the New York Times, the Guardian, the BBC, Le Monde and La Nación, among many others. In total, more than 380 journalists from 96 media outlets in 67 countries were involved. In Austria, it was ORF and the Vienna-based weekly magazine Falter; in Switzerland, the Tages-Anzeiger and the Sonntagszeitung; in Germany, besides the team at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, public broadcasters Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) were also on board.Flashback: Liberal Media Completely Ignored Hillary Clinton’s Leak of Classified Information During Debate
Democrat Hillary Clinton leaked out classified nuclear launch times during her debate with Donald Trump last year.
She leaked the information to millions of viewers during the debate.
The military was “not exactly thrilled” that Hillary leaked the “extremely classified information.”
Via Washington Free Beacon:
Then she tweeted out the same classified information.
The tweet is still up on her twitter account.
When the president gives the order to launch a nuclear weapon, that’s it. The officer has to launch. It can take as little as four minutes. — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 20, 2016
Of course, the Deep State media gave Hillary Clinton a complete pass.
They were on the same team.
Compare that to President Trump’s lawful exchange of information with the Russians that was leaked out by fake news media last night.
It quickly became the top story in WaPo history.Doug Phillips, the Home School Movement's leading Quiverful Patriarch resigned from Vision Forum Ministries, admitting a "lengthy inappropriate relationship" with a woman. It appears that while as he has been fighting homosexuality and feminism as threats to marriage, he has actually been the threat.
His supporters are lauding his resignation letter as appropriately contrite repentance and arguing that this has no bearing on the validity of Biblical Patriarchy. But actually it does, making this more important than another hypocritical cheating scandal.
Phillips is a key figure bringing Christian Reconstruction into the larger home school world. Building upon R.J. Rushdoony's postmillennialism and "Biblical Philosophy of History," he teaches home-schooling families to "exercise dominion" through 200-year plans, "multi-generational faithfulness" and "Biblical Patriarchy."
His influence is hard to overstate; there is barely a part of the home-school movement his empire has not touched. He started as an attorney at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), is a sought-after speaker at home school conventions and Vision Forum sponsors well-attended conferences of its own. Phillips was a founder of the patriarchal Family Integrated Church Movement. He has close partnerships with Henry Morris at Institute for Creation Research, the Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting and actor-turned-Christian activist Kirk Cameron.
Phillips has been active in the Tea Party in San Antonio where Vision Forum is located. He has a film school and annual Christian Film Festival that have been involved with films screened by local tea party groups across the country, including Agenda: Grinding America Down and Indoctrination: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America.
Phillips' infidelity is more than a private matter because, by design, his Biblical Patriarchy makes women vulnerable such that even with a husband repeatedly violating his marriage vows, practically speaking, a wife has no options.
The Family, in Biblical Patriarchy, is the primary institution through which God has delegated authority entirely to men. Women are to be "in submission in all things," first to their fathers and then to husbands, chosen by fathers. The purpose of the family is the exercise of the patriarch's dominion, especially through procreation. Women are to bear as many children as is possible. Anything short of that is deemed selfishness, accommodation with the "culture of death" and rebellion against God's will.
Education is solely a family concern and no other institution may intervene. That they oppose even with the smallest of regulations preventing child abuse is a point pressed by Phillips' home schooling opponents.
Education for girls within Biblical Patriarchy is focused on training them for domestic duties. Vision Forum's catalogs, Beautiful Girlhood Collection and the All American Boy's Adventure Catalog, stated purpose is to teach "Biblical" gender norms: meekness, submissiveness and dependency for girls; chivalry, curiosity and adventurousness for boys. There are strategies for boys to obtain college degrees without actually attending college but college education for girls is often seen as unnecessary and even destructive.
Vision Forum offers opportunities for boys including a "law school" (really just a conference) "Hazardous Journeys" for manly men (this is not a parody), an entrepreneurial boot-camp and the "Christian Boys' & Men's Titanic Society." For girls they offer a "Father Daughter Retreat" (noted for its creepiness), in which fathers "lead," "woo" and "win" their daughters to become "industrious, family-affirming, children-loving, women of God."
Phillips' scandal calls attention to the dangers of the world he wants to build: A woman raised in Biblical Patriarchy is carefully sheltered, most especially to opportunities to develop any kind of self-sufficiency. If she finds herself with a houseful of children and a husband forced to admit publicly to unfaithfulness that extends over a long period of time, she has no options.
The cheated wife is not likely to be supported by the patriarchal community. The leaders (all male) are likely to be sympathetic the husband's "temptation" and should she discuss the situation outside of the sanctioned forums controlled by men she will be denounced as a gossip. Sometimes the women are blamed: the "other woman" as Satan's temptress and even the completely innocent wife for having "let herself go" or being inadequately submissive.
As supporters laud Phillips' statement, I see him setting the stage for a time out to be followed by a return to leadership completely redeemed. No woman, in the few leadership roles allowed to them, would be accorded such "grace," even for less serious failings.
Phillips "confession" is very carefully parsed giving a bit of information but leaving more questions than answers. The relationship was "inappropriately romantic and affectionate" but he claims he did not "know this woman in a biblical sense" without explaining exactly what he means. Powerful leaders do not resign over a flirtation.
He could have left the explanation at "inappropriate" yet something compelled him to go beyond that. Is he parsing out what it means to have sex (undermining his sincerity) or hiding something more significant like a power/authority dynamic making this not entirely consensual. Is there an angered father who must be placated but must also, as is his primary obligation in Biblical Patriarchy, preserve his daughter's purity?
Importantly, making some sort of a confession means that Phillips' wife must to continue to submit to his leadership. She may, as he claims, be responding with "supernatural love and forgiveness" though its unlikely we'll hear that from her. But within this world she has no other choice and she is an influential in her own right.The idea of a militia – that is, groups of armed citizens that enter military service in time of need – has a long and contentious history in the United States. The idea of what constitutes the militia under the Constitution is has stirred up a lot of debate these past few years, and was reinvigorated by the so-called militia that took over federal land in Oregon in 2016. The topic is fraught with Constitutional, legal, political, and societal issues that go all the way back to the nation’s founding. However, although the issue is complicated, with a little effort we can trace how the fundamental idea of the militia has changed over time to where it exists in State and Federal laws today.
English Beginnings
The idea of militia goes back to English traditions beginning with the Assize of Arms in 1181: “He will possess these arms and will bear allegiance to the lord king, Henry, namely the son of empress Maud, and that he will bear these arms in his service according to his order and in allegiance to the lord king and his realm.” This was further reinforced in 1285 with the Statute of Winchester in 1285: “Every man shall have in his house arms for keeping the peace according to the ancient assize.” Perhaps the clearest origination of what we would consider the American militia tradition can be found in 1581: “If any man being the Queenes Subject, and not having reasonable cause or impediment, and being within the age of sixtie years (except spiritual men, justices of the bench, or other justices of Assise, or barons of the Exchequer) have not a long bow and Arrowes readie in his house, or have not for every man childe in his house betweene seven years and seventeene of age a bow and two shaftes, and everie such being above seventeene years, a Bowe and foure shaftes, or have not brought them uppe in Shooting: if any man under the age of four and twentie years, have shotte at standing pricks [targets] (being above that age) have shot at any marks under eleven score yards with any prickshaft or flight.”
Perhaps the strongest cultural tradition to transfer from England to its colonies was the distrust of a standing army that could enforce the Crown’s will and circumvent parliament. England’s strength lay in its navy, which was out of sight – and often out of mind – and could not project the Crown’s power inland. The army was not considered a gentleman’s occupation and soldiers were looked upon as mere pawns.
Through the colonial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, English colonists in North America had plenty of opportunities to see regular British Army soldiers. And for the most part, the contact was not positive. The often overly religious colonists saw the Regulars as profane, uncouth, and generally prone to immoral behaviour. For their part, the Regulars thought the colonial militia prayed too much, were not disciplined, and couldn’t be relied upon when the shooting started. The militia through the colonial wars racked up a mixed battlefield record. There were notable collapses, such militia refusing to cross colony lines – an issue that would prevail well into the 19th century – but also successes as well. The most notable came in the 1744 all-militia expedition to seize the French fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia. After a conventional siege, the all-militia force took the fortress, shocking both leaders in France and England. By and large, the militia were a successful auxiliary force for the British in North America, freeing up Regulars for offensive military operations.
Each colony had their own militia laws but most agreed that the militia consisted of all able bodied white males, ages 18-45. These militia units were to be formed under the auspices of the colony’s charter and individuals were responsible for equipping themselves. The first muster of full militia regiments took place in 1636 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Militia spirit waxed and waned in the various colonies, depending on the prevailing spirit of the age. It stayed especially strong in the New England states, where militia units developed into political and social institutions as well as military. The prominent political leaders that emerged in the run-up to Independence were usually very active in the militia. The Sons of Liberty essentially infiltrated the militia system of New England, ensuring that there was a ready force of angry citizens in 1775 when the festivities kicked off at Lexington and Concord.
American Revolution and the Early Republic
Militia units formed the backbone of the force that began the American Revolution and were used to augment the Continental Army as the war went on, although they continued to have mixed results. Still, it was the militia that carried out the Siege of Boston and gave George Washington an army with which to prosecute the war before the Continental Congress could provide authorization for a semi-professional force. The militia traditions ensured that there were trained and (somewhat) ready troops to fill the ranks of the Continental Army, as well as experienced officers.
When the American Revolution ended, the Army was cut down to a tiny force in reaction to a prevailing anti-monarchical spirit that viewed a standing army as a danger to a free people. Even after the toothless Articles of Confederation were scrapped and the Constitutional debates began, the role of the militia was still hotly debated. The Federalists viewed a standing Army and Navy as being necessary for protecting economic freedom and projecting power. The Anti-Federalists were convinced a standing Army would only give more power to the Federal government and reduce the authority of the states.
The Framers of the Constitution eventually got their way, angering the Anti-Federalists by establishing a larger Army, and more importantly, by giving Congress authority over the militia. Article I, Section 8 (the Militia Clause) states:
“Congress shall have the power to: provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”
This removed overall control of the militia from the States to Congress. The Second Amendment to the Constitution added the most often-cited phrase associated with the militia: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” And yet, the militia were already susceptible to control from the Federal government as outlined in Article I, although this was often disputed by State governments.
Following the disaster that was St. Clair’s Defeat in the Ohio Valley, Congress passed the Militia Acts of 1792 which authorized the President to call up the Militia in times of invasion or insurrection and provided for the organization of State militias organized into companies, battalions, brigades, and divisions by their States. Militia were still considered the de-facto defense force for the nation. The idea of the “citizen-soldier” retained a strong romantic hold over the nation’s leaders. However, militia were still governed by State laws, most of which did not allow service either outside the State or outside the nation.
This was most starkly visible in the War of 1812, when the governor of Massachusetts disobeyed President James Madison’s orders to send the Massachusetts Militia outside the state’s borders. The militia suffered notable setbacks in that war, most notably in the British invasion of Maine in 1814 and outside Washington, DC that same year. In both instances, large militia forces fled from the battlefield, often without firing a shot. Militia did have success when fighting in fortifications or when backed by Regulars. The War of 1812 was highly unpopular, so it is understandable to see why the Militia did not commit the same way they had in 1776.
Following the War of 1812, the Militia fell into what can only be called a state of disrepair. Yearly musters were not well attended, inspectors were lax, musters were more often than not an excuse for men to get away from their families and drink, and States neglected to keep good stocks of arms and equipment. The only exception to this were companies of Volunteer Militia that were formed by enterprising and industrious individuals of a martial nature. Company commanders often equipped and clothed their units with private funds and presented their organizations to the State for acceptance as Militia. As the Organized Militia waned in popularity, the Volunteer Militia grew. Because they were considered “elite” companies, they were given honorary positions as the flank companies of regiments, either as guards or light infantry. Few artillery and cavalry Militia companies ended up existing as anything other than paper companies in the Volunteer Militia. Still, State Militia laws still generally prevented their forces from serving outside the country.
The Civil War
To essentially get around the Militia system, the War Department created “volunteer” units, often largely made up of Militia units. When war was declared, the President would issue a call for volunteers with each state given a quota. U.S. Volunteers served with distinction in the Mexican-American War and formed the vast majority of U.S. troops in the Civil War. Generally speaking, the first volunteer regiments sent from each state in 1861 were formed from the Volunteer Militia organizations, many dating back to before Independance. These regiments, for the most part, compiled outstanding records of service in the Civil War and demonstrated that a militia culture could be of great value to the nation. In 1862, the Militia Acts of 1792 were amended to allow African-Americans to serve in the Militia.
Following the Civil War, interest in the Militia dropped off entirely as the nation was tired of war. Between 1869 and 1875, the Militia began to grow. Again, it was the Volunteer Militia that remained the most active force, taking on the role of the Organized Militia. The Enrolled Militia continued to be those men of military age who were eligible to be called up for mandatory service. The Volunteer Militia grew more and more active through the 1880’s, forming into State regiments with State funding. Most States continued to organize their Militia along the lines of their own Militia Acts, no revision having been made to the National Act since 1862. Despite progress in the professionalization of the Militia, U.S. Volunteers were used again in the Spanish-American War in 1898.
Towards a National Guard
The Militia Act of 1903 created the National Guard out of the Organized Militia and created the Reserve Militia, to consist of males 17-45, those eligible for the draft. This removed more control of the Militia from the States but provided additional funding for training, equipping, and manning the force. It was the National Defense Act of 1916 that fully modernized the National Guard, provided Federal funding for training, drills, annual training, and equipping. It did, however, stipulate that in return, the War Department and the Army gained far more control over the Militia; for example, the Army was now able to dictate what types of units would be raised in each State. The Act also removed the issue of Militia serving outside the United States by stating that when called into Federal service, the National Guard would be considered Federal troops.
From then on, the National Guard has served with distinction in all the major conflicts of the United States. The idea of a citizen-soldier still retains its popularity, and for good reason: the National Guard ensures a link between civilians and the military in this age of the All-Volunteer Force.
Common Legal Issues
Most States still have Militia laws on their books, which provide authorization for State Defense Forces or State Guards. Some States – like Texas, surprise, surprise – even have fairly generous Militia laws that allow the Governor to call up private citizens as part of an unorganized militia in the event of invasion or natural disaster. However, these Militia forces all come under the umbrella of the State, per each State’s laws.
Additionally, there is a lot of incredibly boring – yet important – legal documentation that further defines how the Militia may be used. United States Code Title 32 outlines how the organized Militia may be used. The critical piece to understand is that the National Guard is exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, that prohibits Federal troops from enforcing domestic policies. The National Guard may do so, within their own states, if called upon by their governor. It also means the Guard takes a lead role in natural disasters as part of the Defense Support to Civil Authorities mission, in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Title 32 differs from Title 10, which is the section of the United States Code that governs Federal troops. Along with Title 32, there have been multiple court decisions that continue to define how the National Guard can be used. As part of Constitutional Law, the definition continues to be further honed and shaped.
In summary, the National Guard remains the “well-regulated Militia;” the Militia is not anyone who declares themselves so.
For further reading on this topic, check out Michael Doubler’s book, I am the Guard.
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About the Author: Angry Staff Officer is an Army engineer officer who is adrift in a sea of doctrine and staff operations and uses writing as a means to retain his sanity. He also collaborates on a podcast with Adin Dobkin entitled War Stories, which examines key moments in the history of warfare.Divide and Conquer with Algebraic Structures
Brian Lonsdorf Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 1, 2016
Recommended listening during read:
https://open.spotify.com/track/29h3NmtIybnBQDJiTM8TuB
Tl;dr
Pure functional data structures allow us to focus on the composition of complex, effectful workflows through reasoning and interchangeable instances. We can stub functions to return these types, get the composition right, then circle back to implement the functions. Also, traverse kicks ass.
Prereq
To get a feel for algebraic structures see https://github.com/fantasyland/fantasy-land.
Fix me a Fixture
It’s no secret that I enjoy functional programming. Writing code this way typically involves two steps:
Make some tiny functions Compose those tiny functions
Besides the reuse, simplicity, etc, one reason I enjoy this approach is that it enables me to focus on one part at a time — composition or the function implementation. This comes in handy when dealing with a complex function or workflow.
Consider this problem: We’d like to load these fixtures into a db and return a matching data structure of created records. So, looking at the data below, dino_jr will be our fixture name that points to an instance of the Band model and so on.
Data for our fixtures
What’s more, we want to replace the “x_id” references to other fixtures (e.g. band_id and venue_id in the dino_stubbs event) with the actual database ids from the surrounding fixtures — by doing so, our ORM will take care of relationship methods.
If all goes well, we should be able to write something like:
Our goal api
Think for a minute on how you might approach this issue without pure functional data structures. Can you imagine the mutation? Callbacks firing off without warning. And the loops, oh goodness, the nested loops! I suspect it’d feel a little like tuning up a moving car.
Composing with algebraic reasoning
To tackle this issue, let’s focus on the composition rather than the functions here. We’ll need to traverse (and preserve) our data structure while inserting database records, which deals with multiple asynchronous actions. Then we’ll need to coordinate a second pass once all is created to add the relationship ids — another set of async actions.
There are a few composition hints here: We’ll need to traverse the data structure as well as coordinate (i.e. chain) a second pass. We’ll need an effect capturing type to model async.
We can swap out any algebraic data structure with another and preserve compositional reasoning.
To handle the async coordination, I would normally jump straight in and work with Task, which is a lazy promise (see https://github.com/folktale/data.task). However, in this case, we have a complex composition and Task is a bit opaque. Not to worry, there’s a useful trick: We can swap out any algebraic data structure with another and preserve compositional reasoning.
Since we can swap types, let’s choose the benign Id type to capture effects since it is easy to inspect, then trade it in for Task once we have our composition down.
I’ll use Id from https://www.npmjs.com/package/fantasy-identities and Immutable.Map from https://www.npmjs.com/package/immutable-ext.
Mapping Maps
How do we surgically replace nested objects while maintaining structure? Let’s try map:
Using Map
That alters each value, but the result type: Map({a: Id(2), b: Id(3)}) is undesirable. The values are all bottled up in Id and hard to get at.
traverse is a general function that’s like map, but it flips two container-like data structures around while running the transform function. So if I have, say, a Maybe(IO(x)) I can get a IO(Maybe(x)) or if I have a List(Task(x)) i can get Task(List(x)).
Let’s look at how the function traverse works on Map
Using Traverse
By using traverse we ended up with Id(Map({a: 2, b: 3})) which is much nicer. We have one Id on the outside and all the values are left unbottled, as it were.
Keep in mind that if we replaced Id with Task, every place that’s inside the type would be async. Therefore, in this example, we’d have 1 0utter Task that would tell us when all the async work inside those objects had finished.
But this sketch, doesn’t quite match our needs. For our fixtures, we’d like to dig two levels deep and change the values while maintaining the structure.
Can we just traverse twice?
Double traverse workflow
Yes we can! We can place our inner objects into an effect capturing type and have it bubble all the way out all whilst maintaining our object structure.
Plugging it together
So following our sketch above, we want to traverse our tables, then traverse the inner instances. Let’s write our main function, makeFixtures.
Traverse our fixture data
I’ve faked a createRecord function. Since I know createRecord is going to have an effect, I stubbed it with Id. I can then circle back and implement it later. This is what that whole focusing on one thing business was about.
So at this point, we have our first pass (record is a placeholder for the db instance):
Intermediate data structure of created records
Next, we have to do the whole double traversal thing again to update each record with its associations. We use chain (aka flatMap) to sequence effects. Again, I’ve faked an associateRels function for now so we can focus on composing, but it doesn’t matter what it does as long as it returns our Id type.
Sequence our traversals
Now that we’ve got the composition down, all that’s left to do is implement the functions for real and swap out Id for Task. Since they are just db writes, I won’t bore the reader with implementation.
Conclusions
The common apis like map, traverse, chain give us a framework of reasoning and help us compose the nasty parts like async, error handling, and loops. As we saw with Id, they even allow us to swap out one type for another.
We were able to divide and conquer in a completely different way than one might expect coming from an imperative background. Now, time to use these fixtures to write some tests!
*Art by Alevtina KhabibovaIN complete contrast to two years ago, Rally Australia is expected to be raced on bone-dry dusty tracks.
Drivers contesting the World Rally and Australian Rally championships today got their first look at the condition of the stages while testing their vehicles on Sherwood Rd at Central Bucca.
It was a different landscape to the one that greeted the drivers during Rally Australia 2011.
The event two years ago started with a heavy day of rain that created extreme driver hazard and brought even the best in the world unstuck in the opening stages.
With the forecast of just slight showers between now and Sunday, the drivers are preparing for dust bowl driving at its best and have the tyre treads to suit.
Here's a sample of the action from today's testing compiled by Coffs Coast Advocate photographers Trevor Veale and Rob Wright.Today we are announcing that Soham “Valens” Chowdhury has decided to step down from our active roster. Soham has informed management he has not been meeting his own expectations as a player and has decided to focus on his career as a Google engineer.
“We’d like to thank Soham for his hard work and contributions to the squad,” said Jason Lake, Founder and CEO of compLexity Gaming. “He is a fantastic person and it has been a pleasure working with him.”
Soham "valens" Chowdhury - Image courtesy of HLTV.org
After taking some time off, Soham has stated he may return to the scene as a coach or analyst.
Moving forward, compLexity will be trying out different players to determine who will fill our 5th slot for 2016.
Thanks as always for your support!George Soros has been hit with a stunning $10 billion lawsuit, which indicts the 80-year-old investor for “meddling in the politics” of an impoverished African country in order to settle his own scores.
If Soros were to lose the lawsuit, his fortune would be cut in half.
Fox News reports:
Soros, who controls a web of international nonprofits in addition to his vast financial empire, used his sway with the government of Guinea to freeze Israeli company BSG Resources out of the West African nation’s lucrative iron ore mining contracts, according to the suit filed last month in New York Federal Court by BSG Resources.
“Soros was motivated solely by malice, as there was no economic interest he had in Guinea,” BSGR alleges in court papers.
A spokesman for Soros, who regularly supports nascent democratic governments in Eastern Europe and Africa, said the philanthropist has a lifelong interest in helping impoverished nations, and only backed a probe of BSG out of corruption concerns.
Whatever the ultimate outcome in the current case, it is not the first time Soros has been accused of sowing political upheaval to advance a personal agenda. Critics around the world, including in the U.S. and in Soros’ homeland of Hungary, say the liberal financier often masquerades as a humanitarian while manipulating the political landscape.
“We are committed to use all legal means at our disposal to stop pseudo-civil society spy groups such as the ones funded by George Soros,” Hungary’s top education official, Minister of Human Capacities Zoltan Balog said recently.
SHARE on Facebook Twitter if you agree that George Soros should pay!
#Dr. Ahmed Shafik wears three-piece suits with gold watch fobs and a diamond stickpin in the lapel. His glasses are the thick, black rectangular style of the Nasser era. He owns a Cairo hospital and lives in a mansion with marble walls. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize.* I don’t care about any of this. Shafik won my heart by publishing a paper in European Urology in which he investigated the effects of polyester on sexual activity. Ahmed Shafik dressed lab rats in polyester pants.
There were 75 rats. They wore their pants for one year. Shafik found that over time the ones dressed in polyester or poly-cotton blend had sex significantly less often than the |
linkup play nonexistent and Pugh at times playing higher than Horan, the U.S. appeared more likely to luck into a ping-pong goal in the box than actually create one through its own volition.
Unfinished midfield roles left a work in progress
Horan’s role dropping shallow inside the running wide forwards Saturday made Lavelle’s directive typically defensive in purpose. At Wisconsin, Lavelle is one of the most accomplished attacking midfielders in the nation, and as far as creativity is concerned, it doesn’t get much better in college soccer. With the U20s, Lavelle was pushed back into the architecture of the buildup as more of a holding midfielder, where she sat next to Sullivan with small license to track forward.
That maturation was asked to continue on Saturday. While she was clearly shackled creatively, Lavelle’s adaptation to the role was swift. As a deep-lying regista, Lavelle’s composure, vision and cool-headed play was well suited to creating from deep, and she was able to buttress attacks from the root instead of injecting herself directly into its proceedings.
But the U.S. got a brief reminder as to why its formation with Lavelle sitting deep with Sullivan has its drawbacks. Lavelle’s giveaway in the U.S. defensive third allowed North Korea to storm into the U.S. penalty area and create the chance that led to Amack’s handball and then the equalizing goal. It wasn’t until Taylor Racioppi was inserted for Pugh in the 82nd that Lavelle was able to move upfield, where she had a more decided impact on the game. By then North Korea had its claws in the midfield and it was too late.
Nominally, the U.S. plays with three midfielders in a 4-3-3, but that presumes Pugh drops in for Lavelle and Sullivan. In reality, the formation never really clicked out of the principles that made it a 4-2-4 in defense, transition or the build-up. That hurt the U.S. both in defending and attacking. In short, there was too little help where it was needed most.
Penalties provide the final dagger
The U.S. worked on penalties during its pre-tournament camp in Seattle, but it didn’t show on Saturday. Savannah Jordan, Horan and Lavelle each had their penalties saved, which allowed North Korea to build up a 2-0 edge through the first three rounds.
It wasn’t just that the U.S. didn’t score until Stephanie Amack’s well-taken effort in the fourth round. It was how they failed to score; the penalties were meek and hardly angled. Jordan forced Chol Ok to her right, but barely, and a standard dive allowed her to pluck the ball from the air and still have it framed within her chest. Horan went the opposite direction but the result was the same.
Finally, Lavelle tried to go back to Jordan’s side, but Chol Ok again sniffed out its purpose easily. North Korea only missed once thanks to a well-timed save Katelyn Rowland made diving to her right. Rowland was tremendous in spurts for the U.S. on Saturday, even getting a hand to the penalty North Korea converted in regulation before it skittered through. The U.S. simply couldn’t knit together enough attacking passages to provide the breakthrough, and their finishing touch in penalties let them down.
In games like these, the exhaustive effort from the previous 120 minutes is wiped off the board and teams start penalties with a blank slate. Unfortunately for the U.S., it seemed as though the general malaise that carried them through much of the game invaded the shootout. As a result, the U.S. will watch the rest of the tournament from home.This week’s theme, West African, gifted me the opportunity to work with plantain and yam, two semi-standard produce items I tend to ignore.
As ugly as this once-green plantain now is, it’s still kicking inside. I’d like to applaud myself for spending weeks with this blackening fruit and not turning it into some kind of pseudo-banana bread.
Peanut is a common feature in West Africa sauces and stews. Here, it made the base of the pizza using the broad stroke flavors of this recipe’s sauce to create my own.
Unlike a well-ripened banana, plantains seem to keep their structure even in their old age. It took more effort than expected to mash in shallots and cayenne for a tatale recipe.
The plantain cakes caramelized in the pan, some more than other, which gave it a candied sweetness. Cornmeal can be mixed in to the batter to create a more stable texture.
Meanwhile, yam was cut up, boiled and mashed for an addition of fufu to the pizza, an admittedly silly topping when considering fufu’s role as a starchy vessel to assist in eating other dishes.
Peanuts are crushed to finish the pizza.
The peanut sauce is liberally applied and the plantains divvied up to see at least one piece per slice. Fufu and peanut crumbles finish the pie.
And without the use of cheese, this pizza turned out accidentally vegan.
Pretty damn tasty vegan pizza. And the wine pairing only improved the situation.
The sweeter flavors of plantain and yam needs a style with more luscious fruit to offer. Jaffurs’ Santa Barbara Viognier of Bien Nacido Vineyard offers pineapples and peaches with a rounded texture that dances quite nicely alongside our pie. The two complement each other without either pizza or wine taking over the experience.
AdvertisementsUnder Police Pressure Occupy San Diego Expands to Children’s Park
Occupy San Diego – our city’s own version of Occupy Wall Street – has expanded. Due to pressure being placed on the Occupy San Diego demonstrators by the police – a pressure which has prevented the protests’ ability to set up its support network, a solidarity station has been opened at Children’s Park in downtown located at Island and First. The solidarity site will work to support the main occupation site, the Civic Center Plaza, where occupiers are now in their 15th day.
By late morning yesterday, October 21st, OccupySD activists had unloaded several vehicles worth of food and gear, and had begun to set up support stations that make up the occupy infrastructure. And by mid-afternoon, they had completed the set-up and establishment of the stations that support the movement. So, for the first time since last week, the Occupy San Diego efforts had the full panoply of its sustainability network: the food-line and kitchen, the medical station, sanitation, the library, arts and crafts, and some media.
There had been some tension with police all during the day and even last night, as occupiers feared that police would arrive in mass and force the dismantling – once again – of all their gear. Nearly two dozen people had said that they would be willing to be arrested for non-violently resisting such police tactics. But as of this morning – Saturday, Oct. 22nd – no police force had arrived and no arrests had marred the beautiful day. Activists estimated that the gear and food – most of it donated by San Diegans – had a monetary value of close to $4400. And this is partially why they had concerns for its placement and location.
After accommodating occupiers for nearly a week, San Diego Police had changed their tune and on Thursday, October 13th, had ordered all Occupy tents and stations removed from the Civic Center Plaza by that Friday morning. The police since then have allowed only sleeping bags at the Plaza.
Over the course of the last week and half, police have prohibited activists from unloading gear and food at Tuna Park by the Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum, have blocked them from setting up near the World Beat Center in Balboa Park, and have thwarted additional efforts by protesters in other sections of Balboa Park. Many of the original organizers felt that they had been very accommodating to police demands but were now no longer willing to move their donated food and other gear again when ordered to do so by police yesterday morning.
Several activists had been working with the Mayor’s office to find a location such as Children’s Park for the food and other supplies. Children’s Park had been the site of an “occupation” before on Friday, Oct. 7th, when protesters set up a 65-tent temporary encampment for that evening. And there had been no problems with the police then. Occupiers thought that since they had already been allowed an overnight camp before, a precedent had been established – and now they would be able to follow-through and set up their support stations at the Park. Earlier in the first days of its planning, the Park had been the setting for the Occupy San Diego nightly sessions held since late September. These planning sessions led up to the actual protest and occupation.
Strong Contrast with Occupy Los Angeles
All of these maneuverings and seemingly “cat and mouse” games being played by occupiers and police here in San Diego stand in strong contrast with how the city government in Los Angeles was relating to their occupiers. Our northern neighbor’s City Council passed a resolution in support of Occupy LA, the mayor came down and greeted the protesters, and handed out ponchos when it rained, plus the police have worked out an arrangement that allows tents and up to 700 people to sleep on the grounds of City Hall. Here is the support part of the resolution:
“… the City of Los Angeles hereby stands in SUPPORT for the continuation ofthe peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment Rights carried out by “Occupy Los Angeles” …
Here in San Diego, there has been no such resolution, the Council members have washed their hands of any initiative towards the demonstrators, Mayor Sanders’ silence has been deafening, and the police – although very accommodating – have been applying the pressure that has caused the occupiers to take on an even more defiant stance. Yet to be fair – relations between the protesters and individual officers have been very cordial – except for the incidents of last week – and there have been solid communications with higher-ups.
More focused on ironing out consensus and decision-making problems and day-to-day issues, the occupiers have failed to put together a formal negotiating team to meet with the mayor to work out arrangements. And the Mayor, more focused on being a conservative Republican, has failed to reach out to the demonstrators – who are literally yards away from his office.
Several activists and supporters did address the City Council the other day to both complain of police tactics against the protesters and to persuade the body to take some kind of favorable action towards the occupiers.
Focus on Banks
People occupying the Plaza have taken to marches to and sit-in’s in front of local branch offices of the major banks – several situated within blocks of the occupied Plaza. On Thursday, about 3 dozen protesters – many from City College – sat down in front of the B Street branch of Bank of America. Several police officers were positioned nearby as protesters chanted, recited poetry, and took turns with recitals about how banks had helped create the financial mess. Even though demonstrators did not block patrons from entering, nor did they enter the bank, the branch closed early. The protest broke up around 6 pm without incident.
The next day, Friday the 21st, a similar protest was held in front of Chase bank. That branch too, reportedly closed early. A Bank Committee has been formed within the Occupy zone and marches on banks are being planned daily.
Support for Occupy San Diego Grows – at Colleges, in Donations, and in “Spin-Offs”
As the Occupy San Diego effort moves into its third week, having spent 14 days and nights at the Civic Center Plaza, support for the movement grows. In today’s San Diego U-T (Sat, Oct. 22), for instance, the paper announced the results of their last poll. Readers were asked:
Do you support the Occupy movement’s methods for drawing attention to its issues?
53% said Yes, and 47% said No. There were 4841 total responses.
Coincidentally, the musical “Hair” is currently playing at the Plaza’s theater. During intermission at each evening’s performance, as the quad fills up with patrons, occupy protesters take time out from their General Assembly, put on the songs from the musical on the loud speaker, and sing to the mainly older, white, middle class crowd – which appears to enjoy the attention. Many approach the occupy zone – roped off from the rest of the Plaza on performance nights – and read the numerous protest signs lined up on the cement.
In addition, there have been a number of rallies at local colleges in support of Occupy San Diego – most occurred on Thursday, the 20th. 150 rallied at City College, and most marched down to the Plaza to join the demonstrators there. Other rallies were held at UCSD where about 100 gathered, and a rally was also held at Cal State San Marcos with about the same number. At Mesa College, one class reportedly got out early and staged a small protest in support.
Donations continue to flow to the occupiers on a nearly daily basis. Much of the donations are in the form of already cooked food like pizza and sandwiches, but also medical supplies and cash. The American Federation of Teachers that represent professors and other employees at City and Grossmont colleges have to date donated over $800.
There have also been a few spin-offs from the main Occupy San Diego. There have been “Occupy” events in Encinitas, Mira Mesa, in the College area, and a number of other locations. These events – though not true “occupations” – help in getting the word out to people in the County’s disparate neighborhoods.
The Homeless and Occupy San Diego
There is an unmentioned phenomenon occurring between Occupy San Diego and the downtown homeless. Many homeless have joined the encampment at the Plaza, finding safety in numbers and free food.
And while the homeless have found a much needed and valuable ally in the occupation protest, their numbers have added weight to the entire encampment. If one travels around downtown San Diego at night, it’s very easy to see the huge numbers of homeless people sleeping in doorways, on grassy areas and around City Hall itself. The Occupy protest has brought them something immediate – some security and some food. Several have been involved in the protest and its planning and attend the GA’s. Many don’t, however, and activists continually reach out to them in hopes that they will be more full partners at the Plaza.
Internal Changes
The Occupy San Diego activists hold nightly General Assemblies – run on 100% consensus. At a recent GA, the process was changed slightly to allow for a 90% consensus after up to three days had passed to work out differences and find compromises on issues with no full consensus.
Many had found the nightly sessions to be overly frustrating and tireless exercises in what amounted to “rule by a minority” due to the manner that consensus works. But others view the consensus process as the kernel around which to build and create a new society and new ways to make decisions, and these folks had worked tirelessly over the last couple of weeks in efforts to persuade new people of the value of consensus.
As Occupy San Diego continues and even expands, no one can predict or accurately speculate on its future. Its future is clearly tied to the Occupy Wall Street movement that is still growing around the country and around the world. It’s a wind storm that is spreading hope and inspiration while at the same time re-focusing our national and international debate about the role of banks and corporations in our society – a truly revolutionary fete if it is successful.LONG BEACH – Officials from IndyCar and manufacturers Chevrolet and Honda are discussing potential 2017 changes for the controversial aerodynamic body kits introduced last season.
IndyCar chairman Mark Miles told USA TODAY Sports on Saturday at the Grand Prix of Long Beach that a uniform kit to be used by both manufacturers is among numerous options under consideration. He hopes to have a plan for next season finalized by the end of May to provide the manufacturers ample design time and maximize developmental expenditures.
“I don’t think aero kits go away,” Miles said. “We’ve got them. We’ve learned a lot. Both companies have learned a lot. I think the questions are more from conforming them in some way to continuing the competition between them, what’s the right mode to be in. We’re looking at possibilities from continuing with some shaping of the extent of the competition between them to every other possibility.”
Honda Performance Development president Art St. Cyr told USA TODAY Sports in an email that “a variety of options have been presented, and all are worthy of consideration and additional discussion.”
Owners such as Roger Penske and Michael Andretti have decried the kits as extravagant, partly because they provide no return on investment. Miles said he’s aware of owners’ complaints in what has become a “hot topic.”
“The body kits, that was a reasonable thing to try (but) it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. So all right, you go back,” team owner Bobby Rahal told USA TODAY Sports. “I think it’ll go to a spec. All it’s done is cost the teams money and cost the manufacturers money. The cars end up almost looking like each other as it is. What’s the point? There’s better ways to spend money than that. You tried. It didn’t work. Let’s go on.”
Miles acknowledged that design differentiation between Honda and Chevrolet is part of the current review but believes “there are certainly benefits” with aero kits.
“It’s pretty clear that when you’ve got a technical competition – in this case it’s aesthetic and performance – they tend to conform anyway,” Miles said. “They look a lot more similar than they did before. And why’s that? They study each other and they’re going to move to the best model. We’ve got Honda and Chevy and Dallara thinking about that question.”Six Italian scientists and one government official could see four-year prison terms for manslaughter for allegedly downplaying the risk of an earthquake in the town of L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009.
According to prosecutors, the six researchers and the Department of Civil Protection downplayed the likelihood that a series of tremors that hit the city in early 2009 were foreshadowing a larger quake. On April 6, 2009, a magnitude-6.3 earthquake killed 309 city residents.
[sidebar]
The trial, which began about a year ago, has worried scientists, who point out that earthquake prediction is not possible. But prosecutors insist that the trial is not about predicting the unpredictable, according to Nature News. During closing arguments on Monday and Tuesday (Sept. 24-25), the prosecution assistant told the courtroom that instead, the scientists and officials had inadequately assessed the risk of a quake and given deceptive information to the public. The prosecution is asking for four-year prison terms for the accused.
Earthquake swarms are notoriously unreliable predictors of future quakes, say seismologists. In 1988, researchers found that about half of large quakes in seismically active areas of Italy were preceded by foreshocks, but only 2 percent of small earthquake clusters predicted a big temblor.
At the controversial March 31 meeting in L'Aquila, earth scientist Enzo Boschi, now a defendant in the case, acknowledged the uncertainty, calling a large earthquake "unlikely," but saying that the possibility could not be excluded. In a post-meeting press conference, however, Department of Civil Protection official Bernardo De Bernardinis, also a defendant, told citizens there was "no danger."
Prosecutors have portrayed De Barnardinis as a victim of bad information from the team of seismologists, reported Nature News.
The trial is on hold until Oct. 9, when the defense will present its closing arguments.
Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Hillsong UNITED, along with Amanda Cook and Mack Brock, will be in Orlando, FL on May 7th! Catch them at the CFE Arena for a powerful night of worship! • • On Sale Now!
Join us at the Orlando CFE Arena on the UCF campus for Mike Epps "Funny As Ish Comedy Tour" March 22nd!
The Tenderloins, creators of the hit truTV series, Impractical Jokers, are bringing “The Cranjis McBasketball World Tour” to CFE Arena on March 21, 2019 at 7:30pm.
Description
Join us at Light Up UCF for a FREE showing of "Frozen" at 7pm and 9:30pm! Make sure to bring chairs and blankets to cozy up and enjoy this wonderful movie on a giant two-story outdoor screen. For more information about Light Up UCF, please visit http://lightupucf.coPretty cool moment happened last night as the Kansas City Chiefs’ star Running Back, Jamaal Charles, spoke publicly and passionately about his struggles with his learning/reading disability, how he overcame it, how he too was once a Special Olympics competitor, and how the event helped him discover a talent he “did not know that he had”…
Jamaal Charles at #SpecialOlympicsWorldGames. Discussing learning disability, first competition at Special Olympics pic.twitter.com/AvlMalvFi1 — Kevin Nogle (@thephinsider) July 26, 2015
“Special Olympics gave me the first chance to discover the talent I did not know I had.” – @NFL superstar @jcharles25 of @KCChiefs #LA2015 — Special Olympics (@SpecialOlympics) July 26, 2015
Charles then led the crowd at the LA Coliseum in the traditional Special Olympics opening ceremonies athlete oath…
Powerful stuff, to say the least…Thai exports are likely to hit rock bottom in the first quarter with a contraction of 4%, says Deputy Prime Minister MR Pridiyathorn Devakula.
The predicted sharp drop is attributed largely to the slower-than-expected global economic recovery and Thailand's lower competitiveness.
"The drop in exports is not that surprising because the world's economy did not yet recover by the first quarter," he said at a seminar held Wednesday by the Thai National Shippers' Council (TNSC). "And more importantly, the country's sluggish economy does not stem from political upheaval but from low competitiveness in the manufacturing sector compared with other Asean members after the daily minimum wage hike to 300 baht."
Late last month the Commerce Ministry reported exports fell for a second consecutive month in February, down by 6.14% year-on-year to US$17.2 billion after January's figures fell by 3.46% to $17.2 billion. The dip was mainly attributed to lower global oil and crop prices.
Shipments of farm products fell by 12.5% in February to $2.49 billion, particularly rubber, which decreased by 38.8%.
Other major products including rice, sugar and canned and processed seafood also saw big declines in exports in February.
Industrial product exports including gold and oil fell by 3.7% to $13.8 billion.
Gold exports plunged 66% as traders delayed shipments and shifted their focus to imports for speculative purposes, while oil shipments fell by 6.1% from February 2014.
However, imports edged up 1.47% to $16.8 billion, leading to a trade surplus of $390 million compared with a deficit of $457 million in January.
For the first two months, exports totalled $34.5 billion, down 4.82% year-on-year, with imports down 6.69% to $34.5 billion.
He predicted Thai exports would remain in the red in March, but gave no figures.
For the full year, the deputy prime minister was positive the country's exports would stay in a range of 0-1% growth.
Earlier last month, the same factors prompted the TNSC to slash its export forecast to flat growth this year from 1.5% growth.
Thailand's exports dropped by 0.41% last year to $228 billion, the second straight year exports fell after a 0.3% contraction in 2013.
"After the first quarter, exports are unlikely to be an area of concern. The momentum of consumers' consumption recovery and the government's accelerated spending are expected to help drive economic growth this year," said MR Pridiyathorn.
He said private consumption was returning as indicated by higher value-added tax collection in the first quarter, an increase of 9.75% from the same period last year.
The government's disbursement in the first six months of fiscal 2015 increased to 51% of the total fiscal budget, said MR Pridiyathorn.
"I'm not worried so much about Thai economic prospects, as statistics showed promising private consumption and government disbursement trends," he said. "I also expect private investment to recover thanks to higher raw materials imports in February."
He expected the Thai economy would grow by 2.3% year-on-year in the first quarter.
Thailand's economy contracted 0.5% in the first quarter of 2014 before recovering to 0.4% growth in the second quarter, 0.6% growth in the third quarter and 2.3% growth in the fourth quarter.
MR Pridiyathorn said Thailand's long-term economy was also promising thanks to the government's restructuring of industry and the new investment strategy from the Board of Investment that shifts privileges to support high technology, innovation, and research and design.
The government's digital economy drive is also expected to be an instrument pushing Thai export growth over the next two years, he said.
In a related development, MR Pridiyathorn said the new tax incentives for regional headquarters and international trading companies were expected to be announced soon in the Royal Gazette.For all of the drama surrounding the blockbuster trade between the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers that sent Isaiah Thomas to Cleveland and Kyrie Irving to Boston, we haven't heard much from one of the key pieces involved.
We've heard plenty about Thomas (and his hip), but the injured All-Star point guard hasn't been talking to the media much since the trade. Now, thanks to yet another phenomenal profile by Lee Jenkins, we have plenty of thoughts directly from IT himself, and he does not hold back one bit. The whole piece is well worth reading, but this passage stood out for the pure emotion, both from Celtics head coach Brad Stevens, and Thomas. Via Sports Illustrated:
"I've been looking at this wall for five hours," Celtics coach Brad Stevens texted Thomas after the trade, "trying to figure out what to say to you." When Sacramento let Thomas walk in 2014, he left town telling himself, "F--- Sacramento. I'm about to kill those dudes." When Phoenix exiled him the following winter, he pledged, "O.K., now they're gonna get it." But there will be no revenge tour this time. "Boston is going to be all love," he vows, with one exception. "I might not ever talk to Danny again. That might not happen. I'll talk to everybody else. But what he did, knowing everything I went through, you don't do that, bro. That's not right. I'm not saying eff you. But every team in this situation comes out a year or two later and says, 'We made a mistake.' That's what they'll say, too."
More than most deals, the Celtics' decision to trade Thomas after all he had done for them -- carrying them to the Eastern Conference finals on a bum hip while mourning the death of his younger sister -- was a reminder that the NBA is a cold, hard business just like anything else.
Ainge was right to do what he did, making a trade he felt would better his team in the long run. Still, Thomas is certainly right to feel the way he does -- betrayed, frustrated, vengeful -- as well. And while he's rehabbing a serious hip injury, with no clear timetable for a return, there's little reason to doubt Thomas will make good on his vow to show the Celtics, and Ainge specifically, they made a mistake.About the Author:
Edmund C. Moy
Since the dawn of money, money has had three major eras: commodity money, representative money and fiat money.Now we are seeing the birth of the fourth era: digital money like Bitcoin.The first era of money was commodity money. Commodity money is money made of a commodity. There is much ancient history documenting commodities of all sorts being used, like shells and grains. Initially, commodity money was used mostly for individual or local transactions.Commodity money took a huge step forward when it started being made of metals. The first mention of silver and gold coins were the ones being used by the Lydians around 650 B.C. They were a big improvement over other commodities: more durable, more rare and more portable.And the development of coins was a very useful innovation. It standardized weight and content, especially when made by a government, and the designs made coins easily recognizable. The result was that they were more easily exchanged. Because its value is determined by the value of the commodity used to make it, a $20 gold coin would have $20 worth of gold in it.The second era of money was representative money. Representative money, also known as commodity-exchange money, is a proxy with a guarantee that it can be exchanged for a fixed amount of a commodity, like a precious metal. The most common form is a paper bill like the silver certificates used in the United States. For example, a $10 silver certificate could be redeemed for $10 worth of silver.This form of money solved the problem of whenever the logistics of transporting silver and gold were impractical. This innovation enabled larger economic transactions, especially enabling trade between countries and therefore global economic growth.Commodity money and representative money existed side by side for most of history. They both were rooted in a commodity that had intrinsic value and therefore viewed as sound money. For example, in the United States, silver and gold were used in higher denomination coins along with silver and gold certificate bills. The user would be free to use the form of money that was the most practical for each transaction.In the period leading up to World War II, commodity and commodity-exchange money began falling out of favor. The global economy was suffering from the Great Depression and the world was headed toward war. Governments wanted more money to stimulate the economy and fund their military buildups. But they already made all the money their precious metal reserves would allow. They could only make more money if they grew their reserves.But mining new metals would take too long. And the production volumes would not be large enough to make the large amounts of money that governments wanted to make. That ended commodity money in 1933 and began the representative money.The third era of money is fiat money. Fiat money's value is determined solely by government order, also known as fiat. It has no intrinsic value itself nor is there a guarantee that it can be exchanged for a valuable commodity. Instead, the government decrees it legal tender, meaning that it is unlawful not to accept it as payment. No longer was money linked to anything of value, but instead its value was based on the confidence in the government that made it.Fiat money came into being in 1976 when the U.S. government officially changed the definition of the dollar to remove any reference to gold. It was the final nail in the coffin. Until then, the fact that the U.S. dollar could be exchanged for gold was limited to between countries and their central banks. Individuals and companies were excluded from convertibility beginning in 1933.All other countries' monies were backed by its exchangeability with the U.S. dollar through foreign exchange trading, and the U.S. dollar was backed by its exchangeability with gold between countries. Now, for the first time in history, the world's monetary system was completely decoupled from anything of tangible value.We are witnessing the birth of the fourth era of money, namely digital money like bitcoin. Digital money is money that exists solely in cyberspace. Unlike fiat currency, bitcoin is created by a decentralized network instead of a centralized government. Its value is determined by the free market and not government fiat. And like commodity money, it is rare (only 21 million bitcoins can be created), durable, easily divisible (currently up to 9 decimal places), cannot be duplicated and can easily be identified through its unique cryptography.It is interesting to note that the first bitcoin was created in 2009. Recall that was after the financial crisis and nearing the peak of the Great Recession. The Federal Reserve began a series of stimulus programs to flood the economy with newly created fiat currency in hopes of shocking the moribund economy out of recession. With each dose of stimulus having little impact, the Fed dramatically boosted money supply by $4.5 trillion. That could only be accomplished with fiat money but puts at risk the confidence in the U.S. government and therefore the value of the dollar.The last major shock to the money supply ushered in a new era of money. The era of commodity money abruptly closed in the U.S. in 1933 and started the end of representative money, which disappeared in 1973. In 1933, the newly elected FDR had no ability to make additional money to stimulate the economy out of the Great Depression. Through a combination of confiscating American's monetary gold and unilaterally increasing the price of gold, President Roosevelt increased America's money supply from $4 billion to $21 billion. The result was the collapse of the commodity and representative monetary systems.It appears that history is repeating itself. The current shock to the money supply is ushering in a new era of money.is the Chief Strategist of Fortress Gold Group and was the 38th Director of the United States Mint (2006-2011). He can be followed on Twitter @EdmundCMoy.New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, right, phoned New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, in 2013 with a colorful message for the head of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority. | AP Photo Report: Christie asked Gov. Cuomo to tell Port Authority executive director to "f--k off"
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie once phoned New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and told him to tell Pat Foye, the executive director of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority "to f--k off."
The call in December 2013 and Christie's colorful language is detailed in a newly released book, American Governor: Chris Christie's Bridge to Redemption by Matt Katz.
Story Continued Below
Christie, according to the account, made the call after Foye, speaking under oath, said he was "not aware of any traffic study" during questioning about the "Bridgegate" scandal that once threatened to derail Christie's political career. Christie has denied knowing anything about the shutting down of the lanes of traffic on the George Washington Bridge in 2013. Federal officials indicted Christie's former deputy chief of staff as well as two Port Authority officials in May, alleging they carried out an act of political vengeance on a mayor who would not endorse Christie's re-election campaign.
Christie, according to Katz, was listening to the hearings on his computer and quickly texted Regina Egea, his incoming chief of staff and also his aide charged with liaising with the Port Authority. He then called Cuomo, who had appointed Foye to the Port Authority post.
"I told Cuomo to tell Pat Foye to fuck off," Christie told his staff, according to the book. Foye had written emails quoted in the press that were critical about the lane closures.
The book is full of other juicy nuggets, including the 2016 Republican presidential candidate describing the marital problems he had with his wife, and a spat he got into with Sen. Rand Paul.
That feud started when Christie said he was against Paul's call to dismantle the government's federal surveillance program. Paul snapped back that Christie loved government largesse as illustrated by his efforts to get federal relief aid after hurricane Sandy. Paul said it was "gimme gimme gimme" and that the New Jersey governor was the "king of bacon." Eventually Paul tried to thaw relations by proposing a beer summit in 2013. That didn't happen though and in the end Paul sent flowers to Christie.More than any other industry today, the tech sector has an undeniable hold on the American public’s imagination. There is something alluring about the myth of Silicon Valley — the idea that the tech entrepreneur alone (well, with the help of an angel investor or startup incubator) could be responsible for the wealth and innovation of the digital economy. The government certainly has no place in this success story; if anything, government is the adversary, looking to stifle innovation at every turn with its dimwitted regulations and parasitical taxation. (This is no longer the controversial notion it once was, as Silicon Valley sit-downs with Presidents Obama and Trump will attest.) In her book Cyberselfish, technology journalist Paulina Borsook calls this the “technolibertarian perspective.”
According to technolibertarians like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley ideal is infinitely scalable. Thiel wishes to “disrupt” aging and death altogether by putting his resources behind a series of life-extension startups. And Musk thinks he can innovate our species out of the way of its imminent extinction using free-market principles.
Of course, Thiel and Musk aren’t the only people who have ever thought this way. And this specific line of thought — that the tech sector can somehow be the engine of evolution that gets humankind off-world and into the solar system and beyond — goes back at least 40 years, to the ex-academic, counterculture gadfly, and enthusiastic LSD advocate Timothy Leary.
By 1980, Leary had become a counterculture icon, an international fugitive, a lodger in some of California’s finest penitentiaries, and eventually a resident of Beverly Hills. He had come far from his time as a young cadet at West Point and his subsequent career at Harvard researching psychedelic drugs. It was in this latter period that Leary’s theories emerged as a precursor to the weird transhumanist vision of Silicon Valley. In the 1960s, Leary’s pro-LSD jingle was “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.” In the 1980s, his vision could be summed up in one word: SMI2LE.
SMI2LE is an acronym that stands for Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, and Life Extension. First published in his book Terra II (1974), it’s a neat summary of Leary’s vision of the future of the human species, the next step in human evolution. If the millennia behind us had our biological ancestors climbing out of the water to dwell on land, the theory goes, the future will see us spread out to the stars. This was a dream of liberation for Leary — it’s not for nothing that he came to this conclusion while rotting away in prison. He had been given 20 years for marijuana possession. Leary was released in 1976, when Gov. Jerry Brown commuted his sentence after a little over six years (two years of which he spent as a fugitive).
When the first serious proposals for space migration were being drawn up in |
ANN, an Internet body that's been based in the United States since the early days of the Internet and which is responsible for connecting Internet domain names to the hardware that hosts a website. A move to transition ICANN to international control has been opposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), and Trump endorsed Cruz's plan as part of his successful attempts to woo Cruz to his cause last week. Why should we keep control of ICANN? Apparently because "[w]e came in with the Internet, we came up with the Internet."
But Obama allowing the planned transfer of ICANN's authority has absolutely nothing to do with cyberwarfare. It's just "a computer thing that Trump thought of and which he disagrees with," and so it earned a mention in his response.
5. Kitchen sinkiness.
This is what Trump does. In territory where he doesn't feel very familiar, like Internet security, he cobbles together a hodgepodge of information that loosely hangs together (or sometimes doesn't). ICANN worked its way into Trump's response on cyber attacks because he had to say something, so he did.
6. Failing to learn from past mistakes.
What's amazing is that he botched a similar question three weeks ago.
"Now the cyber is so big," he said at a town hall moderated by his ally, Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn had asked about combating the Islamic State and how Trump had in the past mentioned cyber warfare. So Trump kept going: "And you know you look at what they're doing with the Internet, how they're taking and recruiting people through the Internet. And part of it is the psychology because so many people think they're winning. Any you know, there's a whole big thing. Even today's psychology — where CNN came out with a big poll. Their big poll came out today that Trump is winning."
Sure, okay.
Never mind that Trump is conflating the Islamic State's effective online propaganda with cyber warfare, something he repeated during the debate. Never mind that. Trump's answer on cyber warfare hasn't improved one iota over the past three weeks, even after he was pilloried for his last response.
[Related: How Trump’s fortunes turned south with a rambling 'birther' answer]
7. Bizarre appeals to authority.
How do we know that Trump knows computers? Because he tells us about his direct experience with cyberactivity: A notorious less-than-400-pound cyber whiz named Barron Trump, 10.
"I have a son. He's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable," Trump says, then saying that "[t]he security aspect of cyber" is maybe "hardly doable." Trump knows cyber, because his kid does crazy things with his computer and therefore, maybe cyber is hard.
8. A reminder that everything is broken.
America's cyber challenges (as proven by Barron Trump, somehow) are just one more example of how the country under Obama is "not doing the job we should be doing."
What job is that, Mr. Trump? What job should we be doing on cyberwarfare? Where are we failing? That was the question that was posed and which went unanswered. What, exactly is the problem?
Who knows. "We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester," Trump concluded, "and certainly cyber is one of them."
Everything is broken and only Trump can fix it — though the problem and the solution were left almost completely unarticulated.
As I said: The debate in a nutshell.Since I’ve been preoccupied with software issues the last few weeks, I decided I might as well publish this strategy memo that I privately distributed some time ago.
A couple of years ago, I launched my Unz Review, providing a wide range of different alternative perspectives, the vast majority of them totally excluded from the mainstream media. I’ve also published a number of articles in my own American Pravda series, focusing on the suspicious lapses and lacunae in our media narratives.
The underlying political strategy behind these efforts may already be apparent, and I’ve sometimes suggested it here and there. But I finally decided I might as well explicitly outline the reasoning in a memo as provided below.
The Mainstream Media is the Crucial Opposing Force
Groups advocating policies opposed by the American establishment should recognize that the greatest obstacle they face is usually the mainstream media.
Ordinary political and ideological opponents surely exist, but these are usually inspired, motivated, organized, and assisted by powerful media support, which also shapes the perceived framework of the conflict. In Clauswitzian terms, the media often constitutes the strategic “center of gravity” of the opposing forces.
The Media Should Be Made a Primary Target
Why are the most advertised Gold and Silver coins NOT the best way to invest?
If the media is the crucial force empowering the opposition, then it should be regarded as a primary target of any political strategy. So long as the media remains strong, success may be difficult, but if the influence and credibility of the media were substantially degraded, then the ordinary opposing forces would lose much of their effectiveness. In many respects, the media creates reality, so perhaps the most effective route toward changing reality runs through the media.
Discrediting the Media Anywhere Weakens It Everywhere
The mainstream media exists as a seamless whole, so weakening or discrediting the media in any particular area automatically reduces its influence everywhere else as well.
The elements of the media narrative faced by a particular anti-establishment group may be too strong and well-defended to attack effectively, and any such attacks might also be discounted as ideologically motivated. Hence, the more productive strategy may sometimes be an indirect one, attacking the media narrative elsewhere, at points where it is much weaker and less well-defended. In addition, winning those easier battles may generate greater credibility and momentum, which can then be applied to later attacks on more difficult fronts.
A Broad Alliance May Support the Common Goal of Weakening the Media
Once we recognize that weakening the media is a primary strategic goal, an obvious corollary is that other anti-establishment groups facing the same challenges become natural, if perhaps temporary, allies.
Such unexpected tactical alliances may drawn from across a wide range of different political and ideological perspectives—Left, Right, or otherwise—and despite the component groups having longer-term goals that are orthogonal or even conflicting. So long as all such elements in the coalition recognize that the hostile media is their most immediate adversary, they can cooperate on their common effort, while actually gaining additional credibility and attention by the very fact that they sharply disagree on so many other matters.
The media is enormously powerful and exercises control over a vast expanse of intellectual territory. But such ubiquitous influence also ensures that its local adversaries are therefore numerous and widespread, all being bitterly opposed to the hostile media they face on their own particular issues. By analogy, a large and powerful empire is frequently brought down by a broad alliance of many disparate rebellious factions, each having unrelated goals, which together overwhelm the imperial defenses by attacking simultaneously at multiple different locations.
A crucial aspect enabling such a rebel alliance is the typically narrow focus of each particular constituent member. Most groups or individuals opposing establishment positions tend to be ideologically zealous about one particular issue or perhaps a small handful, while being much less interested in others. Given the total suppression of their views at the hands of the mainstream media, any venue in which their unorthodox perspectives are provided reasonably fair and equal treatment rather than ridiculed and denigrated tends to inspire considerable enthusiasm and loyalty on their part. So although they may have quite conventional views on most other matters, causing them to regard contrary views with the same skepticism or unease as might anyone else, they will usually be willing to suppress their criticism at such wider heterodoxy so long as other members of their alliance are willing to return that favor on their own topics of primary interest.
Assault the Media Narrative Where It is Weak Not Where It Is Strong
Applying a different metaphor, the establishment media may be regarded as a great wall that excludes alternative perspectives from the public consciousness and thereby confines opinion to within a narrow range of acceptable views.
Certain portions of that media wall may be solid and vigorously defended by powerful vested interests, rendering assaults difficult. But other portions, perhaps older and more obscure, may have grown decrepit over time, with their defenders having drifted away. Breaching the wall at these weaker locations may be much easier, and once the barrier has been broken at several points, defending it at others becomes much more difficult.
For example, consider the consequences of demonstrating that the established media narrative is completely false on some major individual event. Once this result has been widely recognized, the credibility of the media on all other matters, even totally unrelated ones, would be somewhat attenuated. Ordinary people would naturally conclude that if the media had been so wrong for so long on one important point, it might also be wrong on others as well, and the powerful suspension of disbelief that provides the media its influence would become less powerful. Even those individuals who collectively form the corpus of the media might begin to entertain serious self-doubts regarding their previous certainties.
The crucial point is that such breakthroughs may be easiest to achieve in topics that seem merely of historical significance, and are totally removed from any practical present-day consequences.
Read the Whole Article
The Best of Ron UnzAmare Stoudemire, Jeremy Lin, Carmelo "Melo" Anthony and Tyson Chandler led the New York Knicks to their fourth straight win (106-87) on Tue. March 20 against the Toronto Raptors at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks have been on a winning streak ever since ex-coach Mike D'Antoni stepped down and was replaced by Mike Woodson, though NY's wining streak could also be attributed to the fact that they have been playing against some of the NBA's weaker teams recently.
The Knicks have been building steady momentum ever since Woodson took over for D'Antoni, bringing some fans and commentators to declare a new era of "Woodsanity" now that Linsanity appears to be dead and buried. Before resigning D'Antoni publicly lamented that the Knicks were not playing hard enough on March 11, and then stepped down one loss later, causing fans to speculate that he may have been forced out.
Stoudemire led the Knicks in scoring with 22 points and 12 rebounds in his 32 minutes on the court. Jeremy Lin played for just 28 minutes, scored 18 points and dished out 10 assists. Anthony and Chandler each scored 17 points in 31 and 28 minutes of play, respectively.
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The Knicks defense was stronger than ever, giving NY a comfortable lead for most of the final three quarters of play, and playing a particularly tight defense in the fourth quarter to maintain their lead. Even star ball-hog Melo played a stronger defense than typical, possibly because of the stress intermin-coach Woodson has put on the team's top players to show accountability on both offense and defense.
The Toronto Raptors were led in scoring by Demar DeRozan, who scored scored 17 points. Jose Calderon added 11 more points and dished out nine assists in his first game following five missed games due to a sprained right ankle. Andrea Bargani scored 15 points but shot just 5-for-15.
The last time the Knicks and Raptors faced off was at the height of Linsanity, when Jeremy Lin scored a last minute three-pointer against Toronto to clinch the win. The two teams will meet again on Friday in Canada. Before then the Knicks will take on the 76ers at Madison Square Garden on March 21 at 7 pm.
Highlights via msg.com:Two weeks to go before the official release of Steel Division: Normandy 44! Our Pre-Order Beta is still going on and tomorrow on Twitch we will reveal a new map and two new divisions that will be made available next Wednesday. Today we will present every single Ace you can get in our game and, more importantly, remind you how to get them.
Take control of the best of the best
The Aces, the greatest soldiers of each country during WW2, are the first ones on the battlefield in Steel Division: Normandy 44. They replace only the first same type “regular” unit you call during the battle, bringing with them cosmetic changes, with their customized gears and vehicles. Of course, they only appear once during the battle, so they must be protected! Each one of them has a new skin model, but also an in-game description that, in a way, honors them: we used their real name, a unique photography, and laurels in the panel info that make them impossible to miss. You can use the Aces either in skirmish or multiplayer. We didn’t want to make our game unfair for those who do not have access to these elite heroes, so their stats remain the same that their comrades’ stats. However, fighting with an Ace always gives you a special feeling: being part of History and making the difference as they did during their time.
Sign-up reward
Pierre Clostermann
With 33 confirmed victories, Pierre Clostermann earned the title of “Premier Chasseur de France” (France’s First Fighter). He was 16 old when he first started flying and was an aeronautical engineer and professional pilot at 20. Studying in the USA when war broke in France, he was back in Europe in late 1940 to enlist with the FAFL (Free French Air Force). He served with both FAFL’s “Alsace” Squadron and RAF’s 602 Squadron. It is as part of the latter one, with which he served on D-Day, that he is depicted here.
Getting Pierre Clostermann in its Spitfire couldn’t be easier: all you have to do is sign up to Paradox’s newsletter on the official Steel Division: Normandy 44 website BEFORE THE RELEASE.
Clostermann’s Spitfire Mk.IX
Two exclusive Pre-Order Aces
Every player who pre-orders our game gets the chance to participate in our Pre-Order Beta (join it now if you missed it!), but that’s not all, as they will also receive two exclusive aces at release.
Francis S. ‘Gabby’ Gabreski
With 28 confirmed kills against the Luftwaffe, Francis S. ‘Gabby’ Gabreski was the USA’s top ace on the European theater of operation in WW2, even though he was shot down and captured on July 20th, 1944, the very day he was supposed to fly back to the USA to get married. But his legend didn’t stop there: after WW2, ‘Gabby’ flew during the Korean War. Adding 6 more kills, he thus joined the very restricted circle of pilots who became an ace in two different wars.
Gabreski’s P-47
Michael Wittmann
Michael Wittmann is without a doubt the most famous Tiger ace of WW2. A veteran of all the Leibstandarte SS ‘Adolf Hitler’ division’s campaigns, he is best known for his ambush at Villers-Bocage, on June 13th, 1944. Upon arriving in Normandy, while his company was still gathering, he went scouting ahead with his sole Tiger and found that the spearhead of the British 7th Armoured Division was already deploying out of Villers-Bocage. With no time to assemble his men, Wittmann attacked alone at first and went back up the same road used by the 7th AD, blasting every tank and vehicles he passed by. Later joined by the rest of his men, as well as other elements, they inflicted heavy losses on the famous ‘Desert Rats’. Wittmann was to be killed one month later.
Wittmann’s Tiger E
The Deluxe Edition, the most generous!
Finally, the ones who opt for Steel Division: Normandy 44‘s Collector Edition will be rewarded with six unique aces that will enrich their games.
Ernst Barkmann
Ernst Barkmann, a Panzer ace serving with 2. SS-Panzerdivision, is best remembered for his action at what will later be called “Barkmann’s Corner”, in Normandy. It is claimed (yet challenged nowadays) that on July 27th, near Le Lorey, Barkmann’s Panther held a crossroad against an American armored column forcing the Americans to maneuver around it and, in last resort, calling air support on it. Scarred and shot up, with several crew members wounded, Barkmann’s Panther nonetheless managed to escape, not without delaying the Americans for several hours and destroying about 10 vehicles.
Barkmann’s Panther A
Joseph ‘Pips’ Priller
Joseph ‘Pips’ Priller was a Luftwaffe fighter ace credited with 101 victories for all WW2. But what sets him apart from the other flying aces in an air force which counted so many is that ‘Pips’ was one of the very few German fighter pilots to fly over the landing beaches on D-Day and attack the allied assault troops. He was made famous by the book & movie “The Longest Day”, which depicts this episode.
Priller’s FW 190 A8
Richard D. ‘Dick’ Winters
Richard D. ‘Dick’ Winters started the war as a young lieutenant and ended it as a decorated major. All through the war, he held more or less direct command of the famous 101st Airborne Division’s 506th PIR’s Easy Company, made famous be the TV show “Band of Brothers”. With it, he made the division’s two combat jumps (Normandy & Netherlands), survived through the siege of Bastogne and went on invading Germany, ending the war in Hitler’s own Berchtesgaden house.
Winter’s AB Leader Squad
Wilfred Harris
A sergeant in the British 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, Wilfred Harris was at war since 1939 and a survivor of Dunkirk in 1940. Commander of a Sherman Firefly during the campaign in Normandy, Harris made History on June 14th, 1944, by destroying four Panthers and disabling another one in a single day, with only five shots.
Harris’ Firefly
Leo Major
One-eyed Canadian sniper-scout Leo Major is the stuff of legend, a one-man-army. In the course of a single year, from D-Day to the end of the war, he single-handedly captured command vehicles with radio codes, wiped out SS ambush and even a tank, made a hundred prisoners in one patrol, … If that wasn’t enough, he liberated the Dutch city of Zwolle in one night, wreaking such havoc all by himself that the garrison commander thought he was under attack by a much larger force and evacuated the city!
Leo Major’s Sniper Scouts team
Kurt Knispel
Kurt Knispel, although much less famous than Michael Wittmann or other nazi propaganda darlings, is probably the greatest Panzer ace in History. With 168 confirmed kills, which could rise up to 195 with unconfirmed ones or which he willingly left comrades to take credit for, he was a quite unusual German tank commander. Sporting long hairs, a goatee and a custom-made retrimmed uniform, and known to have assaulted an officer for mistreating Russian POWs, he was definitively not the nazi poster boy.
Knispel’s Königstiger (P)
Now, you know what to do to fight with the very best. Which one is your favorite? Beside which Ace will you stand when the D-Day will come? Your call!When did it stop being OK for first-person shooters to be silly? Once upon a time you just rocked up, ran down some corridors with increasingly powerful weapons and shot guys. Most of those guys chose to defend themselves by dancing left and right, and they came from places like Stroggos.
Not these days. These days you have to wrestle with mentalist ideologues and make choices with profound repercussions. BioShock gave us Randian objectivism and attacked our notions of free will in video games. Modern Warfare 2 was about... Well, nobody knows what Modern Warfare 2 was about, but you shot some civilians in an airport, which was a bit weird.
Meanwhile, Raven Software has been making Singularity - the first new IP to come out of the studio in a decade. It's about a guy who is sent to a secret Russian island, Katorga 12, where mad scientists experimented with a rare element called E99 in the 1950s and it all went wrong. Now it's full of mutants, zombies and, predictably, angry Russian soldiers.
Guess what you use to subdue them? Increasingly powerful weapons! There's a machine gun, and a shotgun, and a sniper rifle, and a minigun, and a grenade launcher, and they're all really fun to use. Some have excellent alternative fire modes. The grenade launcher alt-fire spits out a grenade ball that you can roll around with the left stick until you find someone to blow up. There's even a special gun that fires bullets you can pilot with the right stick, a bit like the Redeemer in Unreal Tournament.
We may have to refer back to a game from 1999 for context, but after a while playing Singularity you realise that it's quite contemporary too. There's an upgrade system, there are exotic set-piece boss fights on trains falling off bridges and walkabout bits where a friendly mad scientist briefs you on what's happening next, and there are lots of audio logs and reels of spoof USSR propaganda to watch.
Singularity looks lovely throughout, never afraid to be colourful and cartoon-like.
Sometimes it's a lot like BioShock. It even looks like BioShock. Unreal Engine 3 has a (slightly unfair) reputation for turning out games that are similar in appearance, but Singularity only calls one game to mind with its cracked tiles, water effects, rust and rot. All the pickups have that effervescent halo effect on them, and even the HUD's the same. The level of polish is also similar, to Raven's credit.
You also have a special arm attachment called a Time Manipulation Device, which you get periodic upgrades for and which you need to inject energy into when its little meter is empty, plasmid-style. You can use the TMD to make things older or younger, and this is handy in combat, where you can turn a Russian soldier into a skeleton or a shambling zombie.
It's also the solution to many of the game's basic puzzles, most of which involve ageing a crate between two states - rusty and compact, and strong and shiny - in order to jack open doors. (And trust Raven, veteran magpies of the FPS genre, to make time-travelling crates a key component of their first new game for a generation.)The guitarist talks about the pair's infamous 'Wibbling Rivalry' recording in a new interview
Noel Gallagher has discussed a series of arguments he had with brother Liam Gallagher during their time in Oasis.
Recent tabloid reports suggested that the band would reform without Noel. However, a representative of Liam told NME that Gallagher had “no comment” on the rumours.
Oasis originally split in 2009 with Noel citing an inability to work with his brother at the time as the key reason. Now, speaking in the second part of a video interview with Noisey, Noel Gallagher opened up about the pair’s infamous disagreements.
READ MORE: Oasis – Their Top 10 Best Lyrics – Do You Agree?
Reminded of ‘Wibbling Rivalry’, a spoken-word single released in 1995 that included a recording made by then-NME writer John Harris of the brothers arguing during an interview in 1994, Gallagher said, “The ‘brawling’ might have been blown out of all proportion by the song and The Mirror… If I think back to it now, my argument [in the recording] is ‘Be a cunt all you want but let’s do the gig first and then be a fucking dick’. His argument is ‘I’m just being a dick all the time’. Repeat endlessly until fucking 2009.”
Gallagher continued to detail the frequency of his bust-ups with his younger brother. He recalled: “I remember countless gigs where three songs in he’d just pop his fucking headphones out and just get off. You’d be doing a guitar solo and you’d get to the end of the song and think ‘It’s not that mad for him just to disappear during the guitar solo and not sing the rest of the song – he’s obviously gone back to fix his sunglasses or something’. Then you’d just go ‘Where’s Liam gone?’ And he’s got off. What do you mean he’s got off? ‘He’s got a sore throat’. What a cunt. Then you’ve got to go out and say in English to a perplexed Japanese people… and they’re all like ‘What the fuck is going on here? Where’s the singer gone?'”
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“I could never forgive him for that. Ever,” Gallagher added. Watch the video interview in full below.
Last month (April 19), however, tabloid reports emerged suggesting that an Oasis reunion was on the cards, with a ‘well-placed source’ saying the brothers had come to “a gentlemen’s agreement” to reunite.
Noel Gallagher subsequently denied that he would be interested in a Oasis reunion, claiming that the rumour came from a “source close to Liam”.
https://link.brightcove.com/services/player/?bctid=1803923792(CNN) -- America's political leaders are paralyzed. The government is reeling from debt. Corrupt bankers foreclose on people's homes as a brutal recession sweeps the land.
We're talking, of course, about the great debt standoff of 1786: Shays' Rebellion.
Nervous Americans glancing at the upcoming August 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling are being told that the nation is entering uncharted territory. But historians say they've seen this movie before.
Many of the same issues driving this modern-day standoff -- disagreement on how to handle the national debt, ineffective government and a populist citizen's revolt -- drove the 18th-century uprising that's been called America's first civil war.
Historians say the lesson that can be drawn from Shays' Rebellion and other transformative events in U.S. history is this: Protracted political gridlock is seldom resolved through compromise. It comes when one political party finally beats the other down.
Many Americans, however, have told pollsters that they want the political parties to work together to solve the debt ceiling crisis. Yet political stability doesn't always come through give-and-take, some historians say.
"There are times when only the outright defeat of political enemies can bring about needed reform," says Richard Striner, a history professor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.
"It was only by confronting and defeating the aggressive leadership of the slave states that Lincoln and the Civil War Republicans rid the nation of slavery."
The fight over 'big government'
Shays' Rebellion was such a crisis. Rooted in economic anxiety and political turmoil, it even involved a leader of a tea party.
The country had incurred massive debt during the Revolutionary War. But it couldn't pay it off because the Colonists, distrusting "big government," had created the Articles of Confederation to run the country, which weakened the authority of a central government.
The result was anarchy.
The federal government wasn't allowed to raise taxes to pay off war debts. Various states responded with crushing taxes. Shady bankers in states such as Massachusetts foreclosed on farmers' homes and threw people in debtors' prison. Some thought the country would dissolve.
The political leaders in Massachusetts, though, didn't seem to care, says Daniel Klinghard, author of "The Nationalization of American Political Parties, 1880-1896."
"The state Legislature was completely out of touch with the excruciating economic difficulties that people were going through," Klinghard says.
That's when Daniel Shays entered the picture. The Massachusetts farmer had fought in the Revolutionary War, only to return home and find himself -- like many fellow citizens -- facing foreclosure. He decided to fight back.
In 1786, he raised a private citizens' army called the "Shaysites." They marched on and shut down a debtors' court in Massachusetts and tried to storm a state arsenal. Samuel Adams, one of the Founding Fathers who had planned the Boston Tea Party, called for their capture and death.
Adams got his wish. The rebel army was routed by a state militia, and some of its leaders were hanged. Shays was arrested and later pardoned. His uprising, though, helped settle a paralyzing political question, Klinghard says.
The country was stuck between two competing views of government. Federalists such as Alexander Hamilton wanted a strong national government and president. Anti-federalists such as Thomas Jefferson wanted more state power.
Those competing views of government are being played out in Washington today. The political leaders negotiating the debt crisis face the same question that Shays' Rebellion provoked: How big should the federal government be and how much power should it have?
"It was a conflict over the nature of what the new republic would look like," Klinghard says of the rebellion. "Shays wanted this simple, agrarian existence while people like Hamilton wanted a robust government."
Shays' Rebellion frightened so many of the nation's leaders that they opted for robust national government. They met a year after the rebellion and drafted the Constitution, which gave the federal government and president more powers -- including the ability to quash "domestic disturbances."
Shays' Rebellion followed a script that would be repeated in American history, especially during the lead-up to the Civil War.
President Barack Obama and others issue warnings about not kicking the debt issue down the road. Their predecessors in the 18th and 19th centuries passed the issue of slavery down to one another like it was a dinner bill no one wanted to pay.
They compromised so much that it took the Civil War to abolish slavery, says Klinghard, a political science professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
"It didn't represent a momentary crisis," Klinghard says of issues such as slavery "but the culmination of years, decades of disputes during which a series of compromises results in an incoherent national policy and, despite compromise, the disputes continue to harden to the point that compromise becomes politically impossible."
A leader has to be able to fight dirty, historian says
Shays' Rebellion also offers another lesson for today's debt ceiling standoff, historians say. Forget all that talk about reaching across the aisle: Politicians operate like a pride of lions, and there can only be one alpha leader.
George Washington fulfilled that role after Shays' Rebellion. He abandoned retirement to become the nation's first president. His stature ensured that the president wouldn't be a token figure who deferred to state's powers.
Other periods of dangerous political gridlock in American history were resolved by alpha presidents, who had to possess a ruthless, and even deceitful, side, some historians say.
Consider President Abraham Lincoln, or Honest Abe. He's now known as the magnanimous president with the grandfatherly smile. He forgave personal insults and reached out to his enemies.
Yet Lincoln was also a political version of a cage fighter -- he could fight dirty, says Striner, the Washington College historian who has also written a book on Lincoln, "Father Abraham."
Lincoln had long wanted to abolish slavery before he became president. But after he was elected, he wrote a now-famous public letter in 1862 saying he wouldn't free slaves if their enslavement would preserve the Union, Striner says.
"It was balderdash," Striner says. "He was being deceptive to allay white supremacist resistance to emancipation."
Today's political leaders could learn something from Lincoln, Striner says.
"Lincoln should be understood as a fervent anti-slavery idealist who was also a consummate Machiavellian power artist," Striner says. "It was this combination of qualities that meted out the death blow to American slavery. He was a moral visionary with street smarts."
A leader also has to be able to go to the people to break political gridlock, historians say.
President Franklin Roosevelt was a master of appeal during the Great Depression, says Nancy Koehn, a historian at Harvard University's School of Business.
He helped settle a jittery nation's nerves through his fireside chats by explaining in concrete terms why New Deal legislation was necessary, she says.
Obama hasn't used the powers of the presidency to break through the debt ceiling gridlock, Koehn says, by talking directly to the American people about the stakes involved.
"For all of his presidency, he has never given evidence that he trusted the people to consistently bring them into his confidence and explain the connections," Koehn says. "He's never gone to the people and said, 'I need your help.' It's a huge, missed opportunity on his part."
Learning from Athens
Polls show Americans are in need of reassurance. Eighty percent are dissatisfied with the federal government, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. The daily media are full of editorials blasting both Republican and Democratic leaders.
Despite the anxiety, few are talking about the end of democracy. Many Americans may regard our current system of government as perpetual. We'll always have a democracy, right? But history shows that too many internal divisions can doom a democracy. The political leaders who put down Shays' Rebellion feared this fate, says Striner, the Washington College historian.
"Many of them were privately fearful that the union might not last," Striner says. "Most of them regarded our national existence as an 'experiment.' "
They also knew from history that the world's first democratic experiment collapsed because of poor leadership, he says.
The golden age of Athens evaporated with the death of Pericles, one of its greatest leaders. After Pericles, the Athenian assembly degenerated into chaos: bickering by demagogues, the launching of ill-thought-out military campaigns and the eventual overthrow of Athens by the Spartans, who abolished democracy.
"The death of Pericles left no one to master the squabbling and bickering factions," Striner says. "The confusion and division in Athens played into the hands of the conquering Spartans."
Sparta isn't massing at Washington's city limits if the debt negotiations fail, but the seeds of our potential collapse are still there, Striner says. The internal divisions that propelled Shays' Rebellion remain a part of America's political DNA. It won't end with the resolution of the debt ceiling standoff, he says.
"It is a permanent fixture in American political culture, even though its influence rises and falls," Striner says. "We will probably never outgrow it."By SETH BORENSTEIN Nov. 22, 2015 10:51 AM EST federal ground-based data, which scientists said is more reliable than satellites AP FACT CHECK: Most GOP candidates flunk climate science
Ground data is more reliable than satellites? Consider Greenland. Satellites used millions of temperature readings in Greenland last month. NOAA used zero actual readings in Greenland.
Global warming theory is based on troposphere temperatures which satellites measure, not urban heat islands and data tampering by criminals at NASA and NOAA.
NASA has known for 25 years that satellites are more accurate than surface temperatures, and that surface temperature measurements should be replaced.
The same criminals who claim (when convenient) that surface temperatures are more accurate, also feel the need to massively adjust them (when convenient) – because of their gross inaccuracies.
They can’t claim that surface temperatures are accurate, and then justify massive adjustments of surface temperatures.
The people behind this scam will engage in whatever tampering and lying is necessary to keep the White House happy.
AdvertisementsDavis Speaks Up For Officers In Third Problematic Body-Camera Video
Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis held a Thursday press conference to register his strong objections to State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby dropping charges in dozens of cases tied to a third problematic body camera video.
"I remain committed to getting it right in Baltimore. At times, however, we fall short," Davis said. "We must not misconstrue mistakes in judgment by police officers as criminality."
Davis said that since the body camera program began, 62 officers have been disciplined for not having their cameras on when they should, 14 more have been disciplined for caught-on-camera misconduct and one has been fired. However, he unequivocally defended the officers as the department showed the relevant video and audio to reporters.
In a statement issued Thursday afternoon, Mosby said that the officer should have included the re-enactment seen in the body camera footage in the statement of probable cause, and that failing to do so creates "indefensible doubts in the minds of the general public, judges and jurors.
“We are working hard to gain the trust and confidence of the public and incidents like this make it harder," Mosby said. "The BPD is an indispensable partner and I am committed to working with the commissioner as he continues to reform the department.”
In June, a special unit pulled up by a suspect in southwest Baltimore. The suspect, 22-year-old Tyquon Jones of the 2700 block of Giles Road, immediately ran, as seen in body camera video. Officers gave chase, and he was re-captured at the edge of a wooded area.
Police, Davis said, believed he discarded drugs during the foot chase and listened in on his calls from Central Booking. Two days later, police heard him tell an unknown person where to find the drugs in a cigar package in that wooded area.
"And, you know where like the bushes at right there, say we like, listen, look you gotta listen you and picture it," the suspect is heard saying.
That person said he would check the following morning. Officers, however, hearing that, went there the next morning before that person could get there. The first officer sees the second officer recover the drugs, and the first officer's body camera video depicts that. At that point, the officer puts the drugs down and both officers activate their body cameras. The cameras automatically recorded the previous 30 seconds without audio, however. The second officer then picks up the bag again.
Warning: The below video contains explicit language.
"That's it. There is nothing questionable about this," Davis said. "The officer did exactly what I and the community expect of him."
Davis likened it to a time before body cameras, when an officer might find evidence in a cereal box and put it back to take a still photo of where it was recovered.
Davis said he had little doubt a reasonable jury would see the videos the same way he did.
The officer, Davis repeatedly emphasized, self-reported the gaffe in light of recent and highly public issues with body camera video, but neither the officer nor Davis expected all the cases tied to the three officers involved to be dropped.
"A decision to drop all the pending criminal charges with these three officers simply does not help the crime fight," Davis said. "They need support. They need my support. They need your support, and they need support from everyone in the criminal justice systems."
Davis said he has met with Mosby to talk about their differing viewpoints on the case, and said he doesn't believe the flap will hurt the strong working relationship between police and prosecutors. However, he said he had to speak out publicly to defend the three officers to protect department morale and let younger officers know he'll stand up for them |
like other European countries. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels alone provided the prefaces for five editions between 1888 and 1893. Among these is the 1888 English edition, translated by Samuel Moore and approved by Engels, who also provided notes throughout the text. It has been the standard English-language edition ever since.
The principal region of its influence, in terms of editions published, was in the "central belt of Europe", from Russia in the east to France in the west. In comparison, the pamphlet had little impact on politics in southwest and southeast Europe, and moderate presence in the north. Outside Europe, Chinese and Japanese translations were published, as were Spanish editions in Latin America. This uneven geographical spread in the Manifesto's popularity reflected the development of socialist movements in a particular region as well as the popularity of Marxist variety of socialism there. There was not always a strong correlation between a social-democratic party's strength and the Manifesto's popularity in that country. For instance, the German SPD printed only a few thousand copies of the Communist Manifesto every year, but a few hundred thousand copies of the Erfurt Programme. Further, the mass-based social-democratic parties of the Second International did not require their rank and file to be well-versed in theory; Marxist works such as the Manifesto or Das Kapital were read primarily by party theoreticians. On the other hand, small, dedicated militant parties and Marxist sects in the West took pride in knowing the theory; Hobsbawm says: "This was the milieu in which 'the clearness of a comrade could be gauged invariably from the number of earmarks on his Manifesto'".
The Communist Manifesto were distributed far and wide Following the 1917 Bolshevik takeover of Russia, Marx/Engels classics likewere distributed far and wide
Following the October Revolution of 1917 that swept the Vladimir Lenin-led Bolsheviks to power in Russia, the world's first socialist state was founded explicitly along Marxist lines. The Soviet Union, which Bolshevik Russia would become a part of, was a one-party state under the rule of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Unlike their mass-based counterparts of the Second International, the CPSU and other Leninist parties like it in the Third International expected their members to know the classic works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Further, party leaders were expected to base their policy decisions on Marxist-Leninist ideology. Therefore works such as the Manifesto were required reading for the party rank-and-file.
Therefore the widespread dissemination of Marx and Engels' works became an important policy objective; backed by a sovereign state, the CPSU had relatively inexhaustible resources for this purpose. Works by Marx, Engels, and Lenin were published on a very large scale, and cheap editions of their works were available in several languages across the world. These publications were either shorter writings or they were compendia such as the various editions of Marx and Engels' Selected Works, or their Collected Works. This affected the destiny of the Manifesto in several ways. Firstly, in terms of circulation; in 1932 the American and British Communist Parties printed several hundred thousand copies of a cheap edition for "probably the largest mass edition ever issued in English". Secondly the work entered political-science syllabuses in universities, which would only expand after the Second World War. For its centenary in 1948, its publication was no longer the exclusive domain of Marxists and academicians; general publishers too printed the Manifesto in large numbers. "In short, it was no longer only a classic Marxist document", Hobsbawm noted, "it had become a political classic tout court".
Even after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in the 1990s, the Communist Manifesto remains ubiquitous; Hobsbawm says that "In states without censorship, almost certainly anyone within reach of a good bookshop, and certainly anyone within reach of a good library, not to mention the internet, can have access to it". The 150th anniversary once again brought a deluge of attention in the press and the academia, as well as new editions of the book fronted by introductions to the text by academics. One of these, The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition by Verso, was touted by a critic in the London Review of Books as being a "stylish red-ribboned edition of the work. It is designed as a sweet keepsake, an exquisite collector's item. In Manhattan, a prominent Fifth Avenue store put copies of this choice new edition in the hands of shop-window mannequins, displayed in come-hither poses and fashionable décolletage".
Legacy [ edit ]
"With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this work outlines a new world-conception, consistent materialism, which also embraces the realm of social life; dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development; the theory of the class struggle and of the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletariat—the creator of a new, communist society." —Vladimir Lenin on the Manifesto, 1914[6]
A number of late-20th- and 21st-century writers have commented on the Communist Manifesto's continuing relevance. In a special issue of the Socialist Register commemorating the Manifesto's 150th anniversary, Peter Osborne argued that it was "the single most influential text written in the nineteenth century".[7] Academic John Raines in 2002 noted: "In our day this Capitalist Revolution has reached the farthest corners of the earth. The tool of money has produced the miracle of the new global market and the ubiquitous shopping mall. Read The Communist Manifesto, written more than one hundred and fifty years ago, and you will discover that Marx foresaw it all".[8] In 2003, English Marxist Chris Harman stated: "There is still a compulsive quality to its prose as it provides insight after insight into the society in which we live, where it comes from and where its going to. It is still able to explain, as mainstream economists and sociologists cannot, today's world of recurrent wars and repeated economic crisis, of hunger for hundreds of millions on the one hand and 'overproduction' on the other. There are passages that could have come from the most recent writings on globalisation".[9] Alex Callinicos, editor of International Socialism, stated in 2010: "This is indeed a manifesto for the 21st century".[10] Writing in The London Evening Standard, Andrew Neather cited Verso Books' 2012 re-edition of The Communist Manifesto with an introduction by Eric Hobsbawm as part of a resurgence of left-wing-themed ideas which includes the publication of Owen Jones' best-selling Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class and Jason Barker's documentary Marx Reloaded.[11]
In contrast, critics such as revisionist Marxist and reformist socialist Eduard Bernstein distinguished between "immature" early Marxism—as exemplified by The Communist Manifesto written by Marx and Engels in their youth—that he opposed for its violent Blanquist tendencies and later "mature" Marxism that he supported.[12] This latter form refers to Marx in his later life acknowledging that socialism could be achieved through peaceful means through legislative reform in democratic societies.[13] Bernstein declared that the massive and homogeneous working-class claimed in the Communist Manifesto did not exist, and that contrary to claims of a proletarian majority emerging, the middle-class was growing under capitalism and not disappearing as Marx had claimed. Bernstein noted that the working-class was not homogeneous but heterogeneous, with divisions and factions within it, including socialist and non-socialist trade unions. Marx himself, later in his life, acknowledged that the middle-class was not disappearing in his work Theories of Surplus Value (1863). The obscurity of the later work means that Marx's acknowledgement of this error is not well known.[14] George Boyer described the Manifesto as "very much a period piece, a document of what was called the 'hungry' 1840s".[15]
Many have drawn attention to the passage in the Manifesto that seems to sneer at the stupidity of the rustic: "The bourgeoisie [...] draws all nations [...] into civilisation[.] [...] It has created enormous cities [...] and thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy [sic] of rural life".[16] However, as Eric Hobsbawm noted:
[W]hile there is no doubt that Marx at this time shared the usual townsman's contempt for, as well as ignorance of, the peasant milieu, the actual and analytically more interesting German phrase ("dem Idiotismus des Landlebens entrissen") referred not to "stupidity" but to "the narrow horizons", or "the isolation from the wider society" in which people in the countryside lived. It echoed the original meaning of the Greek term idiotes from which the current meaning of "idiot" or "idiocy" is derived, namely "a person concerned only with his own private affairs and not with those of the wider community". In the course of the decades since the 1840s, and in movements whose members, unlike Marx, were not classically educated, the original sense was lost and was misread.[17]
Influences [ edit ]
Marx and Engels' political influences were wide-ranging, reacting to and taking inspiration from German idealist philosophy, French socialism, and English and Scottish political economy. The Communist Manifesto also takes influence from literature. In Jacques Derrida’s work, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, he uses William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to frame a discussion of the history of the International, showing in the process the influence that Shakespeare's work had on Marx and Engel’s writing.[18] In his essay, "Big Leagues: Specters of Milton and Republican International Justice between Shakespeare and Marx", Christopher N. Warren makes the case that English poet John Milton also had a substantial influence on Marx and Engel’s work.[19] Historians of 19th-century reading habits have confirmed that Marx and Engels would have read these authors and it is known that Marx loved Shakespeare in particular.[20][21][22] Milton, Warren argues, also shows a notable influence on The Communist Manifesto, saying: "Looking back on Milton’s era, Marx saw a historical dialectic founded on inspiration in which freedom of the press, republicanism, and revolution were closely joined".[23] Milton’s republicanism, Warren continues, served as "a useful, if unlikely, bridge" as Marx and Engels sought to forge a revolutionary international coalition.
References [ edit ]
Source text [ edit ]Two days after a group of Democrats made moves to impeach President Donald Trump, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said during a speech that impeaching Trump would be a waste of time and energy, because “he’s just not that important.”
Pelosi, who spoke at Hearst’s offices on Friday, said Democrats’ priority should not be removing Trump from office, according to tweets from Cosmopolitan features editor Emma Barker. “Republicans would love for us to make our campaigns about the impeachment of Trump,” she said. “That’s not what it’s about. It’s about the well-being of American families.”
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The longtime congresswoman has publicly denounced impeachment efforts in the past. Earlier this month, she told Politico that impeachment proceedings are “not someplace that I think we should go.”
During her appearance at Hearst, according to Barker’s tweets, Pelosi also said that impeaching former President Bill Clinton was “a frivolous activity.”
Write to Jamie Ducharme at jamie.ducharme@time.com.Hello and welcome to the 191st instalment of the SWD.
Military events/news are listed below by the governorates:
Raqqa:
The Syrian Democratic Forces have launched multiple offensives against ISIS targeting different fronts. On the eastern front, SDF forces claim to have killed 7 IS members in al Mansur district. On the western front, SDF captured some of the ISIS-held missiles after with Cyrillic scripts on it, and also captured a munitions and mortar shells factory. The US-backed forces targeted the Al-Nahdah area before storming ISIS units. SDF killed eight IS members in the al-Maroor district, five in Nahda neighbourhood, and four in the Bitani district. Additionally, SDF captured the Children’s Hospital and the southern Mosque in al-Moor district.
The Syrian Arab Army and tribal forces were attacked by an ISIS counterattack on the recently captured villages of southern Raqqa. The elite unit Tiger Forces sent reinforcements to help tribal fighters against ISIS forces. Government forces have retreated from Muqlah, Salim al-Hammad, Abu Hammad, Subayat, Ghanim al-Ali, Zwar Shammer and Al-Jabali, which were captured by the Islamic State.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State militants managed to kill an unknown number of SAA and allies soldiers using a SVBIED in the southeastern village of Ghanim al-Ali. Also, the IS forces captured some vehicles, weapons and ammunition after they successfully did a night raid. Images published by ISIS sources show that the terrorist group managed to kill a large number of the Syrian Arab Army soldiers, apparently more than 30, and not tribal fighters as other reports suggested.
Aleppo:
Government forces shelled the northern city of Anadan with artillery.
Hama:
The Syrian Arab Army opened a new axis in east Salamiyah countryside and captured point 9 and point 7 in the mountainous area of central Hama. The newly captured “point 7” is a key area since it is one of the most fortified points and positions in the area.
Government forces have shelled the town of Lataminah in north Hama. Meanwhile, the FSA group “Abu Amara Special Task Brigade” claimed its first operation outside the Aleppo governorate as they successfully managed to blow up an ammo depot in Suqaylabiya, in northwestern Hama countryside.
Homs:
The SAA Tiger Forces have captured new territories in the area of Tuwaynan mountains. Additionally, government forces also found and captured an ISIS underground base in the mountains located south of Bir Qadim village, which is close to Tuwaynan area.
Around the Sukhnah area, an ISIS ATGM has hit a Syrian government tank with unknown results. Footage shows a direct hit on the left side of the tank at a moment when the crew was not inside. At the same time, SAA is positioned 25 km east of Sukhnah and has shelled ISIS positions on the Homs eastern desert.
The Islamic State claimed to have destroyed a government-held bulldozer with an ATGM somewhere north of Humayma.
Damascus:
According to some sources, the Islamic State have asked Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab Army for a safe withdrawal from west Qalamoun to Deir ez-Zor area. For more information, you can read this article.
An exchange of prisoners has taken place today between Jaish al-Islam and the Syrian authorities as the first exchanged 14 children, 12 men, and 10 women, for 11 government soldiers.
CJTF-OIR :
On the 23rd of August 2017, CJTF-OIR has conducted 12 strikes in Syria. CJTF-OIR ‘s main focus in Syria is Raqqa region where they did nine strikes supporting SDF‘s operations against IS destroying 11 fighting positions and a vehicle.
Another area where three strikes occurred is Deir ez-Zor destroying three ISIS headquarters and an ISIS-held building. The full report on CJTF-OIR strikes conducted in both Syria & Iraq can be found here.
Other:
Intellectual credited properly used may vary from an edition to edition.
Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments section below, constructive criticism is welcomed.
For those of you interested, you can follow me on my personal, controversial twitter @alextorrell where I constantly tweet about different issues and conflictsMexican modernism was also about more than murals, which are often its only recognized manifestation abroad. “The dominance of muralism has obscured from the art-historical record practices such as ‘Estridentismo’ [also known as ‘Stridentism] that made cultural circles hum with competing visions,” the art historian Lynda Klich notes of one of the country’s modernist countermovements. Here was an international, vanguard style represented by the poet Manuel Maples Arce (1900–1981) and the painter Ramón Alva de la Canal (1892–1985) that was often at odds with the localism of the muralists and the folk art traditions advocated by artists and teachers such as Dr. Atl (1875–1964), Roberto Montenegro (1885–1968), and Adolfo Best Maugard (1891–1964). “The postrevolutionary environment fostered many artistic dialogs, including the Estridentistas’ own interrogation of what it meant to be both modern and Mexican at this time,” says Klich.
“For many years,” says Matthew Affron, the exhibition’s curator at the Philadelphia Museum, “the received story of modern Mexican art was dominated by los tres grandes... Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, though standard accounts also had room for [Rufino] Tamayo [(1899–1991)], who positioned himself as the muralists’ competitor. The popular ascent of Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) came in the 1980s. Only in more recent times have the diverse achievements of the broader modernist artistic community been examined in greater depth.”
With more than three hundred objects—including paintings, drawings, photographs, woodcuts, and publications—“Paint the Revolution” goes far beyond the political “painted revolution” many of us associate with the famous muralists.
One point of tension was just what should be “modern” and “progressive” about Mexican art. “This exhibition alters our idea of what modern is,” Affron tells me as he opened his show. The Mexicans “might also change our understanding of what is progressive art and what is regressive art,” he adds. For one, they “complicate our ideas of realism. There are elements of murals that speak to masses, but there are also elements that are much more coded. There is an interesting dialog between an art which wants to speak to many publics at once, a wide public, and an insider public.” Drawing directly on the esoteric influence of symbolism in late nineteenth-century Mexico City, there known as “Modernista,” for example, even in its most realistic and didactic forms the art of the Mexican modernists “dislocates what is looking forward and what is looking back. This quite elite streak in modernism, that doesn’t end.”
This more cosmopolitan, “decadent” influence of Mexican art was picked up by a movement known as Contemporáneos, with artists such as Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who cultivated a connection to Oscar Wilde and André Gide “as a strategy for publicly representing their own homosexuality,” writes the Philadelphia Museum’s Mark A. Castro, “creating a counterpoint to the hypermasculinized images of celebrated revolutionary leaders such as Francisco (Pancho) Villa and Emiliano Zapata.” Connecting in the 1930s with the Surrealist exiles from Europe, the Contemporáneos sought a pure, art-for-art’s-sake aesthetic, free of political compromise and dedicated to personal visual language.
After the Contemporáneos criticized the murals of Rivera for turning art into a “political-social instrument” for the state’s agenda, Rivera lashed out at them in 1934 as “pimps of the bourgeoisie” in an article he called "Arte puro: Puros maricones" (Pure Art: Pure Faggots), while caricaturing two of their artists in his mural panels. Orozco also derided them as los rorros Fachistas (Fascist Gay Boys) in a drawing for the publication El machete. “For the muralists,” writes the art historian Mireida Velázquez, “the revolution had signified the possibility of renewing Mexican culture; for the Contemporáneos, it represented a period of barbarity that had broken the balance established under Porfirio Díaz.”
Another point of tension was between the Marxism of muralists such as Rivera and the capitalism of their American patrons, who repeatedly lavished them with major projects. After Edsel Ford brought Rivera to the Detroit Institute of Arts to paint his most famous and brilliant stateside mural over eleven months from 1932 to 1933, Nelson Rockefeller commissioned him later that year to paint a mural of similar scope in the lobby of the new RCA Building at Rockefeller Center—even after Rivera had included a not-so-flattering portrait of Rockefeller’s grandfather in the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) murals in Mexico City. Their diverging views came to a histrionic head as Rivera departed from his original proposal and included a portrait of Lenin in his RCA lineup. Rockefeller objected, and the New York mural was destroyed—only to be reproduced back in Mexico City.
“None of them was a dupe,” says Affron. “They all knew what was going on. It cannot be an accident that during the Great Depression this American art with ancient sources, not European, a moral art, came to the attention of such a varied public. Rockefeller and the Fords understood that as patrons during the Depression they had a certain responsibility. Rivera fit the bill, but it wasn’t an easy relationship.”
Despite the mural controversy, Affron says, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller purchased Rivera’s May Day drawings and gave them to the Museum of Modern Art. “This is not a simple story. They were all living in a situation of shifting political sands.”
Photo caption Portrait of Martín Luis Guzmán, 1915, by Diego Rivera (Fundación Televisa Collection). © Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
With repeated overtures and allusions to art history, from the Old Masters to indigenous abstraction, the Mexican modernists drew on a diverse inventory of sources that looked both forward and backward, local and international. “One of the ideas we try to hit people over the head with,” says Affron, is that “no matter how nationalist this Mexican art was, it was just as internationalist, and this is the great surprise to many people.” After training in Mexico City’s National School of Fine Arts, for example, a government scholarship brought Rivera to Montparnasse in Paris, where he lived at its moment of greatest modernist ferment from 1911 to 1921, in fact missing the direct experience of the Mexican Revolution. Instead, he became immersed in the circle of modernists around the studio building of La Ruche, a group that included the painters Chaim Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani and the poet Max Jacob. According to Mexican scholar Dafne Cruz Porchini, Rivera was also steeped in mystical beliefs as a member of a Rosicrucian order—a reason why hidden, subterranean forces can often complicate the political messages of his murals.
This all helps explain why one of Rivera’s earliest paintings now on display in “Paint the Revolution,” Portrait of Martín Luis Guzmán (1915), mixes Analytical Cubism with the Hispanism of a matador’s hat and the Mexicanidad, or “Mexicanized,” pattern of a native blanket for this depiction of a writer Rivera portrayed sitting in his Paris studio. For an artist today identified as one of Mexico’s big three muralists through a native, political, “revolutionary” style, Rivera was most influenced by this period of European high-modernist expatriation. As compared with Rivera’s revolutionary theories developed abroad, the muralist Orozco experienced the bloody revolution of Mexico first hand—one reason his work tended to focus on the disasters, rather than the aims, of war.
Beyond his contemporary influences, Rivera increasingly looked back—to Cézanne, to El Greco (whom he studied in Toledo), and finally to Italy, where Renaissance fresco initially sparked his interest in muralism. Rivera’s European influences, in fact, put his work at odds with the muralism of Siqueiros, who attempted to radicalize not only his content but his medium.
“Rivera’s mural art is a modern adaptation of an historical medium—the Mexican government financed his trip in 1921 to Italy,” says Affron. “But by the 1930s Siqueiros was loudly denying that fresco was a good way to go. He thought it was an historical anachronism, an elitist medium.” So as Rivera looked to historicized techniques in designing his murals for classical buildings from Mexico City to Detroit—trompe l’oeil frames, grisaille, illusionistic banners, and other traditional academic techniques—Siqueiros began experimenting with spray paint, synthetic pigments, and unorthodox spatial perspectives. These innovations came together in Siqueiros’s dizzying Portrait of the Bourgeoisie (1939–1940), which he painted in the stairwell of the new modernist headquarters of the Mexican electricians’ labor union and is reproduced in a special installation in “Paint the Revolution.”
This brings up a question for any exhibition on Mexican modernism: how to treat its most well-known component. “When I would speak about the exhibition, I’d say, I know what you are thinking: What about the murals?” says Affron. “The stumbling block of any exhibition of this kind is that the most famous artistic examples are bound into the walls in which they are painted.” For two major murals, Affron and his colleagues at both the Philadelphia Museum and in Mexico found a solution in high-definition video technology deployed on site. These films are used to reproduce the work as scanning projections for Rivera’s Ballad of the Agricultural Revolution (1926–27) and Ballad of the Proletarian Revolution (1928–29) from the SEP in Mexico City, and Orozco’s The Epic of American Civilization (1932–34) from Baker Library at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
“It was important to us that all of the digital simulations find a way to really show they exist in architectural spaces and can only be seen in time and space,” Affron tells me. “I cared a lot about that. You must give people an equivalent version of the experience. We have a whole team here working in information technology and interpretation, and they worked with the curatorial department. Then we had to hire a very specialized team in Mexico City. You get a level of clarity and quality, and the solution was totally innovative. No one has seen it done this way. It really required everybody’s brain to add something that couldn’t be added by other means.”
Photo caption Carnival at Huejotzingo, 1939, José Chávez Morado, Phoenix Art Museum. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico
Without any murals of its own—unlike its partner institution, the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, which features murals by all three greats, including Rivera’s recast Rockefeller Center work—the Philadelphia Museum might not appear to be the first institution to choose to take on such a large-scale Mexican exhibition. But, in fact, the institution’s commitment to Mexican modernism runs as deep as any American museum’s.
Trained as an engineer in Austria, René d’Harnoncourt moved from Paris to Mexico in 1926 to try to live as a painter, but he soon established himself as a dealer and curator, first in Mexican antiquities and then for the modernists. In 1930 he organized the first exhibition of Mexican art in the United States at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
With its grand building’s opening in 1928, the Philadelphia Museum also first looked to the Mexicans, and d’Harnoncourt, to fill out its modern collection, decades before such great modernist bequests as that of Walter and Louise Arensberg, which included Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912), enriched its collection in the 1950s.
Then, in 1943, the Philadelphia Museum organized “Mexican Art Today,” arguably the most significant exhibition of Mexican art in the United States in the twentieth century and a model for the current show. It also happens that d’Harnoncourt’s only child, Anne Julie d’Harnoncourt, served as the longtime director and later CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, from 1982 until her death in 2008. “And to think that Rivera came here in 1922,” says Affron. "And René’s daughter became the director here. These are all examples of why we are the right institution to do this show.”
Today Philadelphia has one of the richest contemporary mural projects of any city. What began as an anti-graffiti initiative in the 1980s, the city’s Mural Arts Program now employs hundreds of artists a year and has become a defining characteristic of the cityscape. Is there a direct connection between this exhibition and what we now see lining the city streets? “I don’t think you can connect them as a cause and effect, but there’s a consonance of ideas,” says Affron of the Mexican muralists and Philadelphia’s contemporary examples.
“Paint the Revolution” proves yet again how the true revolution of art was modernism itself, which flowered simultaneously across continents in multiple centers of influence. “This story was both local and international from the start,” Affron concludes. “Mexican artists created a modern art that was deeply embedded in international politics and aesthetic currents, but was also rooted in Mexico’s particular experiences, history, traditions, iconography, and institutions. Looking back a century later, at a moment when a global account of modernism is emerging, Mexico between 1910 and 1950 clearly belongs at the center of the story”—with a revolution in style that remains revelatory.Alvin Lee, the guitarist and singer of Ten Years After, has died.
A statement posted on his official website read: "With great sadness we have to announce that Alvin unexpectedly passed away early this morning after unforseen complications following a routine surgical procedure.
"We have lost a wonderful and much loved father and companion, the world has lost a truly great and gifted musician."
Alvin Lee ripping it up at Woodstock
Lee, whose musical career began in the early sixties, was launched to international stardom after an incendiary performance at Woodstock, which showcased his mastery of blues-rock guitar and turned his sticker-plastered "Big Red" Gibson ES-335 into an icon of the festival.
When Ten Years After split up in 1973, Lee went on to release a number of albums, including On The Road To Freedom, which included guest spots from the likes of Mick Fleetwood, George Harrison, Steve Winwood and Ron Wood. His last release, 2012's Still On The Road To Freedom, referenced his early solo success and confirmed his place in the pantheon of rock greats.Reginsmál) as depicted on a 16th-century Icelandic manuscript (SÁM 66) Loki with a fishing net (per) as depicted on a 16th-century Icelandic manuscript (SÁM 66)
Loki ( Old Norse: [ˈloki], Modern Icelandic: [ˈlɔːkɪ], often Anglicized as ) is a god in Norse mythology. Loki is in some sources the son of Fárbauti and Laufey, and the brother of Helblindi and Býleistr. By the jötunn Angrboða, Loki is the father of Hel, the wolf Fenrir, and the world serpent Jörmungandr. By his wife Sigyn, Loki is the father of Narfi and/or Nari. By the stallion Svaðilfari, Loki is the mother—giving birth in the form of a mare—to the eight-legged horse Sleipnir. In addition, Loki is referred to as the father of Váli in Prose Edda, though this source also refers to Odin as the father of Váli twice, and Váli is found mentioned as a Son of Loki only once.
Loki's relation with the gods varies by source; Loki sometimes assists the gods and sometimes behaves in a malicious manner towards them. Loki is a shape shifter and in separate incidents he appears in the form of a salmon, a mare, a fly, and possibly an elderly woman named Þökk (Old Norse 'thanks'). Loki's positive relations with the gods end with his role in engineering the death of the god Baldr and Loki is eventually bound by Váli with the entrails of one of his sons. In both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, the goddess Skaði is responsible for placing a serpent above him while he is bound. The serpent drips venom from above him that Sigyn collects into a bowl; however, she must empty the bowl when it is full, and the venom that drips in the meantime causes Loki to writhe in pain, thereby causing earthquakes. With the onset of Ragnarök, Loki is foretold to slip free from his bonds and to fight against the gods among the forces of the jötnar, at which time he will encounter the god Heimdallr and the two will slay each other.
Loki is referred to in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson; the Norwegian Rune Poems, in the poetry of skalds, and in Scandinavian folklore. Loki may be depicted on the Snaptun Stone, the Kirkby Stephen Stone, and the Gosforth Cross. Loki's origins and role in Norse mythology, which some scholars have described as that of a trickster god, have been much debated by scholars. Loki has been depicted in or is referenced in a variety of media in modern popular culture.
Etymology, and alternative names
The etymology of the name Loki has been extensively debated. The name has at times been associated with the Old Norse word logi ('flame'), but there seems not to be a sound linguistic basis for this. Rather, the later Scandinavian variants of the name (such as Faroese Lokki, Danish Lokkemand, Norwegian Loke and Lokke, Swedish Luki and Luku, along with Finnish Lukki) point to an origin in the Germanic root *luk-, which denoted things to do with loops (like knots, hooks, closed-off rooms, and locks). This corresponds with usages such as the Swedish lokkanät and Faroese Lokkanet ('cobweb', literally 'Lokke's web') and Faroese lokki~grindalokki~grindalokkur ('daddy-long-legs', associated in pre-modern folk-taxonomy with spiders). Some Eastern Swedish traditions referring to the same figure use forms in n- like Nokk(e), but this corresponds to the *luk- etymology insofar as those dialects consistently used a different root, Germanic *hnuk-, in contexts where western varieties used *luk-: "nokke corresponds to nøkkel" ('key' in Eastern Scandinavian) "as loki~lokke to lykil" ('key' in Western Scandinavian).[1] While it has been suggested that this association with closing could point to Loki's apocalyptic role at Ragnarök, "there is quite a bit of evidence that Loki in premodern society was thought to be the causer of knots/tangles/loops, or himself a knot/tangle/loop. Hence, it is natural that Loki is the inventor of the fishnet, which consists of loops and knots, and that the word loki (lokke, lokki, loke, luki) is a term for makers of cobwebs: spiders and the like."[3] Though not prominent in the oldest sources, this identity as a "tangler" may be the etymological meaning of Loki's name.
In various poems from the Poetic Edda (stanza 2 of Lokasenna, stanza 41 of Hyndluljóð, and stanza 26 of Fjölsvinnsmál), and sections of the Prose Edda (chapter 32 of Gylfaginning, stanza 8 of Haustlöng, and stanza 1 of Þórsdrápa) Loki is alternatively referred to as Loptr, which is generally considered derived from Old Norse lopt meaning "air", and therefore points to an association with the air.
The name Hveðrungr (Old Norse '?roarer') is also used in reference to Loki, occurring in names for Hel (such as in Ynglingatal; hveðrungs mær) and in reference to Fenrir (as in Völuspa).
Attestations
Poetic Edda
In the Poetic Edda, Loki appears (or is referenced) in the poems Völuspá, Lokasenna, Þrymskviða, Reginsmál, Baldrs draumar, and Hyndluljóð.
Völuspá
In stanza 35 of the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, a völva tells Odin that, among many other things, she sees Sigyn sitting very unhappily with her bound husband, Loki, under a "grove of hot springs". In stanza 51, during the events of Ragnarök, Loki appears free from his bonds and is referred to as the "brother of Býleistr" (here transcribed as Byleist):
A ship journeys from the east, Muspell's people are coming, over the waves, and Loki steers There are the monstrous brood with all the raveners, The brother of Byleist is in company with them.
In stanza 54, after consuming Odin and being killed by Odin's son Víðarr, Fenrir is described as "Loki's kinsman".
Lokasenna
The poem Lokasenna (Old Norse "Loki's Quarrel") centers around Loki flyting with other gods; Loki puts forth two stanzas of insults while the receiving figure responds with a single stanza, and then another figure chimes in. The poem begins with a prose introduction detailing that Ægir, a figure associated with the sea, is hosting a feast in his hall for a number of the gods and elves. There, the gods praise Ægir's servers Fimafeng and Eldir. Loki "could not bear to hear that," and kills the servant Fimafeng. In response, the gods grab their shields, shrieking at Loki, and chase him out of the hall and to the woods. The gods then return to the hall, and continue drinking.
Entrance and rejection
Loki comes out of the woods, and meets Eldir outside of the hall. Loki |
cover design, Stahle said, "We try different pictures and different approaches with all those things. We'll try several different covers and show them to people and see which ones kind of speak to them."
The almanac does more for the church and its members than just keep a record and share statistics and facts, Stahle said. He believes that it also unifies the church's members.
"Every member in any part of the world is important; they're part of the big picture. And where they are and how they live is part of this record."
The is available at Deseret Book and retails for $19.95.In this remarkable ensemble, 23 of New York's finest low brass musicians join forces to perform a bass-quaking cover of Game Of Thrones' rousing opening theme music. If you weren't already excited for tonight's season finale, this ought to do the trick. Seriously, give it a listen. This will give you chills.
The ensemble includes 11 bass trombones, 6 contrabass trombones, 6 tenor trombones, 6 tubas, and 3 cimbassos. According to tuba and cimbasso player Andrew Bove, the idea for the cover was born about a year ago, when a few New York City low brass players got to talking about how fun it would be to record an epic piece of music with an "extra low" brass section. The Game of Thrones theme, they decided, would be perfect. The biggest challenge, however, would be getting the necessary players together. "The idea," Bove writes, "almost never got off the ground." But then,
Two weeks ago, with the current Game of Thrones season coming to a close and the deadline approaching to release this track, they realized there was actually a 90 minute timeslot on a random Tuesday afternoon when 6 contrabass trombone players were all going to be free at once. It was time to do it. Once you get six contra players in one place, you either run away fast – or join in. Seventeen other top orchestral and commercial NYC low brass players joined them, bringing the ensemble to 23 players, and this is the result.
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Said result is, if you own a subwoofer, quite literally, earthshaking. Really loving the incorporation of other instrumental themes from the show, most notably that of the White Walkers.
You'll want to listen to this one at as high a quality as you can (YouTube's audio quality corresponds to the resolution at which you watch the video.) Turn up the bass on your home speakers, or listen through a good pair of bass-friendly headphones.
And now for something completely different (and also excellent), The New Orleans Swamp Donkeys:Egalitarianism is an article of faith in Australia. While the nation still faces issues of class, Australians tend to be uncomfortable about discussing these or acknowledging their extent. Interestingly, it has fallen to Australian authors such as Tim Winton and Christos Tsiolkas – as well as American writer David Simon, creator of the TV series The Wire – to wonder at and question the taboo.
Today The Conversation launches a series, Class in Australia, to identify, illuminate and debate its many manifestations. To begin, Christopher Scanlon observes that terms like bogan and hipster and much of our popular entertainment make no sense without a social awareness of class.
“This is bullshit,” the student muttered under her breath. The tutorial topic assigned for that week was class. I’d kicked things off by asking whether class existed in modern Australia, or whether it was a relic of 19th century Europe.
Struck by the student’s response, I asked her to elaborate. She did:
Look, I went to a private school and my Dad’s a CEO and most of his friends are business people. So I guess that’s supposed to make me upper class? But class has nothing to do with it. Going to a private school was my parents’ decision. And my Dad’s friends are just his friends.
I suggested that the choice of school – not to mention the capacity to afford the fees – and her father’s friendship network might have been shaped heavily by their class position. That wasn’t to say there was anything wrong with it, but it did show how our lives are shaped by larger social and economic forces we don’t control.
The student was having none of it. It was clear that she’d encountered the notion of class before and found it singularly unconvincing. In her world, everything was simply a matter of individual choice – choices that were unconstrained.
She didn’t say it, but class seemed to be an excuse for people who made the wrong choices in life. Alternatively, it was a way to unfairly label people like her and her family who’d worked hard for their success, presenting their achievements as little more than the luck of being born into the right family.
Her response isn’t surprising. Many Australians share her view. Part of the reason for this is that class is less visible than it once was.
Ready access to cheap credit has blurred class distinctions. When most people can afford the latest smart phones, wear Prada, get about in four-wheel drives and take overseas holidays, class seems like an irrelevance.
About the only time we hear the word “class” in public debate any more is when someone questions the wisdom of rewarding CEOs with multi-million dollar salary packages. In a culture that has internalised the mantra of “You Can Do Anything”, this apparently constitutes the first salvo in a class war.
The only time we’re happy to discuss class openly is when it can be viewed from the safe distance of the past or another country, as in shows like Downton Abbey. Class in this world is a simple matter of upstairs/downstairs.
It’s about much more than money
But class has always been more complex than this view would suggest. As the late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued in his book Distinction, class – and the reproduction of class – has as much to do with your tastes, the way you speak and comport yourself as it has to do with income levels.
Taking this broader view, class is as prevalent as it ever was. It’s just that when we talk about class, we don’t use the “C word”. Instead, we use other less threatening terms – “bogan”, for instance.
One definition of a bogan is someone who fails to conform to middle-class standards of taste, dietary habits, leisure activities, styles of dress and ways of speaking. You don’t have to have read sociology or understand the political economy to notice such distinctions.
When, for example, Channel Ten launched the 2014 season of The Biggest Loser, which centres on the town of Ararat in Victoria’s south-west, a theme running through the audience reaction on Twitter centred on class. Some of the uglier tweets included:
That’s the entertaining thing about #biggestloserau We’re laughing at them cos they’re bogans. FunFact My cousin used to own a $2 shop in Ararat he did a roaring trade, couldn’t keep up with track suit & thong orders. Hahahaha no money for your poor town unless you lose weight. No pressure. #biggestloserau
The crime of the contestants — and by extension Ararat — is that the show features people who don’t conform to middle-class standards of health and well-being. Like the worst stereotypes of the working class that have been around since Karl Marx was a boy, they are assumed to be slovenly, poor and poorly educated, and lacking in taste and refinement.
Looking through the biographies of the contestants, you begin to notice that most are working class or lower-middle class. Along with a couple of students, the contestants are supermarket managers, a baker, nurses and what former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich refers to as “in-person service providers”. The few professionals who are on the show tend to be ones that, relative to other professions, are on the lower end of the income scale, such as nursing or teaching.
Of course, the class hatred expressed on Twitter at The Biggest Loser contestants is nothing new. But it’s now wrapped up in messages about health and exercise. Income, occupation, residence and eating and activity habits are all part of what defines people’s class.
At the other end of the spectrum to bogan is the hipster. Whereas bogans fail to conform to the lifestyle norms, values and tastes of the middle classes, a hipster cleaves to them closely to the point that they end up a parody of them. Hipsters trade on authenticity, individuality and a rejection of the mainstream. Sometimes this parody is ironic, while in other cases it is unconscious.
I have no doubt that these arguments wouldn’t find much traction with my former student. Imbued with a heightened sense of choice, she would probably regard all this as people just being funny on Twitter about a TV show or, in the case of the hipster, simply a personal matter of style and taste rather than pointing to any deeper social reality.
Popular culture makes no sense without class
The problem with this kind of response is that if class truly does not exist in modern Australia, or has no bearing on shaping – not determining, mind, but shaping – one’s behaviour and life chances, then large swathes of contemporary Australian culture appear completely random and utterly baffling.
Everything from plays (and movies based on the plays) like David Williamson’s Don’s Party and Emerald City, to novels like Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip and Christos Tsiolkas’ Loaded and The Slap, to comedies such as Upper Middle Bogan, The Castle, Kath & Kim and Ja'mie: Private School Girl are premised on the social realities of class.
All of these presume their audiences have some experience of social class. Ja’mie’s behaviour is appalling, in large part, because she’s oblivious to the privileged bubble in which she lives. The slap in Tsiolkas’ book of the same name is based on differences in working- and middle-class attitudes to parenting and what constitutes appropriate discipline.
If class were not a lived part of people’s everyday experience, these productions simply would not resonate with audiences in the way they do. They would just appear surreal, completely disconnected from Australian culture.
For those whose choices are more constrained, this is self-evident — a point that was underscored for me by another student in a different tutorial. Unlike the first group, the students in this tutorial had lower ATARs and lived in suburbs with lower incomes.
Once again, I kicked off the tutorial by asking if they thought class existed in modern Australia. They looked at me as if the answer were obvious: of course it did.
I asked one student why he was so certain. He replied simply:
I live in Frankston and work at Woolworths.
See the other instalments of the series Class in Australia here.Imagine what it would be like to be fully conscious and aware of your surroundings, but trapped inside a paralyzed body, not only unable to move, but unable to communicate in any way, for the rest of your life. Unable to express feelings, thoughts, intentions. Unable to express love or show appreciation for it.
In addition to the frustration and feelings of hopelessness this would create, you could also be faced with people assuming that you’re in a vegetative state, essentially already gone and not worth maintaining with sustenance and care. Even if they don’t make that assumption, it is likely that social interaction would dramatically slow down or stop completely if communicating is purely a one-way road.
This is not a hypothetical scenario. This is what life is like for those who suffer from what doctors and scientists call a “completely locked-in state.” These people, unlike those who are simply “locked-in,” are unable to make even small eye movements or subtle blinks. While the situation would seem utterly hopeless, using something called a brain-computer interface (BCI), scientists have—for the first time—enabled completely locked-in people to take part in two-way communication. The study that achieved this breakthrough was published today in the journal PLOS Biology.
In the study, scientists at the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, Switzerland, assessed four people with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a progressive motor neuron disease that attacks the part of the brain responsible for voluntary movement. These patients completed from 20 to 46 sessions over the course of several weeks, where they were asked both closed and open questions that required a “yes” or “no” nonverbal response, which was made possible by their noninvasive BCI.
A BCI is a direct communication pathway between a brain and a computer. Essentially, it is a device that is used to detect activity in the brain, and to translate that activity into a message. Since BCIs do not require any muscle control to function, they provide a potential path for restoring communication in those with total paralysis.
The first BCIs used invasive methods, whereby electrodes were implanted directly into brain tissue, which required surgery. With the development of non-invasive BCIs, they’ve become more practical and comfortable. Many non-invasive BCIs work by detecting changes in electrical activity in the brain through EEG (electroencephalography) recordings that use electrodes placed over the scalp, but unfortunately this method failed to work for completely locked-in people. For this reason, the researchers utilized a different type of BCI that detects blood flow changes in the brain—much like an fMRI machine—using a technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).
With this setup, locked-in patients were able to respond to questions with a “yes” or “no” by focusing their attention in a specific way, which caused two distinct patterns of blood oxygen level changes that could be detected and classified by the BCI.
The success of this communication method surprised even the authors of the paper, as it was thought that completely locked-in people lacked the sort of goal-directed thinking required to use any BCI.
What may seem more astonishing to people unfamiliar with research on locked-in states is that the study found that all four patients reported being generally content with life, despite their physical affliction. This conclusion is unmistakable, as the patients were routinely asked if they were happy over the course of many weeks. Although it is not perfect, researchers found that the method provided right answers to closed questions, such as “Is your husband’s name Joachim?” approximately 70 percent of the time.
Niels Birbaumer, the lead author of the paper, thinks that this development can be used to immediately and drastically improve the quality of life in completely locked-in people, who already have a strong will to live. “We were initially surprised at the positive responses when we questioned the four completely locked-in participants about their quality of life. All four had accepted artificial ventilation in order to sustain their life when breathing became impossible so, in a sense, they had already chosen to live. What we observed was, as long as they received satisfactory care at home, they found their quality of life acceptable. It is for this reason, if we could make this technique widely clinically available, it would have a huge impact on the day-to-day life of people with complete locked-in syndrome.”
This finding raises questions about how it is possible that someone who is permanently in a physical state that would feel torturous for any normal person could genuinely feel “happy.” Although it is speculation, perhaps over time total paralysis creates a state of relaxation similar to that experienced during meditation, a practice that requires complete stillness over prolonged periods. Indeed, the brain activity data gathered by the researchers, who also recorded electrical activity using EEG in addition to fNIRS, showed similarities to meditative states.
This new type of BCI has the potential to help not only those with ALS, but others in locked-in states as a result of stroke, spinal cord injury, or other neurodegenerative diseases. Additionally, it can be used to determine whether those who are thought to be in a vegetative state are actually cognitively and emotionally normal, and self-aware as the rest of us. In such cases, not only does opening a line of communication increase the quality of life for the locked-in sufferer, it can do the same for all their loved ones who have also been suffering due to their inability to interact with them.Published July 06, 2016 | Updated July 14, 2016
The Android Security Bulletin contains details of security vulnerabilities affecting Android devices. Alongside the bulletin, we have released a security update to Nexus devices through an over-the-air (OTA) update. The Nexus firmware images have also been released to the Google Developer site. Security patch levels of July 05, 2016 or later address all applicable issues in this bulletin. Refer to the documentation to learn how to check the security patch level.
Partners were notified about the issues described in the bulletin on June 06, 2016 or earlier. Where applicable, source code patches for these issues have been released to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository. This bulletin also includes links to patches outside of AOSP.
The most severe of these issues is a Critical security vulnerability that could enable remote code execution on an affected device through multiple methods such as email, web browsing, and MMS when processing media files. The severity assessment is based on the effect that exploiting the vulnerability would possibly have on an affected device, assuming the platform and service mitigations are disabled for development purposes or if successfully bypassed.
We have had no reports of active customer exploitation or abuse of these newly reported issues. Refer to the Android and Google service mitigations section for details on the Android security platform protections and service protections such as SafetyNet, which improve the security of the Android platform.
We encourage all customers to accept these updates to their devices.
Announcements
This bulletin defines two security patch level strings to provide Android partners with the flexibility to move more quickly to fix a subset of vulnerabilities that are similar across all Android devices. See Common questions and answers for additional information: 2016-07-01 : Partial security patch level string. This security patch level string indicates that all issues associated with 2016-07-01 are addressed. 2016-07-05 : Complete security patch level string. This security patch level string indicates that all issues associated with 2016-07-01 and 2016-07-05 are addressed.
Supported Nexus devices will be receiving a single OTA update with the July 05, 2016 security patch level.
Android and Google service mitigations
This is a summary of the mitigations provided by the Android security platform and service protections such as SafetyNet. These capabilities reduce the likelihood that security vulnerabilities could be successfully exploited on Android.
Exploitation for many issues on Android is made more difficult by enhancements in newer versions of the Android platform. We encourage all users to update to the latest version of Android where possible.
The Android Security team actively monitors for abuse with Verify Apps and SafetyNet, which are designed to warn users about Potentially Harmful Applications. Verify Apps is enabled by default on devices with Google Mobile Services, and is especially important for users who install applications from outside of Google Play. Device rooting tools are prohibited within Google Play, but Verify Apps warns users when they attempt to install a detected rooting application—no matter where it comes from. Additionally, Verify Apps attempts to identify and block installation of known malicious applications that exploit a privilege escalation vulnerability. If such an application has already been installed, Verify Apps will notify the user and attempt to remove the detected application.
As appropriate, Google Hangouts and Messenger applications do not automatically pass media to processes such as Mediaserver.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank these researchers for their contributions:
2016-07-01 security patch level—Security vulnerability details
In the sections below, we provide details for each of the security vulnerabilities that apply to the 2016-07-01 patch level. There is a description of the issue, a severity rationale, and a table with the CVE, associated references, severity, updated Nexus devices, updated AOSP versions (where applicable), and date reported. When available, we will link the public change that addressed the issue to the bug ID, like the AOSP change list. When multiple changes relate to a single bug, additional references are linked to numbers following the bug ID.
Remote code execution vulnerability in Mediaserver
A remote code execution vulnerability in Mediaserver could enable an attacker using a specially crafted file to cause memory corruption during media file and data processing. This issue is rated as Critical due to the possibility of remote code execution within the context of the Mediaserver process. The Mediaserver process has access to audio and video streams, as well as access to privileges that third-party apps could not normally access.
The affected functionality is provided as a core part of the operating system and there are multiple applications that allow it to be reached with remote content, most notably MMS and browser playback of media.
Remote code execution vulnerability in OpenSSL & BoringSSL
A remote code execution vulnerability in OpenSSL and BoringSSL could enable an attacker using a specially crafted file to cause memory corruption during file and data processing. This issue is rated as Critical due to the possibility of remote code execution within the context of an affected process.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-2108 A-28175332 Critical All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 May 3, 2016
Remote code execution vulnerability in Bluetooth
A remote code execution vulnerability in Bluetooth could allow a proximal attacker to execute arbitrary code during the pairing process. This issue is rated as High due to the possibility of remote code execution during the initialization of a Bluetooth device.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3744 A-27930580 High All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Mar 30, 2016
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in libpng
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in libpng could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of an elevated system application. This issue is rated as High because it could be used to gain local access to elevated capabilities, such as Signature or SignatureOrSystem permissions privileges, which are not accessible to a third-party application.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3751 A-23265085 High All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Dec 3, 2015
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Mediaserver
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in Mediaserver could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of an elevated system application. This issue is rated as High because it could be used to gain local access to elevated capabilities, such as Signature or SignatureOrSystem permissions privileges, which are not accessible to a third-party application.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3745 A-28173666 High All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Apr 10, 2016 CVE-2016-3746 A-27890802 High All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Mar 27, 2016 CVE-2016-3747 A-27903498 High All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Mar 28, 2016
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in sockets
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in sockets could enable a local malicious application to access system calls outside of its permissions level. This issue is rated as High because it could permit a bypass of security measures in place to increase the difficulty of attackers exploiting the platform.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3748 A-28171804 High All Nexus 6.0, 6.0.1 Apr 13, 2016
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in LockSettingsService
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the LockSettingsService could enable a malicious application to reset the screen lock password without authorization from the user. This issue is rated as High because it is a local bypass of user interaction requirements for any developer or security settings modifications.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3749 A-28163930 High All Nexus 6.0, 6.0.1 Google internal
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Framework APIs
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Parcels Framework APIs could enable a local malicious application to bypass operating system protections that isolate application data from other applications. This issue is rated as High because it could be used to gain access to data that the application does not have access to.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3750 A-28395952 High All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Dec 16, 2015
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in ChooserTarget service
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the ChooserTarget service could enable a local malicious application to execute code in the context of another application. This issue is rated High because it could be used to access Activities belonging to another application without permission.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3752 A-28384423 High All Nexus 6.0, 6.0.1 Google internal
Information disclosure vulnerability in Mediaserver
An information disclosure vulnerability in Mediaserver could enable a remote attacker to access protected data normally only accessible to locally installed apps that request permission. This issue is rated as High because it could be used to access data without permission.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3753 A-27210135 High None* 4.4.4 Feb 15, 2016
* Supported Nexus devices that have installed all available updates are not affected by this vulnerability.
Information disclosure vulnerability in OpenSSL
An information disclosure vulnerability in OpenSSL could enable a remote attacker to access protected data normally only accessible to locally installed apps that request permission. This issue is rated as High because it could be used to access data without permission.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-2107 A-28550804 High None* 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1 April 13, 2016
* Supported Nexus devices that have installed all available updates are not affected by this vulnerability.
Denial of service vulnerability in Mediaserver
A denial of service vulnerability in Mediaserver could enable an attacker to use a specially crafted file to cause a device hang or reboot. This issue is rated as High due to the possibility of a temporary remote denial of service.
Denial of service vulnerability in libc
A denial of service vulnerability in libc could enable an attacker to use a specially crafted file to cause a device hang or reboot. This issue is rated as High due to the possibility of remote denial of service.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3818 A-28740702 High None* 4.4.4 Google internal
* Supported Nexus devices that have installed all available updates are not affected by this vulnerability.
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in lsof
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in lsof could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code that could lead to a permanent device compromise. This issue is rated as Moderate because it requires uncommon manual steps.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3757 A-28175237 Moderate All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Apr 11, 2016
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in DexClassLoader
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the DexClassLoader could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process. This issue is rated as Moderate because it requires uncommon manual steps.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3758 A-27840771 Moderate All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Google internal
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Framework APIs
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Framework APIs could enable a local malicious application to request backup permissions and intercept all backup data. This issue is rated as Moderate because it requires specific permissions to bypass operating system protections that isolate application data from other applications.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3759 A-28406080 Moderate All Nexus 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Google internal
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Bluetooth
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Bluetooth component could enable a local attacker to add an authenticated Bluetooth device that persists for the primary user. This issue is rated as Moderate because it could be used to gain elevated capabilities without explicit user permission.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3760 A-27410683 [2] [3] Moderate All Nexus 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Feb 29, 2016
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in NFC
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in NFC could enable a local malicious background application to access information from a foreground application. This issue is rated as Moderate because it could be used to gain elevated capabilities without explicit user permission.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3761 A-28300969 Moderate All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Apr 20, 2016
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in sockets
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in sockets could enable a local malicious application to gain access to certain uncommon socket types possibly leading to arbitrary code execution within the context of the kernel. This issue is rated as Moderate because it could permit a bypass of security measures in place to increase the difficulty of attackers exploiting the platform.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3762 A-28612709 Moderate All Nexus 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Apr 21, 2016
Information disclosure vulnerability in Proxy Auto-Config
An information disclosure vulnerability in the Proxy Auto-Config component could allow an application to access sensitive information. This issue is rated Moderate because it could be used to access data without permission.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3763 A-27593919 Moderate All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Mar 10, 2016
Information disclosure vulnerability in Mediaserver
An information disclosure vulnerability in Mediaserver could allow a local malicious application to access sensitive information. This issue is rated as Moderate because it could be used to access data without permission.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3764 A-28377502 Moderate All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Apr 25, 2016 CVE-2016-3765 A-28168413 Moderate All Nexus 6.0, 6.0.1 Apr 8, 2016
Denial of service vulnerability in Mediaserver
A denial of service vulnerability in Mediaserver could enable an attacker to use a specially crafted file to cause a device hang or reboot. This issue is rated as Moderate due to the possibility of remote denial of service.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Updated AOSP versions Date reported CVE-2016-3766 A-28471206 [2] Moderate All Nexus 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1 Apr 29, 2016
2016-07-05 security patch level—Vulnerability details
In the sections below, we provide details for each of the security vulnerabilities that apply to the 2016-07-05 patch level. There is a description of the issue, a severity rationale, and a table with the CVE, associated references, severity, updated Nexus devices, updated AOSP versions (where applicable), and date reported. When available, we will link the public change that addressed the issue to the bug ID, like the AOSP change list. When multiple changes relate to a single bug, additional references are linked to numbers following the bug ID.
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm GPU driver
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Qualcomm GPU driver could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of the kernel. This issue is rated as Critical due to the possibility of a local permanent device compromise, which may require reflashing the operating system to repair the device.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Date reported CVE-2016-2503 A-28084795* QC-CR1006067 Critical Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P Apr 5, 2016 CVE-2016-2067 A-28305757 QC-CR988993 Critical Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Nexus 6P Apr 20, 2016
* The patch for this issue is not publicly available. The update is contained in the latest binary drivers for Nexus devices available from the Google Developer site.
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in MediaTek Wi-Fi driver
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the MediaTek Wi-Fi driver could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of the kernel. This issue is rated as Critical due to the possibility of a local permanent device compromise, which may require reflashing the operating system to repair the device.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Date reported CVE-2016-3767 A-28169363*
M-ALPS02689526 Critical Android One Apr 6, 2016
* The patch for this issue is not publicly available. The update is contained in the latest binary drivers for Nexus devices available from the Google Developer site.
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm performance component
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Qualcomm performance component could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of the kernel. This issue is rated as Critical severity due to the possibility of a local permanent device compromise, which may require reflashing the operating system to repair the device.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Date reported CVE-2016-3768 A-28172137* QC-CR1010644 Critical Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 7 (2013) Apr 9, 2016
* The patch for this issue is not publicly available. The update is contained in the latest binary drivers for Nexus devices available from the Google Developer site.
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in NVIDIA video driver
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the NVIDIA video driver could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of the kernel. This issue is rated as Critical due to the possibility of a local permanent device compromise, which may require reflashing the operating system to repair the device.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Date reported CVE-2016-3769 A-28376656*
N-CVE20163769 Critical Nexus 9 Apr 18, 2016
* The patch for this issue is not publicly available. The update is contained in the latest binary drivers for Nexus devices available from the Google Developer site.
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in MediaTek drivers (Device specific)
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in multiple MediaTek drivers could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of the kernel. This issue is rated as Critical due to the possibility of a local permanent device compromise, which may require reflashing the operating system to repair the device.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Date reported CVE-2016-3770 A-28346752*
M-ALPS02703102 Critical Android One Apr 22, 2016 CVE-2016-3771 A-29007611*
M-ALPS02703102 Critical Android One Apr 22, 2016 CVE-2016-3772 A-29008188*
M-ALPS02703102 Critical Android One Apr 22, 2016 CVE-2016-3773 A-29008363*
M-ALPS02703102 Critical Android One Apr 22, 2016 CVE-2016-3774 A-29008609*
M-ALPS02703102 Critical Android One Apr 22, 2016
* The patch for this issue is not publicly available. The update is contained in the latest binary drivers for Nexus devices available from the Google Developer site.
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel file system
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the kernel file system could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of the kernel. This issue is rated as Critical due to the possibility of a local permanent device compromise, which may require reflashing the operating system to repair the device.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Date reported CVE-2016-3775 A-28588279* Critical Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Nexus 6P and Nexus Player, Pixel C May 4, 2016
* The patch for this issue is not publicly available. The update is contained in the latest binary drivers for Nexus devices available from the Google Developer site.
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in USB driver
An elevation of privilege vulnerability in the USB driver could enable a local malicious application to execute arbitrary code within the context of the kernel. This issue is rated as Critical severity due to the possibility of a local permanent device compromise, which may require reflashing the operating system to repair the device.
CVE References Severity Updated Nexus devices Date reported CVE-2015-8816 A-28712303* Critical Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Nexus 6P, Nexus 7 (2013), Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Pixel C May 4, 2016
* The patch for this issue is not publicly available. The update is contained in the latest binary drivers for Nexus devices available from the Google Developer site.
Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm |
ys, Popgoes or even Flumptys tell a more complete and coherent story than the source material, which is still in a lore limbo. Even the books tell a more coherent story than the original game. It’s depressing, to say the least.
Still, I don’t know when the next update will come. The last one was 5 months ago. At this rate, it’ll probably be closer to the 6th game’s launch. I’ll hope that it sheds light on my concerns, but at this point, I hold no faith in it having the answers.
As for those projects, I don’t know. I’ve lost all motivation. I think I need to step back, let that motivation build up, then push ahead to finish the site and get those games sorted. All I know is, there’s not going to be a lot happening here.
Take care everyone. I’ll drop by to see how things are going. Here’s hoping the lore is fixed with 6, even though i doubt such a fix is even possible.
Oh, also, Happy Halloween! Shout out to all the grim reapers out there. They’re so underused nowadays. The scythe designs out are terrible.
Kizzycocoa – Owner and designer of FNaFLore.com
edit: as a clarification, I do not plan to shut down the site, ideally ever. I just can’t find the time or motivation to actively maintain it, beyond backend security to ensure it doesn’t get hacked.Police say a 2-year-old boy was found safe Tuesday morning following an abduction in Minneapolis and subsequent Amber Alert.
Harlen V. Hulbert was taken from his home in the 2000 block of Third Avenue South about 5:45 a.m., where his mother was found stabbed. Police said shortly before 9 a.m. that the boy had been found. Related Articles St. Paul company develops Uber-like service for disabled passengers
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Hershel T. Hulbert, 26, the mother’s ex-boyfriend and the boy’s noncustodial father, was in custody. Another male initially believed to have been involved was questioned by investigators, according to police.
The boy’s mother was treated at Hennepin County Medical Center for a stab wound in a leg. The boy was also taken to HCMC to be checked. He was found to be fine and was reunited with his mother, said Sgt. Catherine Michal with Minneapolis police.An investigation is underway after a man died following a confrontation in downtown Tuscaloosa.
Authorities on Monday identified the victim as David Blake Milligan. He was 27.
Tuscaloosa police and the Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit responded at 2:30 a.m. Sunday to the 2400 block of University Boulevard on an assault call, said Capt. Gary Hood. Once on the scene, they found Milligan unresponsive. He was taken to DCH Regional Medical Center but never regained consciousness and died later Sunday afternoon.
Hood said investigators learned Milligan and a friend had been to the bars near the intersection of Fourth Street and 23rd Avenue. After the bars closed at 2 a.m., Milligan walked west along University Boulevard and crossed Greensboro Avenue. Investigators believe Milligan then began walking north along the east side of the Embassy Suites where he had a confrontation with someone that had possibly driven by him as he was walking.
Milligan leaves behind a wife, stepdaughter and 2-year-old son.
Investigators are asking anyone that may have seen a confrontation in this area around 2:30 a.m. Sunday to contact the Tuscaloosa Metro Homicide Unit at 205-464-8690 or Crime Stoppers at 205-752-7867.Some have called for state laws and policies abolishing bounty hunters and bail bonding after a case of mistaken identity left a mid-state father dead.
Seven men with Keessee Bonding in Clarksville were indicted on 16 charges including 1st degree murder, attempted 2nd degree murder and especially aggravated kidnapping.
In late April, the men are accused of pursuing a vehicle they thought had fugitive William Ellis inside. Turns out, Ellis was not there but other men including 24-year-old Jalen Milan were.
When the bounty hunters opened fire at the vehicle, Milan was shot and killed.
"This culture of hunting people for money...that's what this amounts to, a hunt for money," said family attorney Robert Pence.
Milan's family has sued for wrongful death as state law makers review the laws that surround bounty hunters.
Although a bounty hunter may face serious charges, as in this case, there are no laws on that books that will prevent them from continuing to work and apprehend fugitives while awaiting trial.
Some are calling for state laws and policies that will to do away with bounty hunting and bail bonding altogether.
Our attempts to reach Representative Joe Pitts were not successful before the July, 4 weekend.
NewsChannel 5's attempts to reach Representative Joe Pitts were not successful before the July, 4 weekend.We grabbed the demo for Dungeon Siege III, because demo. Plus, we have the requisite neurotransmitters a game like this might stimulate. We long, for example, to wield the famed Barb of Yalf, and games where such barbs may be obtained are of interest. Also, co-op, and any game whose quality is at least partially determined by the friends I’ve made stands to gain several points.
Except that Dungeon Siege has co-op more along the lines of sidekicks, drifters who temporarily embody people from your own game. Fable 2 tried to get away with the same sort of thing, something they remedied in the third outing. I can’t really stress this enough: “Co-op” means that you and at least one friend can share an experience. In a shooter, that’s ridiculously easy. In an RPG, which amounts to a tarted-up progression schedule, I‘m not entirely sure you can do away with local advancement and retain the “experience,” let alone the genre.
We came back from the store with Shadows of the Damned and “F.3.A.R.,” which is pronounced fa-thrir. Shadows of the Damned is often funny - actually funny, not Videogame Funny, thanks no doubt to the Suda 51 portion of its superstar triad. It’s pretty loose, though, from a technical perspective; it’s papered over with that style, and it’s an inimitable style, but I’m not sure how long you’ll last if you don’t like its particular thing.
We found F.3.A.R. very difficult to put down, so difficult (in fact) that we’re halfway through it without really meaning to be. I’ll go into more detail once I’ve played further, but it’s a function of our actually enjoying it coupled with the fact that we have been playing co-operative shooters together for a very long time. We used to play Descent with such otherworldly synchronicity that no communication was ever required. Which is good, because we couldn’t speak. We’re pretty old, you’ll recall. I tried to remember why we wouldn’t have used our phones to keep in contact, squozen awkwardly in the crooks of our shoulders, but then I remembered that we were using that line to send data, as one did in those days. A cellular phone would have been kind of a strange, ostentatious bit of status display, to say nothing of the expense.
Like I said: old.
Our friends Scort and Krasp, known the world over as Blamimators par excellence, have completed the first DVD collection of their Richter Award winning shorts. They have a preorder thingy up, where you get a map of The Rivenshyre or something, but really you would probably buy it because it’s good, and they’re good, and you want it.
(CW)TB out.
shredding the files like yeahDemetri Evan Martin (born May 25, 1973) is an American comedian. He was a contributor on The Daily Show. In stand-up, he is known for his deadpan delivery.[1]
Early life [ edit ]
Martin was born into a Greek-American family in New York City on May 25, 1973,[2] the son of Lillian and Greek Orthodox priest Dean C. Martin.[3][4] He grew up in Toms River, New Jersey, and has a younger brother named Spyro and a younger sister named Christene.[5] He attended Toms River High School North and graduated in 1991.[6]
Martin graduated from Yale University in 1995 with a B.A in History. During his time there, he wrote a 224-word poem about alcoholism[7][8] as a project for a fractal geometry class, which became a well known palindromic poem. He was also a member of the Anti-Gravity Society, whose members juggle objects on Sunday evenings on Yale's Old Campus.[9]
Although Martin was admitted to Harvard Law School, he decided to attend New York University School of Law upon receiving a full scholarship.[10] Martin withdrew from law school before the start of his final year, opting to pursue comedy over obtaining his Juris Doctor degree.[11][12]
Career [ edit ]
Shortly after leaving law school, Martin started performing stand up in 1997.[13] Four years later, in 2001, Martin caught his first big break in stand-up comedy when he appeared on Comedy Central's stand-up showcase Premium Blend. At the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe he won the Perrier award with his show If I....[14] The show was turned into a BBC television special in 2004. From 2003 to 2004, Martin wrote for Late Night with Conan O'Brien.[15] In 2004, Martin had his own Comedy Central Presents stand-up special. His special was divided into three parts. In the first, he performed in traditional stand-up comedy fashion. In the second segment, he used humorous drawings as visual aids, which would serve either as the punchline or a background. During the third segment, he played a guitar and put on a pseudo-play where he would strum his guitar while alternating between playing harmonica and talking; some of his comedian friends dressed as fairies and dragons acted according to the story he was telling, detailing the magical land from where his jokes came. Martin's mother and grandmother also appeared.
Starting in late 2005, he was credited as a contributor on The Daily Show, on which he appeared as the named "Senior Youth Correspondent" and hosted a segment called "Trendspotting." He used this segment to talk about so-called hip trends among youth such as hookahs, wine, guerilla marketing and Xbox 360. A piece about social networking featured his profile on MySpace.[16] On March 22, 2007, Martin made another appearance on The Daily Show, talking about the Viacom lawsuit against Google and YouTube. He is no longer a Daily Show contributor as of 2014.[17] Before starting at the Daily Show, he was offered to audition for SNL but turned it down due to the seven year commitment. [1]
He has recorded a comedy album titled These Are Jokes, which was released on September 26, 2006. This album also features Saturday Night Live member Will Forte and stand-up comedian Leo Allen. Martin returned to The Daily Show on March 22, 2006, as the new Youth Correspondent, calling his segment "Professional Important News with Demetri Martin". In 2007, he starred with Faryl Millet, a comedian and actress better known for her show Fancy Nancy's Funny Hour, in a Fountains of Wayne music video for "Someone to Love" as Seth Shapiro, and Millet as Beth Mackenzie. Both of them characters in the song. He also starred in the video for the Travis single "Selfish Jean", in which he wears multiple T-shirts with lyrics written on them. On September 2, 2007, Martin appeared on the season finale of the HBO series Flight of the Conchords. He appeared as a keytar player named Demetri.[18] He also had a part in the movie The Rocker (2008) starring Rainn Wilson. Martin played the part of the videographer when the band in the movie was making their first music video.
In 2009, he hosted and starred in his own television show called Important Things With Demetri Martin on Comedy Central. Later in June, it was announced his show had been renewed for a second season.[19] The second season premiered, again on Comedy Central, on February 4, 2010. Martin has stated that Important Things will not return for a third season. Prior to completing work on his second season, Martin starred in the comedy-drama film Taking Woodstock (2009), directed by Ang Lee, which premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. In the film Martin plays Elliot Tiber, a closeted gay artist who has given up his ambitions in the city to move upstate and help his old-world Jewish family run their Catskill Mountains motel. The film is based on the book written by Tiber. On April 25, 2011, Martin released his first book, titled This Is a Book. Martin played a small role in the 2011 film Contagion.
Martin sold his movie concept Will to DreamWorks, and is expected to play a key supporting role.[20] He will play the lead in the film Moon People, a pitch that he sold to Columbia Pictures. He also signed a blind script deal with CBS in October 2010 to produce, write, and star in his own television series.[21] After CBS was shown the pilot for the series, they decided not to air it.[22]
On October 2, 2012, Martin released his second comedy album entitled Demetri Martin. Standup Comedian.[23][24]
Martin voices Ice Bear in the Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears. He wrote, directed, edited, and starred in the 2016 film Dean.[25]
Comedic style [ edit ]
Martin is known for being an unconventional stand-up comic. He uses one-liners and drawings on a "large pad", as well as accompanying his jokes with music on either guitar, harmonica, piano, keyboard, glockenspiel, toy bells, ukulele, or tambourine, sometimes all at once.[26] He has cited comedian Steven Wright as an important influence (both use deadpan one-liners in their acts) as well as The Far Side cartoonist, Gary Larson. He has submitted cartoons to the New Yorker magazine at its invitation – and had them rejected. "You gotta get better at drawing. These aren't funny enough." [27]
Martin plays instruments on stage and has music playing in the background of his performances as a way of preventing any editing of his performances to better fit for television.[28] However, Martin has also confessed a desire to evolve his comedic style.[29] "I love one-liners, I love jokes...but I also want to talk about how I feel. I want to talk about below-the-neck stuff. It's hard, if that's not where your head goes, it's hard to get comedy out of that...[But] I want to dig deeper, I want to connect in a different way with the audience. "
Personal life [ edit ]
Martin is severely allergic to seafood, poultry, and nuts.[30]
According to a July 2011 interview on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, Martin had a short-lived marriage with a former high school classmate named Jen. They began dating after high school and got married when he was at NYU Law School and she was attending NYU Medical School.[10] This relationship was further analyzed in his one-man show Spiral Bound.
On June 1, 2012, Martin married his long-time girlfriend Rachael Beame in Santa Monica, California, where he has lived since 2009. They have a daughter named Eve and a son named Paul.[31][32][33]
Discography [ edit ]
Filmography [ edit ]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
Books [ edit ]
This Is a Book, April 2011, ISBN 978-0446539708.
, April 2011, ISBN 978-0446539708. Point Your Face at This, March 2013, ISBN 978-1455512058.
, March 2013, ISBN 978-1455512058. If It's Not Funny It's Art, September 2017 ISBN 978-1538729045.
References [ edit ]
GeneralIf you don’t remember those little grey bugs known as pill bugs or roly-polies, I’m not sure what you were doing with your childhood.
To me, these creatures are synonymous with summer and digging around in my backyard. They don’t gross me out, as far as bugs go, and it was always fun to watch them roll up into little balls — hence the name.
Well, it turns out that childhood was basically a lie: Roly-polies aren’t bugs at all.
Flickr | Frank Boston
Here’s what they actually are:
They’re crustaceans.
That’s right, crustaceans. This means they’re more similar to your shrimp cocktail than any of the other bugs crawling around in your garden.
According to the American Orchid Society (which probably knows a thing or two about bugs), roly-polies are closely related to “lobsters, crabs and shrimp.”
Though most traditional crustaceans (like the ones we eat) live in or near water, pill bugs need a damper habitat to protect their delicate “gill-like breathing organs” that are located on their undersides.
Flickr | Wildreturn
This is where the roly-poly signature move and name come in — they curl up into a ball to protect these organs that have to be kept damp to work.
Here are a couple of other fun facts about roly-polies:
Adobe
1. They like humid conditions.
Roly-polies prefer to live in humid, sheltered areas that are full of decaying vegetation. That’s why you can always find them under logs and rocks or in piles of dead leaves during early fall.
Adobe
2. They live an average of two years.
According to Pest World for Kids, roly-polies have a lifespan of about two years.
Wikimedia | benjamint444
RELATED: 10 Ways To Keep Cockroaches Out Of Your Home
3. Keeping your home dry will keep them at bay.
They can’t live if they get too dry. So if you have a basement infestation, make sure all of your windows are properly sealed and that the floor stays dry.
Adobe
To help keep them out of your home, Pest World for Kids recommends making sure the areas in and outside your home are clean and dry, and that the area around your foundation is clear of leaves.
4. They are scavengers.
Roly-polies feed mostly on decaying plant and animal material. However, they will also eat live plants.
Andrea, the woman behind the Little Big Harvest blog has some good tips for protecting your plants from roly-polies, such as keeping young seedlings inside and putting plants that bear fruit off the ground in a pot or on a trellis.
Flickr | Derek Bridges
She notes that these little crustaceans are mostly good for a garden, given how they assist in the soil’s decomposition process.
5. They’re also known as pill bugs or doodlebugs.
And their Latin name? Armadillidiidae. Their hard shells do look like an armadillo’s, come to think of it.
Getty Images | Richard Heathcote
RELATED: Here’s The Purpose Of Those Sidewalk Bumps
6. They Are Often Confused With Sow Bugs
Though these critters go by lots of names, there is another bug that is somewhat similar: the sow bug.
The difference between the two is that roly-polies can roll into a ball, tucking their legs inside. Sowbugs, on the other hand, are not blessed with this unique ability. Sowbugs also have oval-shaped bodies, whereas roly-polies are rounder.
Adobe I know this information is a lot to process — don’t worry, I’m thrown off that these critters aren’t actually insects, too.
At least now I know the reason I’m less grossed out by roly-polies than other bugs — they were never bugs to begin with!
Now I just want to know how I managed to miss this crucial detail in science class …In our previous blog post on “dandifying Mageia” (nearly a year ago!), we introduced DNF in Mageia 6 to the world. Since then, we’ve been keeping pace and tracking upstream development in Cauldron. By working closely with upstream and being actively involved in the development process (which involved reviewing and testing proposed changes), we’ve been able to ensure that the package manager evolves on the right track. This has led to benefits for both us in Mageia as well as Fedora and other projects using DNF (such as the Yocto Project, which adopted DNF with their 2.3 release).
As a consequence of our work to bring you the latest and greatest of package manager technology, Mageia is pleased to be one of the first major Linux distributions to offer DNF 2.x on release! We currently have v2.5.1 of DNF, along with v2.1.1 of the core plugins and v2.0.1 of the extra plugins. DNF is also preinstalled with all fresh installations of Mageia 6, and for those who upgraded from Mageia 5, you can just install the “dnf” package to get it.
For those who prefer a graphical experience with package management, we’ve developed dnfdragora to provide an intuitive graphical frontend similar to rpmdrake. Though unlike rpmdrake, dnfdragora provides native Qt 5, GTK+ 3, and ncurses frontends, so it doesn’t matter what you’re using as your desktop, you’ll have a nice experience with dnfdragora.
Just install the “dnfdragora-qt” or “dnfdragora-gtk” packages for either frontend, or “dnfdragora” for ncurses only.
For those makers and shakers of the world, we have several pieces of exciting news!
We’ve completed the integration of support for Fedora’s COPR service, which means that anyone can now build packages targeting Mageia 6 and Cauldron today on COPR, alongside Fedora and CentOS. For how to use it, see our wiki page on it.
We’re also pleased to announce that both Mageia 6 and the rolling target Mageia Cauldron are supported on the openSUSE Build Service. Because of the OBS interconnection capability, the vast majority of private Open Build Service appliances also now can build packages for Mageia 6 and Mageia Cauldron, too! For how to use it, see our wiki page on it.
In addition, Mageia now fully supports AppStream, the cross-distribution standard for software authors to describe their software for software centers to use. With Mageia 6, software center applications that use AppStream, such as GNOME Software and Plasma Discover, will be fully populated with a representation of the software we ship that provide AppStream information.
Just install the “gnome-software” or “discover” packages to check this out.
However, if you’re using GNOME and install GNOME Software, the GNOME Shell integration will activate the next time you log in, allowing you to use the GNOME Shell search to find applications to install from GNOME Software.
To add a little cherry on top, if you use GNOME Software to manage your software updates, you’ll be pleased to know that GNOME Software’s Offline Updates functionality works perfectly! It looks rather spiffy, if I do say so myself!
This is the culmination of two years of work in Mageia and various upstream projects to make this a reality. The upstream software developers, our friends in the Fedora Project and the openSUSE Project, the Mageia packagers, and the Mageia system administrators have all contributed to the success of this technology launching in Mageia 6. All of us hope that all Mageia users will enjoy this in the release of Mageia 6.The FTC has charged DirecTV with fraud, claiming that it misled customers with its popular 12-month discount package.
