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-year-old brother Winthrop arrives home. Amaryllis, who secretly likes Winthrop but teases him about his lisp, asks Marian to whom she should say goodnight on the evening star, since she doesn't have a sweetheart. Marian tells her to just say goodnight to her "someone" ("Goodnight, My Someone").
The next day, Mayor Shinn and his overbearing wife Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn lead the festivities for Independence Day at the high school gym ("Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean") but are interrupted by a firecracker set off by troublemaker Tommy Djilas. Harold takes the stage and announces to the townspeople that he will prevent "sin and corruption" from the pool table by forming a boys' band ("Ya Got Trouble [reprise]/Seventy-Six Trombones"). Mayor Shinn, who owns the billiard parlor, tells the bickering school board to get Harold's credentials, but Harold gets them to sing as a Barbershop Quartet to distract them ("Ice Cream/Sincere"). Harold also sets up Zaneeta, the mayor's eldest daughter, with Tommy, and persuades Tommy to work as his assistant. After another rejection by Marian, Harold is determined to win her ("The Sadder But Wiser Girl"). The town ladies are very excited about the band and the ladies' dance committee that Harold plans to form. He mentions Marian, and they imply (falsely, it turns out) that she had an affair with a now-deceased miser, who willed the library building to the town but left all the books to Marian. They warn Harold that she advocates "dirty books" by "Chaucer, Rabelais and Balzac" ("Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little"). The school board arrives to review Harold's credentials, but he leads them in song and slips away ("Goodnight, Ladies").
The next day, Harold walks into the library to woo Marian in earnest ("Marian the Librarian"). For a moment, she forgets her decorum and dances with Harold and the teenagers. Harold kisses her; when she tries to slap him, she accidentally hits Tommy instead. With Tommy's help, Harold signs up all the boys in town to be in his band, including Winthrop. Mrs. Paroo likes Harold and tries to find out why Marian is not interested. Marian describes her ideal man ("My White Knight"). She sets out to give Mayor Shinn evidence against Harold that she found in the Indiana State Educational Journal, but they are interrupted by the arrival of the Wells Fargo wagon, which delivers the band instruments ("The Wells Fargo Wagon"). When Winthrop forgets to be shy and self-conscious because he is so happy about his new cornet, Marian begins to see Harold in a new light. She tears the incriminating page out of the Journal before giving the book to Mayor Shinn.
Act II [ edit ]
The ladies rehearse their classical dance in the school gym while the school board practices their quartet ("It's You") for the ice cream social. Marcellus and the town's teenagers interrupt the ladies' practice, taking over the gym as they dance ("Shipoopi"). Harold grabs Marian to dance with her, and all the teenagers join in. Regarding Winthrop's cornet, Marian later questions Harold about his claim that "you don't have to bother with the notes". He explains that this is what he calls "The Think System", and he arranges to call on Marian to discuss it. The town ladies ask Marian to join their dance committee, since she was "so dear dancing the Shipoopi" with Professor Hill ("Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little" [Reprise]). They have reversed their opinions about her books, and they eagerly tell her that "the Professor told us to read those books, and we simply adored them all!"
That night, the school board tries to collect Harold's credentials again, but he gets them to sing again and slips away ("Lida Rose"). Marian, meanwhile, is sitting on her front porch thinking of Harold ("Will I Ever Tell You?"). Winthrop returns home after spending time with Harold and tells Marian and Mrs. Paroo about Harold's hometown ("Gary, Indiana"). As Marian waits alone for Harold, traveling salesman Charlie Cowell enters with evidence against Harold, hoping to tell Mayor Shinn. He only has a few minutes before his train leaves, but stops to flirt with Marian. She delays him so he won't have time to deliver the evidence, eventually kissing him. As the train whistle blows, she pushes him away. Charlie angrily tells Marian that Harold has a girl in "every county in Illinois, and he's taken it from every one of them – and that's 102 counties!"
Harold arrives, and after he reminds her of the untrue rumors he's heard about her, she convinces herself that Charlie invented everything he told her. They agree to meet at the footbridge, where Marian tells him the difference he's made in her life ("Till There Was You"). Marcellus interrupts and tells Harold that the uniforms have arrived. He urges Harold to take the money and run, but Harold refuses to leave, insisting, "I've come up through the ranks... and I'm not resigning without my commission". He returns to Marian, who tells him that she's known since three days after he arrived that he is a fraud. (Harold earlier claimed to have graduated from the Gary Conservatory in 1905, but Gary, Indiana, was not founded until 1906.) Because she loves him, she gives him the incriminating page out of the Indiana State Educational Journal. She leaves, promising to see him later at the Sociable. With his schemes for the boys' band and Marian proceeding even better than planned, Harold confidently sings "Seventy-Six Trombones". As he overhears Marian singing "Goodnight My Someone", Harold suddenly realizes that he is in love with Marian; he and Marian sing a snatch of each other's songs.
Meanwhile, Charlie Cowell, who has missed his train, arrives at the ice cream social and denounces Harold Hill as a fraud. The townspeople begin an agitated search for Harold. Winthrop is heartbroken and tells Harold that he wishes Harold never came to River City. But Marian tells Winthrop that she believes everything Harold ever said, for it did come true in the way every kid in town talked and acted that summer. She and Winthrop urge Harold to get away. He chooses to stay and tells Marian that he never really fell in love until he met her ("Till There Was You" [Reprise]). The constable then handcuffs Harold and leads him away.
Mayor Shinn leads a meeting in the high school gym to decide what to do with Harold, asking, "Where's the band? Where's the band?" Marian defends Harold. Tommy enters as a drum major, followed by the kids in uniform with their instruments. Marian urges Harold to lead the River City Boys' Band in Beethoven's Minuet in G. Despite the boys' limited musical ability, the parents in the audience are nonetheless enraptured by the sight of their children playing music. Even Mayor Shinn is won over, and, as the townspeople cheer, Harold is released into Marian's arms ("Finale").
Music [ edit ]
Musical numbers [ edit ]
Act I "Rock Island" – Charlie and Salesmen
"Iowa Stubborn" – Townspeople
"(Ya Got) Trouble" – Harold Hill and Townspeople
"Piano Lesson" – Marian, Mrs. Paroo and Amaryllis
"Goodnight, My Someone" – Marian
"Seventy-Six Trombones" – Harold, Boys and Girls
"Sincere" – Barbershop quartet (Olin, Oliver, Ewart, Jacey)
"The Sadder-But-Wiser Girl" – Harold and Marcellus
"Pickalittle (Talk-a-Little)" – Eulalie, Maud, Ethel, Alma, Mrs. Squires and Ladies of River City
"Goodnight, Ladies" – Quartet
"Marian The Librarian" – Harold, Boys and Girls
"My White Knight" – Marian
"The Wells Fargo Wagon" – Winthrop and Townspeople Act II "It's You" – The Quartet, Eulalie, Maud, Ethel, Alma and Mrs. Squires
"Shipoopi" – Marcellus, Harold, Marian and townspeople
"Pickalittle (Talk-a-Little)" (reprise) – Eulalie, Maud, Ethel, Alma, Mrs. Squires and Ladies
"Lida Rose" – Quartet
"Will I Ever Tell You" – Marian
"Gary, Indiana" – Winthrop, Mrs. Paroo, Marian
"It's You" (reprise) – Townspeople, Boys and Girls
"Till There Was You" – Marian, Harold
"Seventy-six Trombones/Goodnight, My Someone" (reprise) – Harold and Marian
"Till There Was You" (reprise) – Harold
"Finale" – Company
Notes:
As this musical concerns a marching band, Willson's orchestration for several of the numbers includes band instruments.[18][19]
"Lida Rose" and "Will I Ever Tell You", sung first separately and then simultaneously, are examples of Broadway counterpoint (songs with separate lyrics and separate melodies that harmonize and are designed to be sung together). Similarly, "Pickalittle" and "Good Night Ladies" are also sung first separately, and then in counterpoint. Willson's counterpoint, along with two counterpoint song pairs from Irving Berlin musicals, are lampooned in the 1959 musical Little Mary Sunshine, where three counterpoint songs are combined: "Playing Croquet," "Swinging" and "How Do You Do?." "Goodnight, My Someone" is the same tune, in waltz time, as the march-tempo "Seventy-six Trombones".[20]
In the 1962 movie, the 1980 and 2000 revivals, and some amateur and regional productions, "Gary, Indiana" is sung in Act I by Harold and Mrs. Paroo (between "Marian the Librarian" and "My White Knight"), with Winthrop singing a reprise of it in Act II.[citation needed]
Casts and characters [ edit ]
Casts [ edit ]
Main characters [ edit ]
Character Description Professor Harold Hill A confidence man and traveling salesman Marian Paroo The town librarian and part-time piano teacher Marcellus Washburn Harold's old friend and former shill, who now lives in River City Mayor George Shinn A pompous local politician; suspicious of Hill Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn The mayor's wife Mrs. Paroo Marian's Irish mother Winthrop Paroo Marian's shy, lisping brother
Secondary characters [ edit ]
Character Description Original Broadway performer The School Board (Barbershop Quartet) Four bickering businessmen united by Hill (Olin Britt, Oliver Hix, Ewart Dunlop and Jacey Squires) Bill Spangenberg, Wayne Ward, Al Shea and Vern Reed (The Buffalo Bills) Pickalittle Ladies Eulalie's four gossipy friends (Alma Hix, Mrs. Squires, Ethel Toffelmier and Maud Dunlop) Adnia Rice, Martha Flynn, Peggy Mondo and Elaine Swann Tommy Djilas A young man "from the wrong side of town"; secretly seeing Zaneeta Shinn Danny Carroll Zaneeta Shinn The mayor's oldest daughter; secretly seeing Tommy Djilas Dusty Worrall Charlie Cowell An anvil salesman who tries to expose Hill as a con man Paul Reed Constable Locke The town sheriff Carl Nicholas Amaryllis Marian's young piano student Marilyn Siegel
Setting and popular culture references [ edit ]
The Music Man is set in the fictional town of River City, Iowa, in 1912. The town is based in large part on Willson's birthplace, Mason City, Iowa, and many of the musical's characters are based on people that Willson observed in the town.[citation needed]. The "river" in River City is probably the Mississippi River near Davenport, Iowa: the Rock Island conductor's announcing "River City, Iowa! Cigarettes illegal in this state" implies crossing the Mississippi from Rock Island, Illinois, into Iowa. The year 1912 was a time of relative innocence, as recalled in 1957 after two world wars, the Great Depression and the arrival of atomic weapons.[citation needed]
The musical includes numerous references to popular culture of the time. For example, in making his pitch, Harold Hill lists popular musicians and composers: Gilmore, Pat Conway, Giuseppe Creatore, W.C. Handy and John Philip Sousa.[21] Some of the cultural references are anachronistic: "Trouble" contains references to both Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, a monthly humor magazine that did not begin publication until October 1919, and the nonalcoholic "near-beer" Bevo, which was first brewed in 1916.[22][23] In addition, Rafael Méndez (referred to by Hill as "O'Mendez," a great "Irish" trumpeter) was six years old in 1912.[24]
Recordings [ edit ]
The first recording of "Till There Was You" was released before the original cast album version. Promotional copies of the 45 rpm single, Capitol P3847, were released on November 26, 1957, even before the Broadway production had premiered. Produced by Nelson Riddle, it featured his orchestra and 17-year-old vocalist Sue Raney.
The original cast recording was released by Capitol Records on January 20, 1958 in stereophonic & monaural versions and held the #1 spot on the Billboard charts for twelve weeks, remaining on the charts for a total of 245 weeks. The cast album was awarded "Best Original Cast Album" at the first Grammy Awards ceremony in 1958 and was inducted in 1998 as a Grammy Hall of Fame Award winner.[25]
In 1959, jazz composer and arranger Jimmy Giuffre released Jimmy Giuffre and His Music Men Play The Music Man, consisting of jazz arrangements of tunes from the musical.[26]
"Till There Was You" was covered by Anita Bryant in 1959 as a single for Carlton Records, reaching #30 on the Billboard Hot 100.[27] ln 1963, The Beatles covered "Till There Was You" on their second LP With the Beatles (issued on Meet the Beatles! in the United States). Willson's widow later told The New York Times that his estate made more money from the royalties of the Beatles' recordings of "Till There Was You" than it did from the musical.[28]
Adaptations [ edit ]
The film version, again starring Preston, with Shirley Jones as Marian, was released in 1962.[29]
The success of the 2000 stage revival prompted a 2003 television movie starring Matthew Broderick as Hill and Kristin Chenoweth as Marian, with Victor Garber, Debra Monk, and Molly Shannon in supporting roles.
Reception [ edit ]
Though West Side Story had opened nearly three months earlier, The Music Man captured audiences, critics and five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The New York Times theatre critic Brooks Atkinson wrote in his review "If Mark Twain could have collaborated with Vachel Lindsay, they might have devised a rhythmic lark like The Music Man, which is as American as apple pie and a Fourth of July oration.... The Music Man is a marvelous show, rooted in wholesome and comic tradition."[30]
Walter Kerr of the Herald Tribune glowingly described the opening scene of the musical: "It's the beat that does it. The overture of The Music Man drives off with a couple of good, shrill whistles and a heave-ho blast from half the brass in the pit, with the heartier trombonists lurching to their feet in a blare of enthusiasm. The curtain sails up to disclose the most energetic engine on the Rock Island Railroad (circa 1912) hurtling across the proscenium with real smoke pouring out of its smokestack and real steam rolling along the rails".[3] Kerr called Preston "indefatigable: he's got zest and gusto and a great big grin for another slam-bang march tune".[3] Robert Coleman of the New York Daily Mirror wrote that the producer "made a 10-strike in landing Robert Preston for the title role", stating that Preston "paces the piece dynamically, acts ingratiatingly, sings as if he'd been doing it all his life, and offers steps that would score on the cards of dance judges".[3]
Frank Aston of the New York World-Telegram and Sun declared "It deserves to run at least a decade", especially praising Barbara Cook's performance as Marian: "If all our stack-tenders looked, sang, danced, and acted like Miss Barbara, this nation's book learning would be overwhelming".[3] John Chapman of the Daily News pronounced The Music Man "one of the few great musical comedies of the last 26 years", stating that Of Thee I Sing (1931) "set a standard for fun and invention which has seldom been reached. Its equal arrived in 1950 – Guys and Dolls – and I would say that The Music Man ranks with these two".[3] In the Journal-American, John McClain deemed the show "a whopping hit. This salute by Meredith Willson to his native Iowa will make even Oklahoma! look to its laurels".[3]
In popular culture [ edit ]
The Music Man's popularity has led to its being mentioned, quoted, parodied or pastiched in a number of media, including television, films and popular music.
Television
The Music Man has been parodied in a number of TV shows, including The Simpsons episode "Marge vs. the Monorail", written by Conan O'Brien. At some point during the second Broadway revival, O'Brien was approached about playing the role of Harold Hill for a brief run, but he ultimately could not fit it into his schedule. He says, on the DVD commentary track for the aforementioned Simpsons episode, that it was the hardest choice he's ever had to make professionally, because The Music Man is one of his favorites. O'Brien did, however, as host of the 2006 Emmy Awards, sing a parody version of "Ya Got Trouble" in his opening monologue targeting NBC and their slide in the ratings.
The television program Family Guy has parodied the musical at least three times. In the episode "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows", Lois chastises Brian's high standards in a spoof of "Piano Lesson". In another episode, "Patriot Games", Peter showboats after scoring a touchdown by leading a stadium full of people in a rendition of "Shipoopi", complete with choreography from the film. In Episode 22 of Boston Legal, "Men to Boys", Alan Shore sings a parody of the song "Trouble" to convince patrons of a restaurant not to eat the salmon. Several Music Man songs were used in Ally McBeal, for example in the season 2 episode "Sex, Lies and Politics" in which lawyer John Cage spurs the jury into singing "Ya Got Trouble" with him.[31] Season 2 Episode 15 (2012), "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", of the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, makes numerous allusions to The Music Man, including a song based on "Ya Got Trouble".[32]
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has numerous times referred to Fox News TV host Glenn Beck as "Harold Hill" on the air.[33][34][35]
Film
In the 1960 film The Apartment, Jack Lemmon's character is given tickets to the show but is stood up at the Majestic Theatre. In Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997), Michele sings "The Wells Fargo Wagon". The next year, in The Wedding Singer (1998), Robbie teaches Rosie to sing "'Til There Was You" for her 50th wedding anniversary.
The 2006 mockumentary/documentary Pittsburgh centers on actor Jeff Goldblum as he attempts to secure a green card for his Canadian actor/singer/dancer girlfriend, Catherine Wreford, by appearing with her as the leads in a summer regional theatre production of The Music Man in Goldblum's hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Music
The political satire group, the Capitol Steps, parodies numerous songs from musicals, including The Music Man. To evoke turn of the 20th century Main Street USA at some of its theme parks around the world, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts uses songs from the show, including: "76 Trombones", "Iowa Stubborn", "Wells Fargo Wagon", and "Lida Rose".[citation needed] BIll Hayes parodied "Rock Island" in a 1959 industrial musical Good News About Olds written by Max Hodge, with Oldsmobile product terminology serving as the "whatayatalk".[36]
The North Iowa Band Festival in Mason City, Iowa is a yearly event celebrating music with a special emphasis on marching bands. Willson returned several times to his home town of Mason City during the 1950s to participate in the event, including leading the "Big Parade", and the stars of the film version participated in the event in 1962.[37]
Awards and honors [ edit ]
Original Broadway production [ edit ]
1980 Broadway revival [ edit ]
Year Award Ceremony Category Nominee Result 1981 Theatre World Award Meg Bussert Won
2000 Broadway revival [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]“Win the battle in the trenches” is probably the most often listed “key to the game” from football analysts. They throw in phrases like “control the line of scrimmage,” “get penetration,” “get to the quarterback,” and “command a double team” on the reg when discussing this ideal. A lot of times it comes across as basic analysis that’s somewhat canned and kicked out there in a pretty sterile fashion.
The thing is, they’re right. They are.
However, making it a generalization game to game sterilizes the issue and makes it more a nice catch phrase than a real ideal that teams subscribe to. Different teams “win the battle in the trenches” in different ways. What an offense like Oklahoma State considers a win would surely be a loss for Alabama. The last few years of Florida football winning on the offensive line is not going to be a W for the system Weis and Co. are looking to install.
This week’s big match up between LSU and Oregon is one of those battles where “winning the trenches” is not just lip service, it is a must. The Ducks need to control the line to open up running lanes, give Darron Thomas a chance to make his reads and give the junior a chance to complete passes down the field. LSU’s success will come through disrupting the mesh point and forcing the issue.
Oregon’s offensive line versus the Bayou Bengals’ defensive line is the most important match up of the weekend as these two highly ranked teams take the field. Sure Jordan Jefferson, Russell Shepard and Cliff Harris being absent will affect the game but the most critical point to watch Saturday night will be the Ducks’ OL against the LSU DL.
To avoid the sterility that we discussed previously we must define what “success” is for the Ducks offensive line. This team is not Alabama. They’re not Wisconsin. They’re not a road grading gang of behemoths up front. The Ducks have one three hundred pounder in their starting lineup, 322 lbs right tackle Mark Asper, and only two in their two-deep. Moving people backwards is not their goal, under Chip Kelly’s offense the Ducks get teams moving side to side up front so their backs can get north and south by slipping through seams.
It is somewhat similar to a zone blocking scheme but when you throw in the option, the tempo of play and the speed of the lineplay what Oregon gives you is a dangerous system. They have guys getting to the second level to create bigger seams for running backs, they force linebackers and defensive ends to commit before they’re ready and often times it results in an explosive play. When Oregon gets teams flowing sideways, they get body on body, stop a defensive line player from getting to where they are supposed to be, put a hat on a linebacker and then you get LaMichael James slipping through a window before the safety can wrestle him to the ground.
On the flipside of that you have LSU’s defensive line lead by the great John Chavis of long time Tennessee fame. He doesn’t have Drake Nevis anymore but what he does have is a gang of monsters down there that are strong, athletic and will come at the Ducks in waves. The success of LSU comes in a more traditional for than the Ducks as they look to do a few things; control the offensive linemen at, to behind, the line of scrimmage, get penetration, command a double team from their interior players, set a hard edge to the defense and keep their linebackers clean.
Those are the ingredients to good, traditional defensive lineplay and it plays toward the bigger goal of an overall defense; stopping the ball as soon as possible. Controlling the line, pushing linemen back into the back field and getting penetration make things happen quick. Running backs are forced to find a hole in a shorter time, quarterbacks must make their option reads faster and the quicker the timeline in the backfield the more opportunity for tackles for loss, fumbles and short gains.
When a lineman can command a double team it helps free up a linebacker to shoot gaps and make quick stops. As for the hard edge; forcing someone to cutback into the teeth of the defense is a must. That will give your linebackers a chance to make tackles and the pursuing defensive linemen a shot at gobbling up a back looking for daylight.
In this Oregon and LSU match up those are the goals each team has set before them. As we watch the game Saturday night whichever team sees success in their goal will be the one who wins the Ducks’ offense vs LSU defense battle.
For the Ducks that means getting LSU moving laterally, putting a hat on hat at the second level and giving LaMichael James, Kenjon Barner and Darron Thomas slivers of daylight to explode through. On the Bayou Bengals side if the defensive line is disrupting Oregon’s mesh point, not allowing the Ducks to get to the edge and giving their linebackers free run through lanes then this is an LSU victory.A team of students beat off industry competition to win the top prize in a recent international content held by Rohde & Schwarz.
A Mars rover project developed by a team from Iowa State University has been announced as the winner of the Rohde & Schwarz 2 minutes competition, which saw shortlisted applicants pitch their ideas in a two-minute video.
Launched last June, the competition offered a chance to win a newly developed Scope Rider: a handheld oscilloscope with all of the functionality of a lab unit. The competition was designed to uncover unique application ideas for the oscilloscope and was launched dramatically with a Scope Rider being sent into space, being exposed to heights of 32km and temperatures of -60°C.
“Since launching R&S Scope Rider customers have come to us with no end of really different ways in which they are using the instrument, so we decided to start a thorough search for the most unusual or innovative applications,” explains Steven Edwards, director sales operations and marketing at Rohde & Schwarz UK Ltd.
The initial round of the competition attracted 350 entries from 30 countries. Judges whittled these down to eight short-listed candidates, with each team awarded a GoPro Hero4 Silver. These finalists were then provided with a Scope Rider in order to make a short video demonstrating their idea.
The shortlist included diverse ideas from both academic and commercial entrants including oil and gas exploration systems, the development of a commercial space station and troubleshooting sailing and electrics.
“We make systems and equipment for use in offshore oil and gas exploration,” says Jody Feltham of UK-based company Seamap. “Our idea was to show how we could use the Scope Rider to fault find and install our equipment onboard a vessel while at sea.
“Unfortunately, the competition fell at a point when no engineers were at sea, meaning they weren’t able to showcase the use of the instrument in extreme conditions. However, office-based filming and some editing meant Seamap was still able to convey how useful the Scope Rider would be to its operations.”
In the USA, Astronautics Corp was interested in using the Scope Rider to assist them in diagnosing a wind speed and direction instrument – a tough challenge given the difficult placement of the wiring and the proximity to water.
“The challenge I had was finding time to get out on my friend's sailboat due to weather conditions,” notes Greg Hahn. “You don't want too much or too little wind. There were no schematics and the boat was wired up by my friend's father, an electrical engineer, who is now deceased. He didn't have any notes on the electronics upgrades that had been done over the years so of course the troubleshooting took much longer than expected, and the entire system still isn't working perfectly.”
But the projects weren’t just limited to being earthbound. Young Texan company Intuitive Machines is currently developing a commercial space station called Axiom.
“We are currently under contract to design a commercial space station to be launched early in the next decade,” says electrical design engineer Greg Hall. “This commercial space station will be manned and contain a science and engineering laboratory. It will be incumbent for the researchers on board to have instrumentation like the Scope Rider to properly monitor and manage experiments as well as troubleshooting on-board systems.”
A combination of the judges’ opinion and social media reaction to the project videos led to a team from the Make to Innovate (M:2:I) project at Iowa State University ultimately being declared the winner.
The M:2:I program, sponsored by Boeing, allows students to participate in aerospace design projects that address real-world problems.
Their winning project was MAVRIC – the Mars Analog Vehicle for Robotic Inspection and Construction. Founded in 2008, the student team competes annually in the annual University Rover Challenge. This contest, held at the Mars desert research station, attracts team from all over the world who are hoping to design and build the next generation of Mars rover.
The MAVRIC team is composed of students with several different backgrounds including aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer engineering. Their goal for this year is to continue to test and refine their rover in preparation for the 2017 URC.
“The team saw an advertisement when browsing Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange online and thought ‘we could really use an instrument like the Scope Rider’,” explains MAVRIC project lead Danny Mallek. “We conducted a lot of testing out in the field, where normal bench-top equipment cannot go. The Scope Rider, being both portable and durable, is able to handle the fieldwork quite easily. The team can bring it anywhere and perform many different tests on the rover with it.”
With the Scope Rider able to provide troubleshooting onsite, the team anticipate these improved testing capabilities will allow them to speed up problem diagnosis and solving significantly.
The main problem that the team faces is that of manpower – particularly within the electrical team.
“The team currently has only a few experienced members and everyone else is learning. Due to some of the complexity in the rover’s electrical system, this created a challenge for the students working on the rover. To help solve this problem, the team utilises a task management system that breaks large tasks into smaller ones, to help guide the way for those who are lost or stuck,” says Danny.
“The road to competition is going be long and paved with challenges, but I believe we can pull though. This year, our competition has an autonomous navigation task, where the rover must drive itself through a series of gates in the Utah desert,” Danny continues. “With our relatively young electrical team, it will be tough to meet this objective. The good news it that we have already started development of such a system, and the results are promising!”MOYOBAMBA, Peru – Karina Pinasco watched in dismay as flames on a hillside at the edge of town lit up the sky one night in October 2010. A farmer had intended to clear a few hectares of land to plant coffee bushes, but the fire – set during an unusually hot, dry spell – quickly got out of hand.
Propelled by winds and high temperatures, it burned for 10 days, charring more than 250 acres of land.
"We realized we weren't prepared," says Pinasco, a biologist who heads Amazónicos por la Amazonía, a local environmental organization. "The firefighters weren't trained. It was the rain that finally put it out."
Scientists used to think the rainforest, especially in the western Amazon, was too wet to burn. But major fire seasons in 2005 and 2010 made them reconsider.
Fires are a major source of carbon emissions in the Amazon, and scientists are beginning to worry that the region could become a net emitter, instead of a carbon sink. New findings link rising ocean temperatures off the northern coast of Brazil to changing weather patterns: As the Atlantic warms, it draws moisture away from the forest, priming the region for bigger fires.
"We are reaching a tipping point in terms of drought, beyond which these forests can catch fire," says Daniel Nepstad, international program director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brasília, Brazil.
Once-a-century no more
The 2005 drought – considered a once-in-a-century event – resulted in unprecedented wildfires in Acre, the western Brazilian state bordering Peru. Flames scorched the tree canopy, and at one point the front face of the fire stretched nearly seven miles. As many as 1.2 million acres of forests were affected in Acre and the neighboring regions of Pando in Bolivia and Madre de Dios in Peru. Officials estimated upwards of $100 million in economic damages.
But the forest loss wasn't the only concern for the Acre state government, said Foster Brown, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center and a professor at the Federal University of Acre in Rio Branco, the state capital. Choking smoke spiked respiratory ailments in the region and canceled flights.
Just five years later, another once-a-century drought struck, and fires spread out of control, especially in Acre, Bolivia's Pando region and Brazil's Mato Grosso state. Acre was better prepared, but in Bolivia, smoke from more than 20,000 fires reduced visibility and shut airports in several towns. The Bolivian government declared a state of emergency as more than 3.5 million acres of forest burned. In Mato Grosso, fires destroyed at least 100 homes.
Gigatons of carbon
The 2005 fires added 1.6 gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere, according to a study by Simon Lewis of the University of Leeds, who put emissions from the more widespread 2010 fires at 2.2 gigatons.
In a normal year, the Amazon forests store 0.4 gigatons of carbon a year in the trees and soil, meaning that two bad seasons like 2005 and 2010 could wipe out a decade of gain, according to Lewis' calculations.
And as humans push further into an increasingly drier Amazon, the problem could worsen.
In the western Amazon, humans are the chief source of sparks. With new roads being built and paved through once-inaccessible areas, Peru's Amazonian regions now have some of the country's highest population growth rates. Many of the newcomers clear a little land to farm, and where there are farms, there is fire.
Fire risks
In the Amazon, where weeds and insects run rampant, burning is the most cost-effective way for small farmers to control ticks in cattle pastures and unwanted plants in cassava fields, says Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, director of international programs for the Columbia University Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, who also works with the Center for International Forestry Research.
Fire will limit development and poverty reduction efforts while increasing greenhouse gas emissions and food insecurity in the region, said Pinedo-Vasquez, who grew up in a small farming community outside Pucallpa, in Peru's Amazon basin. "The risks will increase as we face climate change and demographic shifts, and as land-use changes are becoming more evident."
Drought in the Amazon has long been associated with the large-scale weather pattern known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation in the Pacific Ocean. During an El Niño year, the winds that usually blow from east to west across the Amazon weaken, so less moisture is carried over the basin. Drier forests pump less moisture back into the atmosphere, exacerbating the effect.
But 2005 and 2010, both record drought years in the western Amazon, were not El Niño years.
Atlantic Ocean is key
Researchers now think the key lies not in the Pacific – or, at least, not entirely – but in the north tropical Atlantic Ocean, off Brazil’s northern coast.
When sea surface temperatures in that area warms, moisture-bearing winds shift northward, said Katia Fernandes of Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society. Heavier rains fall in the northern Amazon, while the southwest gets a drought.
Fernandes thinks she can predict those droughts. Looking at droughts over the past few decades, she found that ocean temperatures rose about three months before the dry spell set in – enough time for scientists to issue a warning so governments can prohibit burning during especially dry periods.
That could help farmers tip Amazonian forests back to the carbon sink side of the scale.
In Moyobamba, Pinasco and her colleagues have launched a fire observatory to map hot spots and try to predict high-risk areas. They also teach farmers safer burning techniques, although they would like to see the San Martín region – which has seen an influx of newcomers seeking to cash in on coffee and cacao booms – ban burning altogether.
Pinedo-Vásquez is skeptical about the practicality of going fire free. He and other researchers are studying the behavior of both humans and fire, to make recommendations for better land-use management.
The areas near Moyobamba and Pucallpa are magnets for migrants from the Andean highlands who are new to Amazonian farming. Because escaped fires are most common in areas settled by newcomers, those are the places where fire education should focus, Pinedo-Vásquez said.
"Just blaming them, and telling them they're the sources of fire won't help," he said.
This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.A couple of days ago Xiaomi revealed that it would be holding a special event on December 23, and since a laptop was featured on the invite, it's clear what it's all going to be about. That said, so far nothing's been known about this new Mi Notebook, except for the fact that it will come with 4G LTE connectivity.
Now though a new leak out of China tells us that the new device will |
Internet. Two decades ago, as the Internet was entering a phase of rapid growth and expansion, a Republican Congress and the Clinton administration established these foundational principles: the Internet was to progress through human social interaction; voluntary contractual relations and free markets; and governments and regulators were not to harm the Internet’s continuing evolution.19
This simple approach is well-recognized as the enlightened regulatory underpinning of the Internet that brought about such profound changes to human society. During the almost 20 years of “do no harm” regulation, a massive amount of investment was made in the Internet’s infrastructure. It yielded a rapid expansion in access that supported swift deployment and mass adoption of Internet-based technologies. Internet-based innovations have revolutionized nearly every aspect of American life, from telecommunications to commerce, transportation and research and development. This robust Internet economy has created jobs, increased productivity and fostered innovation and consumer choice.
“Do no harm” was unquestionably the right approach to development of the Internet. Similarly, “do no harm” is the right approach for DLT.
I recently called on the CFTC and its domestic and overseas counterparts to join an international consensus to avoid impeding essential DLT innovation by protracted rule uncertainty or uncoordinated actions.20
I believe regulators and policy makers have a choice: we can either follow a path that burdens the industry with multiple onerous regulatory schemes or one where we come together and set forth uniform principles in an effort to encourage DLT investment and innovation. I favor the latter approach.
I believe that innovators and investors should not have to seek government’s permission, only its forbearance, to develop DLT. Government must foster a regulatory environment conducive to the technological innovation needed to address the increased operational complexity and capital consumption of modern financial market regulation.
Once again, the private sector must lead. Regulators must avoid impeding innovation and investment. Instead, they must provide a predictable, consistent and straightforward legal environment. Protracted regulatory uncertainty or an uncoordinated regulatory approach must be avoided, as should rigid application of existing rules designed for a bygone technological era.21
Need for Global Regulatory Coordination
As they did with the Internet, U.S. and foreign regulators must coordinate to create a principles-based approach for DLT oversight in order to provide the flexibility, certainty and harmonization necessary for the technology to flourish.
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions or “IOSCO” have recently turned their attention to financial technology innovations, including DLT.22 I was encouraged to read that FSB Chairman Mark Carney recognizes that regulation should not stifle emerging innovation.23 I similarly understand that IOSCO is working on international policies to drive innovation without undermining confidence in markets.24
Noteworthy is the recent white paper of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), entitled “Supporting Responsible Innovation in the Federal Banking System”.25 In its paper, the OCC offers its support for innovation in the financial services industry that it views as “consistent with safety and soundness, compliant with applicable laws and regulations, and protective of consumer’s rights.”26 It emphasizes the need to “support responsible innovation” and business cultures “receptive to responsible innovation.”27
IOSCO Chairman, Greg Medcraft, has said that issues around DLT must be dealt with at the multilateral level, not by individual countries.28 I agree. Regulation of DLT must indeed be coordinated on a multilateral level based on the principle of “do no harm.” Just as many financial services firms are joining together in broad DLT consortiums, regulators must do the same. The FSB and IOSCO have important roles to play in coordinating DLT regulation. These organizations should put forth a set of simple governing principles flexible enough to accommodate the issues and concerns of different national regulators. Such principles would create a regulatory environment that encourages the development of DLT, just as U.S. policymakers’ 1990s framework fostered the exponential growth of the Internet.
Without such a “do no harm” approach, financial services and technology firms will be left trying to navigate a complex regulatory environment, where multiple agencies have their own rule frameworks, concerns and issues.29 Some of the issues are anti-money laundering, know-your-customer requirements, privacy and security and dispute resolution.30
It is therefore critical for regulators to come together to adopt a principles-based approach to DLT regulation that is flexible enough so innovators do not fear unwitting infractions of an uncertain regulatory environment. Some regulators have already openly acknowledged the need for light-touch oversight. Masamichi Kono, Vice Minister for International Affairs at the Japan Financial Services Agency, stated that regulators must take a “pragmatic and flexible approach” to regulation of new technologies so not to stifle innovation.31 Similarly, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has committed to regulatory forbearance on DLT development for the foreseeable future in an effort to give innovators “space” to develop and improve the technology.32 The FCA is even going one step further and engaging in discussions with the industry to determine whether DLT could meet the FCA’s own needs.33
I have no doubt that the FCA’s intention to give DLT innovators “space” to innovate will be good for DLT research and development. I also suspect that it will be very good for London’s burgeoning FinTech industry and job creation in the United Kingdom.34
Yesterday in London, a senior representative of Her Majesty’s Treasury announced that the United Kingdom will establish an “industry-led panel” that will set an overarching strategy for the British FinTech industry.35 She went on to say, “[t]he [UK] government wants to ensure the UK continues to be the best place in the world to be a FinTech company.”36
It is unfortunate that we do not hear similarly strong voices on this side of the Atlantic. U.S. lawmakers concerned about the rapid loss of jobs in the U.S. financial service industry, especially in the New York City area where job losses are pronounced,37 should similarly look to provide “space” to U.S. DLT innovation and entrepreneurship and the well-paying jobs that will surely follow.
American global leadership in technological innovation of the Internet was built hand-in-hand with regulators’ enlightened, “do no harm” approach. The same opportunity for technology leadership is present today – if we have the good sense to seize it.
Practical Steps to “Do No Harm”
While international regulatory coordination and the adoption of a principles-based approach are important, each regulatory agency can take steps now to ensure that its existing rules do not inhibit DLT development and adoption.
For the CFTC, one example comes to mind – recordkeeping rule 1.31.38 Rule 1.31 requires all books and records to be kept in their original form or native file format.39 Such records must be produced in a form specified by any representative of the Commission.40 Rule 1.31 also has requirements for certain records to be stored in either micrographic media or electronic storage media and other related conditions.41
As I have previously stated, the CFTC should revisit this rule and make it technologically neutral such that it can accommodate DLT and other innovations that promote efficiency, accuracy and security in recordkeeping.42 The CFTC should also examine and, as necessary, revise other rules that may inhibit DLT innovation. Other regulators should similarly examine their recordkeeping and other rules.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I note that when the Internet developed in the mid-1990s, none of us could have imagined its capabilities that we take for granted today.
Fortunately, policymakers had the foresight to create a “do no harm” regulatory environment that served as a catalyst rather than a choke point for innovation. Thanks to their forethought and restraint, Internet-based applications have revolutionized nearly every aspect of human life, created millions of jobs and increased productivity and consumer choice.
Policymakers must show that same forethought and restraint now.
Today, I repeat my call for my agency, the CFTC, and other U.S. and overseas policymakers and regulatory counterparts to repeat that broad-minded approach.
I look forward to working with my fellow CFTC commissioners, U.S. lawmakers and other financial services regulators here and abroad to develop a “do no harm” framework from which to launch a new era of innovation in distributed ledger technology – for the good of our markets, the jobs they support and the people they serve.
Thank you for your time and attention.
1 Robleh Ali et al., Bank of England, Innovations in Payment Technologies and the Emergence of Digital Currencies 11 (2014), http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q3digitalcurrenciesbitcoin1.pdf; see also Tomas Hirst, The Bank of England Just Said It Thinks Bitcoin Could Be Huge, Business Insider, Sept. 11, 2014, http://www.businessinsider.com/bank-of-england-report-on-bitcoin-2014-9.
2 See, e.g., Larry Greenemeier, Can't Touch This: New Encryption Scheme Targets Transaction Tampering, Scientific American, May 22, 2015, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-t-touch-this-new-encryption-scheme-targets-transaction-tampering/.
3 See Massimo Morini & Robert Sams, Smart Derivatives Can Cure XVA Headaches, Risk Magazine, Aug. 27, 2015, http://www.risk.net/risk-magazine/opinion/2422606/-smart-derivatives-can-cure-xva-headaches; see also Jeffrey Maxim, UBS Bank Is Experimenting with “Smart-Bonds” Using the Bitcoin Blockchain, Bitcoin Magazine, June 12, 2015, https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ubs-bank-experimenting-smart-bonds-using-bitcoin-blockchain-1434140571; see also Pete Harris, UBS Exploring Smart Bonds on Block Chain, Block Chain Inside Out, June 15, 2015, http://harris-on.typepad.com/block_chain_io/2015/06/ubs-exploring-smart-bonds-on-block-chain.html; See generally Galen Stops, Blockchain: Getting Beyond the Buzz, Profit & Loss, Aug.–Sept. 2015, at 20, http://www.profit-loss.com/articles/analysis/technology-analysis/blockchain-getting-beyond-the-buzz.
4 See Guest Lecture of Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo, Harvard Law School, Fidelity Guest Lecture Series on International Finance (Dec. 1, 2015), http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/opagiancarlo-11.
5 Telis Demos, Citi: Technology Could Cost Two Million Bank Employees Their Jobs, The Wall Street Journal, Mar. 30, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/03/30/citi-technology-could-cost-two-million-bank-employees-their-jobs/.
6 See, e.g., Oversight of Dodd-Frank Act Implementation, U.S. House Financial Services Committee, http://financialservices.house.gov/dodd-frank/ (last visited Mar. 2, 2016).
7 Santander InnoVentures, Oliver Wyman & Anthemis Group, The Fintech Paper 2.0: Rebooting Financial Services 15 (2015), http://santanderinnoventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/The-Fintech-2-0-Paper.pdf.
8 Telis Demos, Bitcoin’s Blockchain Technology Proves Itself in Wall Street Test, Apr. 7, 2016, The Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-blockchain-technology-proves-itself-in-wall-street-test-1460021421.
9 See Financial Regulation: Complex and Fragmented Structure Could be Streamlined to Improve Effectiveness, Government Accountability Office, Feb. 2016, http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/675400.pdf.
10 Id.
11 Id.
12 See Blockchain & Bitcoin 2016: A Survey of Global Leaders, Magister Advisors, http://magisteradvisors.com/blockchain-bitcoin-2016-a-survey-of-global-leaders/ (last visited Mar. 24, 2016); see also Kim S. Nash, Blockchain: Catalyst for Massive Change Across Industries, The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/02/02/blockchain-catalyst-for-massive-change-across-industries/ (citing figure published by Magister Advisors).
13 Demos, supra, note 8.
14 Id.
15 Press Release, Successful Blockchain Test Completed by Axoni, DTCC, Markit, and Multi-Bank Working Group, DTCC, Apr. 6, 2016, http://www.dtcc.com/news/2016/april/07/successful-blockchain-test-completed.
16 Jemima Kelly, Three Banks Join R3 Blockchain Consortium Taking Total to 25, Reuters, Oct. 28, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/28/us-global-banks-blockchain-idUSKCN0SM1U120151028#v7OOc1U88vjMzTJ6.97.
17 Press Release, DTCC and Digital Asset to Develop Distributed Ledger Solution to Drive Improvements in Repo Clearing, DTCC, Mar. 29, 2016, http://www.dtcc.com/news/2016/march/29/dtcc-and-digital-asset-to-develop-distributed-ledger-solution.
18 Benjamin Elliott et al., Banks Testing Blockchain Need Clarity on Regulations, TabbForum, Feb. 26, 2016.
19 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (See Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Pub. L. No. 104-104, 110 Stat. 56 (1996))) and the ensuing Clinton administration “Framework for Global Electronic Commerce” (See Clinton administration, Framework for Global Electronic Commerce, http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/New/Commerce/) established a simple and sensible framework: 1) the private sector should play the leading role in innovation, development and financing; and 2) governments and regulators should “do no harm” by avoiding undue restrictions, supporting a predictable, consistent and simple legal environment and respecting the “bottom-up” nature of the technology and its deployment in a global marketplace.
20 See Special Address of CFTC Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo Before the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation 2016 Blockchain Symposium, Mar. 29, 2016, http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/opagiancarlo-13.
21 Henry Engler, Blockchain Faces Maze of Regulatory Complexities, Questions and Challenges, Thomson Reuters, Feb. 23, 2016, https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/answerson/blockchain-faces-maze-of-u-s-regulatory-complexities-questions-and-challenges/.
22 Caroline Binham, Financial Stability Board Adds Fintech to List of Worries, Financial Times, Feb. 27, 2016; Huw Jones, Global Regulators May Propose Rules for Fintech: FSB’s Carney, Reuters, Feb. 27, 2016; Greg Medcraft, Blockchain: How We Can Harness the Benefits of this New Technology While Mitigating the Risks, MarketVoice, at 23, Jan. 2016.
23 Binham, supra note 22; Jones, supra note 22.
24 Medcraft, supra note 22.
25 Supporting Responsible Innovation in the Federal Banking System: An OCC Perspective, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Mar. 2016, available at http://www.occ.gov/publications/publications-by-type/other-publications-reports/pub-responsible-innovation-banking-system-occ-perspective.pdf.
26 Id.
27 Considering the OCC’s emphasis on “responsible innovation,” one thoughtful commentator notes that “A regulatory mindset that regards the failure to innovate as an indicator of a legal violation ultimately will discourage the very innovations [praised by Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry], since restrictions and punishment tend not to engender creativity. It is inevitable that bank regulators are cautious. Even so, a regulator’s inclination to say “no” to innovation by punishing failed innovation is likely to give the less regulated a strong competitive advantage.” Steven Lofchie, Commentary, OCC Summarizes Latest Developments of Its Innovation Initiative, Cadwalader Cabinet, Mar. 31, 2016, https://www.findknowdo.com/news/03/31/2016/occ-white-paper-highlights-guiding-principles-evaluating-innovation-federal-banking.
28 Medcraft, supra note 22.
29 Engler, supra note 21.
30 Id.
31 Masamichi Kono, Japan Financial Services Agency, How Can Regulators Do Better The Next Time?, CFTC International Regulators’ Meeting, Boca Raton, FL, at 5-6, Mar. 15, 2016.
32 Daniel Palmer, U.K. Financial Regulator Vows to Give Blockchain “Space” to Grow, CoinDesk, Feb. 23, 2016, http://www.coindesk.com/uk-financial-regulator-blockchain-space-grow/.
33 Id. Blockchain may provide many benefits to regulators as well, such as improving audit trail and surveillance capabilities. A light-touch approach in regulating the blockchain will allow these benefits to be realized. See Mike Ross, Blockchain Plus Smart Contracts Equals Boon for Regulators, TabbForum, Feb. 29, 2016.
34 Through “Project Innovate,” the FCA works with businesses to introduce innovative financial products and services to the market and to help them understand the regulatory framework. The FCA plans to expand Project Innovate by implementing a regulatory sandbox that furthers UK-based financial technology development. This regulatory sandbox would include a “safe space” where businesses could test innovative products, services, business models and delivery mechanisms without immediately incurring all the normal regulatory consequences of pilot activities. See FCA Project Innovate, https://innovate.fca.org.uk/; see Regulatory Sandbox, http://www.fca.org.uk/news/regulatory-sandbox.
35 Silvia Scioilli Borrelli, UK Government Pledges to Back Fintech Industry, Politico, Apr. 11, 2016.
36 Id.
37 Portia Crowe, Wall Street Jobs are Leaving New York, Business Insider, Feb. 10, 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/where-goldman-sachs-is-outsourcing-jobs-2016-2.
38 17 C.F.R. § 1.31 (2015).
39 Id. § 1.31(a)(1).
40 Id. § 1.31(a)(2).
41 Id. § 1.31(b).
42 See Special Address of CFTC Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo Before the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation 2016 Blockchain Symposium, Mar. 29, 2016, http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/opagiancarlo-13.Minneapolis is “more gay” than Seattle. So is Santa Fe and Vancouver, Wash., according to a list from Advocate.com.
The list is raising some eyebrows online, with some wondering why New York doesn’t even rank on the list of 15 cities.
Seattle, usually a top-three city on rankings regarding anything gay, came in at No. 9. To put that in perspective, Vancouver was ranked sixth — largely because that’s where Portland residents go to grow up.
Here’s how the list’s authors described their findings:
Using a completely unscientific — but still strangely accurate — statistical equation, The Advocate has come up with a diverse and surprising list of where gay people are living, loving, voting, and creating communities. This list demonstrates that the homosexual agenda is spreading across the 50 states — from Washington, D.C., to Vancouver, Wash. — and especially, it seems, in the heartland. Like it or not, America, LGBT is more a part of the USA than ever before.
That “completely unscientific” equation factored in profiles on gay.com, the number of openly gay public officials, lesbian bars and — is this one real? — the number of Tegan and Sara performances during the last five years.
Here’s what they had to say about Seattle:SINGAPORE - Office workers in Singapore are the least productive among 11 countries polled by enterprise software firm Unit4.
The study found that Singapore workers spend only 60 per cent of their time on their main work duties, compared with a poll average of 72 per cent.
Roughly 380 hours a year are spent on completing administrative or repetitive tasks. This is equivalent to 47.5 work days or two months of the working year.
This loss of productivity is costing the Singapore service industry more than S$36.5 billion annually, said Unit4.
Its survey comes amid studies that show labour productivity in Singapore is decreasing due to significant challenges from structural transformation and ageing demographics.
Singapore office workers said the specific daily administrative tasks that prevent them from focusing on their primary duties include manually collating and entering data, tracking their project status, handling invoices as well as submitting their expenses and planning travel.
Unit4 said technological advancements such as a digital assistant or software application will help employees manage repetitive tasks and allow them to spend their time on value-added services.
This, in turn, will boost workforce productivity and contribute to the growth of Singapore's GDP.
The firm surveyed around 1,500 office employees in the service sector from 11 countries: the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Sweden.
On average, respondents aged 41 and above estimate they spend significantly more time on their primary duties compared to those aged 26 to 30.
The cost to the service industry in lost productivity due to excessive administration is more than US$2.87 trillion (S$3.95 trillion) annually for the 11 countries surveyed."This is not a threat on the far side of the world, left unchecked we will face a terrorist caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean... This is not a fantasy and we need to face up to it," he told members of parliament (MPs).
Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain had never dealt with a threat like the Islamic State before, as he opened the debate on Friday morning. "This is not 2003," he insisted, alluding to the intervention against Saddam Hussein.
But British planes will not be allowed to join strikes across the border in Syria, a decision dismissed by defence specialists as a half-measure in the fight to stop a caliphate being established across the two countries.
Airstrikes were approved by an overwhelming majority of 524 to 43 following a seven-hour debate which saw passionate scenes in the House of Commons as parliamentarians took to the floor one by one to voice their demands for — or opposition to — intervention against the Islamic State.
The British air force could conduct airstrikes in Iraq as early as Friday night after parliamentarians approved the intervention in an emergency debate — but any action in Syria was kept firmly off the table.
Read more
The British air force could conduct airstrikes in Iraq as early as Friday night after parliamentarians approved the intervention in an emergency debate — but any action in Syria was kept firmly off the table.
Airstrikes were approved by an overwhelming majority of 524 to 43 following a seven-hour debate which saw passionate scenes in the House of Commons as parliamentarians took to the floor one by one to voice their demands for — or opposition to — intervention against the Islamic State.
But British planes will not be allowed to join strikes across the border in Syria, a decision dismissed by defence specialists as a half-measure in the fight to stop a caliphate being established across the two countries.
Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain had never dealt with a threat like the Islamic State before, as he opened the debate on Friday morning. "This is not 2003," he insisted, alluding to the intervention against Saddam Hussein.
"This is not a threat on the far side of the world, left unchecked we will face a terrorist caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean... This is not a fantasy and we need to face up to it," he told members of parliament (MPs).
Cameron laid the failure to consider strikes in Syria firmly at the door of the opposition, saying there was a "strong case" for such a move but that he had not put it to parliament at this stage because of the need for consensus. But he acknowledged British concerns over the delicacy of intervention in the multi-dimensional Syrian conflict, noting that the situation in the country was more complicated because of the "brutal dictator" Bashar al-Assad.
Britain's politicians have been criticised for being late to the game over the conflict in Iraq and Syria, while others such as the United States, France and a number of Gulf states take on the militants bidding to carve out an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East.
Amid a growing clamour for intervention, all three major parties now support British involvement in airstrikes — but the Labor opposition has insisted that a United Nations resolution would be required for it to back intervention in Syria. Some Labor MPs remain resolutely opposed to any intervention at all, and one — Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow — resigned her post in the opposition shadow cabinet ahead of the vote in order to abstain.
Parliamentarians are still stung by the memory of the 2003 Iraq invasion and have been reticent ever since to sanction military action in the Middle East. Last year Prime Minister David Cameron suffered a humiliating defeat when parliament voted against intervention in Syria following chemical weapons attacks on civilians, to then be snubbed by Washington as it embraced France as its "oldest ally."
On Thursday night protesters gathered out Downing Street to voice their opposition to airstrikes. "Don't bomb Iraq!" read placards from the Stop the War Coalition.
But the demonstration belied the position of the British public, which now overwhelmingly supports airstrikes not only in Iraq but in Syria too, according to opinion polls.
A YouGov poll for The Sun newspaper published on Friday indicated that 57 percent back British strikes in Iraq with just 24 per cent opposed — a 20 percent rise in support since August. 51 percent are in favour of extending action to Syria, with 26 percent against.
The public also seems to have regained its appetite for conflict in the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in a way that politicians have not — 43 percent would like to see British troops back in Iraq or to at least keep the option on the table. Only 32 percent want to completely rule out boots on the ground.
In an attempt to win over reluctant MPs from his party, Labor leader Ed Miliband insisted that this was not a repeat of 2003 and was aimed at supporting a democratic state rather than regime change.
"There is no debate about the legal case as in 2003. Whatever side of this debate you're on, nobody is saying 'Let's negotiate with ISIL (Islamic State)'. There is broader support… five Arab states taking part in action," he said.
There was nevertheless vehement opposition to the move from some anti-interventionist stalwarts. George Galloway, leader of the fringe left Respect Party, insisted that "everything will be made worse" by strikes, arguing that the populations of Iraq and Syria were to an extent supportive of IS because of western policies.
"The last people who should be returning to the scene of their former crimes are Britain, France and America," he added.
But defence specialists insisted that action, while challenging and likely costly, was essential - and that it would inevitably have to be extended to Syria.
Lord Dannatt, the former head of the army, said attacking the Islamic State in Iraq only was "dealing with half a problem, not a whole problem."
He acknowledged that operating in Syrian airspace was a problem and might necessitate some form of dialogue with the Assad regime. In the end, he suggested, boots on the ground might be inevitable.
"Issues such as the one we are currently facing are ultimately settled on the ground. Isil must be defeated on the ground, albeit supported from the air," Dannatt said.
Defense Secretary Michael Fallon told BBC Radio 4 on Friday that the Islamic State's headquarters were in Syria, not Iraq, and that the group could not be defeated without striking at its stronghold.
He said: "ISIL is based in Syria, that's where its headquarters, resources and people are. They have crossed the border into Iraq, and to deal with ISIL you have to deal with and defeat them in both Iraq and Syria. The logic follows."
Follow Hannah Strange on Twitter: @hannahkstrangeImage copyright Getty Images Image caption Energy Minister Michael Fallon said a "good mixture of reliable energy" was needed
The Conservatives have said they will not subsidise new onshore wind farms if they win the 2015 general election.
Energy Minister Michael Fallon said any project not granted planning permission before the election would not get funds as the UK would already have enough wind power to meet 2020 EU targets.
He also said councils in England and Wales would be given the "decisive say" on new onshore wind farms from 2015.
The Lib Dems said they had blocked such changes being made by the coalition.
'No more needed'
Mr Fallon said a "good mixture of reliable energy" was needed and the government was "committed" to cutting carbon emissions.
"Renewable energy, including onshore wind, has a key role in our future energy supply," he said.
"But we now have enough bill payer-funded onshore wind in the pipeline to meet our renewable energy commitments and there's no requirement for any more."
He also said his party would change the law within six months of winning the 2015 election so all onshore wind farm applications would be handled by local planning authorities.
At present large projects in England and Wales are dealt with under the "nationally significant infrastructure" planning regime.
Coalition divide
The government says there is currently enough wind power to provide energy to four million homes, forecast to rise to seven million by 2020.
Department for Energy and Climate Change figures suggest 13.8GW of UK onshore wind power capacity is already built, under construction or has been granted planning permission.
It says that will be enough to meet targets of 11-13GW even if some projects fall through.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Speaking on Tuesday, David Cameron suggested onshore wind farm subsidies might be cut
BBC political correspondent Ross Hawkins said the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had been "at pains to point out how much they disagree about onshore wind farms", with David Cameron "repeatedly saying" subsidies must eventually be brought to an end.
Energy Secretary Ed Davey said his party, junior coalition partners the Lib Dems, had "fought and won" Conservative plans to cap onshore windfarms.
He said: "This government is green because the Liberal Democrats have fought every step of the way to protect our environment and lead the fight against climate change.
"Putting the brakes on onshore wind would be disastrous for business and jobs in our growing green economy.
"You can't trust the Conservatives on their own to build a fairer society. Only with Liberal Democrats in Government can we build a stronger economy and a fairer society."
On Wednesday the government announced approval of eight new renewable energy projects, including offshore wind farms and conversions of coal-powered plants to run on biomass.The City of Buffalo has released its new Bicycle Master Plan. The announcement was made as bike enthusiasts stood along a section of the recently completed $1.7 million North Buffalo Rail-to-Trails (see image below). The cycling community has been eagerly awaiting news of the City’s forward-thinking advancements pertaining to additional bike lanes and overall connectivity. The community played a significant role in advancing many of the features laid out in the plan.
Mayor Brown stated, “There are many reasons to promote bicycle ridership in Buffalo and the city’s new Bicycle Master Plan will serve as our blueprint to providing an even safer and more connected bicycle network citywide that will improve safety, public health and quality of life for our citizens. It is also a plan that promotes bicycling infrastructure for the benefit of all city residents. As Buffalo continues its significant growth by focusing on being a City of Opportunity, I thank the project team and stakeholders for sharing my commitment to diversity, inclusion and equity by weaving those core values into this new plan from start to finish. The result is a final report that provides our city with the tools it needs to serve the diversity that exists and is growing in neighborhoods citywide.”
The plan includes the following:
Addition of 10 miles of facilities per year
Buffalo will have added over 90 miles of new bicycle facilities by the end of 2016
The goal is to reach 150 miles by 2018
Propel Buffalo from a Bronze level bicycle friendly community to a Silver
In 2016, bicycle facilities will be added along Niagara Street, Pearl Street, and Kenmore Avenue
Also, bicycle lanes on Forest Avenue (from Delaware to Elmwood), S. Elmwood (from Virginia to Niagara), Carolina Street (from Niagara to Tupper) and Parkridge Avenue (from Winspear to E Amherst)
“A well-connected bicycle infrastructure network will improve the safety, environment, public health, and quality of life for residents, visitors, and businesses,” stated Justin Booth, Executive Director of GObike Buffalo. “A bicycle friendly Buffalo will be a more affordable, economically competitive, and a sustainable city creating a much stronger backbone of cultural, historical, natural, economic and community assets that can further propel Buffalo along its path of revitalization.”
Funds for the this plan were derived from the Department of Transportation and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), as well as matching funds from the City of Buffalo.
The Bicycle Master Plan for the City of Buffalo was funded in part by New York State through a collaborative agreement between the Department of Transportation and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and through matching funds provided by the City of Buffalo.
“Governor Andrew Cuomo knows that a sound transportation system encourages economic growth and community well-being,” New York State Department of Transportation Commissioner Matthew J. Driscoll said. “With that in mind, we have been pleased to support the development of a new bicycle master plan for the City of Buffalo, a blueprint that will help improve mobility, increase traffic safety and enhance the quality of life for everyone who lives, works and travels in the city.”
NYSERDA President and CEO John B. Rhodes said, “This project is another step in helping the State reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourages a healthier and active lifestyle. I applaud the City of Buffalo’s commitment to becoming a bicycle-friendly city to preserve the environment for future generations. The Master Plan will not only help current cyclists to better move around the city but makes room for hundreds more to enjoy this activity and even bike to work, taking even more cars off our roads.”
GObike Buffalo: Administered the project
Alta Planning + Design: Project consulting team
Local partners: Mustard Seed and Wendel Duchscherer
View Bike Master PlanIt is also understood that while Uefa is still content with a deal that more than doubled its UK broadcast income, it will insist upon changes to the existing model when it sells the rights to the 2018‑21 seasons. Whether that is demanding a better free-to-air offering or taking the entire competition behind a paywall remains to be seen.
Sponsors would certainly be unhappy with the status quo, according to Steve Martin, of M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment. He said: “The UK market is a massive market commercially and if one of your markets for the top five – England, Spain, Germany, France, Italy – is playing out to audiences as low as that, you’re going to question the value and you’re going to go straight to Uefa.”
BT Sport defended its viewing figures. A spokesman told Inside Sport: “We’re pleased with the strong audiences we are seeing for Uefa Champions and Europa League football across our BT Sport channels, and we’ve seen a 46 per cent increase year-on-year in the average BT Sport audience over the last three months we’ve reported. To compare the viewing numbers of BT Sport Showcase, which launched this season, with those of ITV, which has been running for decades, is unfair.
“Football fans will be able to enjoy a selection of top European matches on Freeview via BT Sport Showcase this month, including Juventus v Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund vs FC Porto.”
Uncertainty about future of Champions League
The ratings travails of BT have coincided with mounting uncertainty about the entire future of the Champions League. Renewed talk of a European Super League overshadowed Monday’s general assembly of the European Club Association, which is flexing its muscles just as Uefa prepares to sell the next set of television rights for Europe’s premier club competition. Many clubs believe that the Champions League format is preventing them from maximising revenues, with the group stages marred by too many unglamorous fixtures.
As well as a 20-team Super League, proposals have included automatic Champions League qualification for a cabal of Europe’s top clubs. Both would face fierce opposition from within the ECA’s 220-club membership and would raise the spectre of the return of the old G14, which was disbanded under pressure from Uefa.
Much of the revamp talk appears to be a tactic to encourage European football’s governing body to find a way to boost the value of the Champions League closer to that of the Super Bowl, which makes much more money despite boasting far fewer followers. But there is also a genuine desire to sex up the group stages, with a senior executive at one of England’s Champions League clubs telling Inside Sport one idea would be to create a mechanism by which it could be reduced to 16 teams.
That might involve the competition kicking off with a knockout round that would cull half of the 32 qualifiers.
Whether clubs would trade off more money for the potential loss of two thirds of their Champions League fixtures remains to be seen.Mark Levin speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
Radio host Mark Levin, who sent President Donald Trump into a rage on Twitter after floating a conspiracy theory about wiretaps ordered by President Barack Obama, admitted on Sunday that he had no concrete proof that the former president was involved.
On his radio show and in a column for Breitbart, Levin called for an investigation into Obama’s so-called “silent coup” against the new president. Without presenting any proof, Levin alleged that Obama personally ordered wiretaps of Trump associates.
“The evidence is overwhelming,” Levin told Fox News host Pete Hegseth on Sunday. “This is about the Obama administration’s spying.”
Levin repeated the list of “sources” offered in his Breitbart column as proof that Obama allegedly ordered the wiretapping of Trump’s team. A careful reading of those reports, however, do not back up Levin’s conspiracy theory.
“Donald Trump is being attacked for [the accusations] he tweeted,” Levin said. “Donald Trump is the victim, his campaign is the victim, his transition team is the victim, his surrogates are the |
icio Pochettino.
The English club have already made a formal approach with Monaco for the availability of their attacker. The bid tabled by Tottenham is still not clear, but Ferreira-Carrasco employers are unhappy with the offer made by the Premier League outfit.
Any move from Tottenham to bring the Belgium international to White Hart Lane will see them improve their offer to tempt Monaco let their player leave the club in the summer transfer window.
After coming through the ranks of Monaco's youth set-up, the winger broke into the first team in 2012. Ferreira-Carrasco signed a new deal last summer and his current deal at Stade Louis II runs down in 2019.
Any move from Tottenham in persuading the Belgian to join the north London side this summer will see them step up their offer. His style of play is compared with his compatriot and Tottenham's Nacer Chadli, who had an impressive season under the guidance of the former Southampton manager.
Should Ferreira-Carrasco make a switch to England, it could force Pochettino to sanction the sale of Andros Townsend. The Mirror claims Tottenham are willing to use their winger as part of the swap deal in signing Aston Villa striker Christian Benteke.
However, Townsend has vowed to prove his worth and is confident of cementing his place in the first team, despite Tottenham exit rumours.
"To be as fit as possible and to show my ability on a consistent basis while trying to nail down a place in the first team," Townsend told Tottenham's official website.
"I'm looking for consistency on a personal level and if we can do it as a team as well, because we showed we can do it in certain games last season, who knows where that can take us?"Your name: Lachlana, Custom Shop: “Borderline Being”
Where is your stuff: Maru-Light at Deviant Art
How did you get involved in Super Dollfies and customizing them?
I think I knew when I bought my first boy that painting and customizing BJD was where I wanted to go. I’d been an avid pastel portrait artist who’d done a lot of work in watercolor and oil as well and had more than dabbled with sculpting portrait busts and character statues—BJD seemed like a natural progression just shy of being the doll-crafter I’d always dreamed of being. I spent so long just staring at my first boy’s faceup (in awe), studying every stroke and line and patch of color and imagining my strategy for painting one.
It took me about a year to get started—a friend of mine thrust her Dollzone boy upon me and asked if I’d paint him. I’d never done a faceup before, but I had faith in my background and the poor boy needed some help. I had a lot of fun going through the process and was happy enough with the outcome (and so was she) to want to actively pursue it. So I went and bought a floating head. (I actually bought a mold I wanted as a doll and not just a practice head.) I really adored the way he turned out—however the very day after I painted him he had an accident and face-planted into the floor, destroying the MSC on his nose. I was absolutely devastated. I cried for three days while trying to repair him, but the more I layered on the MSC, the worse he got so I had to concede to wiping him and doing him again. (Because I was a noob) I used alcohol to remove the faceup—it took me hours worth of scrubbing but when I at last repainted him, I’d taken note of everything I hadn’t done well enough the first time (like cleaning the pastel dust away from the nose crevices, blending better, etc) and tried to improve. It’s years later, and this boy still has that same faceup even though I’ve come so far—I still like it.
What do you do best?
Lips. I‘d say lips are my specialty. When I was a child I’d go through my coloring books and color all the lips first. With BJD I paint the whole face LOL, but lips are still my thrill. I love the pouty plump lips best. Let me paint a doll with a plump, pouty pucker and I’m a happy beast.
What Inspires You?
Other artists inspire me. I troll forums and flckr and deviantart and just gawk at the extreme talent of other artists. I love when you can truly see the technique at work, when you can glance at a doll and just know what dollmaster produced the faceup. But I also love the rare gems, the surprises, the ones that make you sit back and say ‘Wow. WHO did that??’
What do you want people to think when they look at your Customizations?
I’d like them to see something special, whether it’s the character of the doll through the entire faceup/mod or a certain paint stroke or lip-shading that calls to them. I’ve fallen in love with whole dolls just for the way someone painted their lips. That’s always wonderful especially when I’m really proud of the result. Though I’m pretty sure I’m my own worst critic. Almost every doll I paint I always have a period where I hate it and want to repaint it immediately. It’s rare that I complete a doll and sit back and feel accomplished. It usually takes a photoshoot for me to be like ‘oh, there you are. Wow. Cool.’ Or conversely, ‘Back on the slab you go.’
What do you hope to accomplish in the next 5 years?
I’d like to at last venture into airbrushing. It’s something I’ve stayed away from because of time and equipment investment reasons, but I’ve always wanted to learn. And I know it’s going to be a learning process, and I’m not sure it will achieve the looks and control I currently have with pastel, and I’m not sure just how sane I’ll be going through it when the airbrush decides to spit on a nearly-finished faceup LOL—but I’d still like to try it.
What sorts of things do you enjoy the most about your designs/customizations?
Lately I’m enjoying the realism effect. A few years ago I would scrunch my nose at applying too much blushing to a head, there was always an element of the stylized in my work—I had rules to never paint the nose, to stay inside the lines with lips, to leave the jaw and chin alone. Lately, I broke all those rules. The last handful of dolls I’ve painted for myself have blushing all over the place, around the nose, the mouth, the chin, the jaw—on the forehead. I’ve even added veins in the temples—not morbidly, but just faintly there. I like making the ‘skin’ appear soft and plaint, I like super-tender fingers and toes in graduated pinks and stuff of that nature. And then building over a very solid style of blushing the other elements of the faceup, usually finishing with some skin texture or freckles or beauty marks—things I know a lot of collectors aren’t terribly fond of. But I really like blending the separation between ‘doll’ and ‘portrait’ in the faceup these days. That’s what I’ve been enjoying.
Other than yourself, who are your favorite doll customizers?
Sdink (Cheryl) is a huge influence on me in terms of inspiration, aesthetics, molds and always striving to improve on my work. I’m a big admirer of kamarza, alientune & Blueoxyde’s work. Blueoxyde has done some truly phenomenal customs with her Zaolls—her vision and execution is so inspiring. And I’m positively amazed by everything Jubriel produces. The extent of her talents, from faceups to costuming to photography supported by the elaborate backstory and designs of her characters is nothing short of stunning. The same can be said for Candygears who always floors me with any projects that involve her Mr. Have and Clean Slate. Her diorama for Uncanny Dream 2011 especially is absolutely jaw-dropping. Citronrouge has incredible vision and ability to execute that vision, her works are so dark and such a superb example of the “beautiful-grotesque” which I adore. But there’s really just so much talent out there, it’s hard to quantify it and I know I’m leaving people out.
What’s the Best thing about customizing your own dolls?
The freedom. Both creatively to try and experiment with new looks and repaints more often and not having to hunt someone down to realize a vision for you. There was a definite turning point where I stopped buying just dolls I liked and started buying the ones I wanted to paint. To this day, the dolls I purchase and put on layaway are usually dolls where the very thought of painting them excites me. It’s rare I go into a sale without a reason that involves customization and faceup potential.
What’s the most difficult thing about doing customizations (your mods, face-ups, tats, etc) and altering them?
Altering them? I’ve run into that quite a few times. Lisander, my half-statue boy began as a full facial reconstruction, but midway through I realized that my sculpting technique just wasn’t up to par, so I ended up carving most of what I’d done off of him—which is how he ended up with stone work.
More often than not I’ll paint a face and not be satisfied with it, and immediately wipe it and paint it again. I just did that with my IOS Sezz—he was nice, but now he’s much better. But that’s personal criticism at work. Sometimes it’s a case of gloppy eyelashes, I’ve ruined whole faceups because I went too heavy-handed on the paint and had to start from scratch. So the difficult thing in altering is really the time it costs to repair what was already done and turn it into something better. I don’t have a lot of time to begin with, so when I spend hours working on something just to have it all be for naught, I get angry. Then I get over it, and do what needs to be done usually to much better results.
What type of dolls do you enjoy customizing (male/female/brands)?
I’m a male-doll kind of person. 9 times out of 10 I prefer to paint men. Whether it’s the androgynous sort, the gothy types, or more currently the handsome realistic guys with the attractive manbrows—I like painting boys/men. Women are a whole different strategy for me and not usually as enjoyable. I’m very picky about my women and while I’m open to taking on any doll as a commission, my personal preference is Iple girls. Iplehouse really produces the only female molds so far that excite me. I have 3 big girls myself (a Cherie, Carina & Soo) and one little girl (I) and I’m aiming to get my paws on a Jessica to paint as a gift for my sister-in-law-to-be. I’ve also painted two Asa’s for a customer, same head, but one was a boy and one was a girl and it was the boy I enjoyed painting immensely. (Though oddly if I got an Asa for myself, it’s for a female character I’m planning… so go figure.)
What is your favorite style to create?
I’m on a realism kick these days. I enjoy a nice natural faceup with dramatic eyes and plump lips. It’s fun to paint the more stylized and elaborate types (like my recent Iple Carina) but I find it more challenging and I’m not always taken with the result.
Who would you love to collaborate with?
Someone who has a really mean talent with wig making/styling and clothes making. eclipse21 comes to mind immediately as a wig-maker. I’d love to collab to create a really wonderful full set doll. That would be truly fantabulous.
Why choose doll customizing as a form of Self Expression?
I think it’s the whole element of bringing characters to life. Creating these 3D avatars, making them life-like, having this interactive artwork to hold in your hands and mod and play with and shoot. It’s not a painting on the wall you just stare at, it’s something more tangible. I’ve always been drawn to dolls and figures and statues—the 3-D medium coupled with my inexplicable need to push for realism just comes into perfect harmony in the BJD world. Back when I was sculpting my own characters in high school and pouring over doll-making magazines I don’t think I ever could have imagined something like this. It’s so fulfilling for me.
How long does it take from start to finish on a typical doll to create and complete?
A typical doll I’d consider to be slight mods (usually some face sanding), a faceup & full body blush with mani/pedi and often skin texturing. In crunches, I’ve done it in 10 hours—at least I recall clocking one on Facebook at 10 hours (I think it was Gerard). I do often find I work in crunches though, as my work and social life don’t really permit me relaxing doll-painting streaks. I work on weeknights after I come home into the wee hours of the morning and have notoriously crawled into bed at 4 and 5 am to finish a project only to get up and zombie myself to the office the next day. And then do it again.
How do you like to work best with a custom order for a client? With total freedom to create your vision, or do you like some feedback/interchange with a client who might have an idea or theme they would like to see realized?
Ultimately I want to produce what will make my client happy. They’re sending their doll to me to realize a vision they have, so I ask for as much detail as possible. I’m very visual, so visual references help me tons, whether they’re pictures of real people or other dolls, I like to really get in there and see what the client is thinking aesthetically—what appeals to them and I can better translate that visually.
I had a lovely client send me a movie once to watch so I could fully gauge the look of the character who resembled the main actress and that was awesome. It helped loads because the look and attitude sort of go hand-in-hand. It’s great to paint a nice faceup, but to really have it translate that doll’s character (which I’m all about) it takes some extra consideration.
I don’t copy faceups however, but I will seek visual reference to understand a certain style the client is after. At the same time, I feel that I will produce a better faceup if a client does allow for my creative interpretation in addition to everything else. I have certain quirks in my style I always fall back on, and I will always use unless I alter them myself—so if someone is going to commission me I’m assuming they like my style and I will apply my style as I see fit.
What have been your favorite projects you’ve done thus far?
Smile definitely ranks up there. He was a commission that gave me total freedom and was really in line with a lot of things I wanted to try but never had the right opportunity to do. He was a Miho head that was going to be sold if I couldn’t ‘save’ him for the owner—so right there the pressure was more off than on because he wasn’t a dearly beloved doll, he was already coming to me with a certain amount of freedom attached. The owner quoted me some of my favorite darker inspirations to draw from, like Heath Ledger’s Joker and Death Note’s Beyond Birthday and a general urban decay/mental asylum sort of aesthetic and let me loose. I came back to her with ideas that involved a Glasgow grin and facial pierceings and custom-created zombie eyes and she was like GO! GO! And I did, and it was just absolutely liberating and so very enjoyable. We both really adored how he came out and I really missed him once I sent him back because he was so inspiring (she even let me name him in the process. He really was a commission that spoke to me.) Incidentally, her financial state a few months later forced her to pare down her resin crew, so she contacted me about buying Smile from her. I couldn’t get to my paypal fast enough. LOL Now Smile is home with me and I’m planning to continue work on his body, and take my first steps into carving out ribcage structure, and dark things of that nature. We’ll see how it goes…
What sets your doll customizations apart from all the others?
I try to give them character in their design and the way they photograph. That’s what I’m about, character. I want other people to look at members of my crew (or dolls I’ve worked on for other people) and see a story in their face, to imagine that there’s more than just resin there, there’s intelligence, cunning, sexuality, humanity, what have you. I want people to look at a photo of a doll I’ve worked on and be able to read the deeper character traits and personalities. I feel a lot of my dolls have that quality and I think that’s what makes them unique. At least they do to me.
Are there any sort of projects you’ve been hoping to work on but just haven’t gotten around to it?
Too many. I have a long line of my crew and my partner’s crew waiting for various aesthetics, tattoos and mod work. I think in terms of full projects, the most immediate one I can never seem to get going on is Beyond’s body work. I’m designing for him to have a corset piercing and I want to mod him with epoxy to make it seem like it really is his skin being stitched into. On top of that, he has oodles of ink that needs to be done on top of a general body blushing that needs to be a bit more decrepit than the norm—but in subtle ways. So while I’ve been putting thought into him, I can just never seem to get the gears going on this guy. And he’s one of my favorite dolls and faceups too.
What was the most challenging thing you have ever done thus far?
My poor Bertram, Adonais Muse. I lusted after an AiL bertam for about 4 years before finally getting one, and almost immediately I decided to mod him. It was such a sudden impulse decision that I jumped in without really considering what I was doing and spent many hours sanding facial bone structure into this boy. I wanted him to look real, and I gave him a very realistic faceup, I smattered it with skin texture and freckles and beauty marks and invested in glass eyes (which I wasn’t in the habit of doing often) and when I sat back to drink him in—I wasn’t happy. It was sort of like a Frankenstein situation, where I thought I’d made every feature lovely on its own, but together he just looked wrong. So I fielded for feedback (and had a nervous breakdown because by then I was convinced I’d ruined a lovely little boy) and after deliberating on him for 24 hours (and impulsively buying a second Bertram as a replacement) I went back to rework him. Some of my blushing, coupled with the extreme sanding made him look emaciated, and since I hadn’t modded his eyes, which on a plumper face looked proportionate, with the narrower cheeks and jaw I’d given him, they looked immense. And I’d painted his mouth wide—so he had this realistic faceup with a wide mouth and giant eyes and gaunt features.
I reworked his blush and paled him out and let him sit that way. I tried to photograph him often to find his angles and convince myself he looked good. And I think in some ways he did—there is one photo in particular I still really adore, but the hair is covering part of the mod work and it makes all the difference.
So after several months I’d determined all the problem areas and put him back on the slab to completely rework again. I wiped his faceup and added modeling compound to flesh out his gauntness. I also modded his eyes smaller, and when painting him, I was careful not to paint the full mouth, but sort of custom his own lip shape. He still has imperfections, because this boy has had a lot of work done, but ultimately I think he looks much better now. He’s taken a few really lovely photos and his character is greatly beloved by my partner and I, so even after all he went through, he’s one of the more special members of the crew.
I still think I was nuts to even do as much as I did in the first place. But I learned a lot about modding, and my Gerard Way AiL boy really reaped the benefits.
How has your style evolved over time, and where do you see it going in the future?
Definitely. I think it went from ‘hey, I can paint this doll’ to really trying to visualize what I wanted beyond just slapping on some color and doodling an arching eyebrow. I did okay faceups at the start, but I wanted to really explore what called to me in terms of style and develop my own techniques to really achieve it. I think I did a lot of gothy stuff in the beginning because that was sort of status quo for me, but I found that I was more drawn to natural looks, realistic looks, and small details like plump lips instead of hard lip lines or that one strip of color down the bottom lip which I was doing a lot out of habit. I think I’ve learned to layer color better, how to make gothy faceups look more real and less Harlequin, how to do minimal without being minimal about doing it. I just want to keep improving. There are so many things I still want to try, but I don’t just want to try them, I really want to succeed at them—and then do better.
Interview continues… soon!All-female creative team—writer Caitlin Kittredge (THROWAWAYS, Coffin Hill) and artist Roberta Ingranata—join forces for an all-new story about one Alex Underwood, a journalist who thinks she’s seen it all… until she becomes the unlikely host to an ancient and powerful artifact known as the WITCHBLADE. The ongoing series—first co-created by Image Comics co-founder and partner, Marc Silvestri, with Brian Haberlin, Michael Turner, and David Wohl—is set to launch this December.
“Everywhere you look in the real world, you’ll see a hero. Not the kind that wears a cape and flies around a comic page or across the big screen but the kind you see walking around being kind of unremarkable. Basically people. People that, when given the choice, will simply do the right thing. Because that’s what a hero does,” said Silvestri. “Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, as it often means being selfless. Without hesitation. But again, that’s what a hero does. Our most enduring superheroes come from this simple idea: people choosing to do the right thing. People like the wielders of the Witchblade.”
WITCHBLADE #1 drops readers into the action from page one. Gunned down and left for dead on a New York rooftop, Alex Underwood's life should have ended there—but instead, at the moment of death, she became host to the Witchblade, a mystical artifact that grants the woman wielding it extraordinary powers. But the power comes with a heavy cost, and Alex finds herself thrust into the center of an unseen battle raging on the snowy streets of NYC. Demons are real and walking among humans, and every one of them is intent on taking out the Witchblade's newest host before she becomes too strong to kill. But the artifact chose Alex for a reason, and she's not going down without a fight.
“The idea of people choosing to be selfless was always at the forefront when Brian Haberlin, Michael Turner, David Wohl, and myself went about the business of creating Witchblade 20 some years ago. Now a talented new team has grabbed the creative reins and, quite frankly, they’ve knocked the new Witchblade out of the park! Writer Caitlin Kittredge, artist Roberta Ingranata, and colorist Bryan Valenza have taken Witchblade in a bold new direction that is completely fresh and exciting,” added Silvestri. “So do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Witchblade where you can follow the adventures of a person granted great power and choosing to do the right thing with it. You know, a hero.”
WITCHBLADE #1 (Diamond Code OCT170557) hits stores on Wednesday, December 6th. The final order cutoff deadline for retailers is Monday, November 13th.Why iPhone won’t revolutionize the mobile web landscape
~ 10 January 2007 ~
…at least not in the short-term.
First things first: If you plan on buying an Apple iPhone this June, you better get in line in front of me, because I’ll have $500 ready to leave my hands the minute the first one’s available. I couldn’t be more elated about the announcement and more appreciative of the incredible development effort on Apple’s part.
Several people have pinged me asking my thoughts about how much the iPhone will change the mobile web landscape, seeing how I’m in the midst of authoring a book on the subject.
My reply? Hardly at all. Here’s my reasoning:
Content zooming isn’t new. Don’t get me wrong — the UI features in “Safari Mini” (or whatever the new name) are no doubt really cool, but the technology to see an entire web page and zoom in/out — “adaptive zooming”, “mini-map navigation”, what have you — has existed, to my knowledge, for some time now (at least a year?). Additionally, Opera has been developing similar technology for non-desktop browsers, notably of late in the version for Nintendo Wii (video). I really like the idea of viewing the exact same site on a mobile, but I question how practical it is for every site. (Nor is the idea of mobile widgets new, while we’re at it.)
Data costs will continue to plague subscribers. Take the NYTimes.com example shown in the keynote. We can probably expect “Safari Mini” to compress images and code to reduce download size much like other mobile user agents, but at the current NYTimes document size of +500 KB you could potentially pay $5.00 just to download the home page once, if paying per KB for data access. I’m currently subscribed to data plans on two different providers (Sprint, Cingular). One has unlimited, the other a 5 MB/mo cap. I surf endlessly on the unlimited plan, but I’m very cautious about web content on the other. Granted, iPhone owners will likely be unlimited plan subscribers, but still. (For the record, let it be said I expect unlimited data plan growth/affordability to continue to increase the next few years.)
Context is still king. At the end of the day, the iPhone is a device built for mobility. And with mobility, there are limitations and opportunities that should be addressed, both of which are roughly the same for iPhone as that of nearly any mobile device. Consider the Google Maps app, for example. Firstly, Google Maps Mobile has been widely available on a variety of devices for some time now. Secondly, if iPhone isn’t GPS-enabled, that is to say it can tell where I’m at rather than typing in my location, it doesn’t radically alter the existing experience anyway. The UI is slick for sure, but beyond that I’m still at the mercy of text entry.
iPhone owners won’t be the typical mobile web user. If the mobile web is to become anything more than rich internet access for elite phone subscribers, we must look beyond Blackberrys, Treos and yes, iPhone. Currently India is outpacing all other countries in mobile subscriptions growth (source), but don’t expect them to be iPhone owners anytime soon — or owners of devices with similar capabilities, speaking in terms of a subscriber majority.
All this aside, while the iPhone won’t revolutionize the mobile industry as a whole anytime soon, it will revolutionize the individual mobile web experience, and come June that’s about all that will matter for me.
69 CommentsPosted by Nolan Dalla on Jun 12, 2013 in Blog, Music and Concert Reviews, Rants and Raves |
If You’re Under 25, Your Music is Fucking Garbage
You show me a machine or a computer program that can match the stellar majesty of Luciano Pavarotti’s singing “Nessun Dorma,” and I’ll acknowledge it as music. Until then, it’s fucking garbage.
If you’re under 25 years old — or an immature 30-plus — I’m about to set your ass straight.
So, listen up.
Your music is fucking garbage.
There, I said it.
Mindless crap. Eardrum-bursting, dagger-in-the-eyes, ass-bagging, blow your fucking brains out — unadulterated dog shit. That pretty much sums up the type of music that’s popular with today’s young people.
Listen, you stupid sons of bitches. I’m talking at you. I’m your elder. My opinion demands respect.
Your music hasn’t got life. It’s fucking dead. Your music is void of humanity. It’s as fake as a porn queen’s orgasm. There’s no soul. It’s tripe. It’s a carp in the sea of music. The stuff you listen to was created by fucking machines.
Today’s “artists” — there’s an oxymoron — don’t even need to know how to play musical instruments or sing. In other words, no fucking talent whatsoever is needed to succeed today in music. You heard me. No. Talent. Whatsoever.
And, I’m fucking sick of it because the current generation is taking the gold we gave you and dragging it into a sewer.
Listen up, you little pricks. I’m not stuck in some kind of classic rock time warp. Fact is, I expose myself to many different kinds of music. I give all music a chance. Even the techno-trash littering the modern music scene is something I’ve tried to digest, which I found to be like choking down a plate of raw oysters laced with salmonella.
It would be nice to enjoy fresh musical acts. I want to hear new songs. I like some young people, especially when they get my order right. But real music is written and performed by humans, not a fucking computer program linked up to a laser show.
Fact: The more fancy gadgets and distractions you need, the most your music just flat out sucks.
Music should convey some sense of humanity — who we are, and what we feel. I know that’s a hard concept to digest since your idea of a relationship is picking up a new Twitter follower. Where’s the love and romance in the mind-numbing rubbish that’s played at most nightclubs? Is there any conveyance pain and loss? Or pride and joy? How about playing a catchy tune that’s just fun to sing along with?
Is that too much to fucking ask?
I don’t expect to like everything that’s new. As an amateur observer of the human condition, I freely acknowledge that successive generations are obliged to a continuation of the species which sometimes entails pushing boundaries and violating the preferences of their elders. History shows the more radically different one generation is from one to the next, the greater degree of innovations are sparked from such permutations. Music is just one by-product of inevitable cultural and technological shifts, sometimes mislabeled as advances.
Yes, yes, yes! New music should piss off plenty of parents and leathery jokers like me. At least I’ll accept “cultural evolution” as being inevitable, and necessary.
If you don’t believe this, take a look at the past century. Nearly a hundred years ago, traditional musicians hated a new sound called jazz. Later, jazz loyalists despised rock n’ roll and even the early sound of Motown. After that, the rockers hated disco music. Then, just about everyone hated New Wave and the 1980’s. Next came rap music which irritated everyone over the age of 30. Now, it’s hip hop and something called dubstep, which is essentially music made by computers and sound-making software. This garbage makes rap sound like fucking Amadeus.
There’s a reason this “music” is used as a weapon on suspected terrorists, forcing them to wear earphones and being bombarded with such abuse for hours. I’m not making this up. This is the brain-frying shit they put on the headphones and strap to the ears of prisoners who are handcuffed behind their backs and sit naked in jail cells while they are forced to endure this madness. I’d rather blow my fucking brains out, and if I ever did managed to get out, I’d be running off to join the nearest terrorist cell in order to extract my revenge.
Have a listen this rubbish (CLICK BELOW) if you can stand it for more than a few seconds:
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I know what you’re thinking. You want to go after my music. You want to blast away at me. Go ahead, fuckers. See if you can top what I like at the conclusion of this article. You’re drawing so fucking dead you should even be in my game.
So, what constitutes real music? Here’s a list of things I believe to be essential.
REAL MUSIC DEFINED BY NOLAN DALLA:
(1) Real music is created by humans, not by a machine or a computer.
(2) Real music has structure and consistency.
(3) Real music elicits real emotions — of love, loss, anger, fear, happiness, hope, inspiration, or anything related to the gambit of being human.
(4) Real music requires talent.
(5) Real music requires instruments and/or voices.
(6) Real music should be cross generational.
(7) Real music shouldn’t need gadgets or special effects to be enjoyed.
Here and now, I’ll leave you with a video clip of real music (CLICK BELOW). When one of those fucking machines creates a sound that can somehow match this magical majesty, then give me a call. Until then, don’t label what you listen to as “music.” It’s not music. It’s garbage.
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Writer’s Note: I wrote this over-the-top satirical outrage back in 2013, not expecting it to become the third-highest rated post at my website, with more than 100,000 page views. Had I know that trolling could generate such high traffic, I probably would have utilized the tactic more often. That said, I’ve come to modify my position somewhat on modern music. There’s an astonishing array of excellent high-tech, computer generate sound that’s as profoundly creative as anything ever written and recorded. I continue to express some bewilderment at what masquerades as “popular music” today. Much of it is garbage. However, I wish to amend my previous remarks and withdraw the blanket condemnation of anything enjoyed by listeners under the age of 25. Now, please continue to post the often hilariously hateful comments below. Regards.
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TwitterPalestinian leaders seek to charge Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague with the crime of “Apartheid” and 22 other criminal counts, including seven war crimes. A thick set of documents containing evidence and arguments was ceremoniously handed over to the ICC today at its headquarters, according to Shawan Jabarin, the director of the Palestinian human rights group Al Haq.
Jabarin said he had seen the documents in Ramallah and that the case file covers three areas of Israeli violations under international law: the summer war in Gaza in 2014, settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and issues relating to Palestinian prisoners. Most of the pages are of “legal analysis and legal arguments” he said, in which Palestinians gave technical explanations to the court for how Israel broke specific regulations.
The dossier is organized into sections, one for each of the 23 counts against Israel. Aside from asserting that Israel has violated the United Nations definition of “Apartheid,” Jabarin said the report also names specific crimes such as the “targeting of civilians” in Gaza, and violations of rights to due process for Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons who are then prosecuted under Israeli military code.
Military courts boast a 99.9% conviction rate and trials last an average of five minutes. Palestinians rights groups say these courts violate their fundamental rights to a fair trial. Additionally, Israel transfers Palestinians from the occupied territory to a number of prisons inside Israel in what the Palestinian brief argues is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The evidence used to support each of the Palestinian claims is sourced from field investigations by the Palestinian government, and reports published by the human rights groups Al Haq, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Surprisingly Jabarin indicated the United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) report published Sunday outlining “possible war crimes” committed by Israel and Hamas was not included, despite Palestinian leaders stating repeatedly over the past few months that they would courier a copy to the ICC. Even so, the court has the ability to solicit their own research materials including ordering the UN report.
For the moment Palestinian officials are keeping quiet on the details. Jabarin’s account represents the most substantial clues as to what charges Palestine will seek against Israel. And while he was confident about what he had seen in the file, he noted that he had not read the entire file, and it may contain further charges.
“It’s not for public view,” Ashraf Khatib, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and an advisor to the negotiations team, told me. “We wanted to have an exclusive report made for the ICC.” Another source close to the Palestinian government indicated a directive had gone out to not disclose the contents of the brief.
“Who is charged, it’s up to the court,” said Khatib. “The idea is to make sure Israel and Israeli decision makers will not commit more crimes like the ones that took place in Gaza last year.”
Last winter after Palestine joined the ICC, its leaders sought to compel the ICC to look into war crimes committed by Israel. However, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was barred at that time from calling for a criminal investigation. His hands were tied by a four-month waiting period for new members to the court.
All the same, Palestinian officials exploited a loophole in the ICC rules to initiate a “preliminary inquiry” against Israel within their first months of joining the ICC. Now that freeze against filing charges against Israel has elapsed, Palestinian officials hope that their documents turned over to the court today will upgrade the inquiry into a full investigation, giving the court the power to summons Israeli officials for a trial.
Yet there is no guarantee that the court will charge Israel, and Israel can still take actions that would immobilize The Hague.
The ICC can only move to charge Israel once its internal war crimes investigations closes. The ICC does not prosecute countries or leaders who are sanctioned by their own legal systems. Right now, Israel still has a handful of cases open that could lead to |
United States out of what he sees as the quagmires of the last decade. In places like Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya and Syria, Mr. Obama has opted for selective engagement and accepted that sometimes there will be bad results, but in his view not as bad as if the United States immersed itself more assertively in other people’s problems.
The president’s methods have come under new scrutiny in recent days with flags of Al Qaeda hoisted over Falluja and Ramadi, two names with deep resonance for a generation of American veterans who spilled blood there. And the criticism was fueled by a new memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates describing an ambivalent commander in chief who did not believe in his own military buildup in Afghanistan and wanted mainly to get out of Iraq.NASHVILLE, Tenn. – While the Red Wings wrapped up a tremendously successful six-game (4-1-1) road trip on Saturday, Brendan Smith was just glad to finish – intact.
The Wings’ defenseman was the victim of dirty plays committed by San Jose’s Logan Couture and Nashville’s James Neal.
First, Smith landed hard on the back of his head when he was slew-footed by Couture Thursday in San Jose. Led off the ice by a Wings’ trainer, Smith went through the NHL protocol for concussion evaluation. He did not return to the game.
Then Saturday afternoon in Nashville, Smith absorbed a vicious butt-end to the side of his face administered by Neal as he tried to gain entry into the offensive zone. Neal has a shady reputation for questionable on-ice behavior. He received a two-minute high-sticking penalty with 10:18 left in the third period.
Smith, who scored the first goal in the Wings’ 4-3 win over the Predators, stayed in the game.
But afterward, he was quite outspoken about both incidents.
“I personally didn’t like the play (Thursday),” Smith said. “I thought for me I can’t defend myself. That’s the biggest thing. When somebody can’t defend themselves, that’s when there’s an issue. Obviously it was intentional. You got to look at those things where, was it intentional? Yes or no? You got to have somebody be the judge of that. And can they protect themselves? Is it an attempt to injure? If they put those in and it comes out to be conclusive it should be a fine or suspension.
“There’s another thing, like tonight, even with Neal, you got to look at those things and see what happens. I haven’t seen (a replay) but I felt he knew I was there and that was kind of intentional (I think he meant Neal elbow to chin/head during his high-sticking penalty at 9:42 of the third). You got to look at those kind of things. You put those in the back of your head and I think that’s why he (Couture) got fined.”
The NHL wasted little time in levying a $5,000 fine – the most permitted under the Collective Bargaining Agreement – on Couture for the illegal play that occurred at 16:03 of the third period. At the time, both players received coincidental two-minute minors – Couture for tripping, Smith for hooking.
Smith was fortunate that he didn’t suffer more serious injury on either play, especially Thursday when he struck the back of his head on the ice.
“Yeah that’s the thing, I couldn’t put any hand down to protect myself and I did land pretty hard on my head and that’s why I had to go off and get an assessment,” Smith said. “That makes me upset because there’s a chance I could be out for a long time. You’ve seen it with (Johan Franzen). He hasn’t been back since then. Those head injuries are dangerous. At least the league saw it as it was and we’ll keep going. The game is so quick. Everybody is trying to battle for space. Things like that we got to crack down on.”
Smith was a game-time decision Saturday as moments before the slew-foot, he was hit in the right hand by Brent Burns’ shot from the point.
“Yeah, it was like everything combined,” Smith said. “But the shot was the one that hit me.”
Pavel Datsyuk Center - DET Goals: 22 | Assists: 29 | Pts: 51
Shots: 131 | +/-: 11
For the last two games the Red Wings have overcome third-period deficits to win in regulation.
On Thursday in San Jose, the Wings trailed 2-1 after 40 minutes before Pavel Datsyuk tied the game at 13:32 and Luke Glendening produced the game-winner at 18:45. The Red Wings followed that up Saturday with another comeback when Alexey Marchenko scored his first NHL goal and Tomas Tatar fired a backhand shot off a Predators’ defenseman for the game-winner.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Wings last mounted third-period comebacks to win consecutive games on Dec. 9 and 11, 1993 when they posted home wins over St. Louis (3-2) and San Jose (5-3). It’s been more than 31 years since it happened in consecutive road games – Jan. 28 and Feb. 5, 1984 – with comebacks over the New York Islanders (4-3) and Boston (6-5).
Overall, the Wings have overcome third-period deficits to record at least one point in five of their past eight games, including four times on their six-game road trip.
“You never know when you’re down by a one, every team should be aware because we’re going to be coming and we don’t stop,” Smith said. “If we just keep playing our system, I think the teams that start pressing or getting outside of their element, that’s when they start making mistakes and the game becomes out of reach for them. We just keep at it, we chip away in the third, it’s been working for us. I guess that’s where your resiliency comes from.”
Backup goalie Jonas Gustavsson made a season-high 37 saves Saturday, which is three shy of his career high. He now has a 3-2-1 record with a 2.12 goals-against average and.924 save percentage in six appearances this season. … Fourth-line forward Drew Miller produced a goal and an assist in Saturday’s win. It was his 12th multi-point game of his career, but the first of this season. … Defenseman Niklas Kronwall collected two assists against the Predators for his 64th career multi-point game of his career, the 10th this season. He has a goal and five assists in the past five games.I actually laughed out loud when I heard Blanca call Red “Heat Miser” (I remembered the heat miser song from watching “The Year Without Santa Claus” as a kid). Blanca is totally right here, Red does look like Heat Miser. If you don’t get the reference, start watching the video above at 2:18.
I also continue to find it odd that right after Blanca gives her “all natural energy supplements” Red dives right into being addicted to speed. Remember that Red has literally built her entire persona and crew around keeping people sober.
Finally, last week I mentioned that I found it out of character for Red to “Queer Shame” Piscatella. Apparently, Piper (Taylor Schilling), Alex (Laura Prepon), and Nicky agree. They call her out for it too and Red’s best answer is that she is only talking about “Man Gays.” I have to object that Red’s has been written entirely out of character so far this year.
4. “You Have Interior White Privilege, You Look Like You Have Too Much To Live For”
Alex says this about Linda while Linda is trying to figure out how to fit in.
Piper starts out wanting to mentor Linda but she quickly learns that Linda’s all about trading in on or abandoning friendships in order to move up in the world.
Just in this one episode, Linda abandons Piper and Alex to get in tight with Maria Ruiz (Jessica Pimentel) and then abandons Maria to get in tight with Big Boo (Lea DeLaria).
Of course, the problem here is that in prison, people remember being slighted. Linda might have protection from Boo now, but if she pushes things too far she will be all alone and facing some serious music.
In prison, you can be whoever you want to be as long as you can back it up (not sure Linda can, no matter how good she is at manipulating people and situations).
I guess what I am saying is that she really does look like she has too much to live for which also means she has things to lose. Those things can come back to bite her, and I suspect that they will.
3. “CO’s Taylor and Rice Reporting for Duty”
One of the major themes of season five is reversals (like abused becoming abusers or people without power becoming powerful)
Angie Taylor (Emma Myles) and Angie Rice (Julie Lake) decide that they will become CO’s. Their plan is to wear CO uniforms and then go around enforcing their new power by de-panting inmates.
I have to agree with Taystee here that the meth-heads are “so stupid.”
2. “Well, Democracy is Bullshit”
Taystee makes this statement after finding out that the results of the Litchfield poll put arresting CO Bayley at number nine on the list of demands (understandably).
But, in all honesty, the final list covers a lot of important criminal justice reform ground. Here is the final list (I am adding in articles that explain why these issues are important as well):
1. Proper Training of the CO”s (This is a real problem in private prisons).
2. Reinstatement of the GED program (lack of programming is a huge problem and very little training gets people ready for life after prison).
3. Better Health Care (Taystee calls for Health Care provided by real doctors, yup this is a huge problem too at private prisons and at women’s prisons - I personally experienced getting treated for MRSA by only nurses).
4. Conjugal visits. We certainly didn’t have them but this was not an issue that I was particularly concerned with (I am sure it is important to married couples).
5. Amnesty for all prisoners providing there are no hostage casualties (this would have been my number one concern personally).
6. Ending Body Cavity Searches (I covered this in Episode 2) and the use of Solitary Confinement as punishment (also a huge problem, in fact, I have seen stats that suggest between 80,000 to 100,000 people are in solitary at any particular time, it is also a huge problem in women’s prisons)
7. More jobs and better pay (As prison populations have skyrocketed it created a jobs crunch, given the massive costs prisoners accumulate being incarcerated this would be a huge help to prisoners and to their families - and let us not forget the high costs of phone calls, commissary, and other fees).
8. Access to the internet - this would certainly have been nice, but aside from fully walled off email providers, I have not heard of prisons providing access to the internet.
9. CO Bayley arrested and tried for murdering Poussey Washington (Samira Wiley).
10. Flaming Hot Cheetos and Takis, Tampons, and more nutritional foods (I have talked before about how bad the food is in prison but the sparse availability of tampons is a huge problem for women’s prisoners as is the cost of tampons).
In other words, despite some short-term thinking and selfishness from inmates like the meth-heads, they came up with a pretty good list.
Alison said when discussion creating their list of demands that, “we can do this two ways, as if we were animals, like how they treat us...or like we civilized human beings, like how we want them to treat us.” I would suggest that they, with the exception of flaming hot Cheetos and Takis, did it like civilized human beings (which is important given the brutal treatment of the CO’s and the many diverse agendas of the many cliques of inmates).
I recently had a pretty deep conversation with a former women’s prisoner who was angry that I was giving cover to Orange Is the New Black. For her, the show turned her experiences into entertainment for the masses. She was also very angry that often times women, like her, feel excluded in discussions of criminal justice reform.
I want to honor her feelings and listen to her voice. It is really important to include the voice of women and solving mass incarceration is not possible if we leave people behind or consider the job done when leaving anyone behind.
I do think that OITNB works pretty hard to expose some important ideas to the general public, I try to use the show as a springboard to discussions about criminal justice reform, life on the inside, and to educate people who haven’t been to prison about the challenges that formerly incarcerated people face. But I try to be critical when it is called for and to call out the show's mistakes.
I have freely admitted since the beginning that there are two weaknesses to my coverage: I was not in a woman’s prison and I was in a state prison (not a federal camp). I apologize for any mistakes I made and I am open to hearing criticisms of the show from anyone who has done time.
1. “Until Bayley is in Chains”
Taystee says this to clarify her only ambition for Litchfield’s demands. This is kind of ironic because in most cases, this is exactly the kind of attitude society has to people who have been arrested and are facing trial (as everyone in Litchfield would have personally experienced).
As I mentioned earlier, reversals of ethical position seem to be one of the biggest themes of Season 5 and Taystee’s position is no exception. Taystee has in many ways taken the position of an aggrieved victim of crime.
Baley (Alan Aisenberg) is yet another character put into a situational reversal. He absolutely killed Poussey but he also never in a billion years intended to kill her. Just like so many people I met in prison, he has that look of someone who had no idea that they were even capable of killing someone until it was too late.
I absolutely believe that he deserves to serve time for what he did, he was careless with his power and chose to continue to do his job despite having little to no training. The Management and Corrections Corporation should also be charged (this for some reason reminds me of Big Pharma’s complicity in the opioid crisis).
At the same time, Bayley absolutely had no intention to kill anyone. He is the guy who hit someone too hard in a barfight only to find out later that the punch just happened to kill the target of his punch. Bayley deserves to be punished, but he is not the person Taystee thinks he is. Way too often we confuse justice with revenge. Way too often we confuse negligence with intent. And way too often, we apply cruelty where compassion should be applied instead.
Unlocking The GatesDragon philanderer, Ryan Giggs’ ex-wife Stacey Giggs, spoke of her excitement today as she is finally set to be awarded half of the Giggs estate in a huge ceremony in Cardiff.
There will be a formal presentation to hand over the briefcases of cash and medals to Stacey within the week and is set to include other celebrity fiddlers, such as Tiger Woods, David Beckham and Brad Pitt. Wayne Rooney was also invited, but declined the offer, saying he had Old people’s homes to visit.
We caught up with Stacey as the news broke. “I’m chuffed, but still a little frustrated.” Said the 39-year-old. “The dirty prick [Giggs], won 13 League medals and I only get 6. They should melt the odd one down or something and give me half of it.” “Even though I hate United, it’s still nice to see that us SLAGs [Single Ladies and Girlfriends] are able to claim more medals than some other footballers do in an entire career!”
Another of our reporters, fortunately wearing a sow’ester and goggles, caught up with Steven Gerrard as he left the world’s Scousiest Scouser awards 2017, having been runner up again to Jamie Carragher.
“Orrr, ehy! I can’t believe eht. She’s a cheeky cow, err! Had I not, ehhh, slipped against Chelsea, she would have had ehhhh, only 5!”
Further to this report – In a ceaseless two-hour campaign, The Rochdale Herald is now happy to report that it has managed to gain agreement that at the end of Cardiff ceremony, the 13th medal will be smelted down and formed into little golden testicles. One of which will be given to Stacey.It's early at the Open Source Convention, held this week in San Jose — the keynotes were just this morning — but I'm already starting to see a few themes. One of them, mentioned both in the first keynote address this morning, is the notion that freedom is not necessarily synonymous with software freedom.
[ See also: Convincing the Boss to Accept FOSS ]
For example, said Tim O'Reilly, you can think of the "Internet OS" as a data operating system, based on the growing importance of some of its subsystems, such as location and identity — Who should own the databases? It's no longer an issue of having source code; it's the data you have and control that defines power.
"There's a natural tendency towards monopoly," said O'Reilly. And for those who care about freedom (of which software freedom is a subset), that raises the question: Should those databases be centralized or federated?
The meta-issues that question suggests, which touch on software as a service (SaaS), Internet architecture decisions, and "cloud" software licensing, were the topic of a panel discussion moderated by Bradley Kuhn from the Software Freedom Law Center, "With Software as a Service, Is Only the Network Luddite Free?"
Free software may not matter as much as it used to, said O'Reilly, and it may cause us to miss things that we ought to be paying attention to. "The architecture of systems matters more than the licenses," he pointed out. "The Internet isn't free because of a license but because it was designed for cooperation." It's not just the availability of the source code, because you don't have the machine and you don't have the data that's been collected. "How do we think of these services as fundamentally federated?" he asked. "We're going to live with the consequences [of the answer]."
Open source is based around the convenient fact that for 20 to 30 years, computing has happened on a user's local computer, said Benjamin Mako Hill, senior researcher at the MIT Sloan School of Management. One result is that open source philosophy and licenses are built around this highly individualistic use of software. But that's increasingly not the case in a world of network service, Hill said. "It's no longer as simple as a user's computing; it's a group's computing." And none of us is quite sure what is meant by "a group to control its computing." Some of these issues are addressed in the Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services (which I confess I haven't had time to read — hey, I'm listening to the speakers!).
One example of the new data challenges is how it is and should be licensed, so that people can collaborate but they don't give away more rights than they should. When you contribute to a social network, what do you grant to the public and what do you keep? If you leave the social network, what data can you take with you? That's one reason why O'Reilly believes the licensing model a developer adopts is among one of the most important decisions. "What is the license of my tweets? I really don't know," he said.
This isn't limited only to the information we consciously post on social networks, said O'Reilly. We also have to think about data that isn't created explicitly by humans. For example, your cell phone is automatically recording GPS locations; who has the copyright on that information? "As more companies wake up to the realization that data is power, they will not hesitate to make great use of it," O'Reilly added.
"We talk too much about free software and not so much about freedom," said Hill. "The value and principle at stake here is user autonomy."
Open standards are just part of the solution, said the panelists. Suggested Identi.ca's Evan Prodromou, an open source version of Facebook might be more integrated and you could control your own social graph on a server you control, without influencing the site's functionality. Because, he said, right now "If Romeo is on Facebook and Juliet is on facebook they will never be able to be friends."
"The low barrier to entry in the federated web is much lower when the development system is there," said Prodromou. "It's really important to develop and attract this kind of developer ecosystem," he explained, such as with APIs. Identi.ca's API supports the Twitter API, he said, "So we have great buy-in by third party developers."
But this is all about rethinking structured data and the way it's shared. "I'd love the FOSS community to reinvent the address book," said O'Reilly. "That's really my social network." In an ideal world, he said, the address book would understand e-mail, instant messaging, microblogging, and use algorithms and metrics to notice who's more important because he responds faster to them. "A social application like Facebook should access my machine using my settings of sharing to private/friends-only; the network would be with me," he explained.
There's plenty more discussion at the conference touching on the "what ought to be in the cloud, and who owns it?" Danny O’Brien, international outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, gave a session about why innovation still comes from the edge of our networks during which he pointed out that the primary problem in giving data to the cloud is that most services are honeypots. "Even if they go to great efforts to protect your data, [these services] become the one stop shop for hackers, government, or their own corporate temptation."
They have no vested interest in protecting that data, said O'Brien. Yet we trust them to give us a feeling of privacy. "This is a strange and weird result," he said.
The conversation is obviously continuing... and it needs to.The movie industry has spent nearly every summer for the last 15 years trying to unite the people behind watching their world get systematically blown up real good, hoping that each time they set New York on fire or smash the White House that it will evoke the same strange mix of visceral, nihilistic thrill and patriotic pride as 1996’s Independence Day. Many of those attempts have been led by director Roland Emmerich himself, so it’s no surprise to hear that he’s finally given up on finding new, not-so-subtle angles to recreate Independence Day and just started pushing to make some sequels already. Fox has similarly been working on the project since 2009, planning to shoot back-to-back the two follow-ups, which will tell one big story. One big, loud story.
However, the deal remains stymied by Will Smith’s exorbitant, $50 million asking price to come and punch more aliens in the face, along with his other, more recent demands such as strict control over the script (as seen in the recent stagnation on Men In Black III), and finding parts in the movie for wife Jada and daughter Willow. But today Vulture reports that the studio is expected to have the scripts in hand for ID2 and ID3 by December, and that it’s considering moving forward without Smith if necessary—though obviously that means less Will Smith bucks, as his face on a movie poster still causes overseas moviegoers to involuntarily begin spewing euros from their lederhosen. And of course, it would be unthinkable on our end, as we’ve all just agreed to pretend that this project requires integrity and continuity of character. After all, no amount of pretty fireballs will distract us from wondering why that charismatic pilot isn’t here to welcome us, again, to Earth, and remind us that highly evolved alien races are no match for America’s street smarts.Jan 8, 2015; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Charlotte Hornets forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (14) scores as Toronto Raptors forward Amir Johnson (15) defends in the first quarter at Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Peter Llewellyn-USA TODAY Sports
Charlotte Hornets small forward, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, is very quietly becoming one of the most improved players in the NBA.
This season, the Hornets hold a record of 19-27 overall, with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist having missed 14 of those games. In those games, Charlotte went 3-11, including a ten-game losing streak. For those not wanting to keep up with the math, that means the team is 16-16 with MKG in the lineup.
To take things a step further, since his return from injury on December 10th, the Hornets are 10-7 when Kidd-Gilchrist sees more than 25 minutes of action. This just goes to show how much of an impact he has on the team, despite flying under the radar the majority of the time.
We’ve known since the moment he was drafted that MKG was an elite defender, but his offensive game has left a lot to be desired. Fortunately, Kidd-Gilchrist’s work ethic is second to none, resulting in an offseason of working tirelessly with sharp-shooter Mark Price. His efforts to this point have really started to show.
All of last season, Kidd-Gilchrist only took 60 shots from a distance of 10-19 ft, making 21 of them for a shooting percentage of 35. Through 32 games this season, he’s already taken 81 shots from that distance and is hitting them 43 percent of the time.
This has not only opened things up for him, but for his teammates as well.
In the past, defenders could pack the paint when Kidd-Gilchrist had the ball, almost daring him to pull up for a jumper, knowing the numbers were on their side. Having extra defenders in the paint not only made it difficult for him to score, but it crowded things for Kemba Walker and Al Jefferson as well.
Now that defenders are having to respect MKG’s shot more and more every game, it is forcing them to pull away from the basket. If the defenders stay packed in, he’s starting to make them pay.
This is a major reason why he’s been able to score double-digit points in 11 of his last 15 games. In 62 games last season, Kidd-Gilchrist hit double-figures in 14 of them. In 32 games this season, he’s already done it 18 times.
With Kemba Walker set to miss at least the next six weeks, the Hornets need all the help offensively they can get.
Michael Kidd-Gilchrist isn’t just seeing an uptick in scoring, he’s improving his rebounding numbers from a season ago as well.
Last season, MKG only had two games with at least ten rebounds. He’s already had six games with at least ten this season in 30 less tries.
This has led to him already having six double-doubles as opposed to only one last year.
His six double-doubles are fourth-most among Eastern Conference small forwards and tied for sixth-most among all small forwards.
Despite his obvious improvements and undeniable impact on the team, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist has gone about this season under-appreciated. If he continues to grow at his current rate, he will surely be an All-Star caliber player by next season.
While many have been quick to label him a bust, I’m expecting Michael Kidd-Gilchrist to storm onto the scene in a Kawhi Leonard– or Jimmy Butler-esque fashion by next season.Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek national who worked as a commercial truck and Uber driver, was identified in news reports as the suspect accused of ramming a Home Depot rental truck into people on a bike path in lower Manhattan, killing at least eight and injuring multiple more, in a frightening “act of terror” that unfolded in the shadow of the World Trade Center memorial.
Saipov, who had identification from Tampa, Florida, was recently living in New Jersey and also drove for Uber this summer. According to CBS News, the terror suspect is “Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, apparently from Uzbekistan,” a central Asian nation. He is an Uzbek national who has been in the United States for seven years, according to NBC and CNN. Online records show he worked as a commercial truck driver and had ties to Ohio as well. According to the New York Post, a friend described Saipov as a “friendly Uber driver.” Although in the country since 2010, Saipov had contact with law enforcement in many states for minor traffic violations, showing a mobile life.
He came to the U.S. through the Diversity Visa Program, “a State Department program which offers a lottery for people from countries with few immigrants in America,” prompting President Donald Trump to tweet on November 1, “The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based.” Saipov was charged with terrorism counts on November 1.
Earlier concerns that the attack was terrorism appear to be well-founded; the suspect left a note that said he carried out the attack in the name of ISIS, which was found near the truck. He also had a photo of the ISIS flag. New York police and other authorities declined to release the 29-year-old suspect’s name in an early evening press conference after the Halloween afternoon attack, but the mayor publicly and quickly called the truck ramming an “act of terror,” and his identity quickly leaked. CNN is reporting that sources say Saipov is not a U.S. citizen. Visitors to New York City were among those killed in the carnage; five of the deceased victims are from Argentina. They were together on a trip to New York City to celebrate the anniversary of their graduation and were on a bicycle tour.
Here he is, shot in the abdomen by officials.
Sayfullo Saipov the NYC bike path attacker. pic.twitter.com/DG5U5uMRXE — Lee 🌪🐻 (@ScotchAnon) October 31, 2017
It might have been even worse were it not for the heroics of a New York police officer, Ryan Nash, 28, who shot the suspect in the abdomen after authorities and witnesses say Saipov leapt from the truck with paintball and pellet guns while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” Saipov, who was captured in dramatic photos with a gun in each hand after crashing into a school bus, is in custody and needed surgery, New York’s top officials confirmed in the press conference. The FBI has taken over responsibility for the investigation and is considering the attack to be terrorism. It was the city’s deadliest terrorist attack since September 11, 2001.
“It looked intentional,” an eyewitness confirmed to CNN, describing the truck hurtling through the busy bike lane, leaving behind crumpled bicycles and bodies with tire tracks visible on them. Pedestrians and bicyclists can see the World Trade Center memorial as they traverse the popular, and usually peaceful, area where the attack occurred. It’s literally adjacent to the scene where the United States’ worst terrorist attack occurred. Again and again, in their initial comments, New York officials focused on the horrific spectacle of average people just going about their lives, enjoying a beautiful, sun-dappled fall day, before being struck down so randomly. Whether the suspect had any actual ties to ISIS beyond the note is not yet clear.
Eyewitness to NYC truck attack says alleged suspect “sprinted toward the group of kids” after crashing onto bike path and hitting school bus pic.twitter.com/Sbqt4h7OYS — ABC News (@ABC) October 31, 2017
“The truth is, New York is an international symbol of freedom and Democracy,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in the press conference, describing the suspect as a likely “lone wolf.” He added, “That also makes us a target from those people who oppose those concepts… We go forward together, and we go forward stronger than ever. We’re not going to let them win.” Be forewarned that some of the videos and photos below are graphic.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. The Suspect Is an Uzbek National Who Came to the U.S. Through the Diversity Lottery Program, Was Once Interviewed by Federal Agents & Passed an Uber Background Check
Photo of 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov's Florida drivers license behind #Manhattan attack. pic.twitter.com/BjWVWYjMiq — Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) October 31, 2017
Details about the suspect’s background were just unfolding as his name emerged, but it appears that he is a somewhat recent immigrant to the United States. Saipov “is an Uzbek national and came to the U.S. in 2010,” NBC News reported. The ABC News social media editor, Evan McMurry, tweeted, “NYC suspect was interviewed in 2015 by federal agents after being listed as point of contact for two men on counterterrorism list.”
Although CNN reports that it’s not clear whether he was in the United States lawfully, Fox News reports, though sources, that “the suspect was from Uzbekistan and had a green card. According to The Associated Press, Saipov has a Florida license but may have been living in New Jersey.”
Uber confirmed to ABC News that “truck attack suspect Sayfullo Saipov was an Uber driver. He passed background check, now banned from the app,” reported a network producer. According to Fox News, “Uber added it has not found any safety reports concerning the terror suspect.”
President Trump tweeted that he was stepping up “extreme vetting” for migrants in the wake of the deadly attack. “I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!” he wrote. According to the U.S. State Department, “The Department of State administers the Congressionally-mandated Diversity Immigrant Visa Program annually. Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides for a class of immigrants known as ‘diversity immigrants’ from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States.” There will be 50,000 of these visas available in 2019, according to State, which adds, “The Department of State distributes diversity visas among six geographic regions, and no single country may receive more than seven percent of the available DVs in any one year.” The program was introduced by Chuck Schumer in 1990 and George H.W. Bush signed it into law.
The suspect is now out of surgery. “Investigators believe he came to the country legally,” The New York Daily News reported. President Trump criticized “chain migration,” in the wake of the attack, saying Saipov was the point of contact for 23 people “brought in with him.”
Haunting photo of #NYC terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov & rental truck police say he used to carry out attack. Here he is weapons in hand. pic.twitter.com/ujXRQcnvAu — Brynn Gingras (@brynnCNN) November 1, 2017
According to online records from his traffic history, Saipov has worked as a commercial truck driver. He rented the Home Depot truck in New Jersey the day of the attack, CNN reports. According to The New York Post, Kobiljon Matkarov, 37, a friend of Saipov’s, met him in Florida five years ago and they became friends. “He is very good guy, he is very friendly… he is like little brother… he look at me like big brother,” Matkarov told the Post, adding that Saipov had “been working for Uber and living in New Jersey as recently as this summer.” He said that Saipov gave him a ride to JFK airport in June. The friend told Fox News he didn’t know Saipov had been radicalized, saying, “he was generally a happy-go-lucky person who loved America.”
Heavy was at the scene of Saipov’s Tampa, Florida address. Although local media were also at the scene, there did not appear to be any law enforcement activity at the spot, indicating that Saipov might not have lived there anymore. The Tampa angle broke into the news because of the ID Saipov had with him at the scene.
Here’s another photo from the scene:
According to a producer for GMA, writing on Twitter, the suspect was “carrying a Florida ID.” Authorities, without giving his name, later said he was 29 and was not from New York, but they would not confirm where he was from. A review of online records does not show much of an obvious social media presence for the suspect, although he did have a Google Plus page with two followers and no photos on it.
The page in his name had check ins at two restaurants from 2012, both in Brooklyn. One was a Russian restaurant and the other a Jewish cafe, according to the Google Plus check in. He appears to have had a Facebook page (which bears only a few photos mostly of cars and nothing obviously alarming). It said he lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and it has now been deleted. The page also said the suspect studied “Moliya,” which means he studied in the area of finance. This was one of the photos on it. According to CNN, “Saipov has been linked to social media accounts that contain ISIS-related material.”
John Williams witnessed the aftermath of the incident. He said in a media interview widely circulated on Twitter, “It was a Home Depot pickup truck. The front was entirely smashed in, and it had smoke coming out of it… and I heard it was an accident with a bus, but I didn’t see the bus. I did see the Home Depot truck… It was definitely totaled.” He added of the disturbing scene: “Right next to the truck was the man laying on the ground and the man getting arrested.”
Video shows large police response in Lower Manhattan after reports of shots fired. https://t.co/kcQD2fXckk pic.twitter.com/vdUmF6UXGS — ABC News (@ABC) October 31, 2017
Videos showed a large police response after reports of shots being fired. The scene of a truck ramming into pedestrians obviously brings to mind ISIS-fueled attacks in Europe in which a vehicle was the modus operandi. The attack fueled panic throughout lower Manhattan, especially due to its location near the World Trade Center site.
2. Sayfullo Saipov Shouted ‘Allahu Akbar,’ Was ‘Radicalized Domestically |
The information website of the American Bar Association. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 14, 30-38. (A review article critiquing the American Bar Association's attempt to correct myths about domestic violence. Specifically authors state, "... female IPV is more commonplace than male IPV.")
Dutton, D. G. & Nicholls, T. L. (2005). The gender paradigm in domestic violence research and theory: the conflict of theory and data. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10, 680-714. (A review and analysis of the data regarding male victimization. Critical of feminist approaches that minimize female perpetration and trivialize male injury.)
Dutton, D. G., Nicholls, T. L., & Spidel, A. (2005). Female perpetrators of intimate abuse. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 41, (4) 1-31. (A review article examining issues related to female abusers. Authors conclude, based on survey and epidemiological studies, that females are as abusive as males in intimate relationships. They note that this is "especially so for younger cohort samples followed longitudinally.")
Dutton-Greene, L. B., & Straus, M. A. (2005, July). The relationship between gender hostility and partner violence and injury. Paper presented at the 9th International Family Violence Research Conference, Portsmouth, NH. (Report of findings from international dating violence Study which collected data from over 11,000 <70% women> college students from 50 universities in 21 countries. Subjects responded to the revised Conflict Tactics scale, gender hostility scales and injury scales. Findings reveal that women perpetrated greater partner violence than men, that women were more seriously injured than men and that hostility toward the opposite sex was significantly and similarly correlated with partner violence for men and women.)
Eaton, D. K., Davis, K. S., Barrios, L., Brener, N. D., & Noonan, R. K. (2007). Associations of dating violence victimization with lifetime participation, co-occurrence, and early initiation of risk behaviors among U. S. high school students. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 22, 585-602. (Data was examined from the 2003 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Subjects were 15,214 students from the 9th to the 12th grade and consisted of 48.7% female, 61.5% white, 13.9% black, 16.6% Hispanic, and 8.1% other race or ethnicity. Physical dating violence was assessed by response to the question: "During the past 12 months, did your boyfriend or girlfriend ever hit, slap, or physically hurt you on purpose?" Results reveal that 8.8% of girls and 8.6% of boys reported being victims of dating violence.)
Ehrensaft, M. K., Cohen, P., Brown, J., Smailes, E., Chen, H., & Johnson, J. G. (2003). Intergenerational transmission of partner violence: A 20-year prospective study. Journal of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, 71, 741-753. (A sample of 541 subjects from New York State <298 women, 243 men> who had been followed for over 20 years responded to the CTS. While overall similar rates of perpetration of partner abuse were reported by men and women <21% vs 22%> women were more likely than men to kick or hit <9% vs 5%> or hit or try to hit with objects <7% vs 2%>.)
Ehrensaft, M. K., Moffitt, T. E., & Caspi, A. (2004). Clinically abusive relationships in an unselected birth cohort: men's and women's participation and developmental antecedents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 113 (2), 258-270. (Assessed 980 individuals, ages 24-26, who were participants in longitudinal study in New Zealand. Subjects were examined with the CTS, the Partner Conflict Calendar, PCC, a measure of the consequences of abuse and a variety of personality and psychopathology scales. Findings reveal that 9% of the total sample, with an equal number of men and women, were victims of clinical abuse in their relationships with partners.)
Ellison, C. G., Barkowski, J. P., & Anderson, K. R. (1999). Are there religious variations in domestic violence? Journal of Family Issues, 20, 87-113. (Subjects were selected from the first wave of The National Survey of Families & Households and consisted of 2,420 women and 2,242 men. Self administered surveys revealed that females were significantly more likely than males to perpetrate violence toward their partners. Authors report that "regular attendance at religious services is inversely associated" with domestic violence for men and women.)
Ernst, A. A., Nick, T. G., Weiss, S. J., Houry, D., & Mills, T. (1997). Domestic violence in an inner-city ED. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 30, 190-197. (Assessed 516 patients <233 men, 283 women> in a New Orleans inner-city emergency Department with the Index of Spousal Abuse, a scale to measure domestic violence. Found that 28% of the men and 33% of the women <a nonsignificant difference>, were victims of past physical violence while 20% of the men and 19% of the women reported being current victims of physical violence. In terms of ethnicity, 82% of subjects were African-American. Authors report that there was a significant difference in the number of women vs. men who reported past abuse to the police,19% of women, 6% of men.>)
Farrell, W. (1999). Women cant hear what men dont say. New York: Tarcher/Putnam. See Chapter 6. (Pp. 123-162; 323-329.) (An excellent social and political analysis of couple violence.)
Feather, N. T. (1996). Domestic violence, gender and perceptions of justice. Sex Roles, 35, 507-519. (Subjects <109 men, 111 women> from Adelaide, South Australia, were presented a hypothetical scenario in which either a husband or wife perpetrated domestic violence. Participants were significantly more negative in their evaluation of the husband than the wife, were more sympathetic to the wife and believed that the husband deserved a harsher penalty for his behavior.)
Felson, R. B. (2002). Violence and Gender Reexamined. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. (Scholarly review and analysis of the literature. Author concludes that, "Women are just as likely as men to be victims of violence from their partners...." Also "casts doubt on the battered wife syndrome as an explanation for why women kill their male partners.")
Felson, R. B. (2006). Is violence against women about women or about violence? Contexts, 5, 21-25. (Reports that while men are eight times more likely to commit overall violence than women, there is gender parity in partner violence. Author suggests that violent men are "less likely to assault their partners because of the chivalry norm.")
Felson, R. B. (2008). The legal consequences of intimate partner violence for men and women. Children and Youth Services Review, 30, 639-646. (Author reports that "evidence does not support the idea that assaults by male partners are particularly likely to be underreported or treated leniently. Rather, the results suggest that offenders who assault women are more likely to suffer legal consequences than those who assault men...." In the article author summarizes an unpublished study examining whether gender and marital status affect whether people think the police should be notified about a partner assault. In a telephone survey, 800 subjects responded to a scenario of an argument between a couple in which one strikes the other, bruising their arm. Results indicate that subjects were more likely <80% to 60%> to condemn men's assaults on women than women's assaults on men, even though injuries were identical.)
Felson, R. B., & Outlaw, M. (2007). The control motive and marital violence. Violence and Victims, 22, 387-407. (Study based on an analysis of data obtained through the National Violence Against Women Survey <see Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000>. Authors looked at 10,000 respondents out of 16,000 total sample who were currently married. Results reveal that adult women are just as controlling and jealous toward their male partners as the other way around. Also report that, "While controlling spouses in current marriages are more likely to act violently there is no evidence that this relationship is gendered.")
Felson, R. B., & Pare, P. (2005). The reporting of domestic violence and sexual assault by nonstrangers to the police. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 597-610. (Authors analyzed data from The National Violence Against Women Survey, and found that "male victims are particularly reluctant to report assaults by their female partners." Reasons for nonreporting include: fear of reprisal, thought that police could do nothing to help and charges would not be believed.)
Felson, R. B., & Pare, P. (2007). Does the criminal justice system treat domestic violence and sexual offenders leniently? Justice Quarterly, 24, 435-459. (Authors analyzed data from the National Violence Against Women Survey and conclude that "women who assault their male partners are particularly likely to avoid arrest.")
Fergusson, D. M., Horwood, L. J., & Ridder, E. M. (2005). Partner violence and mental health outcomes in a New Zealand birth cohort. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 1103-1119. (Examined extent of domestic violence experience and perpetration in a sample of 828 <437 women, 391 men> young adults who were 25 years old. Subjects were part of a long term longitudinal study and were administered the CTS2. Results reveal that "there were more men exposed to severe domestic violence than women" and that mild and moderate rates were similar for men and women. Overall, 39.4% of women and 30.9% of men reported perpetration scores of 3 or higher. Authors report that men and women reported similar rates of injury <3.9% for women vs. 3.3% for men>. In terms of initiation of partner assaults, 34% of women and 12% of men reported initiating physical assaults.)
Fiebert, M. S., & Gonzalez, D. M. (1997). Women who initiate assaults: The reasons offered for such behavior. Psychological Reports, 80, 583-590. (A sample of 968 women, drawn primarily from college courses in the Southern California area, were surveyed regarding their initiation of physical assaults on their male partners. 29% of the women, n=285, revealed that they initiated assaults during the past five years. Women in their 20's were more likely to aggress than women aged 30 and above. In terms of reasons, women appear to aggress because they did not believe that their male victims would be injured or would retaliate. Women also claimed that they assaulted their male partners because they wished to engage their attention, particularly emotionally.)
Fiebert, M. S. (1996). College students' perception of men as victims of women's assaultive behavior. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 82, 49-50. (Three hundred seventy one college students <91 men, 280 women> were surveyed regarding their knowledge and acceptance of the research finding regarding female assaultive behavior. The majority of subjects (63%) were unaware of the finding that women assault men as frequently as men assault women; a slightly higher percentage of women than men (39% vs 32%) indicated an awareness of this finding. With regard to accepting the validity of these findings a majority of subjects (65%) endorsed such a result with a slightly higher percentage of men (70% vs 64%)indicating their acceptance of this finding.)
Flynn, C. P. (1990). Relationship violence by women: issues and implications. Family Relations, 36, 295-299. (A review/analysis article that states, "researchers consistently have found that men and women in relationships, both marital and premarital engage in comparable amounts of violence." Author also writes, "Violence by women in intimate relationships has received little attention from policy makers, the public, and until recently, researchers...battered men and abusive women have receive'selective inattention' by both the media and researchers.")
Follingstad, D. R., Wright, S., & Sebastian, J. A. (1991). Sex differences in motivations and effects in dating violence. Family Relations, 40, 51-57. (A sample of 495 college students <207 men, 288 women> completed the CTS and other instruments including a "justification of relationship violence measure." The study found that women were twice as likely to report perpetrating dating violence as men. Female victims attributed male violence to a desire to gain control over them or to retaliate for being hit first, while men believed that female aggression was a based on their female partner's wish to "show how angry they were and to retaliate for feeling emotionally hurt or mistreated.")
Foo, L., & Margolin, G. (1995). A multivariate investigation of dating aggression. Journal of Family Violence, 10, 351-377. (A sample of 290 college students <111 men, 179 women> responded to the CTS. Results reveal that 24.3% of men and 38.5% of women reported perpetrating physical violence toward their dating partners.)
Forke, C. M., Myers, R. K., Catallozzi, M., & Schwarz, D. F. (2008). Relationship violence among female and male college undergraduate students. Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine, 162, 634-641. (A sample of 910 college students <520 women, 390 men> from three college campuses responded to select items from the CTS. Results indicate that women were significantly more likely to report perpetrating physical violence on their male partners than men on their female partners.)
Foshee, V. A. (1996). Gender differences in adolescent dating abuse prevalence, types and injuries. Health Education Research, 11 (3), 275-286. (Data collected from 1965 adolescents in eighth and ninth grade in 14 schools in rural North Carolina. Results reveal that 36.5% of dating females and 39.4% of dating males report being victims of physical dating violence. In terms of perpetrating violence 27.8% of females while only 15.0% of males report perpetrating violence.)
Gelles, R. J. (1994). Research and advocacy: Can one wear two hats? Family Process, 33, 93-95. (Laments the absence of objectivity on the part of "feminist" critics of research demonstrating female perpetrated domestic violence.)
Gelles, R. J. (2007). The politics of research: The use, abuse, and misuse of social science data - the case of intimate partner violence. Family Court Review, 45, 42-51. (An analysis examining the issue of how social science data has been "abused and misused in policy and practice in the area of Intimate Partner Violence <IPV>." Challenges "supposed" facts in the area and faults feminists for not acknowledging the empirical findings that men are equal victims of IPV.)
George, M. J. (1994). Riding the donkey backwards: Men as the unacceptable victims of marital violence. Journal of Men's Studies, 3, 137-159. (A thorough review of the literature which examines findings and issues related to men as equal victims of partner abuse.)
George, M. J. (1999). A victimization survey of female perpetrated assaults in the United Kingdom. Aggressive Behavior, 25, 67-79. (A representative sample of 718 men and 737 women completed the CTS and reported their experience as victims of physical assaults by women during a five year period. Men reported greater victimization and more severe assaults than did women. Specifically, 14% of men compared to 7% of women reported being assaulted by women. Highest risk group were single men. The majority (55%) of assaults on men were perpetrated by spouses, partners, or former partners.)
George, M. J. (2002). Skimmington Revisited. Journal of Men's Studies, 10 (2), 111-127. (Examines historical sources and finds that men who were victims of spousal aggression were subject to punishment and humiliation. Inferences to contemporary trivialization of male victims of partner aggression is discussed.)
George, M. J. (2003). Invisible touch. Aggression & Violent Behaviour, 8, 23-60. (A comprehensive review and analysis of female initiated partner aggression. Historical, empirical and case evidence presented to demonstrate reality of "battered husband syndrome.")
George, M. J. (2007). The "great taboo" and the role of patriarchy in husband and wife abuse. International Journal of Men's Health, 6, 7-22. (A scholarly examination of key myths and taboos surrounding the concept of patriarchy. Emphasizes the point that IPV will be successfully combated only when male victimization is acknowledged and addressed by both men and women.)
Giordano, P. C., Millhollin, T. J., Cernkovich, S. A., Pugh, M. D., & Rudolph, J. L. (1999). Delinquency, identity, and women's involvement in relationship violence. Criminology, 37, 17-40. (Reports the responses of 721 young adults <45% male, 55% female; 47% white, 53% nonwhite> who had been involved in delinquent activities 10 years earlier. Subjects responded to a modified version of the CTS. Findings reveal that women were more likely to perpetrate violence than men. Specifically, 27.6% of women compared to 19.2% of men hit or threw at their partner and 8.3% of women compared to 0.4% of men threatened spouse or partner with a knife.)
Goldberg, W. G., & Tomlanovich, M. C. (1984). Domestic violence victims in the emergency department. JAMA, 251, 3259-3264. (A sample of 492 patients <275 women, 217 men> who sought treatment in an emergency department in a Detroit hospital were survey regarding their experience with domestic violence. Respondents were mostly African-American (78%), city dwellers (90%), and unemployed (60%). Victims of domestic violence numbered 107 (22%). While results indicate that 38% of victims were men and 62% were women this gender difference did not reach statistical significance.
Gonzalez, D. M. (1997). Why females initiate violence: A study examining the reasons behind assaults on men. Unpublished master's thesis, California State University, Long Beach. (225 college women participated in a survey which examined their past history and their rationales for initiating aggression with male partners. Subjects also responded to 8 conflict scenarios which provided information regarding possible reasons for the initiation of aggression. Results indicate that 55% of the subjects admitted to initiating physical aggression toward their male partners at some point in their lives. The most common reason was that aggression was a spontaneous reaction to frustration).
Goodyear-Smith, F. A. & Laidlaw, T. M. (1999). Aggressive acts and assaults in intimate relationships: Towards an understanding of the literature. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 17, 285-304. (An up to date scholarly analysis of couple violence. Authors report that, ...studies clearly demonstrate that within the general population, women initiate and use violent behaviors against their partners at least as often as men.
Graham, K., Plant, M., & Plant, M. (2004). Alcohol, gender and partner aggression: a general population study of British adults. Addiction Research and Theory, 12, 385-401. (A cross sectional sample of 2027 <1052 women, 975 men> adults were interviewed regarding their experience with partner aggression. Results indicate that 16% of women reported physically aggressing their male partners within a two year period, while 13% of males reported physically aggressing their female partners.)
Graham-Kevan, N. (2007). Domestic violence: Research and implications for batterer programmes in Europe. European Journal of Criminal Policy & Research, 13, 213-225. (A review article in which author cites evidence which challenges traditional feminist conceptualizations of "domestic violence as unilateral male-to-female violence enacted to control and dominate women, supported by the patriarchal beliefs and systems of the wider society.")
Graham-Kevan, N., & Archer, J. (July, 2005). Using Johnson's domestic violence typology to classify men and women in a non-selected sample. Paper presented at the 9th Annual Family Violence Research Conference, Portsmouth, NH. (A total of 1339 subjects, students and staff from the University of Central Lancashire, responded to a modified version of the CTS. Authors report that, "the proportion of women and men using any act of physical aggression towards their partners was as follows: from self-reports 29% for women and 17% for men, and from partner reports 31% of women and 22% for men.")
Grandin, E. & Lupri, E. (1997). Intimate violence in Canada and the United States: A cross-national comparison. Journal of Family Violence, 12 (4), 417-443. (Authors examine data from the 1985 U.S. National Family Violence Resurvey and the 1986 Canadian National Family Life Survey. Report that "although the United States exhibits significantly higher rates of societal violence crime than Canada, Canadian women and men were more likely than their American counterparts to use severe and minor intimate violence." This finding is counter to the "culture of violence theory." Moreover, in both cultures the rates of violence of wives to husbands were higher than husbands to wives. Specifically, the overall violence index for men in America was 10.6 and in Canada it was 18.3; while the overall violence index for women in America was 12.2 and in Canada it was 25.3.)
Gray, H. M. & Foshee, V. (1997). Adolescent dating violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 12, 126-142. (A sample of 185 adolescents responded to a questionnaire about dating violence; 77 students reported being involved in physical violence in their current or most recent dating relationship. Mutual violence was present in 66% of cases; while 26% of males and 8% of females reported being victims of violence and 29% of females and 4% of males reported being sole perpetrators of violence.)
Gryl, F. E., Stith, S. M., & Bird, G. W. (1991). Close dating relationships among college students: differences by use of violence and by gender. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 8, 243-264. (A sample of 280 first year college students <156 women, 124 men> at a mid-Atlantic university completed the violence sub-scale of the Conflict Tactics Scale. Results reveal that almost 30% of the females and 23% of males reported that they had been violent in the current relationship. Also almost 28% of women and 39% of men reported sustaining violence in their current relationship.)
Halpern, C. T., Oslak, S. G., Young, M. L., Martin, S. L. & Kupper, L. L. (2001). Partner violence among adolescents in opposite-sex romantic relationships: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. American Journal of Public Health, 91, 1679-1685. (A sample of 7493 subjects <3405 boys, 4088 girls> were drawn in 1994-5 from a stratified random sample of high school students in the United States. Subjects responded to items from the CTS and results reveal similar rates (12%) of reported physical violence for boys and girls.)
Hamel, J. (2005). Gender Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse. New York: Springer. (Reviews the "most reliable and empirically sound research" and concludes that "men and women physically and emotionally abuse each other at equal rates..." Offers a comprehensive gender inclusive treatment approach to domestic violence.)
Hamel, J. (2007). Toward a gender-inclusive conception of intimate partner violence research and theory: Part 1-traditional perspectives. International Journal of Men's Health, 6, 36-54. (A review article which examines research in the area of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and finds that until recently the primary focus was on the physical and psychological abuse of women by their male partners. Concludes that the reluctance to objectively investigate the area is due to a "prevailing patriarchal conception of intimate partner violence.")
Hamel, J. (2009). Toward a gender-inclusive conception of intimate partner violence research and theory: Part 2-new directions. International Journal of Men's Health, 8, (1) 41-59. (A review article critical of Johnson's post-patriarchal typology of intimate partner violence. The author presents and discusses a gender-inclusive model for prevention, intervention and policy. This model is consistent with latest findings that reveal most domestic violence is mutual.)
Hampton, R. L., Gelles, R. J., & Harrop, J. W. (1989). Is violence in families increasing? A comparison of 1975 and 1985 National Survey rates. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51, 969-980. (Compared a sample of 147 African Americans from the 1975 National Survey with 576 African Americans from the 1985 National Survey with regard to spousal violence. Using the CTS found that the rate of overall violence (169/1000) of husbands to wives remained the same from 1975 to 1985, while the rate of overall violence for wives to husbands increased 33% (153 to 204/1000) from 1975 to 1985. The rate of severe violence of husbands to wives decreased 43% (113 to 64/1000) from 1975 to 1985, while the rate of severe violence of wives to husbands increased 42% (76 to 108/1000) from 1975 to 1985. In 1985 the rate of abusive violence by black women was nearly 3 times greater than the rate of white women.)
Harned, M. S. (2002). A multivariate analysis of risk markers for dating violence victimization. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 17, 1179-1197. (In a university sample of 874 daters <489 women, 385 men> assessed with the revised CTS, 22% of women and 21% of men reported experiencing physical aggression from dating partners.)
Harders, R. J., Struckman-Johnson, C., Struckman-Johnson, D. & Caraway, S. J. (1998). Verbal and physical abuse in dating relationships. Paper presented at the meeting of American Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA. (Surveyed 274 college students <92 men, 182 women> using a revised formed of the Conflict Tactics Scale. Found that women were significantly more physically aggressive than men, particularly in the areas of: pushing, slapping and punching.)
Headey, B., Scott, D., & de Vaus, D. (1999). Domestic violence in Australia: Are women and men equally violent? Data from the International Social Science Survey/ Australia 1996/97 was examined. A sample of 1643 subjects (804 men, 839 women) responded to questions about their experience with domestic violence in the past 12 months. Results reveal that 5.7% of men and 3.7% of women reported being victims of domestic assaults. With regard to injuries results reveal that women inflict serious injuries at least as frequently as men. For example 1.8% of men and 1.2% of women reported that their injuries required first aid, while 1.5% of men and 1.1% of women reported that their injuries needed treatment by a doctor or nurse.
Hendy, H. M., Weiner, K., Bakerofskie, J., Eggen, D., Gustitus, C., & McLeod, K. C. (2003). Comparison of six models for violent romantic relationships in college men and women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 18, 645-665. (A sample of 608 students <164 men, 444 women> were surveyed with the Conflict Tactics Scale. Results indicate that 16% of men and 26% of women report inflicting violence on their current romantic partner.)
Henton, J., Cate, R., Koval, J., Lloyd, S., & Christopher, S. (1983). Romance and violence in dating relationships. Journal of Family Issues, 4, 467-482. (Surveyed 644 high school students <351 men, 293 women> and found that abuse occurred at a rate of 121 per 1000 and appeared to be reciprocal with both partners initiating violence at similar rates.)
Herrenkohl, T. I., Kosterman, R., Mason, W. A., & Hawkins, J. D. (2007). Youth Violence Trajectories and Proximal Characteristics of Intimate Partner Violence. Violence and Victims, 22 (3), 259-274. (Subjects were drawn from a longitudinal study in Seattle, WA. At age 24, 644 subjects <51.6% female, 48.4% male; 48% Euro-American, 25% African-American, 22% Asian-American) who were partnered were assessed with a modified version of the CTS. Results reveal that 19% of subjects perpetrated one or more acts of IPV in the past year. Overall 25% of women and 13% of men reported having perpetrated IPV.
Hettrich, E. L. & O'Leary, K. D. (2007). Females' reasons for their physical aggression in dating relationships. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 22, 1131-1143. (Examined a sample of 446 dating college females <38.6% Caucasian, 23.6% Asian, 18.1% Hispanic, 7.9% African-American, 6.3% Caribbean American, 4.8% other> and found that 32% reported in engaging in physical aggression toward their male partners. Primary reasons for aggression were anger and poor communication.)
Hines, D. A., Brown, J., & Dunning, E. (2007). Characteristics of callers to the domestic abuse helpline for men. Journal of Family violence, 22, 63-72. (Study examines experiences of 190 men who called the Domestic Abuse Helpline for men. Results reveal that all callers "experienced physical abuse from their female partners, and a substantial minority feared their wives' violence and were stalked.")
Hines, D. A. & Douglas, E. M. (2010). Intimate terrorism by women towards men: does it exist? Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, 2, (3), 36-56. (Study investigates Johnson's theory of partner violence which differentiates common couple violence <CCV> from intimate terrorism <IT>. Johnson maintains IT is caused by patriarchy and primarily committed by men. The authors examined a sample of 302 men who sought help as victims of partner violence and compared their responses to the CTS2 and other measures to a sample of 520 men from the community. Female partners of the helpseeking sample were significantly more likely to aggress against and injure their male partners than female partners of the community sample. For example, males sustained injuries 5 to 1 in the helpseeking sample <35% to 7%> and 1.5 to 1 <1.5% to 1%> in the community sample. Authors indicate that the majority of male aggression in the helpseeking sample was "likely a reaction to their female partner's violence." Results were interpreted as a repudiation of Johnson's theory.)
Hines, D. A. & Malley-Morrison, K. (2001). Psychological effects of partner abuse against men: a neglected research area. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 2, 75-85. (A review article that examines the issue of men as victims of partner abuse. Considers reasons why men would remain in an abusive relationship.)
Hines, D. A. & Saudino, K. J. (2003). Gender differences in psychological, physical, and sexual aggression among college students using the revised Conflict Tactics Scales. Violence and Victims, 18 (2), 197-217. (A sample of 481 college students <179 men, 302 women> responded to the revised Conflict Tactics scale. Results indicate that 29% of men and 35% of women reported perpetrating physical aggression in their relationships.)
Hird, M. J. (2000). An empirical study of adolescent dating aggression in the U.K. Journal of Adolescence, 23, 69-78. (A sample of U.K. high school students <279 male, 269 female> were assessed with a modified version of the CTS. Results indicate that 15% of males and 14% of females reported experiencing physical aggression from their dating partner within the past 12 months.)
Hoff, B. H. (1999). The risk of serious physical injury from assault by a woman intimate. A re-examination of National Violence against women survey data on type of assault by an intimate. WWW.vix.com/menmag/nvawrisk.htm. (A re-examination of the data from the most recent National violence against women survey (Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998) shows that "assaulted men are more likely than assaulted women to experience serious attacks by being hit with an object, beat up, threatened with a knife or being knifed.")
Holt, M. K, & Espelange, D. L. (2005). Social support as a moderator between dating violence victimization and depression/anxiety among African American and Caucasian adolescents. School Psychology Review, 14, 309-328. (A sample of 681 middle and high school students <319 males, 362 females, 267 African Americans and 414 Caucasians> responded to the Victimization in Dating Relationships scale. Results reveal that 43% of males and 32% of females reported physical violence dating victimization. More African American than Caucasians reported physical violence dating victimization <45% vs 32%>.)
Holtzworth-Munroe, A. (2005). Female Perpetration of Physical Aggression Against an Intimate Partner: A Controversial New Topic of Study. Violence and Victims, 20 (2), 251-259. (Examines the changing zeitgeist, methodological issues, and research findings regarding female perpetrated violence.)
Jackson, S. M., Cram, F. & Seymour, F. W. (2000). Violence and sexual coercion in high school students' dating relationships. Journal of Family Violence, 15, 23-36. (In a New Zealand sample of senior high school students <200 women, 173 men> 21% of women and 19% of men reported having been physically hurt by their heterosexual dating partner.)
Jankey, O., Prospero, M., & Fawson, P. (2011). Mutually violent attitudes: effects on intimate partner violence and mental health symptoms among couples in Botswana, Africa. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, 3, (1) 4-11. (A sample of 562 university students in Botswana <71% female> completed the CTS2. No significant differences between men and women were found with regard to physical perpetration of partner violence.)
Jenkins, S. S., & Aube, J. (2002). Gender differences and gender-related constructs in dating aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1106-1118. (Used the CTS with a university sample of 85 dating couples. Authors report that, "women in existing college dating relationships are more aggressive than men.")
Jezl, D. R., Molidor, C. E., & Wright, T. L. (1996). Physical, sexual, and psychological abuse in high school dating relationships: Prevalence rates and self-esteem issues. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 13 (1), 69-87. (Examined an ethnically diverse sample of currently dating subjects <114 male, 118 female> who responded to a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale. Results indicate that 50.9% of subjects <63% of males and 39% of females> reported being victims of moderately abusive behaviors such as "being kicked, slapped, having your hair pulled, and being intentionally scratched.")
Jouriles, E. N., & O'leary, K. D. (1985). Interpersonal reliability of reports of marital violence. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 53, 419-421. (Used the Conflict Tactics Scale with a sample of 65 couples in marriage therapy and 37 couples from the community. Found moderate levels of agreement of abuse between partners and similar rates of reported violence between partners.)
Kalmuss, D. (1984). The intergenerational transmission of marital aggression. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 46, 11-19. (In a representative sample of 2,143 adults found that the rate of husband to wife severe aggression is 3.8% while the rate of wife to husband severe aggression is 4.6%.)
Katz, J., Carino, A., & Hilton, A. (2002). Perceived verbal conflict behaviors associated with physical aggression and sexual coercion in dating relationships: a gender-sensitive analysis. Violence & Victims, 17, 93-109. (A sample of 223 <115 males, 108 females> heterosexual dating undergrad |
and dog were removed and placed into pet carriers and taken to a shelter. The animals were checked out by a vet. Several of the cats suffered from heat exhaustion along with other skin and upper respiratory conditions.In addition to the live animals, two feline skeletons were also recovered at the scene, according to HSPSCA authorities.Animal control officers say conditions in the home were poor. Urine and feces, they say, were throughout the house.Houston SPCA's spokeswoman Tara Yurkshat said, "The cats have taken over.... We don't know how long this has been going on."At least one cat got away from animal control officers.The next-door neighbor says he's called his pest control company to have his yard sprayed for fleas.There's no word yet on whether animal cruelty charges will be filed in this case.Neighbors say the homeowner is a middle-aged geologist who lives alone. No one was at the home when Eyewitness News was on the scene.Stay with Eyewitness News for more details as they become available.Pence Says America Owes Vets a Debt, Promises Stronger Military
From the dawn of the Republic, the United States has depended upon its veterans, and it owes them a debt of honor that must be paid, Vice President Mike Pence said today at the annual Veterans Day ceremony here.
He stood in for President Donald J. Trump, who is attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in Da Nang, Vietnam.
Pence noted that some 50 million Americans have worn the cloth of the United States since 1775, with 20 million of them alive today. “From the hour of our nation’s birth, our best and bravest have stepped forward to defend our freedom,” he said. “And as we speak, a new generation of American veterans is being forged across the wider world.”
The United States owes a debt to veterans, and “it’s a debt we can never fully repay. But on this Veterans Day we rededicate ourselves to accomplishing just that,” Pence said.
Veterans return from service to the nation to serve their communities, he said.
Pence said the administration has been working hard on delivering the services – especially medical assistance – that veterans need and deserve. “Working with Secretary [David] Shulkin, we’ve made the Department of Veterans Affairs already more efficient, effective, and accountable,” the vice president said.
“Let me be clear: Veterans benefits are not entitlements -- they are earned. They are the ongoing compensation for services rendered in the uniform of the United States of America. And under President Donald Trump, we’re keeping the promises that we’ve made to men and women who’ve served in our armed forces,” he said.
Veterans Choice Program
Pence noted the administration has expanded the Veterans Choice Program by more than $2 billion to give beneficiaries access to real-time, high-quality healthcare. “And because not all wounds of war are visible, we’ve improved veterans’ access to urgent mental healthcare services and given them greater access to telemedicine for our veterans,” he said.
The president also signed into law the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act to ensure veterans receive the highest level of service. “And this president has taken decisive action to end the pattern of neglect and mistreatment at the VA,” Pence said. “We’ve already fired or suspended over 1,500 VA employees for negligent behavior.”
Trump has also signed legislation to expand the post-9/11 GI Bill and eliminate the 15-year limit on benefits for new veterans. “And I’m glad to report, veteran unemployment has already fallen by nearly 40 percent since President Trump was elected,” he said. “It’s lower today than at any point since the year 2000. And we're just getting started.” | Nation Grateful for Veterans, Vice President Says
Veterans return from service to the nation ready to serve in communities. “Today, our veterans continue to serve our nation in careers ranging from business to education, from law enforcement to public service,” Pence said.
Keep Your Wits
He related an example of service from the tragedy in Texas. “On Wednesday, Karen and I traveled to Sutherland Springs, Texas, to meet the families and the victims of the worst attack on a place of worship in American history,” the vice president said. “At Brooke Army Medical Center, we stood at the bedside of a retired U.S. Marine Corps gunnery sergeant named Juan Macias. We spoke to his family, as he lay before us, recovering from his injuries. But it was from another member of the church that we learned of that veteran’s extraordinary courage last Sunday.
“Julie Workman, a registered nurse, was also wounded in the First Baptist Church that day,” Pence continued. “But no sooner had the attacker left that she began to treat the wounded. Seeing what lay before her, though, Julie told me she was momentarily overcome, and that’s when “Gunny” stepped in. Despite having five bullet wounds, she told me that Gunny sat up, looked her in the eye and said, ‘You were born for this, keep your wits about you, do your job.’ She said that’s all she needed to hear. Heroism outlives the uniform. And her actions and his courage undoubtedly saved lives that day. That’s an American veteran.” | Pence: Veterans Benefits Earned
Veterans of the future are serving today, and the vice president said the administration has already taken decisive action to make the strongest military in the history of the world, stronger still. “This President has already signed the largest increase in military spending in nearly a decade, and before this year is out, we’ll enact the largest investment in our national defense since the days of Ronald Reagan,” he said.
“And under President Donald Trump, I’ll make you a promise: We’re going to rebuild our military. We're going to restore the arsenal of democracy, and we will once again give our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen the resources and training they need to accomplish their mission and come home safe,” Pence said. “That's our promise to all of you.”The former poster child of the "ex-gay movement" renounced his controversial past beliefs in an email interview with PQ Monthly last week.
John Paulk, the former chairman of Exodus International and co-author of Love Won Out: How God's Love Helped Two People Leave Homosexuality and Find Each Other, said he struggled with rejection all of his life and has been on a journey trying to understand God.
“Until recently, I have struggled all my life in feeling unloved and unaccepted,” Paulk said. “I have been on a journey during the last few years in trying to understand God, myself, and how I can best relate to others. During this journey I have made many mistakes and I have hurt many people including people who are close to me. I have also found a large number of people who accept me for who I am regardless of my past, any labels, or what I do.”
Paulk said he is now greatly remorseful for any harm that he's caused by his words.
“I no longer support the ex-gay movement or efforts to attempt to change individuals — especially teens who already feel insecure and alienated. I feel great sorrow over the pain that has been caused when my words were misconstrued," he said. "I have worked at giving generously to the gay community in Portland where I work and live. I am working hard to be authentic and genuine in all of my relationships.”
As The Advocate points out, Paulk issued a formal apology for his past actions on April 24.
“For the better part of 10 years, I was an advocate and spokesman for what’s known as the 'ex-gay movement,' where we declared that sexual orientation could be changed through a close-knit relationship with God, intensive therapy and strong determination," he said. "At the time, I truly believed that it would happen. And while many things in my life did change as a Christian, my sexual orientation did not."
He added, "Today, I do not consider myself 'ex-gay,' and I no longer support or promote the movement. Please allow me to be clear: I do not believe that reparative therapy changes sexual orientation; in fact, it does great harm to many people."
Paulk's wife and Love Won Out co-author released her own personal statement on April 22, noting that the couple was in the process of divorce.ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Attention, phony war heroes: Dust off those surplus uniforms and shine up those medals awarded by eBay. U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn has ruled that the Stolen Valor Act is an unconstitutional abridgment of your free-speech rights to deceive the public and dishonor those who actually did the heroic acts that you can only dream of doing.
Judge Blackburn, in a case before the District of Colorado over faux Marine Rick Glen Strandlof, ruled that the government lacked a compelling interest in abridging speech rights when it came to warrior impersonators. This is no G.I. Joke.
The Stolen Valor Act made it a misdemeanor for people to falsely claim “verbally or in writing, to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States.” Congress thought the law was necessary because “fraudulent claims surrounding receipt of the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Air Force Cross, the Navy Cross, the Purple Heart, or any other medal or decoration awarded by Congress or the Armed Forces damage the reputation and meaning of these medals.”
Counterfeiting is an apt analogy. The counterfeiter turns paper into wealth he did not earn, and in so doing dilutes the value of legitimate currency possessed by others. Service medals are akin to currency, but they are backed by blood, sweat and sacrifice. They are a form of recognition that has value because of the official regulations and honored traditions that govern the awards. Those who have earned the right to wear them, possess them or even say they were awarded them have acquired a tangible asset in the form of the respect bestowed on them by the public. Most recipients of military medals don’t seek them, and many are unassuming about their awards after the fact. But the phonies seek only to profit from claiming to be among the ranks of these heroes. They impersonate specifically to seek gain in the same way the counterfeiter seeks to profit from making phony bills.
Fraudulent heroes devalue military medals in two ways. By making awards seem more common, they become less rare and seem more ordinary. If every veteran - or rather, imposter - claimed to have been awarded the Silver Star, the award would soon inspire the same awe and admiration as a Girl Scout Brownie’s merit badge for basket-weaving. And when fakers are exposed, the disappointed public then looks with suspicion on genuine heroes. The phonies break the bonds of trust established by those who earned it. Heroes unjustly lose their repute; the public unfairly loses the opportunity to have heroes to emulate. In this way, the fakers assault the integrity of the military awards system itself.
It is in the government’s compelling interest to defend the system established by Congress to render these official honors. The issue is not whether all lying should be made illegal; lying, with some notable exceptions, is protected speech under the Constitution. Acknowledging a special interest in safeguarding the military awards system is no more a slippery slope than the laws governing perjury, libel, slander and criminal fraud. If the government has an interest in recognizing valor at all, it also has an interest in seeing to it that valor is not cheapened.
A Purple Heart medal can be purchased online for less than $35. Compare that to the price paid by warriors who survived enemy attacks or who face a lifetime of disability from their wounds - or those who never make it back home. No matter what some confused judge thinks, honoring genuine heroism and sacrifice for America is a compelling interest.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.According to a team of researchers led by Dr Silvia Bradamante from Institute of Molecular Science and Technologies in Milan, Italy, microgravity accelerates cardiovascular disease and the biological aging of endothelial cells, the cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels.
Dr Bradamante with colleagues examined endothelial cells in real microgravity aboard the International Space Station and conducted deep gene expression and protein analysis on the cells.
The scientists compared space-flown endothelial cells to endothelial cells cultured under normal gravity, looking for differences in gene expression and/or in the profile of secreted proteins.
Space-flown cells differentially expressed more than 1,000 genes and secreted high amounts of pro-inflammatory cytokines.
Ultimately, this induced significant oxidative stress, causing inflammation among endothelial cells, which in turn, led to atherosclerosis and cell senescence (biological aging).
Dr Gerald Weissmann, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), said: “as we plan to send people deeper into space than ever before, and for longer flights, we’ve got to make sure that they remain in best health possible. We’ve evolved to rely on gravity to regulate our biology, and without it, our tissues become confused. Worst of all: they age faster!”
“Understanding the cellular and molecular events of senescence might help in finding preventive measures that are useful to improve the quality of life of millions of people,” added Dr Bradamante, who reported the findings in the FASEB Journal.
“Our study further supports the role of oxidative stress in accelerating aging and disease.”
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Bibliographic information: Silvia Versari et al. 2013. The challenging environment on board the International Space Station affects endothelial cell function by triggering oxidative stress through thioredoxin interacting protein overexpression: the ESA-SPHINX experiment. The FASEB Journal, vol. 27, no. 11, pp. 4466-4475; doi: 10.1096/fj.13-229195The crème de la crème of Bollywood expected for the July 10 wedding.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BENGALURU: A day after Kareena said she would attend her ex-boyfriend Shahid Kapoor’s wedding if invited, the Bollywood romantic hero has indeed invited Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan for his big fat Bollywood wedding to Mira Rajput on July 10.
What is more interesting is that Saif was the first Bollywood superstar to receive a formal invitation for Shahid-Mira wedding. Though this seems deliberate it wasn’t so because both the stars are currently working for the same movie ‘Rangoon’ and it was natural that Shahid invited Saif and Kareena for his wedding.
During an interview that Kareena gave a few days back she had revealed that she is aware of the current “soon to be wedded” status of her ex-beau, that too with a girl who has no links what so ever with the glitz of Bollywood.
Bollywoodlife.com reported that Ranveer Kapoor, who is also secretly planning to get hitched with his long-time lover Deepika Padukone during the International Indian Film Academy Awards 2015, asked whether Shahid would invite him for the wedding. To which Shahid replied ‘No’.
A source attending the award said, “Ranveer asked Shahid if he was invited to his wedding this year? To which Shahid said ‘NOT invited’.” The source also added, “It was all in good humour though. Shahid was smiling and Ranveer was having fun at Shahid’s expense.”
Since the beginning of the year, there were rumors that Shahid Kapoor was going to get married. Later, Shahid himself revealed that he is getting married to Mira Rajput, an undergraduate student of English literature at Lady Shriram College, who has no film background.Lawyers for the Florida Democratic Party settled a lawsuit on Monday filed against election supervisors in three south Florida counties after the officials agreed to allow voters to cast in-person absentee ballots in their offices throughout Election Day.
The settlement came after a flurry of legal motions on Sunday and Monday by Democratic Party lawyers who charged that early voting in Florida had resulted in long, burdensome lines and a growing sense of frustration among voters.
After the infamous recount in the 2000 presidential election, Florida earned an international reputation as ground-zero for election foul-ups. Video footage of long lines of haggard, would-be voters outside a Miami-Dade elections office over the weekend seemed to reignite the infamy.
Similar scenes were playing out across south Florida, where elections supervisors failed to match the number of voting machines with heavy early voter turnout. The result: long lines.
In a complaint filed early Sunday, the lawyers asked a federal judge to order the supervisors of elections in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties to provide a safety-valve for frustrated voters. They wanted the elections officials to allow in-person absentee ballot voting at their offices through Election Day on Nov. 6.
The supervisors of elections agreed in three stipulations filed in federal court. Two of the supervisors said they were already permitting such in-person absentee voting. The third agreed to do so.
Under Florida law, early voting was set to take place for eight days from Saturday, Oct. 27, to Saturday, Nov. 3.
Voters waited in line between six and eight hours Saturday afternoon and night at a library in Lake Worth, with the last ballot cast at 2:50 a.m. Sunday morning, according to an affidavit attached to the lawsuit.
Early voting was scheduled to end Saturday at 7 p.m., but election workers are instructed to allow anyone waiting on line at that time to remain until they vote.
“The voting facilities within these counties were plainly inadequate to meet the needs of county electors seeking to exercise their right to right to vote,” the complaint said.
“The extraordinarily long lines deterred or prevented voters from waiting to vote,” the suit said. “Some voters left the polling sites upon learning of the expected wait, others refused to line up altogether.”
The agreement means that voters in the three counties of southeast Florida will have two options for voting on Tuesday, Nov. 6. They can either go to their designated precinct and cast a regular ballot, or they can go to the supervisor of elections office, ask for an absentee ballot, complete it, and immediately turn it in.
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The in-person absentee ballot service offers an alternative for voters should precinct lines grow too long on Tuesday.
Preliminary data show that 248,534 voters cast early ballots in Broward County, while 235,733 voted early in Miami-Dade County, and 105,981 voted in Palm Beach County.If you're packing to go to Black Hat, Defcon or Security B-Sides in Las Vegas, make sure you also download Metasploit 4.0 to entertain you on the plane ride. If you missed the recent announcement, check out this blog post for a list of new features.
The new version is now available for all editions, and here's how you upgrade:
Metasploit Pro and Metasploit Express 4.0: For fresh installs, download version 4.0 of Metasploit Pro or Metasploit Express and install (to try these versions, use the same links). If you already have Metasploit Pro or Metasploit Express installed, simply go to the menu item "Administration" and choose "Software Update".
For fresh installs, download version 4.0 of Metasploit Pro or Metasploit Express and install (to try these versions, use the same links). If you already have Metasploit Pro or Metasploit Express installed, simply go to the menu item "Administration" and choose "Software Update". Metasploit Framework 4.0: For fresh installs, download version 4.0 of Metasploit Framework and install. If you already have Metasploit Framework installed, you can use the SVN update function to upgrade to version 4.0. If you selected the automatic update during the installation of 3.7.2, youre installation should already be ready to go. If not, you can use the following steps to update:
$ sudo bash
# cd /opt/framework-3.x.x/msf3/
# svn update
In case you get stuck or have any questions, make sure you visit the Rapid7 Community to find answers, tips & tricks. Alternatively, just drop by our Black Hat booth #109 and ask us directly!For as long as there has been international trade, there has been a need to make international payments. To show up in person with gold or silver coins risked both your life and your wealth. Centuries ago--at least as far back as the early days of the silk road--this problem was solved with informal financial networks--networks that still serve the same functions today.
One array of such networks, with its roots in the Middle East, is called "hawala." If you wish to send some money to someone in another country, you can visit your local hawaladar and give him the sum in local currency. The local hawaladar contacts (by phone, fax, or email) another hawaladar who then delivers an equivalent sum to the recipient in his or her local currency. The hawaladars settle transactions between themselves in many different ways--netting out transactions going in the opposite direction, financing trade, and so on.
Hawala transactions are quite cheap--much cheaper than international transactions using banks, especially for small sums.
After the attacks of 9/11, there was considerable suspicion that hawala networks were used to finance terrorism. The resulting scrutiny failed to find much evidence of that (although considerable evidence that the networks were used to evade currency controls and to launder money).
The hawala system depends on trust rooted in personal, family, ethnic, and cultural ties between individual brokers and their customers. Because of that, they can operate even where legal systems are poorly developed or unstable.
Hawala systems operate today. But, because the basis of trust in the system springs from ethnic and cultural ties, they are less accessible to people who do not have the same cultural background. As it happens, though, there's a very similar system that depends not on ethnic ties, but rather on linguistic ones--the language of Esperanto.
Early on after the creation of Esperanto, there were various efforts to create a means for international payments--because one of the first things people want to do once they can communicate with one another is to trade with one another.
The big international Esperanto organization, the UEA (Universala Esperanto Asocio), automatically creates an account for each member. By sending money to their local or national Esperanto association, members can add money to their account. They can then transfer money to any other Esperantist in the world, simply by sending instructions (by letter or electronically) to the central office of the UEA. The account is maintained in euros, but payments can be made in any currency.
Your local or national Esperanto organization may charge a fee (or take a percentage) when you put the money into your account, but once it's there, payments between members are free.
The system is primarily used to buy books and magazines in Esperanto, to pay membership fees to Esperanto organizations, and to pay the costs of attending various Esperanto conferences, classes, and other events. But the system can be used to make payments for any purpose. You simply need to be a member of the UEA and be able to read and write Esperanto well enough to give the instructions and read the statements. (You can learn that much Esperanto in an hour.)
Details on personal accounts at UEA (in Esperanto)
http://www.uea.org/agadoj/personaj_kontoj.html
Esperanto organizations in English-speaking countries
USA: http://www.esperanto-usa.org/
Great Britian: http://www.esperanto-gb.org/
Australia: http://aea.esperanto.org.au/
New Zealand: http://www.esperanto.org.nz/
Canada (in English): http://www.esperanto.ca/kea/
Canada (in French): http://www.esperanto.qc.ca/en
Learning Esperanto
http://en.lernu.net/
http://esperanto.org/espviva/ev_en/utf-8/unik/index.html
http://esperanto-usa.org/?q=node/5"Source:" Hillary Clinton Is, Get This, on Witch-hunt for Staffers Who Spoke to Allen and Parnes for the Unflattering Portrait of Her in Shattered The woman who combed through people's emails to find out who the traitors were is now reportedly launching a new effort to find the new traitors. One source said, "The knives are out to find the people who spoke about the campaign to the authors of this book. Dennis has been texting prominent campaign staffers, asking who talked. He�s on a witch hunt to find out who talked to save their own skin, throwing Hillary and her campaign manager Robby Mook under the bus." The source added, "There's some speculation that Huma Abedin cooperated to save her own reputation. However, she and Hillary are still very close." How awesome would that be? How awesome would that be? Posted by: Ace at 04:43 PM
MuNuvians MeeNuvians Polls! Polls! Polls! Frequently Asked Questions The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick Top Top Tens Greatest Hitjobs News/ChatWatkins Glen fan favourite Boris Said may have let second place in Sunday's Sirius Satellite at the Glen slip away from him but his legions of fans were still ecstatic with his third place effort, Said's career best Nextel Cup finish to date.
Ardent fans of Jerry Garcia's 'The Grateful Dead' may have coined the term 'Deadheads' but Boris Said can also boast a somewhat wacky group of supporters, known as 'Saidheads' of course.
And after Said's gutsy drive from 41st to third in his #36 MB/Sutton Motorsports Chevrolet on Sunday, the 'Saidheads' had plenty to cheer, and chant about.
The Saidheads' chant -- "Who Said, Boris Said" --resonated at Watkins Glen International after their favourite son crossed the line. Complete with bushy afro 'Said-like' wigs and yellow Saidhead T-shirts, third was as good as a victory for the fans of a driver who is rapidly becoming one of the most popular drivers on the grid during his selected appearances.
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Until a caution came out on lap 73 of 90, Said was challenging for the lead. He was in second place and running comparable lap times to race leader Tony Stewart. But when the race was restarted on lap 75, Said got bogged down and was passed by Robby Gordon, who went on to finish second.
"Tony did a good job on the restart, he stabbed the brakes and I checked up, he was gone and I was passed for second," explained Said. "If I were in Tony's position I would have done the same thing. It was a good move on his part."
After Said and Gordon rubbed fenders on the restart, Said's #36 Centrix Financial Chevrolet suffered some damage. His last chance to overtake Gordon and Stewart was on the green-white-chequered restart due to a caution on lap 89.
"I had a vibration and didn't want to take any chances, my car was not at full strength after Robby and I got into each other," offered Said. "But overall, I am very happy and very proud of this entire Centrix Financial team. What an awesome job they did today. Frankie's (Stoddard, crew chief) pit stop strategy was perfect. A solid team effort."
Because qualifying was rained out, Said started 41st but picked his way through the field in a surgeon-like fashion.
"I had a great car, simple as that," noted Said. "I feel I got the monkey off my back today with this finish. I've had good runs going in the past, but something would always seem to happen to spoil a strong performance."
For the record, Said's previous best finish was a sixth-place result in both the 2003 and 2004 races at the Infineon Raceway.
"MB/Sutton Motorsports, Bob Sutton, Nelson Bowers and Jay Frye, gave me a big break this year and I am ecstatic that we were able to deliver a result that they deserve," offered Said. "It's a great feeling and I couldn't be happier right now."
After being interviewed live by NBC following the race Said jumped over the wall and went into the crowd to high-five the chanting Saidhead fan club.
"They're a great bunch of guys, I don't know how this got started, but it sure is fun to have them around," noted Said. "Other drivers have different types of groupies, I got these tough guys. I love it and wouldn't want it any other way."
Neither would the Saidheads, who were still chanting "Who Said, Boris Said" long after Said left the track for the airport.
Said's next Nextel Cup race will be at California Speedway in Fontana on the first weekend in September.Corsair has announced a new color option for the RMx series power supplies, Arctic White. Readers with a watchful eye may remember that a while ago the company brought out a special edition of the RM1000i PSU in white. Now by popular demand, Corsair has made this a standard option for two of their PSUs, the RM750x and RM850x.
The newly redecorated power supplies are otherwise identical to their existing black-painted counterparts. This means they have fully modular cabling which can minimize the amount of wires users need to use, and see, in their cases allowing for a cleaner look. The cables come already individually sleeved in white with black connectors using three layers of paracord for each. Also something of note, one will find in-line capacitors on the ATX, EPS12V, and PCIe cables which Corsair says helps reduce ripple and noise, and improve voltage regulation.
Features of the RMx series include a Zero RPM Fan Mode, where the rifle bearing 135mm fan sit idle during light to medium loads, only spinning up with heavy loads or at a specific temperature. On top of that The RMx line carries an 80 Plus Gold certification for efficiency, uses 100% all Japanese capacitors rated to 105C, and provides owners with a long 10 year warranty.
Corsair RM750x and RM850x Specifications RM750x RM850x Rated Combined Rated Combined +3.3V 25A 150W 25A 150W +5V +12V 62.5A 750W 70.8A 850W -12V 0.8A 9.6W 0.8A 9.6W +5Vsb 3A 15W 3A 15W Total Power 750W 850W Connector Type RM750x RM850x ATX 24 Pin 1 EPS 4+4 Pin 1 2 PCIe 6+2 Pin 4 6 SATA 8 10 4P Molex 7 8 Floppy 1
The Artic White versions will fetch a $10 premium over the traditional charcoal/black RMx models. They are priced at $149.99 for the RM750x and $169.99 for the RM850x at the Corsair Website. Finally, Corsair is also stating that at least for now, this is it for white RMx PSUs; there are no plans to produce the lower wattage RMx series power supplies in white.
Related Reading:Right now, it is V. Stiviano’s world, and we are just staring at it.
She describes herself on her Instagram profile — 175,000 followers and counting — as “Artist, Lover, Writer, Chef, Poet, Stylist, Philanthropist.” She might want to add “practitioner of applied media philosophy.”
Ms. Stiviano, 31, is the woman whose voice appears on the mysteriously leaked tape on which Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, is heard making racist comments. And she is the one who, after posing for hundreds of smiling cheesecake photos in the past, has grabbed a page out of the Daft Punk playbook and obscured her face with a shield. Well played, V. Stiviano.
She is now famously anonymous, a bit player looking to leverage her infamy into the big time. Interviewed from behind the shield outside a Los Angeles restaurant, she said she was pretty sure where this was all going: “One day, I will become president of the United States of America.”A man suspected of swiping a $135,000 Mercedes-Benz from a display platform at a dealership in North Austin was arrested Friday after being followed to a strip club by dealership employees, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Austin Police Department AMERICAN-STATESMAN file photo/Jessalyn Tamez
Mark Ricketts, 46, faces a felony theft charge, the document said.
The affidavit said police were called out around 7:30 p.m. to The Yellow Rose, on 6528 N. Lamar Blvd., after receiving a report from a man who said he found a car that had been stolen from his dealership.
Police arrived shortly after and found the vehicle, a yellow Mercedes-Benz AMG GT valued at $135,860, parked at a Shell station just down the street, the affidavit said.
According to the report, employees heard the car start up around 6:30 p.m., then watched as the vehicle drove off of the platform away from the dealership.
About 20 minutes later, a cab driver spotted the car at the Shell station.
The cab driver told police he found it odd that the man inside, later identified as Ricketts, was smoking inside the “high-end luxury car.”
“(The cab driver) observed the male inside the AMG GT ‘pitching a fit’ and spasming in the driver’s side seat,” the affidavit said. “Suddenly the male exited the AMG GT. The male told (the cab driver) that ‘he tried to blow up the car’ and that he just broke the turn signal levers off.”
Ricketts then told the cab driver he could have the AMG GT and stormed off, the document said.
Shortly after, the cab driver drove over the dealership and told employees about the car. They called Austin police and followed the suspect over to the Yellow Rose, where he was taken into custody, the affidavit said.
]]* Cabinet declared Brotherhood a terrorist group on Wednesday
* Bomb in Cairo wounds five, police dismantle second bomb
* U.S. believes Egypt going “way too far” in crackdown
* Sisi says Egypt will be “steadfast” confronting terrorism
* Publication of Brotherhood newspaper halted (Adds U.S. comment in paragraphs 6-8)
By Tom Perry and Shadia Nasralla
CAIRO, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Egypt increased pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday, detaining dozens of its supporters on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organisation the day after it was declared one by the government, security officials said.
A bomb blast in a Cairo suburb wounded five people - the second attack this week after a suicide bomber killed 16 people north of the capital on Tuesday. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who led the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi in July, said Egypt would be “steadfast” in the face of terrorism.
The Cairo blast, which blew windows out of a bus, appeared to be the first aimed at civilians in a recent wave of attacks. But there was no claim of responsibility to say what had been targeted. A second device found nearby was defused.
The government declared Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group on Wednesday in response to the suicide attack that targeted a police station a day earlier in the city of Mansoura. It accused the group of carrying out the bombing, which the Brotherhood condemned.
The move gives the authorities wider scope to crack down on the movement that propelled Mursi to the presidency 18 months ago but has been driven underground since the army toppled him.
In Washington, a U.S. official said that the administration of President Barack Obama was not considering, or even discussing, the possibility of the U.S. government designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
The official also said the U.S. administration believed the Egyptian government was going “way too far” in its current crackdown on the Brotherhood and its supporters.
However, the official said that despite its reservations about the Egyptian government’s actions, the Obama administration also was not planning to take any action against Egypt or its authorities in response to the crackdown.
The United States decided in October to withhold some of its annual $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt, pending progress towards democracy after the overthrow of Mursi, the country’s first freely elected head of state.
ARRESTS
Sixteen of the arrests under the new law were in the Nile Delta province of Sharkiya. The state news agency said those held were accused of “promoting the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood group, distributing its leaflets, and inciting violence against the army and police”. Security sources gave a country-wide total of 38 arrests on terrorism charges.
From now on, anyone taking part in Brotherhood protests will be jailed for five years, Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif told state TV. Jail terms for those accused under the terror law stretch up to life imprisonment. “The sentence could be death for those who lead this organisation,” he said.
Terrorism charges will also apply to anyone who finances or promotes the group “verbally and in writing”. Publication of the Brotherhood’s newspaper, Freedom and Justice, was halted in response to the decision.
The state has accused the Brotherhood of turning to violence since the army toppled Mursi after mass protests against his rule. Since then, attacks on the security forces have become commonplace, with about 350 soldiers and policemen killed.
The Brotherhood denies turning to violence, saying the army has mounted a bloody coup and killed hundreds of its supporters.
The government says it will stick to its political transition plan. The next step is a mid-January referendum on a new constitution, after which elections will follow.
Sisi is widely tipped to win a presidential election expected next year, assuming he runs.
INTERIOR MINISTRY SAYS TO PROTECT CHURCHES
Some analysts believe the nation of 85 million people faces a protracted period of Islamist militancy, with attacks spreading beyond the restive Sinai Peninsula, the scene of the worst violence against the security forces to date.
The government has yet to make public any evidence to back up the charge that the Brotherhood staged the Mansoura suicide attack.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Sinai-based radical Islamist group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has taken responsibility for several other major bombings, including a failed attempt to kill the interior minister in September.
The state news agency reported that the security forces |
stories. Taylor’s dad had taught him that while treasure may capture the imagination, what sticks in our memories are the tales of the people who survived or perished in shipwrecks. In gathering evidence on the Connaught for his employer, Taylor would uncover a story so captivating, it was as if he had dreamed it. The plot began with an engineering marvel, a catastrophe, and a stunning feat of courage. It ended with piracy, treason, and a hero disgraced.
In April 1860, tens of thousands of people gathered at the docks just outside Newcastle, England, to witness the launch of the Connaught. Shipping executives schmoozed with local scions of industry and politics. As the giant ship slid stern-first along oiled rails into the water where the River Tyne meets the North Sea, the crowd cheered. A militia band played the folk song “Off She Goes.” The Connaught had been constructed in neighboring Jarrow by the shipbuilding firm of Palmer Brothers & Co., but it was being delivered to Galway, Ireland, where it would be the crown jewel of the city’s port and of the Atlantic Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company. During the first half of the 19th century, advances in boiler designs, paddles, and metalwork had ushered in the age of steamships capable of traveling along the rivers of Europe, down the length of the Mississippi, and, soon enough, across oceans. In 1838, Irish scholar and popular science writer Dionysius Lardner wrote that it was “as chimerical to talk of going to the moon as running a steamer service to New York from the British Isles.” By 1860, an ocean crossing took just one or two weeks. Whoever owned the ships, governed their ports of call, and secured contracts for cargo stood to profit immensely. The Atlantic Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company was incorporated in 1858 for just that purpose. The Galway Line, as it was informally known, was supposed to transform its quiet namesake into a port city to rival existing powers. That was the vision, anyway, preached by area businessmen. Ships carrying passengers and international mail would have a shorter journey to America than those departing from ports to the east, such as Liverpool and Dublin. A busier Galway would also require new rail links to handle increased traffic and freight, a pleasing prospect to entrepreneurs eager to lay tracks across Ireland. Announcements in the local press advertised a “New Line of Steamship to America” and offered fares to emigrants looking to set off westward. The Connaught was the Galway Line’s most impressive ship. It was equipped with three 800-horsepower oscillating engines, and at its center stood two massive paddlewheels three stories tall. Whereas most vessels at the time had rounded bows, the Connaught was one of the first to incorporate a “wave line,” characterized by a concave hull that came to an unusually narrow point, almost like a blade. Engineers had calculated that the shape would make vessels cut more smoothly through water, speeding travel. Matching the Connaught’s sleek figure was an all-white paint job that earned it a moniker: the White Boat. The bow was adorned on its right side with a favorite emblem of Ireland, Erin and her harp (from the Gaelic Éirinn go Brách, meaning “Ireland Forever”) and on its left with an image of Lady Liberty. The stern was ornate, with figurines and inset carvings of the ship’s name and port. On the main deck, framed skylights and companionways featured carved, polished teak accented with stained glass. The real glamour, however, was inside. The saloon and first-class cabins had walnut and maple paneling with paintings depicting scenes of the Irish countryside. A lounge was furnished with the finest upholstery and capped by a marble ceiling. Throughout the ship was the same spare-nothing adornment: diamond-cut glass doorknobs, velvet couches, and burnished gold molding. Reporters for the Galway Vindicator who toured the ship took note of two bookshelves in the main cabin. Their contents: four volumes of the Book of Common Prayer, three miscellaneous titles, and 19 copies of the Bible. The same members of the press were forbidden from joining the Connaught’s trial cruises around Galway Bay before the ship’s first ocean crossing. Reporters took this as a sign that the Galway Line’s top brass were hiding something, and they raised concerns about the vessel’s seaworthiness. They were drowned out, however, by the public fanfare surrounding the ship and by the blessing of local Board of Trade inspectors. Under a bright sky in the summer of 1860, the Connaught embarked on its inaugural voyage to America.
One afternoon in 1987, when Taylor Zajonc was five years old, his father paid an unannounced visit to his son’s kindergarten in Spokane, Washington, carrying a handful of tarnished coins and a six-inch metal spike. Tall and thin, Guy Zajonc wore a three-piece suit with a gold chain connected to a pocket watch. “This is real treasure,” he told the children. “It’s from a shipwreck nearly 300 years old.” Taylor, who was developing an early and keen interest in history—ancient Egypt, Vikings, and Captain James Cook were his favorite topics—was dazzled. Guy was a respected attorney in town. He had a top-floor office, a good income, and a happy family. On weekends he volunteered as a high school track coach. Yet as his career wore on, he was finding real estate transactions and contract law less than thrilling, especially compared with the tales of adventure that he and Taylor were reading at home. Before coming to his son’s school that day, Guy had met with a man who was hoping to raise money for a treasure hunt: salvaging a lost Manila galleon off the western coast of North America. The man brought along the coins and spike, artifacts from another wreck, as proof that the venture would be worthwhile. Guy had asked to borrow the items to impress his young son. Guy offered free of charge to help the man obtain a legal permit to recover the galleon—not always an easy task, given the ownership, insurance, and sovereignty disputes that treasure hunts can provoke. They are also notorious for financing problems, personality clashes, and legal challenges. The galleon project proved no exception and was scrapped in short order. Guy heard that an investor from Texas had lost $300,000 and had no clue where the money went. Still, Guy was hooked on treasure hunting. The world of underwater explorers is tightly knit, and he was suddenly an insider. All it had taken were some phone calls and a few trips to meet (and drink) with adventurers and investors. It helped that most of the players he encountered lacked legal training, which made Guy an instant asset. He got along with these dreamers, especially the eccentric millionaires who bankrolled the ventures—“likeable rogues,” he called them. In 1998, Guy organized a mission to Japan’s “golden submarine,” the I-52, which had been discovered three years prior. Bombed by the Allies in World War II, the sub sank near the dead middle of the Atlantic, taking with it more than two tons of gold. Guy arranged for the shooting of a National Geographic documentary about the effort to salvage the wealth and established himself as a man who got things done. Over the next few years, he tackled several more projects. Whenever he visited a shipwreck site, Guy tried to bring his sons. (Taylor has a brother, Austen, who is younger by three years.) In September 2000, a team of Russian explorers was taking wealthy tourists to visit the final resting place of the Titanic. Guy was part of that expedition, and he managed to talk the Russians into letting his sons tag along. The following year, Taylor joined the same crew on a cruise to the Bermuda Triangle to investigate the wreck of a trading vessel that sank in 1810, carrying millions of dollars in silver coins. He participated in a submarine dive to more than three miles below the ocean’s surface, a depth that for a teenager—so far as Taylor knows—remains a record. Only as an adult would he realize how exceptional these experiences were. “Almost everybody thinks the way they grew up was totally normal,” Taylor told me. In 2003, Guy became general counsel for a new Florida-based company called Odyssey Marine Exploration. With Odyssey’s launch, and that of another large firm in London, treasure hunting arrived on Wall Street, complete with stock issuances and ticker symbols. (Odyssey’s is OMEX.) With big-league financing and sturdy corporate structuring, the new ventures would be far removed from the world of weekend divers and quixotic explorers. Odyssey had slick offices in Tampa, a 230-foot research vessel, a $1.5 million tethered robot for filming and retrieving debris from the seafloor, and about 100 employees. In Guy’s first year, the company recovered an estimated $75 million in gold from the SS Republic, found off the coast of Georgia. When a $100-a-day position opened up for an archaeologist’s assistant—really a glorified gopher—Guy called Taylor to see if he wanted it. The younger Zajonc was a semester away from finishing his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Western Washington University. “Take a night to think about it,” Guy said. “OK,” Taylor replied. “But it’s going to be yes.”
The Connaught’s maiden voyage from Galway to Boston, with a stop in St. John’s, Newfoundland, was anything but auspicious. One of the ship’s pistons fractured, causing a two-day delay. After undergoing repairs stateside, it began the journey home, but another piston failed. The ship eventually limped back into Galway almost a week behind schedule. Optimists would call this sort of thing typical: “Baby disorders and untoward misfortunes,” The New York Times reported, “the usual forerunners of gigantic success.” Besides, it could have been far worse. Steamships were prone to boiler explosions and spontaneously combusting piles of coal. Dozens of vessels were lost due to accidents throughout the 19th century. The Connaught’s second crossing began on September 25, 1860. A few days in, it passed another ship bound for Europe that had lost its masts in a storm. Captain Leitch offered assistance, but the damaged vessel was faring just well enough that its crew declined. The Connaught steamed on, straight into the same storm. Within a day, heavy seas were blasting the ship, sending waves over the sides and into the bulwarks, shattering windows on the deck. A number of paddlewheel blades were lost or damaged. Before sunrise on Wednesday, October 3, the Connaught docked in St. John’s. Two passengers were so shaken by the storm that they decided to stay put, not traveling on to Boston. The Boston Pilot later reported that even some seasoned mariners “felt there was great danger” on board. Just a few more hours in rough seas and the Connaught “might have broken her back.” One of the passengers who declined to continue was Reverend Peter Conway from Headford, near Galway, who had listened to confessions and administered penance during the worst of the storm. Conway was so unimpressed by how the grand ship had performed that, in an undated letter published in the Newfoundlander newspaper, he called the Connaught “the worst ship ever built.” He opined that the builders should have been prosecuted for putting so many lives in danger. Most of the passengers, however, were sufficiently reassured when Leitch and the local representative of the Galway Line hurried to recruit mechanics to repair the ship. While that work was under way, coal and provisions were replenished, and a dozen new travelers boarded, including W.H. Newman, the U.S. consul to St. John’s. In addition, £10,000 worth of gold was loaded onto the Connaught for transfer to Boston. Who the money belonged to and what its ultimate destination was have never been confirmed; one theory is that the British government was making payments for expenses incurred during a recent visit to North America by the teenage prince who would go on to become King Edward VII. The Connaught left St. John’s on the same day it had docked. For the first time since the storm, the mood on board was sanguine. The crew sang traditional Irish chanteys, such as “Haul Away, Joe” and “The Lever Line.” As they steered toward Boston, they faced only a moderate headwind from the southwest.
In January 2004, Taylor Zajonc moved to Tampa to start working at Odyssey. He was a quick study and impressed the company’s research experts. They agreed to let him become a “stack rat,” delving into library special collections, newspaper microfiche, and obscure corners of the Internet looking for information about shipwrecks. Taylor read his way through the books and binders in Odyssey’s research archive, which was scattered across office shelves, filing boxes, and storage units, then reorganized the materials into a searchable filing system. “It was a mess like you wouldn’t believe,” he told me, “years’ worth of stuff that had just piled up.” Next he began honing Odyssey’s research methods with an almost compulsive commitment to empiricism. From field experiences with his dad, he had seen how assumptions and bias threatened the chances of a successful discovery or salvage mission. A classic example was the I-52. After the initial find, the project leader saw black-and-white video footage of the wreckage that revealed a cluster of rectangular shapes. They had to be gold bullion, he decided, based on their size and lack of corrosion. (Part of what makes gold so bewitching is its resilience to deterioration.) So his team went to retrieve them. The objects, though, turned out to be tin ingots—there is so little chemistry in the deep ocean that most metals barely deteriorate. The misstep cost the mission precious time and resources. At Odyssey, Taylor was learning that emotions and marketing optics seemed to factor into discussions about projects as much as probabilities and evidence did. He decided to draft a white paper on “actionable shipwreck intelligence.” A wreck, he wrote, should be rated according to four criteria: confidence that it can be found, value of the presumed cargo, likelihood of recovery, and the path to legal salvage. Imagine, for instance, a shallow-water wreck with verifiable cargo worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A promising target—except that it’s just a few miles from a North Korean naval base. For a wreck to warrant the company’s attention and resources, it would need to score well on all the criteria. Taylor’s method soon became the standard format for the research department’s reports. Yet around the same time, the Zajoncs began noticing subtle discrepancies between what Odyssey’s research staff reported to upper management and what the company was telling investors. The father and son—along with other employees—raised concerns about the company’s headline-grabbing claim that it had found the HMS Sussex, which sank in 1694 near Gibraltar with ten tons of gold. They believed Odyssey executives should have been more forthright about the possibility that what they had found was another wreck in the same area. At odds with the company’s leadership, Guy quit just before Christmas in 2005. He went back to lawyering in Spokane and, as always, kept an eye out for new adventures. Guy told me that it felt to him as if Odyssey, which became entangled in seemingly endless court battles, had “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.” For Taylor, who quit soon after his father did, the situation was crushing. Straight out of college, he’d hit upon a dream job. Now it was gone. To make ends meet, he took a position developing architecture and engineering courses for an online-education firm. Recalling his disappointment, Taylor told me, “I thought I would never be able to do something quite so interesting again.”
The Connaught’s luck began to run out soon after the ship departed St. John’s. On Friday, October 5, 1860, increased winds began beating the ship’s bow. Waves intensified, too, pummeling the steamer overnight and into Saturday. By that evening, the Connaught was facing another full-on tempest. Around 8 p.m., a leak was discovered in the engine room. Leitch ordered that pumps be brought down from the deck and set his crew to bailing. Some passengers, noticing the commotion, convivially stepped up to lend a hand. Despite their efforts, water began filling the engine room and seeping into the forward bunkers. Passengers felt the ship pitch hard to the right and stay that way—a result of it taking on so much water. Stepping out onto the deck, Hugh Whittell, the California entrepreneur, was met by a deafening rush of wind. Crewmen were scrambling about for pumps and buckets, muttering to one another. They told Whittell that everything was under control. If the wind cooperated, the Connaught would reach Boston that night. In fact, the situation was worsening. By early Sunday morning, the encroaching waters belowdecks threatened to kill the fires that powered the forward boilers. Around 4 a.m., the flooding in the engine room extinguished the fire used to fuel the ship’s steam pump, rendering useless an essential tool for combating the leak. Four hours later, water finally overwhelmed the ship’s furnaces, and the engines sputtered to a stop. An eerie quiet followed. Hundreds of the Connaught’s passengers gathered on deck. Some asked Leitch what they could do to help, and he requested that men continue to bail seawater. Lingering hope soon gave way to dread, however, when anxious whispers spread word of a new danger: fire. Smoke had begun rising through the stoke hole toward the rear of the ship. Leitch dispatched an officer to find the source of the fire, but the man met only an impenetrable cloud. The blaze, which seemed to be coming from somewhere between the boilers and the stern, must have been building while all hands were dealing with the leak. The exhausted crew responded with buckets of seawater and wet blankets, but they were fighting blind. Unable to get close to the fire’s source due to the flooding and smoke, they could only aim their dousing in the general vicinity of where the flames emanated from deep within the ship’s belly. The Connaught was still taking on water and slumping further into the sea. Waves sizzled as they met the metal hull, which was burning from the inside out. At least one passenger made preparations to leap into the ocean. Finding a rope maybe 15 or 20 feet in length, he tied himself to a metal railing on the ship’s low side. Should the heat of the fire become unbearable, he would jump into the water and pay out the rope to get away from the flames. There he planned to remain until someone saved him or the great ship pulled him under. Leitch was no stranger to disaster. As captain of the steamship City of Philadelphia a few years earlier, he had been caught in a severe fog and had run the ship aground near Cape Race, east of Newfoundland. With calm waters and the Newfoundland shore less than a mile away, the evacuation into lifeboats proceeded smoothly. All the passengers were transported to safety with luggage, food, and sails, which they used to craft makeshift tents as they awaited help. The Connaught didn’t have the same advantages; it was in rough waters and far from land. With no way to get the upper hand on the fire or the leak, the captain must have known that salvation would require another ship. Leitch told a crew member to scramble up the mainmast and scan for distant sails. “Nothing to sight, sir,” the man shouted back. The passengers on deck anxiously watched the sailor. Minutes later he yelled, “Sail on the lee bow!”—but the vessel was too far away to notice the Connaught’s distress flags and soon slipped from sight. Other ships followed the same agonizing pattern. Then, a little before noon, another vessel appeared. “Can you make out if she is coming toward us?” Leitch asked. “I think she is, sir,” the sailor answered, followed soon after by, “She sees us!” W.H. Newman, the U.S. consul, had been moving hand over hand along the railing of the sloping deck to keep from falling. He later wrote that before spotting the brig, everyone on board was “humanly speaking, without hope.” When Newman heard the crewman’s shout from the mainmast, he looked out on the horizon and could see the ship heading toward the Connaught “with bursting canvas, dead before the gale.” The crew fired a cannon, an emergency signal, to beckon the vessel to their aid. Passengers rejoiced. The priests announced that deliverance was imminent. When the two ships were roughly 200 yards apart, Leitch called for the other captain to make himself known. “The brig Minnie Schiffer, Captain Wilson,” came the reply. Captain John Wilson of New Orleans, to be precise, in command of a cargo ship, laden with fruit and wine and not even a quarter of the Connaught’s size.
Micah Eldred was itching to do something exciting with a multimillion-dollar fortune earned in the financial industry. A native Floridian who loved the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Eldred had watched closely as search-and-salvage ventures came and went, sometimes burning huge amounts of capital with little to show for it. Believing he could do it differently—and that there was money to be made—he connected with Guy Zajonc through a mutual contact in 2009 and said he wanted to start a business. After his experience at Odyssey, Guy had come to believe that a viable treasure-hunting enterprise was likely a chimera. “You’re too smart for that,” he told Eldred. When the 41-year-old entrepreneur insisted that he would put up $600,000 of his own money, the elder Zajonc relented. To start, Eldred didn’t need to buy a fancy vessel or equipment, Guy advised. He needed research. “This may sound self-serving,” Guy said, “but it’s the truth: You should hire my son.” A few weeks later, Eldred did. Taylor was about to get married and move to Arlington where his wife, Andrea, had secured a government job. He was hired part-time to develop a list of wrecks from which Eldred’s new business, dubbed Endurance Exploration Group, would pick its first target. Working from home, with excursions to the library at Georgetown, Taylor focused his energies on steamships. Records are more plentiful for steamers than they are for earlier ships, and hulking masses of metal on the seafloor are more easily detectable than decaying wooden wrecks are. The Connaught made Taylor’s list early, and it scored well on the criteria he’d carried over from his Odyssey white paper. The wreck, believed to be about 600 feet underwater, was too deep for scuba divers but well within the range that remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) could handle. It was close enough to U.S. shores that the legal route to salvage would likely be straightforward. And, of course, there was the missing gold. To identify the shipwreck’s probable location, Taylor combed through newspaper clippings, government communiqués, and weather reports. Sometimes he imagined himself as one of the two captains—Leitch and Wilson—making decisions in real time. In October 2010, several months into his research, Taylor got a break when he came across an account of the burning and sinking of an unnamed ship, written by a mariner who had been off the coast of New England in 1860. The article included a bare-bones map and rough coordinates of where the mariner believed he had spotted the vessel. (Eldred and Taylor requested that I not share the specifics of where the account was located. “It’s clearly a findable document,” Taylor wrote in an email, “but we’d sleep better at night knowing that someone still needs to spend the money and time to dig if they ever want to look for the Connaught themselves.”) Taylor contacted Eldred about the latest piece of evidence. They decided it was time to move their operation out of the library and into the sea.
Fifty years old and standing about five-foot-eight, with brown hair, gray eyes, and a small scar on his forehead, John Wilson was a longtime seafarer. Born in Baltimore, he later moved to New Orleans, his wife’s hometown, and built a career as a ship captain and co-owner of a few different vessels. He spent much of his time transporting cargo in and around the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1840s, working for an import-export business called Schiffer & Brothers, he delivered goods to Tampico, Mexico, during the Mexican-American War. In 1856, commanding the Minnie Schiffer, which was named after the daughter of one of the company’s owners, he transported soldiers of fortune to Nicaragua, where they participated in a short-lived attempt by William Walker, an American civilian, to conquer the country. On October 7, 1860, Wilson was nearing the end of his latest journey, bringing the Minnie Schiffer home to America with cargo from Europe. When he spotted a ship, a cloud of smoke, and distress flags in the distance, he told his crew of six men—four of whom spoke no English—to bear down on the vessel. As he got closer, he could see that the boat was pitched on its side. After hearing cannon fire, Wilson ordered a crewman to raise a flag in reply. He piloted close enough to the Connaught to communicate with Captain Leitch. “Make ready to take us all on board without delay,” Leitch yelled. “The ship is all on fire below.” Wilson responded, “Yes, I am ready to take you.” Some passengers on the Connaught quietly worried that the Minnie Schiffer was too small for the task at hand. The tops of its masts were almost even with the larger ship’s bulwarks. If Wilson decided to take only some of the passengers, or even if a rumor broke out that he would, pandemonium would follow. When Leitch asked if his counterpart could accommodate everyone, however, Wilson responded that he “would stand by as long as there was one on board.” The rescue would depend on the Connaught’s lifeboats ferrying passengers to the Minnie Schiffer. There were fewer skiffs than needed for everyone on board—commonly the case for ships of that era—necessitating dangerous trips back and forth. Leitch ordered the men on his deck to form two parallel lines facing each other, creating a tunnel of sorts to usher women and children to the sides of the Connaught. Because the seas were rough, the lifeboats would be lowered first, and passengers would descend ladders or be let down by ropes once the vessels were on the water. As the first skiff neared the ocean’s surface, a violent wave threw it against the Connaught’s iron hull, smashing the lifeboat to pieces. The rest of the boats made it to the water intact, but they were moving targets for the passengers trying to board—smacking against the ship one moment, separating from it by several feet the next, rising up to a ladder’s final rung with one wave, dropping far below with the next. A man named Patrick O’Flaherty slipped as he tried to load into one of the boats. Leitch himself climbed down a line, swung out over the water, and pulled O’Flaherty to safety. William Hurry, the wealthy Manhattan developer, fell out of a lifeboat and was overwhelmed by the waves. Thomas H. Connauton, the first mate, threw him a wooden pulley that was buoyant enough to buy Hurry a few minutes above water. The crew tossed him a line and dragged him back to the lifeboat. When the first load of survivors finally set foot on the Minnie Schiffer, Wilson spotted some of the Connaught’s sailors trying to hide among the throng of travelers to avoid going back to assist. He yelled at them to do their duty, and they reluctantly returned to the lifeboats. By that point, the fire inside the Connaught was so intense that passengers still stranded on deck could feel the heat through their shoes. More than once, flames leapt out of the ship’s skylights. By sunset, only about 200 people had been carried to the Minnie Schiffer, leaving some 400 yet to be rescued. Darkness would bring more hazards, and crew members from both ships begged Wilson not to send them back to the blazing steamer. A few again tried to hide, this time belowdecks on the cargo brig. “Every soul must be saved!” Wilson shouted. He gave the order to maneuver his ship close enough to the Connaught to throw over a line. Tying off was a huge gamble: An explosion on the Connaught, or even a wayward ember, could have jeopardized the Minnie Schiffer and all on board. Yet narrowing the gap between the ships would also speed the transfer of the remaining passengers. The risk paid off. By 9:30 p.m., all the passengers were safely away. Fire soon shot up the ropes, masts, and mainsail of the Connaught. When the last of his crew had escaped, Leitch, weaving his way through the smoke and flames, made one last sweep of the ship before climbing down into a waiting lifeboat. By 10:45, he was aboard the Minnie Schiffer, his face and hands singed. Rescued travelers were crammed so tightly in the bulwarks and on deck that some were forced to perch in the ship’s rigging. The brig also towed the Connaught’s lifeboats, filled with additional passengers. Wilson turned the Minnie Schiffer toward Boston. He ordered his crew to offer caskets of wine and raisins to the survivors. He then made his way around the deck, distributing cups of water and asking people if they were injured. Hours later, behind the overloaded brig, a giant fireball drifted on the horizon, illuminating the night sky.
In the summer of 2013, Micah Eldred chartered a commercial fishing boat out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. With rented sonar gear and a small crew, he began surveying nearly 800 square miles of ocean floor in search of the Connaught. It was painstaking work, moving over a measured grid for days at a time as if endlessly mowing a lawn. Sonar emits sound waves and picks up responding signals. Depending on the depth and distance of a wave’s bounce and whether it ricochets off sand, metal, wood, or another material, a different signal comes back. The technology then creates images out of the sound waves, known as sonographs. Taylor took a vacation with his wife at the same time the survey was happening. Sonar missions, he explained, “aren’t that interesting. You’re just one more mouth to feed.” Back home in Arlington, he received the sonographs and got to work cataloging everything he saw. He tabbed through image after image on his computer, zooming in to squint at shadows, bumps, ripples, and shapes that might have represented something man-made. Near the middle of the search area sat an obvious shipwreck. It had a pronounced, narrow shape with a tapered bow. Taylor knew that the survey area was full of World War II wrecks. He also knew that sonographs can behave like a Rorschach test: People see what they wish to see. Skeptical that this was the Connaught, he still showed the image to Eldred, who pointed out a bulge on one side that he thought looked an awful lot like the shadow of a steamship’s paddlewheel. Eldred sent the images to some sonar specialists, who replied that the measurements didn’t match up: This wreck wasn’t the same length as the Connaught. Guy Zajonc, who also took a look at the data, was more optimistic. He noted that a boxy section in the middle of the wreck indicated heavy machinery of the sort steamers once carried. He also eyed two similarly sized black holes where masts may have stood. In a phone call with Eldred, Guy said, “That’s your boat.” Weighing the conflicting opinions, Taylor toggled between lithographs of the Connaught and the sonar images. What was he missing, he wondered? He touched base with his father, who suggested that the length issue might be a red herring. Guy zeroed in on a rough line, or “knife cut,” running across one image. He thought it indicated a hiccup in the software that had translated the sound waves into pictures. If he was right, the glitch could explain the size discrepancy that the sonar experts had identified. The hunch was enough for Eldred to green-light a follow-up expedition. It was time, finally, to go down to the wreck.
Two days after rescuing the Connaught’s passengers, the Minnie Schiffer arrived in Boston Harbor. As it approached India Wharf, hundreds of people who had gathered on the docks began cheering and waving hats. Spouses, siblings, cousins, and friends had gotten word of a disaster and rescue at sea. Now they crowded the shore, screaming the names of relatives they hoped to find alive. Some of the Connaught’s passengers, elated or delirious, tried to jump from the ship as soon as the wharf was within reach. Others wore the stunned look of civilians in a war zone. Some didn’t have shoes. A number of passengers sat down on the wharf, seemingly unsure of what to do next. One girl clung to a prayer book that she had held throughout the catastrophe. Over the course of the following week, more-detailed accounts of the rescue began to emerge. Passengers furnished newspapers with personal stories, all of them praising Leitch, whose “intrepid coolness,” wrote the Boston Evening Transcript, was crucial to the survival of the passengers. Then there was Wilson, the “brave and unselfish commander,” as the Baltimore Sun described him. “Judging from his well-known humanity,” wrote The New York Times, “nothing could have afforded him so much gratification as the opportunity of being instrumental in saving so many human lives.” The paper touted that “in his social relations, no less than among his sea-faring acquaintances, he is distinguished for his urbanity and great kindliness of character. With his employers he has always stood very high for his integrity, his only fault being, they say, that he is so unselfish and liberal that he saves nothing for himself. Having no children of his own, he has adopted and brought up several orphans.” Neither captain gave interviews, but each provided the authorities and the press with an official statement. Leitch’s was an exacting, if not exhaustive, technical account, all but devoid of emotion. Wilson’s was a few short paragraphs that applauded the conduct and courage of the Connaught’s officers and passengers while chastising the sailors who had tried to hide instead of manning the lifeboats. News of the astounding incident soon went global: In terms of the number of lives saved, it was one of the most successful rescues in maritime history. Survivors, dignitaries, and fellow mariners arranged for gifts and financial compensation for Wilson, including a gold pocket chronometer presented to him by the British consul in Boston. During their time aboard the Minnie Schiffer, rescued passengers had also decided to reward Wilson and his crew. Led by William Hurry, the impromptu committee raised $500 in pledges on the spot, with some people managing to donate only a few pennies. A follow-up meeting was held two nights after disembarking in Boston, at the grand Tremont House hotel. This time the discussion was about recognition and compensation for the crews of both ships—men who were, in W.H. Newman’s words, “instruments in the hands of God.” A few days later, in New York City, Hurry met with Galway Line representatives and agents from various life-insurance companies. At Hurry’s urging, more than $3,300 was pledged in recognition of the “generous and humane spirit of the noble-hearted Captain of the Minnie Schiffer.” By mid-November, the fund for Wilson stood at more than $5,000—about $150,000 today—and growing. Donors included individuals, small businesses, law firms, Wells Fargo Bank, shipping companies, and the Panama Railroad Co. Leitch soon went back to work; he would captain passenger ships for another quarter-century before retiring in England. Wilson, meanwhile, returned to Louisiana, where the sensation of the rescue made him a local celebrity. There were profiles in newspapers and gifts delivered to his door, including a silver plate and pitcher. Hurry’s fund was set to arrive, too. According to one press account, the captain took a job as a harbor master in the city. It’s possible that this was a position earned as a result of his heroism. Just as likely, though, he accepted it to take a break from grueling long-distance journeys. To Wilson’s admirers around the globe, he was surely deserving of rest.
On a glassy September morning in 2014, the crew of a rented research vessel called the Manisee lowered a tethered ROV into the Atlantic. The ROV pilot used a joystick to drive the boxy, yellow-and-black machine toward the seafloor. Eldred stood in the cramped cabin next to the pilot and watched the ROV’s grainy video feed on a monitor. First a school of fish, then some broken bottles and dead coral came into view, followed by giant shards of a ship’s iron hull. A few minutes later, the Connaught’s massive and unmistakable paddlewheel appeared. It was the first time anyone had laid eyes on the ship since the early-morning hours of October 8, 1860. Eldred cracked a smile and picked up his satellite phone. He called Guy Zajonc in Spokane, even though it was before 5 a.m. there. “We have video!” he announced. Guy gave a groggy congratulations. Then Eldred called Taylor in Arlington. The younger Zajonc should have been thrilled, and he did indulge in a quiet, slow-motion fist pump. Mostly, though, the bookish treasure hunter felt relief. “Finding the Connaught meant my methodology worked,” he told me. “Failure would have meant that it was flawed.” The Manisee crew’s next move was to rig a magnet and a small grabbing device on the ROV and send the machine back down to the wreck. The idea was to recover metal fragments, which could be used to validate the ship’s identity. The ROV did better than that, though, scooping up a number of artifacts, |
altered during flight. The proof of concept wing will eventually enable flight over much longer distances than currently possible.
The wings have been developed and successfully tested in-flight through a unique combination of hands-on experimental work at the University of Southampton and computational research at Imperial College London, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The United States Air Force, through their European Office of Aerospace Research and Development (EOARD), provided additional support.It’s tough to go from dreams of controlling Congress and the White House to the reality of being less powerful than dudes who call themselves Deplorable Pepe. Despite rays of sun like the resignation of Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn, Democrats have grim days ahead. They’re as marginalized as they’ve been in decades, outnumbered by Republicans in not only the House and Senate, but also in 32 of 50 state legislatures. They’ve got high-handed committee chairs steamrolling them, and the majority party threatening to confiscate parliamentary weapons like the filibuster. If you’re a Democratic legislator, you don’t get to do anything you want to do; your job is now to stop others from doing what they want to do. Sad!
One bright spot is that you don’t get blamed for everything that’s going wrong and you’re free to plan for better days. To that end, Democrats met up for a retreat last week in Baltimore, an affair that managed to be somehow both contentious yet boring at the same time. If nothing else, Democrats are bonded in their desire to regain their majorities and make Trump a one-term president. But things get tougher when they require more specificity. That’s where they’ll have to wrestle with some hard realities.
The first is that they can’t just count on Trump to mess things up and flame out. George W. Bush erased our budget surplus, presided over the intelligence failures of 9/11, gave us black sites and the use of torture, and invaded Iraq based on bogus intelligence. The response of voters: let’s have another round! For all his flaws, Bush had clear convictions and aims, while John Kerry didn’t. Yes, yes: the convictions were fanatical and the aims delusional, but that just goes to show how much more politically effective bad beliefs are than vague ones. Trump, likewise, has his own convictions and a vision. And while their validity is still to be determined, they could see him through policy disasters if Democrats don’t offer a clear and confident contrast.
Video: Steve Bannon: The Shadow President
This means that Democrats have to decide what they stand for—something I admit I’ve argued before. While opposition parties get unfairly accused of having no ideas—since being out of power amplifies the impression that you’ve got nothing cooking—the criticisms are sometimes valid. Do Democrats believe that policy should be made primarily in the interest of Americans, or do they believe that it should be made primarily in the interest of the international community? Do they believe that economic policy is the primary remedy for social injustice, or do they believe that social policy is the primary remedy for economic injustice? Do they believe that the trade agreements we’ve made during the past 25 years have been good for Americans or not? Do they support enforcement of immigration law or not? Do they support humanitarian intervention or not?
Many seasoned politicians roll their eyes at such questions. “I don’t go to moral victory speeches,” Rahm Emanuel recently told an audience in California. “It’s about winning, because if you win you then have the power to go do what has to get done.” But left unsaid is what, exactly, needs to get done—or why. Hillary Clinton had plenty of detailed policy ideas, but the bigger principles or goals often went missing. Just saying “stronger together” didn’t cut it.
Democrats also have to decide if they want to wage all-out war against Trump. The Democratic base all over the country is pressuring legislators to pursue a campaign of blanket resistance to the White House: whatever Trump wants, just vote no. The idea mirrors the tactics of Senator Mitch McConnell, who famously announced, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Since Republicans gained seats in Congress, McConnell’s approach seemed to be vindicated. Just do the same to the current president, many Democrats suggest, and win that way.
But there are serious limits to what such an approach accomplishes. Republicans have the majority, and they’re using it. Democrats have put up symbolic fights of “No,” but Trump’s Cabinet appointees are getting confirmed. Democrats will try to make life hard for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, something that honor almost demands after what Republicans did to stonewall Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland. But they can’t stop him.
George Bush erased our budget surplus, presided over 9/11, and invaded Iraq. The response of voters: let’s have another round!
More important are the costs of stubborn resistance. When Republicans refused to get involved in health-care reform, Obama wound up having to negotiate exclusively with his own side, throwing in special sweeteners and baking in flaws that might have been excised had Republicans tried in good faith to improve the bill. Not only did Republican intransigence fail to stop Obamacare, it also ensured that Republicans would hate the result even more.
Republican obstructionism didn’t help Republicans with their presidential campaigns, either. Precisely when the G.O.P. needed to remake itself and recover from the Bush years, it instead became a party frozen in place. Instead of re-examining its values and looking for ways to cooperate across party lines, it concentrated solely on tactics. That’s one reason that Mitt Romney offered voters nothing more than Bushism, but with better looks. It was doomed to fail. Had Marco Rubio, who offered Bushism with updated donor-class accessories, gone up against Clinton in 2016, he would probably would have done no better, and he certainly wouldn’t have flipped Rust Belt states like Michigan or Wisconsin, both of which Trump won.
There’s also one important difference between the policy divisions of today and yesteryear. Obama offered cross-party cooperation but not realignment. His policy priorities and outlook were those of his party alone, and he was not fighting his own side. Since McConnell never cared about healthcare reform, getting in the way of it was painless. By contrast, if Obama had come out of the gate pushing for huge tax cuts, Republicans would have had a much harder time saying no. That’s where Trump is a little different. He cares about the Republican Party only as a means by which to enact his agenda, and he’s willing to defy it when it pleases his base. If he passes an infrastructure bill with help from Democrats, Trump is happy. The same goes for a bill with tariffs on imports. That makes the case for blanket resistance weaker. To be sure, if this is war—if the only goal is to defeat Trump—then you might hurt yourself to hurt Trump, just as you might bomb your own bridges if it prevents the advance of your enemy. But that’s taking things even further than Republicans did with Obama, and it’s sacrificing a lot for the cause.
Finally, Democrats have to decide whom they’re going to run in 2020. That’s mighty tough. Already, we’re hearing arguments suggesting that Hillary Clinton could somehow be back. But she won’t be. At least not once voters have weighed in. As for the other possibilities, few are ideal. Tim Kaine is seasoned, but he will have trouble filling a stadium—or a living room. Elizabeth Warren will be 71 in 2020, and to see her more is to like her less. Bernie Sanders will be 79. Cory Booker is a show horse who isn’t that beloved in his home state. So it won’t be easy. Likelier to emerge are governors with names like Hickenlooper (first name John) or lesser-known Rust Belt types like Sherrod Brown (although he will be 68). Or maybe Al Gore, who’ll be 72. Is it finally time?
Donald Trump FOLLOW Barack Obama FOLLOW Follow to get the latest news and analysis about the players in your inbox. See All PlayersWASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service has paid more than $2.8 million in bonuses to employees with recent disciplinary problems, including $1 million to workers who owed back taxes, a government investigator said Tuesday.
More than 2,800 workers got bonuses despite facing a disciplinary action in the previous year, including 1,150 who owed back taxes, said a report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The bonuses were awarded from October 2010 through December 2012.
George's report said the bonus program doesn't violate federal regulations, but it's inconsistent with the IRS mission to enforce tax laws.
"These awards are designed to recognize and reward IRS employees for a job well done, and that is appropriate, because the IRS should encourage good performance," George said. "However, while not prohibited, providing awards to employees who have been disciplined for failing to pay federal taxes appears to create a conflict with the IRS's charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration."
Other examples of misconduct by workers getting bonuses included misusing government credit cards for travel, drug use, violent threats and fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits.
The IRS said it has developed a new policy linking conduct and performance bonuses for executives and senior level employees.
"Even without a formal policy in place over the past four years, the IRS has not issued awards to any executives that were subject to a disciplinary action," the IRS said in a statement. "We are also considering a similar policy for the entire IRS workforce, which would be subject to negotiations with the National Treasury Employees Union."
The IRS had about 100,000 workers during the period under review.
In the 2011 budget year, more than 70,000 IRS workers got cash bonuses totaling $92 million, the report said. In the 2012 budget year, nearly 68,000 workers got cash bonuses totaling $86 million.
The report said the IRS considers prior conduct before awarding permanent pay increases. "However, IRS officials stated that the IRS generally does not consider conduct issues when administering other types of awards," the report said.
There are no government-wide policies on providing bonuses to employees with conduct issues, the report said. However, a 1998 law calls for removing IRS employees who are found to have intentionally committed certain acts of misconduct, including willful failure to pay federal taxes.
Tax compliance at the IRS is generally better than at other federal agencies.
In 2011, 3.2 percent of federal workers owed back taxes, according to IRS statistics. The Treasury Department, which includes the IRS, had the lowest delinquency rate, at 1.1 percent.
The delinquency rate for the general public was 8.2 percent.
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Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatapNEW YORK—With just days remaining before the nation heads to the polls, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reportedly crisscrossed the country this weekend in a frenzied last-minute push to appeal to white voters. “White outreach is going to be at the center of our campaign during these final few days of the election—we really want white audiences to know they have a friend and advocate in Donald Trump,” said Trump’s communications director, Hope Hicks, explaining that the campaign was spending $7 million on advertising targeted at white households in addition to scheduling a whirlwind series of campaign stops in predominantly white cities and neighborhoods as part of their eleventh-hour effort to engage the voting bloc. “Mr. Trump will visit white churches and businesses in several states, conveying a hopeful message to the nation’s Caucasians that tomorrow will be brighter. We want white people, and in particular, white men, to recognize that they have a voice in this campaign, and we want to assure them that Donald Trump understands the white community’s concerns and will never stop fighting for them as president.” Hicks said she expected the nominee’s message of compassion to resonate deeply with white Americans, stating that it comes from a real place in Trump’s heart.
AdvertisementI love judging books by their covers. I will look at a cover and just judge the shit out of it. “Boob armor,” I’ll scoff, and toss the book contemptuously away. “That dragon looks like a lobster.” Gone.
Is this an effective method? Not really, but I count on the internet to keep badgering me about the shittily-covered books that are really great. This is why we invented the internet, right?
When I first saw my own cover (check it out here), however, I started feeling a little less blasé. Fortunately, I love it, but it got me thinking about the role of covers and the messages they carry. Never one to pass up a little side-by-side comparison, I decided to take a look at the old cover (OC) and new cover (NC) of Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World.
First, the stats:
Weaponry
OC: Three swords, one axe, and a helmet. Don’t tell me that helmet’s not a weapon.
NC: A piercing blue stare.
Elements of Vague Menace:
OC: Night, dead trees, agitated horse.
NC: Weather, possibly inclement.
Possible Magical Shit:
OC: One staff, elegantly carved.
NC: Something gleaming yet indeterminate in the middle distance. (I know this is the tower of Genji, rabid Jordan fans, but I wouldn’t if I was looking at the book for the first time.)
Serious and Immediate Threats:
OC: An airborne, malevolent, human-stalking bat creature.
NC: Falling off the mast?
Coed Fellowship of Like-Minded Heroes:
OC: Eight strong.
NC: Conspicuously lacking.
Clothing:
OC: Armor, gown, jerkins, capes.
NC: Lush, billowy shirt. Immaculately laundered.
Phallic Imagery:
OC: Minimal.
NC: To the max.
Based on the new cover, someone unfamiliar with the novel might reasonably expect a coming-of-age tale about a young man with impeccable laundry service, who goes to sea, then secretly pines for the love he left behind, yearning for the day when they will be reunited. Not a lot, in other words, about trollocs slaughtering villagers, or the impending destruction of all creation.
And it doesn’t matter! The new cover doesn’t need to convey anything about the actual substance of the book because The Wheel of Time has been around for decades. The book has been vetted. The role of the cover art now is not to convince the hard-core fantasy fans to read it, because the book, even if you hate it, is already an inevitable part of the fantasy canon.