The satellite company advertises a 12-month plan for as little as $19.95, but fails to make it clear that a two-year contract is required, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That means customers are getting stuck with a longer contract than they wanted. What's worse: The package's price jumps in the second year by between $25 and $45 per month. Customers that try to cancel early are hit with a fee of up to $480, according to the complaint.
The company also failed to make clear that customers must proactively cancel the free premium channels like HBO and Showtime that they get during the first three months of the package. If they don't, they're charged automatically.
With more than 20 million subscribers, DirecTV (DTV) is the largest satellite television provider in the country. A "large portion" of those customers could have been affected, said FTC Director Jessica Rich on a call with reporters.
Related: Verizon FiOS drops the Weather Channel
The complaint was filed in federal court. The FTC is asking the judge to stop the company from the allegedly illegal conduct, and is seeking money that would be used to refund customers, which could reach millions of dollars, Rich said.
DirecTV denies the agency's claims.
"The FTC's decision is flat-out wrong and we will vigorously defend ourselves, for as long as it takes," the company said.
While FTC Director Rich said that the company sometimes included a disclaimer in the fine print, but in other cases it was obscured by text and pictures.
She would not comment on whether or not the lawsuit would affect DirecTV's pending merger with AT&T. The $49 billion deal still needs federal approval.A dress at the Manus x Machina exhibition. Metropolitan Museum of Art The arts and technology are beginning a courtship that may fundamentally affect the way we perceive both of them: in visual art, we have Google Deep Dream, creating hallucinatory vistas on par with the wackier end of Hieronymus Bosch or Alan Aldridge; in music, we have A.I composers; virtual reality offers an unprecedented and fully-immersive opportunity for filmmakers and writers alike.
Fashion, however, is another kettle of fish because it is an art that is lived, occurring at all hours of the day.
Additionally, the high fashion industry is a made-to-order one, often based on a limited quantity of materials and intensive crafting — a difficult set of values to integrate with the nature of the technology industry: machines mass-producing goods and materials.
There have been hesitant exchanges at the higher end of fashion — some examples include a Google and Levi's collaboration called Project Jacquard that turns fabrics into gesture-controlled surfaces and Largerfield using 3D printing in some of his designs.
Futuristic high heels from Studio Bitoni. Ultra-lab/Flickr At the far end of the spectrum is Studio Bitoni; Francis Bitoni, the company's CEO, said: "Our products should create the next version of the human, not service humanity after it has evolved." They are responsible for high heels fit to be worn to a dinner party by a Matrix sentinel and bodices that would look natural on an alien queen (although they're currently worn by Dita Von Teese).
Fashioned technology
Wearable technology has progressed far beyond the L.E.D t-shirts you used to wear to parties when you were 15, and has now become fully integrated into those with active lifestyles with the advent of step counters and heart rate recorders.
According to an educated guess by Canalys, a research firm, the Apple Watch sold 11.9 million units last year, permeating the market more than any previous smart watch and setting a precedent for widespread adoption of wearable technology. However, the next development will shift the onus of the development from wearable to worn, stressing integration rather than accessorization. Almost every wearable currently available relies on a cell phone, including that Apple Watch.
Kate Sicchio, an assistant professor of integrated digital media at New York University, predicts the relationship could lead to the elimination of the smartphone itself: "If we look at the history of ubiquitous computing…in the '90s, all these MIT researchers had backpacks full of laptops, and now we just have this little [rectangle] we keep in our pocket, and soon that's going to disappear and it just will be a small microcontroller in our garments."
While this may seem outlandish, we must think that we already consider technology as part of our bodies in many ways: a study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication states that "cellphone users are capable of perceiving their iPhone as an object of their extended self, which can be negatively impacted (i.e., lessening of self) during separation."
If this is the case, then, it is only natural that we will want to bring our technologies closer and closer to our bodies. Fashion could be the stepping stone that bridges handheld technology and bionics on the way to synthesis between humans and machines.
Google/Levi's Project Jacquard. Matt Weinberger
So what are some of the technologies that companies are dabbling in? Adidas is working on 3D printed shoes, Nike is focusing on shoes that lace themselves (which actually began as a replica of the Mag shoe worn by Marty McFly in Back to the Future Part II), and Google/Levi's Project Jacquard created a denim jacket that can connect to a smartphone. By touching the jacket sleeve in certain ways, you can control your phone.
If, as Diane Kruger famously stated, "what you wear is an expression of who you are," our growing obsession with iPhones, Instagram, and technology as a whole will be reflected in the direction the clothing and wearable industries take in the coming decades.The Nazi spies arrived on the shores of Britain under the cover of night, by parachute, by rowing boat and by rubber dinghy. In their suitcases each carried a morse code transmitter, a map of the UK, a handgun and some invisible ink. Their mission: to pave the way for an invasion.
But the spies chosen for the mission had neither convincing fluency in English nor basic knowledge of British customs. One spy was arrested after trying to order a pint of cider at 10am, unaware that during wartime landlords weren't allowed to serve alcohol before lunchtime. Another pair were stopped while cycling through Scotland on the wrong side of the road: once the police discovered German sausages and Nivea hand cream in their luggage, their cover was blown.
Of the 12 spies who landed in Britain as part of Operation Lena in September 1940, most were arrested without having come closing to fulfilling their mission, and "because of their own stupidity", as British official records put it. Why Germany sent such inept agents on one of the most important missions of the second world war has remained an enduring mystery.
A book published in Germany this summer comes up with a new explanation. In Operation Sealion: Resistance inside the Secret Service, the historian Monika Siedentopf argues that the botched spying mission was not the result of German incompetence, but a deliberate act of sabotage by a cadre of intelligence officials opposed to Hitler's plans.
Siedentopf first became interested in the story of Operation Sealion – the German plan to invade Britain – while researching a book on the role of female spies during the war. For many other missions, German spies had been meticulously well-prepared, she noticed, so why not in 1940?
Her research led her to a circle of people around Herbert Wichmann, the officer in charge of the Hamburg intelligence unit, one of Nazi Germany's biggest secret service posts.
Wichmann had close ties not only to Wilhelm Canaris, the spy chief once dubbed the "Hamlet of conservative resistance" by Hugh Trevor-Roper, but also to the Stauffenberg group which planned to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.
At the end of the war, Wichmann was given a key role in rebuilding Hamburg's shipping industry, upon express orders of the British. MI5 described him and his circle as "good Germans, but bad Nazis".
After six years of research in the National Archives and using Wichmann's own writing, Siedentopf deduced that the spy chief had deliberately sent agents on Operation Lena who had neither particularly good knowledge of the country nor the language.
Instead, his preference appears to have been for individuals with low levels of intelligence but resounding enthusiasm for National Socialism, many of them petty criminals and members of far-right organisations in the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark.
Wichmann's motives, Siedentopf told the Guardian, were mixed. He feared not only that Operation Sealion was badly planned and would come at a considerable human and material cost to Germany, but also that an attack on England would escalate the conflict into a proper world war – but preventing that was an objective that even its most inept spies could achieve.This cop is a real kidnapper!
Cop gets pissed off with the parents who appeared to be smart about their rights and threaten to remove their infant baby! A Sandusky cop pulled over the family car of Andre Stockett and Kathryn, alleging their license plate had expired However, the cop was proved wrong after seeing the valid license. Stockett wasn’t suspected of committing any crime, so he refused to identify himself when officer Denny asked him to. He immediately brought a K-9 and ordered the dog to search the vehicle for drugs. The couple was told to step out of the car to which they refused as they had a 2 week old baby in the back seat. That was exactly where the uncontrollable cop threw his tantrum and started shouting he would take the baby. At that point it seemed like the cop couldn’t admit himself loosing. He badly needed any reason to have those two smart asses arrested. Eventually, the couple got out of the vehicle. Both Stockett and Said were arrested on obstruction charges.It’s morning. Time to shoot some pucks. Out walk Clarke MacArthur and John-Michael Liles, to a $100,000 contraption that will let them do just that. Gone are the days of shooting pucks and denting the garage. Or putting up the fake goalie in the net with the five holes clearly marked. In this day and age of high tech and every advantage money can buy for a sports team, the Maple Leafs have given their players a new toy: A gadget called RapidShot. Like the batting cage has done for baseball for years — automated thrown balls so a hitter can practise — this machine passes pucks to shooters. “It is pretty neat,” says MacArthur. “It’s like a Chuck E Cheese thing.”
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But it also does so much more. It measures the players’ speed in accepting the pass, their velocity in shooting the puck and their accuracy in hitting targets. The targets, by the way, appear in the form of lights (in all four corners and the five hole) only at the last possible moment when the shooter receives the puck. “You work on quickening reflexes and you work on your shot and getting it off quicker,” says Liles. “There are different things you can do and different things you can play. It is a great tool.” Each player has his own swipe card. When it’s his turn, he logs in with the card.
“It tracks you and your trends, if you’re getting more accurate, which one is your weakest corner to pick, different things like that,” says Liles. “I think it is a great way to warm you up to get your body and muscles firing.... You spend a lot of time in the gym and this is a good way to mix it up on your body.” Developed in Germany, and popular in Russia, the company was purchased by Walter Payerl of Michigan, who saw its use both as a tool for the developing minor hockey player, for scouts, for pros and for players coming back from injuries. “If a player has a baseline, and we know he could shoot 70 miles an hour before his injury, what his reaction time was, and now he’s not able to do that, we have specific data,” says Payerl. “For concussive injuries, we’re able to show players and trainers the difference in their pure physical reaction time.” But mostly, it’s fun. The company’s website tracks every shot for every shooter (about 55 million shots from 100 machines worldwide so far) and can crown champions. Payerl’s nephew, Adam Payerl, is the record holder at many age groups and now plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins top farm team.
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Other NHLers can be found on the site; Jordan Eberle of the Edmonton Oilers is up among the leaders. But a few NHL teams, Vancouver, Buffalo and now the Leafs, have their own and keep their data private. It is morphing into a scouting tool. More and more, hockey is getting broken down into its various parts and this machine allows shooting to be measured accurately. “People who know about it,” says Payerl. “If I tell you I have a 16 year old who is a 500-plus shooter, that doesn’t mean anything to you. But once you get to be familiar with system and knew what it meant, it would mean a lot. The scouts wold go: ‘Wow, that’s something. I need to see that guy.... He’s worth having a look at.’” The Leafs found it a good investment even thought the target market is teenagers. Versions sell for as low as $20,000. “It’s good for all levels,” said Payerl. “The people who have the quickest improvement are 10 to 16 year olds. They’re going through strength, stamina and finesse improvements. “The pros, it’s just fine-tuning, and prove to them there are different techniques to shoot the puck and receive the pass. It’s easy to show a pro if you leave them on their own they might have a.7 or.8 of a second reaction time. With a little bit of tweaking and letting them try different techniques, they’ll cut that in half quickly. “Once you get that in their mind this is a technique they can get the puck off faster, then the puck is going to get to the net faster without them having to put another 10 miles an hour on the puck.”In a slum colony in one corner of Delhi, a heated debate is taking place near the home of Vinay Sharma, one of the six accused in the rape of a 23 |
-open three-pointer with 7.8 seconds left in overtime, then Chris Singleton missed one of three free throws with a chance to win and the Wizards had to settle for another overtime. And finally, Beal missed another three-pointer in the final 16 seconds of the second overtime and the Wizards lost 108-106 to the Charlotte Bobcats.
The Wizards had several other breakdowns in the final minutes of regulation and both overtimes, but Coach Randy Wittman, at wits’ end with his team’s 0-11 start, wasn’t going to criticize the effort of his players.
How could he? When Nene was out there on one good foot, hustling and dunking to get a notch in the win column? When Webster put the Wizards in position to win in regulation by forcing a jump ball and recovering possession? When Beal and Singleton both had double doubles and scrapped for loose ball?
“I’m not pointing my finger at my players,” Wittman said. “Obviously, it lies with me and I know it lies with me and I’ve got to figure a way to get this righted. That’s what my job is. And I’ll take full responsibility for that.”
Wittman lost his job in Minnesota when the Timberwolves went on a 13-game losing streak in 2008-09. Flip Saunders lost his job after a 2-15 start last season. But it would be an incredible accomplishment for the Wizards to go 2-4 in their next six games and match the horrible start that opened the door for Wittman to get the job.
The next six games are against San Antonio, Portland, New York, Miami, Atlanta and Golden State. None of those teams currently has a losing record and two of those games are on the road in arenas where the Wizards have had little success. Somehow, though, Beal believes the Wizards have what it takes for a turnaround.
“We just lost. Everybody hates losing. You just see the guys faces, it’s like depression. We haven’t won a game yet,” Beal said. “We still have [71] more games. It’s still a long season. We still have our opportunity to get over.500. Right now, it’s our goal we have to shoot for, is to probably get into the playoffs. We’re going to make it. I have faith in this team. I have confidence in us. I think we’re more than capable of doing it, with the assets that we have. As long as guys keep buying in and never give up, we’ll be fine.”
What more do you want me to do? (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
The Wizards are now the 12th team in NBA history to open a season with 11 straight losses, and they wasted their latest, best chance against a Bobcats team that was on the second end of back-to-back games and missing three of its best players in the final overtime period.
“You can’t get any closer than we’ve been getting,” Crawford said.
They have lost three games in overtime, including the two past games against Atlanta and Charlotte by a combined three points.
Nene has come back from plantar fasciitis in his left foot earlier than he perhaps should’ve, but there is no denying the influence that he has had on the team. The contrast when Nene plays and sits is so vast that Wittman could be forgiven for being tempted to leave him on the floor for the entire 48-plus minutes. Wittman brought Nene off the bench, played him half the game, and the Wizards were outscored by 24 points when he sat. Again, they lost by two.
“I have no choice, I tried helping my team. I knew my limitation, but I try to help my team. That’s why they brought me there, to play the whole minutes I play,” Nene said after scoring 19 points. “I tried to step every moment to help my team get better shot, better pass or on defense, and we work really hard. At the same time, we need to play as one, everybody on the court, and we need to keep fighting, keep playing hard.”
The Wizards’ starters combined to score just 38 points and got down by double digits in the first quarter and at the start of the third. Wittman has used three different starting lineups, all based on a lack of production instead of injuries, and he blamed himself for the slow starts that consistently force the team to dig.
“Obviously, I’m not pushing the right buttons or pulling the right strings right now. I’ll continue to try to figure that out,” Wittman said. “I’ll continue to work at trying to find a starting combination, people to play. That’s my job.”
Beal said Wittman is not the reason why the team remains winless. “As much as he wants to take credit for it, the game is in our hands. He’s not the one to blame; it’s us. That just shows his leadership. I even blame myself. I had an opportunity to sieze the game and I didn’t. Coach Witt, we’re all buying into him. We love him to death. He wants the best for us.”
Wittman’s arguably biggest blunder wasn’t necessarily starting the ineffective Jan Vesely for the fourth consecutive game and getting limited production. But he may have been better off using one of his point guards – Shaun Livingston or A.J. Price – in either the first or second overtime. He also admitted that Nene was “gassed” down the stretch but never called on Emeka Okafor, who had 11 points and seven rebounds in just 21 minutes.
Wittman left the ball in Crawford’s hands and the offense looked disheveled and without structure. Plays consistently broke down and the Wizards committed three combined turnovers in the overtimes.
Nene was 3 of 6 in the extra frames, while his teammates were 1 of 11, with Beal making a three-pointer that brought the Wizards within one with 1.6 seconds remaining.
“He’s doing everything, searching for lineups, searching for answers,” Crawford said of Wittman. “If everybody come in and work every day, it’s going to turn around…It’s tough, but this shows, right now in a tough situation, shows who’s a man or not, who can hold their up high and keep going. This is still a blessing, an opportunity to play every night the game that I love. I’m still excited every day.”Canadians may finally be getting skittish about real estate.
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Home sales in the city fell 51 per cent to 758 transactions in the first two weeks of August from the same period a year earlier, according to Vancouver realtors.
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The share of survey respondents who expect a decline in local housing prices jumped by 8.5 percentage points, the most since weekly polling began three years ago for the Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index. The increase to 20.5 per cent from 12 per cent dragged the broader sentiment index down from 2016 highs.
The reading marks a change from almost unbridled consumer optimism in a housing market that has carried the Canadian economy since the 2008 global financial crisis, even as policy makers warn price gains in some cities are unsustainable. Preliminary data this month from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver show recent government measures to cool the market may be taking effect.
Countering the deterioration in housing market sentiment, the share of respondents who say their personal finances improved over the past year jumped 6 percentage points to 25.8 percent, also the largest increase since weekly polling began. The move coincides with government measures to increase monthly payments to lower-income families.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau implemented the new child benefits as part of a program of deficit spending, with the first payments sent out last month.
‘Cross-Pressured’
“Canadians are cross pressured –- on the one hand taking the newly changed Child Benefit but increasing concern about the value of real estate,” said Nanos Research Group Chairman Nik Nanos.
There’s no comparable increase in views that housing prices would fall since Nanos began gathering weekly data in May 2013. In the quarterly data preceding that, there was a jump of 24 percentage points at the end of 2008, just as the world financial system was melting down. That move was more than reversed two quarters later.
The share of those expecting home prices to rise or stay the same was more stable, while still downbeat. The 41.4 per cent who see home prices rising was down from 43.7 per cent in the prior week. Those seeing little change fell to 36.3 per cent from 41.6 per cent.
The shakeup follows British Columbia’s July decision to impose a 15 per cent tax on Vancouver homes purchased by foreigners, effective Aug. 2. Average prices for detached homes in the city had surged to about $1.6 million, putting them out of reach of many local families.
“If there was to be a bit of a slowdown I don’t think it would be surprising given the strength that we’ve seen in the market over time,” Bank of Montreal Chief Financial Officer Tom Flynn said of the Vancouver market in an Aug. 23 phone interview. “We’re protecting ourselves from a risk perspective by having higher levels of equity down payments on more expensive properties, and we’ve been doing that for a period of time.”
To be sure, there are signs consumer confidence remains healthy. The Nanos Pocketbook measure rose to 62.5, the highest since February 2015. That helped keep the headline confidence measure of 59.3, close to the 2016 high of 59.9 set the week before.
Here are some of the other highlights from the report: Job prospects brightened, with the sixth straight increase in the share of respondents calling their positions “secure” to 50.4 per cent; The confidence of people aged 40 to 49 rose to the highest since August 2014 at 60.1 per cent; The economy will be little changed in six months according to 44.1 per cent of those surveyed, up 2 percentage points from the prior tracking period; That was higher than the 26.5 per cent who predicted strengthening and 23.2 percent who said it will be weaker.
The Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index is based on a four-week rolling average of telephone polling with 1,000 respondents. It’s considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The latest round of polling ended Aug. 26.
Bloomberg NewsA stunning little statistic from a United Nations report. More people now have mobile telephones around the world than have access to a flush toilet. Given that the water closet is several centuries old and the mobile phone really only about 30 years mature that's a pretty stunning difference in the two technologies adoption:
Six of the world's seven billion people have mobile phones - but only 4.5 billion have a toilet, according to a U.N. report.
The shocking statistic has prompted the international organisation to launch a global campaign to improve sanitation for the 2.5 billion people whose health is at risk. U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson called their plight 'a silent disaster' that reflects the extreme poverty and huge inequalities in the world today.
I have to admit that I'd worry rather less about those inequalities. One of the things that the globalisation of the past few decades has done is lower global inequality. Largely through making some billions richer: even if, sadly, those made richer weren't you or me.
It's possible to be a little cynical about this phones versus thrones number though. Actual flush toilets aren't in fact the problem. What is is the provision of water to flush them and a sewage system to flush them into. Both of which are largely government provided. While mobile phone systems are largely private company provided. Whether you want to call it the lust for profit or the greater efficiency of the private sector, it won't surprise the more right leaning of us that phones do have a greater market reach than toilets.
Being slightly less cynical there is in fact a real governmental problem here. The work of Hernando De Soto is full of such stories. In the great shanty towns of the Third World most residents are squatting. On the land that is: they don't own it. So there's no real incentive for them to privately develop such infrastructure as a water and or sewage system. Further, the governments don't develop them because the people aren't supposed to be there in the first place. This might sound rather socialist, even communistic, but the correct solution is probably to simply sign over title of the land to the people that live there. To turn their de facto occupation into de jure ownership. Then either they can band together to provide the infrastructure, or the State can given that they now legally occupy the land. But little is likely to happen without that legalisation of the land occupation.The deepest blue on the maps shows areas 2 degrees Celsius cooler than the average for 1951 to 1980; the darkest red shows regions more than 2 degrees C warmer than this baseline.
It’s now official: 2015 was the warmest year on record.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today updated their separate analyses of surface temperatures across the globe, both declaring 2015’s heat to be unprecedented. Teams of scientists in Britain and Japan are expected to come to the same conclusion in the coming days.
This video summarizes NASA’s historical temperature data.
Producing a single figure for the global average temperature means combining results from monitoring stations across the world. Last year, the Berkeley Earth project, set up to address climate skeptics’ concerns about the way this was done, stopped short of declaring 2014 to be the record claimed by NASA and NOAA. Given the statistical uncertainties, the Berkeley researchers were prepared to say only that 2014 tied with 2005 and 2010.
But the heat in 2015 has been so extreme that this time there is no real doubt. Leaders of the Berkeley Earth project have already said they are 99.996% confident that last year was the warmest on record.
According to NASA’s analysis, in 2015 the Earth was 0.87 degrees C (1.57 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the average for 1950 to 1981 — compared to 0.74 degrees C in 2014.
See here to learn why last year broke the previous record with such ease.In an interview today with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Sen. Marco Rubio said that the Supreme Court’s rulings on marriage equality and abortion rights in the Obergefell and Roe decisions, respectively, are “not settled law.”
The Republican presidential candidate said that states should “do everything possible within the constraints that its placed upon us” to curtail abortion rights, before insisting that government officials “ignore” Supreme Court rulings if they believe they conflict with “God’s rules.”
“We are clearly called, in the Bible, to adhere to our civil authorities, but that conflicts with also a requirement to adhere to God’s rules,” he said. “When those two come in conflict, God’s rules always win. In essence, if we are ever ordered by a government authority to personally violate and sin, violate God’s law and sin, if we’re ordered to stop preaching the gospel, if we’re ordered to perform a same-sex marriage as someone presiding over it, we are called to ignore that. We cannot abide by that because government is compelling us to sin.”
Brody, unsurprisingly, took that as an endorsement as Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’ stance that she could flout the Supreme Court and refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.My father always says there are two sides to every story. There’s one party’s side, the opposing party’s side, and then the truth tends to fall somewhere in the middle.
Most videogames, however, exist in a vacuum of storytelling, where the player takes control of a set of heroes out to destroy a set of bad guys. Through this, they mostly attempt to capture and tell only one side of a story. Mario is good, and Bowser is bad. Sora wants to save the world, the Heartless want to destroy it. Link is the Hero of Time, Ganon the bringer of destruction. It’s a repeated formula because it’s easy (and because it works), but it also tends to make things somewhat superficial and obvious.
Golden Sun, the 2001 Game Boy Advance role-playing-game from Nintendo, then, manages to pull off something that not a lot of videogames are able to do: take a look at both sides of a story and use it to explore the complexities of real-world morality.
the truth tends to fall somewhere in the middle
The first two entries in the series, Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age, together tell one complete story, but halfway through pull the narrative rug out from underneath the player. In The Lost Age, the player takes control of the antagonists from the first game, and the story from there delves into deeper ideas of morality, right and wrong, and starts to make the player wonder which side the “good guys” are on.
Golden Sun takes place in Weyard, a world kept in balance by the four basic elements of Alchemy: Venus (Earth), Mercury (Water), Jupiter (Wind), and Mars (Fire). Years before the game begins, the powers to control Alchemy were sealed away in an attempt to keep the world safe. Now, a rogue group of Adepts — the name for the in-game characters who can control the elements and have magical abilities — is attempting to relight the Elemental Lighthouses and break the seal on Alchemy, releasing its untold power unto the world.
This is all fairly standard Japanese role-playing game stuff, but, after spending the entire first game on a quest to prevent this from happening, the sequel deconstructs the player’s notion of right and wrong. You play as Felix, one of the antagonists from the first game, in an attempt to light the lighthouses, opposing the goal you tried to accomplish in the first game.
Slowly, more and more information about Weyard is revealed. Felix and his companions visit towns that are actually suffering from the lack of having the lighthouses enflamed. Lemuria—the ancient civilization based on the Atlantis-like myth—is in a state of continual decline, with the once rich civilization now devoid of its enthusiasm and creativity. (There’s also a not-so-subtle metaphor here: the leader of the Lemurian senate is named Lord Conservato, who is trying to keep things exactly the way they are).
Compare Lemuria with your visit to Izumo, a town that is on the verge of offering human sacrifices to a giant dragon that was awoken due to the player’s actions in the first game. For any area in the world that may have seemed to be better off with Alchemy restored, the second installment shows the other side, with other civilizations wrestling with the dire consequences of the player’s original actions.
The biggest reveal is saved for the end, though. The last location in the game is the frozen wasteland of Prox, home to the Fire clan that has been the “enemy” for most of the game. You learn that Felix’s parents aren’t dead; they have been held hostage in exchange for Felix’s cooperation. He was out to save his parents this whole time, not out of any selfish greed or lust for power.
A strong sense of self-preservation, not world domination, has been moving the characters
As you explore Prox, you discover that the only reason the members of the clan set out to return Alchemy to the world is because their northern-most continent is slowly being destroyed, and that the whole world is moving closer and closer to the overflowing edges of the planet. (Like early maps of Earth, Weyard is flat, with giant waterfalls surroundings its edges).
A strong sense of self-preservation, not world domination, has been moving the characters, cast as enemies, over the past two games. It paints them in a much different light than average videogame “bad guys.” Can the player accept the actions of the Fire Clan if they were done in an attempt to save their town and villagers (and by extension, its children and elderly) from destruction? Do the ends justify the means?
The ultimate decision boils down to this: If the Lighthouses are relit, then the world will stop decaying, but also might be destroyed in the resulting cataclysm. But if the lighthouses aren’t lit, then the world most definitely will be destroyed.
It’s a surprisingly dark take on morality and mortality, implying that the act of making a decision can be more important than blindly accepting a predestined fate. On the other hand, to make no decision is to condemn entire races and villages to certain death.
There’s no clear right or wrong. No clear “videogame trope” of which side is the “hero.” Even as the characters go to light the last lighthouse beacon, they are stopped by The Wise One, a god-like deity who originally tasked them with stopping the lighthouses from being lit. Even with the characters’ resolve to not let the world end, The Wise One attempts to stop them, claiming that the world will end either way: “It is inevitable. In time, one man will seek to rule over all. It is human nature, inescapable.”
Even then, the game even asks the player directly, in a simple Yes or No prompt that appears on screen, if risking this is worth saving entire villages over. The characters ultimately choose to oppose the Wise One, and take the fate of the world into their own hands. The Wise One then reanimates the player’s previously missing parents into a giant dragon that they have to kill in order to save the world. It’s grim stuff.
The results of the decision to light the Lighthouses is even further explained in the sequels, as the rest of the world has to deal with the actions of a few children. To some, they are heroes, but to others, they were help not asked for, returning a power back to the world that not everybody wanted.
There’s at least two sides to every story
But the world was saved. Weyard continues to exist, even with the power of the elements unleashed. However, in the process of unleashing these elements, the normal videogame role of hero is redefined. The player receives a much more complex look at the characters through the shifting viewpoint of the characters. Golden Sun succeeds in raising interesting questions about the human condition. How will a person’s upbringing and background affect their viewpoint, and what is the right choice when faced with the complex moral decisions of real life? There’s at least two sides to every story, and Golden Sun thoroughly investigates this.
And in that sense, Golden Sun presents players with a reality that transcends the game. Sometimes there aren’t right answers. Life isn’t as easy as black and white, and sometimes even the best of intentions can cause the worst of outcomes. It’s a hard lesson, but one that Golden Sun, despite its bright name, manages to get across, well, adeptly.
Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age are available to play on the Wii U Virtual Console.I’m a Google employee who has taken the manifesto situation to heart. Not because I agree or disagree with the position James took (that will be part II), but due to the way Google has handled and responded to it. I’m not going to evaluate the substance of the manifesto, but I will evaluate the actions taken by Google. I believe James was well-aware of the potential consequences (including termination) by publishing the manifesto using Google collateral versus a neutral platform (e.g. Facebook or blog). I say this because I believe James took a calculated risk, and I’m not sure if he got the outcome he wanted or not.
I started this blog to tell my story about always dreaming of being a millionaire; realizing that dream at 29 years old and still feeling as broke as I did when I graduated at 22 years old making $24k a year with $10k in savings (hence the name of the blog). I planned on my first blog post being around financial freedom, creating wealth, spending habits, demystifying retirement, making your first million before 30, making your third million before 35 but I feel compelled to address the situation. For some reason, I feel it’s my duty to provide a Googler's POV. What qualifies me to write about this topic you ask? To start with, I’m a Google insider. I live, breathe and spend a majority of my day in Googles culture (so I get it). I’m not an organic Googler, in that I came from another industry so I’m open-minded and not someone who has been drinking the kool-aid since graduation. Let’s cover the 3 biggest mistakes Google made in the last 72 hours:
1. Not Walking the Walk
If you’re going to preach an open culture that promotes diversity, you have to accept diverse opinions that are presented in a respectful, thoughtful, open and non-aggressive manner. You can’t send out Leadership memos that promote diversity, and then only accept diversity that aligns with what Google deems acceptable. Starting off an email with: “First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it" doesn’t give you a right to be the judge and jury on what can and cannot be safely expressed. It gives you the power but not the right. This is why you're seeing #MarchOnGoogle.
Google should have used this situation as an example of practicing tolerance and grace during a time of such divide. Bring James in and go over his 10-page manifesto in order to truly understand his position. Then determine if his position on the topic is termination worthy and a violation of our Code of Conduct. Did the memo offend Googler's, Yes. Does offending someone = termination or discussion? I’ve spoken to dozens of Googlers about this and it’s split 50/50 on whether or not James should have been fired. Notice what I said, 50/50 on whether he should have been fired, not whether or not they agree with the content of his manifesto. I was happy to find this article right before I published this post to support my findings that Googlers are split. By firing James, Google sent a loud and clear message: if you don’t agree with Google’s opinion then you’ll be fired if you ever decided to express yourself. Google has officially established themselves as a far left political organization versus wanting to organize the world's information, making it universally accessible and useful. Please remember: Don’t be evil.
2. The Double Standard - Leadership's Bias
The second biggest mistake that Google leadership made was their double standard, in that they are also exposing their own biases. Danielle Brown, our new of VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance, introduced herself to Google with her first “Hi, my name is ___________” email by addressing the manifesto. Side note: I can relate with Danielle given my first blog post has also been hijacked by manifestogate. Does that make me VP worthy? Maybe! Ha, I digress. I think Danielle’s email was safe and well-balanced. In part, because I don’t think James’ fate was determined when she sent her note. Danielle was walking the line on this, and I can’t blame her. My issue is with our CEO, Sundar Pichai. At the surface, James’ manifesto offended women by making statements like:
“Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.”
Understandably, this pissed of a number of female Googlers, and Leadership felt they had to intervene and support the women at Google. In Sundar’s memo, he quoted our Code of Conduct, and said:
“We expect each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.”
Leadership determined that James’ memo violated our Code of Conduct resulting in termination. Sundar continued with: “The memo has clearly impacted Googlers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender. Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
The message from our CEO is, biases have no place at Google. Yet Sundar presented a HUGE BIAS while writing his memo. Notice Sundar was careful to not take a gender position here, but only mentions and defends points that would have offended women at Google. To be clear, his focus was to only protect and defend females at Google. What about the non-engineer, passive, introvert male that felt emasculated by James’ manifesto? Let’s call him Joe. Joe read the memo and realized that he doesn’t possess any of the male characteristics that James identified. Joe now doesn’t feel like a “Man,” he feels emasculated and inferior when he compares himself to Male Googlers that are Engineers or in Leadership positions. Sundar didn’t mention Joe’s feelings - no one came to defend Joe. Sundar was blinded by his own bias when writing his memo by trying to be the Knight to save the damsel in distress. Don’t mind Joe, he can handle it because men just need to suck it up…right?
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's response confirmed the focus is only around women. This is further evidence that our Leaders continue to talk about not having a bias, and they themselves are showing a bias by choosing to defend and protect only women who might have been offended by the manifesto. To be very clear: I’m not asking for equal protection or defense, I believe that women deserve the majority of attention here but please just mention that fact that the manifesto also hurt males who don’t feel they possess the male characteristics the manifesto called out in statements like this:
“Status is the primary metric that men are judged on, pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths.”
Male Googlers who don’t judge themselves based on status, are not in higher paying positions, would shy away from high stress jobs, and who would never put themselves in a dangerous job now feel emasculated. Why is Leadership not protecting or defending this group? You know why? Because Leadership as an implicit bias and they don’t even know it.
Dear, Sundar and Janet - before you fire someone for having a bias please have a look in the mirror right before you hit send. Courage is to be truly open to diversity and not just Google’s definition.
3. Psychological safety is dead and Google killed it
The third biggest mistake that Google leadership made was that they killed psychological safety. Google kicked off a management/culture project back in the day called Project Oxygen. By 2012, it was widely adopted and showed that the best performing managers were the ones who were the most aligned with Project Oxygen. Not long after, Google kicked off another project to determine what makes a team successful. The biggest/most important factor in both studies was psychological safety. Now, psychological safety is a very powerful phrase at Google. If it ever comes up in conversation, everyone perks up like a prairie dog because someone just went nuclear and dropped the PS bomb! Did you hear that Bobby dropped the “I don’t feel psychologically safe bomb” and now HR and his manager are all over it? For those not in Tech, Psychological Safety is can be summarized as follows: You feel comfortable that you can offer up an opinion or ask a question within a group/team and you don’t feel you’re at risk of being judged or attacked for presenting your thoughts. Well Google, you just killed psychological safety for a large group of Googlers by firing someone for expressing an opinion that at least half would agree was not a fireable offense. Want evidence: our message board for today's canceled Google meeting had an enormous amount of "anonymous" questions/comments about not feeling safe. A majority were conservative Googlers who have been in hiding ever since they joined the company, with a number of other anonymous comments who supported the firing. Anonymous postings = not feeling safe. To add, Googlers were asking for explanation for why people were casting down-votes to questions that were linking the manifesto to race more than gender. Almost like Googlers were trying to smoke out closet racist. Looks like our utopia of free lunches, coffee bar, gyms and massages finally got a dose of the real world.
We can debate if you agree or not with the content but to fire someone sends a strong signal. The conservative minority will be silent, or anonymous, for a long time at Google. Based on how Google handled this, I’m not sure we’ll ever see a Jerry McGuire moment like this again at the Googs…#notsafe.
Bonus: James sent out his manifesto July 2017. Danielle Brown sent her email to all of Google on August 5th, 2017. Sundar sent him Memo on August 7th 2017 and Google updated their Code of Conduct on August 7th 2017. Sneaky…sneaky Google! It’s not like we’ve ever been busted for being shady. My biggest gripe with the content of the manifesto is the weak suggestions. James and Google missed the most important way to solve this problem. More to come next week!It has been called New Orleans jazz, Dixieland (a term that most of the musicians playing it despise), and most recently, “trad” (short for “traditional”) jazz. Ever since Benny Goodman exploded onto the pop-music scene in 1935 and ignited the swing era, the earlier jazz of the 1920s has been relegated to music’s margins.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the modern bandstand.
Gradually, over the past few years, more and more young jazz musicians—mainly in their 20s and even younger—have begun to play this music and, in the process, started again to refer to it by the name it was known by when it was new: Hot Jazz. Ninety years ago, dancers employed designations of temperature to distinguish between “hot” bands, like King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band or Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers and the “sweet” bands of the era, like Guy Lombardo’s.
All of a sudden, Hot Jazz bands are all over New York (and, by various indications, other cities as well)—most of them made up of musicians roughly the age of trumpeter Mike Davis and Joshua Holcomb (who plays trombone, tuba, and bass), both 21. The two are recent graduates of the Manhattan School of Music, where they jointly led a Hot Jazz student-ensemble band, and are now part of the city’s workforce of professional musicians. Such bands are heard in an increasing number of clubs, including several devoted to Hot Jazz, such as Mona’s in the Alphabet City neighborhood, and Radegast Hall & Biergaretn in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Nearly every week (particularly in the summer), these musicians also play in bands at dance-oriented “retro nouveau” events, like Shanghai Mermaid, the Jazz Age Lawn Party, and the Salon—a combination of dance, concert, and costume party. Young dancers typically come in 1920s drag, and one can see flappers and sheikhs texting and tweeting on the margins of the dance floor.
The Lawn Party, the biggest of these events, usually attracts 3,000-plus people (most in vintage attire, almost all under 30) for two weekends a summer on Governors Island. Movie director Baz Luhrmann is a regular attendee, and although his film adaptation of The Great Gatsby—based on the definitive novel of what author F. Scott Fitzgerald called “the Jazz Age”—featured little authentic jazz from the period, the movie’s box-office success reveals again how the culture of the Roaring 20s seems to resonate with contemporary audiences.
Hot Jazz is so prevalent now that New York has almost become like New Orleans in the fin de siècle period: in covering the city’s jazz scene for The Wall Street Journal, I find that I can go hear a 20s-style band, almost inevitably made up of musicians born well after 1980, playing somewhere in the city virtually every night of the week. For these young players, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, the 11-piece ensemble that’s kept the torch burning for pre-swing music for almost 40 years. Most of Giordano’s regular musicians are in their 40s and 50s, but he occasionally hires up-and-coming artists, such as 26-year-old twins Peter and Will Anderson, two reed players (clarinet and saxophone) who have been working with Giordano since 2007, their sophomore year at Juilliard.
Will Anderson feels that an understanding of early jazz is essential to being able to play the music of any period. “I enjoy playing all styles of jazz, because it is all rooted in the music of the 1920s—harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically.” He adds, “Twenties jazz has a clarity and beauty that anyone can identify with; it expresses the most bitter sadness and complete joy, simultaneously.”
Along with the Nighthawks, a newer, smaller band that’s serving as the focal point of the Hot Jazz movement is Mona’s Hot Four, which plays all night long every Tuesday, to a capacity crowd of regulars and musicians who come to sit in and jam. Here, alas, there’s no room for dancing and, in fact, barely any room even for listening. “I believe musicians of my generation and younger are attracted to the roots, blues aspect of the music; the collective polyphony of the ensemble; the partner-danceability of the rhythm [that has] revitalized excitement of the audiences,” says Mona’s Hot Four’s guitar-and-banjo player, Nick Russo. Gradually, the mania surrounding the music has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Mr. Russo notes that the more musicians play Hot Jazz, the more crowds are attracted, which, in turn, he says, generates “more gigs.”
What’s also interesting is that this new wave of traditional jazz relies on nontraditional venues: formal jazz clubs, mostly in midtown, generally ignore it, and so far Jazz at Lincoln Center has not yet gotten hip—a further irony, in |
a scale that was absolutely unforeseeable to Marx” (109). Men have become “products,” “mere administrative objects”; “dehumanization is perfected…not as naked coercion…[because] dehumanization is what civilization is”; “domination becomes an integral part of human beings” (109). And on and on: “Dehumanization is no external power…[but] the intrinsic reality of the oppressed in the system…[and] their wretchedness lies in the fact that they can never escape” (109-110). What hope is left? Total mimetic identification with the aggressor: “Only when the victims completely assume the features of the ruling civilization will they be capable of wresting them from the dominant power” (110). Which is to say Adorno retains the mechanical aspect of Marx—utter psychological deprivation automatically, by virtue of some biological absolute, brings revolution—seemingly without a shred of the intentionality Marx required to achieve revolution. There are no revolutionary subjects, only victims who mime the innermost cells of the aggressors and thereby automatically reveal to themselves (there are no others) the horror of the system they reproduce. So even if we needed Adorno, by his own terms we couldn’t get very far. Nonetheless, as Ashton shows, some contemporary poets have understood Adorno completely and have sought to put into practice his provocative solution to the universalization of domination. The poets she cites—Goldsmith, Davies, Boyer, Zaher, Wagner, Guenette, Svalina, Lin—mime the “features of the ruling civilization,” they further literalize Becker’s notion of “human capital” and embrace the turn to entrepreneurial everything. And when this mimetic process is seamlessly folded-in with Adorno’s much-vaunted “second reflection” (poetry as gift economy) what you have is a neoliberal dream: “utopian freedom from the market mimes…the freedom of the market.” Why this collapsing of the boundaries of exploiter and exploited—an identification made possible by the language of domination—is a problem is made clearer alongside the crushing data Ashton cites at the conclusion of her response. And while Adorno ponders the fragmented and alienated consciousness of a consumer society—just how do those “workers whose wages increased by more than 725% between 1978 and 2011” see the world and whether how they see the world is really all that different from those workers whose labor has been increasingly extracted from them over the same period—we might ponder whether we need Adorno at all. ***
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TumblrEvil Dead 4 = Army of Darkness 2
[From March 9th - 17th, Flixist will be providing coverage from South by Southwest 2013 in Austin, TX. Prepare yourselves for reviews, interviews, features, photos, videos, and all types of shenanigans!]
During my roundtable with Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert (Evil Dead), the subject of how different Evil Dead is compared to The Evil Dead (1981) came up. With rumors and backtracking provided by Sam Raimi himself, we took it upon ourselves to ask Campbell and Tapert their thoughts on a proper sequel to Evil Dead.
Campbell had this to say about the subject:
This [Evil Dead] gives it a lot of space, and the series can operate independently in different universes. We can still make Evil Dead 4. [It] has nothing to do with this movie, whatsoever. Nothing, just a creepy book, that's the only thing they have in common.
When pressed on whether that meant Evil Dead 4 was already confirmed, Campbell replied:
Sam's been talking about it. Rob and I are like, 'Show us a script.' [...] If we did another, Army of Darkness 2, which is really what it would be, it wouldn't be Evil Dead 4 because Army of Darkness changed its name a bit. So really, it would be Army of Darkness 2.
Tapert concludes:
Nowhere was it called Evil Dead 3. It was Army of Darkness everywhere. Fans knew it as that.
From the mouths of the gods themselves. Whatever the nomenclature may be, it seems more and more likely that, depending on the proper script, we might see Raimi, Campbell, and Tapert continue what they started so many years ago.
You are logged out. Login | Sign upMatthew Upson has joined the club on a one-year contract.
The former England international has returned following a successful loan spell throughout the closing months of the 2012/13 season, and put pen to paper this morning, as a free agent.
Head of football operations David Burke told seagulls.co.uk, “We are delighted that Matt has agreed to come back to the club. His experience is fantastic and it really shows our intent by bringing in someone of Matt’s pedigree.
“It’s not like he’s a new signing because he’s been with us for almost six months and he knows exactly what we are all about. He brings continuity and stability to the defence, which is what we were looking for, and it bodes well for us to keep the strong defence that we had last season.”
The 34-year-old made 20 Albion appearances between January and May, contributing to the Championship’s meanest defence as the Seagulls conceded just 15 goals during that time.
Upson will join up with the squad this morning and travel to Madrid for the pre-season training camp on Sunday.
Burke added, “His experience will bring more impact to the players as he spends more time with them, particularly during pre-season, which is a key time for tactics and strategies to be embedded into the players. Matt has experienced that at the highest level.
“We finished with the best defensive record in the league and we will build on that for the coming season.”
Upson made his name with Arsenal after a reported £2m move from Luton Town in 1997 and he went on to make over 50 appearances for the north London giants during his six-year stay.
During that time he had loans spells at Reading, Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest before signing permanently for Birmingham City for £1m in 2003.
He established himself as a regular Premier League defender with the Blues, while also receiving his full England debut, and racked up 128 appearances at St Andrew’s before a £6m move to West Ham United in 2007.
Upson went on to captain the Hammers and made 144 appearances for the east London side before a free move to Stoke City during the 2011 summer. Upson departed the Britannia Stadium when his contract expired earlier in the summer.On the cover of Our Ecological Footprint, published in 1996, a giant foot stomps on the Western hemisphere, carrying the weight of cars, overpasses and skyscrapers. William Rees, a population ecologist at the University of British Columbia, first thought of the footprint metaphor while boasting to a graduate student about the “small footprint” of his new computer tower in 1992. Linguists trace the use of footprint to mean “space occupied” to 1965 when astronomers described the landing area for a spacecraft. It would be another fourteen years before a Senate committee first uttered “environmental footprint.” But is this the best metaphor for humanity’s impact on the natural world?
Today Our Ecological Footprint is a classic text among biologists, and “ecological footprint” and “carbon footprint” are terms as familiar as “Googling” and “selfie.” A number of NGOs offer ecological footprint calculators, including the Global Footprint Network, the WWF footprint calculator and the Earth Day Network Footprint Calculator. The calculators approximate the amount of biologically productive land required to generate the resources an individual or a population consumes and to absorb the waste that the individual or population leaves behind. The results of footprint calculators are often used to highlight global disparities. In 2007, for example, the U.S. footprint per capita was 9.0 global hectares while China’s was just 1.8.
Global estimates of human impact on natural systems are bleak. Species are going extinct 1,000 to 10,000 times more rapidly than they historically have between major extinction events. There are as many introduced plant species on oceanic islands as native plants. Humans consume about one-third of all solar energy converted to plant matter through photosynthesis, and their actions directly impact 75 percent of terrestrial Earth – or, if we take climate change into account, the entire Earth. The magnitude of these changes has prompted some geologists and ecologists to favor the term “Anthropocene” when referring to the present geological age, even though the International Union of Geological Sciences still places us in the Holocene.
Given the picture painted by such statistics, it is no surprise that the footprint metaphor has caught on. A footprint is a mark one never meant to leave: a revealing clue in a garden, a blemish on an otherwise sparkling floor. It evokes both the weight of whoever left it and that being’s ominous absence. Verbs popular among environmentalists include trample, tread, oppress and dominate. Heavy feet imply antagonism and the lack of intimacy between humans and the non-human world. Are we waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Recently, a number of ecologists have suggested that it is no longer possible to imagine a nature where humans don’t tread. Richard Hobbs and his colleagues have coined the term “novel ecosystems” to describe new combinations of species that arise through human action. Erle Ellis has developed maps of “anthromes,” areas where humans have directly altered ecological patterns and processes. Large areas of “pristine” wilderness no longer exist, contend the members of this new school of thought.
Anthropocene studies have polarized conservation biologists. Some, like Peter Kareiva, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, contend that setting aside large tracts of land is an outdated conservation strategy. Instead, conservationists need to become more “people friendly” and attend more seriously to “working landscapes.” Similarly, journalist Emma Marris argued in her 2011 book, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World:
"If we fight to preserve only things that look like pristine wilderness, such as those places currently enclosed in national parks and similar refuges, our best efforts can only retard their destruction and delay the day we lose. If we fight to preserve and enhance nature as we have newly defined it, as the living background to human lives, we may be able to win. We may be able to grow nature larger than it currently is."
Other biologists believe that embracing the Anthropocene will doom biodiversity.“We need to meet proponents on the battlefield,” E. O. Wilson told me over dinner recently. Rather than the “cheery” Anthropocene, he prefers to call Earth’s new era of history the Eremocene: the Age of Loneliness. Elsewhere, Tim Caro and colleagues have warned that the concept of pervasive human-caused change may “cultivate hopelessness” and may even facilitate accelerated changes in land use motivated by profit. The controversy is one of adjectives. Scientists agree that humans have never been so populous. They agree that wilderness protection cannot be the only conservation strategy. But they disagree over whether scientists should describe humans as threats or as saviors.
Despite this new dialogue, the footprint metaphor remains a popular one. As one elementary school principal argued in The Christian Science Monitor, “A ‘footprint’ is a good metaphor for our individual impact on the social or natural environment. It’s personal, tactile, organic, and immediately comprehensible. It’s elementary. We’re bipeds; we all walk and leave tracks.” In a New York Times op-ed, Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote, “You feel as though you’re reducing global warming by saying it.”
But humans have been altering the Earth for millennia, and not only for the worse. We know from the management of invasive species and fire regimes that ecosystems can benefit from human action. Some species, like the California condor, avoid extinction only through human intervention.
So what if we move up on the human body to consider hands? A handprint, as opposed to a footprint, is deliberate, skilled and artful. It evokes human agency and the human ability to shape the world by choosing among many possible natures. A handprint suggests stewardship. Handprints allow us to ask: What is the place of creativity in conservation? How can human existence lead to good?
Importantly, handprints remind us of equity and of power. Yes, we must consume resources to live. But as those who developed the footprint metaphor have pointed out, we do not consume equally. According to the Footprint Network calculator, it would require 3.6 Earths for the entire human population to live a lifestyle similar to my own.
It is with our hands that we take from others. And it is with our hands that we give to them. It is with our hands that we plant a seedling, carry a re-usable bag and photograph a snow goose. Conservationists who characterize humans as uniformly destructive are as mistaken as those who characterize them as uniformly constructive. Both sides are missing the point that environmental governance – and all the human activity that comes with it – is immensely complex. Human hands speak, read, and write. They convey to us the texture of the world.Share. The Cabin in the Woods filmmaker on his screenplay for the sci-fi blockbuster and how he gave up the director’s chair. The Cabin in the Woods filmmaker on his screenplay for the sci-fi blockbuster and how he gave up the director’s chair.
We recently chatted with Drew Goddard, the Cabin in the Woods filmmaker and former Daredevil showrunner, on his screenplay for the new Matt Damon sci-fi blockbuster The Martian, and how he gave up the director’s chair – only to be replaced by his hero Ridley Scott.
IGN: Drew, you’ve spoken about wanting to keep “the vibrant soul of the book” The Martian. What did you mean by that?
Drew Goddard: The thing I love about the book is that it has this spirit of optimism in the face of tragedy. It’s a man who’s stranded by himself on Mars and I think in most other people’s hands that would be very dour. And in [author] Andy Weir’s hands, it’s much more optimistic – and funny, in a way. And I liked that. It’s not what you usually see in science fiction.
IGN: These stories are usually much more existential and ‘how insignificant I am.’
Goddard: Right! And I love those movies too, don’t get me wrong, but I felt like I hadn’t seen this positive side before.
Exit Theatre Mode
IGN: So what did you bring to your screenplay adaptation?
Goddard: So much of this one was more about protecting rather than inventing. The book’s great and so it was more about how do we shape this into a movie that isn’t nine hours long. The good news is, when you have so much great stuff, that’s a good problem to have. It’s all about making hard decisions on what to cut.
IGN: You have a scientific background, so did that help?
Goddard: Andy Weir is much smarter than I am, so in terms of the specifics of the science, he just nailed all of that. To me, I feel like I understand how scientists sound. I grew up around them and I don’t think they’ve ever been portrayed the way my experience has been listening to them. They’re much funnier than you realize. There’s a much more deadpan humour to scientists that I find pretty consistent and it was very important to me to convey that onscreen.
IGN: Originally you were slated to write and direct The Martian. With some projects, one feels “I have to direct this at all costs”, but what was the thinking here?
Goddard: Look, it falls under the category of good problems to have, in that I had three projects all get greenlit at once – Daredevil, Sinister Six and Martian – and I had to make some tough decisions. With The Martian, Fox was great and we all just sat down and said, ‘We want to make this movie,’ because Matt Damon had a window and that doesn’t come up that often, and you tend to want to make movies when you can. So we said, let’s try to find a director that we’re all excited about. If we don’t, we’ll wait and Drew will do it then… Ridley was the top name on our list and we sent it to him - and he said yes that night!
Exit Theatre Mode
IGN: He doesn’t tend to mess around, does he?
Goddard: No, he’s ready to go! You usually get a quick answer one way or another. And when he said yes, we all immediately relaxed and thought, this is going to work out fine.
IGN: Ridley Scott is generally considered a sci-fi movie icon but what specifically do you respond to in his work?
Goddard: The thing I think Ridley doesn’t get enough credit for, is the humanistic spirit that’s in his movies. Look at Blade Runner – my favourite movie of all time – and it’s just people struggling to live longer. Gladiator – it’s just a guy who wants to get home to his family. Thelma and Louise, Alien, they’re about people struggling to survive. It’s a theme he keeps coming back to – I’m not even sure he’s aware of this! But it felt like exactly the right fit for The Martian.
IGN: That’s interesting because most people immediately talk about his visuals.
Goddard: For sure, you have the technical side – it’s space and there’s nobody better. But I don’t know if people appreciate how soulful [his films are]. I think people appreciate him on a gut level, because we keep watching his movies over and over, but I don’t hear it talked about on an intellectual level.
IGN: This might be an unfair question but how do you think your version of The Martian would have differed from Ridley Scott’s?
Goddard: Look the simple answer is, that it wouldn’t have been as good! He’s a much better director than I am. He just made this movie sing, man. I don’t know that I could have done that with those sequences of this movie, especially in the back half – like, I keep forgetting that he didn't actually go to Mars! It’s got this epic, David Lean quality to it that I know I wouldn’t have captured the way Ridley did. It’s hard for me to think any more what I would have done, because what I’m watching is so much better!
Exit Theatre Mode
IGN: When you cast Matt Damon, were you aware of his role in Interstellar, where he’s also an astronaut stranded alone on a distant planet?
Goddard: No! We knew he was doing a movie but I don’t know that we knew it was that specific. But the truth is, we didn’t care. He let us know – and [Interstellar co-star] Jessica [Chastain] too – but we just knew that this movie was special and unique and nothing else was going to be like this movie. Everyone wants to work with talented actors. And if you rule out doing a movie because it’s like something they’ve done, your list is going to be pretty short, pretty quickly.
The Martian is now playing.1 /* -*- Mode: C++; tab-width: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil; c-basic-offset: 4 -*- */ 2 * This file is part of the LibreOffice project. * 5 * This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public * License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this * file, You can obtain one at 8 * 9 * This file incorporates work covered by the following license notice: * 11 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed * with this work for additional information regarding copyright * ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache * License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file * except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of * the License at 18 */ /* 3 * This file is part of the LibreOffice project. 4 * This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public 6 * License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this 7 * file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/ * This file incorporates work covered by the following license notice: 10 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more 12 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed 13 * with this work for additional information regarding copyright 14 * ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache 15 * License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file 16 * except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of 17 * the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 */ 19 20 #include <sal/main.h> 21 22 #include "sofficemain.h" 23 24 #ifdef DBG_UTIL 25 #ifdef __gnu_linux__ 26 #include <stdio.h> 27 #include <stdlib.h> 28 29 static int g_Exiting = 0; 30 31 /* HACK: detect calls to xmlCleanupParser, which causes hard to debug crashes */ xmlCleanupParser(void) (( "default" ))) void xmlCleanupParser(void) __attribute__ 32 (( visibility ))) 33 { 34 which is not entirely sound (another atexit handler could want to use libxml), but not enough of a problem to complain. (example found by llunak: KDE's Strigi library) */ /* there are libraries that register xmlCleanupParser as an atexit handler, 35 which is not entirely sound (another atexit handler could want to 36 use libxml), but not enough of a problem to complain. 37 (example found by llunak: KDE's Strigi library) */ 38 if (!39 { 40 fprintf(stderr, "
*** ERROR: DO NOT call xmlCleanupParser()
" ); } 43 } (! g_Exiting ); 41 abort (); 42 44 #endif 45 #endif 46 SAL_IMPLEMENT_MAIN() () { SAL_IMPLEMENT_MAIN 47 () { 48 int ret = #ifdef DBG_UTIL 50 #ifdef __gnu_linux__ 51 g_Exiting = 1 ; 52 #endif 53 #endif 54 return ret; 55 } soffice_main (); 49 56 57 58 /* vim:set shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 expandtab: */ 59C++ and copy-on-write data structures
I generally like C++ and the way C++ feels, but there is one specific quirk which is caused by STL designers’ choice of data structures which cannot be implemented with a copy-on-write (aka COW) semantic. Curious about which quirk? Keep on reading! COW might look like an implementation detail, but it can really change the way you design your APIs.
What is a COW?
An object with COW semantic (sometimes also called “implicit sharing”) has an interesting property: whenever you copy it, it does not really do a “deep copy” but simply shares the underlying data between the original object and its copy, and increments a reference counter to track this. Only at the moment that any of the copies is further modified (written to), the deep copy is really performed.
Now, it is important to realize that the overhead imposed by the COW semantic is usually very tiny: the object just needs to bookkeep a counter at every copy, and check it before any modification. The latter is even lighter than it sounds because the compiler can strip off many checks thanks to constant propagations.
But what are the advantages of using COW? The first and foremost advantage is the possibility to have a clean API with respect to return values.
Returning a COW
If you have programmed C++ long enough, you know that all C++ functions that should return a complex data structure (anything which is larger than a small structure, like a container, a memory buffer, and so on) will instead accept a reference or a pointer to an object that the caller must provide and that will be “filled in” as return value. This is absolutely awful. If you don’t see it as awful, it’s about time you take a break from C++ and switch to other languages for a while. For instance:
std::vector nodes; cur_node.children(nodes); printf("Number of children: %u
", nodes.size());
The Node::children() function, in any other language, would have returned a vector of Nodes. But idiomatic C++ says that you should not impose the overhead of doing an additional copy of the vector onto your user, and thus ask him to pass you the container to fill. This is really unreadable because it breaks the common syntax of functions by intermixing return values to arguments. Moreover, it imposes additional troubles to the API; eg: what happens if you call Node::children() with a non-empty vector? Will the function just append its data to the vector? Or would it clear it at the beginning?
Now, think of a world where std::vector is a COW data structure. All these problems suddenly disappear because returning the vector would not cause a copy anymore. Bam, problem solved! And when you have a clear API, where return values really are return values, you get all the benefits from it:
printf("Number of children: %u
", cur_node.children().size());
Three lines merged into one. No more temporary named variable. And if Node happens to internally store its children as a vector, this code is even faster than the non-COW version, because there is no copy performed at all: you get the same speed as if children() returned a reference to the internal vector, even though it does not.
COWs to the rescue
Other advantages of COW data structures:
You can nest COW data structures without overhead. Think of vector<vector<int>>. Without COW, whenever the outer data structure resizes, the inner data structures will all be reallocated and copied. With COW, there is no copy at all: the internal data structures are basically moved over in constant time. You can stop abusing const references everywhere. In C++, most functions will receive arguments by const references instead of simple values. Again, this is to save the overhead of a copy, and again this is almost useless with COW data structures. Const references are also nasty because they represent a first leak of const-correctness in your code (I also hate the whole const-correctness in C++, but this is for another day; if you like it, you can still make your functions accept const values if you feel too).
Norwegian COWs
Nokia’s Qt has designed all objects and data structures with COW. They even made them reentrant (for multithreading purposes) by using atomic reference counting through native CPU instructions. Finally, they expose the guts of COW through a simple QSharedData template that you can use to reimplement your own COW objects.
I could not agree with Qt’s designers more.
This is another example of how COW can positively influence API design:
QByteArray fileHash(QString fn) { QFile f(fn); QCryptographicHash h(QCryptographicHash::Sha1); while (!f.atEnd()) h.addData(f.read(16*1024)); return h.result(); }
See how I can simply pass the buffer returned by QFile::read() to addData() without having to worry about memory copying.
Counting COWs
So, the next time you design an API which asks for a return value among the arguments, think of a C++ world where COW is everywhere. And dream on.A simple quote that sums up this wonderful couples love. Wendy and Nate are so perfect for each other. Who will cross the ends of the earth, just to be in each other’s arms.
^How beautiful is that? Wendy & Nate’s Maryland wedding is chock full of personal touches (Lord of the Rings quotes in the ceremony, a bride in chucks!) that made their love shine throughout their wedding day. I think the photographer summed it up the best though — ” This couple sure showed us that, as traditional as weddings can be, making it your own is what makes it perfect. ” Boom. Exactly. Traditional or nontraditional, it doesn’t really matter as long as you make it your own.
Wendy & Nathan’s Personalized, Geek Influence, Waterfront Maryland Wedding
Vendors:
Photography: The Messenger Image | Venue: Private Residence | Florist: My Flower Box | Cake: Catering By Uptown | DJ: Event Entertainment – Dave | b: Lisa, 1612 | Bride’s Dress: Bridal Boutique | Groomsmen Attire: Men’s Warehouse | Submitted via Two Bright Lights
My triple star jewelry (1 on the necklace, and one in each ear) was part of the “something old” since I’ve had that necklace (and it’s been a favorite) since I was 16; also, one of my sorority’s (Kappa Delta) symbols are 3 stars. I was wearing a bracelet from Nate (new-ish), a bracelet from my dad (new), and a bracelet from my best friend (old family heirloom, also my “borrowed” item). My “something blue” were my powder blue Chucks.
The details are where it gets fun! The bride and groom both wore Chucks (as did all the groomsmen), because who doesn’t love Chucks? Also because heels are incredibly uncomfortable.
Nate’s cuff links (my wedding present to Nate) were the Hyrulian Shield from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time because we both love gaming and it’s a shared favorite of ours.
We chose the venue based on how easy they made the planning process. Since Celebrations had lots of experience and preferred vendors (and had the most beautiful view), we decided to use them. The colors that we chose (blue, gold, and silver) were based on what would look best on the girls and with the light blue/grey background of the waterfront venue.
Click inside for the rest of Wendy & Nathan’s Personalized, Waterfront Maryland wedding!
One of my best friends from high school wrote our wedding ceremony that was chalk full of nerdy references from Lord of the Rings to Princess Bride. We wrote our own vows which also included some subtle references to some of our favorite shows (Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Game of Thrones). My dad was the one to legally marry us and sign our marriage license (which we had done just prior to the ceremony so that the events of the day could unfold without interruption).
I was extra excited for the reception because I hadn’t seen all of those friends in 4 years since I moved here from Indiana, and it would be Nate’s first chance to meet them. We let everyone know that this was going to be a rowdy celebration, and they all lived up to the task! Basically, we wanted the whole day to be the biggest and best party that we’d ever throw. And we definitely got our wish.
Our panda cake toppers were made by a friend for us; we chose pandas because that is our nickname for each other. That story started very silly. We love South Park and there’s an episode with “Sexual Harassment Panda” where he says “That makes me a saaaad panda!” So we used to say that all the time and then it slowly morphed into other emotions too until we just kept calling each other panda all the time. (Example: when Nate would text me to say that he was coming over the next day, I’d text back “You just made me the happiest panda in all of panda-town!”)
The DJ list was full of our favorite songs, inside jokes, and lots of dance tunes. I walked down the aisle to “Bridge Over Troubled Water” because I think it’s one of the sweetest and most romantic songs. Our first dance was to “Steady as We Go” by Dave Matthews Band because it very nicely sums up our relationship; and because we once slow danced to it in my living room while packing up my tiny apartment to go live in our new home together.
Congratulations Wendy & Nathan! Thank you for sharing your personalized Maryland wedding with us. A special thanks again to the Messenger Image for sharing their images with us!
[icon size=”small”]ERBIL, Kurdistan Region— Discussing the ongoing Mosul offensive against ISIS at a panel organized by Rudaw Research Center on Wednesday a group of military experts and analysts stressed that once the radical group has been routed from the area new solutions must be found to prevent the rise of similar groups in the future.
Mala Bakhtyar, a senior leader in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said in his opening remarks of the panel, that if the Iraqi government and international powers continue their policies of the last century groups like ISIS will continue to rise and Iraq will have to deal with more failures for years to come.
“Terrorism will resurface if democracy is not embraced in the region,” Mala Bakhtyar said. “If human rights, individual liberties, and women’s rights are not ensured, and accommodated we should not expect any miracle from the liberation of Mosul or defeat of a group like ISIS.”
Mala Bakhtayr said that the former colonial powers drew borders in the Middle East based on their own political and economic interests alone and ignored the ambitions and concerns of local communities.
He warned that “if after all these troubles they will once again try to solve everything by the policy of oil wells and listen only to governments in the region, then we will see again and again what we have been suffering from for a century.”
Jabar Yawar, chief of staff of the Kurdish Peshmerga ministry added his voice to concerns over the future of Mosul after ISIS, saying that the city’s stability is crucial for the Kurdistan Region and that’s why the Kurdish forces are playing a direct role alongside Iraqi troops in the operation to drive ISIS from Mosul.
Yawar said that Kurdish Peshmerga forces were in the battle only to liberate Kurdish areas in the Nineveh plains 40 percent of which has been freed so far.
“The importance of this Mosul operation is that it puts an end to the idea of the so-called Islamic State,” Yawar said, adding that Erbil and Baghdad had an agreement to oversee the situation in Mosul after liberation through a joint commission.
He maintained that one solution for Mosul was “to create a professional national army without any sectarian or ethnic basis or quota,”
Babakir Zebari, former chief of staff of the Iraqi army joined the panelists by saying that “the fall of Mosul means the end of the Islamic State,”
“Mosul is where the group declared its caliphate and its where it will end,” he said.
Zebari said that the grievances of the people of Mosul have to be addressed by the Iraqi government in the future “as it is where troubles started when the army suppressed the voice and concerns of Mosul people through crackdowns.”Where were you? How did you feel when you first learned that David Blunkett had changed his mind about ID cards? Did you fear the former Home Secretary had been the victim of some bleeding-heart liberal identity theft? Perhaps you found "more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance"?
Mr B knows a turning tide. Where once he spoke of "widespread support for an ID cards scheme", he now acknowledges that "people do worry" and I say - good for him.
My "worries" lie in the huge threats to privacy, race relations and liberty more generally, posed by this grandiose ambition. Databases are a fact of modern life, but being specific about purpose is vital to protecting privacy. There is no need for GPs to see my tax information, immigration officers to see my shopping habits and so on.
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As the "national identity register" had been justified in such fickle ways (immigration control, benefit fraud, terrorism, etc.), the amount of information on it and access to it, would inevitably escalate over time. Despite biometric passports for international travel, the repeated use of an immigration justification for ID cards provided a clear indication that border control would move to our city streets and ethnic minorities in particular, would be hassled for their "papers". Then the small matter of the multi-billion pound cost of the project. In the boom years it seemed extravagant for something that wasn't going to cure cancer or conquer Al-Qua'ida. In the current climate the figures seem positively obscene.
In fairness to the one-time Godfather of this multi-billion pound folly, old instincts die hard. A closer inspection of Blunkett's remarks reveals that, in addition to the uncontroversial suggestion that Government should concentrate on making passports more secure, he would like people to be required to have them, whether jet-setting or not!
So, even under his partial retreat package, at a time when many are worrying about food and fuel bills, Britain would be subject to a new regressive tax and internal passport requirement. As the British Airline Pilots Association said when airside workers were chosen as guinea pigs for the compulsory scheme : "This is nothing but coercion. Promises that ID cards would be voluntary have been broken... This is both unacceptable and demeaning and we will resist."
In recent months and years I have watched the people of an old but still resilient democracy slowly waking up to the importance, not just of their personal privacy but their other fundamental human rights and freedoms as well. When intrusive surveillance is used to police school catchment areas, mild-mannered MPs are raided and peaceful protesters are subjected to arrest or much worse, few now believe that the innocent have "nothing to fear".
Maybe people are just tired of all the preachy politicians who constantly wag an authoritarian fore-finger at the people whilst the other hand rummages around the till.
So let's nail down the coffin of the grand ID folly, tighten up surveillance powers and remove innocents from the DNA database. Let's also remember that there is no privacy protection in Magna Carta or other "ancient" texts. Better to go looking in the much-maligned Human Rights Act.
The writer is director of Liberty
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent |
come and go every five minutes, two years on we are still here.
SHD birthday promotions have quite a few highlights, including free invites to all existing members along with the removal of the minimum download requirement. There are several ongoing competitions through which you can win free bonus credits and global free leech has been activated until midnight today (24th). More details on thee below:
Forum Activity Weekend - All this weekend (22nd-24th) we will be awarding 1000 credits for every forum post you make. In addition all new threads you start will gain a whopping 5000 credits. Also there will be several mini competitions all through the weekend, and an IRC scavenger hunt at around 17:00 GMT on Sunday. Keep checking the forums for more details. Invites for all - As a birthday gift, everyone will have received at least two invites so you can invite friends and family. But the catch. You only have a limited time to use them. These timed invites will expire in 14 days so if you don't use them before then you will lose them, so please keep that in mind. Global Freeleech - We are going sidewide Freeleech starting now until midnight Sunday 24th (GMT). So get downloading all those things you've had bookmarked for ages but never got around to grabbing. Site Rule Changes - We are removing the minimum 3GB download requirement (which we haven't really enforced for a while anyway). But we are a community and still expect all members to be active in one way or another. Be it downloading, uploading or just posting in the forum, some form of activity is required each month, otherwise your account will be at risk. Logging in will not be considered actively using the account; you've still got to do something with it. New Staff Members - We are pleased to announce three new members of the Staff team. K73SK and Ingall join us as new Moderators, and Fuzzypants is our new Torrent Mod. They are here to help and are giving up some of their free time so please treat them with respect.
For those of you who are hearing about SHD for the first time, it’s a gazelle based tracker that specializes in Science Fiction TV shows and documentaries. To know additional information about this site including features, screenshots, category details, rules, etc please refer to our previous reviews located here and here. If you are not yet a member, online invite applications are open and you can apply for an invite using the links below:
Site Name: ScienceHD (http://sciencehd.me) Invite Application URL: http://sciencehd.me/applications.php Twitter Feed: http://twitter.com/sciencehd Statistics: ~1875 users and ~7200 torrents which covers episodes/documentaries from 1900+ series
Related ArticlesShane Hmiel, who was told he would never breathe again on his own, let alone move his fingers or his toes, has regained feeling in his right hand. He uses it to navigate his wheelchair. (Photo11: Lisa Hmiel) Story Highlights Shane Hmiel will participate in the Race to the Rock Saturday at Rockingham Speedway
The former NASCAR and USAC driver was paralyzed following a crash on Oct. 9, 2010
Hmiel is partnering with Accessible Racing, which modifies racecars for disabled individuals
In some ways, when Shane Hmiel enters the car Saturday at Rockingham Speedway, it will be the most natural thing in the world.
Except for the fact that it was never supposed to happen, or so Hmiel and his family thought.
Hmiel was an up-and-coming NASCAR driver, making a name for himself in the Nationwide Series — then known as the Busch Series — when he was suspended for failing a drug test for the first time in 2003. He failed two more drug tests in the next three years, the last one coming in February of 2006, prompting NASCAR to ban him for life.
But it was not the drugs or the suspensions or the permanent NASCAR ban that changed Hmiel's life forever. It was the crash in Terre Haute, Ind., on Oct. 9, 2010, that nearly killed him.
Hmiel was attempting to qualify for a United States Auto Club Silver Crown race when his car slammed into the outside wall and rolled over several times, damaging the protective roll cage. He was paralyzed with severe head and spinal injuries, and doctors initially told Hmiel and his family that he had a 10 percent chance to live and that he would never walk or breathe on his own again.
Now, a little more than two years later, Hmiel, 32, will once again be behind the wheel of a racecar, when he participates in the Race to the Rock, an event hosted by Accessible Racing, which provides a therapeutic driving experience that helps disabled individuals rediscover their capabilities.
"This whole thing is pretty incredible," Hmiel says. "I didn't seek this out, but I'm so thankful to Accessible Racing for this honor. They have done and continue to do great things for the physically disabled."
The event is an unexpected gift for Hmiel, the combined efforts of Accessible Racing co-founder and President Brian Hanaford and Shane's mother Lisa Hmiel.
"My mom is amazing," Hmiel says. "This event was actually her idea and she worked so hard to make it happen."
Hanaford and Lisa Hmiel worked together with Rockingham Speedway president Andy Hillenburg to not only provide an opportunity for Hmiel to race again but for two wounded military veterans to join him through the Racing4Vets organization.
Scout Sniper Jessie Fletcher and Lance Corporal Cody Evans, both retired Marine Corps veterans from Walter Reed Hospital who lost their legs in IED explosions, will join Hmiel on the track to drive an adapted Grand Am stock car in the Race to the Rock.
"Seeing the look on other disabled people's faces when they get in the racecar is the most rewarding feeling," says Hanaford, a former track athlete who suffered from a traumatic brain injury himself in a car accident. "The idea to modify a racecar for wounded vets came to me after 9-11, and it took years for the financing and modifications to come together, but we've been able to impact so many people and really change people's lives."
Shane Hmiel smiles after winning the pole for the NASCAR Busch Series O'Reilly 300 at Texas Motor Speedway, on April 14, 2005. (Photo11: LM Otero, AP)
Providing inspiration and hope for disabled veterans was a big draw for Hmiel, who says the military personnel are far more courageous than he could ever be. Hmiel, who remains deeply involved in racing as the co-owner of a USAC midget team with former series champion Levi Jones, says he got a second chance and wants to use it to give back and show other disabled people that they too can overcome their challenges.
Hmiel's own challenges were enormous. Following his accident, Hmiel spent nearly 40 days in a coma, most of which was medically induced. He experienced multisystem failure, including respiratory failure. He developed further complications after surgery and at one point his parents were told he was minutes from death.
Hmiel has no memories of the crash or of the previous few days preceding it. His first memory following the crash is of flying to Shepherd Center, a spinal cord and brain rehabilitation facility in Atlanta, with his mother in mid-November 2010. Hmiel remained there until April 2011 before finally returning home.
Hmiel lives with his girlfriend of five years and his parents in North Carolina. He travels 75-minutes each way five days a week for physical therapy sessions at Race to Walk in Mooresville, N.C. He spends the other two days — and roughly six hours a week — in hand therapy 15 minutes from his home. He has regained the use of his right hand, which he uses to power his electronic wheel chair and a customized $15,000 stationary bike.
He will use that same hand to navigate and control the racecar at Rockingham, both on the oval course and the road course. All three participants will have co-drivers who can step in and take over at any time. Hmiel will drive with former NASCAR Busch North Series champion "Dynamite" Dave Dion; former NASCAR analyst and Nationwide Series driver Randy LaJoie is partnering with one of the veterans.
"We had such a great response from so many people in the racing community," Hanaford says. LaJoie, whose Joie of Seating company makes custom race car seats with an emphasis on comfort and safety, "even provided the seat for the car."
Hmiel is excited and grateful for the opportunity to do something no one ever believed he would do again.
"I have had a lot of people in my corner pulling for me since I got injured — my family, my girlfriend, my friends — and I want to make them proud. Oh, and I don't want to finish last," he says, still a racecar driver at heart.
Follow Ellen Horrow on Twitter @EllenJHorrowIssue 3 marks the end of the first half of the story, and I’m finding it necessary to re-read the earlier issues each time my shop surprised me with a new installment. My familiarity with the early issues should be quite impressive when the series concludes.
We meet several new characters this issue, contributing to the feel of a messy universe. But this issue also puts aside the storylines with the Corinthian and the other characters we’ve glimpsed–at least in any obvious way. In issue 3, Gaiman concentrates on Morpheus’s quest through historical anecdotes and tropes of power. The art, if anything, is even more lush and beautiful.
But even in a chapter that has a great deal of exposition, as this one does, the story continues to be hold my attention. Readers have been curious about the history of the Endless for years, and Neil Gaiman has wisely not told us very much. Even now, unsurprisingly, we’re getting a lot of poetic, cosmic clues. Although this issue is easily worth it for Alianora’s story alone, a tale that’s one of a couple of moments of intimacy in a grand tale.USA Onions teams with Boise State football for grilling extravaganza
by Kathleen Thomas Gaspar | July 05, 2013
Following the precedence set by its 2012 onion grilling campaign, USA Onions/Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee is launching an all-new program this football season in conjunction with Boise State Bronco Football home games.
As part of the tailgate-themed promotion, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter will compete at the grill against a surprise "opponent" during the Broncos' match up with University of Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles at Boise State on Sept. 28.
The highly publicized game, which will be aired on ABC or ESPN, is expected to fill Bronco Stadium, as will other games during the promotional period.
According to IEOOC Marketing Director Sherise Jones, the "USA Onion Grill-Off" series will include a number of high-profile participants such as well-known chefs, sports figures and other big-name personalities.
"We anticipate it to be a really super-charged fun, friendly and high-energy food experience that football fans and grillers alike won't want to miss," Jones said in early July.
The tailgate competition series kicks off Sept. 7 during the Boise State Broncos vs. the University of Tennessee-Martin Skyhawks game, which will be televised on ABC or ESPN. The schedule takes in games against the Air Force Academy Falcons on Sept. 13, University of Nevada Wolf Pack on Oct. 19, University of Wyoming Cowboys on Nov. 11 and University of New Mexico Lobos on Nov. 30.
"The series is part of the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee's ongoing promotion efforts to encourage consumers to include grilling and USA Onions as part of their in-home or foodservice dining," Jones said. "Our series includes six separate grilling events, each held over the course of a three-hour period prior to all Boise State University football home games. And the series is considered to be a key component of the tailgate atmosphere for Boise State's football season, designed to build local awareness and national branding for USA Onions."
She said each separate grilling competition will match up two contestants and may include up to three additional team members per contestant. The competitors will be asked to create a grilling or tailgate recipe incorporating USA Onions and other local products. A variety of local products will be selected for each competition, giving the competitors the opportunity to develop recipes in advance.
The locally produced items will be chosen specifically to complement USA Onions and to encourage unique and creative recipe development.
"Competitors at each will grill and present their creations to three pre-selected judges, and a winner will be chosen just prior to the kick-off." Jones said.
Prizes for winners include custom Weber charcoal grills, as well as national recognition for being among the 2013 USA Onion Grill-Off winners.
"We hope to build sponsorship for the series and are working closely with various media outlets to build national notoriety for this new grilling competition," Jones said. "We have potential exposure of the competition series through commentary pieces on each of the six nationally televised games."VANCOUVER — If there was any doubt Steven Stamkos has his sights set on playing for Canada at next month's Olympics in Sochi, Russia, the Lightning's injured center put that to rest.
The Olympics "is something that's a goal of mine," Stamkos said Wednesday. "I'm going to do everything I can to be ready."
But before that, said Stamkos, out since Nov. 11 with a broken right tibia, "I want to come back and play for the Lightning. … It's nice to have that goal to motivate you and push you through some of the tougher days."
Stamkos, 23, said he still has minor pain and swelling, but that was to be expected. He said skating in a straight line is no problem. The next step is strengthening the leg so it can withstand turning and twisting.
Stamkos, who is traveling with the team on this trip and skating on his own, said his shot "feels great."
"Obviously, one-timers and stuff, you are a little hesitant, you maybe are letting that leg come off the ground a little bit," he said. "It's not about pushing it at this stage. It's just trying to get strong and get that skating motion back and feeling the least amount of pain as possible when I'm doing that stuff."
Stamkos said he has no timetable for a return: "I'm still a ways away, but you can definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel."
BISHOP SNUBBED for olympics: G Ben Bishop was left off the U.S. Olympic team even though his stats — 20-5-3 entering Wednesday with a 1.89 goals-against average, a.935 save percentage and three shutouts — were better than those of the goalies named: Los Angeles' Jonathan Quick, Buffalo's Ryan Miller and Detroit's Jimmy Howard.
A story by espn.com's Scott Burnside, who had access to the decision process, wrote that the red flags about Bishop were his lack of playoff experience and that he lost his starting job at last year's world championship to John Gibson, 20.
It was clear, Burnside wrote, Bishop "does not have the confidence" of the selection committee. That would seem to contradict what U.S. and Panthers GM Dave Poile told the Tampa Bay Times in November: "Especially for goalies, we need guys who are playing well this year. Certainly that favors somebody like Ben with how he's playing."
For more, go to tampabay.com/blogs/lightning.
SALO WATCHES: Sami Salo admitted Wednesday's game against the Canucks was one "marked in the calendar."
But the defenseman, who played nine seasons for the Canucks before signing with Tampa Bay in July 2012, missed his first chance to play against his former team because of an upper-body injury.
"For sure," Salo said when asked if he was disappointed. "I have a lot of good memories. It's a special place. I wanted to play, but it's not going to happen."
Coach Jon Cooper said Salo could play either Friday at Calgary or Sunday at Edmonton.
MORE CONNECTIONS: Cooper, who grew up in Prince George, British Columbia, said he had two suites full of family and friends at the game. … Assistant coach Rick Bowness, an assistant with the Canucks from 2006-13, faced his former team for the first time. … D Eric Brewer, from Vernon, British Columbia, said about 20 family and friends attended.
ODDS AND ENDS: RW Nikita Kucherov changed his number to 86 from 56. He wore 86 at AHL Syracuse and in his native Russia. … Tampa Bay played with 11 forwards and seven defensemen. … Forwards Tom Pyatt and B.J. Crombeen were scratched.In some ways path tracing is one of the simplest and most intuitive ways to do ray tracing.
Imagine you want to simulate how the photons from one or more light sources bounce around a scene before reaching a camera. Each time a photon hits a surface, we choose a new randomly reflected direction and continue, adjusting the intensity according to how likely the chosen reflection is. Though this approach works, only a very tiny fraction of paths would terminate at the camera.
So instead, we might start from the camera and trace the ray from here and until we hit a light source. And, if the light source is large and slowly varying (for instance when using Image Based Lighting), this may provide good results.
But if the light source is small, e.g. like the sun, we have the same problem: the chance that we hit a light source using a path of random reflections is very low, and our image will be very noisy and slowly converging. There are ways around this: one way is to trace rays starting from both the camera and the lights, and connect them (bidirectional path tracing), another is to test for possible direct lighting at each surface intersection (this is sometimes called ‘next event estimation’).
Even though the concept of path tracing might be simple, introductions to path tracing often get very mathematical. This blog post is an attempt to introduce path tracing as an operational tool without going through too many formal definitions. The examples are built around Fragmentarium (and thus GLSL) snippets, but the discussion should be quite general.
Let us start by considering how light behaves when hitting a very simple material: a perfect diffuse material.
Diffuse reflections
A Lambertian material is an ideal diffuse material, which has the same radiance when viewed from any angle.
Imagine that a Lambertian surface is hit by a light source. Consider the image above, showing some photons hitting a patch of a surface. By pure geometrical reasoning, we can see that the amount of light that hits this patch of the surface will be proportional to the cosine of the angle between the surface normal and the light ray:
\(
cos(\theta)=\vec{n} \cdot \vec{l}
\)
By definition of a Lambertian material this amount of incoming light will then be reflected with the same probability in all directions.
Now, to find the total light intensity in a given (outgoing) direction, we need to integrate over all possible incoming directions in the hemisphere:
\(
L_{out}(\vec\omega_o) = \int K*L_{in}(\vec\omega_i)cos(\theta)d\vec\omega_i
\)
where K is a constant that determines how much of the incoming light is absorbed in the material, and how much is reflected. Notice, that there must be an upper bound to the value of K – too high a value would mean we emitted more light than we received. This is referred to as the ‘conservation of energy’ constraint, which puts the following bound on K:
\(
\int Kcos(\theta)d\vec\omega_i \leq 1
\)
Since K is a constant, this integral is easy to solve (see e.g. equation 30 here):
\(
K \leq 1/\pi
\)
Instead of using the constant K, when talking about a diffuse materials reflectivity, it is common to use the Albedo, defined as \( Albedo = K\pi \). The Albedo is thus always between 0 and 1 for a physical diffuse materials. Using the Albedo definition, we have:
\(
L_{out}(\vec\omega_o) = \int (Albedo/\pi)*L_{in}(\vec\omega_i)cos(\theta)d\vec\omega_i
\)
The above is the Rendering Equation for a diffuse material. It describes how light scatters at a single point. Our diffuse material is a special case of the more general formula:
\(
L_{out}(\vec\omega_o) = \int BRDF(\vec\omega_i,\vec\omega_o)*L_{in}(\vec\omega_i)cos(\theta)d\vec\omega_i
\)
Where the BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function) is a function that describes the reflection properties of the given material: i.e. do we have a shiny, metallic surface or a diffuse material.
Completely diffuse material (click for large version)
How to solve the rendering equation
An integral is a continuous quantity, which we must turn into something discrete before we can handle it on the computer.
To evaluate the integral, we will use Monte Carlo sampling, which is a very simple: to provide an estimate for an integral, we will take a number of samples and use the average values of these samples multiplied by the integration interval length.
\(
\int_a^b f(x)dx \approx \frac{b-a}{N}\sum _{i=1}^N f(X_i)
\)
If we apply this to our diffuse rendering equation above, we get the following discrete summation:
\(\begin{align}L_{out}(\vec\omega_o) &= \int (Albedo/\pi)*L_{in}(\vec\omega_i)cos(\theta)d\vec\omega_i \\& = \frac{2\pi}{N}\sum_{\vec\omega_i} (\frac{Albedo}{\pi}) L_{in}(\vec\omega_i) (\vec{n} \cdot \vec\omega_i) \\& = \frac{2 Albedo}{N}\sum_{\vec\omega_i} L_{in}(\vec\omega_i) (\vec{n} \cdot \vec\omega_i)\end{align}\)
Test render (click for large version)
Building a path tracer (in GLSL)
Now we are able to build a simple path tracer for diffuse materials. All we need to do is to shoot rays starting from the camera, and when a ray hits a surface, we will choose a random direction in the hemisphere defined by the surface normal. We will continue with this until we hit a light source. Each time the ray changes direction, we will modulate the light intensity by the factor found above:
\(
2*Color*Albedo*L_{in}(\vec\omega_i) (\vec{n} \cdot \vec\omega_i)
\)
The idea is to repeat this many times for each pixel, and then average the samples. This is why the sum and the division by N is no longer present in the formula. Also notice, that we have added a (material specific) color. Until now we have assumed that our materials handled all wavelengths the same way, but of course some materials absorb some wavelengths, while reflecting others. We will describe this using a three-component material color, which will modulate the light ray at each surface intersection.
All of this boils down to very few lines of codes:
vec3 color(vec3 from, vec3 dir) { vec3 hit = vec3(0.0); vec3 hitNormal = vec3(0.0); vec3 luminance = vec3(1.0); for (int i=0; i < RayDepth; i++) { if (trace(from,dir,hit,hitNormal)) { dir = getSample(hitNormal); // new direction (towards light) luminance *= getColor()*2.0*Albedo*dot(dir,hitNormal); from = hit + hitNormal*minDist*2.0; // new start point } else { return luminance * getBackground( dir ); } } return vec3(0.0); // Ray never reached a light source }
The getBackground() method simulates the light sources in a given direction (i.e. infinitely far away). As we will see below, this fits nicely together with using Image Based Lighting.
But even when implementing getBackground() as a simple function returning a constant white color, we can get very nice images:
and
The above images were lightened only a constant white dome light, which gives the pure ambient occlusion like renders seen above.
Sampling the hemisphere in GLSL
The code above calls a 'getSample' function to sample the hemisphere.
dir = getSample(hitNormal); // new direction (towards light)
This can be a bit tricky. There is a nice formula for \(cos^n\) sampling of a hemisphere in the GI compendium (equation 36), but you still need to align the hemisphere with the surface normal. And you need to be able to draw uniform random numbers in GLSL, which is not easy.
Below I use the standard approach of putting a seed into a noisy function. The seed should depend on the pixel coordinate and the sample number. Here is some example code:“If the ball goes on the left foot then you just try it,” said a typically relaxed Kevin De Bruyne on Saturday evening. “Sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s the same with the outside, the inside. It helps if you can do different types of things, sometimes you might put spin on it. But I’m not scared to shoot with my left foot, obviously.”
Obviously. The Belgian’s left foot decided this match; his shot from outside the Leicester City area hitting the roof of Kasper Schmeichel’s net at a speed that just did not seem feasible. It was the sort of goal that causes cheeks to puff out in astonishment and increasingly what people are hoping to see when they watch Manchester City play. Yes your team might get a chasing but there will be moments of virtuosity you won’t forget. When De Bruyne was substituted in the 89th minute, he was applauded from all sides of the King Power Stadium.
For a player who increasingly looks like a superstar, De Bruyne hardly acts like one. It’s not like he is modest, but he is grounded, and so matter-of-fact as to be both endearing and just a little disappointing. There’s no Ibra-esque talk of lions and immortality, just a clear-eyed focus on process and practice. That, of course, is the way Pep Guardiola likes it.
“It’s freedom but everybody has their position‚” De Bruyne said of the gameplan. “I know when Kyle [Walker] is going up and Raheem [Sterling] is going inside I have to take care of the winger for the counter. If I am more up then Kyle is going to stay and Raheem is going to be outside. It’s fluidity in the team but knowing what you need to do at the right time.
“We just have to try and see where the spaces are and then take advantage of it. Every game is going to give us something else and probably today was more on the left but I think Raheem came more inside as a result and the first goal he created was very good.”
Manchester City sink Leicester with Kevin de Bruyne super strike Read more
Indeed it was. Sterling made the opener just before half-time with a piece of play that was David Silva-like. Playing a one-two with De Bruyne, the England man then dinked a ball between centre-half and full-back that completely turned the Leicester defence. Breaking beyond that back-line with a Sterling-esque dash was Silva. He cut the ball across goal for Gabriel Jesus, who simply couldn’t miss.
City have the same number of points after 12 games, 34, as Roberto Mancini’s title-winning side of 2011-12. They have a better goal difference, by virtue of conceding fewer goals. But the talk is already of a new bar being set for the league in terms of style of play and questions are being asked as to whether City can now go the entire season unbeaten (for the record, Arsenal’s Invincibles had 30 points at this stage).
The fluidity and systematic understanding throughout Guardiola’s team lends credibility to such talk. As does the fact that City have one of the most expensive squads in the history of the game. The City manager fumed at losing John Stones to a hamstring strain on the half hour. It was an injury he blamed on the defender playing 90 minutes in both of England’s recent friendlies. Guardiola will now look to recruit a new defender in January but, for all of that, the substitute Eliaquim Mangala did a good job of standing in. The Frenchman, making only his second league appearance of the season, cost the club £32m three seasons ago.
Vincent Kompany also made his return to the side, though in his case after injury (sustained on international duty, which again drew Guardiola’s ire). The Belgian was lucky not to be sent off in just the third minute when his tackle brought down Jamie Vardy. Claude Puel felt it was the game’s crucial moment, Kompany felt Stones was providing adequate cover to prevent a goalscoring opportunity. “It was a good run from Vardy. I thought: ‘I’ll just use my joker now,’” Kompany said.
The club captain may not be as vital to his team’s prospects as he once was, but the experience he has accrued in winning two Premier League trophies should prove invaluable over the coming months. Asked whether this team are playing the best football he has seen in his nine years at the club, Kompany said: “Maybe at this moment, but I want to remain on the cautious side, because we don’t have any silverware to show for it. At the moment we haven’t done anything special, we’ve just put ourselves in a good position to go and do something great.”A Festival For Mixed-Race Storytellers — And Everyone Else, Too
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Mixed Remixed Courtesy of Mixed Remixed
A couple weeks ago, about a thousand people gathered at a museum in Los Angeles for Mixed Remixed, a free two-day festival featuring events like a memoir writing workshop, a Loving Day Wine and Cheese reception, a screening of multiracial short films and a panel on biracial hair (moderated by Code Switch's own Karen Grigsby Bates!).
In the past, comedians Key and Peele have performed at the festival; this year, Taye Diggs, Willy Wilkinson and Natashia Deon took the stage. The performers and panelists, along with regular attendees, come together to celebrate the "mixed experience."
As a biracial woman, I was intrigued by this description, but curious to know what exactly it meant. After all, the question of what it means to be racially mixed has been a subject of controversy in this country for hundreds of years, and there's no consensus on what it means to have a mixed experience.
So I called up Heidi Durrow, who founded Mixed Remixed in 2014. We talked about the multiracial "family nod," hugging our white moms, and something she calls "mulatto fatigue." She also told me what the festival is about, why it's important, and who exactly it's for.
Durrow says she started the festival partly out of selfishness. She's Danish and African-American, and her 2011 novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, tells the story of a young Afro-Danish orphan who goes to live with her grandmother in a mostly black neighborhood. While Durrow was shopping the manuscript, a lot of publishers told her there was no demographic for "an Afro-Viking coming-of-age tale."
Eventually, of course, Durrow did find a publisher, and her book became a New York Times best-seller. But she knew lots of other multiracial folks are still struggling to be heard. So she decided to create a space to connect people who wanted to tell — and hear — these stories. The first festival was in 2014, and it's always held at the Japanese American National Museum.
Key and Peele were special guests at last year's Mixed Remixed Festival. YouTube
It's important to note that this festival isn't just for people who consider themselves multiracial. Durrow says it's not about "mixed pride," and one of her biggest discouragements is when people ask if they're allowed at the festival even if they're not mixed-race.
"Our greatest goal is for people to recognize that the mixed experience is very much the American experience," says Durrow. "Mixed-race pride, I think, is a difficulty because I don't want to valorize whatever someone's idea is about that. We don't want to buy into ideas of white privilege or light-skinned privilege. What we want to say is, we really are all part of the same story, and we don't have to be ashamed or invisible or feel lonely in this experience.... The festival is about having a space to say, 'I'm connected to this person who you don't even think I'm connected to.' "
This year's attendees included families of transracial adoption, the children of U.S. immigrants, a man who wanted to better understand the experience of his multiracial partner, folks who live in racially diverse neighborhoods, folks who don't. Durrow says that all of these people are part of the mixed experience.
"I feel like my mom gets to be as mixed as I do," Durrow says. When, say, visiting a black history museum with her white mother, she worries that some might see her mom as an intruder. In those moments, she says, "I always want to wrap my arms around my mom and make sure people know that she's not just'some white lady.' She's connected to me. And that matters."
I was curious to know whether Durrow thinks there was anything about the mixed experience that people who identify as monoracial can't relate to. She tells me a story:
"I go to farmers markets all the time, and there are so many multiracial people at farmers markets. I don't know what the deal is, but mixed-race families seem to love farmers markets. And I'm always trying to look at people and give them the 'nod,' like, you know there's a black people nod? And I imagine that there's a mixed family 'nod.' But apparently the memo has not gone out, because when I see these couples with these kids who look just like me, they're not seeing that I'm the same as them, at all."
Durrow hopes Mixed Remixed is a place where diversity within families can be acknowledged in a positive way. As someone who grew up in a multiracial family, she says, it's still rare to be surrounded by people who understand that aspect of your experience. "We don't have a landscape that we belong in," Durrow says. "So I think that's why the festival is necessary. It gives us at least, for a couple of days, a landscape where we belong."
One consequence of that missing landscape, Durrow says, is that over time, some mixed-race folks end up connecting less and less with their mixed identity. She calls this idea "mulatto fatigue," because "it's really difficult to say all of who you are in a world that insists on single labels. It's exhausting." Even as an advocate of multiracial identity, Durrow says she gets tired of the backlash she gets writing about these issues.
But she says that the real problem is that multiracial people haven't shared a sense of collective consciousness — and the art and scholarship that come with it — as long as other identity groups. "This didn't just start in the 1960s with free love," Durrow says. " 'Mixedness' has been happening from the beginning of this country. I don't think people would grow out of it if they knew there was a space to talk about it."
For a growing number of people, Mixed Remixed is becoming that space. The festival has been around for only three years, but it has grown quite a bit. This year, there were more than twice as many attendees as in 2014.
She wants the organization to eventually be a resource for kids growing up in multiracial families, through mentoring and school programs. Multiracial people are the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S., and products and companies like Cheerios, Honey Maid and Old Navy are capitalizing on the growing visibility of racially mixed families. But, Durrow warns, "We can't just be a marketing demographic. We have to say something, so we have to have more storytellers in the future to tell these stories."
For more information on Mixed Remixed check out their website, and follow @mixedremixed on Twitter for photos from this year's event.A Winnipeg family says the young woman who was shot and killed in the city's north end earlier this week was Jeanenne Fontaine, the cousin of Tina Fontaine, the teen girl whose death became one of the country's best-known cases of murdered Indigenous women.
Jeanenne Fontaine, 29, was found in her home on Tuesday. The mother of three had been shot in the back of the head, according to her family, and the house was on fire.
She was rushed to hospital but died on Wednesday morning, after being taken off life support.
Her mother, Lana Fontaine, said Jeanenne's brother was also home at the time and heard the gunshot, but escaped unharmed.
Jeanenne Fontaine, 29, was a kind, bubbly mother of three, says aunt Rhonda Flett. (Facebook)
Rhonda Flett, Jeanenne's aunt, said her niece was a bright-spirited young woman.
"She was a lively, beautiful Native girl," Flett said. "Everybody wanted to be around her. She was kind. She liked to laugh. She made us laugh."
"She's going to [be] very missed. We're going to miss her a lot. A piece of our family got taken and can't be replaced."
Investigators say the fire was likely set on purpose, and is now under investigation by the city's homicide unit.
The family is pleading for anyone with information to come forward.
Jeanenne Fontaine was found at this home on Aberdeen Avenue on Tuesday. (Travis Golby/CBC)
Candid interview
Flett said her niece moved into the home on Aberdeen Avenue following the death of Flett's other niece, 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, in 2014.
Tina |
less than 10 seconds in the closest finish to date. Young Danish driver Tom Kristensen won the first of his record six Sebring victories.
1954 – The first of many upsets at Sebring’s 12-hour classic. A 1.5 litre OSCA driven by Stirling Moss and Bill Lloyd defeated the powerful Lancia factory team and entries from Ferrari, Maserati and Jaguar.
1956 – The legendary Fangio won the first of two consecutive Sebring races, giving Ferrari its first overall win. And 1956 marked the competition debut of Corvette, scoring the first of 22 class wins for the great American sports car.
1965 – Jim Hall’s Chaparral was star of the show, surviving an incredible rainstorm to win and give Chevrolet its first overall win.
1964 – The Cobra vs. Ferrari war was reaching a peak at Sebring this year. The race featured an amazing field of cars and drivers (take a look at the drivers entered in 1963 and 1964- a truly amazing era when drivers from all disciplines of motorsport competed).
2000 – One of the most underrated Sebring races of all-time. Audi scored its maiden victory, but not after a tough battle with the BMW.
2002 – The 50th Anniversary was a spectacular event both on and off the track! Over 40 former winning drivers and 22 former winning cars attended in a salute to America’s greatest endurance racing tradition.
Honorable mention: How about 2007 and the amazing Flying Lizard Porsche vs. Risi Ferrari finish, or Nissan breaking the Porsche win streak in 1989, or the Cunningham win in 1953, or…. The list goes on and on. There’s something special about every Sebring.
Next Week: The 12 Best 12 Hour CarsIf you’re a fan of Voltron – the giant robot made out of five, smaller robot lions – but you’ve never been able to afford a statue of your hero how would you like the ability to 3D print it?
Yes thanks to Jurica Pranjic, you can download and print your own Defender of the Universe for free off of MyMiniFactory.
This isn’t just a huge lump of plastic either. The files come with the five separate lions which you will need to combine to form Voltron.
As awesome as this is, especially with an update from Pranjic which includes a sword and shield, this is going to be a difficult print. He also adds that this version, with 1.2 millimetre wall thickness, 0.1 millimetre layers and 20% infill consumed about 1.5 kilograms of PLA.
This print also makes us excited for the possibility of a LEGO Ideas Voltron set, which could become a reality in the near future.If you’re hitting the beach to escape the inland heat, you might want to stay clear of a stretch of ocean in Laguna Beach shut down after sewage seeped into the ocean late Sunday, Oct. 22.
The Orange County Health Care Agency’s Environmental Health division sent out a closure notice for an area of Woods Cove from about Center Street to Moss Street in Laguna Beach after about 500 gallons of sewage flowed into the ocean from a blocked city sewage line.
The blockage was the result of tree roots and disposable wipes clogging the city’s line near Pacific Coast Highway. The sewage came up from a manhole and then flowed down the cutter to a storm drain, where it continued out to the beach, said agency spokesman Anthony Martinez.
Martinez said the spill was reported to the city about 6 p.m., and the report was filed with the county agency about 7:30 p.m.
He said the area will be closed for at least three days, opening Wednesday at the earliest.
A sewage spill caused by Ruby’s restaurant off the Balboa Pier has cleared, and that portion of beach has reopened. Down the coast at the San Clemente Pier, there’s an advisory 75 feet up and 75 feet down the coast from the pier due to higher-than-normal bacteria levels.Today's Brady Law might have prevented Hinckley from buying a gun, Simon says. | REUTERS Hinckley home for the holidays
John Hinckley will almost certainly be home for the holidays, which will bring much joy to his 86-year-old mother but not to the U.S. Justice Department.
No matter whether there has been a Democrat in the White House or a Republican, the Justice Department has argued against letting Hinckley out of the mental hospital where he has been incarcerated since 1982.
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His family, lawyers and a number of psychiatrists and psychologists who have treated Hinckley over the years say he has responded successfully to treatment, is no longer a danger to himself and others, and that he should be allowed more and more days outside the hospital.
Hinckley had been allowed 10 days per month to visit his mother in Williamsburg, Va. He is not allowed to make visits in Washington because the president of the United States lives in Washington and the last time Hinckley came across a president, Hinckley shot him. Hinckley is also not allowed to visit his sister in Dallas, because the home of former President George W. Bush is a 10-minute walk away.
Even in Williamsburg, Hinckley is trailed by Secret Service agents, and he must carry a GPS-enabled phone that tracks his whereabouts.
On average, a person convicted of a violent crime in America serves about five years in prison.
Hinckley has served 31 years in St. Elizabeths Hospital, even though he was found not guilty of any crime because a jury decided he was insane at the time he shot Ronald Reagan, press secretary James Brady, D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy.
All lived. The bullets Hinckley used, which were supposed to explode on contact, fortunately did not do so, though Brady suffered a permanent disability.
Last week, a federal judge extended the amount of time Hinckley can spend outside St. Elizabeths to 17 days per month. The seriousness with which Hinckley’s request for added visiting time was treated is indicative of how seriously the government still takes his case: Over a four-month period, lawyers battled for two weeks, and the judge’s decision was an incredible 106 pages long.
As far as I have been able to determine, the ruling was front-page news nowhere, though The Washington Post, which has done extensive reporting on Hinckley over the years, did put it on the front of its Metro section.
The hearing did provide some droll moments. In arguing that Hinckley was not fit to be outside of his mental hospital for a longer period of time, the government said one of his girlfriends at St. Elizabeths was “floridly psychotic.”
To which Hinckley’s lawyer replied: “Who is he going to meet at St. Elizabeths?”
Hinckley’s case contains some valuable lessons:
The insanity defense is very rarely used in America and usually fails when it is used. Hinckley succeeded, but what has it gotten him? More than three decades in a mental hospital may be better than more than three decades in prison, but unlike a prisoner serving a sentence with a maximum number of years, Hinckley, 58, can be locked up in the hospital until he dies.
Before Hinckley shot Reagan, he had been stalking Jimmy Carter. In October, 1980, Hinckley was arrested at Nashville’s Metropolitan Airport for concealing three handguns and 30 rounds of ammunition in his carry-on luggage. He paid a fine of $62.50 and was released from custody.
Four days later, Hinckley, who had undergone psychiatric treatment for depression, went to Dallas, where he bought a gun and six bullets at a pawnshop for $47. Hinckley used this weapon to shoot Ronald Reagan, James Brady and the two law enforcement officers.
Today’s Brady law, which was enacted in 1993 and requires background checks for some gun purchases, is named for James Brady and might have prevented Hinckley from buying that gun.
In 1988, his last full year in office, Reagan endorsed the Brady Bill, even though Reagan was not a fan of gun-control laws. His personal affection for Brady might have had something to do with it, but Reagan also said it was a good idea to see if a potential gun buyer had “a record of any crimes or mental problems, or anything of that kind.”
The National Rifle Association condemned Reagan’s statement.
St. Elizabeths, built in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane, once housed 8,000 patients. As the hospital crumbled from neglect, and as laws and attitudes about mentally ill people changed, the population dropped to its current 300 and a new hospital was built in 2010.
St. Elizabeths no longer needs all of its vast 350 acres, where feral cats still roam, some of which are cared for by Hinckley, who often visits PetSmart on his home visits right after he goes to Wendy’s.
About 176 acres of the property will be used for the new $3.4 billion headquarters complex of the Department of Homeland Security.
It is hoped Hinckley will make a good neighbor.
Roger Simon is POLITICO’s chief political columnist.The new DC Comics supervillain movie certainly brings the crazy with its team of psychopathic ex-convicts, a Dirty Half-Dozen Hannibal Lecters. It also brings the chaos and the surreal disorientation. It’s undoubtedly an advance on that recent uneasy face-off, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But does it bring the funny? Not the way the Marvel movies do it, really: that ingredient of sympathetic humour hasn’t quite worked its way into DC’s mix yet – though I accept that writer-director David Ayer (who made Brad Pitt’s second world war drama Fury, as well as End of Watch and Harsh Times) intended Suicide Squad to be darker, meaner and more violent than that – all of which has earned his film a 15 certificate in the UK.
Suicide Squad: are DC’s motley crew the cure for superhero fatigue? Read more
There’s plenty to like: Suicide Squad is about a secret US government project to release the country’s imprisoned supervillains and, with a tiny remote-control bomb implanted in each of their necks to induce cooperation, train them to fight any threat from other uber-bad guys lurking beneath the narrative horizon. Margot Robbie is entertainingly over the top as the toxic-barbie Harley Quinn, formerly Dr Harleen Quinzel, the improbable prison psychiatrist who dressed in strippergram clothes even before her journey to the dark side. She fell in love with a patient, the Joker, now on the loose and played here by Jared Leto.
Robbie steals the movie from most of her co-stars, but the real scene-stealer is Viola Davis, playing soberly dressed federal apparatchik Amanda Waller: it’s an excellent, coolly menacing performance. (Waller has a duplicitous plan to use the Suicide Squad to cover up another plan.) If only Davis were involved a bit more; if only we could scale down the inevitable FX-driven action finale involving slightly tiring supernatural forces, in order to beef up the dialogue and the chemistry. And maybe lose some of the more incidental appearances from B-list Squadders who are hardly used, and perhaps even cut the franchise-signalling cameos, like the Flash (Ezra Miller).
As things stand, Superman is off the scene; America needs protection, so Waller dreams up a plan to recruit a top team of badder-than-bad guys and put them under the control of special forces hombre Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), who can exert authority over and above that neck-bomb. His girlfriend is archaeologist Dr June Moone, who regularly morphs into an ancient warrior, Enchantress (Cara Delevingne); she can keep the Squad in line, and as Waller has her heart in a special briefcase, she will have to keep Enchantress in line too. The Squad is made up of weapons fetishist Deadshot (Will Smith), fire-breathing hellraiser Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Harley Quinn (Robbie), Aussie tough guy Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and subterranean monster Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).
There is fun to be had as each Squadder’s deplorable backstory is sketched out, and in seeing our mutinous antiheroes submitting with bad grace to some sort of training. Yet no sooner are they together, they find that the Joker has plans to spring Harley from the programme – which gives Harley first-among-equals plot status – and the dark forces they must combat have been somehow called into being by the Squad’s very existence: caused, in fact, by the fraught presence of Enchantress. Clearly, Amanda Waller has a secret she is keeping from them.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bats... Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros
It’s a clotted and delirious film, with flashes of preposterous, operatic silliness. But it doesn’t have much room to breathe; there are some dull bits, and Leto’s Joker suffers in comparison with the late Heath Ledger. I was just settling into what promised to be an enjoyable jail-life montage to the accompaniment of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody – a track featured very heavily in the trailer – when the song was yanked, not even a third of the way through, and we cut to something else. (Another trailer promised us a blast of the Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz. Not forthcoming.) There were some funny touches, mainly from Harley, and from Ike Barinholtz’s corrupt prison guard Griggs. (Held at gunpoint by Deadshot, he announces that should he die, his colleague has his permission to shoot Deadshot and then quickly delete Griggs’s internet browser history.)
Suicide Squad promises madness, and a dense downpour of madness is what it delivers. I could have done with more fun and more lightness of touch.5 Blake Ferguson, debut, Canberra. An enigma on and off the field. No doubting his talent, will need to keep his spirits high if things don't go to plan early, otherwise could be a long night. 6 James Maloney, debut, Sydney Roosters. Mature debutant, so the occasion shouldn't get to him. Needs to kick and defend well. Will be a spot player for Queensland in defence. 7 Mitchell Pearce, 9 Origins, Sydney Roosters. Has dodged the axe unlike most of his halves partners. Reports from camp suggest Pearce has taken on more of a leadership role this series. 8 Paul Gallen (c), 14 Origins, Cronulla. Won't play as many minutes, so his impact will be tested. Will again lead from the front. 9 Robbie Farah, 5 Origins, Wests Tigers. Outstanding series last year. Was tough last series, will need some more in attack.
10 James Tamou, 3 Origins, North Queensland. Big and strong. Needs to make a dent early against Cowboys teammate Matt Scott. 11 Luke Lewis, 11 Origins, Cronulla. The only NSW player to be part of a winning series, when he played all three matches in 2004. Had a shoulder complaint but will be OK. 12 Ryan Hoffman, 5 Origins, Melbourne. Arguably the best hole runner in the competition. Will need to be a calming influence. 13 Greg Bird, 11 Origins, Gold Coast. Expected to play in the unfamiliar role of a middle forward. Could do some damage with his ball skills. Interchange:
14 Anthony Watmough, 9 Origins, Manly. In career-best form. Expected to play in the middle of the field and will add experience to an untested bench. 15 Andrew Fifita, debut, Cronulla. The most in-form NSW player but expected to be used in short bursts. Watch for quick play the ball. 16 Trent Merrin, 4 Origins, St George Illawarra. Needs to use his footwork against a tiring Queensland side. His change of angle could be damaging. 17 Josh Reynolds, debut, Canterbury. A tough niggler who is made for Origin. Will provide plenty of energy.
THE MAROONS
1 Billy Slater, 19 Origins, Melbourne. After starting well, has slowed up for the Storm in recent weeks. Due for a big game. 2 Darius Boyd, 14 Origins, Newcastle. Has trained lightly after an ankle injury. Main job will be to finish and finish well. 3 Greg Inglis, 18 Origins, South Sydney. Will be given a roaming licence at stages during the game, which can only mean trouble for NSW. The more times he touches the ball, the more damage he'll do. Will spend the bulk of the game against Josh Morris. 4 Justin Hodges, 15 Origins, Brisbane. Will reprise his role as the sounding board for abuse from the NSW faithful. Dangerous step and fend. 5 Brent Tate, 18 Origins, North Queensland. Mr Reliable. Will make plenty of metres out of dummy half.
6 Johnathan Thurston, 24 Origins, North Queensland. Record breaker and dream destroyer for NSW. Will utilise his dummy once NSW forwards tire. 7 Cooper Cronk, 9 Origins, Melbourne. Will kick and organise his team to victory. Loves extra attention to set up his outside men. 8 Matt Scott, 11 Origins, North Queensland. Carries strong and attracts plenty of defenders. Need to work him over in defence. 9 Cameron Smith, 27 Origins, Melbourne. The genius behind the magic. The Blues need to somehow cut his time down and not allow him to get his team on the front foot. 10 David Shillington, 7 Origins, Canberra. A mainstay in the Queensland pack. Performed strongly for Canberra.
11 Nate Myles, 20 Origins, Gold Coast. Will start the game in the back-row but likely to switch to the middle of the field at some stage. Can play the full game. 12 Sam Thaiday, 17 Origins, Brisbane. Will again act as Thurston's bodyguard. Important NSW commit him in defence to get a shot at isolating Thurston. 13 Ashley Harrison, 14 Origins, Gold Coast. The workhorse. Will play big minutes and go close to making the most tackles. Interchange: 14 Corey Parker, 8 Origins, Brisbane. Used to playing 80 minutes but will need to bring some energy when he comes on the field. NSW need to watch for Slater sniffing around him for an off-load.
15 Matt Gillett, 3 Origins, Brisbane. Solid in his three appearances last year. Another back-rower on the bench. Loading 16 Ben Te'o, 1 Origin, South Sydney. Will need to put off-field distractions behind him to play. Great leg drive, could make an impact if NSW defence gets lazy. 17 Chris McQueen, debut, South Sydney. Can play wing/centre or in the forwards. A short stint with his pace could be a game changer.I stepped out into the sunlight, scarcely able to believe what I had seen or, rather, what I had not. I stared at the hills around me, contrasting them with the old photos of those same hills I had seen. Where dense forests now grew, forming a high, closed canopy — in the valleys, over the hills and up the mountain walls until they shrank, many thousands of feet above sea level, into a low scrub of pines, which diminished further to a natural treeline — there had been almost nothing. In the photos, taken on the western side of Slovenia during the First World War, the land was almost treeless.
So tall and impressive are the trees now and so thickly do they now cover the hills that when you see the old photos — taken, in ecological terms, such a short time ago — it is almost impossible to believe that you are looking at the same place. I have become so used to seeing the progress of destruction that scanning those images felt like watching a film played backwards.
Tomaž Hartmann had driven for almost an hour along a forest track through Kočevski Rog to bring us here. The woods of beech and silver fir towered over us, in places almost touching across the road. Their roots sprawled over mossy boulders. They rolled down into limestone sinkholes: karstic craters. Karst topography — weathered limestone landscapes of chasms and caves, sinkholes, shafts and pavements — is named after this region of Slovenia, which is sometimes called the Kras or Karst plateau. The word means barren land. When Karst landscapes are grazed, they are rapidly denuded, but it was hard to connect the term with what I now saw.
Where the road clung to the edge of a hill, I could see for many miles across the Dinaric Mountains. The mountains rambled across the former Yugoslavia, fading into ever fainter susurrations of blue. The entire range was furred with forest. Where the road sank into a pass, the darkness closed around us. Through the trunks I could see the air thicken, shade upon shade of green. A few yards from the road, a fox sat watching us. Its copper fur glowed like a cinder in the shadows, which cooled to charcoal in the tips of its ears. It raised its black stockings and loped away into the depths. Woodpeckers swung along the track ahead of us.
The leaves of the beeches glittered in the silver light above our heads. The great firs grazed the sun, straight as lances. They looked as if they had been there forever.
‘All this,’ Tomaž told us, ‘has grown since the 1930s.’
He parked the car and we set off up a forest trail. Mushrooms nosed through the leaf litter beside the path. Saffron milk caps, orange and sickly green, curled up at the edges like Japanese ceramics. Dryad’s saddle, sulphur tuft and cauliflower fungus accreted around rotting stumps. Russulas — scarlet, mauve and gold — brightened the forest floor.
Tomaž led us up a limestone slope towards a stand of virgin forest, the ancient core of the great woods that had regenerated over the past century. As we climbed, we stepped into a ragged fringe of cloud. Sounds were muffled. The trees loomed darkly out of the fog. As we walked, Tomaž spoke about the dynamism of the forest system: how it never reached a point of stasis, but tumbled through a constant cycle of change. He had noticed some major shifts, and knew that, as the climate warmed, there would be plenty more. Though he described himself as both a forester and a conservationist, he had no wish to interrupt this cycle, or to seek to select and freeze a particular phase in the succession from one state to another. He sought only to protect the forests, as far as his job permitted, from destruction.
Ahead of us something dark and compact shot across the path in a blur and disappeared into the undergrowth: probably a young wild boar, Tomaž said. Then, though it was not clear where the transition had occurred, we found ourselves in the primeval core of the forest. The trees we had walked past until then were impressive, but these were built on a different scale. The beeches grew, unbranched — smooth pillars wrapped in elephant skin — for 100 feet until they blossomed, like giant gardenias, into a leafy plateau in the forest canopy. Silver firs pushed past them, the biggest topping out at almost 150 feet high. Only where they had fallen could you appreciate the scale of their trunks.
The forests blotted out memories of what had gone before. Humanity’s loss was nature’s gain
The forest had entered a cycle Tomaž had not seen before, in which many of the giants had perished. Some had died where they stood, and remained upright, reamed with beetle and woodpecker holes, sprouting hoof fungus and razor strop. They looked as if a whisper of wind could blow them down. Others now stretched across the rocks and craters, sometimes blocking our path, sometimes suspended above our heads. Among the trunks lying on the ground, some were so thick that I could scarcely see over them. Where they had fallen, thickets of saplings crowded into the light. Seeing the profusion of fungus and insect life the dead wood harboured, I was reminded of the old ecologists’ aphorism: there is more life in dead trees than there is in living trees. The tidy-minded forestry so many nations practise deprives many species of their habitats.
On a large rotten log that had lost its bark and was now furry with green algae, Tomaž showed us two sets of four white marks: deep parallel scratches where a bear had sharpened its claws. He told us that he had seen plenty of bears in the forest, but never a wolf or a lynx — though they are also abundant here. Just knowing that they were there enriched and electrified every moment he spent in the forest. I felt it too, like a third beat of the heart. The forest seemed to bristle with possibility. Here, to mangle W H Auden, nature’s jungle growths were unabated, her exorbitant monsters unabashed. But this great rewilding, Tomaž explained, had come at a price. It was the accidental result of a series of human tragedies.
Some 150 years ago, just 30 per cent of the Kočevje region was covered by trees; now, 95 per cent of it is forested. Much of the forest was preserved by the princes of Auersperg as hunting estates. So obsessed by hunting were they, as princes often seem to be, that they and the other great lords of the Habsburg monarchy in Slovenia and Croatia drew up an official declaration of friendship with the bear, signed and stamped with their great seals, in which they agreed to sustain its numbers so that they could continue to pursue it. The role the bears played in this negotiation is unrecorded.
The revolutions of 1848 brought feudalism to an end in central Europe. Local farmers lost their rights to graze common land, but acquired their own private plots. At around the same time, imports of cheap wool from New Zealand began undermining the European industry. By the end of the 19th century, many peasant farmers had sold their land and either moved to the cities or emigrated to America. The Depression of the 1930s further extended the woods — to around 50 per cent of Kočevje — as more people departed. But the greatest expansion of the forest took place as a result of what happened in the following decade.
Most of the population of south-western Slovenia — around 33,000 people — was ethnic German. They kept sheep and goats in the hills and ran much of the trade in the towns. Under King Aleksandr’s autocracy in the ten years before the Second World War, the Germans of Yugoslavia, around half a million in total, suffered discrimination and exclusion. In response, many of them joined German nationalist movements, some of which allied themselves to the Nazis. By 1941, when Hitler’s army invaded Yugoslavia, more than 60 per cent of its ethnic Germans had joined an organisation called the Kulturbund, which became absorbed into Himmler’s euphemistically titled Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, or Ethnic Germans’ Welfare Office.
Hitler ceded south-western Slovenia to Italy, and the Nazis forcibly relocated many of the Yugoslav Germans to the Third Reich, to preserve their ‘ethnic purity’ and protect them from attacks by partisans. Some of the Germans of Kočevje were transferred to eastern Slovenia, some removed to other lands under German rule.
So feracious is the vegetation of the Amazon that it would have obliterated all visible traces of the civilisations built by its people within a few years of their dissolution
Almost a million people died in the Yugoslavian civil strife triggered by the Nazi invasion. Some of these great crimes were committed by the Prinz Eugen Division of the SS, among whose members were Yugoslavian ethnic Germans. They massacred Jews, partisans and Communists, as well as people believed to sympathise with them.
After the Axis forces were routed, Tito’s communist government found it convenient to blame ethnic Germans for many of the horrors committed by other people. This was, it seems, easier than facing the truth: that atrocities were committed by Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians, Hungarians, Nazis, communists, monarchists, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Muslims. Almost all the Yugoslavian Germans who did not flee the country with the Axis armies were either expelled by Tito’s government or interned, often in forced labour camps. Some were taken by the Soviet Union’s Red Army to camps in Ukraine. Within a few years of the end of the war in Yugoslavia, Slovenia’s ethnic German population had dropped by some 98 per cent.
Many other collaborators were also killed. The six battalions of the Slovenian Home Guard fled with the retreating German troops to Austria in May 1945. They were forcibly repatriated by the British. Driving with Tomaž through the forests of Kočevski Rog, we had seen beside the road great trunks carved, like totem poles, into the tortured figures of Christian martyrs. They marked the sinkholes beside which some thousands of the collaborators were lined up and machine-gunned. The partisans then used explosives to make the craters collapse, burying the corpses.
The barren lands of Kočevje, whose population had been relocated and dispersed first by the Nazis, then by the Red Army and the communist government, were never recolonised. When the farms were abandoned and the pastures no longer grazed by sheep and goats, the seeds that rained into them from the neighbouring woods were allowed to sprout once more. Thus the land has been repopulated by trees.
Ancient Maya temple ruins in Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico. Photo by Steve McCurry/Magnum
In the Americas — North, Meso and South — the first Europeans to arrive in the 15th and 16th centuries reported dense settlement and large-scale farming. Some of them were simply not believed. Spaniards such as the explorer Francisco de Orellana and the missionary Brother Gaspar de Carvajal, who travelled the length of the Amazon river in 1542, claimed that they had seen walled cities in which many thousands of people lived, raised highways and extensive farming along its banks. When later expeditions visited the river, they found no trace of them, just dense forest to the water’s edge and small scattered bands of hunter-gatherers. Orellana and Carvajal’s reports were dismissed as the ravings of fantasists, seeking to boost commercial interest in the lands they had explored.
It was not until the late 20th century that investigations by archaeologists such as Anna Roosevelt at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Michael Heckenberger at the University of Florida suggested that Orellana and Carvajal’s accounts were probably accurate. In parts of the Americas previously believed to have been scarcely inhabited, Heckenberger and his colleagues found evidence of garden cities surrounded by major earthworks and wooden palisades, built on grids and transected by broad avenues. In some places they unearthed causeways, bridges and canals. The towns were connected to their satellite villages by road networks that were planned and extensive. These were advanced agricultural civilisations, maintaining fish farms as well as arable fields and orchards. As in Slovenia, what appeared to be primordial forest had grown over the traces of a vanished population.
It appears that European diseases such as smallpox, measles, diphtheria, the common cold were brought to the Caribbean coast of South America by explorers and early colonists and then passed down indigenous trade routes into the heart of the continent, where they raged through densely peopled settlements before any Europeans reached them. So feracious is the vegetation of the Amazon that it would have obliterated all visible traces of the civilisations built by its people within a few years of their dissolution. The great várzea (floodplain) forests, whose monstrous trees inspired such wonder among 18th and 19th century expeditions, were probably not the primordial ecosystems the explorers imagined them to be.
The short summers and long cold winters, the ice fairs on the Thames and the deep cold depicted by Pieter Breugel might have been caused partly as a result of the extermination of the Native Americans
Gruesome events — some accidental, others deliberately genocidal — wiped out the great majority of the hemisphere’s people and the rich and remarkable societies that they’d created. In many parts of the Americas, the only humans who remained were — like the survivors in a post-holocaust novel — hunter-gatherers. Some belonged to tribes that had long practised that art, others were forced to re-acquire lost skills as a result of civilisational collapse. Imported disease made cities lethal: only dispersed populations had a chance of avoiding epidemics. Dispersal into small bands of hunter-gatherers made economic complexity impossible. The forests blotted out memories of what had gone before. Humanity’s loss was nature’s gain.
The impacts of the American genocides might have been felt throughout the northern hemisphere. Dennis Bird and Richard Nevle, earth scientists at Stanford University, have speculated that the recovering forests drew so much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere — about 10 parts per million — that they could have helped to trigger the cooling between the 16th and 19th centuries known as the Little Ice Age. The short summers and long cold winters, the ice fairs on the Thames and the deep cold depicted by Pieter Breugel might have been caused partly as a result of the extermination of the Native Americans.
In the Soča valley, in north-western Slovenia, Jernej Stritih, a clever, laconic head of department in the Slovenian government, with a thick beard and a splendid moustache, whom we had befriended in Ljubljana, took us to a restaurant ran by a friend in the front room of his farmhouse. The proprietor owned a small herd of sheep, which were kept for show and to make cheese to sell to tourists. We had seen them on display that morning in the Trenta Fair, massive beasts weighed down by trailing yellow coats. They had won first prize, and now a large gilt cup stood on a table, glimmering in the low brown light, while our host, in a leather waistcoat and bushy side-whiskers, drank and talked with his friends. From time to time he would stop talking and, almost as if he were unaware that he was doing so, bend down to play the dulcimer on the table before him, while the other men continued their conversation.
As we ate, Jernej explained that our host was one of the last shepherds in the region. Because there was no longer any arable production in the valley, the few remaining sheep could stay in the lowlands and were never led into the mountains. Here, by contrast to Kočevje, there had been no mass dispossession of local people. A different social tragedy had been engineered. In the 1950s, he told us, Marshall Tito had banned the goat. The ostensible purpose was to protect the environment, but doubtless he also sought to drag the peasantry out of what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels called its ‘rural idiocy’ and press it into the urban proletariat. (The peasants of eastern Europe had perversely failed to fulfil the Communist Manifesto’s prediction that they would ‘decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry’). Without goats, which browsed back the scrub, the pastures became unsuitable for sheep.
The rewilding of the western side of Slovenia, the rapid regrowth of forests there and the recovery of its populations of bears, wolves, lynx, wild boar, ibex, martens, giant owls and other remarkable creatures, took place at the expense of its human population. This is not to suggest that it continues to generate social tragedy. On the contrary, this region has become a lucrative destination for high-end tourism, which supports what was, when we visited, a buoyant local economy.
The forests and their wildlife, the mountains, repopulated by ibex and chamois, the caves with their endemic species of blind salamander, known to locals as the human fish on account of its smooth pink skin, the rivers with their steady flow and excellent whitewater rafting, the extraordinary beauty of this regenerated land, draw people from the rest of Slovenia and from all over Europe and beyond. Talking to many Slovenians, it became clear that the integrity of the natural environment was now a source of national pride.
None of this, however, is to deny a disquieting truth. Slovenia is just one example of a global phenomenon: most of the rewilding that has taken place on Earth so far has happened as a result of humanitarian disasters.
This is an adapted and reprinted extract from Feral: Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding (Penguin), by George Monbiot. Copyright © George Monbiot, 2013.The Standard Model (SM) of particles and interactions provides a successful description of most of the matter we know of. However, physicists have known for many years that it is not complete: the SM predicted massless neutrinos, and has no place for dark matter. A new result from the BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) could possibly provide another problem for the SM—and would place severe constraints on a popular alternative theory, supersymmetry (SUSY).
As described in a new paper in Physical Review Letters, the BaBar collaboration measured a decay process of the bottom (b) quark, the second-heaviest such particle. This decay process produces leptons, the class of particles including electrons, neutrinos, muons (a common product of cosmic rays), and taus. The latest BaBar results indicate more taus were produced than the SM predicted. However, the results were also inconsistent with the predictions of the simplest form of SUSY. While the uncertainties on these results are still large, they are similar to earlier data from the Belle Collaboration in Japan.
Although SLAC's main accelerator is no longer used for collisions, it can inject electrons and positrons into two storage rings that cross paths at the BaBar detector. The energies of these collisions are tuned to produce B mesons, which contain a bottom quark.
The BaBar experiment was designed for b quark physics. (The name even refers to b quarks and their antiquarks, written as b and pronounced "B-bar.") The current results focused on a particular decay of a b quark into a |
100 people had gathered in Peshawar for the meeting of the ANP, which is part of the Pakistan People's Party-led national coalition government.
Mr Bilour had delivered the keynote speech and was leaving when the attack occurred, Nazir Khan, a local Awami National Party leader, told Associated Press news agency.
"There was smoke and dust all around, and dead and wounded people were lying on the ground," he said.
Mr Bilour, 69, was severely wounded in the chest and stomach and died from his injuries in hospital.
A senior police official told Agence France-Presse that Mr Bilour's secretary and a policeman were among the dead, as well as other ANP officials.
At least 18 people were injured in the blast, hospital and police officials said.Social Security is slipping closer to insolvency
A dire forecast by trustees of Social Security and Medicare adds urgency to calls on Washington to do something soon as baby boomers begin retiring.
"We must take steps to keep these programs whole for the future," Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, the senior trustee, told reporters Monday.
And the Social Security trust fund, which will provide assistance to more than 45 million people in 2012, will be unable under current trends to fulfill its obligations in 2033, three years earlier than projected last year.
Medicare, which will provide health insurance to more than 50 million elderly and disabled Americans this year, is expected to start operating in the red in its largest fund in 2024, according to the annual assessment by the trustees charged with overseeing the programs. That's unchanged from last year.
WASHINGTON — The nation's Social Security and Medicare programs are sliding closer to insolvency, the federal government warned in a new report underscoring the fiscal challenges facing the two mammoth retirement programs as baby boomers begin to retire.
If the Social Security and Medicare funds were exhausted, they would still be able to pay benefits because they would continue to collect tax revenue. But the deficits would likely force major cuts.
The dismal outlook was fueled in part by the sluggish economy, which has slowed growth in payroll taxes that sustain the trust funds, according to the trustees, who include administration Cabinet secretaries and two public representatives.
That sparked a round of calls from around Washington on Monday for a new effort to tackle the entitlement programs. Most immediately, the trust fund that pays for disability benefits for more than 10 million people is projected to run out of money in four years.
"Leaving Medicare and Social Security on auto pilot and allowing them to continue to grow beyond their means is no longer an option," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.
Over the last three decades, Republicans and Democrats have periodically forged compromises that extended the solvency of Medicare and Social Security. At one point in the mid-1990s, Medicare's hospital trust fund was projected to run out of money in four years.
It is unclear whether a similar compromise is possible today. Medicare, in particular, has emerged as a central flash point between the two parties.
Congressional Republicans have twice in the last two years pushed legislation to largely privatize Medicare by giving beneficiaries vouchers to shop for commercial insurance, a plan they say would give seniors more choice and help bring down costs. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, is backing a similar strategy.
Depending on how they are structured, voucher programs — or "premium support," as proponents call them — can shift thousands of dollars of medical bills onto seniors. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has calculated this is the primary way in which such programs would save the government money.
President Obama and his allies on Capitol Hill have largely resisted this approach, looking instead to the new healthcare law to restrain rising costs in Medicare by forcing medical providers to become more efficient.
This strategy has produced mixed results in the past, as elected leaders sometimes retreat from making politically difficult cuts. This week, the Government Accountability Office questioned the Obama administration's decision to roll back planned cuts in payments to commercial insurers that administer popular Medicare Advantage plans.His strength was his humility. His stature was his dignity. He was just over 5 feet in height but was a giant of a man. 1010 WINS senior correspondent Stan Brooks died peacefully at his home on Monday afternoon. He was 86 years and 11 months old. He worked until he was 86 years and 10 months old.
How do you tell the story of the story teller? How do you provide perspective on the man who pioneered the most successful and recognized all-news brand in radio history? How do you compose a symphony that plays the notes of a 60-year love affair between a husband and wife? How do you let go and say goodbye?
For more than 50 years Stan has been telling news stories on 1010 WINS. He was doing it when WINS was still a rock-n-roll station. In fact he’d been doing it for so long, his colleagues often joked that everyone in New York City had been interviewed by Stan at least once. His favorite song lyric came from Neil Young’s “My My, Hey Hey.” He quoted it whenever anyone asked him when he was going to retire: “….Better to Burn Out Than to Fade Away.”
1010 WINS Stan Brooks Retrospecitve
Brooksie, as he was called by just about everyone who knew him, “Was a child of the Bronx, small and shy, 182nd Street and Walton Avenue home ground, played in the streets, stick-ball, hockey (on roller skates), marbles, urban baseball (against the walls) and for a 13th or 14th birthday, was given a fortuitous little printing press out of which was born The Walton Avenue News, the inception of his journalistic career,” according to Eve Berliner, former editor of The Silurian News.
Stan told Berliner that he listened to Uncle Don and the old radio serial shows, his favorite, NBC’s stentorian-voiced Kenneth Banghart. His real interest was in the newspapers that his father would bring home with him each evening: The New York Post, The Journal American, PM, Compass and The Star.
He wrote for his high school newspaper, “The Clinton News” at DeWitt Clinton H.S. It was a general news column entitled “The Gossiper” and later changed to “Babbling Brooks.” He was a blogger before there was a name for it!
He told Berliner that his heroes were Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, the Brooklyn Dodgers and his brother, Alan Brooks, sports editor of The Heights Daily News at NYU, his inspiration who went on to become a doctor.
And then, there was the trombone (add Tommy Dorsey to that list of idols) which now sits on a stand in his bedroom, a gift from his three sons who had it repaired and re-polished. His son George, a virtuoso jazz saxophonist, took up the mantle of music.
According to Berliner, Brooks had been drafted out of City College into the Infantry in 1945 landing him overseas post-World War II as a trombonist in a dance band entertaining the troops in Hawaii! The aspiring trombonist returned to the states, graduated from Syracuse University and became a reporter and editor at Newsday for the next 11 years. In 1962, he landed a job at 1010 WINS. Before ‘You Give Us 22 Minutes, We’ll Give You the World’ became a household slogan, Stan was doing a two minute newscast at the top of the hour, working alongside legendary deejays like Murray the K and Jack Lacey.
Watch the wonderful Michael Stoler interview below to learn more about Stan’s life:
In December 1964, the bosses at Westinghouse (owners of 1010 WINS at the time) asked Stan what he thought about changing the station format from Top 40 to all-news. Stan responded, “All-news? What’s that? That of course became the launch of All News. All The Time and Stan was the station’s first News Director.
In 1967 he was named National Correspondent for Westinghouse Broadcasting. He covered the major stories of our generation and the generation before that: The fight for civil rights; the Watts riots; Chappaquiddick; the Vietnam War demonstrations; the ’68 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; Malcolm X’s funeral; the crash of TWA Flight 800; the attacks on September 11th and innumerable others. He would eventually step down to go back to reporting but he continued to be the heart and soul of the station.
Stan recounts the birth of 1010 WINS: Stan recounts his first time on the air:
On September 9. 1971, Stan covered the Attica Prison uprising when about 1,000 of the Attica prison’s approximately 2,200 inmates rebelled and seized control of the prison, taking 42 staff hostage. During the following four days of negotiations, authorities agreed to 28 of the prisoners’ demands, but would not agree to demands for complete amnesty from criminal prosecution for the prison takeover or for the removal of Attica’s superintendent. By the order of then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller, state police took back control of the prison. When the uprising was over, at least 43 people were dead, including ten correctional officers, civilian employees and 33 inmates. The first voice you hear is that of attorney William Kuntsler. You can hear Stan choking on tear gas as he reports on the state troopers and guards storming the prison yard:Comic book fans and store owners are boycotting DC Comics after the company tapped anti-gay writer Orson Scott Card to pen a portion of an upcoming "Superman" story.
Richard Neal, owner of Zeus Comics in Dallas, refuses to stock any issues of the new installment of "Adventures of Superman" because Card is outspokenly anti-gay, the Digital Spy reports.
Neal posted his response to DC Comics' decision on his Facebook page:
Card sits on the board of the National Organization of Marriage which fights against marriage equality. His essays advocate the destruction of my relationship, that I am born of rape or abuse and that I am equated with pedophilia. These themes appear in his fiction as well. It is shocking DC Comics would hire him to write Superman, a character whose ideals represent all of us. If you replaced the word "homosexuals" in his essays with the words "women" or "jews" he would not be hired. But I'm not sure why its still okay to "have an opinion" about gays? This is about equality.
Towleroad notes that San Francisco's Whatever... comic book store is also keeping the "Superman" issue off its shelves.
"Whatever... will not be carrying the Orson Scott Card issues of Superman when they are released in print," reads a message posted to Facebook on Tuesday. "We refuse to give money to someone who will then turn around and use that money to fund more anti-gay hatred."
HuffPost GayVoices previously noted that Card, a Mormon, is an anti-gay advocate who has promoted his ideals about same-sex marriage in writings. He previously was affiliated with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
More than 11,000 people have signed AllOut.org's petition asking for Card to be given the boot, but not everyone approves of a boycott of DC Comics.
NOM President Brian Brown told Fox News he's dismayed gay rights activists are trying to destroy the novelist's career.
“This is completely un-American and it needs to be stopped,” Brown said. “Simply because we stand up for traditional marriage, some people feel like it’s okay to target us for intimidation and punishment.”
Brown, who called the attacks against Card "frightening," doesn't think the author should be condemned for his view on marriage, according to Fox News. “Marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” he said. “That is not hateful. That is not bigoted.”During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.
Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.
Cruise has still made no official response to Going Clear, which was recently nominated for seven Emmy Awards. During the media tour for Rogue Nation, not a single interviewer has asked him a question that in any way deviates from the approved topics regarding the film. At the BFI event, questions were selected from thousands submitted via a Twitter hashtag, #AskMissionImpossible, and carefully curated. On The Tonight Show, Cruise mimed along to The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” and Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” before being tasked by Fallon to take part in an impromptu duet of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” in which the pair serenaded an audience member. On The Daily Show, Stewart simply asked Cruise how many hours a day he should put in at the gym to achieve action-hero level fitness, and expressed his admiration for Cruise’s movies. “Edge of Tomorrow, that’s such a good film,” he said. “I’ve seen that film like 10 times. It’s my son’s favorite.”
Most promotional media tours are tightly regimented—actors typically prefer to discuss their current projects over past works, and dislike being asked personal questions. But the release of Rogue Nation represents the first time Cruise has granted interviews or made public appearances since the premiere of Going Clear at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The allegations about Scientology in the movie are numerous, but the most serious of them charge that the church operates a prison camp of sorts called the Rehabilitation Project Force, keeps blackmail files based on auditing records from its high-profile congregants, and isolates members from their friends and family, often forcing them to “disconnect” from people who disapprove of the Church or leave it. (The organization has repeatedly denied that any of this is true.)President Trump decided to dismiss Stephen K. Bannon, after weeks of White House upheaval and racial unrest. The ousted chief strategist returned to Breitbart News on Aug. 18. (Peter Stevenson,Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
We have learned today that Stephen Bannon, the most prominent nationalist and friend to the alt-right in the White House, is on his way out. The Post reports that President Trump has decided to remove him:
Trump had been under mounting pressure to dispense with Bannon, who many officials view as a political Svengali but who has drawn scorn as a leading internal force encouraging and amplifying the president’s most controversial nationalist impulses. … Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News — a fiery, hard-right news site that has gone to war with the Republican establishment — had been expecting to be cut loose from the White House, people close to him said. One of them explained that Bannon was resigned to that fate and is determined to continue to advocate for Trump’s agenda on the outside.
Coming after the wave of controversy over the events in Charlottesville and Trump’s embrace of the cause of celebrating the confederacy, one might be tempted to view this as some kind of recalibration that could result in a change in the administration’s outlook toward matters of race.
Don’t be fooled.
Republicans will likely seize on Bannon’s ouster to argue that, in his heart, Trump isn’t really a racist. Indeed, in recent days, a number of Republicans have stood up to testify to the president’s inclusive heart. “I know Donald Trump. I don’t think there’s a racist bone in his body,” says Sen. Orrin Hatch. The New York Times tells us that he once dated a model who’s half black. What more proof do you need? (Ask Sally Hemings or Essie Mae Washington-Williams.) Lynne Patton, a longtime Trump family employee, says the president “doesn’t see color the way the average person does.”
Trump himself has said that he is “the least racist person that you have ever met.” I could make a long and detailed case for why Trump is not in fact the least racist person you have ever met.
But this is the wrong question to ask. Not only can’t we know with absolute certainty what lies in Trump’s heart, but it also could not matter less. He’s the president of the United States — what matters isn’t what he feels but what he does and the kind of example he sets.
And by those much more important measures, Trump is the most racially divisive president in our lifetimes — and it’s not even close. From literally the moment he began his presidential campaign in 2015, he has spread racist ideas, made racist arguments, appealed to racist sentiments, enacted racist policies, and encouraged the most repugnant racists in American society to become more vocal and visible.
Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect, got an unexpected interview with White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon on Aug. 15. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Let’s give ourselves a reminder of what President Trump has done just since becoming a candidate, setting aside his history as a private citizen:
In the speech announcing his presidential candidacy, he attacked Mexican immigrants, saying “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
He retweeted a racist graphic showing a dark-skinned man wielding a gun and listing bogus statistics alleging falsely that black people are responsible for the vast majority of homicides of white people. That was in addition to the multiple times he retweeted messages from the Twitter accounts of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Though immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans, he put an intense focus on individual crimes committed by an undocumented person, telling lurid stories meant to inflame as much hatred as possible. After becoming president, he created the Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement office, whose purpose is to publicize crimes committed by immigrants.
He repeatedly characterized African Americans as living in a hellish nightmare that could only be saved by him. “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose?” he said. That statistic, of course, was bogus.
He said that the judge presiding over his trial for fraud in the Trump University lawsuit (for which he eventually agreed to pay $25 million to compensate his victims) couldn’t be impartial, because “He’s a Mexican.” The judge in fact is an American who was born in Indiana; saying “He’s a Mexican” is no more accurate than saying about Trump, “He’s a German.” But the idea that your heritage forever defines your identity and determines whether you qualify as a “real” American is an old racist notion.
He proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States, and even said he’d be open to creating a registry to track all Muslims in the country.
His “America First” slogan was a deliberate echo of the America First party of the early 1940s, which trafficked in anti-Semitism as it attempted to keep America out of World War II.
For almost the entirety of the campaign he continued to hold to the racist conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, the issue that enabled him to transform himself from a reality TV star into a political figure. In addition, he frequently questioned whether Obama could have fairly been admitted to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, demanding to see Obama’s grades to prove that he was actually qualified.
His Justice Department is reportedly planning to seek out cases where it can sue universities for discriminating against white people.
Soon after taking office, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, made clear that the Justice Department would no longer concern itself with investigating police abuse of minority citizens, and has taken steps to pull back from the consent decrees the Obama administration negotiated with local police departments to improve their conduct.
He made the ludicrous claim that he only lost the popular vote because 3 million to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally, then set up a commission to “investigate” the matter, the results of which will be used to further the Republican effort to make it as hard as possible for African Americans and other minorities to register and vote.
On Thursday, he made another reference to a bogus story he told repeatedly on the campaign trail, in which Gen. John Pershing supposedly responded to terrorism by taking 50 Muslim prisoners and summarily executing 49 of them with bullets dipped in pig’s blood, on the theory that this would be particularly offensive to Muslims. So in addition to proclaiming his support for a fictional war crime, Trump is arguing that offending Muslim religious sensibilities is the way to fight terrorism (this from a man who says it’s a deep insult to Christians when a department store puts up a “Happy Holidays” sign).
And of course, not only has he now embraced the cause of monuments celebrating the Confederacy — a rebellion against the United States for the purpose of maintaining slavery — he has explicitly equated its leaders to the founders of the American republic, putting figures like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on the same plane as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Given this extraordinary record, no sane person believes that it’s some kind of accident that all manner of neo-Nazis and white supremacists have felt emboldened by Trump’s campaign, his election victory and his presidency to become more vocal and demonstrative than they ever have before.
Indeed, if you ask them that’s exactly what they’ll tell you. They regularly praise and celebrate President Trump, and say that his words and actions show that they no longer need to hide their ideology of hate. As David Duke said in Charlottesville last weekend, “We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back.”
So Steve Bannon may be gone, but we shouldn’t let that fool us into thinking that the Trump administration has undergone some kind of transformation. We’ll know that something has truly changed if the Justice Department displays a genuine commitment to upholding civil rights, or if the administration dials back on its vote suppression efforts, or if the president himself stops making statements that bring so much joy to the most detestable hatemongers in American society.
That’s how we’ll know that Donald Trump is no racist in the ways that matter. I don’t know about you, but I’m not expecting much.Never have we resembled Pakistan as much as we have begun to in the last few years.
Pakistan’s journey of blatantly mixing sharia-based Islam with politics began way back in the year 1977 when then Army Chief General Zia-ul-Haq first deposed Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in an army coup and imposed martial law in the country. One fine morning after Zia took charge of the country, a lady news anchor appeared on the official Pakistan TV channel with a hijab. She signed off the news bulletin with ‘Allah hafiz‘ instead of customary ‘Khuda hafiz,’ which was till then in vogue among Muslims of the Indian sub-continent as a phrase to say goodbye.
‘Allah hafiz’ was the official signal of the Zia regime announcing the beginning of a hardened Arabised sharia-based Islamic Pakistan instead of the somewhat liberal Muslim country it had been. Since then, till this moment, Pakistani public life has been mired in religion and the polity is being increasingly pushed into the hands of jihadist elements like Hafiz Saeed.
We Indians scoffed at Pakistan orthodoxy and rightly labelled the country as a rogue state as terror and violence became a routine affair. But no one had anticipated that, led by the Sangh parivar, we too would begin the deadly game of mixing politics with religion.
Our own journey in that direction started way back in the early 1990s when the Indian political establishment suddenly faced a massive social crisis after the release of the Mandal Commission report on quotas for the backward classes in government jobs and educational institutions. It was a major blow to the Hindu social establishment and threatened the caste based hierarchy. At this critical stage of social churning within Hindu society, the Sangh stepped in, with L.K. Advani setting out on a ‘rath yatra’ and polarising the country along a mandir-masjid axis. The strategy was simple. The emerging caste divide within the Hindu society was to be diverted with the Hindu-Muslim divide. And, for this purpose, an enemy, an Other, had to be created – that enemy was “the Muslim”, the Babar ki aulaad, who was obstructing the construction of Ram Temple at the site of Babri Masjid.
As we saw, this sharply engineered Hindu-Muslim divide of the early 1990s led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid with massive bloodshed across the country in 1992. The strategy of communal divide lent not just respectability to the BJP but also overnight transformed it into a national political alternative to a somewhat liberal but faltering Congress party that had failed to take on the emerging Mandal challenge.
The socially threatened Hindu establishment suddenly saw possibilities in Hindutva as a bulwark against the caste-based challenge to its position. Language began to change too – first, ‘secularism’ was mocked as ‘pseudo secularism’ and thus discredited, forcing secular forces to go on the defensive. Expressions like Muslim vote bank and Muslim appeasement emerged, feeding a siege mentality among the Hindu majority from an emerging ‘Muslim enemy’. It was a conscious game to create a political Hindutva.
All this was mimicking Pakistan. Zia had painted the members of the Ahmadiya sect as a threat to Pakistani Muslims. In India, these forces began to play the age-old British colonial card of creating a Hindu-Muslim divide. The natural corollary was, therefore, the need of a Hindu saviour to tame the emerging threat.
Initially, this saviour was Advani. But in the months and years to come, a new hardliner Hindu Hriday Samrat was created – Narendra Modi. Once again, taking a leaf out of the Pakistani book of mixing religion with politics, the Sangh created proxies like the Bajrang Dal, Hindu Sena, and Hindu Vahni. What actors like Saeed were to Pakistan, figures like Adityanath became to India. If Saeed was keeping the threat of India alive, Adityanath was doing the same job with his campaigns of gau raksha and love jihad to unite Hindus. These were the new saviours of the majority community with the sole purpose of keeping an imaginary threat alive in the minds of that majority.
Mixing religion with politics is a deadly strategy for a modern and diverse country like ours. It is a spiralling game that could spin out of control. Pakistan began its journey of Islamising politics in 1977 – it is now at the mercy of its jihadist proxies. You never know when proxies become powerful enough to outwit the system and their creators, as we see in Pakistan every now and then.
This is what happened when Modi outsmarted Advani in the race for prime ministership. Who knows one day Adityanath may do the same to Modi – he may dispense even bigger doses of religion into our polity.
We have seen the outcome of mixing religion with politics in our neighbouring country. Our founding fathers in their wisdom had refused to accept Jinnah’s two-nation theory in 1947, which had blatantly used religion to carve out Pakistan. Are we not now taking the same road?Having already released a selection of new titles for the Dreamcast, Hucast Games are back with yet another promising announcement. Following on from their 2014 release of Redux: Dark Matters, the retro developer has just confirmed that the scrolling shooter series is back with an all new sequel for Sega's console.
The newest update on the Hucast Games website firstly revealled that their other project Ghost Blade is back on track, with another Dreamcast developer picking up the unfinished game for a September release. Further down the post, however, were much more enticing additions of Redux 2 concept art and in-development screenshots. Featuring a more defined look than the previous games and all new non-space locations, it would appear that Hucast Games are revamping the series and further pushing the Dreamcast's 2D capabilities.
While a release date for this title is yet to be confirmed, Hucast Games have instead left fans of Sega's swansong with several features to look forward to. Redux 2 is set to build on the series' name with seven different stages of scrolling shooter action, new spacecrafts to choose from, and a selection of new projectiles. Expect to see the title arriving in both standard and collector's editions, both of which at similar prices to prior releases such as Alice's Mom's Rescue and Dux 1.5. More on this new development as and when it arrives.
Link: Hucast Games announce Redux 2 for Sega DreamcastThe Merc with the Mouth will be breaking the fourth wall on TV sometime in 2018.
“Deadpool” will be making some chimi-fuckin’-changas on TV thanks to Donald Glover.
The FX star and his brother Stephen Glover are bringing the wise-cracking superhero to the small screen as a 10-episode animated adult action-comedy on FXX, alongside Marvel Television in association with FX Productions. The announcement of the series order was made by Eric Schrier and Nick Grad, Presidents of Original Programming, FX Networks and FX Productions, and Jeph Loeb, Head of Marvel Television.
Currently, the series is untitled and is scheduled to debut sometime in 2018.
READ MORE: Han Solo Cast Photo: Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover and More Appear in First Image From Standalone ‘Star Wars’ Story
“Donald Glover is an incredibly gifted and versatile artist who’ll bring the untitled Marvel’s ‘Deadpool’ series to life with the same intense, singular vision as his breakout hit ‘Atlanta,’” said Grad in a statement. “With the success of ‘Legion,’ we’re looking forward to again partnering with Marvel Television to create a series that is bold, striking and entirely original.”
Loeb added, “How much more fun could this be? ‘Deadpool,’ Donald and FX – the perfect fit for the Merc with the Mouth! We’re thrilled that our relationship with FX that started with ‘Legion’ continues with what is sure to be a groundbreaking show in adult animation.”
The series marks the second collaboration of FX Productions with Marvel and follows the same pattern of using in-house FX talent to adapt the Marvel property, as “Fargo’s” Noah Hawley did for “Legion” this year.
Deadpool has been a popular antihero character who first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1991. The 2016 movie of the same name was the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, when adjusted for inflation, and earned approximately $783 million worldwide. A sequel has already been ordered for release in Summer 2018.
READ MORE: Donald Glover Signs Major Overall Deal with FX, But ‘Atlanta’ Won’t Be Back Until 2018
The Glovers will act as executive producers, showrunners and writers for the project. Donald Glover is the creator and star of FX’s Golden Globe-winning “Atlanta,” on which his brother is a writer. Loeb and Jim Chory will also executive produce for Marvel. The series is produced by Marvel Television in association with FX Productions and ABC Signature Studios for FXX.
Marvel Comics
Donald Glover has been keeping busy these days. After wrapping an award-winning season of “Atlanta,” the highest-rated comedy in FX history, he’s taking a long hiatus before starting the second season in order to play Lando Calrissian in the upcoming Han Solo “Star Wars” anthology film. He’ll also appear in another Marvel property coming up, “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” which will be released in July. The Untitled Deadpool series is part of the overall deal he has with FX to develop TV shows for its networks and streaming services.
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Elon Musk, the millionaire founder of private space company Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX for short) said the long planned Falcon Heavy vehicle would be ready for liftoff at the end of 2012. The rocket, which he called the most powerful in the world, would be capable of taking men to the International Space Station, dropping vehicles and astronauts on the moon -- and maybe even cruising to Mars and back.
"This is a rocket of truly huge scale," Musk said at a press conference unveiling the rocket. "With Falcon Heavy, we'll be able to put well over 100,000 pounds into orbit," he said, and possibly as much as 120,000 pounds.
"That's more than a fully loaded Boeing 737 -- with passengers and fuel" and even luggage, Musk said.
The Falcon Heavy consists of a standard Falcon 9 rocket with two additional Falcon 9 first-stage rockets acting as liquid strap-on boosters. The upgraded Merlin engines that power the rocket will generate 3.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff -- the equivalent of 15 Boeing 747s, he said.
It is intended primarily to carry satellites and other such payloads into space, though it will meet NASA's requirements for carrying humans as well.
"It can launch people if need be, and do so safely," he said.
NASA spokesman Michael J. Braukus was cautiously optimistic that the ship would help U.S. interests in space, though he declined to comment on whether Falcon Heavy would be useful for human transport.
"The addition of a third [heavy lift] vehicle to the commercial rocket inventory should help bring down launch costs for unmanned missions," Braukus told FoxNews.com.
But for cargo transport, it will clearly have a role: Musk said this version of the spacecraft would have twice the capability of the space shuttle.
The Falcon Heavy will also dramatically surpass the Delta IV Heavy's 25-ton capacity and the yet-to-be-built Atlas 5 Heavy's 32 tons. It will be assembled at California's Vanderburg Air Force Base, but Musk said it would be able to take off from Cape Canaveral as well.
Musk also claimed the Falcon Heavy would cost a third per flight than the Delta IV rocket, and sets a new world record for the cost per pound to orbit of around $1,000. A launch is estimated at $80 million, the company said, while an Atlas 5 costs as much as $100 million more.
We can realistically contemplate a mission to Mars with this craft, Musk said, because the tremendous capacity of the vehicle would allow it to carry enough fuel to return to Earth successfully.
"Falcon Heavy would be capable of launching people as soon as we've proven it out with a few launches," Musk said. "It opens up a wide range of possibilities, such as a mission to the moon or conceivably even Mars," he said.
"First launch from our Cape Canaveral launch complex is planned for late 2013 or 2014,” Musk said.Once again, human feces deliver a smelly shock to rail travelers.
Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station, being the busiest rail hub in the world, produces decisive opinions. Some people hate making their way through its crowded passageways, while others find the hustle and bustle of urban energy exhilarating.
But on October 3, just about everyone agreed that at least one part of Shinjuku Station was an unpleasant place to be, thanks to a line of human feces that stretched for an estimated 30 meters (98 feet) along the floor outside one of the station’s restrooms. Whether the streak was the result of spreading a single turd extra-thin or a composite of multiple plops was indeterminable.
Since most people don’t expect to encounter poo outside the restroom, some travelers were caught unaware.
▼ “Stepped in some poo at Shinjuku Station.”
新宿駅でうんこ踏みました —
毛玉呂 (@k_kedamaro) October 03, 2017
Others, however, managed to avoid soiling their shoes thanks to an olfactory alert.
▼ “Shinjuku Station smells like poo.”
▼ “There’s all this human poo on the ground at Shinjuku Station. It stinks! What the heck is going on here?”
In instances of public pooping, the two usual suspects are young children and drunks. However, the length of the turd line suggests an intestinal capacity beyond that of infants or toddlers, and the timing of the incident (witness reports started showing up on Twitter shortly before 4 in the afternoon) seems too early for an ignominious end to a booze-filled bender. We also can’t entirely rule out the possibility that Tokyo has a serial shitter on its hands, following a similarly stinky incident at Shibuya Station, just three stops down the Yamanote Line from Shinjuku, last May, so we’d recommend watching your step as you make your way around the capital.
Source: News Sokuho Japan via Hachima Kiko
Top image: PakutasoA honey bee (or honeybee) is a eusocial, flying insect within the genus Apis of the bee clade. They are known for construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax, for the large size of their colonies, and for their surplus production and storage of honey, distinguishing their hives as a prized foraging target of many animals, including honey badgers, bears and human hunter-gatherers. In the early 21st century, only seven species of honey bee are recognized, |
permanently mount an AC inverter in the box. With the binding posts, any inverter can be used up to a 30A draw, which is the limit of the box due to the charge controller and the fuse box.
I added an LED wand light that you can see in the next picture that is mounted in the lid of the case so that when it’s open the case itself can light a room, or just light itself. The wand is removable and may be used as a flashlight or work-light.
When charging via solar power, the Solar Charge Controller regulates the voltage and current to the batteries. In this pic, the case is being charged via this CT Solar 32W nylon folding solar panel. You may remember that there are two 12V inlet jacks. If I were to hook up another panel, they would be wired in parallel thanks to how I wired them, thus doubling their current while keeping the voltage the same (assuming the same exposure to the sun). These panels are great because they will produce current on a cloudy day, though they really rock in full sun. I actually have another panel on the way but since I bought them both used on eBay, the second one had not yet arrived when I wrote this article.
The sun isn’t always out, though, and sometimes good old AC mains power is the way to go, and that’s what the Genius charger is for. It takes a good five to six hours to charge the box from AC power, and the Genius G3500 produces 3.5 amps. I’m interested to see how quickly I can charge using the two solar panels because I managed to get 2.5 amps out of just the one in full sun. Of course getting full sun is a challenge even on a clear day because tilting the panels even a couple degrees away from the sun causes the amperage to drop significantly. Could the box be charged by both solar and AC concurrently? Probably, but conflicting charge controllers seems like a bad idea so I’ll probably not risk it.
The Yellow Box of Power was a fun project for me that will be all sorts of useful. Ham Radio Field Days are a natural for a box like this, but the real intent of the box small-time power usage during extended power failures. As I wrote in the beginning of this article, generators are great, but the gas may not last forever.
The only real downsides that I see for this box are the fact that it’s no longer watertight, and that it weighs in excess of fifty pounds which is a bit heavy for my wife and kids, though they could manage it if they had to. Plus, it’s a Pelican box so it would probably survive a fall down the stairs provided it was closed when it fell.
The LED meter and lighted switch both involve parasitic drain which lowers the charging capacity of the panels, but they both consume only 10mA or so. If I find them to be a problem I’ll bypass them. The charge controller also pulls a small amount of current (22mA) for its processor which will slowly drain the batteries over time. If that becomes a problem I could always split the batteries with the quick-disconnect.