So what’s this new cover doing? Two things. First, trying to broaden the appeal of the book beyond fantasy’s traditional readership. I know heaps of people who look down on or sideways at fantasy, people who are always starting sentences, “The thing most readers don’t understand about Proust is…”, people who would hesitate to so much as glance at the old cover. Too many swords, too much horseflesh.
The new look, though – Oho! Who’s this strapping young man striking the type of implausible pose usually reserved for models from clothing catalogues? Who does his laundry? Is he pining for his lost love? And that sky! Evocative of someone famous… maybe Turner?
Which brings me to the second goal of the new cover: dressing up the book. This is related to point one, but transcends it. If the old cover says, “Hey, I’m sorta trashy, but I’ll show you a good time,” this new cover is all buttoned up. This is the kind of book you could read in front of your in-laws. Or in church. If you read in church. Which you probably shouldn’t.
That’s my interpretation, anyway. The folks at Tor have their own explanation, which, given that they’re the ones who commissioned the new look, might have a slight edge over mine. The thing I’m curious about, though, is this: If you knew nothing about the book, which cover would prove more enticing?
AdvertisementsThe Colombian government and leftist Farc rebels have announced a major breakthrough in peace talks aimed at ending nearly half a century of conflict, heralding a "radical transformation" of the war-ravaged countryside.
The two sides said in a joint communiqué that they had reached an agreement on land and rural development issues, the first point in a peace process launched six months ago.
The lead government negotiator, Humberto de la Calle, said the agreement would represent "a historic change, a rebirth of the Colombian countryside".
Land rights and distribution are at the heart of the conflict in Colombia, which saw Farc rise up against the state in the mid-1960s claiming to fight on behalf of the country's peasants. Today 52% of farms are in the hands of just over 1% of landowners, according to the UN Development Programme, giving Colombia one of the most unequal land distributions in the world.
According to official figures, only 22% of potential arable land is cultivated and 6.5m hectares of land was stolen, abandoned or forcibly changed hands in other ways between 1985 and 2008 as a result of the conflict.
Sunday's agreement "seeks to reverse the causes of the conflict" and would be the "start of radical transformations in Colombia's rural and agrarian reality", according to the statement read in Havana, where the negotiations have been taking place since November.
As part of the deal, Colombia would create a land bank through which farmland would be redistributed. Farmers would receive loans, technical assistance and marketing advice as well as legal and police protection.
Specific points of the agreement – such as how many hectares of land would be available for redistribution under the accord – were not made public. However, De la Calle said legal landowners had nothing to fear.
The vagueness of the announcement has triggered opponents of the government to question the process. Rafael Guarín, a critic of the peace talks and of the government of Juan Manuel Santos, tweeted: "What did Santos give in exchange for the Farc's 'yes' on rural and territorial issues?".
Farc has said it wants to see 9m hectares of land set aside for "peasant reserve zones" that would enjoy some autonomy from national government control. The government rejected the idea of autonomous zones but said they could be the focus areas of rural development programmes.
The government and rebel negotiators stressed they would enter into effect only if an overall peace accord was reached.
The chief Farc negotiator, Iván Márquez, said several issues surrounding land reform remained unresolved but the agreement was most likely announced to show some progress in the talks, about which many Colombians remain sceptical.
If the land issue was difficult because of the technical nature of the subject and the historical context, the next items on the agenda may be even more complicated politically. When the talks reconvene on 11 June, negotiators will begin to tackle the problem of how Farc can make the transition from an 8,000-strong guerrilla army to a legitimate political movement.
Farc tried this before with disastrous results. As part of a previous peace process in the mid-1980s it created the Patriotic Union party to participate in electoral politics while the rebels remained in arms.
But as many as 3,000 of party its members, including two presidential candidates, were murdered in the process. On the other hand, a majority of Colombians find it unpalatable to see rebel leaders sitting in Congress. Two-thirds of Colombians polled in April said they would not accept Farc leaders participating in politics if the group demobilised.
Other items on the agenda include the drug trade – a major source of funding for the rebels – reparation of victims, demobilisation, and implementation of a final accord. Santos, who faces re-election in May 2014, has said he wants to see a final peace deal ready by November.
Despite the tight deadline, De la Calle is optimistic. "Today we have a real opportunity to achieve through dialogue," he said.DeVante Parker hasn't been hyped as much as some wide receivers have been in this year's class. Is there a reason why?
Former Louisville wide receiver DeVante Parker was ridiculously good in 2014.
Once he returned for the final six games of the season from a broken bone in his foot that required surgery, Parker absolutely took over the Cardinals' offense, averaging 7.2 receptions per game and tearing up opposing defenses for 142.5 yards per contest. Parker accounted for 57% of Louisville's receiving yards in his active games last year, a higher share of yards than both Amari Cooper (44%) and Kevin White (35%) had in their final collegiate seasons.
While Amari Cooper may be the best wide receiver in this year's class and Kevin White is arguably the most explosive athlete among the incoming wide receiver class, Parker is not held in a similar light. Why is this?
Absurd Production
It's totally possible that Parker's 2014 season is being knocked because his sample of games (six) was virtually cut in half relative to the rest of the class. But is this a fair assessment?
To find out, the table below has Parker's career yardage splits against the average. Essentially, this statistic looks at the percentage of receptions that met the specified split (i.e. first down). For a little more context, I added Amari Cooper and Kevin White's splits to the table as well. The entire sample was 15 wide receivers.
Name Rec. Targets 1st Down % 15+ Yards % 25+ Yards % TD % DeVante Parker 156 241 75.0% 46.8% 26.3% 21.2% Amari Cooper 227 323 63.0% 36.6% 15.9% 13.7% Kevin White 144 239 55.6% 33.3% 14.6% 10.4% Average 173.7 273.3 60.2% 33.1% 15.9% 13.5%
An astounding 75% of DeVante Parker's career receptions at Louisville went for a first down. Of course -- this includes first-round quarterback Teddy Bridgewater's three seasons as a starter from 2011 to 2013 -- but it's hard not to fall in love with Parker's overall efficiency.
Once more, DeVante Parker was a habitual touchdown scorer in his college career. 21.2% of his career receptions found the endzone which was the second highest touchdown rate behind only Ohio State's Devin Smith (24.8%) in this year's class.
All of this effectively leads to one question: how does this production project to the NFL?
A Grain of Salt Needed?
Frankly, there is not much to dislike about Parker's game. He was insanely efficient in college -- but some of his success has to do with the fact he never had more than 55 receptions in a single season. Granted, he was on a 93-reception pace had he played out the entire season. Yet, one of the major fallback arguments against Parker is we haven't seen him explode for a full-season like Amari Cooper and Kevin White both did in 2014.
Parker is also a fantastic athlete, standing at 6'3" and 209 pounds. He also posted some fine scores at the 2014 combine. But unlike in the production splits above, he fails to separate himself into an elite athletic upper tier.
Using RotoUnderworld's "Player Profiler" tool, the table below indicates Parker, Cooper, and White's relative height-adjusted speed and burst scores.
The height-adjusted speed score measures a player's speed via their 40-time but puts a premium on both body weight and body length. Burst score total's a player’s vertical jump height and broad jump distance and equally weights both measures. Percentiles are denoted in parenthesis.
Name Height-Adj Speed Burst Score DeVante Parker 109.5 (86th) 124.6 (68th) Amari Cooper 110.6 (89th) 116.1 (21st) Kevin White 123.4 (98th) 123.6 (61st)
As you can see, all three of these wide receivers are phenomenal prospects from just a height-adjusted speed perspective, and Parker has a slight edge in overall athletic burst.
While Parker's 86th percentile speed score is fantastic, it still is just below Cooper's 89th percentile speed and pales in comparison to Kevin White's 98th percentile explosiveness. For further reference, Missouri's Dorial Green-Beckham's 4.49 40-yard dash warranted a 97th percentile speed score.
The Bottom Line
It really is pretty simple: DeVante Parker is an outstanding prospect coming in to this year's draft. While his overall production-based efficiency in college was extraordinary, he still didn't have a full season's sample to claim dominance.
Perhaps it's a bit short-sighted to knock him for an injury and perhaps his six games in 2014 really were a direct representation of his ability. He did, in fact, have his most productive season by far with a quarterback not named Teddy Bridgewater.
Parker may not be the first or even second-best wide receiver in this year's draft according to mock drafts and rankings, but it's as if he lacks monstrous upside like Amari Cooper, Kevin White, Dorial Green-Beckham, or even Breshad Perriman.
Of course, draft capital and landing spot will play a big role in determining the outcomes of these players' careers. Still, Parker's college production and solid athleticism certainly makes him worthy of at least being in the conversation among the best wide receivers in this year's draft class.Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET
There are lots of potential uses for mid-air haptics; gaming immediately springs to mind -- imagine if you could feel a physical ball while playing with the Kinect for instance. User interfaces for a variety of technologies would be another -- particularly if it was combined with holographic visuals, Iron Man-style. And there are some pretty interesting potential uses for medical technology -- such as being able to feel around inside a 3D model of a CT scan to touch a tumour, for example.
A new method of haptic feedback has been invented by a team of researchers at the University of Bristol's Department of Computer Science. Rather than puffs of air -- as developed by Disney Research -- it uses a technology usually used for imaging, for visualising the unseen: ultrasound.
Ultrasound produces an effect known as acoustic radiation force, which produces a physical effect -- the scattering and absorption of the acoustic wave. By observing how sound behaves when it hits an object, we can extrapolate the shape of that object.
It's also possible to focus complex patterns of ultrasound in such a way as to cause air disturbance. It is this property of ultrasound that the researchers have tapped to create 3D haptic shapes in mid-air -- users can feel those air disturbances on the skin. Moreover, those patterns can be formed into 3D shapes.
"This approach applies the principles of acoustic radiation force, whereby the non-linear effects of sound produce forces on the skin which are strong enough to generate tactile sensations. This mid-air haptic feedback eliminates the need for any attachment of actuators or contact with physical devices," the paper's abstract reads. "The user perceives a discernible haptic shape when the corresponding acoustic interference pattern is generated above a precisely controlled two-dimensional phased array of ultrasound transducers."
What this means is that an array of ultrasound generators creates a variety of shapes -- such as cubes and spheres -- which the user can feel when they place their hand above the array. By itself, of course, it can't be seen -- but the team has used a container of oil to show how the shapes work. In the video below, you can see the array directed at the oil, creating a variety of shapes. This is what the team means when they say the haptics can be "seen".
It wouldn't, of course, exist by itself, either: the team envisions its use in concert with a display, such as a holographic display -- if or when that technology arrives.
"Touchable holograms, immersive virtual reality that you can feel and complex touchable controls in free space, are all possible ways of using this system," said study leader Dr Ben Long.
"In the future, people could feel holograms of objects that would not otherwise be touchable, such as feeling the differences between materials in a CT scan or understanding the shapes of artefacts in a museum."
The full study, "Rendering volumetric haptic shapes in mid-air using ultrasound", can be found online in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics.Venezuelan children express hunger in drawings Thomson Reuters CARACAS (Reuters) - When children at a Catholic-run school in a poor neighborhood of Venezuela's Caracas capital began fainting from hunger, teachers asked them to draw or describe their most recent meals and what they expected to eat next.
The responses were shocking.
Some of the 478 kindergarten and primary students had gone without breakfast and were skipping other meals. Others expected to eat only bread, yucca or "arepa," a form of cornmeal flatbread that is a local staple.
The drawings and texts at the Padre Jose Maria Velaz school in western Caracas are another symptom of the oil-rich South American nation's deep economic crisis and its effects on nutrition and eating habits.
Due to the faltering socialist economy and the plunge in global oil prices, Venezuela has been in recession since early 2014. It suffers from the world's highest inflation and is experiencing shortages of basic goods, from milk to medicines.
The student wrote, "Today I ate nothing for breakfast and had pasta with Mortadella for lunch. I'm hungry." REUTERS/Carlos Jasso Huge lines at shops and pharmacies are now the norm, and hungry residents are quickly stripping the nation's lush mango, coconut and papaya trees.
Depicting their latest meals, some students at Padre Jose Maria Velaz drew just mangoes and plantains. One said he had eaten rice and beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Another said he had no breakfast. "We are waiting for food.
"I have pasta and ham for lunch," he added. "I'm hungry."
School director Maria Hidalgo said one in four children there were eating inadequately, and some teachers had also fainted from hunger.
"It's dramatic, what we are going through," Hidalgo said. "What kind of Venezuela are we going to have in 10 years?"
Critics say Venezuela's crisis is the fault of economic policies under President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. But the government says it is the victim of an "economic war" led by opposition politicians, businessmen and the United States.
The student wrote, "For breakfast, lunch and dinner I had corn cake with cheese." REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Alexis Marin, who runs the food program for state schools, said children were receiving proper supplies.
"With all the economic war, they couldn't destroy the school food program," he told state TV.
The children at Padre Jose Maria Velaz at least had a happy reprieve: Nearby private textile company Telares de Palo Grande and local charity Mi Convive recently organized a party around a healthy meat soup for all to mark the end of the school year.
(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)Global Collapse: Children Are Literally Starving To Death In Venezuela And Yemen by Michael Snyder – The Economic Collapse Blog
Venezuela and Yemen were both once very prosperous nations, but now parents are literally watching their children starve to death as the economies of both nations continue to utterly collapse. Just like so many here in the United States, most of those living in Venezuela and Yemen would have called you completely crazy if you would have warned them that this was going to happen five years ago. In particular, Venezuela has more proven oil reserves than almost anyone else on the planet, and so to most of their citizens it was unimaginable that things could ever get this bad. But it has happened, and the collapse that has already begun in parts of South America, Africa and the Middle East will soon spread elsewhere.
When I said that children are literally starving to death in Venezuela, I was not exaggerating one bit. The following comes from the Wall Street Journal…
Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, has the drawn face of an old man and a cry that is little more than a whimper. His ribs show through his skin. He weighs just 11 pounds. His mother, Maria Planchart, tried to feed him what she could find combing through the trash—scraps of chicken or potato. She finally took him to a hospital in Caracas, where she prays a rice-milk concoction keeps her son alive. “I watched him sleep and sleep, getting weaker, all the time losing weight,” said Ms. Planchart, 34 years old. “I never thought I’d see Venezuela like this.”
What would you do if that was your child?
At one time Venezuela had the brightest outlook out of all the economies in South America, but now their economy has contracted by a total of 27 percent since 2013, imports of food have fallen 70 percent, and the IMF says that the inflation rate will hit a staggering 720 percent this year.
Tonight, in major cities all across Venezuela you will find thousands of people rummaging through garbage looking for food. It has been reported that some citizens have even resorted to eating cats, dogs and pigeons because they are so desperate for something to eat.
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A MONTH ago seasoned watchers of Syria reckoned that the regime's ferocious crackdown would keep the lid on dissent, albeit with President Bashar Assad's legitimacy badly impaired. Now the prevailing wisdom is changing. Rather than subside, the protests are spreading and intensifying. Having started in the south and spread to coastal cities such as Banias, they moved to Homs, Syria's third-biggest city, and the surrounding central districts. More recently they have gripped Hama, the country's fourth city, famed for its uprising in 1982, when 20,000 people may have been killed by the then president, Hafez Assad, the present incumbent's father. After starting in the rural areas, the unrest has hit cities all over the country. And the death toll, well past 1,200, has begun to rise more sharply. On June 3rd, at least 70 people are reported to have been killed in Hama alone.
The first of two big questions is whether the revolt will get going in Damascus and Aleppo, the capital and Syria's second city respectively, which have been relatively but by no means entirely quiet. The second big question is whether the security forces, on which the regime was founded when Assad père took over in 1970, will stay loyal. If the army's middle and lower ranks, drawn mainly from the country's Sunni majority, which comprises some 75% of the population, begin to turn against the senior ranks where the Alawite minority (10%, including the Assad family) predominates, the regime could begin to fall apart. The events of June 5th in the town of Jisr al-Shughour, near the north-western border with Turkey, suggest that this may be starting to happen.
An accurate version of what happened there is hard to confirm, because independent reporters are banned from Syria and the state media have plumbed the depths of mendacity. Usually, however, they flag up an event and give an indication, sometimes unintentionally, of its magnitude. Then they set about rearranging the facts. In the case of Jisr al-Shughour, they at first said that 20 members of the security forces had been killed in an ambush “by armed gangs” and then, within an hour, raised the figure to 120, declaring that “decisive” action would be taken as part of the state's duty to protect its citizens. Probably the death toll has indeed been high.
But who killed whom remains unclear. Theories abound. Residents say people have been fighting back after helicopters and tanks killed at least 40 civilians during the weekend. Tanks have been massing menacingly around the city. But well-informed Syrians surmise that the number of dead servicemen was exaggerated in an effort to make ordinary people rally to the regime and that most of the victims were killed in clashes between the police and the army or within some security-force units after their members tried to defect or to mutiny—the last two possibilities being the ones that must really scare Mr Assad.
The killing in Hama on Friday June 3rd was also a watershed. Many thousands went onto the streets, to be met by a volley of gunfire. The unrest continues to spread. Idleb, the province around Jisr al-Shughour, is up in arms. Homs is still boiling. Deir ez-Zor, in the remote east, is seething too. Thousands of protesters have poured onto the streets. Security forces have been burning their fields. People are terrified they will be the next victims of the crackdown.
Eyes are now turning on Damascus and Aleppo. The uprising has hitherto been fiercest in rural areas. During the Baath party's early days in power in the 1960s, its officials were often rural types who sought support for the Baath's socialism from poor villagers. But Mr Assad has neglected those roots, favouring urbanites, including merchants and religious leaders. The villagers, by contrast, have suffered from bad conditions, drought, rampant unemployment, and the corruption and bullying of state officials.
Damascus has not, in any case, been completely quiet. Angry protests have taken place in Kafr Souseh and are continuing in Midan, districts in the heart of the city, and there have been many small protests. Aleppo, haunted by a crackdown against Islamists in the 1980s and still heavily policed, may be the last city where people will take to the streets en masse. But unrest is growing there too.
Across the country, a growing number of religious leaders are weighing in behind the protesters. More of Syria's minorities, such as Christians, who have looked to Mr Assad for protection, may also be joining in. The several hundred thousand Palestinians who reside in Syria may also be turning against him (see article). On June 6th there were clashes in Yarmouk, the biggest refugee camp, on the edge of Damascus. “We're getting to a tipping point, where groups waiting for a balance of power to change will move,” says a veteran analyst in Damascus. The influential Qatar-based television channel, Al Jazeera, reported that a member of the Tlass family, a Sunni clan that has been close to the president, had defected. He contradicted the government's line that the army is fighting against armed rebels.
At first Western governments, including America's, were loth to call for Mr Assad to go, hoping he could still set about reforms and open Syria up. But his |
as a result, it is not certain to whom you should turn for licenses. These complications are discussed in Section 1.2.7.3 - “Licenses You Will Need.”
Two Types Of Copyright “Rights”.
In addition to appreciating that there are two types of works (the musical composition and the sound recording) at stake in any recorded song (and therefore, potentially, two copyrights), the use of a song in a podcast might implicate two or more different exclusive rights that copyright owners are granted under the Copyright Act in different ways, specifically: the right to reproduce and distribute copies of a work, and the separate right to perform the work publicly. Because as noted above in (see Section 1.2.7.1 - “Two Types of Works Involved In A Copyrighted Song”) these rights also are frequently owned by different rights-holders and licensed by different entities and may or may not be implicated in the making and delivery of a podcast, it is worth taking a moment to explain the differences between them.
(a) The Reproduction Right. Copyright holders in both musical works and sound recordings (see Section 1.2.7.1 - “Two Types of Works Involved In A Copyrighted Song”) hold the exclusive right to “reproduce,” or make copies of, the copyrighted work. If you create a new copy of someone else's song, for example, by downloading an MP3 file, burning it to CD, or causing it to be transferred to an iPod or other MP3 player, you may violate the copyright holder's exclusive right to reproduce the work.
The simplest case of copying music involves reproducing an entire song. If you take an entire music track of someone else's song from a CD and use a CD burner to make a copy of it, you might violate the rights of reproduction in both the musical work and the sound recording -- absent fair use (see Section 1.2.9 - “Fair Use Under Copyright Law And Its Application To Podcasts”). However, if you record your own rendition of a song, based on a song you heard, you only violate the right of reproduction in the musical work, but not in the sound recording. This is because the reproduction right in a sound recording only extends to copying the actual sounds included in the sound recording; it does not extend to the independent creation of similar sounds.
If your podcast includes all or part of someone else's recording of a copyrighted song, you may infringe the reproduction rights in both the music al work and the sound recording. So if you create an audio file that contains the music (whether ripped from a CD or taken from a downloaded music file) you make a reproduction of two copyrighted works and, unless any of the exceptions described in Section 1.2.2 - “The Goods News: 5 Instances Where Permission Is Not Required” apply, you need to have express permission from the rightsholder(s) (this means permission in writing, such as an email giving you permission from a source you can confirm is indeed the person with authority to give the right, followed by a confirming letter from you noting the specific rights granted in the email, and the right-holder's signature on the letter). This would be true even if you never post the podcast online. If you do in fact post the file for others to download and you have not obtained the copyright holders' permission, in addition to direct infringement you could be also be secondarily liable for copyright infringement (udner theories of ”contributory” or ”vicarious” infringement) each time someone downloads it, because your act of putting it online enables others to create unauthorized copies. Copyright infringement lawsuits potentially could result in thousands or even millions of dollars in damages and attorney's fees. Therefore, the only truly safe course under current law is to secure express permission to use, in your podcasts, any copyrighted music and sound recordings that are created by others unless you are sufficiently certain that it falls under the so-called “fair use” exception (discussed in Section 1.2.9 - “Fair Use Under Copyright Law And Its Application to Podcasts”) or otherwise falls within an exception (see Section 1.2.2 - “The Goods News: 5 Instances Where Permission Is Not Required”).
(b) The Public Performance Right. In addition to controlling reproductions of their music, the holders of copyrights in musical works, and in sound recordings that are transmitted digitally (e.g., over the Internet), also have the exclusive right to publicly perform their works. This right is less straightforward than the reproduction right, and courts have not resolved the question of whether it applies to podcasting. In this context, “performance” does not have its usual dictionary meaning; instead, it is defined in the Copyright Act to include essentially anything that allows music to be heard. “Performing” a song can include singing it, broadcasting or webcasting it, or just having a radio turned on and music playing. But in order to infringe the public performance right, a performance must also be “public.” A performance is public if it takes place where many people are gathered (except in a home among family and friends) or if it involves transmitting a work either to a place where many people are gathered or generally to the public (as with a radio broadcast). The “public” requirement means that playing legitimately acquired music at home, like on your iPod or stereo, does not infringe the public performance right.
A podcast is probably “public” within the meaning of the Copyright Act (since it can be freely downloaded by all), but it may not be a “performance.” Although normal Internet “streaming” webcasts plainly constitute “performances” because the transmissions from the webcasting server are immediately made audible by the listener's computer (just as songs broadcast over the air immediately are emitted as sounds by the radio), the way in which music included in a podcast is made audible is at least one-step less direct. In the ordinary case, a podcast is first downloaded as a copy onto the user's computer; the user, acting on his own initiative and timing, then plays the podcast and any music in it on her computer, iPod or other portable player.
Although your actions in creating a podcast ultimately enable a willing listener to hear the music (and other contents) contained in your podcast, it is currently still an undecided question whether you are therefore “publicly performing” a work merely by making it available for download; the US Copyright Office has declared this “an unsettled point of law that is subject to debate.”(U.S. Copyright Office, DMCA Section 104 Report, August 2001, available athttp://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/sec-104-report-vol-1.pdf, xxvii.) No court has yet squarely addressed the issue, which means that podcasting is currently operating in a realm of considerable uncertainty.
Some of the leading copyright law commentators have suggested that non-simultaneous transmissions, such as podcasts, probably do not implicate the public performance right. (See Bruce P. Keller & Jeffrey P. Cunard, Copyright Law: A Practitioner's Guide, 2004 ed., § 14.2(E). Cf. Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright, August 2005 ed., § 8.14(B)(1) (noting that internal operations of a computer do not seem to constitute a performance).) Performing rights organizations, by contrast, have asserted that “[e]very Internet transmission”, streaming or download, is a public performance. For example, ASCAP's Internet license FAQ (http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/webfaq.html) states that ASCAP's view is that "every Internet transmission of a musical work constitutes a public performance of that work."
There are three main performing rights organizations in the US -- ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC - who own and license the public performance rights to the majority of commercially available musical works. BMI has recently created a license specifically designed for the podcasting of music (http://www.bmi.com/licensing/forms/Internet0105A.pdf;), and ASCAP (http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/release5.0.pdf) and SESAC (http://www.sesac.com/licensing/internetLicensing.asp) have general Internet licenses which cover podcasting.
If you want to use commercially released music that BMI, ASCAP and SESAC or a large corporate entity control and you are concerned and want to eliminate any uncertainty, you may wish to obtain a public performance license either from BMI, ASCAP or SESAC or the individual artist or composer.
The person or entity who owns the copyright in a sound recording also enjoys the exclusive right to publicly perform that sound recording by means of digital audio transmission. The Copyright Act defines “digital transmission” very broadly (any “transmission in whole or in part in a digital or other nonanalog format”). If you want to provide a podcast with a copyrighted sound recording on an interactive basis (the user can select and download the podcast), then, that may be regarded as a digital audio transmission. If you need to secure a license for that use, then, ordinarily, you must approach the copyright holder of the sound recording directly.
Licenses You Will Need.
(a) Licenses For Reproduction And Distribution Of Musical Works. You can obtain a license to reproduce and distribute copies of the musical composition from the Harry Fox Agency (http://www.harryfox.com/public/index.jsp); most uses of other people's copyrighted music in podcasts will require that you obtain such a license (unless an exception applies Section 1.2.2 - “The Goods News: 5 Instances Where Permission Is Not Required”). Note that you can access the Harry Fox Agency's “Songfile” database, which allows you to search to find titles and authors of songs in relation to which Harry Fox licenses the reproduction rights (http://www.harryfox.com/public/songfile.jsp). One thing to be sure to do is search both on the title of the song you want over the author/song writer's name. The reason for this is that the singer (e.g. Britney Spears) who performs a song (e.g. “Oops!...I Did It Again”) is often not the author/song writer (e.g. Max Martin, Rami). By searching on title, you will be more likely to find the title you intend to find.
Remember - the licenses obtained from the Harry Fox Agency cover only the right to reproduce and distribute copies of the musical composition in a musical work and do not cover the right to perform publicly the musical work (see the preceding discussion for a description of licenses for public performances) or the right to reproduce, distribute copies of or perform the sound recording included in the work (see part (c) below).
The current rate for a license from the Harry Fox Agency is 9.1 cents per song per download for songs up to 5 minutes. If the song is longer than 5 minutes, the rate per download is 1.75 cents times the number of minutes (or fraction thereof). In either case, what you would have to pay is based on this rate times the total number of downloads. So, a podcast including one song of less than 5 minutes in length downloaded by 1000 users, for example, would result in fees of $91 ($.091 x 1000). A podcast that is 6 minutes and 18 seconds long downloaded 500 times would cost $61.25 (7 minutes x $.0175 x 500). Licenses from the Harry Fox Agency are available at http://www.harryfox.com/public/licenseeServicesDigital.jsp. There is also a per-song “processing fee” of $8 to $10. Details of these costs are found in Harry Fox Agency’s FAQ (http://www.harryfox.com/songfile/faq.html#faq1). If you want to distribute more the 2500 digital downloads of the work, you need to contact Harry Fox Agency and set up an “HFA Licensee Account” ( for more information see http://www.harryfox.com/songfile/faq.html#faq3).
Alternatively, podcasters can obtain licenses similar to the one available from the Harry Fox Agency by following the procedures of section 115 of the Copyright Act. This license is known as a "compulsory license" and requires notifying either the music publisher or the Copyright Office (if the publisher cannot be located) for every musical work desired (Information on notifying the Copyright Office is available at http://www.copyright.gov/carp/m-200.pdf). The usage fees are the same for the compulsory license as for a license with the Harry Fox Agency
(b) Licenses For Public Performance Of Musical Works. If you decide to secure a public performance license from ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC based on the discussion in Section 1.2.7.2 — “Two Types of Copyright ‘Rights,’” you need to remember that this license will not grant any rights to reproduction and distribution of copies of the musical works (for that you will need a Harry Fox license, discussed in part (a) above). Since the creation of a podcast and podcasting to the public inherently results in creating copies, public performance licenses alone would not be sufficient to obtain all the rights to podcast copyrighted music.
In addition, the ASCAP, BMI and SESAC licenses do not grant the right to perform publicly (through digital audio transmission) or the right to reproduce or distribute copies of any copyrighted sound recordings (as distinguished from musical works). For example, under the ASCAP license, you can publicly perform by podcast your own kazoo rendition of the musical composition of Britney Spears’ song “Oops!... I Did it Again” (so long as you have also obtained the rights to reproduce the underlying lyrics and score from Harry Fox (see part (a) above), but if you publicly performed (by digital audio transmission) the original Britney Spears’ recording from a CD you would also need a separate license to record and perform publicly the sound recording of Britney’s performance.
The typical rate schedule for the current ASCAP license charges podcasters 1.85% of revenue plus 0.06 cents per session, with a minimum payment of $288 a year (http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/release5.0.pdf). In addition, ASCAP requires quarterly reporting of music usage. Similarly, the current minimum fee for the BMI license is $283 a year (http://www.bmi.com/licensing/forms/Internet0105A.pdf), and the minimum fee for the SESAC license is $168 a year (http://www.sesac.com/licensing/internetLicensing.asp). Separate licenses from each organization may be necessary if you wish to use different songs in your podcast because each organization holds the rights to different musical works.
Once you have obtained a license from ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC for the performance of a composition, and from the Harry Fox Agency for the reproduction and distribution of copies of the composition, you can then legally podcast your own renditions of those compositions. However, if you want to podcast copyrighted recordings made by others (e.g., a song ripped from a CD or copied from a legal download), then you need to think about obtaining a license for reproduction and public performance (by a digital audio transmission) of those sound recordings (which is discussed in the next section) unless one of the exceptions discussed in Section 1.2.2 - “The Goods News: 5 Instances Where Permission Is Not Required” applies to your situation.
(c) Licenses For Reproduction, Distribution, And Public Performance (By Digital Audio Transmission) Of Sound Recordings. All of the rights to a sound recording are usually owned by the record company that produces the sound recording. Unfortunately, this means that you may be required to negotiate separately with multiple record companies for the right to reproduce and distribute their respective sound recordings as part of your podcast. Dealing directly with the record company that owns the rights to a particular song may be preferable, because the record company likely has the legal power to grant licenses for all the types of rights discussed above — to reproduce and distribute copies of the sound recording and to publicly perform the sound recording (by digital audio transmission).
(d) Licenses For Use Of Music Together With Images (or Audiovisual Works). This section deals with additional licenses you need to consider if you are using music with images in your podcast. Therefore, this section only applies to video podcasters. If your podcasts are limited to audio-only, then the good news is that you need not worry about the following three licenses.
If you a video podcaster, then the possible licenses you will need to include a musical work with images in your video podcast fall into three categories: (i) synchronization (or “sync”) licenses (ii) “master use” licenses, and (iii) “videogram” licenses. Like the licenses for reproduction and public digital transmission of sound recordings (see previous section), these licenses do not fall within the mechanical licensing schemes and must be individually negotiated. Also, it should be noted that these licenses stem from “traditional” practices in a world pre-podcasting and pre-internet (e.g., many of these licenses relate to movie-releases and television broadcasting) and their specific application to the podcasting/digital world is not obvious.
(i) Sync License. The sync license is negotiated with the copyright owner (likely the music publisher) directly. The Harry Fox Agency discontinued sync licensing in 2002 (see http://www.harryfox.com/public/licenseSynchronization.jsp). Traditionally, the sync license allows you to “synchronize” a musical work with an audiovisual work, such as a motion picture or television program, and to make copies of the resulting audiovisual work. Also traditionally, these licenses came in only two flavors: a theatrical sync license and a television sync license. This means that under a traditional sync license, you may only distribute the licensed copies for the specific purpose of either exhibiting the audiovisual work in motion picture theaters or broadcasting the work on television. It is not clear how exactly these licenses will be applied in the podcasting context. To date, no specific sync license scheme exists for podcasts or other digital transmissions.
Given this ambiguity, the most conservative route in protecting yourself from legal attack is to consider your video podcast as a “theatrical release” or a “television broadcast.” Doing so means that you may be required to obtain a sync license when you want to include a musical work with the images in your podcast. If you are required to do so, then you should contact the copyright owner (likely the music publisher) directly to get permission to synchronize the musical work with the video track of your podcast.
(ii) Master Use License. The master use license is negotiated with the record company. It applies only if you want to use a particular recording of a musical work with a video image that you are putting into your video podcast. For example, it applies when you want to use Madonna's recording of “Sorry” in your video podcast. When you do that, you will be required to get permission from the record company to use the “master recording” of the song for inclusion in your video podcast. The “master use license” does not apply if you make your own recording of “Sorry” for your video podcast.
(iii) Videogram License. Traditionally, a videogram (= “video” + “program”) license is used to describe a license for programs contained in audiovisual devices - like videotapes, laser discs or DVDs - primarily intended for sale to the public for in-home use. Whether a podcast is considered legally the same as a videotape, laser disc or DVD remains to be determined. Viewing the risks conservatively, you may need a separate “videogram” license from the music publisher and the record company if you plan to distribute your podcast to the public (which, of course, is how most podcasts are distributed). The videogram license is necessary because the music publisher's permission under the traditional sync license may not extend to copies of your podcast that you distribute to the public. Likewise, the record company's permission under the master use license to use the recording of a song in the podcast may not authorize releasing the podcast for distribution to the public. The important notion here is that the trigger for this requirement is that your content is made available to the public generally, and not merely for a specific purpose like theatrical release or television broadcast.
The “Fair Use” Exception.
For a discussion of how the fair use exception may apply to your inclusion of other people's music in your podcast, please check out Section 1.2.9 - “Fair Use Under Copyright Law And Its Application To Podcasts” where we discuss fair use.
Using Video/Images.
If you are interested in video podcasting, vlogging or otherwise including images or video with your podcast, you need to think about potential copyright issues and publicity issues. For publicity rights, see the discussion in Section 1.3 - “Publicity Rights Issues.” You should also generally consult the EFF Legal Guide for Bloggers if the content of your video podcast will likely touch on issues relevant to defamation, election and labor laws or adult material: http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/.
As regards copyright, the issues that arise are similar to those that arise in relation to the use of text or music except that there are more of them because a greater number of copyrighted works may be included in an image or video. You need to isolate and think about each type of work that may be included in an image or video and identify whether you need to clear each of those works. For example, you will need to identify each piece of music you use and any still images or video footage created by other people and consider whether copyright applies and if so, whether your use requires the copyright owner's permission or whether your use falls within an exception to copyright. Using music together with images in a video podcast also raises special licensing issues. These are addressed in Section 1.2.8 - “Using Video/Images.”
One final thing to consider that is not addressed above, although architects have no right (under copyright law) to prevent a public building from being photographed or sketched, you may want to think before including other artwork in your video or image collage and go through the exercise of identifying whether your use likely constitutes a fair use or whether separate permission is needed.
Fair Use Under Copyright Law And Its Application To Podcasts.
A “fair use” is copying any protected material (texts, sounds, images, etc.) for a limited and “transformative” purpose, like criticizing, commenting, parodying, news reporting, teaching the copyrighted work. Under the US copyright laws, fair use “is not an infringement of copyright.” Judges typically consider four factors that are set forth in the Copyright Act. These factors are non-exclusive, so judges are permitted to consider other facts in addition to these. However, in the vast majority of cases, courts limit their analysis to these factors (you can read more detail about these factors at http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html. The Brennan Center's excellent public policy report entitled “Will Fair Use Survive?: Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control” provides a analysis of how fair use has played out in numerous scenarios over recent years: http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/WillFairUseSurvive.pdf):
the purpose and character of your use (this is sometimes called the “transformative factor”);
the nature of the copyrighted work (e.g., is the work highly creative fiction warranting broader protection, or is it highly factual warranting narrower protection?);
the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, (as compared both to the underlying work and the work in which the copying is used); and
the effect of the use upon the potential market (e.g., did the copyrighted work lose market share or potential market share?).
In addition, some commentators refer to a “fifth fair use factor” which hinges on good faith -- whether your conduct might be considered “morally offensive,” Judges and juries are human, and their decisions can be swayed by whether they think you are a "good or bad” actor (see http://bgbg.blogspot.com/2005/10/search-or-seizure.html).
Two Misconceptions About Fair Use.
(a) Acknowledgement Is Not Enough. Some authors have the erroneous belief that an acknowledgement will immunize a copyright infringement as “fair use.” This is a myth. Including an acknowledgement may be considered in analyzing the four statutory factors, but it is by no means is a clear defense to a claim of infringement.
(b) Disclaimers Are Not Enough Either. Another point of confusion is whether an upfront disclaimer that denies any association between the podcast and the copyrighted material can protect the podcaster from liability. For example, assume your podcast is a parody of “The OC” television show. You include a disclaimer at the beginning of your podcast in which you state: “This podcast is not associated with or endorsed by Fox Television.” This sort of disclaimer will not, by itself, protect you from a claim of copyright infringement, or act as a clear defense to such a claim. It will, however, be considered among the factors the court considers, and in a very close case, a court may look positively on a clear statement of disassociation. (Note, however, that including a clear disclaimer can help with potential trademark infringement situations. See section 1.4 - “Trademark Issues” -- for further information about trademark law.)
Examples Of Fair Use That May Apply In Podcasting.
To help illustrate the way these factors may play out in the podcasting context, it may help to consider a few examples:
Example 1: A book group organized by a high school teacher podcasts its meeting discussing J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye. The members discuss the book, read short portions of it aloud, and criticize and comment on the author's style, the storylines, and the like. The podcast is posted on the book group's blog site, which is hosted by the high school. The site includes no advertising and generates no revenue. Conclusion: This would likely be a fair use.
Example 2: A podcaster uses the copyrighted music of pianist George Winston for the intros and outros of her podcast that is about yoga and meditation. The podcast has nothing to do with commenting or critiquing the music played. Conclusion: This is likely not a fair use.
Example 3: A 10-minute podcast includes a group of music fans discussing a recent copyrighted article in Rolling Stone magazine about a new band. One fan reads 4 paragraphs of the 6-paragraph article and comments on its analysis of the band. Another fan plays a 1-minute segment of the band's copyrighted song, which is 2 minutes in length. The fan then discusses the music as it compares to other music in the genre. The fans post the podcast on a fan website where advertising is sold, and the fans receive revenue for their podcast. Conclusion: This commentary/criticism by the fans in response to the article and song suggests a “fair use”, but the commercial/profit aspect of the site where the podcast is being distributed raises concern, as does the amount of the article and song taken in comparison to their overall length. Any negative effect on Rolling Stone magazine's market or the band's market for its music could cut against the fair use argument, though the podcasters might argue that the podcast promotes the Rolling Stone magazine article and band's song, and that it is not a replacement for either (of course, this would likely be costly and difficult to prove in a trial setting). Given the flexible application of the fair use doctrine, and that the burden lies on the podcaster to prove fair use, podcasters in this situation could be found to infringe.
Publicity Rights Issues
A claim of right to publicity generally arises if you use another person's image, likeness or voice in a podcast without their consent and for commercial purposes, which results in injury to the individual. (See EFF's Bloggers FAQ for some recent cases where the right of publicity was at odds with the Constitution: http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-ip.php). This means that if you use another image, likeness or voice as a way of advertising or soliciting your podcast, you will need the individual's consent. First amendment (freedom of speech) rights allow uses of a public figure's name or likeness so long as it is done (1) in a truthful way and (2) does not imply a false endorsement of you or your podcast by the public figure.
Right of publicity is governed by state law, which means that it can vary state to state. For example, in California, a plaintiff would need to show that your podcast (a) used the individual's name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness in your podcast (b) for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting, the podcast (or any other products or services), (c) without the individual's consent. If the plaintiff proves her case, she is entitled to payment of damages (of at least $750), profits from the unauthorized use, and her attorney's fees and costs.
The good news is that that law in California includes an important exception to the general rule that consent is required. In situations where the name, voice, signature, photograph or likeness of an individual is used “in connection with any news, public affairs, or sports broadcast or accounts, or any political campaign,” consent is not required. So, to the extent your podcast can be construed as “news, public affairs, or sports broadcast or accounts”, you do not need to obtain consent of the individuals. The language of this section is deliberately broad, so it is likely to apply equally to bloggers and podcasters as it would to traditional media, though this question has never been tested by California courts.
In California, if you use the name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness of a “deceased personality” in your podcast, you still need to consider right of publicity issues. California law permits the heirs of that deceased personality to control the use of the personality for up to 70 years after the personality's death.
Moreover, on a related note, in California, you need to consider risks associated with misappropriating the identity of a well-known celebrity. For more information on this issue, see the discussion in Section 1.2.5. - “Incorporating Pre-Existing Audio Voice Recordings” regarding the Bette Midler case.
Trademark Issues.
Infringement And Dilution.
Generally, you can violate a trademark in at least in two ways: by direct infringement, and by dilution.
Direct infringement occurs when you use someone else's trademark (often a competitor's trademark) in a way that is "likely to cause consumer confusion" as to the source, affiliation or sponsorship between you and the trademark owner. This might occur if you use a trademark to describe your podcast, and the trademark owner thinks that your podcast is sufficiently related to their product or service, that a listener might conclude that the podcast comes from or is endorsed by the trademark owner, when that is not the case. For example, if you named your music-review podcast "The Rolling Stone Music Hour", you may find that Rolling Stone magazine will be unhappy with you and perhaps send you a cease and desist letter (among other possible unpleasant things). If however, your podcast had to do with gardening instead of music (e.g., Rolling Stone Gardening Hour), your risk of infringement would be much smaller, because listeners are unlikely to think that the well-known music magazine was sponsoring your gardening-related podcast.
Dilution can occur if the character of the trademark becomes clouded by an unwanted association, either through tarnishment, which occurs when a famous mark is used to promote a product that is considered offensive (e.g., the mark "DISNEYLAND" being used to market an X-rated podcast), or through blurring, which means the use of a famous trademark causes consumers to blur the two companies in their minds (e.g., naming your podcast the "Nike Hemorrhoid Discussion Group"). In a dilution claim, a trademark owner must prove actual dilution, not merely the likelihood of dilution. Note that dilution does not occur from a “nominative” or informational use of a trademark, such as a critical review or what is known as a “descriptive” use of a trademark (i.e., using it in a sentence to discuss Nike). But even if consumers are not at all confused about the source, a trademark owner can have a claim for dilution.
When Do I Need Permission?
Generally you do not need permission to make an informational (also called "editorial" or "nominative") use of a trademark. You also do not need permission if you're making a comparative advertisement (however, comparative ad situations often provoke trademark owners into legal action even when their trademark claims are weak especially if your statements about their product and your claims regarding your product are not wholly accurate). You will need permission if you're making a commercial use of the mark.
You may also identify the trademark of another (such as your employer or former employer) if the reference is accurate and does not cause confusion. For example, “I am Sobert Roble, and I work for SicroMoft” is acceptable if the context does not falsely suggest that the employer (here, SicroMoft) endorses the podcast. But using a title for a podcast such as “SicroMoft's Sobert Roble Speaks Out On The Issues” may suggest endorsement by the employer, and should therefore be avoided if that is not the case.
One other thing to remember is that you are not under an obligation to identify each and every trademark as a “registered” trademark. You can even use a trademark in the title of your podcast as long as it is not the title of series of podcasts. So, for example, you can title a single podcast “TRADEMARK ATTRIBUTION FOR DUMMIES” and not violate the trademark in the “For Dummies” books (see http://www.schwimmerlegal.com/archives/2006/02/trademark_attri.html).
EFF's Bloggers FAQ discussing intellectual property questions, http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-ip.php, addresses the basic questions about when you may use a trademark without permission (nominative or informational uses) and when you need permission (commercial uses) in your blog. Those same rules apply equally to your audio or video podcast. You should just think more broadly about how trademarks will appear in your podcast (e.g., as sounds and images), which might be unique from the written text of a blog entry. You will still need to consider if your use of the mark is informational (informing, educating, or expressing opinions protected under the First Amendment) or commercial (like advertising, promotion, or marketing). See also the Chilling Effects website's trademark FAQ available at http://www.chillingeffects.org/trademark/faq.cgi.
A Note About Using Trademark Disclaimers.
If you use a trademark in a commercial context in your podcast, it is a good practice to include a reference to registered trademarks of others in your show notes (if you have them) as well as in the podcast itself. A statement along these lines would suffice:
“[YOUR TRADEMARK] is a trademark of [YOUR NAME]. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.”
You may also check with the company whose trademarks you reference and read its trademark use policy typically found on its website. While using a disclaimer does not immunize you or clear your rights to use a particular trademark in a commercial context, it can help to show your good faith.
Finding “Podsafe” Content To Include In Your Podcasts.
Finding good content to use in your podcast and individually negotiating permission to use it can be a time-consuming task and may also be daunting if you are unsure if the rights-holder will agree to authorize the use of their content in your podcast.
One way to reduce the time and hassle of individually seeking permission from each rights-holder is to search for Creative Commons licensed material. CC-licensed material is “pre-cleared” for use in accordance with the terms of the applicable Creative Commons license. We explain at section 1.2.2.5 - “You Are Using Creative Commons-Licensed Or 'Podsafe' Content” - about the different types of Creative Commons licenses. Below we explain how you can find and identify CC-licensed content that you may be able to use in your podcast.
Finding CC-Licensed Materials.
Creative Commons licenses are expressed in three formats: the human readable summary of the key terms (Commons Deed); the actual license (Legal Code); and, finally Resource Description Framework metadata that describes the key license elements in machine-readable format.
You can identify Creative Commons licensed content in two ways: either by looking for a human-readable statement that a piece of content is licensed under a Creative Commons license. This can include, for example a statement to the following effect:
“This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/.”
And/or this may be indicated by the use of one of the Creative Commons logos or license buttons, such as our “some rights reserved” button:
Or the CC license buttons:
You can also find Creative Commons licensed content through the customized Yahoo! and Google searches that are available in the “Advanced Search” pages for both search engines. The Yahoo! Advanced search (http://search.yahoo.com/search/options) page clearly illustrates how you can limit your search results to Creative Commons-licensed works. In the Google Advanced Search page (http://www.google.com/advanced_search), by limiting your search according to “Usage Rights”, this will restrict your searching to find CC-licensed materials only.
There are also various content aggregator sites that offer a large amount of Creative Commons licensed works. These are listed at this page: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Content_Curators.
One thing to note about Creative Commons licensed content generally - you should be aware that all of the licenses contain a disclaimer of warranties, so there is no assurance whatsoever that the licensor has all the necessary rights to permit reuse of the licensed work. (Note: this applies to version 2.0 licenses and up; the version 1.0 CC licenses included a warranty of title). The disclaimer means that the licensor is not guaranteeing anything about the work, including that she owns the copyright to it, or that she has cleared any uses of third-party content that her work may be based on or incorporate.
This means that you should satisfy yourself that the person has all the necessary rights to make the work available under a Creative Commons license. You should know that if you are wrong, you could be liable for copyright infringement based on your use of the work.
You should learn about what rights need to be cleared (such as for example publicity rights) and when a fair use or fair dealing defense may be available. It could be that the licensor is relying on the fair use or fair dealing doctrine, but depending on the circumstances, that legal defense may or may not actually protect her (or you). You should educate yourself about the various rights that may be implicated in a copyrighted work, because creative works often incorporate multiple elements such as, for example, underlying stories and characters, recorded sound and song lyrics. If the work contains recognizable third-party content, it may be advisable to independently verify that it has been authorized for reuse under a Creative Commons license.
Other Sites That Offer Podsafe Content.
See Section 4 - “Background And Further Resources” - of this Guide for a listing of podsafe content providers.
Legal Issues Surrounding How You Distribute Your Podcast.
You may license your work through either an “implied” |
because I don't personally like to ride backwards," said passenger Nancy Coleman.But other passengers said flipping the seats wasn't important."Change is a challenge, you know. What are you gonna do? Once they do it, it's done," said passenger Pete Valencia.Actually, Metra wants to know what its riders think and will be getting reaction over the next couple months when the 30 new seat cars are phased into service on Metra's 11 lines. Anticipating the flip as an issue, each refurbished car has six spots where four seats face each other in a fixed position."This provides you with the four seaters - so we tried to accommodate everybody's needs into the car, and that's why I believe when people experience the ride on this car, and the comfort, they're gonna love it," Orseno said.The love test now begins, and if it's sufficient, Metra will begin a long-haul switch to a new look and feel.Russia's new Armata tank, which is set to officially debut in Moscow for the Victory Day parade on Saturday, appears to have broken down during a dress rehearsal on Thursday, according to reports from Russian media and a video of the parade from RuptlyTV.
Here's how it looked:
RT Ruptly, Youtube
The rest of the parade continued while the Armata sat motionless. It appeared to be attached to a vehicle in front by a cord. Here it is from a little farther out:
RT Ruptly, Youtube
The tank has been touted as one of the most impressive pieces of military hardware ever produced by Russia, with technical specifications that suggest it could survive an attack from an Apache attack helicopter.
Some analysts even think the Armata will surpass all existing Western models— at least when it is fully functioning.India on Sunday put in yet another impressive performance by beating Malaysia 2-1 in the final to win the Asia Cup Hockey 2017 at Maulana Bhasani Hockey Stadium in Dhaka. Manpreet Singh-led India, who remained unbeaten in the tournament, started on a positive note and dominated till the very end to win their third Asia Cup title. India were off to a flyer as SV Sunil and Ramandeep Singh combined to give India an early lead in the third minute.
Lalit Upadhyay doubled India's advantage as he scored a superb field goal in the 29th minute. Malaysia, who had lost to India 2-6 in the league match, struck back in the final quarter to reduce India's lead but the latter managed to hold on to their advantage till the final whistle.
The Indians, ranked sixth in the world, were in for nervous last 10 minutes but the defence did enough to hold on to the lead.
Pakistan won the bronze medal after edging out Korea 6-3 in the third-fourth place play-off match earlier in the day. For India' new chief coach Marijne Sjoerd, it was perfect start to his stint as the Asia Cup was his maiden tournament in charge of the senior national side.
The top-ranked Indians finished unbeaten in the tournament, having won all their matches except for the 1-1 draw against Korea in th Super 4 stage.
Today's win was India's second victory over Malaysia in the tournament, having beaten them 6-2 in the Super-4 stage. For Malaysia, it was their best result in the tournament. They had earlier won the bronze in the 2007 edition of the event in Chennai.
The Indians came out all guns blazing and took the lead as early as the third minute through Ramandeep, who scored from a rebound after his initial deflection from SV Sunil's cross hit the post.
Chinglensana Singh's reverse hit from close range then went wide as India wasted a golden chance.
It was a battle fought on even keel between the two teams as Malaysia secured their first penalty corner in the 13th minute but wasted it.
Harmanpreet Singh was then denied by Razie Rahim as he made a goalline save to keep out the Indian defender's flick from India's first penalty corner.
Minutes later Malaysian goalkeeper Kumar Subramaniam made double save -- first kept out Akashdeep Sinh's shot and then denied Amit Rohidas from the resultant set piece.
A minute before the half time, Lalit doubled India's lead when he beautifully deflected home Sumit's reverse hit cross from the left flank.
After the change of ends, Lalit and Ramandeep came tantalisingly close to extending India's tally of goals but their shots from inside the D were off target.
Down by two goals, the Malaysians came out all guns blazing in the fourth and final quarter in search of the equaliser and gave the Indian defence a run for their money.
After wasting their second penalty corner, Malaysia came back into the match when Saabah scored from close range in the 50th minute as the Young Indian defence wilted under pressure for a second.
It was nervous last 10 minutes for the Indians as Malaysia mounted attack after attack in search of an equaliser.
In the form of their third penalty corner, Malaysia had a golden opportunity to take the match into shoot-out but the Indian defence stood tall to maintain their slender lead.
With three minutes from the hooter, Malaysia withdrew goalkeeper Subramaniam for an extra player but the move failed to yield desired result as the Indians managed to hold on to their lead for a famous victory.
(With PTI inputs)NAPLES, Fla. (AP/WSVN) — Florida Gov. Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency in all of the state’s 67 counties in advance of Hurricane Irma.
In a news release issued Monday afternoon, Scott said he’s issuing the order to make sure governments have “ample time, resources and flexibility to get prepared” for the storm.
Use today to buy hurricane supplies and make sure disaster kits are ready. Be prepared for Hurricane Irma now. https://t.co/ymXjrTHewW https://t.co/RhIgh88tjf — Rick Scott (@FLGovScott) September 4, 2017
Scott’s statement reads as follows: “Hurricane Irma is a major and life-threatening storm, and Florida must be prepared. I have continued to be briefed by the Florida Division of Emergency Management on Hurricane Irma and current forecast models have Florida in Irma’s path – potentially impacting millions of Floridians. Today, given these forecasts and the intensity of this storm, I have declared a state of emergency for every county in Florida to make certain that state, federal and local governments are able to work together and make sure resources are dispersed to local communities as we get prepared for this storm. In Florida, we always prepare for the worst and hope for the best and while the exact path of Irma is not absolutely known at this time, we cannot afford to not be prepared. This state of emergency allows our emergency management officials to act swiftly in the best interest of Floridians without the burden of bureaucracy or red tape. In Florida, we know that the best way to protect our families in severe weather is to have a plan. I urge all Floridians to remain vigilant and stay alert to local weather and news and visit FLGetAPlan.com today as we all prepare for Hurricane Irma. We will keep monitoring and issuing updates on Hurricane Irma as it approaches Florida.” 8 PM Hurricane Irma. It's stronger than the previous advisory (now 140 mph winds). Major Cat 4 pic.twitter.com/sKPc9WplGA — 7 Weather (@7Weather) September 4, 2017
The governor noted that since many of the storm models have Florida is in Irma’s path, he advises Floridians to take time to make preparations.
Scott says residents should stay vigilant and monitor weather conditions over the coming days. And, he adds that the state of emergency allows emergency management officials to act swiftly without the burden of red tape.
Please check back on WSVN.com and 7News for more details on this developing story.
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.You can find the statements and references in "Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on the Priesthood" in BYU Studies v47 n8 2008, which you can download for free here: Link is here..
For example, Bruce McConkie, reports in "The New Revelation on the Priesthood" in Priesthood (Deseret Book, 1981) that "From the midst of eternity, the voice of God, conveyed by the power of the Spirit, spoke to his prophet... And we all heard the same voice, received the same message, and became personal witnesses that the word received was the mind and will and voice of the Lord. President Kimball's prayer was answered and our prayers were answered. He heard the voice and we heard the same voice" (128). He reaffirms, "And when President Kimball finished his prayer, the Lord gave a revelation by the power of the Holy Ghost" (133).
However, some of these people may be taking liberties with the phrase "voice of God" as others like Gordon B. Hinckley never claimed to have heard an actual voice. It was more of a feeling that they were doing something right by reversing the ban.
Elder Le Grand Richards, from an interview by Wesley Walters and Chris Vlachos on August 16, 1978, Church Office Building, Salt Lake City:
Walters: On this revelation, of the priesthood to the Negro, I've heard all kinds of stories: I've heard that Christ appeared to the apostles; I've heard that Joseph Smith appeared; and then I heard another story that Spencer Kimball had had a concern about this for some time, and simply shared it with the apostles, and they decided that this was the right time to move in that direction. Are any of those stories true, or are they all?
Richards: Well, the last one is pretty true, and I might tell you what provoked it in a way. Down in Brazil, there is so much Negro blood in the population there that it is hard to get leaders that don't have negro blood in them. We just built a temple down there. It's going to be dedicated in October. All those people with Negro blood in them have been raising money to build that temple. If we don't change, then they can't even use it. Well, Brother Kimball worried about it, and he prayed a lot about it. He asked each one of us of the twelve if we would pray--and we did--that the Lord would give him the inspiration to know what the will of the Lord was. Then he invited each one of us in his office--individually, because you know when you are in a group, you can't always express everything that's in your heart. You're part of the group, see--so he interviewed each one of us, personally to see how we felt about it, and he asked us to pray about it. Then he asked each one of us to hand in all the references we had, for, or against that proposal. See, he was thinking favorably toward giving the colored people the priesthood. Then we had a meeting where we meet every week in the temple, and we discussed it as a group circle. and then held another prayer circle after the close of that meeting, and he (President Kimball) lead in the prayer; praying that the Lord would give us the inspiration that we needed to do the thing that would be pleasing to Him and for the blessing of His children.
And then the next Thursday--we meet every Thursday--the presidency came with this little document written out to make the announcement--to see how we'd feel about it--and present it in written form. Well, some of the members of the Twelve suggested a few changes in the announcement, and then in our meeting there we all voted in favor of it--the Twelve and the first Presidency. One member of the Twelve, Mark Peterson, was down in South America, but Brother Benson, our president, had arranged to know where he could be reached by phone, and right while we were in that meeting in the temple, Brother Kimball talked with Brother Peterson, and read him the article, and he (Peterson) approved of it.
Walters: There wasn't a special document as a "revelation", that he had wrote down?
Richards: We discussed it in our meeting. What else should we say besides that announcement? And we decided that that was sufficient; that no more needed to be said.
(excerpted, emphasis mine)
Although we don't normally quote from sources who are unwilling to have their name published, we decided to add this account from someone we know who worked in the administrative staff at the MTC during the time of the announcement:
We were told, by visiting General Authorities and others from the Church Office Building, that it was not a revelation, but a "negative revelation." That is, the First Presidency and the Twelve decided to tell the Lord that they were going to change the policy regarding blacks and the LDS priesthood "unless He gave them a sign to the contrary." In the absence of any sign, they changed the policy. No one officially coming over from SLC to the MTC at the time denied this story. It was later that I heard the word "revelation" actually used in conjunction with it. But Elder Le Grand Richard's statements in his interview with Chris Vlachos and Wesley P. Walters supports this version of the events.
Perhaps many "revelations" within the church have been "received" this way?
It seems likely from President Spencer W. Kimball's statement printed in the church's own newspaper that he did not receive any word from God concerning the matter (emphasis added):
I asked the Twelve not to go home when the time came. I said, 'Now would you be willing to remain in the temple with us?' And they were. I offered the final prayer and I told the Lord if it wasn't right, if He didn't want this change to come in the Church that I would be true to it all the rest of my life, and I'd fight the world against it if that's what He wanted. "We had this special prayer circle, then I knew that the time had come. I had a great deal to fight, of course, myself largely, because I had grown up with this thought that Negroes should not have the priesthood and I was prepared to go all the rest of my life till my death and fight for it and defend it as it was. But this revelation and assurance came to me so clearly that there was no question about it." (Deseret News, Church Section, January 6, 1979, page 4)
It would appear then, that when President Kimball asked the Lord if He had any objections to his changing the doctrine, he received no answer from heaven. Since God did not seem to contest the idea, Kimball felt he had the "assurance" that it must be the Lord's will. This, of course, seems like a very unusual way to obtain a "revelation."
(the original link is now dead with no redirect or archived page)
A business-like process
The description given by the Church is a simplified (and romanticized) version of the actual decision. As the son of former Church President Kimball, the process has been described, makes it more like a manager who wants change to implement, therefore seeks support in the organization and thinks about how the change should be communicated (Kimball 2008).
June 1977: Church President Spencer W. Kimball asks three Brethren to write about the implications of a possible lifting of restrictions memos.
March 9, 1978: At a joint meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve decided that any waiver of the limitations as a revelation of the church president should be presented.
March 23, 1978: Kimball has decided to lift the restrictions and submit it to his two counselors, who support the decision. They discuss the impact of the change and the timing of the necessary actions to be taken. They conclude that there is no rush and that they want to look at the Quorum of the Twelve support.
May 30, 1978: Kimball made a preliminary statement to his counselors. They are asking the Church History Department to look at previous statements on the subject.
June 1, 1978: Kimball asks apostles Packer, McConkie and Hinckley to each register for the announcement of the change text.
June 7, 1978: Francis Gibbons, the secretary of Kimball, has prepared a proposal for the final text of the declaration on the basis of the three proposals Packer, McConkie and Hinckley. The First Presidency refine the text further on.
June 8, 1978: The statement shall be presented to the Quorum of the Twelve, who still imagine a few textual changes. the timing of disclosure is discussed. Some wanted to wait until the general conference in October but Apostle McConkie insisted on immediate publication. He feared that the change would otherwise leak out prematurely and that the church would not have control over it. The statement was presented that afternoon to the Quorum of the Seventy, and the press was informed.
Church leaders act as if racism did not exist in the Church
From an Ensign article of September 2000 by General Authority Alexander Morrison (emphasis added):
"Unfortunately, racism-the abhorrent and morally destructive theory that claims superiority of one person over another by reason of race, color, ethnicity, or cultural background-remains one of the abiding sins of societies the world over. The cause of much of the strife and conflict in the world, racism is an offense against God and a tool in the devil's hands. In common with other Christians, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regret the actions and statements of individuals who have been insensitive to the pain suffered by the victims of racism and ask God's forgiveness for those guilty of this grievous sin. The sin of racism will be eliminated only when every human being treats all others with the dignity and respect each deserves as a beloved child of our Heavenly Father. "How grateful I am that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has from its beginnings stood strongly against racism in any of its malignant manifestations."
And another statement from the prophet Gordon B. Hinckley:
Now I am told that racial slurs and denigrating remarks are sometimes heard among us. I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ. Nor can he consider himself to be in harmony with the teachings of the Church of Christ. How can any man holding the Melchizedek Priesthood arrogantly assume that he is eligible for the priesthood whereas another who lives a righteous life but whose skin is of a different color is ineligible? President Gordon B. Hinckley, "The Need for Greater Kindness," April 2006 Priesthood Session.
Critic's point: Isn't what GBH saying is wrong exactly what the Church did? The Church assumed blacks were not eligible for the priesthood regardless of how righteous they were and they did this for 150 years.
Additional critic's comments:
In the D&C, OD-1 is this official statement: "The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as president of this Church to lead you astray." This is doctrine in the D&C. It has been taught from the pulpit at general conference. It is in official church manuals. Earlier in 2012, the church released a press statement that read: "It is not known precisely why, how, or when this restriction began in the Church but what is clear is that it ended decades ago...We condemn racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the Church." This statement is very profound. It tacitly admits that the previous statement, that the Lord won't allow a prophet to lead the members astray, is false. For nearly 150 years the prophets have led the people astray with racist policies and the current prophet administration does not know why this happened, they just know firmly, racism is wrong. That repudiation of the former policy, of hundreds of statements made by Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, John Taylor, Bruce McConkie, and many more effectively opens the gate to an understanding that the current administrating prophets could be absolutely dead wrong on policies they have in place currently (such as on gays, on apostates, on non-tithers, temple marriage and more).
The issue of the blacks and the priesthood has become a pivotal issue about the integrity of past and current leaders. In 2006, then Church president Gordon B. Hinckley declared that "no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ. Nor can he consider himself to be in harmony with the teachings of the Church. Let us all recognize that each of us is a son or daughter of our Father in Heaven, who loves all of His children."
By this standard any prophet that taught that a skin of blackness or descent from Africa is a curse would not be considered "true disciples of Christ". This apparently includes Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Joseph Fielding Smith, Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson and Gordon B. Hinckley who have all taught dark skin as a curse.
Segregation in the LDS Church
The Church stated in their Dec 2014 essay 'Race and the Priesthood' the following:
There has never been a Churchwide policy of segregated congregations.
It is probably technically true that there has never been a Churchwide policy of segregated congregations, but there certainly was tacit approval of racial segregation from the days of Joseph Smith until relatively recently. Here are some examples (emphasis added):
1) In 1842, Joseph Smith said to Orson Hyde:
"Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization." (Source: Joseph Fielding Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 270 (Deseret Book 1979)). Thus, although the "national equalization" was quite a progressive attitude at the time, Joseph clearly showed himself to be a strict segregationist.
2) A more recent example: In a letter dated June 23, 1942, the First Presidency sent the following letter to Ezra Taft Benson, then president of the Washington, D.C. Stake:
First Presidency to Pres. Benson wrote:
Dear President Benson:
Through the General Board of the Relief Society, who reported to the Presiding Bishopric, and they to us, it comes to us that you have in the Capitol Ward in Washington two colored sisters who apparently are faithful members of the Church.
The report comes to us that prior to a meeting which was to be held between the Relief Societies of the Washington Ward and the Capitol Ward, Bishop Brossard of the Washington Ward called up the President of the Relief Society of the Capitol Ward and told her that these two colored sisters should not be permitted to attend because the President of the Capitol Ward Relief Society failed to carry out the request made of her by the Bishop of the other ward.
We can appreciate that the situation may present a problem in Washington, but President Clark recalls that in the Catholic churches in Washington at the time he lived there, colored and white communicants used the same church at the same time. He never entered the church to see how the matter was carried out, but he knew that the facts were as stated.
From this fact we are assuming that there is not in Washington any such feeling as exists in the South where the colored people are apparently not permitted by their white brethren and sisters to come into the meeting houses and worship with them. We feel that we cannot refuse baptism to a colored person who is otherwise worthy, and we feel that we cannot refuse to permit these people to come into our meeting houses and worship once we baptize them.
It seems to us that it ought to be possible to work this situation out without causing any feelings on the part of anybody. If the white sisters feel that they may not sit with them or near them, we feel very sure that if the colored sisters were discreetly approached, they would be happy to sit at one side in the rear or somewhere where they would not wound the sensibilities of the complaining sisters. We will rely upon your tact and discretion to work this out so as not to hurt the feelings on the part of anyone.
Of course, probably each one of the sisters who can afford it, has a colored maid in her house to do the work and to do the cooking for her, and it would seem that under these circumstances they should be willing to let them sit in Church and worship with them.
Faithfully your brethren,
[signed]
Heber J. Grant
J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
David O. McKay
(Source: Lester E. Bush, Jr., "Mormonism's Negro Doctrine," Dialogue, Vol. 8, No. 1 at 43 & n. 197 (Spring 1973)).
3) In 1944, J. Rueben Clark, Jr. (1st counselor in FP) authorized local LDS leaders to join "a civic organization whose purpose is to restrict and control negro settlement" in Salt Lake City. (Source: D. Michael Quinn, Elder Statesman: A Biography of J. Reuben Clark, p. 344 (Signature Books 2002)).
4) In 1945, then LDS president, George Albert Smith, wrote in his diary of conversing with J. Rueben Clark, Jr. and Nicholas G. Smith (the latter an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve, and brother of George) "about the use of [LDS] meeting houses to prevent Negroes from becoming neighbors" – the outcome of this meeting is unknown, but Nicholas Smith described the meeting in his journal as "race hatred." (Source: Quinn, Elder Statesman, p. 344).
5) In 1947, when discussing the site for the future Los Angeles Temple, Clark told the LDS Church attorney in that area "to purchase as much of that property as we can in order to control the colored situation." (Source: Quinn, Elder Statesman, p. 344).
6) Since its opening (in 1911), the LDS Church-owned Hotel Utah (the FP and Twelve were the senior officers of the hotel) had refused to admit blacks as guests. In 1943, when famous black singer Marian Anderson came to Salt Lake City to give a recital, she was denied at every Salt Lake City hotel and had to stay at the home of one of the concert's promoters. When she returned in 1948 to give a concert in the Mormon Tabernacle, she was allowed to stay at the Hotel Utah but on the condition that she only use the freight elevator, not the main entrance or lobby. (Sources: Salt Lake Tribune, articles published on 9 April 1993 (p. A-3) and 19 April 1993 (p. B-1); Quinn, Elder Statesman, p. 345). Similarly, in 1951, when black Nobel Peace Prize recipient Dr. Ralph Bunche visited Salt Lake City to give a lecture at the U. of Utah, the Hotel Utah initially refused to accept him (even though he had a reservation); Dr. Bunche was eventually admitted after pressure was brought to bear, but only when he agreed to take his meals in his room and not come to the dining room. (Source: Quinn, Elder Statesman, p. 347).
7) In 1949, David O. McKay (then counselor in the FP) praised the South's Jim Crow laws, writing in his diary: "I said further that the South knows how to handle them [i.e., blacks] and they do not have any trouble, and the colored people are better off down there – in California they [i.e., blacks] are becoming very progressive and insolent in many cases." (Source: Quinn, Elder Statesman, p. 348).
8) In 1952, McKay (then LDS president) "initiated – without prior consultation with his counselors – a ban … against LDS Negroes speaking in sacrament meetings or firesides." (Source: Quinn, Elder Statesman, p. 348).
9) In 1954, Apostle Mark E. Petersen told a CES audience at BYU:
Now we are generous with the Negro, We are willing that the Negro have the highest education. I would be willing to let every Negro drive a Cadillac if they could afford it. I would be willing that they have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world. But let them enjoy these things among themselves. I think the Lord segregated the Negro and who is man to change that segregation?
Later in the same speech, Petersen gave this example of tacitly-approved segregation of LDS members:
Some years ago, back in 1936 to be exact, I became acquainted with a negro family in Cincinnati, Ohio. I was back there for three months in connection with a newspaper assignment. I went to Church there and became acquainted with the family of a negro man named Ben Hope … [, who] lived down in Mississippi. …
Later he met the Elders and joined the Church. Then he joined the army in the First World War. When he came back, having carried a Book of Mormon with him all through the war and studied it carefully[,] he converted his negro sweetheart whom he married and she was baptized. Then they moved up to Cincinnati to escape the "Jim Crow" law.
Up in Cincinnati, some of the members of the Church became extremely prejudiced against this Negro family. They met in a group, decided what to do and went to the Branch President, and said that either the Hope family must leave or they would all leave. The Branch President ruled that Brother Hope and his family could not come to Church meeting[s]. It broke their hearts. But, the missionaries went out to the Hope home and there conducted Sunday School every Sunday and served them the sacrament. I had the privilege of visiting with the Hope family. I was in their home. I saw how their song book had been literally worn out and likewise their Doctrine and Covenants and Book of Mormon.
Apostle Mark E. Peterson, "Race Problems – As They Affect the Church," Address given at the Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level, delivered at BYU, August 27, 1954.
I say "tacit approval" because Elder Petersen did NOT in any way condemn the blatant segregation he witnessed in this Cincinnati branch.
10) In 1956, the LDS Church-owned Deseret News published an editorial conceding that racial desegregation was inevitable and advocating "moderation and gradualism" in granting "full civil and personal rights." However, the original editorial had contained language that also advocated school desegregation, which text LDS President McKay had deleted prior to publication. He explained his reason in his diary:
I had no objection to the editorial's being printed as it now stands with the exception of the reference to segregation in the school room. I said that there is a different problem attached to this subject; for instance there may be a district where the negro is in the majority; that there might be three or four white children. Inasmuch as the negro child is two or three grades below the white child of the same age, it would not be fair to force the few white children to attend – furthermore, the negro really prefers to attend a school of the colored people. I therefore instructed Dr. Robinson [i.e., then-general manager for the Des News] to leave the reference to the school room out of the editorial. (Source: Prince, David O. McKay, p. 67).
11) In 1957, making specific reference to the school desegregation controversy in Little Rock, Arkansas, J. Rueben Clark instructed Belle Spafford, then general president of the Relief Society, "that she should do what she could to keep the National Council [of Women] from going on record in favor of what in the last analysis would be regarded as negro equality." (Sources: Prince, David O. McKay, p. 63; Quinn, Elder Statesman, p. 348).
12) In 1960, Harold B. Lee told BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson: "If a granddaughter of mine should ever go to BYU and become engaged to a colored boy there, I would hold you responsible." (Source: Prince, David O. McKay, p. 64).
13) In 1960, BYU President Wilkinson wrote the following journal entry about his reversal of a subordinate's decision to hire a black professor to teach a summer course at BYU:
I wish we could take him on our faculty, but the danger in doing so is that students and others take license from this, and assume that there is nothing improper about mingling with the other races. Since the Lord, himself, created the different races and urged in the Old Testament and other places that they [i.e., blacks] be kept distinct and to themselves, we have to follow that admonition. (Source: Prince, David O. McKay, p. 65).
14) In 1961, then-LDS president, David O. McKay, wrote in his diary of Henry D. Moyle (counselor in FP) encouraging an initiative to persuade the U.S. Department of Defense not to deploy troops to an army base in Toole, Utah, because "there will be two to three hundred Negro families in the contingent." (Source: Prince, David O. McKay, p. 63).
15) In 1963, President McKay received an invitation from U.S. President John F. Kennedy to attend a White House meeting of religious leaders to discuss JFK's proposed civil rights legislation. McKay declined the invitation (upon the recommendation of Hotelier/Restaurateur J. Willard Marriott, Sr.). A few days later Pres. McKay met with James E. Faust (then president of the Utah State Bar Association; Faust would later became an apostle and member of the FP). Faust had received an invitation to a related meeting in Washington, D.C., and he was asking McKay whether he should accept. Pres. McKay recorded his response in his journal:
I told Brother Faust that he should go and find out what President Kennedy is trying to do. I said that I did not like to see a law passed which will make the Hotel men violators of the law if they refuse to provide accommodations for a negro when their hotels are filled with white people, or restaurant men made violators when they decline to serve colored people. I said that businessmen ought to be free to run their own businesses, and not become law breakers if they choose to employ certain people; that if we have such a law as that, then it is unfair to the majority of the citizens of this country. (Source: Prince, David O. McKay, p. 68).
16) In 1964, Apostle Delbert L. Stapley wrote a letter to Michigan Governor George Romney, expressing his displeasure "after listening to your talk on Civil Rights." Here are some real gems from that letter:
I cannot, in my own feelings, accept the idea of public accommodations; the taking from the Whites their wishes to satisfy the Negroes. I do not have any objection to recognizing the Negro in his place and giving him every opportunity for education, for employment, for whatever contribution he can make to the society of men and the protection and blessings of Government. Yet, all these things, in my judgment, should accord with the expressions of the Prophet Joseph Smith.
It is not right to force any class or race of people upon those of a different social order or race classification. People are happier when placed in the environment and association of like interests, racial instincts, habits, and natural groupings.
…
I fully agree the Negro is entitled to considerations, also stated above, but not full social benefits nor inter-marriage privileges with the Whites, nor should the Whites be forced to accept them into restricted White areas.
…
Now, don't think I am against the Negro people, because I have several in my employ. We must understand and recognize their status and then, accordingly, provide for them. I just don't think we can get around the Lord's position in relation to the Negro without punishment for our acts; going contrary to that which He has revealed. The Lord will not permit His purposes to be frustrated by man.
…
(Source: Letter dated 23 January 1964 on "Council of the Twelve" letterhead from Delbert L. Stapley to Governor George Romney). Link to Letter
17) In 1965, BYU President Wilkinson wrote in his journal that Harold B. Lee was "protesting vigorously over our having given a scholarship at the B.Y.U. to a negro student from Africa. Brother Lee holds the traditional belief as revealed in the Old Testament that the races ought to be kept together and that there is danger in trying to integrate them on the B.Y.U. campus." (Source: D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, p. 852 (Signature Books 1997)).
We think it is very clear from the above examples that there was a widespread attitude of segregation in the Church, even if no "official policy."
Why are blacks born black?
Many religions in the 1800s believed that the curse put upon Cain in Genesis was black skin. It wasn't just the Mormons. The Catholics did not believe this though. However, the other non-LDS churches did not teach that blacks were less valiant before they came to earth - that was a unique LDS belief.
The LDS apostles taught for generations that blacks were the "cursed seed of Cain". According to LDS theology, "The Lord" punished Cain for murdering his brother Abel by making his skin go dark, making him the first Negro.
This isn't necessarily Biblical. According to the Bible, the mark was put on Cain to protect him. The mark was not explained - it could be anything, no necessarily 'black skin'. The Mark of Cain was to be a protection. That it was seven times worse to kill Cain or one of his descendents than it was to kill another. But also it was a mark so that racial/tribal/religions wouldn't inter marry. God was very specific in the Old Testament on what kind of person and race people could marry or have sex with.
In early 19th century America, the Western World accepted the Bible as historically accurate. The Book of Genesis stated that God created Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve were the parents of all living. It was generally understood that Adam and Eve were white-skinned. Their descendents should logically also have white skin. But many ethnic groups had dark skin. How did this happen? The Book of Genesis provided an answer. The first murderer was Cain, and according to the Bible, Cain was cursed with a mark. To the 19th century mind, it seemed reasonable that dark skin was the mark, and that it was passed on to one of Noah's descendents after the Great Flood. This presumably occurred via the wife and children of Ham, the son of Noah, of whom Genesis 9:18-27 says:
And the sons of Noah that went forth from the ark were Shem |
all. More needs to be done before Scotland can justly lay claim to the coveted title of the best wee non-believing country in the world.
Each year, though, despite all our best efforts, the Saviour of the World stubbornly clings on to the festive season, sticking his holier-than-thou persona in places where it is plainly no longer wanted and making a nuisance of Himself. Can’t the Holy Spirit tell him that a chap ought to know when he’s overstayed His welcome?
It’s both refreshing and reassuring to stroll through the streets of urban, lowland Scotland and find them aglow from September onwards with all sorts of tasteful, neon iconography. There is such a riot of big electric Santas, snowmen, sleigh bells and reindeers that sometimes the entire street seems to be swaying to and fro. Whenever I observe these joyous scenes I keenly scan all the images, looking for signs of anything that remotely could be considered religious, such as angels, wise men or shepherds. Happily, it would seem that these foolish and superstitious symbols are gone for ever from Scotland’s residential neighbourhoods.
Most of my Christmas cards now seem to feature robins and paintings of thatched cottages in snowbound dales or just plain Season’s Greetings in a big, spangly font. This pleases me greatly as sometimes you can get too much of Caravaggio or El Greco and their misguided adoration of superstition and shallow sophistry. Christmas is a time when we should forget how much we have been fleeced by the banks and credit card companies during the year and try to enjoy ourselves. The last thing you need at this time of the year are these inert, medieval studies in poverty while you’re trying to have a bacchanal.
Soon the word 'Holy' will be removed from the name of the Scottish parliament and it will be called Jollyrood
In this respect, our political leaders should be commended for showing proper leadership on the Christmas card front. Each year, they choose shallow and reductive pop art or vapid paintings of fey lasses bearing saltires to convey the message of peace and goodwill in a non-binary, inclusive and diverse way. Last year was a record one for the number of families living in poverty and the proliferation of food banks. These wretched people simply don’t need to be reminded of their plight by paintings of babies being born in a manger among cows and sheep. The Scottish government long ago removed the word Christmas, preferring, instead, to deploy the phrase “winter festival”. Thus the old, narrow and outmoded concept of Christmas has been expanded to include a wide assortment of carnivals and events celebrating self-gratification, excess and epicureanism for the diversion of the middle classes, this administration’s target voters. Soon the word “Holy” will be removed from the name of the Scottish parliament and it will be called Jollyrood.
There are still, though, pockets of resistance from adherents of the old ways. Too many Christmas cards bearing the discredited nativity scene are still being sold. And, unconscionably, Glasgow city council still insists on erecting its silly manger on George Square with lifesize carvings of the ridiculous fairytale characters such as the Three Wise Men.
Catholic schools are still hotbeds of all this superstition. Of course, there ought not to be any room for these sinister faith establishments in a modern, diverse, inclusive and tolerant Scotland but, until such times as they are wiped off the face of the country altogether, we each have a moral responsibility to strive for a Scotland where one size fits all and we are all marching to the same tune.
Affirmative action is needed to ensure that our children are spared much more exposure to the damaging messages of Christ and his alleged virgin birth. So I hereby propose a re-working of the nativity story to include messages of equality and sustainability. This would also have an undeniable climate change undertow, and have outcomes.
And Lo, Good King Herod, who was fighting a lone battle to preserve the planet’s natural resources, issued the following harsh but fair decree: all children must be slain on sight.
And there existed in this kingdom a lowly couple called Kim, from the house of Kardashian, and Harry, from the House of Nobby Styles, a carpenter. Kim was pregnant and feared for her child’s safety. So they fled to Glasgow and while they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her first-born, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. This was because there were too many people in Scotland buying second and third homes.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night and hatching a bold stratagem, under cover of darkness, to organise a community buy-out of the land that they worked under the new land reform legislation.
Soon they were surrounded by a bright light, and they heard a voice saying: “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today a Saviour has been born to you – he is the Messiah who will lead you to glory in the year 2022 in the hot land east of here that some have called Qatar. For his real mother is Brazilian and his real father is Argentinian.
And then three wee kings in strange clothes arrived bearing gifts of Moët, Chanel and jojoba. Their names were Antanddek, Len and Cowal and they represented the major kingdoms of the world. “We had to see the Reality Child,” said King Antanddek. “He will grow up to be king of the world and unite all the peoples in peace while moving in the one direction together.”
And when King Len gazed upon the child, he said: “From Len, a ten.”There is a myth in German football, that if ever FC Bayern fall from their proverbial horse, they promptly get back on and ride away into yet another glimmering sunset. The reality is, of course, that, although they eventually – inevitably – remount, there are usually a lot of tears before they do so.
The course of 2011 has been rather in keeping with these traditions of precociousness. The sacking of van Gaal and the near disastrous end to last season led Uli Hoeness to throw the toys out of the pram and quite literally demand new, more expensive ones to replace them. Hoeness returned to his favourite old teddy in Jupp Heynckes, while Jerome Boateng was brought in after a tug of war, cheque books and morals with Manchester City. The arrival of ex-Schalke defender Rafinha caused healthy controversy as Phillipp Lahm was forced to switch flanks to left back, but most polemical of all was the symbol of Bayern’s monopoly of all things Bundesliga: the one time Schalke hero and Germany number one Manuel Neuer.
With a bolstered defence, a gleaming new gold trim on the red strip, and a significantly smaller amount of steam erupting from Uli’s ears, what could go wrong? A 1-0 home defeat to Gladbach on opening day, is what.
A quick recovery
In possibly the single worst start anyone could have imagined, given the criticisms Bayern’s profligate transfer policy had endured, their two star signings got together to create a nightmare of a defensive error and let Gladbach steal away three points in the first match. Bayern’s attack in that game, moreover, looked equally underwhelming. Unable to break down the exquisitely constructed Gladbach defence, Bayern reverted to long ball tactics, and a cold dread fell over the Allianz Arena.
With the exception of a couple of hiccups, however, the Rekordmeister’s run since that day in August has fulfilled expectations comfortably. Neuer soon settled, going nearly 800 minutes without conceding a single goal. It was a record that was testimony to a Bayern defenc unrecognisable from its 2011 incarnation. Boateng’s solid performances not only benefited himself, but also the previously under performing Daniel van Buyten, who seemed to thrive on the competition, and the full back switchover found simultaneously a solution for two of Bayern’s major problems from 2011. Firstly, the left back issue was gone. Rafinha’s performances proved plenty of critics – including myself – inescapably wrong, and Lahm’s consummate professionalism at left back helped welcome in a new era in the development of one skilful Frenchman.
When Franck Ribéry was interviewed by kicker earlier in the season, he insisted that his newly rediscovered form was a tribute to Heynckes, and that under van Gaal, he had never been able to thrive. As self-excusing as the assertion sounds, he probably just about hit the nail on the head. Heynckes’ team have clearly gelled far more than van Gaal’s ever did. Not only have several new, big name players been assimilated seamlessly into the first eleven, but the former stars – even the ones given their chance and nurtured by van Gaal such as Toni Kroos and Thomas Mueller – have also risen to a new challenge.
Form and complacency
Kroos, in particular, has been a revelation for Bayern this season. With the possible exception of Luiz Gustavo, there are few who would contest that, in terms of progress at least, he has been Bayern’s player of the Hinrunde. By no means guaranteed a starting spot for either club or country at the start of the season, Kroos has developed rapidly to establish himself as an increasingly versatile midfielder who is becoming ever more indispensable for both Bayern and Germany. When Bastian Schweinsteiger picked up an injury in the Champions League fixture against Napoli, there was talk of the whole Bayern system faltering in his absence. With Toni Kroos in the side, no such thing was ever going to happen.
Among the other notable performers has been Mario Gómez, whose unnerving ability to appear three inches from the goalline and prod the ball over it is becoming ever more remarkable. With a gorgeous new haircut and a goal tally of 16, Gómez can once again declare himself the Bundesliga’s most prolific goal getter, and stats nerds are getting can barely control their excitement at the prospect of Gerd Mueller’s league season record of 40 being broken this year. The lost years of Bayern’s ever-injured wingers, meanwhile, have definitively come to a close. After a bleak 2011 season for both Franck Ribéry and Arjen Robben, both now look as dangerous as ever, supported as they are by the new full backs.
Indeed, the only reason that Bayern aren’t clear of second place by a number in double figures seems to be an increasing, but not unfamiliar, partiality to indulgent complacency. With the pace of their attacking football, Bayern have often taken leads early and then sat on the halfway line, content to keep the ball, and their several goal lead, for the remaining seventy minutes of the game. Against certain teams, this laziness has been costly, and come the end of the season, they will not be able to afford to do it against teams like Dortmund and Barcelona.
Off field verbals
This return to form for Bayern’s squad means that, despite embarassing afternoons in Hannover and Mainz, they are sitting pretty at the top of the Bundesliga. With a DFB Pokal quarter final date lined up and the knockout stages comfortably reached in the Champions League, normality has been restored in Munich.
So much so that the hierarchy, who spent most of last season either spitting ill-disguised bile at van Gaal or defending themselves from the even more precocious fanbase, have this season been able to turn their well documented voices elsewhere. Karl Heinz Rummenigge’s vocal criticisms of FIFA have secured his Europe-wide status as the Che Guevara of the anti-corruption movement, defending his fellow clubs against the mighty organisations with every breath in his body. True to Guevarian form, however, even the fellow clubs themselves are not exempt from his particularly eloquent brand of abuse. Manchester City have been in a perpetual war of the words with Rummenigge over the new Financial Fair Play rules. If he weren’t invariably in the right, the Bayern chairman would probably have been assassinated by now.
Prospects for 2012
As for 2012, the future is distinctly orange for Bayern. And not in the superfluously Dutch way it used to be under van Gaal. The return of Schweinsteiger should restrengthen the team ahead of the coming onslaught of fixtures in February. Ironically, it is the Pokal where Bayern will probably encounter bigger problems than the Champions League to begin with, with Stuttgart a slightly more menacing opponent than FC Basel. The Swiss outfit have knocked out Manchester united, however, and Bayern have already paid the price for complacency this year.
In the league, it seems their main competitors for the title will, as predicted, be Borussia Dortmund. Without the Champions League to worry about, Dortmund will be, for a second year in a row, all guns blazing as they head into the Rueckrunde, and, having already lost 1-0 to the Champions at home, the return game at the Westfalenstadion will be a crucial game for Bayern. In Europe, Bayern have, in the eyes of most of the European press, established themselves just behind Real Madrid and Barcelona as favourites to win the tournament. If their luck holds in the draw, and they don’t meet a Spanish team until the final, few would bet highly against their home advantage paying off in May. A major injury or confidence crisis notwithstanding, Bayern look set to make this a bog standard even year, ad find themselves competing in the latter stages of all three major tournaments. The rest of Germany finds it terribly dull. For Bayern fans, it’s just the way of the world.This Photograph will be used in the Burning Man art exhibition inside the DepARTures Gallery at the Reno-Tahoe International. (Photo: RGJ file photo)
Nevada Burners might have conflicting feelings about a new tax ushered in by the Nevada Legislature late Monday.
On the one hand, their home-state will make more money.
On the other, Burning Man officials say that they are looking at all of their options to reckon with the estimated $2.8 million that the tax will cost Burning Man each year.
What are the options?
They include everything from bumping up ticket prices to leaving Nevada.
"We certainly understand the Nevada Legislature's need to identify revenue sources, but we believe this change to the Live Entertainment Tax is misguided," said Jim Graham, a spokesman for Burning Man.
The Nevada Legislature passed a 9 percent live entertainment tax, which first was introduced to the Senate floor in March, according to the Legislature's website. The flat tax means that some venues in the state that previously were taxed based on their size will see a decrease in their dues.
For other entities, such as Burning Man and the Electric Daisy Festival, held in Las Vegas, it will be a completely new expenditure.
Burning Man officials state that their nonprofit status formerly qualified the organization as exempt from the tax. Now the tax will collect 9 percent of all income generated by ticket sales to the event.
Burning Man has not yet disclosed the revenue that it generates from ticket sales each year, but the Internal Revenue Service documents revealing the numbers are expected this fall.
Assemblywoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas, co-sponsor of the bill, said that the tax currently brings in an estimated $137 million, most of which goes toward the state's General Fund. About $150,000 goes toward the Nevada Arts Council's budget, she said.
Burning Man officials believe state representatives are getting greedy, calling Kirkpatrick's bill "unbalanced and short-sighted."
According to Burning Man, the organization itself spends $11 million in Nevada annually, has vendor contracts with local businesses and is a strong supporter of arts around the state.
Burning Man participants contribute more than $40 million annually to the Nevada economy; they pay their share of sales and gas taxes, and they are tremendously supportive of local businesses, Graham said.
Burning Man's ticket admission revenue will not be taxed until 2016, even though the legislation technically goes into effect July 1 and will not begin taxing until Oct. 1, about a month after Burning Man has taken place. The event is from Aug. 30 to Sept. 7 this year.
Buy Photo (Photo: Photo by Andy Barron/RGJ)
"Burning Man already sold its tickets for this year. Anything that has already been sold does not apply," Kirkpatrick said.
Kirkpatrick said that she has been working on the bill for years due to the changing entertainment industry. When she first introduced the bill, Burning Man founder Larry Harvey suggested that Nevada might not be the best home for the event.
Kirkpatrick is unfazed, she said.
Burning Man officials are reviewing the bill, figuring out what their next step will be.
"It's passed. Now we just have to take a good hard look at it," Graham said.
Read or Share this story: http://on.rgj.com/1M4qWolEbola has now entered the U.S. because of President Obama’s open-borders policy, charged talk-radio host Michael Savage.
Savage, who has a doctorate in epidemiology, said Obama refused to employ the basic epidemiological rule of quarantining a deadly virus, “because the far-left agenda is to have an open-borders policy.”
Referring to the commander in chief as “President Obola,” Savage said on his nationally syndicated show Wednesday the “only solution is zero travel in and out of West Africa for any American.”
“You let nobody in from a country where you have a raging epidemic,” he said, emphasizing “microbes do not discriminate.”
“You isolate and you quarantine an entire nation, if necessary.”
Savage addressed the argument that it’s not practical to isolate an entire country or region.
“Is it practical to risk the spread of a killer illness?” he countered.
See the entire collection of Michael Savage bestsellers in the WND Superstore.
Ebola has killed more than 3,300 people in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone this year. But a statistical forecast released by the CDC last week said the virus could infect 1.4 million in Liberia and Sierra Leone by the end of January.
WND reported Wednesday a team of researchers published an article in a scientific journal last month warning a reduction in airline travel of as much as 80 percent would only delay the international spread of the disease by three to four weeks at most.
The scientists concluded Ebola is unstoppable without a total quarantine.
Savage holds master’s degrees from the University of Hawaii in medical botany and medical anthropology and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in epidemiology and nutrition sciences.
The system is working?
Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control reported the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the U.S. The patient was identified Wednesday as Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national who had traveled to Dallas from Liberia Sept. 20 via Brussels, Belgium, to visit his family. Duncan was treated with antibiotics at Texas Presbyterian Hospital Sept. 26 and dismissed without being asked any details about his travel history. He returned to the hospital Sunday in an ambulance.
Meanwhile, five students from four different Dallas schools were being kept out of class Wednesday because of their possible exposure to Duncan.
Savage also has charged that Obama’s open-borders policy has allowed tens of thousands of unaccompanied Central American minors to enter the U.S. and spread in schools viral illnesses, some of which had been largely eradicated in the country.
Regarding the threat of Ebola to the U.S., Savage said officials have resorted to spouting platitudes.
He chastised the CDC for insisting months ago that Americans had nothing to worry about, because the CDC has trained-doctors at airports in West Africa to prevent people infected with Ebola from traveling to the U.S.
But Savage noted that people infected with Ebola don’t show any symptoms until about three weeks later.
He criticized Texas Gov. Rick Perry as well, who said Wednesday that while the Ebola case in his state was a serious issue, everything was under control, and the “system was working as it should.”
Savage said Perry’s assurances disqualify him for the presidency, arguing the system never should have allowed Ebola to enter in the first place, and now many Americans are believed to have had contact with Duncan, including the public school students. The students attended classes this week after possibly being in contact with Duncan over the weekend.
Perry was a Republican candidate in 2012 and has shown signs he might run again in 2016.Photo credit: DYW14 | YouTube
Google under Alphabet is essentially committing suicide for YouTube with its nonchalant extreme censorship tactics.
The direction in which YouTube is headed is that of MySpace, being a massive platform that is essentially destroyed by its own tactics of trampling upon American values and the First Amendment.
The relentless censorship on the internet in 2017 has reached cataclysmic levels with popular accounts on every platform being terminated because they don't perceive the world through the rose colored glasses the left would prefer.
<iframe style="float:left;margin: 10px 20px" type="text/html" width="360" height="270" src="//video1.thegoldwater.com/api/player.php?id=ZhpmX293tI5" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"/>
<iframe style="float:left;margin: 10px 20px" type="text/html" width="360" height="270" src="//video1.thegoldwater.com/api/player.php?id=VDEUWpOJ8nl" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"/>
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/8e1159ca15940a0aecdcdc555de7fd787a2ad42525464bd179a5ae599ccd4cbb.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
What's occurring right now on YouTube, however, is coming from a much more cognitive and calculative company with Google being able to abuse its monopolization of the search index and domain registration to effectively slice the throat of its competition before users can abandon their sinking ship.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/4e342773851160f62ff3e11907f3fdf9ad0f75c19e1e81fe3df53696f9b26bdd.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
From a neutral standpoint, it's absolutely masterful tactician play by Google, who can now suppress its competitors and already has been making the move to do so.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/d0751b4a72c7ff8740444e4578674a986010d34bcfebb1636fc550b9e0379545.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
Gab, a growing popular social media platform that launched GabTV, along with WrongThink (both of which have competitive video sharing services) have been kicked off the Google Play Store for what Google deems as <i>”hate speech”</i>, which is a completely bogus claim.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/99cfbf8e52dbb94fc6f821767ffe1b9860ca3fd72093a74c50d0d10c2c194aa0.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
What Google is doing right now is what Microsoft was accused of possibly doing in the 1990’s, but the government stepped in and stopped Microsoft before they could become this powerful.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/758d77dff83447ede7150390a7f2c3bade19f122d8c42239108917288c1bb244.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
Google and Alphabet have transcended the worst nightmares of those fearing the behemoth of Microsoft, and literally, nobody in the government is batting an eye to stop them.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/075a5e859fe758f732082545a038f4dd3eecab8449ef9ea64d21eb37f3ee761a.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
Why this is being allowed to happen is uncertain, whether it's the fact that there is a lack of tech representation on the right wing and the leftist rights groups would benefit from the censorship of the right, or the fact that the majority of Congress is financed through donations from Alphabet and their subsidiaries, the fact remains that the censorship isn't being stopped.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/0dae26b8c94e7d4d3ee348812e20885f84da1a76df965af59621b2588358fe21.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
This is essentially Orwellian tier control of thought, indoctrination of the young minds from future generations.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/44dae3e338c023bbc7101e647b8b70245e41c993181d9b0628e1376bf541f51b.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
A culture war is brewing, and the only viable alternative is for liberty loving tech to respond with a probable and stronger platform.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/ae2ad9cd93ab448ff60c6ac0bb01d2a7fc5e4c5bd194d3233350f8e0c8cdce21.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
There are alternatives, as I've mentioned, Gab, WrongThink, Daily Motion, Vid.Me, Vimeo, Blip.tv, Veoh; among many other up and coming designs.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/3aba8d0719d49f3095bd9bea7689a1fd9ee2f12b129647c2d5f99b5782e4b1cc.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
The largest problem remains that YouTube itself even as massive as it may be is essentially not turning a profit, which <i>leaves many questions as to why it's being financed still</i>, including the idea that a Globalist sect of cultural Marxists are spending the dollars to portray as a specific message.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/075a5e859fe758f732082545a038f4dd3eecab8449ef9ea64d21eb37f3ee761a.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
It remains uncertain how the other platforms of the future can compete as per offering incentives to content creators.
<img src="https://media.8ch.net/file_store/44a0825628a8d8e0d227782e7d844d0660e524a8926dbab4c4a11156357884e6.jpg" style="max-height:640px;max-width:360px;">
Some platforms offer <i>”tipping”</i> functions but it doesn't compare to the ad revenue larger content creators would be making using YouTube.
Google’s official guidelines are as follows:
<blockquote>Our Community Guidelines prohibit hate speech that either promotes violence or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against individuals or groups based on certain attributes. YouTube also prohibits content intended to recruit for terrorist organizations, incite violence, celebrate terrorist attacks, or otherwise promote acts of terrorism. Some borderline videos, such as those containing inflammatory religious or supremacist content without a direct call to violence or a primary purpose of inciting hatred, may not cross these lines for removal. Following user reports, if our review teams determine that a video is borderline under our policies, it may have some features disabled.</blockquote>
Essentially it would require a mass exodus from using Google, or any Alphabet subsidiary all together, which is going to be difficult to the meme. It's not impossible though.
Source:
https://8ch.net/pol/res/10490503.html
—<i>[email protected]</i>
<i>On Twitter:</i>
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Tips? Info? Send me a message!Hoisted from the Archives: August 17, 2005:
Brad DeLong's Website: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Michael Barone: Intellectual Garbage Scow Edition): Mark Thoma does intellectual garbage pickup on the overrated Michael Barone.
He tackle's Barone's claim that "maybe" the fall in social mobility in America is due to the fact that a high IQ genetic elite has risen to the top of the fair meritocracy that is our society. And Mark's head explodes:
Economist's View: Does Michael Barone Believe the Poor Lack the Genetic Intelligence and Drive Needed to Compete in the Emerging U.S. Meritocracy?: Am I reading this column by Michael Barone correctly? Does it blame being poor on lack of intelligence? Do you believe, as he does, that if you are poor it is most likely because your parents were unintelligent?... Read it yourself.... Michael Barone: [P]olls show that Americans think their chances of moving up are better than a generation ago. Statistics tell a different story: There is a higher correlation today between parents' and children's income than in the 1980s, and the income gap between college graduates and non-graduated doubled between 1979 and 1997. "America," concludes Parker, "is becoming a stratified society based on education: a meritocracy."... [This] is exactly what Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray predicted for America in their controversial book The Bell Curve, published 11 years ago. Herrnstein and Murray noted that intelligence is both measurable and in some large but unquantifiable part hereditary, an unexceptionable finding for experimental psychologists but maddening to social engineers. As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence, graduates will tend to marry graduates and produce children with similar intelligence, while others will tend to produce children without it. "Unchecked, these trends," Herrnstein and Murray wrote, "will lead the U.S. toward something resembling a caste society, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite ever more firmly anchored at the top."... Are we there yet?... [M]aybe so. Yet should we be so gloomy?... Not everyone has an emotional need to be on top: How many people, if they thought seriously about it, would really want the burdens of a CEO, however lavish the pay?... As Murray has written, all you need to do to avoid poverty in this country is to graduate from high school, get and stay married, and take any job. The intelligence needed to get a place in the cognitive elite may become more concentrated in a fair meritocratic society, but the personal behaviors needed to find a valued place in society are available to everyone. Meritocracy may mean less mobility, but that is bearable if, as Brooks says, "America is becoming more virtuous."...
The inheritance of inequality is strikingly large in America today: if the father's lifetime was 100% above the American average for his day, the son's lifetime income will on average be 65% above the American average for his day. That's a lot of inherited inequality. Is this unequal distribution of wealth, income, and status in the United States today the result of the fact that a genetic elite has risen to the top in a "fair" IQ-driven meritocracy?
No.
This high degree of inherited inequality isn't because high IQ genetic eliteness genes are being passed down from fathers to sons. As Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (2002), "The Inheritance of Inequality," report:
The direct effect of IQ on earnings... presented in Bowles, Gintis, and Osborne (2002a)... is 0.15, indicating that a [one] standard deviation change in the cognitive score, holding constant... remaining variables... changes... earnings by about one-seventh of a standard deviation.... An estimate of the causal impact of childhood IQ on years of schooling... is 0.53 (Winship and Korenman 1999). A rough estimate of the direct and indirect effect of IQ on earnings... is then... 0.15+(0.53)(0.22) = 0.266.... h is the heritability of IQ.... The value cannot be higher than 1, and most recent estimates are substantially lower, possibly more like a half or less.... [C]ouples tend to be more similar in IQ than would occur by random mate choice.... [The] genetic correlation of parent and offspring [is] (1 + m)/2.... Using the values estimated above, we see that the contribution of genetic inheritance of IQ to the intergenerational transmission of income is (h2(1+m)/2)(0.266)2 =.035(1 + m)h2. If the heritability of IQ were 0.5 and the degree of assortation, m, were 0.2 (both reasonable, if only ball park estimates) and the genetic inheritance of IQ were the only mechanism accounting for intergenerational income transmission, then the intergenerational correlation [of lifetime income] would be 0.01, or roughly two percent the observed intergenerational correlation [of lifetime income between parents and children].
Two percent is simply not a large number. Factors that currently account for two percent of lifetime earnings inequality are simply not yet a big deal, and cannot be responsible for the fall in social mobility.
If there is ever to be a genetic elite, its members will surely exhibit two behavioral traits: a facility with math, and a near-intinctive tendency to do back-of-the-envelope quantitative checks of assertions. We can conclude only one thing from Barone's column: neither he nor his descendents (unless they get really lucky in their mates) are plausible candidates for membership in any "genetic elite".
It is worth pointing out that neither Richard Herrnstein nor Charles Murray are plausible candidates for membership in any "genetic elite" either. Let me turn the microphone over to impeccably right-wing Jim Heckman, who comments on The Bell Curve:
The Book fails for five main reasons. 1. The central premise of this book is the empirically incorrect claim that a single factor - g or IQ - that explains linear correlations among test scores is primarily responsible for differences in individual performance in society at large.... There is much evidence that more than one factor -- as conventionally measured -- is required to explain conventional correlation matrices among test scores.... They do not emphasize how little of the variation in social outcomes is explained by AFQT or g. There is considerable room for factors other than their measure of ability to explain wages and other social outcomes. 2. In their empirical work, the authors assume that AFQT is a measure of immutable native intelligence. In fact, AFQT is an achievement test that can be manipulated by educational interventions. 3. The authors[']... implicit assumption of an immutable g that is all-powerful in determining social outcomes leads them to disregard a lot of evidence that a variety of relevant labor market and social skills can be improved. 4. The authors present no new evidence on the heritability of IQ or other socially productive characteristics.... [T]hey... [compare] IQ... [to] a crude measure of parental environmental influences. This comparison is misleading. It fails to recognize the crudity of their environmental measures and the environmental component that is built into their measure of IQ, which biases the evidence in favor of their position. Moreover, the comparison as they present it is intrinsically meaningless. 5. Finally, the authors' forecast of social trends is pure speculation... the social policy recommendations have an ad hoc flavor to them.... The appeal to Murray's version of communitarianism as a solution to the emerging problem of inequality among persons is a deus ex machina flight of fancy that is not credibly justified.
And take a look at http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001975.html as well.We’ve been contacted by Alex Breen who is currently undertaking a PhD with Bournemouth University, exploring the spine and lower limb kinematics of trans-tibial amputees.
He is looking to gain further information relating to his study and hopes to recruit potential volunteers to take part.
The purpose of Alex’s PhD is to investigate the relationship of the motion between each of the bones in the lower spine (lumbar inter-vertebral motion) and those within the residual limb; and subsequently the prosthetic socket itself. The study protocol has undergone National Research Ethics and received favourable opinion in November 2013 from the NRES Committee South West (reference 13/SW/0248).
This is potentially important research that could provide very helpful and useful information and lead to a better understanding of problems which may affect trans-tibial amputees. Problems with sockets can be an ongoing and frequently painful issue for many amputees and research that could lead to improvements in this vital area is very welcome. We wish Alex well.
If you’d like to take part, please check out Alex’s inclusion and exclusion criteria and then, if you feel you could help, contact him direct. Contact details will be found on the poster (currently being displayed in Royal Bournemouth Hospitals Prosthetics department) below. He will be delighted to hear from you and to answer any questions you may have.
INCLUSION CRITERIA:
Males, age 25-60 yrs
Able to understand written information
Willing to participate and able to freely give informed consent
Body Mass Index (BMI) of less than 30
Below knee amputee
Mature amputation (>12 months since surgery)
EXCLUSION CRITERIA:
Poor understanding of English rendering the participant unable to understand the information given
Subjects will be excluded if they have had spinal surgery, a fracture, a dislocation, or any structural defects of the spine
Having treatment for osteoporosis
Recent abdominal or pelvic surgery
Severe scoliosis
Any radiation in the past year or exposure in the past 2 years with a dose greater than 8mSv (defined as CT scan of Chest, Abdomen or Pelvis or interventional procedures under radiological control, i.e. angiography)
Current involvement as a participant in any other research study which requires ionising radiation |
bear the full blame. They are taught by dishonest and irresponsible academics. Let’s look at it.
“A Clash of Police Policies,” a column written by Thomas Sowell, presents some readily available statistics:
“Homicide rates among black males went down by 18 percent in the 1940s and by 22 percent in the 1950s. It was in the 1960s, when the ideas of Chief Justice [Earl] Warren and others triumphed, that this long decline in homicide rates among black males reversed and skyrocketed by 89 percent, wiping out all the progress of the previous 20 years.”
Academics and the media blame poverty and discrimination for today’s crime. No one bothers to ask why crime was falling in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, when blacks faced far greater poverty and discrimination.
The 1960s riots were blamed on poverty and discrimination. Poverty and discrimination were worse in the South than in the rest of the country, but riots were not nearly so common there. Detroit’s deadliest riot occurred at a time when the median income of black families in Detroit was 95 percent of their white counterparts, plus the black unemployment rate was 3.4 percent and black homeownership was higher than in other major cities.
Academics teach that the breakdown of the black family is the legacy of slavery and discrimination. They ignore the following facts.
In 1950, 72 percent of black men and 81 percent of black women had been married. Also, only 17 percent of black children lived in single-parent households; today it’s close to 70 percent. Every census from 1890 to 1950 showed that black labor force participation rates exceeded those of whites. During the late 1940s, the unemployment rate for black 16- and 17-year-olds was less than that for white teens.
According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, that year 11 percent of black children and 3 percent of white children were born to unwed mothers. Before 1960, the number of teenage pregnancies had been decreasing; both poverty and dependency were declining; and black income was rising in both absolute and relative terms to white income. As late as 1965, 75 percent of black children were born to married women. Today, over 73 percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers. Again, so much for the “legacy of slavery” argument.
Academics teach that school integration is a necessary condition for black academic excellence. Blacks, their logic implies, cannot achieve academic excellence unless they go out and capture a white kid to sit next to their kids. Public charter schools such as those in the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, and Success Academy Charter Schools are having some successes without race mixing.
Sowell points out that only 39 percent of students in New York state schools who were tested recently scored at the “proficient” level in math, but 100 percent of the students at the Crown Heights Success Academy scored at that level in math. Blacks and Hispanics are 90 percent of the students in the Crown Heights Success Academy.
More than 43,000 families are on waiting lists to get their children into charter schools. Teachers unions are opposed to any alternative to public education and contribute to politicians who place obstacles and restrictions on the expansion of charter schools. The NAACP, at its 2016 national convention in Cincinnati, voted to support “a moratorium on the proliferation of privately managed charter schools.”
It’s easy to understand why the NAACP is against any alternative to public schools. Many of its members work in public education. However, many of those people do want alternatives for themselves.
In Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, 25 percent of public school teachers send their children to private schools. In Philadelphia, 44 percent of teachers send their children to private schools. The percentages are similar in several other cities: Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; and Rochester, New York, 38 percent. This demonstrates the dishonesty, hypocrisy, and arrogance of the elite. They effectively say, “One thing for thee and another for me.”
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.Mumbai: While equating "Uniform Civil Code" with beef ban and building Ram Temple in Ayodhya, renowned feminist scholar and writer Nivedita Menon in a recently published article said the ongoing debate on the controversial issue is part of Hindu nationalist agenda and has nothing to do with gender justice as claimed.
"The talk of a “Uniform Civil Code” has nothing to do at all with gender justice. It has entirely to do with a Hindu nationalist agenda, and is right up there with the beef ban and the temple in Ayodhya", Nivedita Menon wrote in her article published by The Hindu.
"A Uniform Civil Code is meant to discipline Muslims, teach them (if they didn’t know it already) that they are second-class citizens, and that they live at the mercy of “the national race” (the Hindus), as M.S. Golwalkar decreed", she added.
Asserting that "Uniform Civil Code" is a "stick to beat Muslims with", Menon acknowledge that Muslim Personal Law is modern in sense and reforms in other personal laws were made only taking hint from it.
"Muslim Personal Law is already modern in this sense, since it has since the 1930s enshrined individual rights to property, unlike Hindu law, in which the family’s natural condition is assumed to be 'joint'.", she wrote.