I bought most of the parts on eBay, Amazon.com, and Powerwerx.com which has some very cool stuff if you’re into projects like this. The solar panels are fabulous since they fold up and were designed for for serious expeditions. I’ve been very impressed with the panel’s output and would recommend CTSolar if you’re looking for something similar. I may get another Pelican case to hold the panels and various adapters.
I hope you enjoyed the tour of my Yellow Box of Power. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve built something similar! As for me, I’m now in the odd position of hoping for a power failure to show my wife how smart and well-prepared I am.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Former Browns CEO Joe Banner packed up his belongings this week and departed Cleveland for good, feeling like he left the team in great hands and great shape.
He also regrets that he won't get to enjoy the success when it comes.
His tenure with the Browns lasted only 16 months, ending abruptly in February when he and former Browns general manager Mike Lombardi were fired by owner Jimmy Haslam after a tumultuous coaching search that landed Mike Pettine.
Feeling like his management team splintered during the search, Haslam cut loose two of his top lieutenants and the streamlined the flow chart.
According to friends, Banner was "blindsided'' by the move after he had helped position the club for sustained success.
Since that time, he's turned down more than 50 interview requests, speaking only to the Philadelphia Inquirer in March. Still reeling from the blow, he also turned down several job opportunities in the NFL and isn't sure he'll ever venture back in.
"I'm not going to do anything for now, and whether or not I'm going to come back and do something in football is up in the air,'' he told cleveland.com in a phone interview.
Banner was originally set to remain with the Browns until May, but left the Berea facility in early March and closed the book on his truncated career with the team. For the most part, he's kept to himself since then, spending time with his wife Helaine and their three children, who were equally rocked by his ouster.
Banner returned this week to Philadelphia, where he spent nearly 20 years helping to turn the Eagles into a perennial contender for his childhood friend Jeffrey Lurie, and will contemplate his next move.
In the meantime, he leaves Cleveland feeling like he accomplished many of the goals he set for the Browns when took over as CEO in October of 2012.
Discovering Pettine and Farmer
"The most significant thing is that the building is now filled with outstanding people,'' Banner said. "That will translate into a very good experience on and off the field for these fans. These are some of the best and bright people in the world of sports. You can make the case that some of them are the very best in the league at what they do.''
Banner cited newcomers such as team president Alec Scheiner, whom he lured from the Cowboys, and Executive Vice President General Counsel Sashi Brown, who came from the Jaguars. But he's most proud of finding Pettine and general manager Ray Farmer, who are working in concert and drawing rave reviews.
"I've been watching Mike Pettine for years,'' said Banner. "I believe he has the ingredients to be a very successful head coach in this league, primarily because of the defensive schemes he's come through. I think it's by far the best in the league. He's worked in winning programs in Baltimore and New York and he's worked for three guys in John Harbaugh, Rex Ryan and Doug Marrone who have different styles and different strengths.
"He's just a strong guy. He knows what he believes in and he'll lead both the players and the coaching staff in a very strong, effective way. If you follow his career and talk to people that have worked with him, I believe he'll be very successful and I know everybody there believes that.''
Banner likens his discovery of Pettine to that of Andy Reid, who led the Eagles to five NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl.
"I don't know if Pettine will last 14 years, but it was a similar situation with a guy that was not on anybody's radar,'' Banner said.
Banner is equally pleased with the choice of Farmer, who had spent the previous seven seasons as Chiefs' Director of Pro Personnel, and was overlooked for promotions. Banner hired him as assistant general manager, and he replaced Lombardi in February.
"I knew Ray as a player in Philly and he was a smart, high character guy,'' said Banner. "I saw him get his first job down in Atlanta and I asked a couple of people about him there who told me he was a smart, hardworking, intelligent guy. And then he went to Kansas City and kind of got lost in the shuffle a little there. We spent some some extended time with him and and felt he had what it would take to be a really good general manager.''
Banner noted that it took months for the Browns to land him.
"First we had to convince Ray, and then we had to convince the Chiefs to let him go,'' said Banner. His family was very comfortable in Kansas City, he knew Andy Reid, he believed in Andy Reid and he had a good relationship with (Chiefs Chairman and CEO) Clark Hunt. Then, after we hired him, we had to convince him to not take the (GM) job in Miami.''
Watching Farmer and Pettine operate together over the past few months, Banner is more convinced than ever that they were the right choices.
"On the football side, how good Mike is and how good Ray is will determine how good this team is over the next three to five years,'' said Banner. "And both guys were under the radar.''
Loading up on picks and cash
Of course, Banner and Lombardi gave Pettine and Farmer a good head start by clearing millions of dollars in salary cap space and acquiring extra draft picks for a total of 10 in 2014 -- including the first-round pick and the third-rounder used to select former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel.
"The plan was very simple,'' said Banner. "It was to accumulate draft picks and and cap room so we could build on this base, keep our own guys, participate in free agency and have the assets necessary so that if a quarterback became available that we felt was transformational -- either from another team or in the draft -- we'd have all the assets we need to go and get him. That's why we did everything we did in that first year.''
Banner was bashed during the 2013 draft for trading several of his picks for 2014 choices -- including a fourth-rounder for Pittsburgh's 2014 third-rounder. But Farmer and Pettine used that third-rounder, the No. 83 overall, to move up from No. 26 to No. 22 to draft Manziel. Meanwhile, Thomas is working with the second team in Pittsburgh during organized team activities.
Banner was also hammered for dealing 2012 No. 3 overall pick Trent Richardson to the Colts for that No. 26 overall pick, but it gave the Browns a chance at their potential quarterback of the future. Richardson, on the other hand, struggled in Indianapolis, gaining just 458 yards on 157 carries for a 2.9-yard average.
"I still think Richardson will prove to be a solid player, but based on where we were at the time, with the goal we had for accumulating cap room and draft picks, it was a a sound move for the team to make at the time,'' Banner said.
Banner acknowledges that the draft-day trade with Miami for troubled receiver Davone Bess was a mistake, but that it cost the Browns nothing in draft pick compensation. The Browns paid Bess about $4 million for his lost 2013 season, but wrote language into the contract to protect themselves against future guarantees in the event they were forced to cut him. The jury is still out on 2013 No. 6 pick Barkevious Mingo and 2013 free agent pass-rusher Paul Kruger, but both have a chance to excel in Pettine's attack-minded scheme. 2013 third-round pick Leon McFadden is not slated for a starting role at cornerback, and hasn't yet lived up to his draft status.
But Banner cleared about $28 million in cap room for 2014 that enabled the Browns to extend the contracts of Pro Bowlers Alex Mack and Joe Haden, and to sign free agents such as Karlos Dansby, Donte Whitner, Andrew Hawkins and Nate Burleson.
Some of the moves were unpopular -- especially letting kicker Phil Dawson walk in free agency -- but they added up to a bonanza for Farmer and Pettine this offseason. The following is the cap savings for each player cut or not re-signed: Dimitri Patterson $5.5 million, Chris Gocong $5.5 million, Usama Young $2 million, Frostee Rucker $8 million, Ben Watson $3 million, Sheldon Brown $4.5 million, Dawson $3.5 million.
The moves gave Farmer about $55 million to $60 million in cap space with which to start the year, which enabled him to sign Alex Mack to a five-year $42 million extension and Haden to five-year, $68 million extension. The club also has $20 million in remaing cap space, which can be rolled into next year.
"We weren't saying any of those guys were useless,'' said Banner. "But we were trying to build a quality team that had a chance on an ongoing basis to win Super Bowls, and we weren't going to win the Super Bowl last year.''
Banner also noted that the Browns took grief for moves such as signing wide receiver Charles Johnson off the Packers practice squad when it was discovered a few days later that he had a torn anterior cruciate ligament. "But that was fine because he'll be healthy this year and we still owned his rights for four more years,'' Banner said.
Banner and Lombardi also wanted to trade star receiver Josh Gordon because of multiple failed drug tests, but some in the organization, including then coach Rob Chudzinski, felt the Browns had a strong enough support system to keep him on the straight and narrow. When the Browns' highest offer was a second-round pick and players, they opted not to make the move, and Gordon responded by finishing No. 1 in the NFL with 1,646 yards before reportedly failing another drug test this season.
Banner also worked hard on the two-year $120 million renovation of FirstEnergy Stadium, including helping to secure $30 million over the next 15 years from the city of Cleveland.
"When fans walk into the Stadium and see just the first phase of this renovation, I think they're going to have a big 'wow' experience,'' said Banner. "We talked about building a first-class, championship-caliber organization and we had management and ownership backing that up with their own efforts and investments. It was a collective thing, and people are going to walk in and they're going to be proud and excited about what they see.''
Banner won't be around to enjoy the Browns' success if it comes in the next few years, but he'll still feel a part of it.Brodie Retallick won't play against Ireland because of concussion, resulting in a double change at lock for next week's Test in Chicago.
Team management confirmed Retallick would join Sam Whitelock in missing the first Test of their four-leg northern hemisphere tour following the head knock suffered during Saturday's 37-10 win over Australia.
Whitelock is sidelined for 3-6 weeks with a high ankle sprain, meaning the All Blacks will lose 139 caps worth of experience against the Irish.
Editor's Picks Vote: How long will All Blacks' run last? The All Blacks are hunting a new mark for consecutive Test wins, starting with a record-equalling 17th victory in Durban this weekend. Will they get it, and how far can they go? Vote now.
Luke Romano and Patrick Tuipulotu, who have both made sporadic appearances this year, are expected to start.
Uncapped Cantabrian Scott Barrett, who was named as injury cover for the tour, will be on the reserves bench if the selectors want specialist lock backup in Chicago.
The injuries mean athletic Wellington lock/flanker Vaea Fifita will travel with the 36-man squad on Friday to act as cover for the Chicago Test at least.
Fifita and Barrett both enjoyed excellent Super Rugby campaigns for the champion Hurricanes and the Crusaders respectively.
The injuries are significant for the All Blacks, with World Cup-winning pair Retallick and Whitelock having played to a high level throughout their unbeaten season to date.
Romano, 30, has added four caps to his 26-Test career this year, enjoying one start in the season-opener against Wales in Auckland in June.
Tuipulotu, 23, has played eight of his 10 Tests off the bench. His three Tests this year featured a start against Argentina in Buenos Aires.Bevan said a host of inspirational things about the NHS, but the quote the Labour leader tweeted is from a television play
Jeremy Corbyn has tweeted an inspirational image of Aneurin Bevan, with a famous quote about the NHS that has come to be seen as a rallying cry in support of Britain’s health service. The message reads: “The NHS will last as long as there’s folk with faith left to fight for it.”
The tweet on Wednesday echoes the speech Corbyn gave earlier in the week at the Royal College of Nursing, unveiling Labour promises to end the public sector pay cap for a an NHS workforce he described as “underpaid, overworked”.
Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it. Be in no doubt that there are those folk. I am one of them. pic.twitter.com/BxRryzUlKT
There’s a hitch though. Bevan, known as Nye and who oversaw the creation of the NHS in 1948, did not actually say those words. They come from a 1997 television play about the life of the Welsh politician called Food for Ravens, and they were written by Trevor Griffiths.
The provenance of the quote did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of Corbyn’s social media followers for the strong message of support for the NHS.
pandypooch (@pandypooch2) @jeremycorbyn You tell them, Jezza, it was Labour who created the NHS, following Beveridge. 🎈🎈🎈
Juliette Page (@Juliette_Page) @jeremycorbyn Thank you for being there for the many. Well done for standing strong against the tide and onslaught. The people are behind you.
Daniel Blake's Vest (@WarmongerHodges) @jeremycorbyn Under the Tories the NHS is in critical condition. Unless you #VoteLabour you're effectively choosing to switch off the life-support machine
Although the fictional quote has taken a hold on social media, plenty of Bevan’s real actions and quotes would be just as inspiring.
Nye Bevan's dream: a history of the NHS Read more
In 1948, on the day the NHS came into being, the then health minister visited the first ever NHS patient, 13-year-old Sylvia Diggory. She later recalled the meeting, saying: “Mr Bevan asked me if I understood the significance of the occasion and told me that it was a milestone in history – the most civilised step any country had ever taken.”
“The eyes of the world are turning to Great Britain,” he said on that day. “We now have the moral leadership of the world.”
The creation of the NHS had faced opposition, and months before the nation’s doctors, nurses, pharmacists, opticians, dentists and hospitals came together as one giant UK-wide organisation, the British Medical Association had been threatening to boycott it.
In a speech to parliament about the dispute, Bevan made the case for the NHS: “There is nothing that destroys the family budget of the professional worker more than heavy hospital bills and doctors’ bills.”
In 1951, Bevan resigned from the cabinet over the issue of charging for prescriptions and dental treatment. In his resignation letter, he provided another inspirational quote about the erosion of NHS services being free at the point of delivery: “It is the beginning of the destruction of those social services in which Labour has taken a special pride.”
Labour’s manifesto, published on Tuesday, promised an additional £37bn for the NHS in England over the five-year parliament. Other policies included the scrapping of hospital car-parking charges, setting a one-hour waiting time target for urgent A&E cases, and guaranteeing cancer patients would be seen within four weeks.
The manifesto describes the Labour creation of the NHS as “our proudest achievement, providing universal healthcare for all on the basis of need, free at the point of use”.Posted by Chris Brown on March 12, 2015 – 1:15 pm
The Bills have played host to Miami transition player Charles Clay the past two days, but it appears that Clay will also make a free agent visit with the Cleveland Browns.
That according to Palm Beach Post reporter Andrew Abramson, who cited Dolphins Executive VP of Football Operations as his source confirming that Clay will visit with Cleveland before signing any offer sheets.
Mike Tannenbaum confirmed that Charles Clay is visiting #Browns in addition to #Bills — Andrew Abramson (@AbramsonPBP) March 12, 2015
Once a transition player signs an offer sheet he cannot go to another team and sign another. So the process Clay is choosing to take is understandable. The Browns have already signed Clay’s former Miami teammate WR Brian Hartline.
Tags: Charles Clay Posted in Inside the BillsThe title is self-evidently true, of course, as anyone who is following the electricity generation sector this third-in-a-row, 1960s-style, cold winter (2010 - 2011) can confirm. Typically, wind power output during the periods of greatest (and record) demand has been a piffling few percent at most of their highly expensive, nameplate capacity - and a negligible fraction of national requirements.
His article begins with the statement that “ In private, the best-informed analysts now agree that Britain's environmental policies have put the country on track to have the world's most expensive electricity.” This is true and tragic. Whatever happened to the “honest” analyst? That their well-informed views are largely correct but held privately disgraces not just the "best-informed analysts" but the whole financial industry! These are the same analysts (or at least from the same self-regarding stables) who stayed mum and therefore well rewarded, while their peers exponentially diced and sliced debts, leading up to the Great Crash of 2008.
Dr John Constable, the Director of Research at the Renewable Energy Foundation has written an important new article, entitled " Renewables won't keep the lights on ", for the on-line Standpoint Magazine.
This is a guest post by Hugh Sharman that originally appeared on Dimwatt. Hugh is a well known UK energy analyst, his short biography is included at the end of this post. Long term readers of TheOilDrum may recall the second guest post I published here that was based around one of Hugh's articles.
This winter is proving once again that, just when it is needed most, wind power (installed capacity > 5 GW) can provide the nation with no effective, reliable generation capacity at all. And forget about photo-voltaic output (PV)!
Dr Constable’s article is not so much focused on the reliability of renewable energy so much as its hidden cost to consumers who pay the whole cost, including subsidy, for all renewable energy. It is frightening that the expanding fleets of wind turbines and many GW of installed photovoltaic generation still require subsidy at all, given their market maturity and the many £ billions of subsidy they have received already.
As he writes, “…the costs of environmental legislation tend to be moderate in the short run, with the pain of the full impact only likely to be felt in years beyond the political horizon.” So true! The sinister reality is that these rising costs are like a line of still-invisible torpedoes, all on target, all heading for the engine room of the UK economy which is likely to blow up and sink the boat with all its unsuspecting passengers.
If this all sounds like “anti-renewables” hyperbole, UK readers who wish to learn more about the way these costs creep up on consumers, can read all about it at the English language version of Germany’s Der Spiegel at Will High Costs Kill Merkel's Green Revolution?. Unlike the UK, Germany has actually built a huge renewable energy capacity, every kW financed by feed-in tariffs, under-written by all consumers. Germany is looked to as the model for promoting further expansion of renewable generation in UK. In the past year, Germany’s PV capacity has almost doubled from 9.4 GW to something between 17 and 18 GW, representing a sunk investment of something between € 50 and €60 billion, the repayment of which will fall on all consumers during the next twenty years. Yet this vast investment yields the equivalent of just 2% of German generation!
Dr Constable also points to Spain which, to avoid exposing its citizens to the real cost-pain of renewable energy through the tariffs they pay, undertook to repay investors through the tax-base. The result is a deficit that is reported to be growing towards €22 billion by December 2010. (Spanish Tariff Deficit to Grow 30% in 2011, Economista Says and Solar investors outraged by Spain's slashing of subsidies). This deficit is unlikely ever to be re-financed by the markets and could result in the bankruptcy of many of the original investors, some of which are among Spain’s largest power companies.
Dr Constable’s paper expertly exposes the threat to consumer prices if the UK Government does not soon review its current intentions and embrace the German model. Fortunately for the UK, at this point it is saddled with relatively light liabilities, compared with its European peers. There is still time to step back and reconsider our whole renewables subsidy strategy.
From the text, I am not entirely sure that Dr Constable shares my gloom over the rising price and growing scarcity of oil and coal – and therefore, inevitably, of gas. He writes “Concerns over gas availability and price appear to be alleviated by the unexpected growth of global shale gas production…”.
If this surmise is right, it will certainly be a wonderful thing. The view of most conventional analysts is that shale gas makes gas “forever” abundant and that the price link between oil and gas is broken. This view is likely to be shared by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on the somewhat specious grounds that this is the advice they will receive from upstream industry analysts. In a future article, we shall review the record of the upstream industry’s advice to predecessors of the DECC, being the DTI and BERR; on the whole it has been woeful.
If indeed peak conventional oil flows occurred in 2006, as seems likely from the IEA’s latest “World Energy Outlook”, published on 9th November this year, then it is hard to be anything except gloomy about oil prices (and therefore supply security) from 2011 onwards.
Slide 8/23 of the IEA’s press pack, 9 November 2010.
This slide tells us that in order for conventional crude oil volumes to be maintained at around 74 million barrels per day, the upstream oil industry must find, develop and commission new, conventional oilfields at the rate of a Saudi Arabia equivalent every five years. No serious energy analyst could possibly accept this hypothesis. And nor do they. The analysts are once again, with some honourable exceptions, staying as mute over the fact that we are over “peak oil flows” as they are about the UK’s energy prices.
There is ample evidence on this site and a growing body of fact-based evidence elsewhere, that growing demand from Asia will push up global demand faster than this can be supplied. The IEA understands this very well but still appears to fear the wrath of its OECD paymasters if it dares to be frank about the extreme fragility of energy supplies. Just over two years ago, during the summer of 2008, on the top of the global boom, global oil demand could simply not be met by global supply, despite record prices. There are siren voices claiming that there is “6 million b/d of spare capacity” at OPEC that can be mobilized as demand continues to rise. The truth is that as we enter 2011, with the oil price once again about to break through the $100/b ceiling (~$17/GJ), that only another global financial crisis can prevent run-away oil price inflation during the next decade, with dire consequences for the UK’s balance of payments.
Even mature businessmen who should know better seem to prefer optimistic myth to studying facts. We will shortly publish a scholar’s review of WEO 2010. In the mean time readers are encouraged to read TheOilDrum's review of WEO 2010 “Questionable assumptions and major omissions” and “Don’t worry be happy” which examines the US EIA’s year-end energy review.
Hitherto, the conventional and comforting view has been that coal can “fill the energy gap” and that the Fischer-Tropsch (coal to liquid) process can keep liquid demand satisfied. This view, often cited by economists, ignores the huge upfront capital costs of Fischer-Tropsch and the long lead times of such capital intensive processes. It also assumes that coal will remain abundant and cheap. And it is the belief of most of the globe’s most influential citizens that CO 2 emissions from burning oil, coal and gas threaten the very health of the Globe, so in Europe and probably America, supply will have to get very much worse and liquids prices must rise before any new coal-to-liquids plant gets built.
But as the reality of “peak oil” has become clearer, scholars are beginning to question the optimistic assumptions about coal supply. China and India are between them burning about half of all coal mined. China produces and consumes roughly 42% of global coal (3 billion t/y) and until 2008 was a significant coal exporter, despite that its historical annual increase in demand is between 150 and 200 million tons. However, China imported significant amounts of coal for first time in history during 2010. We have to remember how very small the ship-born market for thermal coal actually is – less than 700 million tons per year. (Coal Statistics).
China’s share of ship-born coal this year was 130 million tons; the direct consequence of this has been a doubling of the price of coal since the end of 2009. What will happen during 2011, if China looks for up to 300 million tons from the international market, is still unknown but prices are likely to be increased again. We expect coal supply security to become a major issue during 2011.
It is clear enough that the China understands the parlous state of its energy supply security well. Chinese state and privately owned energy suppliers are scouring the Earth for fossil fuel and other basic industrial commodities and are out-bidding international bidders to secure the resources for the Chinese market, as any reader of the Financial Times knows very well.
Its demand for iron and copper seems insatiable, and its near monopoly of the World’s supply of refined rare earths is driving up the costs of capital equipment in the renewable energy industry enormously.
Coal price rises will, of course, stimulate coal production in the UK, which until 1981 was a major coal-mining centre. And this increased production may give limited protection to the UK’s coal-fired power stations during the coming decade, providing they are allowed to operate.
But in the short to medium term, it would be naïve to believe that there will not be a large substitution of coal for “cheap gas” all over the globe. As this article goes “to press”, well-head natural gas prices in the USA, depressed by high stocks and relatively high national production) are around $4/GJ, or four times cheaper than oil and considerably cheaper than internationally traded coal at $124/t (roughly $5/GJ FOB).
All the same, it might be well to keep in mind some simple facts about the shale gas boom.
Conventional (that is to say cheap) gas supply continues to decline. The USA remains dependent on Canadian imports and Canada’s own conventional gas supplies are declining At current prices, shale gas is unprofitable for many producers, particularly in cases (most) when second year and subsequent year flow rates fall dramatically (Debate over shale gas decline fires up ). The motivation of the energy majors in making shale gas acquisitions is not because of the low prices currently causing so much joy to consumers. Shale gas production is under fire in many producing areas for the alleged pollution that it is causing, particularly to aquifers that supply America’s drinking water.
The foregoing chart shows that the USA remains dependent on imported gas!
The low price of natural gas in the USA is the cause of huge and loudly expressed joy among a surprising number of fossil energy analysts and market traders. Some even believe that US prices today signal a long term dislocation between oil and gas prices.
All the following is true:
Natural gas is a cleaner fuel than coal. The power generating equipment needed to turn it into electricity is much cheaper than for coal plants. Gas-fired CCGTs can be built much faster and deliver electricity much more efficiently (up to 60% thermal efficiency) than high efficiency (up to 48%), super-critical, coal-fired plants. Indeed, the “dash for gas-fired power stations” has been a global phenomenon since the early 1990s.
Since 1990, nearly all new, thermal, generating capacity that has been built in Europe, including the UK, has been gas-fired. This is estimated to amount to 160 GW, or 20% of European capacity and is largely responsible for the increased, roughly 200 million toe per year, gas that is now being burned since CCGTs began to be delivered.
However, as Steve Kopits, managing director of Douglas-Westwood’s NY office, writing in the December 2010 issue of Petroleum Review Magazine, reminds us “...economics works. When a commodity becomes expensive, consumers will switch to the next closest substitute and learn how to use that substitute efficiently”.
Compressed natural gas (CNG) is also being used to substitute for diesel and gasoline as a transport fuel. There are many millions of vehicles that have been cheaply and easily adapted for CNG in operation around the World (Compressed natural gas & Natural Gas in the Transportation Sector) and it is quite certain that the USA’s (and China’s) ingenious and price-savvy citizens will soon be adapting their vehicles in their millions to run on CNG. Oddly, for a continent that prattles so much about transport fuel’s effect on Climate Change, the iron grip of Europe’s tax authorities on the use of fuels for transport is likely to make Europe the last major economic area where vehicles are adapted en-masse for CNG.
To repeat, we can be absolutely sure that the mass purchase by the oil majors of the independents who developed shale gas extraction is not for the derisory returns presently being made by these pioneers!
It will only be a matter of time before the relatively small global surplus of gas extraction will be “used up” and the wide ratio between oil and gas prices will revert to the historical mean, close to one. That is what the US energy majors are banking on.
So by 2015, not only will the UK’s generation fleet be heavily dependent on natural gas but there is a high risk that this will also be very expensive and will certainly be beyond national control.
The rate of decline in the North Sea is staggering. We must draw what cold comfort we can from the supposed fact that gas-fired power emits less CO 2. However, one cannot resist reminding the reader that the so-called CO 2 footprint of a MWh of power derived from LNG is hardly better than that of a modern, super-critical, coal-fired power plant.
To "keep the lights on" this winter (2010 – 2011), we continue to rely on the UK's ancient, polluting, inefficient but generally reliable coal-fired power stations and its mostly ancient but relatively unreliable nuclear to provide respectively 45% and 17% of UK demand. It is a sobering thought that the UK is legally committed (by the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive or LCPD) to closing down more than 8 GW of this capacity, along with 3 GW of serviceable oil-fired capacity by or before 31st December 2015, on the grounds that these emit more than the permitted level of sulphur oxides. With the exception of Torness and Sizewell B, most nuclear capacity will also be phased out by 2018, unless the AGRs can be given a make-over to extend their lives.
It is possible but by no means certain that this loss of capacity will be entirely replaced by new CCGT capacity, but as we write, this could be a close-run thing.
The new Coalition is now wrestling with the near criminal consequences of thirteen years of New Labour talking shops, muddle and inaction over energy reform.
When Labour came to power in 1997, there was ample generating capacity, North Sea gas and oil flows were still rising and during 1999 the international oil price fell to less than $10/b. Some OPEC nations were staring at the possibility of defaulting on their huge debts. The Economist became famous (or infamous) for suggesting that the World was “drowning in oil”; so much for the analysts at our premium and most influential weekly newspaper. (Drowning in oil)
Since coming to power, apparently obsessed by “climate change concerns”, New Labour was in constant dialogue with the public through endless consultations. These were long, drawn-out affairs, ending up with a “white paper” full of bombast and invariably endorsed by then Prime Minister Blair. But only two serious actions were actually taken.
The introduction of the so-called “New Energy Trading Arrangement” or NETA
The introduction of a complicated and expensive, customer-subsidy for renewable energy called the “Renewable Energy Obligation” or ROC
Over the last six years, the Renewable Energy Foundation (www.ref.org.uk) of which Dr Constable is the Research Director, has published a number of devastatingly forensic analyses, of which “Renewables won’t keep the lights on” is the latest.
NETA was introduced in England and Wales on 27th March 2001 and replaced the “pool trading system” introduced by the Conservatives, following electricity industry privatization. (NETA-One Year On). The idea was to deliver more efficient and competitive trading arrangements. It certainly soon led to a substantial reduction in wholesale electricity prices.
NETA replaced an energy trading system that had rewarded both production capacity and energy production with a system that only allowed remuneration for pure energy trades. At the time of its introduction, oil was still cheap (roughly $3/GJ), and the upstream industry was unconstrained in its hydrocarbon production, an extraction policy inherited from the previous Tory government. Given the industry’s low specific prices (a consequence of political policy) the industry could only recover its high costs by maximizing extraction rates. This flawed, short sighted policy led directly to the almost complete evacuation of the nation’s North Sea hydrocarbon resources within a generation. Compare this policy with that of the conservation-driven policies of the Netherlands and Norway.
NETA certainly “constrained” energy prices. British Energy and Drax Power Station (to name only two generators) were effectively bankrupted by the low price (gas-based) competition. Large US investors in the UK electricity system, like Mission Energy, AES and AEP lost many $ billions in fire sales of premium coal-fired plants and the effective nationalization of the nuclear industry.
What NETA was specifically designed for - to cut short term prices – was achieved. What it could not do was to send any sort of appropriate pricing signal for the |
night, cozily arm in arm and looking up at the stars. The husband wears a black jacket and hat—and Daumier’s blacks have great depth—jauntily holding his umbrella at a sharp diagonal in the twilight evening sky. His plump wife wears a black wrap and her bonnet is tied demurely under her chin. This print is beautiful because it is a oneness of opposites—the high and low, near and distant, heavy and light. Their forms begin with rather tiny feet, swell into rotundity and as they arch backwards with heads raised the forms taper again. As they look with wonder into the sky they have depth, majesty and mystery. Daumier has us look up at this couple, not condescendingly down. We laugh and are moved simultaneously. Daumier has evoked respect. The couple is close and seen in relation to all space. Daumier relates the figures in the foreground to the tree shapes in the background. They stand in the spotlight and their shadows extend beyond them. They are dark and light like the world they are in. They are on their toes, their whole bodies lift, with heads raised, mouths open in wonder, looking up beyond themselves. This relation shown by Daumier of the depths of a person to a boundless universe is the way of seeing which is necessary for contempt to be defeated. Aesthetic Realism has been crucial to my happiness and to my career as an artist. I have done many satirical prints and I had the honor of having my work discussed critically by Mr. Siegel in Aesthetic Realism classes. When I wasn’t sure whether I was having contempt or not in my work, Mr. Siegel asked me—and every artist should be asked this: “When you aren’t in your workshop, have you enjoyed too much making fun of people in your mind?” Unfortunately, I had, and Mr. Siegel showed that contempt was making for technical difficulty in the engraving I was working on. He asked: “If you are satirizing are you regretful that you are?” I learned from Mr. Siegel and from how he himself was all the time what it means to put together beautifully compassion and criticism. I am very grateful to teach what I have learned to students in my printmaking classes at the School of Visual Arts, to distinguish between respect and contempt in an artist’s idea and technique. I think that the unforgettable Tourists by Duane Hanson (1925-1996) is his best work because he was impelled by imaginative respect. Tourists is “benevolent,” even though at first these life-size painted and clothed figures seem to invite contempt. The sculptor saw reality’s opposites here—“satire and flowers” are made one. Decked out so tastelessly—he in his green Hawaiian shirt, tan checkered shorts, leather sandals, and actual camera paraphernalia, and she with her bright red stretch pants, her blue and white striped shirt, big beads, yellow hair net, big sun glasses, and finally, her patch worked, overstuffed beach bag—they too, like Daumier’s couple, look up in wonder into deep space.
Duane Hanson, Tourists, 1970. Polyester and Fiberglas.
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
I had a large art experience when I first came upon this couple exhibited at the Whitney Museum. My first response, like other museum visitors, was to laugh at this blatant display of bad taste. As we approached the two people however, saw their lovely expressions—he with his hand to his brow, both standing firm and looking up—tears came to people’s eyes. “Mockery and compassion” were one. People have always wanted to see and to be seen with the good will that is art. That is what is taught by Aesthetic Realism: the art way of seeing the world, other people and ourselves as a co-presence of opposites. 1. Eli Siegel, The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, #127 (1975).
2. Ibid.
3. Charles Baudelaire, Vers pour le portrait de M. Honoré Daumier.Share
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Welcome to Digital Trends’ new series, Pro:Test.
For our first installment, we reached out to Beastmode himself, Marshawn Lynch, to find out whether fitness watches can really coach a gym rat to full-on pro athlete status. Except, Beastmode doesn’t work out in the conventional sense. So, Marshawn did us a solid and called up his cousin, Defensive Rookie of the Year and Kansas City Chiefs Cornerback Marcus Peters, to strap on three top-rated fitness watches and give them the workout of a lifetime.
The Gear
We chose three distinctly different fitness watches for our test, each with its own set of features, metrics, and feedback style.
Fitbit Blaze ($200) The Blaze looks more like a watch than our other two wearables, and provides an optical heart rate monitor, step counter, and advanced motion sensors. It will automatically detect various sorts of exercise activities, from running to cycling, and tennis to basketball — no button pushing required. While the Blaze doesn’t have a built-in GPS tracker, it can coordinate with a smartphone to collect positioning data, then collate that information with all the other metrics it gathers. What really sets the Fitbit Blaze apart from its competitors is its remarkably user-friendly mobile app, which has an intuitive and informative dashboard underscored by separate screens that provide deeper analytics, including sleep monitoring. The battery is rated to last five days. The Blaze also offers several smartwatch features, including on-screen messaging, calendar notifications and caller notification. On the down side, the Blaze can’t provide as accurate feedback without a connected smartphone, which makes some activities — like swimming — a no-go. Also, the Blaze is water resistant, but not waterproof. Amazon Garmin Vivoactive HR ($250) Perhaps the most likely choice for advanced athletes, the Vivoactive HR offers built-in GPS, an optical heart-rate monitor, and step counter. The vast array of sports and activities it can monitor set it apart from competitors. Along with the usual running and cycling, you’ll find golf, skiing, swimming, and even rowing. The watch provides an exceptional amount of data, freeing it from the need of a smartphone, but with a smartphone or PC, Garmin can provide much deeper historical data and tie it all together. The Vivoactive HR’s battery life is also the best of our bunch here, topping out at up to eight days in activity mode, and 13 hours with GPS tracking enabled. On the down side, we found the accompanying app a little confusing, and not as rich with data as we’d hoped. Amazon Polar A360 ($200) Easily the simplest of the trio, the Polar A360 lacks GPS capability entirely. As such, it must rely entirely on motion data and heart-rate monitoring. On the other hand, the A360 is completely waterproof, and is meant to automatically detect various exercise types. It also tracks sleep and will notify you if you have been sedentary for too long a period. Of the three, the Polar A360’s on-screen interface is the least intimidating and simplest to navigate. Unlike the other two watches in our battle, the A360 doesn’t offer any smartwatch features. Amazon
The results
You’ll have to watch our video to find out which of the fitness watches Marcus and Marshawn liked best, but truth be told, none of them were able to track Marcus’ hard-core workout very well. Some of his steps were too fast and furious to count, and because Marcus’ heart rate remained so steady, his calorie burn metrics were likely skewed as well. It would have helped, too, if the workout covered some sort of distance so GPS could have come into play.
Ultimately, while the Fitbit Blaze was the most practical and fun to use of the three, the Garmin Vivoactive HR was probably the most accurate, and would be the best choice for most advanced athletes. With that said, both the Fitbit Blaze and Polar A360 will be much more desirable for novice athletes and adventurers.The New York Times got ahead of itself again with yet another supposedly hot scoop involving former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland, the Russians and the 2016 presidential election.
The story, now titled “ McFarland’s Testimony About Russia Contacts Is Questioned,” reported originally that an email sent by the former Trump transition official indicated she lied to Congress this summer when she was questioned about disgraced Gen. Michael Flynn's communications with the Russians.
The article has been heavily amended since publication so that it is now mostly innuendo. The initial references to the emails have been removed, and the story now leans mostly on Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who only questions whether McFarland was forthright in her testimony.
The headline alone has undergone multiple facelifts. Here they are, in order of changes:
“McFarland Contradicted Herself on Russia Contacts, Congressional Testimony Shows”
“Email Counters Aide on Flynn’s Russia Contact”
It then reverted to back to: “McFarland Contradicted Herself on Russia Contacts, Congressional Testimony Shows,” and then changed twice more:
“Email Counters Testimony On Flynn by Former Aide”
“Former Aide’s Testimony On Russia Is Questioned”
Multiple headline changes are not the worst of it. Not by a long shot.
The original version of the Dec. 4 report began with the following lines:
An email sent during the transition by President Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, K.T. McFarland, appears to contradict the testimony she gave to Congress over the summer about contacts between the Russian ambassador and Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.
Ms. McFarland had told lawmakers that she did not discuss or know anything about interactions between Sergey I. Kislyak, who had been Moscow’s ambassador to the United States, and Mr. Flynn, according to Senate documents.
But emails obtained by The New York Times appear to undermine those statements. In a Dec. 29 message about newly imposed Obama administration sanctions against Russia for its election interference, Ms. McFarland, then serving on Mr. Trump’s transition team, told another transition official that Mr. Flynn would be talking to the Russian ambassador that evening.
The discrepancy is likely to add to mounting troubles for the White House that stem from Mr. Flynn’s interactions with Russian officials. He pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to F.B.I. agents about his discussions with Mr. Kislyak about the sanctions.
These four paragraphs have been removed entirely from the Times' report. The website Newsdiff, which tracks changes in stories, illustrates the major narrative overhaul in this Times report:
There are no editor’s notes drawing attention to the story’s many changes.
The report's core message has been softened considerably since its initial publication. Where the headline once declared that "McFarland Contradicted Herself on Russia Contacts," the story now reads, “A leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee questioned on Monday whether a high-ranking official in Donald J. Trump’s transition team had been deceptive over the summer about her knowledge of discussions between Michael T. Flynn...”
The article, which was once so sure of itself, now eases away from its original message by stating McFarland, “might have given ‘false testimony’ in her answers.”
That's not to say the article doesn't try to pin something on the former deputy national security adviser. The wink-winking seen in the original version of the story is still there; the language is just less certain.
“Court documents … indicate that senior members of Mr. Trump’s transition team were well aware of [Flynn’s] discussions with the Russian ambassador,” the report states. “Court documents state that Mr. Flynn discussed what he should tell Mr. Kislyak with another transition official beforehand and briefed that person afterward.”
The article, which keeps the content and full context of the Flynn court documents secret, heavily hints that the nameless “transition official” was likely McFarland. What makes this insinuation particularly shameful is the fact that the article itself notes the court documents “do not identify that official, who was with other senior members of the transition team at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.”
Even more embarrassing is the fact that the article also includes this sentence: “White House officials said on Friday that they believed that the official was Ms. McFarland, but that information has not been confirmed.”
Perhaps as a Hail Mary to make something stick, the article tries to tie McFarland to Flynn via reputation: “Ms. McFarland worked so closely with Mr. Flynn on the transition team that her colleagues sometimes referred to her as his ‘brain.’”
Translation: It was probably her that he talked to, but we’re not sure.
Once again, this Times report references email correspondence that it refuses to let the reader see.
“An email exchange obtained by The New York Times indicates that Ms. McFarland was aware at the time of a crucial Dec. 29 phone call between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak that was intercepted by American intelligence,” the story said.
That’s it. We’re left with nothing but an excerpt out of context, newsroom interpretation, and a lot of innuendo.
This comes just two days after the paper published a separate article that left readers assuming McFarland conceded in a private correspondence on Dec. 29, 2016, that the Kremlin had tipped the election in Donald Trump’s favor.
She didn’t say that — at least, not that we know of. The Times declined to reproduce her email correspondences in full, leaving readers with no choice but to guess as to the true meaning of McFarland's reported conversations, which didn't appear to match the Times' in-print speculation.
This newer report has the same style of insinuation as the Dec. 2 article, but with the added bonus of many amendments and clarifications. Call me crazy, but the way the story stands now is a long way off from “McFarland Contradicted Herself on Russia Contacts, Congressional Testimony Shows.”
After two misleading reports like these, maybe the Times should get a fresh set of eyes to read and report from these emails.After my test drive of the Mitsubishi i MiEV at the 2008 LA Auto Show yesterday, I walked away with the distinct feeling that Mistubishi has designed a sporty, relatively spacious, and well-thought-out winner of an electric car.
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Mitsubishi is currently testing the i MiEV in California in collaboration with Southern California Edison. Additionally, according to Mitsubishi executive, David Patterson, the company is in negotiations to partner with Oregon after Nissan announced its new electric car partnership with the state on Wednesday. I guess everybody wants to get in on the Oregon action.
My feeling that the i MiEV — regardless of its awful name — is a winner, was heavily reinforced after comparing the it to the Mini E electric car in a different test drive later in the day. Of the two, it seems the engineers at Mitsubishi have a better grasp of what people will like in an electric car and took care to make sure consumers had the choices they’ll want..
For instance, the i MiEV has room for four adults (and some storage space in the back of the car to boot). It also has a way to switch between an economy mode, in which the driving range is extended and regenerative braking is used to it’s fullest, and a normal mode where the car behaves more like a conventional car when it comes to braking (see my post from yesterday about the Mini E to learn more about this issue).
The i MiEV has a top speed of 81 mph, making it highway legal, and can go up to 100 miles on a single charge. The car is based on Mitsubishi’s “i” gas-powered compact car already on sale in Japan. The 47 kW (63 hp) electric motor has improved handling and acceleration characteristics over the 64 hp gas engine in the “i” car, and is powered by a 330 volt lithium ion battery.
When I asked David Patterson about an expected on-sale date to the general public in the US, he said that there’ll probably be about a year and a half of testing the i MiEV in Southern California (and maybe Oregon) before they can start thinking about releasing it to the general public. So I’m guessing it’ll be at least 2010 before you’ll be able to purchase one in the US — and even then it might be restricted to certain geographic locations.In the last few weeks, the ECB has been drawing on its liquidity swap line with the Fed, first $308 million for a week, then $658 million for a week, and last week back down to $358 million. What’s that about?
It’s not such a large amount. Bank of Japan borrowed more in the past, $810 million in March and $1528 million in January. But the question then repeats, what was that about?
Both of these drawings are part of the new set of central bank swap lines linking what I call the C6: the Fed, ECB, Bank of Japan, Bank of England, Swiss National Bank, and Bank of Canada. On October 31, 2013 these lines were made permanent and unlimited; contract details may be found here. Ever since then I have had a slide in my powerpoints saying “Forget the G7, Watch the C6.”
So now we’re watching. What are we seeing?
Central bank swaps are in some ways quite similar to a standard commercial FX swap, but the differences are important and significant.
A standard swap involves exchange of two currencies today at the spot exchange rate prevailing today, plus a promise to reverse the transaction at maturity using the forward exchange rate prevailing today. Suppose that forward rate is calculated using covered interest parity as
F = S(1+r)/(1+r*)
where r and r* are respectively the dollar and foreign interest rate for a given term T, s is the spot exchange rate and f is the forward exchange rate for date T.
In this case, the exposure of the standard swap contract is identical to a swap of IOUs between the contracting parties at the prevailing interest rates in their respective currencies. One party borrows dollars at rate r and the other party borrows euros at the rate r*.
Central bank swaps are different. First, the forward rate in the contract is usually exactly the same as the current spot exchange rate. This means that central banks are never in the position of realizing profits or losses from the swap (although of course there will be implicit profits and losses), that come from deviation between the agreed forward rate and the spot rate at expiry.
Second, the interest rate on the contract is negotiated rather than calculated from market prices. But, given the choice of forward rate, the analogous commercial contract would call for payment of the interest differential, so anything different from that is significant. Significantly, the documentation of the current C6 swap line leaves open the question of who pays interest to who, and how much.
Usual practice has been for the party who draws on the line to pay interest on the line at some penalty rate. Thus the May 9, 2010 swap agreement between the Fed and ECB called for the ECB to pay the USD Overnight Index Swap Rate plus 100 basis points on its dollar borrowing, and the Fed to pay nothing on its euro borrowing. In effect, the ECB was simply borrowing dollars at the discount window, like any other bank, but with its own monetary liability serving as collateral instead of some financial asset.
This kind of arrangement is still in effect a swap of IOUs but at a price that is away from the market. Central bank swap lines thus in effect operate as a kind of outside spread providing bounds within which normal commercial dealing takes place. So long as prices stay at or near CIP, private agents prefer to do business directly with each other. But when CIP comes under pressure, because of one-sided liquidity flows, the central bank moves from backstop to market-maker and the outside price becomes the market price.
The ECB is borrowing dollars from the Fed and lending them on to banks in Europe who have dollar liquidity needs. Here is the tender documentation. Presumably it is doing this for banks who are unable, for whatever reason, to access dollar funding in the open market, or only at a premium that is higher than the ECB charges.
During the financial crisis, dollar funding needs like this got met by central bank liquidity swaps that rose almost to $600 billion, raising questions in Congress. Now, in normal times, smaller sums are becoming a routine way of handling the normal stresses and strains of world funding flows.
For lack of a world central bank, we have a network of central bank liquidity swaps.
(Council on Foreign Relations has a fun interactive app that shows the rest of the emerging swap network as well.)CNN has a cryptic story — pitched as evidence that the committees conducting the Russian investigation may be clashing with the Mueller investigation — suggesting two kinds of “aggressive tactics” on the part of Robert Mueller’s team.
The less cryptic of the two tactics is that the FBI seized attorney-client privileged documents in the morning raid of Manafort’s house.
Mueller issued subpoenas to Manafort’s former lawyer and current spokesman and authorized a pre-dawn raid of his Virginia home in late July. During that raid, Mueller’s investigators took documents considered to be covered by attorney-client privilege, sources told CNN. Lawyers from the WilmerHale law firm, representing Manafort at the time, warned Mueller’s office that their search warrant didn’t allow access to attorney materials. The documents in question have now been returned, the sources say. The episode raised questions about whether investigators have seen materials they weren’t entitled to obtain. “You can’t unsee something,” one source said. It’s not an uncommon problem in FBI investigations. US attorneys typically have separate document-review teams to prevent investigators from handling materials they aren’t allowed to have. It’s not clear what procedures Mueller’s office uses.
We first head of this claim not from Manafort, but from Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, via an email sent to WSJ but instead reported by Fox.
Dowd also said agents seized “privileged and confidential materials prepared for Mr. Manafort by his counsel to aid him in his cooperation with the Congressional committees,”
The claim that this privileged information pertained to Manafort’s cooperation with the Congressional committees may help to elucidate the second claim: that Mueller’s lawyers made an agreement with Manafort’s lawyers about what they could obtain from the Senate Intelligence Committee, then overstepped it in trying to get an actual transcript of the interview. CNN rather unhelpfully doesn’t tell us when Mueller made the agreement with Manafort’s lawyers about his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee, before or after the interview and the raid.
After Manafort privately interviewed with Senate intelligence committee staff in late July to discuss the June 2016 meeting between Trump Jr. and Russian operatives, Mueller’s lawyers have struggled to get a copy of the interview transcript. Manafort’s attorneys, in talks with the special counsel’s office, agreed to allow Mueller’s team only to get the documents Manafort had turned over to the committee, not the interview transcript, according to the sources. Yet an attorney with the Mueller team later told the committee that they were authorized by Manafort’s representatives to have the Manafort interview transcript, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN. Committee lawyers later learned from Manafort’s attorneys that they had not provided that consent, the sources say. As a result of the dispute, the committee hasn’t turned over any documents and the matter is still under discussion, sources say.
That’s critically important given the concern (which is real), that Mueller’s team “can’t unsee something.” That is, they may have seen something in the privileged communications about Manafort’s interview strategy that made them interested in the transcript, and only then asked for the transcript. Alternately, Manafort (and/or Dowd!) may just be bullshitting here, in a way to get SSCI to withhold something that became far more damning after the raid on his home.
Dowd’s other complaints — that Mueller didn’t need to raid Manafort’s home because he could get everything via other means, as witnessed by Manafort’s cooperation with SSCI — suggest the latter may be the case.
Dowd, in his note, questioned the validity of the search warrant itself, calling it an “extraordinary invasion of privacy.” Dowd said Manafort already was looking to cooperate with congressional committees and said the special counsel never requested the materials from Manafort. “These failures by Special Counsel to exhaust less intrusive methods is a fatal flaw in the warrant process and would call for a Motion to Suppress the fruits of the search,” Dowd wrote, arguing the required “necessity” of the warrant was “misrepresented to the Court which raises a host of issues involving the accuracy of the warrant application and the supporting FBI affidavit.”
But there’s something else important here. As I laid out here, the Mueller raid happened in the wake of two developments in the Senate Judiciary Committee. On Monday, July 24 (“last night” in a July 25 release), Grassley and Feinstein issued a subpoena for Manafort, in particular complaining that Manafort wanted to appear before just one committee, SSCI.
While we were willing to accommodate Mr. Manafort’s request to cooperate with the committee’s investigation without appearing at Wednesday’s hearing, we were unable to reach an agreement for a voluntary transcribed interview with the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Manafort, through his attorney, said that he would be willing to provide only a single transcribed interview to Congress, which would not be available to the Judiciary Committee members or staff. While the Judiciary Committee was willing to cooperate on equal terms with any other committee to accommodate Mr. Manafort’s request, ultimately that was not possible. Therefore, yesterday evening, a subpoena was issued to compel Mr. Manafort’s participation in Wednesday’s hearing. As with other witnesses, we may be willing to excuse him from Wednesday’s hearing if he would be willing to agree to production of documents and a transcribed interview, with the understanding that the interview would not constitute a waiver of his rights or prejudice the committee’s right to compel his testimony in the future.
That is, Manafort was digging his heels in on a strategy that would have him cooperate exclusively with SSCI, not with SJC. And, as with Mueller, Manafort was refusing to turn over that transcript to SJC.
Faced with the threat of the subpoena, however, Manafort agreed to turn over documents and suggested he might be willing to do a separate transcribed interview.
Faced with issuance of a subpoena, we are happy that Mr. Manafort has started producing documents to the Committee and we have agreed to continue negotiating over a transcribed interview. It’s important that he and other witnesses continue to work with this committee as it fulfills its oversight responsibility. Our investigation is still in its early stages, and we will continue to seek information from witnesses as necessary. As we’ve said before, we intend to get the answers that we need, one way or the other. Cooperation from witnesses is always the preferred route, but this agreement does not prejudice the committee’s right to compel his testimony in the future.
This is the reluctant, last minute “cooperation” that Dowd pointed to as basis for his claim that Mueller could have gotten Manafort’s cooperation via other means, and part of that cooperation had Manafort undergoing a transcribed interview solely with SSCI.
Hours after Manafort made this agreement with SJC, Mueller’s team raided Manafort.
Two more details are worth recalling. We now know that on the day the WaPo broke the story of Mueller’s raid of Manafort, Donald Trump bitched out Mitch McConnell on the phone about not protecting him in the Russia probe. NYT described Trump as being even angrier about that than McConnell’s failure to pass TrumpCare.
During the call, which Mr. Trump initiated on Aug. 9 from his New Jersey golf club, the president accused Mr. McConnell of bungling the health care issue. He was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader’s refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Republicans briefed on the conversation.
That’s when Dowd started emailing reporters at Murdoch publications, complaining that the Manafort raid endangered Trump.
Now consider that the other thing CNN includes among Mueller’s aggressive tactics — his subpoena of Manafort’s former lawyer Melissa Laurenza — is effectively a subpoena of a former McConnell staffer.
The subpoenas seeking documents and testimony were sent to Melissa Laurenza, an attorney with the Akin Gump law firm who until recently represented Manafort, and to Jason Maloni, who is Manafort’s spokesman, according to people familiar with the matter.
So it may be that Trump believed Manafort had certain understandings with McConnell that the raid — executed hours after Manafort’s SSCI interview — disrupted.
All that being said, once you consider that both Mueller’s team and Grassley’s committee are facing similar difficulties with Manafort, it suggests the focus here should not be on Mueller, but instead on what kind of special deals SSCI (Chaired by former Trump advisor Richard Burr) is offering up.
Sure, we have yet to have committees granting immunity to protect the president and his lackeys — which is what thwarted the Iran-Contra investigation. But given that SSCI seems to have offered to serve as a black hole for Manafort’s sworn claims, I think it time to stop assuming, as many in DC are doing, that that’s where the grown-ups live.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Tigers left-hander Daniel Norris experienced a real emotional roller-coaster during his Wednesday start.
First the 22-year-old rookie acquired from the Blue Jays in the David Price trade last month hit a home run in the first at-bat of his entire professional career–minors or majors. And then he exited the game in the fifth inning with an oblique strain.
And now he’s headed to the disabled list. Given the typical recovery timetable for oblique injuries it’s possible he’s thrown his last pitch of the season, in which case Norris would finish the year with a 4.43 ERA and 34/17 K/BB ratio in 45 innings split between Toronto and Detroit.
He’s a huge part of the Tigers’ plans in 2016 and beyond.
Follow @AaronGleemanA new Turkish satellite has Israelis eyeing the end of a U.S.-backed blackout on high-resolution commercial photography of their turf from space.
The GokTurk satellite due in orbit by 2013 will sell images of objects more detailed than 2 meters across -- currently the finest grain available when it comes to pictures of Israel, thanks mainly to U.S. legislation from the 1990s.
Google Maps satellite image of Israel. Google
Turkey's leap into the aerospace market treads on Israeli security sensitivities given the former allies' recently strained ties. Unlike with other nations that have fielded commercial satellites, Israel has little leverage over Ankara.
"We try to ensure that we are not photographed at high resolutions, and most [countries] accommodate us," a senior Israeli defense official said. "Should we request this of the Turks? We won't ask for it. There is no one to talk to."
The official cited Gokturk, and popular space-image clearing houses like Google Earth, among developments that have prompted discussions in Israel as to the viability of the so-called "shutter control" over commercial satellite cameras:
"The basic agreement was for 2 meter [resolution]. This has still not changed. In the future, it will certainly change."
The current "shutter control" is anchored in an amendment to the 1997 U.S. National Defense Authorization Act, which banned disseminating satellite images of Israel of a grain higher than that available from non-American commercial sources.
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Israel used bilateral lobbying to deal with the few such challenges to Washington's aerospace dominance to emerge so far. An Israeli firm provided the telescope for Kompsat, a South Korean commercial satellite launched in 2006. Its camera offers photos with a maximum resolution of 1 meter.
"They don't photograph our area at a resolution better than 2 meters," the Israeli official said. "There is always conditioning."
French Connection
Similar appeals have been made to France, whose Pleiades satellite will soon sell images with a 0.7 meter grain. France, along with Italy, has a subsidiary role in GokTurk, which experts say may provide pictures of even higher resolution.
But Turkey, whose Islamist-rooted government froze relations with Israel after its deadly raid on a Gaza aid ship last year, has shown no interest in veiling the Jewish state from GokTurk. "We decide how to use the images taken by our satellite," an unnamed Turkish official told the newspaper Today's Zaman.
The dispute is not new. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak tried to sell the Turks an Ofek spy satellite in 2008. But those talks collapsed, with Barak aides blaming Ankara's refusal to accept a "shutter control" clause in the contract.
The Israeli official said such measures helped prevent "sensitive material falling into the hands of terrorists". Israel also frets about its nuclear facilities and other secretive projects becoming too open to public scrutiny.
Asked about the prospect of Israel's "shutter control" expiring, the official cited countermeasures developed by other countries, such as jamming space communications and even the shooting down of hostile satellites.
Worried about missile attacks from an array of regional foes, Israel has been digging in -- for example, with a huge government bunker in the Jerusalem hills and a submarine hangar at Haifa port. These offer some cover from satellites.
"We know how to defend ourselves like others defend themselves, and better than others," the Israeli official said.It’s a dark night in mid-August, and the clock is nearing 3am. A small group of people huddles together in a spot of overgrown vegetation, just outside an industrial farming facility where hundreds, if not thousands, of pigs are held captive. These pigs live out miserable and short lives at the end of which awaits a sorry fate consisting of becoming food on the plates of those who value their arbitrary taste preferences over the lives and suffering of sentient beings.
It is the first direct action of this type for several members of the group, and nerves are running high. They’ve seen cars come and go near the facility. And was that voices in the distance? Finally, after making sure everything seems calm and quiet, the moment has come, and it is time to enter in order to save some of the individuals inside. The group leaves the safety of the forest line and hurries across the open yard towards the entrance to the facility. As they open the unlocked door, they realize that someone is already inside. Panicked, the activists dash back to safety, and curse the turn of events. No animals will be saved tonight. Or will they? Where do we go from here?
This is a relatively accurate re-imagining of an open rescue performed by the Swedish direct action group Tomma Burar (Empty Cages), one of three such rescues performed during their high profile August campaign in which they hit three sites, liberating selected animals from the cruel conditions prevailing in industrial animal farms. They had been planning the campaign for a long time, and thought out what they believed would be the best tactics and best strategy for their specific conditions.
Rather than conforming to the stereotypical demographic of naive teenagers often spouted by media, commercial interests or politicians, these were people of various ages and from various backgrounds, some of them parents, some veteran activists while some participated in this type of action for the very first time. As such, certain options were off the table. A full blown rescue, while hitting the factory farm hard financially, would at the same time pose several problems. Chief amongst them, was that these activists had families, and couldn’t afford to leave them behind, spending time in prison.
They had children and loved ones to care for, and had to strike a balance between benefits for the animal liberation movement and personal consequences. Usually this is where activists often would drop out, and where everyday lives lure those in theory opposing many aspects of the status quo to lull into a sort of slumber, pacified by the hardships and realities of our society. And it is indeed hard to blame people for not doing more, as they try to stay afloat amidst financial, social and political hardship. But these activist wouldn’t have any of that, and thus the idea of open rescue.
Back in the safety of the vegetation, the group is shaken and uncertain of what to do. Months of planning, and now this setback at the first step of their campaign. But not everything is lost. In their reconnaissance operations, they have pinpointed a backup location. A plan B. But the safety of the night will soon break into the exposing light of dawn, and the later in the night it gets, the bigger the risk that personnel will be present at the site.
Besides, the secondary location is not as well scouted as the primary one. Is it worth the risk? The activists consult with their off-site member that is on stand-by back at home. Together they iron out how to get to the second location, and the group makes a consensus decision to carry on. There’s no time to be afraid or get caught up second guessing oneself, it is time to act.
Open rescue is a type of rescue in which the activists are open with both their identities and their actions. It means that they will certainly have to answer for what they do to those who uphold laws, but it also means a great chance at publicity, and a platform to discuss animal rights and animal liberation. For this purpose, the group chooses to perform the rescues as partially symbolic actions, for which the legal ramifications will not include prison. Throughout the course of August, they liberate two pigs, eight hens and one salmon.
The animals are relocated to loving homes (well, the salmon is in the open waters, which is probably as homely as it gets) where they can live in natural and non-oppressive environments. The activists contact authorities and media and inform them about the actions they have performed. They also leave a jar of cookies and a signed letter at the sites where they liberate animals, explaining their actions. They take pictures, record sound, and record video, before, during and after the rescues, and have turned it all into documentaries and informational material on their website where people can hear their thoughts, see their actions and judge the results for themselves.
As they performed further rescues, the media attention picked up, and the activists got recognition on national level. They managed to get statements published in a multitude of papers, and garnered the support of thousands of people, dozens of whom even contacted the group and were eager to join into similar operations.
Some radical voices, on the other hand, criticized the group’s “tame” approach and friendly style of communication. But the effort the group put into this image is probably the key element of the broad popularity of their actions. The group contacted experts for consultation regarding how to best transport |
— and urging the Obama administration to join them.
But at the State Department, some officials were fuming about what they felt was a broken process and a lack of strategy.
The administration took more than a year to nominate a replacement for Jeffrey D. Feltman, a veteran Arabic-speaking diplomat who had coordinated the State Department’s Middle East policy and left in June 2012 for a job at the United Nations. Much of the department’s time was now being devoted to what was called the “post-Assad project,” the planning for political transition in Syria. Many State Department officials began to dismiss the project as a useless academic exercise. They believed that its premise — that Mr. Assad’s government was on the verge of collapse — was becoming outdated.
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After Mr. Obama’s sweeping re-election victory, some of those officials, and others in the administration, expected a change in the White House’s position on Syria — and an end to what they saw as the stalemate of the previous year. Those expectations, however, were dashed during a meeting in early December. Michael J. Morell, who had taken over at the C.I.A. when Mr. Petraeus resigned after acknowledging an extramarital affair, renewed his predecessor’s pitch to begin arming the rebels. The agency had tinkered with the proposal made by Mr. Petraeus, partly to address directly the president’s skepticism about the plan.
Mr. Obama expressed thanks for everyone’s comments and said he wanted to think about it. One former White House official at the meeting said it was clear from Mr. Obama’s body language that he was not convinced. “They could have tweaked this thing till kingdom come, it wouldn’t have made any difference,” the official said. “He just didn’t think it was a good idea, period.”
The second term also brought a new national security team, including a secretary of state, Mr. Kerry, who came to his job convinced that the United States could step up military support to the Syrian rebels while also working with Russia to broker a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
Denis R. McDonough, the deputy national security adviser and one of the biggest skeptics about American intervention in Syria, was promoted to White House chief of staff. Mr. McDonough had clashed frequently with his colleagues on Syria policy, including with Samantha Power, a White House official who had long championed the idea that nations have a moral obligation to intervene to prevent genocide.
Ms. Power came to believe that America’s offers of support to the rebels were empty.
“Denis, if you had met the rebels as frequently as I have, you would be as passionate as I am,” Ms. Power told Mr. McDonough at one meeting, according to two people who attended.
“Samantha, we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” Mr. McDonough responded crisply.
Battlefield’s Balance Tips
But a new American intelligence assessment at the beginning of 2013 revived the discussions about whether to give arms to the rebels.
In a reversal from what spy agencies had been telling administration officials for more than a year, the new assessment concluded that Mr. Assad’s government was in no danger of collapsing, and that Syrian troops were gaining the upper hand in the civil war. The pace of Syrian Army defections had slowed, and Iranian munitions shipments had replenished the stocks of army units that had once complained of shortages in arms and ammunition.
The opposite was true for the rebels, who were running out of ammunition and supplies. Morale was low, American spy agencies concluded, and Qaeda-linked groups like the Nusra Front were becoming increasingly dominant in the rebellion.
Besides the Syrian government’s gains, there was mounting evidence that Mr. Assad’s troops had repeatedly used chemical weapons against civilians.
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Even as the debate about arming the rebels took on a new urgency, Mr. Obama rarely voiced strong opinions during senior staff meetings. But current and former officials said his body language was telling: he often appeared impatient or disengaged while listening to the debate, sometimes scrolling through messages on his BlackBerry or slouching and chewing gum.
In private conversations with aides, Mr. Obama described Syria as one of those hellish problems every president faces, where the risks are endless and all the options are bad. Those views would then be reflected in larger groups by Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, and Mr. McDonough.
“You could read the president’s position through Tom and Denis,” one former senior White House official said.
Slowly, however, Mr. Obama’s position began to change, in no small part because of intense lobbying by foreign officials. During a three-day trip to the Middle East in March, Mr. Obama met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who warned him that the Assad government’s chemical weapons could fall into the hands of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The pressure was even more intense the next day in Jordan, where Mr. Obama, Mr. Donilon and Mr. Kerry had a late-night dinner with King Abdullah II. Jordan was straining under the weight of more than 100,000 Syrian refugees, and the king urged Mr. Obama to take a more active role in trying to end the war.
Jordanian officials were even offering to allow the C.I.A. to use the country as a base for drone strikes in Syria — offers that the Obama administration repeatedly declined.
By April, senior officials said, one of the major skeptics, Mr. Donilon, had shifted in favor of arming the rebels. Another strong opponent in the fall, Ms. Rice, had also shifted her position, partly because of the alarming intelligence about the state of the rebellion.
Mr. McDonough, who had perhaps the closest ties to Mr. Obama, remained skeptical. He questioned how much it was in America’s interest to tamp down the violence in Syria. Accompanying a group of senior lawmakers on a day trip to the Guantánamo Bay naval base in early June, Mr. McDonough argued that the status quo in Syria could keep Iran pinned down for years. In later discussions, he also suggested that a fight in Syria between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda would work to America’s advantage, according to Congressional officials.
But debate had shifted from whether to arm Syrian rebels to how to do it. Discussions about putting the Pentagon in charge of the program — and publicly acknowledging the arming and training program — were eventually shelved when it was decided that too many legal hurdles stood in the way of the United States’ openly supporting the overthrow of a sovereign government.
Instead, Mr. Obama decided to make the rebel training program a “covert action” run by the C.I.A. He signed a secret finding allowing the agency to begin preparing to train and arm small groups of rebels in Jordan, a move that circumvented the legal issues and allowed the White House to officially deny it was giving the lethal aid.
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Besides the legal worries, there were other concerns driving the decision to make the program a secret.
As one former senior administration official put it, “We needed plausible deniability in case the arms got into the hands of Al Nusra.”
Dragging Its Feet
The president signed the finding in April, but months went by without any movement on the C.I.A. program. The White House waited to ask Congress for money for the secret mission, further evidence of Mr. Obama’s continued misgivings.
Through the spring, Iran continued to step up support for Syrian government troops, and Hezbollah fighters joined the offensive against rebel forces. The rebellion was collapsing, and a classified State Department briefing paper on June 10, which mentioned the rebel commander Gen. Salim Idris, painted a grim picture.
“We are headed toward our worst case scenario: rebel gains evaporating, the moderate opposition — including Salim Idriss — imploding, large ungoverned spaces, Asad holding on indefinitely, neighbors endangered, and Iran, Hizbollah, and Iraqi militias taking root,” the paper concluded.
With the policy on Syria foundering, Mr. Obama’s top advisers met in the Situation Room on June 12.
Mr. Kerry had recently announced a deal with his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, to hold an international peace conference in Geneva to try to end the fighting. But rebel setbacks had cooled any enthusiasm for talks among many American officials at a time when Mr. Assad held all the leverage and leading opposition figures were refusing to attend.
“We need to go slow on Geneva given the SOC’s disarray and the worsening situation on the ground,” said a sheet of talking points, referring to the Syrian opposition coalition, prepared for Mr. Kerry to take to the meeting.
And the administration faced another problem. There was no longer doubt among American intelligence agencies that Syrian troops had repeatedly used chemical weapons against civilians. With the president’s “red line” having been crossed, the White House had to come up with a public pronouncement that showed it was prepared to enforce consequences. What came next was a surprise across the government, from the Pentagon to the State Department to the C.I.A.
The day after the meeting, Mr. Rhodes held a news conference and told reporters that Mr. Obama had made a decision — a decision that actually had been made two months earlier and that would be carried out in secret as a C.I.A. covert action. Mr. Rhodes said the United States would give additional military support to the rebels, although he refrained from spelling out that it would involve arming and training them, and that the C.I.A. would supervise the effort.
Mr. Obama made no public statement on the issue.
A Surprising About-Turn
An administration that had spent nearly two years telling members of Congress it was determined to avoid direct military intervention in Syria now had to persuade lawmakers to pay for the arming and training program.
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The lobbying began, with Mr. Kerry holding closed meetings with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Immediately, he was deluged with questions from both Republicans and Democrats: How would he ensure that arms did not fall into the hands of Islamic extremists? Would arming the rebels tip the balance on the battlefield? What was the overall strategy?
It took weeks to overcome skepticism on Capitol Hill, but the intelligence committees eventually approved the administration’s plan to give light arms to the rebels, but not the antiaircraft weapons the rebels insisted they needed the most. But the Aug. 21 poison gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus changed those plans — and suddenly put Syria, for the first time, on top of the president’s agenda.
Within hours, administration officials began signaling that they were preparing for an immediate military strike to punish the Syrian government — an idea dismissed repeatedly in the past and a hard sell with some allies, a war-weary public and Congress. But after the British declined to participate in the operation, and Mr. Obama abruptly decided he would seek Congressional support for the strike, many lawmakers were led to suspect that Mr. Obama still was not convinced that intervention was a good idea.
A senior White House official said that one reason the president had decided to get Congressional approval was his fear that alienating lawmakers might undermine their support on other tough foreign policy issues, most notably Iran. In early July, Mr. Obama had asked Ms. Rice, who had succeeded Mr. Donilon as national security adviser, to undertake a review of American policy in the Middle East and North Africa, and to make Syria part of a broader strategy involving both Iran and the Middle East peace process.
Two days after his announcement that he would go to Congress for approval of a strike, Mr. Obama met in the Oval Office with Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the two Republicans who are the Senate’s most outspoken advocates of military intervention in Syria. Mr. Obama agreed with the senators that American efforts to arm the rebels had been slow, but told them that the first group of 50 Syrian rebels — trained by the C.I.A. in Jordan — would soon cross into Syria, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
The goal was for that group to train larger numbers of rebels in Syria — expanding the impact of the limited C.I.A. training effort in Jordan. But Mr. Obama acknowledged that having the C.I.A. carry out the training covertly had slowed the pace of the program and suggested that he was considering expanding the program and carrying it out publicly, an allusion to having the Pentagon take over.
The president’s enthusiasm for that approach soon cooled again. A week after the meeting with the two senators, Mr. Obama seized on a proposal by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, aimed at forcing the Syrian government to give up its chemical weapons stockpiles. That effort, adopted by the Security Council in late September, appears to have overshadowed the arming project.
While the training mission in Jordan continues, officials now say there is no immediate plan to drastically expand it under the Pentagon’s control. The White House appears to be concerned that a public effort might undermine the diplomatic initiative to remove Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles and convene a peace conference. Mr. Assad, meanwhile, told a Lebanese newspaper in mid-October that he was happy to trade his chemical arsenal, which he dismissed as “obsolete,” in order to “spare Syria” from aggression by the United States.
During his Senate confirmation hearing this month, the Obama administration’s nominee to run special operations policy at the Pentagon was asked whether the rebel training program — currently run by the C.I.A. — might significantly change the balance of power in Syria.
The nominee, Michael D. Lumpkin, a former member of the Navy SEALs, was candid in his answer.
It would not, he said.Plot
Cast
Production
Music
Release
The film held its world premiere in Beijing on October 26, 2017, and was theatrically released in North America and elsewhere around the world in standard, RealD 3D and IMAX on November 17, 2017.[128] Its Japan premiere took place on November 20, 2017 in Tokyo, with only Ezra Miller and Ray Fisher from the main cast attending. In the United States, the film opened to 4,051 theaters in its widest release. Justice League was shown in cinemas for 119 days (17 weeks). Marketing Superman was intentionally left out on all early Justice League marketing materials, including trailers, clips and posters, which actor Cavill commented as "ridiculous". Despite his character being hidden from promotional materials, Cavill still joined the rest of the cast on the film's press tour.[129][130] Clark Kent was revealed in a final trailer before the release of the film, but edited in a way that writers felt Lois Lane was dreaming about Clark.[131][132] Sponsorship and marketing partners of the film included AT&T,[133] Gillette,[134] Mercedes-Benz,[135] and TCL.[136] Home media Justice League was released on digital download on February 13, 2018, and was released on Blu-ray Disc, Blu-ray 3D, 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray and DVD on March 13, 2018 in various international markets.[137] The Blu-ray features two deleted scenes titled Return of Superman.[138] As of January 18, 2019, it has made $16.3 million in DVD sales and $38.7 million in Blu-ray sales, totaling an estimated of $55 million.[139]
Reception
Future
A sequel was scheduled to be released in June 2019 but has since been delayed to accommodate the release for a standalone Batman film.[189] By March 2017, producer Charles Roven announced that Zack Snyder would return as director.[190] In October 2017, J. K. Simmons stated that the studio is working on the script of the sequel, alongside The Batman.[191] Shortly after the release of Justice League, Henry Cavill stated that he is under contract with Warner Bros. to play Superman for one more film.[192] In December 2017, it was reported that there were "no immediate plans" for Zack Snyder to direct a Justice League sequel, or any other DC films, with Snyder instead being relegated to an executive producer position. This comes after a reshuffling of film production staff at Warner Bros. due to the film's mixed critical reception and disappointing financial performance.[193]
Notes
^ [1] In home release, RatPac-Dune Entertainment was replaced with Access Entertainment (RatPac's current owner), following the rape and sexual harassment allegations against RatPac-Dune's CEO, Brett RatnerHi everyone and thanks for coming along to the Annual General Meeting of the Huon Producers Network, and thank you also for giving me this opportunity to speak.
The topic I’ve chosen for tonight is “Living on the Land” — which basically makes it easy for me to bang on about the things closest to my heart for half an hour. So here we go….
So here we all are, trying to make a living off the land, on our own terms, in the Huon Valley, on a smallish scale, in this modern age of multinationals and industrial agriculture, and for me this raises the question: is this realistic? How viable are our expectations of living on the land?
Are we a bunch of hopeless romantics befuddled by this dream of life on the land, of gentle rains and growing plants and sunny afternoons, and a good ache at the end of the day? Of bounteous harvests and being beholden to no man or woman? Of a sustainable life close to nature?….sounds lovely, doesn’t it!
Well, statistically speaking, people, this is all looking pretty dreamy…
What a lot of us here are trying to do — make an income from a small scale farm — is bucking a long-term trend that is still accelerating. In the last three decades the number of farmers in Australia has dropped by 40% as small-scale farmers sell out …and as the big guys get bigger.
Even in the last few years I’ve watched this happen around Cygnet, where two mid-size orchardists on my road are pulling out trees while in Nicholls Rivulet the Harvey orchard continues to expand with new plantings.
Economies of scale are one reason for the decline of the small farms. The farms on my road just weren’t making enough money anymore as the price of apples dropped and the price of diesel rose. Imports and interstate competition dropped apple prices, and fuel is only going to become more expensive as the wells decline. To turn a profit from margins reduced by global factors, you’ve got to get bigger or sell out.
Another reasons for the decline of the small-scale farm is an ageing population of farmers: When you think of a farmer, you imaging a leathery old bloke in dusty clothes on a tractor, and this is largely a true image. Farmers are significantly older than the average Australian worker, and as these farmers retire, there are fewer of the following generation who choose to farm for a living.
There’s a reason for this. Farmers work bloody hard, significantly harder than the average Australian, more hours for significantly less income. I am a prime example of this. Last financial year, I worked between 50-60 hours a week for an income of $35,000, which equates to the princely sum of $13 dollars per hour. I am not in the big league. I could earn more managing a McDonalds. Or just working in one!
So to earn a living from a farm you have to work physically harder, for longer hours, for less money. It’s not sounding great, is it?
Maybe I won’t go on to talk about the far higher than average death rates of farmers due to accident? Suicide? I won’t talk about drought or crop failure. Or of the winter days at the market when everybody has stayed at home, and it’s raining and you’ve lost money?
Or those seemingly endless summer days when you drag yourself out of bed in the dark, again, to tend to your crops, and don’t get back to the house until after sunset, again, and you talk to your mates from the mainland with city jobs who are spending the weekend at the beach. Again.
It’s fraught, living on the land, it’s hard work with little recognition and less pay….so why do we do it? Why? Are we engaged in some delusional pursuit of a romantic notion?
Or are there ameliorating factors? We are all here having a go at this, so what is it that makes living on the land worthwhile, against all this evidence?
Well, I’ve been farming on a small scale for almost five years now, and am planning to continue to do so, so I obviously do think there are factors that make living on the land worthwhile.
But money is not one of them! If you are gunning for the millions, you might want to look elsewhere!
It’s not about the money. Money is not a way of keeping score, it is a way of continuing to do what you love. The money is not an end in itself, it is a means to keep the farm going, and to provide for the poor times, and to build up a bank for when you retire. So financial considerations aside, what is there to love about living on the land?
I reckon there’s a few things worth mentioning. Lifestyle comes to mind straight away. I mean, I have these mates in the city who do get weekends at the beach, and trips overseas, and who eat out a lot — but they are stuck in an office all week. Some of them even like their jobs — but every one of them would give it up if they had the money not to work.
Whereas if I had a million or two, I would still be gardening and farming. Probably on a larger scale, and certainly with more employees. Or employees at all, in fact. And holidays, ahhh holidays… I’d take holidays! But I’d still be farming, still living on the land. So it’s about lifestyle, but what else?
Sometimes I think about the personality traits that drive some people to take up farming, and not others.
Independence would be one; not wanting to work for a boss, enjoying making your own mistakes, and the challenge of fixing things that are broke (often by yourself). Maybe also an aversion to crowds, or a dislike of hustle, bustle and noise, such as you find in the city. What about a contented nature? A desire to live simply?
But most of all I reckon your small-scale farmer is characterised by excessive optimism. So much optimism. And if you are not well endowed with optimism, then I don’t think you’d last long!
Because you have to believe you can do better next year. That you will remember to water all those carrot sowings, and therefore have a crop for winter, that you will put up netting over the peas before the damn ducks eat them all, and you will keep the weeds down so there isn’t a plague of cutworms that eats your entire corn crop for the year.
And yes, that’s all happened to me.
Optimism. This is the same optimism that gets you out of bed in the dark on market morning despite last week’s miserable takings: It’s sure to be better this week!
This same optimism carries you through the wet months of spring when the farm is a quagmire and you are carrying a couple of kilos of mud on each boot and your ‘waterproofs’ are proving to be misnamed: Just think of how the seedlings will pop up when the sun returns!
And, inevitably, the sun does return. Not everything fails. Some of the crops even turn out better than expected. And sometimes you take a moment to lean on your hoe and look around, sunlight on your shoulders and warm earth at your feet. Things are looking good and you gaze around and wonder “they let me do this for a living? How good is that?”
And indeed it is good. And in yet another incidence of scientists going to great lengths to tell us what we already knew intuitively, there are now studies confirming that time spent in nature is beneficial to human health and happiness.
One such study showed that mental and physical recovery from an operation was significantly better when patients had access to natural surroundings. Another study showed that people were significantly happier if they had been outdoors during any given day.
We kind of knew this already, I think? And the farming life — living on the land — is replete with good air, good exercise, and being outdoors. There is goodness gained from being in nature even on the most miserable day — you may not be ready to admit to this until you are back inside, dry, by the fire, sipping tea, but it is so. Even an unexpected and foul-falling November frost has it’s beauty.
So there are indisputable personal and aesthetic reasons for living on the land. And beyond the personal and aesthetic I think there are other considerations that make living on the land worthwhile. Community. I think part of living on the land is being embedded in a local, rural community where you see the same faces week after week and month after month. Year after year.
Where you know and have a relationship with the people who serve you at the garage, the library and the shop, as well as the people you sell your produce to. Where even if you are not particularly fond of someone, you make an effort. You live in the same valley, you’ve got to learn to get along.
And you end up with friendships with people you’d probably never be friends with if you lived in the city, and you form relationships that can be challenging but are always worthwhile. It seems to me that living on the land, we are far more dependent on those around us than are city dwellers.
I have a neighbour who is very different to me, and whom I find difficult occasionally, and we’ve had our small disagreements, but when something goes wrong — and on the land things do go wrong more often than elsewhere — there’s no question. Pitch in and help out. Do what is necessary.Donald Trump was headed toward overwhelming defeat at the polls even before the release of a 2005 Access Hollywood video showing him bragging about groping women without their consent. Now, in the wake of another underwhelming debate performance Sunday in which the Republican nominee defended his lewd comments by essentially accusing Hillary Clinton, without evidence, of facilitating sexual abuse by her husband, G.O.P. leadership is grappling with how to lose the presidential election with their dignity intact—and without Trump’s scandals imperiling their increasingly tenuous grip on the Senate.
With Senate Republicans panicking that Trump’s unpopularity could increase the odds of a Democratic sweep, Mitch McConnell is instructing vulnerable colleagues to steer clear of the flailing G.O.P. nominee, The Hill reports citing party sources. McConnell has kept a lower profile than his House counterpart, Speaker Paul Ryan, who recently announced that he would not longer “defend Trump” (though he did not un-endorse him). But the Senate majority leader is doing damage control of his own, reportedly telling Republicans who are up for re-election to do what is best for themselves. “We’re advising the same thing we have all along. Run your own race,” one G.O.P. aide told The Hill.
Fears that Trump could hurt Republican candidates down the ballot have also deepened in recent days with the release of several new polls that show the G.O.P. nominee headed for a landslide loss in November. On Monday, as Ryan held a conference call in which he implored House Republicans to “do what’s best for you in your district,” NBC News and The Wall Street Journal released a new poll showing Clinton a whopping 11 points ahead of Trump in a four-way race including Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, and 14 points ahead in a two-way race. Rasmussen reported that Clinton now holds her “biggest lead ever,” 45-38, in a four-way race, while Politico found similar results in a poll taken on Saturday—before a wave of Republican senators and congressmen publicly repudiated Trump. Politico notes that in modern American history, no presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1980 has ever overcome a four-point deficit in October. Trump, according to NBC and the Journal, is down by double digits.
All this has left the Republican Party in a tough spot. Aligning themselves too closely with Trump forces them to own his many scandals—a dicey proposition amid rampant rumors that more damning video or audio recordings like the Access Hollywood tape are on the way. But disowning the divisive billionaire carries serious risks, too. The Trump campaign has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to go to war with fellow Republicans it deems disloyal, like Ryan, who Trump tweeted “should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee.” Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson similarly suggested that the campaign was just winning at the expense of the party, if it comes to that. “I can't keep my phone charged due to the mass volume of texts from people all over the country who will #VoteTrump but [down] ballot not so much,” she tweeted Monday. Anecdotal evidence suggests Pierson is right: as The New York Times reports, many Trump supporters say they are perfectly willing to vote against their local Republican lawmakers in order to punish anti-Trump politicians they see as members of a corrupt establishment.
The Republican National Committee, which fund-raises and controls spending for both Trump and dozens of congressional races, is not unaware that it is in a vice. But after flirting with pulling financial support for the presidential nominee, the R.N.C. appears to have made its choice. For now, the R.N.C. and the Trump campaign are maintaining a fragile peace: Priebus announced in a conference call Monday that the committee was standing by their candidate, and in turn, the Trump team fired their Virginia campaign chair for protesting the R.N.C.’s headquarters. For the R.N.C., this might be the wise choice: while other party elites are running for the hills, Politico polling finds that 74 percent of G.O.P. voters want leadership to support their own candidate, and only 13 percent agreed that they should drop Trump. Priebus is staying on the Trump train—even if an impending derailment takes a few vulnerable senators with him.David McRaney spends a lot of time thinking about all the ways thinking doesn’t work. He catalogues delusions, fallacies of thinking, and the psychological short-circuits that cause procrastination, groupthink, and poor decisions. But McRaney swears his index of common mental shortcomings actually inspires him–and could inspire you to know thy working self.
You Are Not So Smart, McRaney’s blog and forthcoming book, is intentionally labeled as a “Celebration of Self-Delusion.” Sure, topics like the bystander effect, showing how bigger crowds encourage less help for people in trouble, and the backfire effect, where people learn to reject science when it questions their beliefs, are likely to get under anyone’s skin after some reflection. But McRaney says that understanding our mental malfuctions should inspire us.
“(It’s) an appeal to be more humble and recognize we can’t always overcome these things, so we should factor them into our lives, our business practices, our politics,” McRaney wrote in an email exchange. “If we know we are all equally susceptible to certain fallacies, biases, heuristics, prejudices, manipulations–we can use that knowledge to appeal to our better angels.”
Here are a few of the self-delusions McRaney writes about that are most apt to throw you off during those 40 hours you’re paid to think straight and make decisions.
The Sunk Cost Fallacy
You’d like to believe that you can evaluate the future worth of a project, an investment, or just a laptop with the stoic gaze of a Wall Street lifer. But you tend to favor those things you’ve already “invested” in, because otherwise–horror of horrors–you’d have made a mistake in your past.
That’s the sunk cost fallacy. Another short version: The pain of losing something is twice as strong as the joy in gaining the same exact thing. McRaney wrote that this single understanding has made the biggest change in his life. “There are a lot of applications, like ejecting from a career path, a degree, or a relationship instead of staying the course, just because you’ve already invested a lot of time and effort into it. It’s a silly thing we all do, and I used to fall prey to that one every day.”GESTURE + EMOTION TRANSFERENCE
Download the software to connect the Microsoft Kinect to Second Life.
At the MxR Lab at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies we are developing methods of recognizing social gestures in order to explore the transference of emotion and gesture between a virtual world and the real world. Thai Phan an engineer at the MxR Lab, using the OpenNI toolkit as a foundation has developed new software which utilizes Kinect to read gestures and triggers corresponding server-side scripts within Second Life. These methods may allow the user to feel a deeper emotional connection to the social gesture performed by their virtual avatar, regardless of the bond which already exists between the user and his recipient. Instead of having to think about pressing the right sequence of keys to make a ‘wave’ gesture, the user can simply raise their hand and wave.
CREDIT
This project is made possible through the use of the OpenNI toolkit, Kinect, and Second Life. The software was developed by Thai Phan, an engineer at the MxR Lab at the USC Insititute for Creative Technologies and a computer science grad student in the USC Viterbi School of Engineeering.
Phan was first introduced to the MxR lab in his work with Diane Tucker, third year MFA in the Interactive Media Department, on her thesis project, exploring the embodiment of gestures and how they affect the emotions of a player.
In consideration of the navigation technique adopted for this demo, we looked to proven mechanisms of control which harness the familiar yet unconcious feedback systems humans have developed to negotiate the real world.'Stealthing' is sexual assault and Congress should address it, lawmakers say
CLOSE "Stealthing" is when a man secretly removes a condom during sex. USA TODAY
Two federal lawmakers say "stealthing" — the act of secretly removing a condom during sex — is a form of sexual assault that should be addressed by Congress.
Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., asked leaders of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to hold a hearing on the "emerging" phenomenon, which they called "disgraceful" and "incredibly dangerous" in a joint letter.
"'Stealthing' can lead to lasting consquences," their letter read, "such as unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, and is also a violation of trust and dignity between two sexual partners."
Read more: The conversation about campus rape is so much bigger than Title IX
Read more: Majority of House members now back bill for women's museum
Read more: A disturbing sex trend called'stealthing' is on the rise
The issue made headlines earlier this year when a report in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law pondered legal actions for stealthing victims.
The report described stealthing as common among young people, with victims being both men and woman. Stealthing victims worried they'd become pregnant or get a sexually transmitted disease, but the impacts went beyond the physical.
"Survivors experienced nonconsensual condom removal as a clear violation of their bodily autonomy and the trust they had mistakenly placed in their sexual partner," the report said.
The report said some legal maneuvers may provide relief to victims, but suggested new legal remedies may be needed.
“I am horrified that we even need to be having this conversation, that a sexual partner would violate their partner’s trust and consent like this. Stealthing is sexual assault,” said Rep. Maloney. “We need a hearing so that Congress can hear from the experts about how to best address this issue as we continue to amend our country’s and universities’ responses to sexual assault and rape.”
Maloney and Khanna said the committee should explore stealthing's prevalence, whether it alters consent and if legal recourses are sufficient. The effects of stealthing, Khanna said, are "far-reaching."
“Consent is not up for discussion," he said, "it is a requirement for the entirety of any sexual interaction. Stealthing violates an agreement between partners and is a dangerous form of sexual assault."
Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2knD1CzFirefighters tackle a fire during a serious blaze in a multi-storey car park in Liverpool, Britain, December 31, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble
LIVERPOOL, England (Reuters) - Firefighters in the northern English city of Liverpool were battling a huge fire at a car park on Sunday that destroyed hundreds of vehicles and prompted the evacuation of multiple buildings in the surrounding area.
Police said all cars inside the multi-storey Kings Dock car park, which has a capacity of 1,600 vehicles, had been destroyed, and owners should contact their insurance companies.
An international horse show that had been scheduled to take place at the Liverpool Echo Arena, next to the car park, was canceled. Organizers said all people and horses involved were safe.
The Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service said initial investigations indicated that an accidental fire within one vehicle had caused others to ignite.
Firefighters equipped with breathing equipment were still fighting the blaze six hours after they were called to the scene.
Liverpool City Council opened a reception center for people who were unable to get home because of the blaze.
The city’s mayor, Joe Anderson, visited the scene, which he described on Twitter as a major incident.
“The people of Liverpool never let us down with their generosity and everyone has now been accommodated or given a lift. A big thank you to everyone who called to offer help,” he said.MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday criticized a decision by U.S. authorities not to file charges against the adoptive parents of a Russian-born boy whose death in January was seized on in Moscow as justification of a ban on adoptions by Americans.
People take part in a rally in defence of Russian children in Moscow, March 2, 2013. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
The death of three-year-old Max Shatto led to criminal and child welfare investigations in the U.S. state of Texas, where he died. Russia has also opened an inquiry and lawmakers in Moscow called for his younger brother to be returned to Russia.
Tensions between the United States and Russia have risen since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency last May. The adoption ban is part of a law he signed in December to retaliate against U.S. legislation meant to punish Russian rights abusers.
Max Shatto’s death added to the poisoned atmosphere. Russia’s child rights ombudsman aired suspicions of foul play and lawmakers demanded the return of his brother Kris, who was also adopted by Laura and Alan Shatto, to Russia.
But a U.S. district attorney said on Monday the couple would not face criminal charges over the death of the boy, who is referred to in Russia by his original name, Maxim Kuzmin. Kris Shatto was born Kirill Kuzmin.
“The decision by the authorities of the state of Texas not to press charges against the Shattos in |
1999.
But Albert was already developing a split personality. In public, he seemed like a decent student and computer savant. In the privacy of his bedroom, online, he transformed into "soupnazi" — an aggressive, macho hacker.
The summer after he graduated from high school, "soupnazi" talked to ZDNet magazine and boasted about breaking into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's system for the Keebler Elves gang. "Defacing a site, to me, is showing the admins, the government... that we own them," he bragged.
Albert was never pegged for that crime.
Jonathan James wasn't so lucky. On January 26, 2000, just before 8 a.m., Bobby James got in his car to leave for his job at county hall. He noticed a Pinecrest Police cruiser in his neighbor's back yard but didn't think much of it.
Suddenly, the lights flicked on. Bobby pulled over. As an officer walked up, three dark-tinted Lincoln Continentals screeched to a halt. His stomach dropped. "What did Jonathan do now?" the father asked.
The past year had been difficult. Jonathan had been suspended from Palmetto Senior High, where he was a sophomore, after he was caught stealing computers from a lab. Then his mother, Joanne, had been diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. She'd recently had a mastectomy.
As cops entered the house, Bobby grabbed the lead agent's arm. "Listen, the bedroom you want is the first one in the hallway," he said. "In the back bedroom, my wife is 21 days postmastectomy. She will not be happy to see you."
From Jonathan's bedroom, the agents took five computers, a cache of burned CDs, and — bizarrely — his Klingon-language dictionary. "They thought he'd used it as an encryption tool, I guess," Bobby says, laughing.
Like Albert, Jonathan had hacked into NASA's computers. But the younger hacker had gone a step further. He had intercepted more than 3,000 emails and stolen data from 13 computers. The boy had even downloaded the program that controlled the climate on the International Space Station.
On March 20, Jonathan admitted he'd hacked the government and he belonged to the Keebler Elves. Prosecutors weren't satisfied. They were angry he'd told other hackers about his bust, which meant he couldn't be used in a sting. In September 2000, at age 16, he was sentenced to six months in a juvenile facility and probation until he was 21.
Jonathan wasn't contrite. The day after his sentencing, he called the Miami Herald to brag. He sent a photo of himself in dark shades and black clothes, strutting like Neo from The Matrix, his favorite movie.
He said he'd hacked BellSouth, the Miami-Dade public school system, and many others. "All the girls thought it was cool," Jonathan told the newspaper.
His hacking, he said, had helped the government by showing weaknesses in the system. Jonathan's dad felt impressed, even if warning bells were ringing.
"He really didn't feel that he'd done any malicious damage," Bobby says of his son. "But in hindsight, he was already showing some sociopathic tendencies. He truly felt that rules were meant for everyone but him."
In early 2007, Albert sat at a desk dwarfed by a towering mound of wrinkled cash. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in $20 bills were heaped in unruly piles as he chatted online with friend Stephen Watt.
Albert laughed as his automatic counting machine choked on the cash. "I'm trying to manually count over $340,000," Albert wrote to his buddy. "My f'n money counter just broke, 340,000, and it's all in 20s. ROFL!"
His grand criminal enterprise — which he called "operation get rich or die tryin" — had already brought regular payments of $10,000 or more from Eastern Europe, laundered through Latvian banks and then delivered by courier to drop boxes in South Florida.
In just a few years, he had evolved from hacking for fun to masterminding a series of massive online heists, to some extent with the help of Jonathan. Also involved were two of their friends from South Florida hacking circles, Stephen Watt and Chris Scott.
Albert had met Stephen when both were high school hackers. The seven-footer from Melbourne — a savant who graduated at age 16 from Melbourne Catholic High — had won admirers online by founding a hacking cartel called Project Mayhem. Chris, Jonathan's best friend at Palmetto Senior, was an overweight social misfit with a gift for computers. The four friends, according to Chris's mom, probably encountered one another at meetings of an underground hacker magazine called 2600 in 1999, when Albert was a high school senior.
Now, years later, the four had combined to hack into databases of some of the largest U.S. retailers and lifted millions of credit card numbers. They then manufactured cards using some of the stolen data. "These guys all started like me, hacking just to see what happens at first when you're still a kid," says E. J. Hilbert, a former FBI undercover agent who worked several cases connected to Albert's criminal ring. "Then you have to show off just to show what you can do. Finally, you... steal... That's when things really get serious."
But there was something the gang didn't know about their leader, Albert Gonzalez.
It had all begun after the handsome young Cuban with lively eyes and a buzzcut graduated from South Miami High in 1999. He enrolled in classes at Miami Dade College but soon dropped out to move to New York for a programming job with FortuneCity, a dot-com start-up. When the site went belly-up a year later, Albert found work with European engineering giant Siemens. A few months later, though, Siemens closed Albert's office and asked him to relocate to Pennsylvania.
He refused. Palomino says Albert had by then developed a drug habit — pot, cocaine, and amphetamines. He hooked up with a group of hackers that ran a site called ShadowCrew (slogan: "For Those Who Wish to Play in the Shadows!"). Their message board offered hackers a place to discuss topics such as "recreational pharmacy" and "physical ops." Mostly, though, it was a safe haven to buy and sell stolen credit cards.
By 2002, Albert had become one of the site's administrators, operating under the name "cumbajohny." Soon ShadowCrew had garnered more than 4,000 subscribers who traded more than a million stolen cards. But then the operation imploded.
In late 2003, Albert walked up to an ATM on a quiet New Jersey side street to test fraudulent cards. Local detectives happened to be staking out a grand theft auto ring nearby. They watched the then-23-year-old, who sported long, scraggly hair and a scruffy beard, feeding card after card into the machine. After stopping him, they discovered more than 75 cards in his pockets.
They passed Albert onto the Secret Service, which decided to use him to bring down the ShadowCrew.
Yet again, Albert seems to have set up a two-faced personality. For the federal agents, he played the part of a repentant hacker — sparing no effort to bring down his criminal coconspirators and pleading he'd joined them only out of curiosity.
But online, as investigators would learn years later, Albert was still "soupnazi," the kid who couldn't stop hacking for fun, for profit, and for the sheer joy of breaking the rules.
Days after his arrest at the ATM, "cumbajohny" was back at work at ShadowCrew. He encouraged site members to log into a secure network to sell the cards, supposedly for their privacy — but really so he could feed their identities to the feds.
On October 26, 2004, Albert organized an online meeting of top users. By the end of the day, "Operation Firewall" had ensnared 28 ShadowCrew members. The feds turned up more than 1.7 million stolen card numbers.
And Albert had found a new career. The Secret Service agreed to pay him $75,000 annually as a hacker/consultant. "He was doing what he loves to do," Palomino says. "And he was doing it legally with the government's consent."
Back in Miami, Jonathan James was struggling to readjust to life after serving six months of house arrest for hacking NASA.
At least one computer company offered employment afterward. But Jonathan wasn't interested. "That would have required actually, you know, showing up for work," Bobby says.
Soon after, the boy violated his probation by smoking pot. That earned him a four-month term in a Liberty City halfway house.
On February 10, 2002, breast cancer killed Joanne James. Jonathan, always moody, became depressed. In late March 2002, after violating probation again, he was sentenced to a six months at Three Springs, a youth facility outside Tuskegee, Alabama, where he was kept away from newspapers, books, and computers. The 19-year-old clashed regularly with guards. He was one of two white inmates in the facility, his dad says.
On New Year's Eve 2003, he was walking home from a party when a cop stopped him, suspecting he might have drugs. He didn't, but a speeding ticket had lapsed while he was in the halfway house, and he was booked overnight into Miami-Dade County Jail.
When Bobby picked him up at 10 the next morning, the young man said, "Dad, I'm never going to jail again. Never."
After his prison term, Jonathan grew closer to Chris Scott, who had earned a GED after dropping out of Palmetto Senior High. The pair drank, played Ping-Pong, and hacked. They also stayed in touch with Albert, who had bought a $118,500 condo off Bird Road.
Albert had already re-entered the world of illegal hacking — even as he infiltrated online gangs for the Secret Service. It wasn't long before he talked the two friends into helping him.
Their first big hack for Albert came in 2003, when Chris helped him break through an unprotected wireless system at BJ's Wholesale Club.
The next year, according to one federal indictment, Chris and "J.J." — probably Jonathan James — began "wardriving," as hackers call it, up and down U.S. 1 in Kendall. They looked for big companies' wireless systems on the thoroughfare and then hacked in to steal credit card data. On one of these tours, they hacked the OfficeMax on SW 109th Street.
Albert, meanwhile, recruited an itinerant hacker named Damon Patrick Toey to move into his condo. Damon had begun stealing credit cards online as an 18-year-old in Virginia, where he lived with ten other relatives in a tiny apartment. His mother was absent, "out partying every night and drinking," according to court documents. Albert offered Damon free room and board in exchange for help stealing data; his attorney later said the younger man was a virtual slave, trapped in the condo with no car or money.
By 2007, Albert, Chris, Jonathan, and Damon — with the help of a "sniffer" program, written by Stephen, that found weaknesses in security systems — had hacked a staggering array of companies: TJX Companies, which owns the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls chains; Dave & Buster's; Sports Authority; Citibank; a corporate payroll company called Heartland Payment Systems; and others. They worked with two mysterious, powerful hackers in Russia who helped direct them to targets.
After the gang members stole customers' credit card numbers, they had two options. With some of the data, they made fake cards and used them to withdraw cash from ATMs in Miami and elsewhere.
But the vast majority were fenced online. To sell the cards, Albert had hooked up with a 25-year-old Ukrainian named Maksym Yastremskiy, known online as "maksik." Maksym bought cards in bulk and then laundered Albert's payments through a site called eGold before depositing money into Latvian bank accounts.
In chats, Albert marveled at media coverage of his crimes. "I'm surprised [this latest theft] wasn't on the news, every hack i've made is on the news heh," he typed.
With his profits, Albert soon moved with his girlfriend into the swanky National Hotel, leaving Damon to toil in the shabby condo. He leased a 2006 BMW 300i and threw a $75,000 birthday party for himself. He made plans to invest in Stephen's dream project: a New York rock club.
Jonathan James wasn't living that life. He and his brother Josh lived rent-free at their childhood home, which their mother had left them when she died. Their dad had moved into his own apartment in South Beach. If his son was profiting from Albert's crimes, Bobby didn't see much evidence. "Jonathan took living with no cash to a new extreme," he says. "He was even scarfing wireless Internet from the neighbors."
On July 25, 2007, a team of Secret Service agents huddled inside a posh resort in Kemer, a seaside town in southwestern Turkey. Across the hall, Turkish secret agents slipped into a luxury suite and grabbed a Lamborghini laptop.
The laptop's owner, the Ukrainian Maksym Yastremskiy, was dancing at a nightclub nearby.
The Turks handed over the machine, and the U.S. agents began downloading data. When they finished, they put the computer back in Maksym's room and slipped out of the resort.
The agents had waited years for the hacker to travel to a friendly country where they could carry out this operation; in Ukraine, he was protected by corrupt officials. Turkish police arrested Maksym the next day. By July 30, he had provided his passwords and given investigators full access to his computer. Still, it wasn't easy to pin down his accomplices. Albert's team used secure communication networks that gave users long numerical IDs, not easier-to-identify nicknames.
"We had this evidence of these strings of numbers being connected to a crime," lead prosecutor Kim Peretti said in a recent interview with BankInfoSecurity.com. "But connecting the numbers to a person was really difficult."
Detectives focused on Maksym's chats with one American — 201679996 — who had sold him millions of stolen credit card numbers. They spent the next few months studying the data with experts at Carnegie Mellon University. By late 2007, they had linked the numbers to a Russian email address with a startling name: soupnazi@efnet.ru.
Alarm bells rang across the Secret Service. Was their prize informant playing them? Then investigators found a chat in which 201679996 referred to himself as "segvec" — another nickname Albert had used in his ShadowCrew days. That sealed it.
The Secret Service immediately began investigating Albert. Soon they arrested an Estonian hacker and accessed two Latvian servers where they found more than 40 million unsold credit card numbers linked to the break-ins at U.S. companies.
After Maksym's arrest, Albert probably considered running. But he made no move to erase his links to the Ukrainian hacker. "I would have wiped all my drives clean, shredded all my paper, taken any evidence there was out of my possession," former hacker Mitnick says. "Then all you have is the logs, and they can't conclusively link that to you. I don't get it."
For months, Albert holed up in the National Hotel. He had cash — more than $400,000 on hand and another $1.1 million buried in plastic tubs in his parents' back yard.
On May 7, 2008, eight months after Maksym's arrest, the feds made their move, raiding Chris Scott's and Jonathan James's homes, Jonathan's girlfriend's apartment, and Albert's hotel room, condo, and parents' home.
They arrested Albert and Chris the same day. Damon was soon in custody too. Stephen Watt's role in the crime wasn't determined until August.
Jonathan wasn't arrested during the raids. For almost two weeks, he tried to understand why the FBI had targeted him again. Then, on May 18, a federal indictment against Albert Gonzalez was posted online. Jonathan read it and was shocked: Albert had been working for the feds since 2003.
Jonathan leaped to a quick — and tragically mistaken — conclusion: Albert had offered up Chris Scott to get out of the latest charges, and Chris, inevitably, would give prosecutors an even bigger morsel: Jonathan James, the young hacker they'd already sent to the slammer once before.
Jonathan grabbed a sheet of lined notebook paper and wrote in uneven but unrushed cursive strokes. "Story Time," he penned at the top.
"When I Googled 'cumbajohny,' what I saw blew my mind. Albert had been working with the feds since 2003. That means that for five years, he had been having people like Chris hack credit cards for him while he made money selling them over the Internet and then at the same time has his buyers arrested to please the feds," he wrote. "Talk about entrapment!"
Jonathan continued, "I honestly, honestly had nothing to do with [the TJX break-in]. Unfortunately, I don't picture the feds caring all too much.
"So despite the fact that [Chris] and Albert are the most destructive, dangerous hackers the feds have ever caught, they'll let them off easy because I'm a juicier target."
A few minutes later, Jonathan picked up a handgun and sat on the floor in the corner of his bathroom. He signed the letter: "Remember, it's not whether you win or lose, it's whether I win or lose, and sitting in jail for 20, 10, or even 5 years for a crime I didn't commit is not me winning. I die free."
Jonathan nestled the gun against his head, just over his right ear, aimed upward and to the left, and pulled the trigger.
Albert Gonzalez stood before a judge in a Boston courthouse on March 25. Maria and Alberto Sr. cried audibly in the front row. He wore olive-green prison garb and spoke in an even tone. "I stand before you humbled by these past 22 months," he said. "I'm guilty not only of exploiting computer networks, but of exploiting personal relationships."
It was the last day in a 22-month legal process — one of three criminal cases Albert faced in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York for the thefts he orchestrated in "operation get rich or die tryin." He faced 15 to 25 years in federal prison, and he pleaded with the judge for mercy.
He'd betrayed the Secret Service and cost U.S. companies and credit card users big money. TJX alone lost 46.5 million credit card numbers and spent more than $132 million paying back customers, fixing security flaws, and defending itself in lawsuits. Banks, retailers, and payroll companies racked up "hundreds of millions" in expenses, prosecutors said.
"He knowingly victimized a group of people whose population exceeded that of many major cities and some states," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
But Albert pleaded with the judge that he didn't do it out of avarice.
"I didn't throw it away because of egotism or greed," he said. "I threw it away because of my inability to stop my pursuit of curiosity and my addiction."
The month before, a psychologist named Barry Roth had testified that Albert might suffer from Asperger's disorder, which is similar to autism. He noted the hacker was "possessed by a twisted genius."
Palomino, in part, blames the Secret Service for not monitoring Albert more closely. "Sending him home with a laptop would be like a DEA agent sending a cokehead informant home with a kilo for the weekend and expecting him to come back with the whole thing on Monday," he says. "The guy had an addiction."
But the prosecution's psychologist, Mark J. Mills, argued that Internet addiction isn't recognized by mainstream medicine and that Albert clearly knew what he was doing when he stole.
The truth, perhaps, lies somewhere in the middle. Going back to his earliest days as a hacker, it's clear that Albert never really stopped breaking the law online — he just got better at pretending that he had reformed himself. And if his hacking was rooted in intellectual curiosity, by the end it was also driven by naked greed.
This past March 25, U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris sentenced Albert to 20 years in prison, much of it to be served in isolation because of his role as an informant. He was also ordered to repay $69,143,862.80. Another restitution hearing is set for June. It was the stiffest sentence ever handed down to a cybercriminal.
Chris Scott received a seven-year federal sentence. Stephen Watt got two years and was required to pay $171.5 million in restitution. Damon Toey earned five years in prison. Yastremskiy was hit with a 30-year prison sentence by Turkish courts.
Prosecutors say two Russian criminals, identified only as "Hacker 1" and "Hacker 2," played a key role in all the thefts. They remain at large.
After Jonathan's death, Bobby James moved back into the Pinecrest home with his other son, Josh.
The house, still cluttered with Jonathan's books and videogames, has the air of a bachelor pad. The brick-lined pool out back is half-full of tea-colored storm water.
Bobby says he still struggles with Jonathan's suicide. He brushes his teeth every morning in the same bathroom where his son died. "I just try to remember the good times we've had in this house," he says.
He is still not sure how much of a role Jonathan played in Albert's scheme. He believes his son's claim that he didn't participate in the huge TJX break-in. "But I do believe that he was doing other illegal stuff for Albert," he says.
Bobby also tries to keep a sense of humor about his boy's brilliant and troubled life. He and Josh sometimes laugh about how confused Jonathan was when federal agents took his Klingon dictionary. They chuckle about the time he was desperate enough for cash to eat a whole jalapeño for $20.
A few weeks ago, Bobby printed simple white business cards with Jonathan's name, his date of birth and date of death, and this simple inscription:
"Google 'c0mrade hacker.' (Please Remember Me)."Ryanair has issued a tongue-in-cheek apology after a photo of a rude outline drawn in the snow by its ground crew circulated on Twitter. User Brendan Keary spotted the schoolboy graffito at Dublin Airport, says The Daily Telegraph.
Keary's photo of the scene - a Ryanair jet on the snowy tarmac surrounded by support vehicles and with a 30-foot phallus etched out beside it - was quickly re-tweeted by other users:
Ryanair ground crew are my new heroes! pic.twitter.com/dVxqW8KdzL — Matt Tilley (@itsmatttilley) February 3, 2015
One user, Lisa Domican, thought the work to be "better than Banksy" while another, John Boyle, claimed that "from a certain angle" it looked just like Ryanair's controversy-courting CEO, Michael O'Leary.
Ryanair responded with a press release saying: "While our ground crew excel at industry-leading 25-minute turnarounds, art isn't their forte, as they've clearly forgotten to draw wings on their snow airplane."
The Telegraph points out that Ryanair has made an effort to shake off its reputation for blithely causing offence with its advertising, customer service and avaricious pricing.
Last summer, the low-cost carrier started offering business class tickets for the first time.The company has even been making "great strides in recent months to win over families", says the Telegraph.The white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) is a very large eagle widely distributed across Eurasia. As are all eagles, it is a member of the family Accipitridae (or accipitrids) which includes other diurnal raptors such as hawks, kites, and harriers. One of up to eleven members in the genus Haliaeetus, which are commonly called sea eagles, it is not infrequently also referred to as the white-tailed sea-eagle.[2] It is also sometimes known as the ern or erne (depending on spelling by sources),[3] gray sea eagle[4] and Eurasian sea eagle[5] While found across a very wide range, today breeding as far west as Greenland and Iceland across to as far east in Hokkaido, Japan, they are often scarce and very spottily distributed as a nesting species, mainly due to human activities. These have included habitat alterations and destruction of wetlands, about a hundred years of systematic persecution by humans (from the early 1800s to around World War II) followed by inadvertent poisonings and epidemics of nesting failures due to various manmade chemical pesticides and organic compounds, which have threatened eagles since roughly the 1950s and continue to be a potential concern. Due to this, the white-tailed eagle was considered endangered or extinct in several countries.[3][6][7][8] However, some populations have recovered well due to some governmental protections and dedicated conservationists and naturalists protecting habitats and nesting sites and partially regulating poaching and pesticide usage, as well as careful reintroductions into parts of their former range.[9][10][11] White-tailed eagles usually live most of the year near large bodies of open water, including both coastal saltwater areas and inland freshwater, and require an abundant food supply and old-growth trees or ample sea cliffs for nesting.[3][9] They are considered a close cousin of the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), which occupies a similar niche in North America.
Taxonomy [ edit ]
The first formal description of the white-tailed eagle was by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Falco albicilla.[13][14] The genus Haliaeetus was introduced in 1809 by the French naturalist Marie Jules César Savigny in the Description de l'Égypte.[15] The name Haliaeetus is New Latin for "sea-eagle", from Ancient Greek hali-, "sea-" and aetos, "eagle". The specific albicilla, "white-tailed", is from New Latin albi-, "white" and cilla, "tail".[16] The Anglo-Saxon name erne means “soarer”.[3] It has many Gaelic names, including iolar sùil na grèine or 'eagle of the sun's eye.'
Systematics [ edit ]
Japan. Wintering adult white-tailed eagle in Hokkaido
The white-tailed eagle is a member of the genus Haliaeetus, a monotypical group comprised by 11 living species, including the closely related Ichthyophaga fish eagles which may or may not be part of a separate genus. The latter group, comprised by the lesser (Haliaeetus humilis) and the grey-headed fish eagle (Haliaeetus ichthyaetus), differ mostly in life history, being more fully devoted to fish eating and habituating wooded areas, especially in mountainous areas. In appearance the two Ichthyaetus are slenderer, longer tailed and more uniform and grey in colour than typical sea eagles. This species pair may be genetically not distinct enough to warrant division into separate genera.[18][19] Other than these Ichthyophaga-type species found farther north in Asia, Sanford's sea eagle (Haliaeetus sanfordi) of the Solomon Islands is the most atypical Haliaeetus, retaining rufous-brown plumage into adulthood (this particularly resembling the white-bellied sea eagle juvenile, likely a closely related species) more typical of juveniles in other species and it also dwells more so in dense, coastal forests where it feeds mostly on birds and mammals rather than fish and water birds.[3][20] Outside of the genus Haliaeetus, among other extant forms, they appear to be most closely related to milvine kites and Old World vultures, based on modern forms from these subfamilies that broadly share morphological and life history traits with sea eagles: the Brahminy kite (Haliastur indus) (historically sometimes referred to as the “red-backed sea eagle”) and the palm-nut vulture (Gypohierax angolensis) (which was once widely referred to as the “vulturine fish eagle”). The relation of these species to the sea eagles is partially borne out by their genetic sequencing.[3][21][22] Other groups, beyond milvine kites and Old World vulture, of modern accipitrid that are seemingly in some way related, albeit very distantly, to the sea eagles include Accipiters, harriers, chanting-goshawks and buteonines. Notably excluded from their relations are most other species referred to as “eagles”, including booted eagles and snake and serpent eagles.[9][22][23]
The white-tailed eagle itself forms a species pair with the bald eagle. These diverged from other sea eagles at the beginning of the early Miocene (c. 10 mya) at the latest, possibly (if the most ancient fossil record is correctly assigned to this genus) as early as the early or middle Oligocene, about 28 mya. A recent genetic study of mitochondrial DNA is consistent with this idea. Greenlandic white-tailed eagles (proposed as H. a. groenlandicus) form, on evolutionary time scales, a relatively recently founded population that has not yet accumulated many unique genetic characteristics and may not strictly fulfill the distinction of a subspecies. However, the population appears to be demographically isolated and deserves special protection. At one time an eastern subspecies (H. a. brooksi) was proposed as well but there is little evidence supporting this as more than a case of clinal variation in coloring and size.[25] As in other sea-eagle species pairs, this one consists of a white-headed (the bald eagle) and a tan-headed species. They probably diverged in the North Pacific, spreading westwards into Eurasia and eastwards into North America. Like the third large northern species, Steller's sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus), adults have yellow feet, beaks and eyes. Another species, likely intermediate between the white-tailed, bald and Steller's sea eagles and the Ichthyophaga type fish eagles, is the Pallas's fish eagle, which in life history seems to range farther from water and to higher elevations than the three northern species normally do. Due to the similar dietary and nesting habits of sea eagles, they are mostly allopatric in distribution as competition can be considerable between these eagles.[3][18]
Currently, eagles only occur in the Hawaiian Islands as vagrants, but Quaternary bones of Haliaeetus have been found on three of the major islands. An ancient DNA study published in 2015 characterized the rapidly evolving mitochondrial control region of one of these specimens.[26] DNA from a ∼3500-year-old sea eagle skeleton found in a lava cave on Maui was sequenced. Phylogenetic analyses suggested that the Hawaiian eagle represents a distinct (>3% divergent) mtDNA lineage that is most closely related to extant white-tailed eagles. Based on fossil calibration, the Hawaiian mtDNA lineage probably diverged around the Middle Pleistocene. Thus, although not clearly differentiated in morphology from its relatives, the Hawaiian eagle likely represented an isolated, resident population in the Hawaiian archipelago for more than 100,000 years, where it was the largest terrestrial predator. The reasons for its extinction are unknown.[27]
Description [ edit ]
Size [ edit ]
The white-tailed eagle is the largest eagle found in Europe and most of its Asian range.
The white-tailed eagle is a very large bird and one of the largest living birds of prey. It is the largest of the dozen species called eagle to be found in Europe and is the largest eagle across its distribution, excluding the Russian Far East and during winter in Hokkaido where it co-exists with its larger cousin, Steller's sea eagle. The white-tailed eagle is sometimes considered the fourth largest eagle in the world and is on average the fourth heaviest eagle in the world. The only extant eagle eagle species known to be more massive in mean bulk are Steller's sea eagle, the harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) and the Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi).[9][28] The white-tailed eagle measures anywhere from 66 to 94 cm (26 to 37 in) in total length with a typical wingspan of 1.78 to 2.45 m (5 ft 10 in to 8 ft 0 in).[9][29] This species may have the largest wingspan of any living eagle.[9][28] The Steller's sea eagle, which is larger in weight, total length and non-wing standard measurements, may be the closest rival for median wingspan amongst living eagles.[9] Average wingspans are not known for the Steller's species, however white-tailed eagles do appear to outsize the average wingspan of the wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax), which is sometimes also titled the largest winged extant eagle.[30] In one sample from Norway, 5 male white-tailed eagle were found to average 2.26 m (7 ft 5 in) and 8 females were found to average 2.37 m (7 ft 9 in).[31] In another sample of wild birds of unspecified origin, 5 males were found to average 2.1 m (6 ft 11 in) and 7 females averaged 2.3 m (7 ft 7 in).[32] Record wingspans have included a specimen from Greenland which measured 2.53 m (8 ft 4 in) while another specimen apparently spanned 2.6 m (8 ft 6 in).[33][34] The bald eagle broadly overlaps in size with the white-tailed eagle. In direct comparison, the white-tailed eagle averages somewhat larger in body mass than the bald eagle and may be marginally larger in bill and talon size although these linear aspect can be quite similar between the two species. However, the white-tailed has a significantly larger wing chord and average wingspan. On the other hand, the bald eagle usually possesses a longer tail length on average, which imparts a somewhat longer total length that the white-tailed eagle, and a longer mean tarsal length.[3][9][35][36]
Size variation is generally a clinal trend, these figures usually being measured in standard measurement such as wing, tail and tarsal length, or body mass rather than wingspan or total length. As expected for many widely distributed animals of varied lineages, the white-tailed eagle conforms to Bergmann's rule in that more northerly birds tend to outsize those found relatively closer to the Equator. Somewhat less predictably, size seems to decrease from west to the east as well.[3][37] The largest white-tailed eagles appear to be found in Greenland, which are just slightly larger than those from Scotland and Scandinavia and notably larger than eagles from central Europe, especially in proportions of the wing area. Meanwhile, those from the southerly portions of their breeding range, such as Asia Minor (principally Turkey), southern Kazakhstan and Korea Bay appear to be the smallest-bodied population, but this is complicated by the fact that there's nearly been no comprehensive measurements or published weights known for these extremely sporadic and rare Asian populations of eagle. Furthermore, weights of fully grown eagles from Greenland are not known.[3][9][32] Unlike many accipitrids, in white-tailed eagle (and seemingly other sea eagles as well) juveniles are often of similar weight to adult eagles, whereas in most the juveniles will usually weigh somewhat less. However, more typically, juvenile eagles have somewhat larger average wing and tail lengths than adults.[3][38] In the white-tailed eagle, body mass can typically range from 4 to 6.9 kg (8.8 to 15.2 lb) in females. The slightly smaller male may typically weigh from 3.1 to 5.4 kg (6.8 to 11.9 lb).[9] Average weights in European white-tailed eagles can range from 4.02 kg (8.9 lb) in 5 males and 5.11 kg (11.3 lb) in 9 females to (from the reintroduced birds of Scotland of Norwegian stock) 4.98 kg (11.0 lb) in 39 males and 6.06 kg (13.4 lb) in 43 females.[11][32] In comparison, the weight ranges for white-tailed eagles from northeast China were claimed as only 2.8 to 3.78 kg (6.2 to 8.3 lb) in males and 3.75 to 4.6 kg (8.3 to 10.1 lb) in females.[37] The heaviest female white-tailed eagles can apparently scale up to 7.5–8 kg (17–18 lb) and even males can sometimes weigh up to 6.5 kg (14 lb), which would make the largest males perhaps the heaviest recorded modern male eagle as male harpy and Philippine eagles (being more sexual dimorphic in favor of the female) are not known to exceed 5 kg (11 lb) (the highest weights for male Steller's sea eagle are not known).[3][30][39][40] The global mean body mass of white-tailed eagles is estimated at approximately 5 kg (11 lb).[39][41][42] The average female Steller's sea eagle may weigh just under 25% more than the average female white-tailed eagle (the average weight of male Steller's is not known) while the average European golden eagle weigh about 11-12% less than the average European white-tailed eagle and the bald eagle species as a whole about 10% less than the white-tailed eagle species.[39][43][44]
Standard measurements and sexual dimorphism [ edit ]
An illustration of the large bill and sharply curved talons of a juvenile white-tailed eagle.
The most reliable method to sex birds is by tarsus width and depth and bill depth but |
getting close to us, brushing their bodies against ours. They were in their early forties, she was a curvy blond in a tight summer dress; he was short but well-built, with dark Mediterranean features. Soon I felt someone’s, not my husband’s, hand on my ass. It startled me at first but then I realized that the audacious touch was welcome… and I let the hand stay. When I looked around I saw that my hubby’s hand was groping the other woman’s breasts. I felt his hard-on pressing against my hips. All of a sudden I was breathing heavily as the stranger’s hand was caressing me more boldly under the skirt. Soon we exchanged dancing partners and the man was kissing me, holding me tight. I saw the other wife getting on her knees, undoing my hubby’s zipper.
When the song was over we sat on the couches for a while, the foreplay continued, and then we retreated into the playroom area. What followed was an unforgettable, long, juicy and raunchy foursome. Once we were all pleasantly exhausted, we properly introduced ourselves… We exchanged phone numbers and the couple (George and Lucy) said they would invite us to a couples-only house party. We had never been to such a party, so we said we would be interested.
A few weeks later, when we almost forgot about the promise, Lucy called and invited us to their country house on Saturday.
… When we arrived, the sun was setting and there were already several cars parked near the house. Everyone brought their own wine, beer or hard liquor. The hostess Lucy stuck labels with the couples’ names on the bottles and put them on the bar counter. We were also instructed to bring our own towels, robes and condoms. We also left a ‘donation’ of twenty bucks to compensate the hosts for the food and the cleaning after the party.
Other than the bags with the towels and the robes, nothing was suggesting that it was a swingers party at first. A couple of men were cooking on the barbeque, while their wives (or girlfriends) prepared snacks. The guests were sitting on the deck and in the living room. More couples arrived, greeted by Lucy, who was wearing a short dress that could barely contain her voluptuous parts. As we chatted with a heavy-set, handsome gentleman, he told us that these parties were hosted regularly by different couples who belonged to their circle of lifestyle acquaintances. They were people from all walks of life: lawyers, doctors, business people, an ad agency executive, a banker, an artist, a construction engineer and so on. I lost count after 16 couples, and the new ones kept arriving for another hour. Most women were dressed up in sexy outfits, nothing overly slutty. Men wore fancy casual, or suits with no ties. To my surprise, no man was wearing shorts!
When it got dark and we started wondering if that was just a social evening, Lucy came up, sat on my husband’s lap and kissed him on the mouth. Then she turned to me and kissed me too, her lips soft and thick. When I opened my eyes after the deep kiss, I saw my husband’s face buried in a huge bosom of another woman, whose male partner was touching Lucy’s thighs. I got instantly aroused by the sight. Very soon most couples in the living room appeared to be entangled in one way or another. It looked like an HD porn movie, but much better, because it was for real, it was not staged, and it was happening right in front of me. The most titillating thing about it was that I could reach out and touch anyone and join in at any moment. Which we started doing. My husband and I stayed close to each other and we managed to play with several other couples throughout the evening.
When I went to the bathroom, I looked into other rooms and discovered that both bedrooms were occupied, doors wide open. At one point there were 8 couples all mixed up together on a big bed. I noticed one young couple who were heatedly whispering to each other in the corner. The husband wanted to stay and play with others but the wife got visibly jealous and wanted to leave. They left early. There was a skinny older woman who tried to fuck every man in the house, her husband fully dressed and patiently watching. There was an Italian wife whose face was completely covered with cum. There were naked or partly dressed bodies writhing everywhere. A plump pretty woman wearing nothing but pink stockings and high heels was sitting on her husband’s face, her hands and lips busy pleasuring two other men. I remembered that she was the lady who was dressed very conservatively when they showed up. Perhaps they did not want their kids to ask any questions when they left their house.
That, and many other scenes were turning me on, but some were too anatomical for me, probably not a sight for the faint-hearted beginners. I can say that few porn movies can get close to depicting what was happening in that house that night.
My hubby and I probably went through at least ten couples in different combinations, and four of my orgasms. As he concluded, the evening was a smashing success, and I did not argue with that. The party gradually dispersed by 4am. Two or three couples stayed over for the night (I guess this was when the robes came in handy). We got home, had a bite and passed out in each other’s arms. The memories from that evening stirred our lust for a long time.
Since then we’ve been to many other house parties. There are many variations of them: occasional private house parties; weekly parties at a private residence (sort of a swingers club located in a private house); couples-only house parties; couples-and-singles parties; private gangbang parties (we’ve never been to one); two, three or four couples meeting at someone’s home, and many other types. Some home-based swingers clubs host parties every weekend that include an optional dinner, followed by an on-premises swingers party. You can sign up for the full thing with the dinner (extra $$), or just for the party, at a regular price. We prefer non-commercial gatherings like the one George and Lucy hosted, but those are harder to get into and they are not as regular as the weekly private swinger house parties. On certain rare occasions we found that the socializing components (dinner, small talk, dancing to blasting music) were too long and excruciatingly boring. By the time the action started, it was already around one in the morning. A few events did not have enough people to choose from, and one or two had people we thought were repulsive. Other than that – we enjoyed the vast majority of them, and intend to have more… while we can.
You can read about the swingers party etiquette here.
If you would like to ask me any questions about private swingers house parties, please do so via the Comments.Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco was pulled in favor of Ryan Mallett during the fourth quarter of Sunday's 44-7 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in London.
Mallett took over with the team trailing 44-0. Although the benching likely was a response to protect Flacco in a game out of reach, he was struggling mightily when he left. He completed only 8 of 18 passes for 28 yards and also threw two interceptions.
Mallett got the Ravens on the scoreboard in the fourth quarter on a 6-yard TD pass to tight end Benjamin Watson.
Last week, Flacco said he still wasn't feeling 100 percent after suffering a back injury in the offseason that kept him out of four preseason games. It's unclear whether his back was causing any significant issues for him before he left the game.
If he's healthy, look for Flacco to be back under center next week when the Ravens play the Steelers next week.Mim Swartz is the former Travel editor of The Denver Post.
When I discovered one of my favorite singers would be appearing at a Palm Beach hotel cabaret room last spring coinciding with a major birthday, I decided to give myself the perfect present: a VIP dinner-show seat to see jazz vocalist Jane Monheit.
However, I could have saved the cost of airfare, the hotel stay and some retail therapy along tony Worth Avenue, because three months later, Monheit and her swinging trio were booked at Dazzle Jazz in Denver.
I went to that show as well.
Nowadays, Denver-area jazz junkies don’t have to go very far to get their fix. In fact, I can’t remember when there has been so much exciting music in and around Denver and throughout Colorado.
Of course, Dazzle Jazz — a slightly funky lounge and supper club in Denver’s Capitol Hill — has been a mainstay of the local jazz scene for nearly 20 years. Downbeat magazine has named it among the top 100 jazz clubs in the world. The club not only imports big names, it also features local talent. Good local talent. In some cases, great local talent.
And where else can you go for lunch on a Friday and hear jam sessions with such a polished pianist/vocalist as Ellyn Rucker (she hosts there on the last Friday of the month, while various musicians sit in). Lucky for us, elegant Ellyn also plays gigs elsewhere in Denver.
Other clubs have cropped up in the last several years, like Nocturne in the River North District and The Crimson Room in Larimer Square, both classy, sophisticated spots that make me feel like I’m in New York.
LaCour Bistro and Art Bar on South Broadway in Denver offers an eclectic mix of music five nights a week, including local treasure Billy Wallace, who’s still playing 88 keys at age 87.
On the west side of town, there are a couple of notable places with regularly scheduled music: the Golden Hotel, where songbird Teresa Carroll holds down the fort with the Clear Creek Jazz Quintet once or twice a month (she, too, performs elsewhere), and Grappa Italian Bistro in Lakewood’s Belmar area, which boasts live jazz twice a week.
Of course, Vail and Telluride are known for their jazz festivals, but closer to home, the 15th annual Evergreen Jazz Festival at the end of July blew me away with non-stop performances in five venues. You could stay in one place and the groups came to you.
As for national headliners, it’s been a stellar summer. In addition to Monheit, I’ve seen guitarist/singer John Pizzarelli and his dynamite quartet at the cozy Baur’s Listening Lounge (the next day they headed up the hill to appear two nights at Vail Jazz). Wunderkind Joey Alexander, 13, who has been wowing audiences since he was 10, also was at Vail Jazz and then in Aspen. Maybe you remember the little boy with big hands on the piano from an interview on TV’s “60 Minutes.” I can’t wait for his return to Colorado on Sept. 9, when he’ll perform at Boulder’s Chautauqua Auditorium.
And what an electric night it was on Aug. 13 when the don’t-worry-be-happy pianist Monty Alexander, a native of Jamaica, and his Harlem Kingston Express had the throngs groovin’-and-a-movin’ at Balistreri Vineyards north of Denver at the annual fund-raiser for KUVO Radio (another music gem, which I’ve listened to since its inception 31 years ago). Monty (no relation to Joey) and his more subdued trio, with bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton, played at Vail Jazz in early July, and he will return to Dazzle Jazz in November with his Harlem Kingston Express.
With all this jazz, there’s no way Denver can still be considered a cow town.
It’s cool, man, so cool.BY: Follow @BillGertz
China conducted another flight test of its newest and longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile last week amid growing tensions with the United States over the South China Sea.
Pentagon officials told the Free Beacon the flight test of the new road-mobile DF-41 missile took place Tuesday with two multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, that were monitored in flight by U.S. military satellites and other regional sensors.
Officials did not say where the test took place. Past DF-41 launches were carried out from the Wuzhai Missile and Space Test Center in central China.
The latest flight test followed an earlier, rail-based canister ejection test of a DF-41 on Dec. 5.
U.S. Strategic Command commander Adm. Cecil Haney said Jan. 22 that China’s multiple warhead missiles are part of a significant investment in both nuclear and conventional forces.
"China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple nuclear warheads," Haney said in a speech.
The flight test came around the same time that a high-ranking Chinese general made an unusual visit to a disputed South China Sea island. Also, the missile test occurred three days before Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited the aircraft carrier USS Stennis as it sailed in the South China Sea.
Pentagon officials said the visit to Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands by Gen. Fan Changlong was timed to the Carter visit to the region. Fan is vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the most powerful military organ under the ruling Communist Party of China.
The Pentagon has said China is covertly building military bases on disputed islands in the sea. Beijing has accused Washington of militarizing the sea by deploying warships and bolstering regional alliances.
Disclosure of the DF-41 test follows a newsletter report last month that stated China is nearing deployment of the new ICBM.
Kanwa Asian Defense reported last month that the new ICBM is in the final testing phase, and its expected deployment area will be near Xinyang in Henan province, in central China.
From that location, the missile would be capable of striking the United States in around 30 minutes, either through a polar trajectory or over the Pacific.
An earlier flight test of the DF-41, also with two dummy warheads, was carried out Aug. 6.
The new missile poses a significant strategic threat because it is larger than other road-mobile ICBMs and the new JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile.
The DF-41 is assessed by U.S. intelligence agencies to be powerful enough to deliver between six and 10 warheads up to 7,456 miles—far enough to reach every corner of the United States from launch areas in eastern China.
Rick Fisher, a China military affairs analyst, said the latest launch is the seventh reported flight test of the DF-41, an indication the ICBM will soon be deployed with the newly-renamed PLA Rocket Forces.
"As with previous MIRV tests, the PLA has used a small number of reentry vehicles to mask the real capability of the DF-41, which is estimated to be able to loft up to 10 warheads," said Fisher, senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
The congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission stated in its most recent annual report that China is developing maneuvering re-entry vehicles, or MARVs, in addition to multi-warhead missiles.
"Because MARV-equipped warheads are capable of performing preplanned flight maneuvers during reentry, they are more difficult to intercept and better able to penetrate adversary missile defenses," the report said.
Fisher said he expects China to sharply increase the number of warheads in its arsenal as a result of the shift to multiple-warhead missiles.
China also has begun retrofitting older, single warhead DF-5 ICBMs with MIRVs, according to defense officials, who said the uploading was detected over the past several months.
China is currently engaged in a large-scale buildup of nuclear forces and missile delivery systems that include new missiles and a hypersonic glide vehicle—a weapon that can maneuver to avoid missile defenses in delivering nuclear or conventional warheads.
"There will initially be two types of DF-41s, a road and rail mobile version, indicating the PLA could be fielding several brigades of this ICBM," Fisher said.
"In addition, there may be a new MIRV equipped version of the older DF-31, called the DF-31B."
China also is expected to add multiple warheads to its new submarine-launched missile, called JL-2C or JL-3.
"The DF-41 program appears to be in the advanced stage of research and development," said Mark Stokes, a former Pentagon specialist on the Chinese military.
Stokes said the DF-41 appears to be a modified variant of the post-boost stage of the DF-5B ICBM that has been placed on a larger solid rocket motor.
If the design is certified by the manufacturer, the DF-41 could be deployed within five years.
"The first unit equipped with the DF-41 could be expected to have at least six launchers in its inventory," Stokes said.
Fisher said it is evident the Obama administration policy of reducing nuclear weapons "is not going to be reciprocated by China, Russia, North Korea or Iran."
"But what is much worse is that China and Russia are increasingly coordinating their military forces against the Untied States and that China's program of enabling North Korea and Iran to become nuclear missile powers is nearing completion," he said.
To deter nuclear attack from hostile powers, the United States should rapidly expand its warhead stockpile by at least 1,000 warheads, Fisher said.
"In addition, the U.S. must quickly reintroduce tactical nuclear forces back to the Navy and Army to enable more assured deterrence of North Korea and Iran," he said.
A Pentagon spokesman did not respond to emails and telephone calls seeking comment.
Asked last month if China would soon deploy the DF-41, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Sr. Col. Yang Yujun told reporters in Beijing, "I don’t have any information to release here."
In a Dec. 31 response to the Dec. 5 rail-mobile ejection test of the DF-41, Yang said "Scientific tests within the Chinese territory are conducted according to plan."
A Chinese regional government website first disclosed the existence of the DF-41 on Aug. 1, 2014. The Shaanxi Province Environmental Monitoring Center official website reported the "China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation 4th Institute 43 Study Department DF-41 missiles" office had been closed.
The study office was said to be involved in developing composite materials used in the missiles. The office is in charge of building solid fuel rocket engine casings, missile canister launchers, and nozzles made from high-strength composite material.
The closure was said to be an indication that DF-41 development had advanced considerably.
The posting was removed days later, after Western news reports mentioned the post.Saudi Arabia has offered to build 200 mosques in Germany to accommodate the wave of Muslim refugees there if German authorities permit, according to media reports Thursday. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and other asylum seekers from countries in North Africa and the Middle East have sought refuge in Europe in recent months.
The Lebanese newspaper Ad-Diyar first reported the offer last week, citing a request by a committee of sheikhs. Saudi Arabia also vowed to donate at least $200 million, according to the Lebanese paper, although whether that was to support the refugees or to build the suggested mosques was unclear.
One of the Mosques our beloved Huzur inaugurated earlier this year - Mansoor Mosque Aachen #Germany #Islam #Ahmadiyya pic.twitter.com/B1YyVWojUP — Noor Hadi (@_NoorHadi) September 9, 2015
The proposal comes amid growing accusations of hypocrisy directed toward the wealthy gulf nation and its neighbors for taking in few, if any, refugees from the ongoing four-year civil war in Syria, even as they funnel support to groups fighting there. In 2014, Saudi Arabia accepted just 561 refugees and 100 asylum seekers, according to the United Nations, the Wall Street Journal reported. Fewer still found refuge in Qatar and Bahrain. Germany, by contrast, has said it will accept 800,000 refugees, and countries bordering Syria--Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey--have officially taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees each.
Proposals for building mosques have an uneasy history in Germany. In July, when an Islamic center decided to convert a church in northern Germany into a mosque to accommodate its expanding following, locals protested. The Christian Democratic Union party requested the church not be changed, while one pastor recommended razing the building, the New York Times reported.
In 2012, a mega mosque built by Turkey in Cologne sparked pushback as well. Islamic Turkish Associations were there "to challenge the sovereignty of Christianity in Cologne," Michael Höhne-Pattberg, identified as an anti-jihad activist, told CBN news at the time. Other locals in towns where Muslims populations were growing similarly criticized what they called the "Islamization" of their town.France refused Monday to carry out an arrest mandate from the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal against a French journalist convicted of contempt for revealing confidential information about the tribunal’s work.
The nation’s chief Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, said France’s accords with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia require it to carry out mandates against those accused of “serious crimes” but not offenses against the court itself, such as Florence Hartmann’s contempt conviction.
“Since the contempt of court of which Ms. Hartmann was convicted is not one of those crimes, France has no legal basis for such cooperation,” Valero said at a ministry briefing.
France’s insistence that it would cooperate only for “the serious crimes that the tribunal has as its mission to judge” was seen as indirect criticism of the body in The Hague. The war crimes tribunal was founded 18 years ago but has not finished its task of prosecuting those accused of atrocities during the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. Several supporters of the U.N.-affiliated court have said that, because it is so far behind schedule, the court has better things to do than prosecute a journalist for revealing sensitive information.
Hartmann, a French national, covered the Bosnian war in the 1990s. After working as a spokeswoman for the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 2000 to 2006, she published a book in 2007 that contained information on Serbia’s involvement in the horrors of the Bosnian conflict.
France will not arrest Florence Hartmann, a French journalist, to face a jail term for revealing confidential information, the foreign ministry said. (Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images)
A special panel of the tribunal convicted her in September 2009 of contempt of court and ordered her to pay a $10,000 fine. She appealed and declined to pay. Last month, an appeals panel upheld the conviction and converted the fine into a seven-day prison term, calling on the French government to arrest her and turn her over in The Hague.
Hartmann, speaking by telephone in France, said she was gratified by the French government’s decision but disappointed to see it justified on such legal grounds.
The real issues, she said, are her freedom of speech and the legitimacy of a court that, feeling offended, decides to judge the question of contempt.
“It is nice to see France take this position, but it is not the same as the question of the absurdity of the original judgment,” Hartmann said. “I still cannot travel or work. If I go to another country, they might feel their agreement with the tribunal obliges them to arrest me.”
There was no immediate response from the tribunal.
In the original ruling, the panel’s presiding judge, Bakone Justice Moloto of South Africa, said the Yugoslavia tribunal has an “inherent jurisdiction” to prosecute anybody who interferes with its work. Hartmann did so, the panel found, because revealing the sensitive information provided by Serbia “may deter sovereign states from cooperating with the tribunal where the provision of evidential material is concerned.”
Hartmann’s book explained a secret court ruling that allowed the Serbian government to prevent confidential documents provided to the court — showing Serbia’s involvement in the Bosnian war — from being made public. The documents, according to Hartmann, detailed then-President Slobodan Milosevic’s military support of Bosnian Serb forces and his links to wartime atrocities that those forces committed, including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A magnificent model of Hogwarts Castle used for the Harry Potter films was revealed for the first time yesterday.
The giant, highly detailed hand-sculpted construction has been used for exterior shots in every Harry Potter film
It is 50 feet in diameter and took a total of 74 years to build when all the time spent by 86 artists and crew members is added up.
It has over 2,500 fibre optic lights to simulate lanterns torches, and even students passing through hallways, and is crammed with details like miniature owls in the Owlery and even hinges on the doors.
The castle, which was constructed by 86 artists and crew, is set to go on display as part of The Making Of Harry Potter studio tour at Leavesden Studios.
Bafta-award winning production designer Stuart Craig, who designed and built the castle with his team, revealed that the design was based on Durham Cathedral and Alnwick Castle.
“Everything to the right of the viaduct is in fact Durham Cathedral,” he said.
“But the profile has been changed so that there are tall, pointy spires so there’s plenty of theatrical exaggeration. It was constructed for the first movie 12 years ago at the sound stage here.
“It’s pretty extravagant, I have to say.”
(Image: WireImage)
But although the exterior looks stunning, there is not much inside he revealed.
“It’s made from a thin skin of moulded plaster applied to bits of MDF,” he said. “The materials are quite simple.
“For every new movie it was wheeled out and repaired.”
* Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making Of Harry Potter will open to visitors from 31 March. Tickets on sale now from www.wbstudiotour.co.uk.“North Korea has been engaged in a so-called headline strategy,” Kim Jang-soo said, referring to an almost daily drumbeat of North Korean threats since early March and the news stories they have generated.
North Korea is raising tensions in an effort to frighten and force the United States and South Korea into negotiations and concessions, he said. The pressure was also aimed at China and Russia in an effort to push them to mediate on North Korea’s behalf, he said.
“We see through their motive,” he said. “Although North Korea shows no signs of attempting a full-scale war, it will suffer damage many times more than we do if it launches even a localized provocation.”
South Korea “has no intention of attempting premature dialogue just because of a crisis,” Mr. Kim said, urging the North to ease tensions so talks can start.
In an interview on the ABC News program “This Week” on Sunday,President Obama’s senior adviser,Dan Pfeiffer, declined to discuss what the United States would do if North Korea tested another missile, but said that it would not be a surprise if it did. “We have taken the steps we need to be able to protect our allies, protect the homeland,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “The real focus and the onus is on North Korea to do the right thing.”
Two senior senators also criticized China on Sunday for not doing more to press North Korea to tone down its confrontational stance. “The Chinese hold a lot of the cards here,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” “They’re by nature cautious, but they’re carrying it to an extreme. It’s about time they stepped up to the plate and put a little pressure on this North Korean regime.”
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, appeared on the same program and said China could use its economic leverage over North Korea, cutting off support entirely “if they want to.” Mr. McCain said China’s failure to push North Korea was “very disappointing.”Microsoft yesterday announced the release of Apple App Store extension for Visual Studio Team Services. This new extension allows deploying iOS applications to the Apple App Store via Team Services or Team Foundation Server (2015 Update 3 or later).
This extension contains a set of deployment tasks which allow you to automate the release and promotion of app updates to Apple’s App Store from your CI environment. This can reduce the effort needed to keep your beta and production deployments up-to-date, since you can simply push changes to the configured source control branches, and let your automated build take care of the rest.
The extension provides 2 build/release tasks and a service endpoint to manage your Apple App Store/iTunes Connect credentials. The tasks allow you to:
Upload a build for an existing app to TestFlight for beta testing.
Upload a build for an existing app along with metadata and screenshots to iTunes Connect.
Submit your app for review to the Apple App Store.
Similar to this, Microsoft has already released Google Play extension which allows developers to automate the release, promotion and rollout of app updates to the Google Play store from your CI environment.
Download these extensions from the below links,[SC2B] Liquid vs EG Clanwar - games over Text by riptide The match is over, scroll down for results.
Well, here we are! It's been a bit of a wait, but the hype has been building this week and we're now ready to watch these two heavyweights clash. Read on to create cheerfuls, win beta keys and hype your favourite to glory.
Beta Keys
We're giving away 5 beta keys during this cast! Follow the instructions below to enter.
How to play!
1. Go to
2. At the beginning of the show match, we will tweet a beta/broadcast announcement.
3. Retweet this announcement during the match and we will randomly select 5 retweeters to win!
4. 1 winner will be selected after each game
5. We will contact you via twitter and you will need to @teamliquidnet us your TL user name if you win. We will pm the key there.
FAQS
1. I dont have a twitter account ;_;
Go make one (and that's not a question)
2. Too bad i dont use twitter
Too bad you also dont have a beta key.
3. How do i retweet?
Come on..google or something, my god.
http://mashable.com/2009/04/16/retweet-guide/
4. What is @teamliquid
If you win, just tweet @teamliquid (username here). For nerds you kids are bad at the internet
We're giving away 5 beta keys during this cast! Follow the instructions below to enter.1. Go to www.twitter.com/teamliquidnet (follow us if you aren't already!)2. At the beginning of the show match, we will tweet a beta/broadcast announcement.3. Retweet this announcement during the match and we will randomly select 5 retweeters to win!4. 1 winner will be selected after each game5. We will contact you via twitter and you will need to @teamliquidnet us your TL user name if you win. We will pm the key there.1. I dont have a twitter account ;_;Go make one (and that's not a question)2. Too bad i dont use twitterToo bad you also dont have a beta key.3. How do i retweet?Come on..google or something, my god.4. What is @teamliquidIf you win, just tweet @teamliquid (username here). For nerds you kids are bad at the internet
Cheerfuls
Show support for your favourite team using these awesome cheerfuls put together by our very own Keit! Think of something witty, open MS paint, and be on your way, nerdlings!
Show support for your favourite team using these awesome cheerfuls put together by our very own Keit! Think of something witty, open MS paint, and be on your way, nerdlings!
Results
+ Show Spoiler + Drone vs Louder
Drone < Lost Temple > Louder
Drone < Blistering Sands > Louder
Drone < Kulas Ravine > Louder
TLO vs Incontrol
TLO < Lost Temple > Incontrol
TLO < Blistering Sands > Incontrol
TLO < Kulas Ravine > Incontrol
Nazgul vs Machine
Nazgul < Lost Temple > Machine
Nazgul < Blistering Sands > Machine
Nazgul < Kulas Ravine > Machine
Jinro vs Inka
Jinro < Lost Temple > Inka
Jinro < Blistering Sands > Inka
Jinro < Kulas Ravine > Inka
Nony vs Lzgamer
Nony < Lost Temple > Lzgamer
Nony < Blistering Sands > Lzgamer
Nony < Kulas Ravine > Lzgamer
Team EG wins 3-2, GGs!
VODs
Vods are available in Vods are available in the wrap up thread Well, here we are! It's been a bit of a wait, but the hype has been building this week and we're now ready to watch these two heavyweights clash. Read on to create cheerfuls, win beta keys and hype your favourite to glory. Administrator SKT T1 | Masters of the UniverseThe towering 327-foot-tall Ares I-X rocket moves towards launch pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida October 20, 2009. REUTERS/NASA/Handout
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA on Tuesday delayed the test flight of an unmanned prototype moon rocket due to poor weather.
The attempt to launch the 327-foot (100-meter) Ares 1-X rocket was reset for 8 a.m. EDT on Wednesday.
The flight is the centerpiece of a $445 million NASA technology demonstration program aimed at replacing the space shuttles. The shuttles, which began flying in 1981, are due to be retired next year after six more flights to complete construction of the International Space Station.
NASA planned to launch the demo rocket on Tuesday but was stymied by cloudy skies over the Kennedy Space Center and by a boat that wandered into the launch danger zone. Pilots and mariners who violate restricted zones can face jail terms and fines of up to $250,000.
Ares 1-X, currently the world’s tallest rocket, is a modified space shuttle booster outfitted with a faux second stage and a simulated Orion crew capsule. It is the first new rocket developed by NASA since the 1970s-era space shuttle. The test flight is intended to verify computer models used to design rockets.
Ares 1-X’s motor was made by Alliant Techsystems Inc as part of a $1.8 billion Ares development contract for NASA.
NASA hopes to develop two Ares rockets to return U.S. astronauts to the moon sometime in the 2020s. The program, however, is under review.
(Editing by Jane Sutton, Editing by Sandra Maler)During their research project, undergraduates Francis Vuijsje, Meta de Hoon, and Remco van der Burg (left to right), discovered an extrasolar planet orbiting a fast-rotating hot star.
Threeundergraduate students have discovered a large planet orbiting a fast-rotatingstar. Extrasolar planet discoveries like this have become common, but this oneis unusual both for who found it and the type of star it orbits.
"It isexciting not just to find a planet, but to find one as unusual as this one; itturns out to be the first planet discovered around a fast-rotating star, andit's also the hottest star found with a planet," said one of the planet'sdiscoverers, Meta de Hoon of Leiden University in The Netherlands.
The otherLeiden-student team members included Remco van der Burg and Francis Vuijsje.
The planet,which is about five times as massive as Jupiter, circles its host star every2.5 days. It lies at only three percent of the Earth-sun distance from itsstar, making it very hot and much larger than many otherplanets.
The hoststar is about 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit (6,700 degrees Celsius). Forcomparison, the part of the sun we see reaches temperatures of 10,000 degrees F(5,500 degrees C). The planet is officially tagged as OGLE2-TR-L9b. "Butamongst ourselves we call it ReMeFra-1, after Remco, Meta, and myself," Vuijsjesaid.
Thestudents detected the exoplanet while testing a method for investigating lightfluctuations of thousands of stars in the OGLE database in an automated way.
The planethas not been seen directly. But the brightness of one of the stars decreasedfor two hours every 2.5 days by about one percent, suggesting a planet wastransiting in front of the star as seen from an earthly point of view. Follow-upobservations with ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile confirmed that the dip inlight was caused by a planet passing in front of the star, blocking part of thestarlight at regular intervals.
"Thisis the first planet found around a fast-rotating star, because it is verydifficult to confirm planets around these objects," the project supervisorIgnas Snellen of Leiden told SPACE.com.
He added,"So there must be many planets orbiting fast-spinningstars, but they are just difficult to find. This is because the fast spinmakes it difficult to measure the stellar 'wobble' needed to determine the massof the object orbiting it, and confirming it to be a planet."
Most of the300-plus exoplanets identified to date were detected by the so-called radialvelocity method, in which astronomers look for a star's wobble produced by thegravitational tug of an orbiting planet. But the transit method of detection isgaining steam. And recently, the firstactual photos of planets around other stars were made.
Thediscovery will be detailed in a forthcoming issue of the journal Astronomyand Astrophysics.A pedestrian was struck by a sport utility vehicle on a street in Corona, Queens, on Wednesday morning, then immediately struck again by a cargo van that dragged the victim 17 miles through a web of city highways and to Coney Island in Brooklyn, the police said. The pedestrian, apparently a male, was killed.
The victim had not yet been identified, though some paperwork was found in the clothing on his body, which was wedged under the van’s chassis, the police said. The authorities said there did not appear to be any criminality involved.
A cadre of uniformed police officers was retracing the van’s route, searching for pieces of the victim’s remains, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.
The chain of events began at 6 a.m. in the vicinity of 51st Avenue and 108 |
making the Canadian wrestling team when he got a call from the UFC asking him to take an injured Matt Serra ’s place against Matt Hughes. By accepting the fight, he put his dream of competing in the Olympics on hold. But, according to the immensely popular champion, that burning desire has not been extinguished.St. Pierre, despite his lack of a collegiate pedigree, is widely recognized as the best wrestler in mixed martial arts, but how will that translate on wrestling’s international stage?No one can be sure -- not even St. Pierre -- but he is adamant he would like to find out.Noting his contractual status with the UFC and his need to word his response cautiously, St. Pierre discussed the difficulties he may encounter in his quest to compete in the London games.“There is a big difference in me saying, ‘I want to go to the Olympic games,’ and actually going to the Olympic games,” said the 28 year-old welterweight champion. “It is very hard … you have to pass through a bunch of obstacles before you get there.”As for his motivation in crossing over to pure wrestling, St. Pierre pointed to his fascination with the individual aspects of MMA and his desire to perfect his application of each one. It was also apparent that wrestling holds a special place in St. Pierre’s heart. It is the discipline he has excelled at in his MMA career, and the base on which he has built his successful title run.“I’m a mixed martial artist,” stated St. Pierre. “I like to compete not only in the sport of MMA, but I like the single sports [themselves]. I love wrestling, I love boxing … for me, I love every single [discipline] of the sport. That is why I consider myself a mixed martial artist.”The thing that has held so many mixed martial artists back in some of the individual sports -- be it boxing, wrestling, or even jiu-jitsu -- is the amount of time they spend across the spectrum of disciplines, rather than keeping a narrow focus. That is a fact that is not lost on St. Pierre.“It’s tough. It wouldn’t be easy, but maybe we’ll see what is going to happen in London,” said St. Pierre with a wry smile.• St. Pierre stated that he has recently added a nutritionist and has since gained 10 pounds of muscle.• GSP stated his toughest fight was against either Jon Fitch or Thiago Alves. Fitch, because he never gave up; and Alves, dut to his size and strength.• The big difference between the first and second B.J. Penn fights was his preparation, he stated.• “I’m not afraid of anyone in the sport,” was his answer when asked about fighting Anderson Silva • GSP would love to fight Silva if it makes sense weight-wise. He is getting bigger, but so is Silva. St. Pierre also privately admitted his decision will have a lot to do with the outcome of his teammate Nate Marquardt ’s inevitable rematch with Silva.• He stated his belief that skill always beats size, like his fight with Alves.• Whoever wins between Dan Hardy and Mike Swick will deserve a title shot. Both fighters are worthy and will be tough matchups, stated St. Pierre.• Health is GSP’s biggest concern, and he will never put anything into his body that would jeopardize that. Will only do it naturally, no steroids, said the champion.• If St. Pierre decides to go up to middleweight, he will probably have to stay up due to the muscle he would have to put on.• Dream fights for St. Pierre would include Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brock Lesnar Gegard Mousasi vs. top UFC light heavyweights and a fight pitting himself against Jake Shields Royce Gracie was GSP’s inspiration to get into MMA. He met Wagney Fabiano at a jiu-jitsu class and got tapped out like 10 times in five minutes. He was hooked from that point on.• GSP is a way better fighter than a dancer, and he isn’t sure he would want to follow in Chuck Liddell ’s footsteps on “Dancing with the Stars.” B.J. Penn was the most arrogant person he has ever fought, according to GSP.• Will never fight a friend or a training partner. Should Nate Marquardt win the title at 185, he would not move up.• St. Pierre stated that Penn was looking for an excuse for the second loss and came up with the greasing accusation. He feels he should have looked inside himself for the reason he lost, not make excuses.• He doesn’t watch much MMA, other than fights with potential opponents. After training so much, he doesn’t want to watch it and would rather just see the highlights on the Internet.• St. Pierre stated he became a victim of the fame that came with winning the championship from Matt Hughes. He stated that he forgot that no matter how great a fighter you are, you are only one mistake away from losing.You can tell that all these reporters for right-wing propaganda organs like the Media Research Center spend waaaay too much time watching Fox News and their army of would-be ambush journalists. Because they often try to imitate their betters only to discover that it can seriously backfire on them.
Especially when the intended victim is a seriously smart person like Barney Frank.
This happened yesterday to a young reporter for CNS (an MRC outlet), as Terry Krepel at Media Matters reports:
Apparently feeling confident (and sufficiently homophobic), CNS decided to target Rep. Barney Frank with a question about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – specifically, whether he thought gay and straight soldiers should shower together. This was based on a statement calling for a ban on separate showers from the Pentagon’s report on the impact of repealing DADT that CNS had previously singled out. Frank saw this coming from a mile away. As CNS reporter Nicholas Ballasy slowly got out the words “shower with homosexuals,” Frank let out an exaggerated gasp and responded, “What do you think happens in gyms all over America?” After calling it a “silly issue,” Frank added, “What do you think goes wrong with people showering with homosexuals? Do you think it’s the spray makes it catching?... We don’t get ourselves dry-cleaned.” Frank then turned the tables on his interviewer by quizzing Ballasy: “I know you’re looking for some way to kind of discredit the policy. Do you think that gyms should have separate showers for gay and straight people? I’m asking you the question because that’s the logic of what you’re telling me. You seem to think that there’s something extraordinary about gay men showering together. Do you think gyms should have separate showers for gay people and straight people?” Ballasy wouldn’t answer, insisting that he was “just quoting the recommendation.” Frank responded: “Don’t be disingenuous. You’re quoting those you think may cause us some problems. You’re entitled to do that, but you shouldn’t hide behind your views.” Frank again asked the question of Ballasy, who again wouldn’t answer, trying to change the subject: “So that’s the question you would pose to people who have an issue with that part of the report, the recommendation?” Frank made his point one more time, and that’s where the CNS ends the video.
As is often the case with Barney Frank, it is a delightfully thorough humiliation.On your mark... Get set... STOP! Wait, why did some of you start running? Boy, I hope you haven't been waiting until now to start -- and if so, I wish you the best of luck, because the New Toon Laff-o-lympics ends TODAY!
Deer and Crocodile Toons of all shapes, sizes, puns, and personalities have been competing in the most competitive Toontown event to date, the New Toon Laff-o-lympics. These Laffletes have put countless hours into training to reach a high Laff, and today it all pays off!
In case you've forgotten, here are the prizes for each milestone of the Laff-o-lympics. And for the first time ever, the bronze, silver, and gold medal shirts have been debuted in the image above!
50 Laff - Receive a bronze medal shirt and a "New Toon Starter Pack" full of jellybeans and ToonFest tokens!
- Receive a bronze medal shirt and a "New Toon Starter Pack" full of jellybeans and ToonFest tokens! 100 Laff - Receive a silver medal shirt and an exclusive SpeedChat phrase to show your glory!
- Receive a silver medal shirt and an exclusive SpeedChat phrase to show your glory! 115 Laff - Receive a gold medal shirt, and enter a drawing to win one of three real-world Toontown prize packs with a Toontown poster, drawstring bag, and trading cards! ONE grand prize winner of the drawing will receive a Toontown poster signed by members of the Toontown team.
Each milestone will receive the previous milestone's rewards in addition to the listed prizes. The medal shirt rewards are not the same as the gold medal shirt given during January's Top Toons contest.
After the event ends at 11:59 Toontown Time (PST) tonight, the Toon Council will spend a short amount of time reviewing the winners and making sure there was no cheating along the way.
Once we get everything squared away, we'll be sending out the prizes and announcing the gold winners on the blog! Don't worry - it won't take long. We know that you want to get your hands on those ToonFest tokens before ToonFest ends.
For those of you who are just a few Laff points away from the next milestone, remember: You ARE Toon Enough! You still have a few more hours to push through -- but remember, school and work is more important than staying up late for Laff. (I'm looking at you too, parents!)
Finish strong, Laffletes! You can do this!(PhysOrg.com) -- The U.S. patent office has granted Apple a patent for a 3-D projection system that doesn't require the use of bulky 3-D glasses. This gives the viewer more freedom of movement and viewing angles.
The name Apple has given to this simple 3-D system is called, "Three Dimensional Display System." This auto-stereoscopic system works by projecting each pixel onto a reflective, textured surface, which is then bounced into a viewer's left and right eye separately; this produces the 3D or stereoscopic effect. By sensing the locations of both eyes of each viewer, multiple viewers could observe the 3-D effect from a variety of angles.
Each pixel is aimed at a curved surface, where it reflects onto the correct eye.
Apple is not the only company thats involved in auto-stereoscopic R&D; however Apple's patent has picked apart the limitations of three categories of auto-stereoscopic system:
1. Ghost like or transparent images in volumetric displays.
2. The viewer required to remain stationary using the parallax barrier method.
3. The use of holographic images requires greater computer power and larger bandwidth, keeping the commercial cost higher that is required for other auto-stereoscopic systems.
Apple's auto-stereoscopic system tracks where the viewer is located and tailors its display to your position.
Apples main objective is to develop a 3-D glass-free auto-stereoscopic system that would give viewers the freedom to move around without being tied down to bulky 3-D glasses. Apples patent also promises to keep costs low and simplifying the system while maintaining performance.
Explore further: Apple patent application for 3D viewing glassesDescription
A great price on an non-rebuilt Cornelius keg. You can purchase the rebuild kit and replace the gaskets yourself (very easy job) to save some money. These Cornelius kegs could have residual soda syrup inside and will need to be cleaned. To totally rebuild the keg you should also consider a new relief valve and poppets (part number listed below). PBW works as a great cleaner for eating away sticky residual soda residue. Kegs are sold "as is".
The body connnects on a keg are the metal posts where the quick disconnects attach too. They should be removed for cleaning and sanitizing before each use. Kegs can come with either 11/16" body connects or 7/8" body connects. We sell deep sockets for the removal of either one. So if you do not have these sockets at home and want to make sure you can disassemble these Cornelius kegs you may want to purchase both sockets below. Then you will always be covered as your keg collection grows.
If you want a great deal on a 4 pack of kegs, check out our KEG430A.© Cathy Dogon / FR 3 LR
La justice a statué
Ciné Royal : le lieu garde son esprit d'origine. Confiserie, guichet... Les occupants ont tout gardé, et remettent l'établissement en ordre. / © Cathy Dogon / FR 3 LR
Des ambitions culturelles pour le lieu
Salles de cinéma obligent, l'accent est mis sur le 7e art. Des projections de films libres de droit, ou indépendants avec l'accord des autres sont régulièrement diffusés. Elles peuvent accueillir plus de 300 personnes. Les autres salles servent de lieu de concert/théâtre, d'espace de vie, ou d'espace de rangements.
Ce samedi soir, le Ciné Royal renouait avec sa fonction d'antan. Ne vivons plus comme des esclaves! de Yanis Youlountas était projeté dans une salle encore en activité. A la seule particularité : le cinéma est fermé depuis janvier 2015.Ce type de projections n'est en fait pas rare, au "plus vieil écran de Montpellier". Depuis mi-mai, le lieu renaît de ses cendres grâce à ses occupants. Environ une trentaine de personnes logent dans les lieux. Certains y ont même apposé leur boîte aux lettres et y reçoivent leurs factures. Ce n'est ni légal, ni illégal. N'ayant pas les moyens de louer un appartement, et profitant de cet espace vide, les habitants plaident le droit au logement.Mais les propriétaires ne se laissent pas faire. Ayant fermé leur cinéma en janvier 2015, ils avaient comme idée de le transformer en immeuble d'appartements. Ce projet immobilier entrait dans la rénovation de la rue Boussairoles, toute proche de la place de la Comédie. Ils ont donc fait appel à des huissiers, puis eu recours à la justice le 2 août dernier.La décision est tombée une semaine plus tard, en faveur des occupants. Selon la justice, le droit au logement prévaudrait sur le droit à la propriété. Sans appel de la part des propriétaires, les habitants du Ciné Royal pourraient rester.Les idées fusent dans leur tête. Résidences artistiques, rencontres avec des réalisateurs de films, assemblées générales pour le mouvement Nuit Debout, voire pour des organisations syndicales... Un tas d'activités sont sur le point d'aboutir. Ils mettent en ligne leur programme, sur la page Facebook : Le Royal Occupé. Et le public répond présent! Un concert, un chant polyphonique occitan, a déjà rassemblé 200 personnes devant le Ciné Royal.Pour continuer cette aventure, les squatteurs comptent bien remettre sur pied le cinéma. Une fuite dans le plafond fait couler de l'eau à l'intérieur des salles dés qu'il pleut, et des câbles sortent encore des murs suite au départ des propriétaires avec leur matériel. Le lieu n'a cependant rien d'insalubre. Les anciens employés sont même venus donner quelques conseils sur les installations à ceux qui font désormais vivre leur cinéma.Les voisins souhaitent accompagner la transformation du lieu. Plusieurs se sont déjà déplacés pour rencontrer les occupants. Une réunion devrait bientôt se tenir pour informer les riverains des prochaines évolutions.NVIDIA seems to finally be throwing its weight behind the Linux desktop.
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Linux has announced that four companies are joining the organization: Fluendo, Lineo Solutions, Mocana, and NVIDIA. The big news here is that NVIDIA, the major graphic chip original equipment manufacturer (OEM), is finally officially supporting Linux.
Now that NVIDIA is a member of the Linux Foundation, all three of the major graphic chip designers--AMD Graphics Technologies (formerly ATI) and Intel--are backing Linux. NVIDIA, best known for its GeForce chipsets, has long had an uncomfortable relationship with Linux.
While NVIDIA has long shipped Linux graphic drivers and has kept its Linux drivers up-to-date, the drivers for their graphic processors have always used proprietary binary blobs. This meant free-software users couldn't use the drivers and open-source developers couldn't work on them to improve them.
Even now though, it's still not clear that NVIDIA will be open-sourcing its drivers. Still Scott Pritchett, NVIDIA's VP of Linux Platform Software, said in a statement that the company "is strongly committed to enabling world-class experiences and innovation with our GPU and mobile products. Membership in The Linux Foundation will accelerate our collaboration with the organizations and individuals instrumental in shaping the future of Linux, enabling a great experience for users and developers of Linux," sounds promising.
On the other hand, there's not a word about NVIDIA joining the Linux Foundation on NVIDA's Web site. There have also been no peeps of news from Nouveau, the open-source effort to fully support NVIDIA's graphic processors. Still, it's hard to see why NVIDIA would make this move if the company hadn't decided to fully embrace Linux.
As for the other companies, Fluendo has long been a leading Linux multimedia software development company. Fluendo employs several of the central developers of Gstreamer, the popular open source media framework and it has also developed legal proprietary video format playback plug-ins and a Linux software DVD Player. Lineo is a Japanese-based embedded Linux company. Mocana is a device-agnostic security platform that protects mobile devices, apps and their networked services
Related Stories:
Shuttleworth on the Ubuntu Linux 12.04 beta
Ubuntu 12.04 'Precise Pangolin' goes beta
Linus Torvalds snarls at openSUSE desktop Linux's security
Adobe abandons Linux
Ubuntu for Android: Linux desktop on a smartphoneNational Route 127 in Futtsu, Chiba Prefecture, was blocked by flooding on the morning of Sept. 28. (Hayato Murai)
Torrential rain in the Tokyo metropolitan area caused landslides and flooding that disrupted train services and stranded motorists on the morning of Sept. 28.
One person was reported swept away in a river in Yokohama, and nearly 2,000 residents were issued evacuation orders in Chiba Prefecture.
Although the heaviest downpours have passed, the Japan Meteorological Agency is still urging people to take precautions against possible disasters.
In the hour to 5:40 a.m., 87 millimeters of rain fell in Miura, Kanagawa Prefecture, a record for the city, according to the agency. Four passenger vehicles in the area were stranded on flooded roads around 5:30 a.m.
Futtsu, Isumi and other cities in Chiba Prefecture received about 100 mm of precipitation in one hour, the agency said.
Landslides and other rain-related problems blocked around five points on national routes in Chiba Prefecture, including National Route 127 in the Takeoka district of Futtsu, according to the crisis management division of the prefectural government. Thirteen points on prefectural roads were blocked as of 11 a.m.
Evacuation orders were issued to 1,384 residents of 481 households in the Furusawa, Taito and Chimachi districts of Isumi city.
The Chiba prefectural center of flood disaster prevention said the water level reached the threshold that could cause the Kamogawa river to overflow at the observation point in the Kaisuka district of Kamogawa.
East Japan Railway Co. suspended 15 express train services for parts or all of the Uchibo and Sotobo lines in Chiba Prefecture as of 1 p.m.
All train services between Ito and Izukyu-Shimoda stations on the Izu Kyuko Line in the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture were suspended in the morning. They started to resume operations shortly after noon.
The heavy rain was caused by a low pressure system with a rain front moving across the Japanese archipelago.Release date of the upcoming iOS 6.x untethered jailbreak has just been confirmed by the official Twitter account of the team Evad3rs. It’s coming on Monday, February 4, 2013.
@Evad3rs: Final count down toward tomorrow’s release has begun!
Planetbeing, who is a member of team Evad3rs, also confirmed the release date:
@Planetbeing: Yes, tomorrow is a concrete release date. It’s also the only release date we’ve ever given.
Last week, team Evad3rs hinted on the very same Twitter account that such a tool, the first one capable of iPhone 5 jailbreak, would be available on the 4th of January (Super Bowl Sunday), although this has not materialized.
The status bar on the official evasi0n.com site is currently showing 91% progress for “final testing and preparation,” with next step being “Release!”.
This jailbreak has been awaited for months, especially among iPhone 5 users who are, so far, absolutely unable to modify the software on their devices. This is the first time that an untethered jailbreak will be available for iOS 6.x, meaning that those users will soon be able to ditch the aging iOS 5 for the newest version of Apple’s mobile operating system.
While Team Evad3rs has kept the details of its new tool way under wraps, partly in order to stop Apple from patching existing vulnerabilities before the tool reaches the general public, some information has been released in the form of micro-announcements throughout the last few months. It is known, for instance, that the new tool will support almost every iOS device (iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 4, iPad 3, iPad 2, iPad mini, iPod touch 4, iPod touch 5 and the Apple TV 2). The single exception is the new Apple TV 3, which will not be supported.
If you have an older device (running an A4 processor or older), you can still apply a tethered jailbreak iOS 6.1 on your device using tools such as Redsn0w. You might as well, however, just wait until tomorrow.
We will let you know as soon as Evasi0n is released tomorrow, followed by full how-to tutorials to help you with jailbreaking. Stay tuned!
UPDATE x1: As pointed out by one of our reader, @UK_IT_Guy on Twitter, the status bar on the official Evasi0n website is going up 0.0045% every 30 seconds:
By our calculation, it will reach 100% at approximately 9am Pacific Time.
You can follow us on Twitter, add us to your circle on Google+ or like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple and the web.
Related StoriesTwo buttons offering support for one of Bill Clinton's presidential runs made the rounds on social media over the weekend. The first shows the Confederate battle flag with the words "Clinton-Gore" superimposed.
The second goes a bit further, portraying Clinton and Gore in the gray uniforms of the Confederacy. It's currently for sale on eBay.
As all political debates on Twitter can be, each side in this one can be summarized easily. Conservatives offer the buttons as a sign that Democrats now calling for the removal of the flag from the state house grounds in South Carolina are being hypocritical, given their party's historic embrace of the banner. (It's an extension of the long-standing rhetorical point that comes up in debates over race: From Reconstruction through segregation, the South was strongly Democratic.) Liberals reply that the buttons show how symbols imbued with racist connotations have been — and continue to be — entrenched in American politics.
It's important to note that there is no indicator that these buttons were actually made and distributed by the actual Clinton-Gore campaign. The second, with its cut-out photos of the candidates, almost certainly isn't.
One indicator that it isn't official is that it lacks a union "bug," the little marker showing that a piece of campaign material was printed in a union shop. If you look at other Clinton-Gore buttons, nearly all — but not all — have a bug somewhere. The buttons below, from CampaignButtons-Etc.com, have their union bugs circled.
In the 1980s and 1990s, buttons played part of the role that Etsy, Zazzle and Cafepress play now. Buttonmakers were never hard to come by, and anyone who wanted to could make his or her own, offering whatever sentiment they wanted to. So just because these buttons exist doesn't mean they were sanctioned or approved by the campaign.
It also doesn't mean they weren't. When Clinton was first running in 1992, his geographic background was a key advantage. Since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, the act that hastened the South's partisan flip, four Northern Democrats and one Southern Democrat had run for the presidency. Only the Southern one, Jimmy Carter, won — and he only won once. Clinton, a Southern governor of a state whose flag still alludes to its history in the Confederacy, needed to solidify support from nearby states to have a chance at unseating George H.W. Bush. He ended up winning Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee and Georgia. A button like the one at top wouldn't necessarily have hurt.
The politics then were less complicated than they are now. It's believable that Clinton and Gore might have had a Confederate button, though we don't know for sure that they did. What the reemergence of the buttons now shows, if nothing else, is that the history of the rebellious South continues to resonate and continues to evolve, year by year, as a component of American politics.Catalonia On The Brink
Cyrus Clarke Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 6, 2017
Welcome to the first edition of The SIFT, a weekly overview of the biggest stories by the team at Media Sifter. Each edition will follow the guiding principles that our platform is built around.
Since there are a multiverse of perspectives on any given topic, we advocate a form of media consumption, not based on censorship or filters, but rather on scrutinizing the details. We believe in providing as much evidence as possible for the reader to make up their own mind.
This week The SIFT focuses on events in Catalonia, where a referendum vote on independence, left the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union on the brink of declaring independence.
We analyzed mainstream media outlets including the New York Times, Al-Jazeera, BBC, and The Guardian, as well as an in-depth look at a view from Catalonia’s distant relatives in Scotland.
New York Times
Headline: Catalonia’s Independence Vote Descends Into Chaos and Clashes
The NYT goes aerial, giving us an overview and sense of scale
In this article, the NYT seeks to state that while pro-independence and central authorities claimed respective victories, the only clear outcome is that both sides are more divided than before.
The referendum vote is described as “descending into chaos”, and as the “gravest test of democracy in Spain since Franco”. A video is prominently featured showing the violent actions of the Spanish police, it is captioned:
“ Hundreds of people were hurt as the Spanish police closed polling stations and seized ballot boxes during Catalonia’s independence vote on Sunday”
The stand-out interview is with Mr. Pulpillo, a wheel-chair bound man, who talks of Spain’s ugly past. His turnout to vote (and the turnout in general) is described as an “extraordinary show of determination”. The combination of Franco, graphic video and determined suffrage suggests that the NYT sees the Catalonians attempting to vote as the oppressed party.
Despite the article stating that “ slightly less than half” of Catalonia’s population are pro-independence, not a single pro-unionist public voice is featured. The share of voice provided to the political parties on either side is much more balanced, with 65 words are attributed to President Rajoy and his Vice President and 60 words (and an untranslated tweet) from the leader of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, and the “left wing Mayor of Barcelona” Ada Colau, the only indication of political leanings in the piece.
Al-Jazeera
Headline: Catalonia vote: Social media mirrors street tension
In this round-up of social media tweets, posts and videos, the middle-eastern publication takes a far more nuanced stance on events in Catalonia. While they seem determined not to appear biased, through the use of media from both sides, the culmination of the article seems to suggest that they would like to highlight how events in Spain resemble elections in parts of the world that the Western press are often quick to criticize.
The language used is restrained throughout; tension in place of chaos or violence. Amazingly this is the only coverage we found that makes reference to the actual referendum question;
“Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?”
Al-Jazeera are the only publication in this roundup to feature an image of the Catalonian flag
The reader is given the impression of balanced reporting, with official posts from both sides. We are presented a clearly pro-government video of a police officer helping a member of the public, published by Spain’s interior minister Juan Ignacio Zoido. Then immediately a tweet from Raül Romeva i Rueda, the Catalan government’s minister of foreign affairs, showing the grizzly aftermath of police violence. This back and forth pattern continues with tweets and videos, while referencing the fact that the opinion polls (and indeed opinion) are split on the issue.
Interestingly the three contributions of private individuals plucked from social media all show police using significant force against civilians. Messages such as “Where is Democracy” are focused upon, striking and poignant slogans in an EU state perceived as democratic. We are told that a number of high-profile European politicians entered the fray. Tweets from Jeremy Corbyn, the UK opposition’s leader, Miro Cerar, the centrist Slovenian leader and Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel are all featured, without any mention of the missing voices.
The article ends with a tweet from the Human Right’s Watch. While the tweet itself is mild and does not offer a strong condemnation, the very fact that this type of tweet, normalized in the election coverage of so called undemocratic countries, is featured at all, comes across as a slight to the ‘democratic west’.
BBC
Headline: EU looks away as Catalan crisis unfolds
The BBC provides another perspective on matters, looking at the reaction of the EU states and leaders to the events in Catalonia. The article immediately launches into a series of rhetorical questions:
So where the cries of outrage? Where the statements of condemnation, the tweets of shock at the violence meted out on the voters of Catalonia at the hands of the Spanish police?
Comparisons are drawn to the flurry of messages that accompany the Brexit saga. Three reasons are given, with the third reason, the EUs staunch opposition to separatist movements in general, cited as the underlying reason for the comparative quiet.
The government in Madrid sees Catalan independence as a fundamental threat to the constitutional Spanish (…) And a European Union that gives daily lip service to the idea of breaking down the boundaries between its members looks silently away as one of its number uses state violence to protect the integrity of its borders.
The article seeks to persuade us that the idea of nationalism, despite the cries for supranational action, is on the rise and is manifest in the actions of both the Spanish and Catalan authorities. The silence from the EU is portrayed as nothing more than an act of self-preservation.
The Guardian
Headline: The Guardian view on Catalonia’s referendum: the Spanish state has lost
Crying for help or Passionate declaration?
The sole overt, editorial piece on behalf of a publisher in this week’s SIFT. The headline is concise and transparent, presenting a position without resorting to sensationalism.
The lead image shows an impassioned woman, arms aloft, with an ambiguous look of desperation and/or defiance towards an unmoved police officer — a representative of the Spanish state. In the first paragraph we are given graphic details of the conduct of these officers:
“..dragging voters out by the hair or throwing them down stairs, firing rubber bullets to disperse crowds — even striking at Catalan firefighters and jostling with Catalan police.”
We are told that the immediate result of the “violence” was hundreds of casualties — the source is provided as Catalan authorities.
There is a relentless focus on President Rajoy’s handling of the situation, placing the blame squarely on his shoulders for the rise of the independence movement, the actions of the police and probable success of the secessionists. The article then deftly alludes to monarchic tendencies, representing the state, and by extension the President, as a reigning, sovereign entity, oppressing its citizens — the unnamed ‘many’;
“Who wants to be ruled by a state like this, many are asking.”
Towards the conclusion, more considered arguments are presented for the editorial line. The fact that public support for the referendum and independence peaked in 2013. Or that most people who supported the union would be unlikely to vote.
“Between them, the two sides have produced both a vote that is hugely contentious and a result that is meaningless.”
After more discussion of the heavy-handed police, the editorial follows the NYT, discussing the failure of both sides to secure a clear outcome. It then takes a page from the BBC’s James Landale pointing to the lack of condemnation from other EU members. The Guardian however seeks to explain this away as necessary to avoid “accusations of authoritarianism and complaints about the suppression of the Catalan will”.
“Mr Verhofstadt urged de-escalation, a negotiated solution bringing in all parties — including the opposition in Catalonia — and respect for Spain’s constitutional and legal order. He is right.”
After taking aim at Mr Rajoy for most of the article, interestingly The Guardian conclude by declaring Mr Puigdemont’s claims of victory “at best half true”. In contrast to the piece on the BBC, the only party to come away with any real credit here is the much maligned EU, and Mr Verhofstad.
The View From a Distant Cousin
Given events over the weekend, it’s hard not to think back to the 2014 referendum in Scotland. Catalonia and Scotland are often referred to as similar cases, distant cousins. Both forced into a larger union, they share complicated histories with their respective centralized authorities. Their similar-sized populations have also in recent times grown increasingly pro-independence.
Our featured analysis comes from The Scottish Sunday Herald, a newspaper that famously backed the “Yes” campaign, while its weekly edition backed the eventual winners “No”. This article by David Torrance caught our eye:
The sensationalist headline immediately suggests that the writer’s sympathies lie with the Catalonians, and indeed the article leads with a strongly pro-independence stance. Unionist voices are provided in the middle for balance, before a strong kicker wraps things up.
Draped in the Spanish flag
Given the amount of graphic images and video circulated, it is noteworthy that this article features a single image — a woman draped in the Spanish flag in the manner of a religious follower. This rather peaceful image is juxtaposed with the description of a scene in a school, where “referendum staff showed each other videos of police brutality at other polling stations”. Despite creating a sense of imminent threat, the democratic process witnessed by the writer is depicted as idyllic, — peaceful voting, beaming citizens and careful voting administration.
The quote featured in the headline ‘Today, they lost Catalonia’ is attributed to a member of the referendum staff. To clarify who they are, the writer reinforces that they are simply ‘Spain’. The writer, on the ground in Catalonia, compares the actions of the “lone Catalan policeman” benignly looking on, and his Spanish counterparts “firing rubber bullets into crowds and physically assaulting voters”. This creates a chasm like discrepancy between the two forces in terms of both temperament and force.
Mid-way into the story we have our first encounter with Spanish unionists, the other side of this referendum vote. This group of demonstrators are described as a large “silent-majority”, applying the term popularized by Nixon and recycled by Trump to label his supporters in the run up to the 2016 US election. We are told “Catalonia is split between ‘independistas’ and those who want to remain part of Spain”, however no numbers are provided.
A series of interviews follow. None of the interviewees are pro-independence, though the interviews may be noted for the fact that they do not feature a single Catalan respondent. We are presented a brief timeline of events, which provides 2010 as the genesis of the story. We are told at that time 15–20 per cent of people supported secession [unsourced]. The economic crisis and the response of the Madrid based government to referendum demands are cited as the major contributors to current events.
A further respondent tells us that he and his friends have switched allegiances, becoming supporters of independence due to “all this repression” before implying that “Catalanophobia” could be the cause of President Rajoy’s actions, seeking to appear strong rather than “too soft”.
The writer concludes sharply, suggesting that the illegality under law of the referendum vote bears no comparison with the actions of the Spanish government. He declares that it is the central authority in Madrid that has lost legitimacy with its actions. That the violence surrounding voting, which he describes as “the most peaceful of activities” is steering Catalonia towards independence.Excerpt: 'Lost Boy'
Lost Boy
By Brent Jeffs with Maia Szalavitz
Hardcover, 256 pages
Broadway
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Heaven or Hell
Every child believes he's special. But when you are number ten of twenty, with three "sister- mothers" - two of whom are full- blooded sisters-and a grandfather whom thousands of people believe speaks directly to God, it can be hard |
111. Parks Canada Agency
112. Parole Board of Canada
113. Patented Medicine Prices Review Board
114. Petroleum Compensation Board
115. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
116. Port Alberni Port Authority
117. Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration
118. Prince Rupert Port Authority
119. Privy Council Office
120. Public Health Agency of Canada
121. Public Service Commission
122. Quebec Port Authority
123. Regional Development Incentives Board
124. Royal Canadian Mounted Police
125. Royal Canadian Mounted Police External Review Committee
126. Saguenay Port Authority
127. Sahtu Land and Water Board
128. Sahtu Land Use Planning Board
129. Saint John Port Authority
130. Security Intelligence Review Committee
131. Sept-Îles Port Authority
132. Shared Services Canada
133. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
134. Statistics Canada
135. Statute Revision Commission
136. St. John’s Port Authority
137. Thunder Bay Port Authority
138. Toronto Port Authority
139. Treasury Board Secretariat
140. Trois-Rivières Port Authority
141. Vancouver Fraser Port Authority
142. Vancouver Port Authority
143. Veterans Review and Appeal Board
144. Windsor Port Authority
145. Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
146. Yukon Surface Rights Board
Schedule 1 of the CISA is currently empty.
Schedule 2 of the CISA adds:
147. Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner
“people of Canada” means (a) the people in Canada; or
(b) any citizen, as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Citizenship Act or any permanent resident, as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act who is outside Canada.
PURPOSE AND PRINCIPLES Purpose 3. The purpose of this Act is to encourage and facilitate the sharing of information among Government of Canada institutions in order to protect Canada against activities that undermine the security of Canada. Guiding principles 4. Information sharing under this Act is to be guided by the following principles:
(a) effective and responsible information sharing protects Canada and Canadians;
(b) respect for caveats on and originator control over shared information is consistent with effective and responsible information sharing;
(c) entry into information-sharing arrangements is appropriate when Government of Canada institutions share information regularly;
(d) the provision of feedback as to how shared information is used and as to whether it is useful in protecting against activities that undermine
the security of Canada facilitates effective and responsible information sharing; and
(e) only those within an institution who exercise its jurisdiction or carry out its responsibilities in respect of activities that undermine the security of Canada ought to receive information that is disclosed under this Act.
We know who ‘ought’ to receive information but that is no guarantee that information sharing will be confined to institutions that ‘ought’ to receive that information.
More importantly we will have bureaucrats in 147 different departments and agencies deciding whether a given act fits within the definitions of “activity that undermines the security of Canada” means any activity, including any of the following activities, if it undermines the sovereignty, security or territorial integrity of Canada or the lives or the security of the people of Canada”
There is no central clearing house to determine if alleged actions do or do not fit into the definition. There can be several hundred people exercising their judgement on actions they observe or become aware of. That is a nightmare open to substantial abuse.
DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION Disclosure of information 5. (1) Subject to any provision of any other Act of Parliament, or of any regulation made under such an Act, that prohibits or restricts the disclosure of information, a Government of Canada institution may, on its own initiative or on request, disclose information to the head of a recipient Government of Canada institution whose title is listed in Schedule 3, or their delegate, if the information is relevant to the recipient institution’s jurisdiction or responsibilities under an Act of Parliament or another lawful authority in respect of activities that undermine the security of Canada, including in respect of their detection, identification, analysis, prevention, investigation or disruption. Further disclosure under subsection (1) (2) Information received under subsection (1) may be further disclosed under that subsection. Further disclosure other than under this Act 6. For greater certainty, nothing in this Act prevents a head, or their delegate, who receives information under subsection 5(1) from, in accordance with the law, using that information, or further disclosing it to any person, for any purpose. No presumption 7. The act of disclosing information under this Act does not create a presumption
(a) that the disclosing institution is conducting a joint investigation or decision-making process with the recipient institution and therefore has the same obligations, if any, as the recipient institution to disclose or produce information for the purposes of a proceeding; or
(b) that there has been a waiver of any privilege, or of any requirement to obtain consent, for the purposes of any other disclosure of that information either in a proceeding or to an institution that is not a Government of Canada institution. Non-derogation 8. Nothing in this Act limits or affects any authority to disclose information under another Act of Parliament or a provincial Act, at common law or under the royal prerogative. PROTECTION FROM CIVIL PROCEEDINGS No civil proceedings 9. No civil proceedings lie against any person for their disclosure in good faith of information under this Act. POWERS OF GOVERNOR IN COUNCIL Regulations 10. (1) The Governor in Council may, on the recommendation of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, make regulations for carrying out the purposes and provisions of this Act, including regulations
(a) respecting the manner of disclosure under section 5;
(b) requiring records to be kept and retained in respect of that disclosure; and
(c) respecting the manner in which those records are kept and retained. Amendments to Schedules 1 and 2 (2) The Governor in Council may make an order adding the name of an institution to Schedule 1 or 2 or deleting one from either of those Schedules. Amendments to Schedule 3 (3) The Governor in Council may make an order adding the name of a Government of Canada institution and the title of its head to Schedule 3, deleting the name of an institution and the title of its head from that Schedule or amending the name of an institution or the title of a head that is listed in that Schedule. An addition is authorized only if the institution has jurisdiction or responsibilities under an Act of Parliament or another lawful authority in respect of activities that undermine the security of Canada, including in respect of their detection, identification, analysis, prevention, investigation or disruption.
Let’s look at the listings on Schedule 3 – they should be the agencies who deal with threats to Canada:
1. Canada Border Services Agency
2. Canada Revenue Agency
3. Canadian Armed Forces
4. Canadian Food Inspection Agency
5. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
6. Canadian Security Intelligence Service
7. Communications Security Establishment
8. Department of Citizenship and Immigration
9. Department of Finance
10. Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
11. Department of Health
12. Department of National Defence
13. Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
14. Department of Transport
15. Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada
16. Public Health Agency of Canada
17. Royal Canadian Mounted Police
This list is far more manageable, but again, there is no priority for who should be informed first and no central authority for assessing the degree of risk presented. One would think that the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness (DPSES) would be the first priority for reporting and that DPEPS would in turn notify appropriate agencies that deal with a given risk. Although there is provision for information sharing there is no organization to ensure that suspected threats are properly analysed and that the agencies best suited to the risk presented are informed.
More importantly, there is no provision to ensure that following analysis, if there is no threat presented that the information will be expunged. There is a very real possibility that threat databases will be filled with information on innocent people who present no risk to our security. Canadians have no assurance that incorrect or false information respecting their actions will not be shared amongst various agencies without any attempt at analysis or investigation.
It is frightening to think that investigations may occur without any prior analysis of actual risk presented. We do not need our police forces and security agents busily chasing shadows.
There is no provision for a Canadian who suspects he has been reported to authorities for inappropriate actions to determine what information is held by agencies or who that information has been shared with.
The complete lack of recourse is not acceptable. The sections on Collection and Disclosure of Information, Administrative Recourse and Appeals set out in Part Two, The Secure Air Travel Act need to be duplicated, with appropriate amendments, in the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act.
Proper disclosure and recourse will do far more than any oversight agency can. There has to be a disclosure and appeal process to avoid having honest citizens caught up in a fervour of false or unwarranted accusations and listing in a terrorism database which can affect everything from employment eligibility to travel restrictions.Clinging to the ceiling of an abandoned mine tunnel in Birmingham's Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, a tricolored bat is in trouble.
It's February, and the small, tufted ball of fur and wings is just a few feet inside the entrance to Ruffner's Mine No. 3. It should be much farther inside the tunnel, better protected from the cold, and waiting for spring to reemerge and begin foraging on mosquitoes, moths and other insects in the urban nature preserve just south of Birmingham's East Lake neighborhood.
That probably won't happen. The bat is showing signs of infection with white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has caused more than 95 percent mortality for this species in Georgia.
Ruffner Mountain's bats are very likely to follow the same path, according to Chris Cornelison, a PhD researcher studying white-nose at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
"White-nose syndrome is going to move through that population pretty severely," Cornelison said. "It would be my prediction that we'll continue to see declines until they probably hit about five percent of that historic population."
Cornelison conducted that survey with Jamie Nobles, Ruffner Mountain's Conservation Director, and Dottie Brown of Ecological Solutions Inc. He said they counted more than 600 bats in their limited exploration of the mine tunnel, and believe there were more than 1000 tricolored bats hibernating there last winter.
That makes it one of Alabama's largest tricolored bat hibernacula, according to surveys conducted by the Alabama Bat Working Group, a collaboration of state wildlife officials, researchers and volunteers. Or at least one of the largest ones left.
"Cathedral Caverns used to have many, many tricolored bats," said Nick Sharp, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources' lead bat biologist. "There's no telling how many bats used to be in Cathedral Caverns.
"I suspect Cathedral Caverns once upon a time rivaled Ruffner Mountain No. 3, but those bats [in Cathedral] have all but disappeared."
Cathedral Caverns also tested positive for the fungus that causes white-nose, and all signs point to that disease as the driving force in the population declines.
Cornelison said the bats he encountered at Ruffner were in "at least" year two of a white-nose outbreak, possibly year three. The greatest mortality usually occurs in years three and four.
"I would not be surprised to hear that spring counts show a 50 percent or greater reduction in those bats," Cornelison said. "I hope that is not the case, but unfortunately that is the trend that has been observed in neighboring states with that species.
"It's not a very positive outlook, but you never know."
Species in peril
The tricolored bat got its name from its fur, which is dark at the base, lighter in the middle and bears a yellow-brown tip. It is known as a slow flyer, hovering over water bodies and around the edges of forests to hunt insects during the summer.
It's the smallest bat in Alabama, and until recently it was one of the most abundant. In fact, Sharp said, the bat was so common, that there wasn't much of a push for new research on the species here.
"The fact of the matter is, the species that are going extinct are the ones that get the money, that's the way things work," Sharp said. "We start studying them when they're in danger of going extinct."
The bats reproduce once a year, with females birthing one to two pups usually around late May or early June. Beyond that, Sharp said, there are still significant questions about the bat's life cycle, especially in Alabama.
"Another complicating factor in trying to conserve and manage and support these bats is we don't know how to do it," Sharp said. "We know very little about their summer habitat use and their general natural history and breeding biology.
"Folks have started looking at that now."
There is also very little survey data on tricolored bat populations in Alabama caves before white-nose arrived. Most of the surveys began in 2010. White-nose was first confirmed in Alabama in 2012.
Alabama caves that have tested positive for white-nose have all shown a 70-95 percent drop in observed tricolored bat populations within a few years of the arrival of the disease.
White-nose syndrome is caused by a fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, which is not native to North America. The prevailing belief among wildlife agencies is that spores of the fungus were brought to American caves by hobbyists who did not properly wash their gear after visiting European caves.
Once the fungus crossed the Atlantic, bats and other animals have spread it from cave to cave, causing a slow-moving wave of the disease from that radiated out from New York throughout the Appalachians, across the Southeast and Midwest, with more isolated outbreaks confirmed in north Texas and Washington state.
The fungus causes white growths to appear on the bats, often around the nose and mouth, or sometimes on the wings. The fungal growth irritates the bats and prevents them from reaching deep hibernation in winter. The bats use too much energy at a time when they are meant to be dormant, and sometimes leave the safety of their caves to forage for insects.
Infected bats are sometimes spotted around cave entrances in the late winter, sometimes behaving erratically or otherwise showing signs of distress.
Just like the ones encountered in the February survey. Nobles said there are several old mining tunnels at Ruffner that recreate cave conditions for the bats, and the white-nose fungus has been found in all three portals that have been surveyed.
"With the tunnels being as close as they are, if you find it one, you're going to find it in all three," Nobles said. "And we did. We found more individuals in mine No. 3, and also more individuals with white nose."
Tricolored bats are one of the most vulnerable species to white-nose syndrome, being one of the smallest hibernating bats in North America. Since they're so small to start with, it's harder for them to build up enough energy to survive a fungus-agitated winter.
Cornelison said the tricolored bat was once Georgia's most abundant bat, before white-nose wiped out 95 percent of the population.
"[White-nose] showed up in Georgia in 2013 so that's four years and 95 percent loss," Cornelison said. "It's unprecedented in a wildlife disease.
"It's arguably the most severe wildlife disease that's ever been observed."
The tricolored bat has been proposed for protections under the Endangered Species Act, but that proposal is still under evaluation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Cornelison said the species is expected to gain some level of protection from the federal government due to the severity of the declines.
Due to the lengthy review process, it's unclear when a decision might actually be made.
"There's some concern they could go extinct before we actually list them," Nobles said.
'If you like food, thank a bat'
As to why Alabamians should care that one of the state's most common bat species seems on the brink of irreversible decline, Sharp said he steers that conversation to the dinner table.
"What I tell people is 'if you like food, thank a bat,'" Sharp said. "All our bats in Alabama are insectivores and they eat billions of insects every night."
Sharp pointed to studies finding that in North America, bats provide agricultural pest control benefits worth billions of dollars every year, not to mention feeding on a lot of insects that are undesirable for other reasons. Another study showed bats provide more than a billion dollars' worth of benefits to corn crops alone.
"Everything we eat has corn in it in some form or another," Sharp said. "All our livestock are fed corn, so if you like to eat, you should thank a bat for that."
Opportunity lost?
Cornelison and Sharp said little can be done at this point to save Ruffner's bats.
Ruffner built steel gates over the entrances to Mine No. 3 and Mine No. 2 to prevent people from spreading the fungus to new areas. There is no treatment for white-nose syndrome that's been proven to work in the field.
But Ruffner's population could have served as a living laboratory to help researchers develop treatments for white nose that might be useful elsewhere.
This summer, Cornelison applied for a federal research grant to use Ruffner's bat population to test potential treatments for white nose, but he did not receive funding.
"I feel really good about the proposal we put in," Cornelison said. "I believe it scored highly, but it's just a very competitive process and that's the way these sort of research projects go."
Cornelison said the Ruffner site was an ideal location to test white-nose treatments, because it had a large bat population with an active outbreak, and it was an already disturbed site, not a natural cave system with a functioning ecosystem to worry about.
"This was the best-case scenario for Ruffner to be involved in promoting the conservation of bats," Nobles said. "In the meantime, we're still going to do surveys, but all we can really do is observe.
"Because white-nose is time-sensitive, you only have so long. That mine that had 600 bats this year might only have 200 next year and the year after that, it might have 20, at least with that species of bat."
The project would have tested two different techniques to reduce white-nose mortality over two winters. One group of bats would have received a "probiotic" bacterial treatment that has been shown in labs to slow the growth of the fungus. Another group would get an anti-fungal aerosol that is mild enough to avoid damaging bats and other cave-dwelling wildlife. A third group would receive both treatments.
But Cornelison would also have to have a control groups of bats receiving no treatment to prove that his treatments worked. The clearest proof of the effectiveness of the treatments would be for the subject group that received the treatments to survive at higher rates than the rest of the cave. Otherwise, he said, researchers would wonder whether other factors in the cave besides his treatments were responsible for any resistance to the disease.
In other words, the project wasn't about saving Ruffner's bats, but about developing techniques that might prevent future caves - or the species as a whole - from suffering the same fate.
"There's a bigger game afoot," Cornelison said. "Within the context of the species, the bats at Ruffner don't matter. To people there locally and it's their backyard, the bats are very important, but what we want to do is not just save bats in Georgia or Alabama, we want to develop tools that can be taken across the affected range.
"It would take these kind of controlled trials to demonstrate that these techniques are effective and scalable."
Cornelison said stopping white nose in Georgia was essentially a lost cause, and Alabama was following the same path.
"The fact of the matter is we're post-collapse in Georgia with this species," he said. "It's a greater than 95 percent decline across the state, so even if our treatment was effective in Georgia, it would take over a century -- if we stopped all white nose mortality -- to get back to our historical numbers.
"In those cases, the die is cast. What we're trying to do is utilize those resources to help states where white nose hasn't yet taken hold. That's what we were trying to do at Ruffner."The early U.S. experience may offer an idea for avoiding the crash that looks likely in Afghanistan post-2014.
Panic would be an understatement. Land values and home prices were down 50%, key financial prices hit 25% in a single day, and banks began to foreclose on heavily mortgaged properties.
The financial crisis of 2008? No, in fact we’re talking about the first modern financial crisis to hit the United States, way back in 1818-1819. If we’re lucky, that difficult period could provide a blueprint for how to pull out of the nose-dive that looks increasingly likely to be the trajectory of the Afghanistan economy after 2014.
The early financial history of the United States reads like a playbook of things to avoid: an experimental central bank with almost no accountability, regional banks with even less oversight of their own back-room currency printing presses, and an easy credit mentality driven by the new national pastime of Western expansionism. This heady mix of credit and confidence exacerbated a boom and bust cycle that would last until well after the American Civil War.
Many of these booms and busts in early U.S. history can be attributed to the emergence of the agricultural futures markets in Chicago, the use of leverage in those markets, and the ability of banks to use local harvests as a source of credit in the form of new loans without centralized control. This newly created credit exacerbated price volatility around harvest times, which was made even worse by leveraged commodity speculation. The frequent outcome was widespread bank failure.
As complex and obscure as this picture seems, it does offer one gem of an idea with direct applicability to Afghanistan: the use of agriculture as a source of credit and as a way to increase food security locally.
Afghanistan’s economy is largely dependent on agriculture and so its economic output often swings wildly year-to-year. What is perhaps less quantifiable but no less important is the emotional impact those swings have not just on economic output but on the stark choices faced by Afghan families when times are very bad and the limited opportunities available when times are good.
One possible solution aimed at reducing uncertainty is to establish a new system of agricultural districts across the country. Within these districts nationally owned grain storage facilities could be built to secure and audit locally grown yet farmer-owned staple crops. Each large district, ultimately as many as 10 or 12 across the country, would give farmers low-cost storage, could link individual identification of what they own to the national ID card in development, and might offer the capacity to either sell a portion of their crops to government-sponsored programs or save for future shortages to feed their own families. It’s the farmer’s asset and their choice.
Most importantly, the central bank of Afghanistan under its mandate to promote sustainable economic growth could issue a new type of regional currency backed by the value of the grain in storage. This new currency would not replace the existing Afghani and would be issued only in small bills, be legal only in that agricultural district, be issued with an expiration date, and be supplied directly to the farmer in some fractional amount to what they leave on store.But these aren’t ordinary times. Banks aren’t lending out their extra reserves. They’re just sitting on them — in effect, they’re sending the money right back to the Fed. So the Fed isn’t really printing money after all.
Still, don’t such actions have to be inflationary sooner or later? No. The Bank of Japan, faced with economic difficulties not too different from those we face today, purchased debt on a huge scale between 1997 and 2003. What happened to consumer prices? They fell.
Photo
All in all, much of the current inflation discussion calls to mind what happened during the early years of the Great Depression when many influential people were warning about inflation even as prices plunged. As the British economist Ralph Hawtrey wrote, “Fantastic fears of inflation were expressed. That was to cry, Fire, Fire in Noah’s Flood.” And he went on, “It is after depression and unemployment have subsided that inflation becomes dangerous.”
Is there a risk that we’ll have inflation after the economy recovers? That’s the claim of those who look at projections that federal debt may rise to more than 100 percent of G.D.P. and say that America will eventually have to inflate away that debt — that is, drive up prices so that the real value of the debt is reduced.
Such things have happened in the past. For example, France ultimately inflated away much of the debt it incurred while fighting World War I.
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But more modern examples are lacking. Over the past two decades, Belgium, Canada and, of course, Japan have all gone through episodes when debt exceeded 100 percent of G.D.P. And the United States itself emerged from World War II with debt exceeding 120 percent of G.D.P. In none of these cases did governments resort to inflation to resolve their problems.
So is there any reason to think that inflation is coming? Some economists have argued for moderate inflation as a deliberate policy, as a way to encourage lending and reduce private debt burdens. I’m sympathetic to these arguments and made a similar case for Japan in the 1990s. But the case for inflation never made headway with Japanese policy makers then, and there’s no sign it’s getting traction with U.S. policy makers now.
All of this raises the question: If inflation isn’t a real risk, why all the claims that it is?
Well, as you may have noticed, economists sometimes disagree. And big disagreements are especially likely in weird times like the present, when many of the normal rules no longer apply.
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But it’s hard to escape the sense that the current inflation fear-mongering is partly political, coming largely from economists who had no problem with deficits caused by tax cuts but suddenly became fiscal scolds when the government started spending money to rescue the economy. And their goal seems to be to bully the Obama administration into abandoning those rescue efforts.
Needless to say, the president should not let himself be bullied. The economy is still in deep trouble and needs continuing help.
Yes, we have a long-run budget problem, and we need to start laying the groundwork for a long-run solution. But when it comes to inflation, the only thing we have to fear is inflation fear itself.Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow is scheduled to hold his baseball showcase on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Some estimates have as many as 20 teams set to attend.
To help everyone keep track of who's in, we've rounded up all the reports linking individual teams to Tebow's showcase. That doesn't mean the teams without a public commitment won't attend, just that these are the teams we know for certain will be represented.
The teams are listed in alphabetical order.
Thumbs up if you're attending Tebow's workout. USATSI
Arizona Diamondbacks: So far, no indication either way.
Atlanta Braves: Of course. The rebuilding Braves will take talent wherever they can find it, though it's unclear if they'll find it at Tebow's showcase.
Baltimore Orioles: It's unknown whether the Orioles will attend. The answer is a strong no if Buck Showalter's sentiments are shared by the front office.
Boston Red Sox: The Red Sox will have boots on the ground in Los Angeles. No word on whether they'll actually wear red socks, however.
Chicago Cubs: Joe Maddon had some kind words about Tebow's swing, but the Cubs were, at last check anyway, undecided.
Chicago White Sox: Looks like a no.
Cincinnati Reds: The Reds will attend.
Really no big deal that #Reds will be at Tebow showcase. Heard estimates as high as 20 clubs taking a look. Longshot, obviously. — Jeff Wallner (@JeffWallner) August 25, 2016
Cleveland Indians: Ditto for the Indians.
Colorado Rockies: You have to hope the answer is yes, just for the Broncos jokes. But so far there's been no indication either way.
Detroit Tigers: The Tigers will scout Tebow.
Houston Astros: Who knows if the same is true for the Astros.
Kansas City Royals: The defending champions have interest in Tebow.
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: The Angels intend to get an eye on Tebow, which makes sense, given he's working out near them.
Los Angeles Dodgers: The Dodgers got a jump start on most teams, having worked out Tebow during the spring. Presumably, they'll check in again.
Miami Marlins: Obviously.
Miami Marlins plan on checking out a certain former Heisman-winning quarterback:https://t.co/1xCUqJbUHfpic.twitter.com/VNsnLZku11 — George Richards (@GeorgeRichards) August 27, 2016
Milwaukee Brewers: The rebuilding Brewers will be there, if only for due diligence's sake.
Minnesota Twins: The Twins have nothing to lose by checking out Tebow, and that's what they'll do.
New York Mets: The Mets seemingly remain undecided.
New York Yankees: On the other hand, the Yankees will be there.
Tebow as a future Yank? Probably not. But the Yankees will attend his showcase. USATSI
Oakland Athletics: It's unclear if the A's intend to attend.
Philadelphia Phillies: Conversely, the Phillies are going to make the trek.
Pittsburgh Pirates: The Pirates' interest in Tebow is unknown.
San Diego Padres: San Diego once drafted Johnny Manziel, so naturally they'll scout Tebow.
San Francisco Giants: The Giants signing Tebow would provide for nice NFL-related troll fodder. There's no telling if that's a possibility, however.
Seattle Mariners: It's not known if the Mariners have interest in Tebow.
St. Louis Cardinals: Yes, yes the Cardinals will scout Tebow. Get your "right way" jokes in now.
Tampa Bay Rays: You'd think the Rays would, but there are indication that they won't.
Nope. Not their kind of move https://t.co/Gxg0EoZ3VU — Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) August 10, 2016
Texas Rangers: Remember what the Rangers did with Russell Wilson? Maybe that's part of why they're scouting Tebow.
Toronto Blue Jays: The Blue Jays, employer to many players with weird career arcs, are going to attend.
Washington Nationals: Nope.Ken Buck, Colorado Republican Senate candidate believes the reason you should vote for him instead of Jane Norton is because he doesn’t wear heels (and because his cowboy boots are full of bullshit). Seriously.
And shudder to think the best thing Obama gave us is “Tea Parties and a great constitutional newspaper” but I digress.
He claims she questioned his manhood. In response to ads against her she said, “You’ve seen those ads attacking me. They’re paid for by a shady interest group doing the bidding of Ken Buck. You’d think Ken would be man enough to do it himself.” I really hate when people suggest that men should “man up,” because it relies on the idea that masculinity assumes being tough, strong, unemotional and reinforces traditional gender norms for men. Her statement was problematic.
But while that is problematic, she didn’t suggest he shouldn’t be elected because he is a man. In responding with the heels comment Buck is drawing from and reinforcing the idea that women don’t belong in politics. He claims he was kidding, but realizes the joke wasn’t really that funny. Yeah, no shit.Thanks to technology, entrepreneurs no longer need to be on Sand Hill Road to catch an investor's eye.
December 4, 2017 2 min read
This story appears in the December 2017 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
For 2018 trends, we asked an expert on what entrepreneurs can expect this coming year in fundraising.
It’s never been cheaper to start a company, but competition has never been fiercer. Only a few years ago, being in Silicon Valley gave startups a leg up. It was instant access to the world’s best network. But the ecosystem has been shifting -- a decentralization of knowledge, capital and networks that’s enabling entrepreneurs to attract great investors no matter where they’re based. And this will be the big story of 2018: It’ll be the year that shift becomes a permanent state.
Related: How to Start a Business: a Step-by-Step Guide to Growing Your Big Idea Into a Successful Company
Part of this has to do with technology. A 10-year-old girl in Kenya now has a better library in her pocket than someone a few decades ago had while studying for their Ph.D. at Harvard. And with the rise of crowdfunding platforms, initial coin offerings and global startup programs, founders anywhere can connect with investors, corporations and other entrepreneurs to help them with resources, mentorship and investment. Of course, we’ve had this technology for years. What’s really different is that investors -- from the under-the-radar angel investors to the heavy-hitting VC firms -- have a new perspective. They’ve seen that startups can thrive anywhere, and they’re eager to find unexpected opportunities beyond their backyards. And more cities have what I like to call local startup ecosystem builders -- the people or companies that create momentum.
Related: How to Start a Business With (Almost) No Money
Entrepreneurs who want to take advantage of this need only go online -- or outside! -- and start reaching out. Develop relationships with entrepreneurs local and half a world away. Use new tools to build compelling companies of great value. And then, go out there and introduce yourself to investors. Sure, that may still mean flying to a different city, including San Francisco, of course. But investors will be happy to welcome out-of-towners.
-- Ryan Baird, Global Startup Manager, G-Startup WorldwideWisdom (left) attempts to nudge her mate off the nest for her turn at incubating the couple's egg. She’s 62; the male is presumed to be much younger. (Pete Leary/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
She is described as awesome. And wonderful. And maybe a little weird. She is the world’s oldest known living wild bird at age 62, and she produced a healthy chick that hatched Sunday.
It’s pretty amazing that Wisdom, named by scientists who stuck a tag on her ankle years ago, has lived this long. The average Laysan albatross dies at less than half her age. Scientists thought that, like other birds, albatross females became infertile late in life and carried on without producing chicks.
But Wisdom, who hatched the chick at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean, defies comparison. Her feat could prompt scientists to chuck some of their early theories about the bird out the door.
Wisdom has raised chicks five times since 2006, and as many as 35 in her lifetime. Just as astonishing, she has likely flown up to 3 million miles since she was first tagged at Midway Atoll at the end of the Hawaiian Island chain in 1956, according to scientists who have tracked her at the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s “4 to 6 trips from the Earth to the Moon and back again with plenty of miles to spare,” the USGS said in an enthusiastic announcement Tuesday.
“It blows us away that this is a 62-year-old bird and she keeps laying eggs and raising chicks,” said Bruce Peterjohn, chief of the Bird Banding Laboratory at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel.
“We know that birds will eventually stop reproducing, when they’re too old to breed anymore,” he said. “The assumption about albatross is it will happen to them, too. But we don’t know where that line is. That in and of itself is pretty amazing.”
Wisdom’s advanced-age reproduction not only could help scientists understand more about the albatross but also learn more about the health of the oceans.
“These birds are emblematic of the health of the ocean and the health of that ecosystem,” Peterjohn said. “It has to be healthy for them to live long.”
But the USGS and other organizations that study albatrosses must first untangle some shortcomings in the research. Scientists say past methods of data collection have been a little shaky.
Thousands of Laysan and other species of albatross have been banded since 1956, when scientists started studying them at the atoll to determine why so many were striking Navy aircraft, killing the birds and damaging the machines.
The tracking bands, also called tags, weren’t all that reliable. They generally fall off after 20 years, sometimes before being replaced. Wisdom went through six, which were replaced before she lost them.
As far as Peterjohn and other scientists know, “half the birds could be 60 years old,” he said. “These birds could be much older than we think.”
Nineteen of 21 albatross species are threatened with extinction, and their demise might be linked directly to humans. Long-line fishing has depleted their numbers. Fishermen throw bait in the ocean to lure fish, but they also lure albatrosses that get hooked and drown when they squat on the water to eat.
The birds also swallow marine debris. An estimated five tons of plastic are unknowingly fed to albatross chicks each year by their parents, the USGS said.
This might not kill the chicks quickly, but it restricts their food intake, leading to dehydration. Also, the birds are threatened by invasive species, such as rats and wild cats, that prey on eggs, chicks and nesting adults.
Albatrosses aren’t the world’s largest birds, or the oldest — parrots in captivity have lived to age 80, Peterjohn said. But they are easily the largest seabird, with wingspans as wide as eight feet, “like a sea gull on steroids,” Peterjohn said, dwarfing the average gray gulls that are known to roam beaches stealing french fries.
They’re the oldest known bird in the wild. Wisdom edged out the second oldest known albatross to reproduce, a 61-year-old named Grandma, of the Northern Royal species, Peterjohn said. But Grandma hasn’t been seen at her nesting ground at Taiaroa Head, New Zealand, in three years and |
ahunt
the fates lead the willing and drag the unwilling -- attributed to Lucius Annaeus Seneca
dulce bellum inexpertis
war is sweet to the inexperienced dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
it is sweet and fitting to die for your country
dulcius ex asperis
sweeter after difficulties
e pluribus unum
out of many, one -- on the U.S. seal, and was once the country's de facto motto
emeritus
veteran -- retired from office
ergo
therefore
et alii
and others -- abbreviated et al.
et cetera
and the others
et tu, Brute?
last words of Caesar after being murdered by friend Brutus in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," used today to convey utter betrayal
ex animo
from the heart -- thus, "sincerely"
ex libris
from the library of -- to mark books from a library
ex nihilo
out of nothing
ex post facto
from a thing done afterward -- said of a law with retroactive effect
fac fortia et patere
do brave deeds and endure
fac simile
make alike -- origin of the word "fax"
flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo
if I cannot move heaven I will raise hell -- Virgil's Aeneid
fortes fortuna adiuvat
fortune favors the bold
fortis in arduis
strong in difficulties
gloria in excelsis Deo
glory to God in the highest
habeas corpus
you should have the body -- a legal term from the 14th century or earlier; commonly used as the general term for a prisoner's legal right to challenge the legality of their detention
habemus papam
we have a pope -- used after a Catholic Church papal election to announce publicly a successful ballot to elect a new pope
historia vitae magistra
history, the teacher of life -- from Cicero; also "history is the mistress of life"
hoc est bellum
this is war
homo unius libri (timeo)
(I fear) a man of one book -- attributed to Thomas Aquinas
honor virtutis praemium
esteem is the reward of virtue hostis humani generis
enemy of the human race -- Cicero defined pirates in Roman law as being enemies of humanity in general
humilitas occidit superbiam
humility conquers pride
igne natura renovatur integra
through fire, nature is reborn whole
ignis aurum probat
fire tests gold -- a phrase referring to the refining of character through difficult circumstances
in absentia
in the absence
in aqua sanitas
in water there is health
in flagrante delicto
in flaming crime -- caught red-handed, or in the act
in memoriam
into the memory -- more commonly "in memory of"
in omnia paratus
ready for anything
in situ
in position -- something that exists in an original or natural state
in toto
in all or entirely
in umbra, igitur, pugnabimus
then we will fight in the shade -- made famous by Spartans in the battle of Thermopylae and by the movie 300
in utero
in the womb
in vitro
in glass -- biological process that occurs in the lab
incepto ne desistam
may I not shrink from my purpose intelligenti pauca
few words suffice for he who understands
invicta
unconquered
invictus maneo
I remain unvanquished
ipso facto
by the fact itself -- something is true by its very nature
labor omnia vincit
hard work conquers all
laborare pugnare parati sumus
to work, (or) to fight; we are ready
labore et honore
by labor and honor
leges sine moribus vanae
laws without morals [are] vain
lex parsimoniae
law of succinctness -- also known as Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one
lex talionis
the law of retaliation
magna cum laude
with great praise
magna est vis consuetudinis
great is the power of habit
magnum opus
great work -- said of someone's masterpiece
mala fide
in bad faith -- said of an act done with knowledge of its illegality, or with intention to defraud or mislead someone; opposite of bona fide
malum in se
wrong in itself -- a legal term meaning that something is inherently wrong
malum prohibitum
wrong due to being prohibited -- a legal term meaning that something is only wrong because it is against the law
mea culpa
my fault
meliora
better things -- carrying the connotation of "always better"
memento mori
remember that [you will] die -- was whispered by a servant into the ear of a victorious Roman general to check his pride as he paraded through cheering crowds after a victory; a genre of art meant to remind the viewer of the reality of his death memento vivere
remember to live
memores acti prudentes futuri
mindful of what has been done, aware of what will be
modus operandi
method of operating -- abbreviated M.O.
montani semper liberi
mountaineers [are] always free -- state motto of West Virginia
morior invictus
death before defeat
morituri te salutant
those who are about to die salute you -- popularized as a standard salute from gladiators to the emperor, but only recorded once in Roman history
morte magis metuenda senectus
old age should rather be feared than death
mulgere hircum
to milk a male goat -- to attempt the impossible
multa paucis
say much in few words
nanos gigantum humeris insidentes
dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants -- commonly known by the letters of Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants"
nec aspera terrent
they don't terrify the rough ones -- frightened by no difficulties, less literally "difficulties be damned"
nec temere nec timide
neither reckless nor timid
nil volentibus arduum
nothing [is] arduous for the willing
nolo contendere
I do not wish to contend -- that is, "no contest"; a plea that can be entered on behalf of a defendant in a court that states that the accused doesn't admit guilt, but will accept punishment for a crime non ducor, duco
I am not led; I lead
non loqui sed facere
not talk but action
non progredi est regredi
to not go forward is to go backward
non scholae, sed vitae discimus
we learn not for school, but for life -- from Seneca
non sequitur
it does not follow -- in general, a comment which is absurd due to not making sense in its context (rather than due to being inherently nonsensical or internally inconsistent), often used in humor non sum qualis eram
I am not such as I was -- or "I am not the kind of person I once was"
nosce te ipsum
know thyself -- from Cicero
novus ordo seclorum
new order of the ages -- from Virgil; motto on the Great Seal of the United States nulla tenaci invia est via
for the tenacious, no road is impassable
obliti privatorum, publica curate
forget private affairs, take care of public ones -- Roman political saying which reminds that common good should be given priority over private matters for any person having a responsibility in the State
panem et circenses
bread and circuses -- originally described all that was needed for emperors to placate the Roman mob; today used to describe any entertainment used to distract public attention from more important matters
para bellum
prepare for war -- if you want peace, prepare for war—if a country is ready for war, its enemies are less likely to attack parvis imbutus tentabis grandia tutus
when you are steeped in little things, you shall safely attempt great things -- sometimes translated as, "once you have accomplished small things, you may attempt great ones safely"
pater familias
father of the family -- the eldest male in a family
pecunia, si uti scis, ancilla est; si nescis, domina
if you know how to use money, money is your slave; if you don't, money is your master
per angusta ad augusta
through difficulties to greatness
per annum
by the year per capita
by the person per diem
by the day per se
through itself
persona non grata
person not pleasing -- an unwelcome, unwanted or undesirable person
pollice verso
with a turned thumb -- used by Roman crowds to pass judgment on a defeated gladiator
post meridiem
after noon -- P.M., used in timekeeping
post mortem
after death
postscriptum
thing having been written afterward -- in writing, abbreviated P.S.
praemonitus praemunitus
forewarned is forearmed
praesis ut prosis ne ut imperes
lead in order to serve, not in order to rule
primus inter pares
first among equals -- a title of the Roman Emperors
pro bono
for the good -- in business, refers to services rendered at no charge
pro rata
for the rate
quam bene vivas referre (or refert), non quam diu
it is how well you live that matters, not how long -- from Seneca
quasi
as if or as though
qui totum vult totum perdit
he who wants everything loses everything -- attributed to Seneca
quid agis
what's going on? -- what's up, what's happening, etc.
quid pro quo
this for that -- an exchange of value
quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur
whatever has been said in Latin seems deep -- or "anything said in Latin sounds profound"; a recent ironic Latin phrase to poke fun at people who seem to use Latin phrases and quotations only to make themselves sound more important or "educated"
quis custodiet ipsos custodes? who will guard the guards themselves? -- commonly associated with Plato quorum
of whom -- the number of members whose presence is required under the rules to make any given meeting constitutional
requiescat in pace let him rest in peace -- abbreviated R.I.P.
rigor mortis
stiffness of death scientia ac labore
knowledge through hard work
scientia ipsa potentia est
knowledge itself is power
semper anticus
always forward semper fidelis
always faithful -- U.S. Marines motto
semper fortis
always brave
semper paratus
always prepared
semper virilis always virile si vales, valeo
when you are strong, I am strong
si vis pacem, para bellum
if you want peace, prepare for war
sic parvis magna
greatness from small beginnings -- motto of Sir Frances Drake
sic semper tyrannis
thus always to tyrants -- attributed to Brutus at the time of Julius Caesar's assassination, and to John Wilkes Booth at the time of Abraham Lincoln's assassination; whether it was actually said at either of these events is disputed
sic vita est
thus is life -- the ancient version of "it is what it is"
sola fide
by faith alone
sola nobilitat virtus
virtue alone ennobles
solvitur ambulando
it is solved by walking
spes bona
good hope
statim (stat)
immediately -- medical shorthand
status quo
the situation in which or current condition
subpoena
under penalty
sum quod eris
I am what you will be -- a gravestone inscription to remind the reader of the inevitability of death summa cum laude
with highest praise
summum bonum
the supreme good
suum cuique
to each his own
tabula rasa
scraped tablet -- "blank slate"; John Locke used the term to describe the human mind at birth, before it had acquired any knowledge
tempora heroica
Heroic Age
tempus edax rerum
time, devourer of all things
tempus fugit
time flees -- commonly mistranslated "time flies"
terra firma
firm ground
terra incognita
unknown land -- used on old maps to show unexplored areas
vae victis
woe to the conquered
vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas
vanity of vanities; everything [is] vanity -- from the Bible (Ecclesiastes 1)
veni vidi vici
I came, I saw, I conquered -- famously said by Julius Caesar
verbatim
repeat exactly
veritas et aequitas
truth and equity
versus
against veto I forbid vice versa to change or turn around vincit qui patitur
he conquers who endures
vincit qui se vincit
he conquers who conquers himself
vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
[a] wise man does not urinate [up] against the wind
virile agitur
the manly thing is being done
viriliter agite
act in a manly way
viriliter agite estote fortes
quit ye like men, be strong
virtus tentamine gaudet
strength rejoices in the challenge
virtute et armis
by virtue and arms -- or "by manhood and weapons"; state motto of Mississippi
vive memor leti
live remembering death
vivere est vincere
to live is to conquer -- Captain John Smith's personal motto
vivere militare est
to live is to fight
vox populi
voice of the people
What are your favorite Latin phrases? Any other important Latin words and phrases that you think a modern man should know? Share with us in the comments!The NBA’s two-year salary cap jump—brought on by a massive broadcasting rights deal—prompted a spending spree unlike any the league has ever seen. Every contract signed for the foreseeable future functions on a different sort of scale. The three largest contracts in NBA history (Mike Conley, Damian Lillard, and DeMar DeRozan) were all inked in this environment. Re-signing a player to a full max off of his rookie deal cost teams over $125 million over five years—some $30 million more than the season prior.
That spending spree has actually lowered projections for the 2017-18 salary cap, though even the revised figure ($102 million) would make for the highest the league has ever seen. On one hand, this kind of headroom makes even lavish contracts more manageable; not every deal is a good one, but even previously cumbersome salaries are now significantly easier for teams to work around. On the other, the relative value of any contract only stretches as the cap increases. A deal that looked like a bargain in 2014 might now be the kind of piece that allows for star-heavy team construction. Just one or two of those deals could afford a team a luxury player it might not have been able to fit under the cap otherwise.
For the sake of understanding where those opportunities lie, we’ll parse rosters around the league for the 30 best (read: most team-friendly) contracts in the league based on the value they present moving forward.
Note: For obvious reasons, rookie-scale deals are not included here. It’s understood that Karl-Anthony Towns is a bargain at $6 million, as are Kristaps Porzingis at $4.3 million and Myles Turner at $2.5 million. This is a collection of the 30 best contracts in the league that were actually negotiated independent of the confines of rookie scale
Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty Images
Max deals
Jimmy Butler, Bulls: Four years (Player option), $75.9 million
The 28th-highest-paid player in the NBA this season does everything. Solo shot creation? Check. Facilitating for others? Butler makes it look easy. Those defensive assignments most of the league’s load-bearing superstars pass off? Butler somehow finds the energy to handle them in between high-energy offensive possessions. Having that kind of two-way pillar is an incredible luxury for a franchise, particularly when he has another three years remaining under contract beyond this season at a rate hardly becoming of a superstar. Such is the nature of the league with a sharply rising cap. Any players locked in on long-term at just the right time will give their teams wiggle room to build around a foundational talent. Considering how much roster reshapsing Chicago still has ahead, that lasting benefit could make all the difference.
Kawhi Leonard, Spurs: Four years (PO), $77.9 million
San Antonio won on two fronts with Leonard’s contract: First by convincing Leonard to pass on signing an extension so that they could use their temporarily available cap space to sign LaMarcus Aldridge, and then by the fact that even the maximum value allowed to Leonard’s experience level hardly does him justice. Leonard is technically tied for the highest-paid player on this list for this season. He makes all of $17.7 million—less than Luol Deng, Allen Crabbe, Derrick Rose, and Chandler Parsons.
Kyrie Irving, Cavs: Four years, $77.9 million
One could lodge very reasonable complaints regarding Irving’s wild, unreliable defense and single-minded offensive approach. They just wouldn’t mean much relative to what the Cavs have invested financially. The skills that tend to run up the bill on the free agent market happen to align perfectly with Irving’s unimpeachable best. You can’t dog the the finishing ability, the poise off the dribble, and the impeccable ability to hit contested shots. The rest can be addressed over the life of a long deal and worked out through the variety of options that Irving’s deal leaves on the table.
John Wall, Wizards: Three years, $54.2 million
The man said it best himself: “I’m getting the same as Reggie Jackson.”
DeMarcus Cousins, Kings: Two years, $35 million
There is still no player in the league who can fully contain Cousins one-on-one, and frankly it’s a hell of a task to slow him down even with help. That’s a point of leverage worth paying for. Lesser teams go to such great lengths in their attempts to manufacture the kind of advantage that Cousins can dial up on demand. With that accessibility comes offensive freedom, a defense forced into overreaction, and the means to activate role players by easing their individual responsibilities. If Sacramento ever fields a roster that makes sense, Cousins will do a lot to elevate their floor.
LeBron James, Cavaliers: Three years (PO), $99.9 million
Sometimes the best way to get a good deal is to find a player so tremendously valuable that even a year-to-year max couldn’t approximate his value.
Brian Babineau/NBAE/Getty Images
Unspeakable bargains
Isaiah Thomas, Celtics: Two years, $12.9 million
Which is more unbelievable in retrospect: That a dynamo like Thomas was once signed for $27 million over four years, or that the team he signed with actually traded him seven months into that deal? This contract looked to be such an excellent value at the moment it was signed that it was hard not to read into it. Players don’t put up the numbers Thomas did and sign for mid-level money without some serious red flags. In Thomas’s case, most every concern—some ball-hogginess? Defensive limitations? Attitude questions?—has been either resolved or eclipsed entirely.
Nikola Jokic, Nuggets: Three years (TO), $4.4 million
The single most cost-efficient star in the league. Hitting this big on a second-round pick can prove transformative—particularly for a Nuggets team stocked with good-not-great veterans and good-not-great prospects.
Stephen Curry, Warriors: One year, $12.1 million
Curry’s deal is proof that a single great contract can change the fate of an entire franchise. It was because Curry’s deal was so reasonable that there was room to acquire bigger contracts and pile up more total salary without buckling. Andre Iguodala and Andrew Bogut’s deals work just fine as a composite with Curry’s savings. Or trade one of them away and pair one MVP with another—all because Curry’s wobbly ankles, once upon a time, created enough doubt in his future as to validate a contract this modest.
Stacy Revere/Getty Images
Affordable stars
Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks: Five years, $103 million
This contract is a godsend for the Bucks. The fact that Antetokounmpo took slightly less than the max drew warranted attention, but the bigger deal here is that he signed up for a four-year extension with no player option or early termination option. Milwaukee can plan to have one of the best players in the league propelling its team for each of the next five years with no clear ceiling in sight.
Kemba Walker, Hornets: Three years, $36 million
Walker's deal is oddly reminiscent of Mike Conley’s controversial contract extension back in 2010. At the time of this deal’s signing, Walker had seemed to plateau. He came into the league at 21. He played four consecutive seasons at essentially the same level, during which he shot worse than 40% from the field overall without reliable three-point range, the ability to rack up free throws, or gaudy assist numbers. Then, in a single season, everything came together. Walker will likely be an All-Star this year because of the substantive changes he made to his jumper and the world of efficiency that single tweak opened up for him. A quick guard can get anywhere he needs to when his shot demands respect. Walker has reached that point and built outward—stringing together dribble moves and counters that play off of a defender’s panic. There was plenty to be unsure of when Walker actually signed this deal, but what a bargain it has turned out to be.
Draymond Green, Warriors: Four years, $67.7 million
Championship goodwill coupled with restricted free agency netted the Warriors one of the best deals in the league. All told, Green accepted a deal for around $11 million less than the max in 2015—and thus $11 million less than he arguably deserved. Green is easily a max-worthy player within this experience bracket. To edge down even further from those CBA-imposed limits is an incredible boon for Golden State, both in terms of easing the luxury tax burden and making the very idea of a max-salary addition like Durant more feasible.
Gordon Hayward, Jazz: Two years (PO), $32.8 million
The only drag in Hayward’s deal is that—by virtue of that player option Charlotte signed into his initial offer sheet—it ends so soon.
Kyle Lowry, Raptors: Two years (ETO), $24 million
There was some risk implicit in signing the injury-prone Lowry to a four-year deal back in 2014, though the rising cap has all but erased it as a matter of scale. This is just an absurdly low number for the kind of player that Lowry has turned out to be. His two most recent seasons, in particular, have been a revelation of gutsy drives and back-breaking shooting. Keeping up with Lowry demands so much guile of a defender that some breakdown is inevitable. From that, Lowry works every inch and angle to take a slight breakdown to its fullest payoff.
Derrick Favors, Jazz: Two years, $23.1 million
Favors has fallen off the map a bit due to a lingering injury this season, but this is an insanely good deal for a big who can hold his own switching on the perimeter, power-post his way through mismatches, and score comfortably on the move. Part of the reason the future of this Jazz core is somewhat tenuous is that Favors and Rudy Gobert have enough spatial overlap in their games to consider the alternatives. Another part is that all of these quality young players Utah has amassed will have to be paid, a fact disguised by rookie-scale deals and value extensions/re-signings like this one.
Klay Thompson, Warriors: Three years, $53.5 million
It says everything you need to know about Golden State’s fortuitous cap situation that the team’s fourth-best player is an All-NBA-level talent on the team’s third-best contract. Golden State did smart work in protecting itself, too, by locking in Thompson’s extension at a hard, set figure rather than hinge it to fluid cap projections.
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Micro-salaries
Malcolm Brogdon, Bucks: Three years (last year non-guaranteed), $3.9 million
Far steadier than a second-round rookie point guard has any right to be. How is it that his presence is already so calming? How could he possibly have this kind of command so soon after joining the league? Brogdon is a clear first-round value who can swing between both guard positions and make his teammates look good. Shooting alone (43.5% from three) makes the 24-year-old worth much more than his deal. Factor in a more complete game and Brogdon registers an entirely different level of value and importance.
David West, Warriors: One year, $1.6 million (cap hit: $980k)
The twilight is calling for West, for whom nothing on the court comes as easily as it once did. At this price point, that hardly matters; Golden State is paying the smallest amount possible for a smart contributor who knows his lane, an adult who understands the dynamic of a locker room, and a seasoned competitor who knows how to work when the game tightens up. To get all of that for the veteran minimum is a dream.
Dewayne Dedmon, Spurs: Two years (PO), $5.9 million
A targeted, low-cost specialist is the easiest way for an NBA team to clear up redundancy. Dedmon and the Spurs are a perfect case study. LaMarcus Aldridge and Pau Gasol will always be an imperfect pairing, and within certain matchups a damaging one. Through Dedmon, Gregg Popovich always has the option to fall back on a more balanced sort of pairing. To get that kind of player—just the sort San Antonio needed—while committing $14+ million to five different players is nothing short of miraculous.
Norman Powell, Raptors: Two years (last year non-guaranteed), $2.4 million
Powell can never seem to hold down a steady gig in Toronto’s rotation, but that speaks more to the glut of capable wings than any particular deficiency on Powell’s part. Two years in and Powell is nothing if not dependable; nothing in his game really jumps out, but to be a competent shooter, confident with the ball, and committed to his defensive assignments goes a long way at this price point.
Montrezl Harrell, Rockets: Two years, $2.5 million
Another second-round pick who makes for a tremendous bargain. The going rate for capable reserve centers in the current market can range up toward $10 million a year. Even some lesser third-stringers are making between $4 million and $6 million on a one-year deal. Harrell, who wound up starting 11 games while Clint Capela was sidelined by injury, is locked in for this season and next at a figure that allows the Rockets to keep financially nimble. That the combination of Harrell, Clint Capela (rookie scale), and Nene make a combined $5.3 million this season is a big reason why Houston ranks 20th in total team payroll—a standing which allowed for meatier commitments to Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson.
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Discount role players
George Hill, Jazz: One year, $8 million
A bargain even before Hill’s game really started to flourish in Utah. Coaches dream of players who keep their options open. Hill takes nothing off the table; he allows a team to play through its do-it-all wings or high-usage bigs, he makes your defenseless guards all the more playable, he stretches the floor, he keeps an offense moving, and he doesn’t grouse. What a player.
J.J. Redick, Clippers: One year, $7.4 million
So effective in his role that he exerts a star-like impact. The summer of 2017 will effectively decide the future of the Clippers and the fate of this current core. All eyes are on Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, both of whom have early termination options that will allow them to become free agents. Re-signing both would be a huge financial commitment to a team that as of yet has run up against every possible obstacle in its attempts to get over the hump. But those stars, along with DeAndre Jordan, only hit their peak when Redick is around to occupy defenses and space the floor. His upcoming free agency is a quiet, critical subplot of what figures to be a fascinating offseason.
Avery Bradley, Celtics: Two years, $17.1 million
A true developmental success story. Boston never forced Bradley’s game against the grain in an attempt to make him a true point guard. Instead, Bradley grew into one of the game’s most balanced two-way wings: a dogged defender, effective shooter, smart cutter, and—new this season—shockingly effective rebounder. It’s completely understandable why a player this good might be displeased with his current contract situation.
Will Barton, Nuggets: Two years, $7.1 million
Barton has a wild game that, honestly, has never really settled down. The primary difference between his early struggles with the Blazers and his sparkplug seasons with the Nuggets is comfort. Barton knows he has room to make mistakes under Mike Malone and sprints into them full bore. At the same time, his energy on the floor—and the pressure it exerts—allows Barton to rack up points while keeping an opponent off-balance. Last season was the big surprise. This year is a quiet extension of all that made Barton so successful: 17.3 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 3.5 assists per 36 minutes with uncharacteristically hot shooting to boot. Barton might be a tough piece to incorporate into a more orderly system, but his brand of chaos is valuable in its own right.
Patrick Patterson, Raptors: One year, $6.1 million
Teams get so locked into their pursuit of specific, targeted skills that sometimes a versatile non-specialist falls into a surprisingly affordable deal. Patterson was just one example, having signed a three-year, $18.2 million commitment with Toronto after being traded there a season prior. He wouldn’t address a need, per se, but Patterson has grown to be just the kind of player whose round, functional game makes everything around him go a bit more smoothly. It’s shooting, it’s passing, it’s switchable defense, it’s mistake-free system play—nothing truly elite, mind you, but just the kind of profile that can make a good team better.
Patty Mills, Spurs: One year, $3.6 million
Teams willing to do their homework before signing injured players can come out with a tremendous bargain. Mills signed a deal with a significant right shoulder injury priced in; though officially slated as a three-year contract, Mills’s deal overlapped with a projected 6-7 month recovery period that sideline him for training camp, the preseason, and at least two months of the 2014-15 regular season. There was no guarantee he would return to form and there could be no assurance that his following seasons would not be hampered by recurring injury. All turned out about as well as it could for the Spurs, given those circumstances, and Mills is in line to cash in this summer off of his considerable scoring ability.
Jae Crowder, Celtics: Four years, $28.2 million
A leap of faith that has paid off in a big, big way. At the time of this contract’s signing, Crowder was more enticing as an idea than an actual player. Boston took that idea and cultivated it into something real, all while betting on the strength of its developmental resources with the length of this contract. Every year the league demands a bit more versatility of its best players. Crowder fits in perfectly as a multipositional defender with a malleable offensive game.
Patrick Beverley, Rockets: Three years (last year non-guaranteed), $16.5 million
It was amazing that Houston, in an age where scouting has become a legitimate, worldwide industry, caught on to Beverley in Russia before any other team in the league and managed to land him on a multi-year, non-guaranteed deal. It might be even more so that the Rockets were able to re-sign Beverley to another deal at this favorable a rate. A loose-cannon specialist will naturally whittle down his suitors, but Beverley is such a tenacious on-ball defender and such a convenient fit alongside creative wing players that it’s a wonder some other team didn’t bid up the price. The team option in the final year of what was a four-year, $23 million deal is just icing on the cake.
Trevor Ariza, Rockets: Two years, $15.2 million
Consistently better than you’d think. Ariza’s game has fallen off slightly, but at a rate that pales next to the rising cost of effective wing players. Scarcity at his position, viable defense across a variety of matchups, and effective fill-in-the-gaps wing play grant him a lasting rotation value. Ariza is a bargain at nearly half the price of an average starter.
Salary data courtesy of Basketball Insiders (link: www.basketballinsiders.com)Same ES&S iVotronics Flipping Votes from Democrats to Republicans (and others) in At Least 4 States
Warnings About Thes Machines Issued Long Ago, Yet Dems Continue to Allow Their Use...
Brad Friedman Byon 10/27/2008, 12:28pm PT
The Charleston Gazette reports still more ES&S iVotronic touch-screen vote flipping in WV, including reports now from Jackson, Putnam, Berkeley, Ohio, Monongalia, and Greenbrier Counties.
Add those to the reports of vote flipping on ES&S machines in at least four different states. We're also trying to find a moment to report on votes flipping in other states (including NV) on the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) systems made by other private companies including Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic.
Today's report mentions that these are older ES&S machines. We'll again remind everyone that Dan Rather produced an hour-long investigative report two years ago in which he reported on the touch-screens that ES&S was using and how they were causing these same problems even then. No one recalled those machines and now they continue to flip votes.
The DNC and Barack Obama campaign now tell us they are doing something about these problems "behind the scenes," they just won't tell us what it is they are doing, and the machines continued to be used, and votes continue to flip in WV, so far always from Democratic to Republican, and officials continue to blame the voters...
From the Charleston Gazette...
...
Juan E. Gilbert, a professor at Auburn University's Center for Governmental Services...says the ways voting screens are set up cause problems. Most voters who complained said their votes switched from Obama to McCain. No one complained that their votes switched the opposite way....Juan E. Gilbert, a professor at Auburn University's Center for Governmental Services...says the ways voting screens are set up cause problems. "Some voters touching screens roll their fingers down the screen, trying to touch the names of the people they want. It is human nature." People voting for Obama who do that,Gilbert said, may actually touch the area for McCain. "But you cannot have John McCain losing votes to Barack Obama. If you touch McCain's name at the top of the screen, it will not switch to Barack Obama." "This problem will keep occurring. Some voters notice. But a lot don't pay attention and might not notice."
CNN even ran a report last week (see video at right)suggesting the problem was due to voters accidentally touching the choice next to the one they are trying to vote for. That report doesn't explain what happened in TN when an attempted vote for Obama lit up the choice for Cynthia McKinney five rows away.
It also defies what was shown in the Dan Rather report, as votes were seen flipping again and again, even when the neighboring candidate was not being touched at all by the voter.
But, either way, officials say "don't worry"!...
"There are safeguards in the system. Here, in Monongalia County, we have a seven-page ballot and a three-page review screen where the machine tells you what people you voted for. "Voters can review their votes before a third screen comes up and says, 'Is this the vote you want to make?' Then, you have to hit the word 'confirm'," [Monongalia County Clerk Carye L.] Blaney said.
Um, problem with that? A Rice University study showed us, two years ago, that of those voters who do manage to check their review screens at the end of the long process (and the huge majority don't), two-thirds of them don't notice when their selections have been flipped to different candidates or initiative.
UPDATE 10/27/08: WV's Secretary of State gives an award to ES&S Vice President, even as their machines fail across her state. Details here...
Previous BRAD BLOG stories on ES&S vote flipping and other failures follows below, along with steps you can take should this happen to you since, apparently, you're on your own, and the DNC will not be calling for these machines to be removed, or for you to be allowed to vote on paper ballots instead...
Recent ES&S iVotronic Failures as covered by The BRAD BLOG:
What to do if it happens to you:
Call poll supervisors to observe the problem.
Fill out a problem report.
Refuse to vote on that machine.
Request that the machine be taken out of service.
Get a serial number of the machine if possible (may be difficult in many cases).
Tell other voters in line which machine it was and that they should NOT vote on that machine!
Report it to county/town election office.
Report it to the Secretary of State.
Call local reporters and tell them the story.
Call voter problem hotlines (eg. 866-MYVOTE1 and 866-OUR-VOTE) and report it.
866-OUR-VOTE) and report it. Contact bloggers and Election Integrity websites.
Raise holy hell.
And again, people, please bring a video camera/cell phone camera when you go to |
Ross Barney, a fixture of Chicago architecture, and has been a frequent collaborator of our office. I’m a relatively young designer, comparatively, and it was a humbling thing, because that space continues to be humbling—how iconic it is, how memorable the landscape is. Whenever you see any movie about Chicago, there’s always a flythrough of that space.
I think it’s because there’s so much layered history that’s visible in one view. You’ve got very modern architecture, and beautiful early American early architecture side by side; and you get an industrial waterfront with a Beaux Arts facade. The river itself is awesome in how much it’s a working river, with so much traffic on it.
The riverfront right now, at the ground level is…
Pretty shabby.
Yeah, bordering up against Lower Wacker, Lower Michigan. It’s humbling, but it’s also a bit forbidding. How’d you begin to approach that aspect?
We benchmarked different riverfront projects around the country. We looked closely at places like the San Antonio riverfront, and our own work in Indianapolis, and we looked at best practices for accessibility. There was a question about how often you have to have accessible walkways between the lower and upper level.You know, what’s the right rhythm of that so you create a sense of safety and accessibility? You can imagine that, with 22 feet of grade change, it’s hard to incorporate vertical circulation in every room [i.e. section of the riverwalk]. So we did a lot of benchmarking and looked at other communities and what they’d done, and established that it should be every third block at a minimum, that there should be vertical access between Upper Wacker and the lower riverwalk, which is what gave birth to the river theater, which is the third space in the sequence. And then three more spaces after that, what we call room six, the confluence, and vertical circulation there
The river theater
And there’s the question of how you visually connect the upper and lower spaces. CDOT was adamant that we have some physical design expression in each space where you could see the lower level. In most of the rooms that happens through tree canopies. One of the issues now is that when you’re at Upper Wacker, you can’t see the riverwalk very well. So you have to have something vertical that bridges that vertical gap that signals something happening down there.
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What else do you think, in your experience of the river walk?
I’m interested in the retail component; I know they’ve had trouble with that at the Trump tower, in that retail space, finding retailers. When I spoke with someone at SOM about the riverwalk, they talked about how narrow it is. How are those spaces designed to allow for retail?
It’s different from room to room. The marina room, which is the first in the sequence—it was always our strategy that it would be the major food and beverage space, so it has an upper dining terrace and the built-in bar along the edge.
The marina room
It is possible to do food and beverage in the arcade spaces, it just can’t be a full built-out kitchen. It has to be a smaller amenity. Our job was to shell each of the spaces to make sure they had the right utility hookups, to make sure they were secure, to make sure we had storage and access from Lower Wacker at certain increments. For instance, under the river theater stairs, there’s a whole series of storage spaces that can be used by retailers.Then, each of those spaces has a slightly different character. The marina’s kind of an enclosed space that has a storefront to it. I think the cove, the second space, will also have that. It’s always been our thought that maybe the retail in the cove is not food and beverage, maybe it’s more small-scale vendors, seasonal vendors, and potentially human-powered craft-related vendors—if you can imagine, actually renting a kayak from the cove room. The water plaza, that’s really going to be a whole series of changing rooms and rest rooms associated with the interactive water feature
The water plaza
The last space is the jetty. That room we’re just keeping a completely open arcade, because we see it as an open-air classroom space. We try to build in diversity and flexibility so that we can test programs over time and see what works, and not commit ourselves to full-out kitchens in every room, a fixed idea of what might work.
This idea of “rooms"—I was trying to think of other urban spaces that use that concept and couldn’t. Is this a new idea in urban space?
We hope so. We went through like three design iterations in the beginning, like in any design process you give the client a lot of ideas, and then you come to what’s the most interesting, and sometimes it’s an amalgam of all three.
Our three big ideas from the beginning were, one, we called it the “gradient.” You basically have the civic crossroads of Chicago at Michigan Avenue and the river; moving westward, could it slowly become more environmentally focused? So it goes from being civic, hard-scaped, to much softer. You see a bit of that in the plan: it goes from the marina room, which is very formal, to the jetty, which is very informal and much greener.
The second idea was this notion of the river theater as the heart of this new district. You’d do something very provocative, gutsy, audacious in that center space, and let the other two be very muted and much more about walkways. And you see a little bit of that, because the river theater has persisted as this very different space in the sequence.
And the last one is what we call “river typologies,” which is the one most people felt favorable to. In that one, we basically had done a really careful assessment of each block, and tried to understand what’s unique about each block that we could riff off of from a design perspective.
The typologies of the riverwalk
When you’re in the first space, near Marina City, it plays this very significant role in your experience of that space. The corncobs themselves, the towers, but also this whole ground level of activities that’s happening—this boat ballet of people moving in and out of the marina below Marina City. We wanted to create a whole space that looks at that. So we created steps, and this folded-seating element that was about sitting and watching the life of the river.
The cove, according to our boating specialists, Moffatt and Nichols, was the safest place for human-powered craft, because of the bend of the river and the confluence.
The cove
The river theater was the third in the sequence, so from an accessibility point of view, it really made the most sense to do our vertical circulation there.
The water plaza came out of an observation that the light levels of that room are much higher than anywhere else. It has much less dense construction, and a reflective building across the way, so it has significantly more light. If there was any place to do a water feature, it would be there.
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And the jetty was the closest to Wolf Point, which is the closest thing to a live river bank you have on the main branch—one little strip of green on an otherwise gray edge. So we thought, let’s riff off that and create a place of greenness here.
It’s interesting because it really came out of that fine-grained assessment of those spaces and what we could be inspired by in each place. But wanting, also, to make sure that it had continuity—that the walkway was always the same width, that it had the same materials throughout. We don’t ever introduce unusual materials to each room; each room is crafted out of the same material language to create continuity. It’s just its shape and its adjacencies that give it its own character.
Speaking of visual language, how do you create horizontal continuity from the canyon to the river?
We wanted to preserve as much of the Wacker viaduct infrastructure as possible, and work on lighting strategies to celebrate that piece of architecture in and of itself.
If you think about the edge treatment that runs along the entire riverwalk, one thing that’s new here, and that will be new to the main branch, is that we drop that whole edge elevation down as close as we could to the water, and that’s pretty consistent between the spaces.
It doesn’t sound like a huge change, but it’s actually going to enable a lot more boat docking, and a lot more interaction between the water sheet and each of the plazas itself. I think it will have a much more integrated feeling. And it will have a continuous expression of the Wacker Drive viaduct throughout.
We developed a material language for the project where, anything that’s touching the Wacker Drive viaduct, up against that structure, is always made of materials that are incredibly sympathetic to it, always granite or limestone, which are two fundamental materials. Everything outside of that, that’s low, against the river, has a different material quality that’s a lot more rugged. A lot of precast concrete, metal grating, and stainless steel material.
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There’s continuity that you’ll be able to see from across the river that will make it feel, I think, contextual within that architectural frame, if you will.
Lowering the grade of the riverwalk actually does seem significant to me. Chicagoans are kind of wary of the river, probably because of its history as an industrial channel. And as kind of an open sewer.
We work on riverfronts all over the country. I think the whole Wacker Drive section was created in a time when there was an idea from Burnham about civic promenades, and really the river was something to be viewed and promenanded along. In modern culture you see this everywhere from New York to Texas to California—much more recreational life along the river now.
ArchDaily had a funny piece about how all our renderings show kayakers, and there really aren’t that many kayakers in the world. But in reality, you’re there, you see it—it’s pretty constant. Party boats, kayakers; I don’t know if you have stand-up paddle-boarders, it’s probably too much of a risk to get wet.
It’s also important economically to lower the edge, because the city can have a lot more lease space for boat traffic. There’ll be new water taxi stops, the potential for new tour boats, and all of that helps to make the economic case for the investment.
And below the surface, there’s going to be things going on that you can’t see that’s part of the environment—like the things you’re working on inspired by the fish hotel.
It’s funny—that’s probably my favorite part of the project, and probably the lowest-cost thing we’re doing, just plywood and nylon rope.
We started off thinking about the jetty, really understanding the fish hotel as an idea done in a homemade and experimental way. When we saw it, we thought there should be a whole space devoted to a floating wetland idea. We worked closely with our ecologist here to understand what it would mean to actually create fish habitat in this space, and something that would really work, and there’s all of this really low-tech… like the pole hula, it’s basically just nylon ropes attached to the edges of the caissons that hold up the walkway, that create places for fish to hide, and plywood attachments that are called lunkers, that basically have gravel in them, that are good for amphibious insects, and therefore fish, since it’s basically what they eat.
The jetty
We wanted to create this underworld of fish habitat that you won’t see at the surface, but hopefully you could… I know that they monitor the fish hotel, and they know what kind of species come there. Obviously since Asian carp is such a big issue on the river, we’re trying to promote native ecosystems to thrive.
I’ve never detailed anything like that in construction documents, but it was like, “no, team, we really have to figure out how to make space for the fish here.” The space doesn’t stop and end where humans inhabit. There’s this whole underworld.
When you spoke about Sasaki’s work at RISD, one of the themes that ran through your waterfront work was flooding. How does that play out throughout your work across the country?
I grew up at Sasaki; I’ve been at Sasaki 17 years, and I apprenticed my first 10 years doing waterfront work in Detroit, Columbus, Ohio. It was very much working with the Army Corps to integrate things like levees and flood protection. And the last 10 years of my career have really been focused on resiliency; we’ve had a lot of work in the past decade related to flood-recovery work and post-disaster waterfronts, which is a new specialization, I guess. It started with the project in [Cedar Rapids] Iowa, and it manifested here in post-Sandy work on the Jersey shore, and we’re just starting a competition in New Orleans about the Mississippi River Delta and its challenges, like sea-level rise. It’s a huge part of our work.
On the Chicago River, it’s a very controlled river. It doesn’t have such huge extremes, and it can be controlled. There’s a certain elevation that, when the water hits it, the locks go into operation; they can basically drain the river. We didn’t have to worry so much about the really significant outlier events that can happen on more naturalized rivers.
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But we did make sure that, within the spectrum of what will flood, we detailed all of the landscape features to be incredibly resilient, from paving material choices—which is what I was saying about the material palette, using a rugged pre-cast [concrete], to avoid it having issues with floods. Knowing where to put all our electrical equipment, all the stuff that’s needed to power the rooms and the vendors, keeping them out of flood elevation.
The city will need to manage for flood. And they do that today. All of the underbridges, the ones that pass under Carol Ross Barney’s fantastic metal sheathing, those flood pretty much annually now, I think. So we can expect that the riverwalk, large parts will flood annually in the future. We just designed to make sure it would be resilient and easy to clean up after, easy to operate.
You touched on Burnham earlier. How did you work with his legacy?
About a decade ago, we were one of the three finalists for the Burnham Memorial Competition that the AIA Chicago held. We were the only non-Chicago firm that was asked to compete in that, and we ended up one of the three finalists. So we had a probably nine-month period of really getting to know Burnham very, very well.
Here, what was so interesting about it, was the sense that there are all of these layers that are so visible on the river. These hulking, metallic bascule bridges with big rivets, and it feels incredibly industrial, and it feels of that time, when the river was really an industrial conduit, and they shake and they vibrate when you walk across them. It’s very visceral.
Then you have Burnham’s legacy of this Beaux Arts, limestone, City Beautiful expression. This promenade, which is a very different layer.
We felt that our contribution had to be adding this generation’s layer onto the river. For us, that was really recreation and ecology. Those two things should be present in this new layer that we were adding onto what has been a palimpsest of historical layers of the city.
The focus on ecology, and of the changing of the seasons in the jetty, connects it, in my mind, to the work of Jeanne Gang on Northerly Island, putting the city into an environmental context.
Everything I work on, I work really closely with ecologists. They have a completely different way of reading the landscape, and understanding its health. We look at it—landscape architects look at it—from an aesthetic, visual point of view, or a programmatic one. Ecologists can really look at a space and tell you how it’s functioning from many, many different perspectives. And I think it makes for really rich layering of spaces that can be educational, that can make visible these forces that you don’t see.
The jetty
I think that was really the inspiration for the jetty. A lot of Jeanne Gang’s work, which I’m a huge fan of, is trying to figure out how to make concerns about sustainability part of incredibly vibrant urban spaces.
It also adds a fourth dimension to it, a dimension of time, which people don’t always think of when they think about architecture.
It’s been really fascinating; we’re just finishing the documentation for the water plaza and the jetty. Those drawings are getting finalized. The process of designing those floating wetlands has been one of the most fascinating processes I’ve ever been part of. To your point about time, we have to design these floating planters that will survive heat, drought, ice floes in the wintertime, and basically it came down to designing them like boat slips; they’re like winterized boat docking. We have them tethered to poles like you’d see in a marina. The time dimension is a nice thing to have to think about—something surviving years, or many years, in the river.
And hopefully that will be an interesting part to come see that space when it’s thriving in the springtime, and when it’s in full bloom.In the course of a hotly contested primary season, it's natural for the rhetoric to become increasingly heated and the attacks more direct. And apparently when a campaign is losing ground every day to their opponent, some think that trotting out a Republican line of attack will stop the bleeding. Such was the case earlier today when the co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign in New Hampshire said of Barack Obama:
The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight... and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use," said Shaheen, the husband of former N.H. governor Jeanne Shaheen, who is planning to run for the Senate next year. Billy Shaheen contrasted Obama's openness about his past drug use -- which Obama mentioned again at a recent campaign appearance in New Hampshire -- with the approach taken by George W. Bush in 1999 and 2000, when he ruled out questions about his behavior when he was "young and irresponsible." Shaheen said Obama's candor on the subject would "open the door" to further questions. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" Shaheen said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."
It's hard to say which is the most offensive part about this "concern" from Shaheen. Perhaps that he ignores that it was Obama himself who opened the door when he wrote his autobiography, and that he has used that chapter in his life to convince young people that drugs are a waste of time:
You know, I made some bad decisions.... You know, got into drinking and experimenting with drugs. There was a whole stretch of time where I didn’t apply myself. It wasn’t until I got out of... high school, and went to college that I started realizing, man, I wasted a lot of time...I realized if I had spent a little more time reading, and studying that I could actually have some influence in the world.
Or perhaps it's that Shaheen talks about Republican dirty tricks as he himself is engaging in them. Or maybe it's the implication that Obama should follow George Bush's lead and be secretive and dishonest. Does a Clinton co-chair really want to stay that course?
The Clinton campaign issued a statement saying:
Senator Clinton is out every day talking about the issues that matter to the American people. These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way.
So, the comments were not authorized or condoned, but then again, they weren't condemned, were they? And will Billy Shaheen, who is no political innocent, pay any price for his comments? Or was this a directed hit from a floundering campaign?The Reservation Might Be For One, But You’re Not Alone When It Comes To Dining Solo
You might be eating alone tonight, but you aren’t alone. Well, physically, you might be dining solo, but you aren’t alone when it comes to making a reservation for one, according to a new report from OpenTable. And hey, that means fewer people you have to share dessert with.
OpenTable says reservations of tables for one are up 62% nationally over the last two years, according to its analysis of its online reservations.
Solo diners are the fastest growing party size, the company said. And yes, a party can include just one person, if the party is in my mouth and only delicious food is invited.
You know what this means? According to OpenTable, it means you no longer have to skulk around guiltily when you feel like eating out of the home without having to talk to anyone while you do it. Whew, am I relieved.
“The findings indicate that the stigma surrounding dining solo may be starting to lift and that consumers are eager to savor unique culinary experiences alone,” OpenTable says of its analysis.
The most popular spot to eat all by yourself these days is Dallas, followed by Miami, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Chicago.U.S. Marines with Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division zero in their M2 50.-caliber machine gun at Range 113 at Camp Wilson, Calif., Jan. 7, 2010. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Brandyn E. Council
The M2 machine gun is “an incredible story of longevity,” said retired U.S. Coast Guard Master Chief Boatswain’s Mate Maurice Poulin, who operated the gun aboard the 82-foot cutter Point Cypress (WLB 210) in 1964. “It’s your best friend. You know it will always be there for you and it won’t let you down.”
All five U.S. military service branches use some version of the venerable.50-caliber (or 12.7-millimeter) M2, nicknamed the “Ma Deuce,” which has been on duty since it narrowly missed World War I by entering service in 1919.
All five U.S. military service branches use some version of the venerable.50-caliber (or 12.7-millimeter) M2, nicknamed the “Ma Deuce,” which has been on duty since it narrowly missed World War I by entering service in 1919. The military has many specialized versions, typified by the GAU-18/A carried by U.S. Air Force HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters and fed via a disintegrating metallic-link ammunition belt. A typical M2 weighs about 60 pounds with its tripod, and is 5 feet 5 inches in length. The current version has a rate of fire of 1,150 rounds per minute.
“Other than the tent peg, or possibly the mess kit, I can think of no other piece of equipment that has served virtually unchanged after so many years,” said Master Sgt. John McDermott, an Air Force Security Forces weapons specialist. “We don’t care that it’s old. We care that it works.”
“Aboard ship, it was usually operated by a crew of two,” said Poulin. “If you were the gunner, you were strapped to the gun, and the gun was mounted on a tripod. The gunner gripped the weapon and fired it with a thumb-operated trigger. An ammunition man was responsible for getting belts of ammunition and getting them in place.”
John M. Browning (1855-1926), considered by many to be the greatest firearms designer in history, was responsible for the M2. Browning, however, did not foresee that his machine gun would be widely used in the air as well as on the ground.
John M. Browning (1855-1926), considered by many to be the greatest firearms designer in history, was responsible for the M2. Browning, however, did not foresee that his machine gun would be widely used in the air as well as on the ground.
The U.S. Army introduced the initial version of the M2 to combat units in 1919. The initial model was known as the M2HB, the suffix letters signifying a “heavy barrel.” During and after World War II, the gun appeared on aircraft, tanks, Jeeps, and armored personnel carriers. M2s carried by vehicles were often positioned on a circular M36 truck ring mount, which enables a gunner to fire in all directions.
According to legend, wartime M2s used on fighter aircraft initially carried belts of ammunition that were 27 feet in length; hence the term “the whole nine yards.”
“When you think what a plane, tank, or submarine, looked like when the M2 first came out, and compare them to today’s planes, tanks and subs, you realize how well Mr. Browning’s design has survived technologically.”
At least a dozen factories turned out this classic machine gun, in some cases resuming production after a halt. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, American and Iraqi forces on opposing sides used M2s. The M2 has proven a valuable weapon for convoy escort duty, air base defense, and combat rescue in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“When you think what a plane, tank, or submarine, looked like when the M2 first came out, and compare them to today’s planes, tanks and subs, you realize how well Mr. Browning’s design has survived technologically,” said weapons specialist McDermott.A speech by Yesh Atid MK Aliza Lavie at a Conservative Movement convention in Texas last week drew sharp reactions from leading rabbis in the movement, who warned that by crawling too slowly toward religious pluralism, Israel risked alienating its greatest supporters — Diaspora Jews.
Lavie spoke at the 2014 convention of the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly in Dallas, Texas (watch here), and came under fire from Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, a leading figure in the Conservative movement and the American Jewish community, who criticized her for promoting policies that divide the Jewish people rather than unite them.
Lavie, an Orthodox Jew, is the author of legislation, along with MK Ruth Calderon, which would introduce civil partnership in Israel on a nationwide scale.
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Lavie told the audience that the legislation seeks to introduce civil partnership, rather than civil marriage, as the term “marriage” has religious connotations.
“I hope that in the coming months we will put it on the table,” Lavie said of the new legislation, which would be submitted to the Knesset in cooperation with Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman and Hatnua head Tzipi Livni.
She warned that it was likely to face opposition from other political parties, particularly the Jewish Home party headed by Naftali Bennett, but said that several opposition parties — most likely Labor and Meretz — were expected to support it.
But Schonfeld said that she feared Israel’s policy on non-Orthodox streams of Judaism, such as the Conservative and Reform movements and unaffiliated Jews, would eventually divide the Jewish people and alienate Diaspora Jews to the point that they simply stop supporting Israel.
“World Jewry is becoming so profoundly alienated from Israel… that Israel will stand alone before a nuclear Iran, Israel will stand alone before a world that blames it unilaterally for its very existence,” Schonberg lamented.
Israel already has a legal framework for civil partnerships. However, the framework only covers Israeli citizens who have no religious affiliation and cannot be married by the religious authorities.
However, Schonfeld said the millions of Conservative, Reform and unaffiliated Jews in the Diaspora “cannot make sense” of the policies of a state they consider their spiritual homeland but that won’t recognize many of them as Jewish.
“They have said in so many words that this is another religion,” Schonberg said of Israel’s policy toward progressive Jewish movements. “If Yesh Atid as a party does not step in to stop this … there will not be a Jewish people left to talk about and there will not be a world Jewry left to defend israel,” she warned.
“By the time when the missiles are flying, they are so alienated you can’t bring them back, it’s too late,” she continued.
Others at the conference also criticized Lavie’s and Yesh Atid’s stance.
California Rabbi Menachem Creditor said that while the MK’s book had brought the Jewish tradition “to an incredible clarity,” her remarks at the assembly made her “sound like a politician.”
Calling Israel’s foremost religious authority, the Rabbinate, a “horrible, horrible, corrupt place,” Creditor said he was “patient, but only to a degree” with Israel’s slow crawl toward greater religious pluralism.
“I don’t want a parallel, not-religious marriage,” he said. “I want kiddushin (religious marriage) that our rabbis, who are men and women, are empowered by our home (Israel) to create.”
In response to the rabbis’ reactions to Lavie’s speech, Israeli Masorti Movement CEO Yizhar Hess said Wednesday that the “emotional debate” at the assembly was a reflection of the “mounting frustration” caused by Israel’s “continued humiliation” of non-Orthodox movements.
“From the [Jewish] Federation[s of North America] to AIPAC, Conservative Judaism stands at the head of all the Jewish institutions on which Israel relies in the United States,” Hess said.
“But here [in Israel], the keys have been given to the Orthodox Rabbinate, an institution that never existed in Jewish history, through which the [Israeli] state spits in the face of world Jewry time and time again,” he continued.
“How is it possible that the Jewish state is the only state in the Western world that does not grant Jews religious freedom?”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Lavie could not be reached for comment.WHAT a difference 15 months makes. On June 1st 2009 General Motors applied for Chapter 11 protection, triggering the largest industrial bankruptcy in American history. This week the carmaker filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to pave the way for an initial public offering before the end of the year.
On August 12th the firm unveiled net earnings of $1.3 billion for the three months to June, its second quarterly profit in a row and its best since 2004. GM also announced that it had secured a $5 billion revolving credit line and that its chief executive, Ed Whitacre, would soon depart. The former boss of AT&T took over at GM only last December, but the bankers handling the IPO feared that, at 68, he might not be around for the long haul. His replacement will be another former telecoms executive, Dan Akerson.
GM's IPO is coming sooner than expected and perhaps sooner than the company would have wished. But it will serve some pressing needs. First, it is expected to raise $12 billion-16 billion (the first of several rounds of fund-raising). That will allow GM to start paying back some of the $50 billion it received from American and Canadian taxpayers. Second, the sale of shares will reduce the American government's 61% stake. GM is desperate to jettison the “Government Motors” stigma, which it believes is costing it sales. Finally, the IPO will help President Barack Obama, who is anxious to show voters that the rescue of GM and Chrysler, its smaller Detroit rival, has worked out better than anyone expected. The bail-out remains unpopular and congressional elections are only two-and-a-half months away.
Nobody can be sure what would have happened if GM and Chrysler had been allowed to go under. But rivals, including Ford, which managed by the skin of its teeth to avoid bankruptcy, feared that a collapsing GM would take down with it America's highly-integrated network of car-parts suppliers. That, in turn, would have threatened the whole car industry.
Some will accuse Mr Obama of declaring victory too soon. The anaemic recovery in the American car market since last year's trough of 10m sales may not be maintained. Hopes of sales rising to 12m vehicles this year now look optimistic; 11m-11.5m is more likely. The 16m-17m that was once deemed normal is now a distant memory. The Detroit firms' fortunes are even more closely linked to the general health of the economy than competitors'. Sales of highly profitable pickup trucks are tightly correlated with housing starts, while buoyant business travel boosts demand from car-rental firms.
Even with the economy subdued, however, all three Detroit carmakers are making profits. Ford, the healthiest, is still saddled with more than $27 billion of debt, but it is now generating plenty of cash. Its second quarter net earnings were $2.6 billion, its best performance for 12 years, which enabled it to pay off $7 billion of debt. All of its international operations are profitable. Its excellent products are gaining market share nearly everywhere. By the end of 2011, Ford expects its cash to exceed its debt. Earlier this month, Standard & Poor's upgraded its credit rating from B-minus to B-plus. Ford's chief executive, Alan Mulally, radiates quiet confidence.
Chrysler's performance has been shocking—in a good way. Last year the firm was assumed to be doomed. In the most recent quarter, it made a net loss of $172m but an operating profit of $183m. Max Warburton of BernsteinResearch reckons the firm may now be generating 4-5% margins, despite its clapped-out range of models. Bankruptcy helped. So has Fiat's Sergio Marchionne, who is overseeing its revival. Mr Warburton estimates that Chrysler has cut $7 billion of costs.
All three firms are showing admirable discipline. Inventories are low; discounts small. Detroit's old “push” model—factories churned out cars regardless of whether anyone wanted them—is a thing of the past. But there is still work to be done. Ford is in the best shape. It has a clear strategy, based on “global” cars that can be built and sold in every important market. Its management is stable; its products first-rate. Its two biggest challenges are reducing its debt and making up for lost time in China, where GM has done far better.
The biggest issue for Chrysler is whether its new vehicles, which will slowly start to arrive at the end of the year, are good enough. Mr Marchionne says that the first quarter of next year will be the moment of “almighty truth”. But although Chrysler's line-up is getting classier cabins and facelifts, there will be only a handful of genuinely new cars before Fiat-based models start to arrive after 2012. Sceptics believe that Chrysler has lost most of its product-development talent and question whether a small-car specialist like Fiat can give it the kind of vehicles it needs to win back market share in America, which accounts for 80% of its sales.
Fiat's 20% stake in Chrysler (which it received in exchange for management and technology) is due to rise to 35% in 2011 or 2012 on reaching some easily achievable milestones. It has an option to raise its share to 51%, allowing it to consolidate Chrysler in its accounts. Mr Marchionne is in no hurry to have an IPO, however, perhaps because he would then have to pay the full market price for the stock he will need to gain full control.
The prospects for GM are clearer. Labour contracts are fixed until 2015, while new cars, such as the Chevrolet Equinox crossover, are keeping downsized factories humming at near capacity. Three things should trouble investors, however. Having decided (rightly) to hold on to its European arm, Opel/Vauxhall, GM is committed to spending $4.6 billion to restructure this loss-making business. Another worry is GM's pension scheme, which is underfunded by $27 billion. And finally, the firm looks unstable at the top. Mr Whitacre replaced or shifted 12 of GM's top 13 executives. Now he too is leaving. If Mr Akerson, a tough egg, shakes things up again, fragile executive morale could plunge. GM's IPO will not be easy, but the fact that it is happening at all is remarkable.PARIS (Reuters) - France is working to find a way for the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor to launch an investigation into war crimes it says have been committed by Syrian and Russian forces in eastern Aleppo, Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on Monday.
A boy runs as he rushes away from a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the Douma neighborhood of Damascus, Syria August 24, 2015. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh
Since the collapse of efforts to reach a ceasefire in September, Russian and Syrian warplanes have launched their biggest offensive on Aleppo’s besieged rebel-held sectors, in a battle that could become a turning point in the five-year-old civil war.
“These bombings - and I said it in Moscow - are war crimes,” Ayrault told France Inter radio after a French-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria was vetoed at the weekend by Russia. “It includes all those who are complicit for what’s happening in Aleppo, including Russian leaders.
“We shall contact the International Criminal Court prosecutor to see how she can launch these investigations.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also called for a war crimes investigation last week.
It is unclear how the ICC could proceed given that the court has no jurisdiction for crimes in Syria because it is not a member of the ICC.
It appears the only way for the case to make it to the ICC would be through the U.N. Security Council referral, which has been deadlocked over Syria. Moscow vetoed a French resolution in May 2014 to refer the situation in Syria to the ICC.
“It is very dangerous to play with such words because war crimes also weigh on the shoulders of American officials,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, according to RIA news agency.
ICC OPTIONS
A French diplomatic source acknowledged the difficulties, but said Paris had begun to comb through the ICC’s articles to see what could be done.
The source said the ICC would have jurisdiction if an alleged criminal had the citizenship of an ICC member, for example a dual Syrian-French national in the government involved in an attack. It would be the job of the relevant member state to bring a prosecution.
The source said it would also study whether the ICC could have jurisdiction if a victim of an attack had citizenship of an ICC member.
“It will be complicated, but we are looking for other solutions. Our jurists are trying to find other ways,” the source said, adding that Paris was also not ruling out |
to point out weaknesses in Thomas’s political framework. In this same article, he says:
I have remarked upon Thomas’s suspicion of orthodoxy, but in one respect he accepted orthodox Socialist views on race. The Socialist Party had no special plank on the problem of the Negro. It assumed that abolishing capitalism would automatically mean equality for the Negro…This failure to understand the deeply rooted psychological basis of racism contributed to the Socialist failure to win massive Negro support.
Along with Niebuhr and Thomas, King had libertarian sensibilities that made him suspicious of totalitarianism in all forms including that of the Soviet Union. Still, this concern did not paralyze what he saw as the need to strive towards creating a radically different kind of world. Moreover, unlike Niebuhr and Thomas, King’s politics were anti-racist and related white supremacy to class struggle without collapsing the former to the latter.
Another crucial contour of King’s political vision was his internationalism. He did not segregate his ethics behind the borders of American exceptionalism but related U.S. struggles to freedom struggles taking place throughout the world. From Ghana to Apartheid South Africa to Vietnam, King spoke out for human rights even when it made him extremely unpopular at home. The speech he delivered at Riverside Church about Vietnam, perhaps one of his most important, alienated many of his liberal supporters. Throughout this period, King critiqued communism but also pointed out the moral hypocrisy and imperialism of Western capitalist nations; he did not participate in “Red Scare” hysteria even as the FBI wiretapped him, suspecting he had close communist ties. With piercing clarity, King linked racism, capitalism, and imperial militarism in a larger decolonial framework:
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth…It will look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ‘This is not just.’ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in April of 1968, he was in the city to support sanitation workers on strike. In the last season of his life, he was also busy organizing the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to build a nationwide multiracial working-class coalition that would go to Washington D.C. to demand economic justice. In March of 1968, King spoke about “The Other America” to union Local 1199 in New York City. He outlined the need for a diverse coalition to tackle the country’s “socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.” King elaborated:
Now, I said poor people, too, and by that I mean all poor people. When we go to Washington, we’re going to have black people because black people are poor, but we’re going to also have Puerto Ricans because Puerto Ricans are poor in the United States of America. We’re going to have Mexican Americans because they are mistreated. We’re going to have Indian Americans because they are mistreated. And for those who will not allow their prejudice to cause them to blindly support their oppressor, we’re going to have Appalachian whites with us in Washington.
I think it is significant that the final chapter of King’s life closed with a strong link between anti-racism and economic justice considering that our modern Republican and Democratic parties have seldom brought these two together and considering that there is continued debate over whether race or class was responsible for our most recent presidential results.
Recovering King's Vision for Today
Where is King’s political vision today? While liberal Christians and religious progressives believe themselves to be inheritors of King’s politics, I’m afraid many are more faithful practitioners of the political realism offered to them by the Democratic Party. King is revered but Niebuhr won out. Within the mainstream of American politics, King’s radical politics have remained largely irrelevant. The Democratic establishment’s rejection of Jesse Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition” is an example of how powerful political classes at different turns have evaded anything coming close to resembling King’s justice-based coalitional politics. This is not to say that there aren’t occasionally those like Rev. William Barber II who keep embers of King’s vision burning. It’s just not clear how our major political leaders haved allowed such prophetic speech to actually impact their policy or platform.
In spite of suppression and domestication, King’s radical politics are more relevant than ever and we would do to draw from this well for our struggles today. Rather than dismiss his political vision as impractical, it is due time for it to experience a resurgence and extension within the electoral realm as well as various avenues beyond electoral politics. This does not imply that King was perfect or is the only voice we need to listen to. Additionally, retrieving King’s political vision does not foreclose learning from newer movements like Black Lives Matter. In many ways, we will have to go beyond King and apply certain values and strategies in fresh ways within our context.
King’s internationalism and deep commitment to peace could productively shape how we think about international trade agreements, Palestinian rights and anti-Semitism, and our indefinite Wars on Drugs and Terror. Regardless of one’s position on violence or pacifism, King’s nonviolent tactics and organizing can inform us as we reimagine ways to resist and put pressure on unjust practices and structures. Even King’s critiques of nuclear weapons could seem less “idealistic” in our increasingly dystopic world. His anti-racist democratic socialism could help us to prioritize economic justice while creating diverse, multiracial coalitions resistant to the temptations of neofascism which scapegoats minorities and foreigners. It would remind us that healthcare is fundamentally a human right and not a business. Today’s democratic socialism would also have to be a feminist and queer socialism which extends King’s rigorous defense of civil rights and liberties to women and the LGBTQ+ community. There can be no consistent democracy without full reproductive rights for women and rights protecting the freedoms and love of queer and trans people.
Recovering King’s political vision in our moment would require acknowledging not only the problems of the Right but the crisis in the liberal center. Pragmatism is only helpful to the degree that one remembers what one is working towards and who one is fighting for. Where there is no vision for a better kind of world in which the marginalized are not left behind, the people perish.
Everything changed on the night of November 8th, 2016. It became clear to me that a certain kind of political thinking failed my generation. We were told to face the world as it is and to be the kind of progressives who “get things done.” We were told that there was no alternative to neoliberalism. To imagine and ask for anything more was naïve. Yet, here we are. On November 8th, 2016, the most electable candidate did not get elected and the realism shoved down our throats for decades turned out to be out of touch with reality and its pragmatism turned out to impractical. Now an ominous nationalist cloud looms not only in the U.S. but also in Europe. More of the status quo won’t help us now. Pretending that everything is okay and that “America is already Great” won’t help either. Perhaps it is time that we start dreaming again.What if every time you learned something new, you forgot a little of what you knew before? That sort of overwriting doesn’t happen in the human brain, but it does in artificial neural networks. It’s appropriately called catastrophic forgetting. So why are neural networks so successful despite this? How does this affect the future of things like self-driving cars? Just what limit does this put on what neural networks will be able to do, and what’s being done about it?
Numerical weights in an artificial neural network Neurons in the brain
The way a neural network stores knowledge is by setting the values of weights (the lines in between the neurons in the diagram). That’s what those lines literally are, just numbers assigned to pairs of neurons. They’re analogous to the axons in our brain, the long tendrils that reach out from one neuron to the dendrites of another neuron, where they meet at microscopic gaps called synapses. The value of the weight between two artificial neurons is roughly like the number of axons between biological neurons in the brain.
To understand the problem, and the solutions below, you need to know a little more detail.
To train a neural network to recognize objects in images, for example, you find a dataset containing thousands of images. One-by-one you show each image to the input neurons at one end of the network, and make small adjustments to all the weights such that an output neuron begins to represent an object in the image.
That’s then repeated for all of the thousands of images in the dataset. And then the whole dataset is run through, again, and again, thousands of times until individual outputs strongly represent specific objects in the images, i.e. the network has learned to recognize the particular objects in those images. All of that can take hours or weeks to do, depending on the speed of the hardware and the size of the network.
But what happens if you want to train it on a new set of images? The instant you start going through that process with new images, you start overwriting those weights with new values that no longer represent the values you had for the previous dataset of images. The network starts forgetting.
This doesn’t happen in the brain and no one’s certain why not.
Minimizing The Problem
Some networks minimize this problem. The diagram shows a simplified version of Google’s Inception neural network, for example. This neural network is trained for recognizing objects in images. In the diagram, all of the layers except for the final one, the one on the right, have been trained to understand features that make up images. Layers more to the left, nearer the input, have learned about simple features such as lines and curves. Layers deeper in have built on that to learn shapes made up of those lines and curves. Layers still deeper have learned about eyes, wheels and animal legs. It’s only the final layer that builds on that to learn about specific objects.
And so when retraining with new images and new objects, only the final layer needs to be retrained. It’ll still forget the objects it knew before, but at least we don’t have to retrain the entire network. Google actually lets you do this with their Inception neural network using a tutorial on their TensorFlow website.
Unfortunately, for most neural networks, you do have to retrain the entire network.
Does It Matter?
If networks forget so easily, why hasn’t this been a problem? There are a few reasons.
Take self-driving cars, for example. Neural networks in self-driving cars can recognize traffic signs. But what if a new type of traffic sign is introduced? Well, the training of these networks isn’t done in the car. Instead the training is done at some facility with fast computers with multiple GPUs. (We talked about GPUs for neural networks in this article.)
Since such fast hardware is available, the new traffic sign can be added to the complete dataset and the network can be retrained from scratch. The network is then transmitted to the cars over the internet as an update. Making use of a trained network requires nowhere near the computational speed of training a network. To recognize an object involves just a single pass through the network. Compare that to the training we described above with the thousands of iterations through a dataset.
What about a more immediate problem, such as a new type of vehicle on the road? In that case, the car already has sensors for detecting objects and avoiding them. It either doesn’t need to recognize the new type of vehicle or can wait for an update.
A lot of neural networks are not even located at the place where their knowledge is used. We’re talking about appliances like Alexa. When you ask it a question, the audio for that question can be transmitted to a location where a neural network does the speech recognition. If retraining is needed, it can be done without the consumer’s device being involved at all.
And many neural networks simply never need to be retrained. Like most tools or appliances, once built, they simply continue performing their function.
What Has Been Done To Eliminate Forgetting?
Luckily, most companies are in business to make a buck in the short to medium term. That usually means neural networks with narrow purposes. Where it causes problems is when a neural network needs to constantly be learning to solve novel problems. That’s the case with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Very few companies are tackling AGI. Back in February of 2016, researchers at Facebook AI Research released a paper wherein they gave a Roadmap towards Machine Intelligence, but it detailed only an environment for training an AGI, not how the AGI would be implemented.
Google’s DeepMind has repeatedly stated that their goal is to produce an AGI. In December 2016 they uploaded a paper called “Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks”. After citing previous research, they then cite research in mouse brains that shows that when learning a new skill, the volume of dendritic spines increases. Basically that means the old skills may be protected by the synapses becoming less plastic, less changeable.
They then go on to detail their analogous approach to this synaptic activity which they call Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC). In a nutshell, they slow down the modification of weights that are important to already learned things. That way, weights that aren’t as important to anything that’s already been learned are favored for new things.
They test their algorithm on handwriting recognition and more interestingly, on a neural network you may have heard of. It was the network that was in the news back in 2015 that learned how to play different Atari games, some at a superhuman level. A neural network that can skillfully play Breakout, Pong, Space Invaders and others sounds like a general purpose AI already. However, what was missing from the news was that it could be trained to play only one a time. If it was trained to play Breakout, to then play Pong it had to be retrained, forgetting how to play Breakout in the meantime.
But with the new EWC algorithm, it was simultaneously trained on ten games at a time, randomly chosen from a pool of nineteen possible games. Well, not completely simultaneously. It learned one for a while, then switched to another, and so on, just as a human would do. But in the end, the neural network was trained on all ten games. The games were then played to see how well it could play them. This training and then testing of ten random games at a time was repeated such that all nineteen possible games had a chance to be trained.
A sample of the resulting charts taken from their paper is shown here. Click on the charts to see the full nineteen games. The Y-axis shows the game scores as the games are played. Nine of the nineteen games that were learned using the EWC algorithm could play them as well as when only a single game is trained. As a control, the simultaneous training was also done using a normal training algorithm that was subject to catastrophic forgetting (Stochastic Gradient Descent, SGD). The remaining ten games did slightly better or as poorly as the SGD algorithm.
But for a problem that’s been tackled very little over the years, it’s a good start. Given DeepMind’s record, they’re very likely to make big improvements with it. And that of course will spur others on to solving this mostly neglected problem.
So be happy you’re still a biological human who can remember the resistor color codes, and don’t be in a big rush to jump into a silicon brain just yet.Don't you just hate it when there's someone in the cinema taking photos, or talking on their phone? How unfair is it that 'they' cheated on their test because they could access the Web, and yet you only got half their marks?
Isn't it a shame you can't take a photo of the police officer beating a man in the street because your oppressive government remotely disabled your smartphone camera?
A new patent granted to Apple could do all of the above.
U.S. Patent No. 8,254,902, otherwise known as "Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device," was granted in late-August, and would allow phone policies to be set to "chang[e] one or more functional or operational aspects of a wireless device [...] upon the occurrence of a certain event."
What that means in real-terms is "preventing wireless devices from communicating with other wireless devices (such as in academic settings)," and for, "forcing certain electronic devices to enter "sleep mode" when entering a sensitive area."
But the patented technology may also be used to restrict protesters' right to free expression in oppressive regimes around the world -- if you haven't checked recently, there's plenty of them -- by preventing camera images and video being taken at political rallies and events.
Apple makes a good point for the voice of good:
As wireless devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal media devices and smartphones become ubiquitous, more and more people are carrying these devices in various social and professional settings. The result is that these wireless devices can often annoy, frustrate, and even threaten people in sensitive venues. For example, cell phones with loud ringers frequently disrupt meetings, the presentation of movies, religious ceremonies, weddings, funerals, academic lectures, and test-taking environments.
But it notes later on:
Covert police or government operations may require complete "blackout" conditions.
Adding:
Likewise, an airline operator or airport may cause the mobile device to enter into an "airplane" mode, wherein all electromagnetic emissions of significance are prevented, at least during flight, thereby more affirmatively preventing interference with aircraft communications or instrumentation and enhancing safety. Similarly, if a terrorist threat or other security breach is detected, the airport may disable at least a portion of the wireless communications within a terminal using a policy command, thereby potentially frustrating communications between individual terrorists or other criminals.
It's clear that although Apple may implement the technology, it would not be Apple's decision to activate the 'feature,' such as a remote-switch -- it would be down governments, businesses and network owners to set such policies.
Those policies would be activated by GPS, and Wi-Fi or mobile base-stations, which would ring-fence ("geofence") around a building, a protest, or a sensitive area to prevent phone cameras from taking pictures or recording video.
Other features, such as email or connecting to non-authorized networks -- such as working in the office and connecting to a non-work network on a company-owned device -- could be set, for example.
This sort of 'feature' would not bode well for journalists taking photos and citizens recording acts of state violence or police brutality in areas where ordinary people are facing increasing crackdowns on civil and human rights.
One unknown variable to this is what if you disable all connectivity, such as the cell network, Wi-Fi, and GPS? If there was no connection to a network to set such feature-disabling policies in the first place, it could be possible to circumvent such restrictions.
Questions have been left with Apple, but there was no reply at the time of writing outside U.S. business hours.
It goes almost without saying, just because a patent has been granted doesn't mean Apple will use the technology any time soon.
Companies often patent technologies and features that do not go into end products, so it's not a looking-glass view into what's coming in the next iPhone or iPad at an upcoming September announcement, or even further down the line. It does though offer a view into what companies are working on and have the potential to dish out to end-consumers and business customers.ANALYSIS/OPINION:
With trillions of dollars at stake in the battle over global warming, now would be the time for the press to closely scrutinize the claims of those who would reorganize the world’s economy from farm to factory and laboratory to living room. And the Climategate scandal - where leaked e-mails and dodgy computer programs from the University of East Anglia raise powerful new questions about the role of politics in climate science - would be the perfect opportunity to explore what is going on behind the scenes.
That’s not happening. To judge by recent coverage from Associated Press, the Fourth Estate watchdog has acted like a third-rate pocket pet. Case in point is an 1,800-word AP missive that appeared in hundreds of publications, many carrying it on the front page of their Sunday, Dec. 13 issue with the headline, “Science not faked, but not pretty.” AP gave three scientists copies of the controversial e-mails and then asked them about their conclusions. The wire service portrayed the trio of scientists as dismissing or minimizing allegations of scientific fraud when, in fact, the scientists believe no such thing.
The first scientist quoted in the article, Mark Frankel, is director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. AP quotes him as concluding that there is, “no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very ‘generous interpretations.’” While the article mentions that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and some Republican lawmakers are calling for independent investigations, AP doesn’t note the views of the scientists they interviewed.
When The Washington Times talked to Mr. Frankel, the scientist gave a quite different impression. The e-mails, he said, are not sufficient to reach any judgment at all on whether the data or science was faked or misleading. “You can’t do that on the e-mails alone, you can’t do it on the e-mails or the program,” he concluded. For that reason, Mr. Frankel supports investigation of East Anglia and related allegations of fraud at Pennsylvania State University.
There’s a big difference between saying that there isn’t sufficient evidence to determine if falsification of data occurred - and that there should be an investigation - and saying, as AP did: “Science not faked.”
Mr. Frankel also believes outsiders to the two schools should be asked to take part. “You should be willing and open to going to outside people to be part of your inquiry,” he advised. “If I were Penn State, I would certainly be advising them to be very open to the possibility of bringing in one or two people who have impeccable credentials, well-respected, to join in ….”
Arizona State University professor Dan Sarewitz is quoted by AP as saying, “This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds.” However, Mr. Sarewitz wasn’t speaking about the validity of the climate science; he was discussing his belief that politics infects how most scientific research is conducted. While AP used the quote to suggest that there was nothing terribly wrong that had been revealed in Climategate, Mr. Sarewitz was trying to issue a warning that politics infects too much science and that reporters, politicians and the public are naive about that reality.
As he told The Washington Times, “When the human underside (of science) gets revealed, then suddenly people are disillusioned and they say, ‘Oh, how shocking!’ But it’s not particularly shocking.” Indeed, Mr. Sarewitz suggests that reporters ask scientists about their political views. (For the record, he is a liberal Democrat.) He also is skeptical of the university investigations, particularly if they don’t include outsiders. “I think they should have external people [involved in the investigations]. Certainly. … The challenge here might be, can you find people who are independent but also understand the science well enough to really tell (if there was wrongdoing)?”
The third scientist interviewed by AP, professor Gerald North at Texas A&M University, joined Mr. Frankel and Mr. Sarewitz in hoping that climate data would be more readily shared in the future. He told us he also thinks it is important that investigations proceed at the two universities.
The Washington Times tried to raise these issues with the reporters and editors involved, but Jack Stokes, AP’s manager of media relations, said that none of the five reporters who worked on the article nor their editors had time to answer questions.
If AP refuses to explain how it could have given readers across the planet such a distorted view of Climategate, maybe an explanation can be found buried in the article itself. One of the reporters, Seth Borenstein, the AP science reporter who writes on global warming and who is the lead author on the piece, is part of the Climategate story himself. In the last sentence of the article, the authors note that the archive of disputed Climategate e-mails “includes a request from an AP reporter, one of the writers of this story, for reaction to a study, a standard step for journalists seeking quotes for their stories.”
But Mr. Borenstein’s e-mail was hardly standard and far from neutral. In it, the reporter disparages Marc Morano, a critic of man-made global-warming claims, as “hyping wildly” the study that Mr. Borenstein asked scientists to comment on. The e-mail almost makes it appear as if Mr. Borenstein were asking those involved in Climategate to help him discredit critics of man-made global warming.
East Anglia and Penn State are not the only two institutions that need to answer questions about what is going on behind the scenes.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Taking a picture of your marked ballot on Election Day may soon no longer be a crime in Wisconsin, under legislation introduced at the Capitol.
The so-called ‘ballot selfies’ have raised a number of concerns in recent years, with even some political candidates drawing attention for posting a picture of their ballot on social media. While the decision to file charges is left up to local prosecutors, state election officials have frequently reminded the public about the law as smart phones have become more prevalent.
The current law is intended to prevent people from being forced or paid to vote a certain way, and then providing a photo of their ballot as proof. However, state Senator Dave Craig (R-Town of Vernon) says there are concerns it may be an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights. “You should be able to share your political beliefs how you’d like to,” he argues.
Craig says there are also concerns that many voters don’t realize the law exists, despite efforts to raise awareness. He’s hoping his bill will help to clear up any confusion the current restriction may have created in past elections.
The bill has not yet received a public hearing.A businessman -- and Gadhafi associate -- who was convicted in a 2007 prostitution ring bust reveals all the dirty secrets of how models (and even some Hollywood actresses) swarm the hotels and yacht parties during the fest: says one escort, it's "the biggest payday of the year."
This story first appeared in the May 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
Like Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Sharon Stone, Lebanese businessman Elie Nahas was once a regular at the Cannes Film Festival.
But since his bust in 2007 for his part in the most explosive prostitution scandal in the history of the festival, Nahas, 48, can't leave his native Lebanon. He hopes that his eight-year prison sentence, slapped on him in absentia by a French judge after a trial in Marseilles in October, will be overturned on appeal this year, but he's not overly optimistic. In fact, he also is fearful that if he leaves Lebanon, he'll be picked up by Interpol.
Nahas, who owns a Beirut-based modeling agency, used to work as a right-hand man for Moatessem Gadhafi, the playboy son of Libyan strongman Muammar Gadhafi, Nahas' longtime pal. It was during this time that Nahas was arrested on charges of running a prostitution ring that supplied more than 50 women "of various nationalities" to the younger Gadhafi and other rich Middle Eastern clients during the festival. Moatessem was killed with his father in Libya in 2011.
PHOTOS: 'Cleopatra' at Cannes (Exclusive)
The women ran the gamut, from full-time escorts to models to beauty queens, and they serviced men in hotels, on yachts and in the palatial villas in the hills above Cannes, police said. Philippe Camps, a lawyer for a Paris-based anti-prostitution organization that was a civil plaintiff in the trial, tells THR that some of the women were brought to Cannes under false pretenses and coerced into prostitution.
Police broke into Nahas' room at the city's famed Carlton hotel in August 2007 and arrested him after a lengthy investigation involving wiretaps, which helped them identify Nahas and seven others as key members of the vice ring. (Prostitution is legal in France, but soliciting, whether with advertising or on a street corner, is not.)
Nahas remains bitter about his arrest and subsequent conviction and denies he was running a prostitution ring. He says he was unfairly singled out in a sea of rich players who move in and around the Cannes Film Festival's second-biggest business after movies: sex.
"Why me?" asks Nahas during a phone interview with THR from Beirut. "The police know what goes on during the film festival, and they turn a blind eye. But they went after me. Why? Because I worked for Gadhafi."
STORY: Cannes: Justin Timberlake Boarding Neil Bogart Biopic 'Spinning Gold'
'They Can Make up to $40,000 a Night'
Every year, women ranging from what the French call putes de luxes (high-priced call girls), who charge an average of $4,000 a night, to local streetwalkers, who normally get little more than $50 or $75 an hour turning tricks in nearby Nice, converge on Cannes for what one Parisian hooker calls "the biggest payday of the year." The influx is hard not to notice. "Hookers stand out in Cannes. They're the ones who are well-dressed and not smoking," tweeted Roger Ebert in 2010.
"We all look forward to it," says a local prostitute in Cannes who goes by the name of Daisy on her website but declined to give her surname. Daisy is one of many independent escorts who have their own websites and usually avoid going to hotels and bars -- except during the festival. "There's a lot of competition because there are so many girls, but the local ones have an advantage. We know the hotel concierges."
The local prostitutes, says Daisy, routinely drop cash off with concierges at the town's top hotels. In return, if they are lucky, concierges sometimes steer clients their way. During the 10-day festival, an estimated 100 to 200 hookers stroll in and out of the big hotels every day, according to hotel sources.
Nahas says the money can be bigger than most people realize. The most beautiful call girls, he says, know to target the high-end hotels "where all the Arabs stay."
"They can make up to $40,000 a night," says Nahas. "Arabs are the most generous people in the world. If they like you, they will give you a lot of money. At Cannes, they carry money around in wads of 10,000 euros. To them, it's just like paper. They don't even like to count it. They'll just hand it to the girls without thinking. I know the system."
The serious action starts after 10 p.m., he says. Call girls sit in the lobby, and prospective clients check them out.
"It's all done with hand signals," he says. "The guys signal their room numbers with their hands and the girls follow them."
STORY: Lily Collins to Star in a Resurrected 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'
The Organized Rings
Some of the "luxury prostitutes" come as part of an organized ring, the type of operation that police said Nahas ran, and others fly in small groups on their own, mainly from Paris, London, Venezuela, Brazil, Morocco and Russia. Still others take advantage of the other big event taking place on the Cote d'Azur, the Monaco Grand Prix, and rent hotel rooms in the town of Beausoleil, just behind Monaco, and commute between there and Cannes, a 40-minute drive.
Nahas denies he was running a prostitution ring but admits he arranged for women to come to Cannes during the festival. His job, he says, was to pick them up at Nice International Airport, bring them to the port at Cannes and place them on small boats that took them out to Gadhafi's yacht, the Che Guevara, and other luxury vessels.
"I was not party to anything else," insists Nahas. "I don't know what took place between any of them. I had no part of it. They may have just been there to talk and have fun."
Until his 2007 arrest, Nahas was best known for throwing a $1 million birthday party for Moatessem Gadhafi in Marrakesh in 2004. He paid Enrique Iglesias $500,000 to attend and flew in Carmen Electra for $50,000, he says. Kevin Costner also attended.
"Gadhafi never touched Carmen," says Nahas. "In fact, she was a little angry because she felt he didn't pay enough attention to her. But Gadhafi was shy, believe it or not. Women had to make the first move." (A spokesperson for Electra could not be reached for comment.)
Nahas -- who was jailed for 11 months after his arrest in France then released for lack of proof -- says the younger Gadhafi sent him $25,000 a month to live on after his reputation was ruined in Lebanon and he no longer could work. Since Gadhafi's death, the money has dried up. "I cry blood for him every day," says Nahas.
When Nahas was arrested, police confiscated an address book that contained dozens of names and contact information for some of the richest princes and potentates in the Middle East. Nahas admits that he knew them all but denies that he procured hookers for them.
But even if he did, says Nahas, there are plenty more like him all over Cannes during the festival.
"Please," says Nahas. "Every year during the festival there are 30 or 40 luxury yachts in the bay at Cannes, and every boat belongs to a very rich person. Every boat has about 10 girls on it; they are usually models, and they are usually nude or half nude. It's drugs and drink and beautiful women. Go out on one and you'll see. The girls are all waiting for their envelopes at the end of the night. It's been going on there for 60 years."
VIDEO: 'Bling Ring' Trailer: Emma Watson Steals From Paris Hilton
The Envelope, Please
A "gift" contained in an envelope, according to Nahas and a number of veteran Cannes escort women interviewed by THR, is how prostitutes get paid at the festival.
"It's always a gift," says a Russian woman who oversees a Paris-based escort agency with branches in London and Dubai. "Clients are told to put the money in an envelope and write 'gift' on the outside of it."
Women installed on yachts in Cannes during the film festival are called "yacht girls," and the line between professional prostitutes and B- or C-list Hollywood actresses and models who accept payment for sex with rich older men is sometimes very blurred, explains one film industry veteran.
"You'd definitely recognize more than a few names from Hollywood," he says. "These are actresses who made bad career choices and fell off the radar. They tell themselves what they're doing at Cannes is OK, that they're just on dates with rich men, when the reality is they're doing what prostitutes do. But they like the money."
Carole Raphaelle Davis -- a longtime French-American film and TV actress (2 Broke Girls, Angel) who grew up in international circles in Paris, London and Thailand -- says few people realize that some prominent and moneyed society women spent many years as high-priced prostitutes.
STORY: 'The Great Gatsby' to Open Cannes Film Festival
Davis, who is married to TV comedy writer Kevin Rooney and divides her time between France and Beverly Hills, says she has two acquaintances who used to work the Cannes Film Festival as well as other exotic locales around the world. "I could never understand how they could do what they did," says Davis.
Davis says she has been propositioned by some of the richest men in the world but could never imagine sleeping with them for money.
She says the women she knew "traveled the world like jet-setters," and one of them eventually ended up marrying one of the richest men in France.
"This woman didn't even enjoy sex, she told me," says Davis. "But she didn't mind it, either. She didn't mind sleeping with men who were repulsive. She said it never lasted more than five minutes, so it wasn't that bad."Image copyright AFP Image caption The three men are reported to have been investigating working conditions in Chinese factories
China has defended the detention of three activists who were investigating working conditions in factories that make shoes for companies owned by President Trump's daughter Ivanka.
It says the trio had used illegal surveillance equipment, interfering with the operation of the factories.
It is the first time the government has confirmed their detention.
The US state department earlier called for their release, saying they should otherwise receive a fair trial.
Image copyright Deng Guilian Image caption Hua Haifeng was working undercover for the US-based China Labor Watch
It argues that labour activists play a vital role in helping US firms understand working conditions at supply companies.
The three were detained last month while probing alleged abuses at a supplier for Ivanka Trump's shoe brand.
They are reported to have been preparing a report listing a series of serious shortcomings, including verbal abuse and violations of the rights of female workers.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that the activists were being investigated on suspicion of using illegal "professional surveillance equipment".
The case was being dealt with according to the law and no foreign country had the authority to meddle in China's judicial process, she told a news briefing in Beijing.
Long hours
Hua Haifeng was working undercover for the US-based China Labor Watch (CLW), which said he had witnessed examples of forced overtime and wage violations at Huajian Group factories.
His lawyer told the New York Post newspaper that all three men were being held at the Ganzhou City Detention Center in Jiangxi province and that he had been blocked from seeing his client through most of Monday.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Ivanka Trump shoes made in China are thought to have been among the products manufactured at this factory
The Huajian Group also makes products for other brands including Karl Lagerfeld, Coach and Nine West, CLW has said.
The company has denied allegations that staff have to work excessively long hours for poor pay, and insists that it no longer manufactures shoes on behalf of Ivanka Trump.
Amnesty International has also demanded the release of the trio.
CLW said that suspicions that Mr Hua had illegally used eavesdropping equipment had "no factual basis".
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Products made at the factories are sold all over the world
The other two |
single dose toxicity study administration of Oligonol (2000mg/kg bw) by gavage for 4 weeks was found to be safe with no side effects (such as abnormal behavior and alopecia). Body weight gain and food consumption were within normal range. Oligonol had no observed toxicity at the dose (1/25 of LD(50)) administered for 6 months. This suggests that Oligonol is safe at repeated human intakes of Oligonol in doses lower than 200mg/day. The highest dose used in this study is equal to 12g daily for an adult man with 60kg body weight. The LD(50) was calculated to be 5.0g/kg body weight (95% confidence limit: 3.5-6.4g/kg). Studies conducted on 30 healthy volunteers consuming Oligonol at doses of 100mg/day and 200mg/day for 92 days showed good bioavailability. The biochemical parameters attesting to liver and kidney functions as well as the hematological parameters were within the normal ranges. The potential of Oligonol to induce gene mutation (a reverse mutation test) was tested using Salmonella typhimurium TA98, TA100, TA104, TA1535, TA153 and Escherichia coli WP2uvrA. Oligonol was not mutagenic to the tester strains. The lack of toxicity supports the potential use of Oligonol as a food or dietary supplement and for use as an additive in pharmaceutical and cosmetological applications.Before she was a year old, Aimee Mullins had both legs amputated below the knee. Her family doctor said she’d never learn to walk. At the age of 19, she set world records in the 100-meter dash and long jump.
That was Aimee Mullins the athlete, running on early prototypes of now-commonplace carbon fiber legs. Since the 1996 Paralympics, she’s worked as a fashion model, a speaker, and an actress, while making her way into more sports and culture publications than we can count.
But what most bios may miss about Aimee, whom I had the pleasure to meet at TEDMED, is that she’s more than a jock or some sappy “never give up!!” Hallmark greeting card.
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Standing between a slender 5' 8" to 6' 1"—depending on her particular mood—Aimee is that girl you knew in high school who was too pretty and popular for you but never felt it necessary to point these facts out. (Maybe because she’s a not-so-closeted geek who rarely misses the opportunity to make reference to sci fi classics like 2001, Robocop and Terminator—especially when referencing herself.)
It’s our privilege to have Aimee guest editing this week, exploring where technology has and will take the human body. If she’s what it means to be “disabled,” then why are the “able-bodied” among us so jealous? [image by Howard Schatz]As Spider-Men and Women die in Spider-Verse, We’ll be taking a moment to remember the departed. We’re going to start at the beginning, and we’ll release a new segment periodically.
Fantastic Five Spider-Man:
First Appearance: What If #1
In the Universe of Earth 772, Spider-Man’s initial attempt to join the Fantastic Four succeeded and as a member of the team, he fought against The Chameleon, The Vulture, and The Red Ghost. Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, left the team and instead married Prince Namor. She later rejoined, and had a child with Reed and the group fought Annihilus in the Negative Zone.
Suggested Reading: What If…? Classic Volume one
House of M Spider-Man:
First Appearance: House of M #1
In a world where the Scarlet Witch used her reality warping powers to create a mutant utopia ruled by Magneto, Peter Parker is a celebrity. He wrestles, stars in films and is a shrewd business man. he has everything he’s ever wanted; his Uncle Ben is alive, J. Jonah Jameson works for him, he has a family
with Gwen Stacy, and the public loves him.
But it’s a life built on lies. He’s not a mutant, he’s an altered human. When he starts remembering the world of 616, he cracks. In a shocking twist, he becomes the Green Goblin and sets in motion a plan to ruin his own life. With the help of his family, he recovers and retires to the countryside until Wolverine recruits him to fix the world.
Suggested Reading: House of M; House of M: Spider-Man
Civil War Spider-Man:
First Apperance (Suit): Amazing Spider-Man #259
Little is known about this world, but it seems the Superhero Registration Act was never repealed and Peter Parker never betrayed Tony Stark., it doesn’t really matter because he’s dead. Of note however is A Civil War Teaser that was released for Secret Wars.
Suggested Reading: Civil War; Amazing Spider-Man: Civil War
Armored Spider-Man:
First Appearance (Suit): Web of Spider-Man #100
Information on this world is unknown, but it appears that this Spider-Man is a dark crusader. An alternate version of this Spider-Man was a billionaire businessman engaged to Gwen Stacy. He owned a giant Spider-Robot.
Suggested Reading Viewing:Spider-Man TAS: Spider-Wars Parts One and Two
If you enjoy what you’ve read here at Whatever a Spider Can, we’ve got some exciting news for you — you can be part of the team here too! We’re looking for enthusiastic Spider-Fans to write for us on anything Spider-Man related. just fill in the form you’ll find here and tell us why you want to write for Whatever a Spider Can. We look forward to hearing from you!<
Want more Spider-Man news? Subscribe to the Whatever A Spider Can newsletter to get the latest news and rumors about upcoming movies, TV shows and comics before anyone else. Or you can follow us on Twitter @WhatASpiderCan or like us on Facebook.Moving from Docker to rkt
Adriaan de Jonge Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 11, 2016
Even the coolest products and services come with vendor lock-in. And no matter how enthusiastic I have been about Docker in the last three years, at some point this vendor lock-in starts to hurt. The good news is that competition is well on its way to becoming a viable alternative. Perhaps even a better alternative in some regards. This article takes a look at CoreOS’s rkt (pronounced: “rock-it”) and why you need to start investigating rkt now…
Update (20 October 2017): Please take note of all the updates throughout this article. A number of flaws have been resolved over the last year. I chose to include updates rather than changing the original text.
What is wrong with Docker?
If you are anything like me, you may still be so enthusiastic about Docker that you’re blindsided to some of its flaws. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying Docker is bad. But it is not perfect either. So let’s take a look at some of these flaws.
Docker starts behaving like The Old Microsoft
Once companies realize they have a monopoly, they start behaving like monopolists. Just like Microsoft once practically killed Netscape by including Internet Explorer with Windows, now Docker is trying to defeat Kubernetes, Mesos/Marathon and Nomad by including Swarm into the Docker Core.
Docker deserves credit for simplifying Swarm and making it easily accessible to the average Docker user. Just as much as Microsoft deserves credit for the improvements they introduced in Internet Explorer 6.0 (True story!). The biggest issue in MSIE 6 is that it made Microsoft so dominant that they stopped innovating for five years.
Please realize the consequence of including Swarm in the core of Docker… Imagine your next assignment for a client that wants to move to Docker: When it comes to selecting the best scheduler, you first have to argue why Swarm is insufficient, before you can even start talking about Kubernetes, Mesos/Marathon or Nomad. Swarm is already there anyway so why would you need to install another scheduler on top of it? Guilty until proven innocent — a reversed burden of proof.
I hope Docker will do a better job improving Swarm than Microsoft did with MSIE. But even now, Kubernetes has a head start on Swarm in many ways. And as Kubernetes keeps developing, Swarm is falling further behind. It is good Docker created an easy to use scheduler for Docker but in my opinion, they should have kept it separate from the Docker core.
Update (4 September 2017): To be fair, it must be noted that Docker appears to have taken this feedback seriously. They have separated the core of Docker into the Moby Project (see also this introduction blog) which can be re-packaged/re-assembled by the community in any way they see fit.
Update (20 October 2017): Moreover, Docker now also packages Kubernetes with their product. See this blog for more detail.
“Docker’s architecture is fundamentally flawed”
At the heart of Docker is a daemon process that is the starting point of everything Docker does. The docker executable is merely a REST client that requests the Docker daemon to do its work. Critics of Docker say this is not very Linux-like.
Where it starts hurting is if you use an init system like systemd. Since systemd was not designed for Docker specifically, when you try to start a Docker process, you actually start a Docker client process that in turn requests the Docker daemon to start the actual Docker container. There is a risk that the Docker client fails while the actual Docker container keeps running. In such a situation, systemd concludes that the process has stopped and restarts the Docker client — in turn possibly creating a second container (yes, you can work around this but that is besides the point).
About a year ago, I was investigating systemd as a simple Docker scheduler. I ran into the same risks of combining Docker with systemd. Back then, I considered these as downsides of systemd rather than downsides of Docker. In my view back then, systemd was not designed to be “Docker-native”.
Now, I learned that perhaps Docker is the issue rather than systemd. As mentioned, Docker is not very Linux-like and because of this generic Linux tools do not play nice with Docker. Who is at fault, relative newcomer Docker or the Linux tools that have been around for years? Some say that “Docker’s architecture is fundamentally flawed” — this is a statement of Alex Polvi, CEO of CoreOS.
The Docker build process is stuck in second gear
One of the nice features of Docker was the introduction of Dockerfiles that you can maintain in version control to reproduce Docker images. The only issue here is that the Dockerfile syntax has been frozen in Docker’s roadmap for a long time now. This means that the Dockerfile format has not evolved with the insights in the Docker community for at least a year and a half.
Of course, at some point we need a stable format. But only when the format has fully matured. Just to give you an example where Dockerfiles are lacking, consider Kelsey Hightower’s statement in his blog 12 Fractured Apps:
“Remember, ship artifacts not build environments.”
Fact is that the Dockerfile format does not support this separation very well. Consider for example building a Golang executable: the build environment is several hundreds of megabytes while the resulting executable may be as small as a couple of megabytes only. Sure, you can work around this by building the image on your local system. But you cannot elegantly build a small Golang image from a single Dockerfile using an Automated Build in Docker Hub. Issues proposing to extend the Dockerfile format to better support this principle have been on hold for years because of the freeze.
Update (11 May 2017): The above is FIXED with Multi-Stage Builds. See my new blog “Simplify the Smallest Possible Docker Image”
How does rkt improve the situation?
The short answer is that rkt now provides a viable alternative to Docker. It has a more Linux-like architecture. And a strong competitor will keep the monopolist sharp.
The long answer:
Late 2014, CoreOS announced Rocket — later abbreviated and renamed as rkt — as a competing container platform. While rkt got a lot of attention in the first weeks after the announcement, it became silent for some time. CoreOS continued developing rkt into a viable alternative to Docker and only came back in the spotlight with the release of rkt 1.0 in February 2016.
Now that Docker announced its inclusion of Swarm into Docker Engine 1.12, it is time to start looking seriously at rkt as an alternative to Docker. Can it replace Docker now or in future? Is it difficult to switch between Docker and rkt?
Let’s take a look at rkt and find out…
rkt can run Docker images
Consider you want to replace your staging and production systems with rkt while keeping all your development systems as is… In this case you can replace Docker with rkt on your runtime systems only. It is not precisely a drop-in replacement. After all, the architecture is different — but we’ll get to that. On the other hand, it is not too difficult to learn the new command line instructions for running a Docker container on rkt.
Open a CoreOS instance on your favorite cloud provider and type:
rkt run --insecure-options=image --port=80-tcp:80 docker://nginx
or replace nginx with your favorite Docker image. Under the hood, rkt converts the Docker image to Application Container (appc) format.
This means that you don’t need Docker to run Docker images! And it means that you can reuse anything you created with Docker without the least bit of migration pain — other than learning rkt’s command line syntax.
Let’s take a look at the individual parts of this command:
--insecure-options=image
If you leave this part out, rkt will refuse to start your image as it cannot find a signature (.asc file) to check the integrity of the Docker image. rkt is built secure by default. In this case, it means that you can save yourself some typing on the command line by providing the proper signatures.
--port=80-tcp:80
Just like in Docker, you need to explicitly expose a port to the outside world. Unlike Docker, rkt ports are named rather than numbered. If this were a native rkt image (or appc image to be precise) it would have probably read:
--port=http:80
However, since Docker does not have a concept of named ports, the exposed ports are automatically named as <number>-<protocol>. This also means that if you can only expose ports that have been explicitly specified using the EXPOSE keyword in the Dockerfile.
docker://nginx
The image is expected in the default Docker repository (Docker Hub). Instead of this example, there can be longer URLs pointing to either alternative Docker repositories (docker://…) or to generic websites containing appc images (https://…) but then you are not running Docker images anymore.
rkt has a simpler architecture
In rkt, there is no daemon process. The rkt command line tool does all the work. See the below picture borrowed from the CoreOS website:
Process model for rkt vs Docker
Unlike Docker, this means that if you use systemd to start rkt containers, you are actually monitoring the container process rather than monitoring a client process that connects to a daemon that in turn (directly or indirectly — depending on your Docker version) starts the container.
On the flip side of this, you cannot type
rkt run -d...etc
and daemonize the process like the Docker client. Instead, you’d have to run an init system to daemonize the process. For example, you can run this:
systemd-run --slice=machine rkt run...etc
Also, you cannot run the rkt command from a remote machine like the docker client. On the plus side, you can consider this as a security feature as well.
rkt follows an open standard for images
Right now, rkt allows you to use Application Container (appc) or Docker images. In the near future, the Open Container Initiative (OCI) format will be added to this, but we’ll come to that.
The advantage of having an open standard for container images is that it allows the open source community to provide multiple ways of building images. So you are not tied to the Dockerfile format only.
The default way to build an appc image is using a command line tool called acbuild. Honestly, it is a matter of taste whether you’d prefer acbuild over the Dockerfile format. The advantage is that it stays closer to Linux principles by nature.
The bigger advantage is that the open format allows for alternative build mechanisms. For example, consider the all-round build tool dgr or the Golang specific build tool goaci.
Once the OCI format comes available, there will be even more possibilities but at the time of writing this article, we’ll have to wait for this.
rkt: Are we there yet?
If you want to start using rkt for real right now, there are still a few bumps in the road. Although you can navigate around these, it must be said that at the time of writing this article it may still be early to go all-in with rkt. But that should be a temporary problem.
The OCI image format is not ready yet
As mentioned, rkt supports the Docker image format and can interact with Docker repositories. If you are okay to stick with the Docker image format, it’ll work fine.
However, if you are a bit of a purist — like me — you may not appreciate the fact that you cannot use named ports yet. So you’ll want to use appc containers. And you can use appc containers.
But how do you upload your appc container to the CoreOS alternative to Docker Hub — quay.io? Personally I haven’t found a way to do so…
The nice thing about the appc format is that you are not tied to a particular repository like Docker. Instead, you have the possibility to host the image on a regular http-server or local file system. You can enrich the meta data in HTML files containing meta-tags.
Still, rkt can only really take off once the OCI image format becomes sufficiently mature and well-adopted to be accepted as standard by everyone — including Docker.
Nomad & K8S support not fully mature
In order to run containers in production, at some point you need a scheduler to control what runs where. Both Kubernetes and Nomad have support for rkt already. The catch for now is that the support is not yet as mature as you might hope.
The Kubernetes support for rkt is labeled under active development. It has minimal documentation and a list of known issues. The Nomad support is labeled experimental and does not support dynamic ports.
Update (4 September 2017): If you want to run Kubernetes without Docker, you may also like to learn about the cri-o project. This project is part of an official Kubernetes incubator and based on runc. At the time of writing, it appears to have more traction than rktnetes.
A bit less portable to other platforms
The good news is that rkt is not only for CoreOS. You can install rkt on multiple well-known Linux distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora.
If you want to run rkt on your Apple/Windows development machine, you can of course do so running on top of virtualization layers like VirtualBox. However, the facilities are not yet as nice as Docker’s toolbox — especially the latest beta versions of Docker for Mac/Windows which gives you a native-like feel. Admitted, this may be a slight downside to rkt’s architecture where the rkt executable does all the work rather than being a thin REST client.
If you want to do your development on non-Linux machines, the best way is still to work with Docker images locally and convert these to appc images when you go to staging and production.
Conclusion
Although it is still early, rkt has now become a viable alternative to Docker. If you don’t need all the dynamic features of Kubernetes and Nomad and the more static options like systemd and fleet sufficiently meet your scheduling requirements then you can already move your staging and production servers to rkt right now.
Give it a little more time and there will be true interoperability between Docker and other container platforms in the form of OCI images. At the same time, allow Kubernetes and Nomad support for rkt to evolve a bit and then the Docker and rkt container platforms will be as good as interchangeable.
Is there a strong need to abandon Docker as fast as we can? No, not really. Despite the flaws mentioned in this article, Docker is still an innovative platform with a large ecosystem of development tools, schedulers and orchestrators. The important thing is to have more than one option to choose from. And now Docker has a serious competitor to keep them sharp!Moby on design: "Comfort is not always photogenic"
I have an issue with architects and designers who think about how is the space going to look when it's on an architecture website, rather than how it’s going to feel for the people who either live there, work there or patronise it
– Moby I have an issue with architects and designers who think about how is the space going to look when it's on an architecture website, rather than how it’s going to feel for the people who either live there, work there or patronise it
Musician and restaurateur Moby – whose vegan restaurant Little Pine is approaching its first anniversary – has told CLAD that too many architects and designers ignore the needs of the people who will use their buildings.
In an exclusive interview about Little Pine and his design philosophy, Moby criticised designers “who think about stuff that can be photographed well, but who never actually plan on spending time in the spaces they create.”
“I have an issue with architects and designers who think about how is the space going to look when it's on an architecture website, rather than how it’s going to feel for the people who either live there, work there or patronise it,” he said. “Sometimes certain things like comfort are not that photogenic, and if you’ve ever tried to live in a photogenic space that isn’t comfortable, it can be really upsetting.
“I had a couple of nights in Madrid staying in a hotel room that Zaha Hadid Architects had designed. It looked amazing, but was the least comfortable space I’ve ever inhabited. There was nothing soft in there. Everything was moulded plastic, which photographed nicely but wasn’t designed for humans.
"Literally sleeping in a dumpster would have been more comfortable.”
The design of Los Angeles eatery Little Pine – which Moby designed with local architects Studio Husto to present veganism in a compelling way – is intended to evoke a “simple and unpretentious mid-century Scandinavian ski house”.
Largely inexpensive and “nice but very, very basic materials” were selected and laid out in a semiotic way to create a space where people can feel comfortable. Describing the design approach, Moby said: “Humans like certain basic things. We like light and we like comfort and we like safety. And I think a lot of good design can be really compelling as design, but also meet the sort of basic needs of the people who are inhabiting the space.
“The criteria by which design should be judged is ‘does it make people happy?’ You have to consider their practical and emotional needs.”
Moby, an animal rights activist and vegan for over two decades, donates all of Little Pine’s profits to animal welfare organisations, and the building’s design was developed to offer “progressive people a beautifully designed vegan restaurant that is probably more consistent with their principles than Burger King”.
Moby’s thoughts on Little Pine and restaurant design will feature in a forthcoming issue of CLADmag.If only it had been possible to whisper into Justice Kennedy’s ear. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The fireworks came early this year. When Justice Anthony Kennedy declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, each of the court’s other four Republican appointees wrote a separate dissent taking a swipe at him. (The court’s four Democrats stayed mum, content to let Kennedy make the case and take the heat.) Aiming all their firepower at Kennedy, the dissenters missed their real target: the Constitution itself. While persuasively explaining why they could not join Kennedy’s majority opinion, they failed to persuasively explain why they voted against the constitutional claims at issue—why they were dissenting (“Kennedy has reached the wrong result”) rather than concurring in the judgment (“Kennedy has reached the right result but for the wrong reasons”). Indeed, the four dissenters failed even to identify, much less engage, the best constitutional arguments for same-sex marriage—arguments that have been repeatedly made over many years by many leading lawyers, scholars, and lower-court judges.
Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion is not perfect, but it reached the right result, and for many of the right reasons. To be clear: Kennedy is not just right morally and not just right politically. He is not only on the right side of history—duh!—but also on the right side of the law, based on the Constitution’s letter and spirit and original meaning, as properly construed and implemented by the court in many previous cases.