"In the decades of the 1930s and 1940s, contrary to later discourses about Muslim law being backward, it was Hindu laws that were considered “backward” and needing to be brought into the modern world of individual property rights", she added.
Questioning the practicality of the Uniform Civil Code, Menon while noting that it would simply put together the best gender-just practices from all Personal Laws said, "A Uniform Civil Code would require the abolition of the Hindu Undivided Family, a legal institution that gives tax benefits only to Hindus, and all citizens of India would have to be governed by the largely gender-just Indian Succession Act, 1925, currently applicable only to Christians and Parsis."
"Again, since the Muslim marriage as contract protects women better in case of divorce than the Hindu marriage as sacrament, all marriages would have to be civil contracts. Mehr, in Muslim Personal Law, paid by the husband’s family to the wife upon marriage, is the exclusive property of the wife and it is hers upon divorce, offering her a protection Hindu women do not have. So, the Uniform Civil Code would make the practice of mehr compulsory for all while abolishing dowry", Menon, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, wrote.
Stating that polygamy is not exclusive to Muslims and the practice is prevalent among Hindus as well, Menon highlighted the fact that women are more protected under the Muslim personal law than any other laws.
"Polygamy is not exclusive to Muslims. Hindu men are polygamous too, except that because polygamy is legally banned in Hindu law, subsequent wives have no legal standing and no protection under the law. Under Sharia law, on the contrary, subsequent wives have rights and husbands have obligations towards them", she wrote in her article.
"If gender justice is the value we espouse, rather than monogamy per se, we would be thinking about how to protect “wives” in the patriarchal institution of marriage. “Wives” are produced through the institution of compulsory heterosexual marriage, the basis of which is the sexual division of labour. This institution is sustained by the productive and reproductive labour of women, and almost all women are exclusively trained to be wives alone", she wrote.
She also questioned the necessity of any other law when the country already has Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 — that is available to all Indian citizens regardless of religious identity — as well as the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, to deal with polygamy and triple talaq, and to obtain maintenance, child custody and rights to matrimonial home for countless Muslim women.
"In addition, feminist legal activists have used the landmark Shamim Ara v. State of U.P. (2002) ruling to buttress their claim that arbitrary triple talaq is invalid", she observed.The House Judiciary Committee voted to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act, HR 5949, through Dec. 31, 2017 without any changes. The Act authorizes "programs of surveillance" intended to target foreign agents, but also allows collection of private communications of United States citizens without individualized suspicion. EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg recently testified before the Committe and recommended that Congress strengthen oversight procedures to protect privacy and limit possible misuses of the legal authority. But amendments to improve accountability introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Jerold Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), and Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), were all defeated. In the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and others have expressed concern about renewal of the Act. For more information, see EPIC: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and EPIC: Clapper v. Amnesty International USA.Climate Change Facts: Tree Species Decline Due To Global Warming
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Climate change can be devastating for many plants and animal species. The effects of climate change can be felt more by some species than by others. Climate change facts show that tree species decline due to global warming.
As the climate is warming, the environment would also be changing. These changes could have great effect on species that could not readily adapt to a changing environment. This is the case for the yellow cedar, which depends on soggy soil for its survival.
The yellow cedar would be more vulnerable as the climate becomes warmer. Snow is vital to the yellow cedar, and without much of it the soil would become too wet for the tree. This has led to root freeze, which could kill the tree.
Yellow cedar has been in a slow process of decline. This decline goes all the way back to 1880 and still continues today. It is projected that by 2070 temperatures where yellow cedar are found could rise, which would give way to more rain than snow.
Yellow cedar has been important for communities near it. The Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people have been using yellow cedar for the canoe paddles and tool handles, according to Yahoo News. They have also used its bark for weaving baskets and hats.
Yellow cedar grows much slower than other trees. In turn, this has made them live longer. Still, trees that grow faster such as the spruce has out competed the yellow cedar. Things would only get worse as a wide area of yellow cedar is affected.
As much as 1,544 square miles of yellow cedar land are affected by climate change. This area has experienced around 70 percent of yellow cedar dying, as CBC News reports. An even wider stretch of around 20,207 square miles are vulnerable as climate change continues.
Certain areas aren't as affected. Yellow cedar in higher elevations in Washington and Oregon aren't much affected, since snow in these places haven't lessened much. The roots of the yellow cedar there are still fairly protected.
This effect on yellow cedar is making researchers look into other trees that have shallow roots such as sugar maple and yellow birch. So far though yellow cedar remains to be the most documented case of a tree species that has been affected by climate change. Climate change facts show that a tree species decline due to global warming. Another species affected by climate change is the beluga.
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© 2019 ITECHPOST, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.Exhale, Pirate fans. It looks like Gerrit Cole is all right.
After allowing five earned runs over 4 1/3 innings in his previous outing, Cole shut down Rochester for six frames in his third rehab start Sunday afternoon. He allowed just one hit and struck out three as Triple-A Indianapolis rolled to a 10-0 victory.
Cole (2-1) retired his first 14 batters and faced one over the minimum in his third rehab start. He threw 49 of 73 pitches for strikes and hit 95 mph with his final offering.
Eight of the 23-year-old right-hander's 10 outs came via ground balls.
The Pirates will evaluate Cole on Monday to determine if he'll make another rehab appearance.
"I'm pleased," he said. "It went well but still got some work ahead of us. Next step is tomorrow and keep going.
"Command was pretty good, for the most part. Mixed all four [pitches] and pitched to contact pretty well."
The first overall pick in the 2011 Draft has made three starts with Indianapolis during this rehab assignment, compiling a 2.93 ERA over 15 1/3 innings. He's struck out 13, walked four and allowed one homer.
His first time out, Cole tossed five innings in a 5-0 win over Rochester. Pitching coach Tim Filer said after that outing he was impressed with the life on the UCLA product's fastball.
Cole's next start was scheduled for Aug. 2 but was pushed back to Aug. 5. Against Toledo, he surrendered 10 hits, including a homer, and five earned runs over 4 1/3 innings, walking one, striking out three and throwing 74 pitches.
Cole said he had no concerns from his last outing and had no restrictions beyond his pitch count on Sunday.
"He wasn't tied down to anything like [velocity] today," Indians manager Dean Treanor said. "What was good [was] when he felt he needed some velocity, he was able to ramp it up a little bit and he had the OK to do that today. I'm sure there was more in the tank. That was a good sign."
Cole got three outs on 11 pitches in the first inning, striking out Chris Herrmann after falling behind, 2-0. After retiring the side in order in the second, third and fourth, he got groundouts from Josmil Pinto and Chris Colabello before Daniel Ortiz lined a single to center field. Cole struck out Deibinson Romero to strand Ortiz at second.
Cole finished up with a 1-2-3 sixth on groundouts from Aaron Hicks, Eric Farris and Doug Bernier.
"I really liked his angles today, and that's what I really look for, which means he's working over the ball," Treanor said. "You saw more balls down in the zone today with a better angle as opposed to maybe getting underneath the ball a little bit or getting a little ahead of himself and pushing the ball. We did not see that at all today."
The Indians staked Cole to a big early lead as Brent Morel plated a run with a groundout in the first, then capped a four-run second with an RBI single. Mel Rojas Jr. went 3-for-4 with three RBIs and fell a triple shy of the cycle for Indianapolis.On Sunday night, Kobe Bryant passed Michael Jordan on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, moving into third place behind Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. After the game, Kobe sat down and wrote his thoughts on the historic moment for The Players’ Tribune:
Zero. That’s the number of points I scored the entire summer while playing in Philadelphia’s Sonny Hill Future League when I was 12 years old. I didn’t score. Not a free throw, not an accidental layup, not even a lucky throw-the-ball-up-oops-it-went-in basket.
My father Joe “Jellybean” Bryant and my uncle John “Chubby” Cox were Future League legends in their day. My father as a 6-10 point forward and my uncle as a 6-4 point guard.
I was putting my family to shame!
I considered maybe just giving up basketball and just focusing on soccer. Here’s where my respect and admiration for MJ was forged. I learned that he had been cut from his high school team as a freshman; I learned he knew what it felt like to be embarrassed, to feel like a failure. But he used those emotions to fuel him, make him stronger, he didn’t quit. So I decided to take on my challenge the same way he did. I would channel my failure as fuel to keep my competitive fire burning. I became obsessed with proving to my family — and more importantly to myself — that I CAN DO THIS.
It became an obsession. I learned everything about the game, the history, the players, the fundamentals. I wasn’t just determined to never have a summer of zero again, I was driven to inflict the same sense of failure on my competition as they unknowingly inflicted on me. My killer instinct to score was born.
Twenty-four years later, I pass my muse.
What a journey this has been. Setting this mark is a huge honor. I’m aware of Father Time’s curfew. He has sent me to my room to brush my teeth before he tucks me in, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t walk to the bathroom slowly. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t act as if someone misplaced the toothpaste. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t brush every tooth twice, brush my tongue three times, floss until my gums bleed and rinse with mouthwash until the inside of my mouth burns and then goes numb.
I would not be the kid that bounced back after zero, and I would not be honoring the man that inspired me to challenge everything.
Thank you all for your love and support, it is much appreciated, even if the villain in me refuses to acknowledge it all the time.
Much Love,
Mamba outKomets Remain Unbeaten With Win Over Indy Copyright by WANE - All rights reserved Video
Chuck Bailey, Komets Director of Communication - Fort Wayne, IN-- The Komets battled the Indy Fuel Saturday night in a game that saw leads by each team dissipate into overtime.
Indy led at the end of the first frame 2-1 on goals by Kyle Stroh and Rhett Bly with a tally by Fort Wayne's Trevor Cheek sandwiched in between.
In the second period the Komets dominated with three unanswered markers. Cheek scored his second of the game followed with a pair by Jordon Southorn. The Fuel answered with a pair by Garett Bembridge and Bly's second of the game.
Dylan Clarke gave Indy a 5-4 at 11:18 of the third but the Komets fought back with goaltender Pat Nagle pulled for the extra attacker and Peter Sivak sent the match into overtime with 56 seconds remaining in regulation time.
In the Komets' first three-on-three overtime Alex Belzile scored the game winner with assists from Drew Daniels and Shaw Szydlowski, his four of the night, with 22 seconds remaining in the extra stanza to the delight of a home crowd of 7,695.
The Komets took a sweep of a weekend home double-header against intrastate rival Indy and remain unbeaten at 4-0-0 after the first four games of 2015-16.
Nagle finished with his second win of the year stopping 22 shots while Mac Carruth fell to 1-0-1 allowing six goals on 53 shots.
The Komets will be idle until they face the Fuel again at Indy Friday, Oct. 30 at 7:35pm. The Komets will be home Halloween night for a 7:30 faceoff against the Cincinnati Cyclones in the week ahead.(CNN) Hillary Clinton's ongoing struggle to deal with the revelation that she used a private email server during her time as secretary of state dominated the conversation about her presidential candidacy, and research suggests it might have doomed her campaign, according to a new study by a consortium of pollsters released over the weekend.
In the paper, presented at the American Association for Public Opinion Research's annual conference in New Orleans, pollsters and political scientists from Gallup, Georgetown University and the University of Michigan studied the daily Gallup tracking poll from July 10 to November 7, 2016. In particular, they zeroed in on one question: " Have you read, seen or heard anything about (Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump) in the last day or two? " They then zeroed in on the "yes" responses and categorized what, exactly, people said they had read, seen or heard.
Here's what people had read, seen or heard about Clinton looks like in a word cloud (the bigger the word, the more often it was mentioned):
As you can see, "email" drowns out every other term mentioned about Clinton. It was, without question, the dominant narrative of the election for her -- at least in the five months that this paper documents. And, according to the study, the mentions of email correlate directly to negative views of Clinton.
Now, check out Trump's word cloud:
There's nothing to match the Clinton "email" mentions. And although some of the most commonly mentioned words are negative storylines for Trump -- "women," most notably -- there's a lot of more neutral mentions: "debate," "people" and "president." This speaks to the theory that by throwing so many balls up in the air every day -- via his stump speeches, Twitter, etc. -- Trump made it impossible for anyone to follow all of them. Everything seemed like a molehill. Even the mountains.
JUST WATCHED Clinton blames Comey, Russia for election loss Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Clinton blames Comey, Russia for election loss 02:03
What's more, the word "email" came up more and more in the final weeks of the election -- particularly in the wake of then-FBI Director James Comey's announcement in late October that he was re-starting an investigation into Clinton's server.
Here's the word clouds broken into a week-by-week timeline of the last month of the campaign. Again, the larger the word appears, the more it was mentioned as something people had seen, read or heard about Clinton or Trump.
Not only did "email" dominate the conversation around Clinton, it dominated the entire conversation in the race. From October 23 on, Trump is barely talked about -- an amazing feat for someone so willing to make news.
This study will be used by liberals as evidence that the media's unnecessary focus on Clinton's email server cost her the election.
I'd agree that Clinton's email server played a decisive role in deciding the election. But I wouldn't agree with the idea that the media is responsible for it.
After all, it was Clinton who never seemed to grasp the seriousness of the issue and how it eroded the public's already shaky confidence in her. Her inability to do those things meant she was never able to put the story behind her. And then the Comey announcement came, which undoubtedly surged the issue back to the top of many voters' minds.
Whatever the reasons, when people thought of Clinton in the final weeks of the race, they thought of her emails. And that was a very bad thing for her.After their narrow victory under Winston Churchill’s leadership at the general election of October 1951, the Conservatives approached the task of fulfilling their pledge to build 300,000 houses a year in a spirit of trepidation. The target, as Churchill preferred to call it, had been adopted during a rebellion at the party conference in Blackpool the previous autumn. Harmar Nicholls, elected as MP for Peterborough in the election of 1950, made a passionate speech in favour of building 300,000 homes a year, which other speakers adopted with mounting enthusiasm.
Anxious consultations took place on the platform. Lord Woolton, the party chairman, turned to Rab Butler, chairman of the Conservative Research Department (CRD), and whispered: “Could we build 300,000?” David Clarke, the director of CRD, was consulted and said the target was technically feasible. Housing was at this time second only to defence as a political issue: all Tory candidates had made it a major commitment in their 1950 election addresses and CRD had produced lengthy policy papers on the subject.
Lord Woolton accordingly stepped onto the podium and surrendered to the will of the party with the words: “This is magnificent.” A new group was put to work in CRD to see what needed to be done. It concluded that to reach the target there would have to be
a large reallocation of shipping resources and foreign currency to obtain soft wood; a special increase of nine per cent in the output of the cement industry; almost one million tons of coal; and about 2,000 million bricks [this summary is taken from Tory Policy-Making: The Conservative Research Department 1929-2009, edited by Alistair Cooke].
The manifesto on which the Tories fought the 1951 election stated:
Housing is the first of the social services. It is also one of the keys to increased productivity. Work, family life, health and education are all undermined by crowded houses. Therefore, a Conservative and Unionist Government will give housing a priority second only to national defence.
After winning the 1951 election, Churchill summoned Harold Macmillan to Chartwell. Macmillan recorded in his diary what happened:
He asked me to “build the houses for the people.” What an assignment! I know nothing whatever about these matters, having spent 6 years now either on defence or foreign affairs. I had of course hoped to be Minister of Defence and said this frankly to Churchill. But he is determined to keep it in his own hands…Churchill says it is a gamble – make or mar my political career. But every humble home will bless my name, if I succeed. On the whole it seems impossible to refuse – but, oh dear, it is not my cup of tea…I really haven’t a clue how to set about the job.
This is disingenuous. Macmillan was not a housing expert, but he was a successful businessman who was a director of the family publishing house, Macmillan & Co, and of the Great Western Railway. In the 1930s he was a left-wing Tory rebel, who in 1936 took the drastic step of resigning the Tory whip. But during the Second World War Churchill gave him his chance, sending him first to the Ministry of Supply and then with high executive authority to be “Viceroy of the Mediterranean”. So Churchill was not appointing some callow newcomer to this vital post. Macmillan was 57. He was very clever, quick at transacting business, good at spotting the right experts and persuading them to work for him, and had an acute feeling for literature but also, as a successful publisher, for publicity. And although he was a devout Anglican, he possessed a streak of ruthless, or even unscrupulous, ambition, and an eye for his opponents’ weaknesses.
The last Labour minister with responsibility for housing, Hugh Dalton, asserted in his diary for 29 October 1951 that his own performance could not be beaten by Macmillan: “He won’t be able to build any more, if as many as I. My last month (September) showed more than 17,000 completed.”
But Macmillan had every incentive to exceed that rate, equivalent to the annual construction of 200,000 houses, which was the average that Labour had achieved in the period 1945-51. If he could demonstrate that the Tories were better than Labour at building houses, he would be in the running for the prime ministership. And at least in theory he could rely on the personal backing of Churchill, who insisted that the department, known as the Ministry of Local Government and Planning, be renamed the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, in order to indicate the priority that Housing now took. (It is nowadays the Department of Communities and Local Government: the wishy-washy word “Communities” reflecting the fact that nothing like the same degree of political will is now focussed on housing.) Simon Ball recounts, in his book The Guardsmen, how Macmillan coerced Churchill’s continued support: “The government had so few positive policies to offer that he could threaten Churchill with the ‘terrible political implication of cutting the Housing programme’ [words found in Macmillan’s diary for 15 July 1952].”
As D.R.Thorpe relates in his invaluable biography, Supermac, published in 2010, Macmillan knew he was not going to get the dramatic results he needed by relying on his Permanent Secretary, Sir Thomas Sheepshanks, whom he regarded kindly but ineffective. He deeply offended Sheepshanks by bringing in Sir Percy Mills, a self-made businessman, as Director-General to oversee the housing programme. During the war, Mills had been Controller-General of Machine Tools at the Ministry of Supply, where Macmillan developed complete confidence in him as a man who could deliver. Macmillan said the commitment to build 300,000 houses had to be treated as a “war job” and tackled “in the spirit of 1940”. Another self-made man who joined the team was Ernest Marples, Macmillan’s Parliamentary Secretary, who had built up a successful construction business, and was later as Transport Minister to open the first section of the M1 and close thousands of miles of railways. Evelyn Sharp, deputy to Sheepshanks and described by Macmillan as “without exception the ablest woman I have ever known”, also helped to drive the housing programme forward.
Mills quickly established ten Regional Housing Boards. Red tape was cut, brick-making vastly increased. Macmillan prevailed on Rab Butler, now Chancellor of the Exchequer, to provide the necessary funds. Butler was building up a rival who would within a few years eclipse him.
But although it came naturally to this wartime generation to give orders, much was also achieved thanks to the dismantling of wartime controls, which cleared supply bottlenecks for essential materials such as timber and steel, and enabled them to be bought at much lower cost on the open market. Macmillan also sought to encourage private house-building, for example by abolishing the Development Charge levied under the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947.
Toby Lloyd, director of policy at the housing charity Shelter, suggested to me that as far as housing was concerned, “the mixed economy seemed to work well”. For a period of about 20 years there existed a cross-party consensus that much more housing was needed and about half of it should be built by local councils. The more houses the state built, the more private builders built too: there did not seem to be a problem of “crowding out”. Lloyd and his colleagues have produced a graph which illustrates this point:
But Macmillan’s critics said that far too large a share of the nation’s resources was being devoted to housing, at the expense of factories and other forms of investment. Tories who took seriously the party’s commitment to create a property-owning democracy were also appalled that in Ball’s words, “Macmillan presided over a massive increase in council housing”. For this was “the quickest, if far from the best” way of increasing the number of houses. Macmillan “gave permission for as many ‘subsidised local authority houses’ to be built as there were applications.” Councils were allowed to borrow at very cheap rates, in order to build houses which would in time pay for themselves through rents.
Lloyd, at Shelter, pointed out that Macmillan’s achievement was not without its drawbacks: “The slight fly in the ointment is that not all of them were the best houses. Some of the most shocking tower-block monstrosities were built in that era.” Macmillan sacrificed quality to quantity. His houses were smaller than those built by Nye Bevan, who during most of the post-war Labour government had been responsible for both health and housing. Macmillan was much more anxious to be seen as progressive than to worry about the aesthetics of what he was doing. His decision in 1961, as Prime Minister, to sanction the destruction of the Euston Arch, in defiance of appeals from John Betjeman and many others, epitomised the ruthless philistinism with which he treated architectural questions. Some of the housing built at this time was so repulsive that to this day it makes people deeply suspicious of all new building.
Though one might also say that Macmillan was just yielding to the spirit of the age, or was so out of his depth that he just decided to approve of whatever seemed to be modern. In his diary for 12 December 1953 he wrote: “A tour round Sheffield. The architect seemed very good. Some new flats (on the hill) should be very good.” Many of the flats built in Sheffield in this period did not turn out to be very good. Macmillan himself sometimes recognised that things were not going well, especially when a scheme had not been started by him. Labour had set up 14 New Towns, and Macmillan described in his diary for 1 May 1952 a visit to one of them:
I went yesterday to the ‘New Town’ of Basildon – in Essex. This struck me as pure Martin Chuzzlewit. It was ‘Little Eden’ again [the disease-ridden settlement in America described in Dickens’s novel]. What a mad venture – without any of the facilities. No water; no sewerage; no river to pollute (except the Crouch, which cannot be polluted because of its oyster bed), no industry – and jolly few houses.
Macmillan kept his and his team’s eyes firmly fixed on the numbers. As Thorpe relates, “Totals were displayed in the department along the lines of a cricket scoreboard.” In the first year when Macmillan was in charge, from 30 October 1951 to 31 October 1952, 240,000 houses were completed. In the next year, from 1 November 1952 to 31 October 1953, 301,000 houses were completed. In the calendar year of 1953, 318,000 houses were completed. As Thorpe remarks, “A red-letter day was 10 December 1953, when the three hundred thousandth house that year was completed.”
This was a tremendous achievement, which helped pave the way not only for the Conservative election victory of 1955, but for Macmillan to become Prime Minister in 1957 and win the election of 1959. The Conservatives had shown that in housing, they could provide more effectually for the welfare of the people than Labour had managed to do.
There are some lessons in this for the modern day. Macmillan showed that the ruthless application of political will, along with businessmen employed as fixers, could achieve a surprising amount. He had no qualms about arranging for the building of vast numbers of council houses: Labour was to some extent beaten with its own weapons. But markets were freed up too: the abolition of wartime rationing was the other clear success of this administration. It seemed natural to this generation of Conservatives when necessary to mobilise the resources of the state with wartime determination. Ministers demanded “Action This Day”. Modern government looks by contrast a very tentative exercise.
At the general election of 1955, the Conservative manifesto boasted:
our Party’s pledge to build 300,000 houses a year was derided by our opponents as impossible to fulfil. In fact, nearly 350,000 were built last year, and at least as many are likely to be built this year.
Labour had been well and truly trumped. No such boast is going to be possible in 2015, because no housing minister has enjoyed anything like Macmillan’s prominence, or anything like the support he got from the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, local authorities, the Conservative Party and the wider public.The father of a woman who killed herself after being charged with lying about a rape believes a full inquest compliant with article 2 of the European convention on human rights is his only hope of finding out whether the decision to prosecute her contributed to his daughter’s death.
Writing on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website, David de Freitas, the father of 23-year-old Eleanor, said that part of his daughter’s fear before she took her own life was that the court process she faced for allegedly perverting the course of justice might reveal details of her life that her parents were not aware of.
“At least part of that shame we believe is due to information gathered by her prosecutor suggesting she may have previously acted as an escort,” he said. “This is irrelevant to the question of whether she was raped, but I think she was frightened of it coming out in court as we did not know about it.”
Eleanor de Freitas – who had bipolar disorder and had been sectioned in the past – killed herself three days before the start of her trial for perverting the course of justice in April this year. The prosecution had been instigated by the man she had accused of rape after the case against him was dropped and it was later taken over by the Crown Prosecution Service.
An inquest is due soon. Lawyers for De Freitas are pressing for the hearing to be enhanced and held under the terms of article 2 of the European convention, the right to life, on the grounds that the state failed in its duty to protect her life.
The Guardian revealed on Tuesday that police officers who investigated the alleged rape and carried out a specialist interview with De Freitas maintain sheshould never have been charged with perverting the course of justice. But the director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, has vigorously defended the prosecution after personally investigating the case.
The specialist detectives involved in investigating De Freitas’s rape allegation consistently refused to support prosecutors in a case against her for allegedly making it up.
They were supported by their senior officer, and the force only began to cooperate with the CPS after prosecutors held a meeting with a much more senior officer, Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt.
In correspondence this month, DI Julian King, of Sapphire, the sexual offences investigation unit, said: “I stand by my decision in that I do not believe that Eleanor should ever have been prosecuted for PCJ [perverting the course of justice].”
In his article on Wednesday David De Freitas said: “I am still astonished that the CPS decided to prosecute a very vulnerable young woman in circumstances in which the police had thought it should not take place.”
On Tuesday, Saunders said the case was unique and tragic but that the evidential and public interest tests were both met, and the evidence against the young woman was strong.
She said she had expressed her personal and heartfelt sympathies to the woman’s family, but defended the actions of the CPS and said it was better for the authorities to take on a private prosecution that met the tests than to leave it to a private prosecutor.
Saunders said the case involved careful consideration because De Freitas had mental health problems, but also because it was the subject of a private prosecution without a full police investigation.
“The evidence in this case was strong and having considered it in light of all of our knowledge and guidance on prosecuting sexual offences and allegedly false rape claims, it is clear there was sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction for perverting the course of justice,” she said.
“This evidence included text messages |
flyktning. Foreløpig har Omar hentet kone og syv barn på familiegjenforening. Men han er ikke fornøyd. Nå vil han også ha barna til kone nummer 2 til Norge. Det kan han nok få til. Da snakker vi ikke lenger bare om gjenforening, men vi snakker om familiesplitting. For hva har gjenværende kone og barn å si i sakens anledning?
Det er forhåpentligvis en kjent sak at menn med fast opphold eller statsborgerskap i Norge, kan hente alle barna verden rundt til Norge. Dette tok vi opp med Stortingets kommunalkomité (som har ansvar for innvandring og integrering) allerede i 2003. En mann kan i teorien ha 100 koner og elskerinner rundt forbi på kloden, og alle barn som fødes i disse forholdene kan innvandre til Norge.
Siste ut til å nyte godt av denne ordningen, er Adil A. Omar fra Somalia. Etter to år i Mandal har han nylig fått kone nummer en og deres syv barn på familiegjenforening. Nå er det familiesplitting som står på hans agenda.
Så var kone nummer 1 og syv barn ankommet. Nå kan barna til kone nummer 2 ankomme, hvis Omar får det som han vil.
30. august meldte Fædrelandsvennen nemlig dette (ikke på nett):
Han har altså fortsatt to barn tilbake i Somalia på to og fire år, som han nå jobber for å få hit. De to barna har han sammen med sin andre kone.
– I Somalia er det lov å ha fire koner, forklarer han.
Han sier at ettersom Norge ikke tillater flere enn en kone, skal hun som er i Somalia bli igjen, mens barna skal hit.
– Jeg håper å få de til Mandal ganske raskt, kanskje allerede i høst, sier Adil.
Hva har mor i Somalia å stille opp med? Småbarna skal tas fra henne? Hvem skal ta seg av dem hvis de kommer til Norge? Omar eller kone nummer 1?
I ekstrempatriarkalsk, islamsk stammekultur har mor så godt som ingenting å stille opp med.
Dette verdisynet støtter altså norske politikere opp under?
Hva så med barna? Vil de skilles mor? Det bryr ikke norske myndigheter og politikere seg om? Å komme til Norge trumfer visstnok alt annet. Og hva med hvilke signal som sendes ut til andre bigamister med ønske om å flytte til Norge?
Hvis Omar får gjennom kravet sitt om nok en familiegjenforening, vil de to småbarna og moren i Somalia deretter kunne søke familiegjenforening i Norge? Er det noe i regelverket som er til hinder for det?
Millionkostnader
I 2013 la Finansavisen et dramatisk regnestykke på bordet. Finansavisen viste livsløpskostnader for den enkelte innvandrer, og dennes forventede etterkommer i periode 2015 til 2100. Tallene forutsatte at innvandrerens norskfødte etterkommere ble perfekt (økonomisk) integrert, og at alle har like stort konsum av offentlige tjenester som snittet i Norge, en forutsetning SSB selv kalte diskutabel. Per somalier var tallet i 2013 hele 9 millioner kroner i kostnader per innvandrer (i dag er det høyere). Altså kan vi forvente minimum 81 millioner kroner i utgifter på den foreløpige innvandringen gjennom Omar, fra et land der den store majoriteten som kommer ikke er reelle politiske flyktninger, altså politiske dissidenter. Plusser vi på to barn til, er vi på 100 millioner kroner. 10 slike familier, og vi er på 1 milliard kroner.
En annen lyd, om noen lyd i det hele tatt
For fire år siden kom en liknende sak på bordet. Da handlet det om en somalier som ville ha rundt 20 barn til Norge – med oppskriftshjelp fra UDI.
Hossein Ahmed Mayamuud bor i Svelgen i Sogn og Fjordane. Han har 22 barn og nå ønsker han at 11 av disse skal hentes til Norge.
UDI repliserte at Mayamuud, som hadde disse 22 barna med flere koner, måtte skille seg fra den ene kona i Norge for også å kunne få den andre kona med ytterligere ti barn til Norge. Altså kan dagens Omar «forenkle» prosessen. Han kan skille seg etter norsk lov, og gjerne beholde ekteskapet etter sharia, for så å søke familiegjenforening med kone nummer 2 og de to barna.
Da Mayamuuds sak ble kjent, reagerte daværende leder av Justiskomiteen på Stortinget, nåværende fiskeriminister og nestleder i FrP, kraftig:
Nå er FrPs nestleder og statsråd i regjering. Hva nå? Her Omar i Svelgen også.
– Det må da være dramatisk for disse barna å rive opp sine røtter.
Dette er en sak som virkelig engasjerer Sandberg.
– Frp mener at når det kommer til familiegjenforening, så bør man bli der man samlet har størst tilhørighet.
Han reagerer også sterkt på at UDI antyder at skilsmisse kan være en løsning i denne saken.
– Her har vi en enslig kvinne som sitter igjen med ti barn. Og så gir UDI en oppskrift på gjenforening i artikkelen som jeg reagerer sterkt på.
Hvor er Sandberg og FrP i dag? Har de gjort noe for å stanse denne praksisen?
HRS har tatt til orde for at denne praksisen må opphøre. Det kan ikke være slik at barn kan rives fra en mor som ikke har kulturelle muligheter til å stå opp for egne ønsker og behov. Ei heller at flerkoneri skal belønnes. Hvilken verdimessige bærekraft ligger i dette?
Opplevelsen er: Vi kommer ikke videre. Og vi vet nok nå om at integreringen ikke går seg til, tvert om. Som i Svelgen, der Mayamuuds kone igjen ble gravid, mens hun gikk på norskkurs.New research could provide an insight into the way that babies understand the world around them and their place within it. A study led by Goldsmiths, University of London suggests that babies as young as six or seven months are able to actively respond to stimuli and understand them in relation to their own bodies.
In a series of tests, low-frequency buzzers were placed in the hands of babies. Six month old babies would respond to a buzzer being set off by pulling-back or shaking the hand which held the activated buzzer. The tests were repeated with older babies who also looked towards the stimulated hand, indicating a further developed visual awareness.
The babies’ arms were then crossed to see if they were able to appreciate that their hands, and the buzzes, were not in their usual place. The older cohort was more likely than the younger group to recognise that their hands had been crossed to the other side of their body when responding to an activated buzzer. The younger group made more mistakes, showing less awareness that their limbs had moved.
The results of this study suggest that at six months babies have some comprehension of the world around them and how they can respond to it. The study indicates that a spatial awareness of the body and its physical location, particularly where the limbs are, develops over the first year of life.
While cognitive development theorists such as Jean Piaget have long argued that babies develop through exploring the world with their senses, the question of how our understanding of our own bodies develops has received little consideration until now. The study shows that an awareness of peripersonal space – the way the body relates to its close environment, the space in which it can act – undergoes some significant developments in the first year of life.
Dr Andrew Bremner from the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths said: “Research in recent years has demonstrated that even very little babies know a lot about the outside world. This has led many to suggest that we are born with a great deal of the knowledge we need. But these new findings urge us to think differently about early development. Despite having a good grasp of what goes on in the outside world, young babies may have more difficulties in understanding how they themselves, and their bodies, fit into that world.”Django gotcha: concrete inheritance
Since 1.0, Django’s supported model inheritance. It’s a neat feature, and can go a long way towards increasing flexibility in your modeling options.
However, model inheritance also offers a really excellent opportunity to shoot yourself in the foot: concrete (multi-table) inheritance. If you’re using concrete inheritance, Django creates implicit joins back to the parent table on nearly every query. This can completely devastate your database’s performance.
To refresh, if you’ve got models like:
class Person(Model): name = CharField()... class Manager(Person): department = CharField()...
That’s concrete inheritance. Django creates two tables: a Person table and a Manager table. Since the name field will only exist on the Person table, every time you look up a Manager Django will use to generate a join against the Person table to get the Manager ‘s name. These joins tend to be "hidden" — they’re created automatically — and mean that what look like simple queries often aren’t.
If, on the other hand, you’ve got models like:
class Person(Model): name = CharField()... class Meta: abstract = True class Manager(Person):...
That’s abstract inheritance and Django only creates a single table, the Manager table. Any model that subclasses Person will have the Person’s fields copied onto the child object. This means that looking up a Manager doesn’t require an extra join.
In nearly every case, abstract inheritance is a better approach for the long term. I’ve seen more than few sites crushed under the load introduced by concrete inheritance, so I’d strongly suggest that Django users approach any use of concrete inheritance with a large dose of skepticism.Ahhh, April Fools’ Day on the Internet. YouTube celebrated, capitalized and killed the meme of the moment by Rickrolling the planet. Click on any of the featured videos on the homepage and get swept up and away by Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
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Too bad Rick probably isn’t seeing a dime from all these views. But there is some good news for the Richie Cunningham of rock and roll: His “Never Gonna Give You Up” is currently number 241 on Amazon’s MP3 best-seller list (Update: Rick’s jumped to number 153!) (right above Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker”).
Update: In other online video prankster news:
Blip.tv hops on the Astley bandwagon by offering the “rick-roll” ad format.
Moblogic has a fake 404 message on its homepage saying “In compliance with FCC guidelines,
this site has been removed.”
this site has been removed.” Vimeo says its hosting a treasure hunt on its site.
Break a Leg said it was ending the series (maybe it was all the comments left on our story?)
The BBC makes fun of nature documentarians’ obsession with a certain bird (and plugs its iPlayer).
And it looks like Google and Virgin are teaming up to launch Virgle, the first human settlement on Mars. What’s funnier than the April Fool’s joke though, is watching Brin and Page try to get through their cue cards.
We’ll add to this list throughout the day. If you see a video April Fool’s joke, shoot us an email.State and federal regulators are giving Baltimore another five years to repair and replace cracked and aging portions of its sewer system and prevent waste from routinely fouling waterways.
An agreement filed Wednesday in federal court commits the city to $1.2 billion worth of work over the next 15 years, with a deadline of 2021 for key projects, and other work to be completed by the end of 2030.
The pact between the city, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Maryland Department of the Environment replaces a similar consent decree struck in 2002, which expired six months ago.
The city spent $867 million on repairs over the past 14 years, but rain still frequently washes raw sewage into the Patapsco River, making it unsafe for swimming and at times uninhabitable for wildlife.
The new plan requires almost three dozen projects to repair and replace worn and obsolete sections of the century-old system by 2021, including closing two pipes that release waste directly into the Jones Falls during heavy rains.
The basement of Frantz Walker's house where his mother, sister and brother live flooded during a large February storm, causing sewage to flow out of the toilet, sink, and bathtub from a sewer back up. (Karl Merton Ferron, Baltimore Sun video) The basement of Frantz Walker's house where his mother, sister and brother live flooded during a large February storm, causing sewage to flow out of the toilet, sink, and bathtub from a sewer back up. (Karl Merton Ferron, Baltimore Sun video) SEE MORE VIDEOS
Regulators estimate that that work would cut sewage leaks by 83 percent.
"This mandate for clean water and public accountability means less sewage in basements, streets and waterways and more progress for the Chesapeake Bay," said Ben Grumbles, Maryland's secretary of the environment.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the agreement "ensures the long-term integrity of the city's sewer infrastructure."
City officials said one-third of the most pressing projects required in the agreement by 2021 are already completed and the others are in the process of being designed or constructed.
The city also must prepare a plan for a second phase of work that will extend through 2030, increasing the system's capacity so it can handle heavy rainfall without causing further sewage overflows.
"It is work we must do to secure the long-term future of our critical infrastructure, and to make sure Baltimore's waterways are as clean as we can make them," said Rudy S. Chow, the city's public works director.
Water-quality advocates said they were generally pleased with the plan, but expressed concern that it does not give regulators enough power to ensure that the city meets its deadlines.
"What happens along the way if we see the city is not performing under the consent decree?" asked Alison Prost, Maryland executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Others said the agreement does not address the sewage backups that foul thousands of basements across the city each year.
A Baltimore Sun investigation last month found that sewage backups skyrocketed in the years after repairs began under the 2002 agreement.
Crews responded to nearly 5,000 reports of sewage in city basements last year, and the city rarely reimbursed homeowners for damage, according to data provided to The Sun.
"The revised consent decree doesn't say a word about providing financial and cleanup help to the thousands of often lower-income city residents whose homes have been flooded with raw sewage, which is a real environmental justice issue," said Tom Pelton, director of communications for the Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project.
The agreement would require the city to inspect sewer lines and to notify homeowners when problems are discovered on their property — something public works crews began doing in 2014.
The consent decree is subject to a 60-day public comment period before being formally adopted. Comments can be submitted via e-mail at pubcomment-ees.enrd@usdoj.gov. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Maryland Department of the Environment will conduct a public forum on the agreement at 7 p.m. Tuesday at MDE offices at 1800 Washington Blvd. in Baltimore.
David Flores, the Baltimore Harbor waterkeeper with Blue Water Baltimore, urged residents who have experienced sewage backups to attend the forum and press regulators for more information on how they will be addressed.
"They really deserve a response," he said.
Sewage has been a major contributor to the poor health of the Inner Harbor and the Patapsco River for decades. Before the city entered its original consent decree with the state Department of the Environment and the EPA, dozens of outflows routinely released sewage directly into waterways.
While most of the outflows were subsequently closed, two remain open over the Jones Falls. The new agreement requires them to be closed by 2021.
Another key project with a 2021 deadline would eliminate a 10-mile backup of sewage under the city caused by a misaligned pipe leading to the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The agreement could substantially increase the amount of information the city must make public about sewage leaks and efforts to stop them. It requires quarterly progress reports with day-by-day data on rainfall amounts and sewage flow rates, as well as updates on required improvement projects.
The city would be required to file reports each October detailing complaints about sewage leaks and work to address them, and also to host public forums each year on its progress.
City officials would be required to call the Department of the Environment within 24 hours of becoming aware of any overflow and to follow up with a written report within five days.
The city could face fines for missing deadlines in the new agreement, including a $6,000-per-day penalty if it is more than two months late in completing projects to fix sewage leaks and $2,000 per day if it is more than two months late submitting progress updates.
The city would be required to pay $15,000 each time 1 million or more gallons of sewage-contaminated water is released over the Jones Falls, on top of the $1.8 million in fines it paid for leaks over the life of its original agreement with regulators.
There were at least 11 leaks of 1 million gallons or more in 2015, the Environmental Integrity Project reported in December.
While environmental advocates said the fines and deadlines are important, they would rather see enforcement tied to the water quality and health hazards the sewage leaks create.
"We are well past the time for this to end in the city," Prost said.
sdance@baltsun.com
twitter.com/ssdanceCHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Carolina Panthers coach Ron Rivera admittedly was hard on his players at halftime of Sunday's 20-16 victory over Miami, but not nearly as hard as they were on each other.
It wasn't just the normal suspects, such as wide receiver Steve Smith and left tackle Jordan Gross, that stood up and spoke their mind with the Panthers trailing 16-6. It was center Ryan Kalil and defensive end Greg Hardy, those that usually hang in the background and let the more boisterous talk, that stood out.
So if you're looking for a reason why the Panthers have gone from a team that two weeks into the season was 2-14 in games decided by seven points or less under Rivera and quarterback Cam Newton -- an NFL-worst 0-6 in games decided by four points or less since 2011 -- to one that has won three straight, start here.
Leadership.
"There were some things that were really interesting in that locker room at halftime,'' Rivera said Monday without giving specifics. "Guys said things and challenged each other. It was great to see these guys take ownership.
"Part of coming together as a team is not necessarily having to rely on just one leader. It's relying on a group of men that can come together and take ownership of it. That's part of the maturing process that we've gone through.''
It didn't just happen in the group meeting. It happened in the offensive and defense meetings, as in cornerback Captain Munnerlyn taking responsibility for allowing two long receptions by Miami wide receiver Mike Wallace, a 53-yarder that went for a touchdown and a 57-yarder that set up a field goal.
The Panthers responded with a 14-0 second-half in which they still needed a miracle fourth-and-10 completion with 2:33 left and a 1-yard touchdown pass from Newton to tight end Greg Olsen with 43 seconds left to win.
"It's no longer everybody looking to one guy,'' Rivera said. "Who's that one guy? Now you're starting to see the different guys. You see the Kalils. You see the Greg Hardys. That's important. Now that responsibility is not just one person.''
Rivera appreciated that more after he had time to step back from the tension that enveloped Sunday's game until the final play. He admittedly was harder on players than he might normally have been after looking at tape and seeing how hard they played in the first half.
Yes, he still was upset with the way Wallace didn't have over the top coverage on the first-half plays, as well as the next-to-last play of the game in which he got behind safety Mike Mitchell near the goal line with 10 seconds left.
"I was disappointed,'' Rivera said.
That he was disappointed speaks volumes about what he expects from the Panthers (8-3) as they enter the stretch run with NFC South title, playoff and even Super Bowl aspirations.
"It means the expectations and what I expect and what our level of expectation should be [has changed],'' Rivera said.
That doesn't mean Rivera won't experiment with different combinations in the secondary if that's what it takes to prevent breakdowns that could have prevented the winning streak from reaching seven.
"We're going to continue to challenge those guys,'' he said without mentioning names. "We're going to play the best combination of players out there. We're going to put the guys that are working hard and doing things the right way out on the football field and give them a chance to play.''
Rivera also is going to continue to be aggressive. His fourth-and-10 gamble that turned into a 19-yard completion to Smith shows just how much of a roll the Panthers are on.
Since 2001, on fourth and 10 from a team's own territory, only 44 of 133 plays (33.1 percent) have been successful.
Rivera is willing to take those chances because of the leadership he saw at halftime and the confidence level he sees growing on the sideline each week.
"There's a confident level you should win games,'' he said. "You're not supposed to win games, but something happens and all of a sudden there is a confidence we can do these things, we can make things happen, we can make plays when we need them.''
Injury update: Defensive end Charles Johnson, who missed Sunday's game with a sprained knee, will be re-evaluated on Wednesday. Rivera is optimistic he will be available this week for Tampa Bay.
Linebacker Thomas Davis suffered a dislocated finger that broke the skin, but that won't prevent him from playing. Running back Mike Tolbert had soreness in his leg that Rivera didn't appear concerned about.× Colts’ Frank Gore? Call him ‘man possessed’
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – The long, grueling workouts during the offseason under a searing South Florida sun helped Frank Gore do what few running backs his ilk have done before.
That would be embrace 36 rushing attempts in the Indianapolis Colts’ 13-7 overtime loss to the Buffalo Bills Sunday in arctic-like Orchard Park, N.Y. It was the most carries in Gore’s 193-game career, the most by a running back 34 or older in NFL history, and tied for the third-most in Colts history, regardless of age.
And it would be piling up 130 yards while plowing through accumulating snow. He became the fifth back in league history to rush for at least that much after turning 34, the first since Baltimore’s Earnest Byner. In 1996.
“A man possessed. That’s what we’re calling him,’’ Chuck Pagano said.
Gore shrugged.
“You don’t think about it,’’ he said. “Your number gets called and you do what you do. You try to go out there and get the job done.’’
This undoubtedly is the most exasperating of Gore’s 13 seasons. After virtually each of the 10 losses, he’s one of the last players still sitting in front of his cubicle in the locker room, either with his uniform pants on or with one towel wrapped around his waist and another draped over his shoulders.
No one likes to lose. Gore absolutely detests it.
Yet he carries on, literally. Often, he asks a passing reporter how he looked in the game.
I still got it, right? You see that, right?
It’s important for Gore to do his job and hope those around him do theirs.
And that’s why he’ll do whatever possible on this quick turnaround to be ready for another heavy-carry game if needed when the Colts meet the Denver Broncos and their No. 1-ranked defense Thursday night at Lucas Oil Stadium.
There will be more massages, more sessions in the cold tub. He’s tapered his weekly routine to allow his legs time to recover after running for three hours in snow, which wasn’t too dissimilar to running on a sandy beach. Or quicksand.
“It was different,’’ Gore said of snowy New Era Field. “You can’t really explode or anything, so you had to really feel your way through things, work your way as you go to build up speed.’’
The environment Thursday night will be much more conducive to conventional football and actually playing the position.
“I’m happy to be home,’’ Gore said. “Hopefully the roof’s closed and we can go out there and have fun.’’
From a team standpoint, all that remains is closing the books on an exasperating season that has seen the Colts blow four double-digit second-half leads and go 3-5 in one-possession games. Inevitably, they’ve found a way to lose.
Individually, players – young and old – must prove they deserve to be part of the franchise’s future. No one should be surprised if general manager Chris Ballard oversees another offseason of massive change.
Gore? He’s still doing his best to run over Father Time. Every game. Every carry.
“I think I’m showing people that if you love what you do, it shouldn’t matter what age (you are),’’ he said. “As long as you train and love to compete, you can do whatever you want.
“I still have three more games, so I still want to finish strong and try to get an opportunity to reach the 1,000-yard mark.’’
With 762 yards, he needs to average 80 over the final three games to hit 1,000 for a second straight season and the 10th time in his career. The only players in NFL with at least 10: Emmitt Smith, Curtis Martin, Walter Payton and Barry Sanders.
“That would be real big because once you turn 28 as a back, they think you’re getting old,’’ Gore said with a wry smile. “I’ve been told since I was 28 what I can’t do or will I fall off this year, fall off that year.
“I’m out there and I’m still going and still having fun and showing people on film that I can play this game.’’
Again, credit those Spartan workouts in Miami. Veteran safety Darius Butler has shared offseason work with Gore, which reinforces his appreciation.
“I’ve seen Frank before I came into the league, just how he works and having a chance to work with him in the offseason,’’ he said. “You see his work ethic, so nothing he does surprises me at this point.
“I see him work, I see him grind, I see him outwork most of the young guys and talk trash while he’s doing it. My hat’s off to him.’’
Gore, who’ll be a free agent at the end of the season, insisted he still wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing between September and January if not for what he does during the summer.
“No. I wouldn’t be playing right now,’’ he said. “I’d be done if I don’t train the way I train in the offseason.
“I feel good.’’
And if the Colts ask for another 30-plus carry outing from their 34-year old running back Thursday?
“Whatever,’’ Gore said.Correction: An earlier version of this op-ed stated that the Scottish Labour Party once held a majority in the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. It had a plurality. The op-ed also reported that the Scottish National Party holds a majority in Parliament, but the SNP holds close to a majority. The op-ed has been updated to reflect these changes.
Barton Swaim is author of “The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics” and a contributing columnist for The Post.
I’ve just spent several days among a pretty diverse array of Scottish nationalists — people who, whether by formal partisan affiliation or simply by political sentiment, believe Scotland should detach itself from the United Kingdom. The question I pestered them with was this: Why does a substantial minority of Scots, indeed perhaps a majority, want independence from London but union with Europe? Why, in other words, does Scottish “nationalism” — the desire to secede from an English-speaking nation with which Scots have been conjoined for centuries — usually also include a desire to pool sovereignty with a top-heavy and undemocratic league of 28 nations?
Scottish independence lost by 55 percent to 44 percent in 2014, but in the two years since, the clamor for independence has become louder. In June, Britain as a whole voted to leave the European Union, but in that same vote Scots voted 62 percent to 38 percent to remain — thus heightening the sense of ideological contradistinction and all but guaranteeing another independence referendum. And since the vast majority of pro-independence Scots wish to remain in Europe, the next “independence” referendum will be undertaken specifically to withdraw from one union (the U.K.) and join another (the E.U.).
Sovereignty, then — the right to rule independently of an external entity — must not be what animates Scottish nationalism. Then what is?
The answer begins with identity. Scots have always seen themselves as more egalitarian and democratic than the English — often justifiably so. The Scots’ established church was Presbyterian and so locally administered, not a centrally run hierarchy like England’s, and Scottish universities were never the training grounds for children of aristocrats that Oxford and Cambridge were. That self-definition intensified at two points during the 20th century — first with the collapse of Glasgow’s ship-building industry and Scotland’s economy after World War I, second with the rise of Thatcherism in the 1980s. Many Scots viewed the first as a betrayal of the Scottish working class that built England’s empire; that, combined with the nation’s egalitarian history and self-understanding, set Scotland on a leftward course that hasn’t let up for nearly a century. Margaret Thatcher’s reforms, which most Scots saw as the ascendency of amoral English individualism, deepened the division.
Scottish nationalism achieved a major victory with the devolution referendum of 1997. An overwhelming “yes” vote gave Scotland the power to form its own devolved parliament. (Disclosure: I was invited to Edinburgh to take part in public discussions about American politics sponsored by the Scottish Parliament.) For years, the pro-Unionist (anti-independence) Scottish Labour party held a decisive plurality in the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, and occupied nearly all of the London Parliament’s 59 seats. But the party’s hegemony in Scotland began to unravel in 2010 for one fundamental reason: London’s Labour elite took Scotland for granted. The Scottish National Party (SNP), which a decade ago amounted to little more than a ragtag cadre of socialists, now dominates Scottish politics. The SNP holds almost a majority in a Parliament of five parties and holds 56 of 59 Scottish seats in London. The SNP isn’t quite the ideological monolith it used to be. Its members tend toward democratic socialism for sure, but some hold socially conservative views. The party’s one unifying principle: independence from Britain.
There are differences in outlook between Scots and the English, clearly. But aren’t these better thought of as regional differences that don’t demand political separation? Not at all, a high-ranking member of the Scottish Parliament tells me. The problem, he says, is that under the Act of Union (the 1707 act joining Scotland’s and England’s parliaments) Scotland exists in an “incorporating” union with England, not in a federal or confederal one.
“In an incorporating union of unequal size it’s likely that the larger partner will dominate the smaller. That’s what has happened without any recourse to law or an appeal body,” he said.
In a confederal relationship like the E.U., by contrast, each member is an equal partner and has an equal voice. Larger members can influence and cajole smaller ones, but cannot ignore them.
That accords more or less with the views of other pro-independence, pro-E.U. Scots. “London doesn’t care what Scotland thinks,” a bioethicist and longtime nationalist said. I ask for an example. “The Iraq War. We were overwhelmingly opposed in Scotland. The U.K. went to war anyway. And it’s been the same with most wars London wanted to wage.”
Okay, but if self-determination is the goal, why not leave Britain and the E.U.? There are a few nationalists who would do that, but only a few. Most, if I read them correctly, don’t think sovereignty is the issue at all.
“The E.U. is far from perfect,” an SNP political staffer told me. “But there are undeniable benefits.” She points out that if you need admission to a hospital in France, you’re seen immediately and the hospital is reimbursed by Britain’s National Health Service. Similarly, “if you want to set up a branch office of your company in Amsterdam, you can do it without the nightmare of regulation and paperwork that used to be a matter of course.”
She acknowledges that independence will be tough at first, economically and politically, but insists that the alternative — “successive Labour and Tory governments in Westminster that totally ignore Scotland’s interests” — would be far worse.
These arguments are honorable and cogent, and it seems altogether likely that Scots will eventually achieve independence and E.U. membership on the strength of them. Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is a clever and tough politician, and she is determined that Scotland will have both.
What strikes me about today’s Scottish nationalism is that it’s entirely political and not in any substantial way cultural. It’s concerned preponderantly with laws and government structure. It’s about policy directives and the allocation of public resources — tax rates, social welfare programs, fishing regulations — and only has to do with home rule insofar as home rule means social democracy and soft diplomacy rather than economic liberalism and the use of military force.
Nationalism can emancipate or enslave; it can break the back of an empire or move the masses to great evil; it can liberate or oppress. Yet today’s Scottish nationalism can do neither. It’s not murderous like the IRA or racist like fascism; not remotely. But neither does it desire political and cultural autonomy for its own sake, as for instance the Czechs did under the Habsburg empire or as Ukrainian nationalists do now. Scotland’s is a post-national nationalism — one that cares far less about who governs than about what that governance looks like in practice. It is peaceable and beautiful in its way, but no one would die for it.Veteran slugger Carlos Delgado announced his retirement on Wednesday in San Juan, Puerto Rico, saying he was unable to work his way back to the majors after years of being hampered by injuries.
Delgado, widely regarded as one of baseball's most productive hitters in his prime, retired with 473 career home runs and ownership of several Toronto Blue Jays all-time offensive records.
"I always said I would try to return until my body had enough. And my body could take no more," the 38-year-old Delgado said Wednesday. "I've been training two years and recently tried yet again to increase the routine of work, but the swing was not there to compete at the level I want," he added.
"There comes a moment when you have to have the dignity and the sense to recognize that something is not functioning," he said. "You can't swim against the current."
In the 17 seasons he played as an outfielder, first baseman and designated hitter with the Blue Jays, Florida Marlins and New York Mets, Delgado hit 30-plus home runs 11 times and cracked the 40-homer plateau three times. He was an All-Star in 2000 and 2003.
Delgado signed with the Blue Jays as an amateur free agent in 1988 and spent parts of 11 seasons in Toronto. He played one season in Florida before joining the Mets in 2006. He led New York to the playoffs that season -- its most recent postseason appearance -- with 38 home runs and 114 RBIs.
In the 2006 playoffs, Delgado batted.351 (13 for 37) with four home runs and 11 RBIs as the Mets came within a game of reaching the World Series.
Delgado struggled with hip injures his last few seasons, limiting his ability to play. His last major league appearance came as a Met in 2009, as his attempt to catch on with the Boston Red Sox last season ended after five games at Triple-A Pawtucket.
Carlos Delgado finished his career with a.280 average and 473 home runs. Suministrada
The pain that usually struck every training session was too much to endure, Delgado said.
"And this coming from a man who had nine operations," he said. "It is a sad moment as a human being and athlete that some of your abilities aren't what they once were."
Delgado won the Hank Aaron Award in 2000, the Silver Slugger Award in 1999, 2000 and 2003, and the Roberto Clemente Award in 2006.
"The time I played I enjoyed it big," Delgado said of his career. "No excuses, no complaints. When I signed to play professional baseball I knew my body would suffer."
Delgado said he was proud to have represented Puerto Rico in the majors.
"I've always carried the flag of Puerto Rico in my heart," |
Big Finish listeners.
Opening story Doctor Who: Technophobia by Matt Fitton sees the travellers team up with Bex - played by Niky Wardley (Eighth Doctor companion Tamsin in Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures). She's joined by Rachael Stirling (Doctor Who: The Crimson Horror, Doctor Who: Dark Eyes 4), Chook Sibtain (Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars, Doctor Who: The Feast of Axos), Jot Davies (New Tricks, Casualty) and Rory Keenan (The Worlds of Doctor Who, Doctor Who: The Darkness of Glass)
Then in Jenny T Colgan's Doctor Who: Time Reaver, Dan Starkey (TV's Strax) and Terry Molloy (TV's Davros) lead a guest cast including Alex Lowe (Doctor Who: Find and Replace, Jago & Litefoot: Series 1), Sabrina Bartlett (Doctor Who: Robot of Sherwood) and the legendary John Banks (Survivors, Doctor Who - The War Doctor 1: Only The Monstrous, Doctor Who: The Lost Stories and countless other productions!)
Finally, in Doctor Who: Death and the Queen by James Goss, Donna Noble's marriage to the charming Rudolf (Blake Ritson – Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Box Set, Doctor Who: Gods and Monsters) is opposed by Beth Chalmers (The Seventh Doctor's companion Raine), Alice Kreig (Star Trek: First Contact, Doctor Who: Phantoms of the Deep) and Alan Cox (Doctor Who: The Roof of the World, Doctor Who: The Second Doctor Box Set).
Doctor Who – The Tenth Doctor Adventures will be released in May 2016 - exclusively on the Big Finish website. Each of the three titles are available to pre-order separately today for just £10.99 on CD or £8.99 to download. A bundle of all three titles is also available for £25 on CD and £22 to download!
All three stories are also available in the Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor Adventures Volume 1 – Limited Edition set. Limited to just 5,000 copies and available exclusively from bigfinish.com, this lavish book-sized box set includes exclusive artwork, photography, articles and a one-hour documentary featuring interviews with the stars and production team. You can pre-order the set today at the special price of £30 on CD or £25 to download – offering a £5 discount against the release price!When the cameras were turned off at the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis on Tuesday and the media were hustled out of the room, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni provided some of the most arresting moments of the private gathering of top international officials.
Livni opened her speech with a challenge to the Arab representatives arrayed around the table, most of whose countries do not have diplomatic relations with Israel. Sixteen of the 22 members of the Arab League had representatives in the room, including Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal.
"Why doesn't anyone want to shake my hand?" she asked. "Why doesn't anyone want to be seen speaking to me?"
"She was saying 'Stop treating me as a pariah,' " said Frans Timmermans, the Dutch Minister for European Affairs, who was present. "They shun her like she is Count Dracula's younger sister."
Before arriving, Faisal had publicly said he would not shake the hand of any Israeli, dismissing such gestures as mere theatrics.
Rice, for her part, brought the meeting to close with highly personal and reflective comments that connected her childhood in the segregated South with the challenges facing Israelis and Palestinians.
Both Timmermans and a U.S. official in the room said the gathering became deadly silent as Rice spoke, every eye riveted on her. Rice spoke without notes or script, and no transcript was made, but the two officials provided similar accounts of her remarks. The U.S. official asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss Rice's remarks.
Rice began by saying she did not want to draw historical parallels or be too self-reflective, but as a young girl she grew up in Birmingham, Ala., "at a time of separation and tension."
She noted that a local church was bombed by white separatists, killing four girls, including a classmate of hers.
"Like the Israelis, I know what it is like to go to sleep at night, not knowing if you will be bombed, of being afraid to be in your own neighborhood, of being afraid to go to your church," she said.
But, she added, as a black child in the South, being told she could not use certain water fountains or eat in certain restaurants, she also understood the feelings and emotions of the Palestinians.
"I know what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian," she said. "I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness."
"There is pain on both sides," Rice concluded. "This has gone on too long."Small talk gets a bad reputation. To avoid this allegedly meaningless drivel, people skip networking events. Or, almost as bad, they attend, but talk to the three people they already know.
This is shortsighted, says Debra Fine, author of The Fine Art of Small Talk. “Small talk is the appetizer for any relationship,” she says, and people like to do business with those with whom they’ve established common ground. “A good networker is looking to foster relationships and build a community never knowing how that contact can help now or in the future. My motto is ‘every conversation is an opportunity for success.’” Here’s how to do small talk better:
While you can hope for the best, don’t expect too much from any given chat. If you come to cocktail hour hoping for nothing more than a good restaurant or book recommendation, you can relax and enjoy yourself, and be pleasantly surprised by anything else that happens. Relaxed people are, incidentally, more enjoyable for others to be around too.
“I never approach a meeting, an industry function, or a networking event without at least three things to talk about,” says Fine. “When is the worst time to come up with something to talk about? When you have nothing to talk about!” In particular, she practices a solid answer to “How are you?” or “How are things?” so she doesn’t respond with an “unhelpful one word answer” that forces a conversation partner to do much of the work.
While questions are generally good, leading with one carries risk. You might ask about the one topic the person doesn’t want to cover: “How’s work?” results in “They just announced huge layoffs” or, more likely, an evasive answer and awkward silence. Some people might view asking a direct question at the start of a conversation as rude.
Instead, volunteer something positive about a topic that’s potentially common ground, so the person can choose to reciprocate. “Our host said she just got back from California” lets the person talk about the host, vacations, business she’s done in California, a time she visited California, etc.
Most people like to talk about themselves, so asking questions is a good way to follow up once you’ve established a safe topic. Avoid close-ended questions (“Did you go on Space Mountain?” could be answered “No”) and instead ask about favorite memories. That lets people tell their best stories.Stephen A. Smith reacts to the news that the Knicks and Bulls have agreed to a deal that will send former All-Star point guard Derrick Rose to New York. (1:28)
The Knicks acquired Derrick Rose from the Bulls on Wednesday, hoping the former NBA MVP can be their answer at point guard.
New York traded center Robin Lopez, guard Jose Calderon and guard Jerian Grant to Chicago, which shipped guard Justin Holiday, Rose and a 2017 second-round pick back to the Knicks.
A Chicago native, Rose was drafted by the Bulls with the No. 1 overall pick out of Memphis in 2008. A source close to Rose said he was very emotional about leaving Chicago because of all his great memories there but that he wanted the big stage of New York.
Once Rose got word the Bulls were looking to trade him, the source said, he hoped it would be to the Knicks.
"His first choice was New York," the source said. "He wants the spotlight."
Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf called the trade a "hard one" to make.
"Everyone knows him as the local kid who became MVP for his hometown team, but not everyone got to know him like I did," Reinsdorf said in a statement. "While he is a terrific basketball player, he is an even better person with a tremendous heart."
ESPN reported last week that the Knicks had internal discussions recently about trading for Rose. Both Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek and general manager Steve Mills had said that the team was interested in upgrading its point-guard position in the offseason.
End of An Era for Rose in Chicago • 1st overall pick in 2008 NBA draft
• 2008-09 Rookie of the Year
• 2010-11 NBA MVP
• 1 conference finals appearance (lost to Heat in 2011)
• Signed 5-yr/$94M extension in Dec. 2011
• Tore ACL in 2012 first round vs. 76ers
• Missed entire 2012-13 season; played 10 games in 2013-14
• Played in 39 percent of possible games since 2012-13 season
-- ESPN Stats & Information
Rose has battled injuries since he was named NBA MVP in the 2010-11 season. However, he did show improvement in 2016, averaging 17.7 points (including 8.4 in the paint), 45.3 percent shooting from the field and 55.3 percent shooting on drives to the basket during the new year. That should help the Knicks, whose starting point guards averaged a league-low 7.6 points per game in 2015-16 and shot just 44.7 percent on drives to the hoop.
"This is an exciting day for New York and our fans," Hornacek said in a statement. "Derrick is one of the top point guards in the NBA who is playoff-battle-tested. He adds a whole new dynamic to our roster and immediately elevates our backcourt."
Rose, 27, is owed $21.3 million in the final year of his contract. He will be a free agent after the 2016-17 season.
A six-year veteran, Rose seemed like the perfect fit for Chicago after it drafted him.
He led the Bulls to the top of the Eastern Conference in the 2010-11 regular season, leading the franchise to success it hadn't enjoyed since the Michael Jordan era. But he wrecked his knee for the first time in the playoffs the following year, and since then, he hasn't had the speed that once made him one of the league's most dazzling young stars and a seemingly perennial All-Star.
Rose In Decline A look at Derrick Rose's performance in the four years after he was drafted and since shows numbers that have dropped off. 1st 4 Yrs Since PPG 21.0 16.9 FG pct 46.4 41.2 APG 6.8 4.8 Pct games played 89.4 38.7 -- ESPN Stats & Information
Rose hasn't been back to the All-Star Game since 2012 and has often had trouble just playing in the real games. He sat out all of the 2012-13 season, made it back for 10 games in 2013-14 and appeared in a little more than half the Bulls' games in 2014-15.
But he did play in 66 games last season, his most in five years, and averaged 16.4 points.
A source said Knicks star Carmelo Anthony reached out to Rose's camp in the days leading up to the trade but the sides were unable to connect.
Former Bulls teammate Jimmy Butler thanked Rose in an Instagram post.
Lopez, an eight-year veteran, started all 82 games for the Knicks last season, averaging 10.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and 1.57 blocks.
Calderon, another NBA veteran, started 72 games in 2015-16, posting averages of 7.6 points and 4.2 assists.
Grant was selected 19th overall out of Notre Dame in the 2015 NBA draft. He played in 76 games as a rookie, averaging 5.6 points and 2.3 assists, which ranked eighth among first-year players.
Lopez ($13.5 million), Calderon ($7.7M) and Grant ($1.6M) are owed a total of $22.8 million next season. Trading all three players cleared up more than $13 million in guaranteed money from the Knicks' books for the summer of 2017.
The Knicks will need to replace Lopez this offseason, and some members of the organization would like to target Bulls center Joakim Noah, sources say. Noah is close with Rose and also has a good relationship with Anthony.
Another potential option for New York is free-agent center Dwight Howard. The Knicks are one of several teams that Howard would consider in free agency, league sources say, but their interest in Howard is unclear at this point.
The club will have at least $30 million to spend in free agency.
Bulls general manager Gar Forman said the club was eager to add Lopez, who he said adds "toughness" to Chicago's roster.
"As we said at the end of last season, we are committed to exploring every option to improve this team," Forman said. "This trade is a significant step in that process. Our goal is to get younger and more athletic, and this trade moves us in that direction and allows us to start changing the structure of our team. In Robin Lopez, we are acquiring a starting center who is a good defender, good rebounder, and brings a toughness to our team. Jose Calderon is a proven veteran who can run an offense and knock down threes. Jerian Grant was high on our draft board last year as someone with a great skill set and positional size. All three players are great teammates and have tremendous work ethic, and we are excited to welcome them to the Chicago Bulls organization."
The Knicks will have a news conference Thursday at 6 p.m. ET.
The Chicago Tribune first reported the deal.
Information from ESPN's Chris Broussard, Ian Begley, Marc Stein and The Associated Press was used in this report.LONDON, July 16 (Reuters) - Gay marriage is to become legal in England and Wales after the lower house of the British parliament approved the final changes on Tuesday to a law that had Prime Minister David Cameron's backing but split his ruling Conservative party.
The law had the support of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, Britain's two other main political parties, but damaged Cameron's standing within his own party with many of his own lawmakers criticising him for being too liberal.
His own MPs had previously twice voted against it.
After a two-hour debate, the House of Commons passed the bill, meaning it now only needs to be approved by Queen Elizabeth, a formality.
"The title of this bill might be 'Marriage', but its fabric is about freedom and respect," said Culture Secretary Maria Miller, adding that traditionalists should not feel their concept of marriage had been undermined.
"Freedom to marry regardless of sexuality or gender, but also freedom to believe that marriage should be of one man and one woman, and not be marginalised," she said.
The prime minister personally endorsed the bill to try to show his party was progressive, but that upset some Conservatives who said their Christian beliefs led them to oppose marriage other than between a man and a woman.THE WAR ON VENEZUELA IS BUILT ON LIES In this analysis, John Pilger looks back over the Chavez years in Venezuela, including his own travels with Hugo Chavez, and the current US and European campaign to overthrow Nicolas Maduro in a 'coup by media' and to return Latin America to the 19th and 20th centuries.
JOHN PILGER'S CALL TO 'BREAK THE SILENCE' AT THE POWER OF THE DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL IN SYDNEY In a keynote speech at the 'The Power of the Documentary' festival he curated, John Pilger described the 'noise' of the media, its integration into national security aims of western states and its silencing effect across journalism, film-making, the arts. Over ten days, 26 documentaries, many of them rare and prescient, such as 'Hearts and Minds' and 'The War Game', 'The Quiet Mutiny' and 'Stealing a Nation', were screened to audiences at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Riverside Theatres.
READ THE KEYNOTE SPEECH
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE. THE REPORTERS ARE MISSING In his foreword to a powerful new book by David Edwards and David Cromwell, the founders and editors of Media Lens, Propaganda Blitz, John Pilger asks what happened to an age of eyewitness reporting and to journalism that relied on evidence.
THE ISOLATION OF JULIAN ASSANGE IS THE SILENCING OF US ALL In this letter, twenty-seven writers, journalists, film-makers, artists, academics, former intelligence officers and democrats call on the government of Ecuador to allow Julian Assange his right of freedom of speech.
JOHN PILGER ON A HIDDEN HISTORY OF WOMEN WHO ROSE UP John Pilger describes a women's rebellion in which his own 'intractable' forebear took part and which leads us to ask: where is such a spirit of resistance today?
THE URGENCY OF BRINGING JULIAN ASSANGE HOME A salute to Julian Assange by Rogers Waters at his concert in Berlin on 3 June In this address to mark Julian Assange's six years of confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, John Pilger calls on the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to recognise the urgency of decisive diplomatic action and bringing Assange home.
JOHN PILGER AND ROGER WATERS BACK JUNE VIGILS AND RALLIES FOR JULIAN ASSANGE On 19 June 2018, it will be six years since Julian Assange was forced to take refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He had been warned that the US planned an extradition warrant for his arrest. His 'crime' was that of a scrupulous editor - WikiLeaks had revealed the war crimes of the US. Today, Julian has never been more isolated, and his health is failing. On Sunday 17 June, the SEP will stage a rally for Julian in the heart of Sydney, Australia, his homeland. This is backed by John Pilger, Roger Waters, Julian Burnside QC and Terry Hicks, father of former Guantanamo prisoner, David Hicks. John Pilger will address the rally from the steps of Sydney Town Hall, which starts at 1pm. On Tuesday 19 June, there will be a rally and vigil outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, beginning at 6pm. Other vigils will be held outside British embassies around the world on the same day. In Dublin, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mariead Maguire and members of the Irish parliament, Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, will speak in support of Julian outside the British embassy.
ABORIGINAL PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO PROTEST THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES AS STOLEN WEALTH Amy McQuire tears away the facade on the Commonwealth Games currently under way in Australia, on Queensland's Gold Coast. Australia has a long history of presenting a sunny, sporty picture of itself, complete with Indigenous icons and 'celebrating' native people. There is rarely a hint of the greatest theft of land in recorded history and the brutality that accompanied it, especially in Queensland, the bloodiest state, and which goes on today.
THE 'CAREFULLY CONSTRUCTED DRAMA' OF THE LATEST ANTI-RUSSIA CAMPAIGN Watch John Pilger in this commentary on the British Government's accusations against Russia over the poisoning of the double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, not far from the Porton Down facility where chemical weapons are developed.
JULIAN ASSANGE WAS SET UP FOR 'REASONS THAT ARE OBVIOUS' On the day a London judge decided the bail case against Julian Assange would not be dropped 'in the public interest', John Pilger in this interview described the background to the latest revelations of collusion between the Crown Prosecution Service and the Swedish authorities.
LISTEN NOW
ROBERT PARRY 1949-2018, AN EXTRAORDINARY JOURNALIST John Pilger writes: Robert Parry, one of America's greatest journalists, has died, tragically. He was 68. I had the privilege of honouring Bob Parry in London last June when I presented him with the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Bob's work for the Associated Press and as founder and editor of consortiumnews.com was a beacon of principled, often courageous journalism in a landscape of compliant, distorted anti-journalism that now misrepresents our craft in the misnamed'mainstream'.
All of us at the prize-giving dinner were stunned by the power of his original thought, eloquence and historical understanding in the address he gave, off the cuff, in which he demystified and laid bare the rise of rapacious power in Washington. Following is a link to a fine eulogy by Bob's son, Nat Parry. I ask readers to take up Nat's suggestion and donate to Consortium News - https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/28/robert-parrys-legacy-and-the-future-of-consortiumnews/ - and keep alive Bob Parry's legacy, also described here in Dennis Bernstein's tribute on Radio KPFA Berkeley, California.
BRITISH LIBRARY ACQUIRES JOHN PILGER ARCHIVE AND STAGES TWO-DAY 'POWER OF THE DOCUMENTARY' EVENT The British Library has acquired John Pilger's entire written archive, with work reaching back to the 1960s, along with hundreds of his interviews.
The official announcement can be found on the British Library website.
To mark the acquisition of the Pilger archive, 'The Power of the Documentary', the Library has staged a festival of John Pilger's films and others representing the best of the craft. This was the first time the British Library has honoured a documentarian in this way.
As part of the festival, John Pilger gave this address: 'Why the documentary must not be allowed to die'. Read an edited version here.
You can also watch John Pilger interviewed about the British Library event on Going Underground and on BBC Radio London.
HOW THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA WERE MISLED AND CAN RISE AGAIN Returning to South Africa, John Pilger delivers an inaugural lecture in Cape Town in memory of the anti-apartheid campaigner, Abdulhay Ahmed Saloojee. He asks why the struggle for freedom has yet to be won, why a form of apartheid still rules and why this oppression has become a model for much of the world in the 21st century.
WATCH THE LECTURE
You can also watch John Pilger's 1999 film Apartheid Did Not Die on this website.
THE COMING WAR ON CHINA - NEW SPECIAL SCREENINGS SCHEDULED John Pilger's film, The Coming War on China, proves more relevant with every day of the Trump presidency. There are two special screenings coming up in London...
Rio Cinema, Tuesday 28 November, 6pm: Fundraiser screening for Stop the War Coalition. Followed by a Q&A with John Pilger.
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The Barbican, Friday 8 December, 1.50pm: Screening as part of the Global Health Film Festival. Followed by a one-hour conversation with John Pilger.
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CLINTON, ASSANGE AND THE WAR ON TRUTH John Pilger describes the obsequious media support for Hillary Clinton's score-settling book about her failed attempt to win the US presidency - title, What Happened - notably by the ABC in Australia. He analyses her attacks of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, whose disclosures of her warmongering and corruption were blamed for her losing to Donald Trump.
THE RISING OF BRITAIN'S 'NEW POLITICS' As the Tories plot to get rid of Prime Minister Theresa May, John Pilger analyses the alternative Labour Party, specifically its foreign policy, which may not be what it seems.
THE KILLING OF HISTORY Reporting from New York, John Pilger describes the re-writing of the history of the Vietnam War in the 10-part television series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Millions died "in good faith", they say. And so yet more wars are justified - as President Trump tells the world he is prepared to "totally destroy" North Korea and its 25 million people.
ON THE BEACH 2017. THE BECKONING OF NUCLEAR WAR. In a new essay, John Pilger recognises Nevil Shute's novel, On the Beach - on which a Hollywood film was based - as a forgotten masterpiece, which conveys an urgent warning of how close we may be to nuclear war in 2017.
THE KILLING FIELDS OF AUSTRALIA - A MATTER OF ROUTINE Chris Graham reports on the trial in Perth, Australia of the white man who killed Elijah Doughty, an Aboriginal teenager, and the litany of killings and injustice that preceded it and mark the other Australia behind the sunny mask.
Palestine is still the issue Read the abridged version of John Pilger's address to the Palestinian Expo 2017 in London in July 2017.
ROBERT PARRY WINS 2017 MARTHA GELLHORN PRIZE FOR JOURNALISM Read John Pilger's remarks in presenting the 15th Martha Gellhorn Prize to the American journalist Robert Parry at a dinner in London on 27 June 2017.
GETTING JULIAN ASSANGE: THE UNTOLD STORY Following the news that Sweden has dropped its case against Julian Assange, John Pilger draws together his investigations into the pursuit and persecution of the founder of WikiLeaks.
TERROR IN BRITAIN: WHAT DID THE PRIME MINISTER KNOW? In this investigation, John Pilger raises questions about the role of the British 'deep state' in the atrocity that killed 22 in Manchester on 22 May 2017.
The universal lesson of the courage of East Timor On May 5, John Pilger was presented with the Order of Timor-Leste by East Timor's Ambassador to Australia, Abel Gutteras, in recognition of his reporting on East Timor under Indonesia's brutal occupation, especially his landmark documentary film, Death of a Nation: the Timor Conspiracy. The following was Pilger's response...
AUSTRALIA BECKONS A WAR WITH CHINA Australia is sleep-walking into a confrontation with China. Wars can happen suddenly in an atmosphere of mistrust and provocation, especially if a minor power, like Australia, abandons its independence for an "alliance" with an unstable superpower.
THIS WEEK THE ISSUE IS NOT TRUMP. IT IS OURSELVES. John Pilger argues that the obsession with Donald Trump, as the liberals' ultimate demon, masks an enduring complicity in creating him and his predecessor in the White House.
JOHN PILGER GUEST EDITS DECEMBER ISSUE OF THE NEW INTERNATIONALIST John Pilger says: "I am delighted to be back in the New Internationalist as guest editor. This issue's keynote and supporting articles are the result of two years' work on a documentary film about the shift of the world's economic power east, to China, and the US reaction to this challenge to its dominance. Losing its economic prowess, Washington has turned almost obsessively to its military might; and the prospect of nuclear war is no longer unthinkable. What I found in Asia, the Pacific and the US, was not only evidence of great risk and folly, but extraordinary resistance to a coming war among island people on the frontline: the Marshalls, Okinawa, Jeju: faraway places of which we may know little but which offer an inspiring example as they face the most powerful military machine. This NI is both a tribute to them and a warning, and will, I hope, raise an issue we all need to understand and act upon." Keynote: The Coming War on China Feature: Bikini was just the beginning
THE SECRETS OF THE US ELECTION: JULIAN ASSANGE TALKS TO JOHN PILGER In this exclusive, revealing and moving filmed interview, Julian Assange discloses the truth behind the investigation of Hillary Clinton, and his own political refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. The interview was filmed on 30 October 2016.
Watch the full interview here
Read the full transcript of the interview here
INSIDE THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT: WAR, PROPAGANDA, CLINTON & TRUMP In an address to the Sheffield Festival of Words, in Sheffield, John Pilger describes the 'invisible' and all-powerful role of media propaganda.
Provoking nuclear war by media In describing the exoneration of one of the West's demons, John Pilger argues that a western media campaign to demonise and goad Russia is leading inexorably to war.
Why the British said no to Europe John Pilger argues that the referendum result represents a deeper, more dynamic anger than the reasons rehearsed by politicians and the media and offers a glimpse of hope.
Silencing America as it prepares for war Writing from the United States, John Pilger joins a momentous election campaign - his fourth as a reporter - and suggests that the sound and fury may not be as it appears.
Starvation in Australia: Utopia's dirty secret In this latest report on the vast Indigenous region in Australia known as Utopia, John Pilger reveals a dirty secret.
Trump and Clinton: Censoring the unpalatable A virulent if familiar censorship is about to descend on the US election campaign. As the cartoon brute, Donald Trump, seems almost certain to win the Republican Party's nomination, Hillary Clinton is being ordained both as the "women's candidate" and the champion of American liberalism in its heroic struggle with the Evil One.
A world war has begun. Break the silence. In an address at the University of Sydney, John Pilger describes the beckoning danger of a nuclear war and the propaganda that smothers dissent.
The rape of East Timor: "Sounds like fun" John Pilger, whose film, Death of a Nation, revealed the atrocities and political machinations that befell tiny East Timor reports on the discovery of documents that reminds us of the enduring piracy of great power.
Freeing Julian Assange: the last chapter John Pilger describes a landmark judgement in the Julian Assange case that may see the WikiLeaks founder walk free after five years.
Australia's day for secrets, flags and cowards John Pilger describes the real meaning of 'Australia Day', a national day celebrated and mourned.
Paris, the Middle East and the propaganda of a coming war John Pilger is interviewed on Russia Today's 'Going Underground' on the unmentionables in western political and media life and the rapid drumbeat for a major war.
From Pol Pot to ISIS: The blood never dried Following the ISIS outrages in Beirut and Paris, John Pilger updates this prescient essay on the root causes of terrorism and what we can do about it.
JOHN PILGER'S FILM 'CAMBODIA YEAR ZERO' NAMED AS ONE OF ITV'S 60 GREATEST PROGRAMMES On the 60th anniversary of the founding of ITV, Britain's and Europe's biggest commercial broadcaster, John Pilger's groundbreaking film, 'Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia', has been named as one of the network's 60 top programmes.
'Cambodia Year Zero', as it became known, was credited with alerting the world to the suffering of the people of Cambodia under the fanatical regime of Pol Pot. It raised tens of millions of pounds for Cambodia's children - mostly unsolicited - and became the most watched documentary throughout the world.
Watch the film and read John Pilger's account in his anthology 'Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs'.
The message of Anzac: Put out more flags, or shut up In this article for the Sydney Morning Herald, John Pilger compares the heroism of those with moral courage with the'sludge' of fake patriotism.
The secret country again wages war on its own people In a major article for the Guardian, John Pilger follows the release of his film 'Utopia' with an investigation into a new attack on Australia's indigenous people, which has been called 'cultural genocide'.
Why the rise of fascism is again the issue In a major essay, John Pilger describes a 'Faustian Pact' that allows the suppression of a modern fascism in the West and its reliance on propaganda as news, and the beckoning of a war that rarely speaks its name.
The struggle of Venezuela against 'a common enemy' Children in Venezuela benefit from the country's first free universal education. With a'slow motion coup' under way in Venezuela, John Pilger is interviewed for Telesur, the Latin American TV network, by Mike Albert.
The Coming War between America and China - the new documentary project from John Pilger 'Journey' is an overworked word these days, but I can think of none other to describe the making of a documentary film. Ten years ago, a film of mine could be made in six months, even less. The main work was the research, the journalism.Whenever I felt confident I had the basis of a'story', I would go to the ITV Network in the UK and seek a broadcast commission. If that was forthcoming, ITV would fund the production. The difference now is that I, the film-maker, must raise most of the production money. Also, my documentaries have changed considerably in recent years. They are now made for the cinema as well as TV, and for the internet.
I've made three films this way, The War on Democracy (2007), The War You Don't See (2010) and Utopia (2013). Utopia took more than two years to make.
In raising the money for these films, I've been fortunate to find sympathetic philanthropists and foundations, and persuade them to contribute without attaching any editorial strings. But these benefactors are rare, and tracking them down is probably the hardest part of film-making now and, frankly, not the kind of work I ever saw myself doing - I've always preferred simply to do the job I knew - journalism.
I've lately embarked on another film journey - this will be my 60th documentary. ITV has commissioned the film, and provided seed money. The working title is The Coming War Between America and China, and the film will tell the largely unreported story of a new US strategic policy known as 'the pivot to Asia'. In a nutshell, what this means is that the US is preparing for a new provocative cold war that has every chance of becoming a hot war. Washington has begun to move its main missile and naval forces into the Asia-Pacific in order to surround and 'confront' China, whose extraordinary economic rise in recent years is regarded in Washington as a threat to American dominance. For obvious reasons, I won't lay out here the 'where, what and why'. Suffice to say the film will be shot in some surprising places where I'll meet and interview extraordinary people. Above all, it will be revealing: that is assured.
Having read this far, you're sure to guess that this message is heading towards another modern cliché - an 'ask'. My colleagues at Dartmouth Films and I need to raise at least £60,000 or $100,000 in order to start making the film. This money won't meet unforeseen costs or pay for distribution and promotion, but it will allow for the promised philanthropy, on which the bulk of the film's funding depends, to come on stream and for filming to begin.
And that's where you come in.
This is known as 'crowd funding' and, as you can guess, it's my first day in this strange new world. If you can give £5 - that's about $10 - no more - I'll be grateful. For your part, you'll have made a vital contribution to a film whose disclosure and warning are, I believe, urgently needed. I'm hopeful you'll be proud of the result. Thank you.
You can contribute here
War by media and the triumph of propaganda John Pilger's address to the Logan Symposium, 'Building an Alliance Against Secrecy, Surveillance & Censorship', organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism, London, 5-7 December, 2014. You can also watch the address here
The siege of Julian Assange is a farce - a special investigation John Pilger investigates the rise of WikiLeaks and the Kafkaesque saga that has enveloped its founder, Julian Assange, since he blew the whistle on the dangers and lies of great power and its courtiers.
The forgotten coup - how America and Britain crushed the government of their 'ally', Australia In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger marks the death of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam with the one story missing from the 'tributes' to a man whose extraordinary political demise is one of America's dirtiest secrets.
From Pol Pot to ISIS: “Anything that flies on everything that moves” In his latest essay, John Pilger evokes the US bombing of Cambodia in the 1970s, which gave rise to Pol Pot and the genocidal Khmer Rouge, in examining the rise of the equally fanatical ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the role of Western governments, and the urgent need for solutions that include a truce in Syria, and justice for the Palestinians.
War, circus and injustice down under In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger reports on how the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, seeks to regain his lost popularity with an outback circus in which he performs in the role of war leader.
John Pilger on the 'unmentionables' in Australia On 31 August, following the release of his latest film Utopia, John Pilger spoke at the 'Festival of Dangerous Ideas' at the Sydney Opera House. In conversation with Liz Ann Macgregor, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, he discussed the devotion in Australian public life to the 'a status quo of unmentionables'. You can watch the conversation here. Interviewed by Channel 7's Andrew O'Keefe in Sydney ahead of the FODI, John Pilger describes how an insidious censorship works in a free society such as Australia. Watch the extended online version of the interview. On 11 September, John Pilger gave the Edward Said Lecture in Adelaide, in memory of the great Palestinian educator, writer, visionary. His subject was 'The Last Taboo: Gaza and the threat of world war'. Read an adaptation of the lecture.
The return of George Orwell and Big Brother’s war on Palestine, Ukraine and the truth In his latest essay, John Pilger describes the liberal "one-way, legal/moral screen" behind which great power and its Orwellian propaganda ensure an impunity for war and deception, dependent on what Leni Riefenst |
surveys was initially carried out in an attempt to locate the site of this quite remarkable monument. This led to the demonstration of a pointed-oval formation, which extended between a surviving northern burial mound and the remains of a now demolished and totally removed southern burial mound, evident as a circular depression. Several large stones were also located in the intervening area. Careful archaeological investigations reinforced the supposition that the site of the ship setting had been located.
An extensive metal-detector survey was carried out in conjunction with the archaeological investigations. This led to the recovery of the metal finds from the centre of the structure, which must be from a cremation grave.
The finds date the ship setting to around AD 600. This is the time when a new and powerful elite and monarchy emerge, with the major royal residences at Lejre and Uppsala, and in England with the royal ship burial at Sutton Hoo. The new kings and magnates appear to have had close links across this large area. They used the same symbols and had almost identical rich animal-style ornamentation on their artefacts. The ship was central to their burials, either in the form of actual ship burials or stone ship settings.
“The Vejerslev burial reveals a previously unknown aspect of this story, with the largest ship setting ever found from the period, containing gold finds fully on a par with those we see at other elite sites, even though the funeral pyre has destroyed a great deal,” says Mads Kähler Holst.
Due to the remarkable character of the site there is a wish to have the monument scheduled, and work on this is already in progress.
It is also the intention – in the long term – to visualise and present the monument on-site at Vejerslev and to open the area to the public.
Pictures
Fig. 1: Reconstruction of the enormous ship setting Høj Stene on the day around 1400 years ago when the king begins his journey to the afterlife on a huge funeral pyre. Graphics: Eric Sosa, Moesgaard Museum.
Fig. 2: The finds date the ship setting to around AD 600. This is the time when a new powerful elite and monarchy emerge in Scandinavia, with the major royal residences in Lejre in Denmark and in Uppsala in Sweden, and in England, with the rich royal ship burial at Sutton Hoo. Graphics: Louise Hilmar, Moesgaard Museum.
Fig. 3: Partially melted remains of gold and bronze artefacts from the rich cremation grave in the ship setting. The gold finds include a piece of decorated gold foil, which dates the grave to the Late Iron Age, around AD 600. Photo: Rógvi N. Johansen, Photo/Media Department, Moesgaard Museum.Held last week in New York City, the annual International Emmys event is the world-facing iteration of the entertainment arts awards institution that is the Emmys. While big names like Kenneth Branagh, Anna Friel, and the BBC took home accolades for their work in television at the awards ceremony itself, so much of what makes the International Emmys special is the festival of panels and screenings that accompanies its yearly offerings.
This year, SingularDTV hosted a widely anticipated panel titled “Blockchain in Entertainment” at the International Emmys, and CEO Zach LeBeau and President of Entertainment Kim Jackson appeared alongside Wall Street Journal finance reporter Paul Vigna to introduce the concept of blockchain technology and what it can offer the entertainment industry to a crowded room of television industry creatives and executives.
Watch just a teaser of the panel below…
“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Bitcoin,” began Paul Vigna. The wide-ranging and informative discussion proceeded for over an hour and ranged from explanations under the hood of blockchain technology to the launch of Tokit and SingularX, and the myriad ways in which blockchain will rewrite entertainment business models from advertising to distribution to production.
“I think a really core concept of blockchain technology is that it erases borders and allows anything that can be digitized to move anywhere around the world, virtually in real time. That is a really powerful concept,” said Vigna.
“The internet was a way to give us communication. Blockchain is giving us a way to have value exchange directly with each other,” said Jackson. “It will be very powerful, a place where we can all thrive and create together.”
Many of the career entertainment industry professionals in the room likely had their socks blown off by the implications laid forth by Jackson and LeBeau, particularly in regards to how blockchain and SingularDTV are already creating decentralized solutions for problems like digital rights management, project funding, and content distribution.
A lively Q+A proceeded the panel, and there was a lot discussed that will be of interest to longtime supporters of SingularDTV who may be looking for hints on what’s next for tokenized entertainment ecosystems.
Check out this video of whole panel to get in the know…
SingularDTV: Twitter // Facebook // LinkedIn // Slack // RedditIn his first interview, Oliver Dowden, David Cameron’s deputy chief of staff who oversees domestic policy, disclosed that he was “surprised on a day-to-day basis” by the news agenda.
The admission will add to concerns that the Prime Minister’s office is “dysfunctional” and unable to influence events following the resignation of key members of staff.
The Daily Telegraph has learnt that several members of the Cabinet are now privately giving warnings that the growing allegations of government incompetence will undermine the Conservatives’ re-election efforts.
One Cabinet minister said that Mr Cameron needed to “sharpen and harden” the Downing Street operation as the Conservatives would be judged on “competence, not compassion”.
In an interview with an American public broadcaster at the end of last month, Mr Dowden, nicknamed “Olive” by other aides, gave a rare insight into the uncertainty inside Downing Street.
He said: “Most of my time is spent on day-to-day crisis management — is the term we use.”
The aide jokingly added that “we are not permanently in crisis” before disclosing how he was trying to ensure that Conservative MPs stayed “on message” during media interviews.
However, he admitted that he often only discovered the daily political agenda by listening to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Of course, the first thing I do in the morning, if I’m not woken up by my very young children, I turn on the Today programme and hear what’s going on,” he said. “Hopefully we will have some sense of what’s coming up anyway, but often you’ll get surprised by what’s going on …”
Asked when he was last surprised, he replied: “I’m surprised on a day-to-day basis. There is no accounting for the conduct of individuals.”
Last week, the Government found the news agenda dominated by the continuing
“plebgate” scandal over Andrew Mitchell, a row over the Chancellor travelling first class by train and a botched energy announcement made by Mr Cameron.
Positive unemployment figures, a fall in the crime rate and the lowest hospital waiting time figures were all overshadowed.
Mr Dowden’s remarks were in contrast to previous Downing Street communications chiefs who would boast that they could correctly guess the following day’s headlines. Many senior Labour figures are privately amazed that Mr Cameron’s advisers appear to have lost control and are being buffeted by events just two years after the election.
Several Cabinet ministers have become critical of the Downing Street operation, which is said not to focus enough on long-term strategy. Civil servants are increasingly influential on policy.
It is also alleged that the team regularly lacks the ability to make swift, firm decisions on issues such as whether to defend disgraced ministers such as Mr Mitchell.
One Cabinet minister said: “We will be judged on this incompetence. Margaret Thatcher was not liked but she was backed by the public because she was seen as effective.”
The minister added that the Downing Street machine was “dysfunctional”. “There has been no political heavyweight adviser since [Andy] Coulson and [Steve] Hilton left,” he said. “[George] Osborne is the only political figure left with influence in No 10.”President Bush on Wednesday night leveled his most aggressive criticism yet of the Democratic Party and its presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, by mocking his campaign mottos of “hope” and “change.”
Mr. Bush, speaking to a partisan crowd at a Republican fundraiser in the D.C. Convention Center, also criticized the Supreme Court’s recent decision awarding certain due process rights to suspected enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Though he did not mention Mr. Obama by name, the president, who previously made only a few references to Mr. Obama’s candidacy, took the gloves off for the first time, testing out lines likely to be used in numerous stump speeches between now and Election Day.
Saying that “this election season is just beginning,” Mr. Bush began by portraying Mr. Obama’s signature phrase, “hope,” as a symbol of foreign policy naivete.
“The other side talks a lot about ‘hope,’” Mr. Bush said. “And that sums up their Iraq policy pretty well: They want to retreat from Iraq and hope nothing bad happens.
“But wishful thinking is no way to fight a war and to protect the American people,” the president said to applause.
Mr. Bush praised Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, as “tested” by adversity, a man of experience who “will not flinch,” and said he is the only candidate with those qualities “in trying times.”
The president also said unequivocally that the Democratic Party cannot be trusted to prevent terrorism in the U.S.
“The war on terror is the great challenge of our time. And on this vital issue, the Democratic Party has repeatedly shown it would take America down the wrong direction,” Mr. Bush said.
He referred to the Democratic-controlled Congress’ failure to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, their opposition to aggressive interrogation techniques that at one point in 2002 are known to have included “waterboarding,” attempts to defund the war, and their overall stance on Iraq.
Declaring that “a democracy is taking root” in Iraq, Mr. Bush said Democrats are ignoring progress sparked by his surge of 30,000 troops last year, and labeled them the party of retreat.
“The Democrats declared the surge a failure before it began. And now that the surge has turned the situation around, they still call for retreat,” Mr. Bush said.
The Obama campaign said it had no immediate comment.
But Mr. Obama continued to campaign Wednesday night on his familiar themes, telling a fundraiser crowd at Ethel Kennedy’s house in McLean, “We will not just win this election. We will inspire a generation. … We will change the world.”
The president also for the first time Wednesday publicly criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on detainee rights at the U.S. Navy Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.
Mr. Bush called the 5-4 decision granting enemy combatants the right to challenge their incarceration in U.S. civilian courts “judicial activism that frustrates the American people.”
“A bare majority of five Supreme Court justices overturned a bipartisan law that the United States Congress passed and I signed to deliver justice to detainees at Guantanamo Bay,” Mr. Bush said. “With this decision … hardened foreign terrorists now enjoy certain legal rights previously reserved for American citizens.”
Mr. Bush said the decision was “a fresh reminder of the importance of the courts” and said only Mr. McCain can be trusted to “put good judges on the bench.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.E3 2016: Hands-On Time With Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization
I went back to Aincrad, baby.
06.17.16 - 1:05 AM
I should probably preface this article with the fact that I have only a passing familiarity with thefranchise. I've watched the first half or so of the anime series with a college roommate, and we've covered past games based on it here at RPGFan, but that was the extent of my experience. I also haven't played any MMORPGs outside of a brief foray intothat isn't worth going into. So when I had the opportunity to check out the next action-RPG based on thelicense,, at this year's E3, and was immediately presented by what I can only assume is an accurate representation of a late-game MMO action bar... well, suffice it to say I was kind of overwhelmed.
Fortunately, the combat in Hollow Realization was actually a lot easier to get into than I assumed. Like previous games in the series and the obvious point of comparison,.hack, it strives to emulate the feeling of playing an MMORPG with online teammates, and it does so rather successfully from the brief demo I was able to play. Your party members will declare when they're activating a Sword Skill and give the player an opportunity to add their own attack to the chain, in a manner similar to Xenoblade. The massive action bar also wasn't nearly as intimidating as it first appeared, and was easy to cycle through while delivering the Kirito smackdown to wild boars and venomous alligators.
It's hard to judge the game as a whole based on an eight-minute demo, but the representative from Bandai Namco reassured me that fans of Sword Art Online will be pleased to see a new story from the series' creator, as well as more development of the various party members, such as Silica and Lisbeth. Hollow Realization will be out later this year for PS4 and Vita.The Declaration of Independence When in the Course of Human Events...
Menu Menu
Welcome to ushistory.org's Declaration of Independence website. This site provides a wealth of information about the signers of the Declaration, the history of the Declaration, and an online version of the Declaration for you to read.
The site also provides links to other Declaration-related biographies and histories. This site is a good resource for anyone curious about the Declaration and its history, or for the student who needs resources for his or her research paper.
Where is the original Declaration?
The original Declaration is now exhibited in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom in Washington, DC. It has faded badly, largely because of poor preservation techniques during the 19th century. The document measures 29-3/4 inches by 24-1/2 inches.
See picture.
What's on the Back?
People who watched the popular movie "National Treasure" want to know. On the back, at the bottom, upside-down is simply written: "Original Declaration of Independence / dated 4th July 1776." Regarding the message on the back, according to the National Archives, "While no one knows for certain who wrote it, it is known that early in its life, the large parchment document was rolled up for storage. So, it is likely that the notation was added simply as a label." There are no hidden messages.
Do we have unalienable or inalienable Rights?
In the final version, we have unalienable Rights!
The text and image of the Declaration.
The Signers of the Declaration of Independence
This section gives a profile of every delegate who signed the Declaration in 1776. You will find factual information such as birth-death dates, occupation, education, etc. Each signer also has a short story of his life. A good resource for students.
Related Information
This section provides a listing of people (George III, Patrick Henry, etc.), Events and Things (Boston Massacre, a Tax Stamp, etc.), and Laws and Resolutions (Sugar Act, Quartering Act, etc.).
Thomas Jefferson's Account of the Declaration
Read the lengthy excerpt from Thomas Jefferson's autobiography that talks about the days leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the history of the document, and various other factors which involved the authoring of the Declaration.
The Declaration House
Here is where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration. The house has been reconstructed and is now part of Independence National Historical Park. The Independence Hall Association, host of these web pages, led the efforts to have the Graff House reconstructed in 1975, in time for the Bicentennial.
Declaration Timeline
A Chronology of Events, June 7, 1776 to January 18, 1777.
Revolutionary War Timeline
A Chronology from the French and Indian War to the Constitution
More Information
A collection of orations and newspaper clippingsPresident Obama and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk before an economic leaders meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit. (Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
President Obama's two terms in office have been marked by one of the deepest partisan splits over presidential job performance in history.
As the Pew Research Center found in its annual evaluations of job approval, the gap between the ratings of Democrats and Republicans has been bigger for Obama than for any other past president, thanks in large part to Republicans consistently rating his job performance particularly poorly.
That played to Donald Trump's advantage over the course of the primaries: Trump was fervent in his willingness to disparage the current president at every opportunity, crossing lines that other Republican candidates wouldn't. (It didn't begin this year, of course; his adamant questioning of whether Obama was born in the United States was what really launched his political career in 2011.)
At the same time, Trump has embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin, in part because Putin serves as a foil to Obama and in part, it seems, because Trump embraces Putin's more autocratic leadership style. (A year ago, for example, Trump waved away Putin's apparent role in the killings of journalists critical of his presidency.)
Putin's praise of Trump personally and his country's apparent hacking of the Democratic National Committee in order to sway the presidential election in Trump's direction seem to have helped to solidify Trump's attitudes toward the Russian leader. It's been a fascinating departure from decades of tension between the United States and Russia — and between Russia and leaders in Trump's own party.
After the Obama administration announced sanctions against Russia this week in response to the hacking, Trump waved the issue away, saying that it was time to “move on to bigger and better things.”
When Putin then declined to retaliate against the United States for the sanctions, Trump offered his thoughts on Twitter.
Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2016
It should go without saying that this is a remarkable statement. The president-elect of the United States, a person who has insulted hundreds of people and organizations on Twitter, chooses to praise the leader of a foreign adversarial state — in part because that leader is sticking it to Obama.
What's more, Trump apparently wanted to ensure that the world knew how forcefully he believed in his praise of Putin, pinning the tweet to the top of his timeline so that anyone visiting his Twitter page would see it (though he later unpinned it) and even sending out the same verbiage over Instagram.
Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart! A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Dec 30, 2016 at 12:07pm PST
Russia, understandably, was quite pleased with the tweet, and its embassy in the United States retweeted it. International diplomacy in 2016.
As our Aaron Blake noted earlier, Trump's position on Russia and Putin has put him at odds with much of the rest of his party, forcing them to try to find a path between opposition to a hostile foreign nation and support of their party's leader. Part of that divide stems from the fact that Putin is now viewed much more favorably by Republicans than he used to be, according to data from YouGov polling.
Here is Republicans and Democrats on Vladimir Putin since July 2014. pic.twitter.com/s4I6FY5cbt — Will Jordan (@williamjordann) December 14, 2016
After Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, there was a brief surge in comparisons between Obama and Putin. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin — both of whom eventually endorsed Trump with enthusiasm — praised Putin's strength in relation to Obama. “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil,” Palin said on Fox in 2014. “They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates.”
The fact that Putin stands as a leader in opposition to Obama makes it easier for Republicans to embrace him. Even the Heritage Foundation, which rose to prominence during the Cold War administration of Ronald Reagan, tweeted a comparison that framed Putin favorably in contrast to Obama.
Vladimir Putin respects two things: strength and consistency In the last eight years, President Obama has shown neither. pic.twitter.com/dPv9h7NeUO — Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) December 30, 2016
Trump's praise of Putin on Friday was typically over the top but still deeply atypical for an American politician — much less a president-elect. Part of this is personal to Trump, certainly. But part of it, too, is that American politics is so partisan that even someone who clearly hopes to see America's power and influence wane can earn kudos for opposing a Democratic American president.Copyright by WIVB - All rights reserved
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (WIVB) - Public transportation riders with physical and developmental disabilities joined Independent Living of Niagara County, at a gathering in Niagara Falls' Hyde Park, to protest the NFTA's decision to cancel the Metro bus route between Niagara Falls and Lockport.
There are three cities in Niagara County, and Route 55L was the only direct connection between the two largest cities. Now opponents say Metro bus riders traveling between Lockport and Niagara Falls have to go all the way to Buffalo to complete their journey.
Lynne Neveu, chief of staff for Niagara Falls Assemblyman John Ceretto, said that is a three-and-a-half hour ride, "It's a 7-hour round trip to get from Niagara Falls to Lockport, and back. It's insane."
Until Monday, the 55L started in Niagara Falls, went to Niagara County Community College, adjacent to BOCES, and then on to downtown Lockport. As of the cancellation, the leg from NCCC to Lockport has been eliminated.
Todd Vaarwerk of the Independent Living Center said dropping Route 55L is more than an inconvenience for clients of the center.
"We've had public housing developments that located where they did because NFTA service was available, and then service was subsequently removed. These people end up being isolated, they start to medically decline, and then they end up in nursing homes."
Sen. Robert Ortt whose district includes Niagara Falls and Lockport charged, the cancellation is impacting those with physical and developmental disabilities the most.
"There are folks with developmental disabilities who are displaced, and now have no way to get to their doctors visits, to get to the grocery store, to see a loved one, and that reduces their ability to live independently."
But NFTA officials point out, para transit service, called PAL is available for customers of Route 55L with disabilities who have signed up, and spokesman Doug Hartmayer said as of Monday, there were only two registered. The PAL service ends next March.
Hartmayer also said Niagara County's public transportation service called Rural Niagara can take riders from Niagara Falls to NCCC, and from there the NFTA can get them to Lockport.
"They have 4 trips per day, where we have matching service where people would be able to go and continue their route, via the Metro and the Rural Niagara connecting at NCCC."
Hartmayer said those 4 routes hooking up Rural Niagara Public Transportation with the NFTA at NCCC would avoid the need to take the bus all the way to Buffalo just to get to Lockport.
For more information about the Rural Niagara Public Transportation's service, which is operated under contract with Niagara Falls Coach Lines, Inc., the telephone number is 716-285-9357. To find out about routes and times, here is the link for public transportation at Niagara County's website.You can visit our official website and check the rules here:
https://www.48isff.com
Please read the following submission requirements carefully before you complete our online entry form.
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Films could be premiered anywhere in the world. However, we give priority and preference to movies that haven’t yet premiered in Los Angeles. So, don’t wait to submit your film.
If your film is selected, we will ask you to email us a higher resolution.
You can also submit multiple entries (with different movies), but you must complete a separate entry form and pay the entry fee for each film.
Films must have been completed anytime in the last three years. (From January 1, 2016, until November 2019)
Non-English films will also be accepted but must have English subtitles.
Do NOT send Press kits or extra materials.
DEADLINES
Early Deadline: February 28, 2019
Regular Deadline: September 30, 2019
Late Deadline: December 22, 2019
FEES
Shorts under 30 minutes, for each entry:
Early Deadline: $69.99
Regular Deadline: $79.99
Late Deadline: $89.99
SELECTION
Film selection for the 48 Independent Short Film Festival will going through the judging process by the screening committee headed by the creator and executive producer of our festival, Mr. Francesco Vitali.
Filmmakers will be notified via email of acceptance.
AWARDS
Best Film of 48ISFF
Best Director
Best Cinematographer
Best Screenplay
Best Editing
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best Ensemble
Check our rules in details at our official website: www.48isff.comPoker’s supreme ranking authority the Global Poker Index is all set to launch its own ‘World Cup’ of poker with the announcement of the Global Poker Masters. Set to debut in 2015, The Global Poker Masters will be the culmination of a year-long GPI Player of the Year points race between the world’s top poker countries, as well as between the top players from each country.
The fight to quality for a place in the Global Poker Masters will be a two-fold battle, with the top 9 highest ranked countries qualifying to compete, and the top 4 players from each qualifying country – based on GPI Player of the Year points accumulated over a 12 month period – winning the chance to take a seat and compete on behalf of their nation. This is a player-centric event, with no rake and a structure conducive for media and fans to follow live.
The GPI has gone from strenght to strenght in the past couple of years. From being an external poker ranking agency to acquiring HendonMob, pokers best stats and database to taking over the European Poker Awards to launching a country based poker championship, GPI is surely doing its bit as a poker stake holder.
The GPM will give a chance to the best poker players of the world to play for national recognition and celebrate their poker success in their country. While the concept of a country based poker championship isn’t very new but GPM’s format looks better equipped to take the implementation to the next level.
Some early details of GPM as listed by the GPI Website are as follows:
Event Name: Global Poker Masters
Date & Venue to be held at: GPI is currently in the final stages of deciding the best place and time to run the GPM, with venue and date set to be announced this July.
Format : Multi-Round Sit ‘N Go Invitational-Only Tournament with a $10K Buy-In (tba) and $100K Added-Money Prizepool.
Exposure: the Global Poker Masters will be Live-Streamed online with feature table play aired on TV (to be confirmed).
For further details visit Global Poker Masters website.Prince, ‘Sign ‘o’ the Times’
1987: One of Prince’s first forays into social commentary.
EL-P When this came out, it was the first time I had really heard him say anything this directly. It opened me up a little bit, tuned my brain a little bit more. I started considering a few other things. He’d already taken me this far. When the moment came for him to say, “Now I need you to listen,” I was right there.
KILLER MIKE I just thought Prince was about [sex]. As I kid, I picked my place — I picked rap. When rap happened, I didn’t [care] about pop music. Because my world went crazy, from a neighborhood where families had gardens and goats and chickens, and people spoke to each other. Crack ripped through, and it was like Lebanon. I couldn’t make sense of any of that. All I gave a [expletive] about was music that moved me from the perspective of saying that the world is going mad.
EL-P He’s damn sure saying that on this.
Zack de la Rocha, ‘Digging for Windows’
2016: Produced by El-P; the Rage Against the Machine singer’s first single from a coming album.
KILLER MIKE Do you understand the significance of him rapping about solitary confinement? For people who pretend to be religious in this country, they always forget the part where the Bible tells them to look after not only the sick and poor, but the prisoner. We are still putting people into slavery. We’re going to put this human being in a room that is smaller than this, and then we’re going to put that human being in that room for 23 hours a day.We should close Northern Ireland Troubles files and leave the past where it belongs, in the past BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Hardly a day goes by without one or other group calling for inquests, a public inquiry, a new investigation, or justice arising from events during the Troubles. There is a huge and swelling residue of loss, anger, grief and hurt on all sides, but especially among the relatives of the 3,600 murder victims and the survivors of the estimated 500,000 crimes which were committed during the 30 years of conflict since 1968, very many of which remain unsolved. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/we-should-close-northern-ireland-troubles-files-and-leave-the-past-where-it-belongs-in-the-past-35141424.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/article35141423.ece/0fec1/AUTOCROP/h342/2016-10-19_opi_25613194_I1.JPG
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Hardly a day goes by without one or other group calling for inquests, a public inquiry, a new investigation, or justice arising from events during the Troubles. There is a huge and swelling residue of loss, anger, grief and hurt on all sides, but especially among the relatives of the 3,600 murder victims and the survivors of the estimated 500,000 crimes which were committed during the 30 years of conflict since 1968, very many of which remain unsolved.
But the merits of virtually re-running the tragedies of the Troubles by formal investigative, or judicial, means must be questioned on several fundamental counts:
Is it in the wider public interest to pick so deeply at the scabs of our violent history that we prevent them from ever healing?
Is the vast cost in financial and human terms truly worth it, in that any process will inevitably stretch indefinitely into the future, prejudicing our fragile peace process, denying many of the victims and survivors - the real casualties of our conflict - any meaningful remedy?
As any truth process will inevitably be a selective one, how can it satisfy all the outstanding issues, with the added danger that only those who have campaigned the most vigorously will have their concerns assuaged? Many survivors nurse their grief and grievances in private solitude.