Had I been whispering in Kennedy’s ear, here is the opinion I would have urged him to write:
We begin, as is altogether fitting and proper, with the Constitution itself. The 14th Amendment opens with a promise of birth equality: “All persons born … in the United Sates … are citizens” and thus equal citizens. As full and equal citizens, all persons born in America are entitled to full and equal protection of all fundamental civil liberties, as expressly guaranteed by the very next sentence of the 14th Amendment: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”
The 14th Amendment’s opening words about birthright citizenship were a clear and conscious codification of Abraham Lincoln’s vision at Gettysburg: America is dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal—“born” equal, in the language of the amendment. Persons born black are equal in civil rights to those born white. Persons born male are equal in civil rights to those born female. Persons born out of wedlock are equal in civil rights to those born in wedlock. Those born into Irish American families are equal to Anglo Americans and Italian Americans. Those born into Jewish households are legally the same as those born into Catholic or Protestant households. Children born second or third or 10th in a family are in law no less than those born first—the amendment prohibits once-common primogeniture and entail laws favoring first-born children as such. And today we make clear that those born gay or lesbian are no less in civil rights than those born straight.
The 14th Amendment was surely about racial equality—the core case of birth equality—but it just as surely ranged beyond race. The text speaks more generally than race—in pointed and purposeful contrast to the race-specific language of the 15th Amendment that followed shortly thereafter. (That amendment, of course, was necessary, as was the later 19th Amendment, because the 14th Amendment’s opening words applied only to “civil rights” and not to “political rights” such as voting, as this court correctly made clear early on in our 1875 ruling in Minor v. Happersett. For more documentation and analysis, see Akhil Amar, The Law of the Land, pp. 115-19; Akhil Amar, America’s Unwritten Constitution, pp. 156-61, 186-87, and sources cited therein.)
The birth-equality principle was expressly and emphatically articulated in a landmark statute adopted alongside the 14th Amendment—by the very same Congress in the very same season and by virtually the same vote. This companion statute, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, opened with language virtually identical to the first sentence of the 14th Amendment and then immediately glossed that language by proclaiming that all birthright citizens were entitled to “the full and equal” benefit of all fundamental civil rights. This birth-equality idea was also expressly articulated by the first Justice Harlan—the great dissenter in Plessy—in our 1896 decision in Gibson v. Mississippi where, happily, he spoke for the court as a whole: “All citizens are equal before the law.”
This simple yet profound birth-equality principle powerfully organizes and unifies a vast amount of this court’s case law in the modern era, which treats certain legal distinctions as particularly problematic—laws discriminating on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, or illegitimacy. By contrast, laws that distinguish along most other dimensions—treating wage income differently than rental income; treating opticians differently than ophthalmologists; treating small employers differently than large employers, and so on—are not viewed with the same kind of skepticism.
Some think that the 14th Amendment’s framers were not clearly focused on sex discrimination or the related issue of women’s civil rights. Wrong. In fact, much of the key language of the amendment’s first section tracked a proposal put forth earlier by none other than Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (For details see Akhil Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction pp.260-61 and sources cited therein.) The 14th Amendment’s framers thus knew exactly what they were doing in pitching its text at the proper level of generality, condemning not just racially discriminatory laws but all laws creating unequal civil rights on the basis of birth status. This birth-equality principle resonated with Enlightenment ideology and the original Constitution’s paired clauses banning both state and federal governments from creating titles of nobility (laws that privileged certain persons by dint of their birth).
Not all laws that distinguish on the basis of birth status are unconstitutional. Some distinctions may be justifiable if genuinely and unavoidably necessary to prevent harm to others. For example, although some persons are born blind, the law may generally prohibit blind persons from flying airplanes; persons born with the HIV virus may be legally prohibited from donating blood; and so on. But judges must carefully scrutinize all such laws to ensure that they do not create an improper caste-like system in which some are legally demeaned and degraded while others or legally honored and exalted merely on the basis of birth status.
Laws that allow straights to marry while denying this basic marriage privilege to gays and lesbians violate this deep and pure 14th Amendment principle. These laws improperly demean our fellow citizens who happen to have been born gay or lesbian and improperly exalt our fellow citizens who happen to have been born straight. True, these laws technically and formally do not hinge on a person’s orientation. Even a man born gay is allowed to marry. So long, that is, as he marries a woman! Cf. Joseph Heller, Catch 22. But “law reaches past formalism.” Lee v. Weisman (1992) (Kennedy, J.). Sexual intimacy is part of the core of marriage as a legal and social institution, and denial of same-sex marriage does indeed deprive gays and lesbians of the full and equal enjoyment of this intimacy—a full and equal opportunity for “the pursuit of happiness” that underlies the American project.
We concede that some persons may experience some or all aspects of their sexual orientation as a matter of pure choice. Nevertheless, a vast number of our fellow citizens do in fact understand themselves to be, quite simply, “born this way” in regard to their sexual orientation, and we are in no position to hold that these very widespread self-understandings are inauthentic or delusional. Even if it were conclusively proved at some future point that orientation is typically fixed not at birth but rather very early in childhood, the deep spirit of the birth-equality principle would still apply. Citizens should not be demeaned on the basis of harmless and morally irrelevant traits that they never chose and are not free to change with ease. That is the animating spirit—the underlying logic—of the birth-equality rule.
Religious equality principles are also indirectly relevant here. Even though religion is often chosen rather than fixed at birth, our Constitution allows persons to choose their religion freely and equally. Religion for many is central to identity and so is sexual orientation.
Why, then, did the framers of the 14th Amendment allow discriminatory marriage laws to continue on the books? In large part because they did not know all the facts, scientific and social, that we now know. They did not know that many persons experience sexual orientation as fixed, not chosen. They did not live in a world in which vast numbers of gays and lesbians openly challenged marriage exclusion as a fundamental badge of inequality and degradation.
Similarly, many of the 14th Amendment’s framers thought racial segregation was acceptable because racial separation might genuinely be equal. If most blacks and most whites genuinely preferred segregation, then where was the improper demeaning of one race or the improper exaltation of another? Separate could truly be equal under certain factual assumptions in the 1860s (just as today, separate bathrooms and sports teams for males and females are generally seen as equal by both males and females). But once it became clear, in the decades after the enactment of the 14th Amendment, that vast numbers of blacks did object to racial separation, this changed social fact itself was a proper basis for declaring racial segregation unconstitutional. See Plessy v. Ferguson (Harlan, J. dissenting); Brown v. Board (Warren, C.J.).
A similar story may be told about sex discrimination—discrimination between men and women—within marriage laws. The Framers of the 14th Amendment quite clearly did believe in sex equality in civil rights: within this domain, these Framers believed that women should not be demeaned nor men exalted because of their differential birth status. In the 1860s, marriage laws—and many other laws—created differentiated legal roles for men and women, but these differentiated legal roles were in that era not widely understood as ennobling men or degrading women. Both genders were highly esteemed, but they played different legal roles. Separate roles, distinct roles, but not unequal roles. Women themselves were not en masse demanding an end to coverture laws in the 1860s. And so these laws were widely seen as permissible in the 1860s by the Framers of the 14th Amendment. But when later generations of women did en masse come to demand a change—and to highlight that these laws now did indeed appear demeaning to them and improperly ennobling of men—judges in the mid-20th century rightly struck down these gendered marriage laws.
We do the same today and for the same reason. Indeed, the laws at issue today do, formally, discriminate on the basis of sex. Under these laws, Pat can marry Jane only if Pat is male (Patrick) and not female (Patricia). This is sex-discrimination pure and simple, and under our longstanding sex-discrimination case law—case law deeply rooted in the text and spirit of the 14th Amendment, as we have just explained—this sex discrimination regime must survive the most exacting judicial scrutiny. We hold today that this regime fails this scrutiny. These sex-discriminatory laws are an improper attempt to enforce a rigid and unequal gender code, telling men that they must not act in effeminate (“sissy”) ways and women that must not behave in a masculine (“butch”) manner. Such laws are a violation of genuine sex equality and also of liberty—the liberty of each person, male or female (or neither or both), to be free to be true to himself/herself//oneself.
To put this point about the deep connection between equality and freedom a different way—and to explain from yet another angle why we now must vindicate the enacted letter and spirit of the 14th Amendment without being hamstrung by every specific nontextual and unratified factual or normative assumption that its Framers may have held—we today take judicial notice of the following basic and widespread facts of our modern world. Sexual intimacy and human procreation have been profoundly decoupled in the last half-century. Persons can have babies without having sex (IVF) and can have sex without having babies (contraception). Marriage law itself has become gender-neutral, undercutting several of the basic premises of earlier regimes that structured marriage in deeply gendered ways. Gender itself has been scientifically transformed. Legally and factually, men can now become women and women can now become men. If Patrick, who is married to Jane, undergoes medical and/or legal gender reassignment and becomes Patricia, Pat is the same human being on both sides of this medical and/or legal procedure. And after the gender transition occurs, Pat and Jane remain married. This is already a same-sex marriage, in virtually every state! No jurisdiction has been brought to our attention that treats Pat’s medical transformation as ipso facto dissolving the marriage—as does, for example, death. Pat is Pat regardless of what is between Pat’s legs or what was once between them on the day that Pat was born, and regardless of what gender designation appears on Pat’s birth certificate or driver’s license or passport. Our fundamental nature is not male or female, black or white, but human, pure and simple. Our most basic law must recognize these basic facts of modern life, modern law, and modern science.
There are obvious similarities between Justice Kennedy’s actual majority opinion and my alternative. My opinion and his both rely squarely on the 14th Amendment’s vision. We both invoke liberty and equality and try to highlight ways in which these principles at times intertwine. We both treat sexual orientation as analogous to race in certain ways. (Kennedy does this by appealing at every turn to the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, involving interracial marriage, and by twice explicitly suggesting that sexual orientation is “immutable.” I do so by stressing the 14th Amendment idea of birth equality.) We both candidly confront the fact that the 14th Amendment’s Framers did not understand that its words would doom bans of same-sex marriage. In doing so, we both point to the significance of changed gender rules within marriage—for example, the demise of coverture laws that once gave husbands more power than wives in certain key respects.
But I like my version better. I root my opinion in the solid text of the 14th Amendment’s promises of birthright citizenship and the privileges and immunities of citizenship, which include both substantive rights and equality rights. Also, I make a number of knockdown historical points about the Framers of the amendment and the companion Civil Rights Act of 1866. Kennedy does not play these or any other persuasive originalist notes and puts most of his weight on the textually inapt Due Process Clause. That clause speaks plainly of procedural rights (fair trials, unbiased judges, and the like) as distinct from substantive rights (such as the right to marry). Kennedy, a libertarian, stresses the word liberty in the Due Process Clause, but this liberty has historically been closely linked to negative rights (freedom from government) rather than affirmative rights (freedom to insist on government-recognized benefits such as marriage laws). Kennedy does not make crystal clear the distinction between applying the 14th Amendment’s |
a useful tool for labor by finally connecting our work to our rights of free speech and free assembly.
But if you’ve followed me down this rabbit hole and are starting to get a little excited about a possible post-Friedrichs world, let me give you an “on the other hand.” Heather Whitney’s First Amendment argument for ending the duty of exclusive representation would come before a Court that would not be weighing it against a long-established precedent as Roberts’ Court is considering Freidrichs. It will be weighing the argument against a very recent Court decision.
If labor successfully causes enough chaos of the nature I’m driving at—or even poses a credible threat to do so—don’t be surprised if the Supremes try to put the lid back on Alito’s can of worms.Uganda has launched a 19 million U.S. dollar solar power plant In the remote eastern district of Soroti, of the country.The project which is the largest in East Africa, is the latest addition to Uganda’s power generation plants, to feed its increasing demand for power as the east African country strives to fast track its development.
The plant run by Access Power Middle East and Africa and Luxembourg-based Eren Renewable Energy will power over 40,000 rural households in eastern Uganda.
Managing Director Project Origination at Access, Vahid Fotuhi, told Xinhua at the launch of the plant that although the station has a nominal capacity of 10MW, it is scalable to 20MW.
This is a source of inspiration, it shows that there is a possibility of not only become a national but an international player in the area of sustainable energy generation.
He said in future the electricity produced by the plant will be increased to 30MW.
He stressed that the construction of the solar plant shows the potential the country has in generating solar energy.
“This is a source of inspiration, it shows that there is a possibility of not only become a national but an international player in the area of sustainable energy generation,” Fotuhi said.
Frustrated by the expensive and not readily available hydro energy in most part of the country, many Ugandans in rural areas have been investing in their own solar panels to light their homes at night and keep small businesses running.
Villagers are optimistic that the new power plant will improve their livelihood.
Achom Naomi who runs a nursery and primary school near the power plant said once the school accesses power, the standards will improve and there will be increased enrollment of pupils.
She said currently the standard is low because the pupils especially those in candidate classes cannot access power for reading at night.
Uganda has placed itself on the map, recently, by launching the largest solar plant in East Africa – https://t.co/oUzftT1tAp pic.twitter.com/jIIZwuEUBN — Ventures Africa (@VenturesAfrica) December 13, 2016
The Ministry of energy figures show that electricity demand in Uganda is estimated to increase constantly at an average annual rate of about eight percent. Annually, 50MW of new generation capacity is needed to be added to the national grid in order to avoid supply shortages.International Relations • September 23, 2017 • Dick Nichols
In 1713-14, it took the troops of Spain’s Borbon monarchy 14 months of siege before taking Barcelona and ending Catalan self-rule. In September 2017, Catalonia is again under siege, this time from the central Spanish People’s Party (PP) government. Under prime minister Mariano Rajoy the Spanish state is concentrating all its firepower on stopping the Catalan government’s October 1 independence referendum. On that day, if this siege is successfully resisted, Catalan citizens will vote on whether “Catalonia should become an independent state in the form of a republic.”
Since September 6, the day its parliament adopted its referendum law, Catalonia has experienced a “shock and awe” offensive aimed at forcing the pro-independence government of premier Carles Puigdemont to submit to the central Spanish administration. The adoption of the law by the parliamentary majority of 62 Together For The Yes (JxSí) and 10 People’s Unity List (CUP) MPs was the culmination of an eight-year process that has seen over one million people mobilize every Catalan National Day since 2012.
The stakes could not be higher. If the referendum takes place, the PP minority government in Madrid will suffer a lethal blow to its credibility, opening the way to a change of government in the Spanish state. It would also bring into view the prospect of finally overturning the sub-democratic regime that has been in place in Spain since the late 1970s, when the heirs of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco negotiated a flawed “transition to democracy” with the anti-dictatorship resistance.
By the same token, if the Rajoy government manages to stop October 1, it will be a setback not only for Catalan aspirations to sovereignty but also for all forces in Spain fighting for democratic rights and against austerity. The partial weakening of the “1978 regime” represented by the rise of anti-austerity party Podemos and its allies would be contained: the “constitutionalist” parties – the PP, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and the hipster neoliberal outfit Citizens – would be strengthened.
Understanding of the stakes of the fight is increasingly reaching across the whole Spanish state, with left forces like Podemos and the older United Left, which had originally rejected October 1 as “not the referendum Catalonia needs,” now allying with pro-independence forces in the face of a legal and police offensive that amounts to a state of emergency in all but name.
The Fear Campaign
These stark possible outcomes to the conflict explain the ferocity of the Spanish government’s offensive. The Spanish Constitutional Court’s immediate decisions to suspend both the referendum law and the Law of Jurisdictional Transition (to apply in the case on a Yes win) have allowed Spanish prosecutor-general José Manuel Maza to unleash a judicial firestorm via regional Catalan prosecutors’ offices and the High Court of Justice of Catalonia. To date the main thrusts of the offensive have been to:
Charge those members of the Catalan parliament’s speakers’ panel who enables debate on the laws with disobeying a lawful instruction and perverting the course of justice;
Instruct the electoral commission appointed by the Catalan parliament first to cease all work on the referendum and two days later charging them with usurping public functions, disobedience and misuse of public funds;
Formally warn all MPs supporting the Catalan government and 700 senior public servants that any collaboration with the referendum will open them to charges of disobedience, perverting the course of justice and misuse of public funds;
Instruct the Catalan police, Spanish National Police, the paramilitary Civil Guard and municipal police forces to locate and confiscate all material related to the referendum;
Warn all private media that if they carry advertising material for October 1 they will be liable to prosecution and instructing the heads of Catalan public radio and TV not to carry advertising material for the referendum;
Advise owners of halls and public spaces that hosting any events connected with the referendum will open them to prosecution;
Have the Spanish postal service instruct its employees not to deliver any material connected to the referendum;
Order the closure of the web sites of the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI) and the Catalan Association of Municipalities and Shires (ACM) for facilitating collaboration with the referendum and then order the closure of any web site in any way connected with October 1; and
Open proceedings against the 712 Catalan mayors (out of 948) who have indicated that their councils will make premises available – as per normal – for the referendum. The mayors are to be summoned to regional prosecutor’s offices, where they will face charges of disobeying a lawful instruction, perversion of the course of justice and misuse of public funds (which carries a jail sentence). The Catalan police have been ordered to arrest any mayor who fails his or her appointment with the prosecutor.
Most seriously of all, in the face of a Catalan government refusal to continue to supply the central Spanish government with a weekly report of its expenditures, the Spanish Council of Ministers (cabinet) decided on September 15 to take direct control of all payments to Catalonia’s creditors, effectively ending its financial autonomy.
Police actions in support of this offensive have so far included a Civil Guard raid on the newspaper El Vallenc (with the editor charged with disobedience, perverting the course of justice and misuse of public funds) and the National Police preventing the anti-capitalist CUP from reading a pro-independence manifesto in Valencia. On September 14, Dolors Sabater, the mayoress of Badalona, Catalonia’s third largest city which is run by a left coalition including pro-independence and pro-sovereignty forces, denounced the Spanish government delegation in Barcelona for making threatening telephone calls to council employees.
At the time of writing (September 17), the Civil Guard claims to have confiscated 1.3 million posters from printeries in Catalonia, while municipal police has been engaged in low-intensity harassment of Yes campaign stalls. However, the main meetings of the referendum campaign, including the Yes case’s 13,000-strong launch in the southern industrial city of Tarragona, have so far gone ahead without impediment.
The most potentially damaging action to date was the Civil Guard’s closing of the referendum web site. When this was done on September 13 the Catalan government had two replacement sites on line immediately. These and others were then closed down by September 15, but on September 16 premier Puigdemont tweeted instructions on how to access the referendum web site via proxy servers invulnerable to against Civil Guard interference.
Symptomatic of the rising concern the Catalan rebellion is causing in the establishment was the September 12 decision of a Madrid judge to ban a meeting on the Catalan right to decide from taking place on Madrid Council premises: the grounds were that “the general interests of the citizens precludes the realization of public events in favour of an illegal referendum.” The organizers of the meeting, the platform Madrid for the Right to Decide, then rescheduled the meeting to another location. When it was finally held on September 16, the crowd overflowed the theatre and filled the nearby street.
At the time of writing, over 60,000 people potentially face charges for associating themselves with the “illegal” referendum and the rumours are of even more drastic action to come. The PP is supposedly moving towards establishing the legal and political grounds for suspending the Catalan government under article 155 of the Spanish Constitution; 4000 extra National Police are ready to be deployed; the Civil Guard is bringing extra agents into Catalonia – such is the daily dose of psychological warfare to which Catalans are being exposed.
In a September 17 interview with the web-based daily VilaWeb premier Puigdemont described how far he thought the Spanish government’s intervention had come:
“[T]he Spanish government is near as well implementing articles 116 [covering conditions for declaring states of emergency or siege] and 155 without having to declare them. It is looking for the practical impact of a state of emergency – suspension of public events, confiscation of informative material, intimidation of the means of communication, creation of a generalised climate of persecution of all mayors…”
On September 16, in an address to the PP faithful in Barcelona, prime minister Rajoy warned: “Don’t force us to go to a point that we don’t want to arrive at.”
Who are the Authoritarians?
The blatant goal of the central government campaign has been to create a climate of fear and panic: the October 1 referendum is a political Chernobyl – if you even touch it you won’t only go to jail, you´ll lose all your assets – like former Catalan premier Artur Mas and three of his ministers, who stand to lose five million euros for allowing a September 9, 2014 “participatory process” (9N) to go ahead in the face of a court ban (over 2.3 million of Catalonia’s 5.5 million voters took part).
Central government ministers have personally weighed into this campaign. On September 12, finance minister Cristobal Montoro said that “nobody’s going to use a euro of public money against the law: it didn’t happen on November 9, and it won’t happen on October 1, unless someone wants to put their assets at risk.” On September 13, Rajoy announced: “I say to everyone who understands that the government has to carry out its obligation, that we’re going to do that, that they needn’t worry. If anyone is asked to staff a voting centre, don’t go because there can’t be a referendum and it would be an absolutely illegal act.” With this statement Rajoy unwittingly betrayed his government’s double approach: to stop the referendum by any and every means that don’t entail an intolerable political cost (like sending in the army) and, if that’s finally not possible, to at least drive participation in the referendum to as low a point as possible.
At the core of the PP approach is the big lie that the Spanish government has no choice but to have the law obeyed because a Scottish-style negotiated referendum was always impossible under the Spanish constitution. However, as many Spanish jurists have pointed out, the Constitution provides mechanisms for consultations of a part of the population of the Spanish state – the PP chose not to have one in the Catalan case because it has always seen greater political gain in cultivating anti-Catalanism in the rest of Spain.
Having made that choice, the PP has then had no option but to paint and themselves as the staunch and principled upholders of constitutionality against the authoritarian and anti-democratic Catalan outlaws “abducted” (term of prosecutor-general Maza) by separatism. Matters have reached the bizarre point where some PPers have accused the Catalan government of having Nazi and Francoist tendencies.
The Fight to Adopt the Referendum Law
It was the need to paint the Catalan movement in these black terms that drove the tactics of the PP and the other unionist parties in the September 6 and 7 sessions of the Catalan parliament that adopted the new laws. Spanish television channels were able to broadcast two days of filibustering, procedural haggling and theatrical outrage from the PP, Citizens, the Party of Socialists of Catalonia (PSC) and even from a fraction of the left coalition Catalonia Yes We Can (CSQEP).
It could not have been otherwise. In order to get a referendum in Catalonia in the face of the Spanish institutional refusal to negotiate (18 rejections since 2012), the Catalan parliamentary majority had no choice but to develop its own referendum bill. It was inevitable that this would be met with filibustering and procedural antics aimed at bogging down its adoption. To get it through parliament without giving the opposition the chance to delay its implementation through court appeals, the majority also had to use a fast track procedural provision.
The majority also had to shun the advice of the parliamentary speakership panel’s two legal advisers – who pointed out the bill’s unconstitutionality in terms of Spanish law – and to refuse to allow parliament to seek an opinion from the Catalan Council of Statutory Guarantees, which would also have been certain to point out that incompatibility. CQSEP MP Joan Coscubiela described this approach as “unprecedentedly anti-democratic.”
However, premier Puigdemont justified it in these words: “They’ll get us lost talking about public servants, attorneys-at-law, the Council of Guarantees… However, what is important are the citizens. And they are demanding respect for fundamental rights, for human rights, including the right to self-determination.”
In the two days of acrimonious debate, the PP and Citizens speakers made a point of speaking in Spanish, so that their message could be understood by people in the rest of Spain (the interventions of the majority, done in Catalan, would have been mainly lost on them). The supposedly undemocratic behavior of the speakership panel majority and of the speaker Carme Forcadell could thereby more readily become an “accepted truth” for Spanish public opinion: this impression would have hopefully been reinforced for the PP, Citizens and the PSC by their decision to walk out of the chamber when the final vote was taken on both pieces of legislation.
The conservative Madrid media – sworn enemy of the right to self-determination and even of acknowledging Spain’s plurinational reality – described the adoption of the new laws as “democracy kidnapped” (La Razón) and a “coup d’etat” (ABC). The Spanish deputy prime minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, in charge of the PP government’s operations against Catalonia, said: “I’ve never felt such shame on behalf of democracy in my life.”
Prime minister Rajoy then used the supposedly outrageous behavior of the Catalan parliament to justify his government’s legal carpet bombing. He warned on September 13: “This was an anti-democratic act, a blow against democracy. And in Spain the law gets carried out because if not it would mean that the will of the majority of citizens counts for nothing.”
The Battle for Participation
How has the Catalan government reacted to this aggression?
On the one hand by insisting that all logistics are in place for October 1, that the referendum will be going ahead regardless of the legal and constitutional barrage, and that people should be able to vote at their usual polling station. In cases where local councils refuse to make these available, the Catalan government will make its own premises available as voting centres. At the September 14 launch of the Yes campaign, Puigdemont said: “Does anyone really believe we won’t be voting on October 1? What sort of people do they think we are?”
Such confidence became more plausible earlier on the same day, when the Catalan government and Barcelona Council announced they had reached an agreement on providing voting centres in the Barcelona area. This was an important gain in the critical battle for participation, because it puts Catalonia’s biggest municipality on the side of October 1. Ada Colau, the Barcelona mayoress who had come in for criticism for delaying a decision on the issue, came to the agreement with the government despite advice from the council’s legal service that it would potentially open the administration to prosecution.
On September 16, when the mayors potentially facing charges demonstrated in central Barcelona, Colau was there to greet them on behalf of Barcelona Council. She said: “This is not about independence. They will find an entire people against them in defence of the rights that have cost so much to win.”
Colau’s position reflected a shift in Catalonia’s non-independence left towards participating in October 1, even while still regarding it as “not the referendum Catalonia needs” but mobilization against the Rajoy government and for a Catalan right to decide. This is because a considerable part of its support – mainly but not only working people from other parts of Spain who have immigrated to Catalonia – do not support a unilateral referendum in which the independence case is likely to win. In the world of the “commons” – the catch-all term for Barcelona en Comú (running Barcelona Council), En Comú Podem (largest Catalan force in the Spanish parliament) and Catalunya en Comú (grouping together Barcelona en Comú and the “old left” forces Initiative for Catalonia-Greens, United and Alternative Left and the green party Equo) – the October 1 referendum had intensified differences over how to relate to a unilateral consultation.
However, in the atmosphere of increasing aggression from the Rajoy government a shift towards greater support for October 1 showed in the results of Catalunya en Comú’s membership ballot on whether to participate. The result was 59.39% for to 41.61% against, with 44% of the membership taking part. According to its coordinator Xavier Domènech, Catalunya en Comú will “stage events denouncing the repression and affirming the rights of the Catalans … If, finally, there are ballot boxes, we’ll be going to vote.” This was a move away from an initial orientation that focused more on demanding guarantees from the Catalan government than on how Catalunya en Comú might be able to intervene most fruitfully in the referendum process.
It also represented a defeat for those forces in the party that had called for a boycott of October 1, as organized around the manifesto “Don’t Participate or Call for Participation in the October 1 Referendum.” The shift also came with the effective dropping of their call by Pablo Iglesias and Alberto Garzón, leaders at the level of the Spanish state of Podemos and the United Left, for the commons not to participate.
Nevertheless, despite the Catalunya en Comú membership ballot result certain mayors within the universe of the commons will still not be making their councils premises available for the referendum, the main example being the Initiative For Catalonia mayor of the greater Barcelona industrial town El Prat de Llobregat. In other councils where councilors from the commons are part of the government – especially in partnership with ERC – they have already voted to make premises available on October 1.
As for the PSC, it is driving the campaign among working-class voters to ensure that October 1 is a low turnout flop if it eventually goes ahead. In the two provincial capitals run by the Catalan social democracy (Lleida and Tarragona) councils have refused to make premises available despite protests demanding that they do. The PSC has denounced the supposed intimidation these demonstrations represent. In others towns it controls, such as the outer Barcelona industrial city of Santa Colomer de Gramanet, the PSC has refused to make council premises available for meetings on the referendum.
The party has started an active boycott campaign, launching a manifesto called “On the illegal ‘referendum’ of October 1.” There are signs that this may be beginning to have some effect: all polls previous to September 17 showed around 50% of PSC supporters prepared to vote in the referendum. This figure has fallen in the latest Opinòmetre poll to 35%.
However, even as it tries to wreck October 1 and supports all legal activity to stop it, the PSC has to try to appear as not simply the running dog of the PP. A sign that it does not want to cut all ties with forces supporting the referendum was a September 10 statement by PSOE federal secretary Pedro Sánchez to the effect that, even if Barcelona Council provided voting centres for the referendum, he did not think the PSC should break its governing alliance with Ada Colau’s party (Barcelona en Comú).
Conclusion
If morale and commitment were enough to win on October 1, the victory would already be secure. In the days since the 712 mayors were summoned to appear before the prosecutors, 38 more have signed up to make their council’s premises available for the referendum. To ensure the proper staffing of voting stations, 5000 volunteers were needed: 47,000 have put their name down to help (13,000 more than for 9N).
Nonetheless, the Rajoy government simply cannot afford to lose this fight. Backed by the monarchy, big business, the establishment media, three of the four major Spanish parties and the four main associations of judges, it still remains confident in its capacity to cripple the Puigdemont government.
The deciding factors will be: whether the Puigdemont government is organized enough to ward off Madrid’s sustained attack on the logistics of October 1; whether the mass of Catalan supporters of independence – and of basic democratic rights – are strong enough to make the Rajoy government pay as high a political price as possible for each new act of aggression; and whether, in the case that the referendum goes ahead, the enormous media campaign to denigrate it as a “fraud” fails to reduce participation.
At the time of writing the political cost of the Rajoy government’s aggression is increasing, domestically and internationally. For example, while its legal aggression has received no explicit support from beyond the borders of the Spanish state, support for a negotiated referendum has come from the Scottish government and from 17 Danish parliamentarians representing seven different parties.
Within Catalonia, the Civil Guard’s confiscation of posters is being answered with the reproduction on home printers of posters downloaded from improvised web sites and then pasted up by teams of volunteers from the Catalan mass organizations. The September 16-17 weekend meetings on the referendum went ahead without police interference and were bigger than all expectations (and the halls in which they were supposed to fit). On September 17, 30,000 marched in Bilbao (in the Basque Country) in support of Catalonia’s referendum.
The campaign for October 1 is increasingly taking the form of a peaceful insurrection for democracy against the authoritarian Spanish state – all democrats will be doing what they can to help it prevail. •Scientists are aware you urinate in your wetsuit. While many people feel like this is weird, it’s completely natural. It’s the norm amongst surfers – even if they don’t all admit to it. As a waterman, you’re experiencing a unique underwater phenomenon called immersion diuresis. Don’t panic though. There is a totally legit scientific reason for this.
So, why do we pee in our wetsuits and what is actually happening inside your body?
Immersion diuresis, which literally means “water loss due to immersion,” is the culprit behind that urge to pee when you are in the water. Whether you are surfing, freediving, or just going for a swim, the lower temperature and increased pressure of the surrounding water makes you pee. It’s really as simple as that.
Immersion diuresis is a physiological response to being submerged in water and it’s actually part of the Mammalian Dive Reflex. When the body is immersed in water the colder temperatures and increased pressure from the surrounding environment causes a narrowing of the blood vessels (vasoconstriction) in your extremities. As a result of this vasoconstriction, your body moves blood volume away from your skin and extremities and redistributes it towards your core areas.
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This increased blood volume, which is sent directly to your vital organs, triggers the inhibition of a vasopressin hormone that regulates the production of urine by the kidneys called anti-diuretic hormone (ADH). ADH essentially controls how much urine your kidneys produce and the increased blood volume being sent to your core areas tricks the body into thinking that there is a fluid overload (which kinda makes sense because you are surrounded by water). As a result, the body stops making ADH which triggers the kidneys to produce urine in an attempt to regain the fluid balance (ie. homeostasis) caused by that increased blood volume. So this is what really makes you pee in your wetsuit.
Now that you know this, peeing in your wetsuit is a totally legit thing to do – really it’s science. You have permission to no longer feel weird or ashamed. All the cool kids are doing it. Just make sure that you drink a lot of water before and after your session to avoid dehydration!
Note: This article was co-authored by Ian TowneTexas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said he'll accept a debate invitation from his opponent Ted Cruz under one condition: that the debate be in Spanish.
The challenge comes after Cruz, the tea party-backed candidate who's locked in a runoff with Dewhurst for the Republican Senate nomination, attacked his rival for supposedly dodging one-on-one debates. It's an area where Cruz might have the advantage, given he was a winner at the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championships. That advantage likely would disappear were the debates to be held in Spanish.
“I would welcome a debate with Dewhurst in any form, but I think we would have a better debate if we did the debate in English,” said Cruz in an interview with Univision.
Cruz, a second generation Cuban-American who grew up speaking “Spanglish,” never mastered the language, according to The Houston Chronicle. Dewhurst learned to speak Spanish while working for the Central Intelligence Agency in Bolivia in the 1970s.
“When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English,” he told the Chronicle. “I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get back into a rhythm.”Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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Around thirty-two people were arrested Monday on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, including Representative Charles Rangel and nine New York City Council members, when they blocked a bridge to LaGuardia Airport during a rally for liveable wages and an MLK Day paid holiday. In total, close to a 1,000 people attended the protest that was organized by Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. Ad Policy
Before the march to the bridge, Representative Rangel told the crowd: “No one should be one pay check from homelessness. We have a new mayor now, Bill de Blasio, and I am certain that he will be spearheading our fight for better wages.”
“I’m ready to get put in jail today so that everyone will know that we’re going to fight for decent wages, we’re going to fight for sick pay [and] we’re going to fight for pensions,” Rangel added.
The workers are not employed by the airlines or the Port Authority but rather by companies that contract out for things like food service, custodial work and security.
“Some employees have to go to food pantries to support their families. Thousands live in poverty,” said Hector Figueroa, president of Local 32BJ-SEIU.
“The City Council stands united to support you, airport workers, in your demands for dignified work and respect,” Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito told the crowd. “We have seen a mobilization across this nation of fast-food workers, car wash workers, now airport workers. We will ensure that we stand with you.”
Many of the workers say low wages force them to rely on government assistance to feed their families.
“I find it nonsense that I have a full-time job and I have to seek public assistance,” said Andrew Lloyd, a cabin cleaner at JFK Airport. “I have to do overtime just to support myself and my family.” Mr. Lloyd said he and his coworkers work full weeks and extra shifts but receive no paid sick days or vacation time.
Prince Jackson, 56, of Jamaica, Queens, said he works as a security guard at Kennedy Airport, making $8 an hour, but has not received a raise in four years and is not entitled to paid sick time.
“Martin Luther King Jr. was a friend to the workers in his day, and the workers of today would like to be able to commemorate his memory by fighting for our rights as employees,” Jackson said to Newsday.
Those arrested included New York City Council members Daneek Miller (D-St. Albans), Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside), Ruben Wills (D-Jamaica), Antonio Reynoso (D-Brooklyn), Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn), Inez Dickens (D-Manhattan), Mark Levine (D-Manhattan) and Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan); and union officials Hector Figueroa, president of 32BJ SEIU; Shirley Aldebol, a vice president of 32BJ; and union members, Andy Cabrera, Johnnie Peterson, Hazel Ingrahm, Fadila Mikullo and Ian Zehnder.
“The new day has come in the city of New York,” Public Advocate Tish James said at the protest. “And this new day is consistent with the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King to lift all people out of poverty.”
In an email statement, Port Authority officials said the agency “supports making Martin Luther King Day a paid holiday for airport workers” and planned to “continue to have discussions with the union, airlines, and other airport stakeholders regarding this issue.”
Earlier in the month, dozens of airport workers from Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports, and their supporters, gathered outside Port Authority headquarters to demand better wages and improved working conditions.
“I make $8.50 an hour and I’m a 47-year-old man with three kids,” said Kennedy Airport guard Michael Carey, who lives in East New York, Brooklyn. “Do the math. I can’t support my family on that salary.”
Jackson told Amsterdam News that Dr. King devoted his life to standing in solidarity with struggling workers.
“Dr. King died supporting sanitation workers who were working under deplorable conditions and making what today would be $11.41 per hour,” he told the paper. “Forty-six years after Dr. King’s death, I earn $8 an hour. Most airport workers earn just $8 per hour. We also work under deplorable conditions.”8 years ago
(CNN) - In a recent interview on Fox Business Network, potential Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called it “unconscionable” that President Obama would allow American servicemen and women to serve in a NATO mission helmed by a non-American.
“I don’t believe there was (sic) ever a point at which U.S. troops should be getting their orders from someone who is not sworn to uphold the same Constitution,” the former Arkansas governor said.
Sarah Palin seemed to second that, telling Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, “Are we really going to turn over command and control to the Arab League and to the British and the French? And when do we reclaim our command and control over our troops?”
We asked a handful of experts if American service members are taking orders from non-Americans.
“There is an unbroken chain of command from the soldier on ground to the President of the United States,” said retired Brigadier Gen. Mark Kimmitt, who served in multinational commands overseas. "Legally it can't be done any other way."
A senior Defense Department official added, “At the unit level, Americans always take orders from Americans.”
Canadian Heads Libya Mission
Currently the head of the NATO mission in Libya is a Canadian, Lt.-Gen. Charles Bouchard. So are Americans taking orders from him?
CNN Pentagon Correspondent Chris Lawrence explained, “Allies like the British and Canadians will have positions of authority within what's called a Combined Forces Air Component. But no nation just "hands over" their troops.
Lawrence added, “When U.S. pilots fly these strike missions, they’re reporting directly to American squadron commanders.”
American Supreme Commander
Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, also pointed out that the person in charge of the whole mission is an American, Adm. James Stavridis of the U.S. Navy.
CNN’s Lawrence said Stavridis “is the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. So even the Canadian general who is running ‘Operation Unified Protector’ ultimately reports up to the American Admiral Stavridis.”
Lines of Authority
So how does Adm. Stavridis' office explain allied vs. American command? Col. Greg Julian, Chief of Public Affairs for Allied Command Operations, told CNN that in a NATO mission there are "always at least two distinct chains of command: a national command and a multinational chain of command."
He explained foreign officers might have "operational control,” "tactical control," or support responsibilities. But American commanders retain direct control over U.S. troops. And Col. Julian said, "As Commander and Chief, the president always retains and cannot relinquish national command authority over U.S. forces."
Kimmitt broke it down further: “A foreign officer can direct U.S. forces to conduct missions and operations but doesn't take command of these units." He added that "coalition forces must follow the orders of their home countries ahead of the orders of the coalition." He also noted that "this is not unique to the U.S."
National Caveat
What if a foreign commander orders an American battalion to do something that goes beyond the president's mission or is outside the U.S. Rules of Engagement? The American can refuse the order.
It's called a "national caveat," which Kimmitt described as "routine." He said "the U.S. commander must inform the foreign commander that the U.S. will not allow the unit to conduct that mission." He added this opt-out national caveat "is fully accepted among coalition partners."
Arab League
In a recent interview, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour – like Sarah Palin – seemed to suggest that the Arab League may be among those directing American forces. Barbour told an interviewer with the American Family Association last Friday, “We can’t let American military power be controlled by the Arab League, controlled by NATO, controlled by whatever the E.U. And that is what Obama’s policy seems to be.”
But the Arab League is not involved in command of the military mission in Libya.
The organization called for a no-fly zone, a diplomatic development that signaled Arab public support. But the Arab League does not command NATO or American forces. Some of the Arab League's member nations – the United Arab Emirates and Qatar - have offered military support for the mission. NATO's Col. Julian said, "We are in coordination with them and other international partners."
First Time Ever?
Sarah Palin also told Fox’s Susteren, “We're going to hand over command and control to a steering committee. I don’t think that this has ever been a part of foreign policy, a military mission in the U.S. before.”
Actually, foreign officers have had operational control of U.S. troops many times before. The Council on Foreign Relation’s Boot points out that during World War II the British had operational control of some U.S. troops. A senior Defense Department official offered more recent examples, including the mission in Bosnia and currently in Southern Afghanistan.
Kimmitt concluded, “U.S. troops must always, first, answer to their own chain of command before they answer to the operational requirements of a foreign commander.”
CNN’s Lawrence said, “There’s some foreign commanders in the hierarchy, like when a British General rotated into command of military operations in southern Afghanistan two years ago. But to say American troops are simply ‘taking orders from foreigners’ is simplistic."
And Col. Julian noted, "the president also has the authority to terminate U.S. participation |
the Islamic State group as it trains its sights on “Western lifestyle” targets.
London Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said British police had carried out a record number of counter-terrorism arrests last year.
But he warned that the Islamist group had broadened its focus from military and police targets, noting the Paris attacks last year when gunmen attacked bars, a concert hall and a stadium, killing 130 people.
“In recent months we’ve seen a broadening of that, much more plans to attack Western lifestyle, and obviously the Paris attacks in November,” Rowley told reporters.
“Going from that narrow focus on police and military as symbols of the state to something much broader.
“And you see a terrorist group which has big ambitions for enormous and spectacular attacks, not just the types that we’ve seen foiled to date.”
Police have previously said they foiled seven plots between late 2014 and early 2016.
Across Britain, police made a record 339 arrests related to counter-terrorism in 2015, around half of which resulted in charges being brought.
Arrests in the past three years are 57 percent higher than in the previous three years.
Some 77 percent of arrests last year were British nationals, while 14 percent were female and 13 percent were aged 20 and under — a new trend that reflects specific targeting by IS group jihadists of vulnerable groups on social media.
Britain has suffered only one fatal incident of international terrorism since the July 7, 2005 attacks on the London transport system that killed 52 people.
In 2013, two Muslim converts butchered soldier Lee Rigby near his London barracks in broad daylight.
Rowley said Britain had some advantages over other Western countries in fighting terrorism, notably its experience with dealing with paramilitary groups linked to the conflict in Northern Ireland and tough laws on gun control that made it difficult to obtain firearms.
The Metropolitan Police announced after the Paris attacks that it was training another 600 firearms officers, taking the total number to 2,800, out of a 31,000-strong force.
British authorities have since 2014 assessed the country’s threat from international terrorism to be severe, the fourth of five levels meaning an attack is highly likely.G’day folks, I know this is the holidays Hanukah starts on December 20th, Christmas is in 15 days, New Years in 21. Well statistically folks, more people will commit suicide in the next 22 days than in the rest of the year combined. I have, unfortunately lost more than my share of dear friends to suicide to a variety of reasons and the one thing all their family said was “suicide?we didn’t see it coming they were depressed for months but they seemed to suddenly be happy for the last few days”. It is, a clinical fact that people who contemplate suicide for a long period of time and then set the date and decide it’s going to happen become at peace with themselves, they will suddenly tell everyone they’re loved, pay debts,give away belongings and just be happy they are at peace with their decision.
Their family relaxes, breathes a sigh of relief thinking they have weathered the storm and then they find them one day, Birthdays Christmas, anniversaries of all kinds are more likely to be the day someone commits suicide than any other day of the year.
I lost my kids to an ex almost two decades ago to a bullshit court who equated being gay to being a child molester, so I lost my babies their 22 and 18 but haven’t been in the same room since he baby was still in diapers. The two times I did something to myself years ago was at Christmas, when my presents to them were sent back return to sender. If you have someone in your life who suffers depression, or just went through a bad custody decision or a divorce also new retirees and people who just became widowed after a lifetime with their spouse, pay attention don’t hover but for god sake don’t desert them for the holidays.
Every Christmas dinner with family has a crazy aunt, a grandparent with dementia a teen who is a little weird,we put up with them, but so often avoid that brother, sister aunt or uncle or just a friend who is medicated for mental illness or is always crying,after all who wants a downer at Christmas. Well folks finding your best friend swinging or in the bathtub lifeless will really ruin your holiday and your life, when years from now you wonder what you could have done different.Even if you just visit on the way to mums house or bring them presents and left overs on the way home, be a friend this holiday season be a brother a son a nephew a niece, hell be a decent human and care while you still can. Crying hurts more when the one you love is not here to tell you to stop. Merry Christmas Happy Kwanza, Happy Hanukah, enjoy the family, all of them you’ll be glad you did when they’re here for next Christmas.
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Like this: Like Loading...Mike D’Antoni is the NBA’s Nikola Tesla — while his innovations changed the way the game is played, his competitors reaped most of the benefits. D’Antoni’s Suns stacked points and wins into gaudy heaps, and his offensive concepts were later co-opted by NBA champions like the Spurs and Warriors. But, under D’Antoni, Phoenix was never more than a middling defensive team. With each successive playoff defeat, the braying of the NBA’s old warhorses — “defense wins championships” — became harder to ignore.
It’s historically proven: Teams that don’t have a top-10 defensive rating can basically forget about winning the title. Since Michael Jordan’s last championship in 1998, there has only been one exception. In 2000–01, the Lakers had the 18th-ranked defense, and generally approached getting stops the same way that Bart Simpson approaches Homer: Both are to be scorned until circumstances grab you by the throat. When the playoffs rolled around, L.A. unleashed the greatest “flip the switch” performance in NBA history, barreling to a 15–1 record and the title.
Offense-centric teams, players, and coaches have always been viewed with distrust. Putting the ball in the hoop is viewed as a form of expression. Great offense is described by words like “creative” and “beautiful.” Defense is hard, torturous work, which, when effective, one might call “stifling” or even “suffocating.” There’s an element of luck to scoring; it is, after all, a make-or-miss league. That’s why Charles Barkley can say of the Warriors — who won 73 games in a season, and reached two consecutive finals, winning one — “I don’t know if they can win enough games shooting jumpers.” Offense is fun. Defense is necessary; it’s discipline. It’s a rational response to what Gregg Popovich calls “appropriate fear.” Defense is for teams with something to lose. This is why defense is for cowards.
Mike D’Antoni and James Harden both own well-earned reputations for eschewing defense. (Harden, in particular, will be happy about the death of Vine.) There is an obvious synergy of star player and coach here, with both enabling each other’s worst impulses. Less overt is how D’Antoni’s hire shines a light on the Rockets’ plans for the future. With Dwight Howard in Atlanta, the Rockets lack a secondary star. Houston signed Harden to a four-year, $118 million extension this summer, and is paying more than $30 million a year, combined, for the services of Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon. If Daryl Morey wants to add a max-level star to supplement Harden, it will have to come through either a trade or free agent signed into the cap space created by trading away pieces. Good news, then: In D’Antoni’s Seven Seconds or Less system, the Rockets have a tried-and-true framework that inflates the numbers (and value) of the players operating within it. It’s a boon for the players who play for him, which, in turn, can be a boon for the front office. Here is a look at players who put up career stats running and gunning with the coach formerly known as “Pringles”:
Let’s go ahead and update this with Harden’s player portrait. Before the season started, D’Antoni announced that Harden would be the Rockets’ full-time point guard. In his spread-pick-and-roll system, D’Antoni figures that Harden could do something no less than historic: average 15 assists per game.
Related James Harden Is the Changing Face of the Point Guard Position
“Hopefully, he’ll double his number of assists, and he had seven or eight last year,” D’Antoni told Bleacher Report. “He’s one of the best passers I’ve been around.”
Harden’s response? “Coach trippin’. Coach trippin’.”
Through three games — which, yes, tiny sample, especially considering two games were against a hobbled but well-coached Mavericks team — Harden is averaging nearly 11 assists per game. Per the NBA’s tracking system, both his passes and touches per game are up over last season’s numbers (from 52.3 to 57 and 85.1 to 93.7, respectively).
With the ball in his hands on every possession, Harden’s ability to draw free throws at seizure-inducing clips appears poised to reach new levels. Good news for Harden, but doomsday-level shit for those inclined to hate the player as well as the game. Against the Mavericks on Sunday night, with the game tied at 92 and 3.3 seconds left on the clock, Harden slalomed into the lane, drew the inevitable whistle, and slipped the dagger in from the free throw line. He went to the line 12 times against Dallas and is averaging 11 free throw attempts per game, which, if it holds, would be a career high. After the game, Harden described the final play as “what I do best.”
Meanwhile, that old D’Antoni stats dust already appears to be working its intoxicating magic on Rockets role players. Sam Dekker is averaging 13.2 points per 36 minutes on 50 percent 3-point shooting. K.J. McDaniels is averaging 15.5 points per 36 on 62.5 percent shooting. Clint Capela is all but assured to have a career season filling the void that Dwight left. Trevor Ariza looks healthy after a washed-adjacent 2015–16 and is shooting an unsustainable but heartening-none-the-less 53 percent from deep. Eric Gordon is currently averaging 17 points per game for the first time in four years.
But, you’re saying, WHAT ABOUT THE DEFENSE? Spoiler: Fuck the defense. Defense is for cowards. During his Suns years, D’Antoni would often repeat some pithy variation of “the team that scores the most points played the best defense.” To say that D’Antoni doesn’t care about defense is unfair; rebounds, turnovers, and steals are fuel for fast breaks. It’s more accurate to say that, while he cares about it, he hasn’t cared about it enough to craft a defensive philosophy to match his offensive one, or to create a detailed system beyond, “Hey, stay in front of your guy.” D’Antoni’s Suns basically played man-to-man defense and used Raja Bell and Shawn Marion to plug the most egregious gaps in the levee. There were leaks abound, but it didn’t really matter. The Suns were there to outscore you.
In Phoenix, D’Antoni resisted entreaties to add a defensive assistant to his staff. After three seasons in New York of watching the Knicks get thoroughly and consistently waxed, he relented. The Knicks added Mike Woodson in 2011. By March of the following season, he was coaching the team. In Houston, D’Antoni has learned from his mistake: He brought in former Grizzlies assistant Jeff Bzdelik to craft the Rockets defense. The unspoken subtext of the hire is political, though: When the defense turns out to be bad because Houston is starting Harden, Eric Gordon, and Ryan Anderson, don’t blame Mike. And, anyway, they’re working on it.
“If you’re going to be good at defense,” Bzdelik told NBA.com, “it has to be emphasized every day. You have to do it every day.”
Through three games, Houston has a negative net rating as a result of its 106.1 defensive rating, a figure that is half a point per 100 possessions worse than last season’s mark. The defense in the Rockets’ opener on the road against the Lakers was nonexistent. It was better against the Mavericks last Friday, but Dallas is without Dirk Nowitzki and Devin Harris. When Houston played the Mavs again on Sunday night, Deron Williams banged his knee and spent the rest of the game limping around the floor. The Rockets held the Mavs to 33 percent shooting in the fourth quarter, which is nothing to sneeze at! But Dallas was running out lineups including a hobbled Deron, Seth Curry, J.J. Barea, Salah Mejri, and Dwight Powell against the Rockets starters. The Mavs managed to outscore the Rockets 22 to 13 in the final frame. The Rockets won, 93–92. As D’Antoni was once fond of saying, “The team with the most points …”
In the end, D’Antoni and Harden’s futures are intertwined. They can make all the necessary statements about the importance of defense they want, but it’s hard to ignore the incentives for both of them to say “fuck defense.” Harden’s usage rate over three games is 37.4, per NBA.com. That would’ve led the league last season. Watching the games, it’s hard to see how that number comes down. Harden is the hub of everything Houston does. How much energy do you want James Harden expending on defense? And he’s not out there sticking dudes. You want to turn Sam Dekker and K.J. McDaniels into trade chips? Want to pump up Eric Gordon’s value? Want to hang out a sign that screams to prospective free agents “JAMES HARDEN IS A STAR AND HE WILL PASS YOU THE BALL”?
Then, very quietly, fuck defense. Because defense is for cowards.Jun 25, 2014
House Rabbit Society, SaveABunny, and three dozen other rabbit rescue groups, urges our members and other rabbit lovers to contact Whole Foods to ask them to stop selling rabbit meat at their stores
We have just sent them a letter on behalf of HRS asking them to stop, and now we are asking YOU to contact Whole Foods yourself until they reconsider this poor decision that puts America’s third most popular companion mammal into the meat counter.
Here’s what you can do:
Educate yourself about the lives that rabbits who live on meat farms suffer. This is how Whole Foods’ rabbits are raised; and this is how they are killed.
Tell Whole Foods to stop selling rabbits. Feel free to borrow the language from our letter. They also responded to our letter and we responded back to them, and you can borrow language from our response as well.
Tell Whole Foods managers, staffers, and customers, what great animals rabbits are, and in particular, emphasize New Zealand rabbits, the rabbits being raised and killed for meat.
Tell others to get onboard, via Facebook, Twitter, or even Pinterest.
Sign the online petition at Change.org.
If you feel moved to do so, stop shopping at Whole Foods and take your business elsewhere until they stop selling rabbit meat.
You can find posters, materials, and other resources at the following websites:
Here are a few ways to contact Whole Foods
Whole Foods website: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/customer-service
Whole Foods email: customer.questions@wholefoods. com
Whole Foods Twitter account:@WholeFoods and @WholeFoodsPR
Whole Foods Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/wholefoods
Individual store locations (to call): http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/list
John Mackey
Co-CEO
Whole Foods Market, Inc.
550 Bowie Street
Austin, TX 78703-4644
Fax: 512-482-7000
Regional Contacts
Whole Foods is now selling rabbit meat in most of the country. Please contact the regional management in those areas, as well as the store managers of your local stores. You can find their regional contacts here. Contacting them through Twitter at @WholeFoods, through their customer service form, and of course through your local store, will work no matter where you live.How a course in operating systems changed me
There are few classes at Princeton that changed me like COS 318 (Operating Systems). It was challenging, time-munching, and exhausting, but looking back: I’m glad I took the course.
I had hesitation going into the class because of common wisdom surrounding Operating Systems courses:
“OS sounds really hard”
“OS is only for people interested in low-level stuff”
“OS is a waste of time… when are you going to use that material?”
It’s a difficult class, for sure, but consider momentarily suspending anything you’ve previously heard about the course. Not taking OS isn’t going to ruin your software engineering career, but taking it could change you in astounding ways. As a student admittedly lousy at low-level programming, I had my fears going into the course. Now on the other side, I feel that taking OS was the best course selection decision I ever made. Here are some of the ways I changed as a student, software engineer, and problem-solver.
My experience is based on Princeton’s COS 318 in Fall 2013, but the impact is generalizable to many other undergraduate OS courses.
(1) OS made me better at debugging
There is no doubt that writing an operating system requires a lot of debugging. If you thought debugging in your algorithms course was hard, try debugging a program where running it two different times yields two completely different results.
When programs become as intricate as they do in OS, you’re forced to learn about the right tools (debuggers are you friend) and develop a disciplined approach to debugging.
Before taking the class, debugging was a wandering process in which I frantically tried to brainstorm things I could have messed up. It’s a hopeless and exhausting process that I call “rubber chicken debugging”. After OS, debugging suddenly turned from an art into a science. I recognized that, in most cases, there is an optimal set of things I can log to locate the problem and quickly discern what solution needs to be implemented.
This approach has proved valuable in other courses and beyond. For example, during my internship at Facebook, I fully embraced the engineering culture of “getting your hands dirty” in the code. If something doesn’t work, start logging… immediately. Keep logging until reality disagrees with your expectation. That’s the way of thinking that an intensive programming course like OS requires.
(2) OS made my code more efficient
OS suddenly made me more conscious of my code’s performance. If a program took a long time to run, I would pause to think: what is the limiting factor? CPU? Memory? Disk I/O? Understanding the fundamentals helped me to make my higher-level code faster and leaner.
This fact flies in the face of common wisdom that knowing about operating systems is useful only if you enter a career in low-level programming. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s only by writing OS code in C and Assembly that I appreciated the building blocks of higher level programming languages.
(3) OS made me a better collaborator
Our OS class had a few partner projects, in which groups of two students pair-program the assignment. I was incredibly fortunate to be with two of my best friends through the projects. The shared experience of daunting challenges made partners better friends and the whole class a more bonded group.
As collaborators, we became better at pair programming. At first, the temptation with pair programming is for one person to type the code and the other to sit back and watch. In OS, we strived to check each other’s code as we went and split up the implementation when it made sense to do so. Collaboration required that we get smarter about version control, so it was also a great opportunity to get better at Git.
(4) OS made me a more disciplined problem solver
This is biggest change of all. As a young programmer, I usually turned to the Feynman Algorithm when faced with any problem:
Write down the problem Think really hard Write down the solution
Adopting this approach made the first few projects in OS absolutely miserable. The class demanded that I develop a more disciplined approach to problem-solving. I ended up creating a method for doing programming assignments that I began applied to other CS classes as well. It involves three sheets of paper for tracking:
(1) Tasks: What needs to get done to finish this assignment? I’m very task-oriented in project management, so having a list of small tasks comforted me by organizing my work. Start by writing down the big tasks and breaking things down from there. As an analogy, consider the project of baking a cake:
Procure ingredients Buy eggs Buy milk Buy flour
Prepare kitchen Wash bowl Wash pan Wash scooper Pre-heat oven Grease pan
Execute assembly Mix eggs, milk, and flour to make batter Spread batter across pan Insert pan into oven
There are more steps than that, but a list like this sets you up for a feeling of accomplishment after finishing each task. The key is to make these tasks really small so that you’re always making progress.
(2) Bugs: What bugs do I know about in the code? On this sheet I track open bugs and things I’ve tried to fix them. In earlier projects I wasted time repeating possible solutions and running into the same bug multiple times. Diligently tracking my bugs and their fixes in later assignments saved me a great deal of time.
(3) Questions: What questions do I have? Here I jot down literally any question I have as soon as I get it. As I learn the answers over time by reading documentation and asking classmates, the knowledge is recorded here.
Having these sheets of paper largely gave me confidence that progress was being made. Without it, I was putting in long hours in the computer lab– making motion– but not actually accomplishing much by the end of the day.
Closing Thoughts
OS is certainly a challenging course, but consider giving it a shot. It’s the class that improved me most as a software engineer. And even if you don’t ever remember what a hypervisor is, I think you’ll truly appreciate all of the other skills you gain.
Some other perspectives on these topics if you want to read more:
Thanks to Dan Kang for reviewing this post.
November 2014
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The vast majority of firms in Wales which have been acquired over the last decade, in exit deals with a combined value of £2.5bn, continue to trade here, shows new in-depth research from corporate advisory firm Gambit.
And the majority of exit deals involving around 700 Welsh businesses between 2007-16 were to other UK businesses (via trade sales) or to their respective management teams, through management buyouts.
For the purposes of the analysis nine exit deals with values of more than £100m each, which collectively accounted for another £2.5bn worth of exits, were not included in Gambit’s analysis - nor were property deals and those involving subsidiary businesses in Wales of overseas companies.
These deal over £100m included the de-listing of Cardiff-based Gyrus for a reported £1.17bn to Japanese conglomerate Olympus.
Included are exits whether in the form of trades sales, buy-in and buy-outs, divestments and flotations - as well as Welsh firms de-listing from the London Stock Exchange.
These types deals generated a combine value of £2.5bn.
Geographically south Wales dominated exit deal flow, accounting for more than 80% of the transactions analysed by Gambit, which is based in Cardiff Bay.
The average consideration below the £100m threshold was £8.7m, down from the £10.1m in Gambit’s last exit deal survey for the 2001 to 2006 period.
Gambit's analysis of exit deals from 2007-16 £2.5bn Total value (below £100m deals) 700 Number of deals 85% Acquired firms still trading in Wales £800m Deals involving manufacturing firms 80% Delas in south Wales 2011 Highest number/ value of deals Gambit
Welsh exit deals experienced their lowest point in 2011, with a combined value of just £50m. The peak, including deals involving those for more than £100m was just prior to the financial crisis in 2007, with a combined value total of more than £2bn.
Over the period the most popular form of exit was through trade sales, which made up 72.8% of all transactions, followed by management buy-outs with 21.6%.
The largest management buyout deal on value was £87m for Bluestone Resort in Pembrokeshire in 2013, followed by Tregedar-based Penn Pharmaceuticals Services in 2007 for £67m.
Flotations on the London Stock Exchange, providing an exit, or partial exit for shareholders, remain what Gambit describe as “rarities” in Wales, with only 11 over the decade. The largest was last year’s £131.1m float of Bangor-based property development firm Watkin Jones.
Nearly 75% of exit deal were to other UK businesses or their own management teams.
Still in Wales
And of the 700 deals analysed by Gambit, 570 remain active today, which the corporate advisory firms says “dismisses the myth that ownership change creates a negative impact on the Welsh economy.”
The report adds: “So it is not accurate to say that exited businesses are relocated away from Wales. On the contrary, 85% remain active and are still based in Wales; some perished, but very few moved away.”
Brian Morgan of Cardiff Metropolitan University said: “For those people that have worked hard to create a successful company, management buyouts are an important vehicle for realising the true value of their businesses.
“What is not always appreciated is that achieving the right value can also have a positive impact on the Welsh economy. AS this survey shows, the vast majority of companies involved in a successful exit have remained in Wales.
“In this sense, attaining better value for company exits is good for the Welsh economy.”
Senior partner with Gambit. Frank Holmes, said: “This is our third publication on Welsh company exits. The period under review reflects extreme economic peaks and troughs of boom and bust, followed by slow recovery and prolonged economic uncertainty whilst the UK faces up to predicting life after Brexit.
“The trends, while predictable at the macro level, dispel some myths on the economic impact of changes of ownership and highlights the need to encourage longer-term ambition to create larger home-grown companies in Wales.”
Whist companies of all ages were exited over the period, more than 34% had enjoyed a life of between 10 and 25 years. Gambit said this increase in the corporate age trend is not surprising relative to previous surveys where 65% of companies were less than 15 years old.
Economy Secretary Ken Skates said: “This is an interesting research report which provides a useful insight into the mergers and acquisitions picture in Wales over what has been an economically turbulent decade.
“I am hugely proud of the economic progress we have made in recent years but we know there are further challenges ahead as we seek to navigate the UK’s exit from the EU. Our response must be to work together and develop more resilient regional economies in order to build a stronger and fairer economy for everyone in every area of Wales.
“We are currently developing our approach to economic development to focus on a closer partnership between Government and the business sector and the findings of this report provide an interesting backdrop to this work.A recent study from Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) suggests confidence in the Alberta economy is rebounding and the tech sector is leading the charge.
The survey of 4,000 small and mid-sized business owners found 50 per cent of Alberta entrepreneurs expected their revenue to increase in 2017. That’s a slightly lower percentage than the rest of Canada, at 69 per cent, but still an improvement over last year.
READ MORE: Alberta NDP adding $5 million in funding for tech companies
BDC chief economist Pierre Cléroux told News Talk 770’s Danielle Smith that tech is the fastest growing sector and has the highest investor intention across all Canadian provinces.
“Technology is definitely a sector that is growing and will continue to grow,” Cléroux said. “So, when people are looking for a winning sector, that’s definitely it.”
READ MORE: Could Alberta’s town of Cochrane be the next Silicon Valley North?
Cléroux suggested jobs wouldn’t be created immediately.
“Historically, when we have seen recovery, the job creation is not happening right away, it’s happening over time,” he said.
He suggested that the debt ratio of Canadian small businesses is one of the lowest around the world and that some businesses may have been able to weather the economic storm because of that.
“Many companies have been able to go through this recession because they have some reserve and they were not over-leveraged,” he said.
Listen below: A new BDC survey has found confidence in the economy and investment intention is rebounding in Alberta. Pierre Cléroux chats with Danielle Smith about the positive trend he is seeing in this province.300 Red Pill Relationship Proverbs
Preface
This incredible and extremely lengthy blog post originated in a motorcycle forum where I am an active participant in a particular conversation thread on that forum.
The thread (available to members only) covers Red Pill issues mostly concerning relationships, of all types, with women. The participants there are mostly over 40, many over 50. As it’s a motorcycle website, the vast majority of readers and participants are men.
The original author went to Red Pill and Manosphere websites to learn, to be introspective regarding those lessons, and to apply the wisdom gained to his own life and, in particular, his marriage. Publishing this list does mean every item is approved or even accepted. As well, some of the items are works from other blogs that the author quoted but did not give a proper citation. If any of content is under copyright, please contact this blog so that proper citations can be made or necessary content removed.
This blog only rarely covers issues of long-term relationships with this particular blog post being the only one to directly address marriage. The list is a type of manifesto written by a man leaving an unhappy marriage. His frustration and anger is obvious, necessary, natural, and healthy for the emotional healing that he must experience so he may move on with the rest of his life.
The original author experienced 18 painful years of an unhappy marriage. He obviously assembled this list to share with other men, regardless of their relationship status. The items in the list of 300 are full of amazing insights gleaned by reading Red Pill websites and also the Bible. The author of the list has a strong Christian faith and it’s expressed sometimes through quotes from scripture.
There has been almost no editing except some spelling mistakes of the actual list of these Red Pill proverbs. There has been a bit of formatting changes – mostly line breaks – to make it more readable. The author’s introduction has been edited slightly. This is the first publicly available source for the list.
It has been copied and pasted with the author’s permission.
– Editor, The Private Man Blog
Author’s Introduction
I have been struggling with a bad marriage pretty much since I got married 18 years ago. The [original] thread really opened my eyes to what was going on and why. Since finding that thread I have been doing a lot of reading, studying, and changing my life… for the better. In studying, I did as any good student would do. I kept notes. The following are pieces of advice that I collected for well over a year. Some of it is from here on this site. Some of it is from TRP [The Red Pill] blogs. Some of it is from other places. As always take what works for you and leave the rest.
When I started I had no intention of doing anything with this collection other than reading it to draw strength and guidance from when needed. Because of that, I did not record who made the statement. There are some very wise people here who have learned their lessons the hard way. I want to thank you for being willing to share your experiences and advice.
I also would very much appreciate if this thread stayed on point and others contributed their advice and thoughts as well. I like that we share a passion for motorcycles which brought us here, but also that we share a passion for making our relationships and lives the best we can.
The Red Pill Proverbs
1. The Bible book of Proverbs says:
“It is better to live alone in an attic than in a big house with a contentious woman.”
The point of marriage isn’t to endure it. There is no prize for making a miserable marriage last a long time. Marriage is supposed to be a partnership cemented by attraction, affection, respect and love that you enter into to make it easier for both of you get through life together. It’s like you become a team of horses, and you both help pull the wagon, and it’s easier with two than with one. But being yoked in a team with a partner that isn’t pulling is worse than having no partner at all. Sure, there are going to be some rough moments when you need to do more than your share to help your partner, but those are endurable because it’s mostly good, and the partner will return the favor when you need it because you’re a team.
2. Had a similar situation to the OP. Hung on for 13 years after the kid was born, and it was sheer misery. I, too, was the second husband.
One day I just decided I had enough, and told her to get out. Yeah, it cost a bundle, but it was worth it. Recently found out the “new, exciting man in her life” just dumped her as well.
Bottom line: some women are bound and determined to be and make things miserable. If you have one like that, the first thing you have to do is admit it, then ditch the bitch pronto.
BTW, what happened to her first husband? Dollars to donuts she treated him the same way.
3. Some women pick fights for sport….OK, lots of women pick fights for sport. You don’t have to play.
4. You need to love yourself before you can love someone else.
5. My dad, on the day of my wedding, offered me this advice. It’s the only advice he’s ever offered me about women beyond “don’t marry an ugly one and don’t marry a dumb one, but above all, don’t marry an ugly, dumb one.”
“Son, you’re going to have kids and jobs and commitments and a ton of other things that are going to try and pull you apart. Every 3 or 4 months, no matter what, you guys should get away for a weekend. No phones, no computers, nothing – just you two.”
So we’ve been doing that. Sometimes, it’s us at a 4 star hotel. Sometimes, it’s us in a state park camping. But it’s always different and it’s always just us. No friends, no buddies, no phones, no nothing but two people sitting around shooting the shit.
It’s the most valuable bit of advice I’ve ever received from anyone.
6. Gottman wanted to know more about how the masters created that culture of love and intimacy, and how the disasters squashed it. In a follow-up study in 1990, he designed a lab on the University of Washington campus to look like a beautiful bed and breakfast retreat. He invited 130 newlywed couples to spend the day at this retreat and watched them as they did what couples normally do on vacation: cook, clean, listen to music, eat, chat, and hang out. And Gottman made a critical discovery in this study—one that gets at the heart of why some relationships thrive while others languish.
Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife—a sign of interest or support—hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.
The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either “turning toward” or “turning away” from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that.
People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t—those who turned away—would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, “Stop interrupting me, I’m reading.”
These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a six-year follow-up had “turn-toward bids” 33 percent of the time. Only three in ten of their bids for emotional connection were met with intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had “turn-toward bids” 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of ten, they were meeting their partner’s emotional needs.
7. You are not selfish for deciding to cut someone off. There comes a point when it is time to stop being unfair to yourself.
8. Toxic
9. The relationship has run its course.
10. The marriage is over. The divorce is a business deal. Protect yourself. Those that “try to do the right thing” end up getting hosed in the divorce.
11. Cheaters are repeaters
12. End the relationship if your partner has no compassion for your pain, justifies the betrayal, minimizes the significance of the infidelity or if she continues to lie or deceive you.
13. Determine what you need in order to feel confident that your spouse has not only ended the illicit relationship, but is actively working to rebuild the relationship with you. Then ask for it. If the cheater is not willing to give that to you, they don’t value the marriage enough to repair the damage.
14. Adultery is something that happened to you. It does not define you.
15. If there is not honest communication about other issues, there is not likely to be honest communication |
, Boy, how about the time that we had the donkey that came out and the jockey threw up?
You’re being maybe excessively self-deprecating.
People are so much nicer to me now that I’m not on the air that my impression of myself is beginning to soften, but I’m sticking with jobs as my accomplishment.
Last year, you did the National Geographic documentary about India and climate change, but what else have you come close to doing since wrapping up The Late Show? There were rumors that you were going to do something at the Beacon Theatre.
We were going to re-create the annual Late Show Christmas special for like three days. Then people said, “The ticket prices are going to be so and so” and I said, “Oh Jesus, no. That’s larceny. We can’t do that.” We couldn’t ask people to pay that kind of money to come see something that they got for free on television for so many years.
What other offers have you gotten?
There’s been offers to be on a lot of shows. I’m a big fan of Veep, and here’s how nice they were: They asked if I would consider a cameo. Holy shit — I got so scared. I thought about it for 24 hours and then I told them, “Here’s what would happen: I’m going to do your show. I’m going to worry about it, I’m going to get sick to my stomach, and I’m going to ruin it. I can’t do that to you.” I proved years ago that I can’t act. I was on Mork & Mindy, and the night the episode aired, I had to stand on the front porch while my girlfriend watched inside. I couldn’t watch myself.
You were okay in Cabin Boy.
Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.
I said you were “okay.”
That’s better than what I usually hear. I love Chris Elliott and I love Adam Resnick, the two guys who did that movie. They got a raw deal. I remember going to see that in a theater shortly after it was released. I had never seen myself in a movie. My scene comes up, and it’s just dead silence. You could hear the sprockets in the projector clicking. Once the scene was over, I picked a side aisle and snuck out. It was humiliating.
Is it fair to say you’re not interested in revisiting a late-night talk show?
My interest has shifted. When I’m talking about things to do now, it’s not like, God-dang, let’s get right back into comedy. Let’s call the Butterball hotline on Thanksgiving. But bring in Donald Trump or Mike Pence or somebody, and let me smother them with my ignorance. I’ll tell you what really got up my nose — do you have a minute? — was the John Lewis thing. Congressman John Lewis. Do I have the name right?
Yep.
So he announces he’s boycotting the inauguration. Trump hops on his Twitter device and describes John Lewis as just another all-talk, no-action congressman, so sad.
It turns out John Lewis has been involved in a fair bit of action.
Holy God. First of all, because I’m always thinking about myself, I think, I was about John Lewis’s age when he marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Would I have had the guts to do that? The all-talk John Lewis goes down there and gets a goddamned skull fracture. I mean, Trumpy will never have to worry about a skull fracture because of the hair. Thank you! How do you know if Donald Trump is lying? His lips are moving. Thank you! But in addition to every other thing that’s wrong with the Trump, he’s ignorant in a way that’s insulting to the office, insulting to America, insulting to human rights, insulting to civil rights, insulting to John Lewis. Trump saying that broke my heart. I thought, You stupid son of a bitch. You ought to have known better than that.
When you look around and see Jerry Seinfeld doing Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee or see Louis C.K. pop up with something on his website — does the existence of these streamlined ways of getting material out into the world change the calculus for the kind of project you’d want to do next? It’s not TV-show-or-nothing anymore.
Oh, yeah. I am platform-agnostic. What Jerry Seinfeld has done is brilliant. Because he had his little TV show that did quite well and he loves being on the road. He pursued two interests of his, and now he’s got other people watching it and paying him huge sums of money. Actually, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee was my idea.
Seinfeld stole it from you?
Yeah. We’re in deep, deep litigation. I’m going to get the rights to that back, and then I’ll be doing it.
Is Worldwide Pants still a going concern? Is being on the production side interesting to you?
Worldwide Pants is now on pause. Years ago, I wanted Worldwide Pants to be an ongoing organism whereby we could continue to employ people and develop material. In the meantime, things changed out from under us. It was explained to me that that production model doesn’t hold up anymore. So Worldwide Pants ran out of steam for lack of opportunity. But we are trying to put it back together. It would be fun not to be involved in traditional ABC, NBC, CBS television. There’s a billion different places to put something now.
You know, I think we’re just about out of time.
You’re talking to a man who has nothing to do. When we’re done, I’ll be calling you.
Oh, no, it’s Dave again.
Yeah, it’s asshole again. He’s back.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.
*A version of this article appears in the March 6, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.Timber Case Kickstarter Launch Giveaway
Update - Winners Picked!
While the Timber Case Kickstarter isn't off to a great start (alright it's a horrible start), I'm happy to be announcing the winners. The following Reddit users were randomly selected and won the giveaway. I'll be reaching out to you for your address.
newPCandDEFEATED
HOODS_FL
FrogsGoMoo
v_acat_v
Today I launched the Timber Case on Kickstarter! No matter how it plays out, I wanted to thank PCMR. Without the positive feedback I received from PCMR over the last few months, I would not have finished this project.
So checkout the Timber Case Kickstarter page (entirely optional) and enter to win some awesome hardware.
If you want updates on how the Kickstarter is going or future Timber Case developments, Follow @make4io on Twitter or Instagram.
What type of hardware are you giving away?
I'm giving away four motherboard/ram/CPU/cooler combos
Some of you asked about these motherboards in my previous posts. They were the basis of a virtual machine based gaming platform that I was investigating. Unfortunately it didn't work out, so I'm giving away the hardware.
Supermicro X8DTG-QF. Dual Socket 1366. 4 PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots ( Fits 4x dual-slot GPUs )
) 48GB, DDR3 1333MHz ECC Memory
2x Xeon E5530 (This CPU sucks but keep reading)
2x CPU coolers & fans
These boards are older but hold up really well. I use one of these as my main content creation machine and day-time gaming box. (Total 12 cores/24 threads @ 3.6Ghz [Xeon X5690], 48GB, GTX 1070)
Powered with a standard ATX PSU Must have CPU2 8-pin power. I use an EVGA SuperNOVA 750 B2. You can get one for under 60 dollars on EVGA B-stock or ~$80 new.
Must have CPU2 8-pin power. I use an EVGA SuperNOVA 750 B2. You can get one for under 60 dollars on EVGA B-stock or ~$80 new. It can boot from a PCI-E NVMe SSD.
SSD. You can upgrade the CPU's for dirt cheap. X5670 6-Core 2.93Ghz go for around $30 each on ebay.
Runs Windows 10 with no issues
How do I enter and what are the rules?
Just post a top-level comment on the PCMR post that brought you to this page. Your Reddit account must be at least a month old. US and Canada only (sorry it's really expensive to ship overseas). Giveaway ends when the Reddit post is 48 hours old. I will randomly pick 4 winners with a python script.
How do I know if I won?
I'll post the winning users on the PCMR sub and I'll message you for your address. There will be no cost for shipping. Thanks again to the entire PCMR community.Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Quartz, The IRS Hired Private Debt Collectors Who Are Squeezing Poor People and Hurricane Victims:
An IRS program using private debt collectors to handle delinquent tax bills is improperly demanding payment from hurricane victims and squeezing some of the poorest Americans—all the while turning a profit far below industry standards.
Since April 2017, four debt collection companies have been assigned half a million delinquent taxpayers to contact. So far, they’ve brought in less than 1% of what Congress hopes the program will ultimately generate. Meanwhile, tax experts and the IRS’ own oversight board fear that the targeted taxpayers are being pressured to empty out their savings and take on unnecessary financial risk. The National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent office within the IRS that ensures “every taxpayer is treated fairly,” calls the program ”a serious threat to taxpayer rights.”
Two US senators pushed the IRS to outsource its debt collection to private companies through this program: Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, and Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York who has hailed the initiative for bringing jobs to one of the poorest parts of his state. As if by coincidence, three of the four debt-collecting companies contracted by the IRS are based in Iowa and New York. They declined to comment on the program.
The IRS normally brings in $4 for every $1 put into its budget. But the private collectors don’t appear to be as effective as their government counterparts. From Oct. 2017 to Sept. 2018, the program’s most profitable 12 months, collection companies Pioneer Credit Recovery, ConServe Debt Recovery, Performant Recovery, and CBE Group collected just $2.64 for every $1 the government spent on the program.
The program hasn’t even met the private debt-collection industry’s own financial standards. By June 2018, the companies had recovered just 1% of the of the $4.1 billion in receivables assigned to them, according to a recent report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The industry average collection rate is 9.9%.
And of the total $88.8 million in revenue that the companies did manage to collect, the IRS only received $22.3 million. That’s because the scheme has cost the US government $66.5 million, between startup costs and commission fees of up to 25%. To reach the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation’s target of $2.4 billion in total additional revenue by 2025, annual collections need to rise to around 15 times what’s been collected so far, for the next seven years.
The odds are against the hired collectors. After three years, a debt is considered statistically uncollectible—and the accounts the IRS assigned to the private collectors were an average of 3.97 years old, TIGTA reports.
Congress, which forced the scheme upon the IRS, doesn’t seem to have learned much from past failures with private debt collectors. A 1996 pilot program resulted in a net loss of $17 million and was canceled after a year. Another attempt in 2006 led to a net loss of almost $30 million. The most recent available IRS data says the agency is owed more than $131 billion in delinquent payments on 14 million accounts.
Many, though not all, of the accounts the IRS has assigned to private debt collectors involve America’s most vulnerable taxpayers: poor people, and survivors of natural disasters....
Tax experts say it would be safer and more efficient to direct the entire program budget to the IRS itself. Unlike private collectors, the agency has to abide by stringent checks on taxpayer financial well-being, and it has consistently driven an excellent return on its budget.
“The IRS wouldn’t be hiring collection personnel using scraps salvaged from private profiteering businesses if Congress would do its job and properly fund our most essential government functions, including that of tax collection,” said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center. “Congress created this problem so its friends in private industry could come along and fix it, at a high price to taxpayers.”
November 27, 2018 in IRS News, Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)There are a number of polls out that have Donald Trump surging in Iowa at the last minute. I do believe Trump is probably ahead, but I am aware of several of the campaigns’ internal polls and none of them have anything but Cruz and Trump clustered together very closely.
The problem with polling Iowa is that a caucus is not a primary. With a primary, voters go to a polling booth, click the name of the candidate who they support, and leave. With a caucus, often not even in the same location as where voters go to vote in primaries, there is an hour commitment, the voter must be in the room by seven o’clock in the evening, and they must show their support rather publicly.
People who show up for primaries may not know the caucus location, they may not realize they have to stay an hour, and they may think they can show up late. Likewise, we know historic turnout models for caucuses and many of the late polls with a huge Trump lead have turnout models that far exceed even the most historic high turnouts of caucuses past.
My friend Steve Deace, a Cruz supporter, has some very insightful data on caucuses and polling models.
So now we have FOX as well as CNN producing polls this week that show 300,000 Iowans are voting in the Iowa Caucuses, and therefore Trump with a double-digit lead. Allow me to put those projected turnout numbers in perspective: That’s about a 200% voter increase from the highest Iowa Caucus turnout ever back in 2008.
The most voters we’ve had in a primary (which always has higher turnout) in Iowa this century is only 230,000. And our last U.S. Senate primary had only roughly 150,000 voters in 2014.
There are actually 11,000 fewer registered Republicans in Iowa this January than in January 2015.
Ann Selzer has a very good track record in Iowa, catching both the Huckabee and Santorum trend lines. She’s now caught the Cruz trend line. Pay attention if she releases another poll, but otherwise be cautious. Caucuses are more dependent on ground games than standard primaries. The prevailing consensus of reporters in Iowa is that Cruz, Carson, and Rubio have some of the very best ground game operations.
We have one week to go. We will see how all the data holds up in the face of Donald Trump’s unorthodox campaign. If traditional fundamentals hold, he will not come in first. But if his unorthodox campaign that defies tradition puts him in first, we may see a paradigm shift in electoral politics like we have never seen before.
The danger for Trump is that, with so much late breaking polling showing a renewed and large lead coupled with Trump touting all this polling, expectations are suddenly being set very high for him, which might make him not coming in first very problematic for him.Ronaldo is rated as one of Europe's brightest young stars Kleberson moves to Man Utd
The 18-year-old forward, who has been awarded the number seven shirt formerly worn by David Beckham, becomes the fourth summer signing made by the Premiership champions, with Brazil World Cup winner Kleberson making it a fifth later on Tuesday.
The club made the announcement to the Stock Exchange and have agreed a five-year contract with the player.
Ronaldo said: "I am very happy to be signing for the best team in the world, and especially proud to be the first Portuguese player to join Manchester United.
He is one of the most exciting young players I've ever seen
Sir Alex Ferguson
Eric Djemba-Djemba, David Bellion and Tim Howard are manager Sir Alex Ferguson's other summer signings.
Ferguson claimed an agreement had been in place to sign the player "months ago", but the Red Devils quickened their pursuit when it became clear other clubs were also chasing him.
He said: "We have been negotiating for Cristiano for quite some time, but the interest in him from other clubs accelerated in the last few weeks so we had to move quickly to get him.
RONALDO FACTFILE Full name: Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro 1985: Born in Madeira, 5 February 2002: Makes debut for Sporting Lisbon and scores twice 2003: Linked with Liverpool and Chelsea but completes move to Man Utd
"He is an extremely talented footballer, a two-footed attacker who can play anywhere up front: right, left or through the middle."
Ronaldo was inspirational in Wednesday's friendly against United - creating two of the goals as Sporting won 3-1.
Ferguson added: "After we played Sporting last week the lads in the dressing room talked about him constantly, and on the plane back from the game they urged me to sign him - that's how highly they rated him.
Ronaldo impressed for Portugal at the European Under-19 Championships in Liechtenstein.
Liverpool and Chelsea were also reported to be interested in the player, but they have been beaten to the punch by United.
Ronaldo is set to be unveiled by the Premiership champions on Wednesday, alongside £6m Brazilian World Cup winner Kleberson.
The Atletico Paranaense star was granted a work permit on Monday and signed on Tuesday to become the first Brazilian to play for the Old Trafford club.House Speaker Paul Ryan said that President Donald Trump should not end DACA, calling for a “humane” solution to the executive amnesty provided by former President Barack Obama to illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children.
“I actually don’t think he should do that,” Ryan said in an interview with radio station WCLO Janesville in Wisconsin.
The speaker explained that the illegal immigrant children were brought to the country by their parents and should not be subject to deportation.
“There are people that are in limbo, that don’t know any other country, who were brought here by their parents and don’t know another home,” Ryan said, calling for Congress to give them “peace of mind.”
He added that he had “plenty of conversations” with the Trump White House about a solution to the problem.
“I think the president as well has mentioned that he wants to have a humane solution to this problem, and I think that’s something that we in congress are working on and need to deliver on.
Ryan clarified that he believed that Obama was wrong to use his executive power to issue DACA.
“President Obama did not have legislative authority to do what he did, you can’t as an executive, write law out of thin air,” he said.While Hillary Clinton was rallying with House Democrats at a high-profile meeting Wednesday morning in the Capitol Hill basement, one senior lawmaker was missing.
Connecticut Rep. John Larson skipped the rare session with his party’s presidential hopeful for a face-to-face with the House parliamentarian. Larson had an obscure question about House rules: What would happen if he and a bunch of his colleagues took to the House floor to stage a sit-in protest, effectively shutting down the House?
Story Continued Below
Larson was told that it was an “unprecedented instance that was hard to know what the response would be.” It was assumed the raucous Democratic protest would force Republicans to adjourn the House, which is exactly what happened.
As Democrats on Capitol Hill struggle to push new gun control measures in the face of overwhelming GOP opposition, Larson and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) — with the blessing of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats — wanted to do something dramatic after the massacre in Orlando.
And Wednesday’s protest was nothing if not dramatic — an escalation of tactics by a virtually powerless minority that amounted to guerrilla warfare to force action on an issue. Longtime House watchers hadn’t seen anything quite like it in many years, if at all.
If Republicans stuck together, Democrats would never be able to move their favored proposals, including blocking gun purchases by anyone on the federal “no fly” list, and expanded background checks for gun sales.
So Larson and Lewis and a handful of their colleagues decided to copy a GOP tactic from when Republicans were in the minority in 2008: Get dozens of members to go on the floor and refuse to leave. Demand action or say they won’t let the House adjourn in mid-July. Block the House from any business until Republicans give in.
Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican leaders could either yield and allow a vote — extremely unlikely — or House Democrats would bring new attention to the issue. It was the GOP tactic on steroids, this time in the era of widespread social media. And the passion of Democrats on guns far exceeded that of Republicans eight years ago, when the GOP was demanding more offshore oil drilling.
The plan was laid out at a Tuesday night meeting with Larson and about a dozen Democrats. They met in the office of Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts to hash out a plan to force a vote on the matter. The lawmakers decided they were ready to play hardball — even if it meant shutting down their half of Congress for an entire day, or longer.
“Most of the members didn’t even know what was going ahead for us,” Lewis told C-SPAN. “We never said anything or shared anything.”
When Lewis and Larson led their band of roughly two dozen Democrats onto the floor Wednesday to begin their sit-in, they staged the equivalent of the Senate’s filibuster. What began as an intricate behind-the-scenes plot with a handful of members grew to include almost the entire 188-person Democratic Caucus.
Releasing their pent-up anger over the nation’s gun laws after the Orlando massacre that left 49 dead and 53 wounded, they took over the House floor for hours, plopping down and shutting down all legislative business until GOP leadership would allow a vote.
“We said at the beginning of this week that we would use every tool in our toolbox,” Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said. “We said some of those tools involved hammers. Some of those tools involved screwdrivers. Some are blunt, some not. We’re going to keep using every single tool.”
Hill Democrats had been itching for a political fight on guns since the Orlando shootings. In the Senate, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) last week had staged a successful filibuster that caught national attention and eventually led to a series of floor votes. Those measures failed, but there will be another vote on a proposal by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
House Democrats wanted to do something similar and had been brainstorming for days. There had been talk about trying a discharge petition — doing an end run on GOP leaders to force a vote — but they didn’t have the support and it would take too long.
So they needed to come up with something bigger, something more catchy.
On Sunday, Pelosi called Israel, her caucus’ top messager, and asked him to come up with a list of ways they could force the issue in the House before the chamber left for its July 4 recess.
They spoke again later that day with representatives from roughly 100 gun-control advocacy groups to discuss other options, coming up with the “No Bill, No Break” mantra that House Democrats would start chanting on the floor Tuesday when Republicans refused to recognize Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) for a vote.
Israel came up with a list of options that Pelosi floated to the fuller Democratic Caucus on a conference call Monday, including asking for a vote in a motion to recommit.
The Democratic plan was to keep trying anything they could and keep causing a scene in hopes of increasing pressure on Republicans to let members go on record in a roll-call vote.
Separately, a small group of rank-and-file Democrats was plotting on its own. Just before the week’s first series of votes Tuesday evening, as lawmakers were flying back to Washington from their districts, Clark hosted a meeting in her office to brainstorm ways to force a vote.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici via AP
Larson, whose Connecticut district is near the Sandy Hook elementary school where 20 children were shot to death in 2012, helped drive the conversation. About 12 to 15 people showed, a source present said, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)
“We wanted to make sure the House couldn’t proceed until we got a vote,” said one Democratic source.
Democratic leaders caught wind of the meeting and approved the plan but gave one bit of advice: Go big. If you pursue such an overt demonstration, leaders said, according to one Democratic leader, “seize the opportunity” and make sure it succeeded by tapping a big name to lead the protest.
The group’s choice for leader was an easy one: Civil rights leader John Lewis, who decades ago protested racial inequality during his own sit-ins in the South.
Clark and Larson asked him to take the lead. Lewis accepted, later holding another meeting in his office Tuesday night to finalize their plans.
Some were a bit concerned about the timing. One Democratic aide told Politico he was worried that the sit-in happening on the day that Clinton came to Capitol Hill would look staged and coordinated, when the effort began organically among rank-and-file lawmakers.
But with the House scheduled to adjourn on Friday for recess, it was now or never.
On Wednesday, just before Clinton arrived to meet with Democrats and as Larson went to speak to the parliamentarian, Pelosi stood up at a conference meeting to rally the troops.
“Many of you have said that we cannot have another moment of silence without action to follow. These moments of silence have almost become a moment of denial because it’s a denial of what we need to do,” Pelosi said. “Now, many of you have said, we want to be disruptive, we want to be dilatory, we want to make sure the public knows that there is an opportunity to get this done. This isn’t about politics, it’s not about elections, it’s not about campaigns. It’s much bigger than that.”
John Bresnahan contributed to this report.Why
While working on a new class loading system for SmaliVM, I needed to understand exactly how DalvikVM handles the case of a DEX file including a system / framework class such as Ljava/lang/Object;. I’d originally assumed, naively, in retrospect, that class files in a DEX file should take precedence. Thinking about this for a half second, I have no idea what the hell I was thinking. That would be stupid.
If Dalvik let apps redefine framework classes, it has huge security implications. Sure, each app runs it its own zygote-spawned sandbox, but what if somewhere, somehow, my malicious app’s DEX file was loaded by an app with system or root access? I could just backdoor Ljava/lang/Object;. Even if that’s not possible, I’m sure I could think of something nefarious if you gave me the ability to backdoor any class.
Well, derp, so now I have to rewrite part of Simplify and (hopefully) fix some tests. I might as well know exactly how it fails and document it for other researchers, right?
How
First, I created two small Smali files.
smali/hello.smali:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.class public LHelloWorld;.super Ljava/lang/Object;.method public static main([ Ljava/lang/String; )V.locals 2 sget-object v0, Ljava/lang/System; ->out: Ljava/io/PrintStream; const-string v1, "hello,world!" invoke-virtual {v0, v1}, Ljava/io/PrintStream; ->println( Ljava/lang/String; )V return-void.end method
The purpose of this is just to provide a main(String[]) method and to have Object as a super.
smali/object.smali:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11.class Ljava/lang/Object;.method public static <clinit>()V.locals 2 sget-object v0, Ljava/lang/System; ->out: Ljava/io/PrintStream; const-string v1, "crazyballs" invoke-virtual {v0, v1}, Ljava/io/PrintStream; ->println( Ljava/lang/String; )V return-void.end method
This is the real test. If I can overwrite framework classes, I should get a lot of errors, duh, but not before <clinit> prints out something witty.
After that, it was just packing it up and shoving it onto an emulator:
1 2 3 4 $ smali smali -o classes.dex $ zip hello.zip classes.dex adding: classes.dex (deflated 47%) $ adb push hello.zip /data/ local
I’ll also wanted to see the error explosions in the logs. You’d be surprised how many people have an app crash or something and don’t bother looking at the logs. monitor is your friend. It usually has bad news, and confuses Eclipse and IntelliJ if it’s running, but at least it’s honest.
1 $ monitor & disown
Finally, just invoke dalvikvm with our ZIP as the classpath:
1 2 3 4 5 $ adb shell root@android:/ root@android:/data/ local hello,world! root@android:/data/ local
No "crazyballs", so I guess my hunch was right. I wonder what the error looked like?
1 2 3 4 5 6 12-21 11:07:22.035: D/dalvikvm(1065): DexOpt: --- BEGIN 'hello.zip' (bootstrap=0) --- 12-21 11:07:22.095: D/dalvikvm(1066): DexOpt: 'Ljava/lang/Object;' has an earlier definition; blocking out 12-21 11:07:22.095: D/dalvikvm(1066): DexOpt: not verifying/optimizing 'Ljava/lang/Object;': multiple definitions 12-21 11:07:22.115: D/dalvikvm(1066): DexOpt: load 14ms, verify+opt 11ms, 83668 bytes 12-21 11:07:22.115: D/dalvikvm(1065): DexOpt: --- END 'hello.zip' (success) --- 12-21 11:07:22.115: D/dalvikvm(1065): DEX prep 'hello.zip': unzip in 2ms, rewrite 75ms
If you read between the lines, the actual error message is “has an earlier definition; blocking out (idiot)”.The hills of West Virginia are always nice to look at. In summer, these geologic wonders are attractive in a way that needs no explanation.
But in winter, when the temperature drops, and a thin blanket of snow covers the land, and the horizon fades into whiteness, and the wind dies down, and large, octangular clumps of crystallized water drift in the air like drunken moths, the hills of West Virginia are beautiful in a way that demands further clarification.
Jesse Wright took all but one of the photos below on January 29, 2017 during the Morgantown Mountain Goats weekly disc golf league at Dorsey’s Knob Park in West Virginia. He took the second to last photo one week prior. Jesse’s photos go a long way in clarifying the beauty of West Virginia, but they also reveal the dual nature of light and the naked fact that darkness is a recurrent and sometimes persistent condition. Check out more of Jesse’s photography at West Virginia Disc Golf.
“I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?” ― Ernest Hemingway
Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to like and follow Parked on Facebook.
~~~Image caption The Bond Super Puma came down off Peterhead in 2009
A Super Puma helicopter was signed off as being fit for service the day before it crashed with the loss of 16 lives, a fatal accident inquiry has heard.
The Bond helicopter came down in the North Sea in April 2009.
The technical log showed an engineer signed the aircraft off as fit for service the day before the crash.
The inquiry in Aberdeen has already heard that a fault in the gearbox had been found a few days earlier, but the decision was taken not to repair it.
Bond's former director of engineering James Gilmour said he was not aware that inspections had been ordered on the gearbox in the days before crash.
He said: "That's day-to-day hangar work. I don't get involved down to that level."
The inquiry, which is being held in Aberdeen Town House, is expected to last several weeks.
An Air Accidents Investigation Branch report blamed a catastrophic gear box failure for the crash, which happened 12 miles off Peterhead and left no survivors.
The two crew who died were Capt Paul Burnham, 31, of Methlick, Aberdeenshire, and co-pilot Richard Menzies, 24, of Droitwich Spa, who worked for Bond Offshore Helicopters.
The KCA Deutag employees killed were Brian Barkley, 30, of Aberdeen; Vernon Elrick, 41, of Aberdeen; Leslie Taylor, 41, of Kintore, Aberdeenshire; Nairn Ferrier, 40, of Dundee; Gareth Hughes, 53, of Angus; David Rae, 63, of Dumfries; Raymond Doyle, 57, of Cumbernauld; James John Edwards, 33, of Liverpool; Nolan Goble, 34, of Norwich, and Mihails Zuravskis, 39, of Latvia.
The other victims were James Costello, 24, of Aberdeen, who was contracted to Production Services Network (PSN); Alex Dallas, 62, of Aberdeen, who worked for Sparrows Offshore Services; Warren Mitchell, 38, of Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, who worked for Weatherford UK; and Stuart Wood, 27, of Aberdeen, who worked for Expro North Sea Ltd.Uber, the California-based ride service that has upended the taxi cab industry in just a short few years, was dealt a major blow to its business model this week, one that could have major financial consequences for similar startups.
The California Labor Commissioner’s Office has ruled that Uber must consider San Francisco Uber driver Barbara Ann Berwick an employee. The ruling stems from a claim Ms. Berwick made for about $4,000 in unpaid wages and expenses while working with Uber over two months. The ruling came down earlier this month and was first reported by Reuters Wednesday morning. Uber is appealing the decision, which would only apply to drivers in California. If it sticks, however, and if other states follow suit, it would be a huge financial blow. Since its launch in 2009, the company has grown at a staggering rate. It now operates in 58 countries and at least 300 cities and has accumulated $2.8 billion in venture capital funding (the company’s valuation is approximately $40 billion). Its invasion of territory long occupied by traditional, city-regulated taxicab services has been swift; in March, the number of Uber cars on New York City streets surpassed that of the city’s iconic yellow taxis for the first time.
The company’s virtually nonexistent operating costs are a major contributor, making expansion easy and functioning as a strong selling point for financial backers. Uber counts just 1,000 employees at its San Francisco home base; the 167,000-plus drivers operating under the Uber name worldwide are treated as independent contractors – they supply their own vehicles, set their own hours, and collect their own fares, and Uber acts as the middle man, connecting them with riders and collecting a commission.
But the Labor Commissioner’s Office argued that Uber’s involvement in “every aspect of the operation,” including handing down specific parameters for the tools the drivers use and terminating their access to the platform if their user ratings fall too low, represents an employer-appropriate level of control. Furthermore, it said, without drivers like Berwick, there would be no Uber.
"Defendants [Uber] are in the business to provide transportation services to passengers. Plaintiff did the actual transporting of those passengers," the ruling reads."In light of the above," the ruling continued, "[Berwick] was [Uber]'s employee."
The employment status of Uber’s drivers has been a thorny issue since early in the company’s run, and it hasn’t let up. In the past, the company argued that the arrangement absolved the platform of liability when drivers get involved in accidents or commit crimes. Several drivers for both Uber and its competitor, Lyft, have filed lawsuits seeking compensation for damages incurred on the job. Last month, Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity, a state agency, ruled in favor of a Miami driver who filed for unemployment when his SUV was hit on the job and taken out of commission, deciding that he qualified as an employee for Uber and was thus entitled to jobless benefits.
“The relevant inquiry is how much control Uber has over its drivers while they are on duty for Uber,” Judge Edward Chen ruled in that case, echoing the California board’s reasoning. “The fact that some drivers are only on-duty irregularly says little about the level of control Uber can exercise over them when they do report to work.”
Such decisions could inform the future of a growing sector of the US economy. A number of app-based startups, including Flipkart, TaskRabbit, and many more, have a similar structure to Uber, acting as a middle man for users to connect and exchange services. Funding for such startups is big business; venture capital firms have poured $9.4 billion in funding to “on-demand" businesses like Uber since 2010, according to The New York Times.
Even beyond the tech world, contract work in general is on the rise: according to a recent Census Bureau report, the US economy has added 4 million “zero employer” businesses over the past decade, as more people move into the type of flexible freelance work that Uber offers.
But labor advocates argue that the businesses that facilitate much of this work have found a legal way to pay workers as little as possible while reaping the bulk of the profits themselves. "The euphemism is the ‘share economy.’ A more accurate |
.[172]
The Northern Tower with the library where Smith found the Clement letter.
In 1995, Andrew H. Criddle made a statistical study of Clement's letter to Theodore with the help of Otto Stählin's concordance of the writings of Clement.[118][173] According to Criddle, the letter had too many hapax legomena, words used only once before by Clement, in comparison to words never before used by Clement, and Criddle argued that this indicates that a forger had “brought together more rare words and phrases” found in the authentic writings of Clement than Clement would have used.[174] The study has been criticized for among other things that it focuses on “Clement’s least favourite words” and for the methodology itself, which turns out to be “unreliable in determining authorship”.[175] When tested on Shakespeare’s writings only three out of seven poems were correctly identified.[176][177][n]
The Mystery of Mar Saba [ edit ]
In 2001, Philip Jenkins drew attention to a, at the time, popular novel by James H. Hunter entitled The Mystery of Mar Saba, that first appeared in 1940.[179] Jensen saw unusual parallels to Clement’s letter to Theodore and Smith’s description of his discovery in 1958,[180] but did not explicitly state that the novel inspired Smith to forge the text.[181] Later Robert M. Price,[182] Francis Watson[183] and Craig A. Evans[184] developed the theory that Morton Smith would have been inspired by this novel to forge the letter. This assumption has been contested by among others Scott G. Brown, who writes that apart from “a scholar discovering a previously unknown ancient Christian manuscript at Mar Saba, there are few parallels”[185][o] – and in a rebuttal to Evans, he and Allan J. Pantuck find the alleged parallel between the Scotland Yard detective Lord Moreton's last name and Morton Smith's first name puzzling, since Morton Smith got his name long before the novel was written.[187]
Chiasms in Mark [ edit ]
In 2003, John Dart proposed a complex theory of ‘chiasms’ (or ‘chiasmus’) running through the Gospel of Mark – a type of literary device he finds in the text.[188] “He recovers a formal structure to original Mark containing five major chiastic spans framed by a prologue and a conclusion.”[189] According to Dart, his analysis supports the authenticity of Secret Mark.[189]
Stalemate in the academy [ edit ]
[190] who at the time thought Smith might or might not have forged the letter,[191][192] and that if it is a modern forgery, it would be “one of the greatest works of scholarship of the twentieth century”.[162] Bart D. Ehrman, who in 2003 wrote that “the vast majority of scholars have accepted the authenticity of the” Clement letter,who at the time thought Smith might or might not have forged the letter,and that if it is a modern forgery, it would be “one of the greatest works of scholarship of the twentieth century”.
The fact that, for many years, no other scholars besides Smith were known to have seen the manuscript contributed to the suspicions of forgery. This dissipated with the publication of color photographs in 2000,[75] and the revelation in 2003 that Guy Stroumsa and several others had viewed the manuscript in 1976.[61][14] In response to the idea that Smith had kept other scholars from inspecting the manuscript, Scott G. Brown noted that he was in no position to do so.[14] The manuscript was still where Smith had left it when Stroumsa and company found it eighteen years later,[61] and it did not disappear until many years after its relocation to Jerusalem and its separation from the book.[14] Charles Hedrick says that if anyone is to be blamed for the loss of the manuscript, it is the “[o]fficials of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem”, as it was lost while it was in their custody.[16]
In 2003 Charles Hedrick expressed frustration over the stalemate in the academy over the text's authenticity,[34] although the Clementine scholars in the main had accepted the authenticity of the letter.[26] And the same year Bart Ehrman stated that the situation still was the same as it was when Smith had summarized it in 1982, namely that a majority of scholars considered the letter to be authentic, “and probably a somewhat smaller majority agreed that the quotations of Secret Mark actually derived from a version of Mark.”[28][190]
The two camps could be illustrated, on the one hand by Larry Hurtado, who thinks it is “inadvisable to rest too much on Secret Mark” as the letter “that quotes it might be a forgery” and even if it is genuine, Secret Mark “may be at most an ancient but secondary edition of Mark produced in the second century by some group seeking to promote its own esoteric interests”,[193] or Francis Watson, who hopes and expects that Secret Mark will be increasingly ignored by scholars to avoid “that their work will be corrupted by association with it”,[194] and on the other hand by Marvin Meyer, who assumes the letter to be authentic and in several articles, beginning in 1983,[195] used Secret Mark in his reconstructions, especially regarding the young man (neaniskos) “as a model of discipleship”,[34][158] or Eckhard Rau, who argues that as long as a physical examination of the manuscript is not possible and no new arguments against authenticity can be put forward, it is, although not without risk, judicious to interpret the text as originating from the circle of Clement of Alexandria.[196]
2005 to the present [ edit ]
The debate intensified with the publication of three new books.[197] Scott G. Brown's revised doctoral dissertation Mark’s Other Gospel from 2005,[198][199] was the first monograph that dealt only with Secret Mark since Smith's books in 1973.[55][58][66] Brown argued that both the letter and Secret Mark were authentic.[200] The same year Stephen C. Carlson published The Gospel Hoax[201] in which he spells out his case that Morton Smith, himself, was both the author and the scribe of the Mar Saba manuscript.[200] And in 2007, musicologist Peter Jeffery published The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, in which he accuses Morton Smith of having forged the letter.[202]
Mark’s Other Gospel [ edit ]
In Mark’s Other Gospel (2005),[198] Scott G. Brown challenged “all previous statements and arguments made against the letter’s authenticity”[200] and he criticized those scholars saying that the letter was forged for not offering proof for their claims,[203] and for not making a distinction between the letter and Smith's own interpretation of it.[66] Brown claimed that Smith could not have forged the letter since he did not comprehend it “well enough to have composed it.”[204] Brown also criticized the pastiche theory, according to which Secret Mark would be created from a patchwork of phrases from especially the Synoptic Gospels, for being speculative, uncontrollable and “unrealistically complicated”.[205] Most parallels between Secret Mark and Matthew and Luke are, according to Brown, “vague, trivial, or formulaic”.[206] The only close parallels are to canonical Mark, but a characteristic of Mark is “repetition of exact phrases”,[207] and Brown finds nothing suspicious in the fact that a longer version of the Gospel of Mark contains “Markan phrases and story elements”.[208] He also explored several Markan literary characteristics in Secret Mark, such as verbal echoes, intercalations and framing stories, and came to the conclusion that the author of the Secret Gospel of Mark “wrote so much like Mark that he could very well be Mark himself”,[200] that is, whoever “wrote the canonical gospel.”[209]
The Gospel Hoax [ edit ]
In The Gospel Hoax (2005)[201] Stephen C. Carlson argued that Clement's letter to Theodore is a forgery and only Morton Smith could have forged it, as he had the “means, motive, and opportunity” to do so.[210] Carlson claimed to have identified concealed jokes left by Smith in the letter which according to him showed that Smith created the letter as a hoax.[210] He especially identified two: 1) a reference to salt that “loses its savor”, according to Carlson by being mixed with an adulterant, and that presupposes free-flowing salt which in turn is produced with the help of an anti-caking agent, “a modern invention” by an employee of the Morton Salt Company – a clue left by Morton Smith pointing to himself;[211][66] and 2) that Smith would have identified the handwriting of the Clement letter as done by himself in the twentieth century “by forging the same eighteenth-century handwriting in another book and falsely attributing that writing to a pseudonymous twentieth-century individual named ’M. Madiotes’ [Μ. Μαδιότης], whose name is a cipher pointing to Smith himself.”[212] The M would stand for Morton, and Madiotes would be derived from the Greek verb μαδω (madō) meaning both “to lose hair” and figuratively “to swindle” – and the bald swindler would be the balding Morton Smith.[213][214] When Carlson examined the printed reproductions of the letter found in Smith's scholarly book,[55] he said he noted a “forger’s tremor.”[215] Thus, according to Carlson the letters had not actually been written at all, but drawn with shaky pen lines and with lifts of the pen in the middle of strokes.[216] Many scholars became convinced by Carlson's book that the letter was a modern forgery and some who previously defended Smith changed their position.[p] Craig A. Evans, for instance, came to think that “the Clementine letter and the quotations of Secret Mark embedded within it constitute a modern hoax, and Morton Smith almost certainly is the hoaxer.”[218][219][66]
Ohio. The Morton Salt factory in Rittman
Yet these theories by Carlson have been, in their own turn, challenged by subsequent scholarly research, especially by Scott G. Brown in numerous articles.[220][221][222][223][224] Brown writes that Carlson's Morton Salt Company clue “is one long sequence of mistakes” and that “the letter nowhere refers to salt being mixed with anything” – only “the true things” are mixed.[225] He also says that salt can be mixed without being free-flowing with the help of mortar and pestle,[226] an objection that gets support from Kyle Smith, who shows that according to ancient sources salt both could be and was “mixed and adulterated”.[227][228] Having got access to the uncropped original photograph, Allan Pantuck and Scott Brown also demonstrated that the script Carlson thought was written by M. Madiotes actually was written by someone else and was an eighteenth-century hand unrelated to Clement's letter to Theodore; that Smith did not contribute that handwriting to a contemporary named M. Madiotes (M. Μαδιότης), and that he afterwards corrected the name Madiotes to Madeotas (Μαδεότας) which may, in fact, be Modestos (Μοδέστος), a common name at Mar Saba.[229][230]
In particular, on the subject of the handwriting, Roger Viklund in collaboration with Timo S. Paananen has demonstrated that “all the signs of forgery Carlson unearthed in his analysis of the handwriting”, such as a “forger’s tremor”,[231] is only visible in the images Carlson used for his handwriting analysis. Carlson chose “to use the halftone reproductions found in [Smith’s book] Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark” where the images were printed with a line screen made of dots. If the “images are magnified to the degree necessary for forensic document examination” the dot matrix will be visible and the letters “will not appear smooth”.[232] Once the printed images Carlson used are replaced with the original photographs, also the signs of tremors disappear.[231]
On the first York Christian Apocrypha Symposium on the Secret Gospel of Mark held in Canada in 2011, very little of Carlson's evidence was discussed.[q][233] Even Pierluigi Piovanelli – who thinks Smith committed a sophisticated forgery[234] – writes that the fact that “the majority of Carlson’s claims” have been convincingly dismissed by Brown and Pantuck[235] and that no “clearly identifiable ‘joke’” is embedded within the letter, “tend to militate against Carlson’s overly simplistic hypothesis of a hoax.”[236]
The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled [ edit ]
In The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled (2007),[237] Peter Jeffery argued that “the letter reflected practices and theories of the twentieth century, not the second”,[202] and that Smith wrote Clement's letter to Theodore with the purpose of creating “the impression that Jesus practiced homosexuality”.[238] Jeffery reads the Secret Mark story as an extended double entendre that tells “a tale of ‘sexual preference’ that could only have been told by a twentieth-century Western author”[239] who inhabited “a homoerotic subculture in English universities”.[240][241] Jeffery's thesis has been contested by for example Scott G. Brown[242] and William V. Harris. Jeffery's two main arguments, those concerning liturgy and homoeroticism, are according to Harris unproductive and he writes that Jeffery “confuses the question of the authenticity of the text and the validity of Smith’s interpretations” by attacking Smith and his interpretation and not Secret Mark.[243] The homoerotic argument, according to which Smith would have written the document to portray Jesus as practicing homosexuality, does not work either. In his two books on Secret Mark, Smith “gives barely six lines to the subject”.[243] Jeffery's conclusion that the document is a forgery “because no young Judaean man” would approach “an older man for sex” is according to Harris also invalid, since there is “no such statement” in Secret Mark.[243]
Smith’s correspondence [ edit ]
In 2008, extensive correspondence between Smith and his teacher and lifelong friend Gershom Scholem was published, where they for decades discuss Clement's letter to Theodore and Secret Mark.[244] The book's editor, Guy Stroumsa, argues that the “correspondence should provide sufficient evidence of his [i.e., Smith’s] intellectual honesty to anyone armed with common sense and lacking malice.”[42] He thinks it shows “Smith’s honesty”,[245] and that Smith could not have forged the Clement letter, for, in the words of Anthony Grafton, the “letters show him discussing the material with Scholem, over time, in ways that clearly reflect a process of discovery and reflection.”[21][246] Pierluigi Piovanelli has however contested Stroumsa's interpretation. He believes that the correspondence shows that Smith created an “extremely sophisticated forgery” to promote ideas he already held about Jesus as a magician.[234]
Smith’s beforehand knowledge [ edit ]
A number of scholars have argued that the salient elements of Secret Mark were themes of interest to Smith which he had studied before the discovery of the letter in 1958.[r][250] In other words, Smith would have forged a letter which supported ideas he already embraced.[251] Pierluigi Piovanelli is suspicious about the letter's authenticity as he thinks it is “the wrong document, at the wrong place, discovered by the wrong person, who was, moreover, in need of exactly that kind of new evidence to promote new, unconventional ideas”.[252] Craig Evans argues that Smith before the discovery had published three studies, in 1951,[253] 1955[254] and 1958,[255] in which he discussed and linked “(1) “the mystery of the kingdom of God” in Mark 4:11, (2) secrecy and initiation, (3) forbidden sexual, including homosexual, relationships and (4) Clement of Alexandria”.[256]
This hypothesis has been contested mainly by Brown and Pantuck. First, they object to the idea that something sexual is even said to take place between Jesus and the young man in Secret Mark, and if that is the case, then there are no forbidden sexual relations in the Secret Mark story.[257] Second, they challenge the idea that Smith made the links Evans and others claim he did. They argue that Smith, in his doctoral dissertation from 1951,[253] did not link more than two of the elements – the mystery of the kingdom of God to secret teachings. The forbidden sexual relations is just one among several things the Tannaim said should be discussed in secret.[258][259] Further, they claim that Smith in his 1955 article[254] also only linked the mystery of the kingdom of God to secret teachings.[260] And in the third example, an article Smith wrote in 1958,[255] he only “mentioned Clement and his Stromateis as examples of secret teaching”.[261][262] Brown and Pantuck consider it to be common knowledge among scholars of Christianity and Judaism that Clement and Mark 4:11 deal with secret teachings.[261]
Handwriting experts and Smith’s ability [ edit ]
The November/December 2009 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR 35:06) features a selection of articles dedicated to the Secret Gospel of Mark. Charles W. Hedrick wrote an introduction to the subject,[263] and both Hershel Shanks[228] and Helmut Koester[264] wrote articles in support of the letter's authenticity. Since the three pro-forgery scholars who were contacted declined to participate,[s] Shanks had to make the argument for forgery himself.[265] Helmut Koester writes that Morton Smith “was not a good form-critical scholar” and that it “would have been completely beyond his ability to forge a text that, in terms of form-criticism, is a perfect older form of the same story as appears in John 11 as the raising of Lazarus.”[266] In 1963 Koester and Smith met several hours a day for a week to discuss Secret Mark. Koester then realized that Smith really struggled to understand the text and to decipher the handwriting. Koester writes: “Obviously, a forger would not have had the problems that Morton was struggling with. Or Morton Smith was an accomplished actor and I a complete fool.”[266]
In late 2009, Biblical Archaeology Review commissioned two Greek handwriting experts to evaluate “whether the handwriting of the Clement letter is in an authentic 18th-century Greek script” and whether Morton Smith could have written it.[t] They had at their disposal high-resolution scans of the photographs of the Clement letter and known samples of Morton Smith's English and Greek handwriting from 1951 to 1984.[267]
Venetia Anastasopoulou, a questioned document examiner and expert witness with experience in many Greek court cases,[u] noticed three very different writings. Clement's letter, in her opinion, was written skillfully with “freedom, spontaneity and artistic flair” by a trained scribe who could effectively express his thoughts.[268] Likewise was Smith's English writing done “spontaneous and unconstrained, with a very good rhythm.”[269] Smith's Greek writing, though, was “like that of a school student” who is unfamiliarized in Greek writing and unable “to use it freely” with ease.[270] Anastasopoulou concluded that in her professional opinion, Morton Smith with high probability could not have produced the handwriting of the Clement letter.[271] She further explained, contrary to Carlson's assertion, that the letter did not have any of the typical signs of forgery, such as “lack of natural variations” appearing to be drawn or having “poor line quality”, and that when a large document, such as this letter by Clement, is consistent throughout, “we have a first indication of genuineness”.[v]
However, Agamemnon Tselikas, a distinguished Greek paleographer[w] and thus a specialist in deciding when a particular text was written and in what school this way of writing was taught, thought the letter was a forgery. He noticed some letters with “completely foreign or strange and irregular forms”. Contrary to Anastasopoulou's judgment, he thought some lines were non-continuous and that the hand of the scribe was not moving spontaneously.[x] He stated that the writing of the letter is an imitation of eighteenth-century Greek script and that the most likely forger was either Smith or someone in Smith's employ.[2] Tselikas suggests that Smith, as a model for the handwriting, could have used four eighteenth-century manuscripts from the Thematon monastery he visited in 1951.[y][272] Allan Pantuck could though demonstrate that Smith never took any photographs of these manuscripts and could consequently not have used them as models.[273][274] Since, according to Anastasopoulou's conclusion, the letter is written by a trained scribe with a skill that surpasses Smith's ability, in the words of Michael Kok, “the conspiracy theory must grow to include an accomplice with training in eighteenth-century Greek paleography”.[275]
Having surveyed the archives of Smith's papers and correspondence, Allan Pantuck comes to the conclusion that Smith was not capable of forging the letter; that his Greek was not good enough to compose a letter in Clement's thought and style and that he lacked the skills needed to imitate a difficult Greek 18th-century handwriting.[276] Roy Kotansky, who worked with Smith on translating Greek, says that although Smith's Greek was very good, it “was not that of a true papyrologist (or philologist)”. According to Kotansky, Smith “certainly could not have produced either the Greek cursive script of the Mar Saba manuscript, nor its grammatical text” and writes that few are “up to this sort of task”;[277] which, if the letter is forged, would be “one of the greatest works of scholarship of the twentieth century”, according to Bart Ehrman.[z]
Scott G. Brown and Eckhard Rau argue that Smith's interpretation of the longer passage from Secret Mark cannot be reconciled with its content,[278][279] and Rau thinks that if Smith really would have forged the letter, he should have been able to make it more suitable for his own theories.[278] Michael Kok thinks that the “Achilles’ heel of the forgery hypothesis” is that Smith seemingly did not have the necessary skills to forge the letter.[280]
Interpretation [ edit ]
Smith’s theories about the historical Jesus [ edit ]
Smith thought that the scene in which Jesus taught the young man “the mystery of the kingdom of God” at night, depicted an initiation rite of baptism which Jesus offered his closest disciples.[281][282] In this baptismal rite “the initiate united with Jesus’ spirit” in a hallucinatory experience, and then they “ascended mystically to the heavens.” The disciple would be set free from the Mosaic Law and they would both become libertines.[283] The libertinism of Jesus was then later suppressed by James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul.[105][284] The idea that “Jesus was a libertine who performed a hypnotic rite of” illusory ascent to the heavens,[285][286] not only seemed far-fetched but also upset many scholars,[285][287] who could not envision that Jesus would be portrayed in such a way in a trustworthy ancient text.[288] Scott Brown argues though that Smith's usage of the term libertine did not mean sexual libertinism, but freethinking in matters of religion, and that it refers to Jews and Christians who chose not to keep the Mosaic Law.[283] In each of his books on Secret Mark, Smith made one passing suggestion that Jesus and the disciples might have united also physically in this rite,[289][290] but he thought that the essential thing was that the disciples were possessed by Jesus’ spirit”.[aa] Smith acknowledged that there is no way to know if this libertinism can be traced as far back as Jesus.[291][ab]
In his later work, Morton Smith increasingly came to see the historical Jesus as practicing some type of magical rituals and hypnotism, thus explaining various healings of demoniacs in the gospels.[293] Smith carefully explored for any traces of a “libertine tradition” in early Christianity and in the New Testament.[294] Yet there's very little in the Mar Saba manuscript to give backing to any of this. This is illustrated by the fact that in his later book, Jesus the Magician, Smith devoted only 12 lines to the Mar Saba manuscript,[295] and never suggested “that Jesus engaged in sexual libertinism”.[296]
Lacunae and continuity [ edit ]
The two excerpts from Secret Mark suggest resolutions to some puzzling passages in the canonical Mark.
The young man in the linen cloth [ edit ]
The flight of the naked young man in Mark 14:51–52; painting by Antonio da Correggio c. 1522.
In Mark 14:51–52, a young man (Greek: νεανίσκος, neaniskos) in a linen cloth (Greek: σινδόνα, sindona) is seized during Jesus’ arrest, but he escapes at the cost of his clothing. This passage seems to have little to do with the rest of the narrative, and it has given cause to various interpretations. Sometimes it is suggested that the young man is Mark himself.[297][298][ac] However, the same Greek words (neaniskos and sindona) are also used in Secret Mark. Several scholars, such as Robert Grant and Robert Gundry, suggest that Secret Mark was created based on Mark 14:51, 16:5 and other passages and that this would explain the similarities.[ad] Other scholars, such as Helmut Koester[153] and J. D. Crossan,[303] argue that the canonical Mark is a revision of Secret Mark, where either an ancient editor could have deleted an earlier encounter of Jesus with such a young man in a cloth, then added this incident also involving a young man during Jesus’ arrest,[34] or Secret Mark told other coherent stories, including that of a young man. And although some of it was removed (by the original author or by someone else) in the making of canonical Mark, some remnants, such as that of the fleeing naked young man, were left.[36][155][304]
Marvin Meyer sees the young man in Secret Mark as a paradigmatic disciple that “functions as a literary rather than a historical figure.”[305] The young man (neaniskos) wears only “a linen cloth” (sindona) “over his naked body”.[18] This is reminiscent of Mark 14:51–52, where, in the garden of Gethsemane, an unnamed young man (neaniskos) who is wearing nothing but a linen cloth (sindona) about his body is said to follow Jesus, and as they seize him, he runs away naked, leaving his linen cloth behind.[306] The word sindōn is also found in Mark 15:46 where it refers to Jesus’ burial wrapping.[307][308] And in Mark 16:5 a neaniskos (young man) in a white robe, who in Mark does not seem to function as an angel,[ae] is sitting in the empty tomb when the women arrive to anoint Jesus’ body.[36][309]
Miles Fowler suggests that the naked fleeing youth in Mark 14:51–52, the youth in the tomb of Jesus in Mark 16:5 and the youth Jesus raises from the dead in Secret Mark are the same youth; but that he also appears as the rich (and in the parallel account in Matthew 19:20, “young”) man in Mark 10:17–22, whom Jesus loves and urges to give all his possessions to the poor and join him.[36] This young man is furthermore by some scholars identified as both Lazarus (due to the similarities between Secret Mark 1 and John 11) and the beloved disciple (due to the fact that Jesus in Secret Mark 2 is said to have loved the youth, and that in the gospels he is said to have loved only the three siblings Martha, Mary and Lazarus (Joh 11:5), the rich man (Mark 10:22) and the beloved disciple).[af][311] Schenke interprets the scene of the fleeing youth in Gethsemane (Mark 14:51–52) as a symbolic story in which the youth is not human but rather a shadow, a symbol, an ideal disciple. He sees the reappearing youth as a spiritual double of Jesus and the stripping of the body as a symbol of the soul being naked.[312]
The road from Jericho into the village of Bethany on the Mount of Olives about 3 kilometers from Jerusalem, in a photo from 1913. Here Jesus, according to John 11, rose Lazarus from the dead. This, however, is another Bethany than the one where Jesus raises the young man in Secret Mark.
Meyer finds a subplot, or scenes or vignettes, “in Secret Mark that is present in only a truncated form in canonical Mark”, about a young man as a symbol of discipleship who follows Jesus throughout the gospel story. The first trace of this young man is found in the story of the rich man in Mark 10:17–22 whom Jesus loves and “who is a candidate for discipleship”; the second is the story of the young man in the first Secret Mark passage (after Mark 10:34) whom Jesus raises from the dead and teaches the mystery of the kingdom of God and who loves Jesus; the third is found in the second Secret Mark passage (at Mark 10:46) in which Jesus rejects Salome and the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother; the fourth is in the story of the escaping naked young man in Gethsemane (Mark 14:51–52); and the fifth is found in the story of the young man in a white robe inside the empty tomb, a youth who informs Salome and the other women that Jesus has risen (Mark 16:1–8).[313] In this scenario, a once-coherent story in Secret Mark would, after much of the elements had been removed, form an incoherent story in canonical Mark with only embedded echoes of the story present.[36]
Lacuna in the trip to Jericho [ edit ]
The second excerpt from Secret Mark fills in an apparent lacuna in Mark 10:46: “They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside.” Morton Smith shows that “one of Mark’s favorite formulas” is to say that Jesus comes to a certain place, but “in all of these except 3.20 and 10.46 it is followed by an account of some event which occurred in the place entered” before he leaves the place.[314] Due to this apparent gap in the story, there has been speculation that the information about what happened in Jericho has been omitted.[315][316] According to Robert Gundry, the fact that Jesus cures the blind Bartimaeus on the way from Jericho justifies that Mark said that Jesus came to Jericho without saying that he did anything there. As a parallel, Gundry refers to Mark 7:31 where Jesus “returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee”.[317] However, here Jesus is never said to have entered Sidon, and it is possible that this is an amalgamation of several introductory notices.[318]
With the addition from Secret Mark, the gap in the story would be solved: “They came to Jericho, and the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho …”[319] The fact that the text becomes more comprehensible with the addition from Secret Mark,[37] plus the fact that Salome is mentioned (and since she was “popular in heretical circles”, the sentence could have been abbreviated for that reason), indicates that Secret Mark was written first and that the canonical Gospel of Mark became the result of certain elements, such as this, being removed.[320] Crossan thinks that this shows that “Mark 10:46 is a condensed and dependent version of” the Secret Mark sentence.[321] Others argue that it would be expected that someone later would want to fill in the obvious gaps that occur in the Gospel of Mark.[322]
Relation to the Gospel of John [ edit ]
Map of Ancient Palestine. Jesus is said to have left Judea and crossed the Jordan, walked south through Peraea, raised the youth in Bethany, once more have crossed the Jordan and gone to Jericho.
The raising of Lazarus in John and of the young man in Secret Mark [ edit ]
The resurrection of the young man by Jesus in Secret Mark bears such clear similarities to the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John (11:1–44) that it can be seen as another version.[323] But although there are striking parallels between these two stories,[36] there are also “numerous, often pointless, contradictions.”[324] If the two verses in Mark preceding Secret Mark are included, both stories tell us that the disciples are apprehensive as they fear Jesus’ arrest. In each story it is the sister whose brother just died who approaches Jesus on the road and asks his help; she shows Jesus the tomb, which is in Bethany; the stone is removed, and Jesus raises the dead man who then comes out of the tomb.[325] In each story, the emphasis is upon the love between Jesus and this man,[23] and eventually, Jesus follows him to his home.[36] Each story occurs “at the same period in Jesus’ career”, as he has left Galilee and gone into Judea and then to Transjordan.[326][327]
Jesus’ route in Mark [ edit ]
With the quoted Secret Mark passages added to the Gospel of Mark, a story emerges in which Jesus on his way to Jerusalem leaves Galilee and walks into northern Judea, then crosses the Jordan River east into Peraea and walks south through Peraea on the eastern side of the Jordan, meets the rich man whom he urges to give all his possessions to the poor and follow him (Mark 10:17–22), comes to Bethany, still on the other side of Jordan, and raises the young man from the dead (Secret Mark 1). He then crosses the river Jordan again and continues west while rejecting James’ and John's request (Mark 10:35–45). He arrives at Jericho where he does not receive the three women (Mark 10:46 + Secret Mark 2) and then leaves Jericho to meet the blind Bartimaeus and give him back his sight.[328]
Two Bethanys [ edit ]
In each story, the raising of the dead man takes place in Bethany.[329] In the Gospel of John (10:40) Jesus is at “the place where John had been baptizing”, which in John 1:28 is said to be a place named “Bethany beyond the Jordan”, when Mary arrives and tells him that Lazarus is sick (John 11:1–3). Jesus follows her to another village called Bethany just outside of Jerusalem. In Secret Mark, the woman meets him at the same place, but he never travels to Bethany near Jerusalem. Instead, he just follows her to the young man since he already is in Bethany (beyond the Jordan).[330] In Secret Mark, the young man (Lazarus) and his sister (Mary) are not named, and their sister Martha does not even appear.[323]
Relations between the gospels [ edit ]
A number of scholars argue that the story in Secret Mark is based on the Gospel of John.[ag] Other scholars argue that the authors of Secret Mark and of the Gospel of John independently used a common source or built on a common tradition.[23] The fact that Secret Mark obviously refers to another Bethany than the one in the Gospel of John as the place for the miracle, and omits the names of the protagonists, and furthermore since there are no traces in Secret Mark of the rather extensive Johannine redaction,[23] or of other Johannine characteristics, including its language, militate against Secret Mark being based on the Gospel of John.[324][333][334][335] Michael Kok thinks that this also militates against the thesis that the Gospel of John depends on Secret Mark and that it indicates that they both are based either on “oral variants of the same underlying tradition”,[336] or on older written collections of miracle stories.[23] Koester thinks Secret Mark represents an earlier stage of development of the story.[23] Morton Smith tried to demonstrate that the resurrection story in Secret Mark does not contain any of the secondary traits found in the parallel story in John 11 and that the story in John 11 is more theologically developed. He concluded that the Secret Mark version of the story contains an older, independent, and more reliable witness to the oral tradition.[102][337][335]
Baptismal significance [ edit ]
Morton Smith saw the longer Secret Mark passage as a story of baptism.[ah][340] According to Smith “the mystery of the kingdom of God” that Jesus taught the young man, was in fact a magical rite which “involved a purificatory baptism”.[341][282] That this story depicts a baptism was in turn accepted by most scholars, also those otherwise critical to Smith's reconstructions.[340][342][343] And with the idea of the linen sheet as a baptismal garment followed the idea of nakedness and sex.[344]
But there has been some debate about this matter. For example, Scott G. Brown (while defending the authenticity of Secret Mark) disagrees with Smith that the scene is a reference to baptism. He thinks this is to profoundly misinterpret the text,[342] and he argues that if the story really had been about baptism, it would not have mentioned only teaching, but also water or disrobing and immersion.[340][345] He adds that “the young man’s linen sheet has baptismal connotations, but the text discourages every attempt to perceive Jesus literally baptizing him.”[346] Stephen Carlson agrees that Brown's reading is more plausible than Smith's.[347] The idea that Jesus practiced baptism is absent from the Synoptic Gospels, though it is introduced in the Gospel of John.[ai][ |
Boot this year as Nigeria beat Cameroon in the final. The Arsenal Ladies player also won the adidas Golden boot and adidas Golden ball at the 2014 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup.
Kim So Hyang – 19 years old
Korea DPR – Forward
The striker led Korea DPR to the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Papua New Guinea 2016 title, and was crowned adidas Silver Ball in the tournament. Actually, 2016 has been a year to remember for Korean football. The country won both youth tournaments in 2016, triumphing at the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup and in the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup this year!
Kim So Hyang scores her Hat Trick for Korea DPR to lead 5-1, Video: Eurosport, FIFA Women’s U-20 World Cup #U20WWC #womensfootball pic.twitter.com/DICwFEF0XT — WomensSoccerUnited (@WSUasa) 20 de novembro de 2016
Andressa Cavalari Machry – 21 years old
Brazil – Midfielder
Andressa or Andressinha (little Andressa) is a born leader. She was captain of the Brazilian youth national categories and has stood out so much in the senior WNT that she was hired by the Houston Dash in 2015. The midfielder has a good view of the game and her best quality are the mid-long distance shots. With the retirement of Formiga, the young player will have to assume an important role in the Brazilian WNT.
Stina Blackstenius – 20 years old
Sweden – Forward
Sweden forward Stina Blackstenius was crowned Bronze Boot at the 2016 FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup, Silver Medal with Sweden Women’s National team in Rio 2016 Olympic Games, 2016 Damallsvenskan champion with Linköping FC and Damallsvenskan’s second top scorer, behind only team-mate Pernille Harder. What a year for her!
Hina Sugita – 19 years old
Japan – Midfielder
The Japanese midfielder has won the adidas Golden Ball twice in her career! First at the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup Costa Rica 2014 and recently at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Papua New Guinea 2016. Keep an eye on her!
Tabitha Chawinga – 20 years old
Malawi – Forward
The Malawian footballer had an incredible performance in the Swedish Damallsvenskan season this year. She was nominated for two awards this season in Sweden: Best Forward and Most Valuable Player.
Chawinga scored 15 league goals in 22 matches, only behind Pernille Harder and Stina Blackstenius.
???? Fantastic season from the young and very talented Tabitha Chawinga. Will be interested to see if any big clubs come for her now. #Dam pic.twitter.com/q2LfKmqS0X — WoSo Comps (@WoSoComps) 31 de outubro de 2016
Sara Däbritz – 21 years old
Germany – Midfielder
The Bayern Munich player made the 10 women shortlist for The Best FIFA Women’s Player 2016 award and help to lead Bayern to their second consecutive Bundesliga championship as well as winning the Olympic gold medal in Rio with Germany.
Jessie Fleming – 18 years old
Canada – Midfielder
She is a member of the Canadian national team, having made her senior debut at age 15. Fleming won a bronze medal in Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
Caroline Graham Hansen – 21 years old
Norway – Forward
At age of 21, Caroline Graham Hansen is one of the key players of Norway women’s national team and Vfl Wolfsburg. Unfortunately, she was unlucky in season 2015/16, since she missed the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2015 and the 2015/16 UEFA Women’s Champions League final due to injury. I wish much healthy for Hansen this next season, so she can show all her potential.
Deyna Castellanos – 17 years old
Venezuela – Forward
The Venezuelan player is already a star. At the age of 12, she earned a spot on U-17 Venezuelan women’s soccer team. At the age of 14, Castellanos won the adidas Golden Boot – along with team-mate Gabriela Garcia – at the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup Costa Rica 2014. This year, the Venezuelan scored the goal of the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup Jordan 2016 tournament, collecting the adidas Bronze Ball and adidas Bronze Boot, becoming the leading goalscorer in the history of the U-17 Women’s World Cup. Castellanos also led her country to the 2016 South American U-17 Women’s Football Championship, scoring more than 10 goals throughout the entirety of the tournament.
Con este GOLAZO, Deyna Castellanos es ganadora del mejor gol del Mundial #Jordania2016 ¿quedaban dudas?? ¡Inmensa! pic.twitter.com/8K7wO4JspF — La Radio del Sur (@laradiodelsur) 1 de novembro de 2016
Ouleymata Sarr – 21 years old
France – Forward
Ouleymata Sarr is one of the best young french players. Tall and athletic, the striker has been standing out recently alongside players like Cristiane at PSG.
Caitlin Foord – 22 years old
Australia – Winger
The Matildas player Caitlin Foord was recently named Asian women’s player of the year. Foord became the youngest Australian woman to play at a World Cup in 2011, aged just 16 year-old. She currently plays for Sydney FC in the Australian W-League.
.@CaitlinFoord rattles the woodwork early with a this long distance effort #AUSvCHN On 7mate and Plus7 pic.twitter.com/QZNRxjA3zx — The Women’s Game (@TheWomensGame) 9 de março de 2016
Gabi Nunes – 19 years old
Brazil – Forward
The nineteen-year-old won the adidas Silver Boot at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Papua New Guinea 2016. She also was the top scorer of 2015 Brazilian female football championship and was in the top five of topscorer players in the 2016 season. She made her debut in the Brazilian senior national team last Sunday, playing against Russia in the International tournament of Manaus, under Emily Lima lidearship.
Beth Mead – 21 years old
England – Forward
Beth Mead is an English footballer who plays as a forward for FA WSL club Sunderland Ladies and the England national team. In 2015, she was named Vauxhall England Young Player of the Year, FA WSL 1 Players’ Player of the Year and FA WSL 1 Top Goalscorer.
Claire Lavogez – 22 years old
France – Midfielder
The midfielder plays for Olympique Lyonnais of the French Division 1 Féminine and France senior team. She won the adidas Bronze Ball at the 2014 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup. She is one of the most promising French players currently.
Caroline Weir – 21 years old
Scotland – Midfielder
Caroline Weir is a Scottish footballer who plays for Liverpool of the FA WSL and the Scotland women’s national team. She was named LFC Ladies Player of the Season this year and she scored 7 goals in 16 matches, only behind Aluko and Jane Ross in the FA WSL 1.
Thank you for reading, do you agree with this selection, is there anyone you would like to add?So, I have been hearing my friend Paul Lacava for the last few years talking about this Bend, Or. to Oakridge, Or. ride he’s been wanting to do. Its some big miles and some serious hills to cross over for a solo bike ride for a day. Paul is one of those guys that when he says he’s going to do something, he’s gonna fucking do it. I am very proud of him for pulling this off and I think he should be also. I asked him last week before he did it to do a write up and shoot some pics with his phone, well he did both and you get to read his version of the almighty one day solo adventure
It’s 2:30am on September 19th, 2011. A time that may normally reserved for last call at the pub, or at least a good night’s sleep. But not today. Instead it was a pre-dawn wakeup call and time to depart. Not sure if I was looking forward to this day, but I just couldn’t shake this idea for a little mountain bike ride that had been in works for over ten years time. The type of ride that only happens if you start really damn early and end late. Hopefully the time was right. If it wasn’t, I’d find out in more ways than one. Ideas like this usually come about after a bad bet or a bunch of shit talking after a proper epic. A “What if we…..?” type of moment. And it festers in the mind like a bad cold, until it just seems right to give it a go and put it to rest. This ride would combine some of the greatest trails that Oregon has to offer a mountain biker. Starting in the riding mecca of Bend, Oregon on the eastern flank of the Cascade Mountain Range, it would traverse some of the best trails in North America all the way across to the western slopes of the Willamette National Forest foothills, ending in arguably the best little town for all things two wheels and dirt, Oakridge. Various routes exist through this section of wilderness, some longer than others, but there is a clean and natural way to connect the dots between these two places normally reserved for a ride that ends where it started. It takes a little bit of imagination to think for a second that linking this route makes any sense at all. Attempts had been made to rope unsuspecting souls into this adventure, but alas, no takers emerged. Not sure just how long this day make take, I started off by myself with a bit more gear on my back than was comfortable. Contents included enough lights and batteries to last a morning and evening without daylight, all the standard emergency supplies, bivy blanket, spare clothing, a few thousand calories worth of food, most notably a few slices of pizza acquired from Bend’s local hotspot 10 Barrel Brewing the evening before.
My chosen route starts off on Bend’s fast and flowy Mrazek trail and winds about 14 miles upwards towards Broken Top mountain and Mt. Bachelor. Lots of bar hugging tree lined corners and dusty trail brought me to the high elevation Metolious Windigo Trail. A few pairs of eyes glimmering in the dark fortunately only ended being a few deer trying to sort out why the hell I was passing through their backyard. Up here, a touch of moisture combined with the open canopy and loamy surface of this section was making for some absolutely prime conditions. The fall rains hadn’t quite delivered the goods yet, but peak fall conditions were close at hand. After a few hours the trail opens up into some rocky meadows that met with the sunrise on what was looking like a fantastic day.
From here you get a ripping section of roosting corners and wide open sweepers that drop you down towards Mt. Bachelor and right about where most rides turn around back home on a big day. The Metolious Windigo Trail winds up and around the northern side of the mountain around to the southwest through some sandy washes and technical lava rock sections towards Lava Lake. About six hours into things I was able to re-supply some water at a local campground right before hitting the only road and pavement section of the ride. I’d have to traverse around some the Three Sisters Wilderness region on about 7 miles of the Cascade Lake Highway and a few miles of dirt roads to the southwest before winding back onto more remote singletrack.
Feeling good and making fast work of the trail, I made my way onto the Lemish Lake and Charnelton Lake trails en route to one of the best places to stage a good weekend of mountain biking, Waldo Lake. This was far more painful that I planned. A lot of blown down trees lined the Lemish Lake trail and the going was slow. Legs were starting to feel a burn and about fifty odd hike a bike sections didn’t help. Waldo Lake has is one of the clearest lakes in the world, and a good sized body of water surrounded by an amazing network of pristine trials of which it would take days to ride all of. This section of high elevation lakes and peaks sits between roughly 5,000 ft and 7,500 ft and takes until late summer to be free of snow melt. If a person wanted to do a relaxing two day bender of riding, this would be the prime place to stop for a nap, day, or week rest. But no time for an extended tour, I made my way onto part of the northern section of the lake, where I had pre-arranged to meet my dad for some extra supplies. Not sure just how stupid this ride was going to be, I’d planned a possible bail out here and grabbed some additional food and a fresh pair of shorts. Enter secret weapon #1 and #2: the bacon avocado sandwich, and a plate of lasagna. It was nice to have the support, and my dad is the guy who most likely made these types of days seem like a good idea. A seasoned long distance trail runner, he’d spent more than 24 hours on a run or two, and this day didn’t seem all that bad with that to put things in perspective. Nine hours and 70 miles into the day, I left for what would be by far the most difficult part of the route.
About four days prior I had acquired a new whip for the day’s ride. Spending most of my time on 6” travel trail bikes and 26” wheels, I knew I needed something a bit faster. Enter secret weapon #3: the 4” travel Anthem X 29er full suspension bike by Giant. I was no stranger to this bike, working as a sales rep for Giant (Shameless plug), but I’d never spent more than about an hour on this bike and was happy with the choice. A quick ride two days prior confirmed a great fit and with a few tweaks like adding a dropper seatpost and some wide bars made this ride feel like familiar territory. After all, there was over 100 miles of sweet singletrack to cover today, plenty of time to rally some choice sections of dirt! The next section was a ripping-fast smooth descent on Betty Lakes and Gold Lake trail as I made my way over to the hardest climb of the day, Mt. Fuji.
Mt. Fuji delivers a 1-2 hour granny gear climb that is so slow you nearly fall backwards on every rotation of the pedals. This was the moment that I realized moving on from Waldo Lake was rather committing, and once I got a bit further there would be no turning back. This 2’ wide loam filled staircase to heaven would take me up over the should of the mountain and drop off the backside to the most feared section of trail all day, Bunchgrass Ridge trail. After filling up another 100 oz bladder of water in my pack at a small pond at the start of the trial, you get the worst visual of the day. 85 miles in, on the far horizon you can see east over to the Three Sisters, Broken Top, and then barely discernable Mt. Bachelor and Bend another 30 miles beyond that, a reminder of how far I’d come.
Bunchgrass Ridge can best be described as Oregon’s most epic and raw piece of adventure. Having finally ridden the trail for the first time a month prior, I wasn’t really sure whether it’d be a good idea knowing what lay in store. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. The biggest challenge of this day would be that the most ridiculous and most remote section of trail lies at the end of the ride, but arguably the best as well. Remote, overgrown, rough as hell, this trail will deliver you to your grave. There is no support out here, no lifeline except yourself, and I’d not seen more than one person on the trail all day, and most certainly wouldn’t see more here. The trail winds west on a sprawling ridgeline that just seems to go on for eternity as the trail drops up and down the ridge in a sea of open meadows juxtaposed with the dying trees of an old burn and a carpet of bunchgrass.
More of a visual masterpiece than a fun section of trail, the upper portions of Bunchgrass require miles of hike a biking. Today would be reduced to more of a stumbling death march. Two steps forward, one step back. It turns out that a Garmin doesn’t really register your movement when you are travelling less than 1 mile per hour, and this as a sad reminder of how things were going at this point. However, I’d come prepared for this moment. Enter secret weapon #3: Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti. I’m not even sure what really happened during the next 83 minutes as this album progressed, but it didn’t really matter. Time had slowed to a near stop and I somehow made it past the top of the ridge and rolled into the next section of amazingly lush trail beneath an open canopy of huge Doug Fir.
Seconds turn into minutes, and the minutes turn into hours, and the climbing never ends. Bunchgrass trail incorporates approximately 4,000 ft of climbing a total descent of 8,000 ft as you finally fly down warp-speed foot-wide sections of super buff side slope down into Oakridge. The last light of day hits the west and the sun disappears completely during the final feet of downhill into town. Lights go back on. Hanging on by a thread, it all seems a blur at this point. I rarely have the opportunity to see both a sunrise and sunset in one day, let alone during the course of a single ride.
My unofficial goal was to make it to town before the Brewers Union Local 1080 pub closed up for the night. 8pm and the doors are still open and all the pieces had fallen together. A plate of sweet potato fries, a bacon cheeseburger, bowl of chili, and two imperial pints of great local IPA go down without a second to spare. It’s a good life. Over 110 miles of amazing trail, 12,000 ft of climbing, one mountain range traversed, this was a humbling experience, but I’m already looking forward to the next idea… -Paul LaCava
byAfter last Wednesday's game, I asked Dallas Cowboys left tackle Tyron Smith if he'd been aware, while he was making it, that his horse-collar tackle of New York Giants linebacker Michael Boley just as Boley was about to cross the goal line on his interception return was illegal. Smith said that indeed he had been aware of that, but that he didn't care, because it was worth it to keep Boley out of the end zone. The penalty, enforced at the 2-yard line, was only for 1 yard (half the distance to the goal line) and the Giants couldn't punch it in, so they settled for a field goal. Effectively, Smith's hustle and illegal tackle saved the Cowboys four points.
However, the NFL put the horse-collar rule in place in order to protect players from serious injury. And as a result, the NFL would very much like its players to care about the legality of such tackles before they make them. To that end, according to Fox Sports Southwest, the NFL is fining Smith $15,570 for the tackle of Boley.
It was clear after the game that Smith had no regrets about the play. And he is two years into a $12.5 million contract, so he can afford the fine money. The league's goal is to discourage him from doing it again, since the fine would be higher the next time. And while the odds of Smith having to or being able to make such a play again are slim, my sense is that, in the heat of the moment, he probably wouldn't be worrying about being fined.Australian mines top global investment list
Updated
Australian mines continue to rank as the world's top investments in terms of political risk, despite the looming introduction of the mining tax.
In its annual political risk assessment of the mining industry, global resources consulting firm Behre Dolbear placed Australia at the top of its 25-nation ranking, ahead of Canada, the US and Brazil.
Behre Dolbear chief executive Karr McCurdy says Australia has topped the list for several years.
Any investor concerns about the mining tax are mitigated by the quality of Australia's resources and the ease and transparency of approvals, Mr McCurdy says.
"There's no place better than Australia to put your investment dollars at work with respect to the underlying political, if you will, risk," he said.
And while Australia has led the way with the passage of the mining tax, Mr McCurdy says many other countries are considering similar taxes.
"I don't think you are going to see the sector shut down as a result," he said.
The survey examines how nations' political policies and business conditions promote investment growth in the mining sector.
It does not consider economic returns or other investment factors as part of its assessment.
Topics: business-economics-and-finance, mining-industry, stockmarket, australia, nt
First postedBERLIN — For more than four years, Syria has been ravaged by one of the deadliest wars of our time. If anyone in the international community still harbored the notion that this conflict could be ignored or contained, the dramatic events of recent weeks have proven them wrong: For months now, a huge and rising number of Syrian refugees have been pouring across Europe’s borders every day, seeking safety from both the barrel bombs of the Assad regime and the carnage of Islamic State’s terrorist militia.
Meanwhile, Islamic State fighters are advancing against the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, whose military is running out of loyal recruits. There may not be much time left to preserve what remains of Syria’s statehood from falling into utter chaos, leading to even more violence and suffering.
Let’s face it: So far, all efforts by the international community to facilitate a political resolution have failed. Differences between the West and Russia have prevented the United Nations Security Council from taking decisive action. Neighboring countries have been unable to overcome their rivalries over regional influence and deep-seated mistrust. Iran was — and for some remains — an outcast, with which talks are not palatable. Military support continues to flow to the warring factions from hidden and not-so-hidden sources.
Against this backdrop, the recent agreement between Iran and the six world powers known as the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia, plus Germany) opened a new window of opportunity for the region and possibly a chance to break the gridlock on Syria. New channels of dialogue have been opened. Both Secretary of State John Kerry and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, met with key officials of the Gulf countries. The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, visited Moscow.A glimpse of the joy and team spirit exhibited by the individuals charged with making the Russian dream come true was witnessed today in Moscow and across all other host cities, as the volunteer campaign for the FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia™ officially got under way.
In a ceremony at Moscow’s famous VDNH complex that attracted more than 2,000 people, Russian President Vladimir Putin and FIFA President Gianni Infantino came together to announce that applications for volunteers were now being accepted on FIFA.com. They were joined by 2010 World Cup winner Carles Puyol, as well as former USSR goalkeeper Rinat Dasaev, who appeared three times on football’s greatest stage. Zvonimir Boban, the legendary ex-Croatia and AC Milan midfielder who was recently appointed FIFA’s Deputy Secretary General for Football, was also in attendance.
“The volunteer movement has already shown its importance to Russia during various international forums, tournaments and meetings. The FIFA World Cup is a huge event and being involved in the hosting of it is a massive honour,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Every guest at the future World Cup must feel as if they're taking part in an actual celebration. I'm sure that they'll be able to do this with your help. I wish you good luck from the bottom of my heart!”
“Today we sense that the tournaments are drawing nearer, as we move from purely focusing on infrastructure to key operational elements such as the volunteers. There is one element which unites us all, whether we are players, coaches, fans or those who make the staging of the event possible: our passion for the game. To many fans the volunteers become THE face of the tournament. Their work will help build the event experience which will be brought home by thousands of fans from all over Russia and from across the globe, as well as by members of the media, football players and coaching staff,” said the FIFA President.
The quintet presented a football to a team of future volunteers, thus symbolising the unifying force of the game and of volunteering. The football legends also interacted with various Russia 2018 host cities, where the campaign has also been launched, via a live video link.
“I am very happy to be in Russia on such an important day,” said Puyol. “The FIFA World Cup is the greatest gathering of fans from all over the world and celebration of football. I can’t compare my experience there to anything else in my life. One of the nicest things I saw was the joy felt by the volunteers. Some of them were working with our team, at the training base or at the stadiums. They bring a very nice spirit of celebration, friendship and solidarity. I really appreciated having them around and was thankful to them for their support and kindness.”
The volunteer movement is gaining ground in Russia and the recently-launched campaign promises to be the largest in the country's history. Some of those involved have already begun to discover the values of volunteering and have spoken about their experiences.
“This was an opportunity to put my ideas into practice and get to know so many lovely people,” revealed Anastasiya Kulyagina, an active member of the FIFA World Cup Volunteer Centre in Volgograd. “However, the main thing I realised is that volunteering is really close to my heart. Of course, the process requires a lot of effort but every single event inspires and stimulates you. It's great!”
As part of the day’s celebrations, FIFA Partners and Sponsors also showed their excitement about and commitment to the Volunteer Programme. Coca-Cola, Gazprom and BUD Alcohol Free helped encourage potential volunteers to register through a range of social media initiatives. McDonald’s used the event to educate guests on how to work with people with disabilities, while staff and volunteers were seen wearing sporting uniforms from adidas, who will be designing the official volunteer uniform for both the Confederations Cup and World Cup tournaments.
The Volunteer Programme plans to involve around 5,500 volunteers for the Confederations Cup in 2017, while 15,000 will take part in the organisation of the first World Cup to be held on Russian soil. Applications will be accepted until the end of 2016. The recruitment, selection and training of volunteers will take place in 15 centres across all 11 host cities. All applicants, including from outside the World Cup host cities and from abroad will go through the process online. Candidates must be over 18, speak English and possess great team skills.
Volunteers were once again the centre of attention later in the evening, as Volunteer Centre members took part in a charity match at Moscow's Spartakovets Stadium. The volunteers played against a team called “Starko”, composed of Russian politicians and artists. The volunteers team was strengthened by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Carles Puyol, Zvonimir Boban, newly-appointed Russia 2018 ambassador and ex-Russia captain Alexei Smertin, LOC chairman and Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko and LOC CEO Alexey Sorokin. The match ended in a goalless draw.Marx’s writings on slavery, race, and class in relation to capital are examined in light of critics who paint him as a class reductionist with little awareness of or sensitivity to race – Editors
Racialized Slavery
Contrary to the pseudoscientific racist justifications of slavery prevalent throughout the nineteenth century, Karl Marx understood that slave status was a condition branded from without rather than a predisposition existing within. In the period of anthropology and ethnology’s rise, Marx was far ahead of his time in asserting that slave status was not a natural phenomenon biologically proscribed by one’s race. Marx took great care to intricately unravel the strands of how racialized slavery contrasted with wage slavery, how it came to be, and why its racialization was another form of similar kinds of weapons used against the unification of the working class.
On the contrast between labor systems, Marx explained that although wage laborers and their labor were also commodified, wage laborers existed as variable capital, and their labor in concrete or abstract forms. In contrast, “the slave-owner buys his laborer [slaves] as he buys his horse. If he loses his slave, he loses capital.”[1] In other words, as Marx added, “in the slave system, money capital invested in the purchase of labor plays the role of the money form of fixed capital, which is only gradually replaced after the expiration of the active life period of the slave” (Padover, 21). Then, as a slave, the worker is not even recognized as a living laborer, but as dead labor. Furthermore, in this statement Marx contrasts the level of alienation of the worker as slave from wage laborer by identifying the slave as fixed capital, whereas wage labor has previously been referred to as working capital. Therefore, Marx never suggested that wage labor and chattel slavery are the same. He further distinguished the wage labor of the formally free working class from slave labor in another context when he wrote “We are not dealing here with indirect slavery, the slavery of the proletariat, we are dealing with direct slavery, the slavery of Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern states of North America.”[2]
On one hand, Marx distinguished the two by comparing the increased freedom and mobility of the wage laborer to “the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence,” but on the other hand, he asserted that the two are connected by mocking the U.S. white Northern worker, who “boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master,”[3] and who therefore deludes himself that he is free when his relative freedom is so small.
As for how racialized slavery came to be, Marx marked “the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins,” as the pivotal point that “signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.”[4] Marx acknowledged that slavery was “found among all nations since the world began,”[5] but the slavery that paved the way for the emergence of Western capitalism had a unique and aberrant quality that contrasted it from slave systems in other societies of the past. In previous slave societies, people became slaves when they were taken as prisoners of war. It was a humane alternative to killing the vanquished.
Slavery and Capitalism
Under capitalism, the inhumane process of acquiring slaves came to resemble that of acquiring raw materials and livestock as free people were dehumanized and commoditized. The slave status became immutable and marked by birth. Like a commodity market, “the slave market itself maintains a constant supply of its labor-power commodity by war, piracy, etc.,” similar to the way gold had been acquired over the centuries for its market, although slaves were distinct in that they were commodities that reproduced themselves.[6] Although the modern Transatlantic Slave Trade was not the first instance of racialized slavery, Marx identified these distinct qualities of this slave system involving the branding of African skins as slaves as part of the foundation of Western capitalism.
“Before the slave trade in Negroes, the colonies supplied the Old World with but very few products and did not visibly change the fact of the world. Slavery is thus an economic category of the highest importance” (Padover, 24).
In other words, there was no commodity of greater importance connected to European colonies in the Americas as human labor as fixed capital. The export of slaves had a greater impact on the global economy than other raw materials combined.
“Direct slavery is the pivot of our industrialism today as much as machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton, without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given value to the colonies; it is the colonies that created world trade; it is world trade that is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry” (Padover, 24).
The commercial buying and selling of African slaves transformed human laborers into fixed capital that produced the wealth enabling the Old World to develop the technologies for capitalist societies.
“Without slavery, North America, the most progressive country, would be transformed into a primitive country. You have only to erase North America from the map of nations and you will have anarchy, the total decay of commerce and of modern civilization. But to let slavery disappear is to erase North America from the map of nations” (Padover, 24).
Marx was not by any means arguing for the necessity of slavery for social progress here. In this context, Marx was not using “progressive” positively or “anarchy” negatively. He was simply attempting to depict the paramount importance of slavery for the American capitalist economy by portraying the way slavery’s absence would deflate the entirety of American society.
The categories “slave” and “Negro” were analytically separate for Marx in a way they were not to most of his contemporaries. An African was forced into the position of human fixed capital. Marx proclaimed, “A Negro is a Negro. He becomes a slave only in certain relationships.”[7] Marx is frequently misquoted out of context in the portion prior to it when he writes, “What is a Negro slave. A man of the black race. The one explanation is as good as the other” (Padover, 13). But here he was only summing up Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in order to criticize him, not speaking in his own voice. Marx’s point, differentiating “Negro” and “slave,” is crucial to understanding that he did not succumb to the pseudoscientific racist ideology of his time.
Marx had also preemptively countered notions of Africans’ happiness in slavery and White slaveholders having innate abilities to govern effectively by noting that “50,000 slaves have vanished from Missouri, some of them having run away and others having been deported by the slaveholders themselves to the more southern states,”[8] in this way showing that slaves loathed their conditions and slaveholders were petrified of slaves revolting.
Elsewhere, Marx was scathing towards defenders of slavery who assert the interchangeability of the categories of “slave” and “African.” In Capital, Vol. III, Marx quotes an ice-cold statement from a pro-slavery lawyer in 1859, which exposes the cruelty and conceit of the proslavery South:
“Now, gentlemen … to that condition of bondage the Negro is assigned by Nature. He has strength and has the power to labor; but the Nature which created the power denied to him either the intellect to govern, or willingness to work. [Applause.] Both were denied to him. And that Nature which deprived him of the will to labor gave him a master to coerce that will, and to make a useful servant in the clime in which he was capable of living, useful for himself and for the master who governs him. I maintain that it is not injustice to leave the Negro in the condition in which Nature placed him, to give him a master to govern him; nor is it depriving him of any of his rights to compel him to labor in return, and afford to that master just compensation for the labor and talent employed in governing him and rendering him useful to himself and society.’”[9]
In this part of Capital, Vol. III, Marx was drawing a parallel between how masters seek to justify their rule over their slaves, and the capitalists’ justifications for their domination over “free” wage labor. To this end, Marx added to the above in his own words:
“The wage laborer, like the slave, must have a master to make him work and to rule him. And presupposing the existence of this domination-and-bondage relationship, it is proper that the wage laborer be forced to produce his own wages and also the wages of supervision, as compensation for the labor of ruling and supervising him, ‘and afford to that master just compensation for the labor and talent employed in governing him and rendering him useful to himself and to the society.’” (Padover, 26)
Here, without portraying slavery and wage labor as the same, Marx further connected the two labor systems.
This connection also implies the possibility of solidarity between these two groups of workers by introducing the master class’s similar perceptions of both. In addition, Marx thereby embarrassed the factory managers by comparing them to slave drivers. Marx considered it outrageous that factory managers defend their economic positions and higher pay based upon what they consider to be their innate superiority in terms of talent based on class grounds. Marx compared this to the outrageousness of slave plantation masters defending their socio-political and economic positions in terms of innate talent based on racial grounds. One is rooted in racist ideology based on pseudoscientific racism, while the other is classist in nature, but nevertheless functionalist and dogmatic.
Marx made this distinction in Capital, Vol. III, which, like his Civil War writings, has not been as widely read, thus helping to explain the misconception of Marx as a class reductionist by people who make too much out of passages like the one in the very widely read Communist Manifesto, where he uses the word “slave” in referring to the working class as “slaves of the bourgeois class.” As I have demonstrated, Marx was not so simplistic.
Marx to White Workers: Choose Race Solidarity over Class Solidarity at Your Peril!