For fundamentally differing reasons, the various parties to what has become known as the "legacy" issue have adopted such rigid and unyielding standpoints that many people believe the real objective is to indefinitely smother any rigorous investigative process until those with long-lingering concerns either lose interest, or themselves pass away.
Another factor in the deadlock is concern to protect reputations, or revise the historical narrative, for partisan ends. Against this background, it is necessary to outline the standpoints and attitudes of the main participants to understand the deadlock.
The Cost of the Troubles academic study attributes most of the fatalities - 59% - to the various republican groups, overwhelmingly the Provisional IRA. But, nearly two decades into the "peace process", they have maintained a rigid omerta, refusing to reveal, or elaborate in anything but obscure, or general terms, about what they did and why.
Indeed, Gerry Adams, who was a very public proponent of the republican campaign, consistently insists he was never even in the IRA.
His confrere, Martin McGuinness, has adopted a more subtle standpoint: he will confess all only when a comprehensive "truth recovery" process is in place, an unlikely prospect given the ongoing deadlock. Memoirs by former activists have revealed sometimes contradictory insights, but the bigger picture remains wilfully opaque.
The study estimates that 28% of victims were killed by loyalist paramilitaries, whose ongoing activities are dominated by drug-trafficking and organised crime using patriotism as a mask for rampant criminality.
Here, too, there is a marked reluctance to reveal anything of the rationale for the many atrocities attributed to them, but some former members have decided to tell all in return for immunity from prosecution by testifying against their former comrades in crime.
These individuals, along with various official reports, have revealed scandalous links to and actual collusion with rogue members of the security forces, helping them to target victims and even escape detection. Such proven links have combined to foster a wider sense of injustice and undermine the very integrity of the police and Army charged with protecting the wider community.
While the vast majority of police officers and soldiers operated with brave and selfless commitment (302 RUC and 763 soldiers died), 11% of all fatalities were caused by the security forces, frequently in controversial circumstances, fuelling allegations of a tacit "shoot-to-kill" policy encouraged by nods and winks from on high that those concerned would be protected from prosecution.
Against this background, it was inevitable that any post-peace efforts to resolve the enduring inheritance of the violent years would become a major political issue, primarily for both the sovereign Irish and British Governments, the most influential partners in the agreements that underpinned the end of the conflict. For their own reasons, both have been presented with sensitive questions they would rather not answer publicly.
Although the Irish Government was not a direct party to the conflict, it was dragged into the collateral machinations and, from time to time, presented with legal and political dilemmas overspilling the border.
It caused much British frustration by refusing to extradite suspects north because their claim to have committed "political" offences was originally upheld by the Irish courts.
There were also a number of outrages in Dublin, as well as numerous cross-border incidents, which remain mysteries, because they may reveal embarrassing failings. The Smithwick Tribunal (€15m) into the 1989 murder of two senior RUC officers as they crossed the border, reinforced allegations that cross-border security and co-operation was far from ideal for many years.
This sobering outcome for the Irish Government was equivalent, for the British Government, to the Saville report (cost £195m over 12 years) into the events of Bloody Sunday in 1972, when British soldiers were held responsible for the deaths of 13 unarmed civilians.
But any hopes that the British Government had that the thoroughness and cost of the investigation would calm calls for similarly exhaustive processes have been dashed. Instead, they have been forced to pour many more millions of pounds into historical investigations, with more being demanded, triggering a process which has been haunted by general dissatisfaction on the part of the victims and survivors exacerbated by the unwillingness of many former police officers and soldiers to assist.
Although many instances of unlawful conduct by members of the security forces were conclusively established, the vast majority of former soldiers and police officers now deeply resent the perception that the primary focus of post-peace investigation is overwhelmingly centred on their conduct in entirely trying and dangerous circumstances.
There is particular resentment that the soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday are being tracked down and interviewed as part of a criminal investigation. As a result, a coalition of former soldiers who were injured in terrorist incidents have themselves made complaints to the police in Northern Ireland seeking to have equally vigorous investigations to bring their attackers to justice.
Retired police officers, too, have voluntarily funded legal proceedings to clear the RUC of wrongdoing as a result of damning reports from the PSNI and the Police Ombudsman.
The DUP, whose leader, Arlene Foster, the daughter of a former police officer who survived a murder bid at the family home, has vetoed the £10m requested by the Lord Chief Justice, because she fears outstanding legacy inquests will further besmirch the reputation of the police and Army.
For its part, Sinn Fein is frustrated that the British Government clings to the spurious need to protect national security to avoid having to disclose anything about the secret war involving undercover units and informers, often with collusion between security forces and loyalist terrorists.
At present, the two governments and the Stormont parties are in lengthy negotiations to traverse this tangled web. Various approaches to alleviate the distress of victims and survivors have been rejected, but despite the overall economic challenges, there is the still the prospect of endless inquiries, stretching years ahead at a cost of millions.
There are enduring open wounds on all sides, but is preventing them healing the most appropriate way ahead? Wouldn't it be better to close all the files, leave their analysis to history and give the money saved to victims and survivors now to provide them with the specialised assistance many badly need?
Chris Ryder is author of The RUC 1922-2000: A Force Under Fire (Arrow)
Belfast TelegraphNEWS RELEASE
ALGOMA UNIVERSITY
*************************
Statement from Algoma University
Earlier today the Board of Governors of Algoma University accepted the resignation of Dr. Craig Chamberlin, President of the University. Dr. Chamberlin, who was with the university for the last 18 months has decided on returning to Saskatchewan to be with his family.
On behalf of the Board of Governors, we wish Dr. Chamberlin the best in his future endeavors.
“I want to thank everyone at Algoma University and in the Sault Ste. Marie community for welcoming me here. Although my time spent in the community will be short, I truly enjoyed the experience and value the opportunity that I received to engage in this leadership role,” said Dr. Chamberlin.
“Algoma University is a unique and special place, one with great potential to be a remarkable university and I wish everyone well on that journey."
The Board of Governors welcomes Dr. Celia Ross who will be returning as Acting President and Vice-Chancellor, until a new president is appointed.
Dr. Ross is familiar to the university and Sault Ste. Marie community having served as President and in senior academic leadership roles within the institution.
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Time magazine’s editor, Richard Stengel, took a lot of crap last week |
Campbell and features a cover gallery by John Cassaday, Matt Wagner, Alex Ross, and more!
“Excellent work from top to bottom, from story to art, from satchel to paige!” – Major Spoilers
“Wagner plays to his strength with period pieces, and this book is a winner.” – Blog Critics
“Green Hornet: Year One is a terrific comic series and does justice above and beyond to one of the great classic radio heroes of all time. Any pulp fan worth his fedora would be wise to pick it up.” – Pulp Fiction ReviewsFormer interim Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman Donna Brazile in a new interview referred to 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's 2016 presidential campaign as a "cult."
"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough said during Brazile's appearance on the MSNBC show on Wednesday that he thinks President Trump won the 2016 election because of mistakes the Clinton campaign made, former FBI director James Comey and the influence of Russia.
"I'll put it all in there, but it should have never been a close race," he said.
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He then asked: "Why did they lose? Was it at the end of the day arrogance?"
“It was a cult,” Brazile said. “I felt like it was a cult. You could not penetrate them.”
Brazile said she is a "grass-roots organizer."
"I know how to touch people where they live, work, play and pray," she said.
"I cannot help a candidate if I don’t have the resources, if I cannot spend the resources that the party is raising.”
Brazile said during an interview earlier this month she found "no evidence" that the 2016 Democratic presidential primary process was fixed.
“The only thing I found, which I said, I found the cancer, but I’m not killing the patient, was this memorandum that prevented the DNC from running its own operation," she said.
The remarks followed a previous release of a passage from Brazile's book, in which she described a memo she discovered between Clinton's presidential campaign, the DNC and Clinton's joint fundraising committee that said the campaign would "control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised."Housing affordability: Glenn Stevens appointed by Gladys Berejiklian to advise NSW Government
Updated
The row about housing affordability has reignited in the New South Wales Parliament after Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced she had hired former Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens to advise her Government on the issue.
Ms Berejiklian told Parliament she has set up a cross-government working group to develop strategies to help first-time home owners enter the market and Mr Stevens' advice would be invaluable.
"I've asked him to provide advice on all the options that we are considering already as a Government on this very important public issue and I believe there is no-one better qualified to undertake this very important task," Ms Berejiklian said.
Ms Berejiklian vowed to make housing affordability a top priority when she became Premier last month, saying she wanted every hard-working person in the state to be able to aspire to own their own home.
Sydney's housing has been rated less affordable than global metropolises New York and London in a recent survey which rated property "severely unaffordable" for middle-income households.
Under Mr Stevens leadership, the Reserve Bank advocated changes to negative gearing at a federal housing affordability inquiry in 2015.
The Opposition seized on the Premier's announcement by asking Ms Berejiklian what she would do if Mr Stevens recommended the State Government push the Federal Government to reform negative gearing.
"If Glenn Stevens recommends reform of negative gearing, as urged by your former planning minister Rob Stokes, will you support that reform or will you conveniently exclude that matter from Mr Stevens' term of reference?" Opposition Leader Luke Foley asked.
Ms Berejiklian brushed aside the question.
She has previously tried to avoid being drawn into a debate about negative gearing, after then-planning minister Mr Stokes publicly advocated for changes.
In Parliament, Ms Berejiklian's Housing and Planning Minister Anthony Roberts tried to turn the tables on Labor, accusing them of doing nothing to address the issue of housing affordability when they were in government.
"Do not try to lecture this Government on housing affordability, because we are not just building houses, we are building the infrastructure," Mr Roberts said.
"We will make homes more affordable and I can assure the people of New South Wales that this Government will not take the failed, do-nothing Labor approach," Mr Roberts said.
Topics: state-parliament, housing, nsw
First postedSomalia's new president visited victims wounded by the Mogadishu car bomb that on Sunday killed 34.
President Mohamed Abdulahi Mohamed also offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those who planned the blast.
Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo is offering $100,000 to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest of those who planned the first major attack since he was elected on Feb. 8. (Feisal Omar/Reuters)
Many of the dead were carried away by their relatives soon after Sunday's blast in the western part of Mogadishu, said Capt. Mohamed Hussein.
"It was a horrific and barbaric attack only aimed at killings civilians," he said from the scene of the blast.
Busy time at market
Ambulance driver Sabriye Abdullahi said some of the injured victims died on their way to the hospitals.
"Many of them suffered extensive third-degree burns and others were burned beyond recognition," he said.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack in the western part of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. However, the Islamist al-Shabaab group often carries out such attacks. (Farah Abdi Warsameh/Associated Press)
The blast near a restaurant went off at a busy time when shoppers and traders were gathered inside the market, said district commissioner Ahmed Abdulle.
Mohamed Haji, a butcher who suffered shrapnel wounds, pointed to a clothes shop devastated by the blast. "Someone had parked the car here and left before it was detonated," he said. Pieces of wood and metal sheets on the ground were all that remained of the shop.
First attack since election
Women sobbed and screamed outside the market as rescue workers moved bloodied bodies and wounded victims into ambulances.
"It's a painful carnage." said Ali Mire, a government soldier who was helping a friend with shrapnel wounds.
A shopkeeper surveys the wreckage of shops destroyed in the blast. (Farah Abdi Warsameh/Associated Press)
The powerful explosion was the first major attack since Somalia's new president was elected on Feb.8. Although no group has yet claimed responsibility, it bears the hallmarks of Somalia's Islamic extremists rebels, al-Shabaab.
In a Twitter post, President Mohamed condemned the blast, saying that it shows the "cruelty" of al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab's territory mostly gone
A few hours before the blast, al-Shabaab denounced the new president as an "apostate" and vowed to continue fighting against his government.
Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, in a statement condemning the attack, said that "Italy remains solidly on Somalia's side in the process of the country's stabilization." He added that "together we will act so that the terrorists don't succeed in stopping the path of peace and reconciliation that is underway."
Al-Shabaab has been able to carry out increasingly deadly bombings despite losing most of its territory to African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government.
Civil war has torn apart Somalia since 1991. Aid agencies warn that a severe drought has placed large swaths of the country at risk of famine.Share
South Korean scientists have created a beagle that glows green in certain types of light, adding yet another animal to the growing list of genetically modified dogs and cats produced in recent years.
Tegon, the glowing, two-year-old beagle, glows with a bright, fluorescent green hue under ultraviolet light when a particular drug is added to her food, according to a new report published in the scientific journal Genesis.
Discovery News reports that the glowing dog was created using a complicated process of genetic manipulation, with the end goal of the project being a system in which researchers can study the course of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The paper’s co-author, ByeongChun Lee, indicated that dogs’ susceptibility to a high number of the same genetic diseases afflicting humans makes any ability to chart the course of those diseases extremely valuable to research.
According to Lee, genes that trigger some of the 268 degenerative diseases that affect both humans and dogs could easily be added to the drug used to “turn on” the glowing effect.
Lee also noted that Tegon was not harmed in any way by the process.
It’s worth noting that Tegon is far from the first glowing animal created by scientists for similar purposes. Most recently, scientists developed a red fluorescent puppy named Ruppy, as well as glowing cat named Mr. Green Genes.
Of course, anyone who’s ever tripped over a sleeping dog or cat during the middle of night will appreciate the less-scientific applications of this research.
You can watch a Reuters report on Tegon below:The following is a guest post from our senior CBA correspondent Beantown Canuck. Beantown Canuck is a Nucksmisconduct regular, and a lawyerly type who resides in New York. He used to live in Boston but he now denies the existence of such a place. Beantown Canuck loves to look into and analyze the CBA, and may, or may not, derive a quasi-sexual satisfaction from such an activity that he calls "a lawyerboner." Here’s his take on Rule 13.23 of the current NHL/NHLPA CBA which, is the rule that requires players like Antti Miettinen to pass through waivers upon being signed, if they were previously under contract with a team overseas in the same season.
This is a Guest post from Beantown Canuck.
Alright Canucks Army, since I know you all loved my article on the ramifications of falling under the cap floor, I’m back to serve you some more hot, steamy NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement analysis. Today let’s talk about everyone’s favourite rule: Rule 13.23. What is Rule 13.23 you ask? Well you wouldn’t be asking if you were Antti Miettinen, or Evegni Nabokov, or Kyle Wellwood (in the case of Wellwood, for reasons beyond the fact that it’s hard to ask questions with a hoagie in your mouth). Rule 13.23 is the reason Antti had to forego the bikini’d beaches of Tampa for the cruel winters of Winnipeg. It is the reason why Evgeni couldn’t help Detroit overcome their torturous three season Stanley Cup drought and instead had to throw a hissy before eventually joining the Islanders. And it is the reason Kyle somehow missed out on St. Louis and had to instead join those “unafraid of losing” dynamos in San Jose.
This is Rule 13.23:
In the event a professional or former professional Player plays in a league outside North America after the start of the NHL Regular Season, other than on Loan from his Club, he may thereafter play in the NHL during that Playing Season (including Playoffs) only if he has first either cleared or been obtained via Waivers. For the balance of the Playing Season, any such Player who has been obtained via Waivers may be Traded or Loaned only after again clearing Waivers or through Waiver claim.
Basically, Rule 13.23 requires that any player who plays in a European professional league during an NHL season must pass through waivers before being allowed to play in the NHL during that season. As a result of this rule, in the case of Miettinen, Nabokov and Wellwood (who all left the KHL midseason), each was picked off waivers. But from the perspective of the interests of the NHL and the NHLPA, the two parties to the CBA, what’s the point of this rule?
Without question this rule is adverse to the goals of the NHLPA, whose purpose is to advocate for the interests of its members. Rule 13.23 adds a powerful element of risk to any team wishing to sign this category of players, inherently making teams less likely to do so. Furthermore, Rule 13.23 denies the player the element of control over where they play. This category of players basically only get to decide whether or not they are willing to sign a particular NHL contract, and then they leave it to Russian Roulette to determine for which team. Without this rule, players who begin a season in a European league and leave such league midseason would simply return to the free agency status they would have had prior to the season, with all the control that goes with it. The NHLPA is always in pursuit of increasing free agency rights for its members, and surely it should oppose this rule.
I also thing this rule is adverse to the interests of the NHL, whose purpose is to aggregate the interests of the owners/management of the 30 NHL clubs, whose individual goals are some unholy combination of “winning games” and “making money”. Rule 13.23 further ties the hands of league GMs who wish to shakeup their squads midseason. The addition of the salary cap under the current CBA makes midseason roster change difficult because you have to strike a balance between imposed financial limitations and hockey decisions on two separate teams to work something out. It no longer just takes two to tango—it now takes two plus both of their accountants. But for teams that have saved cap space or that have developed a sudden need for another warm body because of injuries (which can create unexpected LTIR cap space midseason), having the potential to bring in NHL caliber players currently outside the system can be a valuable alternative course to take. This rule effectively makes it no option at all, or at least no better than a crapshoot. Teams won’t bother trying to sign these players except as a desperation move, because as experience has shown, in all likelihood you’ll just be doing one of your 29 competitors a favour.
Perhaps I’m overlooking something. Perhaps there are some teams that prefer a system that makes it hard for these players to return to the league—maybe some teams (Islanders? Jets? ) think that they would have trouble signing players in such a fashion, so at least the waiver requirement gives them the same chance of picking up these players as any other team. Or perhaps less wealthy teams who wouldn’t be willing to add additional players to their payroll want this rule to partially level the playing field by deterring other teams from doing so as well. But considering that few players would ever be available through this route, and considering how for the most part players in this category only went to Europe in the first place because no team wanted to sign them for much money, instituting this rule for these purposes seems excessive to me.
I reached out to other hockey aficionados to see what they think the rule is for. In conversations over the interwebs, James Mirtle of the Globe and Mail initially suggested to me that maybe this rule is to appease the concerns of the European leagues. If correct, this seemed to me to be a redundant and overreaching reason to impose the rule. The NHL has in place transfer agreements with all of the major European hockey leagues other than the KHL, under which they agree, amongst other things, that no NHL team will sign a player under professional contract with any of those leagues. So the European leagues (other than the KHL) didn’t need further protection under the CBA, and if the KHL refuses to play nice with the NHL, why should the NHL grant them any favours?
Along a similar vein, Thom Drance of, well, here, suggested to me that maybe the NHL wanted this rule to deter players from cashing in over in Europe for the beginning of the season while awaiting a better offer to return midseason to the NHL. Again, this is a redundant concern for most leagues because of the transfer agreements. With respect to the KHL’s exclusion from the transfer agreement regime, the NHL could have created a simpler rule stating that no player may breach a contract with another professional league if they’ve played in that league during an NHL season in order to come play in the NHL during that same NHL season. That would have still left open the possibility for the NHL to steal away KHL players (i.e. Malkin) in the offseason while closing the door on players starting seasons in the KHL with the intention of breaching contract and running back to the NHL when a sweeter offer comes in. And for the last two seasons even this possibility has become a non-issue, because after a few years of mutual poaching between leagues (e.g. Radulov went the other way), last season and this season the KHL and NHL have entered into a “memorandum of understanding” under which they’ve agreed to cease and desist such practices. So as it stands now, the NHL treats KHL players the same as players in any other major European league—they have to be released from their existing contract in order to try and come back to the NHL. Antti, Evgeni and Kyle all were granted release from contracts to leave their KHL teams for various reasons. They were otherwise powerless to just up and jump ship and seek a better offer in the NHL.
2Mirtle later suggested that perhaps this rule is in place to prevent teams from manipulating the cap. But I’m not sure how teams could manipulate the cap by signing players who played in European leagues earlier in a season. And I really don’t understand why, if there is some sort of cap manipulation involved, such manipulation wouldn’t also be the case for signing free agents who don’t play anywhere until they receive a midseason deal to their liking (such players are not beholden to a waiver requirements). If someone can explain to me a good argument as to how this rule curbs cap manipulation I’d like to hear it.
The long and short of it is I don’t get this rule. I want these players to be able to come back and play in the NHL, and I want this to be a legitimate option available for teams to pursue. I hope when the next juicy, sexy, exciting CBA is agreed to (which hopefully happens this offseason, fingers crossed), Rule 13.23 will be dead and gone.
For those of you who want to join the cool kids and start analyzing the NHL CBA for yourselves, you can find a copy of it here. Have fun!
Beantown Canucks is a strident lawyerly type. Follow him on twitter here.Novelty currency is worth almost three million times less than the crypto-currency flagbearer
Almost twice as many daily crypto-currency transactions are made in Dogecoin than Bitcoin.
The novelty currency, based on the popular Doge meme, sees roughly 90,000 transactions made each day, according to digital currency tracker Bitinfocharts.
In comparison, Bitcoin, seen by many to be the flagbearer for digital currency, sees approximately 54,000 every 24 hours.
The figures equate to about 3,800 and 2,200 transactions made every hour in the DOGE and BTC currencies respectively.
However, the gap between the two currencies’ usage is eclipsed by the difference in their value.
At the time of writing, one Dogecoin is currently worth $0.0003042769 while one Bitcoin is worth $826.33 (£503.6) – making one Bitcoin worth almost three million times more than one Dogecoin.
Despite Dogecoin’s miniscule conversion, nearly $10 million (£6.1 million) is sent every day in DOGE, with an average transaction of $100 (£61).
Bitcoin instead appears to be reserved for large-scale purchases, with $9,844 (£5999) sent on average per transaction. Over half a billion dollars (£300 million) is transferred daily.
Wow.Toronto police have identified the object that caused the closure a city block in the financial district late Wednesday as a smudge pot, an oil-burning heater used to keep frost off fruit trees.
Members of the city’s emergency task force and bomb disposal squad were called in just after 8 p.m. Wednesday to deal with the object, which to some resembled some kind of military device and is about the size of a bowling ball.
Police sent in a robot to examine it and determine if it was dangerous.
About an hour later, the device was put into a secure van and removed from the area.
King Street, between Yonge and Bay streets, was closed for most of the evening, with police redirecting pedestrians.
On Thursday morning police said the device is a smudge pot, also known as a choofa or orchard heater. The pots are used to burn oil outdoors, often to keep frost off fruit trees.
It was the second time the bomb disposal squad was called out on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, they investigated a suspicious package in the city's east end.
That object turned out to be a souvenir artillery shell which did not contain any explosives.Every now and then, everyone has brain farts. You forget how to make change, you misspell the word "definitely" or maybe you just wore mismatched socks. But these people all took that to a brand new level. Maybe I'm being a little bit harsh, but...probably not.
1. No... just... no.
2. That's not what those are for.
3. Please stop using the Internet. GO AWAY.
4. You know, they have a word for that.
5. That's NOT what you should have been correcting. Just FYI.
6. Nice try, dude.
7. No matter how awful this guy is, the girl who retweeted it is worse.
8. That's probably not how you should be using a car wash, but knock yourself out.
9. This is why other countries hate us.
10. Oh, sweetie.
11. Nope, that's not how that is used.
12.... you know what, not lighting up is probably the right decision for this guy.
13. Please, someone find this girl and make her wear a helmet so she doesn't bump into things.
14. Let's just pretend her bag accidentally flipped over while she was using it correctly.
15. I sincerely hope she's not from the UK.
16. It's all about context clues, Dayna.
17. At least he knew to fall on his own sword.
18. Tragically, someone who doesn't know what "Benz" is short for owns a BMW.
19. It would be funny if she wasn't being serious.
20. No one in their right mind would ever think this is a good idea.
21. No, they certainly can't take that away from him... because he never did it.
22. Someone please steal that baby. She clearly isn't interested.
23. Maybe she just moved to the US. And is four years-old.
24. She gets an A for effort.
25. It only took him 1 minute to realize this mistake. This man is a hero (relative to everyone else on this list, at least).
26. Yep, that's exactly what it sounds like.
27.... Good God.
28. Posted by the only person on earth still using a Blackberry. Makes sense.
29. Well, how about that.
30. Please, oh please, let this be an accidental auto-correct.
My IQ dropped 30 points after seeing that. Now it's in the negative. Share this with everyone you know. Spread the dumb.A gay Barclays Center food server claims that Houston Rockets basketball players pelted him with homophobic slurs in a locker room before a 2013 game against the Nets — and that he was coldly canned by his catering company after he complained about the abuse, according to a Brooklyn federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Rasean Tate, 28, of Brooklyn, is suing the Rockets and the company that handles catering at Barclays, Levy Restaurant Holdings, for a slew of civil rights violations and anti-gay discrimination.
Tate claims that he was setting up a buffet in the visiting Rockets locker room before a game on Feb. 22, 2013, when he was all but chased from the area because he was gay.
“When the plaintiff’s back was turned to defendant Rockets players, he began to hear laughter and taunting voices saying ‘get this f—– out of here!’ ” according to the suit, and ” ‘He’s trying to catch a sneaky-peeky!’ ”
The reeling server said that the jabs and snickering didn’t let up.
“These series of comments were repeated a number of times by defendant Rockets players and staff,” according to the suit. “Plaintiff could hear defendant Rockets players overlapping voices and laughter.”
The suit does not name which individual players allegedly made the remarks.
Tate claims that a Nets representative witnessed the ugly incident and advised him to “just leave” and that he would “take care of it,” according to the suit.
Tate headed for the nearest restroom to compose himself, the suit says.
Still reeling two days later, Tate went to Levy catering manager Darcy Tarpia to relay details of the confrontation.
He was offered a verbal apology and promised that the situation would be addressed, according to the suit.
Tate was later told that Nets players were given special sensitivity training because of the incident with the Rockets, the court papers state.
But the suit alleges that he was soon met with retaliation rather than redress.
Tate claims he was slowly phased out of all locker room duty by the catering company after he lodged his complaints and his pay and hours plummeted as a result, according to the suit.
“This was solely in retaliation for his complaints about the harassment and discrimination he faced by defendant Rockets players and because of plaintiff’s sexual orientation,” the suit claims.
From the 2013 NBA Draft to the Jordan Brand Classic, Tate was suddenly barred from working locker rooms in favor of heterosexual staffers, the suit states.
With his pay falling off a cliff, Tate emailed Levy brass to assert his ability to work locker rooms like anyone else.
He stated in the missive that he was “able, capable and comfortable to perform any duty and task as a catering server in all locations of the arena, including locker rooms and dressing rooms, in spite of the incident that occurred earlier in the year.”
But Tate claims that his pleas led to further exile and he was barred from working the VIP area of the Video Music Awards in August 2013.
Tate claims that Levy brass violated their own policies when they assigned a female to work the dressing room of a male performer instead of him.
The suit argues that company policy normally dictates same-gender assignments for dressing rooms.
The pattern of retaliation finally resulted in Tate’s suspension in January for failing to give a customer a fork and other trumped-up offenses, his suit claims.
He was let go without pay — and hasn’t been called to work since, court papers allege.
“But for plaintiff’s sexual orientation and his complaints about harassment and discrimination based on his sexual orientation, defendants would not have retaliated against him and would not have treated him differently,” the suit states.
Lawyer Marjorie Mesidor blasted both the Rockets and the catering company for Tate’s allleged mistreatment.
“What happened to my client was deplorable,” she said. “It should not be tolerated by the Houston Rockets or Levy’s. What they needed to do was address his concerns, not retaliate against him for having the courage to speak up.”
Rockets forward Francisco Garcia, who played on the Rockets last year also, said, “I don’t remember anyone saying anything to anybody last year, so I don’t have any comment on that.”
The Barclays Center and the Nets are not parties to the suit.
A Barclays Center spokesman declined to comment on the suit.
The surging hoops team recently became the first squad to suit up an openly gay player when they signed Jason Collins in March.
Rockets and Levy reps did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the suit.
Additional reporting by Tim BontempsLouisville City FC head coach James O’Connor, assistant coach Daniel Byrd and goalkeepers coach Thabane Sutu this week agreed to new contracts with the club that will hold one of the United Soccer League’s top staffs together for the long-term.
“I can’t tell you how thrilled we are,” said LouCity chairman John Neace, “to announce we’ve signed new contracts with Coach O’Connor and staff which will keep them here with us through the 2020 season — when we plan to play our first season in our soccer-specific stadium.”
Led by the coaching trio, LouCity has accumulated more USL points and goals than any other team in the league since starting play in 2015. Both years were capped by runs to the USL’s Eastern Conference Final.
O’Connor and company will aim for a USL championship during the 2017 season set to open Saturday. Tickets remain available by calling (502) 384-8799 or emailing tickets@louisvillecityfc.com.
“I’m obviously delighted to put pen to paper and commit,” O’Connor said. “A lot of credit needs to go to John Neace. I think he’s played a key role in my signing and all of the coaching staff, and I have to thank Gary Mellor of Beswicks Sports for advising me.
“It’s a really exciting time for us to be associated with Louisville City when you look at the plans for the future. I feel honored and privileged to be in such a good position, and I’m really excited to be the head coach of Louisville City.”
O’Connor, a native of Ireland who played for storied clubs such as Stoke City and West Bromwich Albion, took his first head coaching job with LouCity as the club was forming in 2014. He holds a top-level UEFA Pro License and has quickly established a winning tradition here.
Stars to come through Louisville — guided by O’Connor and Byrd — include 2015 USL MVP Matt Fondy and Bryan Burke, who was named Defender of the Year that same season. In 2016, defender Kyle Smith went from a tryout signing to USL Midseason Rookie of the Year, and striker Chandler Hoffman was named Midseason MVP.
LouCity went 14-8-6 last year even after losing Fondy, who set the USL record for goals in a season by netting 22 in 28 games. O’Connor navigated his side to a streak of 17 league games unbeaten.
Sutu, a local legend who also serves as technical director for the United 1996 FC youth program, has showcased an ability to quickly develop goalkeepers. In 2015, then-starter Scott Goodwin posted a 1.19 goals-against average between the posts.
When Goodwin left the club to enroll at Harvard Medical School, Greg Ranjitsingh stepped in and went five straight games without allowing a goal. Ranjitsingh transformed into an international talent, called up in the fall to train with Trinidad and Tobago during World Cup qualifiers.
The core of LouCity’s roster returned for the 2017 season, which will consist of 16 home games played between Saturday and October. Season ticket packages start at $180 (just $11.25 per game) with single-game tickets $15 in advance.Audubon's First Print Is Found, Ending Long Search
toggle caption Stewart Library, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
For decades, scholars have wondered what happened to naturalist John James Audubon's first commercial illustration, of a small bird called a heath hen. In 1824, the engraving was destined to decorate a banknote -- but it was soon lost. Now an example has been found.
Robert Peck, a curator at Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences, says that in 1824, Audubon wrote in his diary that he had drawn a heath hen for a Philadelphia engraver.
But finding a print of the drawing wasn't an easy task.
"At the time -- the middle of the 19th century -- there were thousands and thousands of bank notes circulating," Peck says. "This was before we had a national currency."
Peck's partner in the search was currency historian Eric Newman -- formally known as a numismatic scholar. Together, they looked for a note from a New Jersey bank like the one Audubon mentioned in his diary.
But they determined that the bank had likely destroyed all its currency. So instead, they looked for the bird in a group of sample sheets from the engraver who had hired Audubon.
The sheets provided banks with stock art for their currency -- many of the images were of George Washington and bald eagles, Peck says.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Eric P. Newman Numismatic Education Society Eric P. Newman Numismatic Education Society
"And there, amidst all of these rather staid and patriotic symbols that would be appropriate for banknotes, was this tiny little bird, rushing through the grass," Peck says.
That's when he and Newman knew they had found Audubon's bird, ending a decade-long search and filling in a blank in the career of one America's premier naturalists.
Just a few years later, Aubudon would publish his watershed work, The Birds of America, which established him as both an artist and a celebrity.
As for the heath hen, the animal is reportedly extinct. And Peck says it was Audubon's bad luck to choose the small, unassuming bird for a banknote.
"A little scurrying grouse rushing into a bed of grass is not the kind of confident image that a bank president wants to convey," Peck says.
It's very likely, Peck says, that Audubon's grouse was simply replaced by a bald eagle.Want a speed hump on your street? Now is your time to act
For those residents who want speed humps on their street, Feb. 28 was a day they have long been waiting for. That’s when the L.A. Department of Transportation began a 45-day-long application period to collect requests for the asphalt humps designed to deter speeding. But speed hump season looks like it’s going to be a very competitive.
For one thing, there might be a lot of pent up demand for speed humps because the city went several years without building them until the City Council restored the program last year.
Also, humps will be approved in only two locations in each council district – so only 30 sites citywide. Second, according to the Speed Hump Evaluation Guidelines, each application needs the support and signatures of at least 10 residents. Third, only 30 applications per council district will be accepted.
Those speed hump nominees will then be evaluated and ranked based on need, a process that could take two or three months.
Keep in mind that there also restrictions on where speed bumps can be built:
Speed humps can only be installed on streets with speed limits of 30 mph or less and the 85th percentile speed is more than 5 mph above the speed limit.
The daily volume on the street should be greater than 1,000 vehicles per day (VPD), but not more than 10,000 VPD.
Speed humps cannot be installed on designated truck or transit routes or on any street identified as a primary emergency route.
There should be a minimum of 600 feet between controlled intersections, where at least 2 speed humps can be installed.
Speed humps should not be installed on streets where there are known drainage/flooding issues.
Speed humps cannot be installed on horizontal curves where visibility is less than 150 feet in both directions.
If you think your street qualifies, here’s the application.
Got a story, tip, question or photo to share? Submit it here
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The Red and the Green Stamps
posted 04:15 PM "I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races -- that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races...I, as much as any man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." From Lincoln's second debate with Stephen Douglas, on August 27, 1858. i read this quote at civil-liberties.com and was wondering where the source was or if this is just a fluke. IP: Logged | Jay
The Red and the Green Stamps
posted 09:33 PM quote: Originally posted by iamlm20012001:
"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races -- that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races...I, as much as any man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." From Lincoln's second debate with Stephen Douglas, on August 27, 1858. i read this quote at civil-liberties.com and was wondering where the source was or if this is just a fluke. I don't know how for certain if he said that, but I wouldn't doubt it: 1. One can be racist and still view slavery as wrong. Realize the time period Abe lived in. 2. He wanted to win the presidency. He KNEW he wasn't getting the Southern vote, so he figured that he wouldn't get far by making the whites in the north feel unsettled. Once again, most people in the North in that time period were racist but still anti-slavery. Saying whites and blacks were equal in that time period would have cost him the northern vote, which he needed. Civil rights were not a widely-addressed issue until the middle of the 20th century. J "It's all about the politics" ay IP: Logged | Cure the Blues
We Three Bl |
NHL experience that could complement the group that I had assembled. I was proud of the group that I had assembled. If critics wanted to point at one thing and say we lacked, it was some experience. My goal was always to find the best person, but certainly, if I had a young person and an experienced person and they were both equally adept at doing the job, I think the experience would’ve been the tiebreaker. I reached out to the Devils management and I asked for permission to talk. I think they were shocked that Lou would even consider it. I just started a conversation. That was several weeks ago. It cooled off at times, but I stayed with it. There were times where I’d back off because I could tell, knowing Lou and knowing that he had been lifelong with an organization, you couldn’t press too hard at times. He had to come to this decision on his own. To make a long story short, we were able to get him done yesterday.
–
On what even made him contemplate Lou Lamoriello for the job or think that he might say yes:
Shanahan: Well, I think the one thing I wanted to appeal to him, and in some ways I tried to appeal to Mike; I know certain types of individuals are just not the “I want to put my feet up on a coffee table”-type of guys. There are certain types of individuals where you don’t underscore the difficulty of a job that’s in front of them, you actually present it as big as the mountain that you see. You appeal to their sense of challenge. Despite what I was reading out of New Jersey, I just knew that there was a burning desire in Lou to compete. I had seen him at Board of Governors meetings when I was with the NHL, General Managers meetings while I was with the NHL, and then again while I was with the Maple Leafs. This did not look like a guy who was slowing down to me. It did not look like a guy that was losing his competitive fire. I could’ve got laughed off the phone, but it’s worth a phone call.
… The only thing we really accomplished with that first phone call was that he was intrigued. To me, that was a good enough first step.
–
On why he wasn’t looking for a guy on a 4-5-6 year deal:
Shanahan: Well, I take that back. I guess there were different scenarios that I could’ve gone with. I probably shouldn’t say because there are people that are in other organizations and I might get myself in trouble with tampering, but there was some other people that I was interested in that were maybe starting out in their career, or were at a younger point in their career. That was one scenario. Most of those guys aren’t coming to Toronto unless they’re getting a five or six year deal. And then there were situations a little bit similar to the one Pittsburgh has done with Jim Rutherford, where you bring in a senior guy to sort of mentor the group and see them through a transition. That was another option. The other option was just going with the current situation that we had, and just sort of doing it learning on the fly and learning as we go along. I think we did a pretty good job this summer. I’m proud of the summer we had. I thought that Mark Hunter was fantastic at the draft, as was Kyle Dubas. I thought that July 1st, that week, was great. It’s a time when sometimes you can help your club, but maybe the biggest thing we avoided, which happens to clubs, is that you hurt your club on July 1st – and we didn’t do that. We are, at this point now for the first time in a long time, we don’t have our noses pressed right against the salary cap ceiling. We have the ability to be buyers and not necessarily be sellers. I thought that they all did a great job. I guess what you’re really trying to get at is I see potential in some of the people we have here internally to possibly do this one day, and I wanted to leave that option there for them down the road.
–
On whether he consulted Mike Babcock early on in the process, given this is out of order for how things are usually handled:
Shanahan: I was in the unique position to be able to know who I was speaking to and not necessarily have to tell them as much information as I had, only enough to satisfy myself and know there was a great comfort between the two men and their respect between one another and the jobs that they would do. I didn’t tell Mike that I was pursuing Lou Lamoriello, but in some conversations — you bump into people at the draft and you have conversations, and New Jersey’s table was near ours and I saw Mike and Lou having a few conversations – you hear people talk about respect and how much they think of someone. I was privy to more information than either of them, and I was satisfied enough that this was going to be a good marriage if Mike and Lou were working together one day.
–
On how important it is that the two work together:
Shanahan: I think it is important. I think it is important for me to know that Lou has a tonne of respect for Mike Babcock. It just gets expressed through conversation, where Lou came up to me at some point and said, “I love what you did with the head coach, and I think he’s fantastic.” And similar conversations I’ve had with Mike. Now, what I’ve talked about since I’ve been here is a vision for how this organization would work and how the group would think together and sort of lean on one another. That was very important for me to continue to describe that environment to Lou so that he knew, with his eyes wide open, exactly what he was walking into. I said at the end of the season press conference –where some people said, “well, it’s a little unorthodox that the GM doesn’t hire the coach, or the GM doesn’t bring all his buddies with him” — I said, “that’s true, and that’s valid, and some guys won’t be for us, and we won’t be for them.” Lou happened to be a guy that liked the people that we had in place and is probably a lot more progressive than people give him credit for. He’s comfortable in his relationship with me. It’s a little bit different that the guy he drafted 28 years ago he now reports to, but such is the cyclical life of hockey. One day I’ll be asking William Nylander for a job.
–
An example of what makes Lou, Lou:
Shanahan: I think it’s so difficult to. What makes you, you? It’s very difficult to encapsulate an entire person with a few quips for a little radio interview, because he is a complicated guy and an interesting guy. Probably the biggest consistency with him is his belief in a team first structure. Something that he used to say, and I mentioned him when I was being inducted into the Hall of Fame that I had learned when I was in New Jersey, is that the crest on the front of the sweater is more important than the name on the back of the sweater. With team success can come a whole lot of individual accolades and success, presently and later in life. What I look back on fondly now is winning championships. I don’t look back on individual trophies, not that I won many of them. What you remember is – I’ve said this before to individual athletes – as great as tennis players are and golfers are and boxers, I feel sorry for individual athletes that they don’t get an opportunity to win something with a group of teammates and what that feels like. I watched the Canadian Men’s Baseball Team win that Gold Medal the other day in the Pan Am games. It makes you jealous and remember what it was like to see that sea of guys jumping on each other like that, and sharing that same feeling of working as a team. For me, that’s the biggest thing that Lou brings, is the team-first mentality.
–
On whether three years is long enough for Lou to build his culture:
Shanahan: I think that’s a start and we’ll see where we are three years from now. Nothing is set in stone. This is hockey. As I said, the vision doesn’t change but the plans sometimes do. Is it enough time? We’ll see. It’s a great start. We can’t necessarily always project what we’re going to look like in three years or four years or five years, but what we are in control of is what we’re doing now and I feel fortunate with the team of people [we have]. I read somewhere once that if you’re a really good executive, do your best to make sure you’re the dumbest guy in the room you’ve assembled. I can say I’ve done a pretty good job of putting myself in a room full of hockey executives that I really look up to and am in awe of, whether they’re older or younger than me.
–
On whether this is the last piece of the management puzzle:
Shanahan: I hope so. I joked around a little bit with some people, some colleagues in hockey that I would bump into at the draft. They’d see me with the bags under my eyes and say, “how’s the summer going?” I’d say, “remind me never to do that at the end of a season again.” You know, we’ve done some other things that might not get the same fanfare that we’re very proud of. What we’ve done with the Marlies and the coaching staff with the Marlies, and our development system, that’s going to be so important. Our sports science department we think is going to be the best in the NHL. These are all the little things we wanted to do. Then, the on-ice product is going to have to get better, and that takes time. We need more players. We need more from our current players. We know, as Mike Babcock said, pain is coming. As much as we’re doing right now, we haven’t won a single game. I think we’ve made our management team better, we’ve made some good decisions with our hockey team, but there’s still some pain coming. This is a process that will take time. We’re prepared for that. I think our fans in our city are prepared for that. I think that our ownership is prepared for that. We have a good group here. Some people ask, “how does this work?” We had a General Manager last year. It works very much the same. He’s just got a different name. We will find a way to make this work. I’m just excited Lou has joined this group and become a part of it.
Lou Lamoriello
On the story of Brendan Shanahan’s courtship of Lamoriello:
Lamoriello: When I decided to start the transition and brought Ray Shero in, that was something that ownership and myself had talked about for the past year. That came relatively quickly. I felt good going forward in that role, doing the things, and – I don’t want to say taking it easy – but overseeing everything in a different way. Evidently, Brendan at that time called our ownership and asked for permission to speak with me. They told him that if that was something that I wanted to do, they would never hold me back. They didn’t think that I would be interested. They were right at that time. And then Brendan, certainly, at different times we spoke – because we had the ability and Larry Tanenbaum had a conversation with me – and then we pushed it off because of the draft and free agency. As soon as that finished, Brendan and I spoke and it just heated up. As I said today in the press conference, if I need somebody to recruit anybody, I’m going to send Brendan and not even think of anybody else. He and I go way back and have had a great relationship throughout his career. I’ve been impressed with the things that he’s been doing here and the commitment that Toronto had. He really rekindled me in an excitement. He got me enthused, and here I am.
–
On whether three years is enough time to shape an organization as he did in New Jersey:
Lamoriello: We’ll have to find out. I really don’t know a lot of the intricate things. I have some information, but you never come in with a list and say, “this is what we’re going to do.” You just look at the little things that possibly you can get control of immediately that happen without someone even knowing. And then build off that. For me, the most important thing is getting players – and I know Mike is totally with me on this, Brendan is, everyone else here – getting players who love the game, and want to have success in the game as a team, not only success as an individual. Creating something where that logo is more important than that name on the back of the shirt. That sounds like a mouthful, but there are little things that you find out in people when that happens. If you look over a lot of the successful teams, and we’ve been very fortunate with some of the players that have their names on the Cups; you don’t see them in any scoring, but without them you would not have won. Everybody recognizes that. People have to realize that, no matter what their role is in a team, they’re just as important as the so-called most talented player. And the most talented player has to recognize he can’t have any success without the other person. That’s what we have to try to create. I know what Mike believes in without question – he has the history to show that, whether it be with Detroit, in the Olympics, or in Junior, or whatever he’s touched his hands on. So that’s the exciting part here. The question you asked is, “how long?” I could not answer that until I see what the character is of the individuals we’re talking about.
–
On whether he talked to Mike Babcock before he agreed to take the job:
Lamoriello: Yes, I did. Mike was very influential. I respect him as a coach, I respect him as an educator, and I respect him as a person. His work ethic, and he’s committed to winning. He doesn’t do it in words. He puts the effort in himself to have success and he also trusts the people around him.
–
On the patience required and whether there’s a clock on how long it will take:
Lamoriello: No, I really don’t [have a clock]. I’ve always had an expression I’d say in New Jersey: You have a five year plan that changes every day, and you adjust it. I think that’s the approach you take. You lay out everything, and then you keep adjusting it. Then what happens is, when you get to a certain point, it shrinks and you’ve got your plan and you have to maintain it, but I have no timetable. When I say “five years,” that was what my thought process was in New Jersey when we were winning. It’s not that it’s five years. I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know enough about the players, and Mike doesn’t, either. You don’t know enough about how they’re going to respond. You just don’t know.
–
On who has final say (and whether Lou said, “I’ll make the decisions,” or, “we’ll make the decisions” in his press conference):
Lamoriello: I think the people that are in place here, and I’ll get to that as best as I can answer it, and the way it has been set up with reference to the responsibilities in each area – for example, Kyle, who is the assistant General Manager, and Mark, who is the Director of Scouting, and Mike, the head coach — every one of them has an individual role and responsibility. No different than what I had in New Jersey. Here, it was a little bit more of the way it’s been put because there have been so many people speaking at different times. So it’s not unusual in the input, but there has to be one voice at the end to make that decision. I think that’s what I was alluding to. You take the input of everyone, and then you have to make that final decision.
–
On the positives, or negatives, of a star-studded management team like the Leafs’:
Lamoriello: I think you can dissect it and look at it any way you want. I think the one thing that we have, if you’re speaking of Brendan and Mike and myself at this point, the common denominator is the type of people. Everyone is team oriented. Everyone is committed to the same goal. I don’t feel, in any way whatsoever, that the respect and trust that each has for each other [won’t] come together as one. Because I was the last person here coming, I had the opportunity to see who the first two were, so I am so comfortable with that; not over-comfortable, it’s just because I know both individuals. I know the good, the bad, and the ugly, which we all have.
–
On the defence-first philosophies in New Jersey:
Lamoriello: That is the best answer that I could give. When we went to New Jersey, and we were where we were, and it was the philosophy I had in coaching in my past in college, is that defence wins championships, offence wins games. Unfortunately, maybe with the growing that we went through in New Jersey, we had ourselves accustomed to winning one goal games. We certainly had the luxury of a world-class goaltender, and our system that we had was to make him see the puck. We felt that we could win, and our players bought into that, and never got wrapped up with anyone talking about defence or letting it get in the way. It was an asset that we had, where people [said], “oh, we have to play the New Jersey Devils.” When Jacques Lemaire came in, he put that to the highest level you could have in the way he put the system together. Whether they called it the trap, or called it this or that, it was just everybody doing their own job collectively. Playing the same way on both sides of the puck, which you don’t always get. If it’s a defence system first, and that’s the way they want to create it, so be it. But you look back at some of those teams that we had, we were pretty well up there in scoring, too, but what got recognized was our defence.
McCown: Philosophically, you aren’t married to the notion of players who are primarily focused on defence?
Lamoriello: That’s accurate.
McCown: If there is a player out there who has a high skill set as a scorer, but maybe isn’t the best defensive player out there, you don’t automatically discount him as a possibility?
Lamoriello: No, I can give you an example in New Jersey. I have tremendous respect for him. We don’t have him, we don’t win the ’95 Cup: Stephane Richer. It’s who you put with him. You put Bobby Carpenter and John McLean. The key there is that those players and the team accepts the assets and the liabilities. That’s the only way to success. You can’t win with all one type of player.
–
On what he’s learned from past management failures in Toronto:
Lamoriello: I’m coming in with no preconceived notions. Each and every player that is on that roster, I was part of them being here, and each and every one of the staff members, I hired. That’s the only way I feel you should approach it. I did that going into New Jersey from Providence. I did that from going into the athletic directorship at Providence. I did it when I had to take the Nets. That’s the only way it works. Once you do that, then people start separating and you find out in players as to who is really committed, and who wants to be successful.
–
On whether Brendan Shanahan conveyed his philosophy on building the franchise in his pitch:
Lamoriello: Yes, he did. If I weren’t in tune with that, and if I weren’t on board with that, I wouldn’t have even considered it. I report to Brendan. Brendan is in the position he’s in. I respect that. I have no problem with that. I feel very comfortable in my own skin. I know that all the people here are comfortable in their own skin and they’re not going to be afraid to test and push each other.Predictions about ramen as Houston's hot dining trend have cooled in recent months. What once seemed like a movement that would sweep the city has settled into outposts of five restaurants — California's Jinya Ramen, Seattle's Samurai Noodle, Washington Avenue late night spot Ninja Ramen, west Houston's Ramen Jin, and Chinatown favorite Tiger Den.
Still, a truly acclaimed restaurant could capture diners' attention, and it seems that one of them has set its sights on Houston. Tatsu Aikawa, the executive chef and co-owner of Austin's celebrated Ramen Tatsu-Ya, is also the registered agent for a company called "I Own This Dirt, LLC." That company has purchased a property in Montrose at 1714 California Street, according to Harris County property tax records.
Located just behind celebrated Italian restaurant Da Marco, the lot's size of almost 15,000-square feet seems to include the adjacent property at 1722 California, which was once slated to be home to Andes Cafe chef/owner David Guerrero's upscale South American restaurant Evo.
While buying property that happens to contain a restaurant on it and opening a restaurant in that building are two different things, the purchase certainly suggests that Aikawa and co-owner Takuya "Tako" Matsumoto have put their long-delayed plans to open in Houston back on track. When all this is happening remains a bit of a mystery.
Noodle obsessives scarcely need an introduction to Ramen Tatsu-Ya. Since its opening in 2012, the restaurant has racked up accolades, including a spot on Bon Appetit editor Andrew Knowlton's list of America's best new restaurants in 2013.
Credit for that success starts with the restaurant's broth, which takes as long as 60 hours to prepare. Properly cooked noodles and carefully chosen toppings complete the experience (this video explains the process).
CultureMap has reached out to Tatsu-ya's representative for comment on Aikawa's purchase and his plans for Houston. We will update this article when we receive a response.Pets play a significant role in the lives of families worldwide. Whether they are the four-legged type, come with more of a nautical nature or fall into the category ‘unusual’, our...
Welcome Home - Choosing a Family Pet The time has come, you’ve made the decision that the time is right to choose a new pet for the family. This is a major decision for families, esp...
The eulogy is one of the most important and touching readings at a funeral. It's a verbal snapshot of not only who a loved one was but also the role they played in the lives of others. Some gen...
Customer Testimonials And Feedback We care about our customers. Your opinion, your thoughts - it matters to us. Our customers play the biggest role in our success. Posting our customer testimonia...An RCMP cruiser was involved in a crash on Highway 101 at Exit 19 near Lawrencetown this morning. Cpl. Jennifer Clarke confirmed the RCMP car’s involvement and that there were no significant injuries. The other vehicle is a smaller red car.
An RCMP cruiser was involved in a crash on Highway 101 at Exit 19 near Lawrencetown this morning. Cpl. Jennifer Clarke confirmed the RCMP car’s involvement and that there were no significant injuries. The other vehicle is a smaller red car.
An RCMP cruiser was involved in a crash on Highway 101 at Exit 19 near Lawrencetown this morning. Cpl. Jennifer Clarke confirmed the RCMP car’s involvement and that there were no significant injuries. The other vehicle is a smaller red car.
An RCMP cruiser was involved in a crash on Highway 101 at Exit 19 near Lawrencetown this morning. Cpl. Jennifer Clarke confirmed the RCMP car’s involvement and that there were no significant injuries. The other vehicle is a smaller red car.
An RCMP cruiser was involved in a crash on Highway 101 at Exit 19 near Lawrencetown this morning. Cpl. Jennifer Clarke confirmed the RCMP car’s involvement and that there were no significant injuries. The other vehicle is a smaller red car.
An RCMP cruiser was involved in a crash on Highway 101 at Exit 19 near Lawrencetown this morning. Cpl. Jennifer Clarke confirmed the RCMP car’s involvement and that there were no significant injuries. The other vehicle is a smaller red car.
An RCMP cruiser was involved in a crash on Highway 101 at Exit 19 near Lawrencetown this morning. Cpl. Jennifer Clarke confirmed the RCMP car’s involvement and that there were no significant injuries. The other vehicle is a smaller red car.
Police were still on the scene as of 4 p.m. Both vehicles came to rest pointing west in an eastbound lane at the beginning of the Exit 19 off ramp.
The crash closed the highway at about 9:30 a.m. with Lawrencetown firefighters redirecting traffic at the east end and Bridgetown firefighters doing the same on the west side at Exit 20 near the ESSO in Bridgetown.
Cpl. Clarke said in a media release that just before 9:30 a.m., an RCMP officer was performing traffic duties in a fully marked RCMP car on Highway 101 near Exit 19.
“He was involved in a collision with a civilian vehicle and was struck on the driver's side of his car,” she said in the release. “The two occupants of the civilian vehicle sustained minor injuries and were transported by EHS to hospital. The officer also required medical treatment for minor injuries.”
An RCMP Traffic Analyst has been called to the scene to conduct an investigation, Cpl. Clarke said, adding that Highway 101 will be closed to traffic between Exits 19 and 20 for several hours. Traffic is being diverted along Highway 1. RCMP tweeted at 12:33 that Highway 101 would be closed until 6 p.m.
Four other RCMP vehicles were at the scene, as well as paramedics and firefighters. Department of Transportation employees later arrived to replace firefighters to detour traffic around the crash.
The other vehicle involved in the crash appears to be a smaller red car. Police would not allow media near the accident scene.
Cpl. Clarke said the investigation is ongoing.
Police were still on the scene as of 4 p.m. Both vehicles came to rest pointing west in an eastbound lane at the beginning of the Exit 19 off ramp.
The crash closed the highway at about 9:30 a.m. with Lawrencetown firefighters redirecting traffic at the east end and Bridgetown firefighters doing the same on the west side at Exit 20 near the ESSO in Bridgetown.
Cpl. Clarke said in a media release that just before 9:30 a.m., an RCMP officer was performing traffic duties in a fully marked RCMP car on Highway 101 near Exit 19.
“He was involved in a collision with a civilian vehicle and was struck on the driver's side of his car,” she said in the release. “The two occupants of the civilian vehicle sustained minor injuries and were transported by EHS to hospital. The officer also required medical treatment for minor injuries.”
An RCMP Traffic Analyst has been called to the scene to conduct an investigation, Cpl. Clarke said, adding that Highway 101 will be closed to traffic between Exits 19 and 20 for several hours. Traffic is being diverted along Highway 1. RCMP tweeted at 12:33 that Highway 101 would be closed until 6 p.m.
Four other RCMP vehicles were at the scene, as well as paramedics and firefighters. Department of Transportation employees later arrived to replace firefighters to detour traffic around the crash.
The other vehicle involved in the crash appears to be a smaller red car. Police would not allow media near the accident scene.
Cpl. Clarke said the investigation is ongoing.CONWAY, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina restaurant manager has been ordered held without bond on charges of abusing and enslaving a mentally challenged employee, according to information released by federal authorities.
This undated photo provided by the J. Reuben Long Detention Center in Conway, S.C shows Bobby Paul Edwards. J. Reuben Long Detention Center via Associated Press CONWAY, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina restaurant manager has been ordered held without bond on charges of abusing and enslaving a mentally challenged employee, according to information released by federal authorities.
Bobby Paul Edwards, 52, of Conway pleaded not guilty to one count of forced labor, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Edwards used abuse and threats to force John Christopher Smith, 39, to work as a J&J Cafeteria cook from 2009 until 2014, authorities said.
Court documents describe beatings with a belt, choking, slapping, punching with a closed fist and burning with tongs used in hot grease.
Smith has been diagnosed with delayed cognitive development that results in intellectual functioning significantly below average. He filed a federal lawsuit in 2015 against Edwards and the restaurant owner, saying he wasn't paid or given time off or benefits.
The lawsuit, which has not been resolved, also accused Edwards of repeated abuse, saying he hit Smith with objects including a frying pan and forced him Smith to work, to the point the man was so weak he had to be carried home.
Saying some witnessed the alleged abuse, the lawsuit noted that Edwards went after Smith with a belt buckle for being too slow to replenish food items on the buffet line.
"Plaintiff was heard crying like a child and yelling, 'No, Bobby, please!'" according to the suit, which accused the cafeteria's owner of knowing about the abuse but doing nothing to stop it.
Edwards' attorney didn't respond to requests for comment. State assault charges against him are still pending.
The indictment outlining the charges against Edwards was sealed last week by a federal magistrate, who has not released it to the public.
Conway is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) northwest of Myrtle Beach.by Paul St. John Mackintosh
Oblique Strategies
Georgia native Michael Wehunt has quietly, almost unobtrusively made a name for himself as a major figure in modern dark and weird fiction, and this first collection of eleven of his stories sets the seal on that endeavor. To say that the book comes garlanded with plaudits is a woeful understatement: The list of praise and compliments reads like a who’s who of the best and most brilliant living horror and dark fiction writers. One of the cuter, funnier memes doing the rounds in horror and dark fiction social media circles lately has been the Greener Pastures cover photobomb, where illustrator Michael Bukowski’s delightfully creepy jacket evocations of images and Things from the book crop up in all kinds of unexpected places. That pretty much sums up how pervasive Wehunt’s presence has become.
It’s not quite so easy to say exactly how and why this has happened, though. I took the title for this review from Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s lateral thinking card game because Wehunt himself references Eno in the title of “A Discreet Music,” citing “the insinuation, the mystery, the lure” of that music in his notes to the story, and because it seems to reflect Wehunt’s subtle, oblique narrative approach, shuffling the deck and dealing his trumps unexpectedly, playing with narrative personas and situations. He also tends to locate his stories in backwoods America (metaphorically and often literally), and I’m not sure how much of this comes from his North Georgia origins, but it certainly adds both realism and pathos to the uncannily dislocated situations, as well as a domestic tone that at first doesn’t hint of larger existential dilemmas – but then, read on.
Many of the tales have appeared elsewhere – “A Discreet Music,” for instance, in the very wonderful tribute anthology Aickman’s Heirs – but almost always in very distinguished company, and assembling them into one collection only drives the point home. These are not stories that grab you from the first line, but you’ll find by the end of each that you’ve been caught nonetheless. Their construction and ingenuity is something else. You couldn’t wish for a clearer illustration of this than the story “October Film Haunt: Under the House,” which piles diverse viewpoints on top of self-reference for a found footage (or found script) style descent into nightmare at a celebrated old dark house. Perhaps it’s a stretch to describe a collection that deals so often with provincial life and the margins, sometimes written in “a thick southern vernacular” but very often far from metropolitan, as a civilized pleasure, but that is certainly how Greener Pastures comes across, not least thanks to the terrific prose. Wehunt is just one more proof point of how modern dark and weird fiction is the representative, diagnostic literature of our time, just as much as Kafka’s was for the disintegrating societies of Central Europe. All that and deeply enjoyable and delightfully creepy too. What more could you ask for in a collection?
From the book:
He checked the mirror with an obsession. No angel he’d heard of was covered in feathers, as he might soon be. A swan, then. He felt certain that his neck would begin to stretch, the feathers continue to flower, and this old ugly duckling would transcend into something more beautiful. Because the symbolism of it – the very thought of it all told him he was meant to be with Jim. – “A Discreet Music”
Since the exorcism it’s been Mae who can’t sleep. The lights, which no longer flicker and buzz in the night, have been clicked off. Her husband stretches himself out near the middle of the bed, clean-souled and unmindful of her space. Ellis snored every night of their twenty-eight years, until Father Darcy cast the devil out of his mouth. – “Dancers”
But it wasn’t long before somebody found the bloodfall. It spewed forth in them days. A man called Jessup come tearing into the village, what had of late been christened Adepine, his mouth dripping red. Two of the elders had to put him down with buckshot. Folk set out to find what it was he’d got into and within days there was screams tearing at the trees and settlers strung dead across the mountainside, Mama among them. Winter of 1889. I don’t recall the exact date. – “Beside Me Singing in the Wilderness”
Publisher: Shock Totem Publications, April 2016, 238 ppAfter Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on Tuesday, the Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein called for “broken Berning hearts” to join her in continuing the political revolution that Sanders helped to spark.
From Politico:
“If you don’t want to vote for a warmonger or racist billionaire, there are more options. The political revolution will keep going,” Stein tweeted in the hour preceding Sanders’ announcement alongside Clinton in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
In another tweet, Stein wrote, “While Trump praises dictators, Hillary takes their money. Remind us again of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record?”
As Sanders began speaking, Stein offered her own hashtags to disaffected Bernie backers. “The revolution continues with those who will fight for a government that represents all of us–not just the 1%. #HillNo #JillYes,” Stein wrote.
Stein has suggested she would step aside as the Green Party’s standard bearer should Sanders wish to lead the ticket. “I’ve invited Bernie to sit down and explore collaboration,” she told The Guardian in an interview published last Friday. “Everything is on the table. If he saw that you can’t have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party, he’d be welcomed to the Green Party. He could lead the ticket and build a political movement.”Oh…this is not a good rumor for Obama. But the word on the street is that the US Gov. attempted to get at Jigga Man to get to Pac's step auntie! Remember, last month, the cops in NJ were foaming at the mouth over Assata, labeling her a terrorist like she was the female Bin Laden. Meanwhile, we still neglect that George Bush killed innocents on the premise that…nahhhhh…y'all don't want me to get to preaching, do you!?! Anyway, America has a hard-on for Assata as she lives peacefully in Cuba.
RELATED: Assata Shakur First Female Added To Terror List
Check out this intel from FTP Movement:
Increasingly it is becoming clear that the Obama administration in preparation for its change in its Latin American policy has been using Hip-Hop millionaires as pawns to cover some of its most unsavory actions. Only a few astute old activists recognized early that Obama was using Pop-culture like Richard Nixon used Ping Pong diplomacy in opening up China to a new US diplomacy.
The recent visit of Millionaire Rap Mogul Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé to Cuba served as a cover for unofficial back-door communications to the Cuban government conveying the Obama’s intentions to modify or lift the four decade old illegal embargo/blockade of Cuba and that the presence of former Black Panther, and Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur could hinder or derail this diplomacy. Jay-Z’s delegation included a State-Department “reliable” personage who transmitted the Obama’s administration’s position. Once the Republican/Right got wind of this overture they screamed bloody murder, but could do little about it as lifting the Cuban Blockade is now crucial to the US reasserting dominance in a post Castro-Chavez Latin America as the geo-economic center for Latin American nations. So Assata is a pawn in the chess game of US imperial diplomacy.
SOURCE: FTP MOVEMENT
By the way, Minister Farrakhan recently commented on Jay-Z in Cuba and dropped some science on the issue.
This is a serious matter!
RELATED: Hip-hop’s Infatuation With Assata Shakur: It’s Complicated
Dream Hampton comments in 5, 4, 3, 2,....
They keep us talking, but if we stop talking about them then they should worry! -illseed.
Illseed, Out.
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Email illseed rumors: kingillseed@gmail.comThe video is 40 minutes long.
The full transcript is available here on the Reasonable Faith web site. (H/T Think Apologetics)
Excerpt:
No one has issued a more forceful challenge to Christians to become intellectually engaged than did Charles Malik, former Lebanese ambassador to the United States, in his address at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois. Malik emphasized that as Christians we face two tasks in our evangelism: saving the soul and saving the mind, |
filmmaking. Beasts in the wild, these children are dangerous. But they are children, and the haunting eyes of Agu, before the credits close, will ask you what needs to happen for change.
AdvertisementsIt is the unknown frontline in Libya's civil war, a rebel town besieged by Gaddafi's forces but almost ignored by the outside world.
Rockets and Scud missiles pour down. Water is running short. Tens of thousands are desperately trying to flee.
But transfixed by the horrors of Misurata, the international community - and the Nato military alliance - have all but overlooked the closely parallel drama in the mountain towns of Zintan and Yafran, little more than an hour's drive from the capital.
"We have been under fire for about an hour and a half now," said one Zintan resident, Mustafa Haider, by telephone from the town on Friday afternoon.
"From the south, from the north, from the east, from everywhere. They fire with Grad missiles, Scud missiles, anything. They have tried to enter Zintan many times but they couldn't." Homes, schools, and the town's main hospital had been hit, causing panic, he said.
A spokesman for Human Rights Watch, Fred Abrahams, accused the Libyan regime of committing "indiscriminate attacks" in the district. "They are firing into residential areas without targeting a military object," he said. "It is in essence the same tactic as in Misurata."
Zintan and Yafran are at the tip of the largest rebel-held pocket in western Libya - a crescent running along the Nafusa mountain range from the towns, south-west of Tripoli, to the Tunisian border.
In normal times, this dramatic area, studded with fortified castle-granaries carved out of the rock, is one of Libya's main tourist attractions. Now it just might be the place where the country's long military stalemate is starting to shift a little.
Zintan, whose Berber people have long been at odds with Tripoli, was one of the first places to rebel against the regime, resisting even a proffered $750,000-per-family bribe by Gaddafi's security chief to stay loyal. Col Gaddafi, in turn, singled out the town for special mention in his first key anti-uprising speech, promising to hunt its rebel "greasy rats" from "alley to alley."
Until two weeks ago, the enclave was isolated.
But then the rebels captured the Wazin-Dehiba frontier post into Tunisia, opening a vital supply line. At that border, earlier this week, the pre-Gaddafi flag flew, rebel troops manned a rickety checkpoint and food and stores flowed across into Libya.
But there was far greater traffic in the opposite direction, of fearful and sometimes traumatised refugees from the regime attacks.
Saleh Aouni, from Yafran, was crying as he crossed over to safety. "We can no longer live there. Not an hour goes by without shelling," he said. "I hope this will end and I can return to a Libya without Gaddafi."
The rocky, moon-like landscape in this part of Tunisia is best known to outsiders as the filming location for Luke Skywalker's home planet in the Star Wars movies. The film-makers named their imaginary world after Tataouine, the nearest large town.
But now the real war, just across the border, has come here too.
As control of the frontier crossing shifted back and forth, Gaddafi troops in pickup trucks invaded Tunisian territory and exchanged fire with Tunisian troops after chasing rebels into the town of Dehiba. The regime shelled the frontier last weekend, with some of the missiles landing inside Tunisia, though there were no reported casualties on the Tunisian side.
A furious Tunisian government has now set up six lines of checkpoints to stop it happening again, with Tunisian troops sitting behind improvised walls of rock at the border.
They can do nothing, however, about the regime's intensifying attacks inside Libya itself, which could be plainly heard echoing round the mountains across the frontier.
Only Nato can do that - and there are complaints that it is saving most of its firepower for better-publicised battlefronts.
On Saturday, rebels in the western city of Misurata said that the government had dropped bombs on four large oil storage tanks, using small crop dusting planes in order to escape the attention of the Nato aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone.
The regime, which still has military bases in the Zintan area, is trying hard to cut the road between Zintan and the border, making life extremely difficult for the towns along the route. The town closest to the frontier, Nalut, was shelled repeatedly last week, with at least four dead, and shells continued to land on Zintan yesterday.
But Nato bombing of regime forces in the area does not appear to have started until recently and comes with pauses which can last days, allowing government troops to regroup. The vast majority of the alliance's sorties have been along the coast and in the east.
A rebel spokesman in Zintan, Abdulrahman, reached by telephone, said that Nato aircraft had bombed government positions around the town on Tuesday, forcing regime troops back.
Nato jets also destroyed at least two helicopters being carried on the backs of trucks on Thursday, the spokesman said, as they headed towards the Tunisian border. There have been no reports of regime helicopters being used in the offensive so far.
Like many mountain-dwellers, the people of Zintan are both independent and martially-minded.
Children learn to shoot from the age of eight, and the area is famous for its skilled huntsmen. The landscape, with its ravines, lookouts and caves, is ideal insurgent territory. Western observers said the rebels in this part of Libya also appeared more organised than their eastern counterparts around Benghazi, with better supply lines and discipline.
But beyond the protection of their mountains, they will struggle to extend the area they control, or to link up with the main rebel-held territory. And the rebels' transitional national council in Benghazi appears, so far, to have had little contact of any kind with them: a spokesman said that a representative of the Nafusa mountains would be appointed to the council next week.
Pleading for more intervention, the Zintan resident, Mustafa Haider, said: "The (international) organisations don't know about us. The help and food we have received is not enough. We don't have any heavy weapons. We need help."
More than 8,000 refugees crossed the Dehiba border last weekend alone, according to the UN, and a total of 44,000 from the mountain area have left since the beginning of the uprising.
A humanitarian crisis has been averted only by the extraordinary generosity of the local people, who have taken the vast majority of the new arrivals into their own homes. Only a relatively small refugee camp has been needed near the border itself.
Massoud Chaben, from Yafran, one of those in that camp, described the situation in his home town as "miserable," saying there was not even any drinking water. Fatma Douri, 35, another Yafran refugee, said she had fled to save her children's lives.
"If I had stayed there, my two little children would have been among the dead," she said. "Just imagine, they were without milk or food for weeks. The siege of the town absolutely has to be lifted, otherwise thousands of children are going to be among the dead in the next few weeks."
Additional reporting by Ruth Sherlock in Benghazi and Harriet AlexanderTwitter’s Facebook app is the little software that most people use to insert their Twitter updates into their Facebook stream. It hasn’t had a ton of other uses until today. Twitter announced on their blog that the company is rolling out a new feature that would make it easier to discover and follow Facebook friends.
Essentially, it scours Twitter for usernames, and gives you a big list of all your Facebook friends who are also on Twitter. That way you can get even more updates from your ex-coworkers or that girl who sat next to you in math class in sophomore year of high school. It also works for LinkedIn, in much the same way. Quoth Twitter:
Our Facebook app, which launched in 2007, now shows which of your Facebook friends are on Twitter and lets you follow them instantly and save them to a list. The app also lets you post your Tweets to your Facebook profile and now, to one of your Facebook pages too. With the Tweets application by LinkedIn, you can see which of your LinkedIn connections are on Twitter and follow the ones you choose right from the app. The app also lets you save your LinkedIn connections as a list, post your Tweets to LinkedIn, and add your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile.
However, shortly after it went live, it went down. Twitter updated the original blog post to say “The Facebook app cannot currently access your Facebook friend list. We
believe this is an issue on Facebook’s end.” Facebook noted “We are working with Twitter to resolve the issue.”
As we wait for a response from Facebook and/or Twitter, the feature remains down. That’s lame; it’s a really good idea and I can’t imagine what issue Facebook might have with it, if indeed they did yank it. I’ll keep you updated if we find out anything new.
[Image from Gizmodo]
Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in San Francisco (no link for that one–you’ll have to do the legwork yourself).Please enable Javascript to watch this video
HENRICO COUNTY, Va. – A Freeman High School history teacher was charged for having consensual sex with a minor and using a communication device to propose sex to a minor.
Ashley Leigh Lewis Weber, who is listed on the Freeman High School website as a history teacher, was charged after Henrico Police said they took a report of an inappropriate relationship between a juvenile and Weber.
The investigation led to the 31-year-old woman being charged with two counts of having consensual sexual intercourse with a child 15+ years old and one count of using a communication device to propose sex.
Authorities were called to the school for a suspicious situation report, on June 12. The student, according to courtroom testimony Wednesday, was 16 at the time of the incident.
Weber was arrested on Tuesday, August 1. She was granted $5,000 bond total on the two misdemeanors and one felony charge.
Weber is married and has no priors on record, according to her attorney Craig Cooley. She is a graduate of Manchester High and received her degree from VCU in 2009.
Weber will be staying with her mother while on bond. She was released from Henrico Doctor's Hospital two days ago, according to courtroom testimony, after police allowed her to go there for an examination before she was taken to jail.
Henrico County Schools spokesperson Andy Jenks said the school system is aware of the charges.
“Ms. Weber is not a year-round employee, and we have few details about the allegations other than what has been publicly reported," wrote Jenks. "Ms. Weber has been employed with us since August of 2009, most recently as a history teacher at Freeman High School and, before that, at Tucker High School.”
Jenks said it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.
Weber returns to court at 10 a.m. on Oct. 6.By By Tim Sandle Dec 29, 2012 in Sports Former England and Sussex cricket captain Tony Greig has died aged 66 after suffering a heart attack at his home in Sydney. Tony Greig was born in Queenstown, South Africa in 1946 (he qualified to play cricket for England through Scottish parents). Greig was a tall (6 feet 6 inches) and he bowled both medium pace and off spin. Greig played 58 Tests for England from 1972-77. Of these, 14 tests were as captain. He was also captain of Sussex. According to the Towards the end of his playing career, Greig joined Australian media magnate Kerry Packer's breakaway World Series.He later became a popular television commentator in Australia. Many tributes have been paid to Greig. Australia captain Michael Clarke is quoted by the Former Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee told the "We will not forget the way he stirred the viewers in a similar vein to the way he did to opposition teams.'' Tony Greig, the great all-rounder cricketer, died of a heart attack. This was following an earlier report that he was suffering from lung cancer, as reported by the Independent. Greig was rushed to St Vincent's hospital in Sydney but was pronounced dead shortly afterwards, according to a statement issued by Greig's wife Vivian.Tony Greig was born in Queenstown, South Africa in 1946 (he qualified to play cricket for England through Scottish parents). Greig was a tall (6 feet 6 inches) and he bowled both medium pace and off spin. Greig played 58 Tests for England from 1972-77. Of these, 14 tests were as captain. He was also captain of Sussex.According to the BBC, Greig scored 3,599 Test runs at an average of 40.43, took 141 wickets with his off-spin and medium pace at 32.20 apiece, and was named one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year in 1975.Towards the end of his playing career, Greig joined Australian media magnate Kerry Packer's breakaway World Series.He later became a popular television commentator in Australia.Many tributes have been paid to Greig. Australia captain Michael Clarke is quoted by the Guardian as saying: "I was only speaking with Tony a couple of days ago so news of his passing is absolutely devastating. Tony has a long and decorated history with international cricket both as a player and commentator and cricket will be much poorer for his loss. Personally, he has also been a great mentor for me, providing great advice through the good times and the bad."Former Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee told the Daily Telegraph that: "Tony was a tough opponent who took on all opposition with aggression and a determination to win."We will not forget the way he stirred the viewers in a similar vein to the way he did to opposition teams.'' More about crciket, tony greig, Sports More news from crciket tony greig SportsCOLUMBUS, Ohio -- Michigan Week is still a week away for Ohio State.
But the Buckeyes' football Twitter account may already be thinking about the game, and in particular, what the Buckeyes will wear.
The account tweeted a 30-second teaser video on Sunday showing pieces of a potential new alternate uniform for the Nov. 25 game at Michigan.
OSU already wore alternate jerseys for the Penn State game earlier this season, going with a gray look.
This one, at least in the initial tease, shows some elements of gray, including the helmet and cleats. But then you get to the jersey, and there is white with a scarlet "Block O" on the collar.
And the text of the tweet is Roman numerals which translate into Nov. 25, 2017, the day of Ohio State-Michigan.This will be my first Father's Day without my father. A fatherless day, really. I got my first "it's never too soon to shop for Dad!" email promptly following Mother's Day, which I'd like to address -- do you know how much I procrastinate? It's May. I've been trying to prepare myself for the email invitations to Father's Day brunches, and "get your Dad something nice for Father's Day!" commercials, and I've never even taken my Dad out to a Father's Day brunch. Suddenly, though, I wish I could. Or at least meander over the idea in the realm of possibility.
I was blindsided by my first real acknowledgment of my Dad's passing. For the past six months, I've been cheering on my efforts of maintaining my composure. I've been reminding myself that I knew my dad's death was coming, as though it would stand in place of my right to grieve. I didn't realize how quickly these repressions would resurface until I was confronted with subtle suggestions, like having a conversation with my girlfriend about growing up while waiting for milkshakes, or hearing someone say, "Hey, Dad!" It makes me humbled but hungry to remember that feeling.
My Dad's stone was engraved a few weeks ago, and though it wasn't a surprise, I stood there emotionally derailed looking at my father's name above two dates and three nouns that are supposed to be a significant representation of who he was. I don't like to say we've been cheated because it sounds selfish but we've been absolutely slapped in the face if we've lost a parent.
Both May and June we're forced to turn our cheeks and grapple with the slightest bit of envy towards everyone occupying the greeting card aisle in search of the perfect message to sign their name below. I realize Father's Day might be just like any other Sunday, but unlike a normal day, it's bringing up the word Dad far too often -- reminding me how it felt to be a daughter looking up at her Dad and seeing his face.
I would like to ask my Dad so many questions: am I making you proud? Why is my car making so many weird noises? What was your exact ratio of sugar to water for the hummingbird food? Do you feel as cheated as we do?
It sucks, I mean, there's no other way to put it unless I keep lying to myself. In the quiet moments I still beg for answers that I'll never receive. I look out into my backyard and imagine my Dad standing there, planting flowers or mowing the lawn or filling his beloved bird feeders. Such Dad stuff, right? Attempting to reject this form of musing is futile.
The anticipation of Father's Day has become a dreadful kaleidoscope of carnival mirrors, disfiguring a warm June that once felt welcoming, instead of an excuse for a picnic or a card to sign.
Alicia Napierkowski is a freelance writer and designer based in CT. More of her work can be found at: sunlight & insight.Bombardier Business Aircraft successfully opened the Global 7000’s speed envelope to Mach 0.995, very nearly breaking the speed of sound, during a recent flight of Flight Test Vehicle 1 (FTV1, registered as C-GLBO) from the company’s flight test center in Wichita, it announced yesterday. The 7,400-nm twinjet is projected to have an Mmo of Mach 0.925.
Meanwhile, Bombardier said that the two flight-test Global 7000s are showing excellent system reliability, and the program is progressing on schedule. "Our flight-test vehicles continue to show a high degree of maturity in testing, dispatching twice daily in many cases," said Michel Ouellette, senior vice president of the Global 7000 and 8000 programs. "We have strong momentum in the program right now, and we are on track for entry into service in 2018. FTV1 completed its maiden flight in November 2016…and, to date, has achieved approximately 200 flight hours."
FTV2, which completed its first flight in Toronto on March 4 and has since been transferred to Bombardier's Wichita flight-test center, is dedicated to testing aircraft propulsion, electrical and mechanical systems.The idea the U.S. administration would be able to normalize ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin is the stuff of fairytales, according to the president of the world's largest aluminum company.
Rusal President Oleg Deripaska told CNBC he believed it is unrealistic to expect U.S. President Donald Trump and the rest of his administration to soothe relations with Russia, despite Washington's recent calls for improved ties with Moscow.
"We all tend to believe (in this) kind of fairytale but there is a reality … You know Trump and his administration needs to prove that they would be capable to change (the) economic reality in the U.S.," Deripaska said in an exclusive interview with CNBC on Tuesday.
President Trump's attempts to improve relations with the Kremlin have been hampered by his team's connections to Russia which allegedly date back to the election campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies also found that Moscow had hacked Trump's Democratic rivals during the election process.Under Obama, U.S. Govt. Spends At Lowest Rate In Decades, Says Journalist
Enlarge this image toggle caption Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
(Updated on 5/23/12 @ 11:55 am. See end of post for Romney campaign response.)
Democrats like Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager of President Obama's re-election effort, and Donna Brazile, the Democratic political strategist, were delighted to point on Tuesday to an analysis of federal spending under President Obama compared with his predecessors.
Rex Nutting, a journalist who writes for the MarketWatch website affiliated with The Wall Street Journal looked at the data and found that rhetoric and reality don't quite match up.
Nutting found that, contrary to repeated allegations from the president's political foes, including Mitt Romney, that Obama has been on a federal spending tear, he actually hasn't.
Indeed, Nutting, spending under Obama has actually occurred at a slower rate than it did under previous White House occupants.
You actually have to go back decades to find a presidency — Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s to be precise — in which spending happened at a slower rate.
An excerpt:
"Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an "inferno" of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children's future. Even Democrats seem to think it's true. "But it didn't happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s. "Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has."
Hoover happened to be president when Will Rogers, that great American humorist, was at the height of his popularity. It was Rogers who gave us a line that is no less true today then when he uttered it more than 75 years ago:
"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble. It's what we know that just ain't so."
I've asked the Romney campaign for a response to Nutting's piece and will update this post with same. Readers can decide whether or not the information is persuasive.
---
Updated on 5/23/12 @ 11:55 am --
A Romney campaign spokesperson has responded with a compilation of information that, she says, supports the Republican campaign's contention that Obama is responsible for a "spending binge.":
Here is an accurate account of President Obama's spending binge: Candidate Obama Claimed $4 Trillion In New Debt Was "Unpatriotic" – But President Obama Has Added More Than $5 Trillion In New Debt: Candidate Obama, On Adding $4 Trillion In Debt: "That's Irresponsible. It's Unpatriotic." OBAMA: "The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents - #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic." (Senator Barack Obama, Remarks, Fargo, ND, 7/3/08)...
The Romney response continues with material that appears drawn from a news release on the Romney campaign website.Cris Carter joined FS1’s Undisputed today. Earlier, Skip Bayless teased that Carter would have “inside information” on the Ezekiel Elliott case.
Carter said that he would be “shocked” if Elliott was not suspended within the next 48 hours, and said that “information will come out.” He also referenced the Tom Brady Deflategate case, in which information was destroyed, and implied that the league would use Brady’s situation as a precedent:
"In the next 48 hours, I would be shocked if Zeke was not suspended." — @criscarter80 pic.twitter.com/aHyoxfjrw0 — UNDISPUTED (@undisputed) August 7, 2017
This situation is reminiscent of when Stephen A. Smith reported that Brady had destroyed evidence, and lo and behold the league announced that soon thereafter.
For what it’s worth, Jerry Jones has remained adamant that he does not believe Elliott would be suspended.LONDON (Reuters) - A major shareholder in British pay-TV company Sky SKYB.L will vote against Twenty-First Century Fox’s (FOXA.O) $14 billion takeover bid, the investor told Reuters on Sunday, while another said it is unhappy about the offer.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch leaves his home in London, Britain March 4, 2016. Murdoch wed former supermodel Jerry Hall in a low-key ceremony in central London on Friday, the fourth marriage for the media mogul. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox offered 10.75 pounds ($13.52) a share in cash on Friday in its second attempt to buy the 61 percent of the business that it does not own, with Sky’s independent directors backing the latest bid.
The shareholder, which declined to be named but said it was one of Sky’s top 50 stakeholders, described the bid as “far too low”.
“We are voting against the deal if it comes out in its current form and we have told the company as such,” the investor said.
“The independent directors have absolutely failed minority shareholders.”
A Sky spokeswoman declined to comment.
The deal would give Fox control of a pay-TV network spanning 22 million households in Britain, Ireland, Austria, Germany and Italy.
A second shareholder told Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper that Sky’s directors should push for more.
It “ought to be the start of the process, not the conclusion”, Alastair Gunn, a fund manager at Jupiter Asset Management, was quoted as saying.
A representative of the firm was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters on Sunday.
Related Coverage UK PM May's spokeswoman says not appropriate to comment on Fox bid for Sky
Analysts at Citi characterized the offer as a “low-ball bid”, citing 13.50 pounds per share as a fair valuation.
Sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters that Fox had pounced after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in June sent the pound down about 14 percent against the U.S. dollar and Sky’s share price tumbling.
($1 = 0.7954 pounds)10. CHAIN OF COMMAND
LOG ENTRY Captured by the Cardassians while on a covert Federation mission (depicted in ”Chain of Command, Part I”), Picard is turned over to Gul Madred (David Warner), an imperious interrogator. Our dear captain is stripped, dangled from the ceiling overnight, and implanted with a device that causes immense pain in any part of the body that suits Madred. Back on the Enterprise, Picard’s caustic replacement, Captain Jellico (the superb Ronny Cox), engages in high-stakes diplomacy that eventually secures Picard’s release.
CRITIQUE Cutting between scenes on an anxious, unhappy Enterprise and of an abused and demoralized Picard, this is one of the darkest — and most resonant — episodes in the series’ history.
TRIVIA Warner is no stranger to the final frontier, having appeared as a human in Star Trek V and, more famously, as the far-thinking and quite doomed Klingon chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI. — Adam B. VaryBERLIN (Reuters) - German pilots at Ryanair (RYA.I) have called for a four-hour strike on Friday that is set to be the first by pilots in the company’s history after the Vereinigung Cockpit union said it was unhappy with the Irish airline’s approach to talks.
FILE PHOTO: A Ryanair plane prepares to land at Manchester Airport in Manchester northern England, March 31, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo
The strike comes less than a week after Ryanair shocked investors by saying it would recognize unions for the first time in its 32-year history in a bid to avert coordinated strikes across Europe over the Christmas period.
The walkout in Germany, described as a “warning strike”, will take place from 0401 GMT to 0759 GMT and will affect flights from all German airports, VC said in a statement.
Around 16 Ryanair flights are due to depart from Germany in that time. Ryanair said it had written to pilots to ask them to work as normal.
“We advise all customers in Germany to turn up as normal tomorrow, as we plan to operate all scheduled flights,” Ryanair spokesman Robin Kiely said in a statement. “We will be doing our utmost to minimize any disruptions to the Christmas travel plans of our German customers.”
MANAGEMENT STYLE
Despite Ryanair’s offer to talk with unions, VC said Ryanair had refused to accept two members of a delegation that the union nominated to hold talks with management. One of the pilots was a contractor and one a direct employee, but Ryanair has ended both of their contracts, VC said.
The union said trade unions in Germany have the right to say who can undertake negotiations and that it would not be dictated to by Ryanair on this point.
“This has shown us that nothing has changed with Ryanair’s management style or how it handles workers’ rights,” VC President Ilja Schulz told reporters, sitting behind a table bearing the slogan “No landing clearance for Irish social dumping”.
Ryanair said it was happy to negotiate with German pilots and VC officials, but not with non-Ryanair pilots or one who is in litigation with the company.
Ryanair has also offered to hold talks on Jan. 5 but Schulz said those talks were subject to the same conditions and so the strike would go ahead.
“Ryanair obviously doesn’t believe that VC is in a position to organize a strike or that the Ryanair pilots in Germany have had enough with how they are treated,” he said.
Ryanair said it would continue to engage with the VC union and its German pilots to try and reach a collective labor agreement in early January.
Analysts at Bernstein said the strike demonstrated the volatility of the situation at Ryanair and that it showed a long and protracted process may be ahead.
“We see the breakdown of talks before they had even started as further evidence that Ryanair needs to build the organizational infrastructure, capability and mindset to deal with union negotiations that cannot be broken by ultimatums,” they wrote in a note.Australia’s environment laws are suffering a “death by a thousand cuts”, conservationists have warned, after the government unveiled plans to amend the key legislation that protects endangered species.
Greg Hunt, the environment minister, has put forward a bill that would mean he would suffer no recourse if he approved major developments without taking expert advice.
The bill adds a clause to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act which states that a decision to approve a development will not be invalid “merely because the minister failed” to receive “relevant approved conservation advice”.
The government said the move was prompted by a court challenge by environmentalists to a proposed mine in north-west Tasmania. The court ruled the project could not continue until the government considered advice on harm caused to the Tasmanian devil, which Labor’s then environment minister, Tony Burke, had failed to do.
The Coalition’s change would mean this, and similar, legal challenges to approvals would fail.
While the environment minister will still be required to consider expert advice, there will be no penalty for failing to do so.
Jess Abrahams, the healthy ecosystems campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation, told Guardian Australia that Hunt was reducing his accountability to protect endangered species.
“These are weasel words, in many ways, because the minister can ignore advice with no recourse at all,” he said. “Review and recourse from third parties to government decisions is an essential part of democracy, so it’s very worrying this is being removed.
“Environmental protection is suffering a death by a thousand cuts at the moment. Laws are being weakened and approvals are being handed over to the states, which have a questionable record of protecting the environment.
“We won’t let this one go. It’s part of a much bigger attack on environment laws. We should be strengthening laws as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is far from perfect, but instead we are watering them down.”
Conservationists say the amendment would stymie a challenge to the Maules Creek mine in NSW, which they say was approved based on erroneous information.
Whitehaven Coal, the mine’s developer, was allowed to clear 544 hectares of endangered box gum woodland, as well as further habitat that contains threatened species such as the swift parrot and greater long-eared bat. Hunt is being urged by conservation groups to revoke the approval.
Hunt is also set to decide whether to allow the dredging of 3m cubic metres of seabed to allow the expansion of the Abbot Point port in Queensland. Advice released by the previous Labor government indicated that dumped sediment travels far further than previously thought, posing a potential threat to the Great Barrier Reef.
Mark Butler, Labor’s environment spokesman, told Guardian Australia: "This is just further evidence of a government that quashes debate and refuses to listen to the experts.
"First they shut down the bodies providing advice on climate change; now they want to ignore conservation advice too."
The Greens also attacked the plan. “The Abbott government is putting in place the legal framework to silence community opposition to its agenda of coal and gas at all costs,” said the Greens senator Larissa Waters.
“With many of our most loved species on the brink of extinction, including the leadbeater’s possum, Tasmanian devil and bilbies, we should be strengthening their protection not tearing it apart.”
But Hunt’s spokesman told Guardian Australia that the move didn’t lessen protections.
“The requirement for the decision maker to have regard to any relevant approved conservation advice is maintained,” he said.
“The amendments apply to ensure that past decisions which have been made are not at risk of being invalid. The amendments will provide certainty for industry stakeholders with existing decisions and the projects that rely on those decisions.”
The government is also toughening up penalties for the illegal killing, trading and keeping of sea turtles and dugongs.
Fines for these offences will be tripled, with the government working with Indigenous elders to stop the practice.
“The government will not tolerate illegal poaching of dugongs and turtles under the cover of traditional hunting,” Hunt’s spokesman told Guardian Australia.
The ACF’s Abrahams welcomed the move but said wider threats to marine creatures needed to be addressed.
“It’s great that illegal hunting is being targeted, but is that the real threat that dugongs and turtles face?” he said. “Let’s look at the real cause of the losses to these animals, such as the industrial development that has destroyed the seagrass that dugongs and turtles feed upon.
"We need to look at the bigger picture, which is the loss of habitat.”FiveThirtyEight's editor in chief Nate Silver thinks it is too early to start predicting the general election. | Getty Nate Silver rips Trump-Clinton polls in 8-part Twitter rant
Nate Silver thinks it's time to pump the brakes on predicting the results of a Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton matchup in November.
"For f--k's sake, America. You're going to make go on a rant about general election polls -- in May?" the editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight wrote as part of a tweetstorm on Tuesday.
Story Continued Below
Silver said Clinton has an about 6 percent lead over Trump nationally, but cautioned: "It's early. Trump could win. Also, he could lose in a landslide." He added that Trump's presumptive nomination and Clinton's ongoing battle with Bernie Sanders could be having an effect — "We'll know more in June."
The statistician said he wouldn't have polls of each state for "a few months."
8. It's usually not worth it to diagnose why an individual poll deviates from the consensus. Think'macro' not micro—look for robust trends. — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 10, 2016
He also warned his followers to check whether pollsters interview likely voters or registered voters.
"The election will go through a lot of twists and turns, and polls are noisy. Don't sweat individual polls or short-term fluctuations," Silver tweeted.They help humans to be happy - but for shrimps, anti-depressants are proving to be fatal.
A study by the University of Portsmouth reveals the anti-depressant - fluoxetine - is having a damaging affect on the creatures as it causes them to swim to the light, making them vulnerable to birds and fish.
Experts say the drug, which combats depression, is being used by more people and is passed through the sewer system into coastal waters, like the Solent.
The drug increases serotonin levels which makes humans happy, but for shrimps it draws them towards the light of the water's surface.
Dr Alex Ford, from the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Marine Sciences, says because shrimps are at the bottom of the food chain, this could have a damaging affect on all sea life.
Speaking to The News, he said: 'For some time scientists have known that prescription chemicals are getting into the water. I wondered if the drugs which are used to treat depression might also change the behaviour of shrimps.
'They are at the bottom of the food chain so this could seriously upset the natural balance of the ecosystem.
'There are millions of shrimps in the Solent and they are taking in excreted drugs of whole towns.'
Dr Ford conducted the simple experiment by putting shrimps into a tank of water and filled it with the same concentrated level of fluoxetine found in coastal waters.
And he found that they were five times more likely to swim to the light than shrimps who hadn't been exposed to the drug.
He added: 'Usually shrimps swim to darkness, like under rocks, it is a survival technique.
'When the shrimp swims out into the open they get gobbled up.
'People don't always realise that the drugs that they take don't get broken down very well through the sewer system.'
The research has now been published in the journal Aquatic Toxicology.
Prescriptions for antidepressants have risen rapidly in recent years, yet the environmental effect of pharmaceuticals in sewage has been largely unexplored.
Dr Ford now hopes to look at the affect of other pharmaceutical drugs on sea life.
'It is quite a new topic and there are so many drugs on the market,' he added.
>> Vote in our latest web poll.Donald Trump has resolutely refused to withdraw his support from Senate candidate Roy Moore, even in the wake of the sexual harassment and assault accusations leveled against Moore—and the unflattering comparisons many have |
Black Shuck Gin. Add a splash of Pomegranate and Elderflower Cordial (we use Green Bottle). Sprinkle over a few pomegranate seeds to garnish then top with 100ml of Prosecco.Thank you to Patrick and Sarah for chatting to us.You can view and buy gin and liqueur from The Norfolk Sloe Company here.In December it was announced that Disney had acquired rights to the Indiana Jones franchise, declaring that it belongs in a museum, where no one can exploit it. Still, as with all things of archaeological import, one can only wait about 45 minutes before being overcome by the desire to get your hands all over it. So naturally, talk has begun about making a new Indiana Jones film, one with or without Harrison Ford. According to Latino Review, as well as common sense, time is running out for the 71-year-old actor to reprise his role as the globetrotting adventurer—even if, like his hunt for “knowledge” in Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, he only goes after intangible, easy-to-lift treasures from now on. So it says the studio is considering rebooting Indiana Jones with a new actor, a la James Bond—a list that, reportedly, currently begins with Bradley Cooper.
While this is obviously still just talk, the site says its same insider previously gave it the scoop on Cooper’s casting in Guardians Of The Galaxy, and so they do seem to be a fairly reliable source on things Disney and Bradley Cooper. For whatever it’s worth, that same source also says Frank Darabont has already pitched an idea for another Indiana Jones movie—one that could turn into something possibly starring Bradley Cooper, or one that LR itself admits could go nowhere.
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Yet whatever the outcome, given Ford’s advancing age and Disney’s interest in making good on its investment, an Indiana Jones reboot definitely seems inevitable, whether it’s with Cooper or someone else. And for anyone who has a knee-jerk reaction to seeing Ford’s wry, world-weary stoicism yield to Cooper’s glib smugness, or for Indiana Jones to be played by Rocket Raccoon, remember that an actual raccoon would be preferable to Shia LaBeouf. He could hunt for treasure in garbage cans and whip people with his tail!The SF Commune, a community center and social space for organizers in the Ocean View district of the city, was raided early this morning, Wednesday, May 15th, 2013. Over twenty people were evicted from their home and social center and four arrested as SWAT team and SFPD moved into the before abandoned building to push people to the curb and maintain homelessness in the city.
Tonight, the SF Commune and all in solidarity with direct action to alleviate the housing crisis and homelessness will march throughout the Ocean View neighborhood to call for an end to evictions and foreclosures in San Francisco by banks and police.
Gather at Minnie and Lovie Ward Recreation Center at Capitol Avenue and Lobos Street, San Francisco at 5pm to get ready to march at 6pm through the Ocean View and call for an end to evictions and foreclosures by banks, developers, and the police.
The SF Commune, a community center and social space for organizers in the Ocean View district of the city, was raided early this morning, Wednesday, May 15th, 2013. Over twenty people were evicted from their home and social center and four arrested as SWAT team and SFPD moved into the before abandoned building to push people to the curb and maintain homelessness in the city.Tonight, the SF Commune and all in solidarity with direct action to alleviate the housing crisis and homelessness will march throughout the Ocean View neighborhood to call for an end to evictions and foreclosures in San Francisco by banks and police.Gather at Minnie and Lovie Ward Recreation Center at Capitol Avenue and Lobos Street, San Francisco at 5pm to get ready to march at 6pm through the Ocean View and call for an end to evictions and foreclosures by banks, developers, and the police.When the SF Commune moved into 200 Broad Street over a year ago on Easter Sunday the building was filled with needles, broken glass, and buckets of human feces. The group worked for weeks cleaning up the building, moving out all the hazardous materials and disposing of them properly, and turning the building into a livable home and organizing space. With freshly painted walls, cleaned floors, a rebuilt kitchen, working electricity and running water, the group started to put their attention to the neighborhood beyond themselves. Participating in and organizing free food programs, art projects, community gatherings, and social justice activism, the SF Commune found themselves with their need met and now able to address the needs of others.Soon, more houses were opened to give shelter to those without. Some of the largest international banking corporations had foreclosed on families throughout San Francisco, pushing them to the curb the same way the police did this morning. Left vacant for years, organizers from the SFC went about turning these empty buildings into comfortable homes for people in need. Focusing first on housing others whose motive was to themselves help house, feed, and heal more people, and then working to alleviate the homelessness crisis of all, the SF Commune, as a people, began to meet the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for all people.In April of 2013, the first three garden beds were built and planted at the SF Commune. Using wood from the Kezar Gardens native plant nursery and recycling center evicted earlier in January of 2013, the group built two fresh raised beds over the concrete backyard and cleaned up the garden bed in front of 200 Broad Street that had been left derelict and overgrown for years.Soon, the beds were filled with strawberries, basil, edible root tubers, kale, chard, vegetables, salad greens, raspberries, and other edible and medicinal plants gathered from farms in San Francisco. It's the very same farms and gardens that inoculated these garden beds with edible plants in a neighborhood with people in need that are soon to be evicted to develop more condominiums. This neighborhood has been known as a food desert for a very long time, a place where organic and nutrient-rich food is very expensive at best and very hard to come by as the norm. Knocking on each door on the surrounding blocks, presenting themselves to the Ocean View-Merced Heights-Ingleside-Neighbors In Action coalition, and joining ACCE and Supervisor John Avalos on a blight tour of the blocks surrounding 200 Broad Street, the SF Commune invited all the neighbors to come plant vegetables, greens, and other edible plants in the backyard garden beds, to which they received overwhelming positive support.There is a problem in this country, this city, and this neighborhood when people are forced out of their homes at the end of a shotgun and riot police storm neighborhood gardens to lock up abandoned spaces. We want to put an end to this type of repression before it affects any more people. Let's build a strong community that seeks to house, nourish, and heal all people.We invite everyone to the table to figure out a solution that works for everyone, a win-win-win situation. We back that invitation up with a willingness to take direct action to offer solutions when our invitations are refused by banks, developers, and the state.ABC 7's Story and Video Footage of the Raid and Arrests: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news%2Flocal%2Fsan_francisco&id=9103422Block of Granite
You have, will, and always will be getting your head and neck area targeted if you’re in a combat or contact sport. Contact sports such as lacrosse, rugby, or football also feature violent clashes of the human body. In BJJ and submission grappling, you literally get your neck squeezed by your opponent in order to solicit a tap to pain or because you are about to lose consciousness from lack of blood flow to the brain.
Yet so little emphasis is placed on developing the musculature and mobility of the neck. This is a must-have tool for every grapplers’ arsenal.
I’m going to get right to it and show you a few movements to use to develop your own neck program.
Neck Movements
To simplify things, I’ll show you exercises from four groups:
External resistance : Resistance Bands – resistance bands provide a lot of versatility and flexibility. You can increase or reduce the amount of resistance during an actual set to get your target contraction right. Ross Enamait covers resistance bands extensively on his site and in his clips.
– resistance bands provide a lot of versatility and flexibility. You can increase or reduce the amount of resistance during an actual set to get your target contraction right. Ross Enamait covers resistance bands extensively on his site and in his clips. Weights – the traditional neck harness has been used for years to develop neck strength. While a valuable tool to overload the rear flexion of the neck, it also provides a static contraction for two main “shock absorbers” of the neck, the sternal head. From a cost/benefit perspective, if your on a budget, choose the resistance bands over the neck harness (Note that isometrics are free!)
– the traditional neck harness has been used for years to develop neck strength. While a valuable tool to overload the rear flexion of the neck, it also provides a static contraction for two main “shock absorbers” of the neck, the sternal head. From a cost/benefit perspective, if your on a budget, choose the resistance bands over the neck harness (Note that isometrics are free!) Workout Partner – using weights, resistance bands, or their own resistance, a workout partner can help you train your neck. The primary method of training the neck with a partner is drilling or live sparring/rolling. Many of your takedowns, escapes, and submissions leverage your head positioning in order to finish, making this a great option for training.
Bridge work : Wrestlers/Grapplers warm up typically included some type of front, side, and back bridging. Bridge work is very demanding on your body, especially with a weak neck. It also works your body as a unit, meaning you move your neck along the primary movement patterns (flexion, extension and rotation) while grappling which makes it highly functional. Isometrics Isometric contractions can be held for quick bursts to develop neck musculature (e.g., 5 seconds) or longer bouts for neck strength endurance (e.g., 30 seconds or more). You will be resisting the force place on your head to move your neck, which is exactly what you face while grappling. Plus you can use various methods of resistance (your head, a towel, resistance bands, an object like a wall or chair) to be creative.
You can also perform variations of headstands which will be, basically, putting weight on your head so your neck has to abosrb the weight. This forces an isometric contraction of the neck that is hard to duplicate. This also places alot of weight on your neck so if you have pain or disc issues to begin with, this may not be for you. Neck Mobility drills When you start moving your body around the mats in grappling movements, where your neck becomes part of the movement, we will classify that as a neck mobility drill). It’s a natural progression from the movement patterns of bridge work and the strength development work with external resistance. Examples I like include the Bridge with Kick Over and the Head Post Bridge Pass Drill (both of which I demonstrate on the video below).
With neck training, an ounce of prevention is worth at least a pound of cure. Don’t get sidelined again by a neck injury. Make neck training part of your program.
Train hard, train safe.Here is a story about some farmers who sold land to home builders during the bubble - and are now buying back land at a fraction of the price...
From Mary Ellen Podmolik at the Chicago Tribune: Shrewd investments enable farmers to live off the land they sold, then bought
... the [Baltz] brothers stood... on 246 acres that, at their peak, sold for $65,000 an acre and in 2005 were annexed by the village and zoned for more than 400 single-family detached homes.
The Baltz brothers paid $3.6 million, or about $14,500 an acre, for land that already has subdivision utilities brought to the property line. This year, though, the only thing rising out of the dirt will be the corn that Bob Baltz planted last month.
Bob Dhuse, whose family has been farming southwest of Chicago since the 1850s, decided to split up the family's Kendall County land seven years ago, selling 90 acres for $34,000 to a housing developer.
... last fall he paid $12,000 to $15,000 an acre for land on the west side of Joliet that was to be a project of Neumann Homes, which, like competitors Kimball Hill, Kirk Corp. and Pasquinelli, all went bankrupt.
And another example (not buying back the same land - but similar):Nice timing!Earlier:This is a short article on how to get an IMEI number from a MEID or ESN, which should be the same. For a lot of people, this can be found within the device. But there will be times when a device will just not show this information.
Why Do I Need This?
As stated above, most of the time an IMEI can be easily found in your device settings. Other times you may even be able to find this printed on the back of a device. However, there will be times that neither provide an IMEI.
As for what it is needed for, most of us would have to give it to a carrier to register our device on a network before we can use the network. There may be other reasons, but this would be the most common.
For Me
I recently had an issue with a brand new LG G5 (US992) device that comes factory unlocked, but is branded for US Cellular. There was nothing on the back, and the settings only showed an MEID and ESN.
Reading through some forum threads, some people stated that popping in a GSM SIM card would allow me to see an IMEI in the settings if the device was on a CDMA network previously. The LG G5 had been on US Cellular for about two days, so maybe this was a simple solution. But after putting in a GSM SIM card, nothing changed...
Luhn's Algorithm
Math. Math is the solution here. If you have either the MEID or ESN, you have the ability to calculate your IMEI.
An MEID or ESN will be 14 digits, while an IMEI will be 15 digits. The IMEI will have the same first 14 digits as an MEID or ESN, with a final 15th digit called a check digit. Luhn's algorithm is a way to obtain that 15th digit. It is a public domain algorithm commonly used today for numerous devices.
The Math
I will give you a simple visual showing of how it is done. We will first write out our MEID:
12345678912345
You will then double every second digit of the MEID:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5
1 4 3 8 5 12 7 16 9 2 2 6 4 10
Add up all the digits as though they were all single numbers:
1 4 3 8 5 12 7 16 9 2 2 6 4 10
1+4
+
3
+
8
+
5
+
1
+
2
+
7
+
1
+6
+
9
+
2
+
2
+
6
+
4
+
1
+
0=62
Now add to the summed number until it is divisible by 10 and results in a whole number:
62+8=70
70/10=7
The number that we added to the 62 is our check digit:
8
Our IMEI would then be:
123456789123458
This is just an example, but shows exactly how one would use a real MEID/ESN to calculate the 15th digit (to get the IMEI).
Does It Work?
I have used this during two occasions. The first was for my LG G5, and I was able to validate it through an IMEI checker, which did display the correct LG G5 variant--and was later sold to a customer with that IMEI, and who has not complained since our transaction.
The second occasion was during a job that required activating phones at times. I had an elderly customer who did not have the IMEI but provided the ESN to me. Following the formula above, I calculated his 15th digit and was able to confirm that his device was fully activated.Government borrowing will hit the debt ceiling on Monday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in a letter to Congress Wednesday.
As a result, the Treasury Department will soon start using what it calls "extraordinary measures" to prevent government borrowing from exceeding the legal limit.
Such measures include suspending the reinvestment of federal workers' retirement account contributions in short-term government bonds.
On Monday, debt subject to the limit was just $95 billion below the $16.394 trillion debt ceiling.
All told, the extraordinary measures can create about $200 billion of headroom under the limit -- normally about two months worth of borrowing.
But it's unclear how much time the extraordinary measures can buy now because there are so many unanswered questions about tax and spending policies, Geithner said, referring to the lack of any resolution of the fiscal cliff.
"If left unresolved, the expiring tax provisions and automatic spending cuts, as well as the attendant delays in filing of tax returns, would have the effect of adding some additional time to the duration of the extraordinary measures," he wrote.
After the extraordinary measures run out, Treasury won't be able to pay all the country's bills in full and on time. At that point, the United States will run the very real risk that it could default on some of its obligations.
Geithner has predicted for months that the country would hit the debt ceiling by the end of December.
But Congress, first consumed with the 2012 elections and now with the fiscal cliff, has made little effort to raise the ceiling.
Now there's a good chance the debt ceiling issue won't be resolved until the 11th hour and only after an ugly fight.
Indeed, some Republicans have been saying they view the debt ceiling as leverage in budget negotiations in early 2013 in their bid to secure spending cuts.
Before fiscal cliff legislation died last week, House Speaker John Boehner offered President Obama a one-year debt ceiling increase, but only on the condition that spending cuts and reforms exceeded the size of any increase.
The last standoff over the debt ceiling in 2011 ended badly, with Congress raising it only at the last minute. The debacle led to the downgrade of the country's AAA credit rating and caused tumult in the markets.
The Government Accountability Office has long called for Congress to come up with a smarter way to handle the debt ceiling.
"Congress should consider ways to better link decisions about the debt limit with decisions about spending and revenue to avoid potential disruptions to the Treasury market and to help inform the fiscal policy debate in a timely way," the GAO said in a recent report.
Meanwhile, a variety of fiscal and monetary experts have called for the debt ceiling to be abolished altogether.Sept. 5, 2014: High above Earth, more than 20 miles above sea level, a diaphanous layer of ozone surrounds our planet, absorbing energetic UV rays from the sun. It is, essentially, sunscreen for planet Earth. Without the ozone layer, we would be bathed in dangerous radiation on a daily basis, with side effects ranging from cataracts to cancer.
People were understandably alarmed, then, in the 1980s when scientists noticed that manmade chemicals in the atmosphere were destroying this layer. Governments quickly enacted an international treaty, called the Montreal Protocol, to ban ozone-destroying gases such as CFCs then found in aerosol cans and air conditioners. On September 16, 1987, the first 24 nations signed the treaty; 173 more have signed on in the years since.
Fast forward 27 years. Ozone-depleting chemicals have declined and the ozone hole appears to be on the mend. The United Nations has called the Montreal Protocol "the most successful treaty in UN history." Yet, despite Montreal's success, something is not … quite … right.
A new study by NASA researchers shows that a key ozone-depleting compound named carbon tetrachloride (CCl 4 ) is surprisingly abundant in the ozone layer.
"We are not supposed to be seeing this at all," says NASA atmospheric scientist Qing Liang.
Between 2007 and 2012, countries around the world reported zero emissions of CCl 4, yet measurements by satellites, weather balloons, aircraft, and surface-based sensors tell a different story. A study led by Liang shows worldwide emissions of CCl 4 average 39 kilotons per year, approximately 30 percent of peak emissions prior to the international treaty going into effect.
In the 1980s, chlorofluorocarbons became well-known to the general public. As the ozone hole widened, "CFC" became a household word. Fewer people, however, have heard of CCl 4, once used in applications such as dry cleaning and fire-extinguishers.
"Nevertheless," says Liang, "CCl 4 is a major ozone-depleting substance. It is the 3rd most important anthropogenic ozone-depleting compound behind CFC-11 and CFC-12."
Click to learn about the chemistry of ozone depletion from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Web link
Levels of CCl 4 have been declining since the Montreal Protocol was signed, just not as rapidly as expected. With zero emissions, abundances should have dropped by 4% per year. Instead, the decline has been closer to 1% per year.