Marx argued, “In the United States of North America, every independent workers’ movement was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic.”[10] By raising the floor as a collective with cross-racial class solidarity, Marx believed that the battle would be waged on a narrower front. Temporarily, Marx succeeded. As Kevin Anderson writes in Marx at the Margins, “In Marx’s view, the 1861-65 Civil War in the United States constituted one of the century’s major battles for human emancipation, one that forced white labor in both the United States and in Britain to take a stand against slavery.”[11]
It is clear that Marx was aware of other arguments against slavery, |
friend of the Realm ($100K)
d) Inn and Flame miniatures to replace tokens ($110K and $120K)
e) Hero miniatures, art, and placards ($50K and $60K)
The details: New Dragon Dark Agent miniatures (3 of them) from New Molds (these become available as add-ons--for $7 each--when the Stretch Goal levels of $70K, $80K and $90K are achieved). Sterling (the fourth new Dragon) is FREE if we can achieve a pledge level of $100K.
Emerald: Taller than most trees and angrier than a raging forest fire
Cinders: The huge-headed, pot-bellied fire breather
Drakus: The menacing, lethal loner
And introducing Sterling (FREE at the $100K Pledge Level): The Silver Dragon and Guardian of the Realm, this dragon may be called upon only in an adventurer's most dire time of need. He comes with a miniature, a placard, his own set of cards and rules describing his function in the game.
New Artwork
For all of the eight dragons that are (or will be at $100K) in the game
For two new Heroes (achieved as Stretch Goals at $50K and $60K)
For three new Minions (Unlocked!)
For the Inns and Flames miniatures (at $110K and 120K)
New Graphics
For the Eight Dragon and Dark Agent placards (incl. Sterling at $100K)
For the Hero cards
For the Minion Cards
For a far better Rulebook--clearer, better organized, more art, FAQs
For many new cards
For the Winds of War expansion
*Keep in mind this New Rulebook IS a DRAFT, and is not finalized nor fully edited. For instance, if we do not fund all stretch goal levels, then certain sections (such as Sterling, for example) may not be included.
The Winds of War Expansion adds an entirely new dynamic to any Defenders of the Realm game. There are 16 Winds of War cards that can be activated, each with their own unique effects.
Details: Whenever the players use three "Special" Hero cards, a Winds of War card is activated. Each Winds of War card provides the players with two options: An Action, and a Prevention.
The action will unleash a devastating effect upon the board. In the case of the "Burned Inns" card, the resulting action is "All the Inns Burn to the ground." However, the Prevention allows the players to collectively stop that action from occurring, but at a cost. In the case of the "Burned Inns" card, the prevention is to "Place 1 taint crystal in each Inn. The Inns remain open, but they are tainted by the Dark Lord."
Hemlock is probably the most evil of all the Dragons. He enjoys the suffering of his enemies, and his hatred of humans is evident when speaking with the crippled adventurers that survive battle with the Green Dragon - of which there are few.
Brimstone lives for one purpose and that is to see the world burn. The current conflict and chaos enable him to pursue one of his greatest desires: to see the Realm set on fire, not only by him, but also by the army of Fire Elementals at his command.
The Black Dragon is the perfect warrior: ruthless, cunning, intelligent, and lightning fast. Onyx is different from most dragons in that he has human followers, The Order of the Black Dragon, that join him on his march to Monarch City.
Sapphire, wise in the ancient dragon spells, draws power from the other dragon generals and becomes the Dragon High General - ruler of all the dragons and their forces. Under Sapphire’s direction, the dragon generals are an even more formidable threat to the Realm.
Sterling, like most Silver Dragons, prefers to take the form of a human, dwarf, or elf, and mingle amongst the people. In fact, many wise adventurers believe the three heads of the Silver Dragon each represent the fabulous creature's mental link to each of the 3 races and as such offer different responses when called upon, depending on which head's attention the adventurer has gained.
Emerald's heart is as venomous as his breath, and his task of finding the Heroes' sanctuaries lead him to the Inns, seeking them out when and where they are least prepared.
"Set the world aflame to welcome the master..." - That was the charge of Brimstone, and one this Dark Agent is far too happy to obey...
Drakus enjoys operating alone to harass the Heroes that stand between the Dark Lord's Army and his ultimate victory over the Realm.
This project, as to the Stretch Goals, is a work-in-progress. We need your Kickstarter support to make the decision to produce each of these stretch goals. We will provide artist drawings, and samples of sculpted figures, (and painted examples if we have any) and whatever else we may have as we get closer to achieving each of these Stretch Goals.
How do I add something onto my pledge?
You simply add the amount of money needed to purchase any of the add-ons below to your pledge! You can always change the amount of your pledge (while the KS project is active) by using the "Manage My Pledge" button.
Where or how do I indicate the specific item(s) I have added-on?
About 7-14 days after this KS project ends we will send you a survey and ask you to indicate exactly how to allocate your pledge between the base game and the add-ons offered here. You will work with our Pledge Manager, Ruth, until you both have all the details of your pledge and shipping worked out.
How much shipping do I add for Add-Ons?
It depends on too many factors to do a chart for, so we will ask you to send a Message (not a Comment please) to us and we will figure it out and let you know. In your Message please tell us what you want shipped and your "ship to" location.
*The Dwarf and Paladin can also be used as the Dwarf Noble and Errant Paladin if you have the placard(s) for them--available for sale as an Add-On for $3 each
*Due to limited quantities, the only Minion Expansions now available are UNPAINTED.
Your order (with what we assume might be various add-ons) will be difficult to project shipping expense for. Our sole objective with shipping is to cover its costs, not make a profit (but not to lose money either--see info above and below). The base shipping cost in the US for the Dragon Expansion: (2nd Edition) itself, will be $15 (and will cover that game box and small, light extras). We will subsidize this by $10 -- both in the US and in all countries.
But that does mean that $5 will be added to the $25 level, and $9 will be added to the $45 level, to cover shipping in the US. IF your pledge is $100 or more, then shipping in the US is FREE.
Shipping is not cheap but we will do the best we can to find group opportunities in various countries which might reduce shipping costs. We will ship US orders from our Eagle-Gryphon warehouse in Kentucky; Canadian orders from Board Games Bliss in Ontario; EU orders from Boosterbox in the Netherlands; Australian orders from The Games Capital in Canberra; and Asian orders from our warehouse in Shenzhen, China (mainland).
AUSTRALIAN Backers take note: Our partner in Australia, The Games Capital in Canberra, currently has a large number of DOTR games and extras in stock. Please get directly in touch with them at thegamescapital.com.au right away to see what they have and save on shipping!
For most countries, the BASE shipping charge (less the $10 subsidy we are giving to you) will be automatically added to your pledge. You will need to contact us for unusual shipping costs you expect.
For most routine extras, please allow us to calculate them and bill you after the KS project ends. If you are unhappy with the amount of extra shipping you can cancel your order at that time. If your country shows $0 (that would be impossible for us; or $500 (that would be impossible for you) then please send us a Message (not a Comment please) and tell us what you want and where you want it shipped to. Thanks!
It has been our experience that many people (including sophisticated Kickstarter Backers) frequently confuse "shipping" expense and "postage" expense. What we try to cover with the above fees (in part) is shipping expenses, not just postage. Postage is the actual charge your country's postal service (or UPS, FedEx, etc) charges us to deliver a package within that country. Shipping is far more comprehensive and includes: getting the container shipped to the US, or the EU, or Australia; the Customs and VAT (or equivalent) and other import fees and taxes; the drayage from the port to the warehouse (not cheap!); the warehouse fees to unload and sort out and prepare packages; the materials and labor involved in the last item; fees to the warehouse for their service to us, and only after all of that, the postage! We need to cover all of those costs--and they really add up. Frequently they cost as much or more than the game(s) did to produce. When we combine a low margin price (such as this one we are offering on DOTR Dragon Expansion) with this shipping expense, we do not make any profit if we are not very careful. The shipping we are charging for this project is as low as we can make it and still stay in business.
Internationally, for two or more games, get in touch with us and tell us the total of how many games you want and which ones; and where you would like them shipped. To get in touch with us, please send us a Message (not a Comment please) using the "Contact Me" button at the top.
We will not ship to Russia, the Ukraine and select other places except for specially-made arrangements wherein the Backer takes the risk involved in getting the package actually delivered.WASHINGTON -- The latest Republican plan to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession.
Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation's debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget.
They are doing so because the Super Committee, which was supposed to find $1.2 trillion in cuts on which everyone could agree, failed, leaving the slashing up to a pre-agreed sequestration plan that extracts half the savings from the military.
Unless Congress acts, the sequestration begins at the start of 2013. Democrats in the Senate are arguing that the Budget Control Act counts as a budget, and therefore they won't take up debate on a spending plan for 2013, much less address Rep. Paul Ryan's House budget resolution.
So instead, the House has embarked on a seldom-used reconciliation process. Its aim is to have at hand an alternative to the sequestration on the theory that the Senate will not want to allow the defense cuts either, and won't have its own plan.
In a memo sent to members Wednesday instructing them how to write their reconciliation bill, Republicans picked a number of targets, including extracting $80 billion from federal workers and $44 billion from health care. In all, it identifies $78 billion to cut in 2013, and details around $300 billion over 10 years.
But the memo spends the most time targeting the exploding cost of food stamps, on which more Americans rely than ever, at greater expense to the government than ever before.
Each month during fiscal 2011, an average of 45 million mostly poor Americans received benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, at a cost of $78 billion to the federal government. Last year's SNAP participation represented a 70 percent increase from 2007, and the highest enrollment the program has ever seen. In that time, the cost of the program more than doubled.
The Congressional Budget Office, which issued a report on SNAP last week, expects enrollment to keep going up through 2014 before it levels off.
Two-thirds of the growth in the cost of the program was a result of increased eligibility -- and therefore increased enrollment thanks to the crashing economy. A fifth of the higher cost came from a boost in benefits provided by President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus bill. Rising food prices and lower incomes among enrollees -- requiring larger benefits -- accounted for the rest.
Republicans want to take away the stimulus boost this year, saving $5.9 billion over 10 years. They note that Democrats were first to raid the extra stimulus funding for SNAP in order to pay for other bills, including a child nutrition bill that was a priority of first lady Michelle Obama's. Democrats promised to put the money back, but that seems unlikely.
Another way Republicans want to save money on food stamps is by restricting automatic eligibility for those already qualified for another program.
Three quarters of households receiving food stamps were "categorically eligible" in 2010, according to the CBO, meaning they qualified because they received benefits from programs like Supplemental Security Income or the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, informally known as welfare. Households that are categorically eligible are often subject to less stringent means testing for food stamps. And some households are eligible for SNAP because of "broad-based" categorical eligibility, meaning they receive non-cash welfare benefits that can be as insignificant as a pamphlet.
That policy borders on fraud, according to the GOP. In their proposal document, Republicans describe their plan to restrict broad-based eligibility under a header suggesting the change would be one way to "stop fraud."
"It's really misleading to call this fraud because people are eligible -- no one's doing anything fraudulent," Elizabeth Lower-Basch, a senior analyst with the Center for Law and Social Policy, said in an interview.
Many households receiving food stamps because of broad-based eligibility could still pass SNAP income and asset tests -- states have their own rules, but the federal minimum standard is income no more than 130 percent of the federal poverty line and no more than $2,000 worth of assets -- but some would not. Restricting broad-based eligibility would cut off 1.8 million people per year and save $11.7 billion over 10 years. The savings would be higher, but some of the savings are lost because the change would increase administrative costs.
Republicans also want to shut down "Heat and Eat," which they describe as a loophole. It allows states to boost SNAP enrollees' benefit amounts if they're receiving heating assistance. About 16 states are abusing the interaction, Republicans say, by sending SNAP recipients tiny $1 or $5 checks under the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program in order to boost federal food stamp benefits. Cutting off "Heat and Eat" would save $14.3 billion over 10 years.
Advocates for the poor, see the cuts not only as an attack on poor people, but as extremely short-sighted. A key reason that advocates have pushed broad-based eligibility for years is that it cuts down on overlapping workloads for the administering agencies, and helps get people -- especially the working poor -- access to aid that they deserve under law. That aid often becomes inaccessible to people who don't have the time or knowledge to deal with multiple bureaucracies.
"The reason that it was put in place was because there were so many households who weren't able to meet the paperwork requirements, or frankly, because so many stressed caseworkers weren't necessarily helping clients get the full benefit of the value that they could," said Stacy Dean, a spokesperson for the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, referring to the Heat and Eat provisions. She also argued that ending the broader cross-eligibility standards would only mean local governments have to hire more people to do the same work while making it harder for people to navigate the system.
"It's redundant and wasteful, and it's just a barrier to eligible, needy people getting the benefits for which they are eligible," Dean said.
While SNAP rolls are expected to start falling after 2014, the military budget that the GOP is striving to protect will not, even with the sequester. According Larry Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, if the sequester remains in place, the military budget will still grow by nearly 20 percent over the next decade.
With defense spending continuing to grow, advocates for the poor, like Dean, see something else in deep cuts aimed at the less fortunate.Lukas Graham is a Danish pop and soul band. It consists of lead vocalist Lukas Forchhammer,[1] drummer Mark Falgren, and bassist Magnus Larsson.[2] The band released their first album, Lukas Graham, with labels Copenhagen Records and Then We Take the World in 2012.[3][4] The album peaked at number one on the Danish charts.[5] Their second album was released in 2015[6] and earned international attention with singles like "Mama Said" and "7 Years", the latter of which topped the singles charts in many major music markets. The self-titled international debut album was officially released in the United States by Warner Bros. Records on 1 April 2016.[7][8]
Career [ edit ]
Lukas Graham performing at Stavernfestivalen 2016
2011–12: Career beginnings [ edit ]
The band formed in Denmark in 2011 and initially uploaded homemade videos of the songs "Drunk in the Morning" and "Criminal Mind".[2][9] The songs were also shared on Facebook and accrued several hundred thousand views.[10] The band earned a contract with Copenhagen Records in late 2011.[3] In a later interview Lukas Graham has revealed that the band already had a contract with Copenhagen Records and the selfmade videos were the label's idea to create an underground buzz.
Prior to officially releasing any music, the band had sold 17,000 tickets for an upcoming tour.[9]
Their first release, available only in Europe and selected other nations,[1] became certified five-times platinum in Denmark.[11] Their first release also featured four charting songs such as "Drunk in the Morning", "Better Than Yourself (Criminal Mind Pt 2)" and "Ordinary Things".[12] Over the course of 2012, Lukas Graham played 107 concerts throughout Europe, selling 40,000 tickets in Denmark alone. They sold 80,000 albums and 150,000 singles while also earning 5 million YouTube views and 27 million streams. Their tour took them across Europe to countries like England, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, and Spain.[1]
2013–14: Continued touring and Warner Bros. Records deal [ edit ]
In 2013, the band continued to tour throughout Europe.[13][14] In the summer of 2013, the band was added to the bill of the Grøn Koncert (Green Concert) tour which is held in support of muscular dystrophy research.[15] In October 2013, Lukas Graham won the European Border Breakers Award (EBBA) for their international tours in Europe.[16]
In the fall of 2013, the band signed to Warner Bros. Records. The record company signed them with the intent of bringing their music to the United States. Starting in early 2014, the band spent extended periods of time in Los Angeles writing and recording what would become their official U.S. debut.[17][18] The band is still represented by Copenhagen Records in the Nordics, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and France[19] and is managed by Then We Take The World.[20] In March 2014, Lukas himself contributed vocals to Hedegaard's Danish number-one single "Happy Home".[21] Later in 2014, the band released their first single, "Mama Said", off their upcoming album.[22]
2015–present: Worldwide debut, "7 Years" and international success [ edit ]
The band released their next record (often referred to as the "Blue Album") on Copenhagen Records and Then We Take The World solely in Denmark and several other mostly European nations in 2015. It peaked at number one in Denmark and made it onto several other European charts as well.[23] It featured the singles "Mama Said", "Strip No More" and "7 Years", the last of which peaked at number one on the charts for Denmark, Italy, Austria, Belgium, and Sweden.[24] The band made their United States television debut performing "7 Years" on a 10 December 2015 episode of Conan[25][26] and the song peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 list.[27] In March 2016, Lukas Graham performed "7 Years" on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.[28] The band has also performed the song on Late Night with Seth Meyers,[29] The Ellen DeGeneres Show,[30] The Late Late Show with James Corden,[31] and Good Morning America.[32]
By the end of March 2016, "7 Years" had achieved around 225 million total listens on Spotify worldwide with 17.2 million listeners per month, making the band the 20th most popular artist on the service.[19] On 1 April 2016, the self-titled international debut was officially released in the United States by Warner Bros. Records. The US release of the album received new artwork, a reworked track listing, and a wider worldwide audience in countries including, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The album reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200, No. 2 in the UK and New Zealand, No. 1 in Australia and Canada, and No. 5 in Ireland.[7][33][34][35][36] The band also embarked on a two-month long tour throughout the United States and Canada at the end of March 2016.[37] Most dates on the tour have already sold out.[7][38] As of July 2016, "7 Years" has over 480 million Spotify streams.[39]
In June 2016, keyboardist Kasper Daugaard left the band as "touring life wasn't right for (him)". He was temporarily replaced by the band's producer and former keyboardist, Morten Ristorp.
In December 2016, Lukas Graham was nominated for three Grammy Awards including Record of the Year and Song of the Year for "7 Years" and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.[40] 7 Year was also nominated for Song of the Year at the 2016 BBC Music Awards where the band performed the song live on 12 December 2016.[41][42]
In 2017, Lukas Graham performed the song "Off to See the World", featured on the soundtrack of My Little Pony: The Movie.
In September 2018, the band announced their third album 3 (The Purple Album), to be released on 26 October 2018 through Warner Bros. Records, and its lead single "Love Someone".[43]
On 20 February 2019, Lukas Graham performed as a guest artist on the third season of I Can See Your Voice Thailand.[44]
Musical style [ edit ]
Lukas Graham's music has been described as a pop-soul hybrid.[1] In a review of the band's new album, journalist Jon Pareles of The New York Times described their sound as the place "where pop meets R&B".[6] Patrick Ryan of USA Today wrote that the band's songs "effortlessly blend elements of hip hop and folk". Lyrically, the songs often deal with relatable experiences like growing up poor ("Mama Said") or drinking ("Drunk in the Morning").[7] The band's most popular song, "7 Years", describes growing up and aging at specific points in life (from seven years old to 60).[45]
Lukas grew up in a self-governing artistic community in the middle of Copenhagen called Christiania.[7] The area is known for its creative atmosphere, relative poverty, and crime. His experiences growing up in the community have shaped both the sound of his music and the lyrics he writes.[25][29]
Band members [ edit ]
Current members Lukas Forchhammer – lead vocals (2011–present)
Magnus Larsson – bass, backing vocals (2011–present)
Mark "Lovestick" Falgren – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2011–present) Former members Anders Kirk – piano, keyboards (2011)
Morten Ristorp – piano, keyboards (2011–12, 2016, studio 2012–present)
Kasper Daugaard – piano, keyboards, backing vocals (2012–16) The Rusty Trombones Lars Vissing – trumpet (2012–present)
Nikolai Bøgelund – trombone (2012–present)
Thomas Edinger – saxophone (2012–present) Other touring musicians Will Herrington – piano, keyboards, backing vocals (2016–present)
Jon Sosin – guitar (2018–present)
Timeline
Discography [ edit ]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohioans could vote on dueling medical marijuana measures this fall.
A group calling itself Grassroots Ohio is pushing a constitutional amendment that would legalize marijuana use for medicinal purposes.
But unlike the measure backed by national group Marijuana Policy Project, the Grassroots Ohio amendment does not establish a regulatory structure. The measure would also allow farmers to grow industrial hemp.
Previous coverage: Ohio voters support medical marijuana amendment, poll finds
Grassroots Ohio spokeswoman Cassie Young said the amendment is intentionally brief and the group plans to propose a regulatory structure in the form of a citizen-initiated statute.
"We shouldn't be putting regulations in our constitution," Young said. "The amendment is about protecting inherent rights of Ohioans - not enshrining business interests."
Ohio's marijuana activist community was sharply divided over last year's recreational marijuana measure, Issue 3. Many pro-marijuana advocates opposed Issue 3 because it designated who would receive licenses to grow marijuana.
Some of Issue 3's loudest opponents -- including leaders of rival recreational marijuana campaign Legalize Ohio 2016 -- have already backed Marijuana Policy Project's amendment. Others banded together to form Grassroots Ohio.
Competing medical marijuana initiatives could again divide marijuana supporters and campaign resources in a year crowded with political campaign messages.
Grassroots Ohio plans to submit its language to the attorney general within the next week. Young said the group will have enough money to hire petition circulators to collect the 305,591 signatures of Ohio voters needed by July 6 to qualify for the November ballot.
But Young said Grassroots Ohio is building a long-term campaign and could wait to put the measure on the ballot in 2017 or later.
Grassroots Ohio's one-page amendment would give adults over age 21 the "right to possess, process, transport, use, share and cultivate cannabis for medicinal purposes." The amendment does not list acceptable medicinal purposes nor require a physician's approval to use marijuana.
The amendment would also prevent using blood or urine tests to prove impairment of a driver.
Tony Coder, assistant director of Ohio-based Drug-Free Action Alliance, said the amendment is lacking so much direction it's almost as if it was written on the back of a napkin.
"We want to make sure that medicine is done through a thorough, safe and science-based process so that every Ohioan knows that whatever medication they might be taking, it is safe and effective," Coder said in an email. "This amendment proposal provides no direction, no guidance and has such gaping holes that should serve as a red flag to Ohio's citizens and communities."
The amendment was drafted by Athens-area lawyer Don Wirtshafter. The longtime Ohio marijuana activist previously worked with the Ohio Rights Group, which put its medical marijuana amendment on hold while lobbying the legislature to act on the issue.
Mobile readers, click here to read the proposed amendment.Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Albertan counterpart Rachel Notley are the latest politicians to wade into Grey Cup bets ahead of tomorrow's championship football game in Winnipeg.
Wynne's rooting for the Ottawa Redblacks, who take on Notley's hometown Edmonton Eskimos.
Notley posed the challenge to Wynne on Twitter Friday, requesting that the losing team's premier wear the other team's jersey in the legislature and they donate to help refugees in the winning province.
.<a href="https://twitter.com/Kathleen_Wynne">@Kathleen_Wynne</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GreyCup?src=hash">#GreyCup</a> bet? Loser wears opponent’s jersey in the House to boast about the winning province... <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ableg?src=hash">#ableg</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/onpoli?src=hash">#onpoli</a> (1/2) —@RachelNotley
.<a href="https://twitter.com/Kathleen_Wynne">@Kathleen_Wynne</a> …and donates to local agencies in the winning province to assist in settling refugees. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GreyCup?src=hash">#GreyCup</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ableg?src=hash">#ableg</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/onpoli?src=hash">#onpoli</a> (2/2) —@RachelNotley
Wynne replied to Notley, telling her she was on board for the bet and supporting the Redblacks.
The bet stirred up response on Twitter. Some were in favour of the friendly wager.
<a href="https://twitter.com/RachelNotley">@RachelNotley</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Kathleen_Wynne">@Kathleen_Wynne</a> Talk a little smack. Cheer a little football. Help some refugees. Good on you both!! —@kalinres
<a href="https://twitter.com/RachelNotley">@RachelNotley</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Kathleen_Wynne">@Kathleen_Wynne</a> Go <a href="https://twitter.com/EdmontonEsks">@EdmontonEsks</a> and well done to support those less fortunate —@YegLightChaser
Others were concerned where the donation money was coming from.
<a href="https://twitter.com/RachelNotley">@RachelNotley</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Kathleen_Wynne">@Kathleen_Wynne</a> I sure would hope this is a personal bet. Doesn't seem right to be gambling with tax payer money. —@jay_ogi
<a href="https://twitter.com/RachelNotley">@RachelNotley</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Kathleen_Wynne">@Kathleen_Wynne</a> I'm sorry Rachel...<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Stamps?src=hash">#Stamps</a> fans will be cheering for you to be donning a Redblacks jersey. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GreyCup?src=hash">#GreyCup</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ableg?src=hash">#ableg</a> —@MarcPower
If Wynne's team loses, it won't be the first time she has had to wear an Alberta football jersey.
Last year, she made a similar wager with former Alberta premier Jim Prentice, when Ontario's Hamilton Tiger-Cats played the Calgary Stampeders. When the Ticats lost, Wynne followed through on her promise, wearing a Stampeders jersey during a meeting with Prentice.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, right, wears a Calgary Stampeders jersey while meeting former Alberta premier Jim Prentice following a friendly bet on last year's Grey Cup. (Darren Calabrese/Canadian Press)
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson have also placed a bet on this year's match, involving a food bank donation from the winner's city to the loser's city, while the losing mayor has to wear the opponent city's jersey.
Even the CBC Radio morning shows in Ottawa and Edmonton have gotten in on the fun, pledging that the losing city's morning show team perform Adele's hit song Hello on video.Long Beach voters may be faced with a choice between two competing medical marijuana ballot measures this November.
There’s also the possibility of a statewide ballot initiative that may legalize recreational use of the cannabis across the Golden State, but that’s another story.
In Long Beach, supporters backing a medical marijuana initiative that would allow dispensaries to legally return to the city have gathered enough signatures to potentially qualify the measure for November’s ballot, the city clerk announced Friday. The signatures still must be verified, however.
Also on Friday, Councilwoman Suzie Price announced that she and two other council members will ask their colleagues on the City Council on Tuesday to consider writing an alternative ballot measure that would allow four medical marijuana delivery services to legally operate in Long Beach.
The alternative proposal holds out the possibility that storefront dispensaries may eventually be allowed in Long Beach, she said.
“We’re trying to clarify, it’s a phased-in, deliberate approach. It’s not a delivery-only model,” Price said.
A board member for the Long Beach Collective Association, which backs the initial, more liberal proposal, disagreed. Board member Adam Hijazi said regulating brick-and-mortar dispensaries would be a more practical alternative than enforcing a policy that, at least for a time, would force authorized delivery services to compete against providers who don’t have Long Beach permits.
“I hope that the leaders are pragmatic about this, are realistic about how to regulate,” he said.
Price’s proposal
Long Beach has generally banned medical marijuana dispensaries since 2012, and a special citizens committee spent much of 2015 attempting to refine the Planning Commission’s draft medical marijuana ordinance that would have set rules for future dispensaries.
Council members, however, effectively decided to let voters figure out how to regulate medical marijuana after a disagreement over whether to allow brick-and-mortar dispensaries ended with the council deciding to scrap the proposed ordinance altogether.
Price had then asked the council to consider a plan similar to the one she, along with Council members Daryl Supernaw and Stacy Mungo, want to place on the ballot as an alternative to the pro-medical marijuana initiative that may be up for a vote this fall.
Price is asking the City Attorney’s office to draft an alternative, which would be similar to the law she favored before the council dropped the marijuana issue.
That plan would allow four delivery services to operate in Long Beach for six months before City Hall would conduct a cost-benefit analysis considering such factors as tax receipts and enforcement costs. If officials determine that medical marijuana deliveries would be a good thing, the delivery operators would get a chance to open dispensaries.
As many as seven dispensaries may ultimately be allowed in the city if the council votes to place Price’s measure on the ballot and her proposal also wins voter approval.
Price said she wants a gradual approach to medical marijuana, in part because it’s her view that city government’s finances are too strained to burden police with new duties to enforce a medical marijuana law.
Initiative campaign
The Long Beach Collective Association and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324 are sponsoring the well-funded campaign to place a medical cannabis initiative on the Nov. 8 ballot.
That measure would tie the number of dispensaries to the city’s population. The U.S. Census Bureau’s July 2015 population estimate shows some 474,000 people living in Long Beach, so the initiative would allow something in the area of 26 to 32 dispensaries.
The proposal favored by medical marijuana advocates also calls for 1,000-foot buffer zones to separate dispensaries from each other, schools and beaches. The initiative would also call for 600-foot buffers keeping dispensaries away from parks and libraries and set a 6 percent tax rate on dispensary operators’ gross receipts.
Long Beach voters approved a 6 percent to 10 percent tax on what may be considered to be theoretical dispensaries in 2014. Although the Collective Association supported that measure, Hijazi said a 10 percent levy would be too steep.
Long Beach City Clerk Maria de la Luz Garcia’s office announced Friday the measure’s supporters collected slightly more than 35,000 signatures, a number that would be well above the roughly 24,900 signatures necessary for qualification.
The raw count clears the way for Garcia’s office to begin checking a random sample of signatures to verify that proponents have indeed collected enough signatures from registered Long Beach voters to put the measure up for a vote this fall.
If the petition has enough valid signatures, the City Council would have the option of adopting the measure as law or leaving the decision up to voters.Today is Valentine's Day. Not that I would know much about that sort of thing. That said, if there was any player on the New Jersey Devils that most people would want as their valentine, then I'd say it would probably be Zach Parise.
Zach Parise #9 / Left Wing / New Jersey Devils Height: 5-11 Weight: 190 Born: Jul 28, 1984
Zach Parise doesn't just have the looks, he's got the knack for goal scoring. He's constantly in motion on the ice. When he's hungry for the puck, the opposition isn't going to so much stop him as much hope that they can contain him. Despite his size, he's strong along the boards and can often be found around the net for goals. At the mere age of 25, Parise is the team's top offensive player, an absolute joy to watch on the ice, and one of the best American hockey players in the NHL today.
GP G A P +/- PIM PPG SHG GWG GTG SOG PCT 2009 - Zach Parise 60 28 33 61 24 20 6 1 3 0 265 10.6
A few weeks ago, a fellow associate at the Rock told me that he had a theory about Parise. That Parise tends to score his goals off rebounds and loose pucks and up close - very few long shots. I figure that with what will be a very unhappy month in review tomorrow, there can be something to smile about. So why not take a closer look at Zach Parise's goals?
Thanks to NHL.com keeping a video archive of every goal this season, I was able to put the following chart together. I noted about where he was when he scored and noted if there was a special way in how he scored each of his 28 goals this season. I also included direct links to each goal from NHL.com in case you want |
in the Kasama Project. He can be contacted at jgramsey AT gmail.com.As our audience is growing a bit, I am going to start a page defining terms we throw around, but perhaps don’t have a well agreed upon mutual understanding. Terms like patriot, partisan and redoubting. I will start with soft secession because as far as I can tell I invented the term. This definition will be obviously much longer than most because this concept is not as well known. I define soft secession as informally withdrawing in some way from active participation in a socioeconomic system for the purpose of living a more independent life while forcing that system to change or collapse. Another way to describe soft secession is an informal network of small actions taken on a personal level to live a more self-sufficient life and degrade a socioeconomic system.
We use the term “soft” to indicate it is may not be obvious or direct confirmation with the socioeconomic system. We use the term secession because it best describes the idea of intentionally withdrawing support for a socioeconomic system on an individual or small group level. This is secession at the personal level. Soft secession requires implementing and supporting an alternative socioeconomic system. This is not simply sleeping in an RV filled with ammo and MREs. That is simply taking yourself off the board.
Soft secession is being as secessionists as possible on the individual level without crossing the line and going directly to jail or being immediately killed in the street. Soft secession is to secession, what a work slowdown is to a strike. The objective is the same, the means may be somewhat less direct. Soft secession often calls for you to withdraw your support from a larger system, say the federal government and its laws, while remaining very active in your local community. However, you defined “local.” As my civil rights activist mother taught me before I could walk “…think globally, act locally.” The way I came up with this term is almost an interesting story so I will share it.
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I use to listen to a radio talk show host named Mark Levin “the great one” daily on my long commute home. I have a different commute so I only catch his show sometimes now. Mark Levin is a fairly smart guy, who is very politically conservative. Mark Levin has a reoccurring theme on his show called soft tyranny or soft despotism to describe the hybrid mutated “Bourgeois socialist,” crony capitalistic, administrative, surveillance and police state that America has become. Alexis de Tocqueville who invented the term soft tyranny and soft despotism describes it as a system that “gives people the illusion that they are in control, when in fact they have very little influence over their government. Soft despotism breeds fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the general populace.” Alexis de Tocqueville observed that this trend was avoided in America only by the “habits of the heart” of its 19th-century populace.
It is called “soft” implying it is not as obvious as “hard” tyranny. “Hard tyranny is blatant and indisputable, where “soft” tyranny is cloaked and obscure and foisted upon an unwitting and unknowing public. We can certainly feel it’s effects, but can’t quite put our finger on the pulse of it.” Patch.com.
For most voting middle-class Americans, America is not an overt tyrannical police state. However, a growing number people are running into many forms of soft tyranny implemented through ever increasing laws and regulations. Simply search Jackboot on this site for many examples. Alexis de Tocqueville describes a soft tyranny / soft despotism as “It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute, and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting.” Few doubt that the modern American soft despotism has created a “turn-key” police state. What few seem to understand is that key is turned when the State wants it to be, it is called selective enforcement.
As I sat in traffic listening to Mark day after day, I would ask myself, short of having a violent secessionist movement today what could I do? I begin to make a mental list of actions I could legally take to withdraw from this soft tyrannical system and to withhold my support from it by using the freedoms left to us. Eventually, I hit upon the term and realized that soft secession is one answer to soft tyranny.
In my opinion, the civil rights bus boycott was a form of soft secession from a system that was exploitative. Instead of using a corrupt busing system, the people would choose to walk to work, to carpool, and taxis would provide rides at cost. They took personal responsibility and withdrew their active support for a government system they disagreed with. They did not wait around until the “immoral bus system failed on its own.” These people would rather personally sacrifice in a legal way that caused the corrupt busing system to collapse, change or at minimal withdrawing their active support. If you want to change the system, you are responsible for changing it. Are you willing to walk to work every day, in the defense of liberty? This was not civil disobedience. There was not a civil law mandating the use of the bus system; this was a boycott for a political purpose. My view is that boycotts have their place, but soft secession is much more than boycotts. Some of the most popular focuses of soft secession include, but not limited to the following areas
1. Rejecting rampant consumerism – and crony capitalism
2. Cloistering away from authoritarian progressive anti-Christian bigots
3. Food security – the fight for locally produced beyond organic food
4. Avoiding the use of debt and “too big to fail” banks
5. Withdrawing from public education, homeschooling, private and charter schools
I have met both very liberal and conservative people who are living examples of soft secession. I have not met any statist or authoritarians who support soft secession. I once attended a camping class run by neo-hippies, anarchist and pagans deep in the Appalachian mountains. They are back-to-the-earth more socially progressives. When I was there, I attempted to buy a bottle of home made “mead” from a hippy as I had forgotten to stock up on booze after traveling to attend this week long camping and skill building course. He refused. He said that his personal beliefs were to avoid using money as much as possible. He lived by barter as much as possible. He claimed he had lived this way in the Appalachian Mountains so long, he would not even know how to value the mead in cash. He had stuff, and he needed other stuff, and that is how he lived. I was struck by his personal conviction.
I have met very conservative people who also are also withdrawing from societies they do not agree with. The notable growth in homeschooling parents is one example of a “more conservative” form of soft secession. Did you know in the homeschooling setting the difference in performance between minority students and whites disappear? It is impressive to me to see such a large number of people flee high tax places like Detroit, Chicago, California and New York. Many of these people who leave high tax states for low tax states are, for the purpose of avoiding those taxes in my opinion implementing a form of soft secession. They are voting with their feet. When you see Wyoming Catholic College or Hillsdale College, refuse to take part in the Federal student aid program this is a form of soft secession. The American Redoubt movement which encourages people to move to deep red low population states including Idaho, Wyoming and Montana for the purpose of driving those states more to the Right is obviously a form of soft secession.
Other examples of soft secession are, being as aggressive with taxes as legally possible, without being put into debtors prison, withdrawing from the “too big to fail” banking sector, use Credit Unions if you must, participating in local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and stop buying poison food pump full of GMO, antibiotics and growth hormones. Supporting locally produce services and products even if those American made products cost more than the slave-labor overseas created products. Other examples include the growth in the self-reliance movement including urban gardens, homesteading and the new focus on the personal generation of electric power. Other people invest in fair-trade environmentally responsible companies that agree with your morals. One of the easiest ways to implement soft secession in your life simply use cash for the majority of your purchases. This takes you a little bit off the grid, and you provide that business or worker a 3% increase in profits simply by using cash. You also deny “too big to fail” banks a significant stream of revenue. Some call for a tax strike. That is their right. However do you know what would happen if 10% of the people simply withdrew their money from the banks, and stopped using debit and credit cards? The banking system would either collapse or drastically change. There is no civil law that mandates you to use the corrupt banking system. Using cash is a lot easier than walking 20 miles to work.
Even States are getting in on the soft secession concept. When California refuses to enforce federal immigration laws because “they don’t agree with them.” When Washington State refuses to enforce federal drug laws because “they don’t agree with them.” Then Wyoming can choose not to enforce federal gun laws because “they don’t agree with them.” And Texas can close 90% of its abortion clinics through State law because “they don’t agree with the killing of the unborn.” None of these states are currently trying to secede from the Union, but each of them in their way is deciding simply not to obey the union in matters their local people feel strongly about. We have not “declared” a war since War World II. Perhaps the coming “troubles” will also not be declared. This “soft” anti-federal movement may continue at the State level.
I encourage all people who don’t agree with the way our country is going to look at how you can personally withdraw your support from it. If you want Christianity and liberty to survive, you are personally responsible with finding some way to demonstrate your non-compliance to this post-Christian socioeconomic system. Let soft secession cover the surface of our society with a network of small actions of protest, self-reliance and noncompliance, through which original minds and energetic characters can flourish in some way. Let soft secession strengthen and free the will of man, and encourage him to act.
Like this: Like Loading...Yann Sommer has made 32 Bundesliga appearances this season.
Switzerland international Yann Sommer will listen to offers from the Premier League, the Borussia Monchengladbach goalkeeper has told Bild amid rumours of interest from Manchester City.
Sommer, 27, is under contract at Gladbach until 2019, but could be tempted by a move to England following Euro 2016.
German newspaper Bild, citing British media reports, confronted Sommer with the rumours that English clubs have been monitoring him and could make a move this summer.
"I will listen to offers from England," Sommer said.
When asked specifically about rumoured interest from City, he replied: "You listen to everything. If something is interesting for a player it's also interesting for the club. Should a club come and make Gladbach a great offer they won't say now. That's football."
For now, the shot-stopper wants to finish the season at Gladbach on a good note and then switch focus to the upcoming European Championship in France, where Switzerland have been drawn in Group A alongside the hosts as well as Romania and Albania.
He said: "I am under contract here for another three years, and feel happy. It's incredible that we've reached the fourth spot after such a season. It was an extreme up and down. We want to end the season on a high at Darmstadt, and I will focus on the European Champions after that."
Despite five consecutive defeats at the start of the season, Gladbach have all but secured the Champions League playoff place as they go into the final match day with a three-point lead and a vastly superior goal difference over Mainz, Hertha Berlin and Schalke.
Sommer is not the only Switzerland international linked with a switch from Gladbach to Premier League. Holding midfielder Granit Xhaka, 23, is a reported Arsenal target and has said he wants clarity over his future before the start of Euro 2016 next month.
Stephan Uersfeld is the Germany correspondent for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @uersfeld.Introduction
Isolation is a security approach provided by many computer systems.It is based on splitting the system to smaller independent pieces to make sure that a compromised sub-system cannot affect the entire entity.This approach is present in every modern operating system (e.g User accounts,process address spaces etc..)
Chroot Jail is a way to separate a process that don’t run as root and its children from the rest of the system by creating a Jail using chroot() system call (system call is an interface between an application and the Linux kernel).The idea is to create a directory and make the process think that it is in the root folder and not letting it access or modify outside that jail.Let’s see how to build this jail and how to escape it.
Setup a Prisoner user
Create a new user: sudo adduser prisoner
Add prisoner to root group : sudo gpasswd -a prisoner root
(Check by visiting the /etc/group path)
Create a Chroot folder : mkdir chroot
Enter chroot (cd /chroot ) and create : bin,dev, etc, home, home/prisoner, lib, var, usr, usr/bin folders: mkdir bin dev etc home home/prisoner lib var usr usr/bin
(we need at least bin and lib directory inside the jail.)
Now let’s copy the bash shell utility that we want the prisoner user to be able to use.
Type: cp /bin/bash /chroot/bin/
To make sure that the bash shell will work properly we need to locate its necessary libraries and copying them to /lib jail folder: ldd /bin/bash
Now let’s use the Magic Chroot command : sudo chroot /chroot /bin/bash
Ps: if you get this error: chroot: failed to run command ‘/bin/bash’ no such file or directory please check this answer.
Voila!
Escaping the jail:
Now let’s see how to escape this type of jails:
First we need to guess the available commands by just typing some commands: cd,ls,pwd,cp,vi etc… to know what we can use to escape. Know the $SHELL and the $PATH variables using: echo $PATH and echo $SHELL. There are different methods and ideas to escape the jail for example:
If ‘/’ is available just run /bin/bash.
. If ‘set’ is available use: export PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:$PATH
and export SHELL=/bin/sh
Use other system commands e.g: awk ‘BEGIN {system(“/bin/sh”)}’
Use scripting language e.g: python – c ‘import os;os.system(“/bin/bash”)’
References:
[1] http://www.adminarticles.com
[2] https://speakerdeck.com/knaps/escape-from-shellcatraz-breaking-out-of-restricted-unix-shellsIn Watchmen, based on the comic novel by the same name, the flawed hero, Dr. Manhattan, is accidentally vaporized in an "intrinsic field subtractor." He puts himself back together--transformed!--into a being governed by quantum mechanics. He can be in more than one place at the same time, and his superpowers are so vast that he becomes a cold war strategic weapon for the U.S.
Not to spoil anything for anyone, but this is not scientifically possible.
What is surprising, though, is that the movie's creators, director Zack Snyder, screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse, and producers Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin and Deborah Snyder, wanted to explore the science behind the science fiction.
Science was ready to help. A pilot program that has now matured into something called the Science and Entertainment Exchange matched the movie's creators with the perfect academic: James Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota and the author of The Physics of Superheroes.
(For a peek at scenes of famous movies that would flop a high school science exam, see "In Pictures: 10 Films That Would Flunk Science Class.")
"They are trying to create an artificial reality. The more support pillars there are underneath that reality, the firmer it will be," says Kakalios. "You have to get things right enough that the audience never stops paying attention to the movie."
Watchmen creators brought Kakalios to Vancouver, British Columbia., where they shot the film. Producer Deborah Snyder says Kakalios helped make the science labs look more authentic and explained some of the possible real science behind Dr. Manhattan's fate--whether or not the real science would ever make it into the movie. "We wanted to have an understanding about the realities of the lab, even though the audience wasn't necessarily going to see all of it," Snyder says. "Watchmen is about real-life personalities; it is grounded in reality, so we wanted to make it authentic."
The Science and Entertainment Exchange was launched by the National Academy of Sciences last fall. During the eight-year tenure of the Bush administration, scientists have grown increasingly worried about the spread of anti-science sentiments in Washington, D.C., and the nation overall.
President Obama, in his inauguration speech, pledged to return science to its "rightful place." But that will take work, says Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. He worries about a disconnect between the public at large and the scientific enterprise in the U.S. "People don't understand how much our life today, including our survival, depends on science," he says. "But we know we can't go around lecturing people. We're hoping entertainment is a better way to reach people."
There are those in Hollywood who care, too. The husband and wife, director and producer team Jerry and Janet Zucker, vocal advocates for stem cell research, suggested the idea of the exchange to Cicerone. Also, Hollywood can get some great plot ideas, or at least plot twists, from some of the far-out stuff that scientists do.
Other advisers to the exchange are luminaries from the worlds of science and movies including Steven Chu, now secretary of energy, neurologist Oliver Saks and Hollywood's Dustin Hoffman and Rob Reiner.
Obviously, the fun in science fiction and fantasy is that the laws of science don't hold anyone back: People become invisible, they travel through time, they catch a bullet in their teeth and spit it out.
But serious scientific misunderstandings are rampant. People continue to believe vaccines cause autism, in the face of consistent and thorough studies that demonstrate they do not. Evolution is not understood to be the single organizing principle of biology--and intelligent design is advanced as a scientific theory even after court battles have shown decisively that it isn't. The science of climate change has been twisted every which way by politics. Some people even worry that the new particle collider in Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider, will create a black hole that will swallow the earth. (See "Trying To Make A Big Bang.")
"People don't really understand the science," says Jennifer Ouellette, the exchange's director. "The more they know about it the better."
The exchange has another, even more ambitious goal: to transform the scientists in movies and on TV into cool characters, or at least more nuanced ones than just another pencil-necked geeky sidekick.
The TV show Big Bang Theory revolves around science geeks who are clueless with the ladies. But cool scientists are possible. Case in point: CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation series, which has drop-dead gorgeous forensic scientists who crack cases using the scientific method and wearing fetching white lab coats.
Even so, science is nowhere near as cool as it was when entire generations of children aspired to be astronauts.
Ouellette matches writers, directors and producers with scientists who coach them through scientific worm holes. "I'm the Yenta," she says. The exchange can check basic facts, Ouellette says, but it can be more effective when it gets involved early. She convenes "think tank" meetings, attended by movie creators and scientists to hash out the science of a movie long before shooting starts. Already, the exchange has connected people working on small independent films, blockbusters, an HBO pilot and the TV program Fringe.
After the National Academy referred Watchmen creators to Kakalios, he worked with the production designer, the art designer and a producer on details as specific as exactly what physics labs might have looked like in 1959 when Dr. Manhattan vaporized himself.
One of Kakalios' observations: In movies with physics professors, creators often write correct equations on the blackboards behind the researchers. But they are equations from every corner of physics--thermodynamics intertwined with quantum mechanics--the scientific equivalent of a car chase that starts in Times Square, turns a corner and winds up in Nebraska.
Dr. Manhattan's "intrinsic field subtractor," Kakalios says, could have been a device that had the power (in the world of science fiction, at least) to turn off the very real fundamental forces of nature--the strong force, the weak force and the electromagnetic force--which hold everything together. It would have taken a tremendous amount of energy, Kakalios told the movie makers, and it would have released a tremendous amount of energy.
Ultimately, of course, the creators wanted to be faithful to the original comic. "If, at the end of the day, they were going to tick off a million Watchmen fans or a physics professor from Minnesota," says Kakalios, "I know what I would choose--and I'm the physics professor."
Scientists abhor absolutes, but suffice it to say it is extremely improbable that Watchmen will inspire anyone to change their minds about stem cell research or reconsider evolution. But it is not technically impossible, either, that this Science and Entertainment Exchange will inspire legions of Americans to grab a Bunsen burner, a telescope or a seismometer and try to figure out how the universe works.
Cicerone admits success will be very hard to quantify. "We'll know it when we see it," he says.
In Pictures: 10 Films That Would Flunk Science Class
See Also:
How To Be A Genius
The Truth In Illusions
Tricked Ya! How Illusions WorkThe debate on marriage equality has been “resolved”, the resources and Northern Australian minister, Matthew Canavan, has said after Peter Dutton’s attack on chief executives supporting the still unlegislated social reform.
Canavan cited Malcolm Turnbull’s reiteration of support for the plebiscite on Friday, a further sign that a push by Liberal moderates who support a free vote on marriage equality has so far failed to convince their colleagues.
Senior moderate Liberals including Julie Bishop and Simon Birmingham have defended the CEOs right to have their say, and Birmingham rebuked Dutton on Sunday by calling for members to express their views in the party room.
This week a group of 30 chief executives signed a letter organised by Australian Marriage Equality urging Turnbull to legislate for same-sex marriage.
Marriage equality: Peter Dutton singles out Alan Joyce in fresh attack on CEOs Read more
On Saturday Dutton singled out the Qantas chief executive, Alan Joyce, accusing him of using the company’s brand to push his personal view on equality.
On Sunday, the Daily Telegraph reported conservatives were rallying to block a push by a group of up to 12 Liberal moderates to write to Turnbull calling for reconsideration of marriage equality before the budget.
Asked about the moderates’ claim resolving the marriage issue would clear the air to talk about budget issues, Canavan told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday the argument was “unusual” because the government should focus on jobs, energy and childcare.
“There’s lots to do and the Coalition’s position on the marriage question is very clear: we think the Australian people deserve a say.”
He said of the plebiscite’s defeat in the Senate, “that was rejected by the parliament late last year”, and labelled the renewed push a “massive diversion”.
“[The prime minister] has been very clear in his views on the matter,” he said. “We’ve been very clear as a party. We had a very respectful debate on this matter a couple of years ago and it’s resolved as far as the Coalition is concerned.”
Canavan said he would like to see more “respect” in the debate, saying unspecified people had shown “a level of contempt for those with a different view”.
He rejected the idea in their CEOs’ letter that continuing to block a free vote would be bad for business, citing the fact that Australia’s biggest trading partners in Asia would not legislate same-sex marriage “any time soon”.
Asked about Dutton’s comments at a press conference on Sunday, Birmingham said that “throughout history business leaders have often step ahead of legislators in support of reforms to gender equity or racial equity”.
“I see no reason why business leaders won’t do the same when it comes to same-sex marriage.”
Birmingham said the government’s priority was childcare but “individual members are free to raise any topic at any time and we are more than capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time”.
“I would also prefer that everything is conducted in the partyroom, but in the end, people are free to express views, and argue their case.”
He added that “any such issues” with marriage equality would be worked out in the party room.
On Sky News on Sunday the health minister, Greg Hunt, who supports marriage equality, reiterated his support for a plebiscite.
“I disagree with those that seek to deny the Australian population a say,” he said. “I respect their views, I respect their right to their views. But it’s a slight perversity that some would say only the elite can participate in the debate... and we can’t trust the population.”
Turnbull brushes off business leaders’ fresh appeal for marriage equality Read more
Hopes for marriage equality were boosted in February by a consensus Senate committee report on ways to improve the government’s exposure draft same-sex marriage bill to better balance the right to equality and protections for freedom of religion.
But momentum on the issue has stalled since then, although Liberal moderates are still reserving the right to raise the issue in the party room.
The Liberal senator Dean Smith has said the prospect of a plebiscite was “dead” and has called for a free vote in this term of parliament.
On Monday his fellow Liberal moderate MP Tim Wilson told Sky News that, although the Coalition took the plebiscite policy to the election, the former prime minister Tony Abbott had also said that the 44th parliament would be the last to be bound on same-sex marriage.
“The question is going to eventually be, the conversation we’re going to need to have [is] around what... policy is taken to the next election but I don’t think now is the time for that conversation,” he said.
On Sunday, the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said it was a bit much for Dutton to accuse companies of bullying people over marriage equality.
“Mr Turnbull, I know, supports a vote in parliament on marriage equality but he just lacks the ticker to confront the bullies of the right wing of the Liberal party,” he told reporters in Sydney.Freelancers CO-OP of New Jersey has been given the go-ahead to compete for consumers on the new federal health insurance exchange being rolled out this fall. The insurance plan, called Health Republic Insurance of New Jersey, will be one of several options the uninsured and self-insured can choose from when they begin enrolling on Oct. 1. The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, requires almost every American to either purchase insurance or pay a fine. “HRINJ is anxious to offer quality health insurance to New Jerseyans through a positive and innovative health insurance experience,” said James Martin, executive director and CEO of Health Republic. Co-ops are health insurance companies that are essentially run by consumers. It’s the same concept as a farm or dairy co-op, only applied to a health insurance company. Health Republic will have a majority of its board of directors made up of its own customers. This, the company claims, allows them to be more nimble and provide better customer service than a large health insurance company. But it also presents the challenge of creating a new business in a saturated market. Freelancers CO-OP will compete on the exchange with large players such as Horizon, Aetna and AmeriHealth New Jersey. None of the companies have announced their rates, but those are expected to be released in coming weeks. The Affordable Care Act, seeking to stimulate competition, provided billions of dollars in loans for co-ops like Health Republic, which received $107 million. The loan program has caused consternation among House Republicans wary of these companies’ ability to repay the money. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations Committee, has asked if co-ops such as Health Republic will be able to attract enough customers to remain viable, and enough revenue to meet expenses and pay claims. “New Jersey consumers should absolutely be concerned,” said Ali Ahmad, a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee spokesman. “When co-ops default, taxpayers lose but so do consumers who purchased coverage through the co-op.” Cynthia Jay, director of marketing and strategic outreach for Health Republic said yesterday the company will be profitable in three years and intends to repay the loan. “The release of the loans was based on a stringent application process,” she said. The company plans to enroll 20,000 members in 2014 and 40,000 by 2016, Jay said. Health Republic has been approved by the New Jersey Division of Banking and Insurance, which requires a detailed feasibility plan, including a marketing strategy and funding source. The Newark-based company has also partnered with Qualcare, which has a network of 28,000 providers. That will give Health Republic a head start on spreading the word to consumers looking to purchase a health plan. The company still needs federal approval to be listed as a qualified health plan on the exchange and that application is pending. If that is obtained, Health Republic plans to offer health insurance products on the company website and through a selective network of insurance agents and brokers.
Star-Ledger staff writer Ed Beeson contributed to this report.The Seattle Mariners and Felix Hernandez supposedly agreed to a long-term contract extension worth $175 million over seven years. The Seattle Mariners then supposedly identified something troubling in Felix's right elbow MRI. The Seattle Mariners and Felix Hernandez have now agreed to a long-term contract extension supposedly worth $175 million over seven years.
source: felix deal remains $175M for 7 years guaranteed — Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) February 12, 2013
'Minor concessions' were made to address the condition of Felix's elbow in his new 7/175m deal. Old deal torn up. — Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 12, 2013
Okay. Obviously, we don't have the whole picture yet, and we might never. We don't know what sorts of minor concessions might have been made. But it seems like the guaranteed money hasn't changed, and if an option were added to the end of the contract, to protect the team in the event of an injury, that doesn't seem like it would count as a minor concession. That would be a pretty significant thing! Although one is free to have his own interpretation of the word "minor".
Here's the real conclusion: if Felix is signing for about the same amount of guaranteed money as was reported last week, then the Mariners can't be too concerned about his health now or in the future. Meaning whatever they saw in Felix's MRI couldn't have been that worrisome. If there were something seriously wrong, it's not like Felix's agents could've negotiated it away. To agree to the same or similar terms means it's probably just ordinary wear and tear, which would only confirm what the Mariners likely would've suspected. Over the next several years, Felix is an injury risk. We knew that from the beginning. We've known that since Felix was a prospect. I remember, when Felix was still a minor leaguer, I asked Will Carroll about him, and Carroll said that Felix's delivery was too violent. I'm still waiting on the consequences.
It's still not clear whether Felix is getting a new seven-year contract, or a five-year extension that kicks in after his old deal expires. I think it's a new seven-year contract. It doesn't really make that much of a difference. (UPDATE: new seven-year contract. So Felix's salary goes up in 2013 and 2014 from what it was to be before.)
Felix. Felix! Felix and the Seattle Mariners! For now and forever!June 29, 2017
Ingrid Raphael and Kristen Godfrey report on a police attack against protesters who tried to bring issues of police brutality to light at Columbus' Pride parade.
SUPPORTERS ARE organizing to demand that charges be dropped against trans and queer activists of color who were attacked and arrested by police at a protest during the Stonewall Columbus Pride parade on June 17.
The 10 activists planned to silently and peacefully block the parade for seven minutes in order to draw attention to the injustices faced by LGBTQ people, specifically police brutality.
As Black Queer Intersectionality Columbus (BQIC), a coalition of LGBTQIA+ community organizers which had two members arrested in the action, explained in a statement, the aim was "to protest the recent acquittal of the police officer who killed Philando Castile" and "to raise awareness about the violence against and erasure of Black and Brown queer and trans people, in particular the lack of space for Black and Brown people at Pride festivals and the 14 trans women of color who have already been murdered this year."
Activists took the streets with a sign that read "What About Us?" stopping the parade for less than 45 seconds before police went on the attack. As police officers used their bikes to forcefully push the protesters back, another officer pulled out his mace and used it within a foot of protesters' faces--including, later, one of the authors of this article.
Police move in to arrest anti-racist LGBTQ activists at the Pride Parade in Columbus (Torin Allen)
Police tackled protesters, pinning them down on the ground, three to five cops on one person. They even send in about a dozen cops on horses to surround them.
Police smashed protesters' faces onto the hot concrete, trampled their glasses and twisted their arms as they choked on the mace. Shockingly, some spectators cheered the police as they handcuffed, arrested and dragged them away, as shown in photos circulating on social media.
The police arrested four activists, known to their supporters as the Black Pride 4. Three were charged with misdemeanors of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The fourth was charged with a felony of aggravated robbery for allegedly attempting to take an officer's weapon, a claim that supporters say video and witness accounts contradict.
IN RESPONSE to the police attack, activists who were part of the Socialist Contingent at Pride, which included members of the International Socialist Organization, Socialist Alternative and the Democratic Socialists, along with Jewish Voices for Peace and the Green Party, immediately rushed to the Franklin County Correctional Center to demand that the four be released.
Organizers across organizations strategized about ways to get the word out on social media and mobilize actions on the ground in their defense. The immediate mobilization proved to be successful: many people shared the bail fund page, called the correctional facility to pressure for the release the Black Pride 4, and shared videos of what happened earlier that morning.
Later that night, the three who were charged with misdemeanors were released on bail. The fourth with the felony charge remained in holding, awaiting arraignment and bail being set, until Monday.
On Monday, June 19, an action organized by BQIC brought out 50 supporters demanding the release of the last member of the Black Pride 4. They were released upon bail and charged with a felony.
The next step for supporters is demanding that all charges be dropped against the Black Pride 4, fundraising for legal fees and holding Stonewall Columbus accountable for contracting the Columbus Police Department (CPD) for the Pride parade.
Stonewall Columbus, the Central Ohio LGBT organization that plans the annual Columbus Pride Event, has remained unclear about its support for the Black Pride 4. In a recent statement, Stonewall Columbus said it had requested a "formal review by the Columbus Police and the Franklin County Sheriff about what occurred during the protests" and "has been in contact with some of the members of the protest, and we are hopeful that we can create a meaningful discussion that will make significant change and heal our hearts."
On June 22, the ISO held a forum on "The Fight for Transliberation" where one of the Black Pride 4 arrested was a speaker. A board member of Stonewall Columbus showed up. The 50 people in the room asked him to take a stand, and he equivocated. He also alluded to Stonewall's statement including the word "condemn." However, this word didn't make the official statement.
Activists also say that the group deleted a statement on its website that it would provide legal assistance to the Black Pride 4.
THE ORGANIZATION behind Columbus Pride, which is named for the Stonewall Inn, the New York City bar where the LGBT movement was born when its patrons rioted against police raids, is taking the side of the police over the trans, queer community of color.
In response, there has been a backlash against the organization from the community, resulting in the voluntary resignation of a Pride coordinator in support of the Black Pride 4. The Pride coordinator has personally condemned the police force's actions, but not its presence at Pride.
Stonewall Columbus needs to take responsibility and condemn the actions of the police and respond to the community's outcry to keep the police out of Pride.
The Columbus Police Department has a long track record of committing acts of violence against Black people. A few of the names of the CPD's victims include Tyre King, a 13-year-old who police shot in the back; Jaron Thomas who was killed by police after he called for help with a mental health issue; and Henry Green who was shot by two plain-clothed police officers last year.
The police who attacked peaceful protesters at Pride are the same ones who murder Brown and Black people in the street. They are also the same cops who police gentrifying neighborhoods that ultimately kick poor and working-class people out in the name of city development.
The Columbus Pride parade went through the Short North, an area that is being heavily gentrified, with housing replaced with high-rise hotels and apartments. The police have proven to be unfit to protect the people, including Pride and communities that are most vulnerable.
The distrust of the police at Pride isn't exceptional to Columbus. This sentiment is shared across the country, with protests against the dominance of corporate sponsors and police at Pride |
Nationalist Congress Party one member each. The BJP now has two members.
In Meghalaya, opposition Hill State Democratic Party (HSPDP) retained the Nongstoin Assembly seat defeating ruling Congress candidate by a margin of over 2,700 votes in the November 21 bypoll.
This is the second loss for the ruling Congress in a span of one month after it lost badly in the Garo tribal council elections held last month.
Former Mizoram health minister Lal Thanzara of Congress won the bypoll to Aizawl North-III Assembly seat with a thumping majority.
Lal Thanzara, who is the younger brother of Chief minister Lal Thanhawla, scored 1,498 more votes than the total number of votes secured by Mizo National Front candidate K Vanlalvena and NDA nominee Lalduhawma.
First Published: Nov 24, 2015 16:01 ISTThe year 2016 ended with two more dramatic and bloody occurrences: the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Istanbul and the brutal murder of people in Berlin who were peacefully enjoying preparations for Christmas. These events were linked to the bloody morass in the Middle East and more specifically to Syria.
The fall of Aleppo represented a decisive turn in the situation. Russia, which was supposed to have been isolated and humbled by the “international community” (read Washington) now controls Syria and decides what happens there. It called a peace conference in Kazakhstan to which neither the Americans nor the Europeans were invited, followed by an agreement for a ceasefire dictated on Russia’s terms.
In different ways these developments expressed the same phenomenon: the old world order is dead and in its place we are faced with a future of instability and conflict, the outcome of which nobody can predict. The year 2016 therefore represented a turning point in history. It was a year marked by crisis and turbulence on a global scale.
Twenty-five years ago after the fall of the Soviet Union the defenders of capitalism were euphoric. They spoke of the death of socialism and communism and even the end of history. They promised us a future of peace and prosperity thanks to the triumph of the free market economy and democracy.
Liberalism had triumphed and therefore history had reached its final expression in capitalism. That was the essential meaning of the now notorious phrase of Francis Fukuyama. But now the wheel of history has turned full circle. Today not one stone upon another is left of those confident predictions of the strategists of capital. History has returned with a vengeance.
Suddenly the world seems to be afflicted by strange and unprecedented phenomena that defy all the attempts of the political experts to explain them. On 23 June the people of Britain voted in a referendum to leave the European Union – a result that nobody expected, which caused shock waves on an international scale. But these were as nothing compared to the tsunami provoked by the result of the American presidential elections – a result that nobody expected, including the man who won.
Within hours of the election of Donald Trump, the streets of cities all over the United States were filled with demonstrators. These events are the dramatic confirmation of the instability that has afflicted the entire world. Overnight the old certainties have disappeared. There is a general ferment in society and a sense of widespread uncertainty filled the ruling class and its ideologues with deep foreboding.
The apologists of capitalist liberalism complain bitterly about the rise of politicians like Donald Trump who represents the antithesis of what is known as “liberal values.” For such people the year 2016 seems like a nightmare. They are hoping that they will wake up and find that it was all a dream, that yesterday will return and tomorrow will see a better day. But for bourgeois liberalism there will be no reawakening and no tomorrow.
Political commentators speak with dread of the rise of something they call “populism”, a word that is as elastic as it is meaningless. The use of such amorphous terminology merely signifies that those who use it have no idea what they’re talking about. In strict etymological terms populism is merely a Latin translation of the Greek demagogy. The term is applied with the same gusto that a bad painter plasters a wall with a thick coat of paint to cover up his mistakes. It is used to describe such a wide variety of political phenomena that it becomes entirely devoid of any real content.
The leaders of Podemos and Geert Wilders, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Evo Morales, Rodrigo Duterte and Hugo Chavez, Jeremy Corbyn and Marine Le Pen – all are tarred with the same populist brush. It is sufficient to compare the real content of these movements that are not only different but radically antagonistic to realise the utter futility of such language. It is not calculated to clarify but to confuse, or more correctly to cover up the confusion of stupid bourgeois political commentators.
The death of liberalism
In its editorial of 24 December 2016 The Economist chanted a hymn of praise to its beloved liberalism. Liberals, we are told, believe in “open economies and open societies, where the free exchange of goods, capital, people and ideas is encouraged and where universal freedoms are protected from state abuse by the rule of law.” Such a beautiful picture really ought to be set to music.
But then the article sadly concludes that 2016 “has been a year of setbacks. Not just over Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, but also the tragedy of Syria, abandoned to its suffering, and widespread support—in Hungary, Poland and beyond—for ‘illiberal democracy’. As globalisation has become a slur, nationalism, and even authoritarianism, have flourished. In Turkey relief at the failure of a coup was overtaken by savage (and popular) reprisals. In the Philippines voters chose a president who not only deployed death squads but bragged about pulling the trigger. All the while Russia, which hacked Western democracy, and China, which just last week set out to taunt America by seizing one of its maritime drones, insist liberalism is merely a cover for Western expansion.”
The beautiful hymn of praise to liberalism and Western values has ended on a sour note. The Economist concludes bitterly: “Faced with this litany, many liberals (of the free-market sort) have lost their nerve. Some have written epitaphs for the liberal order and issued warnings about the threat to democracy. Others argue that, with a timid tweak to immigration law or an extra tariff, life will simply return to normal.”
But life will not simply “return to normal” – or more correctly, we will enter a new stage of what The Economist refers to as a “new normality”: A period of endless cuts, austerity and falling living standards. In reality, we have been living in this new normality for quite some time. And very serious consequences flow from this.
The global crisis of capitalism has created conditions that are completely unlike the conditions that existed (at least for a handful of privileged countries) four decades after the Second World War. That period witnessed the biggest upswing of the productive forces of capitalism since the Industrial Revolution. This was the soil on which the much vaunted “liberal values” could flourish. The economic boom provided the capitalists with sufficient profits to grant concessions to the working class.
That was the golden era of reformism. But the present period is the era, not of reforms but of counter-reforms. This is not the result of ideological prejudice, as some foolish reformists imagine. It is the necessary consequence of the crisis of the capitalist system that has reached its limits. The whole process that unfolded over a period of six decades is now thrown into reverse.
Instead of reforms and rising living standards, the working class everywhere is faced with cuts, austerity, unemployment and impoverishment. The degradation of working conditions, wages, rights and pensions falls most heavily on the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society. The idea of equality for women is being eroded by the remorseless search for increased profitability. A whole generation of young people is being deprived of a future. That is the essence of the present period.
The elite’s Marie Antoinette moment
The ruling class and its strategists find it hard to accept the reality of the present situation and are completely blind to the political consequences that flow from it. The same blindness can be observed in every ruling class that is facing extinction and refuses to accept it. As Lenin correctly observed, a man standing on the edge of a precipice does not reason.
The Financial Times published an interesting article by Wolfgang Münchau entitled “The elite’s Marie Antoinette moment”. It begins as follows:
“Some revolutions could have been avoided if the old guard had only refrained from provocation. There is no proof of a ‘let them eat cake’ incident. But this is the kind of thing Marie Antoinette could have said. It rings true. The Bourbons were hard to beat as the quintessential out-of-touch establishment. “They have competition now. “Our global liberal democratic establishment is behaving in much the same way. At a time when Britain has voted to leave the EU, when Donald Trump has been elected US president, and Marine Le Pen is marching towards the Elysée Palace, we — the gatekeepers of the global liberal order — keep on doubling down.”
The comparison with the French Revolution is highly instructive. Everywhere the ruling class and its “experts” have shown themselves to be completely out of touch with the real situation in society. They assumed that the order of things that emerged from the post-war economic boom would continue forever. The market economy and bourgeois “democracy” were the unquestioned paradigms of the epoch.
Their smug complacency precisely resembled that of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France. It is by no means certain that her famous phrase was ever pronounced, but it accurately reflects the mentality of a degenerate ruling class that has no interest in the sufferings of ordinary people or the inevitable consequences that flow from them.
In the end Marie Antoinette lost her head and now the ruling class and its political representatives are losing theirs. The Financial Times article continues:
“Why is this happening? Macroeconomists thought no one would dare challenge their authority. Italian politicians have been playing power games forever. And the job of EU civil servants is to find ingenious ways of spiriting politically tricky legislation and treaties past national legislatures. Even as the likes of Ms Le Pen, Mr Grillo and Geert Wilders of the far-right Dutch Freedom party head towards power, the establishment keeps acting this way. A Bourbon regent, in an uncharacteristic moment of reflection, would have backed off. Our liberal capitalist order, with its competing institutions, is constitutionally incapable of doing that. Doubling down is what it is programmed to do. “The correct course of action would be to stop insulting voters and, more importantly, to solve the problems of an out-of-control financial sector, uncontrolled flows of people and capital, and unequal income distribution. In the eurozone, political leaders found it expedient to muddle through the banking crisis and then a sovereign debt crisis — only to find Greek debt is unsustainable and the Italian banking system is in serious trouble. Eight years on, there are still investors out there betting on a collapse of the eurozone as we know it.”
In 1938 Trotsky wrote that the ruling class was tobogganing to disaster with its eyes closed. The above lines are a graphic illustration of this fact. And Mr Münchau draws the following conclusion quote:
“But it is not happening for the same reason it did not happen in revolutionary France. The gatekeepers of western capitalism, like the Bourbons before them, have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.”
The collapse of the centre
Contrary to the old prejudice of the liberals, human consciousness is not progressive but profoundly conservative. Most people do not like change. They cling obstinately to the old ideas, prejudices, religion and morality because they are familiar and what is familiar is always more comforting than what is not. The idea of change is frightening because it is unknown. These fears are deeply rooted in the human psyche and have existed from time immemorial.
Yet change is as necessary to the survival of the human race as it is to the survival of the individual. The absence of change is death. The human body constantly changes from the moment of birth; all cells break down, die and are replaced with new cells. The child must disappear in order for the adult to be born.
Yet it is not difficult to understand people’s aversion to change. Habit, routine, tradition – all these things are necessary for the maintenance of social norms that underpin the functioning of society. Over a long period they become ingrained, conditioning the daily activities of millions of men and women. They are universally accepted, as are respect for the laws and customs, the rules of political life and the existing institutions: in a word, the status quo.
Something similar exists in science. In his profound and penetrating study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas S. Kuhn explains how every period in the development of science is based on an existing paradigm that is generally accepted, providing a necessary framework for scientific work. For a long time this paradigm serves a useful purpose. But eventually small, apparently insignificant contradictions appear that eventually lead to the downfall of the old paradigm and its replacement with a new one. This, according to Kuhn, constitutes the essence of a scientific revolution.
Exactly the same dialectical process occurs in society. Ideas that have existed for so long that they have hardened into prejudices eventually enter into conflict with existing reality. At that point, a revolution in consciousness begins to take place. People begin to question what seemed to be unquestionable. Ideas that were comfortable because they provided certainty are shattered on the rock of hard reality. For the first time people begin to shake off the old comfortable illusions and look reality in the face.
The real cause of the fears of the ruling class is the collapse of the political centre. What we are seeing in Britain, the United States, Spain and many other countries is a sharp and increasing polarisation between left and right in politics, which in turn is merely a reflection of an increasing polarisation between the classes. This in turn is a reflection of the deepest crisis in the history of capitalism.
For the last hundred years the political system in the USA was based on two parties – the Democrats and Republicans – that both stood for the maintenance of capitalism and both represented the interests of the banks and big business. This was very well expressed by Gore Vidal who wrote “our Republic has one party, the property party, with two right wings.”
This was the solid foundation for the stability and longevity of what Americans regarded as “democracy”. In reality, this bourgeois democracy was merely a fig leaf to conceal the reality of the dictatorship of the bankers and capitalists. Now this convenient setup is being challenged and shaken to the core. Millions of people are waking up to the rottenness of the political establishment and the fact that they are being deceived by those who claim to represent them. This is the prior condition for a social revolution.
Crisis of reformism
We see a similar situation in Britain, where for 100 years Labour and Conservatives alternated in power, providing the same kind of stability for the ruling class. The Labour Party and Conservative party were run by solid, respectable men and women who could be relied upon to run society in the interests of the bankers and capitalists of the city of London. But the election of Jeremy Corbyn has upset the apple cart.
The ruling class fears that the massive influx of new members into the Labour Party may break the stranglehold of the right wing over Labour. That explains the panic of the ruling class and the vitriolic nature of the campaign against Corbyn.
The crisis of capitalism is also the crisis of reformism. The strategists of capital resemble the Bourbons, but the reformist leaders are only a poor imitation of the former. They are the blindest of the blind. The reformists, both of the right and left varieties, have no understanding of the real situation. Though they pride themselves on being great realists, they are the worst kind of utopians.
Like the liberals of whom they are merely a pale reflection, they are pining after the past that has vanished beyond return. They complain bitterly about the unfairness of capitalism, not realising that the policies of the bourgeoisie are dictated by the economic necessity of capitalism itself.
It is a supreme irony of history that the reformists have fully embraced the market economy precisely at a time when it is breaking down before our very eyes. They had accepted capitalism as something that is given once and for all, that cannot be questioned and certainly not overthrown. The alleged realism of the reformists is the realism of a man who tries to persuade a tiger to eat salads instead of human flesh. Naturally, the realist who attempted to perform this laudable feat did not succeed in convincing the Tiger and ended up inside its belly.
What the reformists to not understand is that if you accept capitalism you must also accept the laws of capitalism. And under modern conditions that means accepting cuts and austerity. Nowhere is the bankruptcy of reformism more clearly expressed than in the fact that they no longer talk about socialism. Nor do they talk about capitalism. Instead they complain of the evils of “neoliberalism”, that is to say, they do not object to capitalism per se but only a particular model of capitalism. But the so-called neoliberalism is merely a euphemism for capitalism in the period of crisis.
The reformists who imagine that they are great realists are dreaming of a return to the conditions of the past when that past has already receded into history. The period that now opens up will be entirely different. In the decades that followed 1945, the class struggle in the advanced capitalist countries was attenuated to some extent as a result of the reforms won by the working class through struggle.
Trotsky explained long ago that betrayal is implicit in reformism in all its varieties. By this he did not mean that reformists consciously betray the working class. There are many honest reformists, as well as a fair number of corrupt careerists. But the way to hell is paved with good intentions. If you accept the capitalist system – as all reformists do, whether right or left – then you must obey the laws of the capitalist system. In a period of capitalist crisis, this means the inevitability of cuts and attacks on living standards.
This lesson had to be learnt by Tsipras and Varoufakis in Greece. They came to power with huge popular support on an anti-austerity programme, but were very quickly made to understand by Merkel and Schäuble that this was not on the agenda. In the end they capitulated and meekly carried out the austerity programme dictated by Berlin and Brussels. We saw a similar situation in France where Hollande won a massive victory promising an anti-austerity programme, then did 180° turn and carried out even deeper cuts than the previous right-wing government. The inevitable result has been the rise of Marine Le Pen and the Front National.
Capitalism in a blind alley
In countries like the United States every generation since the Second World War could look forward to a better standard of living than that enjoyed by their parents. In the decades of economic boom workers became accustomed to relatively easy victories. The trade union leaders did not have to struggle much to obtain wage increases. Reforms were considered to be the norm. Today was better than yesterday and tomorrow would be better than today.
In the long period of capitalist upswing, the class consciousness of the workers was somewhat blunted. Instead of clear-cut class socialist policies, the workers’ movement has been infected with alien ideas through the transmission belt of the petty bourgeoisie which has elbowed the workers to one side and drowned out their voice with the shrill declamations of middle-class radicalism.
The so-called political correctness with its mishmash of half-baked ideas fished out of the rubbish bin of bourgeois liberalism has gradually become accepted even in the trade unions where the right-wing reformist leaders eagerly seize upon it as a substitute for class policies and socialist ideas. The left reformists in particular have played a pernicious role in this respect. It will take the hammer blows of events to demolish these prejudices that have a corrosive effect on consciousness.
But the crisis of capitalism does not permit such luxuries. Today’s generation of young people for the first time will face worse conditions of life than their parents enjoyed. Gradually this new reality is forcing itself on the consciousness of the masses. That is the reason for the present ferment of discontent that exists in all countries and is acquiring an explosive character. It is the explanation for the political earthquakes that have taken place in Britain, Spain, Greece, Italy, the United States and many other countries. It is a warning that revolutionary developments are being prepared.
It is true that at this stage the movement is characterised by a tremendous confusion. How could it be otherwise, when those organisations and parties that should be placing themselves at the head of a movement to transform society instead have been transformed into monstrous obstacles in the path of the working class? The masses are seeking a way out of the crisis, putting political parties, leaders and programs to the test. Those who fail the test are mercilessly cast to one side. There are violent swings on the electoral front, both to the left and to the right. All this is a harbinger of revolutionary change.
In retrospect the period of half a century that followed the Second World War will be seen as an historical exception. The peculiar concatenation of circumstances that produced this situation in all likelihood will never be repeated. What we face now is precisely a return to normal capitalism. The smiling face of liberalism, reformism and democracy will be cast aside to reveal the ugly physiognomy of capitalism as it really is.
Towards a new October!
A new period opens up before us – a period of storm and stress that will be far more similar to the 1930s than the period after 1945. All the illusions of the past will be burned out of the consciousness of the masses with a hot iron. In such a period as this the working class will have to fight hard to defend the gains of the past, and in the course of bitter struggle will come to understand the need for a thoroughgoing revolutionary programme. Either capitalism is overthrown, or a terrible fate awaits humanity. That is the only alternative. Any other course of action is a lie and a deceit. It is time to look truth in the face.
On the basis of diseased capitalism there can be no way forward for the working class and the youth. The liberals and reformists are striving with might and main to prop it up. They whimper about the threat to democracy, hiding the fact that so-called bourgeois democracy is merely a fig leaf behind which hides the crude reality of the dictatorship of the banks and big business. They will try to lure the working class into alliances to “defend democracy”, but this is a hypocritical farce.
The only force that has a real interest in democracy is the working class itself. The so-called liberal bourgeoisie is incapable of fighting reaction, which flows directly from the capitalist system upon which its wealth and privileges are based. It was Obama who paved the way for the victory of Trump, just as it was Hollande who has paved the way for the rise of Le Pen.
In reality, the old system is already breaking down before our very eyes. The symptoms of its decay are evident to all. Everywhere we see economic crises, social breakdown, disorder, wars, destruction and chaos. It is a terrible picture, but it flows from the fact that capitalism has led humanity into a blind alley.
It is not the first time that we have seen such things. The same symptoms can be seen in the period of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the period of decay of feudal society. It is no accident that men and women in those days imagined that the end of the world was approaching. But what was approaching was not the end of the world but only the end of a particular social economic system that had exhausted its potential and become a monstrous obstacle in the path of human progress.
Lenin once said that capitalism is horror without end. We now see the literal truth of this assertion. But alongside the horrors produced by a decadent and reactionary system there is another side to the picture. Our epoch is a birth-time, and a period of transition from one historical period to another. Such periods are always characterised by pains, which are the pains of a new society that is struggling to be born, while the old society struggles to preserve itself by strangling the child in the womb.
The old world is dying on its feet. That it is tottering to its fall is indicated by unmistakable symptoms. The rot is spreading in the established order of things, its institutions are collapsing. The defenders of the old order are seized by an undefined foreboding of something unknown. All these things betoken that there is something else approaching.
This gradual crumbling to pieces will be speeded up by the eruption of the working class on the scene of history. Those sceptics who wrote off the working class will be forced to eat their words. Volcanic forces are building up beneath the surface of society. The contradictions are building up to the point where they cannot be endured any further.
Our task is to shorten this painful process and ensure that the birth takes place with the least possible suffering. In order to do this it is necessary to accomplish the overthrow of the present system that has become a terrible barrier to the development of the human race and a threat to its future.
All those who are trying to preserve the old order, to patch it up, to reform it, to provide it with crutches that will enable it to hobble along for a few years or decades more are playing the most reactionary role. They are preventing the birth of a new society which alone can offer a future to humanity and put an end to the existing nightmare of capitalism.
The New World that is struggling to be born is called socialism. It is our job to ensure that this birth takes place as soon as possible and with the least possible pain and suffering. The way to achieve this end is to build a powerful worldwide Marxist tendency with educated cadres and strong links with the working class.
One hundred years ago an event took place that the changed the course of world history. In a backward semi feudal country on the edge of Europe, the working class moved to change society. Nobody expected this, on the contrary. The objective conditions for a socialist revolution in Russia seemed to be non-existent.
Europe was in the grip of a terrible war. The workers of Britain, France, Germany and Russia were slaughtering each other in the name of imperialism. In such a context the slogan “workers of the world unite” must have seemed like an expression of bitter sarcasm. Russia itself was ruled by a powerful autocratic regime with a huge army and police force and secret police whose tentacles extended to every political party – including the Bolsheviks.
And yet, in this seemingly impossible situation the workers of Russia moved to take power into their own hands. They overthrew the tsar and established democratic organs of power, the Soviets. Only nine months later the Bolshevik Party, which at the beginning of the revolution was a tiny force of no more than 8000 members, came to power.
One hundred years later Marxists are facing the same task that Lenin and Trotsky faced in 1917. Our forces are small and our resources are meagre, but we are armed with the most powerful weapon: the weapon of ideas. Marx said that ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses. For a long time we were fighting against a powerful current. But the tide of history is now flowing strongly in our direction.
Ideas which are listened to by ones and twos today will be eagerly received by millions in the period that now opens up. Great events can take place with extreme rapidity, transforming the whole situation. The consciousness of the working class can change in a matter of days or hours. Our task is to prepare the cadres for the great events that impend. Our banner is the banner of October. Our ideas are the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky. That is the ultimate guarantee of our success.
London, 5th January 2017.
Original source: In Defence of MarxismIn the corporate world in which Real Madrid president Florentino Perez spends most of his waking hours, a certain lingo is often employed to describe concepts that can improve the performance of his huge conglomerate.
Words like "benchmark" and "best practice" describe the business world's obsession with identifying references in every field and copycatting their way of getting things done. During his long corporate life -- 17 years as president of construction and services company ACS, plus another 16 in other positions and companies -- Perez has had to sit through hours, days, maybe even weeks of presentations from his own team or hired consultants telling him to gather inspiration from the best practices of the one or two industry benchmarks.
At Real Madrid, his team have applied these concepts impressively well when it comes to everything that surrounds football. When Perez took over, believe it or not, it was hard to find an official Real Madrid jersey for sale in Madrid, or any merchandising item for that matter. Real Madrid's agreement with their apparel provider was hardly profitable, and there was little in the way of pushing sales outside of Spain.
The stadium, in precarious situation, lived off its last serious reform under Santiago Bernabeu -- he died in 1978 --, leaving several possibilities to generate additional revenue, such as corporate boxes or food stands, completely untouched.
When Perez won the elections for the first time, back in 2000, his team took a deep look at what the leaders in those fields were doing: they thoroughly analysed the best revenue generators in the top American Leagues -- NFL, NBA, MLB -- and started to build the necessary infrastructure to increase their income through merchandising, as well as to get more out of the stadium.
Today, thanks to that patient and well-structured work, Real Madrid have become the revenue benchmark in world football. And, by the way, they did this without extorting the socios, who still pay very reasonably figures for their season tickets.
It's something to be proud of, indeed, but why haven't they followed the same approach with football itself? Why not copy one successful team and apply the brutal amount of resources at Real Madrid's disposal?
Things aren't that simple nowadays. Even if the Barcelona kool-aid drinkers insist, currently there is not one successful team based on a pure model of homegrown talent and one unique style of play. The Real Madrid of the Quinta del Buitre, with the flair of two or three extremely talented foreigners, is a thing of the past, just like the Barcelona of Johann Cruyff, with their similar mixture of local lads and mesmerising imports like Romario or Hristo Stoitchkov.
Even if you have a few exceptional players who came through the ranks, as is the case at Barcelona with Sergio Busquets, Gerard Pique or Andres Iniesta, you will have to complement them with a few handsomely paid stars such as Neymar or Luis Suarez. With all due respect to the entertaining players of yore, Barcelona's current trio bears no comparison in adjusted price, performance or consistency with anything we saw in previous eras. The stakes have upped immensely.
And spending all that cash would not be enough. The club would still need the luck to see a few unexpected bets such as Javier Mascherano or Claudio Bravo to pay off way beyond their expectations.
Even though it is impossible to select one successful football team, analyse it and put together a powerpoint presentation for Mr Perez that tells him exactly what to do to improve his degrading domestic record, one does not need to go far to look for inspiration.
In the last five years, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has seen the club's basketball team claim seven titles.
The most shocking thing about the constant management mistakes of Real Madrid is that his president has something very close to a benchmark to follow inside his own club, but for some reason he hasn't made the connection yet.
In a surprising display of mental clarity when compared with the constant changes of the football section, Real Madrid's basketball team is managed in a completely different way by the same president, and accumulates silverware and successes while the richer brother can't stay alive in all competitions well before the usually key months of the season.
What is different with the basketball team? For starters, in June 2011 Mr Perez chose a low-profile coach, with experience in lower leagues and zero glamour, but who knew the club, as he had played for Real Madrid three seasons in the mid-1990's. Far from a big name, Pablo Laso's designation surprised many who expected Perez to bring another star coach, as he had done previously with Italian manager Ettore Messina.
Since he took over, Laso has won two La Ligas, four Copas del Rey and one Euroliga -- the Champions League basketball equivalent. His team have also played in another two domestic and two European league finals, demonstrating a degree of consistency that the basketball section had not shown since the late 1970's-early 1980's.
Solid as those results seem, it took Laso four seasons and three finals to win a Euroleague title, an investment of time that Mr Perez would have not tolerated in the football team.
In addition to the patience with the manager, Perez employs and respects a Sports Director, Alberto Herreros, who has also been with the club for over a decade in different positions (player, scout, etc). Herreros has complete control over hirings and firings, with which he consults Laso, but never Perez. The talent management in the basketball team is quite active and assertive, with its share of hits and misses, but with a clear blueprint.
This obviously has nothing to do with the situation in the football team, which lacks a real Sports Director since Jose Mourinho disposed of Jorge Valdano. After him, former player Miguel Pardeza tried to take that role, but quickly saw his opinion had little weight on decisions.
The personnel decisions go through Perez, who has given proof of his fickle affections towards one player or another depending on recent performances. The decision-making regarding the 23-man squad is obviously easy to improve, as we see in specific positions such as left-back in which there is no alternative to the injury-prone Marcelo.
Finally, the basketball team has built a core of key players highly identified with the club. The football club, with the revolving doors policy of the last decade, can barely count on four or five players who appear to be committed long-term to the club.
The approaches to manage both teams differ almost as much as their respective results, but the president is the same one. Using the corporate lingo, there is no need to go very far to find a benchmark, analyse its best practices and implement the learnings: it's the basketball section.
Is it that hard to apply the same logic to the venerated, iconic football team, Mr Perez?
Eduardo Alvarez covers Real Madrid and the Spanish national team for ESPN FC. Twitter: @alvarez.Trent Reznor: The Fresh Air Interview
Enlarge this image toggle caption Frank Micelotta/Getty Images Frank Micelotta/Getty Images
Hear The Music Enlarge this image Sony Pictures Sony Pictures "Hidden In Snow" 5:19 "People Lie All The Time" 4:08 "What If We Could" 3:59
When filmmaker David Fincher asked Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and his songwriting partner Atticus Ross to compose the music for his U.S. film adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Fincher had one request: for the music to sound 'textural.'
So Reznor and Ross, who won an Oscar for their score of Fincher's 2010 film The Social Network, experimented with sounds created by stretched-out bell tones, piano beds filled with nails and clothespins, and mixes of distorted instruments played imperfectly.
"We wanted to create the sound of coldness — emotionally and also physically," Reznor tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "We wanted to take lots of acoustic instruments... and transplant them into a very inorganic setting, and dress the set around them with electronics."
Reznor and Ross' hauntingly beautiful soundtrack features three hours of new instrumental music and two cover songs — Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," with lead vocals by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, and a cover of Bryan Ferry's "Is Your Love Strong Enough," with lead locals by Reznor's wife, Mariqueen Maandig. Those two covers complement the instrumental score, on which tracks are layered with simple melodies, machinelike noises and unsettling synthesizers to create a dark, moody atmosphere and complement the foreboding images on screen.
"[The instrumental sounds are] processed and stretched and manipulated into a setting where it may sound harmonically familiar, but if you tune into it, it's not behaving in a way that you're accustomed to that type of sound behaving," Reznor says. "I find experimenting around in that is an interesting place to work."
Creating A 'Downward Spiral'
Reznor's experimentation with "found sound" and discordant harmonies started early in his career, when he says he was inspired by bands like Throbbing Gristle and the films of David Lynch.
"As early as [Nine Inch Nails'] album Downward Spiral, there was a lot of effort and experiments going on — layering in sounds that might bother you under music to create a sense of anxiety," he says. "I've always found that it's an interesting instrument to bring into the mix — creating melody or purpose out of noise in the various shapes noise can take, whether it could be the hum of a radiator to a room tone, [to create] something that evokes an emotional response."
Downward Spiral, Nine Inch Nails' second album, was written in 1993, after the band had started to make a name for itself in the Cleveland underground industrial-music scene.
"I decided to write a conceptual record that told the story of somebody that was futilely trying to fill up a hole in their being with whatever it might be — sex or drugs, or to try to escape from a sense of emptiness," Reznor says. "And I felt that that created a framework where I could write these songs that all kind of made sense."
The album sold more than 5 million copies worldwide, with "Hurt" and "Closer" cracking the Billboard Top 10. Reznor says the album, about a man whose life spirals out of control, was not autobiographical at the time he wrote it.
"But the terrible irony of the story is that the story [in Downward Spiral] came to life over the next few years," he says. "My own life spiraled out of control, and I look back now and think, 'I was writing about me.'... I think that I was somebody who was pretty immature emotionally. And when thrust into a situation that was very abnormal — of fame and adulation — I wasn't really equipped to deal with it very well."
In the late '90s, Reznor says he started relying on alcohol to get him through the day. He also began drinking heavily on tours.
"Things progressed from there and caught up with me," he says. "And realizing I am an addict, it took me a while to realize that. And then it took me a while to take the necessary steps to deal with that.... I wound up in a pretty bad place that I hope to never return to."
Enlarge this image toggle caption John |
look crosses the great naturalist's features when I ask if he has any regrets about his career.
"Jumping on animals. I regret that," he states. I blink in disbelief. It is as if Judi Dench had admitted to glue-sniffing. Attenborough explains. "Fifty years ago, I used to go along, chase a giant anteater and pull it by the tail so we could film it. I am sorry about that sort of thing. But those were different days."
Then there was the time he and his crew were stuck in Borneo and strapped for something to film. "I found a little crocodile and we did a cod sequence with it. We filmed it close up so that it looked like a really big crocodile. I then took off my shirt and jumped on it. Everyone thought I had a fight with a full-sized crocodile. 'God you were brave,' they told me. I wish I hadn't done that."
And as for eating turtle eggs, he pulls a face. "They were horrible, salty. I wished I hadn't done that either."
As crimes against nature, these are minor transactions, it must be admitted. Yet they are informative – for it is easy to forget how attitudes to wildlife have changed since Attenborough began his career in 1952 on programmes such as The Pattern of Animals and, later, Zoo Quest. Wild creatures were still viewed from a Victorian perspective in those days. They were there to be tracked, captured, tied up and brought back to Britain to be goggled at. Attenborough was no different from other naturalists at the time, he admits.
Zoo Quest was certainly made in that mould, he believes. For the nine years it aired, Attenborough would travel with staff from London Zoo to a tropical country to capture an animal for the zoo's collection, a practice that was considered to be perfectly acceptable at the time. Attenborough's first assignment was to track down a white-necked Picathartes in Sierra Leone on the grounds that no other zoo in Europe had one or even knew what it looked like. "I thought: 'Oooh, a bird that no one has ever even seen. I must become the first European to get one.' It was very childish really."
Today Attenborough, like the rest of us, has a far more respectful attitude to animals, as the new series makes clear. Indeed, if Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild has a theme it is that of transition. How attitudes to the natural world have changed and how knowledge of living things has been transformed by modern science. Not to mention the leap that has taken place in the film technology bringing the wonders of the world into our front rooms, from clockwork, wind-up cameras to stop-frame photography and thermal imaging.
An example of these technological changes is provided in the living room of Attenborough's own elegant west London home. It is dominated, not by images of wildlife or native art, as you might expect, but by a giant 50in 3D television. Now Attenborough is certainly no geek – he can't drive and has trouble answering his mobile phone, he says – but he has pioneered a recent series of 3D programmes for Sky. He is clearly in thrall to the technology and keen to demonstrate its wonders.
Attenborough bustles round the set, pulling out discs from a Blu-ray player, and flicking through scenes. The tasks involve a great deal of kneeling and bending over, which Attenborough accomplishes with no hint of stiffness or back pain that would leave many younger men groaning. Dressed in an open-neck light-blue shirt, chino slacks and loafers – an Attenborough uniform to judge from other interviews – he could easily pass for a man 20 years younger and is clearly determined to keep up with the latest developments in his profession.
"I began my career in broadcasting on the old 405 line, black-and-white TV that was broadcast from Crystal Palace," he adds. "I wasn't going to say no to doing a programme in 3D that would be displayed on huge colour screens when I was offered the chance.
"On the other hand, as a medium, 3D TV is certainly not perfect. You are limited to what you photograph. You cannot use long focal lenses because of problems with background. And the cameras require two or three men to carry them. But oh, when you see time-lapse photography of plants flowering in 3D, the results are absolutely mesmeric."
However, the real change in our perspective of the natural world is not due to improvements in TV technology but has been achieved through scientific revolutions, particularly in the fields of biology and geology. These have been the real game changers, Attenborough believes. "We forget what we have learned in the last 60 years. At university I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could I prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed."
Yet we now know that continental drift explains a vast amount about the variation in the planet's plants and animals – for example the presence of similar families of earthworms in central Africa and in central South America – continents which were once attached to each other. Continental drift featured strongly in Life on Earth, Attenborough's first great series on the natural world, in 1979. What his old lecturer made of the programme is not recorded.
Since then a host of great scientific visionaries have been interviewed by Attenborough, with Konrad Lorenz providing an unforgettable early start. Lorenz won a Nobel prize for physiology for his work on animal behaviour and had an astonishing affinity with many species, in particular greylag geese. Would he like to appear on TV and demonstrate that empathy on the air, Attenborough asked.
Lorenz agreed and was filmed clutching a goose provided by London Zoo. "Komm, komm, mein Liebchen," he murmured to the unhappy animal which, as Attenborough relates, eventually squirted a jet of green dung straight at the great scientist, covering his trousers. Lorenz released the goose, wiped his clothes with his handkerchief before absent-mindedly blowing his nose with it. He completed his interview, on camera, with a green smear down his face.
Other stars to receive homage in 60 Years in the Wild include Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey for their ape-observation work, Francis Crick and Jim Watson for their discovery of the structure of DNA, and Richard Dawkins for his ideas about the selfish gene. "These people have completely transformed our understanding of the animal world. We see the world very differently today thanks to them."
Finding ways to film these scientific visions has taken Attenborough to every conceivable place on the planet. He donned a diving suit for underwater sequences filmed for The Trials of Life in 1990; has been lifted to the top of rainforests by cranes; spat at by cobras; flattened by a belligerent Scottish capercaillie; and, of course, been groomed by gorillas in that glorious sequence in Life on Earth.
So which spot on the planet would he recommend to give people a chance to enjoy living creatures at their best? The Galápagos with their iguanas? The Amazon rainforest? His answer comes as a surprise. "People say you cannot beat the rainforest. But that is simply not true. You go there and the first thing you think is: where the hell are the birds? Where are the animals? They are hiding in the trees, of course. No, if you want beauty and wildlife, you want a coral reef. Put on a mask and stick your head under the water. The sight is mind-blowing.
"And that, actually, is still a mystery: why are coral reefs so beautiful and colourful? It is not immediately obvious, though the wildlife is wonderful: shell-less molluscs, crustaceans and shoals of fish that do not give a damn whether you are there or not. Your first trip to a coral reef will be one of the most transforming moments of your life."
There is, of course, a downside. Coral reefs are now being destroyed at a staggering rate. Some estimates suggest around 600 square miles are lost every year, a rate double that of rainforest destruction. Reefs are dying because ocean waters are being acidified as carbon dioxide levels rise in the atmosphere as a result of human industrial activity. At the same time, rainforests are being ploughed up for farmland.
And this takes us to the darker side of the changes that Attenborough has seen in 60 years. Just as we are learning more and more about the glories of the living world, and as new breath-taking visions are being brought into our homes, we are destroying these wonders at an accelerating rate. It is a simple question of numbers, says Attenborough. "There is no problem on Earth that could not be solved quite easily if you could reduce world population. The reason that oil palms are being planted all over the place is because there are so many mouths, so many people in the west offering to pay for these forests to be cut down and palms planted for margarine, for plastics."
Plastic refuse turns out to be a particular concern for Attenborough, who is working on a film that will highlight the crises facing our oceans. "It is just tragic," says Attenborough. "You have got an albatross that comes back to feed its young. In close-up, it regurgitates the stuff it has been collecting round the world's oceans for 10 days to feed its chicks and what comes out? Bits of plastic. And then you see the chicks swallowing this plastic. If you warm the plastic, it gives off dioxins. And the litter of this stuff. You can only get rid of it if you can burn it – and then it gets worse."
It is a grim picture, though Attenborough is not without some shred of optimism. "If I have to grasp for little threads of hope, one is that humans are going to be better informed about the state of the world than they have ever been in the planet's history. Kids in Tibet are going to be talking to people in Patagonia about what is happening to the Earth and there is a chance that a worldwide, slow protest movement will grow with younger people wanting something to be done."
Much of their awareness of the living world and the perils facing its wildlife will have come from Attenborough, of course. In the past, he was criticised for not making clear his position on global warming, and for not taking on those who deny that climate change is occurring. However, in the past few years, he has been far more explicit in his warnings about the dangers our planet faces as it warms up and the polar regions melt.
Not surprisingly, these attempts at enlightenment have brought him into conflict with those who reject the idea that the Earth is in peril. For example, in the final episode of his last major series, Frozen Planet, Attenborough highlighted the impact of global warming on the polar regions. He pointed out that summer sea ice cover has declined by more than 30% over the past few decades and is causing major disruptions to the wildlife.
Nigel Lawson, former chancellor and leading climate-change denier, was unamused. "Sir David's alarmism is sheer speculation," he claimed after the programme was transmitted last year. "When it comes to global warming, [Attenborough] seems to prefer sensation to objectivity." Attenborough, said Lawson, should have acknowledged that although the extent of Arctic sea ice has been declining over the past 30 years, satellite observations have also shown that, at the other pole, Antarctic sea ice has been expanding over the same period.
Sensationalism is not an accusation that many have made about Attenborough in the past. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded the Order of Merit in 2005. He does not, generally, shoot his mouth off and many scientists were quick to jump to his defence. These included oceanographers who pointed out that yes, summer sea ice in Antarctica has increased over the past 30 years, but only slightly – by about 0.4 million square kilometres, an upward trend that may actually be no more than a reflection of year-to-year variability. By contrast summer sea ice in the Arctic has declined in extent by about 3 million square kilometres in the past 30 years: a vast decrease. Lawson was guilty of being economical with the truth, to put it mildly.
So what does Attenborough think about climate change deniers like Lawson? What should be done to counter their highly selective views about global warming?
"Well, it is difficult to know what to say except that people like him have to be allowed to make these claims so that others can assess them. Any idea of suppressing their views would be disastrous. We need to be able to see just how wrong-headed they are and how selective they are in picking data to support their ideas. They pinpoint examples to say global warming cannot be happening because it got colder in some area of the planet. That is the sort of thing they say. But, of course, that completely misunderstands the global nature of the crisis we are facing. We have to keep pointing that out. Certainly I think that most people would recognise that Lawson is up a gum tree.
"The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it."
Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild begins on BBC2 on 16 November at 9pmANALYSIS/OPINION:
Here’s what Washington Redskins fans can expect to see Thursday night in the team’s first preseason game against the Atlanta Falcons.
“The first two games are what they are – a chance to get our veteran guys and our starters a couple of reps, work up a sweat,” Redskins coach Jay Gruden told reporters. “Then it’s a chance for some of our young guys to push into the starting role or the backup role.”
Here is also what Thursday night represents: The likely beginning of the Nate Sudfeld era.
AUDIO: Friend of Muhammed Ali, Gene Kilroy, Thom Loverro
That’s far more significant than watching starters get a few reps or working up a sweat. If the rookie quarterback sees action as expected, it will be the first time Redskins fans will get a look at the quarterback that general manager Scot McCloughan – and Gruden — drafted.
They didn’t draft Kirk Cousins. They didn’t draft Colt McCoy.
General managers, they tend to really like players they draft. And of those players, their favorite players to draft are quarterbacks – even one picked in the sixth round out of Indiana that was hardly a household name coming out of college.
Gruden likes Sudfeld. He told the quarterback so when he contacted him before the Redskins made the pick.
“Coach Gruden gave me the call that they were picking me, said they were thrilled to have me,” Sudfeld, who threw for a school record 7,879 yards and 61 touchdowns during his career at Indiana, told the Indianapolis Star in May. “He loves my upside, said that I can make all the throws, that I’m more athletic than people give me credit for.”
Gruden also told ESPN.com in May about how much he likes the quarterback they picked.
“I’m excited about him, man,” Gruden said. “He’s very accurate with the football. He’s made all the throws. I really like the fact that he has great anticipation in the pocket. He anticipates throws, gets it out [of] his hands. He can speed up his delivery when he has to. And he buys time. He’s very functional in the pocket for a big man as far as buying time in the pocket. I think he has a great upside and we’re excited to have him.”
McCloughan also told ESPN.com in May he was impressed with the quarterback he drafted.
“Just the maturity and taking a team that’s kind of average to better — nothing against Indiana, if anybody went there — but he made them better,” McCloughan said. “Just to see his development and knowing that we have Jay [Gruden], we have Sean [McVay] and we have Matt [Cavanaugh], they’re all three in my opinion really great quarterback coaches. We have got to develop. It’s nothing against Kirk [Cousins] and nothing against Colt [McCoy], but we have to develop young guys at any position. But I feel really positive about those guys.”
Maturity. Great upside. These are terms that general managers and coaches like to throw out for players they have a vision about – a dream, maybe, more accurately. They are not terms that are typically thrown out for sixth-round quarterbacks; unless that vision, that dream, is of Sudfeld being the starting quarterback someday for the Washington Redskins.
Ridiculous? Sudfeld hasn’t shown much upside so far in training camp. He threw three picks in four passes during one two-minute drill.
But let’s revisit the Cousins long-term contract talks and what McCloughan told SiriusXM Bleacher Report radio last month.
“The quarterback position’s very, very important, but you know what, so is every other position,” McCloughan said. “We need football players. We need multiple football players, not one.
“The way I look at it is I want Kirk in a long-term deal, no doubt about it, but also I’m not going to put our franchise in a situation where we’re going to lose three or four younger guys that I think are going to be good football players for one guy,” McCloughan said. “I won’t do it. You know, that’s just how it is.”
The speculation coming out of those comments — following the team’s low-ball long-term offer to Cousins of $24 million guaranteed – is that McCloughan believes he can develop a quarterback that will be a cheaper option, allowing the general manager to pay “multiple football players.” If Cousins continues to play as he did last year — earning him the $20 million franchise tag this season — he won’t be the quarterback that allows McCloughan to pay those “multiple football players.”
Right now, that quarterback appears to be Sudfeld. He is expected to make his debut Thursday night.
• Download Thom Loverro’s podcast, Cigars & Curveballs, from iTunes.The King is dead, long live the king…was it murder? Will we even ever know?
In the spirit of courtly treason and historical homicides, Erwin Olaf‘s (today I’m doing a Erwin Olaf double feature :) series Royal Blood focuses on some famous (and infamous) downfalls, done in a gory and bloody way, giving me an excuse for an extended history lesson!
Jackie Kennedy Onassis
While I believe she had a fairly “normal” death, her presence during her husband’s, JFK assassination is omnipresent, I always remember her attempt to flee into the back of the car, when I think of JFK’s murder. She then went on to marry the world’s richest man Onassis, in a move that surprised many people at the time.
Alexandra Romanova
The last Tsaritsa of Russia, she was one of the most famous royal carriers of haemophilia and had a close friendship with Rasputin, which gave him much of his political power.
Unpopular at court and with the Russian people due to her cold demeanor, after the Revolution, she and her family were imprisioned and executed at the order of Lenin.
She was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.
Lady Di
Well, pretty recent, so I guess it’s self explanatory.
Ludwig II Rey de Baviera
Referred to as the Swan King and the Fairy tale King, Ludwig is best known as an eccentric whose legacy is intertwined with the history of art and architecture, as he commissioned the construction of several extravagant fantasy castles.
His fondness for lavish spending led Bavaria to financial fallout and sealed his downfall since he was deposed on grounds of mental illness without any medical examination.
The day after he was deposed, his body was found floating in the shallow water near the shore of Lake Starnberg. His death was officially ruled a suicide by drowning, but this has been questioned since he was known to be a strong swimmer, the water was less than waist-deep where his body was found, and the official autopsy report indicated that no water was found in his lungs. Many hold that Ludwig was actually murdered by his enemies while attempting to escape.
Poppaea Sabina
Roman Empress and second wife of the Roman Emperor Nero. She was described as an ambitious, ruthless and beautiful woman who used intrigues to become empress, and who after becoming his mistress instigated Nero to murder his first wife.
The reason behind her death is unknown, though some claim it was Nero who killed her, by kicking her in the abdomen while pregnant after a quarrel.
Julius Caesar
Arguably Rome’s most famous political leader, the plot surrounding his death was made famous by Shakespeare himself…who doesn’t associate the line “Et tu Brutus?” with betrayal and backstabbing?
Marie Antoinette
One of history’s most famous women, she was tried, convicted of treason and executed by guillotine.
Sissi – Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary
I remembered from my childhood that there were a string of romantic movies focusing on her young life starring the equally iconic and tragic Romy Schneider that made all the girls swoon with its fairytale flourishes. It was only last year when I went to Austria that I discovered that this was a case of fiction seriously distorting fact.
She never quite adjusted to life in the court, and was hardly ever present during her children’s upbringing, spending most of her life gallivanting around various spots in Europe.
She became known not only for her beauty, but for her fashion sense, diet and exercise regimens (and is now thought to have suffered from anorexia), and a series of reputed lovers. She paid extreme attention to her appearance and would spend most of her time preserving her beauty.
At age 60, she was stabbed in the heart with a sharpened file by a young anarchist.Express Scripts (ESI) is the largest pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) in an industry where scale is a competitive advantage. It has been able to compound earnings, free cash flow, and free cash flow at very high rates (over 20%) over the past ten years. Fundamentally, I believe that Express Scripts’ returns are mostly driven by its CEO, George Paz, who has held the position since 2005. In the past, ESI never had the benefit of scale. Its success was driven by the quality of its management. In the future, ESI will begin to see advantages and disadvantages from its larger size.
On the other hand, the PBM industry has some dubious practices that creates regulatory risk. The PBMs are rarely transparent with their customers and have often taken kickbacks from drug manufacturers. There is a chance that future government intervention will target such practices.
Industry Overview
PBMs act as middlemen between their customers and suppliers.
The PBMs’ customers are:
Health insurance companies.
Employers with health plans.
The PBMs’ suppliers are:
Retail pharmacies. These are usually either independent “community pharmacies” or chain pharmacies such as Walgreens, CVS, etc.
Mail order pharmacies (“home delivery”). Instead of having bricks and mortar locations, drugs can instead be delivered through the mail. All of the major PBMs own their own mail order pharmacies.
Drug manufacturers. They supply the retail and mail order pharmacies.
The PBMs’ normal customers and suppliers have tried vertical integration with their own PBMs. The drug manufacturer Merck used to own Medco; Merck later spin Medco off. Express Scripts used to be part of a health insurance company and was later IPOed into an independent entity. CVS is a retail pharmacy that also has PBM operations. It seems to me that the advantages and disadvantages of vertical integration don’t matter too much. Express Scripts seems to have the best operating metrics in the business so perhaps being a standalone PBM is the best approach.
How PBMs are changing retail pharmacy
One of the major ongoing changes in the industry is the battle between PBMs and retail pharmacies. This is really more of a battle between mail order and bricks and mortar retail. Both modes of delivery have their advantages and disadvantages. The cost savings of mail order is very compelling and will likely push the industry towards mostly mail order. When consumers have higher co-payments for retail pharmacies, they increasingly opt for mail delivery. Health care plans are increasingly looking to save money and are working with PBMs to force health care users onto mail delivery for maintenance medications. The PBM industry will likely drag the American consumer kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Another headwind for the retail pharmacy industry is the increased clout of PBMs. This is shown in the clash between Express Scripts and Walgreens, where the parties were unable to renew their contract. This meant that Walgreens was dropped from ESI’s pharmacy network for 8 months. It looks like ESI was the winner. Walgreens saw a significant drop in revenue while ESI was hardly affected. The Risk Factors section in Walgreen’s 10-K says it all:
We derive a significant portion of our sales from prescription drug sales reimbursed through prescription drug plans administered by pharmacy benefit management (PBM) companies. PBM companies typically administer multiple prescription drug plans that expire at various times and provide for varying reimbursement rates. There can be no assurance that we will continue to participate in any particular pharmacy benefit manager network in any particular future time period. If our participation in the prescription drug programs administered by one or more of the large PBM companies is restricted or terminated, we expect that our sales would be adversely affected, at least in the short term. If we are unable to replace any such lost sales, either through an increase in other sales or through a resumption of participation in those plans, our operating results may be materially adversely affected. For example, we were not part of the pharmacy provider network of Express Scripts, Inc., one of the largest PBMs, for more than eight months in 2012, which led most patients in plans administered by Express Scripts that we formerly served to transition to a new pharmacy and caused us to lose significant sales and adversely affected our operating results. While we reached an agreement with Express Scripts in July 2012 and became part of the broadest network of pharmacies available to Express Scripts clients as of September 15, 2012, we expect the impact of this new agreement with Express Scripts to be incremental over time. When we exit a pharmacy provider network and later resume network participation, there can be no assurance that we will achieve any particular level of business on any particular pace. In addition, in such circumstances we may incur increased marketing and other costs in connection with initiatives to regain former patients and attract new patients covered by in-network plans. When we exit a pharmacy provider network and later resume network participation, there also can be no assurance that all clients of the PBM sponsor of the network will choose to include us again in their pharmacy network initially or at all. For example, after we reached our agreement with Express Scripts, the United States Department of Defense TRICARE program, an Express Scripts client, announced that Walgreens would continue to be designated as a non-network pharmacy provider for TRICARE beneficiaries.
Health plans are more willing to drop Walgreens than ESI. It gets worse for Walgreens because ESI is now roughly twice as big. Walgreens’ 10-K also states:
Consolidation in the healthcare industry could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. Many organizations in the healthcare industry, including pharmacy benefit managers, have consolidated in recent years to create larger healthcare enterprises with greater bargaining power, which has resulted in greater pricing pressures. For example, in April 2012 two of the three largest pharmacy benefit managers, Medco Health Solutions, Inc. and Express Scripts, Inc., merged. The resulting entity is the largest pharmacy benefit manager in the United States. If this consolidation trend continues, it could give the resulting enterprises even greater bargaining power, which may lead to further pressure on the prices for our products and services. If these pressures result in reductions in our prices, our business will become less profitable unless we are able to achieve corresponding reductions in costs or develop profitable new revenue streams. We expect that market demand, government regulation, third-party reimbursement policies, government contracting requirements, and societal pressures will continue to cause the healthcare industry to evolve, potentially resulting in further business consolidations and alliances among the industry participants we engage with, which may adversely impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.
The situation is worse for independent pharmacies as they have even less negotiating power than chain pharmacies like Walgreens. The retail pharmacies have industry groups that are trying to lobby for government protection against the PBMs. I don’t think that they should succeed as the PBMs are genuinely driving down costs. However, there is a small chance that various levels of government may implement some protections for the retail pharmacy industry. However, I doubt it will happen since many Americans are sick and tired of their excessive healthcare costs.
PBMs are sometimes the frenemy
Weirdly enough, PBMs often cheat their customers. The drug industry in general has very little transparency mainly because the manufacturers want low transparency. The drug manufacturers often engage in various schemes to maximize their profits:
Drugs have higher prices in the US than poorer countries.
The manufacturers try to overcharge various US health programs (e.g. Medicare, Medicaid, etc.).
They provide rebates/kickbacks to PBMs so that the PBMs’ customers pay too much for drugs.
They spend huge sums of money marketing their drugs to doctors. They may provide doctors with free trips to conferences (which is like a free vacation), pay consulting fees to doctors, etc. etc. Because of these practices, doctors don’t always engage in the most cost-effective treatment options.
Sometimes the PBMs will respect their fiduciary duty to their customers and will fight the abuses and excesses of the system. PBMs will work with health care plans so that the patients have incentives to use the lowest-cost options. If a doctor prescribes an unnecessarily expensive treatment method, the PBMs’ pharmacist can take steps to try to change the prescription. Or the plan will only reimburse if the most cost-effective treatment option is tried first (“step therapy”).
However, this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the PBMs are more sophisticated than their customers and will cheat them out of savings. The PBMs’ customers often discover that they have less savings than they were originally promised. There are various ways to achieve this:
Kickbacks / “rebates” from the drug manufacturer.
Selling generic drugs at brand-name prices. Many health plans allow their members the freedom to buy brand name drugs. If the PBM lumps generics into the brand name category but charges brand name pricing for the generics, they will be able to make an unusual profit.
“Spread pricing”. The PBM pays retail pharmacies one rate while it charges a higher rate to the health plan. The PBM pockets the difference.
In the past, the various major PBMs had to pay various settlements over these shenanigans. One major risk to the PBM industry is that the government intervention may try to eliminate these practices. It would theoretically make sense for the US government to intervene as it would help lower the US’ excessive healthcare costs. In the future, I think that there will probably be more regulation (not less). It’s also possible that the politicians leave the PBM industry alone because it’s complicated and hard to figure out. The party could continue for a while.
Specialty Pharmacy
There are a few diseases where the drugs are extremely expensive due to low volume of patients and the high impact of the disease (e.g. multiple sclerosis). Many patients obtain these drugs through the hospital that treats them. Unfortunately, a reality of the American hospital system is that competition is low. Specialist doctors band together into practicing groups and cause many markets to effectively operate as monopolies or oligopolies. Similarly, many hospitals merge into hospital networks so that competition between hospitals is low. (Personally, I think that a major reason why the American healthcare system is inefficient is because there is an artificial shortage of doctors.) This allows hospitals to apply extreme markups on specialty drugs. It is not unusual for private insurers to pay 2-3X what Medicare would pay (this is the norm in the dialysis industry). PBMs can legitimately help health plans save money by buying the drugs themselves and avoiding the hospital’s markups.
The future of the PBM industry
I’m not really sure.
In the past, the PBM industry was dominated by drug manufacturers that owned PBMs. Not surprisingly, there were conflicts of interest. The manufacturers would use their PBMs to push their own drugs at inflated prices. Eventually government regulators intervened and many of these PBMs were sold for a loss. There were times when various companies lost billions of dollars buying a PBM and selling it later at a loss. It seems to me that the PBM industry’s profitability is not the best in the world and not the worst.
However, I think that Express Scripts will do well despite the industry’s tricky economics because it is the best operated PBM among the publicly traded PBMs. I will use EBITDA per adjusted claim as the metric for comparison purposes. Mail order scripts are counted three times since mail order often delivers 90 days of drugs while retail pharmacies dispense 30 days at most. Here are the figures for 2011 EBITDA per adjusted claim (I use 2011 because there were more public PBMs back then):
ESI: $3.54
Medco: $3.15
Catamaran: $1.82
Catalyst: $1.12 (this is EBITDA per unadjusted claim; if the adjusted figure were provided, EBITDA/adj. claim would be lower)
I will point out that Medco had higher EBITDA per adjusted claim than ESI in 2008. Both companies increased EBITDA/adj. claim at a very high rate until ESI overtook Medco in 2009. Both ESI and Medco are very well operated. In the future, I think that ESI will continue to consolidate the industry and will be able to enjoy greater economies of scale. Here is ESI’s trend in EBITDA/adj. claim over the years:
2012: $3.87
2011: $3.54
2010: $3.19
2009: $3.19
2008: $2.70
2007: $2.28* (my calculation)
2006: $1.78* (my calculation)
2005: $1.28* (my calculation)
To some degree, ESI’s dramatic increases in EBITDA per prescription may not be sustainable. Many of their customers are sophisticated and will eventually realize that the middleman is making too much money. If PBMs become too profitable, other companies will likely enter the field. For example, United Health (UNH) has started its own PBM and is transitioning away from Medco. Ultimately, PBMs can only exist if their clients are saving money.
Going forward, I think that George Paz will find ways to create value and generate high returns on capital. As long as there are massive inefficiencies in the US healthcare system, ESI will be able to make high returns on capital from legitimately saving its customers money.
Is Express Scripts ethical?
I’m pretty jaded and cynical about the US healthcare industry, especially after researching DaVita. The PBM industry has its share of value creation and abuses. I think that ESI leans mostly towards the value creation side.
In terms of legal settlements, it has paid out very little money. In 2008 it paid $9.3M to 29 states and patients over drug rebates and certain business practices. In 2007 it paid $10.5M because one of its subsidiaries illegally distributed human growth hormone to well-known entertainers and athletes. Compare this to other PBMs and their settlements:
Medco (now part of Express Scripts): $184.1M in 2006
AdvancePCS (now part of CVS/Caremark): $137.5M in 2002
Caremark: $41M in 2008
ESI has paid out significantly less money than its PBM peers and companies owned by Berkshire Hathaway (DaVita, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, etc.). To be fair, one could argue that this isn’t the best metric. I would consider Microsoft to be one of the most ethical companies around, yet it has been hit with fines and settlements from billions of dollars to several hundred million.
Overall, ESI seems fine on the integrity front. It is certainly more ethical than DaVita as it does not endanger lives or actively defraud Medicare. It screws its customers far less than Goldman Sachs.
Insider compensation seems fine for a multi-billion dollar company. Insiders regularly sell stock though George Paz’s stock holdings have grown slightly over the years. This is a situation where you shouldn’t read too much into insider trading. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, we can see that insiders should not have sold their stock since it went up so much after they sold.
Accounting Issues
ESI has amortization charges related to its mergers and acquisitions that distort ESI’s true earnings. From the 10-K:
The aggregate amount of amortization expense of other intangible assets for our continuing operations was $1,632.0 million, $236.0 million and $159.8 million for the years ended December 31, 2012, 2011 and 2010, respectively.
These amortization charges should be added back into ESI’s GAAP earnings to get a better picture of what the business actually earns. (For a long explanation, see the appendix to Warren Buffet’s 1983 letter which touches upon similar issues.)
GAAP profits for 2012: $1,330.1M
Amortization expenses related to acquisitions: $1,632.0M
Adjusted earnings: $1,330.1 + $1,632.0 = $2,962.1M
At a market cap of $52.87B, the adjusted P/E would be 17.8. According to management, there are a number of one-time charges related to the Medco merger (e.g. consolidating clients onto one system). If you take them out, ESI’s profits would be even higher. I will err on the cautious side and leave them in. Here are the calculations for the trailing twelve months of reported earnings:
GAAP profits: $1,820M
Amortization: $2,072M
Adjusted earnings: $3,892M
Adjusted TTM P/E: 13.6
Capital Allocation
Capital allocation is excellent as Express Scripts continually buys back its shares or acquires other companies. Most of its debt is on reasonable terms. However, the overall level of debt is a little high for my tastes. Debt to EBITDA is roughly 2.32. But because the call options on |
planned many events for them) until late in the series, after they started their second year of high school. She is a close childhood friend with Ryu Sanada, her neighbor, and she went to the same middle school as Kazehaya and Ryu. Because of this, Ryu's family regards Chizuru and her family as their own and vice versa. She has a crush on Ryu's brother, Toru, since she was very young knowing the age gap between them. When Toru visits with his fiancée, she realizes that he will only see their relationship as just siblings. She is very dense to the fact that Ryu loves her, even interpreting him saying "I love you" as an expression of their friendship. When he confesses to her again, this time making it clear, it shocks her to the point where it becomes difficult to talk to him normally as she never thought about him like that and believes that they can't go back to how they were before ever again. But she begins to grow feelings for Ryu and in chapter 88 she confesses to Ryu and he kisses her.
Ryu Sanada ( 真田 龍, Sanada Ryū) Voiced by: Yuichi Nakamura (anime), Haru Aoyama (live-action) Ryu is also member of Sawako's group of friends. He is the son of the ramen shop owner of Chizuru Yoshida's favourite ramen shop. He is quiet most of the time and rarely talks, but still can communicate well with Sawako, as they both don't talk much anyways. Ryu and Kazehaya became friends when they were on the baseball team during middle school. He is also close childhood friends with Chizuru and does not deny having feelings for her, such as simply smiling when Sawako asks if he and Chizuru are dating. He later confirms his love when he confesses that he likes Chizuru to Sawako. While his love is one-sided, he is very patient with Chizuru realizing that Chizuru probably won't like him in a romantic sense, at least not right away. He's more than willing to comfort Chizuru if she's depressed, though he would rather have her mad at him as he knows Chizuru can vent out her emotions better. Ryu also seems to like animals a lot; when Shōta was going to walk "Maru", his adopted puppy, home with Sawako, Chizuru pulled Ryu away telling him he's going to walk with Ayane and her instead. While being pulled away from Shōta's puppy, he cried out for it. A running gag in the series is that he has a very hard time remembering a person's name (with the exception of Kazehaya and Chizuru as he's known them for a long time, and after some time later Sawako and Ayane). In chapter 43, he casually tells Chizuru that he loves her and she is totally shocked. However, in chapter 59, he truly confesses his love for her, but she replies saying, "I have never looked at you in that way". In response, he smiles and says, "I know."
Kazuichi "Pin" Arai ( 荒井 一市, Arai Kazuichi) Voiced by: Yūki Ono (anime), Arata (live-action) Arai is the temporary homeroom teacher for Sawako's class, taking over when the previous homeroom teacher became sick during the summer holidays while Sawako was helping him. Sawako, being formal, always refers to him as "Arai-sensei," while almost everyone else refers to him by his nickname, "Pin." Pin is a great fan of baseball as well as the school baseball team's coach. He used to be part of Kazehaya's father's league team, so he has known Shōta since when he was young. A loud and eccentric man prone to believing the silliest things, Pin apparently enjoys interrupting people. He nicknames the puppy that Sawako and Kazehaya find by the river "Pedro Martínez" after the legendary baseball pitcher, which Sawako suggests be shortened to "Maru". A running gag through the series, despite being a teacher he is prone to actions that are more suited to a teenager, such as eagerly running to the bathroom when he heard about a fight yet became depressed when Sawako and her friends were making up rather than fighting. He and Ayane tend to run into each other a lot, often bickering loudly as they walk away, though on rare occasions he will give her advice (though it comically ends in his ruining the moment to praise himself). He also has a false impression that Sawako is an exorcist. But for how he acts, Arai is rather insightful and is very helpful when it comes to his students, especially when he was suggesting career paths for Sawako, Ayane and Chizuru that best suit their talents and abilities. Pin also has a habit of believing girls in Sawakos year fancy him and often turns them down when they speak to him, stating that he's just too old for them. Ume "Kurumi" Kurumizawa ( 胡桃沢 梅, Kurumisawa Ume) Voiced by: Aya Hirano (anime), Mirei Kiritani (live-action) A girl who appears friendly and sweet to everyone around her, she has had a huge crush on Kazehaya since their first year of middle school; as a result, she understands his personality well, despite the fact they were never close friends. From when she was first seen, for many chapters she was known only as "Kurumi", which Sawako mistook to be her given name. She dislikes her given name, Ume, because it sounds old-fashioned and prefers to be called her nickname, "Kurumi." Kurumi is extremely jealous of Sawako, which led her to spread fake rumors of Sawako's only friends at the time, Yoshida and Yano, using Sawako's name. Kurumi does not attend the same class as Sawako or Kazehaya. During the next series of events it comes out that the middle school "Kazehaya is Everyone's" alliance had been Kurumi's idea, in order to preserve her own chances with Kazehaya. She eventually confesses her love to Kazehaya, but receives an expected rejection. Because she is always surprised with Sawako's naiveté, Kurumi, in her own words, "You just don't get it, do you?! Sawako-chan, when I'm talking to you... I get irritated and say what I really mean...", and regards her as a rival for Kazehaya's affection. Following Kazehaya's rejection, she becomes colder to her classmates, but is able to finally express her feelings and personality. When Sawako hesitates on expressing her feelings, Kurumi tells Sawako that Sawako is not worthy of being a rival, but changes her mind after hearing that Sawako and Shōta have become a couple. She even defends Sawako against some other jealous girls, and got angry at Miura Kento for saying unnecessary things to Sawako that had caused a rift between Sawako and Shōta. Despite Kurumi's harsh personality, she is deep down, a stubborn, clear minded young woman who had stooped to unfair tricks to win a person's heart but has since learned better.
Kento Miura ( 三浦 健人, Miura Kento) Voiced by: Mamoru Miyano (anime) A student who sits next to Sawako at the beginning of their second year. Miura considers himself fairly popular among the girls, but he immediately expresses an interest in Sawako that Kazehaya becomes a little jealous. Miura assumes Kazehaya likes Sawako because he feels sorry for her, and tries to persuade Kazehaya to not be as involved in Sawako's life. His interference with Sawako and Kazehaya's developing relationship irritates Ayane. He expresses gratitude over the fact that the two began dating before he fell in love with her. In recent chapters, however, it hints that Kento may be developing a sort of attraction for Ayane and has helped her through some difficult times. He tends to help girls with broken relationships, as he continues to grow feelings for Ayane, he seeks advice from Sawako and Kazehaya. It is from Kazehaya that Kento finds out that Ayane has been slapped by one of her ex-boyfriends.
Tomoko "Tomo" Endo ( 遠藤 朋子, Endō Tomoko) and Eriko "Ekko" Hirano ( 平野 依里子, Hirano Eriko) Voiced by: Mayuki Makiguchi Voiced by: Miho Miyagawa Endou and Hirano are classmates of Sawako, and also members of her study group. After Sawako begins to open up, Endou and Hirano become some of her first friends and try to find ways to encourage her to be less formal around them. They both become close friends of Sawako, who shows her appreciation of their friendship by making them Christmas gifts in addition to those she makes for her parents, Ayane, Chizuru, and Kazehaya.
Soichi "Joe" Jonouchi ( 城ノ内 宗一, Jōnouchi Sōichi) Voiced by: Masahiro Yamanaka One of Sawako's classmates, easily swayed by other people. He generally appears in the background. Jounouchi is very attached to Kazehaya, which usually results in him unwittingly interrupting conversations between Sawako and Kazehaya. At one point, he is rejected after confessing to a girl he liked and is comforted by Kazehaya. After hearing about how Yano broke up with her boyfriend, he sets his attention on her though she is not interested in him. It appears Joe is a character used for comedic value, often blundering with simple tasks or interrupting serious moments. He does not seem to take hints nor does he often realize his mistakes when they are pointed out.
Toru Sanada ( 真田 徹, Sanada Tōru) Voiced by: Wataru Hatano Tōru is Ryu's older brother by eight years and Chizuru's crush since she was young. Although he is Ryu's brother and they resemble one another, their personalities are nearly opposite. Tōru resembles Kazehaya personality-wise and looks extremely refreshing, except much more mature. He lives three hours away from his parents' house but much to Chizuru's surprise, on his visit with the family he introduced his fiancee. He cares about Ryu and Chizuru a lot, and eventually tells Chizuru he loves her like a little sister. He calls Chizuru by the nickname "Chii" because a person has to smile when saying it, and he wanted to cheer her up.
Yoshiyuki "Zen" Arai ( 荒井 善行, Arai Yoshiyuki) Voiced by: Takuma Suzuki The original home room teacher of Sawako's class. He and Pin have the same surname, but are not related. To distinguish between the two teachers Yoshiyuki Arai is nicknamed "Zen", which is an alternate reading of the kanji for "Yoshi". He seems to be afraid of Sawako and the rumors surrounding her as "Sadako". Early in the series, he falls ill and has to take a leave of absence from school; because of that, students often believe that Sawako has cursed him. Arai is newly-wed and eventually retires from teaching in order to help his wife's family business (a sake brewery), resulting in Pin taking over his class permanently.
Shino ( 詩乃 ) Voiced by: Kanae Oki The only link to Sawako's past, Shino was her elementary school classmate and the only person who Sawako talks to as the series begins. During elementary school, by mistake, Shino called Sawako "Sadako." When they attended the same middle school, the boys in their class, afraid by Sawako's appearance, heard rumors that she was known as "Sadako," and since then it became her nickname. It is because of this, that Shino feels guilty about the rumors circulating over Sawako that started from her calling her "Sadako." Thus she cares about Sawako and whether she is fitting into high school. Shino is in a different class and regrets that she doesn't get to see Sawako very much. She is a cipher, appearing only occasionally as a catalyst for Sawako's interactions with other people. Perhaps for story reasons, Sawako is too modest to consider her as a friend. According to Shiina, Shino was an unnamed character in the manga, but was named by the staff for the anime. Shiina also wrote that "Shino-chan in the anime is really cute."
Chigusa Takahashi ( 高橋 千草, Takahashi Chigusa) Voiced by: Yurin A classmate of Sawako, Takahashi sits behind Sawako after the seating arrangements change for the third term of first year. She enjoys teasing Sawako and Ayane remarks that Takahashi is eccentric. According to Shiina, she was just Takahashi-san in the manga, but has the given name Chigusa in the anime show and from volume 10 onwards.
Yagi ( 八木 ) A classmate of Sawako who sits next to her after the seating arrangements change during the third term of first year. He often consults her on supposedly spiritual or occult concerns.
Mogi ( 茂木 ) Mogi is a new character introduced in the recent chapters of the manga. He is a boy from Class 2-B. In Chapter 54, he asks Ayane to date him, to which she immediately agrees. Ayane breaks up with him in Chapter 59.
Media [ edit ]
Manga [ edit ]
Originally planned on being a one-shot to be compiled in her previous work, Crazy For You, Shiina decided to expand the story and make it into a full series.[ch. 1:author's note] It has been running in Japan in Bessatsu Margaret since the September 2005 issue of the magazine, with 29 compiled volumes as of November 13, 2017. Shiina took a break starting in the March 2009 issue to have a baby;[10] serialization resumed in the October issue.[8] With the release of the September 2017 issue of Betsuma, on August 12, 2017, Kimi ni Todoke entered its final arc.[11] The series is licensed by Viz Media for an English-language North American release. The manga ended in November 2017[12] and the final volume was released in March 2018.[13]
No. Japanese release date Japanese ISBN North American release date North American ISBN 1 May 25, 2006[14] ISBN 4-08-846061-8 August 4, 2009[15] ISBN 1-4215-2755-3 0. "Prologue"
1. "Seat Change"
2. "After School"
3. "Smile" 2 September 25, 2006[16] ISBN 4-08-846094-4 October 6, 2009[17] ISBN 978-1-4215-2756-7 4. "Rumors"
5. "True Intention"
6. "Resolution"
7. "Friends" 3 January 25, 2007[18] ISBN 978-4-08-846134-2 February 2, 2010[19] ISBN 978-1-4215-2757-4 8. "Saturday Night"
9. "Practicing on My Own"
10. "A New Friend"
11. "Support" 4 May 25, 2007[20] ISBN 978-4-08-846174-8 May 4, 2010[21] ISBN 978-1-4215-2786-4 12. "Special?"
13. "I Want to Know"
14. "To Love Someone"
15. "Crush"
16. "Kurumi" 5 November 22, 2007[22] ISBN 978-4-08-846237-0 August 3, 2010[23] ISBN 978-1-4215-2787-1 17. "Rival"
18. "Weekend"
19. "Chizuru's Crush"
20. "Big Brother's Homecoming" 6 March 25, 2008[24] ISBN 978-4-08-846278-3 November 2, 2010[25] ISBN 978-1-4215-2788-8 21. "Dream"
22. "Miniskirt"
23. "First Snow"
24. "Christmas" 7 July 25, 2008[26] ISBN 978-4-08-846313-1 February 1, 2011[27] ISBN 978-1-4215-3175-5 25. "Couple"
26. "Birthday"
27. "New Year's"
28. "Valentine's Day" 8 November 25, 2008[28] ISBN 978-4-08-846356-8 May 3, 2011[29] ISBN 978-1-4215-3176-2 29. "Junior Year"
30. "Forget About That"
31. "Apart"
32. "You Don't Understand Her"
33. "Run"
KimiTodo Friend Notebook 9 September 11, 2009[30] ISBN 978-4-08-846440-4 July 5, 2011[31] ISBN 978-1-4215-3688-0 34. "Someone He Likes"
35. "Kindness and Causing Trouble"
36. "Haven't You Been Paying Attention?"
37. "Give Her Up"
38. "Reach Him" 10 January 13, 2010[32] ISBN 978-4-08-846481-7 September 6, 2011[33] ISBN 978-1-4215-3822-8 39. "The Confession"
40. "Right Now"
41. "After the Festival"
42. "Sawako and Kurumi" 11 June 11, 2010[34] ISBN 978-4-08-846539-5 November 1, 2011[35] ISBN 978-1-4215-3922-5 43. "Because of You"
44. "At That Time"
45. "Almost Summer Break"
46. "Date" 12 September 24, 2010[36] ISBN 978-4-08-846568-5 January 3, 2012[37] ISBN 978-1-4215-4023-8 47. "Just a Little Bit"
48. "Do I Look Normal?"
49. "There's No Way I Would Hate You"
50. "You're Too Loud" 13 March 11, 2011[38] ISBN 978-4-08-846635-4 March 6, 2012 ISBN 978-1-4215-4120-4 51. "Summer and the Beach"
52. "The Kazehaya Family"
53. "First Name"
54. "Encounter"
55. "School Trip" Chizuru is tired of summer school so she and the gang go to the beach. Kazehaya invites Sawako to his place to study and to meet his family: first his mother, and then his brother and father. As the second semester begins, and everyone gets excited for the school field trip to tropical Okinawa. Things change for the good, but then a boy confesses to Ayane. 14 September 13, 2011[39] ISBN 978-4-08-846635-4 June 5, 2012 ISBN 978-1-4215-4266-9 56. "From Morning to Night"
57. "Kiss"
58. "How to Act"
59. "Free Time" 15 January 25, 2012[40] ISBN 978-4-08-846738-2 November 6, 2012[41] ISBN 978-1-4215-4919-4 60. "It's Over"
61. "That's Not True"
62. "And Now"
63. "Let's End It" 16 May 11, 2012[42] ISBN 978-4-08-846772-6 April 2, 2013 ISBN 9781421551616 64. "Let's Have A Christmas Party!"
65. "Together With Everyone"
66. "Complications"
67. "Uncontrollable Feelings" 17 September 25, 2012[43] ISBN 978-4-08-846829-7 August 6, 2013 ISBN 9781421554785 68. "Christmas Party"
69. "Special Gifts"
70. "I'll Treasure You"
71. "Final Kiss" 18 January 25, 2013[44] ISBN 978-4-08-846881-5 January 7, 2014 ISBN 978-1421559179 72. "Forty-Five Minutes"
73. "Paying Attention"
74. "Girl Talk"
75. "Happy Moment" 19 June 25, 2013[45] ISBN 978-4-08-845059-9 June 3, 2014 ISBN 978-1421567808 76. "New Year's Eve"
77. "Homework"
78. "Choices"
79. "Deep Inside Me" 20 October 25, 2013[46] ISBN 978-4-08-845114-5 December 2, 2014 ISBN 978-1421573359 80. "Do Whatever You Want"
81. "Just A Thought"
82. "Different Valentine's Days"
83. "A Smile Like That" 21 March 25, 2014[47] ISBN 978-4-08-845181-7 June 2, 2015 ISBN 978-1421578705 84. "White Day"
85. "Final Year"
86. "Exam Preparation"
87. "Desired Path" 22 September 12, 2014[48] ISBN 978-4-08-845261-6 September 1, 2015 ISBN 978-1421580838 88. "Don't Go"
89. "Proud of Myself"
90. "A Mistake"
91. "That's Where We Met" 23 January 23, 2015[49] ISBN 978-4-08-845331-6 January 5, 2016 ISBN 978-1-42-158265-8 92. "True Feelings"
93. "Regret"
94. "Myself"
95. "Thank You" 24 July 24, 2015[50] ISBN 978-4-08-845418-4 May 3, 2016 ISBN 978-1-42-158586-4 96. "Present, Past and Future"
97. "School Festival"
98. "Forever"
99. "Not A Dream" 25 December 25, 2015[51] ISBN 978-4-08-845498-6 September 6, 2016 ISBN 978-1-42-158853-7 100. "Do Your Best"
101. "Good Luck"
102. "Connection"
103. "Fight" 26 May 25, 2016[52] ISBN 978-4-08-845576-1 March 7, 2017 ISBN 978-1-42-159163-6 104. "Relying On You"
105. "Admiration"
106. "You Can Forget"
107. "First Love" 27 September 23, 2016[53] ISBN 978-4-08-845636-2 September 5, 2017 ISBN 978-1-42-159504-7 108. "I Told Him"
109. "Shōta"
110. "Always"
111. "Spilled" 28 February 24, 2017[54] ISBN 978-4-08-845718-5 January 2, 2018 ISBN 978-1-42-159690-7 112. "Realization"
113. "Snowstorm"
114. "Promise"
115. "Wish" 29 July 25, 2017[55] ISBN 978-4-08-845788-8 May 1, 2018 ISBN 978-1-42-159950-2 116. "Accept It"
117. "All Right"
118. "Treasure"
119. "Graduation" 30 March 23, 2018[56] ISBN 978-4-08-844007-1 December 4, 2018[57] ISBN 978-1-97-470380-7 120. Departure
121. New Life
122. The Same Feeling
123. From Me To You
Light novels [ edit ]
Kimi ni Todoke has been adapted into two series of light novels in Japan released by Shueisha, one under their Cobalt imprint and one under their newer Mirai Bunko imprint.[58] Fifteen volumes have been released so far in the Cobalt imprint series; the first was released on August 1, 2007 and most recent on January 30, 2015.[59][60] They are being written by Kanae Shimokawa, who also novelized the Nana movie and Yukan Club.[ch. 26:author note#2] Thirteen volumes of the Mirai Bunko version have been released thus far; the first on March 1, 2011 and most recent on June 5, 2015.[61][62]
A separate volume was released September 11, 2009.[63] The volume took the place of the manga in Bessatsu Margaret magazine while Karuho Shiina took a break due to her pregnancy; it contains the story of Kazehaya and Sawako's first meeting, before the events of the manga.[10]
Cobalt Imprint Volumes [ edit ]
No. Japanese release date Japanese ISBN 01 August 1, 2007[59] ISBN 978-4-08-601059-7 02 November 1, 2007[64] ISBN 978-4-08-601096-2 03 April 25, 2008[65] ISBN 978-4-08-601165-5 04 November 28, 2008[66] ISBN 978-4-08-601242-3 05 October 2, 2009[67] ISBN 978-4-08-601342-0 06 January 29, 2010[68] ISBN 978-4-08-601381-9 07 July 1, 2010[69] ISBN 978-4-08-601424-3 08 October 30, 2010[70] ISBN 978-4-08-601461-8 09 April 1, 2011[71] ISBN 978-4-08-601519-6 10 September 30, 2011[72] ISBN 978-4-08-601573-8 11 March 1, 2012[60] ISBN 978-4-08-601619-3 12 June 30, 2012[73] ISBN 978-4-08-601654-4 13 June 29, 2013[74] ISBN 978-4-08-601741-1 14 April 1, 2014[75] ISBN 978-4-08-601801-2 15 January 30, 2015[76] ISBN 978-4-08-601849-4 16 December 25, 2015[77] ISBN 978-4-08-601887-6
Mirai Bunko Imprint Volumes [ edit ]
No. Japanese release date Japanese ISBN 01 March 1, 2011[61] ISBN 978-4-08-321003-7 02 April 5, 2011[78] ISBN 978-4-08-321012-9 03 July 5, 2011[79] ISBN 978-4-08-321028-0 04 October 5, 2011[80] ISBN 978-4-08-321046-4 05 February 3, 2012[62] ISBN 978-4-08-321069-3
Video game [ edit ]
Banpresto released a game for the Nintendo DS in Japan based upon the series on October 16, 2009, entitled Kimi ni Todoke ~Sodateru Omoi~ (君に届け ~育てる想い~).[81] A second Nintendo DS game, also from Banpresto, was released in the Spring of 2011 under the title Kimi ni Todoke ~Tsutaeru Kimochi~ (君に届け〜伝えるキモチ〜).[82][83]
Anime [ edit ]
The first season of the Kimi ni Todoke anime adaptation aired between October 2009 and March 2010.[8] A second season was announced in the November 2010 issue of Betsuma magazine.[84] The second season aired in Japan on NTV on January 2011. Both seasons of the anime are produced by Production I.G. and directed by Hiro Kaburagi. The music is done by S.E.N.S. Project, with the opening sung by Tomofumi Tanizawa and the ending by Chara. NIS America announced at Anime Expo 2011 that they have licensed the first season of Kimi ni Todoke.[85] They released the first season on DVD/Blu-ray on January 10, 2012, and released the second season later that year.[86]
Live-action film [ edit ]
The February 2010 issue of Bessatsu Margaret (released in January 2010), announced that a live-action film adaptation of the series had been approved.[3] Mikako Tabe and Haruma Miura starred in the film, released in Japanese theatres on September 25, 2010 and directed by Naoto Kumazawa.[87][88][89] The Live-action movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 11, 2011.[90]
Reception [ edit ]
Manga [ edit ]
Volumes of the series commonly rank in listings of top selling manga in Japan. Volumes 1 through 27 have been published in English to date:
Oricon Japanese comic rankings Volume
No. Peak
rank Notes Refs 4 2 [91] 5 1 [92] 6 2 [93][94] 7 1 [94][95] 8 1 [96][97][98] 9 1 [98][99] 10 1 [100][101] 11 1 [101][102] 12 1 [103] 13 1 [104] 14 1 [105] 15 1 [106] 16 1 [107] 17 1 6 weeks [108] 18 1 7 weeks [109] 19 1 4 weeks [110] 20 1 6 weeks [111]
At the debut of the twelfth volume, all twelve of the current volumes were ranked on Oricon's list of 100 best-selling manga for the week. According to Anime News Network, Kimi ni Todoke is now the "shōjo manga with the most #1 books and the most books to sell one million copies since 2008" in Japan.[103] The series was the third best-selling manga series in Japan in 2010, with 6,572,813 copies sold.[112] As of the release of the 16th volume in May 2012, Kimi ni Todoke will have reached a total of over 20 million copies in print.[113] In 2013, Kimi ni Todoke sold over 3.4 million copies, placing 11th on Oricon's best selling manga series for that year.[114]
Anime News Network called the series "hands down one of the best new English-translated manga series of 2009" and suggested that everyone, not just shōjo manga fans, read the series.[115] The first volume of the series was listed as a "Hot Fall Graphic Novel" for libraries in the teen section by YALSA.[116] The series was also listed in the Best Comics for Teens category of the School Library Journal's Best Comics for Kids in 2009 list.[117] Kimi ni Todoke has also been included on the American Library Association's list of 2010 Great Graphic Novels for Teens.[118]
Live action [ edit ]
According to Oricon, the series was listed as 3rd on a list of titles that Japanese readers wanted a drama adaptation for.[119] The live action movie adaptation opened at second place in Kogyo Tsushinsha's box office chart during its first week in Japanese theaters.[103] The movie was number 3 on Box Office Mojo's chart during its first two days, earning the equivalent to US $2,770,613 on 285 screens.[120]
Anime [ edit ]
Many of the first season volumes have sold well in the first week of release to be ranked on the weekly Oricon Sales Chart for Japan's Animation DVDs.
Volume # Sales Period Copies Ranking 2 January 25–31, 2010 7,449 19th[121] 3 February 22–28, 2010 7,557 18th[122] 5 April 19–26, 2010 7,136 17th[123] 6 May 24–30, 2010 7,035 12th[124] 7 June 21–27, 2010 6,613 14th[125] 8 July 12–18, 2010 6,125 20th[126]
The second season of the anime was number one in a poll of Dengeki Online readers as their most anticipated anime series debuting in January 2011.[127] Anime News Network reviewer Carl Kimlinger gave the second season 4½ out of 5 stars, saying, "This remains the finest series of its type since Lovely Complex, and the most beautiful since...well, I don't know when."[128] Japanese viewers voted it the most enjoyable anime of the Winter 2011 season during a poll taken just before the season ended.[129]
Works cited [ edit ]
^ Kimi ni Todoke manga. Kimi ni Todoke manga volumes by Shiina, Karuho. Original Japanese version published by Shueisha. English translation published by Viz Media.In partnership with Nintendo, UNIQLO has launched its UNIQLO T-shirt (UT) Grand Prix 2017 design contest. Anyone around the world can enter until August 31.
Given the partnership, it makes sense that the theme of this year’s contest is Nintendo. Participants are encouraged “to express the joy and excitement of Nintendo’s games through clothing while also fostering creative talent.” Fans can make designs based on the company’s various franchises including Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Donkey Kong.
UNIQLO UT Grand Prix winners will be notified in Spring 2017. They’ll receive up to $10,000 in prize money, and an invitation to attend a special awards ceremony in Japan. Shigeru Miyamoto will be one of the competition’s judges and will also be present at the awards ceremony. Major prize winners will also receive a NX signed by Miyamoto.
These are the full lineup of prizes:
– Grand Prize: $10,000, an invitation to awards ceremony attended by Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo NX signed by him, and a special commemorative award
– Second Prize: $3,000, an invitation to awards ceremony attended by Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo NX signed by him
– Finalist Prizes: $500 each
Winning designs will be featured in UNIQLO’s Spring/Summer 2017 UT Collection, which will be available in men’s, women’s, and kids’ lines from UNIQLO stores in 18 countries and at the UNIQLO.com online store.
Source: UNIQLO PR
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PocketMan Stabbed By Antifa Mob Outside His Home For Not Condemning 'Nazis' Hard Enough https://t.co/ks2tS6eYlT
Cassandra Fairbanks a Big League Politics reported:
The paper added that “Wormer strongly disagreed with Roy’s views but did not support efforts to get Roy fired or to call the Vermont Department for Children and Families in an attempt to remove his child. Wormer said such efforts would lead to more anger.”
“Taking away somebody’s job and livelihood — I mean, that’s just adding fuel to the fire,” Wormer said. “I don’t think any good is going to come of this on anybody’s side.”
This attempt at showing the humanity in someone without agreeing with their ideas in any way would lead to Wormer’s stabbing.
In another comment about Roy’s attendance in Charlottesville, Wormer had stated: “Seeing him reduced to marching with these assclowns chanting their idiotic rhetoric breaks my heart.”
The backlash was swift. Wormer said that by Monday evening he was already receiving threats for his comments. He added that despite the intimidation attempts, he believes in “critical thinking and proper discourse, not a witch hunt.”
The following day, Wormer wrote a status update saying, “Wow i really cant believe what a neo nazi i am rn. Thanks. All my efforts in life have been sufficiently ruined. Thanks guys at least the moral high ground favors you. I love it.”
Two hours later he would post a photo of his open wound.
“All I did was say the truth as far as I knew it and an attempt upon my life was made. That’s screwed up,”Two members of a Liberal riding association in southwestern Ontario have quit in protest over what they say is the party |
Europeans at this point) that is where the dogma ends. These movements attempt to justify their beliefs through scientific and sociological research, and often point to the high rates of crime, disease, poverty, illiteracy, and low IQs of other groups such as African-Americans (Jews, while often seen as more intelligent than average, are condemned on the basis of their intent). These movements are increasing in power and must be combatted with whatever resources we have. Their first error is a failure to note the origin of all white problems: namely, that among white people there are many who are inferior, and that these not only breed more inferiors, but have reduced society in complexity to the point that it rewards inferiors: those shuffling untermenschen who go off to bureaucratic, pointless, lazy jobs and are content to write blockhead memoranda and enforce rigid rules unthinkingly; this is The Establishment Man whether he is black, white, Chinese or from Planet Xerxon. This mentality of being happy with a trivial empty life in a decaying society causes the proliferation of inferiors, because only a true brick-stupid untermensch could find such a life acceptable or desirable. However, millions of them have, from the uptight white guy wimps of the 1950s to our current multicultural bureaucrat; nothing has changed, because the position in which these people serve requires nothing more than obedience and minimal thinking skills. It appeals to the inferior among all races. White people have suffered this decline for many centuries, and with each passing year, it gets closer to domination. Whether it is the execution of nobles in the French Revolution, or the destruction of the last independent aristocracy in America during the Civil War, white people have been in cannibal mode by empowering the workers, the disaffected, and lazy suburban "activists" to blame many complex problems on a simple source: Elites. The Elites, they have told us for centuries, are manipulating you, causing problems... the solution is to dethrone the elites and let the people rule! Oh joyous day... but then century after century the problem persists. Luckily for his manipulators, the average white person at this point has the attention span of a gnat, and therefore can pass this process down the line. White people are consequently, in terms of population quality, descending toward inferior. Even more, white societies have been drenched in technology for some time. From rifles to computers, technology lets someone whose highest actual function is picking turnips assassinate a genius or spam 100,000,000 mailboxes. But it's his right to own that computer, and his right to make income, so who are we to criticize? It's also the right of individuals to make porno films, sell defective products, become televangelists, generate mountains of landfill. But do these actions strengthen or weaken a society? Ah, they weaken it; and what if they are repeated a million times? Then they weaken it appreciably. Looking at white societies today, it's impossible to believe the white race is superior to other races, because white societies are a mess. Moronic bureaucrats, cunning marketers, everyday people who are slovenly and fat and oblivious, nagging spouses and cheating paramours. Then there's the knowledge that such society are at war with themselves. One side screams for the underprivileged, and the other side shills for industry. Where is the plan for betterment? Or even fixing the problems, such as endless freeways, too many stores and ugly buildings, pollution, rotted inner cities, public ignorance, morons in positions of power? While white power movements would like to believe that one day while the white man was asleep, a horde of Jews and Negroes stole in the back door, gangfucked his wife, indoctrinated his children with "rap" and "crunk" music, turned the inner city into an AIDS-ridden war zone, and took over the country, the historical fact is different: white people invited them in; white people made profit from "authentic" music of the oppressed; white people, by fighting constantly amongst themselves, have no direction that might conflict with music profiteering, inner city rot, or even violence (violence produces a product spectrum, from pepper spray to electric gates, to deal with it and is thus profitable to many sectors of the economy, although the socialized cost affects us all). White power movements, instead of being beneficial to white people, are destructive because they deny the actual sources of white problems. You can blame Negroes, Jews and homosexuals until society ends, but the problems, whitey, are within. White power movements have simple dogmas: "if it's white, it's right" and the idea that if all non-whites are excluded, society will somehow become good "again." They address (what they see as) a symptom, and not the problem. They also ignore almost all other important issues outside of race. It is as if they are more provocateurs than political thinkers, here to hit us with a quick and repellent suggestion before fading away, laughing at our discomfort in their discontent. They are not alone in this, since almost every special interest group from Environmentalists to Pro-Lifers to Black Power groups falls into this category; it may be a failing of our political system itself that makes agreement so difficult that political movements must be distilled to the ultimate simplicity and singular focus. But if all non-whites died tomorrow, what would happen? The basic problems of whites would remain. We can distill these problems to two things: Predominance of low-quality whites. White society in the grips of an insane design of a civilization. In addressing the first, we have to look at the problem this way: not all things Caucasian are identical. Any society, no matter how wonderful, produces destructive or stupid people; this is the nature of genetic recombination and environmental factors. If you plant a field of corn, you're going to end up culling the weak plants and the mutants that do not have beneficial attributes. With every generation, some great people are born, and some weaker -- inferior -- ones. If the culture in question manages to have the great people breed more than the weaker, it rises to a higher overall standard. If not -- decline. And what has happened in white culture? First we overthrew the aristocracy and guaranteed universal rights. This places the choices and attributes of the individual beyond criticism. It's illegal, immoral or some combination thereof to discriminate against people because they are delusional, stupid, corrupt, disgusting, ugly, perverse, etc. This leads to a reversal of the equation of healthy societies, and explains why white societies have gone from producing Beethovens and Shakespeares to Britney Spears and Anne Coulter. When we look at the second problem of white societies unacknowledged by white power groups, we get into a more complex situation: what is the ideal design for a society? If we thought clearly, we might say: Leadership by the capable: genius intelligence, conscientious application, empathic understanding but given toward seeing the whole picture and not the conflicting demands of individuals. Does not trash its environment through reckless industry and overpopulation (the primary threat to our environment is land overuse, as with sufficient natural land to absorb, process and counter our pollution through oxygen production, it can deal with us just fine -- yet when we occupy almost all of the land that can be civilized, whether with farms or factories, we destroy that nurturing support structure). Has healthy values that place creativity, sobriety, sexual selectivity and marital fidelity, heroism and transcendence above temporary pleasures such as physical satiation and seizure of power or acting out of emotional desires (revenge, hatred, desire to be loved through popularity). Gives to each of us a place where we can contribute meaningfully, and returns the rest of our time to us. The average person works 8-10 hours and commutes nearly two per day; this leaves 4-6 hours for paying bills, haggling with service providers, fixing up the house, spending time with family, spending time with friends, etc., per day. Weekends for most people consist of a day for errands and a day for rest, with one or two nights of recreation in between. This amounts to too little time for a quietude of contemplation and devotion to family and friends and society in a meaningful way; instead, we get token applications of each and, because people are constantly exhausted, lots of television watching. Produces higher culture, learning, arts and heroes. Rewards those of a higher nature, and ushers the criminal, mentally defective, stupid, ugly and petty-minded toward evolutionary extinction. White societies lack all of these things, and have now for centuries. Until we fix these roots of the problem, all of the symptoms will re-invent themselves even if some genocidal master plan is implemented to clear out all non-whites (which would be a shame, seeing how most of them were invited here by white people as labor, and in innocence believe they can find a "better" life here, although what they really mean by that is greater wealth and technology). Our problem is that our people do not agree on a sensible course of action, together, because they are too busy with individual pursuits of pleasure, wealth, comfort. We are divided and surrounded by (white) people of low quality. White power organizations ignore that reality, and prefer to send us on a wild goose chase after non-whites, so that white privilege can take the place of actually fixing our society. Not only does this ignore the problem, but by offering a placebo solution, perpetuates it. Site map Copyright © 1988-20158 A.N.U.S.The European Space Agency's orbiting X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, has proved the existence of a "gravitational vortex" around a black hole. The discovery, aided by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission, solves a mystery that has eluded astronomers for more than 30 years, and will allow them to map the behavior of matter very close to black holes. It could also open the door to future investigations of Albert Einstein's general relativity.
Matter falling into a black hole heats up as it plunges to its doom. Before it passes into the black hole and is lost from view forever, it can reach millions of degrees. At that temperature it shines X-rays into space.
In the 1980s, pioneering astronomers using early X-ray telescopes discovered that the X-rays coming from stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy flicker. The changes follow a set pattern. When the flickering begins, the dimming and re-brightening can take 10 seconds to complete. As the days, weeks and then months progress, the period shortens until the oscillation takes place 10 times every second. Then, the flickering suddenly stops altogether.
The phenomenon was dubbed the Quasi Periodic Oscillation (QPO). "It was immediately recognized to be something fascinating because it is coming from something very close to a black hole," said Adam Ingram, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who began working to understand QPOs for his doctoral thesis in 2009.
During the 1990s, astronomers had begun to suspect that the QPOs were associated with a gravitational effect predicted by Einstein's general relativity: that a spinning object will create a kind of gravitational vortex.
"It is a bit like twisting a spoon in honey. Imagine that the honey is space and anything embedded in the honey will be "dragged" around by the twisting spoon," explained Ingram. "In reality, this means that anything orbiting a spinning object will have its motion affected." In the case of an inclined orbit, it will "precess." This means that the whole orbit will change orientation around the central object. The time for the orbit to return to its initial condition is known as a precession cycle.
In 2004, NASA launched Gravity Probe B to measure this so-called Lense-Thirring effect around Earth. After painstaking analysis, scientists confirmed that the spacecraft would turn through a complete precession cycle once every 33 million years.
Around a black hole, however, the effect would be much more noticeable because of the stronger gravitational field. The precession cycle would take just a matter of seconds or less to complete. This is so close to the periods of the QPOs that astronomers began to suspect a link.
Ingram began working on the problem by looking at what happened in the flat disc of matter surrounding a black hole. Known as an accretion disc, it is the place where material gradually spirals inwards towards the black hole. Scientists had already suggested that, close to the black hole, the flat accretion disc puffs up into a hot plasma, in which electrons are stripped from their host atoms. Termed the hot inner flow, it shrinks in size over weeks and months as it is eaten by the black hole. Together with colleagues, Ingram published a paper in 2009 suggesting that the QPO is driven by the Lense-Thirring precession of this hot flow. This is because the smaller the inner flow becomes, the closer to the black hole it would approach and so the faster its Lense-Thirring precession cycle would be. The question was: how to prove it?
"We have spent a lot of time trying to find smoking gun evidence for this behavior," said Ingram.
The answer is that the inner flow is releasing high-energy radiation that strikes the matter in the surrounding accretion disc, making the iron atoms in the disc shine like a fluorescent light tube. The iron releases X-rays of a single wavelength -- referred to as "a spectral line."
Because the accretion disc is rotating, the iron line has its wavelength distorted by the Doppler effect. Line emission from the approaching side of the disc is squashed -- blue shifted -- and line emission from the receding disc material is stretched -- red shifted. If the inner flow really is precessing, it will sometimes shine on the approaching disc material and sometimes on the receding material, making the line wobble back and forth over the course of a precession cycle.