To investigate the discrepancy, Liang and colleagues took CCl 4 data gathered by NOAA and NASA and plugged it into a NASA computer program, the 3-D GEOS Chemistry Climate Model. This sophisticated program takes into account the way CCl 4 is broken apart by solar radiation in the stratosphere as well as how the compound can be absorbed and degraded by contact with soil and ocean waters. Model simulations pointed to an unidentified ongoing current source of CCl 4.
"It is now apparent there are either unidentified industrial leakages, large emissions from contaminated sites, or unknown CCl 4 sources," says Liang.
Another possibility is that the chemistry of CCl 4 might not be fully understood. Tellingly, the model showed that CCl 4 is lingering in the atmosphere 40% longer than previously thought. "Is there something about the physical CCl 4 loss process that we don't understand?" she wonders.
It all adds up to a mystery in the ozone layer.
Liang's research was published online in the Aug. 18th issue of Geophysical Research Letters. More information about the extra CCl 4 may be found there.
Credits:
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASAThe question left Kobe Bryant equally bewildered and amused.
Did the Lakers’ star ever envision Memphis center Marc Gasol morphing into the player he has become? The one who causes those inside and outside of the Grizzlies to rank him as the NBA’s best center? The one who enters the Lakers’ game against the Memphis Grizzlies (23-8) on Friday at Staples Center averaging a career-high 20.1 points along with 8.3. rebounds and 1.6 blocks? The one who has anchored a top-ranked Memphis defense that earned him the NBA’s 2012-13 defensive player of the year award?
“Nope,” Bryant said, laughing.
Bryant provided an understandable explanation for lacking clairvoyance. Marc Gasol represented one of many pieces the Lakers (10-22) traded about seven years ago to the Grizzlies to secure his brother, Pau. That move required the Lakers to trade Kwame Brown, Aaron McKie, Javaris Crittenton and two first-round picks without any hesitation. As for Marc Gasol, the Lakers fretted little about granting Memphis his rights after selecting him 48th overall in the 2007 NBA draft.
“He was a heavyset kid,” Bryant told the Los Angeles News Group about Marc Gasol, who entered the NBA listed at 280 pounds. “He was a mystery to everybody. Who knew?”
The Lakers hardly have any regrets over the move they made, for obvious reasons.
“We won a couple more championships,” said Lakers coach Byron Scott, referring to the team’s back-to-back title runs in 2009 and 2010 shortly after Pau Gasol’s arrival. “You can’t get too mad about it.”
But it seems safe to say the Lakers would like Marc Gasol back once he becomes an unrestricted free agent in July. With Bryant, Nick Young, Julius Randle and Ryan Kelly as the lone players under contract for the 2015-16 season, the Lakers will have enough cap space to sign one player to a max-level contract.
Bryant smiled when offering a “no comment” on whether he will recruit Marc Gasol to join the Lakers. Or if Bryant would ask Pau Gasol to intervene as a third party.
Pau provided Marc a neutral perspective despite the affection he still holds for the Lakers after leaving this offseason to sign with the Chicago Bulls.
“I have shared with him that he needs to play as hard as he can,” Pau told Los Angeles News Group. “He needs to play as good as he can and take his team as far as he can. Then he can think about his future afterwards. He can put everything aside and then he can evaluate everything on if he wants to stay in Memphis. That seems like a pretty reasonable option.
“Or he can give it a shot to another place. We’ll see. But who knows. That’s later. Right now, it’s a distraction.”
Marc Gasol was not available for comment amid Memphis’ recent travel schedule and an unspecified illness that kept him out of Wednesday’s practice. But Memphis coach Dave Joerger outlined plenty of qualities earlier this season that makes him attractive to any team.
“He gets a lot of praise for being such an intellectual guy. That overshadows the fact that he’s extremely talented,” Joerger said. “His ball skills and hand-eye coordination is tremendous. His footwork is outstanding. His IQ and want to on the defensive end of the floor is amazing. He wants to win.”
Seven years later, Marc Gasol has changed his identity since the Lakers traded him as an unknown commodity riddled with questions marks. He has anchored a Grizzlies defense than ranks second overall in total points allowed (97.2 per game). The Grizzlies list him at 265 pounds after he spent an offseason on an unspecified diet to lose weight. Joerger attributes Marc Gasol’s increased assertiveness, mixed with his versatility in scoring and passing, for his career numbers.
All of which prompted Scott to say, “He’s the best center, I think, in basketball right now. To me, it’s not close.”
But should Lakers fans even get their hopes up? The Grizzlies own the Western Conference’s third-best record. They have played in the postseason in the past four years, backed by a core that includes Zach Randolph and Mike Conley. The Grizzlies could offer Marc Gasol a five-year deal worth around $108 million, as opposed to a four-year deal worth $87 million with any other team. Meanwhile, the Lakers are on pace to finish with their worst record in L.A. franchise history.
“I don’t see Marc leaving Memphis,” said Lakers forward Ed Davis, who played for the Grizzlies from 2012 to 2014. “He’s already got so much established there. So I don’t see why that would change.”
But …
“You never know,” Davis said. “Things can change in an instant like that, with something unexpected.”
Marc Gasol’s ascension in the NBA seemed unexpected, prompting Bryant to analyze him in a way that starkly differed from his first impression.
“He just got better,” said Bryant, who praised Marc Gasol’s passing and post presence. “He’s so athletic and light on his feet.”Anze Kopitar of the Los Angeles Kings is a special player, from the point-per-game offense (25 points in 26 games this season) to a defensive game that had some chatting him up for a Selke nod last season.
Also, he looks like a Caucasian FrankenBerry.
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It’s one thing to watch and appreciate Kopitar. It’s another to listen to an old hockey guy like his coach Darryl Sutter put him over, as he did this afternoon.
Via LA Kings Insider:
“He’s the best all-around centerman that I’ve coached, period. Period. Faceoffs, last minute, first minute, penalty killer. Plays against everybody’s top player, whether it’s a defenseman, a center, a checking role or an offensive role. He plays 20-plus minutes. Doesn’t take penalties. It’s the whole deal. He can play it whatever way we want. [Also: Where are the'real' New York Rangers?] "Do you want to come and get me? Come and get me…He can play it any way we want. And you know what? The best thing about Kopitar is he’s getting better. And when they do the comparisons with guys that are like that, there’s only a handful of them.”
Come and get me!
So, the takeaway here is that Anze Kopitar is a better center than Jeremy Roenick, Bernie Nicholls, Vincent Damphousse and Patrick Marleau, all of whom Sutter coached …
The Kings face the Coyotes at Staples tonight.
If you were to slot Kopitar in among the NHL’s top centers, where would he go? Top of the noggin, I’d go Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Toews … and then you have a grouping of Kopitar, Ryan Getzlaf, John Tavares, Pavel Datsyuk, Joe Thornton and Henrik Sedin to sort out.
(Ed. Note: Forgot to add Best Player In The World Claude Giroux into the mix at the end.)
NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:
Story continues
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• HBO makes unexpected decision to part with Golden Boy PromotionsImage copyright AFP Image caption The opposition boycotted the vote and called it a "farce"
Mauritanians have voted to abolish the upper house of their parliament, the Senate, in a controversial referendum that was boycotted by the opposition.
The result is seen as a victory for President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who is accused by his rivals of trying to extend his mandate, which he denies.
He called the referendum after the Senate rejected his proposals to change the constitution.
Turnout was 53.73%, with 85% of voters supporting the change, officials said.
But members of the opposition denounced an "electoral farce which has given way to open-air fraud".
Mr Abdel Aziz, who described the Senate as "useless and too costly", said the move to abolish it would improve governance by introducing more local forms of lawmaking.
He is barred by the constitution from running a third term - he came to power in a coup in 2008, was elected president the following year and won a second term in 2014.
The president is a key ally of the West and neighbouring states in countering Islamist extremist groups.
Image copyright AFP Image caption The president has denied allegations that he is seeking to extend his mandate
In the same referendum, held on Saturday, voters also supported a change to the national flag.
The current green flag with yellow Islamic crescent and star will also feature red bands to honour the blood spilt by those who fought for freedom from France.The next update for Minecraft Pocket Edition has been submitted for review. This means we should see the update out in one or two weeks, for both iOS and Android. This update was originally intended to be a small patch, but ended up having a lot of new features and tweaks! Here’s the full changelog:
New features:
Signs
Armor
Baby animals
Fancy clouds
Improved D-pad
Stonecutter for crafting stone blocks
Sheep can be colored with dyes
New block types: Netherrack, Nether Brick, Block of Quartz with 2 variants (pillar and chiseled), mossy/cracked Smooth Stone Brick variants (creative only), chiseled/smooth Sandstone variants
New stairs: Nether Brick, Sandstone, Smooth Stone Brick, Quartz
New slabs: Sandstone
New item: Nether Brick (smelted from netherrack and crafted into nether brick tile)
Upside-down stairs, corner stairs
Slabs can be placed in up position (needs testing on small screens)
Sand and Gravel are affected by gravity
Tweaks:
Recipes for crafting slabs give 6 slabs instead of 3 (as in PC version)
Nether Reactor spawns Netherrack blocks instead of Obsidian
The fog and sky color have changed
The Nether Reactor now spawns more items
Cows drop Leather
Bug fixes:
Melons had several bugs where they would spawn too fast and where they shouldn’t
Notice for Android users: Starting with this update, Minecraft Pocket Edition will require Android 2.3 or later. This means we no longer support Android 2.1 or 2.2, but you will still be able to play older versions of Minecraft Pocket Edition.
// The Minecraft Pocket Edition TeamJames F. Tracy
Activist Post
On June 3, 2014, at the ostensible recommendation of the Southern Poverty Law Center [1] the U.S. Department of Justice announced it will revive the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee (DTEC), founded after the 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing.
“We must concern ourselves wth the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes from anti-government animus to racial prejudice,” Attorney General Eric Holder remarked.[2]
Days after the SPLC’s calls for the reconstitution of the DTEC, something uncanny takes place: militant anti-government conspiracy theorists shoot two cops in a pizzeria and barricade themselves in a nearby Wal Mart. SPLC spokespersons then took to the media with a sort of “I told you so” bravado.
The overt politicization of the event, largely framed in dubious SPLC “research” on “hate groups,” proceeds in now-predictable fashion. Jerad Miller “was clearly part of the Patriot movement,” the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok explains on Democracy Now!
The one thing he really talked about a lot was guns. And that of course is central concern for the Patriot movement. At one point, he talked about, if you even disagree that the Second Amendment should be interpreted in such a way in a very liberal way in terms of an ownership, that you should be hung from a lamppost if you don’t leave the country. So that seemed to be really the central idea.[3]
The SPLC’s Heidi Beirich similarly tells MSNBC’s Al Sharpton,
This movement’s rhetoric is so extreme in terms of hatred of police, federal officials, the entire government apparatus, the Obama administration, etc., that it’s not surprising to see somebody like that—like Miller—making these basic threats toward law enforcement. This is where this rhetoric leads—to hatred of all those kinds of officials and often violence [sic].” [4]
Such talking points have likewise reverberated throughout corporate-owned media. Raw Story called the assailants “right wing conspiracy nuts with a deathwish.” The Daily Beast asserted that the culprits’ “radicalism was cultivated in online conversations about conspiracy theories ranging from ChemTrails to fluoride in the water supply.” CNN referenced a study by The New America Foundation to argue that “right wing views” are more dangerous than Al Qaeda, while MSNBC host Alex Carey hosts expressed outrage over “anti-government fear-mongering on the fringe” and “the zealotry of the far-far right.”[5]
The US government, major media, and propaganda organs like the SPLC operate with the smug assuredness that an overwhelming majority of the public will accept the veracity of public events provided, 1) the information is relayed by official figures in measured tones and appropriate attire, 2) such information is presented with pleasing and predictable visual cues, and 3) the information is accompanied by editorial inference as to how exactly one is to interpret it.
History suggests that we’ve been here before–in fact almost twenty years ago as Congress sought to pass largely unpopular anti-terrorism legislation.
The official story concerning 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing that most people will recite as catechism is that Timothy McVeigh had become increasingly “radicalized” with anti-government views. Such perspectives led him to plot with a small group of conspirators to bomb the Murrah building.
This is the “official story” established largely as a result of SPLC propaganda relentlessly parroted by major news media in the aftermath of that tragic event. “Once the Justice Department announced the capture of McVeigh and [Terry] Nichols” shortly after the bombing, author David Hoffman observes,
the mainstream media, with information manly supplied by the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith, and the Southern Poverty Law center, focused their anti-militia spotlights. Attacks on the Patriot/Militia movement continued for months, even without documentable proof of the suspects’ connections to the militias, or the militias’ connection to the bombing.[6]
The fear and paranoia surrounding the specter of “homegrown terrorism” continued until September 11, 2001, when the military-industrial-intelligence complex modified its terror card to focus public attention on swarthy, gun-toting Muslims.Getting started
EventQL runs on OSX and Linux. You can download the binaries or build the code from scratch. Please refer to the documentation for further instructions.
$./evqld --listen 0.0.0.0:9175 --datadir /srv/evql --standalone
While EventQL is a distributed database first and foremost it also implements a standalone mode so you can quickly get it running on your development machine.
Features
This is a quick run-through of EventQL's key features to get you excited. For more detailed information on these topics and their caveats you are kindly referred to the documentation.
Automatic partitioning. Tables are transparently split into partitions using a primary |
black politicians.
_________________________________________
The lawsuit alleged:
• “Mr. Wizig, individually and through his LLC entities, has purchased approximately 140 vacant properties at tax foreclosure sales and, to date, has failed to remediate any of them.”
• “... knowingly disregarded the accumulation of debris, garbage, refuse, graffiti, weeds, overgrown vegetation and other offensive, dangerous, unhealthy and unsanitary matter on [its] properties throughout the City of Baltimore.”
• For example, at his property at 2901 Mosher Street: “The front porch roof appears ready to collapse, held up only by rotten wood. The roof of the property appears similarly defective and may be admitting rain. Weeds overgrow the front and backyard. Beams from a second-story porch jut out from the rear of the property.”
___________________________________________
Bankruptcy Filing
The six community groups settling the case against Wizig are Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello Community Corporation, Alliance of Rosemont Community Organizations, Mount Clare Community Council, Carrollton Ridge Community Association, Operation ReachOut SouthWest and Greater Greenmount Community Association.
They are slated to receive an $85,000 payment as part of the settlement. They originally sued Wizig for $8 million.
Because the Wizig-related entities filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after the lawsuit was filed, the agreement had to be approved by the bankruptcy court, which took place earlier this week, according to the law center.
Kristine Dunkerton, executive director of the Law Center, said the case represents a new legal strategy in the fight against owners of abandoned properties in Baltimore.
“Putting the power of City Code enforcement into the hands of the communities impacted by the vacant properties is a new tool that is proving effective,” she said in a statement.
She said her group, joined by Venable LLP and the University of Maryland School of Law’s Community Development Clinic, “are committed to continue our work with our clients to ensure the defendants perform their obligations under the agreement.”
Joyce Smith, of Operation ReachOut SouthWest, added this warning to owners of other vacant houses: “We want you to know that you cannot continue to neglect your legal responsibilities as property owners.”Every month the government posts the unemployment rate yet few know where the unemployment rate comes from, how it is determined, and the relationship between the unemployment rate and the monthly reported jobs total.
For a quick recap, the unemployment rate comes from a "Household Survey" while the reported headline jobs total comes from the "Establishment Survey". The former is a monthly phone survey, the latter is a sample of actual business employment.
The reason for the "Household Survey" is that it will pick up new business formation, especially small businesses that might not be on the radar of the "Establishment Survey" sample. Even if the "Establishment Survey" sample size was 100%, unless duplicate names were weeded out, it would double-count those holding multiple jobs.
The "Household Survey" attempts to determine five key items.
Do you have a job? Is so was it full or part-time? If not, do you want a job? If you do not have a job and want a job, did you look for a job in the last 4 weeks? Are you in school, on leave, etc.
Definition of Unemployed
244,000 Jobs Added Last Month
, So Why Did the Unemployment Rise?
employment fell by 190,000
In the last year, the civilian population rose by 1,817,000. Yet the labor force dropped by 1,099,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,916,000. In January alone, a whopping 319,000 people dropped out of the workforce. In February another 87,000 people dropped out of the labor force. In March 11,000 people dropped out of the labor force. In April, 131,000 dropped out of the labor force. The 4-month total for 2011 is 548,000 people dropped out of the labor force.
Many of those millions who dropped out of the workforce would start looking if they thought jobs were available. Indeed, in a 2-year old recovery, the labor force should be rising sharply as those who stopped looking for jobs, once again started looking. Instead, an additional 548,000 people dropped out of the labor force in the first four months of the year. Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the [U3] unemployment rate would be well over 11%.
Indeed, I’d venture that if you add in all those who’ve left the work force since 2008, you’d end up way above 11%. All in all, the total number of people in the working age population who are not in the labor force hit a new all time high of 86.248 million in April. And Wall Street likes that.
Unemployment Math
Unemployment Math Since April 2008
Unemployment Math Take III
Table A-15 Alternative Measures
What About Part-Time Workers?In 17th century and prior, underarm bowling was the only way one could bowl as per the cricketing rules. Anything that is not underarm bowling was treated as illegal bowling. And in those days in England, women were not only interested in watching this game but also started playing the game as well. There were good underarm bowlers those days - men and women together.One such young woman who had interest in cricket was Christina Willes who was the sister of Kent county player John Willes in England. While playing cricket with her brother in their garden, Christina found that her skirt was getting in the way of bowling underarm. Apparently, skirts were pretty large, huge and voluminous those days. Obviously she didn't like the skirt getting in the way of her bowling style. She then tried to bowl overarm (or may be you can say partly round-arm) to her brother John Willes.John Willes observed her sister's bowling action. He then started learning this style from her. On July 15, 1822 Kent County was playing against MCC in Lord's. John Willes was playing for Kent Country. He bowled the first ball of his over using a round-arm style. The umpire declared it as no-ball because,as I said earlier, anything that is not underarm was illegal those days.The moment umpire gave a no-ball, John Willes threw the ball down, got on his horse and left the ground. As a protest, he never played a match since then. But what he left behind was an idea for the cricketing world and for the cricket lawmakers to amend the laws and adopt overarm bowling.Over the years, roundarm and overarm bowling became the only legal ways of bowling. Underarm bowling is now termed as illegal. John Willes and more importantly his sister Christina Willes remained the unsung heroes.What woman created centuries ago, (gentle)men embraces it till date. Isn't this a shower-thought?Now for something more interesting: Want to learn What happens when you hit longest six at World's Highest Cricket Ground(Photo: EFF Photos / Flickr)In her 2004 Brooklyn Law Review article, Ann Althouse offered some powerful suggestions on how to resist “anti-terrorism” powers, such as the Patriot Act, and should be seen as a guide to resisting NSA spying:
The fight against terrorism has raised concerns that the federal government has overreached its legitimate power. Concerns about racial profiling, invasions of privacy, unreasonable searches, and infringement on free speech have fueled a political movement, led by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), urging state and local government to adopt resolutions directing their officials not to participate in at least some aspects of the antiterrorism effort.
More on applying this to the NSA in a moment. First, is this legal?
The Doctrine
The ACLU and BORDC resolutions against the Patriot Act (and subsequent ACLU-backed state laws refusing to comply with the 2005 REAL ID Act) were based on a widely accepted legal principle known as the “anticommandeering doctrine.”
This means the federal government cannot require a state to carry out federal acts. The federal government can pass a law and try to enforce it, but your state isn’t required to help them.
The US Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed anticommandeering, relevant court cases being:
* 1842 Prigg: The court held that states weren’t required to enforce federal slavery laws.
* 1992 New York: The court held that Congress couldn’t require states to enact specified waste disposal regulations.
* 1997 Printz: The court held that “the federal government may not compel the states to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.”
Under this doctrine, Althouse noted that “state and local government officials, if they have the nerve, will be able to decline to carry out the anti-terrorism tasks Congress or the president attempts to assign to them.”
Applied to NSA
This can have a significant impact on the NSA’s ability to continue its mass-spying programs.
In 2006, the Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA had maxed out the capacity of the Baltimore-area power grid:
The NSA is already unable to install some costly and sophisticated new equipment. At minimum, the problem could produce disruptions leading to outages and power surges. At worst, it could force a virtual shutdown of the agency.
To get around the physical limitation of the amount of power required to monitor virtually every piece of communication around the globe, the NSA started searching for new locations with independent resources.
A location was chosen in San Antonio because of the independent power grid in Texas. The new Utah Data Center was chosen for access to cheap utilities, primarily water. The water-cooled supercomputers there require 1.7 million gallons of water per day to function.
That water is being supplied by a political subdivision of the State of Utah. Under the anticommandeering doctrine, Utah isn’t required to provide that water.
No water = No NSA data center.
But it’s not just Utah, and it’s not just water. The war on drugs, for example, is a major benefactor of NSA data collection. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the DEA’s Special Operations Division works closely with the NSA, passing “tips” along to local law enforcement and instructing them to cover their tracks so the public doesn’t learn where the information came from.
EFF calls this “intelligence laundering,” which flat-out “bypasses the Constitution.”
The Act
Following the lead of the ACLU and BORDC, model legislation to refuse cooperation with the NSA is now available for introduction in your state. The 4th Amendment Protection Act would ban states like Utah from providing water, or Texas from providing electricity, to NSA data centers. It would also ban law enforcement from receiving “tips” from the DEA’s special operations division.
In addition, the Act prevents state-run universities from partnering with the NSA. Currently there are 166 so-called “Centers of Academic Excellence” around the country. These schools are major research and recruiting centers for the agency.
Corporations could find themselves in trouble, too, under the proposed Act:
Any corporation or person that provides services to or on behalf of this state and violates the prohibitions of Section 2 of this act shall be forever ineligible to act on behalf of, or provide services to, this state or any political subdivision of this state.
As a result, corporations like Georgia Power, Rocky Mountain Power, Big-D Construction or Intercontinental Hotels just might give pause before signing a new contract to provide services to the NSA.
Can It Work?
This same process was used effectively by northern abolitionists in resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Today, states like Washington and Colorado are helping end the war on cannabis by refusing to comply with federal prohibition.
We should follow their courageous path against the NSA as well.
Calling your state representative and senator today and encouraging them to introduce and pass the 4th Amendment Protection Act would be a good first step. It’s not going to be easy, but sooner or later, we’re going to have to stop putting up with it.
Rosa Parks may have put it best:
People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.Calling all unsigned artists and musicians. Would you like to be featured as our `Artist Of The Month`?
There are so many great bands and artists out there that don`t get the recognition they deserve. I`ve been playing the live circuit around the Midlands (UK) with my current band Ribdonor for about a year now and in that time, I`ve seen some fantastic unsigned local bands as well as been introduced to some awesome unsigned bands from around the world. I want to help in a small way to get bands from all over the world the exposure they deserve. So, if you`re in a quality band, and have some recorded material, get in touch.
Each month, I will be picking a different band to be featured as the `Artist Of The Month` where there will be a blog post written about the band which will be seen by 1000`s of unique visitors that this website gets every week. Just email me at hq@rockstarguitartuition.com or via our contact page.
Your music can be in any style as long as there are guitars (this is a guitar site aftertall) and there is some `rock` influence. So, if you`re djent, indie rock, grunge, metal, prog, thrash, electronic rock, etc – send in your stuff. Any style of `rock` music is welcome. I will listen to all submissions and I will try to get back to everyone who sends in their music, with a thank you and hopefully a bit of feedback. Even if you don`t win, you will get a mention at some point (probably Christmas time) where I will compile a list of everyone who has entered for 2013 with a link to your Facebook/Bandcamp.
To enter, all I ask is you put a link to this site – your favourite blog post or the home page (rockstarguitartuition.com) will do, on your website if you have one. If you don`t have a website, just share our Facebook page here. It`s not a neccessity if you would rather not, but it would be appreciated. Contact me with the following to enter:
Band name:
Website:
Facebook:
Bandcamp:
YouTube:
Location:
Short bio (if you have one)
URL that you have linked this website on:
You can either email me 2/3 songs or send me a link to your best tracks to hq@rockstarguitartuition.com or via our contact page.
…and I will be in touch. If you want to send a copy of an EP, please contact me for my address. Good luck and remember to support unsigned music. We are in this together. I really want to create something special here. A hell of a lot of nsigned music is too good to fall by the wayside.
Look forward to hearing your entries.
Cheers!A former U.S. congressman arrested in Zimbabwe has pleaded not guilty to charges of possessing pornography.
Mel Reynolds entered his plea in a Harare courtroom Wednesday, two days after his arrest. He is due back in court Thursday to enter a plea on a separate charge of breaking Zimbabwe's immigration laws.
Reynolds' lawyer, Arthur Gurira, told VOA that his client suffers from high blood pressure and is not doing well in prison.
“I can also confirm that he is not in the best of health at the moment, and I actually made an application to the court that he be given immediate medical attention," he said.
A state prosecutor said that Reynolds was caught with pornographic images and videos on his mobile phone, in violation of censorship laws.
He also said Reynolds was living in the country on an expired visa and should have left Zimbabwe on December 10.
In the 1990s, Reynolds represented a Chicago-area Congressional district and was considered a rising star in the U.S. Democratic Party. He was forced to resign his seat in 1995 after being convicted of sexual assault, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography.
While in jail in the United States, he was also convicted of bank and campaign fraud. His sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton in 2001.
The 62-year-old Reynolds made attempts to win back his congressional seat in 2004 and 2013 but lost primary elections both times.
In Zimbabwe, he reportedly tried to attract investors for a hotel project.
The U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe has refused to comment on Reynolds' arrest.
VOA News SubscribeDr. Steven Nissen, the chairman of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, said the results were “shocking.” Patients should not be prescribed Zetia unless all other cholesterol drugs have failed, he said.
“This is as bad a result for the drug as anybody could have feared,” Dr. Nissen said. Millions of patients may be taking a drug that has no benefits for them, raising their risk of heart attacks and exposing them to potential side effects, he said.
Still, patients who are taking Vytorin or Zetia should talk to their doctors if they are concerned and not discontinue taking the medicines on their own, Dr. Nissen said.
Dr. Howard Hodis, a cardiologist at the University of Southern California, also said he was concerned by the trial’s results. Growth in fatty plaques — called atherosclerosis — is highly correlated with heart attacks and strokes, Dr. Hodis said.
“Clearly, progression of atherosclerosis is the only way you get events,” Dr. Hodis said. “If you don’t treat progression, then you get events.”
The results of the trial “necessitate further investigation — that just can’t be ignored,” Dr. Hodis said.
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.
Both companies’ stocks fell on Monday, with Merck’s share price down a bit more than 1 percent. Shares of Schering-Plough, whose profits are much more dependent on the drugs, were down nearly 8 percent.
The results will also add to the controversy surrounding a long delay in releasing the results of the trial. Merck and Schering-Plough completed the trial in April 2006 and had initially planned to release the findings no later than March 2007. But the companies then missed several self-imposed deadlines, citing the complexity of the data analysis from the study and saying they did not know when or if the data would be ready for publication.
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Last month, after several news articles highlighted the delay, they finally agreed to release the results soon.
For Merck and Schering-Plough, which jointly market Zetia and Vytorin and share profits from the drugs, the trial’s results are a serious setback. Zetia and Vytorin are important contributors to both companies’ profits, especially to Schering, which is smaller and less profitable than Merck.
Analysts estimate that about 70 percent of Schering’s earnings depend on the drugs. The controversy over the trial is also a problem for Merck, which is trying to repair its reputation after withdrawing the painkiller Vioxx from the market in September 2004.
In the United States, Zetia and Vytorin combined account for about 20 percent of the overall cholesterol-lowering market. More than 100 million prescriptions have been filled in the United States for Zetia and Vytorin since the Food and Drug Administration approved them in November 2002 and August 2004 respectively. Both drugs cost about $3 a day.
Because Zetia reduces cholesterol differently from statins like Lipitor and Zocor, doctors often prescribed it as an additional therapy for patients whose cholesterol remains high even after they are already taking statins. But even before Zetia was introduced in 2002, some cardiologists argued that statins had positive cardiovascular effects that go beyond their ability to reduce cholesterol, and that Zetia lacks those effects.
The Enhance trial covered patients with a gene that causes them to produce very high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, commonly called L.D.L., or bad cholesterol. Patients in the trial had L.D.L. levels of about 320 milligrams per deciliter at the beginning of the trial, about three times the level cardiologists recommend.
Over the two years of the trial, patients who took Zocor alone reduced their L.D.L. by 41 percent on average, while patients who took Vytorin reduced their cholesterol by 58 percent. Yet despite the larger cholesterol reduction, patients taking Vytorin actually had more growth in fatty plaques in their carotid arteries than those on Zocor. The carotid artery runs through the neck and delivers oxygenated blood to the brain.× Man sentenced for role in maiming mountain lions, bobcats to make ‘hunts’ easier for clients
DENVER – A man who was involved in a conspiracy to injure or trap bobcats and mountain lions in order to make them easier prey for hunters on guided trips has been sentenced for his role in the illegal acts, which included facilitating the transport of unlawfully killed animals across state lines.
According to a press release from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Nicholaus Rodgers has been sentenced to six months of home confinement, a $5,000 fine, 50 hours of community service and three years of probation for violations of the Lacey Act—a federal law protecting wildlife. The assistant hunting outfitter and guide will be barred from hunting or fishing during his probation.
Rodgers was part of a scheme involving several other people, including his employer, in which a group was, “illegally capturing and maiming mountain lions and bobcats in order to make taking the cats easier for paying clients.” He worked for Loncarich Guides and Outfitters, which operated primarily in the Book Cliffs Mountains along the Utah and Colorado border.
An investigation went back to 2004 and uncovered 18 clients who had taken part in the illegal killing of more than 30 mountain lions and bobcats.
“This is easily among the worst cases of illegal taking and poaching of wildlife I have seen in my 40-plus years in wildlife management,” stated Ron Velarde, Northwest Regional Manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife in a press release.
Rodgers, Christopher Loncarich and others committed multiple state and federal violations during the 2007 to 2010 hunting seasons, and they had a scheme where the cats would be found prior to a client’s arrival, “and then ‘hindered’ or ‘shortened up’ to make it easier and quicker for their clients to kill the animals.”
Methods of hindering the cats included holding them in cages until the client arrived, or shooting the cats in the paws, stomach and/or legs to slow them down. Some cats had leg hold traps attached to them prior to the client arriving.
The press release states many of the clients who used the service lacked the legal tags to take a bobcat or mountain lion, and the hunting guide service allegedly helped to move the animals illegally across state lines. They also helped obtain seals for the animal pelts from Colorado officials using false information. Clients paid up to $7,500 for each “hunt”, and the funds were shared with Loncarich, Rodgers and other hunting guide assistants.
Rodgers admitted to personally helping clients kill 11 mountain lions and five bobcats during the course of the conspiracy.
Special Agent in Charge Steve Oberholtzer, Fish and Wildlife Serve law enforcement, spoke about the crimes, which he said stemmed from greed.
“Many of the violations committed by Mr. Loncarich and Mr. Rogers appear to be the result of greed, unlawfully killing and maiming wildlife to increase his profits,” he stated in the press release. “The dedication and expertise of the state and federal investigators and prosecuting attorneys in bringing these persons to justice was outstanding. These convictions send a clear message that unlawful commercialization of wildlife will not be tolerated.”
Loncarich, a 56-year-old man from Mack, Colorado, was sentenced last November in Denver for his role in the conspiracy, and he received 27 months in prison and 3 years of probation, during which he cannot fish and hunt. Others in the group, including Loncarich’s daughters, had previously pleaded guilty to violations of the Lacey Act or conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act. Those others were sentenced to varying terms of probation and fines between $500 and $3,100.
Two trucks used in the scheme were seized during the investigation and forfeited to the government. So far, clients of the group have paid a total of $13,100 in fines for the illegal killings.Job advertisements slide for fourth straight month
Updated
The number of jobs advertised via the internet and in Australia's major metropolitan newspapers fell in June, in another sign of weakness for the domestic economy.
The ANZ Job Advertisements Series recorded a decrease of 1.8 per cent last month, following a 2.5 per cent drop in May.
It marks the the fourth consecutive month of falls.
ANZ chief economist Ivan Colhoun says after showing signs of stabilising at the start of the year, job ads are now almost 7 per cent lower than they were in March, and down 19 per cent compared to June last year.
He says last month's weakness was particularly evident in Western Australia.
"WA is now recording the sharpest trend decline in newspaper job advertisements of any state, with job advertising nearly 50 per cent lower than a year ago," he said.
Victoria is the other state showing particular weakness, with a 4.1 per cent month-on-month fall, in trend terms.
But Mr Colhoun says there have been some encouraging signs of moderation in the pace of decline in New South Wales and South Australia.
"New South Wales has generally been recording somewhat better conditions across a range of macroeconomic indicators recently," he said.
Job ads 30 per cent below 2010 peak
On a national level, job advertisements are now almost 30 per cent below their most recent peak at the end of 2010 and only 8 per cent higher than the lowest level reached during the global financial crisis.
Mr Colhoun says downward trends in job advertising have been reliable indicators of lower interest rates and rising unemployment.
"ANZ expects a further interest rate cut in November this year and sees the balance of risks being for further interest rate reductions in 2014, notwithstanding the fact that a declining Australian dollar is now also providing useful stimulus to the Australian economy," he said.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics will release the labour market report for June this Thursday.
Mr Colhoun says he expects the unemployment rate to edge up from 5.5 per cent in May to 5.6 per cent in June.
He says other parts of the economy need to improve as mining slows down.
"The (Reserve Bank) governor in a speech last week was talking about the transition not possibly being smooth and that it's something that's very hard to make sure it happens smoothly obviously, so it has been slow in the construction side, though we are seeing some better signs there now."
Topics: economic-trends, business-economics-and-finance, unemployment, australia
First postedDetroit: A US judge on Tuesday ruled that the government cannot immediately deport nearly 200 Iraqi immigrants arrested last month who argued they would face persecution if they were removed from the country.
US District Judge Mark Goldsmith in Michigan said he had the authority to order the government to keep the Iraqis in the county while their deportation cases were reviewed by the courts.
In his ruling, Goldsmith said sending the Iraqis back now would expose them to a “substantiated risk of death, torture, or other grave persecution before their legal claims can be tested in a court.”
Many of the 199 Iraqis detained – largely in the Detroit area but also in Tennessee, New Mexico and California – were Chaldean Catholics and Iraqi Kurds. Both groups said they could be targeted for attacks in Iraq because they are visible minorities. The government is seeking to deport over 1,400 Iraqis across the country, the ruling said.
The actions are part of Trump administration efforts to increase immigration enforcement and make countries take back nationals ordered out of the US.
The Iraqis arrested by immigration authorities had outstanding deportation orders and many had been convicted of serious crimes, ranging from homicide to weapons and drug charges, according to the US government.
Goldsmith said federal courts were “first responders” if constitutional rights were under threat and the Iraqis’ extraordinary circumstances gave him the power to block their deportation.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
The department has argued that only immigration courts have the authority to decide the Iraqis’ status.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the Iraqis, said in a statement: “Federal courts must be able to ensure that the government acts according to the law, particularly where people’s lives are at stake.”
Some of those arrested committed crimes decades ago and had been allowed to remain in the US because Iraq until recently refused to issue them travel documents.
That changed after Baghdad agreed in March to accept US deportees as part of a deal to remove the country from President Donald Trump’s revised temporary travel ban.
In a statement, Michigan representative Sander Levin, a Democrat, applauded Goldsmith’s ruling, saying it would give courts time “to learn all of the facts related to these individuals.”
Goldsmith scheduled a hearing for Thursday on the next steps in the litigation.
(Reuters)Eric Boyles discusses Texas drunk-driving case [CNN]
The Texas father whose wife and daughter were killed after being hit by a drunk driver criticized Tuesday’s probation ruling sparing the teen repeat offender responsible from prison time because of his rich upbringing.
“For 25 weeks, I’ve been going through a healing process,” Eric Boyles told CNN host Anderson Cooper Wednesday night. “And so when the verdict came out, I mean, my immediate reaction is, I’m back to Week 1. We have accomplished nothing here. My healing process is out the window.”
Boyle’s wife and daughter, Hollie and Shelby Boyles, along with two other people, were killed on June 15 when 16-year-old Ethan Couch’s pickup slammed into them while they were trying to help a stranded motorist. Couch’s blood-alcohol level was measured at the time at 0.24, more than three times the adult limit. Another victim was left paralyzed and one more suffered broken bones and internal injuries.
But while not disputing that Couch had broken the law by drinking as a minor and driving under the influence, a psychologist testifying on his behalf argued that he had developed a condition called “affluenza” because his family’s wealth had led him to grow up with a feeling of entitlement.
District Judge Jean Boyd refused to honor prosecutors’ call for a 20-year jail sentence for the teen, instead ordering him to seek long-term behavior therapy away from his parents. Cooper said during the interview that Boyd was, in effect, sending Couch to “a spa” and referred to him at one point as a “criminal.”
“That’s the incredible thing,” Cooper said to Boyles. “He has prior experiences with alcohol and the law. This is not his first offense. So you have a multiple offender who has killed four people who is not going to spend any time in jail — simply because, it seems to me, his family has money.”
“There are absolutely no consequences for what occurred that day,” Boyles responded. “The primary message has to absolutely be that money and privilege can’t buy justice in this country, that it’s not okay to drink and drive and kill four people, and severely injure another, and not have any consequences. That’s not the American dream that we grew up to participate in.”
Watch the interview, aired on CNN on Wednesday, below.2015: The Year in Social Media Disasters Crowdbabble Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 9, 2016 By Katie Meyer Schadenfreude: A feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people Socialhadenfreude: A feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the social media disasters of other brands 2015 was a very delicious year for social media scandals. Nothing makes a marketing manager feel smugly superior like watching big brands fail hard, and publicly, online. What were the biggest social media fails of 2015? How did brands recover from the disasters? Most importantly, which blunders were the most entertaining? Blackberry’s Twitter for iPhone When you think of social media, you might not think of Blackberry, partly because of a gaffe earlier this year. The tech giant was slow to integrate touch screens and cameras, putting itself behind other mobile devices in ease of use for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. And what’s the point of a smartphone if you can’t use it to talk to your friends? Even RIM employees find tweeting with a Blackberry next to impossible. Or, that’s the message the company very publicly sent when they tweeted about their integration with Twitter… using an iPhone. Whoops. The initial tweet went viral and before Blackberry could take it down (Twitter is so hard to use on a Blackberry); the Verge grabbed the above screencap. Social media mistakes live forever: Blackberry couldn’t undo its iPhone tweet. The brand may have realized that there was no recovering from the slip up. @Blackberry deleted the message and tried to bury it under a deluge of new updates. There was no apology. The gaffe seemed like a confession of Blackberry’s outdatedness: an admission, from the inside, that the company couldn’t keep up. Favourites, retweets, replies, and mentions for the brand dipped on Twitter as users distanced themselves from the brand that confirmed the worst forecasts for its own future.
Despite some signs of recovery in the fall of 2015, as shown in the Crowdbabble visualization above, engagement is down overall from the year prior. Clorox’s Emoji Racism Terrible things happen when brands embroil themselves American racial tensions, whether inadvertently or on purpose. When Apple released a more diverse set of emoji on April 8, Clorox responded with a tweet interpreted as a call for emoji genocide. But wait! That’s not what Clorox meant! As we’ve said before, intent on social media is irrelevant. If a message’s delivery is perceived as insensitive and ignorant, the brand is perceived as insensitive and ignorant. After realizing that the attempt at humour failed miserably, the grovelling began. Was it enough? As shown in the Crowdbabble data visualization below, after the offending tweet went viral in April, the brand experienced little to no engagement. As with Blackberry, when the misstep is more viral than any other posts, engagement suffers in the long term.
Clorox was pummelled on Twitter and across the web for its insensitivity. Twitter users have been reluctant to engage with Clorox and its follower growth has slowed as a result. Tweeting infrequently, for 2015 @Clorox averaged an abysmal 38.5 likes, retweets, or mentions per day. At just 19.5 average engagements per tweet in 2015, the brand has a 0% engagement rate for its 102,000 follower base on Twitter. Bic’s Think Like a Man International Women’s Day. A time to celebrate women, or a time to sell stuff? Bic chose to celebrate women by sharing an inspirational quote on its South Africa Facebook page. If only that quote were actually inspirational. After the pens for women debacle, the brand was on thin ice with the girl/lady sex. Telling women to look like girls and think like men (the best of both worlds?) did not go over well. Apologizing quickly and sincerely is a good strategy, but it had one major pitfall for Bic: users were still angry. Overall, stories created per post declined for the brand’s Facebook page as women turned away from the brand.
Bic South Africa also posted less as their stories created continued to dwindle. Who would want their friends to catch them liking Bic, which branded itself as outdated and sexist with the women’s day post? Houston Rockets’ Dead Horse Heckling the fans of an opposing team is pretty common in the stadium, but it doesn’t play as well on Twitter. During a heated game, the Houston Rockets tweeted a horse emoji being shot at the Dallas Mavericks (mascot: horse). As demonstrated by Clorox fiasco, people take emoji jokes very seriously. Tweets criticizing the emoji threat poured in, forcing the team’s social media team to apologize. The threat gave the Dallas Mavericks the opportunity to take the high road when they tweeted back, making the Rockets look desperate and immature. How did Houston Rockets followers react on Twitter?
Some deemed the Rockets’ apology unnecessary — the joke didn’t touch on any hot button issues or target specific groups — but its sincerity, apparently, was appreciated. After April 29, engagement soared. May was a great month, but the brand shifted strategies in June when it ousted the manager responsible for the dead horse tweet. Favourites, retweets, replies, and mentions flatlined. Starbucks’ Race Together In March 2015, Starbucks decided to jump into the debate on race in the US. It attached Race Together stickers to cups, launched a #RaceTogether hashtag, and handed out questionnaires asking customers how many black friends they had. What could go wrong? Instagram followers had a few problems with the initiative from @StarbucksPartners. The company was jumping into something totally unrelated to its brand, and its lack of diversity in some locations seemed to make the chain a poor choice for the debate. Some critics noted how tightly coffee and the history of slavery were intertwined. Race Together read as a tone deaf PR campaign exploiting racial tensions to sell coffee. Despite the criticism, Starbucks didn’t back down. Can a big brand participate in a conversation about a sensitive topic like race? Detractors used Instagram to suggest that better wages or job security for its largely-minority staff may have been more meaningful. By turning racial tension in the US into a sticker for their products, Starbucks oversimplified the issue and angered those it affects. Below, a graph of the @StarbucksPartners likes and comments on Instagram for 2015, made using Crowdbabble.
Starbucks Partners’ account has enjoyed consistently high engagement on Instagram in 2015 at an average of 1,713 likes or comments from users per day, but its average went down to 1,613 from April to August after the campaign. As with the other 2015 blunders, followers stepped away from the brand on social media. SeaWorld |
Changxing, once China’s most-wanted fugitive, who fled to Canada with his family in 1999 and claimed refugee status after saying allegations that he ran a multi-billion-dollar smuggling operation in the southeastern city of Xiamen were politically motivated.
After a Canadian court rejected Lai’s application for refugee status, dismissing concerns he could be tortured or executed if sent home, Lai was deported, but not extradited, in 2011. He was jailed for life the following year.
David Matas, a lawyer who represented Lai in his refugee claim proceedings, said the case took so long because Canadian courts wanted to examine assurances from China that it would not execute or torture Lai.
Despite China’s promises, Lai was skeptical since his brother and accountant had both died in jail, Matas said, adding the circumstances of their deaths were never fully explained.
“He was worried something like that could happen to him,” Matas said by telephone from Winnipeg.
Chinese state media reported in 2009 that Lai’s elder brother, Lai Shuiqiang, had died in prison in 2002 “after he suddenly fell ill”. There were no articles about the accountant.
Prison officials did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. TALKS
To help return fugitives in the United States, the Ministry of Public Security is trying to set up annual high-level meetings with U.S. authorities, the China Daily said on Aug. 11.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice said agency officials would meet Chinese counterparts in Beijing in December through the U.S.-China Joint Liaison Group on Law Enforcement Cooperation, adding the department regularly discusses law enforcement issues with China, including fugitives in both countries.
The spokesman, Peter Carr, said both sides have occasionally returned fugitives when they were also subject to deportation under immigration laws, but declined to give specific examples.
In Canada, officials at various ministries including the Justice Ministry declined to comment on whether Chinese anti-graft investigators were in the country or planned to visit.
In July 2013, the two governments concluded talks on a deal on sharing forfeited assets and the return of property. The agreement will not come into force until both sides ratify it. A Justice Ministry spokeswoman said she was not aware of Chinese officials in Canada trying to regain the proceeds of crime from corruption back home.
The Australian Attorney General’s office said it was a long-standing practice not to confirm or deny if requests for assistance had come from foreign countries in investigations.
PROPERTY DEVELOPERS
Yang Xiuzhu worked her way up the ranks to become a deputy director of the construction bureau in Zhejiang province, according to Nanfengchuang, a magazine owned by the state-run Guangzhou Daily.
Local authorities said in 2004 she accepted kickbacks from property developers of more than 250 million yuan ($40.62 million), Xinhua has reported.
She was arrested in 2005 upon her arrival in the Netherlands, where Chinese anti-corruption and legal experts believe she remains. It was unclear why Yang flew there or whether she has a lawyer.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry said it would not comment on individual cases, although Dutch officials said there was no pending extradition request from China.
As recently as 2011, Xinhua reported that “the Chinese government is actively handling the extradition formalities” involving Yang.
STOLEN ASSETS
Recovering stolen assets might be easier for China as most nations want to stem the flow of corrupt money across borders, legal experts said, although some sums returned so far are paltry.
Australia for example has repatriated A$7.5 million to China since 2002 from embezzlement, fraud and money laundering, the Attorney General’s department said.
“I think the U.S. is very, very serious about trying to trace and locate ill-gotten assets of politicos of any state who will seek to have the money returned,” said Douglas McNabb, a D.C.-based veteran extradition lawyer.
Legal experts said China’s best option for getting stolen assets would be through the U.N. Convention Against Corruption which obliges countries that have ratified it to cooperate.
The work could be time-consuming.
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One example is a $3 million villa in the French Riviera that was a key piece of evidence in the corruption trial of Bo Xilai, the former high-flying Chinese politician who was sentenced to life in prison in 2013.
The Chinese court said it would seize the villa, which prosecutors say was given to Bo and his wife by a businessman friend. One year later, it’s unclear if talks have progressed, or even started. The court did not respond to a request for comment.
(1 dollar = 6.1510 Chinese yuan)April 8, 2010 - Tom Bui
Just a quick update to point out some of the fantastic community activity out there that gets emailed to us every so often. Hopefully you're aware of some of it already. If not, you're in for a treat.
About a billion or so people (we counted) emailed us links to the amazing Law Abiding Engineer trailer. If you've already seen it, make sure you check out the side-by-side comparison with the original trailer, so you can truly appreciate OneMoreUser's work.
The mysterious person behind the Guard Dog update has raised the bar on fake updates to an insane height with his latest opus, the fake Engineer Update! We're going to warn you ahead of time: Whatever we end up actually coming up with probably won't be as cool as the Chicken Cannon.
The talented folks behind Gang Garrison have just released version 2.2. With reworked weapons, new game modes, and fancier menus and HUDs, it's pretty much better than TF2 in every possible way now. Except for the total lack of hats. Guess we know who the real pros are around here. Go download version 2.2 and let them know how much you want fancy headgear. It's been scientifically proven that hats improve any game they're featured in.
Slightly older, but if you haven't played Dylan 'Steaky' Loney's Great Class Dash yet, you should head over and grab it right away.
Community Fortress continues to do a much better job than we do of tracking competitive TF2. We really liked their latest Moments of Glory, because Riki's engineer moment reminds of why all the most awesome players are either Engineers or Australians (usually both).
ETF2L is gearing up for their Highlander Community Challenge. It's a fun tournament aimed at getting lots of people into some fun competitive matches. If you feel like you're crushing everyone in pubs, this'll be a great opportunity for you to find a new challenge. In addition, we're providing them with the ability to give out in-game medals to players who participate in the tournament. Everyone knows there's only one thing that beats a fine hat-wearing chap: a hat-wearing chap who's also covered in medals. We're not making any of this up, people. These are game design facts.SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is seeding the next generation of American-made glass for its iPhones and iPads, and its investments may have the side benefit of helping the company win favor in Washington.
Apple announced Friday that it was giving $200 million to Corning, which makes the tough, scratch-resistant face for every iPhone and iPad, to support the glass maker’s efforts to develop and build more sophisticated products at its factory in Harrodsburg, Ky.
Corning has made the glass for every iPhone since the original 10 years ago. Apple’s investment, the first from the technology giant’s $1 billion fund to promote advanced manufacturing in the United States, will help Corning develop thinner, more versatile glass for iPhones as well as other product lines that Apple is exploring, such as screens for self-driving cars and augmented reality glasses.
The move goes beyond Apple’s traditional practice of subsidizing suppliers, said Tim Bajarin, president of the technology consulting firm Creative Strategies.We’re no stranger to robotics in the medical field. Robot-assisted surgery is becoming more and more common. Many training programs are starting to include robotic and virtual reality scenarios to provide hands-on training for students without putting patients at risk.
With all of these advances in medical robotics, three niches stand out above the rest: surgery, medical imaging, and drug discovery. How have robotics already begun to exert their influence on these practices, and how will they change them for good?
Robot-Assisted Surgery
Robot-assisted surgery was first documented in 1985, when it was used for a neurosurgical biopsy. This led to the use of robotics in a number of similar surgeries, both laparoscopic and traditional operations. The FDA didn’t approve robotic surgery tools until 2000, when the da Vinci Surgery system hit the market.
The robot-assisted surgery market is expected to grow steadily into 2023 and potentially beyond. The only thing that might stand in the way of this growth is the cost of the equipment. The initial investment may prevent small practices from purchasing the necessary devices.
Medical Imaging
The key to successful medical imaging isn’t the equipment itself. It’s being able to interpret the information in the images. Medical images are some of the most information-dense pieces of data in the medical field and can reveal so much more than a basic visual inspection can.
Robotics and, more specifically, artificial intelligence programs like IBM Watson can help interpret these images more efficiently and accurately. By allowing an AI or basic machine learning program to study the medical images, researchers can find patterns and make more accurate diagnoses than ever before.
Drug Discovery
Drug discovery is a long and often tedious process that includes years of testing and assessment. Artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive algorithms could help speed up this system.
Imagine if researchers could input the kind of medicine they’re trying to make and the kind of symptoms they’re trying to treat into a computer and let it do the rest. With robotics, that may someday be possible.
This isn’t a perfect solution yet—these systems require massive amounts of data before they can start making decisions or predictions. By feeding data into the cloud where these programs can access it, researchers can take the first steps towards setting up a functional database.
Another benefit of these AI programs is that they might see connections humans would never have thought of. People can make those leaps, but the chances are much lower, and it takes much longer if it happens at all. Simply put, we’re not capable of processing the sheer amount of data that computers can process.
This isn’t a field where we’re worrying about robots stealing jobs.
Quite the opposite, in fact—we want robots to become commonly-used tools that can help improve patient care and surgical outcomes.
A human surgeon might have intuition, but they’ll never have the steadiness that a pair of robotic hands can provide or the data-processing capabilities of a machine learning algorithm. If we let them, these tools could change the way we look at medicine.
Image Credit: Intuitive SurgicalThere's nothing like the NFL schedule release. I love it. The event drips with anticipation, excitement and, of course, hyperbole. You truly start getting revved up for the upcoming season -- just over four months before it begins. It's beautiful.
The Seattle Seahawks just won Super Bowl XLVIII in remarkably dominant fashion. The roster remains loaded in 2014. Consequently, folks are tossing around the "R" word -- that's right: "repeat."
Not so fast.
Have you seen Seattle's schedule? Have you studied other NFC contenders' schedules?
Some observers discount the merits of scrutinizing the schedule in April. I believe the schedule really matters.
Seattle seeks an encore in 2014, but the Seahawks' slate is chock full o' roadblocks that will take a toll on the defending champs. So allow me to explain, Schein Nine style, why the 'Hawks won't even make it back to the big game:
1) An immediate threat to the throne
The league picked an unbelievably delicious opener for fans, with the game's best quarterback facing the game's best defense. Aaron Rodgers returns to Seattle for the first time since the "Fail Mary." And while I respect Seattle's defense -- especially when the unit is playing at home, in front of the rabid inhabitants of CenturyLink Field -- Rodgers is unstoppable. Rodgers' midseason injury last year meant we didn't really get to see this offense reach full throttle. Running back Eddie Lacy got better as his Rookie of the Year campaign went on; just think how well Lacy will complement his all-world quarterback in Year 2.
2) September looms for Legion of Boom
Before their Week 4 bye, the Seahawks will face the Packers, Chargers and Broncos. That brutal stretch presents three teams that made the playoffs last year -- and three quarterbacks who obviously can sling it. Rodgers and Peyton Manning are two of the greatest of all time, while Philip Rivers is fresh off a resurgent season that saw him enter the MVP discussion. And that Chargers game is in San Diego.
Yes, the Seahawks manhandled Denver in the Super Bowl, and yes, Seattle is hosting the Week 3 rematch. But with the additions of Aqib Talib, DeMarcus Ware and T.J. Ward -- plus a clean bill of health for Von Miller -- this is a completely different Broncos defense. And do you think Peyton will be focused for this one?
Seattle easily could start 1-2.
3) Double(-digit) trouble
Difficult start, meet difficult finish. From Nov. 16 through Dec. 21, the Seahawks play six straight games against teams that had 10 or more wins in 2013:
» Week 11: at Kansas City Chiefs
» Week 12: vs. Arizona Cardinals
» Week 13: at San Francisco 49ers (in prime time on Thanksgiving night)
» Week 14: at Philadelphia Eagles
» Week 15: vs. San Francisco 49ers
» Week 16: at Arizona Cardinals (on Sunday Night Football)
Tell me: Which of those teams isn't primed to win 10-plus games again in 2014?
Harrison: Top 14 games of 2014 The 2014 NFL schedule consists of 256 different matchups. Elliot Harrison pares it all down to the 14 juiciest gems.
The 2014 NFL schedule consists of 256 different matchups.pares it all down to the 14 juiciest gems. READ
4) A road to perdition
Have you gazed at the Seahawks' road schedule as a whole? I've already mentioned the Week 2 trip to San Diego, as well as the roadies against the Chiefs, Niners, Eagles and Cards. In between, Seattle also must travel to play the vastly improved Redskins (on Monday Night Football), the developing Rams and a Panthers team that went 7-1 at home last year.
Seattle is a different team away from its raucous fanbase. I think the Seahawks go 4-4 -- at best -- on the road. Especially playing in the NFC West...
5) Don't sleep on Arizona
The Cardinals beat the Seahawks in Seattle last year. That's no small feat. These Cards are ready to dance.
Seattle is locked and loaded with supreme talent, depth, coaching and upper management. Having said that, the fact is, there isn't much separating the Cardinals (who have enjoyed a stellar offseason) and the Seahawks.
Seattle's upside is to win the Super Bowl again, but the downside is finishing third in the NFC West. Arizona will be a factor in this division. It needs to be discussed.
6) Rams revival?
The Rams were a popular wild-card pick in the buildup to last season -- and then Sam Bradford got hurt. St. Louis has two of the top 13 picks in the 2014 NFL Draft, including No. 2 overall. Jeff Fisher is a great coach. St. Louis isn't that far away.
On paper, every team in the NFC West looks like it should win at least eight games. But the six divisional bouts will be a challenge for everyone. (In fact, going 4-2 within the division must be considered success.) If you take the Rams lightly, they will bite you.
7) That team by the Bay
It would make no sense to start adding up wins and losses and projecting division standings before the draft. But that doesn't mean I won't do it now. I'm just that kind of guy.
San Francisco has an easier road schedule than Seattle, with the Cowboys, Giants and Raiders on the slate. Just one of those three teams had a winning home record last season (Dallas, at 5-3).
I think the Niners, so close to capturing the NFC West last year, can do it in 2014. Thus, even with a wild-card bid, the Seahawks would be hitting the road for the playoffs. Again: Different team away from CenturyLink.
8) An absolutely loaded NFC
It isn't just the NFC West that presents viable threats. Look at the talent across this conference. And then look at the talented teams' schedules.
Schein: The division to watch in 2014 Yes, the NFC West is the NFL's best division, but what's the most entertaining? Adam Schein has his eyes on...
Yes, the NFC West is the NFL'sdivision, but what's the most entertaining?has his eyes on... READ
You could easily sell me on each of the following teams having 10-win potential: the Seahawks, 49ers, Cardinals, Packers, Bears, Eagles, Saints, Buccaneers, Falcons and Panthers. That's more than half the conference.
9) It's tough to repeat
For the record, I think the "competition at every position" mantra espoused by coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider does keep guys hungry. And Carroll's unbridled enthusiasm obviously helps. But frankly, it's human nature to get complacent after winning a title.
I think the Seahawks are currently one of the best teams in the NFL. They also might be the second-best team in their division in 2014.
Follow Adam Schein on Twitter @AdamSchein.A second photograph has been discovered showing a group of the Spain's Olympic athletes making slit-eyed gestures.
In the image, which was found on the official website of the Spanish Tennis Federation, players and support staff from the country's Federation Cup Team are seen pulling their eyes back alongside the caption "Estamos preparados para China" - "We are prepared for China". It is thought to have been taken in April, prior to the team playing their Chinese counterparts in the semi-final of the competition - the leading team event for female tennis players.
Visible in the picture are Nuria Llagostera Vives, Anabel Medina Garrigues and Carla Suarez-Navarro, who are all at present competing in Beijing.
The discovery comes days after a photograph showing the Spanish Olympic basketball team making the same gestures emerged. It was part of an advert that appeared in Marca, Spain best-selling newspaper, and was meant to promote the country's involvement in the 2008 Games.
No offence is believed to have been intended by the photographs and, as yet, Olympic organisers have not issued a complaint in regard to either of them, but the pictures have caused much adverse comment, particularly in the United States.
Luis Aragones, the former manager of the national football team, was heard in 2004 calling the France striker Thierry Henry a "black shit", shortly before home supporters racially abused Ashley Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips during a friendly between Spain and England in Madrid.
British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton then suffered similar taunts during a practice race in Barcelona earlier this year.Image copyright Getty Images
Plans to introduce "English votes for English laws" for MPs have been voted through in the House of Commons.
The government won the backing of MPs by 312 to 270 votes. A series of amendments by Lib Dem and Labour MPs were also defeated.
Commons leader Chris Grayling dismissed objections to the new law as "nonsense" during a bad-tempered debate.
The SNP's Pete Wishart said the "stupid" plans would make Scottish MPs "second class citizens".
Follow the latest developments with BBC Politics Live
How it will work
There will now be a new stage added to the usual law-making process at Westminster allowing MPs for English constituencies to vote on issues deemed to only affect England.
These MPs would be able to veto the legislation before all MPs from across the United Kingdom voted in the bill's final readings.
Speaker John Bercow will decide whether a Bill only affects England, and all MPs in the Commons will still have to pass legislation at other stages of the process.
The Speaker will be able to explain his reason for certifying an issue as English or English and Welsh only and call on two senior MPs to help make the ruling.
What the government says
The idea is to eliminate the anomaly where Scottish MPs in Westminster can vote on matters such as health or education in England, but English MPs cannot do likewise on issues devolved to the Scottish Parliament. This is known as the West Lothian question and has tormented MPs for decades.
Mr Grayling told MPs: "These proposed changes enable us to give an answer to the West Lothian question, they enable us to give an answer to our constituents, to say England will have its own piece of our devolution settlement."
He rejected as "nonsense" claims that it would create "two classes of MPs" adding that the measures were "fair, sensible and I'm entirely comfortable as a unionist presenting them to this House".
He added: "It can't be in anyone's interest to see English people becoming cynical about the union... it isn't tenable to have devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and for England to have no powers at all."
What the SNP, Labour and other parties said
Image caption Pete Wishart says the mood in Scotland is darkening
The SNP's Pete Wishart told MPs: "Scotland is watching this and the mood is darkening. If this is an exercise in saving the Union you could not have contrived of a more inept way to save the Union.
"Support for independence is actually increasing."
Labour's Chris Bryant said Mr Grayling's plans were so complicated that they resembled a "bowl of soggy, overcooked spaghetti" and claimed they would hasten the break up of the United Kingdom.
Labour backs "an English voice in Parliament" but does not want "an English veto," which would set England against Scotland.
DUP leader Nigel Dodds said: "The proposals neither deal with the problem they diagnose" and threatens the "fabric of our union".
Lib Dem Alistair Carmichael said the government "was still inviting" MPs "to do the wrong thing".
The new process in a flow chart
Conservative MPs happy
Image caption John Redwood says English MPs are 'at the bottom of the heap'
Heather Wheeler, Conservative MP for South Derbyshire, said she was "delighted" the plans are being introduced - telling MPs it is a matter of utmost importance to her constituents who object to MPs from devolved nations voting on England-only matters.
Senior Conservative MP John Redwood, who wants an English Parliament, backed the "very mild and moderate" proposals which he said would "start to put right some of the injustice to England".
He said English MPs had "always been at the bottom of the heap" and that it was wrong that Scottish MPs could vote on matters in his constituency, such as hospitals and schools, but that he didn't have the right to vote on these matters in Scotland.
Why it matters
Image copyright Getty Images
When Scotland voted last year to remain part of the UK, David Cameron promised significantly increased powers for the Scottish Parliament, including the ability to set some tax and benefit levels.
At the same time, he promised English MPs they would get more power too - they would be able to legislate in areas such as health and education without any input from MPs representing Scottish seats.
Getting the balance of power between the different legislative bodies right is seen as important to the future of the UK.
If the Westminster Parliament is going to have any authority, voters from all parts of the country must feel they are being fairly represented.
Further reading
A beginners' guide to 'English votes for English laws'
How 'English votes' will affect Westminster decision
English votes for English laws: Should Wales care?Published: 12:12, 20 April 2016 | Updated: 17:13, 20 April 2016
Edwina Currie has come under fire after insisting women should be happy to be called 'totty' by men in the workplace.
The former minister said 'good-looking girls' should'make the most of' such compliments.
Ms Currie spoke out in the wake over a row over a Tory MP's comment to Spectator assistant editor Isabel Hardman.
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Copy link to paste in your message +3 Tory former minister Edwina Currie made the comments during a debate on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour
Colonel Bob Stewart has been named as the politician who approached Ms Hardman last week saying he wanted to 'talk to the totty'.
The journalist declined to identify the MP, but described the incident onTwiiter and reported it to party whips - responsible for disciplining MPs in Westminster.
Ms Hardman later said she had secured an apology from the 'contrite' member.
Mr Stewart appeared to acknowledge responsibility in the Commons last week, referring to reports in the media and saying he had 'decided political correctness is something that I don't particularly, necessarily agree with'.
Debating the issue on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour today, Ms Currie said she would have handled the situation with 'a little bit of good humour'.
She said while she was a minister in the last Tory government she a male MP told her she was looking'very attractive' at the Commons despatch box.
Ms Currie - an ex-contestant on ITV's I'm A Celebrity show - said she responded that the 'gentleman looks pretty cute today himself'.
'I am all for complaining to the whips or the authorities if there is persistent harrassment,' she said.
'But Isabel Hardman, she should be too busy, she should have too much to do than fret about an elderly male MP who is actually paying her a compliment and meant no harm whatsoever.'
Pressed on whether she regarded the term 'totty' as a compliment in a working enviroment she replied: 'I would.'
'There is a very strong case for recognising compliments, or even a pass when somebody is making an approach that might be an invitation to something more,' Ms Currie went on.
'The strong case is that actually there are an awful lot of men and women who want to make a pass at you.
'If you are a good looking girl, for goodness sake make the most of it.
'Because the day will come when you are not a good looking girl any more.'
Fellow guest Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism campaign, responded: 'That is completely ridiculous.'
But Ms Currie said: 'It is not ridiculous...
'If somebody called me totty I would be delighted, at the age of almost 70.
'That is not a terrible thing to be called.'
Ms Currie said the controversy was creating 'fear in the workplace' where'no-one can open their mouths'.
She insisted 'good looking' people should not be discouraged from coming into work and'making the place look better'.
But Ms Bates said: 'It is so sad in 2016 that this is the debate that we are having.'
Ms Currie responded on Twitter after being criticised for her performance on Woman's Hour
Mr Stewart, who was decorated with the Distinguished Service Order for his exploits during the Bosnian campaign and is a member of the defence select committee, has said: ‘I’m never rude to anyone ever.’
Julia Hartley-Brewer, a Talk Radio host and former political editor, subsequently revealed how, in a separate incident, a ‘very senior Cabinet minister’ had put his hand on her knee at a party conference several years ago.
She said she threatened to punch the then-backbench MP in the face.
Ms Hardman reported the MP to his party whip but said she would not identify him.
‘Not naming as no social media witch hunt ever made anything better,’ she wrote on Twitter.
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Copy link to paste in your message +3 Isabel Hardman, the Spectator's assistant editor, posted about the incident on Twitter
Answering queries on Twitter about the incident, the journalist insisted her experience in Westminster had generally been'very positive' and that most MPs were 'normal and courteous'.
But she said she had revealed the exchange because'sexists' should not be allowed to make such remarks to female journalists.
She tweeted: 'Last night, an MP who I've only met a couple of times actually said to me as his opening gambit ''I want to talk to the totty.''
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Copy link to paste in your message +3 Tory MP colonel Bob Stewart
'Have been thinking about whether or not to tweet about it, but actually that is NOT on and lobby women shouldn't have to put up with it.
'So I have passed the MP's name on to a whip. I don't betray sources. But I will betray sexists.'
She added later: 'So... whips have dealt with it + apology on its way from v.contrite MP. Not naming as no social media witch hunt ever made anything better.'
Speaking in the Commons last week, Mr Stewart said: 'In April 1993, I took soldiers into the village of (unknown) in central Bosnia. I identified a massacre where at least over 100 people had been killed.
'I decided that I had to inform the world. It was my duty under Geneva conventions and I decided I would have a press conference and identify the people that I thought were responsible, who happened to be Special Forces of the Bosnian-Croat army.
'Then I informed the Ministry of Defence, which of course was kissing goodbye to a glorious military career.'
He added: 'The generals who had given me this very severe wigging then sent another signal, totally ignoring the first one, saying ''I had acted in the highest traditions of the British Army and I was to be congratulated''.
'It was at this time that I thought perhaps our senior officers are too politically correct.
'And since that time, if you look at the Daily Mail and the Sun today, you would notice I've decided political correctness is something that I don't particularly, necessarily agree with.'Warriors push back S.F. arena opening date by a year
Litigation over the Golden State Warriors’ planned Mission Bay arena will delay the opening of the facility for a year, the team said Friday.
The Warriors now expect to spend much of this year fighting lawsuits brought by the Mission Bay Alliance, a well-funded group of UCSF donors who say the arena will have a negative impact on the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay, which opened in November 2014.
The legal fights mean the Warriors will likely open the 2019 season in Mission Bay, not the 2018 season as planned.
“The only thing this lawsuit will accomplish will be to waste everyone’s time, delay all the jobs and economic activity the arena will bring and line the pockets of a bunch of lawyers,” team spokesman P.J. Johnston said. “Since we’re a basketball team, we have to think in terms of seasons. And the fact is, if we have to fight this thing in court over the course of 2016, we likely will be delayed by a season.”
Late last year, the San Francisco Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the $1 billion arena. It has won the endorsement of UCSF administration as well as biotech industry executives in the neighborhood.
So far the Mission Bay Alliance has filed two lawsuits against the project. One charges that UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood overstepped his authority by signing a memorandum in support of the project in exchange for transportation improvements pledged by the city of San Francisco. In doing so, the complaint filed in Alameda County Superior Court says, Hawgood tied the hands of the University of California without the approval of the system’s Board of Regents.
The other lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, argues that the city violated state environmental laws by not properly considering alternate locations for the arena and by failing to adequately address the project's environmental impacts, such as traffic, air quality and noise.
Rendering released on Dec. 10, 2014 showing the Golden State Warriors' proposed new arena in San Francisco's Mission Bay area as it would appear from a bay-front park to be built. The arena would seat 18,000 people, have a view deck, and include a 24,000 square foot public plaza on the southeast side and a 35,000 square foot public plaza on the Third Street side. Completion is slated for the start of the 2018-19 NBA season. less Rendering released on Dec. 10, 2014 showing the Golden State Warriors' proposed new arena in San Francisco's Mission Bay area as it would appear from a bay-front park to be built. The arena would seat 18,000... more Photo: Images Rendered By Steelblue., Courtesy Of MANICA Architecture. Photo: Images Rendered By Steelblue., Courtesy Of MANICA Architecture. Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Warriors push back S.F. arena opening date by a year 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
“This is a real victory for the opponents of the Warrior’s ill-conceived Mission Bay arena,” said Sam Singer, a spokesman for the Mission Bay Alliance. “Mission Bay Alliance’s two lawsuits, along with growing public opposition, is going to lead the Warriors to more delays, and we believe that it will ultimately cause the team to depart the Mission Bay site.”
This marks the second time the Warriors have pushed back the opening of a new San Francisco arena. Originally the team hoped to build a waterfront arena on Piers 30-32 and were targeting a 2017 opening. That date slipped a year when the team, facing neighborhood opposition, switched its focus to Mission Bay.
Christine Falvey, spokeswoman for Mayor Ed Lee, said the news of the delay was “disappointing, though not unexpected.”
“Remember, this is the same anonymous group that said they will litigate until the cows come home,” she said of the alliance. “While there is a season’s delay for our residents and the many workers who expect to work on and in the arena, at the end of the day, we will have a state-of-the-art, privately financed arena for generations to come.”
Vic Tafur and J.K. Dineen are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: jdineen@sfchronicle.com, vtafur@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VicTafur, @SFjkdineenby Ray Nelson When I saw Phil Dick for the last time, he was beside himself with glee, having recently received a fat check from his agent for film options on a long shopping list of novels and short stories, in every case for a figure in excess of what he had gotten for their original publications. In addition, the first in the series of optioned stories, Blade Runner, was nearing completion and Phil had seen the rushes and heartily approved of how it had turned out. I glanced around at the small, dim, shabby apartment he occupied and said "I suppose now you'll move out of here and get yourself a mansion with a swimming pool and hot and cold running starlets". He loomed over me where I sat on a threadbare sofa, and slowly shook his head. "I have responsibilities," he intoned. "But surely you have some of the money left, enough to at least rent a place more in keeping with your material success". He gazed down at me with cocker spaniel eyes. "No Ray, I also have my priorities. There are things more important than worldly show. In point of fact, I have already spent most of the money." "Donations to your favorite charities?" "No, nothing like that." "Gifts to the wives of all your friends?" "How little you know me." "A shipment of little pills to make you sick?" "Wrong again, Ray. I know you are the soul of discretion, but if I tell you the last of my many secrets you must swear on a Bible or at least on your copy of Stranger in a Strange Land that you will not reveal what I tell you until after my death" "Good grief Phil!" "Swear!" "All right, I swear." His slightly slanted catlike eyes darted about the room, as if seeking some hidden eavesdropper. "You know when we were kids at Hillside School in Berkeley, I believed without question that Walt Disney personally drew all those talking ducks and mice". "Well, so did I. I took it for granted. Of course we both know now that he didn't even draw his signature. He probably didn't himself actually invent Mickey Mouse. He fooled everyone." "Not everyone Ray. Can you imagine Larry Niven being taken in?" "I guess not." "No Ray, Larry would have laughed at us. I can just imagine his scornful, hurtful laughter if he had found us out." "But that was a long time ago Phil. We've changed." "Oh? Larry hasn't changed. He still has no room in his universe for talking mice. Today, if anything, he'd be more scornful, more sarcastic than he must have been as a child." "Get to the point Phil." Again He glanced around. He paused, gathered his courage. "I still believe" Phil whispered. I burst out laughing. "You too, Ray? Yes, you and Larry have changed all right. Only I have remained faithful." "So that's it? The big secret?" "That's it." "I have to say, I don't believe you. You had me going there for a second, but I don't believe you really still believe in Disney." He looked hurt. "I went on a pilgrimage", He said, rising out of his usual slouch to stand like an indignant christian martyr before a Roman persecutor. "To where?" His dignity send me into another fit of laughter. "Disneyland," He said defiantly. "What?" "Disneyland. I walked the whole way." He made it sound as if Disneyland. was on some other continent when in fact it was only a few blocks away. "I don't believe you, Phil." "I have proof." "Let's see it." He took out his wallet and extracted a laminated card. "It's a pass to Disneyland, good for one whole year." "You must have paid a fortune for it". I took it in my hand and stared at it. It appeared to be exactly what He said it was. "To pay so much for one visit". "For one visit, yes. But it's a bargain for several times." "Several times?" "Many times." "How many?" "Every day at first. Now only two or three times a week." "My God Phil." "There's a little cafe in Disneyland. They have outdoor tables. I've gone there so often the waiters greet me by my first name". "That's amazing." "Even Mickey. Mickey greets me by my first name. |
for example, 71% of all donors fell below the poverty line.[22] Poor people are more likely to fall victim of organ theft. Accounts of this practice usually characterize the victims as unemployed individuals (often but not always men) between the ages of 20 and 40 who were seeking work and were taken out of the country for operations.[21]
Poor people are also more likely to volunteer to sell their organs. One of the primary reasons donors articulate for why they sell their organs is to pay off debt.[21] The most impoverished are frequently viewed as more reliable targets for transplant tourists because they are the most in need of money. While some supporters of the organ trade argue that it helps lift some people out of poverty by providing compensation to donors, evidence of this claim is hotly debated.[7] In many cases, people who sell their organs in order to pay off debt do not manage to escape this debt and remain trapped in debt cycles.[80][81] Often, people feel like they have no choice but to donate their kidneys due to extreme poverty.[81][82] In some cases, organs are sold to family members, either from parents to offspring, or from adult children to parents. This is more frequent in nations where waitlists are less formal, and among families which cannot afford to leave the country for transplants.
Reports by the World Health Organization show decreased health and economic well-being for those who donate organs through transplant tourism. In Iran (where organ sales are legal), 58% of donors reported negative health consequences. In Egypt, as many as 78% of donors experienced negative health outcomes, and 96% of donors stated that they regretted donating.[22] These findings are relatively consistent across all countries: those who sell their organs on the market tend to have poorer overall health. Substandard conditions during transplant surgeries can also lead to transmission of diseases like hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV. Donors' poor health is further exacerbated by depression and other mental illnesses brought on by the stress of donating and insufficient care after surgery.[21][54]
Impoverished donors' economic outcomes are no better than their health outcomes. A study of Indian donors found that while 96% of donors sold a kidney to pay off debts, 75% still had those operative care that is not provided by the buyer.[76] Donors in all countries often report weakness after surgery that leads to decreased employment opportunities, especially for those who make a living through physical labor.[76]
Issues with enforcement [ edit ]
Though many statutes regarding organ trade exist, law officials have failed to enforce these mandates successfully. One barrier to enforcement is a lack of communication between medical authorities and law enforcement agencies. Often, enforcement officials' access to information regarding individuals involved in illegal organ transplants is hindered by medical confidentiality regulations. Without the ability to review medical records and histories to build an effective case against perpetrators, officials cannot fully enforce organ trade laws.[24] Many critics state that in order to prohibit illegal organ trading effectively, criminal justice agencies must collaborate with medical authorities to strengthen knowledge and enforcement of organ trade laws. Critics also support other criminal justice actions to meet this goal, such as prioritizing organ trafficking issues among local legislative bodies; multidisciplinary collaboration in cross-border offenses; and further police training in dealing with organ trafficking crimes.[28]
Media portrayal [ edit ]
There have been various portrayals of illegal organ trade and organ trafficking in the mass media over the past few decades. Many, such as the 1993 book The Baby Train by Jan Brunvand, are variations of the urban legend of an individual who wakes up in a hotel bathtub to discover that one of his or her kidneys has been removed.[24] The 1977 fictional novel Coma by Robin Cook, made into a movie by Michael Crichton, tells of unsuspecting medical patients who are put into a coma in order for their organs to be removed. In addition to books and films, stories of organ trafficking are often depicted through television, tabloid magazines, emails, and the Internet.[83][84]
Many of the organ trafficking tales depicted in the media contain unsubstantiated claims. For example, the 1993 British/Canadian TV program The Body Parts Business made a number of claims about organ trafficking that later proved to be false. The program investigated alleged organ and tissue trafficking in Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, and Russia. One episode discussed a man named Pedro Reggi, reporting that his corneas had been removed without his consent while he was hospitalized in a mental facility. Reggi later disputed this claim, saying that his corneas were still intact, and he had just been suffering from an acute eye infection.[83]
Critics, such as Silke Meyer, argue that this sensationalized view of organ trafficking, often based in urban myth, distracts attention from the illegal organ trade. They call for increased scientific research on illegal organ trade, so that organ trafficking legends can be replaced by scientific fact. Meyer argues: "Only then will [organ trafficking] be taken seriously by all governments affected and will the results constitute a solid ground for the field of policy-making."[24]
Proposed solutions [ edit ]
Various solutions have been proposed to staunch the flow of illegal organs around the globe. The primary strategy is to increase the supply of legally donated organs, thereby decreasing the demand that drives the illicit organ trade. One way to accomplish this goal is for states to implement policies of presumed consent.[62] With presumed consent laws (also known as "opt out" laws), consent for organ donation is assumed upon death unless the individual previously "opted out" by submitting documentation. This is in contrast to "opt-in" organ donation policies, which assume that a deceased person would not have wished to donate unless they had previously notified the government of their intention to donate. Presumed consent policies have already been adopted in various countries, including Brazil, certain jurisdictions of the United States, and several European nations. Research shows a 25–30% increase in the amount of available organs in "opt-out" countries.[21]
Another proposed method is to enact laws that would hold doctors accountable for not reporting suspected organ trafficking. Scheper-Hughes has written extensively on the issue of doctors knowingly performing illegal operations with illicit organs.[9] She argues that though doctors might be violating doctor-patient privilege by reporting suspected organ trafficking, their legal obligation to the patient is superseded by public interest in ending medical violations of human rights. If accountability measures were imposed, doctors would be liable as accomplices if they knowingly performed operations with black market organs.[62]
Many people in the United States believe that adopting a system for regulating organ trading similar to Iran's will help to decrease the national shortage of kidneys. They argue that the U.S. could adopt similar policies to promote accountability, ensure safety in surgical practices, employ vendor registries, and provide donors with lifetime care. They further argue that private insurance companies and the federal government would be invested in providing such care for donors, and that laws could be enacted to make long-term care an inviolable condition of any donation agreement.[7]
Debate over legalization [ edit ]
Although there has been a widespread international consensus against the sale of human organs for decades, individual physicians, jurists, and philosophers have become more willing to criticize the status quo. So far, these proponents of legalized organ trade have yet to persuade a state to permit the practice. However, they have succeeded in starting a lively debate over the prohibition.
Models for organ markets [ edit ]
Proponents of legalized organ sales offer a number of designs for a market in human organs. Some argue that individuals ought to be free to contract for the sale and purchase of organs as if they were like any other commodity.[85] Ethicists Charles A. Erin and John Harris have proposed a much more heavily regulated model for organ transactions.[86] Under this scheme, would-be sellers of organs do not contract with would-be recipients. Instead, a government agency would be the sole buyer of organs, paying a standard price set by law and then distributing the organs to its citizens. This safeguard is designed to prevent unscrupulous buyers from taking advantage of potential donors and to ensure that the benefits of the increased organ supply are not limited to the rich. Moreover, participation in the market would be confined to citizens of the state where the market is located, to prevent the unilateral movement of organs from developing nations to the developed world. Erin and Harris's model has been endorsed by a number of prominent advocates of organ markets.[87][88]
Arguments for legalization [ edit ]
Increased organ supply [ edit ]
The main argument made in favor of legalized organ sales is that it would increase the number of organs available for transplantation.[89] Although governments have implemented other initiatives to increase organ donation – such as public awareness campaigns, presumed consent laws, and the legal definition of brain death – the waitlist for vital organs continues to grow. Even those patients who get off the waitlist often do so after receiving an organ from a cadaver; such transplantations have worse results than when the donor is a living person.[90] Legalizing payments for organs would encourage more people to donate their organs. Each organ sold on a market could potentially save the life (and improve the quality of life) of its recipient.[91] For example, patients with kidney disease who receive a kidney transplant from a living donor typically live 7 to 15 years longer than those who depend on dialysis.[90]
Critics of legalization argue that proponents exaggerate the impact that a market would have on the supply of organs. In particular, they note that legalized organ sales may “crowd out” altruistic donations.[92] In other words, people who would otherwise give their organs to relatives may decline to do so, opting instead to purchase the organ (or rely on the government to buy one) for their relatives. Proponents of markets counter that while altruistic donations might decrease slightly if organ sales were legalized, this decrease would be more than offset by the influx of organs.
Minimal negative consequences for donors [ edit ]
Proponents also assert that organ sales ought to be legal because the procedure is relatively safe for donors.[93] The short-term risk of donation is low – patients have a mortality rate of 0.03%,[94] similar to that of certain elective cosmetic procedures such as liposuction.[95] Moreover, they argue, the long-term risks are also relatively minimal. A 2018 systematic review found that kidney donors did not die earlier than non-donors.[96] Donors did have a slightly increased risk of chronic kidney disease and pre-eclampsia (a condition sometimes seen in pregnancy). The review found no difference in the rates of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, or mental illness. Multiple studies of American and Japanese donors found that they reported a higher quality of life than the average non-donor.[94] Proponents of organ markets argue that, given the comparative safety of donating a kidney, individuals should be permitted to undergo this operation in exchange for payment.
Critics challenge this view of transplantation as being overly optimistic. Specifically, they cite research suggesting that individuals who sell their organs fare worse after the procedure than those who freely donate their organs. Kidney sellers are more likely to have renal problems after the operation (such as hypertension and chronic kidney disease), to report reduced overall health, and to suffer from psychological side effects such as depression.[97] Opponents of markets usually ascribe these worse outcomes to the fact that kidney sellers are drawn from the ranks of the poor; if organ sales are permitted, most sellers will be poor and can expect the same dangerous consequences. Proponents of organ markets respond by blaming these bad outcomes on the fact that kidney sellers have been forced into the black market, with minimal oversight, follow-up care, or legal protections from abuse; thus in a regulated market in the developed world, kidney sellers could expect to see outcomes more akin to those of kidney donors
Respect for autonomy [ edit ]
Many proponents argue for legalized organ sales on the grounds of autonomy. Individuals are generally free to buy or sell their possessions and their labor. Advocates of organ markets say that, likewise, people ought to be free to buy or sell organs as well.[98] According to this perspective, prohibitions against selling organs are a paternalistic or moralistic intrusion upon individuals' freedom. Proponents acknowledge that, unlike selling a material possession such as a car, selling a kidney does carry some risk of harm. However, they note that people are able to undertake dangerous occupations (such as logging, soldiering, or surrogacy) which carry significant chance of bodily harm.[99] If individuals are allowed to take on that risk in exchange for money, then they ought to be able to take on the risks of selling a kidney as well.
Harm reduction [ edit ]
Other physicians and philosophers argue that legalization will remedy the abuses of the illicit trade in organs.[100][101] The current ban on the sale of organs has driven both sellers and buyers into the black market, out of sight of the law.[102] Criminal middlemen often take a large cut of the payment for the organ, leaving comparatively little money left for the donor.[103] Because the mainstream medical establishment is barred from participating in the transplantation, the procedure typically occurs in substandard facilities and not according to best practices.[104] Afterwards, the donors often do not receive important medical follow-up because they are afraid that their role in the crime will be discovered. There have also been reports of criminal gangs kidnapping people and illegally harvesting their organs for sale on the black market.[103] Proponents of legalization argue that it will result in better medical care for donors and recipients alike, as well as larger payments to the donors.
Some critics challenge the proponents' assumptions that legalization will completely eliminate the black market for organs or its problems. For example, one scholar argues that once the organ trade became legalized in Iran, it did not end the under-the-table sales in organs.[105] Instead, people made deals outside the government-sanctioned system to acquire organs from more desirable (i.e., healthier) donors.
Arguments against legalization [ edit ]
Coercion by poverty [ edit ]
Critics often argue that organ sales should remain prohibited because any market solution will take advantage of the poor. Specifically, they fear that a large financial incentive for donating organs will prove irresistible to individuals in extreme poverty: such individuals may feel like they have no choice but to agree to sell a kidney. Under these circumstances, the decision to sell cannot be regarded as truly voluntary.[106] Consequently, it is appropriate for the government to protect poor people by prohibiting the sale of organs.
Proponents of organ markets counter that, by this reasoning, poor people could not be trusted to make any significant economic decision since it would inevitably be influenced by their need to earn money to escape (or survive in) poverty. If impoverished people cannot consent to sell a kidney because of their economic circumstances, they ask, why is their consent valid for other unpleasant choices, such as undertaking an undesirable jobs or selling a treasured family heirloom?
Direct harms of organ selling [ edit ]
Some opponents of markets adopt a paternalistic stance that prohibits organ sales on the grounds that the government has a duty to prevent harm to its citizens. Unlike the "coercion by poverty" line of argumentation discussed above, these critics do not necessarily question the validity of the donors' consent. Rather, they say that the dangers posed by donating an organ are too great to allow a person to voluntarily undertake them in exchange for money. As noted previously, critics of organ sales cite research suggesting that kidney sellers suffer serious consequences of the operation, faring far worse than altruistic kidney donors. Even if one assumes that kidney sellers will have similar outcomes to donors in a regulated market, one cannot ignore the fact that a nephrectomy is an invasive procedure that - by definition - inflicts some injury upon the patient.[107] These critics argue that the government has a duty to prevent these harms, even if the would-be seller is willing to undertake them.
A similar argument focuses on the fact that selling a kidney involves the loss of something unique and essentially irreplaceable on the part of the donor.[108] Given the special value placed on bodily integrity in society, it is appropriate to outlaw the sale of body parts to protect that value.
Objectification [ edit ]
Another criticism of legalized organ sales is that it objectifies human beings. This argument typically starts with the Kantian assumption that every human being is creatures of innate dignity, who must always be regarded as an end to itself and never just a means to an end. A market for organs would reduce body parts to commodities to be bought and sold. Critics argue that, by permitting such transactions, society would reduce the seller of the organ to an object of commerce - a mere means to an ends.[109] Assigning a monetary value to a key organ is essentially assigning a value to its bearer, and putting a price on a human being violates his or her intrinsic dignity.
Proponents of organ sales claim that this line of argument confuses the kidney with the whole person;[110] so long as the transaction is conducted in a way that minimizes risks to the donor and fairly compensates him or her, that person is not reduced to a means to an end.
Unwanted pressure to sell an organ [ edit ]
Another argument against organ markets is that they will give rise to a pressure to sell organs which would harm all people (even those who did not participate directly in the market).[111] Under the current ban on the organ trade, debtors and heads of families in the developed world face little pressure to sell their organs. If a person's creditors or dependents suggest that she sell her kidney to raise money, she could refuse on the grounds that it is illegal. In contrast, if organ sales were legalized, a destitute individual could face pressure from family and creditors to sell a kidney – and possibly endure social consequences such as scorn or guilt if she declined. Legalizing organ sales would create this unwanted pressure (and attendant disapproval) for all poor individuals, regardless of whether or not they wished to sell their kidneys. Thus a legal prohibition on selling organs is warranted to protect poor people from this undesirable pressure.
Academic perspectives on legalization [ edit ]
Economic perspective [ edit ]
Economists generally lean in favor of legalizing organ markets. The consensus of American Economic Association members is that organ trade should be allowed, with 70% in favor and 16% opposed.[112] Another literature review, looking at the publications of 72 economic researchers who have studied organ trade, reached a similar conclusion: 68% supported legalization of the organ trade, while 21% opposed it.[113]
Many scholars advocate the implementation of a free market system to combat the organ shortage that helps drive illegal organ trade.[114] The organ trade's illegal status creates a price ceiling for organs at zero dollars. This price ceiling affects supply and demand, creating a shortage of organs in the face of a growing demand.[115][116] According to a report published by the Cato Institute, a US-based libertarian think tank, eliminating the price ceiling would eliminate the organ shortage.[7] In the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Nobel laureate Gary Becker and Julio Elias estimated that a $15,000 compensation would provide enough kidneys for everyone on the waitlist. The government could pay the compensation to guarantee equality. This would save public money, as dialysis for kidney failure patients is far more expensive.[6]
However, other critics state that a free market for organs would only increase already high prices for organs, creating an imbalance: only wealthy individuals would be able to purchase these organs. They also argue that such a free market system for organ trade would encourage organ theft through murder and neglect of sick individuals for financial gain. Advocates for the free market of organs counter these claims by saying that murder for financial gain already happens; sanctions against such acts exist to minimize their occurrence; and with proper regulation and law enforcement, such incidents in a legal organ trade could be minimized as well.[114]
Human rights perspectives [ edit ]
Legalization of human organ trading has been opposed by a variety of human rights groups. One such group is Organs Watch, which was established by Nancy Scheper-Hughes – a medical anthropologist who was instrumental in exposing illegal international organ-selling rings. Scheper-Hughes is famous for her investigations, which have led to several arrests due to people from developing countries being forced or fooled into organ donations.[117] Like the World Health Organization, Organs Watch seeks to protect and benefit the poverty-stricken individuals who participate in the illegal organ trade out of necessity.[118]
See also [ edit ]FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas - The Fort Bend County Emergency Operations Center will hold a news conference Thursday to discuss the latest flooding concerns.
The conference will take place at 2 p.m.
The American Red Cross opened a new shelter at River Pointe Church in Fort Bend County Wednesday.
The Red Cross began distributing essential supplies such as clean-up kits, tarps, rakes and personal hygiene supplies at the First Baptist Church in Richmond and Shepherd Community Center in Shepherd.
The full list of shelters and addresses is below:
AUSTIN COUNTY:
St. John Lutheran Church, 520 North Holland Bellville, TX, 77418
BRAZORIA COUNTY:
Christ Lutheran Church, 86 Plantation Drive, Lake Jackson, TX, 77566
FORT BEND COUNTY:
First Baptist Church, 502 S. 5th St, Richmond, TX, 77469
River Pointe Church, 5000 Ransom Rd., Richmond, TX 77469
HARRIS COUNTY:
New Light Christian Church, 1535 Greens Mark, Houston, TX, 77067
LIBERTY COUNTY:
Calvary Baptist Church, 816 North Blair Ave, Cleveland, TX 77327
MONTGOMERY COUNTY:
First United Methodist Church, 4308 West Davis, Conroe, TX 77304
SAN JACINTO COUNTY:
Shepherd Community Center, 10251 Hwy 150, Shepherd, TX, 77371
TYLER COUNTY:
True Vine Baptist Church, 26 US Hwy 69, Doucette, TX 75942
WALLER COUNTY:
Bible Fellowship Baptist Church, 1214 FM 359 Brookshire, TX, 77423
WHARTON COUNTY:
Boys and Girls Club, 2120 Newton St, Wharton, TX, 77488
These shelters will be open 24 hours a day, providing a warm, dry place to stay, food and emotional
support for area residents who are not able to remain at their homes due to storms and flooding.
WHAT TO BRING TO A SHELTER: Anyone evacuating to a Red Cross shelter should bring the following essential items for each member of the family:
• Prescription and emergency medications
• Foods that meet unusual dietary requirements
• Identification and important personal documents
• Extra clothing, towels, hygiene supplies and other comfort items
• Supplies needed for children and infants, such as diapers, formula and toys
• Special items for family members who are elderly or disabled
• Certified service animals are permitted.
PETS: The SPCA has partnered with the American Red Cross to help the pets of those seeking shelter. The SPCA will provide a Pet Setup for the pet of an owner who seeks shelter at an American Red Cross shelter. A setup includes a cage kennel, food and water bowls, and pet food. Thanks to the SPCA, dogs and cats are welcome at American Red Cross Shelters.
FOR HELP: Those with flood-related needs are urged to call the American Red Cross at 1-866-526-8300 - option 1.
TO DONATE: Those who wish to donate to flood relief may do so at redcross.org/donate.
TO VOLUNTEER: Every single day, the American Red Cross helps people in emergencies. Whether it's one displaced family, thousands of disaster victims, or providing care and comfort to an ill or injured service member or veteran or support to a military family member, our vital work is made possible by people like you. It is through the time and care of ordinary people that we can do extraordinary things. Sign up today at redcross.org
2016 Click2Houston/KPRC2Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
June 15, 2016, 12:28 PM GMT / Updated June 15, 2016, 12:28 PM GMT
OFF TO THE RACES: Poll: Clinton now back ahead by double digits
A new Bloomberg Politics poll shows Clinton leading Trump by double digits. "Democrat Hillary Clinton has opened up a double-digit lead nationally over Republican Donald Trump, whose negatives remain unusually high for a presidential candidate amid early indications that the Orlando terrorist attack has had little direct impact on the 2016 race. A new Bloomberg Politics national poll shows Clinton leading Trump 49 percent to 37 percent among likely voters in November's election, with 55 percent of those polled saying they could never vote for the real-estate developer and TV personality."
And a new Washington Post-ABC News poll also shows Trump's negative up: "The poll finds 70 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, including a 56 percent majority who feel this way "strongly." Negative ratings of Trump are up 10 percentage points from last month to their highest point since he announced his candidacy last summer, nearly reaching the level seen before his campaign began (71 percent). The survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday among a random national sample of U.S. adults, coming after last week's primary contests, but with the large majority of interviews completed before Sunday's massacre at an Orlando club.'
Alex Seitz-Wald sums up last night's meeting between Sanders and Clinton: "Afterwards, both candidates released nearly identical statements calling the meeting "positive" and saying they had agreed to work together to defeat Donald Trump. "The two discussed a variety of progressive issues where they share common goals like raising wages for working families, eliminating undisclosed money in politics and reducing the cost of college for students and their families," a Clinton official said, echoing the same policy items listed in Sanders' statement. However, while Clinton's statement discussed "unifying the party," Sanders' made no mention of the "u" word."
More, from the New York Times: "Two advisers to Mr. Sanders described him as concerned that Mrs. Clinton might say all the right things now but embrace more politically moderate positions later if she thinks it necessary to win states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia. The advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the campaign had not authorized them to speak, said Mr. Sanders felt no pressure to endorse Mrs. Clinton quickly. He wants her to take steps to win his confidence in the five and a half weeks before the Democratic convention, where his voters and delegates expect him to speak and Clinton advisers hope he will give a full-throated speech backing her."
By the way, the DNC isn't yet calling Clinton the presumptive nominee.
With the Democratic primaries finally in the books, here's a look back at the race -- by the numbers.
CLINTON: She won Tuesday night's D.C. primary, the final one of the nomination race.
Clinton and Obama hit Trump with a one-two punch with similar speeches blasting his response to the Orlando attacks.
Here's our report on the apparent hack of the DNC computer system by Russian government operations.
TRUMP: Per NBC's Alex Jaffe, Trump said Obama "was more angry at me than he was at the shooter" in Orlando.
He appeared to claim last night that American troops had embezzled funds meant for Iraqi reconstruction efforts, though his team says he was referring to Iraqi - not U.S. - troops.
The New York Times: "Exploitation of fear has been part of the American political playbook since colonial pamphleteers whipped their neighbors into a frenzy over British misrule. It took on new potency in the nuclear age with Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy” ad against Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Jimmy Carter’s warnings about Ronald Reagan’s finger on the button in 1980. But Mr. Trump — who drew harsh condemnation from President Obama on Tuesday — has intensified the power of fear in presidential politics by demonizing an entire religious group. And he has expanded the use of that power by stirring up fear in the aftermath of national traumas, like the San Bernardino, Calif., attack and now the Orlando shooting, that traditionally elicited measured and soothing responses from political leaders."
A Washington Post headline to bookmark, again: "Top Republicans join Obama in condemning Trump’s words"
And the Wall Street Journal: "Donald Trump’s Antiterror Plans Rebuked by Leaders of Both Parties"
Via, POLITICO: "A convicted Ponzi schemer on Tuesday filed a curious report with the Federal Election Commission declaring that his super PAC was going to conduct a $50 million digital-media marketing campaign boosting Donald Trump.Steven Hoffenberg filed paperwork in late April to create a super PAC called Get Our Jobs Back Inc. The PAC, which has yet to disclose any cash donations, filed a report Tuesday indicating that a company called Statware Inc. was making an in-kind donation of services worth $50 million. The PAC listed the services as “Digital Media Marketing, Revenue Sharing,” though there’s little evidence yet of such a campaign."
Worth a note in light of the political climate post-Orlando: "U.S. Sen. Rob Portman said Tuesday he favors a federal ban on weapons sales to those on the U.S. terrorist watch list, even though he voted against a similar proposal last year. The Cincinnati Republican, in a conference call with reporters, said in the aftermath of the Orlando shootings – the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history – he feels such a ban is justified as long as there is a way for people mistakenly added to the watch list to remove themselves from it." (Portman is up for re-election.)ELKHORN, Wis. (AP) — House Speaker Paul Ryan was booed and heckled by Donald Trump supporters at a party unity rally in his congressional district Saturday, an event that the Republican nominee had originally planned to attend.
Ryan announced Friday that Trump was no longer welcome at the rally after a recording was released featuring the former reality TV star making vulgar comments about women. Trump’s running mate Mike Pence was to fill in for Trump, but the Indiana governor canceled hours before the annual “Fall Fest” event began.
Defiant Trump supporters voiced their frustration at Ryan and other Republicans who spoke at the county fairgrounds in front of two large American flags, rows of pumpkins and stacks of straw. Ryan — who said Friday he was “sickened” by Trump’s words — was heckled with shouts of “Shame on you!” and “You turned your backs on us!”
Trump’s comments were made in a 2005 video obtained and released Friday by The Washington Post and NBC News. In the video, Trump is heard describing his attempts to have sex with a married woman. He also brags about women letting him kiss and grab them because he is famous.
“When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” Trump says in the previously unaired comments. He adds seconds later: “Grab them by the p—-. You can do anything.”
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, the only speaker to directly address Trump’s crude remarks, was heckled when he said “I know Donald Trump has said some things that are bad.”
“Get over it!” someone shouted.
Ryan obliquely referred to the furor as “a bit of an elephant in the room,” at the opening of his 7-minute speech.
“It is a troubling situation, and I’m serious, it is,” Ryan said. “I put out a statement about this last night. I meant what I said and it’s still how I feel. But that is not what we are here to talk about today.”
Other speakers — including Sen. Ron Johnson and Gov. Scott Walker — didn’t mention Trump and instead focused on state contests, such as Johnson’s Senate race with Democrat Russ Feingold. But Walker and Johnson both released statements ahead of the event denouncing Trump.
Many in the crowd made clear they were standing by the candidate.
“Trump is a great man,” said Scott Reese, a 40-year-old plumber wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat. “We all make mistakes.”
Jean Stanley, a 50-year-old woman from New Berlin, Wisconsin, came to the rally wearing a pink T-shirt with bold, black lettering that said “Wisconsin Women Love Trump.”
“He’s a real human,” Stanley said. “It was a long time ago. We all have something in our past. He was a Hollywood icon then.”
Julie Marso, from Milwaukee, said she still supports Trump.
“You should vote according to the issues facing this country, not the kind of dirt you can dig up on people,” she said.
Orville Seymer, a 62-year-old conservative activist wearing a red, white and blue American flag hat, said the “mildly vulgar comments from 11 years ago” are getting a disproportionate amount of media attention, especially compared to Clinton’s “numerous scandals.”
Stanley called Ryan a “traitor” for denouncing Trump, a sentiment echoed by Dennis Karbowski, a trucker from Elkhorn, Wisconsin.
“Mr. Trump is human,” Karbowski said. “We’ve all said those things. … Either you believe in your party or you don’t. I don’t like Judases.”
(© Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Aug. 14, 2015, 4:16 AM GMT / Updated Aug. 14, 2015, 11:36 AM GMT By Phil Helsel
A firefighter trapped for more than 31 hours was rescued from the blast site in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, according to a city official and state media.
At least 56 people — including 21 firefighters — were killed when two explosions erupted at around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday local time. Several firefighters are reportedly still missing.
The firefighter rescued Friday was identified by state media as 19-year-old Zhou Ti. China's state broadcaster CCTV said he received treatment for burns, smoke inhalation and an injured leg.
"Forces from all sides are searching for the (remaining) missing firefighters," Tianjin Fire Department head Zhou Tian said at a news conference Friday, according to The Associated Press.
State news agency Xinhua said that a total of 701 people remained hospitalized after the blast and that more than a dozen firefighters were still missing.
Following the blasts, many residents kept their windows and doors shut after officials reported dangerous toxins in the air.
The air pollutants — including methylbenzene, methane, epoxy ethane — were "basically at normal levels" by Thursday afternoon, Nankai University professor Feng Yin Chang told reporters on Friday.
However she said that it was still "not very clear" which chemicals had been involved in the initial explosion.
A 200-strong nuclear, biological and chemical team from the Chinese army was drafted in to test for toxins surrounding the site.
There were also concerns from foreign experts that the firefighters' use of water may have reacted with one of the chemicals being stored at the factory, contributing to the explosions' ferocity.
David Leggett, a chemical safety expert based in California, told Reuters that because calcium carbide reacts with water to create acetylene, a highly explosive gas, this could have caused ammonium nitrate, another chemical believed top be present, to detonate.
"In my mind, the presence of ammonium nitrate makes it easier to explain the level of devastation," he told the news agency.
Lei Jinde, the deputy propaganda department head of China's fire department, told state-backed news website ThePaper.cn that firefighters "knew there was calcium carbide inside but we didn't know whether it had already exploded," according to Reuters.
"At that point no one knew, it wasn't that the firefighters were stupid," he said, according to the news agency.
Tianjin is the world’s 10th busiest container port in the world, according to the World Shipping Council, and in 2013 handled nearly as much volume as the port of Los Angeles and the port of New York and New Jersey combined.Jonathan Wilson recently wrote in his excellent ‘The Question’ series about the possibility of the return of the sweeper to football. The sweeper prospered as the ’spare man’ in a three-man central defence up against a two-man attack, so now we have two-man central defences up against one-man attacks, should one centre-back not become a sweeper?
The idea is music to the ears of anyone who fondly remembers Euro 96. The player of the tournament was Matthias Sammer, the sweeper in the German 3-4-1-2 system that went onto win the tournament. As well as being the most important player in defence, clearing up behind the two markers, he also had license to go forward and launch attacks, and found himself scoring (in open play) on more than one occasion.
Perhaps the German success at Euro 96 was what sparked the brief mid-late 90s obsession with three-man defences in England, but they are currently a thing of the past across most of Europe, and certainly in the Premiership.
So, against a lone striker, one of the centre-backs in theory has a license to attack. This has been the case at Arsenal this season, where William Gallas and Thomas Vermaelen often charge forward. It was also demonstrated in the first leg of the Bayern Munich v Manchester United tie, where centre-back Martin Demichelis stepped forward into the midfield. Sir Alex Ferguson’s introduction of Dimitar Berbatov was thought by some to be primarily to prevent the Argentine doing so.
But the reality is that it is suicidal to leave your defence equipped with just one centre-back (see Vermaelen’s error in Arsenal’s defeat to Manchester United earlier this year), particularly if the opposing striker is faster than him and able to move wide before outpacing his marker to the ball. Considering how popular one-striker formations are today, it is still extremely rare to see a centre-back constantly looking to power forward to bolster the midfield – it is simply too risky.
And so it is likely that the equivalent of a sweeper in future years will be a defensive midfielder dropping into the backline – with the centre-backs moving wide – rather than a centre-back pushing forward into the midfield. On this site, we have referred to this player as a centre-half (see Carsten Ramelow at Bayer Leverkusen, for example), such is the similarity in its nature to the ‘original’ centre-half, who permanently moved from the centre of midfield to the centre of defence.
The advantages? It widens the active playing area at both ends of the pitch, making it easier to keep possession, and tougher for the opposition to cover the space. It also creates a difficult situation for the opposition in terms of picking up players.
There are two interesting modern examples of this in action – and tellingly, they involve the best club side in the world, and (possibly) the best international side in the world.
Barcelona have played a system for the past two seasons where the deepest midfield player (either Yaya Toure or Sergio Busquets) drops into the centre of defence, with the centre-backs, Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol, spreading into extremely wide positions whilst Barcelona are in possession, almost on the touchlines. This allows Dani Alves and Eric Abidal/Max |
poor Uber staffer relegated to man that travisforsaken outpost). And Uber's real HQ, where Kalanick can go about his business, secure in the knowledge that he and his crisp blue suit are far from the grubby hands of the drivers who have made him rich.
[Illustration by Hallie Bateman for Pando]0
Whatever you think of Tron: Legacy, there’s no denying that that movie is gorgeous. Director Joseph Kosinski may not have had as strong a handle on the story or characters as one might have hoped, but the Disney sequel was visually stunning. So when Tron 3 came back to life last year with Kosinski directing, there was reason to be hopeful—maybe there’d be a better script, and at the very least we’d be getting another Daft Punk soundtrack, right? However, the hope was shortlived. Just one month later, Disney pulled the plug on the sequel over budget and script concerns, and Tron fans the world over died a little inside once again.
But Kosinski is moving on. Per THR, the filmmaker has signed to helm a film about wildfires called No Exit. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who produced the upcoming oil rig disaster drama Deepwater Horizon, is producing No Exit with Black Label Media financing the picture.The movie is based on the true story of the tragic 2013 wildfire in Prescott, Arizona—known as the Yarnell Hill Wildfire—that almost killed an entire crew of firefighters. Black Hawk Down screenwriter Ken Nolan wrote the script, which focuses on a group of firefighters known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots who became trapped due to fast-changing winds and extreme heat. When all was said and done, 19 of the 20 men perished.
This marks a considerable change of pace for Kosinski, who followed Tron: Legacy up with the Tom Cruise sci-fi pic Oblivion, another gorgeous but uninvolving feature. It appears the filmmaker is eager to take on something more inherently human, and indeed in 2014 he became attached to direct the true crime drama The Trials of White Boy Rick. Kosinski is also set to direct the Gran Turismo movie for Sony Pictures, but THR reports that No Exit is moving quickly and could be shooting as early as this summer.Image caption Guitarist Johnny Marr said he met with Morrissey in 2008 and talked about a reunion
A founding member of The Smiths has revealed that re-forming "was a very real prospect" - if only for four days.
Guitarist and co-songwriter Johnny Marr has released an extract from his upcoming memoir Set The Boy Free in the Guardian and said he met with former band mate Morrissey in 2008.
The pair discussed the possibility, which Marr said would "make a hell of a lot of people very happy".
But "the distrust remained" between the two and the idea never came to pass.
Marr was back in touch with Morrissey in a "rare period of communication" when he was remastering The Smiths' back catalogue and they arranged to meet in a pub in south Manchester.
Image copyright PA Image caption Marr believed with "the right intention" the reunion with former band mate Morrissey could happen
"I was happy to see him," he wrote. "It was 10 years or more since we'd last met. We caught up with personal news and family and reminisced a bit."
But then the conversation turned to "deeper things" and, eventually, what Marr called "that subject".
He wrote: "There had been rumours for years that the Smiths were about to re-form, and they were always untrue. I had never pursued any offer.
"Suddenly we were talking about the possibility of the band re-forming, and in that moment it seemed that with the right intention it could actually be done and might even be great."
After parting company with a hug, Marr returned to his band at the time, The Cribs, and talked to them about him possibly playing some shows with The Smiths, which he hoped "might even be better than before".
But by the time he returned from Mexico with the Cribs, Marr said, the communication had ended.
"Things went back to how they were and how I expect they always will be," he said. "An air of disaffection and distrust remained between us. It was a shame."Pictured for the first time, this is the interior of the mosque where Europe's most wanted man was allegedly seen just eight hours after driving a 25-ton lorry into a crowd at a Christmas market, killing 12 and injuring 56.
The property was raided by elite police commandos yesterday, who blew open the door with explosives and deployed stun grenades before entering the mosque in Berlin's Moabit neighbourhood.
A neighbour reported hearing 'at least 40' gunshots during the raid. 'I used to be in the army and I know the sound of gunfire when I hear it,' he said.
Revealed: Pictured for the first time, this is the interior of the mosque where Europe's most wanted man was allegedly seen just eight hours after the Berlin Christmas market attack
Worship: Books were laid out on one of the tables inside the mosque in Moabit, Berlin
Shortly before 4am on the day after the attack, Amri was allegedly caught on a security camera as he stood outside a mosque in Berlin's Moabit neighbourhood, pictured
A man, alleged to be Amri, was seen at the same mosque on two different days in the week leading up to the atrocity. Pictured, a man alleged to be Amir on December 14, left, and 15
The property was raided by elite police commandos yesterday, who blew open the door with explosives and deployed stun grenades before entering the mosque
Last night the door was seen hanging on its hinges, and a rudimentary attempt to fix it with pieces of wood and masking tape appeared to have been abandoned.
A window in the hall outside the mosque, which was covered with graffiti and dirt, had been smashed.
Inside, the place of worship was bare and dark, with no lightbulbs in the sockets. Islamic books, pamphlets and evangelical material were displayed on a table, and a traditional robe was hanging from a peg on the wall.
At the bottom of a flight of stairs leading to the cellar were three pairs of shoes on a rack, together with two suitcases. According to neighbours, the underground floor housed living accommodation.
Fugitive Anis Amri, 24, was caught by a surveillance camera entering the property shortly before 4am on Tuesday, nearly eight hours after committing the atrocity.
The raid has prompted speculation that police are closing in on a jihadi network that may have helped the killer escape.
Inside, the place of worship was bare and dark, with no lightbulbs in the sockets
Last night the door was seen hanging on its hinges, and a rudimentary attempt to fix it with pieces of wood and masking tape appeared to have been abandoned
Islamic books and pamphlets were stored in a cupboard inside the mosque in the Moabit area
A traditional robe was hanging from a peg on the wall of the mosque raided by police
Local people said that the mosque was used by a moderate Turkish group until two years ago, when it was taken over by a more radical organisation.
It was later raided as part of a police operation to arrest associates of Abu Walaa, a suspected ISIS recruiter who was arrested in November along with four associates, they said.
Amri and Abu Walaa, an Iraqi known as the 'faceless preacher' because he never showed his face in his videos, were reportedly in'regular contact'.
Images obtained by German public broadcaster rbb showed a man in dark clothing and a cap, alleged to be Amri, standing in a doorway in the early hours of Tuesday.
A lone chair was left inside the mosque, where the floor was covered with an ornamental rug
At the bottom of a flight of stairs leading to the cellar were three pairs of shoes on a rack, together with two suitcases
A window in the hall outside the mosque, which was covered with graffiti and dirt, had been smashed
Local residents reported hearing gunshots when police raided the mosque. Pictured, the stairwell of the building
He was seen at the same mosque on two different days in the week leading up to the atrocity.
Elite commando units hunting for Amri, 24, blew up the front door of the mosque, threw in stun grenades and witnesses reported hearing gunfire.
The target was the 'Fussilet 33' association's building in Perleberger Straße in the south-east of the capital.
Neighbouring flats were also, according to German media.
It was raided in 2015 over allegations they were raising money for extremists in Syria. An imam was put under investigation.
Police raided the the 'Fussilet 33' association's building in Perleberger Straße on Thursday
Local people said that the mosque, pictured, was used by a moderate Turkish group until two years agoThere is more bad news for Bitcoin, and it is not just that proposed Bitcoin ETF is not going to ever be allowed off the ground. The Securities & Exchange Commission has charged a man in Texas (and his company) with investment fraud in a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme. The only thing that would sound more odd than this is if it was made up, but it is real. The SEC has charged a man named Trendon T. Shavers, who is also listed as the founder and operator of Bitcoin Savings and Trust.
What is so odd is that there are stories about the fraud here going back to last year. It is a puzzle how and why it took so long for the SEC to make formal charges here. They say everything is bigger in Texas, and this seems like a tall-tale that you wonder who would be stupid to fall for it.
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Shavers has allegedly offered and sold Bitcoin-denominated investments through the Internet using the monikers “Pirate” and “pirateat40” and the SEC said he raised at least 700,000 Bitcoin in BTCST investments. The SEC said that this is over $4.5 million in total, based on the average price of Bitcoin in 2011 and 2012 when the investments were offered and sold.
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The SEC said that the value of 700,000 Bitcoin today exceeds $60 million. Shavers allegedly promised investors up to 7% weekly interest based on BTCST’s Bitcoin market arbitrage activity. This activity was said to supposedly include selling to individuals who wished to buy Bitcoin “off the radar” in quick fashion or large quantities.
The SEC filing said, "In reality, BTCST was a sham and a Ponzi scheme in which Shavers used Bitcoin from new investors to make purported interest payments and cover investor withdrawals on outstanding BTCST investments. Shavers also diverted investors’ Bitcoin for day trading in his account on a Bitcoin currency exchange, and exchanged investors’ Bitcoin for U.S. dollars to pay his personal expenses... Fraudsters are not beyond the reach of the SEC just because they use Bitcoin or another virtual currency to mislead investors and violate the federal securities laws."
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Today's SEC investor alert warns investors about the dangers of potential investment scams involving virtual currencies promoted through the Internet. Shavers has allegedly sold BTCST investments over the Internet to investors in Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Contrary to the representations made to investors, the SEC is alleging that BTCST was not in the business of buying and selling Bitcoin at all.
Apparently Shavers had a grand old time out there too with the money. The SEC said, "Shavers suffered a net loss from his day trading, but realized net proceeds of $164,758 from his sales of 86,202 Bitcoin. Shavers transferred $147,102 from his personal account at the online Bitcoin currency exchange to accounts he controlled at an online payment processor as well as his personal checking account. He used this money to pay his rent, utilities, and car-related expenses as well as for food and retail purchases and gambling."
American Cities Where Wages Are Plummeting
Honestly, what sounds more stupid here: a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, or giving real money to someone named Trendon Shavers? Some news is just almost too hard to make up. Here is the SEC's formal investor warning on the matter.
Related ArticlesFor some reason that memory was all I needed to realize that granola can be a mix of almost anything I snack on to get some quick energy – it didn’t need to have all of those added grains in it. I added some almond flour to give it more texture, which allowed it to become more of a legitimate granola rather than just a trail mix of assorted nuts and things.
If you follow the general outline of this recipe, you can add in any of your favorite ingredients and spices to create your own mix. My version is packed full of healthy fats and protein to keep you moving all day long. I especially love the coconut flakes, because they get all nice and toasted in the oven which only seems to amplify their flavor. It’s deliciously sweet and salty and nutty, and even makes a great alternative to cereal! Just serve it in a bowl covered in almond milk and enjoy.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
Israel's public diplomacy in Central America received a boost Monday, when the Israel Allies Foundation announced that it had opened a new pro-Israel caucus in the parliament of Guatemala.
Guatemala has fewer than 1000 Jews. But it was the first Latin-American country to recognize Israel and was the first to open an embassy in Jerusalem.
The caucus in Guatemala in the 37th Israel Allies Caucus formed around the world. The last caucus formed were in Romania, Slovakia, and Lithuania. Guatemalan Congressman Juan Manuel Diaz Duran, who will chair the caucus, came to Jerusalem last week to meet with other caucus chairmen from around the world at the Israel Allies Foundation' chairman's conference."The solidarity and friendship between the people of Guatemala and Israel has been very clear, since 1947 when the Republic of Guatemala played a determining role in world events by casting the second vote at the UN to recognize the State of Israel," Diaz Duran said.In recent days, Diaz Duran and fellow Guatemalan Congressman Fidel Reyes Lee formalized the creation of the caucus and committed to work to strengthen the relationship between Israel and Guatemala. The Congress of Guatemala is currently crafting a law that will formalize May 14th as "The Day of Friendship" between Israel and Guatemala.Diaz Duran said he would try to build more Caucuses in Central American countries "to build an alliance and mutual support of friendship between Israel and Central America.” Besides Guatemala, there are Central American caucuses in Nicaragua and Costa Rica."We have been working very hard with Congressman Diaz Duran to expand Israel support in Parliaments from Central America, and the leadership and commitment that we have seen in the past months in Guatemala has been decisive to show that we are on the right track," Israel Allies Foundation Latin America Director, Leopoldo Martinez said. “the growing support for Israel by Christian parliamentary leaders from Latin America is truly heartwarming and we see this trend accelerating in the forthcoming years as the IAF Latin America Program continues to gather political support for Israel in the region.The Knesset Christian Allies Caucus was established in 2004 and consists of 19 members of Knesset from seven political parties. The caucus aims to build direct lines of communication between Knesset members and Christian leaders, organizations and political representatives around the world.The Israel Allies Foundation is dedicated to promoting communication between parliamentarians and legislators who share a belief that the State of Israel has the right to exist in peace within secure borders. It coordinates the activities of 35 Israel Allies Caucuses around the world."Through faith based diplomacy and our network of Israel Allies Caucuses we will develop a new, vibrant and united wave of political support for the State of Israel unlike anything we have ever experienced from Latin America," said Israel Allies Foundation president Josh Reinstein.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>(CNN) -- In a down economy, pursuing the American dream can be challenging, but restaurant owner Todd Steele was willing to take a chance.
For nearly 20 years, Steele worked all levels of the restaurant game, from dishwasher to general manager, before partnering with his mom and opening his own eatery called Metrovino on Portland, Oregon's, 11th Avenue streetcar line.
"I would not have picked this spot if it weren't for the streetcar, and my business has certainly benefited from our location," Steele said. "Streetcars are also a romantic way to travel, and they are fun to watch from inside Metrovino."
While America lost much of its love for streetcars as public transportation during the 1960s, a few cities have kept the romance burning. The heart of San Francisco includes its nearly 140-year-old electric cable car system. In New Orleans, the location for Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," many tourists are drawn by the picturesque St. Charles Avenue Line.
The Obama administration recently offered some U.S. cities a piece of a $130 million federal fund for streetcar projects aimed at reducing traffic congestion, cutting pollution and reliance on foreign oil, and creating jobs. Transit systems in Dallas, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Charlotte, North Carolina, are slated to share grants from the Federal Transit Administration's Urban Circulator program.
Other cities have plans and other funding for streetcar projects, too.
See map for key projects
But not everyone is a fan of streetcars. "This is a waste of money," said Ron Utt of The Heritage Foundation.
"Streetcars certainly create jobs, but they are a poor investment and create little lasting value," he said. "Because it requires extensive ongoing subsidies, it is also unsustainable. Improving roads would be the better bet in most communities."
CNN iReporter Raymond Becich is a supporter. "Sure, Portland paid incentives to businesses to build along the streetcar (line)," he said. "But how is this any different than any governmental jurisdiction giving tax breaks and other incentives for businesses to relocate to a city or state?"
Streetcars have transformed a "blighted warehouse district... into a vibrant area of shops, grocery stores, restaurants and apartments that provide entertainment and employment," he said.
But there's nothing streetcars can do that buses can't do better, faster, safer and for far less money, said CATO Institute senior fellow Randal O'Toole. "Even though a single light-rail train can hold more passengers than a bus, a bus route can move more passengers per hour than any light-rail line."
Portland's streetcar system attracts about 12,000 daily riders at an average ticket cost of $1.47. Its creators credit it with $3.5 billion in surrounding development, including shops, restaurants and 10,000 new housing units.
Also, streetcars that run on either hydro or coal-generated electricity spit out less greenhouse gases per passenger mile than diesel buses, according to University of California researchers.
So, what is a streetcar, exactly? The transportation community generally defines it as a rail-based passenger tram that shares streets with cars and trucks.
Becich said he rides his city's system so often he's considering selling his car.
"Riding public transportation in Portland is quick, easy and enjoyable," he said. "It's absolutely easier than driving, and streetcar operators go out of their way to be helpful."
But is it faster than driving? "If you count the time from point A to B, it is slower to ride the streetcar," Becich said. "But if you factor in time to find a place to park and the cost of parking, it is more convenient and cheaper to ride the streetcar."
It's no secret that public transit offers commuters an escape from hectic traffic and a chance to read, make phone calls or snooze.
These transportation issues were recently at the heart of an $85 million question faced by leaders and residents of Fort Worth, Texas: Should they green-light a proposed three-mile streetcar line from LaGrave Field through downtown and into the near-south side?
After much debate, city leaders decided "no" earlier this month "because of the timing and questions regarding how it would be fully funded."
As many as 2,250 people were projected to use the system daily, according to a city study. Utt says that's not very many riders, considering the cost of building and maintaining the line. "Most ridership projections are overly optimistic," he said. "There are good reasons why most cities got rid of their trolley systems in the '50s and '60s."
Read state-by-state data on how commuters get to work
A federal transportation official acknowledged that ridership is often low, according to industry studies.
In Michigan, supporters are working to bring a light-rail line to revitalize downtown Detroit, a city among the hardest hit by the recession.
But on Capitol Hill, a House transportation committee spokesman acknowledged that there may be less federal money available for streetcar projects as Republicans prepare to take control of the House in January.
Transportation blogger Yonah Freemark agreed. "Based on recent decisions by party members at the state and national level, that will mean a renewed emphasis on roadway projects and less proposed funding for transit."Cage Warriors have today revealed several bouts for their upcoming return show on 14th April 2016 in London, UK
Bouts announced include Paddy Pimblett vs Ashleigh Grimshaw, Darren Stewart vs James Hurrell, Anna Elmose vs Steph Page and more
Here is the press release in full:
“CWFC Officials have released the opening bouts for their eagerly anticipated April 15th event which will take place at the Camden Centre, London.
This event will be the first Cage Warriors show since former CEO Graham Boylan purchased the intellectual property of the brand in June of last year.
Since that announcement Boylan has spent time restructuring the organisation so that it can continue to give European Mixed Martial Arts the solid platform it deserves in the same way as it did between 2010 to 2014.
More details including game changing television and streaming deals will follow in the coming weeks, however in the meantime CWFC fans will be pleased to know several bouts have already been agreed which will include a high profile featherweight clash between the talented Liverpool based submission specialist Paddy “The Baddy” Pimblett (9-1 MMA | 4-1 CWFC) and the experienced Londoner Ashleigh Grimshaw (16-9-1-2nc MMA | 2-1 CWFC).
Pimblett will return to the cage in April for the first time in nearly ten months and will look to extend his current five fight win streak which has seen him finish the previously unbeaten Kevin Petshi, the well traveled Spanish veteran Miguel Haro and fellow domestic prospect Stephen Martin inside two rounds. Known for his brash, confident attitude and highlight reel finishes the 21 year old has impressed since his days on the amateur circuit in his mid-teens and won’t be phased by his opponent when they meet next month.
The same can be said for Grimshaw who has 13 years experience in the paid ranks and has 15 of his 16 career wins inside the distance. The Team Titan fighter has fought a “who’s who” of the domestic 145 lbs division and brings with him a versatile and dangerous all-round game which has previously seen him stop the likes of Dave Lee, Vaughan Lee and Paul Reed inside the distance during his career.
Also agreed is a Light-heavyweight bout featuring the unbeaten MMA Clinic fighter Darren “The Dentist” Stewart (5-0 MMA | 2-0 CWFC) and James Hurrell (7-4 MMA | 1-1 CWFC), who makes his return to the cage after being inactive since his exciting rear-naked choke win over Carl Kinslow at CWFC 74 in November 2014.
With all seven career victories coming inside the distance (including 6 TKO’s), Hurrell will be more than able to match Stewart’s own stoppage power which has seen him rack-up three TKO wins so far in his pro career. After going 3-0 during 2015 which included his first win over a foreign opponent, “The Dentist” will look to start his 2016 campaign by claiming a top domestic scalp in the form of the 6’6” Hurrell when they meet on April 15th.
A women’s bout will also take place on the card as the unbeaten Danish striker Anna “Panda” Elmose (3-0 MMA | 1-0 CWFC) will meet fellow stand-up practitioner Stephanie Page (2-1) in a 135 lbs match-up. Elmose has been on a tear ever since her successful amateur debut at CWFC 66 in Copenhagen in March 2014. Since turning professional she has stopped all three of her opponents, including a 19 round second demolition of Emma Delaney at CWFC 74 and a spectacular second round stoppage of Mara Romero Borella last May which went viral. However Page brings with her considerable stand-up experience having been a former Muay Thai and Kickboxing champion.
Other bouts which can be released at this time see the talented Team Titan standout Alfie Davis (4-1) make his CWFC debut again Team Force’s Terry Doyle (3-1) in a Lightweight bout. Opening the pro card will be a featherweight bout between Rob Scott and Oliver Battell as both men look for their first professional win.
More bouts including the evening’s main event are still to be announced and will follow in the coming weeks along with ticket, broadcasting and other fight card details as the CWFC team prepare to deliver another high quality event next month in the heart of London’s Kings Cross district.
Cage Warriors 75 (order TBC)
Paddy Pimblett vs. Ashleigh Grimshaw
Darren Stewart vs. James Hurrell
Anna Elmose vs. Stephanie Page
Alfie Davis vs. Terry Doyle
Rob Scott vs. Oliver Battell
(More bouts to follow)”Image copyright Reuters Image caption Lord Hague said calling an early election could strengthen the government's hand
Downing Street has rejected former Conservative leader Lord Hague's call to hold a snap general election.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Lord Hague said bringing forward an election "would strengthen the government's hand at home and abroad" which could help with Brexit negotiations.
A No 10 source told the BBC it was not something Prime Minister Theresa May "plans to do or wishes to do".
Jeremy Corbyn said Labour was ready to take its case to the country.
The next election is due in May 2020 under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.
Lord Hague suggested repealing the legislation, which was brought in by the coalition government, but acknowledged an imminent election was unlikely.
Lord Hague said the government faced "the most complex challenges of modern times".
These included "Brexit negotiations, the Trump administration, the threat from Scottish nationalists, and many other issues".
A snap election "would catch the Labour Party in its worst condition since the early 30s, and with its least credible leader ever".
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jeremy Corbyn: "I don't want to see this government in office"
"There is no doubt that they (the prime minister and cabinet) would be in a stronger position to take the country through these challenges successfully if they had a large and decisive majority in the Commons and a new full term ahead of them," he said.
"Any [Brexit] deal is bound to be full of compromises which one group or another in Parliament finds difficult to stomach.
Analysis by Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
Image copyright Reuters
Theresa May has a reputation around Whitehall for following the evidence.
Ministers who might not automatically see themselves as her bosom political buddies report that she gives "a fair hearing" and "you can really influence her decisions" if arguments and information are rationally debated and presented.
That formal style irritates some and raises accusations that it is impossible to deal with the Number 10 "bottleneck". But it has, in some quarters, won her grudging respect.
On one particular issue, however, even some of her supporters believe she is not following the natural logic.
That's her decision, so far, not to take people like Lord Hague's now very public advice and call an early election.
Read more from Laura
"As British law needs to be amended countless times to take account of leaving the EU treaties, the government could face many close votes, concessions or defeats as it tries to implement Brexit.
"That prospect will embolden the EU negotiators, and makes an agreement that is good for the UK harder to achieve.
"It could also lead to a situation where the prime minister faces a stand-off with Parliament over a deal that will have taken two years to negotiate and is nearly impossible to change."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Lord Lansley says an early election would enable PM to "strengthen her personal mandate"
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party had supported the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, but that it would "consider" any change to get rid of it.
Asked how confident he was of winning a general election, he said: "We are very confident of the support we can get in order to win the election."
"Do not underestimate the support there is for the Labour Party."The problem with falling in love with a missile, I've found, is that invading spaceships are always trying to come in and dismantle your deadly nuclear girlfriend.
That's the problem for Clarc #37, at least.
Clarc #37 is the star of popular Ouya game (as much as an Ouya game can be popular) Clarc, which will be heading to iOS and Android in a week or two.
You play as a pint-size maintenance robot who works in a decaying nuclear missile factory on Mars. You're also the only sober robot left. Everyone else is sloshed on motor oil.
So, when a spaceship turns up to disarm and dismantle the factory, Clarc is the only one with the brain cells left to solve a bunch of tricky puzzles, save his fellow robots, and rescue his new crush (an atomic bomb named Clara).
You view and play the game from an isometric perspective, and Clarc is able to pootle between grid squares, grab hold of boxes, and spin in 90-degree increments.
That's pretty much all you need to solve over 100 tricky spacial reasoning puzzles. Early on, you'll be plopping boxes on buttons to open doors. Soon, though, you'll be redirecting laser beams, outsmarting drones, and escorting your drunk robot pals.
I got a quick hands-on session with the mobile version of Clarc at the BAFTA Inside Games event.
Clarc works best on Nvidia Shield and its physical inputs, but some smart gesture-driven controls (and a generally slow pace) mean the iOS and Android versions are also perfectly playable.
We'll let you know when you can grab it on Google Play and the App Store.The late J.G. Ballard, author of 19 novels and countless short stories, is one of the few contemporary writers to have earned his own adjective. “Ballardian,’’ according to the Collins English Dictionary, describes the sort of “dystopian modernity’’ and “bleak man-made landscapes’’ in which the British writer specialized.
“Millennium People,’’ originally published in 2003 and now being released here, will not disappoint. The novel is relentlessly, at times oppressively, Ballardian.
Our protagonist David Markham, a psychologist specializing in “the mental problems of middle managers’’ is jolted from his comfortable existence by an airport bombing that kills his ex-wife. In an effort to track down the killers, Markham infiltrates a group of self-styled revolutionaries operating out of Chelsea Marina, a posh London enclave.
The rebels, led by a charismatic and mentally unstable pediatrician, hope to incite the mortgage class to revolt against their self-imposed civic obedience through a series of increasingly outlandish terrorist actions. Before long, Markham has left his second wife, moved into Chelsea Marina, and thrown himself headlong into the movement.
Ballard’s preferred terrain, as a science fiction writer, was the post-apocalyptic dystopia. This time out, there’s no need for a cataclysm. His vision of modern consumer culture could hardly be bleaker. He paints a world so devoid of feeling that average citizens torch their homes simply to feel alive. This is the sort of book in which characters say things such as, “‘Happiness? I like the idea, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort.’’’
Ballard is at his best when his characters resist this sort of easy cynicism. Here, for instance, is how Markham reacts as he’s leaving his ex-wife’s memorial service: “Wisps of smoke rose from the crematorium chimney while the combustion chamber warmed to its fiercest temperature. There was a puff of darker smoke, as if part of Laura had freed itself from the drag-anchor of her body - perhaps a hand that had once caressed me, or the soft foot that would touch mine while she slept.’’
Sadly, the lyric beauty of this passage, the depth of emotion it conveys, is absent from the rest of “Millennium People.’’ What we get instead is a police procedural spiked with bouts of dogma. Ballard’s characters don’t interact. They swap cultural diagnoses. It’s like listening to a gang of hyperarticulate college sophomores.
“ ‘There’s a deep need for meaningless action,’ ’’ the rebel leader assures Markham, “ ‘the more violent the better. People know their lives are pointless, and they realize there’s nothing they can do about it. Or almost nothing.’ ’’African and Caribbean Culture Is The Foundation of the Gothic Movement
Shanna Collins Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 15, 2017
It was always a performance to remember: A wide-eyed dark-skinned man, dressed in a black satin cape, with a bone through his nose, played a guitar with a skull head and skeletal bones splaying across the strings. Popping out of a flaming coffin (which he bought on his own accord) was derigueur, as was the utilization of snakes and tarantulas, an ancestral ode to ancient African and Afro-Caribbean sensibilities. His riotous stage act, channeling Esu, the trickster Orisha of the Yoruba pantheon and the Lwa Baron Samedi of the Vodou, was the epitome of Gothic excellence.
Jalacy “Screamin’ Jay” Hawkins became America’s first “shock rocker” — laying the foundation for what would later be known as Gothic music in the United States. “Hawkins’s spooky theatrics did not emerge again until the mid-to late sixties with bands like the hearse-riding Tombstones in Canada, mostly as a part of the mainstream whitewashing of R&B music,” says Goth scholar, Nancy Kilpatrick, in The Goth Bible. “Indeed, one element that is frequently absent from discussions of Gothic music is its reliance on musical elements that originated with people of African descent.”
Gothic culture is uniformly linked with whiteness; mainstream Goth icons, such as Marilyn Mason, Bauhaus, Dracula, and the late Vincent Price comprise the most revered Goth icons in popular culture. It’s a movement typically associated with the self-absorbed melancholia of 19th century Victorian Europeans, therefore automatically dissociating with what is perceived to be a crucial aspect connected to African Diaspora cultures. These anti-Black definitions of Goth not only obscure the history of Gothic aesthetics deriving from Black folk, but also erase the reality that the African Diaspora’s history of enslavement, colonialism, trauma, and search for belonging are inherently Gothic themes. Within Gothic appropriation of African and Caribbean macabre aesthetics is the history of Black Diaspora cultures around the world.
Serpent imagery, a prevalent feature of Gothic themes, is deeply rooted in indigenous African spiritual traditions. Colonizers often viewed snake veneration with extreme distaste, particularly in Haiti, as enslaved people were watched under the eye of French masters. Animal magnetism in early Gothic literature views the snake with fascination, as well as with trepidation; snakes were associated with the grotesque supernatural forces of the natural world in 18th century English Romantic literature. “Frequently, the appearance of the serpent lends to this Gothic atmosphere an effect achieved by a combination of the ugly and the beautiful,” note researchers Lura and Duilo Padrini. Serpents as symbols of great spiritual power are greatly African in nature, as many indigenous West African peoples considered snakes to be reincarnations of deceased ancestors.
Mami Wata, a deity revered in West, Central and Southern Africa, and the Americas, is often pictured with a snake wrapped around them.
“In Africa, snakes were viewed differently. Serpent veneration was found throughout much of the continent,” explains Kenaz Filan, in The New Orleans Voodoo Handbook. “The Fon-speaking people of Dahomey honored the great serpent Ayida, who stretched across the sky as a rainbow by day and shimmered among the stars as the Milky Way by night. The Timbuktu of central Malawi paid homage to the sky-dwelling python Chikangombe. The Bantu of central and southern Africa had Monyoha, the great water snake who ensured that the rivers and lakes would never dry up for those who honored him. And during the Middle Passage and the horrors of slavery, this snake veneration was carried to the New World, particularly New Orleans.”
Gothic culture also appropriates North African spiritual symbolism, most notably with the Egyptian Ankh and the Eye of Ra. The Ankh, representing eternal life, and the eye of Ra, representing destructive forces, are heavily referenced in Gothic literature, particularly pertaining to “occult practices”. As Britain aimed to colonize Egypt with repressive political policies in the 19th century with the erection of the Suez Canal, white colonial fears and anxieties were expressed in Gothic fiction. Ailise Bulfin attributes the emergence of the Anglo-Egyptian Gothic sub-genre in response to Britain’s colonial aims: “From 1869 when the canal opened, gaining further momentum after the 1882 occupation, numerous tales positing the irruption of vengeful, supernatural, ancient Egyptian forces in civilized, rational, modern England began to appear…the typical plot turns upon modern English trespass into an ancient Egyptian tomb, the misappropriation of a mummy or its artifacts back to England, and the unleashing of a curse which sees an ancient supernatural invader exacting revenge in the heart of the imperial metropolis.” The staples of Ankhs and the Eye of Ra in Goth wardrobe are attributed to this colonial era in |
each in Indonesia, Egypt and Brazil.
Those in the bottom third of the global income distribution registered real income gains between 40 percent and 70 percent, Milanovic reports. The share of the world’s population living on $1.25 or less per day — what the World Bank defines as “absolute poverty” — fell from 44 percent to 23 percent.
Did this historic progress, with its overwhelmingly beneficial consequences for millions of the world’s humblest inhabitants, occur because everyone finally adopted “democratic socialism”? Was it due to a conscious, organized effort to construct a “moral economy” as per Vatican standards?
To the contrary: The big story after 1988 is the collapse of communism and the spread of market institutions, albeit imperfect ones, to India, China and Latin America. This was a process mightily abetted by freer flows of international trade and private capital, which were, in turn, promoted by a bipartisan succession of U.S. presidents and Congresses.
The extension of capitalism fueled economic growth, which Milanovic correctly calls “the most powerful tool for reducing global poverty and inequality.” And he’s no supply-sider, but instead a left-leaning critic of modern economic orthodoxy — as his new book, “Global Inequality,” makes clear.
Like any complex economic process, globalization was not all upside for everyone and produced only limited benefits, or none at all, for many people — including lower-middle-class Americans in manufacturing towns whose understandable frustration has now curdled into the voter anger that fuels both Sanders’s campaign and Donald Trump’s.
Ahead of his trip to the Vatican, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said he is a "very great fan" of Pope Francis' support for a moral economy. (Reuters)
The fact that a small number of globalization’s biggest winners — Milanovic calls them “the global 1 percent” — got a 60 percent boost in their real income over the past quarter-century certainly doesn’t help matters, politically. Obviously, the spectacular 2008 financial crisis that led to the Great Recession also badly damaged capitalism’s legitimacy.
Here, then, is the real challenge facing the world’s leaders, be they bishops of Rome or senators from Vermont: how to preserve free-market institutions that have done so much good for the world, including the poorest, while pragmatically reforming them and curbing their excesses.
Perhaps Sanders will, at long last, articulate a plausible plan for meeting that challenge in his Vatican speech.
So far what he’s done is crudely but crowd-pleasingly attack the market, echoing the pope’s denunciations of money “worship” — and launching a simplistic attack on free trade, including the promising Trans-Pacific Partnership that President Obama negotiated with 11 other countries. In the latter respect, Sanders echoes Trump, a fact that should give The Bern’s supporters more pause than it apparently does.
If Sanders got into the White House because of his protectionist promises, and kept them, it would threaten the very engines of global growth and prosperity that helped lift hundreds of millions from a poverty more grinding and miserable than anything even the worst-off Americans have experienced in recent years.
When you think about it that way, there’s a certain selfishness about this socialist.
Read more from Charles Lane’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.All eyes, in the world of American politics anyway, were on the primary election held Tuesday in Georgia's 6th Congressional District. Democratic favorite Jon Ossoff fell just slightly short, receiving 48 percent of the vote instead of the 50 percent-plus he needed to win the seat left open by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. He will have another chance on June 20 in a runoff election against Republican Karen Handel, who came in second with 20 percent of the vote.
Handel has a good chance at consolidating the Republican vote, which had been split between multiple contenders in the primary, and winning the traditionally conservative district. But there is one thing that Ossoff has going for him: The last time Handel was in the national spotlight, she was making a fool out of herself and her then-employer, Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.
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In January 2012, the Komen foundation, as it's typically called, quietly announced that it was terminating a $700,000 grant made to a number of Planned Parenthood clinics to fund mammograms and other breast cancer-related services. This was less than a year after Republicans, led by then-congressman Mike Pence, used the threat of a government shutdown to bar Medicaid patients from using Planned Parenthood services. Suspicions immediately arose in the women's health care world that Komen was responding to political pressure from conservative Christians who wished to stigmatize Planned Parenthood.
The entire incident was a PR nightmare for the Komen foundation. At first the organization denied that the move had been political, claiming that it was a reaction to an ethics investigation of Planned Parenthood launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla. That excuse didn't hold water because, like every other Republican "investigation" of Planned Parenthood, Stearns' effort was an empty political exercise motivated by a desire to harass the women's health organization, with no sincere concerns about ethics violations.
It was quickly revealed, moreover, that those initial suspicions had been right and that the Komen move was political in nature.
"[T]hree sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process told me that the rule was adopted in order to create an excuse to cut off Planned Parenthood," reported Jeffery Goldberg at the Atlantic. "The decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization's new senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly anti-abortion and who has said that since she is 'pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.'"
Anonymous sources from the Komen foundation confirmed that Handel's reasoning was purely political and that the "investigations" excuse was explicitly concocted as a cover story. The furor caused the Komen foundation to backpedal furiously and reinstate the grants in a matter of days. Handel then resigned.
At the time, Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times called Komen's actions "one of the great PR faux pas of the decade."
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Planned Parenthood is not going to let Georgia voters forget the role that Handel played in this entire travesty.
"Karen Handel failed spectacularly as a Komen executive and would fail again at representing Georgians," said Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in a statement emailed to Salon. "Blocking access to care at Planned Parenthood is extremely unpopular and Handel is out of touch with the majority."
To understand how Handel stumbled so badly, it helps to understand the anti-choice movement's tortured history around the topic of breast cancer. Since the 1990s, anti-choice activists and politicians have been pushing the false claim that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. Five states even require doctors to say so to patients, even though giving false information like that is a violation of medical ethics.
Multiple medical organizations have fought back. The American Cancer Society, the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have all been clear that there's no demonstrated link between abortion and breast cancer. In 2011, just a few months before the Planned Parenthood catastrophe, the Komen foundation also released a statement compiling evidence that shows abortion does not cause breast cancer.
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The anti-choice community went ballistic. Breanne Howe of Life News even floated an elaborate conspiracy theory claiming that Planned Parenthood was "harvesting baby body parts for money" and selling them to researchers who "may hold the key to a possible cure for cancer." It is true that Planned Parenthood lets women who have abortions donate fetal tissue for research purposes — but it is never sold. Howe's anger at those researching a cure for cancer is the kind of thing that makes sense only in anti-choice circles, where death itself is considered preferable to a world where women can have sex without being punished for it.
That the myth about a connection between abortion and breast cancer persists despite the scientific evidence against it is a symptom of the magical and sex-negative thinking that dominates the anti-choice movement. There's something downright medieval about imagining that breast cancer is God's punishment for an unchaste woman. In fact, it's just one of the many ways that fundamentalist Christians frame disease as a punishment for sexual sin. HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases tend to be viewed in the same way, which is why Christian conservatives dismiss the effectiveness of condoms in warding off these diseases, in much the same way they dismiss the science that disproves an abortion-breast cancer link.
The Georgia special election is widely seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump, but it's also a referendum on the anti-science, anti-sex, anti-woman Christian conservatism that the Republican Party continues to peddle, presented by Vice President Pence and Handel herself. Handel is someone who blew up her employer's reputation in order to pander to the Christian fundamentalists who see breast cancer as the "wages of sin" coming to a woman who chooses abortion. There's little doubt that Handel will behave just as irresponsibly if she wins a seat in Congress.That’s right, you read the headline correctly – Killer Instinct: Definitive Edition releases for Windows 10 today. Previously available only on Xbox One, the Definitive Edition packs up ALL the content we’ve ever released – every character (psst, there are 26), stage (20 in full glory), costume, color, trailers and tracks – and puts it all into one box of awesome goodness. As an added bonus, it also comes with behind-the-scenes videos, never-before-seen concept art, and a full universe map so you can read the bios and backstories of all your favorite characters.
With this release, Killer Instinct: Definitive Edition is now an Xbox Play Anywhere title – which means if you purchase the digital version (this also means current players on Xbox One) you can play on both Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs at no additional cost. Plus, as an Xbox Play Anywhere title, Xbox Live cloud-saved player profiles enable you to access all your progress and add-on content, allowing you to pick up where you left off and bring all your saves, game add-ons, and Achievements with you on both platforms. Killer Instinct: Definitive Edition also supports cross-play between Xbox One and Windows 10, so you can play with your friends regardless of which platform they use.
Killer Instinct: Definitive Edition is available today for $39.99 in the Windows 10 store – go get it!
We also want to let Killer Instinct players know that we’re not done yet – we’ve got some awesome surprises in store for fans soon, but as we’re just about to wind down the year we wanted to announce something we’ve been working on for a while and is very special to the entire Xbox & KI team.
When we brought KI back in 2013 for the launch of Xbox One, we knew we needed to redesign one of our most well-loved characters, Thunder, to be much more culturally appropriate.
Some of you may know that we collaborated with the Nez Perce tribe living in Lapwai, Idaho. We wanted to say THANK YOU to our Nez Perce friends (family, really!), and honor the gift of their culture that they have given us for our game. So, coming in December is a completely re-imagined Thunder costume – a 100 percent authentic warrior outfit derived from Nez Perce cultural traditions and dress.
The Nez Perce have a saying “You are who you take care of” and the entire Killer Instinct team takes this to heart – we believe in taking care of our community, our fans, and the people that help us make Killer Instinct the awesome game it is. The Legend of Thunder costume will be released on Wednesday, Dec. 21 for all* Killer Instinct players for free. It’s our gift to you, the fans, and to the Children of the Coyote for everything they have given to us.
*Must own Thunder character to receive free costume packBen Liebenberg/NFL Highly productive running back Montee Ball has helped guide Wisconsin to three straight Rose Bowl appearances.
Montee Ball might not hear his name called on the first day of the 2013 NFL Draft, but he will be an impact running back as a pro.
That's my opinion after watching the Wisconsin star dramatically improve his game over the past year. Ball looks quicker and more explosive than he appeared last season, and he is displaying more toughness and physicality with the ball in his hands.
Now, I know some will wonder how I can suggest that Ball is a better player in 2012 than he was a season ago, considering he nearly rewrote the college football record book during a remarkable junior campaign. Ball led the nation with 1,923 rushing yards in 2011 and amassed 39 total touchdowns on the way to finishing fourth in voting for the Heisman Trophy last December.
Given those impressive numbers, most expected Ball to enter the 2012 NFL Draft. However, NFL evaluators weren't completely sold on his collegiate résumé and reportedly graded Ball as a third-round prospect when he submitted his paperwork to the NFL Draft Advisory Committee.
I also viewed Ball as a mid-round prospect after watching several of his games last season, including the 2011 Big Ten Championship Game. Although I was impressed with his production and quickness, I had concerns about his balance, body control and burst. I thought Ball lacked the explosiveness and agility to pick up yardage in traffic, and worried about his ability to make nifty runs in tight areas. In addition, I questioned his top-end speed and home-run ability at the next level.
However, after watching Ball carry Wisconsin to a stunning, 70-31 win over Nebraska in Saturday night's Big Ten title game, I believe he has improved various aspects of his game and is worthy of serious consideration as a potential feature back at the NFL level. He possesses the size (5-foot-11, 215 pounds), toughness and skills to handle a heavy workload, and teams will covet his consistent production as a runner. Although he still doesn't boast the home-run speed that some offensive coordinators desire in a No. 1 back, his ability to pick up tough yards when the games is hanging in the balance is more important, in my opinion.
Given some more time to reflect on his performance at Lucas Oil Stadium on Saturday night, here are three traits that will make Ball an effective runner as a pro:
1) Vision: Of all of the tools needed to be an effective runner as a pro, the ability to read defenses and spot open creases is the most important. Elite runners consistently find running lanes against aggressive defenses. Inherently, they are able to pick up positive yards whenever they touch the ball. While solid blocking from the offensive line is essential to consistent production, the best runners in football do a great job of anticipating holes and attacking lanes as soon as they appear. In the NFL, creases only stay open for a split second, so a runner must possess the vision and instincts to spot the lane instantly or he will only pick up minimal gains against elite defenses.
In watching Ball against Nebraska, I was impressed with his decisiveness and instincts as a runner. He patiently approached the line of scrimmage after taking the handoff, but immediately accelerated through the hole when the lane opened up. Now, the Badgers' offensive line certainly deserves credit for generating a push at the line, but Ball didn't miss a read the entire night and punished the Huskers' defense for lacking gap discipline. With the majority of his runs initially directed between the tackles, the fact that Ball finished with 202 rushing yards and three touchdowns on only 21 carries is a testament to his exceptional vision and instincts as a runner.
2) Quickness: Most NFL coordinators would tell you that quickness is more important than speed when it comes to running backs. The speed of NFL defenders makes it difficult to break off 80-yard runs consistently, so coaches prefer runners with exceptional quickness and burst over speedsters. Ball falls into the former category with his outstanding stop-start ability. He has the capacity to make hard plants in one direction before quickly re-directing and bursting through a seam in the other direction. Against Nebraska, he repeatedly started a run to one side of the field, but made a quick cut at the line of scrimmage to get to the backside of the defense.
Recent Heisman winners SEE PHOTOS Take a look back at the last ten Heisman Trophy winners.
Ball displayed a combination of balance, body control and quickness that I didn't see a year ago when I watched him in the Big Ten title game against Michigan State. His improvement in this area will not only increase his value in the minds of evaluators, but it could make him the ideal runner for coaches who employ zone-based blocking schemes, which require running backs to adhere to a one-cut rule with the ball in their hands (runners are allowed to only make one cut prior to the line of scrimmage to avoid negative runs). Given Ball's combination of vision and quickness, plus his experience running inside and outside zone-running plays at Wisconsin, he should be a perfect fit within that system.
3) Physicality: The best runners in the NFL possess toughness and physicality that enable them to finish runs in a violent manner. They routinely dole out punishment to defenders attempting to make tackles near the sideline or down the field, and their willingness to run through opponents eventually leads to big gains. Against Nebraska, Ball ran with the kind of violence that coaches expect from workhorse runners. He repeatedly lowered his shoulder to overpower defensive backs in the secondary, and fought for every yard that he could gain on each play.
The best example of Ball's toughness came on his 57-yard touchdown run in the third quarter. After taking the handoff and bursting through the second level of the defense, Ball broke to his left and used a brutal stiff arm to overpower the last Husker defender. The force of the stiff arm lifted the defender off his feet; he landed on his back as Ball continued to rumble into the end zone. The run epitomized what coaches want from their runners at every level, but particularly in the NFL when yards are harder to come by.
The running back position has been devalued in recent years with more NFL teams moving toward pass-first game plans, but the workhorse runner is still coveted by most teams across the league. In looking at Ball's size, skills and production, I believe he has the all-around game to thrive as a feature runner in most offensive schemes. Although his apparent lack of home-run speed and limited production in the passing game will prevent him from being regarded as a blue-chip talent on most draft boards across the league, I believe Ball is a potential rookie starter with the ability to upgrade any roster at the position.
My draft grade on Ball: Second round.
WORD ON THE STREET
While attending the Big Ten Championship Game in Indianapolis, I had the opportunity to discuss the overall depth and talent of the 2013 draft class (particularly the seniors) with scouts. Most evaluators told me this draft is deep at the interior offensive line positions (centers and guards) and defensive tackle. An NFC West official said two offensive guards (Alabama's Chance Warmack and North Carolina's Jonathan Cooper) could come off the board within the first 20 selections. At defensive tackle, Utah's Star Lotulelei remains the crown jewel of the class, but Georgia's Jonathan Jenkins, Purdue's Kawann Short and Alabama's Jesse Williams are also garnering consideration as first-round talents.
When I quizzed scouts on the weak points of the draft, they cited quarterback, offensive tackle and cornerback. The quarterback position, in particular, lacks a franchise guy in the mold of Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III or Cam Newton, but that might not prevent a team from selecting one at the top of the draft. An NFC scout told me, "If you need one, you have to take him high, regardless of what others might think." He pointed to the 2005 NFL Draft that featured Alex Smith and Aaron Rodgers as the closest comparison to this year's class. He reminded me that neither guy was regarded as a blue chipper at the time, but both players have turned out to have fruitful careers, particularly Rodgers, who has become one of the NFL's best signal-callers. With that in mind, it wouldn't surprise me to see USC's Matt Barkley and West Virginia's Geno Smith come off the board sooner than expected on draft day.
STOCK UP
Ed Reynolds, S, Stanford
The ball-hawking safety cemented his status as one of the best center fielders in college football with his standout performance against UCLA in the Pac-12 title game (which Stanford won, 27-24). Reynolds picked off an errant Brett Hundley pass and returned it 80 yards to set up a game-tying score in the second quarter. That was his sixth pick of the season, ranking third nationally. More importantly, it was another display of the awareness and instincts that are difficult to find in deep middle players. With NFL defensive coordinators coveting takeaways at a premium, Reynolds' penchant for picking off passes will make the sophomore an intriguing prospect to watch in the future.
UCLA running back Johnathan Franklin has eclipsed 160 yards rushing in six different games this season. (Nick Lucero/NFL.com)
Johnathan Franklin, RB, UCLA
Franklin has been on the radar of scouts across the league due to a stellar senior campaign, but his spectacular performance in the Pac-12 title game will earn the senior rave reviews as a potential change-of-pace weapon at the next level. In rushing for 194 yards and two scores on just 19 carries, Franklin displayed the quickness, burst and balance that scouts look for in diminutive runners. In addition, he flashed the speed to turn the corner against a fast defense, while also showing the vision and body control to make hard cuts across the grain against an overaggressive defense. Franklin impressed scouts with his solid skills as a receiver, hauling in three receptions for 22 yards against the Cardinal. As more NFL offensive coordinators build their respective game plans around the unique skill sets of their best players, Franklin's ability to serve as a third-down back will make him a valuable commodity in draft rooms across the NFL.
STOCK DOWN
Daimion Stafford, S, Nebraska
It's not fair to pin the Huskers' abysmal defensive performance solely on the shoulders of Stafford, but the senior safety certainly didn't have one of his best games Saturday night. He repeatedly missed tackles in space and didn't take the proper angles to the ball to keep the Wisconsin running backs from breaking big gainers on the perimeter. Stafford carried draft grades in the mid- to late-rounds heading into the contest, and his disappointing play in the Big Ten title game will not help his chances of moving up the board prior to draft day.
Follow Bucky Brooks on Twitter @BuckyBrooks.The first Patrick Feng knew about a cyberattack on his university was when one of his colleagues told him that her computer had been infected by hackers and rendered unusable.
Feng, who studies technology and sustainability policy at the University of Calgary in Canada, immediately checked the Dropbox folder that he was sharing with that colleague — and found that it, too, had been compromised.
“The hackers had created encrypted copies of all my Dropbox files and deleted the originals,” he says. “And there was a ransom note demanding bitcoin to unlock them.” Bitcoin is an online, anonymous currency, making it an attractive option for cybercriminals.
The attack, which started on May 28, left many researchers locked out of their data and university e-mail. Most staff and faculty regained access to the school's networks by May 30, and e-mail was back up by June 6.
Feng’s Dropbox folder contained data and draft manuscripts for a research paper that he is writing on innovative ways of teaching research methods to undergraduates, but he wasn't too concerned. His personal laptop was unaffected, and he asked Dropbox to restore his folder to the last saved version before the attack, which the company was able to do in a couple of days.
Locked out
Others were not so fortunate. Two of Feng's colleagues, including the one who had informed him about the hack, had to have the hard drives of their university-issued computers wiped and restored.
A few of the most badly affected faculty and staff have yet to regain full access to their data. But, there is no indication that any personal or school data were released to the public, according to the university. “Research data that was stored on our systems was backed up prior to the attack and remains intact,” says Marina Geronazzo, a university spokesperson.
The university is confident that it will be able to restore all data from those back-ups, she says. But the school did pay a ransom of Can$20,000 (US$15,500) for the decryption keys as a precaution. They say it will be used only as a last resort.
This kind of “ransomware” attack is becoming increasingly common, says James Scott, a cybersecurity specialist at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a think-tank in Washington DC — and universities are hardly immune. In the United States, the education sector is the third most common target for hackers, after healthcare and retail, he says.
In many cases, the ransom money that hackers can extract from their victims is a secondary goal. “Ransomware is the new DDoS,” Scott says, referring to a Distributed Denial of Service attack, in which a network of infected computers overwhelms a target with more connection requests than it can handle. Hackers use these attacks as a distraction while they steal data, he explains.
Multiple vulnerabilities
City of Calgary police are still searching for the perpetrator. Past incidents, Scott says, make him suspect that Chinese sources may have been involved. The country has allegedly targeted Canadian researchers before. In 2014, the Canadian government accused “Chinese state-sponsored actors” of hacking the National Research Council, a federal research agency headquartered in Ottawa.
It’s a matter of Chinese policy to use espionage to bring their country up to speed, technologically, with the West, says Scott, who is not a part of the investigation. “Universities are a huge target for China because of their advanced research.”
Scott says that universities are particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks because they often have multiple overlapping public and private networks, and staff, faculty members or students with infected devices might connect with any number of them. Many labs also have devices “frankensteined” into their networks that were never intended to be there, which opens up new avenues of attack.
Feng says that aside from requiring everyone to change their passwords, the university has not provided any guidance on how researchers can better protect themselves against such attacks in the future. He says that it is up to researchers to be aware of the risks, and to take the proper precautions by automatically backing up their data on external hard drives, or to the cloud. “Even though I teach technology policy, and am aware of these kinds of issues, I still thought it was never going to happen to me,” he says.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on June 17, 2016.It’s unclear whether her faith or belief in fiscal responsibility are the bigger reason Wisconsin lieutenant governor candidate Rebecca Kleefisch, the running mate of Republican Scott Walker, supports the state’s gay marriage ban, but she sure talks a good game. In an interview with a radio station, she told listeners: “This is a slippery slope. In addition to that at what point are we going to be okay marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table or this, you know, clock? Can we marry dogs? This is ridiculous, and biblically, again, I’m going to go right back to my fundamental Christian beliefs marriage is between one man and one woman.” But that was totally taken out of context!
Speaking to students at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, she insists, “I was talking about the slippery slope and what we would have to do in legislation in order to define and redefine and keep defining what marriage is. If I sounded insensitive, that’s wrong.”
So to recap: Kleefisch, whose campaign hasn’t focused on LGBT equality much at all, doesn’t want to have to legalize same-sex marriage because it’s very expensive, and because of all the clauses lawmakers would have to insert to prevent men and women from getting hitched to the devices that wake them up in the morning. [Fox 6 Now]An Israeli civilian was shot and killed by sniper fire on Tuesday, in a shooting attack near the Gaza border fence in southern Israel.
The attack occurred as the man was working on the border fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip. He was taken by helicopter to Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba. IDF troops launched a search of the area in the wake of the attack. The IDF said in response to the attack that it "maintains the right to protect Israeli civilians and its soldiers."
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At the same time, and apparently regardless of incident, an IDF force spotted a Palestinian approaching the border fence and entering a forbidden zone. IDF claim the Palestinian did not respond to warning calls by the soldiers and thus the forces opened fire towards the suspect's feet. The Palestinians reported the person injured is an 18-year-old who was moderately injured and was evacuated to a hospital in northern Gaza.
Moments before the incident, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the security situation in southern Israel. "Since the end of Operation Pillar of Defense, the south has been the quietest it has been for years. We will continue to keep the south quiet with a strong hand and determination," Netanyahu said.
Evacuation of victim from site (Video: Roee Idan) (צילום: רועי עידן)
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IDF evacuates man after shooting near Gaza fence (Photo: Roee Idan)
Regarding the recent spate of attacks, the prime minister added: "We have recently witnessed an increase in terror attacks. Are we facing a new intifada? We will act with a fierce offensive policy, so that whoever considers attacking us would have to think twice."
Scene of shooting near Gaza fence, Tuesday (Photo: Roee Idan)
The shooting is the latest a string of attacks targeting Israelis in recent days. On Sunday, the quick thinking of a passenger and bus driver prevented what could have been a major attack when they spotted a bomb on a bus in Bat Yam. A police sapper was lightly hurt when the bomb detonated as he was dismantling it.
A little after midnight Sunday, a rocket fired from Gaza struck a residential area in Hof Ashkelon Regional Council, in southern Israel. There were no injuries reported, but light damage was sustained.
Hours later, an Israeli police officer was stabbed in the back in an apparent terror attack near the settlement of Adam. The man suffered moderate injuries.
Yoav Zitun and Mati Siver contributed to this report
Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter21 April, 2013
Two young couples sit in a tent smoking shisha.
Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the country has followed a strictly conservative theocratic line. Western cultural influences have been severely restricted. An estimated 60 percent of Iran’s population is under 30 and have little knowledge of their country before the revolution, yet all the trappings of Western youth and modernity are now beamed into homes via the internet and (as yet still illegal) satellite television. Daily, millions of young people engage in activities that are officially illegal and can carry severe penalties. The Basij—a volunteer militia—polices public morals, on the lookout for such offences as women showing too much hair, or couples inappropriately holding hands.
The photographer was born and raised in Iran and has been photographing his country for 15 years. He aims to document parts of Iran’s complex society showing less-observed areas of daily life. He also turned his focus on some Iranian immigrants in the US, to see how they had kept their language, culture and traditions alive.Songs That Matter Most: A Detailed Account of Specific Events Following 3/11 in Miyako City, Iwate
Matt Ketchum Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 11, 2016
So, to quickly jump into it, I’m a survivor of the 3/11 tsunami that wrecked Japan’s coast 5 years back. Not survivor, like, I happened to be in Japan on the day (not knocking anyone who has that story), but rather I ran up the hill behind my apartment in the small town of Miyako in Iwate only to watch, first, the entire bay get sucked out by some unfathomable Force of Nature, and then, second, a gigantic wall of black muck sweep away half of the town I lived in, including my apartment. Like, I have a government issued document confirming that my place of residence was destroyed. Like, I spent every day of the first 5 weeks, from 9–5, as a first responder digging literally everything you can imagine out of ravaged, gored, filth-covered buildings.
So what I’m saying is, this shit is pretty real for me.
And 5 years is a long time to process the maelstrom of information that was hurled at me during that time, but, slowly, I think that I’m starting to realize the connectivity, the order, of the events in that 5 week span of time and, in a strange sort of way, the effect that its had on my progression from that point to now.
I say “strange” because there seems to be an element of time involved in all of it, or rather the dissolution of it, which in turn brings up some pretty heavy existential questions, particularly concerning self-development. “What am I” and “what will I become henceforth” are questions that, I’m willing to bet, literally every human being has asked themselves at least once, and with the tsunami those questions have, for me, become intrinsically linked to a small, blue collar town on the eastern-most point of Japan’s northern coast, and, if I’m not mistaken, to two very over-used, to the point of being trite, songs. This is, perhaps, embarrassing, or at least unfortunate because the two songs are kind of the song that you would reach for in this kind of moment. I mean, a really uncreative person making up a far-fetched story for attention would chose exactly these two songs. I know this. But these are the cards I was dealt, and so I am stuck with these two songs of drastically different import: Survivor’s (haha! just realizing the irony now) Eye of the Tiger, and Ben E. King’s Stand By Me.
The friends that I made in Miyako are, in pretty much every respect of the word, family. A family of frequently childish, rough-cut, foul-mouthed, tough love, work-hard-party-hard, stubborn, misfits. In short, they’re the realest people ever. And I love them. But amongst them there is one who, more than any of the others, I look up to as… a mentor?… an older brother?… Sempai?… A habitual drinking buddy?… I personally think that the word “Aniki” encapsulates the essence of it, but whatever — The Dude Who Taught Me A Lot suffices, and we’ll call him Taro (which is actually quite pertinent — Miyako was bad; Taro, about 25 mins north, was much worse).
Now, Taro is a character, and probably the unhealthiest person I know (that’s another story). But despite all of his shortcomings, he’s the life of the party and he is that guy around town. So, on March 15th, after 4 days living out of a Buddhist temple atop a hill (with: 20 people (children, 60+ year olds, and me (24 at the time), sufficient futons, sufficient blankets, a roof, a small fire, a small stock of rice, some umeboshi, 1 bottle of sake, a broken toilet, and a crank radio), I was understandably happy when I ran into him as I was scavenging for food. If I remember correctly, he yelled something to the effect of, “WTF yr alive?! GETTHEFUCKINMYHOUSENOW!!”
That’s a longer story (and no, I did not abandon the temple — I made food deliveries to them over the weeks), but suffice it to say that’s how I ended up living out of Taro’s house, which was just barely spared from destruction, with 8 other friends who were in a similar condition. When we left his house every day at 8AM to go to the front lines, I liked to think of us as some Supergroup of Excellent Dudes, with our filthy work-clothes Outfits, characteristic superhero tools of the trade, and an unbreakable conviction to Do Good. In fantasizing about that, I believe I was alone. Call it a coping mechanism lol.
Now, those houses and stores and salons and bars and restaurants that we ripped apart, those were some pretty intense spots. Emotionally? Of course, but really you kind of throw emotions to the dogs (or at least we did) in those situations because otherwise you break down and nothing gets done. Physical exhaustion is one way to deal with that. Liquor is another. Fortunately, we had both in spades. I have never “partied” harder than on those nights lol. I won’t be shy: we all drank entirely too much at pretty much every possible moment.
But I digress! Emotionally tough, but have you ever smelled the ocean floor? It is absolutely disgusting. So that was slathered over precisely everything. And don’t forget that this was a natural disaster, too, so its not like the buildings we entered were all spic & span — floors were now vertical, rubble blocked doorways, everything was slippery, you get the picture. And then of course we had to empty them of everything: we ripped up countless floor boards, moved hulking industrial refrigerators, tore down walls. So, put it all together and you get, for example: 8 filthy, hungover guys swearing a lot in a stinky natural warzone, falling all over each other because they can’t get their footing, miraculously slipping their way up a staircase to break down a wall to get into a baby’s room to throw everything out a window and then run away.
It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so devastatingly sad.
But we’re a rough and tumble bunch, right? Shooting the shit, cracking jokes as we worked until we collapsed — honestly, some of the best laughs I’ve had were had while shoveling muck out of a ladies’ boutique. So, oddly enough, the bonds we had prior to 3/11 were made immensely stronger as we worked our way through it together. And of those laughs, the one that stands out even now is of Taro, with characteristic impeccable timing, enthusiastically humming Eye of the Tiger as he |
Lincoln County News article stated, “No new leads in Newcastle Case.” Deputy Attorney General Richard Cohen was quoted, “The investigation is still continuing, but unfortunately there are no new developments. It’s been uneventful.”
Author’s Note: Eric Wood and his father David, who has since passed away, always thought that whoever dumped Florence’s body at the causeway knew the road. Their theory was that it was too far out of the way for a stranger to find in the dark.
Also keeping in mind that in August 1975, the residents of Lynch Road would have had their windows wide open as air conditioners wouldn’t have been as common as they are now. Did anyone on the road hear anything unusual that night?
In August 2015, the Newcastle Historical Society included a story about Florence’s unsolved murder in their newsletter, noting that, “The crime was committed forty years ago and rumors still circulate around Newcastle about who killed her, but still no one had ever been arrested for her murder.”
In July 2016, this author and her good friend, in an attempt to keep their minds busy, decided to learn everything they could about Florence’s case. Initial inquiries were fielded to Lieutenant Love at the Maine State Police and then research was started.
Author’s Note: In 2014, the 127th Maine State Legislature approved funding for an Unsolved Homicide Unit. Maine State Police Lieutenant Jeff Love is the Commanding Officer and all unsolved homicides and missing person cases are reviewed there.
Newspaper archives were checked online and in person in both Maine and Brockton, Massachusetts, at the city library; local police departments, retired officers, and police records departments were contacted both in Maine and Massachusetts. Jessica Cummings at the Maine State Police assisted with a records search of the 1975 and 1976 Uniform Crime Reports to check for any rape or aggravated assault trends that may have been occurring during that time period (none were found). Jaclyn Zawada, Staff Counsel for the Massachusetts State Police, assisted with a records search in her state (none were found); genealogical records were accessed and Florence’s obituary was located, names from the obituary were cross checked against popular social media forums, i.e., Facebook (no relatives listed were found).
A post from Florence’s niece, Emily Maguns, was located on the YouTube site: “Unsolved Murders Maine Florence E. Lauze.” She made the following comment about a year ago, “Florence (better know as Fluffy) was my aunt. I never got to meet her as she was murdered years before I was born. Thank you for keeping her story alive and known.” In August 2016, I reached out on YouTube and left a message for Emily, but she has yet to reply as she will have to revisit the YouTube site to see the communication request.
Anne Fleming, Research Librarian at the Brockton Public Library, and a volunteer named David were able to locate several Brockton Daily Enterprise articles about Florence on microfiche, which I promptly sent for and then learned that there had been leads in the Brockton, MA, area.
At that point in time, I thought it would be beneficial to speak with Florence’s family members, if they were willing, and also to members of the Brockton Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police who were part of the investigation. Unfortunately, my search for Florence’s family has run dry.
On October 9, 2016, I called the Brockton Police Department and spoke with a female officer. I explained who I was and why I was calling and asked if Detective Frank P. Gentile or Detective Lieutenant John J. Bukunt were still around. She checked with the current Captain who told her that Detective Gentile wasn’t, but Detective Lieutenant Bukunt was and he saw him quite often. I gave all my contact information to the officer and she said she’d see what she could do. As of October 31, 2016, I have not heard back from either the Brockton Police Department or Detective Lieutenant John Bukunt.
An internet search found a Maine State Police Facebook post showing an image of former State Police Officer, Jerry Boutilier. His daughter confirms on the Facebook page that her Dad passed away in 1999.
At this point, I had taken my research as far as I could and thought it was time to have it reviewed. I submitted it to the Maine State Police and left Lt. Love a voice message on October 31, 2016. I soon received a call from Detective Joshua Birmingham, who was assigned the case when he joined the unit. After discussing what I had found during the course of my research he replied that, “Detectives have worked on Florence’s case since 1975 and although there has been no resolution to date, they will continue to work until her case is solved. State Police Detectives have reviewed the evidence and utilized modern technology to further enhance past efforts. A fresh set of eyes frequently brings new life to a case.”
I asked if a story could be run about Florence in local newspapers and in Brockton, MA. Detective Birmingham said he would run it by the team of investigators at the Maine State Police and get back to me.
On January 27, 2017, Detective Birmingham emailed me and indicated that he thought a newspaper article on Florence would be beneficial at this point in time and that a Victim Advocate would contact Florence’s family first. In February, with his permission I submitted this article to the Boothbay Register, Lincoln County News, Times Record, Kennebec Journal, Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, and the Brockton Enterprise.
On the 41st anniversary of the discovery of Florence’s body, I drove across Lynch Road and stopped at the causeway, which has since been rebuilt. It was a beautiful morning and as I looked out over the water and meadow I was swiftly reminded that, despite this being a peaceful scene, in 1975 a 19-year-old woman had either lost her life here or had been dumped at this location, after being strangled with a ligature.
Florence and her family deserve justice and it is my belief that somewhere there is someone who can help. Perhaps they remember seeing or hearing something out of the ordinary and they didn’t know what to do about it or they were too scared to come forward at the time. Please help bring the truth to light and contact the Maine State Police if you have any information about Florence Norcross Lauze’s death.
To access the Maine State Police webpage, Google www.maine.gov/dps/msp/, then click on Criminal Investigation and Forensics, Unsolved Homicides Unit, Unsolved Homicides, Lauze, Florence E. Each victim and missing person is listed alphabetically, and there is a “Leave a Tip” icon that can be clicked if anyone has information that could help.
If you do not use the internet, call the Maine State Police directly in Augusta at 207-624-7076 or 1-800-452-4664 to submit any information you have about Florence’s case or any other cases about which you may have knowledge.
Works Cited
Boothbay Register, “Strangled Girl Found in Sherman Lake,” August 21, 1975.
Boothbay Register, “Young Woman Found in Sherman Lake Identified as Florence Lauze of Brockton, MA,” August 28, 1975.
Brockton Daily Enterprise, “City Woman is Murder Victim,” Tuesday, August 26, 1975.
Brockton Daily Enterprise, “Local Police ‘Have Leads’ in Woman’s Strangulation,” Wednesday, August 27, 1975.
Brockton Daily Enterprise, “Rites Scheduled Friday for City Murder Victim,” Thursday, August 28, 1975.
Information For Survivors On Strangulation, Family Crisis Services brochure, 2016.
Lewiston Evening Journal, “Murder Victim is Identified,” August 27, 1975.
Lincoln County News, “Woman’s Body Found at Sherman Lake,” August 21, 1975.
Lincoln County News, “Body Found at Newcastle Identified,”August 28, 1975.
Lincoln County News, “No New Leads In Newcastle Case,” September 11, 1975.
Lincoln County News, “Assault with Knife Investigated,” January 1, 1976.
www.findagrave.com. Florece E. Norcross Lauze, July 2016. Email sent to Dan Alcott at dan.alcott@gmail.com, but he did not respond back. He added Florence’s record to the website.
Maine State Police, Unsolved Homicides, www.maine.gov. July 2016.
Newcastle Historical Society, “Newcastle Unsolved Murder,” August 2015.
Wiscasset Newspaper, Obituary Randy Pearce, July 2016.
YouTube, Unsolved Murders Maine Florence E. Lauze, August 2016.
Interviews, Inquiries, or Records Requests
Birmingham, Joshua, Detective Maine State Police, spoke on the telephone November 2, 2016, and in December 2016. Email correspondence November 2016 and January 2017 (207-624-7143).
Blodgett, Seth, Investigator Maine State Attorney General’s Office, telephone inquiry July 2016 (207-626-8800). Referred me to retired Knox County Sheriff and Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department Detective Dan Davey.
Brockton Police Department via email and telephone. Left my contact information via telephone, no response to email, spoke with a female officer on October 9, 2016.
Note: Present Brockton Police Department Captain knows former Lieutenant Detective Bukunt (508-941-0200).
Cummings, Jessica, Maine State Police (Records) phone and email, July 25, 2016 (207-624-7276 or jessica.L.Cummings@maine.gov). Requested Unified Crime Reports for 1975 and 1976.
Davey, Dan, Retired Knox County Sheriff and Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department Detective, Responding Detective and Eye Witness, interviewed over the phone and at his home in Warren, ME, on August 11, 2016 and October 30, 2016 (207-273-8046).
Fleming, Anne, Research Librarian at the Brockton Public Library, 304 Main Street, via telephone and email. Plus her volunteer David who loves microfiche (508-580-7890). Note: Brockton High School yearbooks are digitized on the library’s website. I could not find Florence in them? Did she quit school or attend a private high school?
Flynn, Stephen, City Editor, The Enterprise, Brockton, MA, via email sflynn@enterprisenews.com. Interested in the story and would like to see my research.
Love, Jeff, Maine State Police, Telephone inquiry, July 2016 (207-624-7143).
justadotinmaine@gmail.com, YouTube Maine Cold Case site creator, July 26, 2016, via email. No contact information found for Florence’s niece who commented on the website within the last year.
Wood, Eric, Eye witness, interviewed at his office in Boothbay, ME, on August 9, 2016 (207-633-3193).
Zawada, Jaclyn, Staff Council for the Massachusetts State Police (Records) via phone and email, July 25, 2016. (508-820-2341 or jaclyn.zawada@state.ma.us.) No records found.During a recent Senate hearing chaired by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) focused on the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) support of identity theft by illegal aliens and the IRS's total disregard for the American citizen victims of these crimes. Coats defined employment-related identity theft as occurring when someone uses another person's identity — their name or their Social Security number (SSN) — to get a job illegally.
The hearing also exposed the failure of Congress to do anything to protect American citizens from massive illegal alien job-related identity theft, leading me to think that what needs to be done is to provide the Social Security numbers of all members of Congress plus the Social Security numbers of all IRS officials and their staffs to illegal aliens so they can file their taxes without stealing the identities of average American citizens.
IRS and Congress Encourage and Tolerate Illegal Alien, Job-Related Felonies
Three key points came from the interchange between Sen. Coates and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
The IRS encourages and facilitates the commission of job-related felonies, including Social Security fraud, forgery, perjury, and identity theft as long as these crimes are committed by illegal aliens and their employers.
The IRS places the interests of illegal aliens ahead of those of American citizens by forbidding its employees from notifying American citizens, including millions of American children, that their Social Security numbers are being fraudulently used by illegal aliens in spite of the fact that these Americans suffer serious harm.
Congress is complicit since it has long been aware of the problem but has done nothing to protect American citizens from illegal alien, job-related felonies. I wrote about this in 2009 in a CIS Backgrounder: Illegal, but not Undocumented: Identity Theft, Document Fraud, and Illegal Employment", and yet like Captain Renault in the film classic, "Casablanca", every time this comes up our elected officials all repeat in unison "I'm shocked, shocked to find that illegal alien driven identity theft is going on in here!"
IRS Does Not Notify Victims
As Coats explained, when a stolen Social Security number is used, a W-2 form with this false information is then sent to the IRS and Social Security Administration (SSA) by an employer and the W-2 may be attached to the tax return of the illegal alien worker. The average person would naturally assume that when the IRS or SSA receives the phony W-2 they would flag it and take action against the employer and employee submitting it. However, they don't and this is what really happens:
The IRS processes tax returns with false W-2 information and issues refunds as if they were routine tax returns.
When the IRS marks the account of a victim, it does not notify the Social Security Administration that the victims did not earn the income reported on a W-2.
The IRS forbids its employees from notifying victims that their information has been stolen. The IRS identified 200,000 new cases of employment-related identity theft last year and marked the victims' accounts, yet did not notify the victims.
According to the IRS officials, their job is simply to process tax returns and issue tax refunds or collect taxes due.
The IRS ignores notifications from the Social Security Administration that a name does not match a Social Security number and may use its own system to determine whether or not a number is valid.
Employers are liable for IRS-imposed fines and penalties if they submit false W-2 information, yet neither the IRS nor the Social Security Administration notifies employers that the information they are submitting is false, and they don't fine or otherwise penalize the employers.
The IRS does not examine returns submitted on paper for employment-related identity theft.
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George confirmed that what Sen. Coates outlined above was "completely accurate" and noted that the IRS did have a pilot program to address the issue, but ended it, so nothing is being done to protect Americans with Social Security numbers being used for employment purposes by illegal aliens.
IRS Commission Defends Need for Illegal Alien Job-Related Identity Theft
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen then reiterated IRS support for illegal alien job-related identity theft by downplaying how serious it is and ignoring the multiple felonies committed by illegal aliens. Koskinen also showed a total disregard for American citizens, including millions of innocent American children, who are the victims of illegal alien, job-related identity theft. Key points made by Koskinen:
It's in everyone's interest to have illegal aliens use the identifying information of Americans in order to be able to file their taxes (since they cannot legally obtain Social Security number).
If the Social Security number being used has been borrowed, that's not the normal identity theft situation (although it is still forgery, Social Security fraud, and perjury on an I-9 form — all felonies).
When the numbers are stolen and not borrowed, that is more problematic and the IRS is trying to find a way to protect American citizens without preventing illegal aliens from filing their taxes (even if this means allowing illegal aliens to freely use Americans' Social Security numbers).
The IRS is "very sensitive to protecting taxpayer information on both sides" (i.e. protect the information of the identity thieves and in no case turn them over to law enforcement).
A bill titled the "Social Security Identity Defense Act" that requires the IRS to inform American citizens that their Social Security numbers have been fraudulently used has been pending with the Senate Finance Committee since May 13, 2015, but no one on the committee was aware of it. (In addition, Sen. Orrin Hatch, Committee Chairman, introduced a bill in 2011 to protect the victims of illegal alien job-related identity theft, but once he was re-elected he dropped it, so it appears that he has no desire to protect his constituents from this crime.)
The IRS does, however, advise taxpayers when there has been any kind of access to one of its online applications that their Social Security number is in the hands of criminals. (Illegal aliens using fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers are committing multiple felonies — forgery, Social Security fraud, identity theft, and perjury on I-9 forms, but the IRS Commissioner does not view them as criminals.)
The IRS does not notify taxpayers in the "very limited case where people file with an ITIN, but it is very clear that a Social Security number was used to get job" (75 percent of illegal aliens use a fraudulently obtained Social Security number in order to get jobs, so this "very limited" number is actually in the millions).
Protect American Citizens: Make the SSNs of IRS Staff and Congress Publicly Available for Use
Given the IRS' strong support for illegal aliens unlawfully using Americans' Social Security numbers and congressional indifference, the following steps should be taken.
Make the Social Security numbers of all IRS employees, including the commissioner's, publicly available so illegal aliens can use them to get jobs and file taxes.
Make the Social Security numbers of all senators, all members of the House, and all congressional staff publicly available.
If this were done, there would be no need for illegal aliens to unlawfully use the Social Security numbers of other innocent, law-abiding American citizens since thousands could use the same number.
Furthermore, the IRS commissioner and elected officials who support illegal alien job-related identity theft would finally be putting their Social Security numbers where their mouths are.It’s another week in Washington and another horror show. This time it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions being grilled by Senators on whether, when, and how he might have met with certain Russians, or any Russian, or someone who might actually know a Russian. In addition to fishing for any inconsistency that could be used to support an accusation of obstruction of justice or perjury – the usual sleazy methodology of politically motivated investigations here – the transparent aim was to further poison the well on any possible initiative to improve ties with Moscow.
The strategy appears to be working. The Russian Embassy in Washington confirms that for the first time since the Russian Federation’s founding the State Department did not send pro forma national day greetings. Perhaps the bureaucrats were afraid they would be tainted and themselves become targets of multiple investigations into «collusion» with the Kremlin. (Luckily, this intrepid Washington analyst has no qualms about such associations.)
Or more likely, they themselves are part of the Russophobic mob undermining the White House. It has been reported that soon after the inauguration Trump sought to open dialogue with the Kremlin and set an early summit with President Vladimir Putin. This produced a hysterical counteraction from the Deep State. As reported by conservative columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan:
Time to buy old US gold coins
«The State Department was tasked with working out the details.
«Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received ‘panicky’ calls of ‘Please, my God, can you stop this?’.
«Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded.
«‘It would have been a win-win for Moscow,’ said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own».
So much for constitutional government and the rule of law…
But now it gets even worse. This week Congress moved legislation designed to codify in statute sanctions imposed on Russia by Barack Obama over Ukraine and evidence-free charges of Russian election interference. Provisions for a presidential waiver, which are standard in any sanctions legislation, are unusually narrow. Congressional proponents are clear that their aim is to take the matter out of the president’s hands. Democrats, seemingly devoid of any other policy agenda or ideas, vow to keep banging the Russia drum through the 2018 Congressional elections.
When all is said and done, there are lots of reasons the political class hates Trump. His heresies on immigration and trade are near the top of the list. But make no mistake: for the Deep State and its mainstream media arm, demonizing Russia and Vladimir Putin personally is a dangerous obsession. (There is reason to suspect «Russian collusion» figured in the thinking of a fanatical Leftist’s shooting attack on Republican Congressmen: «The shooter also signed a petition calling for an investigation into Trump-Russia ties, confirming he was radicalized by the mainstream media’s obsession with conspiracy theories about Russia interfering with the election».)
It remains to be seen whether Oliver Stone’s extended interview with Putin on the Showtime network will have any impact. So far the commentary seems to be divided between descriptions of the substance of the discussion and attacks on Stone for talking with such a bad, bad man: «Speaking after the interview, Stone refuted allegations that he became an unwitting messenger of pro-Putin propaganda or of dishonest information given by the president».
With regard to substance, relatively little attention has been accorded in American media to Putin’s flat accusation that U.S. «special services» have supported terrorists, including in Chechnya. Of course anyone paying attention would know that arming jihadists is a standard part of U.S. policy, going back at least to Afghanistan in the 1980s and repeated in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and today in Syria. Indeed, as early as the 1950s the U.S. had established a very close relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist elements as a weapon against Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Baathists in Syria and Iraq, who Washington thought were a little too cozy with the Soviet Union and far too socialist and secular for the taste of our pals in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
There is a real symbiosis between the anti-Russian imperative in American foreign policy and support for radical Islamic elements. It did not end when the Soviet Union and communism collapsed but rather was intensified. This is why Moscow’s constant calls for a common front against terrorism are always rebuffed. Such cooperation doesn’t make any sense for anomenklatura whose number one goal is hostility to Moscow and for whom jihadists are at worst «frienemies» – people who may be troublesome but useful.
We can only imagine how completely different the world would be if the U.S. were to recognize that Russia is a country that in many respects is not that different from the United States or Europe and that we had common interests. But for the U.S. Deep State, that would amount to switching sides in a global conflict, where we see jihadists essentially as «freedom fighters» against a geopolitical adversary. These same clueless «elites» are then puzzled when their carefully nurtured, cuddly, «moderate» jihad terrorists attack us back here at home.
This irrational pattern is at the root of the hostility of American policymakers toward Russia and any prospect of normalizing bilateral ties. In large part, it’s what underlies the «soft coup» being directed against Trump, of which the Sessions pillorying was an episode. (A late report based on unreliable, unverified sources suggests that Special Counsel on the Russia probe, Robert Mueller, is expanding his investigation to include potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. Mueller, a close personal friend of ousted FBI Director James Comey, has already packed his team with partisan Democrats.)
Those behind this attempted coup think we can continue to treat Russia as though it were a minor power of the magnitude of Serbia, Iraq, Libya, or Syria, or even Iran. They think if we just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, either the Russians will collapse or back down. They will do everything possible to box Trump in and prevent him from pursuing any path other than the disastrous course laid out by Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama. They can see no other outcome than removing Putin and returning Russia to the condition of a Yeltsin-era vassal state – a term Putin used in the Stone interview – or, better yet, its territorial breakup along the lines suggested by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Will the Oliver Stone interview change any minds? It’s too soon to tell. But if the soft coup against Trump succeeds, it might not matter, since then America could not be considered a self-governing constitutional republic even in a residual sense. We may have already passed our own Rubicon and just don’t know it yet.Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
In an ironic testament to British engineering, this beautifully preserved German warbird comes to life for the first time in over 40 years. This is one of five barn find Spanish ME-109's featured in the movie Battle of Britain that were fitted with surplus Rolls Royce Merlin engines purchased from the U.K.
These examples are Hispano Aviaciõn HA-1112 M1Ls, a Bf 109G-2 built under license from Messerschmitt by Spain and were last flown in the Battle Of Britain movie in 1968. Afterwards they were disassembled and shipped to Texas where they have been stored for the last 45 years. These planes made the journey to Texas via the hands of Connie Edwards who took payment for his work on the movie Battle of Britain in the form of 8 aircraft including several ME-109's and a Spitfire. Connie is a war veteran, stunt pilot, and an all around badass. He is perhaps the most qualified living warbird pilot on the planet, and you need to watch his interview where he details how he acquired this unique hardware and why he decided to sell after the loss of his son in tragic automobile accident.
The collection of aircraft was recently auctioned off and a single plane could have been yours if you had pockets deep enough to pay the expected price of $1 million. Two were bought by the Swiss company Boschung Global Ltd, including the only survivng factory 2-seat version which they plan to restore to original factory condition.
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As always, apologies for the music soundtrack drowning out the beautiful notes the Merlin V-12.Published: Friday, December 12, 2014 @ 11:46 AM
Updated: Wednesday, December 31, 2014 @ 4:33 PM
— UPDATE @ 4:30 p.m. (Dec. 31):
The day after Christmas former Greene County Sheriff’s Maj. Eric Spicer and his attorneys filed a motion for a new trial in federal court.
Spicer, 45, was indicted in the U.S. Southern District Court in Dayton on seven counts related to allegedly acquiring and possessing a Heckler and Koch HK416 machine gun illegally. Three counts stem from the 2009-10 application and delivery of the gun. Four counts are from 2014 when federal agents seized the weapon at Spicer’s residence about three weeks after Greene County Sheriff Gene Fischer fired him.
On Dec. 13, Spicer was found guilty of knowingly possessing a machine gun and of possessing a gun that was not registered to him in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. However, he was found not guilty on five counts related to falsifications on documents to purchase and register the gun and misrepresenting himself as a police officer.
After hearing the jury’s verdict, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Barrett said a pre-sentence investigation would be done before setting a date for Spicer’s sentencing.
In his motion for a new trial filed on Dec. 26, Spicer’s attorney John D. Smith wrote that, “the jury’s verdict (s) … (are) against the manifest weight of the evidence and undisputed testimony reveals that reasonable minds could come to only one conclusion; Spicer was not guilty of knowingly possessing this machine gun without authority. The statutes as applied to Eric Spicer were unconstitutional as applied and violated his due process rights.”
“We have no comment on the pending defense motions at this time,” said Jennifer Thornton, spokeswoman for assistant U.S. attorney Dwight Keller.
Smith did not immediately respond to a phone call and an email placed by this newspaper on Wednesday.
Fischer referred all questions regarding Spicer to the federal prosecutor’s office when contacted on Wednesday.
First take:
Former Greene County Sheriff’s Maj. Eric Spicer was found guilty by a federal jury on two of seven counts related to his purchase and possession of a machine gun.
Spicer, 45, admitted to signing Sheriff Gene Fischer’s name on documents to acquire a Heckler and Koch HK416 machine gun, but testified he did so with Fischer’s knowledge and approval.
After hearing the jury’s verdict in Dayton’s U.S District Court, U.S District Court Judge Michael Barrett released the jury without setting Spicer’s sentencing date.
Spicer was found guilty of knowingly possessing a machine gun and of possessing the gun that was not registered to him in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.
Spicer took the stand in his own defense Thursday, and contradicted testimony from other sheriff’s office employees. His attorney, John David Smith, suggested Fischer was afraid of bad publicity.
Prosecutors painted Spicer as someone who wanted a machine gun even though he wasn’t on the SWAT team and did anything he could do to acquire one.Let me take on the unpopular opinion. Walt Disney World construction is a good thing. It seems obvious to say that construction is a good thing, but a popular attitude has been that Walt Disney World has felt like a mouse trap, and that all this construction has dampened guests’ views. I believe that people need to have moment of clarity when they think about this. Why is the construction going on and why could it help?
1) Construction Will Help With Ever Increasing Crowds
Walt Disney World’s annual attendance is increasing each year. The bypass and HUB expansion in the Magic Kingdom will be crucial in maintaining an operational park in the coming years. According to Themed Entertainment Association’s annual report in the five years from 2009 to 2014 the Magic Kingdom saw an increase of over 2 million people. Without making changes these increasing attendance numbers could make the park non-functional. Sometimes the result of the construction isn’t something to drool over, but they are changes that are going to be increasingly important for the park to stay operational in the near future.
2) Construction Will Create New Attractions That Will Keep You Coming Back
While Star Wars Land and Toy Story Land seem so far away their construction will soon be very present. Just as we see Pandora: Land of Avatar construction going on now, soon Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be engulfed by cranes and construction vehicles, but remember this is good. Yes it might not be ideal when you are on vacation as the construction might limit some of the fun to be had in the parks, but don’t forget why it will all be worth it. Just when you’ve had enough of the construction try and remember the attractions, restaurants, and shows we are waiting for. New attractions blend in well with my first point about crowd control. The more attractions, the more guests are occupied in the lines, which frees up more of the park. This is a huge reason why these attractions are so important.
3) Construction Could Fix The Attractions You Know And Love
This one is more speculation, but I hope that with the increase in construction that Walt Disney World recognizes that some of their current rides need to be refreshed. On the DIS Unplugged Podcast, Host Pete Werner has talked about how Disney is forgetting about the legacy that got Walt Disney World to where it is today. I completely agree, and this is why I hope Walt Disney World starts a massive rejuvenation for all of their staple attractions. Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress, Spaceship Earth, Ellen’s Energy Adventure, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, are just a few of the many attractions that desperately need a facelift.
As for how long the construction is taking is another discussion, and one that I believe guests have a fair and just reasoning to be upset with Disney over. If the construction for these projects hadn’t taken so long I truly believe this would not even be a discussion because the end results of these construction projects are going to create an exciting new era for Walt Disney World.Most of us know Wykrhm as the guy whose work everyone shares. I mean if there’s ever a big update, an announcement or just good Dota content you know the source is likely Wykrhm. You’re bound to have come across his work on social media and let’s be honest you liked it. His Facebook describes him as an artist. In fact this is how he describes himself on Twitter Now for a casual observer he isn’t so strange. But for someone who has followed the Dota scene for a long time you’d know that he isn’t just an “artist”. Wyk’s claim to fame is not just his content. It’s also the speed at which he delivers it. He is almost always the first guy to announce new stuff. His posts are more like announcements. Basically it’s safe to say that Wykrhm Reddy is the the unofficial spokesperson for Valve. And boy am I glad that it’s not anyone else. His content is fresh, well designed and nicely articulated. It’s always exciting to see a Wyk post because you know it’s gonna be something good.So who is Wykrhm Reddy? Many people have called him many things over the years – an artist, a Valve employee, a Dota evangelist and my personal favorite, Icefrog.We spoke to Wykrhm about Dota, TI,Warcraft, Counter Strike and more …: Vikram Reddy: 28: WykrhmThe first time I played was back in 2003 if I recall correctly. Patch -- well I cannot exactly remember but it was before All-Stars. Might have been 5.xx. This was before Ice. Actually maybe not even 5. I remember even older maps. Just can't remember which one I played first. Really long time ago.Yeah. Ice's first dispatch was in 2005. And I had played Dota for a good while before that.Warcraft obviously. I'm a huge fan of the lore. MMORPG's. Back when I was a kid, the consoles - SEGA and etc. Owned every PlayStation. So a ton of games. I'm just a gamer in general. Anything and everything that's good.Well my feelings are biased. I liked it overall. Looking forward to the sequels.. if they make them which I think they are.5 man is always a lot more fun. I used to play with a bunch of friends back in gaming cafes in the early days.So we used to have all nighters almost every week where around 10-15 of us would just gather and play Dota on LAN all night.Honestly, I knew the game would be huge even before it was released. The first few years things did not go that great. But that's only because of the background it had to deal with. The CS community was deep in love with 1.6 and then came along Source that split it.. and to move away from that and create a product that unites the community was gonna be a challenge. CS:GO had the potential and I knew it won't happen right away but it would. So I am not really surprised. It was only a matter of time. Counter Strike has always been massively popular. CS:GO will take that much further.It seems everyone is in love with it. Blizzard knows how to make games. Good games. I believe they'll do the right thing with Overwatch as they've done with most of their games. As for Overwatch being an esport -- Sure. Why not? It offers a competitive scene and if done right, it can grow to be really popular. It is different, it is fun. And hopefully it adds to the ever growing esports industry.Not into it personally. People enjoy it. I can see the attraction. I think it's okay as long as it doesn't go too far. And by too far, I mean where it starts developing a form where it messes with the fairness of the sport at hand. As long as the fairness and integrity of play is retained, I think betting can stay. The day it takes a step in that direction, it has to go.A more refined structure overall --- from the developers to organizers to players to media to community. Right now things are quite fruitful for some but the rest struggle. I hope to see a balance where anyone and everyone -- If they put in the hard work -- would have options to gain a sustainable job / career in the Dota world. I feel that will remove the burden of finances and let people push productivity to newer levels and eventually boost the game and the community around it.Yes. More or less. Organziations and players can also improve but that's another topic entirely.While things can still be improved, it is definitely a step in the right direction. This year has shown that. The top performing teams at the Majors have been those that have stuck to the same roster since TI. That is something to be noted. While it is definitely not a large enough sample size to make assumptions, roster stability did definitely contribute a little to that. And roster lock -- I want to believe at least indirectly provides an incentive for teams to stick together -- in the hope for an invite. And in that process they grow together as a team. There are some issues.. but like I said, definitely a step in the right direction. Things always need to be tinkered and refined as new problems and issues arise.Getting there. And that's something I would not have said before. But things have changed over the past few months. With recent performances from teams like Beyond Infinity, I want to believe that the scene here is on the right track and as time goes by will slowly make a standing mark in the SEA scene and eventually global.Design I'd say. I like to keep my private life -- well private. So as far as the public image goes, I mainly keep it to things I deal with and a little more by extension.It has worked for me all these years.Maybe if someday I decide to be a personal blogger / vlogger, I'll open the doors to the other side.It'll be a rough fight -- right now I'd say EHOME and Escape. But stats always lie at Majors and TI. So it could be anyone’s game. I'm just hoping for |
invited nearby residents for site visits.
For ethylene oxide and other hazardous materials, AkzoNobel often does more than federal safety and environmental standards require, Nolan said.
East of Degesch, tucked among the trees on Hooper Road, Syntech Chemicals occupies little more than three3 acres, and stores up to 50,000 pounds of formaldehyde solution, considered highly corrosive, toxic and flammable. It also has about a dozen other hazardous chemicals.
In 2002, fire ignited several 10,000-gallon tanks of methyl alcohol. Explosions destroyed most of the plant and sent a plume of black smoke toward the Sam Houston Tollway, snarling rush-hour traffic. Investigators attributed the blaze to an overheated oil reactor. Three months later, one of the tanks caught fire again. OSHA fined the company more than $100,000 for violating chemical process safety standards.
Three years ago, OSHA inspectors – prompted by a complaint – found hoses attached with hanger wires or patched with duct tape because clamps were damaged or missing. Employees told investigators that a worker damaged his eyesight after being sprayed with chemicals when he disconnected a hose.
Syntech Vice President James Gordon, in an email, attributed the 2002 fire to a faulty valve. The company rebuilt the plant, upgrading to the most modern equipment and safety features, he said.
Syntech then ran it for 11 years, OSHA found, without properly inspecting certain pressure relief valves, the last line of defense against fires, explosions and toxic releases.
The company reported that it fixed the problems from the 2013 inspections within one year, OSHA data shows. Gordon called the company's compliance record in the last 15 years exemplary.
"We at Syntech do not take safety lightly or as an afterthought," he said.
Syntech, Degesch and AkzoNobel were in place long before Shadow Creek Ranch's developers broke ground in 2001. None of the facilities will be visible above the treeline from the neighborhood's new sports complex, under construction less than a mile from Syntech and a couple thousand feet from the other plants.
Dangers hit home
In Pasadena, east of Houston, residents who live near the Houston Ship Channel know that a myriad of chemicals could cause the next fire, explosion or release. Most are employed at the plants or at related service companies. For them, the pipes mean prosperity.
An October explosion at SunEdison (formerly known as MEMC) near Highway 225 burned four workers, one so severely that he needs long-term care. The blast resulted from a release of silane gas, one of several hazardous substances used to produce silicon wafers for the electronics and solar industries. A Harris County report said it appeared a valve leaked during maintenance.
The company didn't respond to inquiries about the A&M findings, which placed it on the high-potential-harm list for another substance, an aluminum compound that ignites upon exposure to air.
After the fall explosion, spokesman Gordon Handelsman said earlier incidents had triggered enhanced inspection, maintenance and safety programs.
Fifteen workers went to hospitals after a release of corrosive fumes in 2008, and that same year, a loose pipe fitting resulted in a fire shutting down the silane unit for a week.
In 2011, OSHA cited SunEdison for cracked valves in that unit and for failing to provide workers with a way to lock valves, exposing them to hazards.
Another Pasadena plant near the top of the A&M study, LyondellBasell (also known as Houston Refining), had a fire on April 8. No one was hurt, but schools and homes nearby were told to shelter-in-place for an hour. The plant had 11 violations during a 2009 OSHA inspection, many related to the mishandling of hazardous chemicals.
"We take our commitment to safe operations and compliance with federal and state regulations very seriously," LyondellBasell spokesman George Smalley said by email. We regularly meet with our community and local officials and strive to be a good neighbor at all times."
LyondellBasell can house more than 10 million pounds of methyl mercaptan. That's more than 430 times the amount that spewed into an enclosed building at DuPont.
DuPont knew for years that hazards at its pesticide plant were capable of killing not only workers, but nearby residents, yet problems with clogged pipes and fire protection weren't fixed, the CSB said last fall over company objections. The plant had not seen an OSHA inspector since 2007.
DuPont is closing the plant and spun off part of it into a new company, Chemours. It has up to 2.1 million pounds of toxic hydrofluoric acid, which tops the list of chemicals that advocates want industries to replace. When released, the acid forms a dense, rolling cloud of gas that hangs close to the ground, potentially sending lethal concentrations for miles. In 2012, a South Korean plant released 8 tons of it, killing five workers and triggering emergency treatment for more than 3,000 people in towns downwind.
Sergio Serrano, 76, and his wife have lived near such dangers for 40 years. They sleep to the ceaseless hum of chemical plants in Pasadena, like giant vacuum cleaners running in their back yard. Booming explosions or wailing sirens indicating chemical releases have pierced some nights – more times than Serrano can recall.
Nearby, there's Goodyear, with sodium sulfide, a dangerous chemical in rubber production.
In 2008, a heat exchanger exploded at the plant, killing one worker with flying debris and spraying six others with toxic ammonia. OSHA fined the tire giant $43,000. A year earlier, OSHA had cited the plant for violating a rule that requires companies to take action in response to their own hazard analyses, and for having infrequent inspections of processing equipment.
Over the years, chemical giants have bought out Serrano's neighbors and tried to buy his 860-square-foot home. No one has offered more than $15,000 and that's not enough to afford a move, said Serrano, who is retired after years of washing hospital linens. So here he remains, looking out across weed-covered lots, sleeping to the hum.
'Operating responsibly'
East of downtown, a park, a community center and three schools are within half a mile of Palmer Logistics, a chemical distributor.
The location epitomizes Houston's haphazard zoning.
Palmer has held dangerous chemicals there for more than 30 years, but has not had a major release. It stores but does not process chemicals like paraformaldehyde. Nonetheless, chemical disasters have influenced president Brett Mears and his colleagues.
Palmer has decided to move all its hazardous chemicals to a new facility in an industrial area in Baytown, even though the lease is about 50 percent more expensive.
"Maybe the regulations say it's acceptable to put a hazmat facility in a neighborhood," Mears said, "but if you could be 5 miles from the closest houses, wouldn't that be better?"
The Chronicle followed up with all the high-potential-for-harm facilities to learn what they do to prevent releases. Most responded with general comments about safety, maintenance and monitoring programs. Some went deeper. For example, the AkzoNobel facility in La Porte, which ranked highest in the A&M analysis, described precautions for triethylaluminum.
People who handle it are specially trained, wear customized, stringently tested protective suits and work with constant surveillance, site director Allen Tribble said. The company conducted research and safety studies to develop best-handling practices, including eliminating contact with air and moisture, which leads to fires.
The East Harris County Manufacturers Association weighed in on behalf of many facilities.
Craig Beskid, executive director of EHCMA, said its member companies regularly share best practices and assess hazards and risks, and use state-of-the-art technologies.
"We understand that the public wants to have confidence that our industry is operating responsibly, which is why we have multiple layers of safety protection in place," Beskid said. "Assessing the risks without factoring in these safeguards is similar to assessing the risks of driving a car without factoring in speed, seat belts, anti-lock brakes, safety glass and other car safety improvements."
At KMCO in Crosby, northeast of Houston, new owners made changes in recent years to improve safety.
The plant, near the sports complex, a restaurant and a church, stores organic peroxides, which can burn and explode. A similar substance called TATP is increasingly favored by terrorists because it can be made with household chemicals. Harris County sued the KMCO plant in 2008 for spills and fumes that gave neighbors headaches. The lawsuit ended in 2009, with a permanent injunction requiring KMCO to pay $100,000 in civil penalties and to give investigators easy access to the facility and prompt notification of releases.
The plant has dozens of OSHA violations since 2010, and an explosion in 2011 sent two workers to a hospital.
Kelly Nidini, the plant's safety manager, said the company has significantly upgraded its facilities since 2013, has won multiple industry awards and will invest millions, primarily for safety and environmental concerns.
"We have no higher priority than ensuring safe and compliant operations," Nidini said.
Dangerous and potentially deadly The Chronicle/A&M analysis considered hundreds of chemicals. Here are four used by facilities on the list of those having high potential for harm.
Hazards near two schools
At a facility in northwest Houston, Wyman-Gordon Forgings makes components for aircraft, missiles, power plants, and the nuclear and petrochemical industries. The company uses titanium, a volatile metal that caused two explosions in Los Angeles in 2010. Those blasts blew out fire engine windows, injured four firefighters and launched molten debris hundreds of feet.
On the other side of U.S. 290 from Wyman-Gordon, more than 5,000 students attend Arnold Middle School and Cy-Fair High School.
Company and school officials said they do not talk to each other about possible dangers from the plant.
In a statement, the school district said each campus has an emergency operation plan. "We conduct mandatory crisis drills for sheltering in place and evacuations," assistant superintendent Nicole Ray said.
The facility isn't without problems. In 1996, an explosion of a pressurized nitrogen tank killed eight workers, blew a jagged hole in the roof and propelled a piece of equipment that weighs as much as a Honda Civic more than 200 yards and more than 5 feet into the ground. The company agreed to pay $1.8 million in OSHA fines and promised to improve safety. In 2011, it was cited by OSHA for not recording worker accidents. The company paid a $2,000 fine. In 2014, OSHA cited it for exposing a worker to hazardous chemicals. The company paid a $100 fine.
Wyman-Gordon, like many large plants, has its own safety staff. The company has a full-time safety manager, a 31-member emergency response team, a certified EMT and a "confined space" rescue team.
It also recently started working with the Cy-Fair Volunteer Fire Department to improve the safe storage and use of titanium metal and to prepare for a fire. Company spokesman Jay Khetani described its recent OSHA violations as minor.
"The facility's primary focus is the safety of its employees and ensuring that all members of its team return safely to home each night," Khetani said.
Southeast of Wyman-Gordon on 290, Chem One is housed in a plain, single-story building. The company stores up to half a million pounds of reactive and toxic potassium permanganate.
Many facilities with hazardous chemicals look just as innocuous.
Near Oak Forest: International Paint, which can store an equal amount of flammable copper oxide.
Near Hobby airport: Buffalo Flange, with just as much toxic and flammable iron carbonyl.
Near George Bush Intercontinental Airport: Enduro Composites.
Walter Dunn lives about 2,000 feet from Enduro's plant, which houses up to 5,000 pounds of cumene hydroperoxide – explosive and reactive and a chemical he'd never heard of.
"Small people have no say in where this stuff goes," said Dunn, who was hunched over and working on his car on a warm spring day. His dog, Jack, greeted passersby, and down the street, teenagers played basketball.
If he wanted to move, Dunn said, where would he go?
"There's no safe place," he said. "It's all over this town."
***
Read part 2: An industry left to police itself
***
Mark Collette finds the information the government and corporations don't want you to see. Contact him at mark.collette@chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ChronMC.
Matt Dempsey is the data editor for the Houston Chronicle. He joined the Chronicle in 2014 and has worked on several major projects, including the investigation on the dangers of chemical plants. Matt previously worked for the Arizona Republic and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Contact him at matt.dempsey@chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @mizzousundevil.
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The Houston Chronicle is dedicated to serving the public interest with fact-based journalism. That mission has never been more important. Show your support for our journalism at HoustonChronicle.com/subscribe.James Bond 007: Nightfire is a first-person shooter video game featuring the character of the British secret agent James Bond and a sequel to Agent Under Fire, published by Electronic Arts in 2002. Nightfire was developed by Eurocom for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox video game consoles, while Gearbox Software developed the game for Microsoft Windows using the GoldSrc engine. Aspyr later re-released the game for the macOS. The computer versions are substantially different from the console versions, featuring different missions and a modified story line. In 2003, Electronic Arts released Nightfire for the Game Boy Advance (GBA), developed by JV Games and also featuring different missions and a modified story line from the console and computer versions.
The game marked Pierce Brosnan's fourth appearance as James Bond before the release of his fourth and final Bond film Die Another Day. His likeness was featured in the game, but not his voice, which was provided by Maxwell Caulfield.
Gameplay [ edit ]
There are many weapons that the player can carry including grenades and other types of explosives. In addition, there are numerous mounted weapons found throughout the game. As with previous James Bond games, the weapons that appear are based on actual weapons, but with the names changed. Some weapons appear in the console version but not the PC version, and vice versa.
Each version of the game differs significantly from the others. The PC version, for example, has fewer levels than the console versions and does not implement driving mode. It begins the plot right at Raphael Drake's Austrian castle, skipping over the French mission. Also, in this version, Rook dies much earlier on, in the astronaut training facility that Bond infiltrates. The Game Boy Advance version resembles the PC Nightfire more than the console versions. However, the very general overall storyline and characters remain the same in all versions.
Multiplayer [ edit ]
In the multiplayer mode of Nightfire players can play in many different levels, including Fort Knox, from Goldfinger, Atlantis and the sub docking pen from The Spy Who Loved Me, and many Nightfire-related levels, including Drake's castle, Drake's underwater base, and Drake's secret missile silo. Other levels include Skyrail and Ravine. The player may choose to play against AI bots with customizable reaction time, speed, and health. The number of usable bots vary in the console version. In the GameCube and Xbox version, up to six bots may be used. In the PlayStation 2 version, up to four bots may be used and up to four humans can play. In the PC version, up to 12 bots may be used. The PC version also has an online multiplayer mode.
Some medals obtained will unlock new characters. Notable characters included from previous James Bond films include Francisco Scaramanga and Nick Nack from The Man with the Golden Gun, May Day and Max Zorin from A View to a Kill, Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, Elektra King and Renard from The World Is Not Enough, Auric Goldfinger and Oddjob from Goldfinger, and Baron Samedi from Live and Let Die. Players can customize multiplayer settings before playing. However, one disadvantage to this is that the game will not save the alterations players make to the multiplayer mode.
Plot [ edit ]
In Paris, James Bond (voiced by Maxwell Caulfield with the likeness of Pierce Brosnan) helps French Intelligence operative Dominique Paradis evade a gang chase while chasing a truck with a stolen nuclear weapon, before continuing in his Aston Martin V12 Vanquish. After preventing the truck from blowing up the Eiffel Tower, Dominique and Bond celebrate New Year's Eve.
The UK Government sends Bond undercover to a party at industrialist Raphael Drake's Austrian castle. M (voiced by Samantha Eggar) believes that the party is a cover for the exchange of a missile guidance chip between Drake and Alexander Mayhew - who manages the Japanese branch of Drake's company, Phoenix International - had stolen the chip from the United States. Phoenix is believed to be a front for weapon smuggling. M gives Bond the instruction for him to rendezvous with CIA agent Zoe Nightshade and Dominique, who is posing as Drake's mistress. While Zoe distracts the guards, Bond makes his way to the exchange and steals the chip. Bond and Zoe attempt to escape via cable car, when Drake's bodyguard, Rook, attacks the cable car with a rocket-launching helicopter. Bond shoots down the attacking helicopter using rockets found in the cable car. Bond and Zoe then escape Drake's forces in an armored snowmobile before continuing in Bond's car. They rendezvous with Q (voiced by Gregg Berger), who evacuates them from Austria to safety.
After the breach, Drake threatens to kill Mayhew, should the operation fail. Mayhew contacts MI6, saying he will provide vital information if Bond comes to his rescue. At his Japanese estate, Mayhew is attacked by Drake's men, consisting of Japanese thugs before hiding in an underground bunker. Bond fights his way through the estate and manages to obtain a file from Mayhew's safe. As they are prepared to make an escape from the estate, Mayhew is killed by a ninja. The file leads Bond to Mayhew's office at the Phoenix Building in Tokyo.
Bond is able to infiltrate the building when the security guards are changing shifts, and secures official NightFire documents. He is then attacked by Drake's men before Dominique provides a distraction, which allows Bond to escape via parachute off the roof of the building.
The NightFire documents lead Bond to a nuclear power plant being decommissioned by Phoenix International. Bond retrieves evidence of Drake's activities and escapes. However, he is then double-crossed and captured by Kiko, Mayhew's former bodyguard, and turned over to Drake. On the top of the Phoenix building, Drake decides to kill Bond, and reveals that he has unmasked Dominique as a spy with the hidden camera in the stairwell, which showed her helping Bond to escape. Dominique is then kicked to her death from the top of the tower by Kiko, but Bond escapes to ground level before being saved by Australian Intelligence agent Alura McCall, who drives him away from the building.
M sends Bond and Alura to Drake's private island in the South Pacific, where Drake has set up a jamming signal. The pair infiltrate the island and eliminate Drake's defences. M makes Bond aware of the UN, EU, and NATO forces arriving on the island to dismantle remaining enemy combatants. After killing Rook in a shootout, Bond makes his way to Drake's underground silo, fighting Kiko before entering one of three space shuttles intending to capture the Space Defense Platform. Kiko is incinerated in the blast pit when Bond's space shuttle launches. Bond reaches the U.S. Space Defense Platform, where Drake is. He successfully sends all eight missiles off course, saving millions of lives, and causes Drake's laser weapon to malfunction, leading to a huge explosion. Finally, Bond kills Drake. As the station goes up in flames, Bond blasts from an escape pod and returns to Earth, where M informs him that astronomers from around the globe are reporting "unexpected meteor showers" (which is actually the debris of the now-destroyed Space Defense Platform). Bond celebrates with Alura before setting the auto-pilot on the Vanquish so he and Alura can have a romantic evening.
Development [ edit ]
The game had been in development as early as September 2000,[1] and was announced as James Bond 007 in May 2001.[2] By February 2002, the game's working title was James Bond in... Phoenix Rising.[3] The game's final title was unveiled in May 2002.[4] In July 2002, Pierce Brosnan's head was scanned with a laser digitizer to create the James Bond character model.[1][5]
Driving levels were developed by Savage Entertainment and a team at Electronic Arts.[6] Nightfire marked the first time a James Bond video game featured an original song: "Nearly Civilized" performed by Esthero. Its original score was composed by Steve Duckworth, Ed Lima and Jeff Tymoschuk.
In January 2003, Electronic Arts announced that a Game Boy Advance version of the game was in development by JV Games.[7]
Reception [ edit ]
In the United States, the computer version of Nightfire sold 230,000 copies and earned $5.3 million by August 2006, after its release in November 2002. It was the country's 93rd best-selling computer game during this period.[55] The PlayStation 2 version of Nightfire received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA),[56] indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom.[57]
Nightfire was positively received across all console platforms, with reviews toward the game pointing to the realistic animation.[citation needed] In addition to this, graphically most users have also positively commented on the fact that James Bond and Pierce Brosnan look and move so much alike.[citation needed] However, while the console reviews have been generally positive, some critics believe that the main negative aspect of the game is its relatively short length.[citation needed] Critics also noted that Nightfire does attempt to steer away from previous Bond games (notably GoldenEye) and add a more interesting story line.[citation needed] Critics also derided the game's bots, as having difficulty navigating through the multiplayer maps; because of this, bots are not available in the map Ravine at all.[33]
The PC version of the game, on the other hand, has been subject to mixed reception. Eurogamer gave the game 3 out of 10, while Computer Gaming World called it "the most incompetently crafted shooter in living memory", noting the game's poor art, terrible A.I., shoddy voice work, and highly derivative level design.[58]
In 2008, PC Games Hardware included Alura McCall, Makiko Hayashi, Dominique Paradis and Zoe Nightshade among the 112 most important female characters in games.[59]
See also [ edit ]Well, we all saw this one coming.
Less than 48 hours after mass market retailer Target publicly solidified their support for marriage equality in a court filing on Tuesday, the National Organization for Marriage announced a boycott of the chain.
Target officially announced their public support for marriage equality by signing an amicus brief before a Chicago federal appeals court, following similar moves made by other large companies.
NOM president Brian Brown said in a statement:
Target and other companies need to be forced to realize that it is their alignment with the radical cause of redefining marriage that is "bad for business"—not states' marriage laws that uphold and protect the common-sense idea that kids do best with a mom and a dad! So I'm announcing a new boycott today, against Target, for insulting consumers like you and me. The brief they signed in court this week insinuates that people like you and me, who would vote to uphold traditional marriage, as akin to segregationists and racial bigots. Would you want to shop at a place that viewed you in that way?
NOM, of course, has a history of vehemently opposing legislation and companies that support marriage rights for same-sex couples. In the past the organization has attempted boycotts of JP Morgan Chase and Starbucks, as well as generating hysteria surrounding any political or social gains made by the queer community.
(h/t Towleroad)The “tax the rich” idea is gaining in popularity.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last Thursday found that 73 percent of Americans would support “a special tax on bonuses over $1 million.” That includes 85 percent of Democrats, but also an impressive 62 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of independents.
Voters in Oregon are deciding today whether to increase taxes on the rich in their state, which is being hit by cuts in education and other social programs. They are voting on two ballot measures: Measure 66 which would raise the state income tax on households earning more than $250,000, and Measure 67 which would increase corporate income taxes.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey also released last Thursday found 61 percent of the public favor the House health reform provision, which pays for reform by a tax surcharge on people with high incomes. Only 29 percent favor the Senate provision, which would tax some employee health insurance plans instead.
“A tax on the wealthy is obviously most popular with lower-income Americans, but it is also the preference of people making $100,000 a year or more,” noted CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
Meanwhile, in a CBS poll released Jan. 18, 7 in 10 Americans said they are “bothered” by the bonuses being handed out by banks that benefited from federal bailout money. By a 72 to 19 percent margin, they feel that the bailout has benefited “mostly just a few big investors and people who work on Wall Street.”
The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, in a report released earlier this month, calculates that in 2010, a little over 1 million U.S. taxpayers will report incomes over $500,000. “These 1 million top-earners will collect an astounding $241 billion more in income this year than the just under 80 million taxpayers who will take home less than $40,000,” writes Sam Pizzigati at the Campaign for America’s Future web site.
Pizzigati notes that Goldman Sachs is piously congratulating itself for paying its employees a smaller percent of its whopping revenues than it did last year.
“Goldman’s chief financial officer, David Viniar, wants all of us to consider this smaller payout share a thoughtful, conscientious bank response to widespread public concern over excessive banker compensation,” comments Pizzigati.
“Restraint? Even with the smaller share of bank revenue going to pay, the ‘average’ Goldman employee will pocket $498,153 for the year,” he says. Since, of course, the secretaries and such won’t be getting anywhere close to that, that “average” means that the firm’s top bankers and traders will be pocketing vastly more.
One important Goldman Sachs shareholder, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which operates public transit in the Philadelphia area, last week filed suit against Goldman executives, accusing them of greed.
“Goldman’s employees are unreasonably overpaid for the management functions that they undertake, and shareholders are vastly underpaid for the risks taken with their equity,” SEPTA’s lawsuit charges.
SEPTA’s pension fund has about $1 million in Goldman stock, according to SEPTA general counsel Nicholas J. Staffieri.
“The value of that stock dropped because of excessive fees that management took out,” Staffieri said.
In the lawsuit, filed Jan. 20, SEPTA says that the bank was not acting in shareholders’ best interests when it approved executive pay and bonuses amounting to almost half the bank’s net revenue, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanorwood/ / CC BY 2.0From CIO (Robert McMillan) Corporate IT staffers will get a double whammy next week, as both Microsoft and Oracle are set to release critical security updates [cio.com] on the same day, including a likely fix for an Excel bug that has been used by cybercriminals. This month, Oracle’s quarterly software fixes and Microsoft’s monthly patches happen to fall on the same day, next Tuesday. For Windows users, there will be a lot to patch. Microsoft plans to release eight updates in total [microsoft.com]: Five of them are for Windows, with a single update each for Internet Explorer, Excel and Microsoft’s Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) server. Read the full story. More from ZDNet Zero Day [zdnet.com]
From CIO (Robert McMillan)
Corporate IT staffers will get a double whammy next week, as both Microsoft and Oracle are set to release critical security updates [cio.com] on the same day, including a likely fix for an Excel bug that has been used by cybercriminals.