Seeing this wobbling is where XMM-Newton came in. Ingram and colleagues from Amsterdam, Cambridge, Southampton and Tokyo applied for a long-duration observation that would allow them to watch the QPO repeatedly. They chose black hole H 1743-322, which was exhibiting a four-second QPO at the time. They watched it for 260,000 seconds with XMM-Newton. They also observed it for 70,000 seconds with NASA's NuSTAR X-ray observatory.
"The high-energy capability of NuSTAR was very important," Ingram said. "NuSTAR confirmed the wobbling of the iron line, and additionally saw a feature in the spectrum called a'reflection hump' that added evidence for precession."
After a rigorous analysis process of adding all the observational data together, they saw that the iron line was wobbling in accordance with the predictions of general relativity. "We are directly measuring the motion of matter in a strong gravitational field near to a black hole," says Ingram.
This is the first time that the Lense-Thirring effect has been measured in a strong gravitational field. The technique will allow astronomers to map matter in the inner regions of accretion discs around black holes. It also hints at a powerful new tool with which to test general relativity.
Einstein's theory is largely untested in such strong gravitational fields. So if astronomers can understand the physics of the matter that is flowing into the black hole, they can use it to test the predictions of general relativity as never before -- but only if the movement of the matter in the accretion disc can be completely understood.
"If you can get to the bottom of the astrophysics, then you can really test the general relativity," says Ingram. A deviation from the predictions of general relativity would be welcomed by a lot of astronomers and physicists. It would be a concrete signal that a deeper theory of gravity exists.
Larger X-ray telescopes in the future could help in the search because they are more powerful and could more efficiently collect X-rays. This would allow astronomers to investigate the QPO phenomenon in more detail. But for now, astronomers can be content with having seen Einstein's gravity at play around a black hole.
"This is a major breakthrough since the study combines information about the timing and energy of X-ray photons to settle the 30-year debate around the origin of QPOs. The photon-collecting capability of XMM-Newton was instrumental in this work," said Norbert Schartel, ESA Project Scientist for XMM-Newton.
More information
The results reported in this article are published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The European Space Agency's X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission, XMM-Newton, was launched in December 1999. The largest scientific satellite to have been built in Europe, it is also one of the most sensitive X-ray observatories ever flown. More than 170 wafer-thin, cylindrical mirrors direct incoming radiation into three high-throughput X-ray telescopes. XMM-Newton's orbit takes it almost a third of the way to the moon, allowing for long, uninterrupted views of celestial objects.
NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech in Pasadena and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information about NuSTAR, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/nustar
http://www.nustar.caltech.edu× Medical Marijuana To Be Added To November Ballot
ARKANSAS (KFSM) — The Arkansas for Compassionate Care group announced on Thursday (July 7) that they received enough signatures to put medical marijuana to vote in the November election.
Secretary of State Mark Martin’s office confirmed that the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act will be on the 2016 ballot in November, the group said in a post.
The group turned in a petition with 77,516 valid signatures, which is enough to put the act on the ballot. The group needed roughly 69,000 signatures from registered voters to qualify for ballot eligibility.
Now, voters will decide the issue on Nov. 8.
If the act passes, patients must get a written recommendation by an Arkansas physician for medical marijuana. Then they must apply for a license from the Department of Health before they can buy from a Cannabis Care Center.
During the 2012 general election, Arkansas voters voted down a similar medical marijuana act 51 percent to 49 percent.
Currently, medical marijuana is legal in 25 states and Washington, D.C.Media playback is not supported on this device International Day of Happiness: Does sport make you smile?
Does watching sport make us happy? That seems an easy one: when our lot win it does, when they lose it doesn't.
Except it's never that simple. Only one team in a division can win the title each season. Only one player can win a Grand Slam event or major. Only one captain can raise the Six Nations trophy this weekend. "Sport is about people who lose and lose and lose," the great American journalist Gay Talese once wrote. "They lose games, then they lose their jobs."
Losers. Hundreds of thousands of losers. When the United Nations decreed 20 March to be International Day of Happiness, you sense this is not quite the image they intended to promote.
But happiness is a strange thing, found in the most unexpected of places.
"I was at Headingley in 1995 when England lost to the West Indies by nine wickets in three and a half days," says Rob Evans, an otherwise rational 42-year-old man who has followed his national cricket team since childhood.
"On the last morning, with England eight wickets down and only 70-odd runs ahead, Peter Martin - a bowler who I can barely even think of as a Test bowler - hooked Ian Bishop for six.
"It landed two rows in front of me on an empty Western Terrace. I was ecstatic. I thought, 'A six! Wow, we're really giving this a go. We can win this!' It was one of my happiest moments at a Test match."
Happiness = low expectations
There is a reason for this, beyond hopeless delusion. Research carried out at Cambridge University by a professor of neuroscience named Wolfram Schultz indicates the amount of dopamine - the neurotransmitter that among other things helps control the brain's pleasure centres - we release is directly related to how much you were expecting an event to occur.
Peter Martin (blond hair), here celebrating the dismissal of West Indies skipper Richie Richardson for his maiden Test wicket, also hit Ian Bishop for six on his debut
Evans, like every other England supporter familiar with Peter Martin (Test average with bat: 8.84) had absolutely no expectation that he could smash Ian Bishop (who had taken 5-32 in the first innings and would break the jaw of England's best batsman, Robin Smith, a few Tests later) into the stands.
Hence, when it happened, a dramatic surge of dopamine. England were losing, horribly and obviously. But Evans could still feel wildly happy.
"We all know this intuitively about sport - that the happiest fans are those with the lowest expectations," says Eric Simons, long-suffering watcher and author of The Secret Life of Sports Fans.
"If you are behind in a game and then equalise at the death, that makes you far happier than being ahead and then drawing, even though ultimately it produces the same result.
"The best way to be as a fan is to have the maximum emotional investment in a team but the least expectation of success, because that's what rules the dopamine release."
'I don't care that we have no silverware'
Which bring us to Rochdale AFC, by many measures the least successful professional club in the country.
In the 108 years of their existence, the Dale are yet to win a single trophy. They have spent more consecutive seasons in the Football League's bottom division than any other club, have the lowest average position of any team continuously in the League and share with Hartlepool the dubious honour of having played the most seasons without ever reaching the top two tiers.
Chris Rodgers has been watching them for more than 25 years. His father Eric has been going to Spotland for half a century. Why?
"You feel part of something," says Chris. "Even when you're playing badly, it's the people you sit around. The football is secondary to what's going on in the stands around you.
Rochdale's Nathan Stanton celebrates with fans after their 2008 play-off semi-final win over Darlington - a rare moment of success for the club
"My single happiest moment as a Dale fan was Darlington, play-off semi-final second leg 2008, when David Perkins scored an absolute blinder to take it to penalties.
"We won the shoot-out, and that meant we were at Wembley, for the first time ever, in our centenary season. Stockport ended up beating us. No-one really cared that much. It was all about getting to Wembley."
Does it bother him that in more than 100 years of trying his team have never actually won anything?
"It doesn't bother me at all. It occasionally winds me up that Bury have won the FA Cup, because their fans like to point it out to us, but I don't care that we have no silverware," he says.
"We're never sure of a win. I went to watch Manchester United a few years ago when they played Wolves, and all their fans could talk about in the pub beforehand was how much they were going to win by.
"Who wants that? You want drama, you want competition. Not knowing the result before you even enter the stadium."
The higher the high, the lower the next low
Sometimes winning, much less make us happy, can actually make it worse.
"The Ashes series win in 2005 was probably my highest point as an England fan," says Evans. "It's still the only time I've ever cried at the outcome of a sporting event.
England's 2005 Ashes win - their first in 18 years - was a heady time for players and supporters alike
"On the back of that win, and the bravado that came with it, my mate Rob and I decided: next Ashes tour down under, we're going. Forget the money, forget the time off work. England are really going to challenge. It'll be brilliant."
You can imagine the rest: a couple of thousand pounds down, watching through the night at home as England are hammered in the first two Tests, flying out to Australia with England ahead in the third, only to be told by a chipper Qantas pilot, descending towards Melbourne, that they had somehow contrived to lose that one too, and with it the series.
"The low was lower than any previous low," Evans says.
"All those previous disappointments and paranoias had been cast away by the win in 2005. Having to dust that old persona off again was horrible. And being in Australia made it so much harder. It's not a nice crowd to be in when they're battering you and you're playing rubbish cricket."
'Find meaning rather than happiness'
You could argue that being fed through the sporting mangle like this is actually good for us: a preparation for the more serious disappointments life will throw up, a source of empathy when others around us are also struggling emotionally.
In the frantic moment, watching sport can often be miserable - the suffocating tension, the complete lack of control over something we care so deeply about. In the long term, as so beautifully illustrated by Talese's famous profile of the retired baseball player Joe DiMaggio, it can bring a different sadness: at young heroes turned mortal and weak, at the passing of time and our own fading ambitions and dreams.
Media playback is not supported on this device The death of Brazil's World Cup dream
But it is also a narrative around which to structure those years, a way of staying young through the deeds of others, an escape from the tedium of a humdrum world. And supporting one team or player, like membership of a religious or political group, creates both a distinct personal identity for us and camaraderie with otherwise complete strangers.
"Psychologists say it is more important in life to find significance or meaning than happiness," says Simons.
"So identifying yourself with a team, the idea of being part of a group, is very important. And you get that whether a team wins or loses. Losing together is a very powerful experience, and one that can help you much more in life than the shallow, superficial joy of winning."
Neither should we belittle it. It's certainly one way to deal with the failures and frustrations - pretend none of it matters compared to the Big Stuff like relationships, health or careers. But to do so is to be at odds with both nurture and nature.
"If you are looking at an image of someone's brain, the effect of taking cocaine or, as a Liverpool fan, watching your team beat Manchester City is essentially the same snapshot," says Simon.
"Sport does matter. It doesn't matter cosmically, but very little does. It matters to you, tremendously.
"It awakes all manner of powerful things, physiologically and neurologically. Things beyond your control.
"Respect that power a little more. If your team has lost horribly, legitimise that emotion. Of course you're sad, because this is what it is to be human - to be angry and frustrated over inconsequential things. Don't feel ashamed about your behaviour, because this is how we go through life."
Liverpool fans have had more than 30 major trophies to celebrate in the last 40 years
Sport makes us feel alive
How then to deal with that anger and frustration?
"England finally winning in Australia in 2011 and becoming the number one ranked Test team actually casts a shadow over my enjoyment of watching them now," says Evans.
"In the bad periods when you have no expectation of sporting glory, your pleasure is derived from watching the sport, from the social occasion - a nice day out with other like-minded individuals, and on the side you can celebrate England's small victories - a rapid partnership of 42 for the eighth wicket that briefly forces the opposition to remove one fielder from their five-man slip cordon.
Will England's rugby team live up to expectations and win the Six Nations title on Saturday?
"Even though I enjoyed Headingley 1995, I don't actually want to go back there - a half-empty ground, everyone laughing at how bad we are, Carl Hooper scoring 60 in 30 balls as they knock off 120 in 19 overs.
"But now being able to remember so clearly it being so much better so recently actually makes it worse. I watch this current squad - some of who were part of those successes - being utterly unable to recreate it. I can recreate in my mind how good it felt, but the players can't make it happen."
When Tennyson told us in 1849 how it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, the first rugby union international was still 22 years away. The first England-Australia Test was another five years on; the Football League would not come into existence until four years before Alfred popped his poet's clogs.
Yet the melancholic old boy summarised it rather well for the sporting supporters to come.
Who wants to go through life insulated from emotion? Sport - the winning, the losing, the hoping, the hating, the tension and the despair and the very occasional ecstatic moment - opens us up to feeling alive. And if a deflected long-range shot against Darlington or Peter Martin slogging a six finishes up as one of our happiest memories, so be it.Under Justin Trudeau’s leadership and policy of appeasing hatred, Canada has become a more dangerous place for Jews.
“Why can’t he be our President?” lamented the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s charisma and wardrobe certainly left an impression on the writer, who made a point of noting the pushed-up sleeves, blue tie, and white shirt, topped off with “socks festooned with moose.”
Remember when Rolling Stone was all about rock, not socks? Nowadays it seems like the magazine spends its time sexing up terrorists such as the Boston Marathon bomber, and making up a story on campus rape that never happened.
The truth is that under Trudeau’s leadership and policy of appeasing hatred, Canada has become a more dangerous place for Jews. Canadian Jews are the most targeted religious group in the country. Despite making up less than 1 percent of the population, Jews disproportionately make up most of the victims of hate crimes.
Canada Funds Anti-Semitic Projects
Why are Canadian Jews the most-attacked religious group? Much of this has to do with the tolerance of anti-Jewish bigotry in Canada’s education system. An Ontario Ministry of Education-issued textbook titled “Canada and the Global Community” promotes dangerous falsehoods about the state of Israel. The textbook falsely accuses Israel of using “child soldiers” and “kidnapping” children in order to force them to fight. Despite the ministry issuing an apology and a corrected version of the sixth-grade textbook, about 800 elementary schools in Ontario already received it.
Islamic anti-Semitism is on the rise in Canada. In the University of Western Ontario, anti-Israel bigotry is not only given a platform, but receives financial support by the Canadian government. The creator of an upcoming art exhibit that glorifies terrorism against Israel has received $35,000 CAD in 2015 from a federal funding agency to continue her work.
The artist has continuously justified terrorist acts against Israel, plotted by her brother Khaled Nazzal, including the 1974 massacre of 22 Israeli schoolchildren and 4 adults. In 2014, this same individual put up a similar display at Ottawa City Hall, which glorified Nazzal and other Palestinian terrorists.
Under Trudeau’s watch, radical imams have been allowed to preach hatred and genocide against Jews. In December 2016, an imam in a Montreal mosque described Jews as “the most evil of mankind” and “human demons” before proclaiming that there will be a genocide against Jews at the end of time. In February 2017, a different imam called for Muslims to support Palestinian jihad against Israel and the total genocide of the Jewish people.
In a study released by Tom Quiggin, a court expert on terrorism and member of the Terrorism and Security Experts of Canada Network, the Muslim Brotherhood has entrenched itself in North American politics to the point where it represents a greater systemic threat to Canada than al-Qaeda does.
I’m Tolerant and Inclusive of People Who Kill
But this doesn’t bother Trudeau in the slightest. In fact, the progressive leader, whose disdain for walls and passion for inclusivity was lauded by Rolling Stone, saw absolutely no problem in visiting a sex-segregated mosque with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood last year.
Surely Trudeau could at least condemn this rise of Islamic anti-Semitism in Canada? That might be difficult, because his government is seeking to make any such criticism illegal. Despite being opposed by 42 percent of the Canadian population, the Trudeau government passed M-103, an awkwardly worded motion that broadly criminalizes any sort of criticism of Islam in Canada.
Trudeau’s generosity toward Islamic terrorists is seemingly limitless, such as when he defended the recent payout of $10.5 million CAD to convicted al-Qaeda terrorist Omar Khadr. While in Afghanistan, Khadr assembled improvised explosive devices, the kind that killed and maimed thousands of American and Canadian troops. Khadr also confessed to tossing a grenade that killed U.S Army Sgt. Christopher Speer.
Trudeau didn’t even have the decency to reach out to Tabitha Speer (Sgt. Speer’s widow) in the wake of the Khadr payout, instead offering sympathies from afar. An Angus Reid poll found 71 percent of Canadians believed Trudeau made the wrong choice in settling with Khadr and should have instead fought Khadr in court.
Far from turning Canada into a multicultural paradise, Trudeau’s tolerance for hatred and anti-Jewish bigotry has turned Canada into a less safe place for its Jewish community and anyone who values freedom of speech. As Canada celebrates its 150th anniversary, is Trudeau’s legacy really something to fawn over?Ali Adnan has attacked the Iraqi Football Federation in a scintillating rant, where he claimed that Iraqi fans are unaware of what the players and the coaching staff of the national team have been put through during recent times. Iraq’s young wingback has started in Iraq’s last three World Cup qualifiers under current manager Yahya Alwan, featuring in a slightly more attacking position than his natural full-back role. The player was notoriously quiet in Iraq’s disappointing draw against Vietnam in their last game.
Using his official Facebook and Instagram pages, the Udinese superstar urged Iraqi fans and the media to “stand alongside him to end this farce”. Ali confirmed that he monitors his social media accounts closely, paying particular attention to the comments and feedback left by fans following Iraq’s matches.
“I cannot stay silent any more”, claimed the 21 year old. He added, “I’m reading the comments on social media websites and other media outlets after every match, where players are attacked alongside the coaches. They do not know anything about what is happening in the team or the problems the players are experiencing – it is a very difficult period for us. Leave the players alone, because you do not know what’s happening (in the background).”
These claims are not unusual for Iraqi footballers, who have suffered continuously from poor management and disastrous planning under the Iraqi Footballing Federation, Ministry of Sports and Youth and Olympic committee. Nashat Akram revealed to IraqFootball.me that the difficult conditions created for players were a result of negligence and ignorance by those in charge of the Iraqi league and national team. The exclusive interview will be featured on our website within the next few weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our mailing list to be the first to read it.
Although Ali Adnan did not specifically mention the Iraqi FA, he still managed to make it clear who was at the end of his attack. The player added, “I’m a professional in the biggest leagues in the world and I’ve had to spend two days sleeping in an airport. How is this acceptable?”
Ali Adnan’s assault has come at a very dangerous time for the Iraqi FA given recent performances and events. Yaser Kasim has just returned to the national team after problems surrounding him and Iraqi captain Younis Mahmoud. Ahmed Yasin was also surrounded by controversy prior to the Vietnam game after being handed economy tickets for his 23 hour flight from Denmark to Vietnam. The player’s text messages to Basil Gorgis were suspiciously leaked, where he told the manager’s right-hand man that he will be unable to attend due to the circumstances surrounding his ticket. The player ended up featuring in the match regardless, although we do not know whether his flight was upgraded or not.
Osama Rashid discussed difficulties he’s experienced with the national team, highlighting a lack of communication between the Federation and players. The player was unable to attend the national team’s camp recently due to the Federation’s inability to simply book plane tickets for the player at a convenient time for him. Instead, they ended up booking tickets for him during his match day with SC Farense.
The outcome of Ali Adnan’s rant remains unclear, although we do obviously sympathise with the player. Judging by history, we can only imagine that the player will be punished at some point for speaking out against the blatant injustices that Iraqi footballers suffer from. We wish the national team all the best and we hope Ali Adnan continues to set Serie A alight with even more dazzling performances.Library
Buddhology
A History of Indian Buddhism: From Śākyamuni to Early Mahāyāna, by Hirakawa Akira
Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India, by Gregory Schopen
Buddhist Monastic Life: According to the Texts of the Theravāda Tradition, by Mohan Wijayaratna
Buddhist Thought: A complete introduction to the Indian tradition, by Paul Williams
History of Buddhism in Ceylon: The Anurādhapura Period, 3rd Century BC – 10th Century AC, by Walpola Rahula
How Buddhism Began, by Richard F.Gombrich
Indian Buddhism, by A. K. Warder
Mahāyāna Buddhism – The doctrinal foundations, by Paul Williams (Second Edition) 1989 – 2009
The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, E. Zürcher: (Series) Sinica Leidensia; Vol. XI; by Barend J. Ter Haar (Editor)
The Foundations of Buddhism, by Rupert Gethin
The Message of the Buddha, by K.N. Jayatilleke
The Pāli Literature of Ceylon, by G.P. Malalasekera
Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo: (Second Edition), by Richard F. Gombrich
The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, by Choong Mun-keat (Wei-keat)
The Sociology of Early Buddhism, by Greg Bailey and |
Mexico and drove six hours to provide Prater some company. He knew Prater would need it. At nightfall, as Prater wound his way up Mount Princeton, another short 14er with a trail, he thought of Lori and his daughters. If the sun always gave him the energy to reboot, the nights always magnified the mental challenge and threatened to drain whatever reserves he had left. days of not eating much and sleeping less and the wearisome pain had drained him. The emotional trips up the Wilsons and the Crestones, days of not eating much and sleeping less and the wearisome pain had drained him. Prater enjoyed hiking alone, but now he was lonely. Lori was everywhere, wrapped up in all those 14ers; they had courted one another on the slopes. His shell cracked, and at 13,000 feet, Prater wiped dusty tears from his face. Halladay met Prater coming off Princeton and could see he was down. As an ultrarunner, Halladay knew he was battling loneliness as much as fatigue. "You know, a lot of times I don't even feel like talking during those times," Halladay said. "But you just want someone there." Prater finished Day Six with Mount Shavano and Tabeguache Peak, two mountains with easy terrain but punishing ascents and descents. He made it back to the crew, drained, and pulled out his cell phone. He listened to a message left by Lori and Mia and Anya. Standing next to the car, with his crew busy washing his socks and fixing a meal, he sobbed out loud with the phone to his ear. He called Lori back and told her not to leave him any more messages from the girls. At that point, not even the morning sun could cure the gnawing isolation Prater was beginning to feel. He missed the girls' soccer games and dinners at Chick-fil-A, his favorite food, with Lori. He craved adventure, but by that point, he longed for the life he left back home even more.
Day Seven: Pain and Hope
Prater began the day in the dark by taping his right shin, which had swollen to three times the size of his left with a lump protruding from it the size of a golf ball. Prater battled shin splints earlier that summer, even taking an unthinkable 10 days off to heal. Now they were back. Runners often use compression sleeves to ward off the overuse their sport demands. By the seventh day, Prater's own sleeves weren't enough. He needed something tighter, so he borrowed a pair of Lori's much smaller sleeves. He didn't care that they were hot pink. Prater winced as he and Halladay began to run up the trail. The good news was the pain in his twisted left foot was better, but Prater wondered if that was just because his right shin hurt even more. Still, as the sun rose, Prater rebooted yet again, and Halladay, one of the better ultrarunners in the region, joked with a friend over a text about being dropped as Prater surged ahead. Most of the 14ers in the central Sawatch Range, like Princeton, were named after universities. In one sense they were easy because trails covered most of their tracks, but they were also hard because they were steep and exhausting. As hikers pursued the 14ers, all kinds of mini-challenges helped keep them focused up some of the mundane routes, and climbing Missouri Mountain and Mounts Belford and Oxford, a climb of more than 8,000 feet in one day, was one of those badges of honor hikers often bragged of. Of course those who managed to do so usually didn't talk about how trashed they were by the end, usually limping back to their cars with barely enough daylight left to guide their way. Prater climbed them all by lunchtime. Even with the wear and tear, the bad weather, the oil trouble and the loneliness, he was still on Cave Dog's tail. Even with the wear and tear, the bad weather, the oil trouble and the loneliness, he was still on Cave Dog's tail. For most climbers, ascending the next two peaks, Mounts Harvard and Columbia, was an epic day unto itself. That afternoon, he traversed over to Harvard and dashed across Mount Columbia, and as he headed down and prepared himself for Mount Yale, his last peak of the day, he allowed himself to dream about Longs Peak. He planned to save Longs for last because it was closest to his Superior, Colo., home. The mountain, the tallest in Rocky Mountain National Park with a breathtaking east face and a route called "the Diamond" that attracts climbers from around the world, also draws thousands a year to a second, easier, yet still challenging route. Prater loved it. He had climbed Longs at least once in every month of the year. With nearly four days of climbing left, Prater had only 15 peaks to go. Those peaks, however included the Elk Mountains in Aspen. Rock for rock, the Elk range was the toughest among the 14ers. They contained the crumbly, exposed Bells, Maroon and North Maroon Peaks, and two other peaks just as difficult. But he thought he was ready. Every step hurt, but so far the ibuprofen dulled the pain just enough to continue. Wright, back home, had lined up what everyone agreed was a dream team to help on the final days. Stefan Griebel and Ben Hoyt, who could climb like spiders up the smoothest faces, were scheduled to join Prater, as was the legendary Andrew Hamilton. At one point, Hamilton held the 14ers record himself, and he still held the "self-powered" 14ers record of 19 days, 10 hours, 40 minutes, meaning he either hiked, ran or biked the whole way. The record, at last, seemed within Prater's reach, like a peak on the horizon coming into focus in the morning light. It actually seemed doable. Longs was going to be fun, and Prater imagined what would wait for him at the end. At this point, he knew his attempt was drawing a lot of attention on 14ers.com, and there was talk of a reception right in Longs' parking lot. That would make him uncomfortable, but he admitted to himself that it would also be kind of cool. Minutes later, as he descended down Columbia, a sharp pain hit his quad just above his left knee. He didn't feel a pop. He didn't bang it on a rock. He didn't even twist it. But every time he bent the knee, the pain was excruciating. Many hikers scowled at Columbia, which at times seemed like nothing more than a pile of rotten marbles. The proper term for the tiny, loose rock was scree, though hikers preferred to use another, more profane "S" word to describe it. Prater tried to keep his leg straight, but that was like trying to stand on a pile of LEGOs. Then Prater taped it, which did no good. He started to crab walk, bending at his waist and scrambling on his hands and feet, and then he fell before the mountain to his knees and began to crawl. He sent Jon Kedrowski, the first man to camp on the summits of the Colorado 14ers in one season, and his partner down Columbia, to inform the crew that he may be finished. Eric Lee, who thought about attempting the record himself that season, was having none of it. He ran up the trail and met a disgusted Prater at the bottom of Columbia. Lee tried a deep tissue massage on the quad with a stick, and Prater tried stretching his leg in all kinds of ways and gobbled salt pills, hoping the pain in his leg was just a cramp. None of it helped, and yet Lee's presence, along with a few more ibuprofen, seemed to rally him. Prater stood and the two broke into a slow run back to the car that felt like a death march. Prater was in horrible pain. He knew his shot at the record was in trouble - Longs was fading in the distance.
Day Eight: The Long View
Roach, hoping for another Prater reboot, took him to Ken Nolan's house. Prater felt bad about that, but if anyone would understand, it was Nolan, one of a handful to climb all of Colorado's 1,300, 12,000-foot mountains. He called Prater a friend and, like those following on 14ers.com, was rooting for him hard to break the record. Roach hoped a few hours of sleep in a real bed, not on a mattress in a car, might get Prater through another day. Prater crawled into Nolan's guest bed without showering and felt guilty until the moment his head hit the pillow. Prater awoke in the dark the next morning to climb Yale, but he wasn't the same. Even after sleeping, he was exhausted. The pain in his leg was still sharp, and after reaching the trail Prater hiked down a few steep sections to test it. He didn't want a repeat of the previous night's awful descent. It hurt, but the ibuprofen masked it just enough for him to stumble along. Prater even used hiking poles, a staple of many mountain hikers, even though he believed they slowed him down. Now Prater feared the message his body sent with every step: Enough, already. Now Prater feared the message his body sent with every step: Enough, already. He had promised himself before the attempt that he would give it everything he had and was now taking measure. He cursed his twisted foot. That, he thought, started the chain of pain, as he had to favor the foot, which probably caused the shin splints in his right leg, which threw off his balance and may have ruined the quad in his left leg. Or it could be that he was just a middle-aged guy with kids and a family whose body was collapsing under what many consider one of the most demanding endurance feats in the world. Prater could barely talk. He thought a nap might help. He collapsed in the wet grass and the mud. Andy Wellman, another ultrarunner who Wright lined up to get Prater through the peaks, tried to rouse him, but Prater slept on. Wellman wondered what he could possibly say to him to wake up. Then, without warning, Prater stood, and within seconds, he was gone. It was much lighter out, the start of a new day. Prater was off like a bullet and even began talking strategy. Maybe he could knock off Yale, and then Mount Huron and La Plata Peak in the afternoon, and that would set him up for his epic trip through the Elks. Wellman wondered if this was the famous Prater reboot he'd heard about. Can the record be broken?
Cave Dog's record is a tough one, Gerry Roach said, but it is breakable. John Prater showed that much. "These new guys, these young ultrarunners, are pretty good," Roach said. "There are lots of 100-mile races now, and those times are being lowered all the time. People are figuring it out." Prater didn't get the speed record, but he did set his own. He climbed those 41 14ers faster than anyone else ever has. Prater's foot still hurts him, if you poke it, but that's the only lingering injury from last year's attempt. Prater said earlier this year that he would like to try it again in 2014. But that's only if someone like Eric Lee doesn't beat him to it. Prater's ultimate goal, to draw some attention to Cave Dog's record, was a wild success. His attempt got the more than 1,600 responses on 14ers.com, more than any thread in the last few years. Roach has heard that one, and maybe even two, ultrarunners were fascinated with Prater's attempt and might take a shot at the speed record. Cave Dog wanted to see Prater break his record, and if someone else calls him for advice, he is willing to help. He posts his routes, times and statistics on his site as a guide for others. "My goal was to be the fastest at the moment," Cave Dog said. "That record will be mine forever, just as the records previous to mine will be theirs forever. I really hope others improve on it." Better trails, technology and beta on the routes should help the attempt, but Cave Dog reminds others that he had advantages others before him didn't as well, including lighter and more durable running shoes. "Give me a call," Cave Dog said. "I'll give them any tips I can. I want people to have their own adventures and their own victories." Prater, like Cave Dog, will be one of the hundreds following along and cheering that person on if it happens. He may even join them for a few trips up. "If someone else does it," Prater said, "I'd be their biggest fan." At the tree line, however, Prater slowed again, the jolt of energy spent. He grimaced and grunted with every uphill step, as if his leg was pierced by shards of broken glass. Prater massaged it and stretched it, and once again, nothing helped. Prater knew he was done but said nothing. That realization stung even more than he thought it would. Privately he had worried about the Elks from the moment he twisted his foot. Those peaks demanded anyone's best, and Prater knew his body wasn't right. He wasn't ready to go against his instincts for a fourth time. He was content. It was time to stop chasing the Cave Dog. But it was not time to stop climbing. For the moment, Prater decided to keep going. Climbing Yale would meet another goal and mark his third time he had summited the same 55 14ers he set out to speed climb in the record attempt. That alone justified a trip up, and in so doing meant that he had given everything he had. He had failed to catch Cave Dog, but had set a personal record, pushing himself harder and farther than he ever had before. As he hiked at the speed of an average hiker, not a badass ultrarunner trying to set a record, his pace reminded him of a time when every trip up was a new adventure. There were weekend outings in college, and the climbs he'd done both on his own and with his friends, and with Lori, and climbs to come someday with his daughters. In the last week, he had made a valiant attempt at the record with great friends who lost sleep and nerves and even risked their lives to help him. He planned to give Roach a big hug at the bottom for all of his friends' hard work. Maybe one day he would help one of them go for the record. Or, maybe one day, he would try it again himself. At this moment, however, he still had Yale to climb. The peak wasn't anything special, just another 14er with a steep but easy trail to the top, a mountain climbed by the masses. Every step hurt, both in his legs and in his heart. Yet it was still another day in the mountains, his home away from home. He loved their summits more than just about anything, but the frenetic pace of the record pursuit hadn't allowed him the luxury of experiencing one of his favorite reasons for climbing. He hadn't had a chance to linger on the peak, to soak in the view and know how far he had come. As he approached his 41st and last summit of his adventure, he looked forward to some quiet reflection on top. Producer/Design: Chris Mottram | Editor: Glenn Stout | Copy Editor: Kevin Fixler
Photos: Jason Halladay, Mark OvesonDo you remember building pillow forts? I do. I built forts out of card board boxes. I built forts out of Legos. I built forts out of towers and cannons. And, at the end of the night, I build a fort by locking my door and wrapping up under the blankets. We like to build forts.
But why all the fort building? Simple. Defense against invaders! Over the course of our lives, aggressive people will try to come into our lives and control us—we have to have defenses set up! We have to have boundaries set up! If we don’t, we will let people walk all over us. Building pillow forts in childhood is important preparation for security in adulthood.
Building a Pillow Fort
Of course, I have built pillow fort decks from Magic cards. I have built pillow forts out of [card island sanctuary]Island Sanctuaries[/card]. I have built pillow forts out of [card]Fortress Crab[/card]s. These pillow fort decks are very different from control decks. They aren’t about controlling the opponent at all. They are about setting up a fort so awesome that the other guy can never get in! Eventually he gives up and goes to play with someone else.
This past week on TWOO TV (twitchtv.com/traviswoo) I have been building an awesome pillow fort.
Here is a picture of us safely outlasting a Zombie invasion:
Pillow Fort
[deck]Main Deck:
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden
2 Overgrown Tomb
4 Hinterland Harbor
1 Alchemist’s Refuge
2 Nephalia Drownyard
4 Abundant Growth
3 Sensory Deprivation
4 Farseek
4 Detention Sphere
2 Nevermore
4 Oblivion Ring
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
4 Sphere of Safety
1 Touch of the Eternal
4 Sphinx’s Revelation
4 Mana Bloom
Sideboard
1 Sensory Deprivation
1 Ground Seal
2 Rest in Peace
1 Nevermore
3 Slaughter Games
2 Curse of Death’s Hold
3 Jace, Memory Adept
1 Vraska the Unseen
1 Touch of the Eternal[/deck]
Question: So what’s the win condition?
Answer: DEATH BY OLD AGE
Our opponent starts with a creature. We put a [card]Sensory Deprivation[/card] on it. He plays more creatures. We play [card]Oblivion Ring[/card]s and [card]Detention Sphere[/card]s. He plays more creatures, as most decks these days do. And then we play [card]Sphere of Safety[/card]. He spends all of his mana and attacks with one guy. He’s so close to killing us!
We play more enchantments. Now he can’t attack. But maybe he will draw enough lands to keep up with our enchantments. Or maybe he will draw some burn spells to finish us off.
A [card]Nevermore[/card] comes down on a burn spell. Well, now he needs to draw perfect. A [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card] reloads. Still enough shots in the deck—might as well keep playing.
[card]Touch of the Eternal[/card] hits the battlefield. Well, maybe he will be able to take out the Spheres. He really needs this win. Might as well keep playing.
The game continues. More Spheres hit the battlefield. More enchantments litter the board. Before he knows it, he looks up and he sees this.
And then he cries.
WARNING!
THIS DECK WILL ALIENATE PEOPLE FROM YOU.
Actually, it’s not fun to play against. That’s kind of the point. Pillow forts and boundaries are meant to keep other people out. They’re about being emotionally unavailable to the outside. People will want to get in, but they won’t be able to. And if that’s what you want, that’s what you want. They might bang on the door for hours and cry, but this is YOUR pillow fort. You don’t have to let ANYONE in! So go ahead and push that Like button! Nothing wrong with it!
Alright, let’s talk Magic card strategy!
Playing with Nevermore
[draft]Nevermore[/draft]
This card is incredibly difficult to play with. You have to imagine that the opponent is going to go through their ENTIRE deck (they will). What cards will be good in a longer game? Usually the answer is cards that destroy permanents or cards that win outside of combat. You might want to name a removal spell like [card]Ray of Revelation[/card]. You might want to name a burn spell like [card]Searing Spear[/card].
Something to keep in mind is that [card]Nevermore[/card] is a symmetrical effect. You might really want to name [card]Detention Sphere[/card] or [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card], but since we have 4 of each of those ourselves, it’s usually not advisable.
[card]Slaughter Games[/card] doesn’t have this problem, although it’s only castable off of the [card]Mana Bloom[/card]s and [card]Abundant Growth[/card]s.
Playing vs. Control
Control is the hardest matchup. They can usually blow up enchantments. They can sometimes attack you outside of combat with planeswalkers. And they might play enough card draw and lands to actually keep up with [card]Sphere of Safety[/card]. So how do we win?
They might get into our pillow fort, but we might as well make it tough for them. If they are going to beat us, it’s going to take a VERY long time—so might as well make ’em work for it! If they aren’t careful they might get locked out or killed by [card]Nephalia Drownyard[/card]. I don’t have any tips for you other than waste as much of the opponent’s time as possible. There, I said it!
After sideboard, our plan is to ramp into an early [card jace, memory adept]Jace[/card] or [card vraska the unseen]Vraska[/card]. Jace puts a massive clock on them. We also have access to 3 [card]Nevermore[/card] and 3 [card]Slaughter Games[/card], so we can knock out a lot of their problem cards before they ever cast them.
On the whole, control is tough, but winnable. You are also bound to be the last match going, which will hold the tournament up. Bonus! (Depending on how much of a troll you feel like being, but if you are playing this deck the assumption is you feel like being a big troll).
Playing vs. Aggro
Enjoy! I mean, it’s possible to get overrun in the early turns—but once we have them locked out, they are usually locked out for good. Aggro matchups are always a good opportunity to slowly assemble the best pillow fort known to mankind.
Strange Cards
[draft]Sensory Deprivation[/draft]
I am drawn to [card]Sensory Deprivation[/card] for two reasons: The first is that it costs only one mana, which makes it a great early answer for [card]Rakdos Cackler[/card] and other early beaters in the format. The second reason is the flavor of the card. Look at the picture and the name! This is what we are slowly doing to our opponents.
[draft]Mana Bloom[/draft]
[card]Mana Bloom[/card] is necessary. It is awkward, but it’s both a ramp spell and an enchantment. Both of these functions are crucial.
It’s also extremely hard to play. I have played with it a ton, and I’m still making mistakes. For a single G, you can put it into play as an additional enchantment or an additional life point off of [card]Touch of the Eternal[/card]. Also keep in mind that you can make multiple mana with it in a turn cycle—1 during your turn and 1 during the opponent’s turn.
[draft]Touch of the Eternal[/draft]
[card]Touch of the Eternal[/card] works fantastically with [card]Sphere of Safety[/card]. It is slow and expensive, but over the course of a really long game it can protect us against a hole in our pillow fort developing for a turn. The card is also great at stabilizing in the mid-game—sometimes they can get a single guy through every turn but a [card]Touch of the Eternal[/card] can usually stop that.
[draft]Vraska the unseen[/draft]
Ok, Jace is obvious, but why Vraska? Vraska is great for killing [card]Detention Sphere[/card]s and other planeswalkers. These can be real problem cards in control matchups, and Vraska is a great repeatable answer. It also is a win condition, although it is extremely slow.
Cards I’m Not Playing and Why
[draft]Supreme Verdict[/draft]
Yes, [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] is awesome, but it works against everything this deck is doing. [card]Sphere of Safety[/card] is meant to ignore the number of creatures they have (it could be 1 or a 1000). [card]Sphere of Safety[/card] also requires a massive commitment to enchantments. We NEED to play more enchantments than they play lands. We just have to. If you add [card]Supreme Verdict[/card], you cut enchantments—at which point you need to go build another deck altogether.
[draft]Martial Law[/draft]
[card]Martial Law[/card] doesn’t work very well with [card]Sphere of Safety[/card] because they can attack you with whatever other creature they have lying around. It also doesn’t go into effect immediately. It’s just worse than other options.
[draft]Pacifism
Defang[/draft]
These cards are great, but I have liked [card]Sensory Deprivation[/card] more. I find the single mana difference to be huge in the early game. Is it possible I’m wrong? Absolutely.
[draft]Sands of Delirium
Elixir of Immortality
Azor’s Elocutors[/draft]
Winning is not a problem. Setting up our defenses is a problem. With the defenses set up, Drownyard will do the job. Adding an extra win condition means cutting a defensive spell that could lock up the game—for a card that ends the game faster? Why would you want to end the game faster!? The whole point is to play a long dramatic defensive game.
Also a card like [card]Azor’s Elocutors[/card] now makes their previously useless creature removal GREAT! Let’s not do that.
The Future of the Deck!
Do you feel like being alone? Do you feel like being safe? Do you feel like being secure from invaders of all kinds? Take this deck to your local tournament! Keep in mind there is a chance of making a small child cry, so be careful, and be a good sport. Although, by playing this deck it is almost impossible to be a good sport.
The deck is hilarious. It is capable of winning any matchup and is pretty good against creature decks, but overall it’s not the winningest deck. If you are looking for something to WIN your next tournament, take a look at LSV’s Omnidoor video and play that deck. Seriously. This deck is about building a Pillow Fort, and building a Pillow Fort only!
Pillow Fort Assembled
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Questions! Comments! Think there’s something I missed?WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has proposed over USD 1 billion in civilian and military aid to "strategically important" Pakistan for fighting terror, economic development, safety of nuclear installations and improving ties with India among other objectives.The budgetary proposals released by the State Department after Obama sent them to the Congress show a more than six- fold increase in the foreign military financing (FMF) to Pakistan from USD 42.2 million in 2014 to USD 265 million in 2016.The key elements of the proposed budget include strengthening Pakistani military for its fight against extremism, safety of nuclear installations, stability in Afghanistan, economic development and improving ties with India.In addition, the Obama Administration proposed USD 334.9 million for economic support fund and USD 143.1 million especially for counter-terrorism and non-proliferation efforts.Pakistan lies at the heart of the US counter-terrorism strategy, the peace process in Afghanistan, nuclear non-proliferation efforts, and economic integration in South and Central Asia, the State Department said.For Pakistan, the budget demonstrates US commitment to fostering stability and prosperity, and provides security assistance that promotes counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency capabilities, the State Department said.The budget continues to support public engagement and partnership programmes in Pakistan and maintains staffing in order to support these critical US priorities, the State Department said.Proposing USD 265 million for Pakistan under foreign military funding (FMF), the State Department argued that this is essential to Pakistan's efforts to increase stability in its western border region and ensure overall stability within its own borders.FMF will continue to focus on seven priority areas identified and agreed with Pakistan. These include-- precision strike; air mobility and combat search and rescue; counter- improvised explosive device and battlefield survivability; battlefield communications; night operations; border security; and maritime security/counter narcotics in support of counter terrorism aims.For Pakistan, the overseas contingency operation (OCO) request of USD 36 million, will support critical US activities such as sustaining close cooperation with Islamabad, working with the country to facilitate the peace process in Afghanistan and promoting improved relations with India.The State Department said the OCO funds will help facilitate increased stability and prosperity in this "strategically important nation".Last man standing.
By Rupen Savoulian
October 5, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/Antipodean Atheist -- Five years ago, in September 2008, the giant investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, filing for bankruptcy. This was the largest, but not the only, banking and investment firm to go under in that year, signalling the beginning of the ongoing capitalist economic crisis. Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, IndyMac and a host of financial institutions went bust, were taken over by the US federal government (yes, in the United States where private corporations are venerated, banks were nationalised) and returned to private ownership or continued in different forms.
The beginning of this economic meltdown compelled the national bourgeoisies of the worst hit economies – namely the United States and Britain – to take steps to alleviate the crisis and rescue the capitalist system. Austerity packages were applied in the countries that experienced severe economic downturn, measures that forced the working class to accept lowered pay levels, an erosion of working conditions and removal of pensions and job security, while the top 1 per cent of the social pyramid preserved its wealth. In the United States, the Barack Obama administration passed a series of stimulus packages designed to hand over public money to the ailing investment banks and financial institutions. Corporations such as Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and other privately owned hedge funds so that they could continue their predatory financial practices.
The economic crisis has meant a huge drop in employment. Back in 2009, the CNN Money outlet reported that millions of jobs were lost as a result of the economic meltdown. The normally corporate-friendly mouthpiece Sky News reported in February 2013 that in the United Kingdom, 3.7 million jobs were lost since the start of the great recession. Less employment opportunities has meant a staggering rise in unemployment, less secure jobs and more temporary work for employees. Being unemployed or underemployed is becoming a more common feature of working life in the crisis-wracked capitalist states.
The Wall Street Journal, the lapdog of the US financial elite, reported earlier in September 2013 about the upcoming "Lost Generation" – the high schoolers from 2008 who lived through the economic downturn and are now struggling to find work. The article, entitled “Wanted jobs for new ‘lost’ generation”, details the plight of young people, their diminishing prospects for secure employment, their resultant financial difficulties and increasing student debt that is now part of the life of new college graduates. The economic and social stagnation of an entire generation puts paid to the myth of upward social mobility in a capitalist system. As Gary Lapon explained in article published in the Socialist Worker online magazine;
ONE OF the biggest myths about the United States is that it’s a mostly “middle class” society, with poverty confined to a minority of the population. The reality is exactly the opposite: The vast majority of people in the United States will experience poverty and economic insecurity for a significant portion of their lives.
Lapon summarises the findings of various economic surveys and statistical analyses that accurately portray the life of the majority of people in the United States that experience economic immiseration. As Lapon explains:
Around four out of every five people in the U.S. will endure unemployment, receive food stamps and other forms of government aid, and/or have an income below 150 percent of the official poverty line for at least one year of their lives before age 60.
Long periods of unemployment are not just economically devastating, but also have a deleterious impact on mental health, contributing to bouts of depression and anxiety, higher levels of admissions to mental hospitals, and also a rise in chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and hypertension. Lapon cites a study by researchers at the University of Queensland who examined the harmful effects of family unemployment on child cognitive development. Children from unemployed families and living in poverty experience diminished levels of cognitive development, according to the researchers.
However, the wealthiest 1 per cent of the US population has amassed enormous amounts of wealth, enough to feed millions of hungry and impoverished people. The combined wealth of the richest US oligarchs is more than enough to fund education programs, food kitchens and social welfare for the poorest families. As Lapon explains in his article:
The 400 richest Americans, with a total net worth of $1.7 trillion as of last year, were worth an average of $4.2 billion each, enough to support over 89,000 families of four at 200 percent of the poverty level for an entire year.
However, the wealthiest and largest corporations are doing well during this crisis. In fact, the Obama administration has done everything in its power to ensure that the richest elite retained and even increased their share of profits as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Concomitantly, the share of the GDP dedicated to workers’ wages has decreased. As Forbes magazine documented in April 2012, under Obama’s watch, corporate profits have hit an all-time high, while wages have stagnated and reached an all-time low. In the third quarter of 2012, corporate earnings increased to $1.75 trillion, while workers’ wages have plummeted as a percentage share of GDP. In 2013, the picture was even starker, with Business Insider Australia reporting that corporate profit margins have hit another all-time high in the United States. One of the reasons for this surge in corporate profitability is given by the Business Insider article:
Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades. The other reason corporations are so profitable is that they don’t employ as many Americans as they used to. As a result, the employment-to-population ratio has collapsed. We’re back at 1980s levels now. In short, our current obsessed-with-profits philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.
The Huffington Post, a mouthpiece of the liberal wing of the US ruling class, published an article that detailed how corporate profits are soaring, but workers are not getting any richer. Income inequality is skyrocketing, with an average CEO from one of the largest corporations in the US earning 273 times more than his or her co-workers. It is touching to see that the author of the Huffington Post article still believes that wealth will somehow trickle down to the rest of the population, rather than tending to coagulate at the very top. The Wall Street financiers and speculators, those responsible for the current capitalist malaise, are hardly expected to be socially responsible and reform their criminal ways. In fact, in a sign that the speculator-parasites are continuing their predatory practices, pensions and public money is being looted by the big banks and financial firms in order to prop up a failing economic system.
Suffering
Behind the statistics and figures are the human stories of suffering and struggle that the 99 per cent are going through to make ends meet. Job insecurity and the threat of poverty are basic instruments that the capitalist class uses to keep working people down. In an article published in the Socialist Worker called “She gave 25 years and her life”, author Leighton Christiansen documents the life and passing of adjunct professor Margaret Mary Vojtko, who taught French at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. As the article states:
On September 1, she passed away at the age of 83, still an adjunct. She was buried in a cardboard coffin. Margaret Mary was, in the words of Prof. Gary Rhodes, part of a new segment of America’s working poor: adjunct professors at colleges and universities. When she was hired 25 years ago, Vojtko may as well have taken a vow of poverty–and this poverty undoubtedly hastened her death. Like the rest of the working poor, adjuncts work part-time or full-time for low pay, are routinely denied access to health care and/or affordable health insurance, and have little or no money left after paying the bills to invest in a retirement plan, if one is even available.
Her story is becoming increasingly widespread, as education is privatised and universities become corporatised "knowledge factories". A professorship is normally associated with job security and decent pay – not anymore. Impoverishment, the lack of a decent wage, and the erosion of health benefits all contribute to stresses and strains of the life of people like the late Margaret Mary Vojtko, and hasten their demise.
As the criminal parasitism and social decay of the capitalist system become the norm, more people are realising that all the social gains of the past – the minimum wage, set working hours, paid overtime, health benefits – are being rolled back. Obama used the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial meltdown to make the case for an economic recovery. He argued that while problems remain, the financial situation is stabilised. There is a grain of truth in this characterisation; the economy has partly stabilised, but not for the 99 per cent of us. Richard Eskow, in an article published in Common Dreams, states it plainly;
Five years after the financial crisis, it’s become increasingly apparent that the government didn’t rescue “the economy.” It rescued the wealthy, while doing far too little for everyone else.
Recovery for the rich
Obama is correct in one respect – the banking and financial system has been stabilised, in order to continue plundering the public purse and reallocate a greater proportion of the national economy to corporate profits. The economic recovery was intended to secure the privileges and position of the super-wealth |
ande, A. (2011) The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Henry Holt and Company. Weingart, S. & Hua, A. (2014). An Intubation Checklist for Emergency Department Physicians. ACEP NOW. March ED: Vol 34 – No 3. Young, J. & Sewell, J (2015) Applying cognitive load theory to medical education: construct and measurement challenges. Perspect Med Educ. Jun; 4(3): 107–109 Mani, A, Mullainathan, S., Eldar Shafir, E, Zhao, J. (2013). Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function. Science. 30 Aug 2013: Vol. 341, Issue 6149, pp. 976-980 Burgess, D. (2010). Are Providers More Likely to Contribute to Healthcare Disparities Under High Levels of Cognitive Load? How Features of the Healthcare Setting May Lead to Biases in Medical Decision Making. Med Decis Making March/April 2010 30: 246-257. Burgess et al (2014). The effect of cognitive load and patient race on physicians’ decisions to prescribe opioids for chronic low back pain: a randomized trial. Pain Med. 2014 Jun;15(6):965-74. Landrigan CP, Rothschild JM, Cronin JW, et al. (2004).Effect of reducing interns’ work hours on serious medical errors in intensive care units. N Engl J Med; 351:1838–1848. West CP, Huschka MM, Novotny PJ, et al. (2006). Association of perceived medical errors with resident distress and empathy: a prospective longitudinal study. JAMA;296:1071–1078. Williams ES, Manwell LB, Konrad TR, Linzer M. (2007). The relationship of organizational culture, stress, satisfaction, and burnout with physician-reported error and suboptimal patient care: results from the MEMO study. Health Care Manage Rev;32:203–212. Shanafelt T, Bradley K, Wipf J, Back A (2002). Burnout and self-reported patient care in an internal medicine residency program. Ann Intern Med;136:358–367. Firth-Cozens J, Greenhalgh J (1997). Doctors’ perceptions of the links between stress and lowered clinical care. Soc Sci Med;44:1017–1022. Dugan J, Lauer E, Bouquot Z, Dutro BK, Smith M, Widmeyer G (1996). Stressful nurses: the effect on patient outcomes. J Nurs Care Qual;10:46–58. Shirom A, Nirel N, Vinokur AD (2006). Overload, autonomy, and burnout as predictors of physicians’ quality of care. J Occup Health Psychol;11:328–342. LeBlanc VR, MacDonald RD, McArthur B, King K, Lepine T. (2005). Paramedic performance in calculating drug dosages following stressful scenarios in a human patient simulator. Prehosp Emerg Care; 9:439–444. Van Merriënboer JJ, Sweller J. (2010) Cognitive load theory in health professional education: design principles and strategies. Med Educ. 2010 Jan;44(1):85-93.The 'Bridget Jones's Baby' star, and the subject of heavy (some say sexist) scrutiny, is guarded about almost everything — except her writing, support of Hillary Clinton and society's inequality: "Why are we [still] talking about how women look?"
"My main goal," says Renee Zellweger, curled up in an oversized club chair in a private VIP room off the lobby of Santa Monica's Hotel Casa del Mar, "is to avoid any negativity that might enter my consciousness. If I'm not aware of it, then it's not real. It doesn't exist."
For the past six years, Zellweger has been avoiding it like crazy. She's taken a self-imposed hiatus from acting, enjoying the Zen-like peacefulness of living "under the radar," as she calls it. She spent some downtime at her 40-acre farm in Connecticut, chilled out in her beach house in the Hamptons, then holed up for a while at her home in Santa Barbara. She enrolled in screenwriting courses at UCLA, even co-wrote a TV pilot with one of her professors that she pitched to Lifetime (it passed) and pursued a range of other soul-nourishing endeavors.
"I wanted to grow," she explains. "If you don't explore other things, you wake up 20 years later and you're still that same person who only learns anything when she goes out to research a character. You need to grow!"
In September, however, Zellweger, 47, returns to the acting business, emerging from her hiatus to star as Bridget Jones in the long-awaited third installment of the series, Bridget Jones's Baby (out Sept. 16) — and it appears as if her chakras already are starting to fray. Sipping pineapple juice, dressed in low-key workout gear and running shoes, her hair long and loose, she still is the same pretty, perky actress she has always been — but I've interviewed Zellweger three times over the past 11 years, and this is the first time I felt like she was mentally vetting her every word before speaking. Thanks no doubt to the recurring controversy over her appearance — most recently stirred up by a much-pilloried commentary on her face by a Hollywood film critic; more about that later — she's more cautious and cagey with the press than she's ever been before. At times, as she casts a wary eye at the digital recorder on the coffee table, there is even a slight whiff of warning in her voice.
"I've never seen the maturation of a woman as a negative thing," she answers with a tight smile when asked about aging in Hollywood. "I've never seen a woman stepping into her more powerful self as a negative." She leans forward in her chair and chooses her next words pointedly. "But this conversation perpetuates the problem. Why are we talking about how women look? Why do we value beauty over contribution? We don't seem to value beauty over contribution for men. It's simply not a conversation."
In other words, change the subject.
Zellweger was 32 when she first slipped into the title role of Working Title's adaptation of Helen Fielding's best-selling British novel about a hapless book publicist looking for love in London. By that point, she already was a rising star thanks to a career-making turn opposite Tom Cruise in 1996's Jerry Maguire as well as some other notable performances (she earned a best debut award at the Independent Spirit Awards for her role in 1994's Love and a.45, the same year she starred opposite Matthew McConaughey in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation). But it was landing the lead in 2001's Bridget Jones's Diary — a part that every British actress under 40 had been lining up for, including Kate Winslet, Tilda Swinton, Elizabeth Hurley, Helena Bonham Carter, Rachel Weisz and Kristin Scott Thomas — that launched her onto the A-list. The film grossed more than $280 million worldwide, earned Zellweger her first Academy Award nomination for best actress (the year Halle Berry won for Monster's Ball) and almost immediately spawned a sequel, 2004's Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which grossed more than $260 million.
From the start, Zellweger's enthusiasm for the character was legendary: She gained 25 pounds for the role, took a three-week job at a London publishing firm to learn the book business and trained like an Olympian with a dialect coach to turn her Texas twang (she was raised in tiny Katy, Texas, by European parents who immigrated to the U.S. during World War II) into Bridget's chirpy British brogue.
There was some grumbling in the British press about the part going to a Yank, but her English co-stars give Zellweger props for mastering the subtleties of their mother tongue. "I'm always a little thrown by her American accent — sounds like she's putting it on," says Colin Firth, who reprises his role of Darcy in Bridget Jones's Baby (whether the baby is his turns out to be a major plot point). Patrick Dempsey, who plays Jack, Bridget's new American love interest (and the other possible father) also is impressed with Zellweger's devotion to her British accent. "We were at a junket last week," he told THR early in August, "and it was the first time I'd heard her speak in her real voice in a year. It's crazy how committed she is to the character."
That commitment to character isn't limited to Bridget. Between the first two films, Zellweger was Oscar nominated for her performance as Roxie Hart in 2002's Chicago and won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as Ruby Thewes in 2003's Cold Mountain. She went on to star opposite Russell Crowe in 2005's Cinderella Man and did voice work with her best pal Reese Witherspoon in 2009's Monsters vs. Aliens. She also became a regular fixture in gossip columns, beginning (and ending) several high-profile, headline-grabbing relationships. She dated singer Jack White in 2003, was briefly married to singer Kenny Chesney in 2005 (she'd been engaged once before, in 1999, to Jim Carrey) and dated Bradley Cooper from 2009 to 2011. Today, she's with guitarist Doyle Bramhall II, 47, an old friend she met while attending the University of Texas (where she first got her SAG card for doing a Coors Light commercial), with whom she reconnected in 2012.
Sometime around 2010, though — right after finishing a straight-to-DVD indie called My Own Love Song — Zellweger's enthusiasm for acting must have cooled (it happens a lot to actresses entering middle-age in Hollywood, where interesting roles for over-40 females are few and far between; just ask Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston). After making nearly 40 movies — some well received (One True Thing; Nurse Betty; Me, Myself & Irene), some not so much (The Bachelor) — she decided to take that break from acting and concentrate on other creative outlets. In particular, writing. "Writing is something that has always been part of my life," she says. "I'm tapping into it because it makes me happy. There are so many women now who are answering their creative calling — writing, producing, directing. I have a lot of girlfriends who would like to produce material that matters in some way."
Most of her friends, she says, are writers — although she declines to name names. And just the day before this interview, she was attending a daylong seminar on "Great Female Voices" at the home of another friend (again, she declines to give a name). Even when talking about that pilot for Lifetime — it actually got made; it was about a bunch of young songwriters coming of age in Los Angeles during the 1960s — Zellweger is careful not to reveal too much. "It's so boring when people talk about what they're going to do, or what they might do, or the thing that they want to do," she says, explaining her reticence. "It's so much more interesting when you just do it and say, 'Here it is.' "
These past six years, she indeed has lived more like a writer than a movie star. She recently sold the farmhouse in Connecticut and the beach house on Long Island and has settled down in West L.A. She has no social media presence, hasn't done many interviews and has steered clear of gossip columns. But she has kept up with her Hollywood friends, particularly her former publicist Nanci Ryder, rushing to her side when she was diagnosed with ALS in 2014. "I met Renee before the premiere of Jerry Maguire," Ryder says in an email to THR (she mostly is unable to speak). "We bonded right away. I had 10 great years of being her friend and publicist. Then I got breast cancer, [and] she was beyond supportive. Then I got ALS, [and] she was beyond supportive. She cried with me and laughed with me. She is intelligent, with a wicked sense of humor and a great friend. I love her. Write this."
Not surprisingly, jumping back into the limelight for Bridget after so many years — and so many sea changes in media — has been jarring for Zellweger. She obviously is a little rusty interacting with journalists. "I'm not great at press," she says. "It's the part of my job I'm least comfortable with because I'm a really private person." She's more than willing to chat about politics ("to boring degrees, at the expense of everyone around me") and why she's supporting Hillary Clinton ("There's never been anyone better prepared in our lifetime") over Donald Trump ("The language that he uses perpetuates a particular way of communicating that standardizes cruelty and mean-spiritedness as a culture norm"). But ask her about Bramhall, or anything else personal, and she freezes up. "We have shared history, the same mutual friends from eons ago, before either of us was doing anything public," is about all she'll say about her boyfriend. Pressed further, she smiles icily. "I appreciate you asking," she says. "But let's stop." A lot of movie stars claim to be "really private," but this one may actually mean it. And given recent events, it's perhaps not all that surprising.
About the only time over the past six years that Zellweger publicly surfaced in a big way, it did not go so well. It was in 2014, at Elle's Women in Hollywood party. Something about Zellweger looked noticeably different to many covering the event in the media, sparking rumors of plastic surgery. Numerous news outlets called her "unrecognizable," while Twitter exploded with arguments over whether Zellweger had surgically altered her appearance or merely had grown older, the way normal humans do. The noise got so loud, the star felt compelled to respond in a statement to People magazine. "I'm glad folks think I look different!" it read. "I'm living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I'm thrilled that perhaps it shows."
Zellweger's face made headlines again when Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman penned a June 30 review (of Bridget Jones's Baby's trailer, mind you, not the movie) titled, "Renee Zellweger: If She No Longer Looks Like Herself, Has She Become a Different Actress?" The piece, largely eviscerated for its sexism, touched off a firestorm online and off-, inspiring actress Rose McGowan to lash out against Gleiberman ("vile, damaging, stupid and cruel") in an essay for THR.com. Ultimately, Zellweger responded with a column of her own for The Huffington Post. "Not that it's anyone's business," she wrote, "but I did not make a decision to alter my face and have surgery on my eyes."
At least one of Zellweger's castmates was horrified by the controversy. "She should not have to face such scrutiny," says Dempsey, 50, whose own more senior and weathered appearance in the trailer thus far has inspired not a single film critic to speculate about whether or not he's the same actor who once played "McDreamy" on Grey's Anatomy. "Hollywood can be unsparingly brutal — and it's always worse for women."
Of course, the cultural climate has changed quite a bit in the 12 years since the last Bridget Jones film was in theaters, back when Tony Blair was prime minister. Small, plot-twisty rom-coms set in quaint London flats have given way to superhero franchises in which cities like London get flattened. Nobody is making modestly budgeted romantic comedies anymore (Bridget Jones's Baby reportedly cost $35 million), which no doubt is part of the reason why it has taken more than a decade for another Bridget Jones movie to get made. "All my girlfriends are waiting to go to films that are relatable, and I don't know why we're not making movies for [them]," complains Zellweger. "Whatever else may have changed in the world, we still have conversations with ourselves about how we might improve, or things we're insecure about, or our failings."
In truth, it wasn't entirely a changing zeitgeist that kept Bridget Jones's Baby on the back burner for so long. Creative differences among the cast and others also have played a large part, with different directors (Paul Feig was in talks at one point, as was Peter Cattaneo) and writers (like One Day's David Nicholls) playing musical chairs for the better part of a decade. Ultimately, Sharon Maguire, who helmed the first Bridget movie, was hired to direct the film, with Fielding, Borat scribe Dan Mazer and actress Emma Thompson writing the script. But Hugh Grant passed on the chance to reprise his role of Bridget's rakish boss, Daniel Cleaver, saying he couldn't get any version of the script to "work for me" (the writers get even by writing Grant's character out of the film with an offscreen accident in the first act, although they do leave wiggle room for him to return in a Bridget 4). Zellweger typically is vague about the backstory behind the delay — "My understanding is that the script wasn't ready, and then Helen wrote another novel [Mad About the Boy, which veers dramatically from the film's plot] and revisited the screenplay afterward" — but says she was always eager to return to the character. "We never ever, ever, ever considered casting someone else," says Eric Fellner, co-chairman of Working Title. "When I think of Bridget Jones, I think of Renee, and when I think of Renee, I think of Bridget Jones. Renee and Bridget are synonymous. It's not like James Bond or some other franchise."
Once the film finally got a green light, Zellweger threw herself back into the role with the usual gusto. She shadowed a producer on Good Morning Britain (Bridget, who's 42 in the film, has a new job in television), spent hours talking to a midwife, watched countless birthing videos on YouTube and, of course, repolished her English accent. "She's in every scene and has a huge amount to do," says Maguire. "She could put her feet up for five minutes when she's not on camera, but she never does." Firth also remains somewhat in awe. "When I first met Renee, my sense was that she thought the role was a challenge," he says. "Perhaps it was. If so, she hid it well. She's so convincing that I tend to get a jolt of surprise at how different Renee is from Bridget."
Still, 12 years is a long time for audiences to wait for a sequel. And who knows if Bridget Jones still will be as charming to her old fans, let alone a whole new generation of younger filmgoers whose idea of a romantic plot twist is when you swipe the wrong way on Tinder. On the other hand, both Bridget's resurfacing and Renee's come at a time when consciousness about gender equality and female representation on the screen never has been higher in Hollywood. One person who believes the character still has legs is (predictably) Fielding. Indeed, the author thinks her body image-obsessed heroine is more relatable than ever, especially when played by the age-appropriate actress sipping pineapple juice at Casa del Mar. "Increasingly, we inhabit a world where the external — beauty, fame, thinness — is celebrated more than being human, warm and kind," says Fielding. "It's great that Bridget seems to have a following amongst young teenage girls. I hope [the character] helps them remember that being a good person is more important than having a big handbag and a bottom like two snooker balls."
Zellweger has high hopes for Bridget's third act as well. "I love this character," she says. "Bridget makes imperfection all right." Spoken like someone who just might know from experience.
This story first appeared in the Sept. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.The family of a 6-year-old Palestinian boy whose parents and brother were killed in an arson on their West Bank home has filed a lawsuit against the State of Israel demanding £2.14 million ($2.78m) in compensation, saying its settlement policies led to the attack.
Right-wing Jewish extremists were indicted in the July 2015 firebombing in the Palestinian village of Duma in the northern West Bank. Ahmed Dawabshe, then 4, was the only survivor of the attack that killed his brother, Ali, 18 months old; father, Saad; and mother, Riham.
The lawsuit filed Monday in the Nazareth District Court charges Israel with criminal negligence, saying that the state failed to demolish illegal outposts, including the one from which the alleged attackers came, The Times of Israel reported.
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“The writing was on the wall and it was clear to everyone that the leniency toward the hilltop youth, outpost residents and lawbreakers would quickly spill over from property damage and non-fatal attacks to deadly attacks that would end the lives of the innocent Palestinian residents,” the lawsuit said, according to the news website.
Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said late last month that Ahmed Dawabshe was not eligible for compensation because he does not qualify as a terror victim, the law does not apply to Palestinians and that there was no request on file for such compensation.
Lieberman was responding to Arab Joint List lawmaker Yousef Jabareen, who had asked why the boy had not received money from the state.
Ahmed is being cared for by his grandparents.Paul F. Vogley II charged with one felony count of inducing panic, a misdemeanor charge of using a weapon while intoxicated and two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence.
PERRY TWP. Police responded to domestic violence call late Monday night in which multiple shopts were fired inside a residence as occupants ran outside to escape.
Between three and six shots were fired just prior to 11 p.m. by an intoxicated Paul F. Vogley II after a physical altercation inside the home within the 5000 block of Monticello Street NW, according to Perry Police Chief Mike Pomesky. Four occupants — a combination of family and friends — escaped the home without being struck by gunfire or seriously injured.
"We were arriving as (the occupants) were exiting the house and as shots were being fired," explained the chief, noting that a combined two dozen officers and Canton Regional SWAT Cooperative team members responded to what became a nearly eight-hour standoff.
There were no injuries as a result of the shooting, but minor injuries were reported among one occupant due to the skirmish, said Pomesky, who called a peaceful resolution to the dispute "very fortunate."
"There's always a level of danger (for police) when there's an intoxicated male firing a weapon," he said. "We're happy we had a good outcome to this."
Pomesky said numerous attempts to contact Vogely inside the home during the standoff late Monday night through early Tuesday morning were unsuccessful. He eventually surrendered to authorities, shortly after 6 a.m., and police cleared the scene at 6:43 a.m., the chief said.
Vogley, 47, a township resident, was charged with one felony count of inducing panic, a misdemeanor charge of using a weapon while intoxicated and two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence. Pomesky was uncertain about the type of gun Vogley fired.
"Numerous firearms were recovered, and we're trying to determine which one was fired," the chief said late Tuesday morning.
After being arrested, Vogley was transported by police to the Stark County Jail.
The chief referred to the efforts by the SWAT team, Regional Emergency Dispatch (RED) Center dispatchers and his officers as outstanding and a strong example of teamwork in resolving a dangerous situation.
Reach Steven at 330-775-1134 or at steven.grazier@indeonline.com.
On Twitter: @sgrazierINDEThe Cardano (ADA) market price has soared by 600% since trading started in October, and the bull run continues.
Cardano (ADA) continues to explode for days now, growing to $0.13 from its long-standing resistance of $0.03. The price continues to rise, currently up 163% just in the past 24 hours, as investors eagerly anticipate the next roadmap announcement forecast coming ahead of the weekend.
The rapid boost in prices landed the ADA token on position nine at CoinMarketCap, once again re-arranging the top 10 of coins ordered by market capitalization.
But some are still skeptical, believing the move of ADA to be a short-term pump:
I like how $ADA is going hard and nobody is talking about it #Cardano — Crypto K.R.I.T. (@Coin_Controlla) November 28, 2017
What is Cardano (ADA)
The Cardano project began back in 2015 with the aim to be “the first blockchain project to be developed from a scientific philosophy”. Partnered with IOHK, a leading cryptocurrency development company, its impressive team of academics and cryptographers includes Professor Aggelos Kiayias from the University of Edinburgh and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson.
Since its arrival on Coinmarketcap last month, ADA’s price struggled to break $0.03 following a drop to $0.019 after its first roadmap announcement failed to excite investors. With a maximum circulating supply of 45 billion coins and 99.9% of its trading volume coming from one single exchange, Bittrex, it may be fair to assume that some may have overlooked this coin up until now.
What can we expect from Cardano?
For the first time ever, Cardano offers an academic peer-reviewed "provably secure proof of stake protocol" named "Ouroboros", which claims to defend against an array of attacks on the blockchain. Coupled with an adaptive consensus algorithm, this new PoS protocol lays the foundations for expansion in the future development of the project.
Cardano are also in the process of creating an ADA debit card, which will link to an app that can be topped up via Cardano’s in-house wallet, Daedalus.
Something that many other cryptocurrencies, including TenX, have tried to do in the hope of bridging the gap between the crypto market and general commerce.
Cardano serves a much-needed role in the cryptocurrency community. Cardano is working on a programming language for smart contracts that would one day allow for a formal-verification approach to programming. This would avoid the pitfalls of contract bugs that have led to many losses in the past, since blockchain and smart contracts are unforgiving about mistakes.The NYPD is seeking a man who entered a commercial warehouse in the Bronx on Tuesday morning and, after inquiring about job openings, threatened an employee with stabbing and took $1,700 from his pocket.
Surveillance footage shows the suspect inside the Hunts Point commercial warehouse for Happy Times USA on Barretto Street around 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
According to the NYPD, he entered the office and asked a 53-year-old male employee if the company had any job openings. The employee replied that there weren't any open positions, and the suspect proceeded to demand money, threatening that he would stab the victim.
The two men then engaged in a "brief struggle," and the suspect took $1,700 from the victim's pocket. Before fleeing the scene, officers say he managed to grab two Panasonic landline phones. There were no reported injuries.
The suspect is believed to be about 40 years old and 5'9" tall. He was last seen wearing a Yankees hat, and a grey Everlast hoodie.
Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential.Historian Ramachandra Guha alleged that journalist Gauri Lankesh's killers could be from Sangh Parivar.
Highlights Ramachandra Guha had linked journalist murder to Sangh Parivar BJP demands unconditional apology within three days Gauri Lankesh latest among left-wing or rationalist intellectuals killed
Senior journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her house in Bengaluru
The BJP has sent a legal notice to historian Ramachandra Guha, who had alleged that journalist Gauri Lankesh's killers could be from the Sangh Parivar - a group of organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP's ideological mentor. Mr Guha has been warned of civil and criminal action if he doesn't offer an unconditional apology within three days for his comments, the BJP has said.The legal notice quotes the eminent historian as telling Scroll.in last week: "It is very likely that her murderers came from the same Sangh Parivar from which the murderers of Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi came."In tweets today after news of the BJP's legal notice broke, Mr Guha shared an essay he wrote on threats of freedom of expression in India. "In India today, independent writers and journalists are harassed, persecuted, and even killed. But we shall not be silenced," he tweeted. Gauri Lankesh, one of India's most fearless and outspoken journalists, was killed outside her Bengaluru home last Tuesday, shot dead at close range by unknown bikers. The police have not yet made any significant progress in its investigation. The killing has sharply divided commentators, politicians and the media and fuelled a storm on social media Mr Guha is among those who have flagged a pattern between this murder and three others over the past four years, those of renowned scholar MM Kalburgi in Karnataka and Leftist thinker Govind Pansare and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Maharashtra. All were shot dead right outside their homes by unknown bikers believed to be hired killers.In the legal notice, the BJP pointed out that none of these murders have been solved so far. A BJP leader in Karnataka said the RSS is the "world's largest voluntary socio-cultural organization" and the BJP is the "world's largest democratic political party". The notice says: "Your deliberate, false and calculated statement against our client's organization has caused great anguish in the minds of thousands of its members and sympathisers."Yesterday morning, as dawn was breaking in Manhattan, and Londoners were enjoying a late Sunday breakfast, I tuned in to BBC Radio 4 to hear the seventieth-anniversary broadcast of “Desert Island Discs,” an hour-long, live interview show that first aired on January 29, 1942.
For seven decades, “Desert Island Discs” has been introduced by the same theme song, “By the Sleeping Lagoon,” composed in 1930, by Eric Coats, and every week a new “castaway” of distinction is asked to name the eight tracks of music, one luxury item, and one book that he or she would choose to be marooned with. (One also gets the Bible, or its equivalent, and the complete works of Shakespeare.) There are only two longer-running shows in radio history: a British program of religious music, and “The Grand Old Opry.”
The program was created by Roy Plomley, an aspiring actor who had supported himself with odd jobs—as a realtor, an astrologer, and an extra—before he had his brilliant idea. It came to him, the story goes, one night in the country, when he was sitting by the fire in his pajamas. He hosted the show for forty-three years, asking polite questions in a plummy accent.
When the first castaway, Vic Oliver, a comedian, sat down at the mike, on January 29, 1942, the BBC studios, in Maida Vale, were still half in ruins: they had been bombed during the Blitz. On a pre-show that aired on Saturday, Jean Seaton, a historian, noted that the grimness of life during the War gave a special poignance to Plomley’s conceit. Rations had recently been cut in half, and the fantasy of a desert island—warm, bounteous, and pacific—was one aspect of the show’s appeal. Another was the subtext of self-sufficiency. And in that respect, perhaps, every listener was a stoical castaway on the desert island that was Great Britain.
In the past seven decades, there have been some three thousand castaways—musicians, actors, writers, politicians, athletes, scientists, and the odd royal. Men have outnumbered women almost three to one. The youngest Crusoe was thirteen, and the oldest well over ninety. It is a signal honor to be invited, and the program’s producer, Leanne Buckle, noted on Saturday that millions of her countrymen have rehearsed their interviews in a bathroom mirror, the way Americans practice their Oscar speeches.
But not all the castaways have been British, and a number have been American. James Stewart was recalled as particularly laconic. Norman Mailer caused a minor scandal by choosing, as his luxury, “a stick of marijuana.” Debby Harry, Alice Cooper, Louis Armstrong, Alan Alda, Michael Jordan, Jerry Springer, Renée Fleming, Whoopi Goldberg, Barry Manilow, Stephen Sondheim, and John Updike are among the names on an eclectic Yankee roster. Updike chose the complete works of Proust, “a silken tent,” and a playlist that included Doris Day and Fats Waller.
I don’t know who first said, “Show me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are” (probably not Julius Caesar), but the castaways’ choices speak volumes about their taste and imagination, not to say their character. Tallulah Bankhead proudly admitted that she “couldn’t put a key in the door, dahling” much less fend for herself in the wild, and when Plomley asked Otto Preminger if he could build a hut, the impresario replied crossly, “Are you out of your mind?”
Tony Blair is said to have convened a focus group before he went on the show. Simon Cowell chose a mirror as his luxury item, noting that he would otherwise “miss” himself. Preminger’s one book was his autobiography. Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s eight tracks were all recordings of her own voice. The most popular piece of classical music was the least recherché—Beethoven’s Ninth. Dozens, if not hundreds, of castaways wanted paint sets or writing paper. (Other luxury items have included spike heels, footballs, a Ferris wheel, garlic, cigarettes, a dojo, mascara, wine, a globe, an ironing board, a symphony’s worth of musical instruments, a cheeseburger machine, and, in the same category, albeit much grander, Sybille Bedford’s desire for “a French restaurant in full working order.”)
If some castaways couldn’t resist the temptation to be clever—Alfred Hitchcock’s luxury item was a Continental railway timetable—and others surrendered to predictability (Philip Larkin chose a typewriter), a few gave their choices more soulful thought. Paul McCartney, who was the castaway thirty years ago, on the fortieth anniversary of the show, eschewed any Beatles hits, but included a track by John Lennon, from “Double Fantasy”—“Beautiful Boy.” Yoko Ono chose Gracie Fields’s sentimental favorite “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” because she had sung it with her aged mother. Daniel Barenboim, the conductor, who was married to the cellist Jacqueline du Pré, spoke of their discovery that she suffered from multiple sclerorsis. She had to stop playing when she could no longer feel her bow, and he chose one of the pieces she had loved most, Elgar’s Cello Concerto. Ronald Searle, the cartoonist, who died last month, at ninety-one, spent much of the Second World War as a prisoner of the Japanese in the Kwai jungle. He wanted to be cast away with the four last songs of Richard Strauss, he said, because they give you the courage to face death.
After Plomley’s retirement, in 1985, he had three successors: Sir Michael Parkinson, Sue Lawley, and the current host of the program, Kirsty Young, whose bright Scottish voice roused me from my Sunday morning stupor. Her guest was Sir David Attenborough, a man who has, in the course of his six decades as a naturalist, visited his share of remote islands, and was returning to this one for a fourth time. He belongs in the category of practical castaways—those who want a windup radio, dry ice, or a battery-powered lamp—and the book he chose was a classic of adventure travel, “Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life,” by W. B. Lord, a Victorian explorer. It is filled with helpful instructions on how to build an inflatable boat, catch edible fireflies, and make fishing lures. But it also contains a useful piece of wisdom that makes a nice epigraph for the show: “Always and above everything remember that the hearts of all mankind are the same.”
Photograph of Roy Plomley by John Downing/Getty.THESE are the startling maps that reveal Donald Trump’s spectacular fall in the space of just a few weeks.
The controversial Republican presidential candidate has gone from looking like a potential winner to the thing he fears most — a massive loser.
These maps, created using RealClearPolitics’ cool electoral map generator and based on public polling, show exactly how much ground rival Hillary Clinton appears to have gained.
In July, the map projected Clinton would win 201 electoral votes compared to Trump’s 158, with 166 too close to call.
A month later, Clinton’s projected total has risen to 273, while Trump’s is at 175.
It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. So as it stands now, even if Trump won all the remaining undecided states, he would still lose the election. If there isn’t a huge turnaround, he has no path to victory.
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from Seville (less by car), it’s the place where you take a relaxed vacation to recover from your learning vacation.
To be sure, parts are unattractive, overbuilt and disdained by the Portuguese. But parts are still innocent. Conventional wisdom holds that you should stay to the far east or the far west. But there are dots of joy all along the coast—especially when you leave the beach and head for the hills. Here are 9 reasons to visit. (Disclosure: several of these places hosted me as a journalist.)
Vila Monte Farm House
The “farm house” in this charming hotel’s name isn’t just marketing. Its 22 acres of grounds are dotted with herb and vegetable gardens, which play a big role in the kitchens—chefs step outside in their whites to snip rosemary and thyme—and add to the general beauty of the place. It’s a five-minute drive from the city of Olhão, but it feels far away from far away. After a major renovation two years ago, the 55 rooms are the height of simple boho chic—lime-washed walls and floors, straw hats and colorful sarongs hung as art. It’s a fine base for venturing toward the beach or into the hills, and the dedicated “experience consultant” has made it his mission to come up with activities to enlighten and entertain guests every day of a weeklong stay.
Tavira
What comes to mind when you picture a perfectly picturesque Portuguese fishing village? It probably looks something like Tavira: cobblestoned streets, a pretty riverside harbor, buildings clad in colorful azulejos, ancient churches and simple seafood restaurants. It’s a short drive from Vila Monte.
Tres Palmeiras
It’s not by the sea, but it’s the quintessential seaside restaurant: no frills, no pretension, just seriously good fish that was swimming a few hours earlier. There’s no menu. You pick a fish from the counter by the entrance, sit down and eat what they give you: bread and olives, tomato and onion salad, roasted potatoes, a carafe of wine and finally, that fish.
Tasting olive oil at Monterosa
Olive oil is a cornerstone of Portuguese cuisine, but it’s only recently that the country has started making small-batch, artisanal oils to compete on a world stage. One winner is Monterosa, a premium brand whose annual output isn’t enough to fill a shipping truck yet is good enough to earn awards from the likes of the New York Olive Oil Competition. It’s open for tours of the groves and production facilities, tastings of the oils they produce and picnics alongside country houses underneath the trees (BYO lunch—or let Vila Monte arrange).
Hiking with goats
The Algarve is home to small-scale producers of other delicacies, including cheeses made with goat milk and cured meats from free-ranging black pigs (hence the ibérico in much jamón ibérico). With the right connections, you can arrange to hike with a local goatherd as he moves several dozen goats around his rugged land. The capper is a picnic lunch of their cheese and meat. The family behind it doesn’t sell directly to visitors, but Vila Monte can make arrangements.
Porches Pottery
For nearly 50 years, this shop, the brainchild of an Irish and a Portuguese artist, has set out to demonstrate that traditional craft isn’t destined to the dustbin of history. The distinctive, beautifully painted ceramics gracefully recognize the past while carrying a contemporary sensibility that makes them transcend time and place.
Anantara Vilamoura Algarve Resort
The Asian luxury brand’s debut in Europe, which opened in April, hit all the right notes. After a significant renovation, what used to be the somewhat troubled Tivoli Victoria, emerged as a five-star hotel that holds its own on a world stage. Public spaces were redesigned, partnerships with the best local artists and food purveyors were forged, and the commitment to authenticity grew. That means a tree in the lobby, made by a local artist, that combines branches from carob, almond and orange trees (the three main crops in the region); nightly fado performances with singers from the local fado association; and restaurants with a deep connection to Portugal, especially the new Ria, which pays homage to the Ria Formosa national park and the mind-bogglingly good fish and shellfish from the southern coast. Even the sea salt was painstakingly sourced.
Quinta do Convento do Paraíso
Algarve wines don’t have the cachet of Douro or Alentejo wines—too much sun, too much sugar (the award-winning sommelier at the Anantara told me he wouldn’t recommend an Algarve wine with Algarve food and would choose something lighter from the north instead)—but a growing number of winemakers is challenging that. One of them is Quinta do Convento do Paraíso, a family-run winery that’s producing some sophisticated bottles and offers tastings of them (book through Anantara) at their house near Silves. The house is a dream of a Portuguese country home, all blue and white and charm. (You can book it as a private rental.) It’s not for nothing that their signature wine is called Euphoria.
And, okay, the beaches
Just slightly east of the developed marina at Vilamoura is Praia do Almargem, which stretches for nearly 10 pristine miles of protected land—you could walk to the regional capital of Faro. And the namesake beach at the Praia Verde Boutique Hotel, the sister property of Vile Monte, in the eastern part of the Algarve goes on and on. And if you go in the off-season (now), it’s plenty warm but there’s no one there.“We have a good starting point in terms of a mandate from the people of Seattle.”
When it comes to creating a city-owned and operated super-speed Internet utility in Seattle, there are still many unanswered questions. How does it get paid for? Is it a pure public utility or a public-private partnership? How does it reach apartment buildings? Will it utilize the city’s existing electrical and telecommunications infrastructure?
City Council member Kshama Sawant thinks rolling out a small pilot program, possibly in the Central District, could help answer many of those questions on the way to providing the service citywide. To do that, the District 3 candidate is considering inserting around $5 million into this year’s budget to fund the pilot program. She is also planning a town hall forum later in the year to help drum up more support.
“We have a good starting point in terms of a mandate from the people of Seattle,” Sawant said.
Executing the plan, she said, will come down to political will — an indirect rejection of how the Office of the Mayor interpreted a study on the initiative in June.
On Wednesday, members of the Upgrade Seattle campaign briefed Sawant’s energy committee on their efforts to build more public support for a pilot program. Using the recently completed study commissioned by the city, Upgrade Seattle presented different scenarios for funding and operating a municipal gigabit Internet service — a service that’s about 100 times faster than average U.S. residential speeds.
“We’re still very optimistic,” said Devin Glaser, a Capitol Hill representative on the Upgrade campaign.
To get the ball rolling, the report completed by Maryland-based Columbia Telecommunications recommended three potential pilot neighborhoods: the Central District, North Beacon Hill, and Upper Queen Anne (Upgrade is pushing for the CD or North Beacon Hill). The city would need an estimated $5 million to build the infrastructure in one of those areas and operate the service for 12-24 years, according to the study.
On a citywide scale, the report says it would cost Seattle between $480 to $665 million to build out the system that municipal broadband advocates believe would level the playing field with entrenched providers like Comcast and provide better service to the city. The city would also need to get 40% of all single-family homeowners signed up to a gigabit service that would cost around $75 a month.
Last year, CenturyLink announced plans to roll out gigabit Internet to Central District homes in 2015. A spokesperson for the company tells CHS the service is now availabe to around 65,000 homes throughout the city, including some on Capitol Hill.
Unlike Gigabit Squared’s failed plans to bring gigabit-to-the-block service to Seattle, CenturyLink is not leveraging any of the city’s “dark fiber” network for its buildout. CHS wrote about the Gigabit Squared plan last year.
Capitol Hill is not completely without fiber connectivity, although it remains fairly limited. CondoInternet has been offering gigabit capacity connections to apartment buildings and businesses since 2008, including several buildings on Capitol Hill.Ken Konias Jr. lavished stolen money on his family, friends, pimps and prostitutes after killing a fellow armored truck guard, an FBI agent testified Tuesday.
Konias, 23, of Dravosburg left about $25,000 next to his great-grandmother’s grave for his parents to find, roughly $200,000 under his father’s Cadillac and $10,000 in a pair of work boots on the front porch of a friend’s house.
“He said he got it from the Garda truck that he was driving,” said FBI Task Force Officer Gerard Starkey, who helped track him down in Pompano Beach, Fla., and arrest and interrogate him.
Nine witnesses testified Tuesday, the third day of Konias’ non-jury trial before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge David Cashman. Konias faces homicide and burglary charges related to the execution-style slaying of his co-worker Michael Haines, 31, of East McKeesport, on Feb. 28, 2012, and an escape to Florida with $2.3 million.
Konias told investigators shortly after his arrest on April 23, 2012, that he shot Haines in self-defense because Haines threw a handheld device used to scan bags of money at the back of his head. Konias said Haines drew his gun first, he kicked it out of his hand and he shot Haines as he reached for it again.
“He said he had been kicked and punched and hurt his head” during the fight, Starkey said.
“Did you see any indication of bruising or a struggle?” asked Assistant District Attorney Robert Schupansky.
“No,” Starkey said.
“When you observed (the top of Konias’ head) it was …” Schupansky said.
“A mole,” Starkey replied.
There were “no bruises that I observed and none that he could point out to us.”
Starkey, head of the bank and armored-car robbery division for the FBI in Florida, said Konias’ generosity grew as he traveled south. He gave cab driver Roger Beauchamp nearly $800,000 to chauffeur him around Pompano Beach, find him prostitutes, get rid of his Ford Explorer and help him plan an escape to Haiti. Starkey said Konias paid John Flowers, a pimp in Pompano Beach, $17,000 to live in his house and gave him the service weapons that he and Haines carried.
After a prostitute named Summer stole $92,000, Konias reserved storage unit No. J388 at a nearby facility where he kept $1 million in a suitcase, Starkey said. Authorities recovered about $1.3 million.
When police arrested Konias, they found in his wallet fake Florida driver’s licenses with Konias’ photo, a Mastercard under a fake name and several of his own identification cards. Starkey said Konias gave his real name when he was arrested.
Pittsburgh police Detective Ryan Rable testified that he and his partner were on their way to Lawrenceville when they passed the Garda truck police said Konias ditched under the 31st Street Bridge and realized “something ain’t right.”
Rable said he came upon a scene of confusion with several Garda employees ushering him toward the truck.
“They said the driver of the truck was no longer present and the other guy was still inside. I looked through the window and saw a man slumped over with blood on his head,” he said. “I leaned over the front seat and checked to see if he was alive. I said ‘Hey, are you OK? Are you OK?’ Obviously, he wasn’t alive.”
Adam Brandolph is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-391-0927 or abrandolph@tribweb.com.On Long Island, the Town of Islip ordered the mandatory evacuation of residents in low-lying areas, including Fire Island, by Sunday afternoon. Similar orders were issued in other coastal areas.
From Plymouth, Me., to Cape Hatteras, N.C., residents boarded up windows; stocked up on water, batteries and food; and prepared to hunker down. Airlines encouraged people with flights scheduled in the next few days to change their plans and waived cancellation fees.
At supply stores across the region, generators and other goods were snapped up in preparation for the possibility of extended power failures.
Sandbags joined the Halloween scarecrows along Main Street in Hightstown, N.J., on Saturday as business owners who suffered flood damage during Hurricane Irene last year braced themselves.
At a Home Depot in Yonkers, where propane cylinders were prominently displayed near the cash registers, generators were sold out by 6:30 on Saturday morning, within 30 minutes of opening, said Kareem Hiland, a store employee. “The line for them was out the door,” he said. “For batteries, too.”Experts warned that even if Hurricane Sandy decreased in strength, it would remain a danger because of the unusual convergence of several weather systems.
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.
A system known as a midlatitude trough — which often causes severe winter storms — is moving across the country from the west. It is expected to draw in Hurricane Sandy, giving it added energy. A burst of arctic air is expected to sweep down through the Canadian Plains just as they are converging. That could lead to several feet of snow in West Virginia and lighter amounts in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The full moon on Monday could cause even greater flooding, with tides at their peak.
The hurricane was forecast to come ashore between the Delmarva Peninsula and Long Island. But as it continued to churn north, it began to spread out, with tropical storm-force winds extending about 520 miles from its center. On Saturday, it was still moving slowly north and had yet to make its predicted westward swing, at which point it will likely become clearer where it will make landfall.
Forecasters cautioned that the course of the storm could change, but officials from the National Hurricane Center said that it was no longer a question of if the storms would converge — but where and with how much force.
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Dr. Knabb of the National Hurricane Center said the storm’s intensity was unlikely to change. “The center of circulation is only going to be a very small part of the story,” he said. “This is not just going to be a coastal event.” People from Virginia northward should be prepared for a “long-duration event,” he said.
Utility companies were rushing to put crews in place to deal with power failures, which state officials warned could be extensive and long lasting. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey told residents that they should be prepared to go 7 to 10 days without electricity. On Saturday evening, Amtrak began to cancel train service to parts of the East Coast, including between Washington, D.C., and New York.
Maureen Smith, 70, and her husband, Jim Dugan, 76, have been through hurricanes before, but on Saturday they were evacuated from North Wildwood, on the south shore of New Jersey.
“There was a sense of worry, because we do believe this will be serious,” she said.
With forecasters predicting this storm would be much worse than Hurricane Irene, which caused $15 billion in damage, many people were taking no chances. Bob Parise of North Wantagh, on Long Island, was scouring a hardware store.
“We learned our lesson from Irene and are better prepared,” he said. “I’ve got the generator and the gas. Now I’m just worried about the roof.”Summary
W e review another crazy week of hockey and give our best and worst players for the week. Then, we look forward and preview a packed weekend and share some pickup suggestions to take advantage. Lastly, we do a three person Draft on DRAFT.
Download the DRAFT app on iOS or Android or visit draft.com and use promo code 'FHP' when you sign up for a $3 ticket on your first deposit AND a $100 satisfaction guarantee.
Show Notes
Week in Review - 1:00
Weekend Pickup Suggestions - 9:00
Picks of the Night - 24:30
Players Talked About
Best Players of the Week
Steven Stamkos Jamie Benn Nikita Kucherov Derek Dorsett John Tavares Aleksander Barkov Sean Couturier Erik Karlsson Martin Jones
Worst Players of the Week
Nikita Zaitsev James Neal Kevin Shattenkirk Ben Bishop Henrik Zetterberg Patric Hornqvist Mark Giordano Frederik Andersen
Weekend Pickup Suggestions
Mikko Rantanen William Karlsson Oscar Dansk Sebastian Aho Drew Stafford Alex DeBrincat Brandon Montour Evgeny Dadonov Carter Hutton
Our Top Picks of the Night
Jamie Benn Tyler Seguin Vladimir Tarasenko Erik Karlsson Sergei Bobrovsky Jaden Schwartz
Our Value Picks of the NightWhile the US public and global markets will be transfixed by the events in Washington today, Trump's emerging nemesis in the upcoming trade wars, China, has decided to avoid the event altogether. According to the FT, Beijing's infamous censors have ordered media outlets to mute their reporting of Trump’s inauguration "as the Communist party continues to weigh its response to a new administration that has threatened to tear up the rule book of US-China relations."
The FT notes that propaganda officials have ordered the press only to use reports on the ceremony written by central state media, according to several Chinese journalists.
“It is forbidden for websites to carry out live streaming or picture reports of the inauguration,” said the censorship instructions highlighted by the Financial Times.
Internet media outlets should not give the event top billing on their homepages, the instructions add, reminding them to “take care of news comments... and negative and harmful speech”. Similar orders are common ahead of big world news events but analysts said in this case they reflected uncertainty in Beijing over how to handle public perceptions of Mr Trump.
Quoted by the FT, Elyse Ribbons, an American who hosts a programme on Chinese state-run radio, said on Twitter on Thursday that she“wasn’t allowed to discuss Trump today on my radio show, he’s now an official sensitive topic", adding "Chinese leadership still trying to figure him out (sigh)."
While China's official diplomatic tone in recent weeks has been relatively subdued, in anticipation of whether Trump's belligerent approach will carryover into his presidency, the local media has been far less contained. As a result, China’s tightly controlled media often portrays Washington as a hostile power attempting to curtail China’s rise. At the same time authorities are struggling to rein in increasingly nationalist voices on the internet.
“Trump is a very different kind of president than Obama. He has a less friendly attitude... he’s unpredictable,” said Zhan Jiang, a professor of international news at Beijing Foreign Studies University. “The government is still working out how to react to him, which is why in this case they are taking very close control of the media for this event.”
Meanwhile, according to early state media reports highlighted the ceremony’s expense, pricing it at more than $100m. The information office of the State Council, China’s cabinet, tweeted in English: “How much does #Trump’s #inauguration cost? The number must be staggering”.The latest rendering by Josh Byrnes from Carscoops – that we can see above -, seems to be very similar to what we can expect for the 2018 Nissan Leaf since the first spy shoots emerged. Now we make some comparisons with the old generation that we see below.
Looks
Some might say that the new generation looks boring, but the same could be said about the best selling car in Europe, the Volkswagen Golf. Boring is always better than ugly, which is exactly how most people have been describing the old Nissan Leaf since its debut.
While the old Nissan Leaf – with its froggy eyes – resembled the entry-level Nissan Note, the second generation Nissan Leaf looks more upscale than its predecessor and seems to be the direct electric alternative to the Nissan Pulsar.
In terms of looks it’s unanimous, the new generation is an improvement. Looks won’t be an excuse anymore to not buy a Nissan Leaf.
Price
While the new generation represents a vast improvement in every field, I don’t expect an equivalent price increase. Not only the kWh cost has been dropping – to levels where electric cars can be price competitive with ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) alternatives -, the new Nissan Leaf will also face an increasing number of competitors. In my opinion, it won’t be the Tesla Model 3 nor the Chevrolet Bolt EV the most direct alternatives to the new Nissan Leaf. It will be the Kia-Hyundai Group that will dispute directly with the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance the title of “best value for the money” electric cars.
Range
The entry-level trim of the new Nissan Leaf with the 40 kWh battery should attain at least 160 miles (257 km) EPA range, which is a nice improvement. However, it’s still not clear if the 60 kWh battery – needed to surpass the 200 miles EPA range – will be available in the mid and high trims from the beginning or will be introduced later.
Charging
In this field relies the chance for the new Nissan Leaf differentiate itself from most electric car alternatives. An internal 3-phase (11-22 kW) charger in Europe would make the Leaf at least as popular as the Renault Zoe.
I remember Nissan former CEO, Carlos Ghosn saying multiple times that bigger battery capacity isn’t the only solution for range anxiety, which could be overcome with more public charging stations and electric cars capable of faster charging. If Nissan doesn’t deliver in this field it will be a big letdown. To match the Chevrolet Bolt EV’s capability to charge up to 80 kW at DC fast chargers, it will require a TMS (thermal management system) to keep the battery cool.
To sum up, the new generation Nissan Leaf is a great improvement over its predecessor. While most of us don’t like to admit, looks matter and more battery capacity isn’t the only way to overcome range anxiety. Faster charging capability and better public charging station networks also work.
Having this said, buying now a first generation Nissan Leaf can be done with great discounts. In some parts of the USA, a brand new 2017 Nissan Leaf – with all incentives included – can be bought for less than 13.000 USD (12.210 €).
I’m curious to see the production numbers. Which electric car will be more produced? The Tesla Model 3 in a huge Gigafactory, or the new generation Nissan Leaf that will be built in four factories around the world (USA, UK, Japan and China)?!
The first generation Nissan Leaf sold more than 250.000 units in roughly six years, since its launch in December 2010. How much time will it take the second generation Nissan Leaf to surpass this figure? I’m pretty confident that it’ll take less than two years – before 2020. What do you think?
More info:
http://www.carscoops.com/2017/03/future-cars-2018-nissan-leaf-keeps.htmlEarly 2005 was a time of joyous celebration in the Congress Party. They had just upset the BJP led National Democratic Alliance at the polls. Their allies DMK and the Communists had pulled off spectacular wins in their states. Sonia Gandhi was in firm control of the Congress party and none of the smaller allies had any big ticket ambitions. They could be placated by a few sectarian concessions, relaxed prosecution, or providing them corruption opportunities. It seemed like the dark days of the Hindutva agenda under Vajyapee were truly over.
However, under the covers, one critical problem loomed that needed urgent fixing. Strategic thinkers of the establishment realized that the principal canon of the “Idea of India” was damaged beyond recognition under BJPs rule. That of the state to run outright communal preferences in the domain of education.
Judicial blows to the Idea of India
The Indian state has grappled unsuccessfully with the issue of education ever since its inception. The question that most concerned everyone during the 90’s was how to regulate the rapidly proliferating private education space. After a series of over eager judgments in Mohini Jain and Unnikrishnan it became abundantly clear that the government alone was not in a position to fulfil the education needs of the people and running the private sector into the ground (such as in Mohini Jain) would backfire. Faced with this reality various state governments resorted to biting off a part of the private capacity and using that to advance its social objectives. Almost immediately this ran into the minority issue as well as issues related to fees and cross subsidies. A number of these questions accumulated and the need to settle this once and for all was felt by everyone. The opportunity presented itself in a case called TMA Pai Society vs Union of India.
Eleven judges of the Supreme Court, the second largest bench after the 1973 Kesavanada Bharati’ thirteen judges would hear the education and minority issues and settle the issues once and for all. The hope was this large bench would not be encumbered by the earlier nine judge bench in St Xaviers v Gujarat. I wont go into the details of TMA Pai but the 11-judge bench delivered its verdict in 2002. The split was roughly 7-4 on a number of questions; but even the 4 dissenting judges agreed on a number of the framed questions. The most shocking part of the judgment was the following.
Private education institutes established by minorities and non-minorities were held to be on equal footing. Hindus could enjoy the exact same rights under Sec 19-1(g) that the minorities did under Art 29/30.
This may seem like a no-brainer decision to us or to a western liberal observer but this kind of parity is anathema to the Idea of India. The best evidence for this came recently when Fali Nariman spoke at the National Minorities Convention. Sample this :
The decision in TMA Pai was a un-mitigated disaster for the minorities. Let me tell you why. Article 30 (the right of minorities,religious and linguistic to establish and maintain education institutions of their choice) has now been placed by Court decision on a much lower pedestal than it was – or was intended to be. It has been equated only with a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 19(1)(g)– i.e. a mere right to an occupation (running an educational institution the Judges said is an “occupation” like any other) Fali Nariman speech at the National Commission of Minorities
Of course, It is not a question of lower or higher pedestal but that of parity with everyone else. Why would you not interpret that everyone is now elevated to Art 30 level protection?
Post TMA Pai, there were a number of issues related to entrance exams, capitation, and such like that caused major confusion. Another constitution bench of 5 judges was setup under Islamic Academy vs Karnataka to clarify. They still left some vagueness in the questions related to admissions. Then a final bench of 7 judges was constituted for PA Inamdar v Maharashtra to further seal the issue. A lot of questions got answered – a lot did not. But here is what happened.
The essential parity the court accorded to minorities and Hindus in the field of education persisted. The concept of parity between Hindus and Minorities run educational institutions emerged unscathed after examination of large benches. First a 11 judge, then 5 judge, then 7 judge. The final word :
In the opinion of S.B. Sinha, J, minority educational institutions do not have a higher right in terms of Article 30(1); the rights of minorities and non-minorities are equal. What is conferred by Article 30(1) of the Constitution is “certain additional protection” with the object of bringing the minorities on the same platform as that of non-minorities, so that the minorities are protected by establishing and administering educational institutions for the benefit of their own community, whether based on religion or language. It is clear that as between minority and non-minority educational institutions, the distinction made by Article 30(1) in the fundamental rights conferred by Article 19(1)(g) has been termed by the majority as “special right” while in the opinion of S.B.Sinha, J, it is not a right but an “additional protection”. What difference it makes, we shall see a little later. PA Inamdar v State of Maharashtra Aug 2005 http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1390531/
The final word in PA Inamdar came in August 2005. It was now clear beyond doubt that the principle of parity to Hindus in education had just emerged unscathed from three big constitution benches. It was settled. It was final. It was going to be the way forward for India. I realize now that the ecosystem must have been inconsolable at this. How was the Sonia led Congress govt going to restore the minority preference over these epic judgments?
The Congress govt just decided to, ahem.. simply change the Constitution of the great Republic of India.
The 104 Constitutional Amendment bill is born
After PA Inamdar came down in Aug 2005, minority preferences in unaided education had reached a judicial cul-de-sac. It really was game over. The Congress govt worked with great urgency to move a constitutional amendment bill that would obliterate the court judgments The idea was to
allow the state to take (to an unspecified extent) from unaided educational institutions
explicity exempt institutions run by minorities from it
explicitly encode the exemption in Art 15(5) itself
The person selected by the party high command to pilot such an outrageously divisive bill was none other than Arjun Singh – the Congress HRD Minister. They quickly added a new section in the Constitution of India called Article 15(5) which read.
“(5) Nothing in this article or in sub-clause (g) of clause (1) of article 19 shall prevent the State from making any special provision, by law, for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes in so far as such special provisions relate to their admission to educational institutions including private educational institutions, whether aided or unaided by the State, other than the minority educational institutions referred to in clause (1) of article 30.”. Article 15(5) inserted by the 93rd amendment
The minority exemption was immediately opposed by the BJP. Unfortunately they did not make an intellectually honest case as to why this bill was wrong. Instead they sought to include backward among minorities in their institutions. Also remember this was 2005, there was no social media. The mainstream media had absolute control of the discourse and they might have simply decided to suppress all dissent and continued with their propaganda. Regardless, it does seem that BJP put up a fight – however nominal. This is what happened.
Since 2005 was a massive victory for the Idea of India in total contrast to 2014 – the Congress could work the caste blocs within the NDA with targeted benefits
The JDU backstabbed the NDA at the last minute leaving it stranded
The BJP opposition was not very sustained or principled. In the end, the BJP voted for the bill and moved a separate amendment which extended Art 15(5) to minorities. That was predictably defeated
You can see that pattern evolve in much of BJP’s support to invidious UPA legislation such as RTE
Impact on SC/ST
Since a large chunk of the top educational institutions are run in India by minorities – the bill predictably hurts the Dalits by shutting them off elite professional colleges. For example in Kerala minorities run 14 of 18 medical colleges. This is the clearest proof that the Congress party which claims to fight for Dalits will only do so when it does not come into conflict with Christians and to a lesser extent the Muslims. (Only because among minorities Christians run a much larger chunk of education than Muslims do). A forum of SC/ST parliamentarians raised this issue and a delegation appears to have met the Prime Minister. They finally seemed to have been assured by the Prime Minster Manmohan Singh that their concerns will be taken care of. Of course, we know now that he really wasnt in control of anything. This fizzled out and Dalits still dont have quotas in aided or unaided minority institutions. Hope the BJP leaders involved in those days speak up now in detail. Details are scant in the media.
In the end, on Dec 22 2005 the 93rd Amendment was passed. The Constitution of India was changed. Years of effort of huge benches, dozens of lawyers, thousands of hours of arguments were obliterated. Minorities were once again restored to a preferred status when it came to the issue to education.
Validity of the bill
One of the reasons I wrote this article was to highlight the need to understand the 93rd amendment. A good summary of details can be found on this blog as well. Quite naturally this 93rd Amendment was challenged. While hearing the OBC quota case Ashok Kumar Thakur v Union of India. the court noted that they would not hear challenge to the 93rd amendment until the Centre passed a law that depended on it.
That opportunity to test the 93rd amendment against the “Basic Structure” came n 2010 in the form of the Right to Education Act. This was a law that exercised the 93rd amendment by imposing on private educational effort while exempting those schools run by people born as minorities. Remember that the quanta 25% is arbitrary – there is absolutely no protection upto 49.5%. Even that is crumbling. An earlier bench hearing a challenge to the RTE Act involving Rajasthan Private Schools did not go into the constitutional question. I can only guess because that was only a 3-judge bench. Eventually they did constitute a 5-judge bench to hear the RTE Case in 2014 involving a large number of petitioners under Pramati Educational and Cultural Society.
On May 9th 2014, a week before Narendra Modi led BJP swept into power on a massive mandate – the 93rd Amendment was held to be constitutional by a 5 – Judge bench in Pramati Educational & Cultural … vs Union Of India & Ors 6 May 2014 http://indiankanoon.org/doc/32468867/
While departing, the Idea of India ecosystem had managed to secure its crown jewel.
This is where we stand now.
——
Fallouts of the 93rd amendment.
Post the 93rd amendment, sectarianism in education has taken deep root. Minority colleges have flourished. Even aided minority colleges are exempt from quotas that are applicable to fully unaided Hindu run colleges. The trajectory of the education scene can be best illustrated by a Jan 2014 judgment in Madras High Court Federation of Catholic Faithful vs State of Tamilnadu Jan 2014
In the light of the above said judgment, even in respect of aided courses run by minority colleges, there cannot be any direction to follow the rule of communal reservation.
Next week we shall talk about another crucial case.
AdvertisementsMy twitter twitter timeline was all, well, atwitter with righteous indignation this afternoon as word got out that WonderCon, to be held in Anaheim on April 1-3 (and put on by the same folks that bring us San Diego Comic Con) is planning an event entitled: "Fanfic Theater with Chris Gore." Here's the discription:
"It's comedians reading fan fiction! Join Chris Gore (PodCRASH, G4TV's Attack of the Show), along with other comedians and TV personalities, who will read aloud the weirdest and wildest fan fiction found on the Internet. You'll hear stories read by performers Giselle B. (Defective Geeks podcast), Adrianne Curry (Cosplay Queen,America's Next Top Model), Mary Forrest (The Biloon-Forrest Project podcast), IvyDoomkitty (SyFy's Heroes of Cosplay, intl. costumer), Tommy Bechtold (ABC's The Middle), Matt Keil (G4TV's X-Play), Yoshi Obayashi (comedian), and more. In addition, a celebrity guest will be invited to write a piece of fan fiction based on audience suggestions that will be read live for a spectacular finale." - Via WonderCon
Fanfic readers and writer alike were understandably appalled by this. Not only does it sound like it another way of mocking geek girls and fans who are too passionate for primetime, but it's being sponsored by a man who I doubt (though I may be wrong) gets why fanfic is so important to us fangirls. The rage is, shall we say, not subdued.
Unfortunately it's not the first, and probably won't be the last, event set up specifically to ridicule fanfic. Back in December of of 2013 Sherlock stars Martin Freemena and Benedict Cumberbtch were ambushed into reading some erotic slash at a preview event for the show, to mortification of many. At other cons I've seen, similar "the worst of fanfic" panels though at least one I know of only read stories written for that event and meant to be intentionally bad (one of them was Serenity/Hellmouth at a Whedon fic event. Think about it). But even in that circumstance, the overall ethos is troubling: fanfic is something to laugh at and make fun of, just like fangirls in general are to be mocked and made fun of.The goal of this campaign is to develop and produce a pen and paper roleplaying game (RPG) set in the universe of Elite: Dangerous, the upcoming third sequel to the original space simulation Elite.
20 years in the making, Elite: Dangerous looks set to redefine the genre its predecessor created, adding stunning visuals, a uniquely customisable multiplayer concept and an ever-changing immersive universe to explore, fight or trade in.
Elite Encounters |
, during which he did not mention “Palestinians” or the need for a peace process based on the two-state model promoted by the United States.
There is little daylight between Romney’s policy approach to Iran and the policies Obama has pursued — a series of ever-tougher economic sanctions and occasional negotiation — although Romney used more heated rhetoric to describe the Iranian threat.
“It is sometimes said that those who are the most committed to stopping the Iranian regime from securing nuclear weapons are reckless and provocative and inviting war,” Romney said. “The opposite is true. We are the true peacemakers.”
Although he did not address campaign politics in his remarks, his roughly 36-hour trip to Israel has been overtly political.
Many of Romney’s biggest benefactors flew here from the United States for the occasion, including Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who has pledged to give tens of millions of dollars to a pro-Romney super PAC.
Adelson sat behind Romney’s wife, Ann, during Sunday’s speech, while top Romney campaign fundraisers occupied the front rows. The campaign took donors on a private tour of historic sites, and many of them accompanied Romney to the Western Wall. New York lawyer Philip Rosen stood a few feet from the candidate as he tucked his prayer note into the wall.
Before he departs for Poland on Monday morning, Romney will hold a fundraiser at the King David Hotel. After coming under fire for saying it would ban reporters from the event, the campaign said Sunday that it would be open to the news media.
Romney’s speech came hours after one of his senior foreign policy advisers, Dan Senor, told reporters that Romney would support Israel’s right to launch a unilateral military strike against Iran.
The Obama administration has urged the Israelis to be patient while international sanctions against Iran are given time to work but has assured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel has the right to act in its own national security interests. Some in the administration fear that an Israeli strike against Iran could ignite a regional war.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak issued a statement Saturday thanking Obama after he signed into law the previous day an act upgrading security ties with Israel, endorsing the concept of preserving Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region. But there was no such declaration of gratitude by Netanyahu. Obama’s step was widely seen as an attempt to parry Romney’s visit here.
On Sunday morning, a senior Israeli official denied a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, had briefed Netanyahu during a recent visit on U.S. plans for a possible attack on Iran.
The report, which cited an unnamed senior American official, coincided with the start of Romney’s meetings and appeared to underline Obama’s readiness to use military force.
“Nothing in the article is correct,” said the Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The report came at the start of a full day of official meetings designed for Romney to deepen his ties with Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu, a friend of Romney’s since they worked together as business consultants in the 1970s.
Romney met with Netanyahu on Sunday morning at the prime minister’s Jerusalem offices. After sundown, their families shared a private meal at Netanyahu’s home to break the holiday fast.
Although he spoke fondly of Romney, even playfully telling him that after so many decades “you still look young,” Netanyahu has avoided any remarks that could be construed as taking sides in the U.S. presidential campaign.
Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and a Netanyahu adviser who attended the meeting with Romney, said Romney did not repeat past criticisms of Obama’s policies toward Israel or try to lay out a Middle East policy different from that of the administration.
“He was more in a listening mode than talking,” Shoval said.
The discussion also covered the perils of the upheaval in Syria and Israeli concerns about Syria’s chemical weapons stocks falling into the hands of the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, Shoval said. The Palestinian issue, he noted, “did not come up in the meeting.”
Scott Wilson in Washington contributed to this report.American comedian Bill Cosby was a popular spokesperson for advertising from the 1960s – before his first starring television role – until the early 2000s. He started with White Owl cigars, and later endorsed Jell-O pudding and gelatin, Coca-Cola (including New Coke), Texas Instruments, E. F. Hutton & Co., Kodak, and the 1990 United States Census. As of 2002, Cosby held the record for being the longest-serving celebrity spokesperson for a product, through his work with Jell-O. In 2011, he won the President's Award for Contributions to Advertising from the Advertising Hall of Fame.
Cosby was one of the first black people to appear in the United States as an advertising spokesperson. He was known for his appeal to white consumers in the second half of the 20th century, in an industry seen as slow to accept diversity.[1] In spite of making contradictory soft drink pitches and endorsing a disgraced financial company, he continued to be considered effective and believable. In the 1980s, studies found Cosby the "most familiar" and "most persuasive" spokesperson, to the point where Cosby attributed his wealth to these contracts, as opposed to his television series. However, in 2014, allegations of sexual assault significantly damaged Cosby's public image; public opinion polling following the news placed him near the bottom of a list of 3,000 personalities, when rated on trust and effectiveness.
Public opinion of him dropped substantially in 2014, by many sexual assault accusations, the earliest of which dates back decades. More than 60 women accused him of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct, although the statute of limitations had by then expired in nearly all cases. Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault in April 2018, and sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison in September 2018.
Personality [ edit ]
First of all and lastly, I'm good—that's all—I'm good. I don't rewrite their material. I take it and I make it. Cosby attributing his success in the field, 1984[2]
Anthony Tortorici, director of public relations at Coca-Cola, told Black Enterprise magazine in 1981 that the "three most believable personalities are God, Walter Cronkite, and Bill Cosby."[3] At the peak of his advertising career in the mid-1980s, Cosby had a Q Score of 70, meaning that 70 percent of those responding to a survey of 1,000 United States residents thought highly of him, thus deeming him the most familiar and persuasive endorser.[4][5][note 1] In 2003, industry publication Advertising Age said that "during [Cosby's] 14-year reign over the ad industry's public approval index [he had only been surpassed by] the Pope.[6] In 2012, the separate Celebrity DBI index listed Cosby as second most-trusted celebrity on a list of celebrities people pay attention to on television, behind Morgan Freeman.[7]
Professionally, Coca-Cola advertising director John Bergin considered Cosby the company's "greatest weapon"; he said, "magic happens when the camera starts." His enthusiasm was tempered on a personal level, finding him "inconceivably arrogant" and mentioned "blow-ups" on the set.[8]
One biographer of Cosby, Linda Etkin, said, "Cosby comes across as a father figure, a teacher, and a friend" in his advertisements.[9] William Turner, in 1982 the marketing manager for Texas Instruments' consumer products group, said Cosby "represents comfort, and people trust him".[10] In 2014, one educator asked for comment said he remembered Cosby as a "black male authority figure, one of those people who folks that don't live on the edges of the country think of as a good black guy; they trust that guy".[11] In 1988, a representative for Kodak said Cosby had become "synonymous with quality products and quality services".[12] Ebony agreed, saying Cosby has the advantage of being able to be selective. Cosby said his belief in their product is an attribute, stating, "if I presented a Bill Cosby who didn't care, their sales would stop right there on the screen. Obviously, I could never do that. Once I believe in the product I aim to sell it, and that's what I think I do better than anybody".[13]
An article in Black Enterprise said part of Cosby's mystique is "that he can endorse a number of products and still retain credibility in each individual sell".[3] Shortly after being signed by Coca-Cola, Cosby appeared at a bottlers' convention. He refused to drink the bottle of Coke he carried on stage, saying, "I'm waiting for all the Jell-O pudding I ate to settle".[3] Cosby said that in childhood, he experienced "periods of addiction" to Coca Cola, consuming fifteen bottles by 2 pm.[14]
Career in advertising [ edit ]
1960s [ edit ]
Nat King Cole plays a piano, 1946, a photo pre-dating his television series.
The American advertising industry was initially reluctant to use black spokespeople for fear of angering white customers.[2] The Nat King Cole Show (1956-1957), the first nationally syndicated U.S. television series to be hosted by an African American, never found a national sponsor; after its cancellation Cole said, "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark".[1][15]
Cosby's first advertisement was for White Owl cigars. His agent approached them in 1965, before the debut of I Spy, but after several appearances on the late-night talk program The Tonight Show, a signifier of success in American comedy. He told agent Norman Brokaw of William Morris Agency that he liked their tagline, "We're going to get you."[16] Cosby later said there were no commercials "with a black person holding something, buying a product, so the absence of pictures, in retrospect, said a lot". Despite the stigma among advertisers around using a black spokesperson, sales of the product rose.[13] According to an entry in Ad Age Encyclopedia, the public acceptance of Cosby and Robert Culp appearing as equals on I Spy made it possible for advertisers to show black people and white people together in their commercials.[17]
The Bill Cosby Radio Program, which debuted in 1968, was sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company.[14][18] The series was syndicated to over 200 radio stations by McCann Erickson, Coca-Cola's advertising agency.[18]
1970s [ edit ]
In 1974, Cosby began promoting Jell-O pudding for General Foods.[2][19] Cosby said comedian Jack Benny, whose program the brand sponsored, was the only previous spokesman for Jell-O,[20] but Kate Smith, Lucille Ball, and Andy Griffith have also pitched the brand.[21] In previous campaigns since the brand's launch in 1902, it was targeted towards parents rather than to children, a practice from which the company departed in 2001.[22] Cosby's early commercials were unscripted, but later were written by comedy writers. Cosby disagreed with the writers, who wanted to say the food was for when you were "hungry"; Cosby thought there was not enough substance to satisfy hunger and wanted to use the word "appetite".[20] In 1979, General Foods introduced Pudding Pops, the company's first frozen dessert product. With Cosby as spokesperson, it sold US$100 million its first year. After introducing Gelatin Pops and frozen Fruit Bars, the company's frozen desserts sales reached $300 million.[23] Cosby was engaged to promote the flagging Jell-O gelatin product line in the mid-1980s, when General Foods introduced a holdable Jell-O product called "Jigglers".[24] Sales increased seven percent during the first year of the promotion.[19]
My approach from the beginning has been, I want to make the program interrupt the commercial. Cosby to Ad Age, 1978.[13]
Cosby appeared in commercials for Coca-Cola's 1979 campaign, "Have a Coke and a Smile," and made a guest appearance at the Great Get-Together, a major bottlers' convention held that year.[14][25] This campaign continued into 1981.[note 2]
His work in this decade was well received. Advertising Age named Cosby the top advertising personality of 1978.[13] In 1999, Advertising Age magazine named Cosby's 1975 Jell-O commercials, which they called "Bill Cosby with kids", the 92nd best advertising campaign of all time.[27][28][note 3]
1980s [ edit ]
Black Enterprise magazine found that Cosby was one of only a very few African Americans who could command among the highest fees paid for advertising spokespeople. The 1981 feature also highlighted how rare it was for African Americans to be hired for a complete campaign, as opposed to a single advertisement, despite an overall increase in opportunities. Cosby's agents told the magazine he had earned at least $3 million in current advertising contracts – about one-fifth of his income – the rest of which he earned from live performances.[3]
Cosby returned as Coca-Cola's spokesperson in its 1982 "Coke Is It" campaign,[14] a series of commercials mocking the Pepsi Challenge.[14] One advertisement in this series showed a Pepsi vending machine to mock the brand, which author Mark Pendergrast called "unthinkable". Another said Pepsi Challenge commercials were misleading because they never showed anyone choosing Coke.[14] John Bergin, who directed the series of commercials, personally disliked Cosby but said his presence in Coca-Cola advertising ended the first Pepsi Challenge campaign in 1983.[14]
Now see, if you were another cola, number 2 or number 29, you'd do taste tests and challenges and stuff and try to compare yourself to this, wouldn't you? Sure, don't shake your head, you would too, you sneaky devil. Cosby in a Coca-Cola ad, c. 1982.[14]
In mid-1982, Cosby was hired by Texas Instruments to appear in television advertisements for the company's TI-99/4A home computer. He was to be paid $1 million a year for the campaign.[29] [30] The company touted Cosby's education and rapport with adults and children.[31] The campaign was aimed at parents, rather than children, as was the campaign for the Commodore 64.[30] Cosby was the face of a mystery rebate program, offering reimbursements of between $3 and $1,000.[32] J. Fred Bucy, who was head of Texas Instruments' home computer operation in 1983, scrapped Cosby's advertisements to focus on the product's educational value.[30] Radio Shack vice-president of marketing David Beckerman said, "A celebrity draws attention to the product. Even if we had President Reagan on our ads, we wouldn't sell any more computers. A product sells itself. A celebrity causes indirect sales."[31] Cosby, along with entrepreneur James Bruce Llewellyn, bought stock in a Philadelphia Coca-Cola bottler in 1983 as part of the company's push to increase African American participation in the company. This was, in part, a response to pressure by Jesse Jackson's PUSH campaign.[8][33][34][note 4]
Spots with Cosby calling Pepsi too sweet were ill-advised, given the introduction of the reformulated sweeter tasting " New Coke ".
At the height of the Cola Wars, marketer Sergio Zyman persuaded Coca-Cola executives to create and air commercials with Cosby praising Coke for being less sweet than Pepsi,[36] which was aired only in areas where sales of Pepsi were dominant.[36] One commercial from the series features Cosby "rubberfacing an icky frown" and describing Pepsi as "gooey".[37] These advertisements were broadcast from October 1984; Coca-Cola's independently owned bottlers demanded the commercials were run in their markets as well.[36][37] Zyman said despite the upcoming contradiction, the ads were the first boost to Coke's image in years.[36] Coca-Cola was simultaneously testing possible new variations of its soft drink and decided it would sell more product if it used a sweeter formula. Once New Coke was launched, Pepsi prepared its public response to the change; among its talking points for journalists writing about New Coke was to "Ask them about those Bill Cosby ads".[38] One of a new series of Coke advertisements showed Cosby dressed in a toga; this campaign was described as unconvincing.[5][39] Coca-Cola faced a widespread public backlash, internal dissent, and ultimately the original drink recipe returned as "Coca-Cola Classic".[40][41] In the days following the reversal, an editorial cartoon featured Cosby pouring a can of Pepsi into a can of Coke.[42] Marcio Moreira, a McCann Erickson creative executive behind the New Coke introduction, said in 2011 that the decision to hire Cosby was not made until other commercials were being edited.[43]
The Cosby Show debuted in 1984, becoming "TV's biggest hit in the 1980s" and reviving both the sitcom genre and NBC.[44] Before the series premiere, Cosby told reporters his income from commercials for Coke and Ford, as well as his Las Vegas shows, had made him financially secure.[45] At some point before 1985, Cosby featured in advertisements for Bird's Eye frozen foods.[46]
In 1986, Cosby's only contract was with Jell-O, but by the end of the year he had added two more endorsements.[47] By August, Cosby began promoting E. F. Hutton & Co.[45] with a series of print and television advertisements, and comedy concerts.[48] The company had been accused of fraud and needed a spokesperson who was well-liked.[45][49][50] Soon after Cosby's commercials aired, the company merged with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.[51] In late December, he added J. Walter Thompson agency account Kodak Colorwatch System photographic processing system to his list. The estimated $10 million contract included commercials featuring Cosby to run in print, on television, as point of sale, and in promotional programs.[47][52]
Coca-Cola purchased Columbia Pictures in 1982.[53][54] In 1987, Columbia decided revenues from its spy comedy Leonard Part 6 (1987) would offset its losses on Ishtar (1987).[54] Leading up to release, Columbia announced it would spend $12 million on "synergies" with the film, taking into account the success of Cosby's television series and record sales for his parenting book, Fatherhood. Promotions included posters, spy cameras, point of sale standees of Cosby, and a contest to win Porsche cars.[54][55][56] Cosby, who acted in and produced the film, was initially supportive of it,[55] but close to the release date he publicly distanced himself from it.[57] The film failed, with a net loss of $33 million.[55]
In the 1980s, Cosby also appeared in public service announcements. To increase black participation in the 1990 United States Census, the bureau recruited Cosby, Magic Johnson, Alfre Woodard, and Miss America Debbye Turner as spokespeople.[58]
1990s to 2010s [ edit ]
Cosby continued to be a Jell-O spokesman through the 1990s. He was present for the lighting of the brand's first billboard in New York's Times Square in 1998.[59] In 1999, Cosby's 25th year as spokesman for Jell-O, was also the final year he appeared in its advertising. The company distributed 120,000 copies of his picture book series, Little Bill, into American public libraries.[60] Despite the transitions of advertising agencies[note 5] and the 1989 merger of General Foods into Kraft, Cosby remained with Jell-O.[62] He appeared at the Utah State Senate in 2001 to designate Jell-O the official state snack,[63][64] and made a promotional visit to the Jell-O Gallery in 2004.[21] In 2010, Cosby returned to Jell-O as executive producer for the company's "Hello Jell-O" campaign. In return, the brand sponsored his weekly web show OBKB, a children's interview series similar to Kids Say the Darndest Things.[65] As of 2002, Cosby's time with Jell-O was considered the longest-standing celebrity endorsement in American advertising history.[66]
In the 1990s, Bill Cosby was also the spokesperson for Service Merchandise. [67]
At the Advertising Hall of Fame induction ceremonies on March 30, 2011, Cosby was the first winner of the American Advertising Federation's President's Award for Contributions to Advertising, for special achievements in the field.[13]
Criticism [ edit ]
In 1973, The Village Voice writer Terry Guerin said Cosby was past his prime. Among the reasons, "making spokesman commercials for such established heels as White Owl cigars and Pan American airlines. He has evolved into a kind of self-parodying sap, the kind of flagrant, perpetual parader Sammy Davis has always been".[68] "The Noble Cos," a 1986 satirical editorial by Edward Sorel for The Nation, was written in Cosby's imagined voice. It echoed the comments of other authors that Cosby had become out-of-touch with lower-class African Americans.[69] In response to this sentiment, Cosby said in 1997, "So this buddy says, 'I didn't mind your commercials for Jello, Del Monte, Ford cars... Ideal Toys, or Coca-Cola, although Coke does do business in South Africa... But, Bill, why do commercials for those crooks at E. F. Hutton?' My buddy didn't understand my commercials improve race relations. Y'see, by showing that a black man can be just as money-hungry as a white man... I'm proving that all men are brothers."[70]
In 1981, Cosby told Black Enterprise magazine:
In this business, many of us are well paid but we are not all that wealthy. You may read 'X-number of dollar goes to so and so,' but remember, everybody takes a cut – the lawyer, the agent, the publicist. If a company comes along and says 'We'd like you to talk about how much you enjoy wearing this warm-up suit,' and the money is right, I'm going to do it. Jell-O was a dessert in my house when I was a kid. My mom served Del Monte fruit cocktail when I was growing up. They want to pay me to say I eat these products, well, I eat them. I came out of a lower economic area, and this is money. This is a business... show business. A great deal of our careers depends on keeping ourselves in the public eye. I think performers should take advantage of commercial offers if they're satisfied with the product.[3]
Sexual assault and rape allegations [ edit ]
In October 2014, a stand-up comedy routine by Hannibal Buress, addressing allegations of rape against Cosby, went viral on YouTube.[71] On November 10, Cosby posted a message requesting meme images, using a hashtag of #CosbyMeme, on his Twitter feed. Many of the images posted in response related to the allegations, which were fresh in the respondents' minds.[72] After numerous women came forward as victims of Cosby's alleged actions, a television special and a series in development were cancelled.[73][74][75] Cosby refused to address the situation; his lawyer said such actions would dignify "decade-old, discredited" allegations.[76][77] Many media outlets commented on the way such actions clashed with his image as "America's Dad".[78][79][80] One of the accusers felt nobody would believe her claims at the time of the alleged incident, given Cosby's status in advertising. Joan Tarshis told the media that Cosby was "Mr America; Mr Jello, as I called him".[81]
The publicity surrounding the allegations had a drastic effect on Cosby's reputation, as seen in the following drop in his ratings. In March 2013, Cosby had a 76.3 rating on the Davie-Brown Index, a rating of the public perceptions of roughly 3500 personalities published by Omnicom Group company The Marketing Arm, placing him as the third most-trusted celebrity, behind Morgan Freeman and Dr. Mehmet Oz. By November 19, this had fallen to 57.1, placing him at either the 2,626th spot[4] or 2615th,[82] depending on the source. The same company's separate rating on who consumers view as an "effective product spokesperson" saw Cosby drop to 2,746th spot; at one point, he had been 5th.[82] Awareness of Cosby increased from 63rd to 51st.[4] The Marketing Arm warns about misinterpreting the ratings fall; it said 900 celebrities were within the margin of error for Cosby's rating.[4] At the time of the accusations, E-Poll Market Research had not updated its scores; a Q Score for Cosby was not expected until 2015.[4] The executive vice-president of Q Scores Co. said polling in the midst of a scandal would likely overstate the score's longterm effects.[4] All three companies' scores are updated at different intervals, meaning they are not directly comparable.[4] Jell-O was relatively unaffected on social media by allegations against Cosby. The brand was mentioned in one percent of posts about Cosby, which was considered low.[82] Still, negative connections continued, including by rapper Eminem in a freestyle rap,[83] and an article by Food Drink and Franchise magazine pointed out moments in commercials that were awkward in retrospect.[84]
The numerous accusations of rape, drug facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct spanned from 1965 to 2008 across ten U.S. states and one Canadian province.[85][86][87] On September 25, 2018, Cosby was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in state prison for sexual assault for an assault against Andrea Constand.[88]
^ [4] Cosby's score of 70 remains unmatched. As of 2014, actor Tom Hanks was the Q Score leader, with a score of 39. ^ [26] Coca-Cola Canada commissioned a spot titled "Coke is winning", based on A. C. Neilsen Co. of Canada statistics on purchasing trends. The April 1981 ad was pulled a month later, as it violated contracts that neither company could release their figures or mention Neilsen in their ads. Bill Cosby spots were substituted, Coca-Cola claiming this to be the second phase of their campaign, while Pepsi claimed this was a retreat. ^ The campaign was introduced by Curvin O'Reilly at Y&R; after launching such a successful campaign featuring Cosby, O'Reilly was later in charge of replacing Cosby at Coca-Cola with Max Headroom, after the unsuccessful launch of New Coke; see Messner, 2012. ^ [35] After purchasing some of the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of New York Inc. in 1984, Julius Erving was announced as a new spokesperson for the brand. ^ [61] Young & Rubicam Advertising had the Jell-O account since 1926, but lost it to FCB in 2000.
Works cited [ edit ]
Greising, David (1998). I'd Like the World to Buy a Coke: The Life and Leadership of Roberto Goizueta. New York, NY: Wiley. ISBN 978-0471345947.
Oliver, Thomas (1986). The Real Coke, The Real Story. New York, NY: Random House. ISBN 0-394-55273-3.
Pendergrast, Mark (2000). For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Unauthorized History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It. New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company. ISBN 0-684-19347-7.As the community looks towards 2017, there’s a sense of renewed enthusiasm but this time it’s tempered by reason, caution and objectivity.
Significant progress has been made this year despite the distractions, network difficulties and misguided hype experienced by the Ethereum community. As the community looks towards 2017, there’s a sense of renewed enthusiasm but this time it’s tempered by reason, caution and objectivity. There’s an immense amount of work to do if Ethereum is to deliver on its promises and move beyond Bitcoin to be the de facto programmable value exchange platform of the new world. There are a number of challenges still to be addressed and potential competitors lurking.
Last week saw a settling down of the markets, though there was some latent anxiety at the announcement of a "second hard fork". Last week's hard fork addressed the underpricing of certain op-codes (among many other upgrades and attack mitigations) and was released under enormous time pressure. By all accounts, the latest clients are working very well across the Ethereum network, however, there were still some lingering attack opportunities needing to be addressed. While the latest versions of eth, geth and parity are all ticking over nicely and the network is healthy, the lingering upgrades will require another technical "hard fork". The technical details of HF2 are probably not of much interest to the majority of users, with most users just wanting a node that's always in-sync with the main network and doesn't give them too much trouble. The important thing is that security is taken very seriously and if issues do arise, they are addressed very rapidly. Now that all these issues have been resolved and the community is beginning to understand that hard forks happen from time to time for perfectly rational reasons, and that the sky isn’t falling when a new issue gets reported; the question is “what’s next?” Where is Ethereum going and what are the milestones head?
Outlook to Proof of Stake (PoS)
The major development to look forward to in 2017 is the move away from mining (i.e. proof-of-work) to proof-of-stake. Mining wastes a lot of energy – in Vitalik Buterin’s “Mauve Revolution” presentation at DevCon, it was estimated that Ethereum currently consumes $360k per day in terms of “wasted” electricity and hardware depreciation from PoW. As the network scales, that figure could skyrocket if the current architecture were to be kept as-is. For Bitcoin, the numbers are even worse – it’s bound to mining dependency for the foreseeable future. Bitcoin is ten times Ethereum’s market capitalisation and eats through the electricity like there’s no tomorrow. Some estimates suggest that Bitcoin consumes tens of millions of dollars of electricity per day. While the figures are large, these dollar costs must be contextualised with the cost of other value exchange networks (such as traditional banks) which eat through electricity to keep their high rise, air conditioned offices operating.
The motivation for PoS is not just energy saving – but scalability. Once PoS goes live, Ethereum will be able to process a huge number of transactions per second and be scalable well into the future beyond. In addition to PoS, Ethereum has the support of side chains (e.g. Lightning) which provides near real-time transaction functionality and provides further capability to Ethereum so it can meet the challenges ahead. No other cryptocurrency has a roadmap like it and PoS will be a huge step forward, not just for Ethereum, but for the entire blockchain ecosystem.
Price Observations
The current market price of Ethereum (approximately $12) is a little bit disappointing right now, but given all that has gone on so far this year the price seems to be a fair reflection on the current state of the network and the current level of real-world adoption. It’s unclear what effect, if any, the forthcoming US presidential election will have on the price of Ethereum. There’s the potential for USD price volatility which could have knock-on effects for Ethereum. It’s possible that blockchain assets are a good hedge against global volatility, but this assumes that the market behaves rationally and in the blockchain space, rational market behaviour is the exception rather than the rule. It’s incredibly difficult to foresee how pricing will pan out over the next few weeks and on into 2017 but extreme volatility is to be expected in the blockchain space. Ignoring the price dynamics completely and focusing instead on launching Dapps with real-world utility is what everyone wants to see happening, but the market reality is that if Ethereum keeps bouncing around at 10% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization for a few more months, investors may start to question the hype, query the usefulness/stability of this technology and seek opportunities elsewhere.
Killer Dapp
Where is the killer Dapp? A huge amount of development activity is underway in the Dapp space with an impressive number of startups from all over the world thrashing ideas together and trying to do things better. The availability of a programmable blockchain has opened up a whole new world of possibilities to entrepreneurs and developers. It’s fair to say that the potential for Ethereum to streamline existing business processes and providing functionality that wouldn’t otherwise be possible is significant. We’re still waiting on the elusive “killer Dapp” and the sooner it comes, the better. A good dose of external attention and investor interest is much needed after all the setbacks and distractions throughout 2016, but most importantly, proof is needed that smart contracts are not just abstract concepts, but have powerful practical use in the real world. If worthy Dapps fail to emerge over the next six to twelve months, Ethereum participants will begin to question the tangible usefulness of this technology and start asking why blockchain technology isn’t driving down costs, eliminating bureaucracy, streamlining business processes, innovating the way we govern, and transforming society as promised.
Adoption
Adoption since Ethereum launched 16 months ago is impressive. The number of accounts, daily transaction volume, public Solidity projects on github, investment inflows, user participation, global distribution, etc. is increasing steadily. But taking it up a notch may require a renewed focus on engaging people from outside the current community. That means everyday businesses and consumers, making Ethereum even more user friendly than it already is and championing this technology with even more intensity. There is push and pull: going out and introducing new people to Ethereum, but the pull factor is arguably more important: that is, people actively seeking Ethereum technology because they heard it works and they know they can benefit from it. It also means protecting Ethereum from attack, both technical (the blockchain) and political (the brand). The Ethereum Foundation has done so much already and they know better than any of us just how much work still has to be done. Currently, there are a number of initiatives ticking along nicely, including the annual DevCon, the community’s global and diverse outlook, ongoing partnerships with governments/regulators/banks, education/outreach initiatives, development projects (e.g. making user friendly, easy-to-use tools available to both users and developers), etc. The culmination of these individual initiatives is a powerful force and Ethereum’s leadership appears to be working very well. Worth mentioning is hack.ether.camp’s online hackathon initiative which kicks off November 17th. While the initiative has been marred in ICO controversy, the entry list is impressive and it’s a major boost to the developer and entrepreneur community.
Regulation and Taxation Uncertainty
Regulation and taxation are an uncertainty at this point and can only become a more serious issue as the value of the network increases. How do national governments and regulators apply the controls and restrictions they have put in place for currencies under their control to value exchanges that occur on transnational blockchain networks? There hasn’t been much of a clampdown on blockchain, but they aren’t ignoring it either. For example, in May 2015, FinCEN (US Dept of Treasury) fined Ripple Labs Inc in what was the first civil enforcement action against a virtual currency exchanger. Arguably, the resources simply are not there to police the entire blockchain ecosystem whose market cap teeters between $10bn and $15bn and isn’t that much to worry about in the grand scheme of things. However, the market cap situation could change, and could change very quickly as blockchain technology (particularly smart contract technology) finds its feet and bad actors attempt to circumvent legitimate payment channels. Already, companies and individuals are popping up on the SEC’s radar and living outside the US may not provide immunity from prosecution and/or extradition if your users are based in the US. There may be similar extradition potentials for other countries – it’s somewhat like Pandora’s Box and is not something that Dapp developers should ignore.
In terms of taxation, from an IRS point of view (and equivalents such as HMRC in the UK), the taxation of crypto personal assets needs clarification. Undoubtedly, there are many private individuals who have seen accumulated wealth (the value of an expensive car or a house is not uncommon) since Ethereum launched in July 2015. Regulation and taxation of cryptocurrency is a hugely complex area and could become an issue for Ethereum at any point. The important thing is that the Ethereum community is actively working on it and is ready to take steps as, and when, required. Ethereum (and others such as Ripple Labs, R3, etc.) are taking regulation very seriously and the desire and readiness to integrate into the real world is one of Ethereum’s key attractions.A healthcare provider was paid £165,000 by the NHS for carrying out just one GP call-out and 18 phone consultations in a contract branded 'a disgraceful scandal'.
Primecare was awarded the contract by NHS England in July last year to provide home visits to patients in the West Midlands who are registered in practices outside of their area.
It formed part of the GP Choice scheme - where patients can access GP appointments outside traditional catchment areas in a bid to make care more accessible.
The contract was worth £165,253 upfront with an additional £80 for each GP visit and £30 for a phone consultation, GP magazine Pulse reports.
Healthcare provider Primecare carried out one GP call-out as part of its £165,000 contract for NHS England
But Primecare was only required to carry out a single home visit during that time and 18 phone consultations with patients up to November, according to NHS England.
The contract, which expired at the end of March, covered Birmingham, Black Country, Solihull, Coventry, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.
Health officials said, given the low demand, they would be looking at replacing the contract at a reduced cost.
The GP Choices scheme was introduced by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to give patients greater flexibility to get appointments.
It means people can choose to see a family doctor close to their work or at a surgery where the hours best suit their needs.
Under the scheme, patients who joined a practice a long distance away were not eligible for home visits.
But the local GP commissioning groups, and NHS England which oversees them, made provisions to ensure these patients can have visits if they become too ill to attend a surgery.
NHS England in the West Midlands said it had to look to |
nuke Philadelphia, I will probably — as long as I survive the carnage — I'll probably sit down and try to write a zombie thing about the nuking of Philadelphia. It's my way of being sort of relevant or being able to comment on current situations, without being pretentious. And it's my way of making a career out of it. I guess I'm maybe the Michael Moore of horror.
Are there any other societal issues floating around like now that you would like to attack for another film?
I would love to do something about the economy. But zombies are not good mathematicians — I don't think they're going to be out selling cheesy mortgages or anything like that. So it's tough for me to see that. A friend of mine recently wrote a novel called The Zombie Autopsies, and it's about an isolated group of people doing autopsies on zombies during the zombie apocalypse and trying to figure out what the hell caused this. They come upon this discovery.
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[Edit Note: SPOILERS Ahead]
The scientists discover that this is not a naturally occurring virus, they deduce that it must have been created by somebody. And they later discover that it was created by people who were trying to topple the economy. So that's a unique way in to talk about the economy, but it's not my story. Steven C. Schlozman is the guys name, he's a Havard Psychologist who has somehow been swept into the zombie craze and is writing zombie novels.
How have the meaning of zombies changed, are we all just zombies walking through a mall?
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Oh man, 68 was my first film, I believe that maybe it was the first film that had the new order of zombies, they were the namers. Instead of exotic creatures conjured by high priests in the Caribbean, you know The Serpent and the Rainbow, doing the wet work for Lugosi. When I grew up, zombies were just those wide eyed boys in the Caribbean who were basically slaves to some master. When I made my first film, I didn't call them zombies because I didn't think I could, I though those were what zombies were. I just wanted some sort of extreme event to be happening, and I called them Ghouls. That was it. I didn't presume to call them zombies. And now, they've become zombies. All I did was make them neighbors.
How have the zombies changed today?
Now zombies have their own rules — they're not all uniform, but they're popular enough that I half expect a zombie to show up on Sesame Street and hang out with The Count. Vampires became The Count on Sesame Street, a zombie might be the next guy. I don't know, it's crazy.
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What are the chances you'll do a sequel to Dawn of the Dead, and bring back the original characters, like a where are they now sort of thing?
I don't think I'll ever do that. The last zombie film I made used characters from an earlier film, it was purposeful. I made Diary of the Dead and I had this dream that my next three films would be based on the characters from Diary. I don't think I ever want to go back to that, to Dawn of the Dead. First of all Dawn of the Dead has been remade. Sort of, I don't know, irreverently I would say, remade. Zack Snyder is a great filmmaker, but I think his remake of Dawn really lost its reason for being, because it was of a time. You can't remake that. When I made Dawn of The Dead, I was responding basically. I socially knew the people who developed the first indoor shopping mall in Pennsylvania. I went out to see it and I was just struck by it. I said OK, finally I might be able to make a sequel to Night of the Living Dead using this concept of the shopping mall, instead of an old farmhouse. That was it, and that was when I decided that i could do political satire in the form of a horror film. But that has no power anymore, there are shopping malls on every street corner. So that has no power, so I don't think you can remake that film.
In Diary of the Dead you were experimenting with the found footage, the victim POV and found footage filming. Is there any sort of filming technique that you want to experiment with next?
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Oh I'd love to, Survival of the Dead was a Western. I love John Ford, I love William Wyler I modeled Survival of the Dead off of a Wyler Western called The Big Country. Unabashedly I said we're going to steal from this movie's imagery and themes all of that. I would love to do the next one, I had planned I don't know if it's ever going to get made, I was planning to do something Noir. It's just me, it's me in addition to wanting to say something about what's going on today. It's fun for me to try and do a little something different stylistically as well. I hesitate to call it an homage, it's just envy. I wish that I was John Ford. [laughs]
So an economic collapse zombie Noir film?
How do you do that, man? The Noir part might be OK — zombies all hunkered around not being able to find any food anywhere. But see their food is not our food… I don't know how to do it. The closest I could come is the Zombie Autopsies — just the way Wall Street engineered mortgages someone has engineered a great big collapse of society. Someone said, "The world is way too populated. We're going to kill off half the population of the world and as a result we're going to get richer!" It's the only way I can see doing it.
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You should option that book.
We have. We have done it, and I'm working on the screenplay right now.
So are you going to do it Noir style?
I may decide to do it that way, I don't know. This is Steve's story, not mine. It's more like The Andromeda Strain. It's very tense and very medically correct. This guy's a doctor, it's all about being medically correct. I think about it like the first Hammer Frankenstein film, which was all about very graphic scenes of brains floating in blood and things like that. I want it to be perfectly accurate, almost shockingly so.
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George Romero is part of AMC's Fear Fest, which is a 17-day salute to all things horror. Check out their bad-ass schedule here!
Image from The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse by Steven C. Schlozman. Illustration by Andrea Sparacio.Submit any burning sports question below and we’ll have our Sportsnet experts answer them! Check out our archived questions here. In this week’s edition, we discuss the Blue Jays’ off-season needs…
As the Blue Jays look ahead to the 2015 season, they face a long list of questions. How will next year’s bullpen look? Can the Blue Jays find middle ground with Melky Cabrera? Will GM Alex Anthopoulos find an everyday player capable of playing second or third base? It’s shaping up to be a busy winter for the Blue Jays.
What is the Jays’ biggest need this off-season?
– Jacob
Joe Siddall, Blue Jays Sportsnet 590 The FAN radio announcer | @SiddallJoe
The Jays have several needs this off-season. If Melky Cabrera is not signed, I would start with a bat in the lineup to replace him in the outfield (not easy). A platoon of Anthony Gose/Kevin Pillar (and potentially Dalton Pompey) in centre field with Goins playing second base would suffice. Their defence trumps any offensive shortcomings and really helps the pitchers. If the lineup is strong enough, and it is when healthy, they can afford that at the bottom. Health is critical and very unpredictable so depth on the bench is an important issue also.
The problem is the Jays really missed out on an opportunity this season with the AL East being weaker than usual. I am sure the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays will all be competitive again in 2015. The other issue is that it is not easy to lure a free agent to Toronto so the Jays may have to get creative on the trade front.
Shi Davidi, Sportsnet baseball columnist | @ShiDavidi
The Blue Jays are looking at several very significant holes this winter and to me the one they’re least equipped to fill is the one in the bullpen. Yes, they’re going to need two outfielders and an upgrade at either second or third depending on where Brett Lawrie ends up, but the bullpen was a big letdown this year. Blue Jays relievers are about a run worse than their Orioles counterparts and that adds up over the year. Factor in that closer Casey Janssen probably won’t be back and Dustin McGowan is an uncertainty to return with a $4 million option and the need becomes accentuated. They have a lot to do there.
Ben Nicholson-Smith, Sportsnet.ca Baseball Editor | @bnicholsonsmith
The Blue Jays could use an outfielder, and they’ll need to add relievers, but for me their top need is a second baseman.
Toronto’s second basemen combined for a.628 OPS this year, ranking 12th among the 15 American League teams. That’s actually better than 2013, when Blue Jays second basemen ranked 15th in the AL with a.556 mark.
One way or another they need considerable improvement at second base, and personally I don’t see it coming from Ryan Goins, who hasn’t shown the ability to hit. Alex Anthopoulos should attempt to go outside of the organization to acquire an infielder capable of contributing at the plate while playing passable defence. Considering Brett Lawrie’s recent trouble staying healthy, more infield depth would only help the Blue Jays.
Hit the comment button, enter your name and ask away.For all its vices, Bill C-51—the Conservatives’ 2015 antiterrorism law—did at least one good thing: it ignited the controversy that prompted a massive 139-page bill introduced today in the House of Commons.
Bill C-59 is the biggest overhaul in Canadian national security since the creation of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) in 1984—and it gets a lot of things right. Here’s our early assessment, based on a first read of the law.
Improving accountability
First, the government is finally redressing the imbalance between security service powers and those of the review bodies that are supposed to hold them to account. Bill C-59 quite properly supplements the parliamentary review committee (now being debated in the Senate) with a reformed expert watchdog entity. Expert review will be liberated from its silos as the new review agency has a whole-of-government mandate. A new accountability body will now “follow the thread” in reviewing security operations involving multiple agencies such as CSIS, the RCMP, Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and (at long last) the Canada Border Services Agency.
Second, the government’s bill revamps CSE. The changes here are complex, but many of CSE’s functions will be defined in law, rather than, as it is today, left to the direction of ministers or internal policies. CSE will also have a new cyber mandate that will allow it to attack as well as defend cyber threats, on top of its signals-intelligence and cyberdefence role.
But critically, the new bill grafts a new, independent oversight system—an intelligence commissioner—on CSE’s activities, putting CSE on a much sturdier constitutional foundation which does not rely simply on ministerial authorization. The commissioner’s role will be double-hatted; he or she also has a role to play overseeing CSIS and its collection of electronic “datasets,” noted below. This is an obvious response to last fall’s federal court decision which found that some CSIS practices in this area are unlawful under its current Act.
Rolling back the overkill around CSIS threat reduction
The bill rolls back much of the unnecessary overkill of the Harper era’s Bill C-51. That law gave CSIS the power to reduce threats through any measure short of bodily harm, violation of sexual integrity or obstruction of justice. With a secret, non-appealable Federal Court warrant, this could include breaching any Canadian law, and any right in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
We believe CSIS should have some threat reduction powers. Like many others, we dispute that it needs (or even wanted) threat reduction powers as extreme as those provided in C-51. And we doubt it was constitutional to allow judges to authorize CSIS to violate any Charter right. The new bill confirms that CSIS cannot detain, torture or damage property at the risk of endangering life. And it lists the things CSIS can do, with a warrant.
Some of these things would otherwise break the law or breach the Charter. But that closed list at least makes explicit what CSIS can do. Canadians will now be able to debate whether CSIS should be doing such things as interfering with a person’s movement. Moreover, in constitutional law, legislating powers, and prescribing them by law, places that debate on a very different footing than giving CSIS a carte blanche. (For those versed in the Charter, this is clearly an effort to place CSIS threat disruption into a conventional section-one framework.)
Speech crime improvements
The new law limits the extreme scope of Bill C-51’s terrorism speech crime. That offence was crafted with such overreach that it swept in communication—private or public—that was far removed from any acts or threats of violence. Today’s proposal eliminates that issue by converting the speech crime (and the related propaganda provision) into a conventional “counselling” of specific terrorism offence. To be sure, counselling is speech, but it has traditionally been criminal.
Peace bonds, preventive arrests and investigative hearings
The government has chosen to make it slightly harder for police to pre-emptively detain people without a criminal charge. The power to make preventative arrests, which could result in seven days of detention, will again be extended for another five years, but C-59 repeals the controversial “investigative hearing” powers created in 2001. They were approved by the Supreme Court under the Charter, but never used after that. And annual reports will now be required for terrorism peace bonds, which are now used regularly to limit liberty.
No-fly lists
Bill C-59 tinkers with the no-fly list process, although in technical ways that do not eliminate the problem of false positives—people with the same name who are wrongly stopped at airports. That is an administrative problem that will require an administrative solution, which is hopefully on its way.
Conclusions
On an early read, many of the changes proposed in C-59 are solid gains—measured both from a rule of law and civil liberties perspective—and come at no credible cost to security. They remove excess that the security services did not need—and has not used—while tying those services into close orbit around a new accountability system that should go a long way to restoring confidence and credibility. From that perspective, they become security-affirming, especially to the extent they sidestep trust-degrading fears about a CSE and CSIS unmoored to satisfactory laws.
These will now be discussion and debate—hopefully more informed and done in a more edifying manner than the C-51 trainwreck.
CSIS’s new statutory criminal law immunities for investigative techniques will spark discussions, although we see it as a more robust codification of powers currently exercised under murky Crown immunity rules.
Some will see the modernization of CSIS’s statute to include rules on collecting and retaining “datasets” as a reversal. Still, it is better to update and debate statutory provisions than to allow an old Act to be “amended” by secret legal advice.
So, what happens now? The new list of CSIS’s threat reduction powers will rightly provoke an open and more informed debate about what a covert intelligence service should do in a democracy.
One disappointing feature of C-59 that ought to come up for debate is its largely cosmetic changes to the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, which galvanized civil society opposition during the C-51 period. The new bill tinkers with the overly broad definition of security in the existing law, but does not abandon it. Other refinements improve the rest of that law, with a greater nod to privacy and accountability, but not to a degree likely to silence concerns. The amount of information sharing contemplated remains vast.
The government also missed a chance to legislate a rule for special advocates who would be able to see secret evidence and defend the interests of appellants in the secret, no-fly list appeal process. And it left intact C-51’s shackles on unmediated access to information by special advocates in immigration security certificates.
Looking down the road, there will still be more work to be done from a security perspective. CSIS and the RCMP have struggled to coordinate their investigations. The single largest barrier to more seamless interagency anti-terrorism have been self-imposed strictures on CSIS sharing information with the RCMP, restrictions that stem from concerns that intelligence shared in this manner may be subject to criminal law disclosure rules. This is what is known as the “intelligence-to-evidence” problem. We regard it as the single most important challenge in Canadian anti-terrorism operations, and it is not addressed by C-59.
There is also work to be done on a matter that raises both security and privacy issues. Lawful access rules—the capacity of the state to intercept and collect electronic communications—are in a state of chaos in Canada, and in need of a clean-up. Different standards are applicable to different agencies, and the law in this area is a patchwork quilt.
Whether the government needs to be more aggressive—or just more coherent and predictable—is a question that will dominate debate among those who consider the balance between security and privacy. We fully expect this to be a core preoccupation for a next round of reforms. But for the time being, we will be happy to argue over details in C-59 and not, as in 2015, over fundamental understandings of how security is achieved in a democracy predicated on the rule of law.
Craig Forcese and Kent Roach teach law at, respectively, the University of Ottawa and the University of Toronto. They co-authored False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-terrorism (Irwin Law, 2015), in response to Bill C-51.When German Chancellor Angela Merkel flies to Beijing in July, she will have plenty of the usual accolades for the Chinese. She will say that relations between the two countries are excellent and communication is amicable and intense. "I believe that one can say that relations are gaining a lot of momentum," the chancellor typically says on such occasions.
What Merkel will probably not mention publicly is the other side of the German-Chinese relationship, which is also gathering momentum. It takes place in the world of espionage and intelligence agencies, and it has to do with Chinese agents in Germany, secret investigations and discreet diplomats. This dark side sometimes comes to the surface, as it did in a town near the northern German city of Hanover, where a team from the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), appeared at the house of Dan Sun (editors' note: the name has been changed) on a Wednesday morning in mid-May and presented a search warrant.
Dan Sun, a slim, amiable man, opened the door and asked the men to come into his study, where there is a statue of Buddha on a shelf and the air smells of incense. The German Federal Prosecutor's Office is investigating Sun on suspicion of working as an intelligence agent. The investigators accuse him of having spied on members of the Falun Gong movement for the Chinese intelligence service. He can expect an indictment, but the investigators are, in fact, more interested in two high-ranking Chinese government officials from Shanghai who are also alleged of being involved in the case.
The espionage affair began in 2005, when Sun traveled to Berlin and applied for a visa at the Chinese embassy there. He is a German citizen who has been living in Germany since the early 1990s, and he wanted to visit his father in China, who was seriously ill. The visa application process was complicated. Sun had been a member of Falun Gong for a long time, which made him particularly interesting to the Chinese government.
The diplomat who processed Sun's visa application held a senior position in the consular division at the Chinese embassy, a modern steel-and-glass structure in Berlin's Mitte neighborhood. German intelligence officials believe she is part of the Ministry of State Security. The Chinese "Stasi" is believed to be the country's largest civil intelligence agency. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency, it plays a "central role in overseas espionage."
The consular official bluntly asked Sun about his involvement with Falun Gong and suggested that he meet with what she called "Chinese experts" to discuss a "research project" on meditation.
Sun, an academic who has written several textbooks, seemed interested. The meeting took place in March 2006 in a restaurant in downtown Berlin. The Chinese "experts," as Sun recalls, consisted of a woman and two men who introduced themselves as representatives of a university for traditional Chinese medicine in Shanghai. One of the men seemed "especially dignified" to Sun. An intense discussion developed over a typical German meal, which was later continued in a hotel room at the Park Inn on Alexanderplatz. According to Sun, the meeting continued until after midnight, as they discussed the spiritual aspects of Falun Gong, the medical effects of the exercises and the political persecution of Falun Gong members in China.
An 'Evil Cult'
For its practitioners, Falun Gong is a principle, not a party. They define it as the "practice of traditional Chinese meditation, in which practitioners use five classic exercises to achieve a trinity of "truthfulness," "compassion" and "forbearance." The exercises are intended to dissolve blockages in the body and cleanse the spirit. But for the government in Beijing, the followers of Falun Gong are members of an "evil cult" and enemies of the state who must be hunted down around the world. The movement grew quickly at first, but then the government banned it on July 22, 1999. Shortly before that, in June 1999, an agency called "Office 610" was established within the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, as the government's response to the rapidly spreading cult.
On that evening at the Park Inn, Dan Sun did not know that two members of the Chinese group were not academics at all, but instead worked for "Office 610" -- at least according to the BfV and the Federal Prosecutor's Office. The investigators believe that Xiaohua Z., the man with the dignified manner, is in fact the head of the office and carries the rank of vice minister.
The fact that the Chinese government went to the trouble of flying in the head of the anti-Falun Gong unit from Shanghai to recruit a source in Germany demonstrates how important fighting the movement is to the government. It also points to the extremely offensive approach that is sometimes being taken by the Chinese intelligence agencies.
For decades, the Chinese were seen as unproblematic partners. German authorities knew next to nothing about Beijing's clandestine practices, and China was chiefly of interest to chambers of commerce, not to intelligence officials. But times have changed, and China, now a major power, has since become one of the most important adversaries for German counterintelligence. A special department has been formed to address Chinese infiltration efforts, and the so-called "Russian policy," developed during the Cold War, is being applied once again. Under the policy, when it is discovered that diplomats are in fact working for the intelligence agencies, they are to be expelled if the German authorities determine that they were engaged in illegal activities, and new embassy employees are subject to a review process before they can be accredited. What was once an amicable and neutral relationship has turned into a discreet war of espionage.
Strain on Relations
The conspiratorial activities are now straining the German-Chinese relationship, and during Merkel's 2007 trip to China, they cast a shadow on ties between the two countries for the first time. At the time, hackers, presumably authorized by the Chinese government, used so-called "Trojan horse" programs to attack the German governmentthrough e-mail messages. A SPIEGEL cover story forced Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to distance himself from the incident. Wen said that he had discussed the attack with Merkel and that his country would pursue the hackers "decisively and energetically."
In the early summer of 2009, German authorities caught a Mr. Wang, who was with the Chinese general consulate in Munich, spying on Uighur expatriates in Germany. The diplomat managed a number of sources, had meetings in cafés, gathered internal information and sent his reports to Beijing. In November 2009, the Federal Prosecutor's Office issued search warrants for four suspects, but the investigators could not arrest Mr. Wang, because he enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
This prompted the German Foreign Ministry to advise the Chinese government last fall to recall the man, in keeping with the "Russian policy." The German diplomats upped the pressure on the Chinese by discreetly pointing out how damaging a public trial could be for Mr. Wang and for German-Chinese relations. They gave the Chinese a six-week deadline to recall the diplomat. A few days later, in December of 2009, Mr. Wang was gone.
The Falun Gong hunters, Xiaohua Zapatero and Bin C., are unlikely to receive the same level of diplomatic consideration. In fact, they could be arrested the next time they set foot on German soil. After the first introductory conversation at the Park Inn, the two men established close ties with Dan Sun, and one of the presumed agent managers even developed a friendship of sorts with him. They exchanged e-mails regularly and communicated via Skype almost daily.
Monitoring E-mail Traffic
According to the investigators' reconstruction of the case, Sun had been forwarding all e-mails from the German and European Falun Gong e-mail distribution list to a Hotmail address in China since September 2008 at the latest. On Jan. 2, 2009, the academic established another e-mail address with GMX, but he isn't the only one with access to the address. The Chinese also have access, which is usually masked to prevent anyone from discovering their identity. But they have been careless at times, which has allowed the BKA to track the access to the data from Germany to a place outside Shanghai.
While the German investigators describe the data as "important information," Sun says that even though he did pass on extensive information about Falun Gong, all of it was from "sources available to the public," such as passages in literature, copies of speeches and meditation guides. Sun has also invited his friend to Germany and candidly introduced him to his acquaintances. He insists that he has "never violated German or Chinese laws." Sun sees himself as a victim who was caught up in the clandestine workings of the intelligence agencies. He claims that "at no time" was he aware that the people he was dealing with were Chinese agents.
In October 2009, seven months before his house was searched, two German officials rang Sun's doorbell at 9 a.m.. They were employees of the domestic intelligence service of the state of Lower Saxony. "We know that you work for the Chinese intelligence agency," one of the men said. "You are under observation at all times." The officer pulled out a photo of the Park Inn and asked: "What happened in this hotel?"
It is possible that it will be up to the courts to elicit an answer to this question. Sun says that his biggest hope was that the dialogue with Shanghai would encourage the Chinese government to recognize that its brutal persecution of Falun Gong followers is a "completely incorrect approach." Sun claims that he still believes that he managed to convinced his Chinese contacts that government repression against Falun Gong must stop.This article is about the politician. For the aircraft carrier, see USS Carl Vinson
Carl Vinson (November 18, 1883 – June 1, 1981) was a powerful United States Representative from Georgia. He was a Democrat and served for more than 50 years in the United States House of Representatives. He was known as "The Father of the Two-Ocean Navy". He is the longest-serving member of the United States House of Representatives from the state of Georgia.[1]
Early years [ edit ]
Vinson was born in Baldwin County, Georgia, where he attended local schools and Georgia Military College. He graduated with a law degree from Mercer University in 1902.[1] After some years of practice, he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1908. After losing a third term following redistricting, he was appointed as judge of the Baldwin County court.[1]
Following the sudden death of US Senator Augustus Bacon, Representative Thomas W. Hardwick of Georgia's 10th congressional district was nominated to fill Bacon's Senate seat. Vinson announced his candidacy for Hardwick's seat in Congress. Vinson defeated three opponents. By this time, most of Georgia's African Americans had been disenfranchised since the turn of the century, after the state passed laws and a new constitution making voter registration more difficult. The Republican Party was hollowed out in the state. Vinson was the youngest member of Congress (30 years old) when he was sworn in on November 3, 1914.
Service in Congress [ edit ]
Carl Vinson was elected as a Representative at age 30. A Democrat, he was repeatedly re-elected, serving until age 81.
Vinson served as a Representative from November 3, 1914, to January 3, 1965. He was repeatedly re-elected by Democratic voters for this seat. During his tenure in the U.S. House, Vinson was a champion for national defense and especially the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps. He joined the House Naval Affairs Committee shortly after World War I and became the ranking Democratic member in the early 1920s. He was the only Democrat appointed to the Morrow Board, which reviewed the status of aviation in America in the mid-1920s.
In 1931, Vinson became chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee. Given the South's disenfranchisement of African Americans, southern white Democrats constituted a powerful bloc in Congress and gained chairmanships of important committees due to their seniority. In 1934, Vinson helped push the Vinson–Trammell Act, along with Democratic Senator Park Trammell of Florida. The bill authorized the replacement of obsolete vessels by new construction and a gradual increase of ships within the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and London Naval Treaty of 1930. Initial funding for the Vinson–Trammell Navy Act was provided by the Emergency Appropriations Act of 1934. This was necessary as during the previous administration, not a single major warship was laid down and the US Navy was both aging and losing ground to the Japanese Navy. Japan repudiated the treaties in late 1934.
Vinson later was primarily responsible for additional naval expansion legislation, the Naval Act of 1938 ("Second Vinson Act") and the Third Vinson Act of 1940, as well as the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940. The ambitious program called for by this series of laws helped the U.S. Navy as the country entered World War II, as new ships were able to match the latest ships from Japan.
At the end of World War II, Congress had authorized four Naval four-star officers to be promoted to Fleet Admiral. A staunch partisan of Admiral William Halsey, Jr., Vinson blocked the nomination of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance several times, although the majority thought him more deserving, to ensure that Halsey got the fourth billet. Congress eventually responded by passing an unprecedented act that specified that Spruance would remain on a full admiral's pay once retired until his death.[2][3]
Portrait of Vinson, 1943.
Following World War II, the House Naval Affairs Committee was merged with the Military Affairs Committee to become the House Armed Services Committee (this consolidation mirrored the establishment of the Department of Defense when the old Departments of War and of the Navy were consolidated). With Republicans winning control of Congress in the 1946 election, Vinson served as ranking minority member of the committee for two years before becoming Chairman in early 1949, when the Democrats were again in majority. He held this position, with the exception of another two-year Republican interregnum in the early 1950s, until his retirement in 1965. In this role, Vinson adopted a committee rule that came to be known as the "Vinson rule", which limited the number of questions a junior member of the committee could ask to one question per year of service on the committee. As chairman, Vinson oversaw the modernization of the military as its focus shifted to the Cold War. He was also committee chair when Congress authorized the procurement of the first nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, starting with USS Enterprise (CVN-65) in the late 1950s.
A staunch segregationist, in 1956, Vinson signed "The Southern Manifesto". Other Southern Democratic politicians signed this in resistance to the ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that segregated public education was unconstitutional, and that states needed to integrate their public schools.
Vinson did not seek re-election in 1964 and retired from Congress in January 1965.
Personal life [ edit ]
Vinson married Mary Green of Ohio in 1921. She died in 1949 after a long illness.[1]
Vinson did not have children, but his grandnephew, Sam Nunn, served as a Senator from Georgia for more than 24 years. Nunn followed in his great uncle's footsteps, serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee for nearly his entire tenure in the Senate. Sam Nunn's daughter, Michelle Nunn ran unsuccessfully for one of Georgia's U.S. Senate seats in 2014.
Vinson considered his longtime assistant Charles Tillman Snead, Jr. his surrogate son, and Snead's wife, Molly Staeman Snead, was Vinson's wife's nurse for several years. Snead's son and grandchildren maintained this familial bond to Vinson until his death in 1981.
Death [ edit ]
Vinson returned to Baldwin County, Georgia, where he lived in retirement until his death on June 1, 1981.[4] He is buried in Memory Hill Cemetery in Milledgeville, Georgia.
At the time of his death, Vinson was the last living member of the House of Representatives who was serving at the time of the United States' declaration of war against the German Empire, which precipitated the United States' entry into World War I.
Legacy [ edit ]
In recognition of his efforts on behalf of the U.S. Navy, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was named the USS Carl Vinson, an honor rarely given to a person while living. On March 15, 1980, at age 96, he attended the ship's launching.[4]
Vinson Massif, Antarctica's highest mountain, is also named after him,[5] together with the related Mount Vinson and Vinson Plateau.[6]
Carl Vinson served 26 consecutive terms in the U.S. House, rarely running against significant opposition. He served for 50 years and one month, a record that stood until 1992, when the mark was surpassed by Jamie L. Whitten of Mississippi.[7]
For his commitment, Vinson was awarded the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson awarded Vinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Special Distinction, the highest award the President can give to a civilian. During his own tenure in the House, Johnson had served for years as a junior member of the House Naval Affairs Committee under Vinson.
The Department of Veterans' Affairs Medical Center in Dublin, Georgia, serving veterans in Central and Southern Georgia, is named for Vinson.
The University of Georgia hosts the Carl Vinson Institute of Government.[8]
Carl Vinson Parkway is located in Warner Robins Georgia.
Georgia Military College formerly had a barracks named for him. It was razed in the mid-2000s.
Vinson Hall Retirement Community in McLean, Virginia is named after Carl Vinson.
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]One of the key highlights of yesterday’s India-Pakistan match (apart from India winning it!) was Big B’s rendition of the national anthem. What a perfect beginning it was!
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In case you missed it, watch it right here:
Amitabh Bachchan sings National Anthem ICYMI: Amitabh Bachchan singing National Anthem before the #IndVsPak match will give you goosebumps! :D (y) Posted by Indiatimes on Sunday, March 20, 2016
Even though everyone was raving about Big B’s soulful performance, some reports that were doing the rounds since yesterday evening claimed that Big B minted close to Rs 4 crores to sing the national anthem. Yes, right. People who blindly believed in these reports in no time turned against Big B and started questioning his ‘patriotism’! However, to end such rubbish rumors, CAB President Sourav Ganguly confirmed that Big B didn’t charge a single rupee for the national anthem.
In an interview, Ganguly said:
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“Mr Bachchan is one and only, a special person. I am eternally grateful to him Can you ever imagine someone paying Rs 30 lakhs of his own pocket to perform? He booked his own flight, bought his own tickets and even paid the hotel bills. I literally begged him to take some money but he said that I am doing it for love and there is no question of money being involved".
Reports also claim that Big B’s enthusiasm was extremely commendable. Even during rough weather, Big B was adamant on rehearsing! He’s a thorough professional and a superstar who never fails to amaze us! Agree?Introduction
Validating web forms is a common task of almost any C# MVC ASP.NET web application. Typically, form field validation is implemented in MVC web applications through the use of.NET data annotations on class member fields. While data annotations offer a powerful and maintainable feature for adding form validation to a web application, occasionally more flexibility is required for adding and removing form field validation in a more dynamic fashion. Some examples might include driving C# MVC form field validation from a content management system CMS, allowing control by the user, or allowing 3rd-party tools to modify form validation. In these cases, a dynamic method is required to offer dynamic data annotation form validation through an external file.
In this tutorial, we’ll walk through dynamically loading C# MVC.NET data annotations for form validation from an XML file. The XML file will specify types of validation (required fields, comparison fields, regular expression fields, error messages, |
are 2 – Psalm 103:1 & Psalm 103:2 Longest verse in the King James Bible Esther 8:9 Shortest verse in the King James Bible John 11:35
Note: Total verses: 31,102. 3+1+1+0+2 = 7
(completeness, spiritual perfection, pure)
The following statistics apply to the 1769 edition of the 1611 King James Bible:
All word counts are the work of computer programmer Dave Whitinger. I have checked and doubled-checked his counts with a manual count in 10 of the 66 Books and they all match perfectly. Therefore I believe these word counts to be 100% accurate (I hope.)
Old Testament
Book Chapters Verses Words 1 Genesis 50 1,533 38,262 2 Exodus 40 1,213 32,685 3 Leviticus 27 859 24,541 4 Numbers 36 1,288 32,896 5 Deuteronomy 34 959 28,352 6 Joshua 24 658 18,854 7 Judges 21 618 18,966 8 Ruth 4 85 2,574 9 1 Samuel 31 810 25,048 10 2 Samuel 24 695 20,600 11 1 Kings 22 816 24,513 12 2 Kings 25 719 23,517 13 1 Chronicles 29 942 20,365 14 2 Chronicles 36 822 26,069 15 Ezra 10 280 7,440 16 Nehemiah 13 406 10,480 17 Esther 10 167 5,633 18 Job 42 1,070 18,098 19 Psalms 150 2,461 *42,704 20 Proverbs 31 915 15,038 21 Ecclesiastes 12 222 5,579 22 Song of Solomon 8 117 2,658 23 Isaiah 66 1,292 37,036 24 Jeremiah 52 1,364 42,654 25 Lamentations 5 154 3,411 26 Ezekiel 48 1,273 39,401 27 Daniel 12 357 11,602 28 Hosea 14 197 5,174 29 Joel 3 73 2,033 30 Amos 9 146 4,216 31 Obadiah 1 21 669 32 Jonah 4 48 1,320 33 Micah 7 105 3,152 34 Nahum 3 47 1,284 35 Habakkuk 3 56 1,475 36 Zephaniah 3 53 1,616 37 Haggai 2 38 1,130 38 Zechariah 14 211 6,443 39 Malachi 4 55 1,781
New Testament
Book Chapters Verses Words 40 Matthew 28 1,071 23,343 41 Mark 16 678 14,949 42 Luke 24 1,151 25,640 43 John 21 879 18,658 44 Acts 28 1,007 24,229 45 Romans 16 433 *9,422 46 1 Corinthians 16 437 *9,462 47 2 Corinthians 13 257 *6,046 48 Galatians 6 149 *3,084 49 Ephesians 6 155 *3,022 50 Philippians 4 104 *2,183 51 Colossians 4 95 *1,979 52 1 Thessalonians 5 89 *1,837 53 2 Thessalonians 3 47 *1,022 54 1 Timothy 6 113 *2,244 55 2 Timothy 4 83 *1,666 56 Titus 3 46 *896 57 Philemon 1 25 *430 58 Hebrews 13 303 *6,897 59 James 5 108 2,304 60 1 Peter 5 105 2,476 61 2 Peter 3 61 1,553 62 1 John 5 105 2,517 63 2 John 1 13 298 64 3 John 1 14 294 65 Jude 1 25 608 66 Revelation 22 404 11,952 66 Bible Totals 1,189 31,102 788,280
* The book of Psalms has superscriptions under some of the Psalms (chapters.) These were not counted in this chart because they are not in the verses. Also Psalm 119 has the Hebrew Alphabet translated into English. Even though these words are not in the verses they were counted because they are scattered throughout this Psalm (Chapter.)
* The fourteen epistles of Paul are sometimes accompanied by subscriptions at the end of each letter. These were not counted because they are not in the verses. They are credited to Euthalius, a bishop of the 5th Century. The wording has slightly been modified during the process of time. Some of them seem to disagree with the text.
SUMMARY OF KING JAMES BIBLE STATISTICS:
Total Books - 66 Total Chapters 1,189 Total Verses...31,102
Total words in the 31,102 verses - 788,258 (not including the Hebrew Alphabet in Psalm 119 or the superscriptions listed in some of the Psalms)
Total words in the Hebrew Alphabet in Psalm 119 - 22
Total words on the cover - 2 (HOLY BIBLE)
Total words in the Book Titles - 85 (the full titles as written in the 1611 edition - 374)
Total times the word "CHAPTER" is listed - 1,034 (in 5 books the word is not listed because they only have one chapter)
Total times the word "PSALM" is listed - 150
Total words in superscriptions (sub-titles) of Psalms - 1,034
Total words in subscriptions (concluding remarks) in the epistles of Paul - 186
Total words in Testament dividers - 6 (The Old Testament, The New Testament)
Total words in Table of Contents - 94 (the Book Titles, the Testament dividers plus the phrase Table of Contents) If you use the full titles as in the 1611 edition - 383
Total words either on the cover or the first page explaining which Bible you have:
A) Authorized Version - 2 or
B) King James version - 3 or
C) King James Bible - 3Separately, the Women in the World Foundation, which will have its fourth annual conference in New York City in April, announced that a fund-raising appeal in the name of Ms. Yousafzai had collected more than $100,000 in donations that the foundation said would go toward girls’ education in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Some progress has been made on that score. “In countries around the world, we see women’s educational achievement growing to the point that in many countries, more women than men are attending university,” says Liza Mundy, a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of “The Richer Sex,” about the rising number of female breadwinners. The near-fatal shooting of Ms. Yousafzai, she says, “demonstrated the real import of schooling for girls and women, and it also shows how deeply threatening this can be to extreme traditionalists.”
Taking on another big issue, Catalyst, a nonpartisan organization for the advancement of women in business, is kicking off a plan to get more women onto corporate boards. “We expect 2013 to be the year when momentum builds for women in leadership,” Ilene H. Lang, Catalyst’s president and chief executive, said by e-mail. “Corporate boards are top priority.” Women hold only 16.6 percent of Fortune 500 board seats. To help close that gender gap, Catalyst plans to enlist chief executives who would sponsor board-ready women into leadership positions. In Europe, Viviane Reding, the commissioner for justice, is leading another big push for women on boards. Allied activists have produced a register of thousands of board-ready women to counter arguments that there is a shortage of qualified candidates.
A big lift to American women came with the record number of women (20) who won seats in the U.S. Senate. The old tag “Year of the Woman” has been revived, and fresh momentum injected into the campaign to elect a woman president in 2016.
It’s no news that Hillary Rodham Clinton — recovering from a blood clot and other illnesses — is the undisputed Democratic front-runner. But the names of Democratic female senators also pop up, including Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York and the newly elected Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
The female senators make up just 20 percent of the 100-member Senate but are drawing outsize attention. Known challenges await them in and out of Congress, like efforts to restrict abortion rights and cut back or end federal funding for women’s health programs like Planned Parenthood.
Familiar issues like equal pay, workplace policies, family-work balance and political power haven’t gone away in the United States or anywhere else. Basic needs and basic rights remain elusive for many women in the developing world. And those issues, too, will not go away anytime soon.
But more women in more regions of the world are stepping up and living better lives, just about everyone in the field agrees. And as the old women’s issues become global, the expectations rise, and the challenges get larger.First things first- This is going to be a long post but I do not want it to go below the fold. Also, this website is not going to go the Daily Kos route. You’ll be free to say whatever you want (within some basic rules of civility, and if you know this place, I mean very basic rules), and there is no editorial direction of this website to begin with, so don’t freak out and claim this website is changing in any meaningful way. This is just my personal opinion, and the commenting policy will remain the same- say what you want, because not only is it just as easier to say “fuck you” to someone than it is to say “shut up” and then block them, but because I like the comment to be a fun place where everyone can be rude to everyone else. I will note that while I disagree on the policy, there is a great deal in that Markos post that I agree with and people should read.
Having said that, I initially thought I would just sit out and wait until November and then support the Democrat, but I think at this point I have seen enough and I have decided that to my surprise I am choosing to support Hillary. I’m not going to go into all the reasons I have problems with her, but I will go into some detail into why I have chosen to support her.
1.) Since the 2008 Obama campaign, I began, through various forums, including fb, twitter, and the wealth of new websites and online journals, to expose myself to a lot more voices that include women and (I hate this term) people of color. I’ve seen and learned a lot of things that I never knew before, and have experienced vicariously what many of them have had happen to them, and it’s changed how I look at things and it has changed how I looked at Hillary.
In my opinion as a white single male with a degree of financial stability, beyond agita and heartburn, I have very little at stake in this election. I’m not going to be drafted, my insurance won’t be lost if ACA is repealed, I won’t have to worry about losing my ability to get pap smears or mammograms or basic health services if PP is closed down, I won’t have to worry about feeding my children, I won’t have to worry about the right to control my body, I won’t have to worry about getting shot in the street for walking while white or be found dead in a jail cell after failing to signal a lane change. These are not and will not be concerns for me, ever.
For women and minorities, these are things they worry about EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
And what I have seen from the women and black people I follow closely, speak with, and respect, is that they are almost to a person supporting Hillary over Bernie, and this has been borne out in the primary elections to date. Hillary is just clobbering Bernie with women and minorities. In one election, one substrata (right word?) substratum of African-American voters chose Hillary over Bernie by something like 95-5. To borrow one of my favorite phrases a pundit uttered years ago, Bernie’s numbers with the African American community are “Alfonsian,” a reference to the utterly reviled Alfons D’Amato.
I don’t want to get into the shameless race-baiting and attacks on Bernie by some of Hillary’s most vocal surrogates on twitter and elsewhere, which has been disgusting in some cases, and I do think that Bernie has not gotten credit for being as good on matters of race as he should be, which is regrettable (as were the remarks by John lewis, I think), but that doesn’t change the basic facts. The people who have the most to lose in this election and who are the absolute bedrock base of this party overwhelmingly support Hillary. When I was an asshole Republican, African Americans and women were overwhelmingly supporting the Democrats then, because they knew what was best for them and the party. I thought otherwise. They were right. I was not. Despite the fact that I was Bernie curious, I think that I should probably shut up and follow the lead of the people who were right all along.
And that’s one reason I am choosing to vote for Hillary in the primary in West Virginia.
***
2.) While I loathe the Super Delegate idea, the simple fact of the matter is that her peers and the establishment, meaning the people who have worked with her for the past few decades at various levels, are almost unanimously endorsing her. While I will always think there is corruption and closing the ranks at the national level, I also think that when that many people have worked with you in the past and liked what they have seen choose you over someone else, it means something. That tells me that despite what you read in the media and despite all the distortions you read over crap like Benghazi, she actually does make good choices as a leader. These people like her, and want to work with her again.
Remember, on the Republican side, not one Senator wants to work with Cruz, and we say it means something about him. On the Democratic side, the overwhelming number of Senators have chosen to support Hillary. That should also say something to you.
A quick sidepoint- I maintain that having the email server was a stupid idea that caused more trouble while it was worth, but the biggest thing it did for me, a loser with no social life, was give me the opportunity to read a metric ton of Hillary’s emails. And, because, as previously noted, I am a loser with no social life, I did just that. You can too! And you know what shocking news I discovered?
She’s actually really nice with her staff and friends and seems like a pretty cool person to have as your boss.
That monster! What kind of inhuman scum doesn’t know how to get their email set up right on their iPad? Oh, me.
And think about it- it kind of makes sense. You all remember Terry McAullife and the rest of the 2008 clown car doing their best Baghdad Bob immitations, and you’ve seen her surrogates willingly, for free, debase themselves in support of her on twitter and elsewhere. She doesn’t have naked pictures of all of them, ffs. Something about her must engender that kind of loyalty and support. Maybe it’s because she’s nice, she’s smart, they trust her, and they would do anything for her because of that? Say what you want, but those are the kind of traits a President and a Presidential candidate will need, especially in this election.
It also says to me that she is going to be better able to work with Congress to get some things done. yes, there will be compromises and the dreaded triangulation. Until Democrats get off their asses and start voting on off year elections, we are going to have to deal with these bible-thumping backwoods hicks and their crony capitalist buddies in Congress. I think Hillary is far more likely to be able to negotiate with them than Sanders.
***
3.) This isn’t a single issue country, this won’t be a single issue Presidency, and we don’t need a single issue President.
Sweet Flying Spaghetti Monster, I love the fire and passion of Bernie Sanders. I really do. People make fun of him because he is shouty- last night at the debate people were mocking him shouting answers to the Flint residents asking him questions, and asking why is he shouting at her. He isn’t shouting at her, he’s shouting with her, because I guarantee that woman on the stand with two kids with lead poisoning wants to do more than shout at Rick Snyder. When Bernie is shouting about inequality and Wall Street I don’t hear him shouting because my internal monologue when I think about those things is shoutier and louder and angrier. I’m amazed he hasn’t called them mother fuckers yet, because it would have been the second and third words out of my mouth.
But it’s not the only issue we need to think about. Income equality wouldn’t save Sandra Bland. Income equality isn’t going to stop global warming. Income equality isn’t going to end racism. Income equality isn’t going to restore a woman’s right to choose back to Roe v. Wade levels.
And despite my misgivings about Hillary’s hawkishness and past mistakes and overall willingness to intervene militarily or otherwise, I think that on balance, she is better on many of the issues and more likely to maintain and advance the gains of the Obama years. We have to make choices when we are adults, and no one gets their perfect candidate. Even though I would love to have Obama for another eight years, I have real issues with him on some things.
***
4.) I think Hillary is better positioned to win. People like to point to her negatives, but those are not going to get worse. If anything, especially if the Republicans nominate Cruz or Drumpf the Insult Comic Hairpiece, I bet her negatives improve. This election is going to be a street fight. It is going to be ugly. I think we can throw the old conventional wisdom of negatives and how they play out in elections out the window. Regardless, if anyone’s negatives are going to go down, I think it is going to be Bernie’s. Our media will fuck up things again and never inform their voters that “democratic socialism” is basically all the things even Republican voters like about government, the Republicans will turn him into the lovechild of Stalin, and that will be that.
Combined with her team’s better ground game, experience with the ground rules, and the enthusiastic support of the base of the party (said women and minorities), I think Hillary is better positioned to win, and really, that is all that matters at this point. I guess I am a single issue voter, too:
Also worth mentioning is that I’m not concerned that were he the nominee, Bernie would bring a knife to a gunfight, but I know damned well that team Clinton will bring a automatic shotgun, grenades, mace, stun guns, and everything else they have at their disposal. Again, it’s irritating as hell most of the time, but there is no denying that Hillary has at her side a large armory filled with weapons grade assholes. Exhibit A- Phillipe Reines:
From: Reines, Philippe (Clinton)
Sent: Tue 12/30/2008 12:0S PM
To: Ben Smith
Subject: DOES ANYBODY Do their own reporting anymore? Page Six is wrong And now you are because you can’t even bother to email and say “Hey, is this true?” Unreal Smith (in response): I checked opensecrets! so why’d she return caroline’s money? Reines: BECAUSE IT WAS A GENERAL ELECTION CONTRIBUTION YOU MORON It was returned along with EIGHT THOUSAND other people on 8/28 the day it legally HAD TO Her primary contribution went nowhere Jezus You’re the fourth person today doing a correction (I hope). Daily News is doing one, LA Times doing one. I mean, come on people
Just google Phillipe+Reines+email if you are as much of a loser as I am and enjoy reading this shit. It’s really awesome.
At any rate, that is the kind of thing we need to win this cycle. I seriously believe this is going to be the ugliest general election in generations, and I want the indefatigable assholes on my side.
***
5.) I know this is going to piss people off, and I know some of you are going to scream ageism, but watching Bernie last night, he just seemed old and tired and wearing down. I was initially leaning Bernie at the beginning of this primary (because of course I was), and every time I look at him he just looks less energetic and a little more beat down. His response latency seems to be increasing as he collects his thoughts, and last night I saw him lashing out angrily about “your Wall Street friends,” and those are just not things that can happen in the general.
I’m not trying to be ageist- I don’t think people his age can’t or shouldn’t be President, it’s just that as I have watched this primary election go on, Clinton seems to be getting stronger and more confident and more ready for the election, while I feel the opposite is true about Sanders. In my mind’s eye, she looks younger to me than she did at the beginning of this primary. Clinton seems to really becoming a happy warrior, despite all the heaps of bullshit the Republicans have thrown at her.
Maybe you don’t see it that way. But I do. I look at Hillary these days and think there is no doubt she could serve eight years right now, while some days I wonder if Bernie is going to make it to November. The Vice President is a backup plan for when things go horribly wrong, not a plan. Again, I’m sorry if my elders think I am bashing them by stating this, but I’m really not trying to- Bernie has more energy on a bad day than I do on a great day, but he just is really starting to look worn down. The contrast for me last night was palpable.
***
I’m sure there are more reasons I could offer up, but that is where I am now. I’m not going to debase myself and go all pro-Hillary and make up bullshit about Bernie like I have seen, because I have to sleep at night and because I think there are enough reasons to support her without having to trash Bernie. Plus, I want to keep my powder dry for whatever viscous green sputum Cthulhu coughs up from his sulfurous chest to run as the Republican. But for right now, I think Hillary is the best choice and I think it is time to get in the game personally. This would be so much easier if one of them just sucked.
Have at it in the comments.PLO Responds To Israeli Demand Of ‘Jewish State’ Recognition: ‘Show US The Map Of Your Borders’
6:02 PM
Yasser Abed Rabbo, an official with the Palestine Liberation Organization, told reporters on Wednesday that in response to the Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognize it as a ‘Jewish state’, that Israel must present the map of the state that it wants the Palestinians to recognize, before asking this question.Abed Rabbo told the Palestinian news agency Ma’an News, ‘Israel is an unknown entity in terms of borders [so] how does it suggest we recognize it as a Jewish state? Israel and the US should first set out Israel’s borders’.
Since its creation in 1948, the state of Israel has never declared its borders and has continually expanded its territory with military force into neighboring Palestinian Territories.
The demand that the Palestinians ‘recognize Israel as a Jewish state’ was backed by the US on Tuesday. It means that Palestinian refugees will be denied their right to return to their homes in what is now Israel. Although the Palestinian Liberation Organization has recognized the state of Israel since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, there has been no reciprocal recognition of the state of Palestine by Israel.
In his interview with the Ma’an News Agency, Abed Rabbo denied a quote in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that said the PLO would recognize Israel as a Jewish state if Israel were to declare borders along the 1967 borders. He said that he had not spoken to Ha’aretz, but only spoke to Agence France Presse, and that Ha’aretz had misconstrued the quote.
A US official criticized the media back-and-forth on this point and said that these issues should be decided at the negotiating table and not in the public press.A 7-year-old will not be expelled after bringing two toy guns to his school.
Josiah Green was suspended for 10 days in May after he brought a small water gun and a small Nerf gun to Douglass Park Elementary School. According to Tim Anderson, the Green family's attorney, Josiah had the toys in his pocket when he was caught.
These toys obviously looked like toys, but it did not matter. Josiah found himself at home while his friends were in class.
Portsmouth Public Schools, where Douglass Park is located, has a zero tolerance policy for all weapons, putting toy guns in the same category as handguns, knives, and bombs. A 10-day suspension is mandatory, and can be followed by a long-term suspension or even expulsion.
Thankfully, Josiah was not given any further punishment. The board met with Josiah, his mother, and Anderson on Thursday to hear their argument on the matter, during which the superintendent withdrew the recommendation of expulsion after just 10 minutes.
But how ridiculous is it that Josiah was punished to this extent in the first place? He's only seven, and is still developing his understanding of what right and wrong means. If school officials wanted to help Josiah, they should have talked to him and his mom about the incident rather than treat him like a serious public menace.
On top of that, a new study found that zero tolerance policies do little to curb disruptive behavior. You can read more about it here.Originating from Warrnambool, Victoria, Moloney supported the Demons as a child and his hero was Allen Jakovich, who played for Melbourne. Moloney played in the TAC Cup for the Geelong Falcons.
He was drafted in the 2003 pre-season draft by Geelong, and made his debut with Geelong Football Club in round 14, 2003. In 2003 Moloney received an AFL Rising Star nomination.
Moloney was traded to the Melbourne Demons following the 2004 AFL season, after which he would play 21 games for Melbourne in 2005.
Injury sidelined him for much of the next three seasons, seeing him play only playing 27 games. He injured his shoulder in Melbourne's Round 11 match against Collingwood in 2008, sidelining him for the rest of the season.
Following a successful recovery from shoulder surgery, he was able to train injury-free for the whole of the 2009 pre-season,[2] and he went on to play every game for the season finding his form back with many consistent performances. His return to his consistent best in 2009 was highlighted by his career-best statistics in every category except kicks – he had the most number of disposals, handballs, goals and marks of any season in his career to that point.
In 2011 Brent received 19 Brownlow Medal votes, and his form saw him awarded Melbourne's best and fairest.
Brisbane Lions Edit
In September 2012, Moloney became the AFL's first free agent, when he announced that he would leave the Melbourne Football Club.[3] On 10 October 2012, he agreed to accept an offer from the Brisbane Lions.[4]
On 11 August 2014, Moloney retired from football following an Achilles tendon injury.[5]
Controversy Edit
In April 2011, Moloney was evicted from a Melbourne nightclub for drunkenness the night after a match. As a consequence, he was stripped of the vice-captaincy.[6]
Moloney was reinstated to the vice captaincy on 9 June, following good form, counselling for his drinking problem and a vote by the entire playing list.[7]
In June 2013, after Melbourne coach Mark Neeld was sacked, Moloney took to Instagram and posted a photo on his profile, saying "karma is a bitch". Moloney had been dropped sporadically during his final year at Melbourne, which was Neeld's first as head coach.[8]Lois Lerner, the “politically toxic” former head of the IRS, finally ended her silence about the IRS targeting scandal that broke 16 months ago. In an exclusive with Politico, Lerner told the site that she has been the victim of hate-mail and death threats, specifically citing verbal attacks using the anti-Semitic epithet “dirty Jew.”
In the interview published Monday, Lerner told Politico that she had not only received a flood of hate-mail and verbal threats, but that at some points the situation became so dire that federal agents were deployed to guard her house. The accusations, she said have forced her to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars attempting to defend herself.
Despite the attacks and knowing full well that she is “politically toxic,” as Politico notes, Lerner remains defiant against, insisting that she did nothing wrong:
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country," adding, “Regardless of whatever else happens, I know I did the best I could under the circumstances and am not sorry for anything I did.”
In another notable moment in the interview, Lerner made a rather strange reference, comparing herself (favorably) to the notorious cannibalistic serial killer, Jeffery Dahmer. Saying that one critic had called her “the worst person ever” in the U.S., Lerner remarked, “I just thought, ‘Boy, worse than Jeffrey Dahmer?’”
Lerner was forced out of the IRS after she became the center of an investigation into an alleged cover-up by IRS officials in the politically-motivated targeting of conservative tax-exempt organizations.• Number of security experts have pulled out of conference • RSA accused of accepting $10m to create backdoor for NSA
Privacy rights groups are calling on comedian Stephen Colbert to cancel his guest speaker appearance at a conference organised by RSA, the security firm accused of accepting millions from the National Security Agency to weaken encryption software.
The host of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report is due to be the closing speaker at RSA’s annual conference in San Francisco in February. A number of security experts scheduled to speak at the conference have already dropped out following reports that RSA was paid $10m by the NSA to distribute a flawed encryption that allowed the security agency to bypass security protections on personal computers and other products.
The Guardian reported last September that the NSA was using a battery of methods to undermine encryption, the codes used to keep users’ data private online. Last month Reuters revealed that RSA was paid $10m by the NSA to incorporate a weakened algorithm into an encryption product called BSafe that would allow the spy agency easier access to protected information.
RSA has been one of the most respected names in online security. It is now part of EMC, one of the world’s largest data storage and cloud computing companies. The payment for the adoption of a flawed system by a company with a long history of championing online privacy caused widespread anger in the tech community.
The company has vehemently denied that it knowingly undermined its own encryption. “Recent press coverage has asserted that RSA entered into a ‘secret contract’ with the NSA to incorporate a known flawed random number generator into its BSafe encryption libraries. We categorically deny this allegation,” it said in a statement last month.
Digital rights group Fight For The Future has now set up an online petition asking Colbert to withdraw from the conference. “Last month, we learned that RSA accepted $10m from the NSA to stick a backdoor in one of their encryption products, and intentionally weaken the safety of the entire internet.
“We know you, Stephen, and we know you love a good backdoor as much as we do – but this is no laughing matter. By colluding with the NSA and covering it up, RSA has endangered all of us,” says the petition.
Earlier this week Google software engineer, Adam Langley, Mozilla’s global chief of privacy Alex Fowler and six other security and privacy experts announced they would cancel their talks at this year’s conference. “I've become convinced that a public stance serves more than self-aggrandisement, so: I've pulled out of the Cryptographers Panel at RSA 2014,” Langley said via Twitter.
Jeffrey Carr, a respected cybersecurity analyst, has also withdrawn from the conference and called for a boycott. “It's not enough to just talk about how bad this is. RSA's parent EMC, like every other corporation, has a board of directors that is answerable to its shareholders for maximizing revenue. If RSA's customers begin canceling their contracts and/or refuse to buy RSA products, the company's earnings will drop and that's the type of message that forces boards to make changes,” he wrote on his blog.
Holmes Wilson, co-founder of Fight For The Future, said: “Colbert isn’t a technologist but he understands this issue very well. His appearance at this conference will let participants laugh about something that is a very serious issue. I’d like to hear his speech too but this is not the venue.”
RSA and Colbert were not immediately available for comment.New Q4 2016 data from Synergy Research Group released Maarch 10 indicates that the enterprise SaaS (software as a service) market grew a whopping 32 percent year over year to nearly $13 billion in quarterly revenues, with ERP and collaboration being the highest growth segments.
For the third successive quarter, Microsoft was the clear leader in overall enterprise SaaS, having overtaken longtime market leader Salesforce. Most of this growth can be directly attributed to the huge growth in the adoption of Office 365 during the last two years.
Other leading SaaS providers include SAP, Oracle, Adobe, ADP, IBM, Workday, Intuit, Cisco Systems and Google. Among the major SaaS vendors those with the highest growth rates were Oracle and Google, the latter thanks to a big push for its G Suite collaborative apps.
To see a larger view of the accompanying graphic, right-click on the image and select "View Image." You can also go here to download the image if you like.
The researcher said that enterprise SaaS market has matured somewhat compared to other cloud markets, such as IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service) and consequently has a lower growth rate.
Nonetheless, Synergy said, it will more than double in size over the next three years, with strong growth across all segments and all geographic regions.
"There are a variety of factors driving the SaaS market that will guarantee substantial growth for many years to come," Synergy Chief Analyst and Research Director John Dinsdale said.
"Traditional enterprise software vendors like SAP, Oracle and IBM are all pushing to convert their huge base of on-premise software customers to a SaaS subscription relationship. Meanwhile, relatively new cloud-based vendors like Workday and Zendesk are aggressively targeting the enterprise market and industry giants Microsoft and Google are on a charge to grow their subscriber bases, especially in the collaboration market."
Reno, Nev.-based Synergy provides quarterly market sizing and segmentation data on cloud and related markets, including company revenues by segment and by region.Image caption A palm print found on a getaway vehicle has been matched to a set of fingerprints
Police are to re-open their inquiry into the Kingsmills massacre following the discovery of new evidence.
A palm print found on a getaway van has been linked to a set of fingerprints.
The new evidence comes 40 years after the killings by an IRA gang and 13 years after the families began fighting for an inquest.
Ten Protestant men were shot dead in the massacre by an IRA gang near the County Armagh village of Kingsmills in 1976.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Colin Worton, a brother of a Kingsmills victim, reacts to news of new police investigation
Colin Worton, whose 24-year-old brother, Kenneth, was one of the men killed, said the announcement that the PSNI would re-open the investigation was a "total shock".
"I have to be truthful to you", he told the BBC, "I do feel a mixture of emotions, but one of the worst ones I have is anger.
'Sickened'
"Why has this taken more than 40 years to come out?"
He called the men who fired the shots "animals" and said he was "totally sickened" that the investigation has gone on so long.
The men who were killed were travelling home from work in a textile factory when their mini-bus was ambushed.
After checking their religion, the gang ordered one Catholic to leave before opening fire.
Image copyright PA Image caption Ten protestant workmen were shot by an IRA gang in the massacre
Only one man survived the shootings.
Alan Black, a 32-year-old father of three at the time, was seriously wounded and spent months recovering in hospital.
On Tuesday, an inquest into the deaths resumed following a short delay.
A senior investigating officer has now been allocated to the case and the criminal investigation re-opened.
Difficult time
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton, head of the PSNI's legacy and justice department, said he appreciated this was "a very difficult time" for the victims' families.
"Due to a recent forensic development, detectives from legacy investigation branch are now following a line of inquiry in relation to the murders at Kingsmills in 1976", he said.
"We have been liaising with the coroner's office in relation to this and will continue to do so.
"We are committed to progressing this matter as expeditiously as possible and will keep them (the families) updated as appropriate."Advertisement
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/register.php Any modified copy or reproduction, including partially usages, of this file requires authorization from Vulnerability Laboratory. Permission to electronically redistribute this alert in its unmodified form is granted. All other rights, including the use of other media, are reserved by Vulnerability-Lab Research Team or its suppliers. All pictures, texts, advisories, source code, videos and other information on this website is trademark of vulnerability-lab team & the specific authors or managers. To record, list, modify, use or edit our material contact (admin@ or research () vulnerability-lab com) to get a ask permission. Copyright © 2016 | Vulnerability Laboratory - [Evolution Security GmbH]™ -- VULNERABILITY LABORATORY - RESEARCH TEAM SERVICE: www.vulnerability-lab.com CONTACT: research () vulnerability-lab com _______________________________________________ Sent through the Full Disclosure mailing list https://nmap.org/mailman/listinfo/fulldisclosure Web Archives & RSS: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/ By Date By Thread Current thread: VoipNow v4.0.1 - (xajax_handler) Persistent Vulnerability Vulnerability Lab (Apr 26)Sitting alongside the marketing suite half-way up the main Canary Wharf can be found the estate’s marketing suite, and in a side room, to show off the development, a gigantic scale model of the estate.
Split roughly into three sections, one wall is a huge slice through the original shopping centre and DLR station.
The other two are scale models of the estate, one of the skyscrapers, and the other of the subteranean world beneath them packed full of shoppers. Remember if passing by on the DLR at weekends, it may look quiet, but below ground is a ants nest of activity.
Just a few photos as there’s not much more to add.
Access was part of the Open House Weekend — the marketing suite is not generally open the public.Oh, sure. A shark’s doll eyes are scary. We get it Quinn. But sometimes getting in the water to risk becoming sharkbait is totally worth it. In this case, another Jaws On The Water event.
This is the 3rd anniversary of Jaws On The Water, an event that allows Jaws fans to watch the film in a perfectly-awesome and horrifying scenario, floating in dark waters. This year the event will include Jaws 2, Jaws 3D and Jaws: The Revenge, in addition to the masterful Jaws. This time around, starting June 30 to July 23, screenings will be held at Volente Beach in Leander. That just a hop, skip and panicked swim out of Austin TX.
Tickets include access to Volente Beach Water Park’s slides and rides, a super sharktastic inner tube and a fireworks display.
“With our new partnership at Volente Beach and a return to Lake Travis, this year’s series is going to be even more fun – and terrifying – than ever before.” says Henri Mazza, V.P. of Special Events for Alamo Drafthouse and BMD Events.
For more info on how to get your tickets and bigger boats, head over here for all sharky needs.
JAWS
6:00 PM – 11:30 PM CDT – June 30, July 1, July 2, July 7, July 8, July 9, July 21, July 22 JAWS 2 6:00 PM – 11:30 PM CDT – July 14 JAWS 3D 6:00 PM – 11:30 PM CDT – July 15 JAWS: THE REVENGE 6:00 PM – 11:30 PM CDT – July 16, July 23 LOCATION Volente Beach Water Park 16107 FM 2769 Leander, TX 78641The NFL partners with Facebook to distribute game highlights and recaps on the social network
Facebook and the NFL this morning announced a new multi-year programming deal that will see the sports organization distributing official NFL video, including game recaps and official highlights, to the social network. According to the NFL, the videos and recaps will be from all 256 regular season games, plus the playoffs and the Super Bowl, and will be made available to Facebook users worldwide.
Alongside the footage from the games themselves, the NFL’s media division will also distribute content from its production arm NFL Films on Facebook’s newly launched Watch platform. Here, users in the U.S. will be able to watch “NFL Turning Point,” “Sound FX” and “NFL Game Recaps” every week.
However, that limitation is due to Facebook Watch being a U.S.-only feature at this time. International users will be able to view the same programming on the Show pages on Facebook, and can view the highlights by following the NFL or any of its 32 Clubs on Facebook, says the NFL.
“We have millions of fans on Facebook, and they continue to demonstrate an incredible appetite for NFL content,” said Hans Schroeder, Chief Operating Officer of NFL Media, in a statement. “We’re excited to bring a compelling set of highlights and shows from the NFL and our Clubs to our fans on Facebook.”
The deal comes at a time when the NFL has been expanding its reach across social media. Last season, the NFL had a $10 million deal with Twitter to live stream Thursday Night Football, for example. But Twitter lost the deal to Amazon this year which paid $50 million for the games that are being made available for free to Amazon Prime members.
Twitter instead this year did a deal with the NFL for a new, 30-minute live streamed show called #NFLBlitz and other live sports programming, like breaking news, highlights, fantasy projections, pre-game updates, key storylines, team power rankings, and more.
This is not Facebook’s first deal to bring streaming sports to its social network.
In May, the company announced plans to live stream Major League Soccer matches; in June, it said it would live stream Champions League Soccer via a deal with Fox; and in August, it partnered with sports network Stadium to stream live college football games.
While Facebook’s NFL agreement won’t deliver live games to fans, it is indicative of the importance of sports programming in general to boosting video views and drawing in new users to Facebook’s Watch video platform.
Sports is a key category in Facebook Watch, which launched with a number of programs in this area, including Golden State Warriors’ “Championship Rewind,” Univision Deportes’ “Liga MX” (live LigaMX soccer matches), and NBA’s “WNBA All-Access,” in addition to the MLB games and a live show called “12:25 Live.”CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and ABC’s Nightline both aired previously recorded interviews with Robbie Rogers last night in the wake of NBA player Jason Collins coming out.
They were originally scheduled to air two weeks ago, but the breaking news from Boston have obviously been a priority for coverage since the Marathon bombings. It would be interesting to see the interviews in their entirety or as they were originally intended to air, as they have been clearly cut to fit into the narrative of the day.
With Anderson Cooper on CNN’s AC360:
The Anderson Cooper interview brought the quote of the night from Robbie Rogers:
There’s a good chance that I might come back to [soccer] but I need a few months to chill out, hang out with my family, go surf in California, just relax.
With Amy Robach on ABC’s Nightline:Introduction: Peter J. Boettke is a professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, Vice President for Research, and Director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at GMU. He is co-editor of The Review of Austrian Economics and author of the award-winning book, Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, published by the Independent Institute and Universidad Francisco Marroquin. Peter Boettke received his BA in economics from Grove City College and his PhD in economics from George Mason University. Before joining the faculty at George Mason University in 1998, he held faculty positions at Oakland University, Manhattan College and New York University. In addition, Boettke was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University during the 1992-1993 academic year. He has been a visiting professor or scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic Systems in Jena, Germany, the Stockholm School of Economics, Central European University in Prague and Charles University in Prague.
Daily Bell: It's been quite a while since we last chatted. How is your program at George Mason going?
Peter Boettke: Yes, I believe we last spoke in 2010. GMU's program has really been doing quite well since that time. We have added some high quality faculty and continue to recruit some very strong graduate students. And our alumni have been doing some outstanding work – both in terms of publishing and in terms of institution building.
Let me give a few examples. Ben Powell and David Skarbek are both doctoral students that I supervised. Ben Powell recently published his book Out of Poverty with Cambridge University Press and it has met with extremely good reviews and praise from his professional peers. Ben has also moved to Texas Tech University, where he has become the Director of the Free Market Institute.
I am a visiting professor there this year, and during my visit in the fall I was amazed at what Ben is accomplishing there with his faculty partners and graduate students. I expect you will hear great things about Ben's continued success in contributing to the scientific literature in economics and political economy, with his training of graduate students to be the next generation of college and university teachers of economics and the advancement of the ideas of economic and political liberty through his good work. See his new TV show "Free to Exchange" for an example. Just fantastic stuff. A link to his new institute is here.
David Skarbek's book, The Social Order of the Underworld, was published by Oxford University Press in 2014, and has been discussed in The Economist and The Atlantic. The book – which is based on material that formed his doctoral dissertation – examines the economic and political organization of gangs inside the prison system. Not only has Dave's work drawn significant attention, it has won major academic awards from his peers.
David, and his wife Emily Skarbek (also one of my dissertation students), both teach at King's College London, where they are joined by a handful of outstanding classical liberal thinkers, such as Mark Pennington, John Meadowcraft, etc. King's developed a Department of Political Economy over the past few years, and it is one of the more exciting academic ventures around – King's itself is a world-ranked top 60 institution of higher learning, so to have such a strong presence of classical liberal political economists in such an elite institution is very promising. Again, I expect that their graduate students will be making an impact on the international intellectual scene within the next decade.
Closer to home, at GMU we have established a new research center that I am directing and Chris Coyne is the associate director. We have continued to grow our graduate student programs under the direction of Virgil Storr, and our journal editing – Review of Austrian Economics, The Independent Review, Public Choice, and Advances in Austrian Economics – as well as our editing of book series, including Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice and Society, the Routledge series on Foundations of the Market Economy and the Edward Elgar series, New Thinking in Political Economy. Independent of our editing, my colleagues in our new center have been very active publishing books. Chris Coyne's Doing Bad By Doing Good (Stanford), Peter Leeson's Anarchy Unbound (Cambridge), Larry White's The Clash of Economic Ideas (Cambridge), Paul Aligica's Institutional Diversity and Political Economy (Oxford) and Virgil Storr's The Culture of the Market (Routledge) have all been published in the last two or three years.
Our faculty and our alumni continue to make inroads into the academic establishment with high quality publications and innovative research and teaching.
One final note here. Chris Coyne and I just sent off to the publisher our Oxford Handbook of Austrian Economics that will be published in 2015 or 2016. This was a major project for us, and we are thrilled to be part of Oxford's famed Handbook series. It is another great feather in the cap for the academic advancement of the Austrian school of economics in the economics profession today.
Daily Bell: You're very busy. What else have you been doing that's a priority?
Peter Boettke: Well, I guess you can divide my time between my own research and teaching, my administration of academic programs, my professional activities, including my editing, but also my professional association involvement. So let me go through these. I will come back to my own research in a second, so I will start with academic administration.
I mentioned our new research center at GMU. It is The F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the Mercatus Center, and it was founded in 2012. In 2013 we received a major grant from the Templeton Foundation to build out our program, and we have received numerous other grants from individuals and foundations that enable us to develop our research and educational initiatives in cooperation with the Department of Economics, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Mercatus Center. You can follow our activities here.
Since our establishment, we have had major conference events honoring the contributions of Israel Kirzner in 2013 and a very successful conference on the 40th anniversary of Hayek's Nobel Prize. The links will allow your readers to see video of the lectures provided at these events. Next year we are planning on a public event focused on the Continuing Relevance of Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty, and Richard Epstein is already confirmed as the keynote speaker. We also sponsor book manuscript vetting conferences and our work on this was featured last year in The Chronicle of Higher Education. As an example, Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois series of books have been in this conference series prior to publication. But the list of books we have held these conferences on through Mercatus for the past 10 to 15 years is very impressive.
Our Hayek Program will sponsor annual public events and these manuscript conferences for works in political economy and social philosophy but our primary focus is on research and teaching. I want to discuss our graduate student programs at length, but before doing I would like to address the professional association involvement and professional engagement because a lot of laymen with a strong interest in Austrian economics operate under a mistaken belief that Austrian economists have no role at all within the larger scientific community. We are a minority no doubt, but we are feisty and we do get a hearing. To give one quick example that you can look up, I recommend readers look up my colleague Larry White's work (joint with George Selgin) on "Has the Fed Been a Failure?" Larry and George's work received wide attention, and eventually an entire symposium on their work was published in one of the field journals in the profession. Again, our position is no doubt the minority position, but if one presents their work in a careful and sophisticated manner, folks pay attention. Another great example of this is that last year Alex Salter, one of our graduate students (as a graduate student), published a paper on the JMCB in perhaps the top field journal critical of Bernanke and his use of Bagehot's rule for central bank management.
We encourage constant professional engagement. Since we last talked to each other, I have been awarded the Adam Smith Prize from the Association of Private Enterprise Educators, received two honorary doctorates – one from Universidad Francisco Marroquin and another from Universitat Alexandru Cuza in Romania (where Ken Arrow also received one), I was elected President of the Association of Private Enterprise Educators and I was elected Vice President of the Southern Economics Association. I bring this up because I want to dispel the mythology that Austrian economists are not only a minority but also a shut-out minority. We have a lot of work to do, but any failure for our advance within the community of our scientific peers is because of our weaknesses not because of a confused and corrupt profession. This is extremely important for the lay audience to start to realize because what it means is that if we work harder, think clearer and write more effectively, we can continue to make significant advances within the economics profession and from that vantage point change the broader cultural conversation.
I am just one of our research and teaching group. There are nine others and they are all being recognized in their respective fields of inquiry and also across the profession in general as major contributors to the literature. So I am very excited about the work we are doing at GMU.
Which brings me to our graduate student programs. When I moved to GMU from NYU in 1998, we had twelve fellowships across four years of classes – so three per year – for students interested in Austrian economics and classical liberal political economy. We also had only three dedicated faculty to the Austrian economics program – Karen Vaughn, Richard Wagner and myself. GMU was always unique in the number of Austrian friendly faculty, but those who devoted their careers to the advancement of ideas within the Austrian framework – methodologically, analytically and, yes, ideologically – was always a very small subset of a more general program. Since that time, the growth has been nothing less than astonishing.
We can now list 12 full-time faculty in our Hayek Program. We also have post-docs and visiting students and scholars. But one of the most exciting things is that this year we are actually funding in total 118 graduate students through our programs with the Hayek Program and Graduate Student Programs at Mercatus. Of those students, 58 are at GMU in our MA and PhD programs and 60 are members of our Smith Fellows and Bastiat Fellows Programs. Smith Fellows are PhD students at other universities in the humanities and social sciences who spent several weekends during the academic year being exposed to Austrian economics, public choice analysis and the institutional analysis of development, and then a week-long research seminar in the summer. This program is in its third year and it is one of the most successful programs we have developed. Virgil Storr has just been an amazing leader of this program.
The Bastiat Fellows is modeled on the Smith Fellows, but is more focused on folks in public policy and law.
The Hayek Program and GSP also sponsor an Advanced Summer Seminar in Austrian Economics, which we are also very excited about.
In September 2015, we will be moving into our own dedicated space on the Fairfax, Virginia campus with plenty of office space for students and seminar rooms, library, etc. It is a very promising time for us at GMU, and I expect our ability to produce high profile research and strong graduate students that will make an impact on the economics profession will only increase over the next decade.
Daily Bell: Your own book, Living Economics: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, came out in 2012 and won the FEE Award for Best Book in Austrian Economics that year. How has that been received? The Mercatus Center and The Independent Institute held an event at the National Economists Club this summer, featuring you speaking on your book. Tell us about that.
Peter Boettke: I've also published two other books since then: Institutional Economics, 2nd Edition, and The Economic Way of Thinking, 13th Edition, and am currently working on three others – a book on Hayek for the Palgrave Macmillan series on Great Thinkers in Economics, a book on the financial crisis and one on public administration and democratic self-governance. But I understand the interest in Living Economics. It has been received quite well, and quite unexpectedly. It has been translated into Spanish and Romanian already, and there are ongoing negotiations for Chinese and even Persian.
I think three things really helped the book. First, I got a series of ringing endorsements from leading economists, including two Nobel Prize winners, an AEA Distinguished Fellow and a John Bates Clark Medalist. Those endorsements really were used effectively by The Independent Institute in marketing the book. And I was thrilled to work with David Theroux and his staff at Independent to push the book. Second, the book came out at a unique time when there was a lot of public soul searching about economics as a discipline due to the financial crisis and this work offered an optimistic view of economics as an engine of social inquiry. Three, the book has a coherent narrative that runs from basic principles that trace from Adam Smith to F. A. Hayek, the book celebrates great teachers of economics and the book pursues consistently and persistently the implications of those teachings to provide a more humble but more compelling picture of economics as a scientific discipline and as a tool for social understanding, not as a tool for social control.
Daily Bell: Who is the intended reader? You see economics as "a discipline that touches on the most pressing practical issues at any historical juncture."
Peter Boettke: The book is primarily written for the student who is contemplating graduate school to offer to them an invitation to join the scientific quest for understanding what economics as a discipline offers, and for graduate students to get them to think about what type economist they want to be and what type of economist and economics teachers they want to be for their careers.
But hopefully the book was written in a way that is more readable. The material in the book was all published before in some form, but for publication it was rewritten in parts to smooth the transition and the selection of material was very much a product of consultation with colleagues and the publication team at Independent.
The title, Living Economics, has three meanings. The first comes from a quote from Ludwig von Mises in Human Action where he states that economics is a living body of scientific thought. The second meaning comes from thinking about what a living body of thought would imply, thus the image of the tree – a strong oak tree deeply rooted in the ground. Obviously, there are new branches but the tree is strong because of its deep and healthy roots. Finally, living economics as meaning thinking about economics 24/7, that the puzzles and paradoxes simply occupy your attention all the time. My focus on the distinction in the book between Mainline and Mainstream economics comes from the first two, especially the second meaning, but my focus on the intellectual excitement of thinking about the world through the economist's point of view is what the third meaning is all about. Again, I think somehow this three-pronged approach captured some folks' imagination and this especially caught on fire with a small social media campaign (#LivingEconomics and Facebook) that certainly helped get the word out about the book.
The book is perhaps my most successful, commercially speaking, book to date, but my royalties from the project are all dedicated to help sponsor scholarships for students to attend Universidad Francisco Marroquin and its wonderful educational programs.
Daily Bell: You've written, "The wealth and poverty of nations are at stake; the length and quality of life turns on the economic conditions individuals find themselves living with." Please elaborate.
Peter Boettke: Economic policy determines the wealth and poverty of nations. I have a simple formula: Ideas → Institutions → Outcomes. Bad ideas result in bad institutions with bad outcomes. Socialist ideas → Socialist institutions that provide perverse incentives and distort information → Bad outcomes in terms of economic growth and development and political tyranny.
The fundamental cause of a nation's economic fate is not to be found in geography, or resource abundance, but in the ideas and institutions that define that system. Private property, freedom of trade (domestic and foreign), fiscal responsibility and sound money provide the right environment for individuals to truck, barter and exchange, and to engage in productive specialization and peaceful cooperation. On the other hand, collective property, restrictions on trade, fiscal irresponsibility and unsound money provide an environment where those who engage in rape, pillage and plunder will fare better than those who seek betterment through trade and cooperation. The vast majority of human history is filled with the miserable existence that such a predatory reality thrusts upon men – life is indeed nasty, brutish and short when violence rather than trade is the main organizing principle of human interaction.
Daily Bell: You did original research on the history and collapse of socialism in several books and edited a book on development economics, The Collapse of Development Planning (1994) as well as a 9-volume reference work on the history of the debate over socialism, Socialism and the Market (2000). In light of your expertise in this area, what's your take on the recent events in Russia and Ukraine? What's going on there?
Peter Boettke: I spent the first 10-15 years of my career as a Russia watcher – studied the language (though I never mastered it), read history, literature and, of course, read daily the newspapers that were available. I was a fellow at the Russian Academy of Science in 1992-93. But during the 2000s I became less Russia focused and more focused on East and Central Europe, and other regions of the world dealing with a host of lingering problems in development economics. I also focused once again on more theoretical and methodological issues in comparative analysis and policy evaluation rather than fieldwork on the ground in transitioning economies. So that removed me somewhat from the scene.
However, just recently I was named a Fulbright Fellow in Ukraine, and I had to postpone my trip (and perhaps turn down the fellowship) due to the concerns I have with the situation. I follow the situation with Putin not closely, but with some attention to the facts on the ground. Starting with the Yukos Affair – with criminalization of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – it was quite obvious that the post-communist Russia had institutionalized crony capitalism and not anything approximating the more dynamic and fluid form of creative capitalism. So what emerged in Russia was a rent-seeking state, and Putin's poor economic policies have been "saved" a few times due to external shocks that provided large inflows of resources to the economy from the international oil market. But if you still look at capital flows, Russia is not a secure haven for international investment and it is just not that attractive of an environment due to insecurity of property rights and the fact that the overall economic situation is still one defined by connections rather than contracts.
Daily Bell: Depending on who's assessment one reads, Putin is viewed as a savior or as a dictator. Your take?
Peter Boettke: Not a savior, not a dictator. A political leader who wants to extract value from resources for power building, not adopt policies which produce greater economic growth and development and thus well-being for the ordinary citizens of Russia. As Andrei Shleifer often says, Russia is a "normal economy" – by that he means a normal middle income economy, which exhibits a high degree of corruption, cronyism and all the behavior you associate with such struggling economies whether we find them in Asia, Latin America, or Africa, or we look historically at how the relatively rich countries today were when they were middle income countries in the 18th and 19th century. I don't completely buy Shleifer's narrative, but I think he makes some very good points.
Russia is not an economy like Western Europe and the US as we just assumed it would be back in the late 1980s glancing forward 25+ years. It has failed to make that transition. But even in its crony capitalist and corrupt political state, one could argue for great improvements over the economic situation in the Soviet Union. Crony capitalism in this sense is preferred to crony socialism – more wealth is produced under the one than the other. But the real issue to move to the next level is to figure out a way to limit the cronyism.
The economic historian John Wallis has a great paper on "Corruption in Economic History," and he distinguishes between venal corruptions and systemic corruption. His argument is that venal corruption while bothersome is not a fundamental economy killer, but systemic corruption is. I would say bribing would be venal corruption, but the sort of criminalization of economic and political rivals as what happened in the Yukos affair is systemic corruption and can kill an economy. In this sense, I think Shleifer underestimates how much the corruption in Russia today is systemic rather than venal.
Daily Bell: Would the directions in which Russia is going look different without interference by the West?
Peter Boettke: Geopolitics is not my thing, I have no doubt that the situation is very complex and that geopolitics has a lot to do with it and that the Western alliances are not without fault. But I also think Putin is not a savior and he is not set on moving in the right – classical liberal – direction either domestically or internationally. And if we go back to my simple formula, unless you move in that direction, economic development and growth, and with that human well-being, will not follow.
Daily Bell: How do you see the tensions resolving?
Peter Boettke: Strengthening of private property rights, the destatization of the economy, the opening of the economy to free trade, the curtailing of fiscal irresponsibility and discipline on the budget, the establishment of sound money. Leaders can choose such a path any time they want. For some reason most choose the opposite path and become extractive agents of a society's wealth for personal gain, including temporary power. Early in his years in power Putin seemed to understand the benefits of long-term economic growth for Russia. That message at the moment seems to elude him.
Daily Bell: We'd like to get into some economics nitty-gritty now, including some questions we asked the first time we interviewed you. First, is economics a science? A predictive one?
Peter Boettke: Pattern predictions YES, point predictions NO. Economics can tell us tendencies and directions; it can not tell us exact points and magnitudes.
Economics proper can be divided into three branches of knowledge – pure theory (a priori and deductive), applied theory (where pure theory is used to examine the impact of alternative institutional arrangements on economic performance) and economic history (and public policy). The tests of pure theory are logic, but in applied theory and economic history there are institutional details and factual occurrences that must be accounted for – in this sense empirics matters.
The position is nuanced and requires a lot of spelling out that is beyond the scope of this sort of interview. But just as a teaser, let me stress again that I believe the best way to understand contemporary Austrian economics and political economy is to read Mises as a Hayekian, and Hayek as a Misesian and in that shared research program you will see where we are going today as a research community.
Daily Bell: Is econometrics valid? Can the use of mathematical formulas improve forward-looking economic predictions?
Peter Boettke: It depends on the purpose. As a tool of historical pattern examination, of course, it can help you see correlations in the data, and sometimes suggest avenues of potential causation. But econometrics is best a tool for what happened, not why what happened happened. That why question is one of theory. I don't not believe mathematics or statistics aids us in forward looking – in other words, I am not persuaded by forecasting models and I think this is one of the big mistakes on standard economics post-WWII – the idea that economics and econometrics can be a tool for social control, rather than that economics should be restricted to its role in social understanding and social criticism.
Daily Bell: What about the issue of gold versus fiat generally? Remind readers where you stand on private – non-governmental – fiat.
Peter Boettke: I believe strongly in the abolition of the state monopoly in the supply of currency. Whether a gold standard would emerge on the market, or some other form of money – say cryptocurrencies – I have no idea. I believe the market mechanism will be the best determinant of the medium of exchange as well as the unit of accounting. Given that the state doesn't seem to be persuaded to give up its legal monopoly, I am not sure how best to discipline central banks – obviously, some form of rules to tie their hands and some set of strong incentives to curtail the manipulation of money and credit to satisfy political ends. But what the best method to achieve that is has proven elusive. We cannot expect central banks to act as if they are participants in an ideal free-banking system, so we have to think differently than mimic efforts. Thus, I continually fall back on a classic gold standard as perhaps the best. But again, not sure that is right. As we saw, governments found ways to manipulate even when the hands were supposedly tied.
I am very much influenced by Adam Smith's discussion in the fifth book of The Wealth of Nations on the "juggling tricks" of government – ancient as well as modern – and that is to run deficits, accumulate public debt and then debase the currency to pay the debt back cheaply rather than declare bankruptcy for fiscal indiscipline. I believe Smith is spot on and that modern governments engage in this juggling trick all the time. Classical economists warned about juggling, but Keynesian economists embraced the juggling and chided fellow economists to simply become master jugglers. This is the state of modern macroeconomics – when push comes to shove, they all are would-be master jugglers. But even master jugglers can drop the ball sometimes.
Unfortunately for modern economies when those in decision power engage in the manipulation of money and credit in combination with fiscal irresponsibility, when they drop the ball, it can threaten the entire system. And due to interlocked balance sheets throughout the global economy, it can actually threaten the global economic situation. Thus, we are stuck on an endless cycle in which we pursue policies where short-run relief from the mistakes caused by bad juggling always takes precedent over long-run economic growth and betterment. For much of the period of the economics of illusion (the Keynesian period of 1945 to today), we have been fortune in the West to experience tremendous technological shocks and periodic expansions of trading opportunities, and this has hidden from view some of the real deleterious effects of bad juggling. But with the slowdown in technological progress and the strains of the global financial crisis, the economics of illusion is getting harder and harder to hide.
Daily Bell: Where do you stand on the inflation versus deflation question from a monetary standpoint? We believe that in a modern monopoly central bank economy deflation is mostly the product of a tremendous asset bubble that breaks.
Peter Boettke: I still would argue that we fear deflation so much that we ended up with permanent inflation.
I recommend to your readers Roger Koppl's excellent "Crisis to Confidence" monograph for IEA. It is the best work that blends the Fisher debt-deflation story and the Austrian inflation-boom story together to provide a coherent narrative of the crisis of the '20-'30s and the 2000s.
Daily Bell: Where do you stand on the quantity theory of money? Valid? Questionable?
Peter Boettke: The quantity theory is a truism, as Ludwig von Mises taught us. It is extremely powerful against monetary cranks. Unfortunately, in the modeling stratagem of some economists they translate the quantity theory into a mechanical interpretation and this is wrong and potentially just as dangerous. As Hayek (and Garrison) often put it, money is a joint between economic activities. It is not a broken joint as Keynesians argue, but it is also not a tight joint as Monetarists and Rational Expectationists argued. It is instead a loose joint. As a result, a change in a nominal variable (money) can have an impact on real variables in the economy. Thus you get the boom and the bust. This is the theory that I hold.
Daily Bell: Where do you stand on the Misesian business cycle? Are you having second thoughts?
Peter Boettke: Nope. If anything, I think the basic elements of the Misesian theory of the trade cycle and Hayek's emphasis on prices and production has an even stronger logical and empirical case for it. It is not going away, but actually coming back – a new National Bureau of Economic Research paper, for example, has articulated a credit induced boom story to explain the origins of the financial crisis. Bottom line, ABCT has more than a promising future in economic analysis.
Daily Bell: Do you believe that interest rates at less than zero are deflationary?
Peter Boettke: Nope, inflationary in the long run – we have been merely reinflating the bubble rather than allowing market corrections to follow. There have been offsetting factors as well, but I would say my expectation is that we will see inflation. Now, governments have done a very good job of redefining the measures of inflation, such as the Boskin Commission, and if you measured inflation the way it used to be measured, then we would see more of it. But it is very important to many that they have been working with this narrative about the zero lower bound and a liquidity trap so that the argument for fiscal policy goes through.
I think when we look back on the past several years of monetary policy we will look closely not just at QE, but focus a lot on Operation Twist, which was extremely important in my reading of making sure that longer-term interest rates did not reflect the appropriate inflation expectations. We will also focus a lot on regime uncertainty, which led to investors to hold off, and we will look at the policy of paying interest on reserves, which gave banks incentive to hold rather than lend out. A lot of contradictory policies, rather than sad economic circumstances can explain behavior since 2008. Keynesian policies produced a Keynesian world, not a solution to a Keynesian problem.
Lots of work to do to straighten out the historical narrative of the 2000s.
Daily Bell: Where do you stand on the growing controversy over Menger versus Mises and the idea that Mises does not represent Menger's Austrian approach? Can you summarize the differences?
Peter Boettke: I don't follow that controversy, sorry. Mises is Bohm-Bawerk's greatest student, Bohm-Bawerk was Menger's greatest student and Hayek is Mises's greatest student. And Kirzner is Mises's best representative in the modern Austrian school. Those are my opinions on those issues. There are, of course, important differences between each of these thinkers but there is also a very strong thread that binds them together into a school of thought. But without Mises and Hayek it is unclear that we would even remember Menger and Bohm-Bawerk today except that they were early neoclassical economists. Mises and Hayek are the towering intellectual figures of the Austrian School of Economics.
Daily Bell: You have an avowed sympathy for Hayek. Was Hayek a greater thinker than Mises? Was he a greater synthesizer – someone who took the best of 20th century sociopolitical quasi-socialist thought and merged it with Austrian concepts?
Peter Boettke: 1. I consider Mises the greatest economist who ever lived. 2. I consider Hayek, Mises's greatest follower. 3. Hayek was different from Mises for a variety of subtle reasons: (a) the way professional opinion was shared was through books for Mises and journal articles for Hayek, (b) |
ity incompatible with his position as first secretary of the Communist Party in the City of Havana, infringed upon the party work standards, something that was discussed with him by a Political Bureau commission which was presided over by myself and made up by comrades Machado Ventura and Esteban Lazo...
Personally, the three of them will continue to be my friends; but my only single commitment is with the people, particularly with those who have lost their lives in these 58 years of continued struggle since the coup d’etat in 1952. This has been the procedure followed with three high level leaders, so let it be known that this would be the same procedure to be followed by the party and the government with every cadre. We will demand more from them, but at the same time we will warn them and adopt any relevant disciplinary measure if any of the established rules are infringed.
As was established by the Law to Modify the Country’s Political and Administrative Division, in January 2011 the new provinces of Artemisa and Mayabeque will be created. Their respective governments will begin according to new organisational and structural conceptions, which are far more rational than the ones that exist in the present Havana province.
All functions, structures and payrolls have been already defined. We are still working on the definitions of their attributes as well as their relations with the central state administrative apparatus, national companies and political and mass organisations. We will follow very closely this experience so that it can be gradually implemented in all other local government bodies throughout the country in the course of the next five years. We very much favour the usefulness of continuing to gradually increase the authority of provincial and municipal governments by entrusting them with greater faculties for the execution of local budgets, which will absorb much of the taxes generated by the economic activity aiming at contributing to its further development.
International situation
The relations with the peoples and governments of almost every nation move on amidst the convulsive international situation.
The world has learned in amazement the scandalous revelations from hundreds of thousands of classified documents of the US government [released by Wikileaks]. Some of the most recent are about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; others deal with the most varied topics about the US relations with tens of states.
Although everybody is wondering what is really going on and how could this be linked to the twists and turns of US politics, what has been revealed so far shows that the US, although pretending to practice a kind rhetoric, essentially, continues to implement the usual politics and acts as a global gendarme.
There isn’t the slightest willingness on the part of the United States to change its policy against Cuba, not even to eliminate its most irrational aspects. It is evident that a powerful and reactionary minority that props up the anti-Cuban mafia continues to have a major influence on these issues.
The United States not only turns a blind eye to the overwhelming call issued by 187 countries asking for an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade against our country. In the year 2010, it reinforced its implementation and once again included Cuba in its spurious lists, whereby they take upon themselves the right to qualify and denigrate other sovereign states to justify punitive actions or even acts of aggression.
The US policy against Cuba does not have an ounce of credibility. The US has no other choice but to resort to lies to reiterate certain allegations. Some of them stand out for being scandalously false, as the one asserting that Cuba is a country that sponsors international terrorism, tolerates domestic traffic in children and women for sexual exploitation, violates flagrantly human rights and is responsible for significantly restricting religious freedom.
The US government tries to hide its own sins and attempts to evade its responsibilities when it allows notorious international terrorists, who have been wanted by the legal systems of several countries, to continue to live with impunity in that country while maintaining our five brothers [the Cuban Five] unjustly imprisoned for fighting against terrorism.
In its slanderous campaigns about the human rights situation in Cuba, the United States has found the connivance of European countries, known because of their complicity with the CIA secret renditions, the creation of torture and detention centres, for placing the burden of the economic crisis on the lowest income workers, violently repressing demonstrators and implementing discriminatory policies against migrants and minorities.
We will continue to struggle, together with all Latin American nations, for an emancipating integration. In the context of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), we will continue to work to consolidate the solidarity and unity that will make us ever stronger.
Therefore, we will continue to support our sister nation of Haiti, where our health staff together with Latin American and Haitian doctors who graduated in Cuba, in a selfless and humanitarian way, are coping with the cholera epidemic, the destruction caused by the earthquake and the sequels of hundreds of years of exploitation and plundering of that noble people. They need the international community to grant resources for reconstruction and especially for a sustainable development.
This is also the right occasion to convey, from this parliamentary meeting and on behalf of all Cubans, a message of support and solidarity to the brother people of Venezuela, who are suffering from the ravages of torrential rains that have cuased great human and material losses. At a very early stage, the tens of thousands of Cuban cooperation workers who are offering their services in that country were instructed to place themselves at the disposal of the Venezuelans and of President Hugo Chavez for whatever might be necessary.
April next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of the socialist character of our revolution. In the sands of Playa Girón [Bay of Pigs] our forces fought for the first time to defend socialism, and within hardly 72 hours and led by [Fidel Castro], they managed to defeat the mercenary invasion sponsored by the US government.
On the occasion of the relevant commemoration, there will be a military parade on April 16 with the participation of troops and combat equipment, to be attended by the delegates to the 6th congress of the Communist Party, who will gather on that very afternoon to begin their works, which we hope will conclude on April 19, the day when we celebrate the victory of Playa Girón. The parade will close with tens of thousands of youth representing the new generations, who are the guarantee of the continuity of the Revolution.
Youth
This celebration will be dedicated to our youth, who have never failed to be faithful to the Revolution. Youth were those who died during the attack on the Moncada and Bayamo garrisons; youth were those who rose up in Santiago de Cuba led by Frank Pais; youth were the Granma expeditionaries, who after the fiasco at Alegría de Pío, founded the Rebel Army and were joined by waves of other young people from the countryside and the city, particularly by the reinforcements that came from Santiago who were personally organised and sent by Frank himself; youth were those who were members of the powerful clandestine movement; youth were those who courageously attacked the Presidential Palace and the Radio Reloj radio station on March 13, 1957, headed by Jose Antonio Echeverría; youth were those who fought heroically in Playa Girón; youth and teenagers were those who joined the literacy campaign, also 50 years ago; youth were most of those who fought against the mercenary bands organised by the CIA; youth were those who wrote beautiful pages of courage and stoicism in the internationalist missions in several countries, particularly those in support of the liberation movements in Africa; youth are our Five Heroes who risked their lives in the struggle against terrorism and have suffered more than 12 years of cruel imprisonment; youth are many of the thousands and thousands of cooperation workers who defend the human life by curing diseases that have already been eradicated in Cuba, supporting the literacy programs and disseminating culture and the practice of sports throughout the world.
This revolution has been the results of the sacrifices made by the Cuban youth: the workers, farmers, students, intellectuals, military, all the youths from all the times when they have lived and struggled.
This revolution will be carried forward by the youth, full of optimism and with an unshakable faith in victory.
Equally big have been both the challenges and dangers since the triumph of the Revolution, especially after Girón. But no difficulty has ever bent our spirit. We are, and will [continue to] be, here due to the dignity, integrity, courage, ideological strength, revolutionary spirit and sacrifice of the Cuban people, who since long ago embraced the concept that socialism is the only guarantee to continue to be free and independent.
Thank you, very much.1 of 1 2 of 1
Lower Mainland Conservative candidates are starring in the Liberal B.C. Team’s “Harpocracy” attack on Stephen Harper. The Muzzle Watch Website lists all candidates who have been “muzzled”, either by refusing to call reporters back, or being no-shows at all-candidates’ meetings.
Several instances of “muzzlings” were taken from Georgia Straight stories, including this one on federal arts funding, when Vancouver Centre candidate Lorne Mayencourt didn't return Jessica Werb's calls to discuss the Conservative government's $45 million in cultural cuts.
So far, the site claims that there have been 44 reported cases of Conservative muzzling in BC. Of those, four involve Vancouver Centre candidate Lorne Mayencourt, and four with Vancouver Kingsway candidate Salomon Rayek. Surrey North candidate Dona Cadman also racked up four.
The Muzzle Watch site opens with this pithy quote:
“Democracy cannot be maintained without its foundation: free public opinion and free discussion throughout the nation of all matters affecting the state within the limits set by the criminal code and common law.”
- Supreme Court of CanadaThere are crazy people in the world, and many of them are in politics. In the past few weeks, we have had the opportunity to view the traveling insane asylum that is the clash of blundering campaigns for the next GOP Presidential nomination. It's imperative to draw attention to the litany of inane declarations made up to this point in order to illustrate just how completely out of touch these people are with the American middle class. And I don't mean out of touch like "You're such a square, old man! I'm outta here!" I mean out of touch like asking these GOP candidates to address the needs of the middle class is like asking your dog to take the SAT.
I'm Not Rich, Dad. I'm My Brother.
If making 65 times the salary of the average American isn't enough to make you rich, apparently it makes you forget to pretend that you think it's enough to make you rich.
Newt, it's OK that you're rich. But it should be enough for the average voter, regardless of party affiliation, to refuse even the remote possibility of Gingrich as a candidate simply because he makes OVER TWO AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR and insanely thinks he's not rich. That is the equivalent of me walking up to a person, kicking that person in the crotch, and then saying "I'm not rich."
Pot Calling the Kettle African-American
Mitt Romney recently called President Obama a "job killer" and "crony capitalist" despite the fact that Romney himself lobbied for the FDIC to forgive $10 million of debt owed by his former company, Bain & Co. in 1991.
Romney also addressed a former American Pad & Paper Co. employee who lost his job after Bain took the company over by saying that he had helped create over 100,000 jobs. When pressed, the Romney camp had to admit that his claims of creating over that number of jobs while at Bain are largely bogus.
A Bain spokesperson said that the figure of 100,000 is based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain.
I'm willing to give Romney a few points for brashness, but his declaration is akin to me bragging about making 400,000 babies every time I ejaculate. Truth be told, not all of those babies actually became people under my watch... and that number doesn't even address all of the babies that were laid off due to masturbation.
Romney's warped perspective is also reflected in his latest tax plan which he says would cut taxes for the middle class. Predictably, it mostly benefits those making over a million dollars a year.
It's time to accept this as a fact: The GOP thinks that "middle-class" means "I only make a couple million yearly." As far as they're concerned, nobody else below that really exists.
If you need to take a second to go punch a rainbow, go ahead. I'll wait.
Stop Saying I'm Surging!
It's not every election cycle that we have a presidential candidate with a last name whose definition isn't safe to google at work (You've been warned... ) but here we are with Rick "Santorum" Santorum.
When asked about President Obama's view on abortion, Santorum stated "...I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'we're going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"
Well... that's just crazy talk.
After implying that Obama should be pro-life because he's black, Santorum took the opportunity to clarify his comments and dig even deeper:
"I am disappointed that President Obama, who rightfully fights for civil rights, refuses to recognize the
civil rights of the unborn in this country."
While Santorum may be disappointed in Obama's stance on civil rights for the unborn, I'm disappointed in the media for not challenging Santorum's stance on civil rights of gay men and women, or as they're called, the already born.
(Dear conservatives, please quit trying to defend your anti-gay rights stance. There is only one defense: You're a bigot. End story. Thank you.)
Regarding Medicaid, Santorum said that he doesn't want "... to make black people's lives better" by giving them taxpayer money. Once the media backlash from his generalized association of race and social programs hit, Santorum later said that he's pretty sure he didn't say "black people" but "blah people"...
...which clearly makes much more sense. After all, blah is the new black.
So, we can all rest assured that Santorum will continue to be a champion for the rights of Blah People everywhere for years to come. (Gay people, don't even think for one second that you could pass for blah.)
It's All Ages, Ladies!
We all know that Rick Perry loves God and guns... but did you know that he doesn't know the voting age in America? Apparently, Rick misspoke when he implied that the voting age was 21. Would you trust a bartender that thought the drinking age was 18? I mean, sure, he'll get you drunk your freshman year, but he probably goes by the name "Scooter" and he's going to run up extra charges on your debit card.
If that simple instance doesn't sufficiently express Perry's lack of connection with the voters, how about only being able to remember two of the three government agencies he wants to cut during the GOP debates? Perry would be able to remember the name of the agency if its elimination were actually vital to the health of our country, rather than just an arbitrary political talking point, but I wouldn't trust this guy to change his oil regularly, much less carry the nuclear football.
Again, my intent is not to nit-pick at verbal gaffes, but rather to stress just how out of touch with our country these politicians truly are. Americans need to fully understand how wealthy and separately unequal these people are from the voting public, which would be fine if they were committed to the middle class. But when it comes to these GOP candidates, it's not a question of whether or not they will help the middle class because it's clear that they wouldn't have any idea what to do even if they wanted to support the middle class. Asking Mitt Romney to lower your taxes is like asking Jerry Sandusky to walk past a military academy without breaking into a cold sweat. He'll smile and pretend like he's doing it, but it just won't happen.
It's so sad to look at the Iowa caucus and think, "Ron Paul is the only one out there who isn't an idiot or insane."Occupational Health and Safety – A Special Report
Remember the Dead; Fight for the Living – International Workers’ Memorial Day
April 28 has been commemorated as the International Workers’ Memorial Day since 1996. With its origins in the US, it has become an international day of remembrance of those who have been killed on the job or have suffered grievous injuries. It is also a time for the workers to collectively fight to make our workplaces safer. On April 28, 1971, after a long struggle by workers, the Occupational Health and Safety Act came into effect in the US. Ever since, unions there have marked the day as Workers’ Memorial Day. This has since been picked up in the developed economies and quickly spread through the world. In 1996, the International Trade Union Confederation began to observe the day as the International Workers’ Memorial Day, with events across the world. ILO, recognising its significance, has made it part of the UN system of commemorative days. April 28 is observed by ILO as the World Day for Safety and Health at Work.
In a statement released on April 28, ILO has maintained that the lack of credible data is a serious impediment to the work of improving safety and health at the workplace. In India too, the data on accidents and fatalities at work suffers from inaccuracies, discrepancies and under-reporting. Quite often, labour activists and unions are forced to depend on newspaper reports to compile data on work site accidents. In a recent interview with the press, Jagadish Patel of PTRC referred to the lack of information, while detailing worker deaths in Gujarat. He also raised the issue of banning asbestos in India. Mine Labour’s Protection Campaign also issued a press statement on this occasion detailing the health burden to workers as worker safety is diluted in Mines. Reuters has also published a report on health effects of noise pollution on workers in the power loom sector in India.
Numerous events were organised across the world to observe this day. Here are some reports from New York, England, Australia, New Zealand, and several cities of Europe. In India, OSH activists and trade unions organised meetings in Rajasthan and Gujarat.
Asbestos lobby prevails at Geneva at the cost of workers’ health
An international conference on regulating the production and trade of hazardous industrial chemicals was held at Geneva, Switzerland, between April 24 and May 5. Delegations from signatory nations of the Basel, Stockholm and Rotterdam Conventions participated in wide-ranging discussions on banning or regulating production, trade, and disposal of persistent organic pollutants and other hazardous chemicals.
Leading up to the conventions, trade unions across the world along with environmental groups raised the issue of banning or regulating the trade of Chrysotile Asbestos. Asbestos is still a major killer in the developing world, where its use has not been banned or regulated. WHO estimates that over 100,000 workers die every year due to exposure to asbestos.
According to estimates collected by Health Grove, India ranks second in deaths and years lost due to asbestosis. Though the trend is dropping, disproportionately more workers tend to die due to asbestos caused diseases every year. PTRC published a report titled ‘India: National Asbestos Profile’, which documents the use of asbestos in India, and the health consequences to workers. The report also indicated that nearly 50% of the asbestos use in India is concentrated in Gujarat.
There was a concerted effort once again this year, from trade union groups and environmental groups to include chrysotile asbestos in the list of chemicals that require exporters to obtain ‘prior informed consent’ from importers before being traded. Yet again, they saw no success, with India and seven other countries opposing the move. While most other opposing members are exporters, India is a major importer of asbestos, with minimal regulation on its use. FirstPost reported in 2014 about the clout and efforts of the asbestos lobby in India in influencing India’s policy towards this issue.
May Day recap:
Celebrations across the world
The Atlantic has a great photo feature collecting images of marches, riots and police confrontations from all over the world including “Moscow, Chicago, Paris, Manila, New York, San Salvador, St. Petersburg, Havana, Los Angeles, Istanbul, Bangalore, Seattle, Athens, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, and more.” You can view the article in full-screen and just use the arrow keys to scroll sideways.
In Turkey, people tried to march to Taksim Square where in 1977, 34 people were killed after shots were fired into the square from a nearby building. May Day events at Taksim are now banned. In Cambodia, thousands of garment workers marched to the Parliament to deliver a petition for higher minimum wages and more freedom of assembly. After a stand-off with the police, the petition was finally accepted by a representative of the government. There were similar protests by garment workers in Bangladesh. In Greece, thousands protested the forced austerity measures. In Portugal, one of the demands was for renegotiation of the national debt, the second-highest in the EU after Greece. See Associated Press’ reports from around the world.
Bonus: A Reading List (Happy Birthday to Marx!)
Other News/Reading Material:
Death of worker in manhole not registered under Manual Scavenging Act
As Uber Probes Sexual Harassment at Its Offices, It Overlooks Hundreds of Thousands of Female Drivers: “Because of how those ratings work, there’s an overall sense of fear among drivers that they could lose their jobs,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director at the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a union that includes more than 5,000 Uber drivers. “For women drivers — these are often working-class women — they are struggling to make ends meet.” Female drivers of taxis have long faced similar challenges in terms of sexual harassment, though Desai said that the glass partition in traditional cabs does offer women drivers a greater sense of security. And unlike Uber drivers, female cab drivers can’t be fired for low ratings. Danielle, a female Uber driver in California, recalled one harrowing ride during which she endured harassment from drunken passengers in silence for fear of a bad rating. “When I told the passengers I had seven children, one of the guys said, ‘Your vagina must be wrecked,’” she said in an interview for the website The Verge. “Driving for Uber, this is my job, and if my rating gets too low, I can lose it.” So instead of confronting the passengers, Danielle laughed alongside her drunken riders.Jaimee Alkinani and her husband had just bought their first home in a quiet suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. The three-bedroom house was in a nice neighborhood: tree-lined street, kids riding their bikes down the sidewalk, and friendly neighbors who waved when they passed. The family was on their way — they'd also just opened a small business near their home, had an 11-month-old child, and Jaimee was eight months pregnant. Life had officially started for the Alkinanis. But soon things turned for the worse.
A few days after they had moved in, a neighbor welcomed them with disturbing news. "Your house used to be a meth lab," he said—a fact that the seller had never disclosed. So they called their realtor. He told them not to worry, that the house had been decontaminated. He even produced a certificate from the local health department to prove it.
Then the family started getting sick. Within five months, Jaimee and her husband developed sinus problems that required surgery. When their baby was born, he had serious lung issues that caused him to stop breathing a few times. He also wasn’t gaining weight, and was in and out of the hospital.
So the Alkinanis had their house tested for methamphetamine. The results made Jaimee put her kids in the car and immediately abandon her new home, with all the family’s possessions still inside. The house’s level of methamphetamine contamination was 63 times higher than the level at which the Utah Department of Health condemns a house.
Houses formerly used as meth labs, called meth houses, put their residents at risk of serious health consequences, says Stan Smith, a doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the Drug Endangered Children Task Force, a division of the California Drug Enforcement Agency.
Upon moving into a meth house, people have experienced short-term health problems ranging from migraines and respiratory difficulties to skin irritation and burns. Long-term problems are less well known, but the results from a 2009 study in Toxicological Sciences suggest that methamphetamine chemicals may cause cancer in humans. And because children have small, developing bodies and a tendency to play on the ground and put things in their mouths, they are especially susceptible to adverse health effects from meth toxins. "When we go into a lab, if there are children, the first thing we do is take the children to the hospital and assess them for contamination," Smith says.
The chemicals used in methamphetamine production are highly toxic and range from pseudoephedrine—the main ingredient in meth and the active ingredient in decongestants—to any one of 32 other precursor chemicals. These include acetone, the active ingredient in nail polish remover, and phosphine, a widely used insecticide.
Home-cooking meth spreads toxins to every inch of the room where the meth was cooked and beyond. Nothing escapes contamination—the carpet, walls, furniture, drapes, air ducts, and even the air itself becomes toxic. "Ingesting some of these chemicals, even a tiny drop, can cause immediate death," Smith says.
"When we go into a meth lab, we have on respirators, Tyvec suits, shoe coverings, gloves and eye goggles," says Sgt. Cory Craig, a state highway patrolman and narcotics specialist based in northern Missouri. Police treat methamphetamine labs as hazardous waste sites. They remove meth-making hardware and chemicals, and often hire professional cleaning companies to sanitize the house.
The sheer amount of chemicals removed from labs is staggering. Consider Missouri alone. "Since 1998 we've seized 12,354 meth labs, 251,000 pounds of solid waste, and 118,000 pounds of toxic waste," Craig says.
In dealing with toxic chemicals, most meth lab clean-up crews follow general guidelines. In the room where the meth was made, they scrub all surfaces, repaint the walls, replace the carpets and air filters, and air out the property. However, there are no national standards for meth lab cleanups—regulations differ from state to state. And in some states, getting a license to decontaminate a house is as easy as taking a few hours of class and a written test. "There are some bad certification methods out there. You could be a pizza delivery guy, study for a month, pay $250 and be certified," said Joe Mazzuca, a methamphetamine contamination expert and CEO of Meth Lab Cleanup, a nationwide meth-lab-specific cleanup company based in Boise, Idaho. In the Alkinanis’ case, the person who decontaminated their house shirked his responsibility by cleaning too quickly and not using the correct cleaning agents.
And although some states, such as Colorado, Washington and North Carolina, employ effective regulations, some experts think that many may not. In Idaho, for example, a former lab is deemed "clean" when there is less than one tenth of a microgram of methamphetamine per square centimeter in the room where the drug was cooked. If the amount of meth detected is at such a low level, some state regulators think, the precursor chemicals are at low levels too. "We just check for meth," says Jim Faust of Idaho's statewide Clandestine Drug Lab Cleanup Program, based in Boise.
Like Idaho, many states only check for meth in the room where the drug was cooked. This method doesn't account for toxic dust or harmful chemicals that may have traveled to other parts of the house. Another compounding factor is that many states do not require that the person cleaning be professionally trained or licensed in methamphetamine or hazardous waste cleanup.
Of all the toxic chemicals in a meth house, the drug itself is probably the hardest to clean up, but it's actually the least toxic. The precursor chemicals pose the greatest health risk to residents of a former meth lab. When people smoke or shoot meth they face serious health risks, but they usually don't die—they just get high. Many of meth's toxic precursors, if smoked or injected, are lethal.
Even if a meth house is cleaned properly, some contamination experts worry that the toxins may hang around. Glenn Morrison, an engineering professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, questions the adequacy of current meth house cleanup standards, emphasizing their failure to ensure the removal of toxins that are absorbed by the home. "These clean-ups tend to be somewhat superficial when it comes to permanent building materials," he says.
Morrison recently received funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to investigate exactly how methamphetamine contamination resides in buildings. He hopes to figure out whether current meth lab cleanup protocols properly address contamination. "Building materials absorb pollutants, even if the materials are not obviously porous or fleecy. This contamination can be re-released, even after the building has been cleaned," Morrison says.
Professional meth house cleanup contractors estimate that about 90 percent of meth houses are never uncovered, and their tenants will likely never know about their homes’ toxicity. Many of the meth houses that are discovered are listed on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) National Clandestine Laboratory Register or on other state databases.
The DEA's registry lists 113,464 meth labs that were uncovered from 1999 to 2008. But this figure doesn't account for any undiscovered meth labs and many meth experts think it's an underestimate. "The record keeping is horrific. The DEA's list can’t be relied upon because it's completely voluntary,” says Dawn Turner, who started methlabhomes.com, a free, web-based resource for people who have unknowingly purchased a meth house. "I've heard estimates that there are a million to a million and a half meth homes and most of them are never found by the police department," she adds. In the area where the Alkinanis lived, there were 250 known meth houses and most of their owners had no clue about their homes' nefarious past. The exact number of meth houses in U.S. is still unknown.
And although meth houses are more concentrated in certain states—Missouri is the meth capitol of the world, with 1,471 labs discovered in 2008 alone—there are meth houses in all fifty states. Consider a lab found in Framingham, Mass., a town with an average home price of around $350,000. Or one found in Norwalk, Conn., where the average home is valued at $694,000. "There is a misconception that these houses are crack houses. They are absolutely not. A meth house in Kentucky recently went on the market for $700,000 dollars," Turner says.
With so many homes potentially contaminated by methamphetamine production, Turner estimates that thousands to tens of thousands of people have discovered that what they thought was the American dream—a nice home for the family—is actually an American nightmare—the potential cause of a range of health problems and a stack of medical bills. But is the issue receiving enough attention? Not for people like Turner. "States are really dragging their feet on this issue," she says.
The Alkinanis agree. Because there were no meth lab disclosure laws in Utah at the time they bought their house, they have no financial or legal recourse. "We are paying the price for what one person did," says Jaimee Alkinani. "My child will likely have a lifetime of permanent medical issues because of this house, and we are going into bankruptcy because we can't sell the house."
This article is provided by Scienceline, a project of New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.First published Tue Aug 26, 2003; substantive revision Wed Apr 12, 2017
Karl Marx (1818–1883) is best known not as a philosopher but as a revolutionary, whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. It is hard to think of many who have had as much influence in the creation of the modern world. Trained as a philosopher, Marx turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties, towards economics and politics. However, in addition to his overtly philosophical early work, his later writings have many points of contact with contemporary philosophical debates, especially in the philosophy of history and the social sciences, and in moral and political philosophy. Historical materialism — Marx’s theory of history — is centered around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx sees the historical process as proceeding through a necessary series of modes of production, characterized by class struggle, culminating in communism. Marx’s economic analysis of capitalism is based on his version of the labour theory of value, and includes the analysis of capitalist profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. The analysis of history and economics come together in Marx’s prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown of capitalism, to be replaced by communism. However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realisation of a pre-determined moral ideal.
Karl Marx was born in Trier, in the German Rhineland, in 1818. Although his family was Jewish they converted to Christianity so that his father could pursue his career as a lawyer in the face of Prussia’s anti-Jewish laws. A precocious schoolchild, Marx studied law in Bonn and Berlin, and then wrote a PhD thesis in Philosophy, comparing the views of Democritus and Epicurus. On completion of his doctorate in 1841 Marx hoped for an academic job, but he had already fallen in with too radical a group of thinkers and there was no real prospect. Turning to journalism, Marx rapidly became involved in political and social issues, and soon found himself having to consider communist theory. Of his many early writings, four, in particular, stand out. ‘Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Introduction’, and ‘On The Jewish Question’, were both written in 1843 and published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, written in Paris 1844, and the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ of 1845, remained unpublished in Marx’s lifetime.
The German Ideology, co-written with Engels in 1845, was also unpublished but this is where we see Marx beginning to develop his theory of history. The Communist Manifesto is perhaps Marx’s most widely read work, even if it is not the best guide to his thought. This was again jointly written with Engels and published with a great sense of excitement as Marx returned to Germany from exile to take part in the revolution of 1848. With the failure of the revolution Marx moved to London where he remained for the rest of his life. He now concentrated on the study of economics, producing, in 1859, his Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy. This is largely remembered for its Preface, in which Marx sketches out what he calls ‘the guiding principles’ of his thought, on which many interpretations of historical materialism are based. Marx’s main economic work is, of course, Capital (Volume 1), published in 1867, although Volume 3, edited by Engels, and published posthumously in 1894, contains much of interest. Finally, the late pamphlet Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) is an important source for Marx’s reflections on the nature and organisation of communist society.
The works so far mentioned amount only to a small fragment of Marx’s opus, which will eventually run to around 100 large volumes when his collected works are completed. However the items selected above form the most important core from the point of view of Marx’s connection with philosophy, although other works, such as the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), are often regarded as equally important in assessing Marx’s analysis of concrete political events. In what follows, I shall concentrate on those texts and issues that have been given the greatest attention within the Anglo-American philosophical literature.
The intellectual climate within which the young Marx worked was dominated by the influence of Hegel, and the reaction to Hegel by a group known as the Young Hegelians, who rejected what they regarded as the conservative implications of Hegel’s work. The most significant of these thinkers was Ludwig Feuerbach, who attempted to transform Hegel’s metaphysics, and, thereby, provided a critique of Hegel’s doctrine of religion and the state. A large portion of the philosophical content of Marx’s works written in the early 1840s is a record of his struggle to define his own position in reaction to that of Hegel and Feuerbach and those of the other Young Hegelians.
In this text Marx begins to make clear the distance between himself and his radical liberal colleagues among the Young Hegelians; in particular Bruno Bauer. Bauer had recently written against Jewish emancipation, from an atheist perspective, arguing that the religion of both Jews and Christians was a barrier to emancipation. In responding to Bauer, Marx makes one of the most enduring arguments from his early writings, by means of introducing a distinction between political emancipation — essentially the grant of liberal rights and liberties — and human emancipation. Marx’s reply to Bauer is that political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the contemporary example of the United States demonstrates. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings who are a threat to our liberty and security. Therefore liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility — for Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. Accordingly, insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways that undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation. Now we should be clear that Marx does not oppose political emancipation, for he sees that liberalism is a great improvement on the systems of feudalism and religious prejudice and discrimination which existed in the Germany of his day. Nevertheless, such politically emancipated liberalism must be transcended on the route to genuine human emancipation. Unfortunately, Marx never tells us what human emancipation is, although it is clear that it is closely related to the idea of non-alienated labour, which we will explore below.
This work is home to Marx’s notorious remark that religion is the ‘opiate of the people’, a harmful, illusion-generating painkiller, and it is here that Marx sets out his account of religion in most detail. Just as importantly Marx here also considers the question of how revolution might be |
, since aggressive decks will be more prevalent. However, Simic has a strong strategy against both Orzhov and Dimir, which means that it will probably be one of the most important decks in the format as the season progresses.
Simic also gets a lot of help from its neighboring guilds. From blue, it gets access to Cipher. Hands of Binding on Cloudfin Raptor will probably be one of the best things you can do in the format. Even Last Thoughts seems pretty good if it is on an evasive creature and drawing you more creatures with which to evolve what you have on the board. Simic is also well positioned to take advantage of Bloodrush. Both Slaughterhorn and Scab-Clan Charger will be useful in evolving Simic creatures, and they let you get in some attacks that you wouldn’t be able to make otherwise.
Recommendations
Before I end this article, I wanted to post one more chart to compare the statistics from all of the guilds. I’ve already discussed these numbers in detail, but I wanted to make sure that this data could be put up side by side so that people can study the numbers and form some of their own conclusions.
Average Statistics of Creatures in Gatecrash, Arranged by Guild
And to wrap things up, here are my recommendations for Gatecrash:
1. Gatecrash is going to start off as a fast format. The creatures are naturally built to be able to attack and trade often. You need to be able to interact in the early game. Also, it will be hard to keep creatures on the board early on.
2. Orzhov is well placed to be the best guild in the format. It has all the tools it needs to compete with all of the other guilds, and it doesn’t have any glaring weaknesses.
3. Many people will be fooled into thinking that Gruul is strong because of the high numbers in the bottom right corner of the card, but you should keep in mind that Gruul’s creatures have serious problems with their casting costs.
4. Each of the guilds in Gatecrash has a lot of synergy with the guilds that neighbor it. One of the key things you need to do is pay attention to how you can take advantage of the tools that are given you by the other guilds.
As always, you can follow me on twitter @oraymw for updates about articles, or for random MTG talk. Furthermore, you can check out my Tumblr account at http://oraymw.tumblr.com/ where I post links to my articles as they go up, and where I’ll be writing occasional editorials about Magic. I’m excited to be able to draft Gatecrash, and I hope that you all enjoy your prerelease.
Thanks so much for checking out Ars Arcanum, and we’ll be back again later with another in depth look at the MTGO Cube.The United States Department of Agriculture will relax a decades-long ban on the importation of many cured-pork products from some regions of Italy starting May 28, greatly increasing the number and variety of salumi in markets and restaurants here.
On Friday, the department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services announced that an in-country assessment had determined that four regions and two provinces in Northern Italy are free of swine vesicular disease, a dangerous communicable ailment that infects pigs, and that “the importation of pork or pork products from these areas presents a low risk.”
Some pork importers and producers, in this country and in Italy, celebrated the changes, saying they would allow more Italian cured-pork products to make their way to American tables.
But others were unable to judge the ultimate impact of the ruling because the Inspection Services did not specify what standards would now have to be met by Italian producers, nor the expense of meeting them. Despite repeated requests, the agency did not immediately provide more details about its decision.Plenty of athletes try to follow in the footsteps of a successful older sibling. Mark Sherrod made one of the smartest decisions of his life when he decided to forge his own path in a different sport.
As a teenager, Sherrod decided he would never be as good a swimmer as his brother and gave it up to focus on soccer. Swapping pool for pitch proved a shrewd move when he flourished as a striker at the University of Memphis. The Dynamo took notice and selected him with the 13th pick of the second round (32nd overall) in this year’s SuperDraft.
After an impressive preseason, head coach Dominic Kinnear immediately called the 23-year-old into MLS action, bringing him on as an 89th minute substitute in each of the first two fixtures, the home wins over the New England Revolution and the Montreal Impact.
Making his debut in the season opener in front of a full house at BBVA Compass Stadium was beyond Sherrod’s expectations. “I was very surprised but I’m really excited that happened. It was like an ongoing thing—walking into the stadium was amazing, warming up was amazing, and everything getting up to that white line and subbing in. That’s a dream come true,” he told HoustonDynamo.com.
“He's worked hard in preseason, played pretty well. But no charity, I think he's earned the couple of minutes that he got there and good for him, he's been playing well so far,” said Kinnear last week.
Sherrod said it came as a complete surprise when he was drafted by the Dynamo. “There was tons of mock drafts online and it was always different teams, but not one linked anything to Houston, so it was a huge shock—but it was a great fit,” he said. “I look at all the stats and everything, this team has done so well it’s unbelievable. It’s been a constant winning program down here. Great city, great people, great team. I’m really excited.”
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee—a state not renowned for producing elite soccer players—Sherrod scored 42 goals in 71 games for the Memphis Tigers over four years. He was named Conference USA player of the year after finding the net 19 times in 18 appearances in 2011. There was pre-draft speculation that he would end up with the Portland Timbers, having played for their under-23 side in the Premier Development League.
Standing 6 feet 3 inches and strong in the air, Sherrod figures to be a powerful physical presence and a threat when the ball is played high into the penalty area. That could prove useful for the Dynamo given Brad Davis’ pinpoint delivery on crosses. And while he would readily admit that he is far from the finished article, Sherrod’s work-rate and ability to hold the ball up should make him an asset defensively as well.
His timing is impeccable: two players from 2013 with similar skill sets, Cam Weaver (now with Seattle Sounders) and Brian Ching (retired), are no longer on the scene. Will Bruin and Giles Barnes seem set as Kinnear’s first-choice strike partnership, but if Sherrod continues to develop it looks like he could be a solid option off the bench.
Since Ching is one of the top American strikers of the past decade it is hardly surprising that Sherrod cites the Dynamo icon as an inspiration. “He definitely was someone I always kept a close eye on just because the way he played is similar to me,” he said.
“I strive to try to play like him—someone who’s good in the air, someone who can play with his back to goal, so I just try to emulate him as much as I can. Whenever I was growing up and I first started hearing about the Dynamo, all I ever heard was Ching. So I just kept watching him and it was unbelievable, I learned a lot.”
As for choosing soccer above swimming: no regrets. “I was playing soccer in the fall and spring and in summer I’d swim. Football never worked out, I played a little basketball but it didn’t work out and swimming was the only sport in the summer that you could play and not have it interfere with soccer. I loved it and I did it since I was four or five,” Sherrod said.
His brother, Will, is four years older and swam at the University of Tennessee. “Growing up it was between soccer and swimming for me,” the striker said. “My brother was an unbelievable swimmer in Knoxville and I couldn’t quite live up to his hype so I chose soccer and haven’t looked back.”
Tom Dart is a contributing writer to HoustonDynamo.com. Former editor and reporter for The Times of London and reporter for SI.com, Dart currently freelances for The Guardian.The supermassive black hole has been identified, but her explorations are far from over. Theories of galactic evolution suggest that the Milky Way’s center should have lots of old stars and almost no young stars. Observations show the opposite. Ghez’s group is also tracking a mysterious, glowing infrared blob called G2 that skimmed past the black hole in 2014. And now, using their decades-long data set, her team has begun testing whether the stars orbiting the black hole move according to the rules of Einstein’s general relativity or are subject to exotic deviations from theory.
Quanta caught up with Ghez to hear about these projects and her plans. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You use new telescope technology to address deep theoretical questions. Which one comes first for you: observation or theory?
I think that’s a great question about creativity and discovery. Like, how do you figure out your next project? For me, what floats my boat the most is to figure out new ways of seeing things; to reveal puzzles. What makes me happiest is when observations don’t make sense. And in order for observations to not make sense in a new way — in other words to not be doing incremental work — you need to be looking in a way that’s different.
Your team and Reinhard Genzel’s group disagreed about how to interpret the observations of G2. They thought it was a gas cloud; your group suggested it was a star. Can you walk us through what happened when it passed the black hole in 2014?
I was pretty convinced that you could explain this object with a model in which you said the object was actually intrinsically a star. One of the key determinants of whether it was a pure gas cloud or a star was whether or not it survived closest approach in 2014. It happily survived.
The interpretation that I am most intrigued by is the idea that you are seeing an object that began its life as a binary star. And if you put very close binaries near a black hole, it turns out to induce what’s known as a three-body interaction, and the binary can merge. So black holes can drive binaries to merge more quickly than they would anywhere else in our galaxy. You end up with an object that has the characteristics of what we are looking at.An incendiary idea first put forward by right-wing radio host Mark Levin is now burning across Washington, fanned by President Trump's tweets and a huge number of supportive commentators and websites -- even though the facts don't back up the conclusion.
Breitbart News has given the conspiracy theory a name: "DeepStateGate." Others are going with "ObamaGate." And Fox News host Sean Hannity is asking: "What did OBAMA know and when did he know it???"
Levin's original idea, advanced on Thursday, was that former President Barack Obama and his allies have mounted a "silent coup" against Trump using "police state" tactics. Levin cherry-picked news stories that supported his thesis and omitted information that cut against it.
The next day, Rush Limbaugh echoed Levin's "silent coup" language, and Breitbart columnist Joel Pollak published an "expanded version of that case."
That's how the idea reached Trump's radar. The Breitbart article "circulated" in the West Wing, a White House official told CNN's Jeff Zeleny, and the information "infuriated" Trump.
To be clear, Levin and Limbaugh and Pollak didn't publish any original reporting. They merely claimed to have connected some dots.
The president's tweetstorm on Saturday morning went even further than Levin and Pollak's opinion pieces. Trump alleged that "Obama was tapping my phones in October," just before Election Day, adding that he "just found out" about it.
There is no evidence to back up this theory. While the government has been investigating Russian attempts to interfere with the election, a spokesman for Obama called any suggestion that Obama or any White House official ordered surveillance against Trump "simply false."
Related: FBI asks Justice Department to refute Trump wiretap claim
"Most reporters I know are digging on this," CNN's Jake Tapper tweeted on Sunday. "But every current intel voice is saying they know of nothing to back up this claim."
Former CIA officer and independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin said on CNN's "New Day" Monday morning that Trump is "taking action based on information he's receiving from far-right, conspiratorial media outlets."
"That is highly concerning," he said.
But some right-wing sites are treating Trump's unfounded claims like undeniable fact. One of the top headlines on The Gateway Pundit on Sunday read: "Incompetent AND Criminal: Obama's Wiretapping of President Trump Icing on the Cake of Worst President Ever."
Other sites are taking a different tack, downplaying the severity of the president's charges against his predecessor.
Levin and Pollak's opinion pieces relied heavily on anonymously sourced reports from the BBC, The Guardian and the new Murdoch-owned conservative outlet Heat Street about requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from June and October 2016.
Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler said these are "sketchy, anonymously sourced reports." CNN has not been able to confirm them. But those reports, alleging efforts by the FBI to monitor Trump associates with suspected ties to Russia, became the basis of the conspiracy theory.
Trump genuinely believes the reports, according to Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, who said he spoke with the president twice on Saturday in Florida.
"He is very confident he will be proven right, said the first FISA was rejected, second one approved," Ruddy said in an email message on Sunday.
Trump's playbook: Go on offense with a new conspiracy theory
Ruddy added that Trump "seemed to know the whole trails of the FISA actions and was recounting them to me."
This description matches what Breitbart reported on Friday.
Pollak posted a story on Sunday night that reflected the weekend's successful reframing.
"The spotlight is now on President Barack Obama and his administration's alleged surveillance of the Trump campaign," he wrote, "as well as his aides' reported efforts to spread damaging information about Trump."
Levin continued to press the case on Sunday through an appearance on Fox and a steady stream of social media posts.
He dismissed skeptical news reports as "fake news" and insulted individual journalists who disagreed with him.
In an email conversation with CNNMoney, Levin asserted that "the public record is damning of the Obama administration."
"It was investigating the campaign of a presidential candidate of an opposing party during the course of the campaign. Its use of FISA, loosening of NSA distribution requirements, husbanding and protecting information at the behest of White House staff on the way out the door, and recent leaks of confidential and perhaps classified information is extraordinary," he wrote.
"Everything I just said is based on media reports, including and especially the New York Times," he added. "It's time to get to the bottom of the extent of what took place in the Obama administration and who was involved. If Obama had no idea about any of this, then he must not have read the newspapers during his presidency, since some of it was public while he was president."C.P. Chandrasekhar
In a move that went contrary to what is expected of regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the US approved in mid-December a controversial JP Morgan-created exchange-traded fund (ETF) backed by physical supplies of copper. The fund will use investor money to buy and hold copper, presumably to earn a profit when prices rise. According to a NASDAQ analysis the investment vehicle will register 6.18 million shares backed by 61,800 metric tonnes of copper in physical form stored in warehouses approved by the London Metal Exchange or located in the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, China and the US, and not approved by the LME. With this decision of the SEC, copper joins metals such as gold, silver, platinum, and palladium that are already traded through ETFs. If the JP Morgan proposal goes through so would another ETF proposed by Blackrock titled iShares Copper Trust, which awaits SEC approval.
Copper is a metal much in demand for electricity wiring and various industrial uses that are growth areas in many emerging markets. The result is that copper has been trading in rather tight markets. According to the International Copper Study Group, apparent global usage of copper rose by grew by 5.2 per cent during the the first nine months of 2012 as compared with the corresponding period of 2011, driven largely by a 19 per cent increase in China’s apparent usage. China accounted for 43 per cent of world usage over this period. As a result the refined copper balance for the first nine months of 2012 points to a deficit of 594,000 tonnes, which was more than a third of refined copper production with capacity utilised to the extent of 80 per cent. While slowing growth in China may have led to accumulation of inventories, the market is indeed tight. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, copper will be the strongest performer among metals in 2013, with prices rising by 12 per cent thanks to the supply-demand balance.
Given this context, the SEC’s decision has been mired in controversy though taken after a delay of more than two years since JP Morgan first proposed the fund. The fundamental issue is whether the process of buying and holding claims on physical stocks of copper would keep supplies out of a tight market and drive up prices to deliver speculative gains to financial investors. Copper traders and users argue it would. The JP Morgan and Blackrock ETF’s together would, in their view, reduce copper available for immediate delivery by about 34 per cent and “wreak havoc” as a result of a “substantial artificially induced rise in near-term copper prices.” Complainants include companies such as Southwire, Encore Wire, Luvata and AmRod and a trading house, Red Kite.
The SEC on the other hand has held that since copper held by the fund can be redeemed in three business days against a share purchase, there would be no “meaningful change” in availability. Rather, in its view this provides another route to purchasing copper and thereby increases competition in the market. This argument makes little sense since creating a financial instrument against physical copper is essentially a way of offering one more alternative asset to financial investors interested in profiting from speculation in the copper market. At a time when restrictions on futures trading in commodities has been recommended by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, inducing additional elements of speculation into the market is hardly defensible.
Moreover, the SEC’s argument, which suggests that it has bought into JP Morgan’s reasoning, flies in the face of facts. Thus, according to the Financial Times, since the launch of physical gold ETFs in the US in 2004, they have collectively acquired $140 billion worth of gold (which is more than what most central banks hold), in the aftermath of which gold prices have risen by 282 per cent. Similarly, a new palladium ETF launched in 2010 acquired 505,000 ounces in two months, which was equivalent to 42 per cent of mine production over the period. The result was that prices rose to a two-year high, forcing even JP Morgan to admit that ETF buying had “crowded out” the market.
Stuart Burns, writing on Seeking Alpha, refers to similar evidence from the aluminium market. According to him: “Financial involvement has distorted the aluminium market so badly that there are officially some 5 million tons and potentially twice that sitting isolated from the market in park-and-ride finance deals. The resulting competition for metal has created premiums for primary ingot over and above the LME price.”
In sum, the SEC was not short of evidence to reject JP Morgan’s proposal. That it has instead decided to back it points to the influence that finance capital exerts. At the time of the 2008 financial crisis there was enough evidence that it was not because of regulatory failure but in part because of regulatory capture and collusion that matters took the turn they did. The post-crisis debate had raised expectations that this would be corrected. The SEC’s decision, along with developments in other markets, is strong evidence that those expectations have been belied.
Triple Crisis Welcomes Your Comments. Please Share Your Thoughts Below.There are many unknowns heading into this weekend’s Tequila Patron Sports Car Showcase at Long Beach, but perhaps none more than how the Balance of Performance in the Prototype class will shake out.
January’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona unsurprisingly saw DP domination, and while Chip Ganassi Racing’s Riley-Ford came out on top at the Twelve Hours of Sebring, three P2 cars finished inside the top-five after showing race-winning pace.
Now, the new-look category heads to its first street race of the season, and for the first time this year, without any BoP changes from the previous race.
Whether the tight and twisty 1.9-mile 11-turn circuit will suit the light-and-nimble P2 cars or the heavier and more powerful DP machines, depends on who you ask in the TUDOR Championship paddock.
“From what I can see, I think there’s going to be a clear advantage on the P2 side,” said points leader Joao Barbosa, driver of the No. 5 Action Express Corvette DP. “At Sebring, we had faster corners and a little bit longer straights.
“Here, everything is tighter, so aero is going to be very important. The P2 cars are very nimble and agile and much lighter cars than what we are.
“We’re probably going to struggle a little bit more. But I don’t see why we can’t have a good result here.”
A select number of P2 teams head into the 100-minute race with a leg up, at least from a setup perspective.
Extreme Speed Motorsports claimed class victory here last year with its HPD ARX-03b, although shod with Michelin tires, while OAK Racing will be able to lean off the experience of Conquest Endurance in 2012 with the same Morgan-Nissan package.
DP cars, however, haven’t raced at Long Beach since 2006, with little to no carry over from the Gen 1 cars into 2014-spec prototypes, which boast a significant increase in horsepower and downforce, along with the addition of carbon brakes.
For ESM’s Ryan Dalziel, who is one of five Prototype drivers in this weekend’s race that took part in the DP event nearly a decade ago, the now-P2 pilot doesn’t necessarily feel it could be in their favor.
“I think we can be very close or we can be way off. I think that’s the same on the DP side,” said Dalziel, who claimed a PC class victory at Long Beach in 2012.
“I’ve driven the DP here, albeit one of the older generation cars. But one place [a P2 car] will struggle is in the extreme slow-speed corners due to nature of our car works best with downforce on.
“I’m definitely hoping that through the last section, the [Turns] 9-10 complex, that’s going to be one of our strong points. The front straight won’t be a strong point for us but hopefully we’ll have good mechanical grip out of the hairpin.”
Michael Shank Racing’s Ozz Negri, meanwhile, has tried to take a philosophical approach to the weekend.
“I’ve been trying to think really hard where the BoP will be but… I’m a little lost still,” Negri said. “I thought the P2 cars were going to blow us away at Sebring and they didn’t. A DP car was on pole and a DP car won the race.
“I’m not confident in saying it will be a P2 car or DP car [that wins the race]. I think the two cars are strong in different points.
“What comes to my mind is how hard we’re driving the [DP] and trying to keep the tires longer in the car. That’s one of the hardest parts.”
Dalziel agrees that tire degradation could end up playing a factor, which could tip the race into the favor of the P2 cars, who will likely be able to do the entire race on a single set of Continental tires.
“It’s really going to come down to how both cars react on the Continental [tires] on a short race,” Dalziel added. “I think it’s going to be very difficult to predict because I think the winner will be based upon yellows.
“I think it’s no secret that the DP gets up to speed quicker than us but I also think it’s no secret that we’re better on tires over a stint.
“If it’s a green race, we’re in good shape. If there’s a lot of yellows, we’ll probably not be in as good of shape. We’re hoping for a green race.”Critics deplore Leni Riefenstahl footage of Hitler games in official video – as ministry stresses mistake should not detract from Greek tourism success
The Greek government has been forced to re-edit a tourism video unveiled in London this week because it contained footage of the infamous 1936 Olympics held in Berlin under Hitler.
The offending clip, which depicted the torch lighting ceremony at the controversial pre-war games, would be “removed immediately” officials said, after being alerted to the gaffe by the Guardian. By last night the original version of the video had been taken down from YouTube.
“This was a commemorative video marking 100 years of the Greek tourism organisation, that was shown in the UK for the first time, and we wanted to include footage from the Olympic games,” explained the tourism ministry’s general secretary, Panos Livadas.
In a telephone interview from London on Thursday, where industry figures had gathered for the World Travel Market, the sector’s pre-eminent global event, Livadas added: “In the sequence, a scene from the 1936 Olympics was mistakenly included which we will immediately remove and rectify.”
The Berlin games, used by Hitler to promote racial superiority and the ideals of Nazism, were the first to portray the ceremonial relay of the Olympic flame.
At about eight minutes into the footage, (taken from a film compiled by the German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl the Fuhrer’s favourite propagandist) a blond, blue-eyed athlete, meant to embody Aryanism, is seen holding the Olympic torch aloft as he skips up a stairway to light the cauldron. The scene lasts barely a second before an image of a more recent torch lighting ceremony appears.
Officials attributed the error to a technical oversight, saying it should not be given undue emphasis at a time when tourism, the mainstay of Greece’s otherwise crisis-hit economy, was doing extremely well.
Despite a precipitous decline in holidaymakers from Russia and the Ukraine, the Mediterranean country attracted more than 20 million visitors – almost double the entire Greek population – amounting to a growth rate of more than 16% this year alone.
“We have not just had a great reception here in London, we have had two back-to-back record years in terms of tourist arrivals and revenues,” said Livadas. “The rise will continue next year, which is great news for a sector that employs 700,000 people. And that is what we should be focusing on. That is what is important.”
But the video rapidly elicited an excoriating response from viewers, not least from some Greeks. In online exchanges many said the error had been exacerbated by the film’s hackneyed presentation of Greece as a land of gods, myths and ancient heroes.
At almost 12 minutes long the video, which inexplicably opens with a shot of New York and is narrated by an American (who participated as a US team member in the 1984 winter Olympics), includes almost no images of contemporary life, or young innovative Greeks.
“It is very tiring and after a bit irritates with its outdated aesthetics,” wrote Robin Savas Savidis in an observation posted beneath the video’s YouTube slot. “It is reminiscent of a cheap soap opera [with] optical effects that verge on the ridiculous,” he said, echoing a widely held view.
Deploring the decision to include the scene from the 1936 Olympic games, Ares Kalogeropoulos, another critic wrote: “It is perhaps the most repellent thing I have ever seen or paid for as a taxpayer.”The food justice trend hit Scripps College recently, where some students at the all-women’s institution boycotted their cafeteria last Thursday to protest the food provider, Sodexo, which they accused of being neocolonial imperialists.
The Claremont Independent reports that the student-led campaign, called “Drop Sodexo,” included a one-day boycott as well as a simultaneous protest outside the dining hall. The students hosted an “alternative community lunch event” for those who took part, according to the effort’s Facebook page.
Scripps College costs about $50,000 annually in tuition and fees to attend.
A Drop Sodexo official statement, published earlier this year, notes:
Sodexo, the 18th largest corporation in the world, is infamous for its host of civil rights abuses, exploitative labor policies, neoliberalism, anti-unionism, substandard food quality, violations of food safety, environmental destruction, racial discrimination, major class-action lawsuits, ownership of private prisons, and much more. The overwhelming profits and capital they have accumulated to make them one of the most powerful multinational corporations in the world are derived from incredible injustices, namely unpaid or underpaid labor from private prisons, unlivable wages, neocolonial relationships that allow them to acquire cheap raw materials from nations of the Global South, substantial gains from military contracts, and others that are too numerous to count. … As a Scripps community, we cannot stand back and allow Sodexo to continue their ruthless practices. We cannot be responsible for supporting what they represent. In its current form, having a contract with Sodexo and paying them to control our dining and facility services means we are investing in the injustices that they carry out in almost every corner of the globe. We are encouraging their growth as one of the largest multinational corporations to ever exist, feeding into their power and allowing them to gain momentum in their imperialist projects. The big picture goal is to put an end to these injustices perpetrated by Sodexo.
Campus officials, for their part, say they are tied down in a contract that does not expire until 2020, and that cutting ties early would cost more than $1 million, adding the college “does not have a policy of disqualifying contractors based on their client or investment portfolio.”
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Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on TwitterThe federal government dropped a bomb on college basketball Tuesday, indicting 10 men in a wide-spread fraud and bribery scheme involving top recruits, college programs, agents, financial planners and the shoe and apparel company Adidas.
It’s thorough. It’s ugly. It’s unprecedented.
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“Fraud and corruption in the world of college basketball,” Joon H. Kim, Acting U.S. Attorney said at a news conference in Manhattan on Tuesday.
Assistant coaches at Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State and USC were all arrested and their programs are almost certainly in dire straights with both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and NCAA. The evidence here is based on an undercover FBI agent, wiretapped phones, recordings, written communication and financial transaction data. The feds win nearly every case for a reason. And the indicted haven’t even started flipping yet.
Also in the crossfire is so-called “University 2,” which in the complaints is described in a way that resembles the University of South Carolina and only the University of South Carolina – “a public research university located in South Carolina … with over 30,000 students …”
Then there is “University 6” which is described in a way that resembles the University of Louisville and only the University of Louisville, linking it to a $100,000 payout for one recruit and a potential $150,000 payout for another, all while on probation for a scandal involving using prostitutes to lure other recruits. “University 6” doesn’t appear to be in any legal trouble, yet, but the NCAA is another story.
Reading between the lines, it’s clear that Rick Pitino’s Louisville program has been caught up in an FBI probe that rocked the college basketball world Tuesday. (AP)
Story continues
The above alone consist of a national championship program with a Hall of Fame coach (Louisville), a Final Four team from 2017 (South Carolina), historic powerhouses (Arizona, Oklahoma State), as well as major schools (USC and Auburn) with a history of NCAA problems.
Death penalty. Postseason bans. Mass firings. It’s going to be a scorched earth, the bill coming due on a sport that has operated in the shadows of corruption for generations.
Yet for college hoops none of it represents the scariest part of the three complaints laid out by the DOJ on Tuesday. This, a statement by said undercover FBI agent, should terrify every coach in America:
“Because this affidavit is being submitted for the limited purpose of establishing probable cause, it does not include all of the facts that I have learned during the court of the investigation.”
Meaning, this is the tip of the iceberg.
“Our investigation is ongoing,” FBI assistant director Bill Sweeney warned. “And we are currently conducting interviews.”
“If you yourself engaged in these activities, I’d encourage you to call us,” said Kim, the Acting U.S. Attorney. “I think it’s better than us calling you.”
The operation that the feds laid out is college basketball recruiting 101. It began when a prominent financial planner from the sports world was ensnared in a securities fraud case and turned into a cooperating witness. He was able to bring an undercover FBI agent along as a supposed assistant for meetings, payouts, recorded conversations and so on.
Top basketball talent is worth more on the open market than the NCAA limit of scholarship, room, board and a small stipend. NCAA limits are an attempt to stop the wheels of capitalism, which like floodwater will simply readjust and go where it wants.
A top high school player can make a school and its coaches millions. His future potential can make shoe companies and others even more. His likely NBA earnings in this era of the one-and-done make him a coveted future client for agents, financial planners, even clothiers, real estate agents and car salesmen.
Families, aware of their son’s worth, have their hands out.
“The mom is like … we need our [expletive] money,” sports agent Christian Dawkins is alleged to have said during a July 27 meeting in a Las Vegas hotel room about the mother of a top recruit in the class of 2019, according to the indictment.
It came during a meeting between Dawkins, Brad Augustine, a prominent Florida-based travel team basketball coach, an assistant coach from “University 6,” the cooperating financial planner and the undercover FBI agent, who recorded it and bugged the room.
Paying the family to go to a certain school not only aids the school’s team on the basketball court, it builds up the relationship between the player/family and the assistant coach. The school gets a great talent, while the assistant coach creates additional trust with the player/family.
Those college coaches then receive kickbacks ($13,000 here, $9,000 there, according to the indictments) from Adidas or the agents/financial planner to steer the player to them when he reaches the NBA. A young player turning pro will almost always seek guidance on who should represent him, or who can give him a good deal on a car or a draft night suit.
Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim lays out the case against four assistant basketball coaches from Arizona, Auburn, USC and Oklahoma State. (AP)
One hand washes the other. Rinse and repeat.
None of this is any surprise for anyone who follows the sport. Proving it, though, has always been nearly impossible … neither the NCAA nor investigative reporters have the resources of the FBI, nor the ability to provide the legal pressure that flips someone into a cooperating witness.
So now the lid is off the jar and where this ends is anyone’s guess.
Tuesday, college coaches were calling emergency staff meetings and coaches at all levels were consulting attorneys. This is an entirely different level than anyone has seen before, not a mostly toothless NCAA, but a motivated FBI and U.S. Attorney in New York looking to make a big media splash.
And splash they will. Even if there aren’t legal ramifications for everyone, the recruiting dirt that is about to get turned over will be unprecedented. The code of silence that has protected the sport and the NCAA’s system of “amateurism” is about to be cracked into a million pieces under FBI questioning, where a single lie is a felony.
The NCAA may be backed into a corner where it needs to blow up one of its signature revenue producers. And financial planners don’t just care about basketball. Football players make big money, too.
In basketball, nearly everyone has recruited Brad Augustine’s “1 Family Hoops” out of Florida, which is annually loaded with talent as one of Adidas’ signature programs. Nearly everyone knows powerful Adidas executive Jim Gatto, who was arrested, too. All of the indictments Tuesday stem mostly from the acts of one financial planner and one agent.
There are many more who operate the same way. Who knows when the heat shifts to them.
Big, bigger … biggest scandal ever.
Tuesday was Armageddon for college basketball. Tomorrow and the tomorrow after that and the tomorrow after that promise to be worse.
View the indictments here:For years, Mark Bouchett has depended on Canadian visitors to keep his business afloat.
The owner of Homeport, a sprawling, three-floor home furniture store on historic Church Street in Burlington, Vt., Bouchett has been anxiously following recent reports of Canadian passport holders turned away at the U.S. border.
"When the economy makes the dollar favourable, we see Canadians come down here all the time, and they have a good time, and they're spending their money," he said.
"When things change, it hurts our business."
We do have some severe concerns about anyone being turned away for their race, religion, etc. - Erin Sigrist, president of the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association
Bouchett, whose family once owned two stores in Montreal, has discussed the recent border cases with other store owners and managers on Church Street, and many share his point of view.
"We love our Canadian neighbours, you know."
Since the beginning of the |
comic came out.Anyway hope you guys like this one. Up next will be my final DBZ pony till November, DBZ Maud. Remember cause October is my Wereluna month so after October will be back on track with DBZ Coco Pommel.Comics will still be out as usual. Don't be scared. Fluttershy, Derpy, Rainbow Dash © HasbroArt © MeTo work in the mayor of Toronto’s office while Rob Ford careered toward self-destruction was humiliating, thankless, and—it later became clear—hazardous to one’s well-being. Days spent doing damage control blurred into frantic, late-night salvage missions, in which members of Ford’s 14-person staff hauled themselves from bed to rescue their reeling boss from public embarrassment, or to listen to his drug-fuelled rants over their cellphones.
By the time Ford left for rehab in May 2014, they were exhausted to the point of physical frailty, writes Ford’s former chief of staff, Mark Towhey, in a newly published book Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable: How I Tried to Help the World’s Most Notorious Mayor. (Read our full Q&A with Towhey here.) Some were laid low by depression; others wrestled with unresolved anger. Two developed cancer, and several remain unemployed to this day. Few absorbed the flak from closer range than Towhey himself.
Ford unceremoniously dumped Towhey not long after the crack scandal broke. But it’s safe to say the chief’s job would have become living hell if he’d stayed. The mayor went on to reveal himself as a full-blown addict with connections to a seedy underworld of drug dealers and gangsters. When under the influence, he had a propensity to go on foul-mouthed, sexist and racist rants.
Debate still simmers over the role those close to Ford played in prolonging his misrule. Towhey believes his book lifts the lid on behind-the-scenes facts that explain their ways, forming the “connective tissue” of a complex and harrowing tale. His team lived in a world of moral conundrums, he argues, pitting their duty to enact the program of a duly elected mayor against their dismay at his growing incapacity to do his job, and their desire to contain the damage he was inflicting on those around him. As the business of the city ground on, they found themselves backfilling for an uninterested boss, because, simply put, someone had to do it. In January 2013, they made a round of key midterm council appointments that are supposed to be done by the city’s elected mayor. “I still think it was wrong,” Towhey told Maclean’s. “But there came a point where the machinery of government had to continue.”
The job was all the harder, he says, because Ford was impossible to take at his word. Bulldozing denial was his political stock in trade. Like many addicts, Ford concocted stories and hurled accusations to deflect blame for his failures. (Whether that was drugs talking, we may yet learn: A reportedly sober Ford was re-elected as a councillor; now, having survived a cancer scare, he’s promising to run for mayor again.)
Related:
Our Q&A with Mark Towhey, the man behind Rob Ford
Trouble at the Garrison Ball: A second exclusive excerpt from Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable
Inevitably, his behaviour drew his staff into the personal lives of their boss, his wife, Renata, and their two young children, Stephanie and Dougie. Such was the case in the wee hours one morning in June 2012, when Towhey was woken by a cellphone call from his raging, apparently intoxicated boss (see excerpt). He’s still shaken by the memory, yet described it this week as a mere taste of what other members of the staff endured on a regular basis. It had become increasingly difficult to separate truth from ravings fuelled by alcohol or perhaps worse. “I knew that these calls were a nightly occurrence for most of the staff,” he said this week. “I didn’t know whether they were like my call. I had to talk to staff afterward and say, ‘He talked to me last night, and this is what he said.’ A lot of them were, ‘Yeah, that happens all the time.’ ”
Exclusive excerpt: Rob Ford: Uncontrollable
This excerpt has been edited to remove a handful of lines that contained material not appropriate for Maclean’s. The edits are indicated by asterisks.
Not long after the Eaton Centre shooting, my work BlackBerry again rang in the middle of the night. 2:39 a.m. Blocked number. Uh-oh—Rob.
He’s out of it, but he doesn’t sound drunk. This time, he’s speaking superfast. Agitated. I can barely understand half of what he says. A clear word or phrase here, then incoherence for several sentences. Gradually, I piece it together.
He says he’s been arguing with Renata and wants me to witness (by phone) that he is leaving the house. I can hear Renata in the background, alternately screaming and pleading with him. Her speech is slurred and she sounds extremely agitated. I turn down the volume on my phone and slip out of the bedroom, closing my son’s bedroom door as I walk down to the kitchen where I can talk without waking up my kids. I grab a pen and a pad of my kids’ construction paper and start taking notes. Rob sounds like he’s out of control, and I’m worried I may have to remember this conversation. It’s now 2:44 a.m. “Rob, what’s going on?” I ask. “Is everyone okay? Are the kids okay?”
Rob doesn’t answer. I hear Renata, in the background, say, “Stop bothering me... Get out of this room.” I hear Rob ask her, “Did I give you $200?” They both sound angry. But he’s 330 lb. and tall, and she’s about 120 and shorter. I’m hoping to God this doesn’t get physical.
Rob: “Can I talk to you about what happened?” I don’t know if he means me or Renata. Next he tells me he and Renata were fighting because “*** *** ******** **** **************.”
At this point, I am not surprised by anything outrageous coming from Rob’s mouth.
Renata: “Get out!”
Both of them spit a string of curses at one another. I can’t hear it all, but it doesn’t sound good. I strain to hear the kids, but there’s no indication they’re there. Maybe Rob and Renata are in the basement. Maybe the kids sleep upstairs.
Rob (to Renata): “Can I get the money back? You have a lot of money there. What else *** *** ***** ** *****?”
Rob (to me): “I can’t live like this.” ****** **** **** ***** ** ***** ** **.”
More outrageous Rob.
It’s now 2:48.
Rob (to Renata): “I want to talk about what happened last night.”
Renata: “* ****** ** *** ***. ” I can’t tell whether she’s being straight or mocking him.
Rob (to me): “I gave her $200 for the kids. You have no idea, man... I swear to God I’m going to kill this woman, brother.”
F–k me. I grab my personal iPhone, which is charging on the kitchen counter. I key in 911, but don’t press “Enter.” Not yet. At the moment, the mayor and his wife are having a no-holds-barred screaming fest, but that’s not illegal. My parents used to have those when I was a kid. No one got hurt. Not physically, anyway.
Renata: “Get out of my face. You’re driving me nuts!”
Rob: “I’ll rip this f–king door open!”
Renata: “Get out of here. Leave me alone!”
Rob: “Just open the door and talk to me.”
Renata: “I’m calling Dougie.” I’m hoping she means Doug Ford, Rob’s brother, and not Dougie Ford, her and Rob’s four-year-old son. But does this mean Renata calls Doug when Rob is out of control?
I wonder if Rob has forgotten I’m on the phone. At this point, he definitely sounds like the aggressor. Renata sounds like she’s locked herself in a room. She keeps yelling at him to leave.
Rob (to Renata, to himself, I can’t quite tell): “Don’t smoke in my room... I catch him on video... What **** do you have under there? It looks like a ******** ********* ****** ***** ****** **** ***** ***.”
Rob (suddenly, to me): “**** * ****** ****. She’s got $520 hidden away. They pay her ** **** **** ** *** * ***** * ***** ****. Stephanie tells me ***** **** *** ****** ****.” Stephanie is his then-eight-year-old daughter.
I can’t tell if Rob believes what he’s saying or if he’s making up lies to anger Renata and make me think everything is her fault.
“Where are the kids, Rob?” I ask. He doesn’t answer.
I can hear him rustling around the house. I don’t hear Renata anymore. I’m hoping he’s moved away from her.
Rob: “I just found $500 in the couch and a cellphone...” I can hear him huffing as he searches under the sofa cushions. His speech is calming down a little bit.
Rob: “I’m going insane.”
It’s now 2:57 a.m. I’m exhausted, but I feel the adrenalin coursing through my veins. How can I shut this down? I can’t drive over there and leave my own kids alone in the house. I have to do it by phone.
Rob: “There’s $1,120 in cash in the couch, dude. You guys all knew about this and you never told me, f–kers.”
He’s still searching the room. I can hear him moving stuff around.
Rob: “I just found a big ***** ** **** *** * ****.” There’s a long pause and I can’t hear him well, as if he’s put the phone down. But it sounds like he’s saying, “I’ll light this thing up.”
His next few sentences are clearer.
Rob: “I just found this **** * *** * ***** ** ** *** ** *****.”
Rob: “You knew this. You guys knew everything all along. ***** * ***** *** * ******* ****”
More lies to enrage Renata?
Rob: “She just took my gun upstairs.”
His what? They have a f–king gun? It’s ominously quiet in the background. I don’t hear Renata or anyone else. Just Rob breathing, then speaking. His voice gets really fast again. I don’t know if he’s making s–t up. I can’t tell what’s really happening from what fantasies he’s spinning.
“Where are your kids, Rob?” I ask again. Again, he doesn’t seem to hear me.
Rob: “It’s quiet now. Let’s go upstairs.” I hear his footsteps on the stairs. I beg him to stay downstairs, to let Renata be. Don’t wake up the kids. Stop arguing. Don’t make the police come to the house. Again.
Rob (to Renata): “There’s a lot of cash downstairs.” I hear her muffled voice in the background. She sounds sleepy.
Rob (to Renata), yelling: “We’ve got you cornered like a rat!”
Renata: “Don’t wake up the kids!”
Rob: “She’s got my piece... She’s gone... Get the f–k downstairs.”
I wonder again: Should I get in my car? Should I get someone over there?
Renata, louder now, no longer behind a door: “Are you going to leave me alone?”
Rob: “I’m going to give you five dollars see...” [... ] incoherent “... or I’m putting three bullets in your head. You’re pinched. I’ll pump you full...” [... ] again incoherent [... ]
F–k. F–k. I fumble with my iPhone again. Call now? “Do you have a gun, Rob?” I ask.
“She stole it,” he answers.
Rob had once told me that his dad had had a vintage gun. I’d asked where it was, if it was legally registered, who owned it now. The last thing I wanted was a gun in Ford’s house—any gun, but especially an illegal gun. This country has tight gun laws, which the mayor of Toronto should not break. Rob had answered that he didn’t own any guns.
Rob (to Renata), mockingly: “Let’s go down and talk about what’s going on.” He laughs.
Rob (to me): “Now she’s upstairs in the kids’ room.”
“Just let her be, Rob,” I plead. “Let the kids sleep. They don’t need to see their mom and dad fighting.”
Too late. I hear Stephanie’s voice in the background. My left thumb hovers over the “Enter” button on my iPhone, ready to summon the police. My heart is pounding. I hear blood rushing through my neck. I lean forward, mouth open, straining to hear what’s going on in Rob Ford’s house. It’s like being back in the army, in the dark woods, straining to hear footsteps.
Rob: “Steph, is Mommy being bad or good?”
I can half-hear Stephanie’s sleepy voice.
“Rob, leave her alone,” I say, trying to sound stern but calm. Reasonable. An ally. “Let her sleep. Don’t drag her into your fight.”
Again, he asks his daughter whether her mommy is good or bad.
“Mommy is good,” she replies, in a tired little voice. “Everyone in this house is good.” More mature than either of her parents, she’s trying to keep the peace. My heart cracks. It’s now 3:05.
I hear Rob say, “See no monkey, hear no monkey,” in the creepiest kiddie-talk voice I’ve ever heard. A shiver goes down my spine.
“Let her go back to sleep, Rob,” I plead.
Rob: “I’ve never stolen in my life, man.” That’s a 90-degree turn in his conversation, but a welcome one. It sounds like he’s moving away from the kids’ room. His voice speeds up again. I can’t understand all of it.
Rob: “I’ve never f–ked around... I would be a world leader... People say you’re f–ked, but you’re honest and never stold [sic] anything.”
Suddenly he’s angry, this time with Doug. He rambles on about a panic rush order from Maple Leaf Foods that Deco had received. They’d paid 10 times the normal invoice price. “Dougie says, ‘Don’t f–k this up,’ ” Rob babbles.
Then: “You and I are exactly the same.” I don’t even want to think about where that came from.
He continues talking about me, about how smart I am, but how I don’t unwind, I don’t have a life. He respects me. But...
At 3:13, out of nowhere, Renata starts yelling again in the background—I mean, really shouting.
Renata: “Shut the f–k up!”
Rob: “Don’t put your hands on me! Don’t grab my phone!”
I’m straining to hear anything that sounds like a blow, a push or a shove. I unlock my iPhone again, ready to call 911.
Rob: “Don’t touch me!”
Renata: “I’ll call the cops. Stay away from me! Get the hell out of my way. Get out!”
Rob: “Call 911! Or Dougie*********** *******.”
Whoa, what? Suddenly Renata is talking to me, speaking over Rob as he holds the phone. “Mark, can you please get Rob out of the house?” she pleads.
I ask Rob to back off, leave Renata alone. I ask him to go to another room so he and I can talk. I’m keeping my voice low, slow, soothing. I hear him moving, I think, downstairs. Renata’s voice disappears and I hear a door close.
Rob is mumbling something I can’t make out, so I keep talking. I tell him I can send him a car, take him to a hotel. “You can get a good night’s sleep,” I say. “You don’t have to fight anymore. How about it?”
It’s now 3:23. Rob unleashes a blast of words at hyper-speed. I can only make out a few words here and there.
“... doobies... ”
“I smoked that s–t...”
“I sold that s–t...”
“... heroin...”
3:30. He’s still talking.
“... my dad shot this guy...”
“... after he shot my cousin...”
“... Cousin Willy died... cousin Dougie...”
“I’m doing it in the washroom. I’m snorting s–t. I’m smashing s–t...”
“I come out all dripping wet...”
3:35.
“Since Mikey the transvestite died...”
“... fighter...”
“... left-handed...”
Finally, at 3:57, his monologue begins to slow. I can make out a few more words and phrases. Rob says he doesn’t smoke, but talks about others “smoking weed in the ‘man cave,’ ” *** * ******** **** *** ** ***** ***** ********** *** *** ********* **** *** ***** **** *** ***** **** ******* ** **** ******* ***** ************.
Rob: “It’s lonely at the top. My therapy is talking. You’re a good listener, Towhey. I’m gonna give you $1,000 for listening to my s–t.” I tell him he doesn’t need to do that; he can call me any time. He insists. “You shouldn’t have to put up with my s—t,” he says.
It’s 4:00 a.m. He now sounds calm. As he has done on other late-night calls, he begins to apologize, says he’s sorry he f–ked everything up. He says he’ll be okay, but he’s sorry for me, because I have nothing in my life. He says I’m f–ked. I’m standing in my kitchen in the dark, looking at a construction-paper pad full of my boss’s ravings. I’m inclined to agree.
Rob: “I gotta go. I gotta go to the washroom to do another smash. I’m not a corrupt guy. Hell, maybe when it comes to******* **** or getting drunk or doing drugs...”
At last, calmed down, he says he’s “gotta let you go” and hangs up. It’s 4:20 a.m. I’ve been listening to him for an hour and 40 minutes. I’m emotionally spent. I plug my phones back into their chargers, take a long drink of water, and go back to bed, hoping to God my phone won’t ring again that night. It doesn’t. But he still owes me that $1,000.
Excerpted from: Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable by Mark Towhey and Johanna Schneller. © 2015 Mark Towhey and Johanna Schneller. With permission from Skyhorse Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.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
Manchester United might not make a late addition to their squad but one player's return might feel like a new signing.
Luke Shaw, who broke his leg over four months ago, was spotted leaving the club's Carrington training ground ahead of United's Tuesday night Premier League home game against Stoke.
Injured trio Shaw, Ashley Young and Matteo Darmian all reported at the club's training complex on transfer deadline day, as they continued their rehabilitation.
Shaw was in superb form before he suffered a double fracture to his right leg, following a challenge from PSV Eindhoven defender Hector Moreno in United's Champions League group stage defeat in September.
Young, sidelined with a groin injury, and Shaw could be available for selection again in March, while Darmian remains a doubt for Stoke's visit.
David de Gea and Juan Mata often journey into Carrington together and were in the goalkeeper's Mercedes when they left in the afternoon.
The prospect of any new arrivals at United is unlikely, despite their interest in loaning a right-back.
Watch: Van Gaal on the fans booing him and the team
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Van Gaal has repeatedly stated his desire to sign a full-back in the winter transfer window, however the emergence of Cameron Borthwick-Jackson and Guillermo Varela has curbed his enthusiasm, despite a slew of injuries to United's full-backs.
Right-back Darmian suffered a head injury in last month's defeat to Southampton, while left-back Marcos Rojo has not played since November, due to a dislocated shoulder.
The Argentine returned to his homeland last week to continue his rehabilitation, having suffered the same injury to the same shoulder last season.NORTH Melbourne coach Brad Scott feels he is the right man to lead the club's transition despite its winless start to the season.
After a tumultuous end to 2016 in which the club chose not to renew the contracts of veterans Brent Harvey, Drew Petrie, Michael Firrito and Nick Dal Santo, North has blooded fresh talent this season, opening the door to youngsters who had previously been starved of opportunities.
Although competitive, the Kangaroos are 0-5 for the first time since 1972 and have surrendered the lead in three matches despite leading at three-quarter time.
Scott reaffirmed his desire to remain at the helm but stressed the club's interests would always come before his own.
"I'm committed to doing what's best for North and if the club consistently feel that that's me, then that's what I'll be doing," Scott told Channel Nine on Monday night, before being asked if he was the best person to lead the Kangaroos.
"At the moment, it is but we'll keep analysing that. At the end of the year, we'll analyse it," he replied.
"I'm really comfortable in my capability as a coach so if that's North Melbourne, fantastic, and if they still want me and I feel like I'm the best person for the job, that's where I'll be."
The Kangaroos led by 32 points late in the third term against Geelong (round two) and ultimately lost by one point.
They led by as much as 29 points against both the Western Bulldogs (round four) and Fremantle (round five) in the third quarter but lost by three and five points respectively.
WATCH: The thrilling final minutes of Frem v NM
North has won just four of its past 19 games that were decided by a goal or less.
Meanwhile, Scott said he was "offended" by the speculation surrounding his coaching future at the end of last season.
The Kangaroos' coach was linked to the then-vacant Brisbane Lions senior coaching position, particularly given his 146-game playing career at the club.
"Never was it my intention to ever contemplate leaving North Melbourne. If I wanted to leave, I would've left," Scott said.
"I was a little bit offended... if anyone ever questioned my loyalty to North Melbourne [who] I think I've shown significant loyalty to over a long period of time, and they gave me my opportunity in senior coaching."
Scott also acknowledged the timing of the announcement about North's departing veterans – which was made ahead of its round 23 clash with Greater Western Sydney – had hindered the club's finals prospects.
"I put my relationship, particularly with 'Boomer' (Harvey) and Drew (Petrie), right at the top of the list and I made a commitment to them earlier in the season that as soon I knew which direction the club was going to take, I would tell them," Scott said.
"That was on the eve of the finals and, in hindsight – and I've spoken to Drew and Boomer about this – it derailed our finals campaign to a certain extent.
"I put their interests ahead of the overall team and I wouldn't do it again."
North crashed out in the first week of the finals with a 62-point loss to Adelaide at Adelaide Oval.
Scott said there was plenty to look forward to despite the slow start in 2017, with youngsters Braydon Preuss, Mitch Hibberd, Declan Mountford, Sam Durdin, Ed Vickers-Willis, and draftee Jy Simpkin all making their debuts in 2017.
"The really important message that I'd like to get across to our supporters is that, you've seen the future of the young players," the coach said.
"There's still a hell of a lot of bullets in that list management gun and we've put ourselves in a position where the future is looking extremely bright."NEW YORK (CNN) -- Actor Kiefer Sutherland has been charged with misdemeanor assault after he was accused of head-butting fashion designer Jack McCollough at a New York nightclub early Tuesday, police said.
Kiefer Sutherland, center, turns himself in to police in New York on Thursday.
Sutherland was charged after he arrived at a New York police precinct Thursday afternoon to answer investigators' questions about the incident.
McCollough claims that he was "the victim of a vicious, violent, unprovoked assault," according to a statement from his publicist.
Sutherland and his publicist have not responded to several calls for comment.
A police statement issued this week did not name Sutherland or McCollough but identified those involved only by sex, race and age:
"Male white 42, speaking to female white when a male white 30 walked in between them to get to the bar. There was a verbal altercation and the suspect head butted the victim, causing injuries to the victim's nose."
Sutherland is 42, and McCollough is 30. Watch an expert analyze Sutherland's alleged behavior »
Media reports have said the woman involved was actress Brooke Shields.
"Anyone who knows Jack McCollough knows that he would not hurt a fly," McCollough's spokesman said. "All we can say at this point is that he was the victim of a vicious, violent, unprovoked assault and that the matter is in the hands of the authorities."
CNN's Doug Ganley, Marc Balinsky and Rob Frehse contributed to this report.
All About Kiefer Sutherland • Brooke ShieldsDear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
Students who live or move to Sderot and the Gaza border region will be able to receive a monthly grant towards their accommodation rental from the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee for this coming academic year.
The initiative is part of efforts to rehabilitate the region after last year's war against Hamas in Gaza in which some 4,500 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel, while Hamas terror cells attempted to infiltrate into Israel from Gaza, causing thousands of people to flee the immediate vicinity of the war.
A total of 720 students who decide to live in Sderot or the various towns in the regional council districts of Hof Ashkelon, Sdot Hanegev, Sha’ar Hanegev and Eshkol will be eligible for NIS 500 a month towards their rent payments for the coming academic year.The initiative is being coordinated with the student unions of Sapir College in Sderot and Ben Gurion University in Be’ersheba and the ministry hopes that it will be able to convince students who live in the south to stay in the region for their studies as well as attract students from other parts of the country.The director of the ministry, Sigal Shaltiel Halevi, stated that in the next stage of the program to strengthen the region, families living there will be eligible themselves for rental assistance payments with the goal of attracting people to live in the area.“This project is the ongoing momentum and reinforcement of the towns in the region, following Operation Protective Edge,” said Arye Deri, minister for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee.“There are no-one better than students, who are quality people, to strengthen the region, and we will continue to work in variety of ways to develop the Negev and the Gaza border region.”
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>Miami Police are enforcing a curfew for children under the age of 17, citing safety.
Curfew hours are 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday to Thursday and midnight to 6 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Children under 17 are not allowed to "linger, stay, congregate, move about, wander, or stroll in any public place in Miami-Dade County, either on foot or in a vehicle during curfew hours," according to police.
NBC Miami "I don't really need a curfew, but I do feel that a curfew is important because young kids like my age are dying in the streets," Keith Stewart said.
Players for Team Pete Basketball said they don't like the move.
"I don't really need a curfew," Keith Stewart said, "but I do feel that a curfew is important because young kids like my age are dying in the streets."
Other Miami youths said they support the curfew.
"Make them go home, do a little homework, get them home early," Robert Sanchez said.
Said adult Cesar Barrero: "Kids at that age … there's nothing for kids to do from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock in the morning."
More from NBCMiami.com
Police say exemptions include if a child is with a parent or legal guardian or someone over 21 years old who has permission to be responsible for the child; and if the juvenile is working or traveling to or from work, traveling interstate, or has written permission to run an errand from a parent or guardian.
Other exemptions are if a child is helping in an emergency, traveling to or from a school or a religious, civic or county-sponsored event, is emancipated by marriage or court order, is homeless, is exercising First Amendment rights, or is on the property of his residence or a neighbor's residence who does not object, if the child is attending or coming back from a public event that began before 10 p.m. and has written permission, and if the child's activity is authorized by the county commission.
Police have not yet given reasons for the curfew, besides safety. But many people point to rashes of violent and sometimes deadly street crimes often involving young people.
"You know what's going on," Pete Soriano of Team Pete Sports said. "You got drug dealing, you got shootouts, kids getting killed left and right."
At Overtown's Gibson Park, manager Benjamin Hanks supports the curfew -- recalling all too well the night three people were shot at a youth football game last September. He believes a police presence, and the curfew, will help make the city's parks and streets safer.
"I think it's overdue that we need cops' supervision, more for preventive measures for the safety of people," Hanks said.
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UPDATE: New rally at MLK Park in Berkeley, Thursday at 2 PM.
Oath Keepers has current and retired law enforcement officers and military veterans on site in Berkeley, CA to protect Ann Coulter and those attending her speech.
We successfully defended the speakers and audience on April 15 in MLK park in Berkeley as part of a combined security detail that also included American Civil Defense, III% patriots, and bikers from Two Million Bikers. The Proud Boys and Kyle Chapman and his men also showed up along with hundreds of other patriots and the event was safe and not one speaker was harmed nor anyone in the audience prevented from listening. We can do it again.
Stewart Rhodes
Founder of Oath Keepers
UPDATE: There is no stand down. We are still going to Berkeley.
We will hold our own event at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Berkeley, Thursday at 2 PM.
(This is the same location as the Free Speech rally on April 15.)
Patriots should still come. We won’t let the bad guys win.
Speakers so far:
Gavin McIinnes – Proud Boys
Kyle Chapman – AKA Based Stick Man
Stewart Rhodes – Founder of Oath Keepers
Brittany Pettibone – Award-winning author
Lauren Southern – Canadian conservative
And others…“One Liberation Under God” is a documentary film project. The goal is to promote love and understanding between the Church and the LGBT community. The film will be a collection of personal stories and experiences, with an intent to find common ground and develop unity. Ideally, I would like to include opinions and philosophies from all points of the spectrum, giving voice to all perspectives.
Here’s the way it works:
1. The more money we raise, the more places we travel.
2. The more places we travel, the more stories we tell.
3. Every dollar donated will go directly into the travel fund. No other budget is necessary. I’ll film with my iPhone, I’ll edit with my MacBook, and I’ll drive my car.
Take a look at the map, also located below. Nashville is my current city, and northeastern KY is my hometown. Therefore, no extra funds are necessary to cover those interviews. Destinations closest to me will take top priority, so we can make the most out of the time and money we have. So why did we only set a $400 goal? Because that's how much it will cost to travel to the closest town (Atlanta) for our first group of interviewees. If we don't meet our goal, we don't get any of the money. But with KickStarter, there's no limit to how much we can surpass our goal! Therefore, the more money raised, the more towns we will be able to add to the itinerary.
Join the movement. Tell your story. Together we can show the world we don’t have to agree on everything in order to love one another.
The MapWal-Mart shares surged to an all-time high, jumping more than 10 percent Thursday after the world's largest retailer showed it can hold its own in a challenging retail environment.
Same-store sales for its U.S. locations climbed for the 13th-consecutive quarter, as the big-box retailer cited a bright spot in its food business and a boost from shoppers stocking up on hurricane supplies.
The Arkansas-based company reported strong growth online, with e-commerce sales soaring 50 percent in the fiscal third quarter, a year after it acquired Jet.com. That's a slower pace than in the prior period when digital sales were up 60 percent.
Wal-Mart also raised its full-year earnings expectations, taking an aggressive stance heading into the important holiday season.
Here's what Wal-Mart reported, compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a Thomson Reuters survey of analysts:
Earnings of $1 a share, excluding items, compared with a forecast profit of 97 cents per share.
Revenue was $123.18 billion, versus an estimate of $121 billion.
Same-store sales for U.S. stores, excluding fuel, climbed 2.7 percent, compared with an anticipated increase of 1.8 percent.
"We have momentum, and it's encouraging to see customers responding to our store and eCommerce initiatives," CEO Doug McMillon said in a statement.
"Existing customers have become advocates for popular initiatives like online grocery and free two-day shipping, and as a result, new customers, suppliers and partnerships are coming to Walmart."
In the third quarter, Wal-Mart reported net income of $1.75 billion, or 58 cents a share, which included a $283 million charge to account for a likely fine related to a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violation investigation that has been ongoing since 2012. Excluding that charge and other one-time costs, Wal-Mart earned $1 a share, outpacing Wall Street estimates.
A year ago, Wal-Mart posted net income of $3.02 billion, or 98 cents a share.
Total revenue for the third quarter climbed 4.2 percent, to $123.18 billion from $118.18 billion. This included sales growth of 4.3 percent for Wal-Mart's U.S. business, 4.1 percent growth for Wal-Mart's international stores and 4.4 percent growth at Sam's Club.
The average ticket at Wal-Mart's U.S. stores was up 1.2 percent, helped by the rapid growth of its food business. Wal-Mart said its grocery categories delivered the strongest quarterly comparable sales performance in nearly six years, with fresh meat, bakery and produce leading the way.
"Market share in the critical food category continues to grow as the expansion of its buy-online/pick-up in store capability is driving increased sales, and the focus on improving working capital continues," Moody's retail analyst Charlie O'Shea wrote in a note to clients.
"As usual, we expect Walmart to largely set the tone on multiple fronts and in multiple categories for the Holiday season."
Comparable sales at U.S. stores, excluding fuel, were up 2.7 percent, versus a 1.2 percent increase a year ago, also outpacing analysts' estimates. Wal-Mart said hurricane-related impacts benefited comparable sales by roughly 30 to 50 basis points. And with fuel, total U.S. comparable sales were up 3 percent, versus a 1.1 percent increase a year ago.
Same-store sales at Sam's Club, excluding fuel, climbed 2.8 percent in the fiscal third quarter, compared with an increase of 1.4 percent one year ago. With fuel, Sam's Club's comparable sales grew 4 percent, versus 0.7 percent growth a year ago.
Looking to the full year, Wal-Mart is now calling for adjusted earnings per share ranging from $4.38 to $4.46 in fiscal 2018 |
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