This month, Oracle’s quarterly software fixes and Microsoft’s monthly patches happen to fall on the same day, next Tuesday. For Windows users, there will be a lot to patch. Microsoft plans to release eight updates in total [microsoft.com]: Five of them are for Windows, with a single update each for Internet Explorer, Excel and Microsoft’s Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) server. Read the full story. More from ZDNet Zero Day [zdnet.com]Shop Disney Parks Walt Disney World Merchandise by App or Online
Have you just returned home from a recent Walt Disney World vacation and are wishing that you had purchased something you had seen while there? Or are you currently in Walt Disney World, wondering where you can find a particular merchandise item? Well, look no further! Disney has released an app for mobile devices called Shop Disney Parks, which can be used to locate and purchase items from Walt Disney World Resort.
This is a great must-have app for Disney fans, and is available for both iOS and Android devices.
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shop-disney-parks/id973805417?mt=8
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.disney.shopdisneyparks_goo
Using the app, you can browse or search for an item…
Or just scan the barcode of the item to find it.
Once you select an item, you can save it to your shopping bag for purchase or bring up a map with the locations that carry the item.
You can also find a wide selection of Disney theme park merchandise available online at http://disneyworld.com/store. In addition to regular park merchandise, you’ll also find specialty items like Epcot festival merchandise and a selection of MagicBands.
If you have questions about theme park merchandise, contact Disney directly at Merchandise.Guest.Services@DisneyParks.com.
NOTE: The Merchandise Guest Services department, which used to handle guest requests for purchasing park merchandise, has been discontinued.
Shop Disney Parks items at shopDisney.Calling the Muslim Brotherhood sit-in protests in Cairo a threat to national security, Egypt’s interim government announced it has ordered police to stop them.
Thousands of supporters of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi have been staging sit-ins in the capital since Morsi was ousted by the military July 3.
Clashes on July 27 between Morsi supporters and security forces in a square near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque resulted in at least 80 supporters being shot dead, the second mass killing of protesters since the sit-ins began.
More from GlobalPost: White House condemns Egypt military's crackdown
"The cabinet has decided to take all measures necessary to confront these risks and put an end to them," Information Minister Dorreya Sharaf el-Din said in a televised statement.
"The continuation of the dangerous situation in Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda squares, and consequent terrorism and road blockages are no longer acceptable given the threat to national security," he added.
El-Din said the police have been ordered to end the demonstrations "within the framework of the constitution and the law.”
Following the announcement, the US State Department urged Egypt's government to respect the rights of its citizens.
"We have continued to urge the interim government to respect the right of peaceful assembly," deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said, according to Reuters. "That obviously includes sit-ins."
Three top Muslim Brotherhood leaders were also referred to trial on charges of inciting violence, including the killing of protesters, last month. The leaders include fugitive Mohammed Badie, deputy Khairat el-Shater and Rashad Bayoumi.Jaw-dropping fraud: FBI agents remove evidence from Rudy Kurniawan's home. Credit:MCT Never before had such a severe punishment been meted out for such a crime. But for the Frenchman who first detected Kurniawan's swindle and relentlessly pursued the 37-year-old con man for almost half a decade, even that is not enough. "Twenty years would have been more satisfactory, considering how he has sullied the image and integrity of the wine appellations of Burgundy, Bordeaux and beyond," said Laurent Ponsot, in his first interview since the sentence was handed down by a federal judge in New York. "Kurniawan gave the entire planet the impression that falsifying wine can make you a whole lot of money, so the sentence had to be very, very severe." Mr Ponsot's own estate, which was founded in 1872 at the northern end of the Cote d'Or and produces 12 grand cru wines, is among the most illustrious in Burgundy.
Jackie Chan hailed Rudy Kurniawan as a genius. Credit:Getty Images His personal crusade against Kurniawan began on April 25, 2008, as the New York auction house Acker Merrall & Condit was selling a host of fabulous wines, including two bottles of 1959 Dom Perignon rose that had once belonged to the Shah of Iran. Also on sale were 97 Ponsot bottles from Kurniawan's cellar, valued at more than $US600,000. Unbeknown to the sellers, Mr Ponsot had flown across the Atlantic to the auction after a tip-off that the consignment included one bottle of 1929 Ponsot Clos de la Roche, which the domain did not produce under its own label until 1934. Also for sale were 38 bottles of another Ponsot grand cru, Clos Saint-Denis, from years up to 1971 - even though the winery only started making Clos Saint-Denis in 1982. After a few words from Mr Ponsot, the suspect bottles were withdrawn and over a lunch meeting the next day the winemaker found Kurniawan evasive about where he had bought the fake bottles.
"I knew he was a crook from the moment I set eyes on him," said Mr Ponsot. "He was ill at ease, stared at his plate and wouldn't meet my gaze." But it was to take years for Mr Ponsot to win the justice he sought - and up to €150,000 ($213,000) in fees for private investigators. Kurniawan spent millions on lavish parties and tastings where genuine top-grade vintages were served beside fakes, and was hailed as a genius by his customers - such as the actor Jackie Chan, who reportedly once stood on a chair holding a rare jeroboam of Chateau Petrus and shouted: "Rudy, you are the best!" Mr Ponsot's breakthrough came when he joined forces with the FBI's art theft unit whose agents raided Kurniawan's home in Arcadia, Los Angeles, in March 2012. In the basement they discovered a fraud factory on a jaw-dropping scale: strewn around it were hundreds of bottles and thousands of fake labels for some of the most prestigious wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux.
Kurniawan would mix cheaper, more common wines, pour them into old bottles with fake labels and aged corks and then fraudulently sell them to credulous clients. Mr Ponsot said: "It's surprisingly easy to fool people who are happy to pay huge amounts of money to find the impossible, such as mythical bottles. "You only have to find one that appears great to get people hooked." The deception was made easier by the fact that earlier generations of wine producers never expected to be targeted by criminals so took no steps to make fraud harder. "There was no regularity, there was no protection at all," said Mr Ponsot.
"Between the wars, for instance, the paper used for labels would change for each vintage. There were cases of genuine bottles with spelling mistakes. Kurniawan played on all this." Mr Ponsot told the trial that, in his estimation, some 80 per cent of pre-1980 bottles put up for auction from among Burgundy's top four domains, including his own, must be fakes. He hopes that the Kurniawan case will mark the end of the "golden era of fake wine" for top grade vintages, as auction houses run ever tougher checks and the most prestigious wine domains step up measures to protect their wines. But he warned that some collectors who bought Kurniawan bottles would not want to admit that they had been swindled, and may lie low before putting them back on the market in five to 10 years' time. "We need to remain very vigilant," he said. Now Mr Ponsot has set his sights on two people he insists were the swindler's "accomplices", and whom he intends to unmask in a book he hopes will be published later this year.
One was a figure with deep knowledge of the complex Burgundy wine world, he said, but he was not yet ready to reveal their identity. Once the book was finished, he insisted, his wine sleuthing days would be over. "It's not my profession and I've done my bit," he said. "I need to get back to making wine." Sunday Telegraph, London**PBE Deployment Update:** As this is monday, these changes are no longer on the PBE. **Note:** Also apologies. I am **severely** outnumbered versus number of comments here. While I normally make it a part of my posting style to reply to every post in the main thread - I don't think that's feasible for me this time. Sorry guys. **Update - 4/11:** Some items have been updated based on feedback from this thread. A quick recap: Morello has more AP and has Athene's Kill passive. Hextech Rocket Belt has had its speed reduced and has a slight after-dash delay where you can't use your spells (0.25 seconds). Some minor stats have been adjusted and Catalyst has had its numbers |
them and you – and in fact I love them more because I love you. Each new person is a new opportunity. In loving you well, I hope to help you love them, too. It’s a math equation of caring: keep adding, keep multiplying. Grow. The. Love. That is the only way we will breed compassion. THAT is what animals teach us – if we pay attention.
Furry, flying, dipping, digging millions, they have trained me to come at everything with love, with forgiveness, with empathy. I give them my blood with smiles, beaming. Because every time, somehow, it is I who feel blessed and grateful, getting so much more than I give. My tourist clothes and supplies thrown away, I am moving in among them. I live here. And it’s such a better place.
Katya Lidsky is a writer, actress, and pet-related host. She is also a content creator for Adopt-a-Pet.com, North America’s largest nonprofit pet adoption website, founder of ShelterShopper.com, as well as a volunteer for Los Angeles animal shelters.
Tags: animal rights activism, animal welfare issues, Animals, aquariums, chicken nuggets, Dogs, fringe festival, I'm Sorry: How An Apologist Became An Activist, Katya Lidsky, kids and animals, Leather, Robert Frost poem, Zoo'sBrenda Mae Tarpley (a.k.a. Brenda Lee and “Little Miss Dynamite”) was born to an extremely poor family in December of 1944. Things took a turn for the worse when her father, a onetime semi-pro baseball player and carpenter, died in a construction accident in May of 1953 when she was 8 years old.
Within two years of this happening, the 10-year-old girl started taking over her deceased father’s role as the primary bread-winner of the family, with frequent performances on various TV and radio shows, as well as in record shops then her big break happened when she sang in front of future Country Music Hall of Famer Clyde “Red” Foley, who sold over 25 million records in his lifetime, a feat Brenda Lee would easily surpass.
At the time, Foley was hosting a new show calledOzark Jubilee, a country music and performance show. Lee was a huge fan of Foley, so decided to go meet him as he was on tour promoting his TV show in her home town. Without them ever hearing her sing, a local DJ, “Peanut” Faircloth, convinced Foley and his promoter to let little Brenda open the show with one song, Hank Williams’ Jambalaya, which she added her own little twist to by speeding up the tempo and rapidly starting and stopping her voice during certain words of the song. (You can see a short bit of her performing this song when she’s 16 here or as an adult here, or a phenomenal mashup of a bunch of snippets of her early performances here).
Foley said this of hearing the 10-year-old Lee in that performance,
I still get cold chills thinking about the first time I heard that voice. One foot started patting rhythm as though she was stomping out a prairie fire but not another muscle in that little body even as much as twitched. And when she did that trick of breaking her voice, it jarred me out of my trance enough to realize I’d forgotten to get off the stage. There I stood, after 26 years of supposedly learning how to conduct myself in front of an audience, with my mouth open two miles wide and a glassy stare in my eyes… The way I stood back and enjoyed watching her work, I felt guilty for not going out to the box office and buying a ticket.
Even though she was slated to just do one song, the crowd called for an encore and she performed three more before leaving the stage. Foley signed her that night to a 5 year contract and she became a fixture on his show, which became her platform for vaulting into super-stardom.
Three years later, at the age of 13 in 1958, Lee recorded what today is the song she’s probably best known for (though she had numerous hits throughout her career), Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. The song was written by Johnny Marks who, despite being Jewish, wrote several hit Christmas songs besides that one (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Run Rudolph Run, A Holly Jolly Christmas, The Most Wonderful Day of the Year, etc.).
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree mostly flopped upon its initial release, selling just 5,000 copies. The next year, they released the song a second time and it again flopped, selling just over what it did on its initial release. It finally started to gain some traction the next year as Brenda Lee’s fame began to skyrocket, managing to rise as high as number 14 on the Hot 100 Pop Singles list. Within 5 years of that, it went as high as number 3 on that same list. By the song’s 50th anniversary in 2008, Brenda Lee’s original version of it had sold over 25 million copies, including about 700,000 digital copies, making it the 4th most digital downloads sold of any Christmas single.
Bonus Facts:
Brenda Lee’s stage name was created by producer of Peach Blossom, Sammy Barton, in 1955, the same year of her big break. Barton thought “Tarpley” would be difficult for people to remember, so suggested she take the “Tarp” part off and just go by “Brenda Lee”. On the night of her big break, she ended up turning down an offer of $30 to perform on Peach Blossom and instead went to see Clyde Foley’s show that she ultimately performed at for free.
Shortly before Peanut Faircloth recommended Lee to Foley, she was regularly performing at her step father’s record shop, Brenda Lee Record Shop, in Augusta, Georgia. At the shop, every week a radio show would be broadcast, hosted by Peanut Faircloth. Brenda Lee even wrote and sung her own theme song for the show: “Brother, if you want to get the lowdown, Come along and let’s all have a hoedown, At the Brenda Lee Record Shop Saturday at 3, On the Brenda Lee Jam-bo-reeeeeeeeeeeeee!” She also at that time sung at Jimmy Skinner’s Record Shop, which had regular radio shows broadcast out of it.
Brenda Lee had 9 consecutive top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 from 1960 to 1962. That consecutive top 10 record would stand for female artists until 1986 when Madonna broke it.
The saxophone solo on Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree was played by famed saxophonist Boots Randolph.
When she was just two years old, Brenda Lee’s mother would take her down to a local candy store where she’d earn money and candy singing on a counter in the store.
At the age of 5, Brenda won a talent contest put on by various elementary schools in her area. What song she sung in that contest is contested, but it is either Slow Poke or Take Me Out to the Ballgame. In that same event, she was runner-up in the beauty contest.
It was from this contest that her career really started. After the competition, she was offered a gig singing on a local radio show in Atlanta, Georgia. She regularly sang on the show, but never got paid anything but ice cream for those performances; she was allowed to eat as much of it as she wanted. This show led to other places booking her, including a TV show, TV Ranch, which she wasn’t paid anything for either, this time not even in junk food.
Brenda’s first paid job was for $20 (about $180 today) at a Shriner’s Club Luncheon.
On April 24, 1963, at the age of 18, Brenda Lee married 18-year-old Ronnie Shacklett. The two met at a Jackie Wilson concert in Nashville. They are still married today, nearly 50 years later.
Peanut Faircloth got his nickname of “Peanut” as he was just 4 feet 8 inches tall, after having his growth stunted by polio. Besides hosting his famous radio shows, he also sang, and played the guitar, harmonica, mandolin, and washboard. He also was proud of his skills with a toilet plunger instrument of his own design called a “flush-a-phone”, which he sometimes used in performances. ~ DAVEN HISKEY
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References
AdvertisementsGustave Courbet shocked the world in 1886 with his notorious Origin of the World, which depicts a close-up view of a woman’s vagina. Almost 130 years later, female genitalia have remained an artistic subject that goes hand-in-hand with controversy.
Earlier this year, Belgian artist Peter de Cupere created The Deflowering, a frozen Madonna statue made from vaginal sweat, which the artist described as “holy water.” As it melted, the statue emitted its scent. To say the work divided opinion would be an understatement.
At the time, de Cupere wrote on his website that “The smell is produced by movement and sweating in the female intimate area,” which was “…conserved as odorous substance and realized by a professional lab in Germany.”
Now, he’s at it again. His latest project entitled The Paintbrush of Gustave Courbet, de Cupere has used a pubic-hair bristled paintbrush to ‘paint’ a blank, primed canvas with the scent of women’s vaginas.
De Cupere says his work aim to activate as many senses as possible, and The Paintbrush of Gustave Courbet is no different. The artist told Huffington Post “To look at vaginal smell as paint is a poetic statement.”
He says that “a woman’s vagina smells, in general, great, and more men should respect that.” The artist insists that “nothing [is] as creative [as] to start with an empty canvas and to brush down your desires with the smell of vagina!”
Follow artnet News on Facebook:Wofford will open its new Jerry Richardson Indoor Stadium this fall with a men’s basketball game against South Carolina, which is coming off a Final Four appearance.
An official announcement and specifics about game day will come at a later date, Wofford officials said.
One of the highlights for Wofford in the Benjamin Johnson Arena, which opened in 1981 and saw its last game men’s basketball game on Feb. 25, was a 68-61 victory against South Carolina on Dec. 19, 2009. Noah Dahlman, the Terriers’ Division I scoring leader, had 19 points and 11 rebounds.
South Carolina last season under head coach Frank Martin was a No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament and won consecutive games against Marquette, Duke, Baylor and Florida before falling, 77-73, in the national semifinals to Gonzaga, eventual runner-up to North Carolina.
Wofford’s new arena, intended to be the best of any mid-major, was a gift from alum Jerry Richardson, owner of the Carolina Panthers. Richardson Indoor Stadium, which is nearing completion, is a 123,000-square foot facility that will seat 3,400 for basketball and has a separate 500-seat venue for volleyball. It is located next to Gibbs Stadium, home of the Terriers’ football team.Carb Back-Loading: What Does the Evidence Say?
By Joseph Agu
Read Time: 8 minutes
TL;DR: Consuming most of your carbs later in the day isn’t some magical tool and the insulin fairy still isn’t the key to getting lean. Overall consumption of calories and macros is the most important thing to control
What is Carb Back-Loading?
Carb Back-Loading (CBL) –basically revolves around taking advantage of the supposed fluctuations in insulin sensitivity (IS) within the muscle and fat tissue throughout the day, as well as the non-insulin mediated uptake of glucose within the exercised muscles.
For example, insulin sensitivity in both muscle and fat tissue is generally higher in the morning relative to the evening [1]. As such, it has suggested that eating carbs in the morning/earlier in the day (when overall IS may be higher) relative to the evening, will result in greater glucose uptake by the muscle (a good thing), but also in the fat tissue (a potentially bad thing).
Therefore, it is is suggested that a way to get around this problem would be to train in the evenings as well as consuming almost all of your daily carbohydrate post-workout (PWO), whilst eating as little carbs as possible throughout the day. That way, you would supposedly take advantage of the reduced IS in fat tissue in the evenings, but also have the benefits of increased insulin sensitivity (more specifically, non-insulin mediated uptake of glucose) in the muscles PWO due to the evening training.
In addition, by avoiding carbs as much as possible during the day (when overall IS is high), fat gain via de novo lipogenesis (the creation of new fat tissue via carbohydrate), would apparently be minimised. Overall, this would hypothetically result in the potential for successful body recomposition (i.e. gain muscle whilst losing fat).
The following points briefly summarise how CBL works:
Shift calories to later in the day, eating lighter in the morning and early afternoon, and feast at night. This may include skipping breakfast. Keep carbs at an absolute minimum throughout the day until training. Train in the afternoon, at around 5pm or so. Start ingesting carbs after your training session, up to 30 minutes later. Continue eating carbs throughout the night.
Does research support the idea of CBL?
There are correlational data signifying associations between shifting the intake of calories at different times of the day and adiposity (generally favouring eating earlier in the day). However, given the limitations of observational research, I’ll solely focus on randomised control trials here.
The whole idea of shifting carbohydrate intake to later in the day is largely based on two studies, which are frequently cited throughout the book on CBL.
The first study by Keim et al [2] compared the effects of eating 70% of the day’s calories in the morning (AM) vs. the evening (PM) on body mass and body composition during a six-week hypocaloric diet (60% CHO, 18% PRO & 22% FAT) in a group of 10 women. It was found that the ingestion of the larger AM meals resulted in greater weight loss compared with the larger PM intake, but this extra weight loss consisted of lean body mass (LBM). Therefore, the consumption of larger PM meals resulted in greater preservation of lean body mass (LBM) and resulted in a greater reduction of fat mass (see table below).
This study possessed several design strengths, the most notable of which was that it was conducted in a metabolic ward, meaning that food intake was strictly controlled. Furthermore, the 10 women underwent a structured exercise programme consisting of cardio and resistance training, making the results somewhat more applicable for those implementing CBL. However, two notable limitations of this study include the relatively small sample size (10) and method of assessing body composition (total body electrical conductivity, which is similar to BIA). BIA isn’t the most accurate means of assessing body composition! [3]
The more recent trial used to support the evening carb intake of CBL is a 6-month study by Sofer et al [4], in which the authors compared the effects of carbs eaten mostly at dinner vs. eaten throughout the day, in diets consisting of 1300-1500 kcal (40-50% CHO, 20% PRO & 30-35% FAT) in a group of 78 Israeli police officers.
It was found that reductions in weight, body fat and waist circumference were greater in the evening-carb experimental condition vs. the control condition (Table below). In addition, glucose control, inflammation, blood lipids and satiety were improved to a greater degree in the evening-carb group.
Moreover, leptin levels decreased to a lesser degree in the experimental condition and may partially explain the better maintenance in satiety within this group, as well as the greater observed weight loss. It is possible that the greater reductions in satiety in the control group led to a greater caloric intake in comparison to the evening-carb group, and thus explaining the more favorable body composition results seen in the experimental group.
Although this study looks extremely promising for CBL with respect to all the anthropometric, hormonal and biomarker data, the methodological limitations of the investigation are worth briefly discussing. Whilst a specified diet was prescribed, dietary intake was self-reported (unlike the shorter trial above).
It is therefore possible that the participants’ reported intakes were inaccurate, especially when considering the hectic work patterns on police officers. Similarly, caloric intake wasn’t set according to the individual. Whilst still on the subject of food intake, an intake of 20% protein is the equivalent to roughly 65-75g per day.
As the participants in this trial had an average body mass of 98.3kg, this would equate to a daily protein intake of 0.66-0.76g/kg, which is below the RDA of 0.8g/kg. This intake is below that required [5] to spare muscle mass and promote satiety and is far below that typically consumed [6] by weight trainees looking to improve body composition. Therefore, the study’s relevance to such populations is questionable (not to mention the lack of a structured exercise programme).
Finally, when we look at the differences in weight loss between groups, the experimental group lost 2.54kg more than the control group over the 6-month trial, and was the only anthropometric measure to reach statistical significance. To put things into perspective, this equates to a greater weight loss of 14g per day, or 100g per week; this is hardly anything to write home about and surely isn’t worth the hassle if it doesn’t easily fit into your routine.
There are other controlled studies [7,8] similar to the two aforementioned, but no changes in body composition or weight loss were observed, probably due to short study durations (15 & 18 days, respectively) and other inherent limitations. Due to their neutral findings, these studies tend not to be mentioned by CBL advocates. Though, by the weight of the limited controlled evidence, it does seem that shifting caloric (and carbohydrate) intake to later in the day would provide a SLIGHT benefit with respect to body composition, hormonal changes and makers of health and disease.
Summary and Practical Recommendations
The general concept of CBL is supported by science. However, this science is limited to two studies with their fair share of limitations, rendering the topic inconclusive in the absence of compelling evidence. Moreover, if we consider shifting only carbohydrate as opposed to overall caloric intake, the data supporting the concept of CBL diminished to a single study. Nevertheless, if we consider the overall impact of calorie/carbohydrate placement on body composition from these two studies, though significant, in reality such differences are trivial.
In my opinion, the total macronutrients consumed by the end of the day will have the largest impact in terms of body composition changes; the author of the book on Carb Backloading even admits this (at least in regards to meal frequency), “the breakdown and distribution of calories and macro nutrients throughout the day matters far more than the number of meals”. At the end of the day, CBL will get some people results, but it will do so because of the caloric deficit and sufficient protein, not because of the intricate protocols.
As such, with respect to carb placement for body composition and performance, total intake is the primary consideration. A secondary consideration would be the positioning of these carbs in relation to training (around-workout nutrition) in order to optimise training performance. Once these factors are in place and consistently achieved, then, and only then, should someone have the option to experiment with hypothetical protocols.
ReferencesIt's Damian Lillard appreciation week across the basketball world, and that's great. But that's not exactly what's happening here. This is about Cliff Robinson. This is about Brian Grant and Rasheed Wallace. This is about me in a bar, sometime during college, squinting at a crappy television across the room, and watching Brandon Roy pull up for a 30-footer to kill the Rockets.
True, the current Blazers have won 11 of their last 12 to crash the playoff race in the West. They've beaten Cleveland, Oklahoma City, and Golden State since Christmas. Lillard dropped 51 on the Warriors last weekend, and he's averaging 30 and 8 in the month of February. CJ McCollum is the most improved player in the NBA. Meyers Leonard is Portland's hilarious answer to Draymond Green. But more than anything, that Warriors game last weekend helped me appreciate the tradition here.
Lillard is just the latest incarnation. Weird, awesome things are always happening in Portland. East Coast games finish, it's almost time for bed, and then, for basically my whole life, it's always been a good idea to check out the Blazers game.
Open Floor podcast: Blazers big man Meyers Leonard on his NBA journey
Even when they're bad, they're good. The fans are loud enough so that all home games are competitive regardless. They haven't won an NBA title since 1977, but that only makes them easier to love. They have the best logo in the league. The uniforms are top five at least, and the Rose Garden has the prettiest floor in basketball. I still don't know what #RIPCITY means and I will always prefer Top Pot to VooDoo Donuts, but these are minor criticisms.
Go read these great discussions of this year's team, but then, come back here.
Watch Cliff Robinson
[youtube:https://youtu.be/7JDRDAEAHys]
He was the first NBA player I remember recognizing outside of Jordan, because at 5 or 6 years old, playing in the NBA Finals and having the same name as Clifford the Big Red Dog was all I needed to know. More importantly, though, watch the video.
People embed videos in articles all the time, and nobody ever actually clicks them to watch. But click for Cliff. And then, the next time someone starts waxing poetic about the new stretch–four revolution that's sweeping the NBA, think back to that video with Rod Strickland and the '95 Bulls. Where were you when Cliff Robinson invented the future?
Watch the Jail Blazers Era in 24 seconds
[youtube:https://youtu.be/ezv4GaXmjec]
And then, go to this Eastern European website to watch Rasheed Wallace's episode of MTV Cribs. Nobody had ever thought to connect the words "master bedroom" and "urinal" before, but Rasheed did, and that's important.
The Jail Blazers legacy hasn't aged as well, as the NBA's done its best to outgrow that post-Jordan wave of angst and crime. It's for the best. Nobody in Portland misses Ruben Patterson.
But for the record, if you were rooting for the Lakers in that Western Conference finals, I don't want to know you. Likewise, if someone approaches me on the street and wants to talk Bonzi Wells, that's a pretty good sign that there will be a lifelong bond.
Watch Arvydas Sabonis and think about basketball
Arvydas Sabonis was never as good as Shaq. Rasheed Wallace was never as good as Duncan, Clyde Drexler wasn't Jordan, and Damian Lillard isn't Steph. There are plenty of people who would call this history depressing, but that's OK, because anyone who sees it that way doesn't understand what makes the NBA work. Basketball has 82 games stretched over five months, playoffs that last another three months, and the entire time, we know that two, maybe three teams have a real shot at winning a title. This sport only works because it gives us characters who are vivid enough to keep us entertained along the way.
Sabonis was Marc Gasol with an extra 50 pounds on him, and like five no-look passes every quarter. He was apparently even better in Europe before a knee injury slowed him down, but as far as I'm concerned he played his entire career at 38 years old. He'd look sweaty and a step slow at every turn, until he'd unlock quickness that seemed impossible.
Anyway, Shaq was the most dominant big man ever. Sabonis had knee pads, pudgy dad strength, and ballerina feet. Who was more fun to root for?
Watch Brandon Roy kill the Rockets
I remember when Brandon Roy declared for the NBA out of high school and confused the entire basketball world. For a lot of high school stars of his era—Ndubi Ebi, Korleone Young—that's where things would've gone off track. But Roy worked out for the Blazers, realized how far away he really was, and withdrew his name before he'd lost eligibility. Then he had to qualify for school. He took the SAT three times, and in the meantime, he worked an $11-an-hour job cleaning sewage out of shipping containers on the Seattle docks, waiting to see if he could attend college. He eventually broke through on the final try, and over the course of a few years at Washington he took his team to the Sweet 16, and transformed himself into a lottery pick. In Portland, he won Rookie of the Year, made three All-Star teams, and then got hurt. But before the degenerative knee condition that cost him a career, he signed an $82 million deal to make sure he'd be taken care of for life. Again, there's a way to frame his career as tragedy, and there's a way to see this as the coolest kind of basketball story.
Read Bill Walton describe the sports world
Last year: "The perfect thing about basketball is that it is the most complete, surreal, and special game of all, where all you have to do is wait for the opening tip and then each and every player, each and every component, has a chance to make a contribution on every single play. Basketball, yeah, shine a light. Unlike football, which is basically a halfway house between the army and prison, and baseball, which is a bunch of out-of-shape guys standing around, taking steroids, and waiting for the game of life to come to them. Basketball, yeah. Who can play? Who's in shape? Who's got game?"
That should be read aloud before every NBA game. Not kidding.
And, obviously, watch Damian Lillard
Against the Thunder:
Against the Cavs:
Against the Rockets:
Against the Warriors:
You don't have to click any of those videos. Just know that Lillard is the closest thing basketball has to living, breathing proof of the clutch gene. He's like Steph Curry, but less refined, which makes it even more fun to watch him go nuts.
The Blazers' season makes no sense. This team was never supposed to be this good. Lillard had struggled down the stretch last season, and when LaMarcus Aldridge (and three other starters) left, it looked like the Blazers were stuck with a small backcourt that couldn't guard anyone, no big men, and a franchise player that was due $100 million and probably wasn't even an All-Star. Now we're here, and I'm glad Lillard somehow missed the All-Star Game, because an angry Damian Lillard is as entertaining as anything the NBA has to offer.
This is just a reminder that none of this is an isolated incident. After the 51-point game, I started thinking about how much I've loved watching the Blazers all year, and then realized that it's like this almost every year.
As for the rest of this season, I have no idea if they can keep this going. The schedule isn't easy down the stretch, and the big men are awfully young. And Lillard can't possibly stay this hot, can he?
I know it will be fun to watch him try. It's tradition.The rules have attracted more scrutiny as a result of the two suits challenging their legality.
The McDonald’s spokeswoman, Andrea Abate, said in an email, “We are confident that the terms of our franchise agreements, past and present, are appropriate and legal.”
McDonald’s abandoned the rule a month after CKE was sued over its version of the provision. But several fast-food experts said the timing could be coincidental because restaurant companies often try to distance themselves from their franchisees to avoid joint liability if the franchisees are sued.
The suit against McDonald’s was filed later on behalf of an employee who worked at a franchise in Apopka, Fla., during the time when the rule was in effect.
Andrew Puzder, the former CKE chief executive who was President Trump’s original pick for labor secretary, once told Congress that franchisees are “not a division, subsidiary or alter ego of CKE, but are truly independent small businessmen and businesswoman.”
The lawyers suing McDonald’s and CKE are trying to use the distinction Mr. Puzder made against the companies, arguing that these separate companies within one brand are signing illegal anti-competitive agreements with one another. The lawyers in the CKE case have cited guidance issued by federal officials in October that indicated it was against the law to, among other things, “refuse to solicit or hire” other companies’ employees.NEW YORK - NEW YORK (AP) — The owner of a storied New York City bagel business shortchanged the state out of a lot of dough by cheating on taxes, prosecutors said Wednesday.
H&H Bagels owner Helmer Toro pocketed more than $369,000 in income and other taxes withheld from employees' paychecks and set up shell companies to game the unemployment insurance tax system out of another $33,000, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said.
Officials said it was the first criminal case in the state — and maybe the country — arising from new laws against manipulating a business ownership structure to lower unemployment taxes.
Toro was released from custody after pleading not guilty to charges including grand larceny. His lawyer didn't immediately return a telephone call.
The 37-year-old business bills itself as the world's biggest bagel manufacturer, dispatching millions of bagels around the world each year from a Manhattan bakery. H&H has been featured in TV's "Seinfeld" and the 1998 movie "You've Got Mail," not to mention countless food guides and best-of lists.
The business has a history of tax trouble. State officials shut down its West Side facilities for a few hours in May, saying H&H owed more than $25,000 in sales and other taxes. The bagel emporium hastily paid and reopened; a representative called the matter a misunderstanding.
In the new case, prosecutors say Toro deducted $369,000 in taxes from his roughly 100 employees' paychecks but held onto the money instead of paying it to the state for them, prosecutors said.
Meanwhile, he transferred most of the employees to a series of shell companies masquerading as new businesses, prosecutors said. New firms can get lower unemployment insurance tax rates than older ones because the rates reflect how many employees a company has laid off over time.
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That maneuver saved Toro money, but it ultimately costs other companies that have to pick up the slack to finance unemployment benefits, officials said.
"Who pays the difference? It's everyone else who's squeezed," said state Department of Taxation and Finance Deputy Commissioner William Comiskey.
A 2003 survey by the federal General Accounting Office found that such tactics — known as unemployment tax "dumping" — cost more than $120 million in just 14 states over three years. A federal law the next year empowered states to crack down on the practice.
Since New York's law took effect in 2006, state officials have pinpointed $20 million worth of unemployment insurance dumping by 354 companies. But the H&H case is New York's first criminal prosecution on the issue, state Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith said.
State officials said they believed it also was the first nationwide. The federal Department of Labor couldn't immediately say.
Toro, 59, could face up to 15 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines if convicted.Parking in Vancouver's West End could get a lot pricier.
The city is sending out feelers to West End residents in the form of an online survey to find out just how many people support a potential 700 per cent increase to annual on-street parking permits.
With enough support, the city would increase the annual permit rate from $80 to $600 and eliminate free 2-hour parking spaces in favour of meters as part of the West End Parking Strategy, pending approval from council.
According to Vancouver transportation director Lon LaClaire. the price hikes will encourage current permit holders to look for alternatives and free up parking space.
"The target is that we want to have 15 per cent of the spaces of available so you don't spend a bunch of time driving around looking for parking, adding to congestion and to the traffic problem, "said LaClaire.
The changes would reduce the maddening hunt for parking that many West End drivers endure by five minutes and one kilometer, according to a study conducted by the City.
"We've had general support from across the community, with exception of the current permit holders — and that's understandable," he added.
The new rate would be grandfathered in, meaning only new applicants would incur the updated costs.
A'market-based' price
But not everyone is satisfied with the city's approach.
"Parking's not that bad in the West End," said Paul Juzkow, a 25-year resident of the neighbourhood. "And you shouldn't need a 700 per cent price increase to fix it."
Juzkow has had his parking permit for the nearly 20 years, which he uses when he goes out to get groceries or visit friends on the other side of the West End..
"You should be able to park in your own neighbourhood for a reasonable price," he said.
Juzkow believes the new permits will only add to the already high costs of living in the West End and will unfairly target residents who rely on vehicles.
"Some people need their cars. Not everyone can ride a bike," he said.
The survey closes on August 15. The proposal will be introduced to council in the fall.Natural gas
Natural gas accounts for almost a quarter of United States energy consumption. The NYMEX Division natural gas futures contract is widely used as a national benchmark price. The futures contract trades in units of 10,000 million British thermal units (mmBtu). The price is based on delivery at the Henry Hub in Louisiana, the nexus of 16 intra- and interstate natural gas pipeline systems that draw supplies from the region's prolific gas deposits. The Natural gas market prices displayed in Trading Economics are based on over-the-counter (OTC) and contract for difference (CFD) financial instruments. Our Natural gas market prices are intended to provide you with a reference only, rather than as a basis for making trading decisions. Trading Economics does not verify any data and disclaims any obligation to do so. This page provides - Natural gas - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news. Natural gas - actual data, historical chart and calendar of releases - was last updated on February of 2019.The massive operation to return residents to Fort McMurray is set to begin June 1, nearly a month after 88,000 people were forced to flee a wildfire still burning up much of northeastern Alberta.
Premier Rachel Notley outlined her government’s long-awaited re-entry plan Wednesday, saying residents will soon be allowed to return to their homes in a phased, multi-day process starting with the least damaged areas.
However, she warned that residents will not be coming home to life as they left it. While essential food, power and urgent medical care will be available, other amenities such as clean drinking water and full hospital services will take longer to restore.
As well, the premier noted the entire plan is dependent on meeting several safety factors, including an end to the ongoing threat of the fire, reasonable air quality and functional traffic controls.
“We know people want to return home as soon as it is safe to do so, and that is what we are working towards,” Notley said Wednesday from the provincial operations centre in Edmonton. “We don’t want to have people completely commit to a certain date, but at the same time we’ve been hearing more and more that people need to have some idea of the dates we’re dealing with. We hope we’ve achieved that balance.”
Asked how confident she was the city can be made ready over the next two weeks, Notley said the timeline is based on the “best guess” of officials on the ground.
The most damaged communities, including Beacon Hill, Abasand and Waterways, will be re-entered last. People whose homes have been destroyed or severely damaged will be allowed to visit their properties, though how this will be done was still being worked out.
It is expected the visits will be conducted under police escort, and the properties will be fenced off. Scott Long, director of operations for the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, said officials are hoping to accommodate residents wanting to retrieve any lock boxes or valuables that might have survived.
For evacuees who lost their homes, Notley said support is available through the Wildfire Evacuation Transitional Accommodation Benefit. The benefit provides eligible applicants with funding to pay for rent and utility connections for up to 90 days from the date of evacuation.
Appearing alongside the premier was Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, Fort McMurray’s MLA, who said the announcement of the re-entry plan brings “a great sense of relief.”
Jean, who lost his home in Fort McMurray to the fire, choked up as he vowed that traumatized residents will see their city come back stronger than ever.
“We will rebuild our city and it will be better than ever,” he said. “I will have my tool belt on and my shovel in my hand, and we will clean it up and rebuild it.”
Mayor Melissa Blake was also in attendance, saying the timeline makes the long journey back “a little bit shorter.”
The province said a phased approach is necessary to ensure a smooth flow of traffic on Highway 63, adding that residents can come back later than their specified re-entry date. The process is expected to be complete by June 15, which is also the day the Northern Lights Regional Health Centre is scheduled to resume full operations.
Air quality in Fort McMurray hit a score of 51 on Wednesday morning, but then reduced to 11 later in the day. A score of 10 is considered extreme.
A boil water advisory is expected to be in place until the end of June to allow officials to flush the treatment plant and make sure it is working correctly.
Plans were also being developed to deal with a mountain of rotten food and ruined refrigerators and freezers in people’s homes.
As for the fire, officials said it has now burned 423,000 hectares and is still out control north of Fort McMurray. The blaze, which destroyed Horizon North’s Blacks |
are sold out in all the places I normally shop for them, like Sasa and BonjourHK. If they come back in stock, I will update.
#1 Sheet Mask Pick: Evercos 행인 - Prunus armeniaca
These have now eclipsed my Winter/Spring HG mask, the Mediental Balhyo Jinjeong Troubled Skin Healing Mask, because my summer skin just doesn't need the same mega hydration bomb that my winter skin does.
Evercos masks are my summer favourites, because although they are slightly thicker than the Lovemore silk masks, they cling just as well and are just as comfortable, but with the added perk of much, much more hydration.
The Lovemore masks dry out quite quickly in comparison, but my Evercos Hanbang masks continue to bathe my face in cool hydration for 20-30 minutes, bringing me relief and the soothing scent of traditional Korean medicinal herbs.
Prunus armeniaca are my favourite out of the 6 types, but all of them are excellent. I have purchased them from Avecko, and from the Korean shopping site 11st; the screenshot guide to using 11st is here. Repurchase? Every chance I get. I want my mask collection to be 80% Evercos and then the rest be a mix of Lovemore, LJH tea tree, and some wacky stuff for kicks. Theare my favourite out of the 6 types, but all of them are excellent. I have purchased them from Avecko, and from the Korean shopping site 11st; the screenshot guide to using 11st is
Where to get them: I got mine from 11st and from Avecko, and supposedly they are also available at Testerkorea just under a different name- but please be warned I have not confirmed they are the same masks myself.
Occlusives
Rarely and sparingly used, but if I do, these are it:
Left: Mizon Snail Gel. Right: Beauty of Joseon Dynasty Cream
Yep, just two.
Mizon Multi Function Formula Snail Recovery Gel Cream : Korean, gel moisturizer ( reviewed)
AM/PM routine: Up to 2x a day, but in actuality more like 1-2x a week, if that. Purchased from RoseRoseShop most likely, but I've bought 15+ tubes in my day so I'm a little fuzzy on where they're all from at this point. I rarely feel the need for occlusives once my hydrating steps are done, but if I want to seal things in without I feel like I need to seal in my hydrating steps but my skin doesn't want anything heavy or rich. Repurchase? There will always be a tube in my stash, no matter the season.
Where to get it: Luckily this is now widely and cheaply available, at $9 from Amazon, and $6 from ebay, but I would not pay over $10 for it. It's around $5 from Korean sites like RoseRoseShop, but then you have to consider shipping.
Beauty of Joseon Dynasty Cream : Korean, cream ( reviewed)
Since reviewing this (then) unknown
product, it's popping up everywhere
and I couldn't be happier about it! AM/PM routine: I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to use this once the weather warmed up, but even when used sparingly, this cream wraps my skin in hydration. Purchased from Avecko, although it's now available from two ebay sellers and either BeautyNetKorea or KoreaDepart. Repurchase? Already on my second jar. Where to get it: I got mine for $12 from Avecko but you can get it for $20 on Amazon Prime, $23 on ebay, or $16 plus shipping from KoreaDepart.
Treatments/Sunscreen/Makeup
terror
So, here's the updated version of what my Summer 2015 routine is looking like these days!I don't even want tomy face, I just want to sloth around on the couch and eat frozen fruit. Don't ask me to slather on a full routine, it's too hot for that.If I give in to the temptation to skip my routine, though, I'm asking for clogged pores, breakouts, and a thick layer of dead skin and grime to build up on my skin.As I mentioned in my 'Keeping Cool' post linked above, I was worried that come the summer months, my sheet mask usage would slow down as I needed less sustained hydration.As it turns out, I actually use sheet masks, not less, than I did when it was cooler, because I'm now too sticky and miserable to do my elaborate routine of toners and serums and ampoules and essences and creams and oils. So what sounds appealing enough to use?I now rely on chilled sheet masks for the'meat' of my routine, because their cool relief on my hot face is something I actually look forward to and feel motivated in doing.Are you ready for some realness? Because this is going to be very real. This has been my routine lately:If I do manage to do a more in-depth routine, it's still much shorter than my Winter/Spring version, because that's all my skin needs.As a quick reminder, I have Dehydrated Combination-Oily skin, so my focus is on re-balancing my skin by adding, not oil. Last week I posted a, where I almost entirely eschewed traditional rich moisturizers in favour of multiple layers of hydrating products. (But! I amthat I explained in detail in thepost, namely:So let's jump in to the products I'm currently using and/or testing!I'm eschewing treatments like clay masks while my skin is in the grip ofazelaic acid, and it's too hot for things like sleeping packs. Instead, I've decided to include my current makeup obsession. Sunscreen is more important than ever, of course!A dirty little secret about column writers is that we each have a handful of road-tested templates that we use all too frequently to make sense of something that has happened and demands our wise opinionation. These past few days I've been rummaging around in my stash for just the right template to apply to the showdown between the Republican governor and public-sector unions now playing out in Wisconsin.
One old trick is to suggest a thought experiment that asks readers to consider the mirror image of what is going on. In this case, you'd be asked what the reaction would be from Republicans and business interests if a newly elected Democratic governor and legislature proposed to deal with a budget deficit by first raising unemployment benefits and then pushing through a big corporate tax increase for all but the Democratic-leaning tech sector. For good measure, the package would also contain a ban on corporations making political donations without getting the permission of each shareholder, lest they use their power to repeal the tax increase and push the budget out of balance.
This is analogous, of course, to what Gov. Scott Walker has proposed for dealing with Wisconsin's budget gap: the tax breaks for businesses, the benefit cuts for all state employees except Republican-leaning police and firefighters, the automatic decertification of all public-sector unions and the stripping of their right to bargain anything but wages. Looking at Walker's reflection in the political fun-house mirror makes it abundantly clear that the governor has a more ambitious agenda than merely closing a modest budget gap.
Another useful template is the double-reverse historical analogy. The last time any elected leader made such a direct and brazen attack on the legitimacy of the union movement was when Ronald Reagan risked havoc in the skies by firing hundreds of striking air-traffic controllers and preventing them from ever getting their jobs back. This dramatic bit of union-busting became a turning point from which organized labor never really recovered - and, like the Wisconsin imbroglio, skillfully played off resentment of public employees whose pay and benefits exceed that of the average taxpayer.
But rather than playing Reagan to Wisconsin's truant teachers, Walker overreached, refusing to give up his union-busting even after the unions agreed to his benefit-cutting demands. Now that he has allowed the unions to reframe the issue from one of greedy public servants to one of political revenge, Walker has single-handedly succeeded in bringing more attention, unity and sympathy to the union movement than it has had since... well, since Ronald Reagan took on the control tower. A mischievous columnist might even take this opportunity to speculate whether this is the beginning of the revival of labor's fortunes.
Back when I was working at Inc. magazine in the mid-1980s, we loved nothing better when approaching a public-sector issue than to ask how the private sector would handle it. Faced with the situation in Wisconsin, we would have called up Tom Peters or Peter Drucker and posed the example of a new chief executive brought in by the shareholders (i.e., the voters) to rescue a company suffering from operating losses (budget deficit) and declining sales (jobs). Invariably, they would have recommended sitting down with employees, explaining the short-and long-term economic challenges and working with them to improve productivity and product quality in a way that benefits both shareholders and employees.
Now compare that with how Wisconsin's new chief executive handled the situation: Impose an across-the-board pay cut and tell employees neither they nor their representative will ever again have a say in how things will be run or get a pay raise in excess of inflation. A great way to start things off with the staff, don't you think? Remember that the next time you hear some Republican bellyaching at the Rotary lunch about why government should be run more like a business.
Regular readers of this column are no doubt familiar with my favorite gambit, which is to spy the common thread in several of the day's seemingly disparate events - the "it's really all one story" ploy. Using this approach, the political badgering in the Badger State is no different from the budget crises in Ohio, New York and California and the looming shutdown of the federal government in Washington. All of them are manifestations of the meta-reality of a country that for years had been living beyond its means. Now, even three years after reality came crashing down, we have only just begun to figure out how to bring about the reduction in living standards that will be necessary to create a sustainable balance. Will the pain come in the form of prolonged high unemployment? Or wage and salary cuts? Or reduction in the value of homes and financial assets? Or loss of ownership of American companies? Or price inflation? Or higher taxes? Or reductions in government services and benefits?
The right answer, of course, is "all of the above." The hole we dug for ourselves was so deep and so wide that we'll need all of them to get us out of it. The central political, economic and social challenge of the next decade will be to decide how we are going to apportion the adjustment among these various channels, and among the various classes and sectors and regions of the country, without tanking the economy or breaking the bonds that hold our society and our democracy together.
That's the sort of seemingly profound and sweeping observation that columnists love to save to provide a dramatic ending, not unlike the timpani-and-brass crescendo at the conclusion of a Beethoven symphony. The columnist's hope is that, in the rhetorical afterglow, the reader will never notice that the column never managed to offer a realistic prescription or even a clue as to what might happen next.Cisco Systems is laying off thousands of employees as it moves to drive software growth in new areas like security and internet of things, according to multiple sources close to the company.
San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco is expected to announce the cuts within the next few weeks, as many early retirement package plans have already been offered to employees, said sources. Cisco is set to announce its fourth fiscal quarter results after the market closes tomorrow.
The cuts stem from Cisco’s transition from its hardware roots into a software-centric organization.
Editor's note: This story was updated after Cisco Wednesday disclosed plans to lay off up to 5,500 employees in a restructuring plan that it will implement this quarter.
[Related: Cisco Earnings Preview: Microsoft Integration, Security Growth And Switching Revenue Decline]
"They need different skill sets for the software-defined future than they used to have," said one source familiar with the situation, who declined to be identified. "In theory the addressable market could be higher and margins richer, but it will take some time to make this transition."
Cisco declined to comment.
The company's headcount as of April 20, 2016, was 73,104, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Wall Street analyst Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research predicted in a January report that Cisco would cut 14,000 employees in 2016. Chowdhry said the cuts would be due to the company not needing as many employees in the back-end process as more customers transition to the cloud as well as Cisco being late to enter the cloud market.
The networking leader has a history of announcing layoffs at the end of its fiscal year each summer. In August 2014, Cisco revealed plans to cut 6,000 jobs, roughly 8 percent of its total workforce at the time. In August 2013, the company cut 4,000 employees, about 5 percent of its global workforce at the time. Cisco also cut 1,300 positions in July 2012. One of Cisco’s largest layoffs came in July 2011, when the company cut 6,500 employees, representing about 9 percent its global workforce. Cisco had no layoffs in the summer of 2015, coinciding with Chuck Robbins' ascension to CEO that July.
Cisco’s stock has increased more than 15 percent over the past three months and hit a nine-year high on this week at $31.23 per share.Moving cheque payments into the 21st century has taken another huge leap as Barclays announced today the roll out of 'cheque imagining' to one million more of its customers.
The service, which allows people to pay in cheques by taking a photograph of it rather than visit their branch, has been available to those with an iPhone since last summer. But now, those with android smartphone and iPads, can choose to sign-up for the scheme.
The pilot, available via the banking app, has seen 30,000 iPhone customers sign up for it in the last year and nearly £750,000 deposited.
Scroll down for video showing how it works
Breakfast banking: Barclays is rolling out cheque payment technology to one million more customers
The technology allows cheques up to £500 to be deposited and the money is then available for withdrawal instantly.
Cheques take a maximum of two working days to clear if deposited by 4pm, rather than the six-day period via the traditional way.
If the cheque bounces, customers are notified and the money taken back out of the account.
On its terms and conditions, it says: 'You authorise us to take a cheque payment back out of your Barclays account - even if we have allowed you to make a payment or take cash out against it,' in a number of scenarios.
This includes for bounced cheques, cheques accidentally paid into the wrong account or if you are unable to provide the real, original cheque within ten days, if requested.
Several businesses have already signed up to the scheme. The high street banking giant said corporate customers are able to scan and upload cheques using software on their office computers or by logging into a website.
Ashok Vaswani, Barclays personal and corporate banking chief executive, said: 'Our customers have welcomed this convenient new way of depositing one of the oldest forms of payment, which is why extending to android phones is an important step forward in giving all customers the ability to pay in cheques using their mobile devices.'
Previous plans to kill off cheques from 2018 were ditched a few years ago after the Payments Council faced an outcry from MPs, small businesses, charities and pensioner lobby groups, who said the needs of millions of vulnerable people were being ignored.
Barclays has been working closely with the Government towards the aim of delivering a UK-wide solution to cheque imaging.
A previous government consultation found that the traditional method of processing cheques creates 'delay and expense'.
When paper cheques are paid into banks, they end up going on a journey around the country, travelling to the clearing centres of both the bank collecting the cheque and the paying bank so that sort codes, account numbers, and signatures can be checked for fraud and to establish there are sufficient funds.
The technology also comes at a time as big banks cut branch numbers and have kitted many existing ones out with gadgets in a bid to cut queues - and retail staff numbers.
Last month, Lloyds Bank confirmed it was piloting a scheme which would enable customers to pay in cheques using their smartphone.59% of voters want the former First Lady to release her medical records, according to a recent poll.
The issue hasn’t received much attention in the mainstream media — but it could in the weeks ahead, thanks to a series of highly revealing videos and photographs that appear to show Clinton in various states of illness and incapacitation while campaigning on the stump.
Lingering concerns about Clinton’s health go back to her highly-publicized fall while traveling overseas as Secretary of State in late 2012. Clinton suffered a concussion that also produced a life-threatening blood clot located near her brain. Her doctors at the time warned that Clinton’s clot problem could easily recur, with attendant complications.
Some analysts — mostly conservative bloggers — speculate that Clinton’s clot may have caused additional neurological and nerve damage. Combined with the effects of stress, aging (Clinton is 68), and poor dietary and exercise habits, it may left her vulnerable to chronic illness. While the former First Lady sometimes references mind-body health practices like yoga there is no evidence that she engages in regular “fitness” activities.
The growing photographic and video evidence of Clinton’s health problems, while not conclusive, is certainly compelling. It includes:
Apparent seizures she’s suffered on the campaign trail, including highly-publicized incidents such as this one from July 2016.
The documented appearance of a Secret Service “handler” at her side armed with an anti-seizure “diazepam pen,” apparently to ward off panic attacks and other potentially embarrassing episodes.
Prolonged coughing fits while speaking to audiences — in some cases lasting nearly two minutes.
A large circular lesion on her tongue typical of someone suffering from syphilis, HPV or tongue cancer.
Pronounced bulges under clothing indicating the likely presence of a special medical device, possibly a defibrillator vest.
An inability to perform routine physical activities, including the climbing of stairs, without active support from others.
Clinton supporters have pushed back against these claims, suggesting that they are part of the same conservative media conspiracy that has dogged the candidate for years. Some argue that her health problems, if real, are little cause for concern because she has an “infrastructure” in place to ensure that her administration continues to function smoothly in the event of her absence.
Clinton herself may have fueled speculation about her health status when she insisted during her running mate search that her prospective VP should have significant national security experience and be ready to assume the presidency “on day one.” Her seeming insistence on this point – and eventual choice of Virginia senator Tim Kaine, who serves on the foreign affairs and armed services committees – may have reflected an underlying concern about her vulnerability to persistent illness.
What conditions might Clinton be suffering from? Her latest critic, controversial pharmaceutical executive Mark Shrkeli, says Clinton’s apparent seizures, trouble walking, and periodic inability to control her facial expressions are likely symptoms of early onset Parkinson’s disease. He’s even speculated that she’s taking the drug which his own company produces to try to control these symptoms.
Clinton wouldn’t be the first presidential candidate to suffer from some kind of debilitating disease. Franklin Roosevelt had polio for most of his life and his staff went to great lengths to conceal his condition from the public, fearing that it would undermine his popularity. And in 2011, reports surfaced that GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann suffered from severe migraines and fainting spells at a time when she was leading the Republican field, leading to demands from rivals that she immediately release her medical records.
Some critics felt those charges against Bachmann – based largely on hearsay from disgruntled ex-aides – were blatantly sexist – a throwback to the Victorian era when women of privilege were routinely portrayed as the “weaker” sex. Partly for this reason, mainstream news organs are likely to tread carefully with Clinton unless more obvious signs of incapacity emerge.
But with Trump on the defensive, she may not get so lucky. The two candidates have already accused each other of being “mentally unstable” and even “crazy.” If Trump fears he’s in danger of losing the race, he may well decide to pull out all the stops. And charges that Clinton’s lying about her health might resonate with voters – especially independents — already concerned about her penchant for deception generally.
As Bachmann discovered to her chagrin, it hardly matters whether your health problems are severe enough to call into question your qualifications and capacity to lead. Unflattering publicity about them can plant pernicious doubts that may prove subtly damaging to your candidacy.The first production 650B (~27.5-inch) downhill bike has just been released and it looks killer. Aside from the wheel size change, Intense took the opportunity to tweak their 951 platform and make a few upgrades along the way. Get the scoop from Jeff Steber and crew in this killer intro video by Suspended Productions, then catch the geometry, complete specs, and some bangin' photos in the press release, below.
Temecula, Ca -- INTENSE CYCLES proudly introduces the next step in the evolution of downhill racing - the 951Evo. Made in the USA with aggressive geometry and eight and a half inches of travel, the 951Evo offers advanced features, patented VPP suspension, and the added benefit of a 27.5” wheel.
Downhill races are won – or lost – by seconds. Our long heritage of building winning race bikes continues by utilizing the larger wheel size for a faster, more efficient race run.
“We have spent countless hours designing, testing and fine tuning the 951evo. The end result is a bike that will shave seconds off your race run… Every second counts when your total race time is sub 3 minutes. The 951evo has consistently dropped seconds from our test teams fastest times.” - Director of Sales, Mike Dettmers.
The 951evo has been designed from the ground up to utilize 275 wheels. We have adjusted geometry and suspension kinetics to create a new ride, ideal for today’s aggressive race courses.
A slacker 62.5 degree head tube angle pushes the front end a bit further out, giving the rider more confidence at high speeds, through steeps and on gnarly rock sections. We have kept the chainstay as short as possible at 17.5”. This magic number keeps the bike stable at high speeds, yet nimble while cornering. Top tube lengths have been increased throughout all sizes to allow for additional room in the cockpit of the bike.
The 951evo will come standard with a Cane Creek Double Barrel coil shock. Our product development team has worked side by side with Cane Creek to create the best possible shock tunes out of the box. The Double Barrel shock has a massive range in tune-ability allowing the rider to fine-tune the shock to match their riding style.
Complete bike spec will include Shimano Zee Components, Novatec Wheels and an FSA Gravity Cockpit. We are also working with Vee Rubber to release our own Intense-designed 275 DH Tire. Also available as frame-only.
As an added bonus, the first 25 complete 951evo’s will be “limited edition” and feature custom Electric Blue Paint, Anodized Gold Links and Hubs as well as a set of matching HT Pedals at no additional charge.
951evo begins to ship late May 2013. How long will you wait to go faster?
Visit intensecycles.com/951-evo for more details.Bill Clinton is counting backward these days. At 65, he says, he has already lived longer than any of his male forebears going back three generations. He has attempted to use this argument with his daughter, he says, hoping to induce Chelsea into getting on the grandbaby express train. Chelsea gives her father an equally persuasive counterargument: if she waits until she’s 50 to produce an heir, her father will just have to live until he’s 83.
“The chances of having a grandchild stand in inverse proportion to how much you talk about it,” Bill Clinton says.
A group of us heard this family vignette from the former president at a Park Avenue fundraiser this week for Rep. Louise Slaughter. The upstate New York congresswoman, who broke her femur in April, won’t be able to get out of a wheelchair until fall to campaign in a tough fight following redistricting. Bill Clinton came to her rescue.
Clinton is perceptibly shorter now, and much leaner, but the charisma is all the more concentrated. The shrewdest mind to occupy the Oval Office in our lifetime still has one of the most impressive hard drives around. What Clinton talks about nonstop these days is the presidential election. And given his new perspective as a bona fide senior, you could be excused for thinking he is running for reelection.
The key question of the presidential election, he says, is, which of these candidates is likely to bring America back into shared prosperity? And as the nation awaits a Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, the former president gave his take on what an adverse ruling would mean.
In the 51 years since President Kennedy took the oath of office, Republicans have had 28 years in the White house; Democrats have had 23. In the same half century, the economy has produced 66 million private-sector jobs—42 million of them under the Democrats, 24 million under the Republicans. “No one states these facts,” Clinton asserts.
“When President Obama took office, it was four months after we suffered the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression,” he says. “The depth of it continued to persist through the first six or seven months of the president’s term.
“Then he passed his legislation, and it began to have an effect. In the last three or four months, the private sector has produced 4.3 million new jobs. That is 40 percent more than the 2.6 million jobs produced by the private sector in the seven years of the Bush administration before the financial meltdown. That’s another relevant fact that hardly anybody knows.”
By Clinton math, Republicans’ score on job creation since they were given control of the House is negative by 670,000 people. “They refused to back the president in his support for state and local government, and that has allowed 670,000 teachers, police officers, firefighters, and others to be laid off,” Clinton asserts. “If they had supported the president, the unemployment rate would be 7.3 percent instead of the current 8-plus percent.”
If the Supreme Court decides to invalidate the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, there will be consequences, Clinton said, which he claims aren’t being reported, and which he spelled out:
• Changing the health-care delivery system has already produced two years in a row of 4 percent inflation in health-care costs. This is the first time in 50 years that health-care costs have gone up so little. Killing the Affordable Care Act would let inflation loose again.
• Some 2.6 million people ages 21 to 26, who now have insurance coverage for the first time because they can be carried under their parents’ policy, would lose it.
• $1.3 billion dollars in insurance refunds have already been paid to businesses and individuals because now the law says 85 percent of your premium has to go to health care and not to profits and promotion. (California hasn’t reported yet, but will likely increase that figure to more than $1.5 billion.) Refunds would shrink.
• If Republicans succeed in persuading the Supreme Court to repeal the individual mandate, somewhere between 12 million and 16 million Americans will be unable to get health insurance because of preexisting conditions.
Clinton predicted that if the law is declared unconstitutional, Republicans will suffer a backlash when millions of Americans calculate what they have lost. Before the Affordable Care Act passed, two thirds of all the applications for bankruptcy were because of health-care emergencies, a consequence likely to return if health care inflation again rises precipitously.
Clinton drew laughter with anecdotes about individual mandates that go back to the founding of the nation. In 1797, when John Adams was president, he signed a bill that required all seamen to be covered by hospitalization insurance through their employer.
None other than President George Washington signed a bill that required employers to provide hospitalization insurance for sailors. Another of the soldier president’s individual mandates would tickle Republicans today: every free male person between ages 18 and 44 had to keep a musket, a bayonet, and ammunition in his home. Even Quakers were denied exemption.
Before Mitt Romney as governor signed the individual mandate, Massachusetts had the highest health-care costs in America. Today, that state is seventh, because inflation in health-care costs in that state have been much lower than in the country as a whole. Why? The mandate prevents insurance companies from shifting their promotional costs to consumers, Clinton said.
After his remarks, Obama’s chief campaign surrogate lightened up and laughed with a few of us about his senior status. I reminded Clinton that 20 years ago I had asked if he expected to see the day when his wife would be president. At the time, he belted out a family cheer: “Eight years of Bill, eight years of Hill!”
Was he still cheering her on to run for president?
He gave the demure smile of a husband who dares not speak the obvious. “It’s the same answer I give about my daughter’s decision on having children.”
The chances of Hillary running stand in inverse proportion to how much the First Husband-in-Waiting talks it up.When you can give me recommended reading on health, thin-shaming, and "thin privilege" that DOESN'T come from this blog (or, better yet, a medical professional or nutritionist), I will take you seriously and think about your oh-so hypocritical words more deeply. In the meantime, bashing everyone who isn't fat makes you look ignorant, unintelligent, and - I hate to say it - jealous of thin people.
Asked by
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Your message really shows that this blog isn’t for you, especially taking into consideration the amount of outside sources we have provided from scholars, nutritionists, and researchers who understand how using the framework of privilege to better understand marginalized experiences can be incredibly helpful / empowering for marginalized people. We even provide medical research, but in reality no amount of research can break through prejudice and privilege denying. That is work you have to do on your own.
I do have to say that the idea fat people are jealous of thin people is just basic ignorance on your part. Talking about how fat people deal with discrimination by framing it in thin privilege isn’t bashing. What you actually feel is fat people speaking out about their experiences and making you be aware of the privilege you have.
Other than that, we are not here for you. We are not here to prove to you fat people face discrimination and have the right to exist. We are not here for you to take us seriously because we don’t really care if you do. The amount of fat hatred we see on a daily basis in our askbox, some of which you have personally sent in, just makes us want to work harder at what we are already doing. So thanks for that.
-FatBodyPolitics
PS. I just wanted to add, thank you to everyone who is commenting and posting links to places to find articles. I’ve had face to face confrontations with people who say things like this offline. I’ve even had someone who asked me if I have read ALL of the research around fatness as I was standing next to a table with 20 books on the subject. They really don’t want facts, because what we are doing is eroding away at the very foundation of fat hatred they have relied on for most of their life. They think sending in vile asks will make us be quiet. Nope. Not happening.Signs if you're a doo doo mama: If your fake ponytail is pressed and straight and your regular hair doesn't match the texture and/or color. You're a DooDoo. If you talk like "Dis" and "Dat". You're a DooDoo. If your hair can't fit in a ponytail and you try to slick it down with jail and/or put clips in it so it can stay. You're a DooDoo. If you haven..t upgraded your cell phone and you're still walking around with an i205 boost mobile. You're a DooDoo. If you are a gangbanger. Welcome to the DooDoo club. If you walk it out or lean with it rock with it to everyone song. You're a DooDoo. If you walk around yelling "Besty" "Sissy" "Pookie" "Ay Babay" "Cuzzy" " Bootah " or anything close. You're a DooDoo. If you have more than 3 tatoos. You..re a DooDoo. If your hair looks like Kunta. You're a DooDoo. If you wear knock-off's. You..re a DooDoo. If you buy jeans from a "Guy" who sells them from his car. DooDoo. If you think Remy Ma is your idol. You're a DooDoo right along with her. If you fight just to get attention. You're a DooDoo. If more than Half of these are you. Give yourself a round of applause. You..re a DooDoo MamaScience denialism at a skeptic conference
12/12/14 UPDATE Updated & expanded version of this essay is now online here.
My response to Watson’s indirect reply to this essay
Appendix of errors and misrepresentations expanded from 24 to 90 items
Most of it revised, ~50% new content
All common e-book formats now available and paperback coming soon
On Mars right now, an earthling-built mechanical spider-scientist is driving around and learning the secrets of our sister world. It is doing so after a months long journey, remote controlled by people tens of millions of miles away. What an amazing time to be alive, to witness such wonders of science. This makes it all the more jarring to see how science is routinely attacked by subsets of the very same group of earthlings who can harness its power to accomplish such amazing feats. Readers of this space can probably readily summon examples to mind: biology textbooks in Louisiana, denial of climate change, attacks on the usefulness of vaccinations.
As scientists and skeptics, many of us have grown to expect this sort of attack on science from conservative and religious corners, and that is undoubtedly true. But science denialism is not confined to the political right, nor to the religiously motivated. Liberal ideology is a factor in irrational arguments against genetically modified crops,nuclear power, vaccines and immunization, and is the ideology of most people advancing 9/11 conspiracy theories. But surely, if such denialism showed up at a skeptics conference, there’d be hell to pay, right? Well at least it wouldn’t be met with thunderous applause… but that is just what did occur a few weeks ago at the conference called “Skepticon“.
The denialism brought to Skepticon was to the field of evolutionary psychology, a thriving social science with roots going back to Charles Darwin himself. The critic was internet pundit and self-described feminist and skeptic Rebecca Watson. Watson is known for her blog website, as co-host of a popular skeptic podcast, and for speaking at secular and skeptic conferences. But Watson holds no scientific training or experience. The charge of science denialism is a serious one, and I will support the claim with a preponderance of evidence.
Watson’s Skepticon presentation. I refer to this YouTube video via video indices for your convenience.
This essay is necessarily lengthy, so here is an index to help you navigate. Part VI includes a link to a public folder containing the PDF-format versions of many scientific papers discussed here, as well as a Microsoft Word version of the 25 false and misleading claims.
[box] I. Overview and analysis
II. Rebecca Watson uses all 5 tactics of science denialism
III. Some lingering questions
IV. 25 false and misleading claims made by Watson
V. Conclusion
VI. Resources & further reading
[/box]
About me
I am an anthropology graduate student at UCLA, a part of its bioanthropology section which conducts research in evolutionary psychology and other areas. I do not speak as an authoritative expert on evolutionary psychology, but I do possess significant experience. I have been closely following developments in the field for about a dozen years. I focused on evolutionary psychology during my undergraduate education at the University of Illinois, and my senior thesis research project, an hypothesis test of an adaptationist hypothesis, will be published in December’s issue of Quarterly Review of Biology. I am presently engaged in three research projects in the field of evolutionary psychology.
I have dedicated my professional and academic life to evolutionary psychology research. This may well mean that I am biased, but I shall strive for objectivity in this post (as I do all my writing). And I will cite evidence to support each of my criticisms.
I. Overview and analysis
A brief synopsis
Rebecca Watson’s talk was called “How girls evolved to shop and other ways to insult women with ‘science’ “. Watson reviews a number of evolutionary psychology claims, generally in the form of their appearance in online newspapers and in at least one book. All of these claims she ridicules pertain to sex differences, such as differing tastes between men and women in shopping, sexual preferences, and in the purported favoring of the color pink. Watson’s talk begins with examples of media distortion, the acceptance of non-experts to support a predefined conclusion (for example, that women evolved to shop a certain way), Interestingly, her talk does not seem to be at all about the media distortion of science. Instead, her conclusion focuses on research demonstrating the demotivational effects of perceptions of stereotypical gender imbalances.
The main points Watson wants to drive home are that evolutionary psychology isn’t science (as indicated by the quotes in the subtitle), and that researchers involved in it work deliberately to reinforce stereotypes and to oppress women. Watson frequently makes overly broad claims about the “they” or “it” of evolutionary psychology without further specificity, leading her audience to assume she simply refers to the entirety of the field, or to a large majority of it.
Points of agreement
I think Watson correctly points out several important things about evolutionary psychology. For example, that the media loves to hype and distort the science to sell newspapers, much as it does with other fields like genetics. Her examples in the introduction are good ones. Watson also brings up some truly objectionable research. The study purporting to show evidence that women prefer redd |
also sets it in the wider context of a growing uncertainty within America itself at the time.
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But the Syrian Baathists weren't going to be outclassed. A month later they mounted their coup, and this time without the CIA's help. Hafez al-Assad was one of the leaders. Everything went fine until Assad arrived outside one of Syria's main airbases to take it over. The officers refused to let him in because they said he wasn't really a Baathist, he was a Nasserist. Assad stood for hours shouting "I'm not a Nasserist, I'm a Baathist" at the airmen. The revolution was held up as they argued over the niceties of Pan-Arab theory.
But it succeeded. And it now looked as if the Baath vision might really spread across the Arab world. Nasser was furious - he used everyone's favourite political insult. He called them "fascists".
Here is a comedy sketch the BBC programme That Was The Week That Was did two days after the 1963 coup in Syria. It's not very funny, but it is interesting because of the prism through which it sees the coup. The "joke" is that the coup will only happen when the western media arrive. The plotters are waiting for the Panorama reporter to turn up because they know that coup will not be real until it is reported by the west.
It is an early example of the techno-orientalism that is being repeated today in the media's firm belief that it is the western social media networks that made possible the rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt.
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The dream of Baathism was to overcome the sectarianism that had always riven the Arab world, to create a secular society in which everyone was included. But now, as Assad and his four friends on the secret committee took power, that sectarianism rose up to possess and distort their revolution.
Of the five conspirators, three of them - including Assad - came from the Alawite sect. They were a Shia sect who lived in the western mountains of Syria. The two others were Ismailis - another branch of Shia Islam. Traditionally power in Syria had resided with the old Sunni landowning and merchant class of the plains who also made up the bulk of the population. The seizing of power by Assad and his conspirators was a dramatic reversal. It was the triumph of a low-class peasant population and lower middle class urbanites against the old metropolitan elites. And the Sunnis hated it.
The hatred went deep because when the French ruled the country they had practiced a programme of divide and rule which deliberately fomented and exaggerated the sectarian divisions in the country. Faced with this, Assad began to follow a logic that would destroy the very core of Michel Aflaq's dream of a united Arab world. Assad wasn't a sectarian, but he moved through the army and the institutions of state ruthlessly installing those he trusted into positions of power - while removing, often bloodily, Sunnis, Druze and other members of the old elite Syrian class. And many of those he installed were Alawites, like him.
In the process Assad also came into conflict with the other four members of the secret committee behind the revolution. So he destroyed them too. Until, by 1969, there were only two men left - Assad and an austere General called Salah Jadid. Assad couldn't get rid of Jadid because he was protected by the ruthless Bureau of National Security. So Assad sent troops to the one petrol station where all the security bureau jeeps refuelled - and grabbed them one by one. When the head of the bureau realised that he was defeated, he rang one of Assad's allies and then shot himself so that his enemy could hear the gunshot.
Here is some footage - beginning with the celebration from the early days of the revolution among the urban poor - as the Baath party free them from the old bosses. Followed by images of the strange Baath state that Assad then created in Syria. It was centred round countless images of Assad as a the heroic leader of the nation. It is very odd because, unlike Saddam who was doing the same sort of thing in Iraq, in every image and statue Assad looks like a middle manager.
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Assad believed that this ruthless exercise of power was necessary because of the deep sectarian divisions. It was a strange echo of the American diplomat in 1949 who believed that a military coup was needed to "quarantine" the Syrian people - because Assad believed that the naked exercise of power by an elite was necessary to enforce a genuinely plural society. To quarantine the Syrians from their sectarian past.
And many Syrians greeted it with a sigh of relief after the relentless chaos and violence of the past twenty years. They welcomed the stable state Assad created for fear of the alternative - and as a result he became popular with millions of Syrians.
But what he had also created was a repressive state that resorted to violence and fear to maintain its rule.
Here are some unedited rushes - shot in 1977 - of the city of Hama. They are labelled Stockshots in the BBC archive. But since 1982 they have become more than that. They are one of the few film records that remain of a city that was practically destroyed by Assad as he struggled to put down an uprising by the disgruntled Sunnis, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, who dominated the town. The accepted estimate is that Assad's security forces killed 10,000 people - and bulldozed many of the buildings - to try and wipe away yet more of his enemies.
But he wasn't successfull, Hama is yet again one of the main centres of the revolt against Assad's son's regime.
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Nobody knows what is going to happen in Syria today. The optimistic view is that a new generation is emerging who really want a proper representative democracy in which all groups can negotiate with each other without violence. The pessimistic view is that those sectarian divisions, encouraged by the French - and then incubated further by the Assad family - will re-emerge. In truth no-one knows.
But there is a terrible naivety in the West's view of the ongoing revolt in Syria. It forgets its own history and the role it played in helping create the present situation.
Back in the 1950s America set out to create democracy in Syria, but it led to disaster. It was by no means the only factor that led to the violence and horror of the Assad dictatorship, but its unforeseen consequences played an important role in shaping the feverish paranoia in Syria in the late 1950s - which helped the Baath party come to power. And while the Western powers no longer remember this history, the Syrians surely do.
The man who had originally created the Baath vision, Michel Aflaq, was forced into exile in Iraq. He died in 1989 - a sad man, convinced that Assad had destroyed his dream of a united, confident Arab world.
The Iraqi Baaths hated the Syrian Baaths and they embraced the exiled Aflaq. After he died they built a grand mausoleum for him in Bagdhad. Here is a photo of what had happened to the mausoleum by 2006. It had been turned into a gym for the invading American troops. You can see Aflaq's tomb behind the weights and the table football.
One idea of personal transformation had been replaced by another.Tether “Audit”: Someone has money somewhere to use for something
Tether, being frequently questioned regarding their transparency and lack of audit, have proudly published a link to something called “Final Tether Consulting report” by Friedman LLP:
Friedman LLP has provided an important memorandum on current and historical Tether balances. Always full reserves.https://t.co/LKCAtDJi51 — Tether (@Tether_to) September 30, 2017
…but it’s not an audit and leaves more questions than it answers.
The question it answers is – is there money on Tether’s account?
The answer is yes.
Questions that remain unanswered, however, are:
where do they bank? (bank names blacked out);
are they in compliance with regulations? (the reporting agency clearly states they have not evaluated legality of any operations);
whose bank account is that? (some trust fund that Tether may not even have access to, Tether can’t bank in the US);
what is the purpose of the funds on the account (FLLP says they do not know if these are for token redemptions or for something else).
Currently the presented internal document is not really comforting anyone except people who have not read it. If you wish to read a thorough investigation of Tether’s activities we recommend checking out the Bitfinex’ed blog.
========
waiting for the story to develop? Sign up to the mailing list:ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) – Anaheim's mayor says federal officials have agreed to review two deadly police shootings after a fourth day of violent protests.
Mayor Tom Tait says he'll meet with members of the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI on Friday.
Authorities say as many as 1,000 demonstrators surged through downtown in the Southern California city Tuesday night, smashing windows on 20 businesses and setting trash fires. Police and patrol cars were pelted with rocks and bottles. Hundreds of police used batons, pepper balls and beanbag rounds.
Police say there were 24 arrests and at least five injuries to officers, media and demonstrators but none was serious.
The clashes followed a City Council meeting Tuesday in which city leaders voted to ask the U.S attorney's office to investigate weekend officer-involved shootings that killed two men and prompted a $50 million civil-rights lawsuit.
The council chambers were packed with people and about 100 protesters were unable to get inside, Dunn said.
They chanted and held a peaceful rally outside. But the crowd swelled and when some people pushed on the windows, police came out and pushed them back, Dunn said.
Demonstrators marched to police headquarters and back to City Hall, but violence didn't erupt until around 6:30 p.m. when police detained a demonstrator who reportedly had a gun, Dunn said.
It turned out the man did not have a weapon, but some in the crowd began throwing rocks at officers, Dunn said.
While most protesters were peaceful, some appeared to be outsiders who "were prone to violence and wanted to incite" both the crowd and police, Dunn said.
Some demonstrators took over an intersection, and a splinter group walked to the scene of one police shooting and back, throwing rocks, vandalizing cars and throwing a Molotov cocktail that damaged a police car, Dunn said.
Throughout the night, knots of protesters spread through downtown, setting fires in trash cans and smashing windows of businesses, including a Starbucks, Dunn said. There also were reports that a T-shirt store was looted, he said.
A gas station was shut down after reports that some protesters were seen filling canisters with gas.
Police used pepper balls and beanbag rounds. Twenty adults and four minors were arrested, Dunn said.
About five people were hurt, including a police officer, two members of the media who were struck by rocks, and some protesters who may have been injured by police or during a fight between demonstrators, authorities said.
The family of Manuel Diaz sued the city and the Police Department on Tuesday, claiming he was shot and killed Saturday while running away, lawyer James Rumm said. The family is seeking $50 million in damages.
The second shooting occurred Sunday when officers spotted a suspected gang member in a stolen sport utility vehicle. A brief pursuit ended when three people jumped from the vehicle and ran. Joel Mathew Acevedo, 21, fired at an officer and the officer shot and killed him, authorities said.
The back-to-back deaths took the tally of shootings by officers in this Orange County city to six so far this year, up from four a year before. Five of the incidents were fatal.
Police Chief John Welter said Diaz was shot after two officers approached three men who were acting suspiciously in an alley before running away. One officer chased Diaz to the front of an apartment complex.
The chief would not say what led the officer to shoot Diaz. But Welter said Diaz failed to heed orders to stop and threw something on the roof of the complex that contained what officers believe was heroin. Both officers were placed on paid leave pending an investigation.
Mayor Tom Tait said a description from court papers relayed to him by a reporter that Diaz had been shot in the leg and in the back of his head was "unsettling."
Anaheim is a city of contrasts that ranges from upscale, hilltop homes to packed, gritty apartment complexes.
The city 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles is known as home to the Angels baseball team, and above all, to world-famous Disneyland.
As California's Hispanic population has grown, so has the Anaheim's, hitting nearly 53 percent in 2010, census figures show.
Residents' concerns about the use of police force in the city aren't new. Last month, Anaheim decided to look into hiring an independent investigator to review police shootings amid protests by relatives of those killed in officers' gunfire.
Latino activists say that isn't enough and they want federal officials to investigate the Saturday shooting.
Tait, who has called for state and federal investigations, said: "If the Latino community is saying there is a rift, then there is rift, and we need to address that."
The police union issued a statement defending the officers involved in the shootings and said both men killed were gang members who had criminal records. The union also said that just before Diaz turned toward officers, he pulled an object from his waistband — a place where gang members commonly hide guns.
The FBI is conducting a review to determine whether a civil rights investigation is warranted, agency spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said."School has become an abnormal setting for children," says Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College. "Instead of admitting that, we say the children are abnormal."
Gray, who is the author of the 2016 Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, says that a cultural shift towards a more interventionist approach to child rearing is having dire consequences. "Over the same period of time that there has been a gradual decline in play," he told Reason's Nick Gillespie, "there are well documented, gradual, but ultimately huge increases in a variety of mental disorders in childhood—especially depression and anxiety."
Gray believes that social media is one saving grace. "[Kids] can't get together in the real world...[without] adult supervisors," hes says, "but they can online."
For more on Gray's work, follow his blog at Psychology Today.
Edited by Mark McDaniel. Cameras by Todd Krainin and Jim Epstein. Music by Broke for Free.
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Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.A new drug which mimics the effects of being drunk without any health risks such as addiction or hangovers is being developed.Professor David Nutt, the Edmond J Safra professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, has identified candidate molecules that reproduce the pleasurable effects of alcohol but are much less toxic.He is looking for investors to help develop the product and bring it to the market.Alcohol mimics a chemical called GABA which is produced in the brain, but it also acts on receptors for other brain chemicals, researchers said.The alcohol substitute would be designed to target GABA receptors very selectively, avoiding undesirable side effects such as hangovers and loss of coordination.An antidote could also be made to block the receptor, allowing drinkers to sober up quickly. Nutt told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that he first tested such a compound many years ago, but even better substitutes could be developed."There's no question that you can produce a whole range of effects like alcohol by manipulating this system in the brain," he said."In some experiments, the effect is indistinguishable from alcohol," said Nutt."What we want to do is get rid of any of the unwanted effects of inebriation, like aggression and memory impairment, and we just want to keep the pleasure and the sense of relaxation."We think by clever molecular modelling we can get rid of the risk of addiction as well," said Nutt.Nutt hopes to make a range of cocktails containing his synthetic alcohol substitute. He has spoken to investors about taking the product to market, but many are wary that the drug might be controlled by legislation."I would like the government to make a recommendation that we try to improve on the health of our people by allowing these kind of substitute alcohols to be legal," said Nutt. Alcohol is responsible for 2.5 million deaths worldwide each year. Making safer alternatives available could reduce the harms significantly, Nutt argued."I think this would be a serious revolution in health benefits, just as the e-cigarette is going to revolutionize the smoking of tobacco. I find it weird that we haven't been talking about this before because it's such an obvious target for health improvement," said Nutt.One of the biggest benefits to Nutt's alcohol substitute would be to remove addiction as a drinking problem.The scientist said 10% of drinkers become addicted, and that addicts account for most of the one and a half million people killed by alcohol every year.The professor said that the drug would be taken in the form of a range of cocktails, and added: "I've done the prototype experiments myself many years ago, where I've been inebriated and then it's been reversed by the antagonist. That's what really gave us the idea. There's no question that you can produce a whole range of effects like alcohol by manipulating the brain."Baru Cormorant believes any price is worth paying to liberate her people-even her soul. When the Empire of Masks conquers her island home, overwrites her culture, criminalizes her customs, and murders one of her fathers, Baru vows to swallow her hate, join the Empire’s civil service, and claw her way high enough to set her people free.
Sent as an Imperial agent to distant Aurdwynn, another conquered country, Baru discovers it’s on the brink of rebellion. Drawn by the intriguing duchess Tain Hu into a circle of seditious dukes, Baru may be able to use her position to help. As she pursues a precarious balance between the rebels and a shadowy cabal within the Empire, she orchestrates a do-or-die gambit with freedom as the prize. But the cost of winning the long game of saving her people may be far greater than Baru imagines.
Seth Dickinson’s highly anticipated debut novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, is available September 15th from Tor Books and Tor UK. Get a closer look at the cover art for both the US and UK editions here. Read chapter two below, or get started with Chapter 1.
Chapter 2
She lost her father Salm, and from this she nearly lost her mother, too.
“You cannot believe what they teach you,” mother Pinion hissed in her ear. (They smiled together at the chaperones who brought Baru to visit her home, which seemed strangely squalid now.) “You must remember what they did to Salm, and give them nothing. The families are taking secret council. We will find a way to drive them back into the sea.”
“They will never go back,” Baru whispered, pleading. “You cannot fight them, Mother. You don’t understand how huge they are. Please find some way to make peace—please don’t die like Salm—”
“He isn’t dead,” Pinion growled. “Your father lives.”
Baru looked at her mother, at Pinion’s eyes red with fatigue, her shoulders bunched in anger, and wondered what had happened to the woman who was a thunderbolt, a storm cloud, a panther. Of all things Pinion looked most like a wound.
And Pinion, looking back, must have seen an equal disappointment in Baru’s eyes. “He lives,” she said again, and turned away.
The argument grew between them like a reef.
By Baru’s tenth birthday, she came to expect visits from the wool merchant Cairdine Farrier more often than her mother or father. He always had advice. Dress this way, never that way. Befriend her, or him—but not him. She liked his advice better than Pinion’s, because it was full of things to accomplish now rather than things to avoid forever.
The school’s Charitable Service instructors came from many foreign places. There were more and stranger people among the Masquerade garrison than Baru had ever seen at Iriad market. “If they can be teachers,” Baru asked, “then I can be one, too? I can go to another land and make little girls stop reading at unjustly early hours?”
“You can be anything you want in the Empire of Masks!” Cairdine Farrier, grown fat these past few years on island life, tugged affectionately on her ear. “Man and woman, rich and poor, Stakhieczi or Oriati or Maia or Falcrest born—in our Imperial Republic you can be what you desire, if you are disciplined in your actions and rigorous in your thoughts. That’s why it’s an Empire of Masks, dear. When you wear a mask, your wits matter.”
“You don’t wear a mask,” Baru said, studying him intently, wondering if there might be flaps behind his ears, fastenings in his hair.
Farrier laughed at her words, or her stare. He was like Pinion or Solit in his love of her sharpest thoughts. But he was like lost Salm in another way, in the way he relished Baru’s effrontery, her willingness to reach out and ask or take. “The mask is for acts of service. The soldier wears a mask on his patrol. The mathematician wears a mask defending her proof. In Parliament they are all masked, because they are vessels for the will of the Republic. And on the Faceless Throne the Emperor sits masked forever.”
A deflection. How unacceptable. Baru pursued her question. “When do you wear a mask? How do you serve?”
“It’s too hot on Taranoke for masks. But I am here to sell wool, and help occasionally in matters of charity.” He scrubbed Baru’s close-shaved scalp with his knuckles. Fat had plumped out his cheeks and weighted his jaw, but when Baru thought of fat men she thought of happy old storytellers at Iriad, pleased to be old, and large with joy. Cairdine Farrier did not seem that way. He carried his weight like a thoughtful provision, stored in preparation.
“What if you could wear a mask?” he asked. “What would you want, Baru?”
It had not occurred to Baru to want anything except stars and letters until the day when the red-sailed frigate moored in Iriad harbor. It had not occurred to her to want the impossible until she lost father Salm, first to that awful doctrine, and then to death.
Perhaps the death of fathers could be outlawed.
Perhaps doctrines could be rewritten.
“I want to be powerful,” she said.
Cairdine Farrier looked down fondly. “You should study hard for your service exam,” he said. “Study very hard.”
* * *
The service exam would not come for eight years. Baru worked herself raw for it.
Falcrest, she whispered to herself at night. Empiricism. Incrasticism. The academies of Falcrest. Parliament, and the Metademe, and the Morrow Ministry, and all their secrets. If only I can go to Falcrest—
So much to master, in that distant axis around which the Empire of Masks and the world turned. Secrets her mother had never dreamed of.
The terror did not stop with Salm.
Outside the walls of the Masquerade school, plague swept Taranoke. Quarantine closed the gates. The Taranoki children in the school, unable to get news of their relatives, waited bravely through their inoculations (a Masquerade concept, like a feeble sickness carried on a swab or a needle). But the quarantine did not lift, not that trade season nor the storm season after.
When rumors of the dead crept into the school, the sobs of bereaved students kept Baru from her sleep. Sometimes the rumors were false. Not often.
On lonely nights in the dormitories, surrounded by mourning, Baru would think with cold resentment: at least you know. Better to see the body, and to know how your beloved kin passed—better that than to lose your father in the night, as if he were a misplaced toy, a ship at a fraying moor.
Then the scale of the death outside became clear—the pyramids of corpses burning on the black stone, the weeping sores and lye stink of the quarantine pens. Baru didn’t weep at that either, but she desperately wanted to.
“Why is this happening?” She cornered Cairdine Farrier during one of his visits, furious and desperate. “What does this mean?” And when he made a gentle face, a face for blandishments and reassurance, she screamed into the space before the lie: “You brought this with you!”
And he looked at her with open eyes, the bone of his heavy brow a bastion above, the flesh of his face wealthy below, and in those eyes she glimpsed an imperium, a mechanism of rule building itself from the work of so many million hands. Remorseless not out of cruelty or hate but because it was too vast and too set on its destiny to care for the small tragedies of its growth. She saw this not merely in the shape of his eyes and the flatness of his regard, but in what they recalled—things he had said and done suddenly understood. And she knew that Farrier had let her see this, as a warning, as a promise.
“The tide is coming in,” he said. “The ocean has reached this little pool. There will be turbulence, and confusion, and ruin. This is what happens when something small joins something vast. But—” Later she would hold to this moment, because it felt that he had offered her something true and grown-up and powerful rather than a lie to shield her. “When the joining is done there will be a sea for you to swim in.”
The Masquerade teachers and sailors came and went freely. They were immune. Baru deduced the arrival of a second Masquerade frigate from a whole flock of new faces, including a lanky black-skinned midshipwoman who couldn’t have had more than two years on Baru but got to wear a sword. Baru was too embarrassed of her accented Aphalone to say hello, to ask how an Oriati girl had made herself an officer in the service of the Masquerade so soon after the great Armada War between the two powers.
Children began to vanish from the school, sent back out onto the island, into the plague. “Their behavior was not hygienic,” the teachers said. Social conditions, the students whispered. He was found playing the game of fathers—
The teachers watched them coldly as their puberty came, waiting for unhygienic behavior to manifest itself. Baru saw why Cairdine Farrier had advised her on her friendships. Some of the students collaborated in the surveillance.
When Baru turned thirteen, her friend and second cousin Lao, two years older and bitterly unhappy, came to her with twisting hands. “Lao,” Baru whispered, in the limited privacy of her curtained bed. “What’s wrong?”
“My special tutor,” Lao said, eyes downcast, “is a—” She lapsed from Aphalone into their childhood Urunoki. “A pervert.”
Lao’s special tutor was the social hygienist Diline, from Falcrest— gentle, patronizing, skin exotically pale. He took sessions with rebellious or homesick students. Baru had decided a long time ago that Diline could not help her on the civil service exam. “What has he done?” she hissed. “Lao, look at me—”
“He thinks I have a social condition.” Lao covered her eyes in shame, a gesture they’d all learned from their teachers. “He thinks I’m a tribadist.”
“Oh,” Baru said.
Later she would hate herself for the calculation she made here: What will it cost me to be associated with her, if she is? For the science of sanitary inheritance they had learned made it very clear what a horror it was to lie with another woman, and what punishment the tribadist would receive. The Imperial Republic had been born in revolt against a degenerate aristocracy, their bodies and minds twisted, Diline had explained, by centuries of unhygienic mating. From this Falcrest had learned the value of sanitary behavior and carefully planned inheritance. The diseases of tribadism and sodomy must be eradicated from the body and the bloodline…
But she and Lao were both Taranoki, born of Taranoki families, and that loyalty had come before the Masquerade and its doctrines.
“What will he do?” Baru asked.
Lao drew her knees to her chest and looked out through the curtains around the bed. “There’s a treatment. Conducted with the hands. Last time he suggested it, I told him I was on my period.”
Baru nodded. “But you have appointments with him every week.”
Lao’s face folded in the shadows. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” she said. “Even you, though you’re their favorite. Perhaps it’s for the best—it has to be cured young, they say, before it enters the hereditary cells—”
“No. No!” Baru took her hands. “Lao, I know exactly who to talk to. I can fix this.”
Lao squeezed her hands gratefully. “I can survive this. You have so much to lose.”
But Baru was already planning her movements, drunk on the thrill of it. Later, just as she would hate herself for her calculation, she would remember: This was my first exercise of power. My first treason.
* * *
But she was wrong. She did not know exactly who to talk to. Cairdine Farrier was no help at all.
“Listen to me, Baru,” he said, speaking softly, as if afraid they would be overheard here in the empty tufa courtyard in the corner of the school compound. “Young women express numerous hysterias and neuroses. It is a scientific fact, an inevitable consequence of the hereditary pathways that have shaped the sexes, that the young man is given to rage, violence, and promiscuity, while the young lady is given to hysteria, perversion, and disorders of the mind. If you want to be a powerful woman—and there are powerful women in the Empire, a great many of them—you must be a strong young woman. Is that clear?”
She took a step away from him, her eyes too wide, her mouth betraying her shock. It was the first time he had ever seemed angry with her. “No,” she said, with a naïve directness that she would later regret. “That’s not true! And besides, it’s Lao who has this problem, and—and why is it about Lao, anyway? It’s that tutor Diline who wants to put his hands on her!”
“Quiet!” Cairdine Farrier hissed. “Diline reports on social hygiene to the headmaster, and those reports go into your permanent files. Do you understand what it means for your future if you make an enemy of him?”
A year or two past she would have shouted I don’t care! but now she knew that sounded like hysteria, and despite her revulsion she focused on practicalities. “If you act,” she said, “then I won’t be making an enemy of him, will I? Just have Lao ejected from the school. She hates it here anyway. The headmaster could judge her unfit for service.”
From the near distance came the sound of a dish shattering in the kitchen and a man shouting angrily in Aphalone. Cairdine Farrier steepled his hands, a gesture that he always made when explaining things he thought were complicated. “Men like Diline give up their lives to work for your betterment. You will respect them. You will be agreeable toward their arts, even when they seem unpleasant. If Diline thinks your friend shows unhygienic tendencies, then he will cure her.” His eyes were dark beneath the redoubts of his brow. “Child, believe me: the alternatives will bring her much more pain.”
He’s explaining it to me, Baru thought, which means he thinks I can be convinced, which means he hasn’t given up on me. But if I push—
It’s not worth losing his patronage over this.
“All right,” she said. “Forget I asked.”
Cairdine Farrier smiled in pleased relief.
* * *
“Did it work?” Lao whispered, while they swept the floor beneath the quarantine seals.
Baru met her eyes and smiled half a smile, a crow smile, a lie. “I’m still exploring the options,” she said.
Looking back on this from adulthood she could not deny that she had considered abandoning Lao. Sacrificing her in the name of forward progress.
If she got to Falcrest, if she learned the mechanisms of power, surely she could save more than just one Taranoki girl. No matter how clever and brave Lao was, no matter how dear.
But Baru had another plan.
* * *
“Hey,” Baru said, as throatily as she could manage. She was thirteen, gawkily tall, intimidated by her target.
“Hey yourself,” the lanky Oriati midshipman said. Every other day she brought a package to the headmaster’s office and left the school through this back corridor, and that was where Baru had waited to intercept her.
Baru combed her louse-free stubble with one hand. “You’re an officer, aren’t you?”
“With an officer’s duties.” The midshipman squared her shoulders and began to push past, toward the outer door. Her Aphalone had its own accent. Perhaps she had been raised in a Masquerade school, just like Baru. “As you were, student.”
“Wait.” Baru caught her by the elbow. “I need your help.”
They stared at each other, almost nose to nose, Baru trying to stay up on her toes just to match the other woman’s height. She had very brown eyes and very dark skin and an intelligent brow and her arm worked with muscle.
“You’re a curious thing,” the midshipman drawled, adopting the easy superiority of Masquerade officers speaking to Taranoki. “Mind your hands.”
“That’s my problem,” Baru muttered, drawing closer, gambling that her impudence was more intriguing than revolting. “Hands. If you know what I mean.”
She had done a little thinking and a little reading about the Imperial Navy, a navy that expected its sailors to climb masts and work ropes and rigging, a navy that boasted a cadre of women captains and admirals who were by any account capable and respected. A navy that must, in the course of packing crews of mostly men onto tiny ships for months at a time, have confronted problems of this order.
The midshipman disengaged sharply, a quick step back and a turn that tore her free of Baru’s grip. Baru drew a nervous breath, ready to be struck or reprimanded.
“My name’s Aminata,” the other woman said. She checked the far end of the hallway, a guilty glance so familiar that Baru had to drown a chuckle. “I’m from Oriati Mbo. My family used to trade on Taranoke, and if you tell anyone I spoke to you I’ll gut you, you understand?”
Baru lifted her chin. “Not if I gut you first.”
Aminata considered her, smiling a little. Baru thought of a kingfisher eyeing a colorful frog. “We can’t talk in here,” she said. “I could get in real trouble for letting you out of quarantine.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You certainly never did,” Aminata said, lifting a small brass key. “Now come on. I’ll tell you how to solve your hands problems.”
* * *
She followed Aminata down the path behind the school to the edge of a bluff that overlooked Iriad harbor, giddy with fresh salt air and disobedience, with the rumble of thunder on the horizon, with the conspiratorial wariness of the older girl’s glances. “It won’t matter if anyone sees us,” Aminata said. “There’s a million of you little island rats, and if you’re not in the school they assume you’re just an orphan looking for errands.”
“Orphan?” Baru frowned at that. Taranoke’s robust nets of mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, had never left many children alone.
Aminata hawked and spat off the edge of the bluff. The sea rumbled and crashed below. “The plague’s been hard.”
“Oh,” Baru said, thinking: yes, of course, I knew that. The island of her childhood was gone. It had died in pus and desperation while she took lessons behind white walls.
It was storm season. In the harbor a pair of Masquerade warships roosted with their sails furled.
“C’mon.” Aminata sat on the bluff, legs dangling, and patted the rock beside her. “Tell me about your trouble.”
“I have a friend—”
“You don’t have to pretend it’s a friend.”
“I have a friend,” Baru said, although Aminata snorted, “who has attracted some unwanted attention. From a man.”
“And he’s done something to your friend already?”
“Not yet.” Baru sat beside her, fascinated by her red uniform. The Masquerade officers wore exquisite wool waistcoats, the broadcloth tight against weather. Aminata, sensible about the heat, wore the coat rakishly loose, and it seemed rather dashing. “Not yet |
Kaplan's impression "dead-on."[40] An episode of the sketch comedy series Robot Chicken titled "Major League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" includes a skit that stars Mr. Krabs and Pearl. The segment, animated in stop motion like most other sketches on the program, features Mr. Krabs using crab legs as the secret ingredient for Krabby Patties.[41]
A track on The Best Day Ever, a 2006 soundtrack album, titled "Fishin' for Money" features the vocal performance of Clancy Brown as Mr. Krabs.[42][43] In the 2017 Broadway musical based on SpongeBob, Krabs, played by Brian Ray Norris,[1] sings a duet with Pearl titled "Daddy Knows Best," an original composition written by Alex Ebert that highlights the characters' differences.[44] In his pre-Broadway review of the musical, Variety's Steven Oxman asserted that the musical's version of Mr. Krabs "fall[s] flat" compared to his animated counterpart, and that the theatrical adaptation "finds no humor or wit or even edge in Mr. Krabs' obsession with money, nor in the nonsensical element that his daughter is a whale."[44]
ReferencesCall it flash-fashion.
Namilia Spring 2018 NYFW show was an ode to lady bits. On Saturday night, the Berlin-based brand sent models down the catwalk in genital-glorifying getups.
There were little bejeweled vaginas adorning a Marie Antoinette-like brocade hoop skirt; balloon sleeves with suggestive pink folds; and feather-tinged fabric vulvas on a regal satin skirt.
Also present: throngs of thongs, pearl-encrusted boob tassels and cartoonishly enhanced bustiers, which turned the models’ boobs into zeppelins.
According to the show notes, designers Nan Li and Emlia Pfohl were inspired by Denis Diderot’s “The Indiscreet Jewels.” The 1748 tale centers on a sultan with a magic ring that can make a woman’s nether regions — aka her “jewels” — spill their amorous secrets.
The models, all in sky-high platforms, walked to a medley of Disney tunes, including “Someday My Prince Will Come” and “Beauty and the Beast.”
It wasn’t subtle, but it was pretty V-riffic.In recent years, Republicans have been characterized by two principal positions: They like starting wars and don't like paying for them. George W. Bush initiated two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but adamantly refused to pay for either of them by cutting non-military spending or raising taxes. Indeed, at his behest, Congress actually cut taxes and established a massive new entitlement program, Medicare Part D.
Bush's actions were unprecedented. During every previous major war in American history, presidents demanded sacrifices from rich and poor alike. As Robert Hormats explains in his 2007 book, The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars, "During most of America's wars, parochial desires--such as tax breaks for favored groups or generous spending for influential constituencies--have been sacrificed to the greater good. The president and both parties in Congress have come together to cut nonessential spending and increase taxes."
During World War II, federal revenues roughly tripled as a share of the gross domestic product (GDP) and the number of people paying income taxes expanded tenfold, from 3% of the population in 1939 to 30% by 1943. In 1940, a family of four needed close to $80,000 of income in today's dollars before it paid any federal income taxes at all. By the war's end, it saw its effective tax rate rise from 1.5% to 15.1%. (Today such a family only pays a federal income tax rate of about 6%.) But taxes weren't the only way the war was paid for. Spending on nondefense programs was cut almost in half, from 8.1% of GDP in 1940 to 4.4% in 1945.
Even during wars closer in magnitude to those in which we are presently engaged, significant sacrifices were made. In 1950 and 1951 Congress increased taxes by close to 4% of GDP to pay for the Korean War, even though the high World War II tax rates were still largely in effect. In 1968, a 10% surtax was imposed to pay for the Vietnam War, which raised revenue by about 1% of GDP. And there was conscription during both wars, which can be viewed as a kind of tax that was largely paid by the poor and middle class--young men from wealthy families largely escaped its effects through college deferments.
However, Bush and his party, which controlled Congress from 2001 to 2006, never asked for sacrifices from anyone except those in our nation's military and their families. I think that's because the Republicans understood, implicitly, that the American people's support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has always been paper thin. Asking them to sacrifice through higher taxes, domestic spending cuts or reinstatement of the draft would surely have led to massive protests akin to those during the Vietnam era or to political defeat in 2004. George W. Bush knew well that when his father raised taxes in 1990 in part to pay for the first Gulf War, it played a major role in his 1992 electoral defeat.
Consequently, Republicans resolved to fight our wars on the cheap and with deceptive cost estimates. On the eve of war in December 2002, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Mitch Daniels claimed that the war in Iraq could be fought at a total cost of $50 billion to $60 billion. Indeed, Bush even fired his top economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, for saying publicly that the war might cost between $100 billion and $200 billion.
Of course, both Daniels and Lindsey grossly underestimated the actual cost. According to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost close to $1 trillion thus far. That is exactly what economists not on the White House payroll expected. (See this December 2002 report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.)
In his 2008 book, What a President Should Know, Lindsey said that lowballing the cost of the war was a "tactical blunder" because it allowed Bush's enemies to claim that he lied us into war. But at the same time, Lindsey acknowledges that the administration never rose to "Churchillian levels in talking about the sacrifices needed." He also says that asking for sacrifice in the form of spending cuts and tax increases would have served the important purpose of involving the American people in the war effort. As it is, war is largely out of sight and out of mind.
According to the CRS, the marginal cost of continuing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is about $11 billion per month, with no end in sight. Although there has been some decline in spending for the Iraq war, it has been more than offset by the rising cost of the war in Afghanistan. According to OMB director Peter Orszag, it costs about $1 million per year per soldier in the field, so adding 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan, as President Obama is expected to do next week, will cost another $30 billion per year.
The White House has given no indication of how it plans to pay for expanding the war in Afghanistan. More than likely, it will follow the Bush precedent and just put it all on the national credit card. But at least some members of Congress believe that the time has come to start paying for war. On Nov. 19, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., introduced H.R. 4130, the "Share the Sacrifice Act of 2010." It would establish a 1% surtax on everyone's federal income tax liability plus an additional percentage on those with a liability over $22,600 (for couples filing jointly), such that revenue from the surtax would pay for the additional cost of fighting the war in Afghanistan.
It's doubtful that this legislation will be enacted. But that's not Obey's purpose. He will probably offer it as an amendment at some point just to have a vote. Republicans in particular will be forced to choose between continuing to fight a war that they started and still strongly support, or raising taxes, which every Republican in Congress would rather drink arsenic than do. If nothing else, it will be interesting to see those who rant daily about Obama's deficits explain why they oppose fiscal responsibility when it comes to supporting our troops.
Obey makes no secret of his motives. He knows that deficits need to be reduced at some point and this will put pressure on spending programs he supports. "If we don't address the cost of this war, we will continue shoving billions of dollars in taxes off on future generations and will devour money that could be used to rebuild our economy," Obey explained in a press statement.
He is not alone in his fear that war presents a threat to the Democratic agenda. As Boston University historian Robert Dallek told Obama at a White House meeting earlier this year, "war kills off great reform movements." He cited the impact of World War I in ending the Progressive Era, World War II in killing the New Deal, the Korean War in terminating Harry Truman's Fair Deal program and the Vietnam War in crushing Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
At this point, Republicans are probably nodding in agreement. If it takes wars to end ill-conceived social programs, then that's another argument in favor of continuing the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. But that's a very short-sighted view because, as essayist Randolph Bourne once put it, "war is essentially the health of the State." Historians Robert Higgs and Bruce Porter, among others, have documented the pernicious effect of war on the size and scope of government. It creates a ratchet effect in which taxes and spending grow and civil liberties are restricted permanently, because when war ends, we never go back to the status quo ante.
If it takes the threat of a tax increase to get people to think seriously about whether it's worth continuing to fight wars far from home--wars that have only the most tenuous connection to the national interest--then it's a good idea. History shows that wars financed heavily by higher taxes, such as the Korean War and the first Gulf War, end quickly, while those financed largely by deficits, such as the Vietnam War and current Middle East conflicts, tend to drag on indefinitely.
If Americans aren't willing to follow John F. Kennedy and "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" to fight a war, then we shouldn't be fighting it.
Bruce Bartlett is a former Treasury Department economist and the author of Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action and Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. Bruce Bartlett's new book is: The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.
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Boeing probes international market for human spacecraft
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: February 10, 2011
WASHINGTON -- Boeing is weighing international sales of its CST-100 commercial crew spacecraft if NASA selects the firm to continue development of the capsule, a company official said Wednesday.
Artist's concept of the CST-100 spacecraft approaching the International Space Station. Credit: Boeing
The aerospace powerhouse is designing and testing systems for its CST-100 space capsule, a craft the company says could begin flying astronauts to low Earth orbit by 2015. It will launch on existing rockets to lessen development risk and costs. When the CST-100 carries U.S. crews, the capsule would launch on Atlas 5, Delta 4, or Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral, Fla. In addition to flights to the International Space Station, Boeing has an agreement to provide transportation to Bigelow Aerospace, a Las Vegas-based firm working on a manned private space complex with government and corporate research applications. Boeing is also exploring opportunities in the international market, according to John Elbon, the company's vice president and general manager of commercial crew programs. The CST-100 is designed to launch up to seven space fliers on several different rockets, opening the possibility of selling flights to other governments. "There's an interesting opportunity that we're just starting to flesh out," Elbon said Wednesday. "The spacecraft that we're designing is rocket-agnostic. It would be possible to sell this like a commercial airplane to countries who perhaps have a launch vehicle who would like to launch it in their own country." Russia and China are the only two countries besides the United States with an orbital human spaceflight capability. India is planning its own two-person space capsule to launch on a next-generation version of its GSLV rocket in 2016. Senior Boeing officials are in India this week as part of a trade delegation led by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. Boeing and other U.S. defense companies were previously kept out of the burgeoning Indian market by export restrictions, but the federal government is lifting the embargo for the the Defense Research and Development Organization and the Indian Space Research Organization. Boeing and other U.S. firms now hope to sell Indian companies and agencies aircraft, satellite and rocket technology. Human spaceflight assistance is also on the table, according to a report this week in the Deccan Chronicle, a major English-language newspaper in India. "With our legacy in space exploration design, development and integration, we believe that we can provide value-added assistance to the human spaceflight program," the Deccan Chronicle quoted Vivek Lall, Boeing's top defense official in India, as saying this week. Lall said Boeing could offer launch escape system, vehicle health monitoring and abort triggers, life support and crew accommodation technologies. Indian officials have not publicly discussed purchasing the CST-100 spacecraft directly from Boeing for human missions. Elbon said Wednesday that Boeing has not had any "serious dialogue" with potential international customers, and the company is "just starting to look" at the possibility of making turnkey deals with other countries. Japan and the European Space Agency also possess operational rockets capable of lifting the CST-100 capsule to orbit.
Artist's concept of a Boeing CST-100 capsule on top of an Atlas 5 rocket. Credit: Boeing
NASA awarded Boeing $18 million last year, funding the early stages of CST-100 design and systems demonstration in a commercial space act agreement. Boeing says engineers completed a landing bag drop demonstration and a test to upright the capsule in case it lands upside down. The company also manufactured a pressure vessel and completed checks on the structure at Bigelow's facility in Las Vegas, Elbon said. "It was pretty impressive to do that in a nine-month period from a clean sheet of paper," he said. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne test fired the engine for the CST-100's pusher abort system twice last week, and initial results from that milestone show no issues, officials said. Boeing expects to fulfill its contractual commitments to NASA by March, when the agency is expected to dole out another $200 million to several companies working on commercial crew transportation vehicles. If Boeing is selected again by NASA, the company plans a preliminary design review by the end of 2011. A critical design review, which will freeze the capsule's layout, is on tap for 2012, according to Elbon. Pad and ascent abort tests are scheduled for 2013 and 2014, followed by an automated unmanned orbital demo mission. A two-person team of Boeing test pilots will ride the ship to orbit on the first manned mission in 2015, Elbon said.People protest against the government in Bucharest | Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images LETTER FROM BUCHAREST 10 days that shook Romania There is no right or left in Romania’s protests. It is an example of direct, participatory democracy.
A brief timeline and summary of events:
Day 1, January 31: Romanians’ anti-graft fight starts spontaneously around midnight, after the government's official journal publishes an emergency ordinance decriminalizing several corruption offenses. Thousands of people gather in Victoriei Square in front of the seat of government; in other cities, thousands more follow suit.
Days 2, 3, 4 and 5: More and more citizens take to the streets throughout Romania, putting pressure on the Grindeanu-Dragnea cabinet to annul their initial decree. Protesters quickly realize that there are a number of constitutional strategies to pursue and turn their attention to government ombudsman Victor Ciorbea, the presidency, political parties, and various juridical bodies. What is striking to international observers is how mature, well-informed and politically aware most Romanians appear.
Day 6: Protest participation hits a new record: 300,000 protesters gather in Bucharest alone — where demonstrators make news for their eye-catching choreographic light shows and laser projections. About the same number take the streets in the rest of the country. Romanians extend their list of grievances day after day: they don't just want the ordinance annulled, they're calling for the guilty to resign, for a new government and greater accountability.
Days 7, 8 and 9: It becomes clearer that the government cannot bear the overwhelming popular pressure for too long, and it attempts to deploy various juridical and political strategies to safeguard itself. Government-friendly TV stations continue to manipulate audiences and slander anyone involved in the protests.
Day 10: At the time of writing, the fate of the original ordinance is still uncertain, but Romanians appear determined to resist heavy snow and blizzards to maintain the political pressure from the streets. Many expect a new participation record for the weekend. What emerged five years ago as a new civic movement in Romania — especially during the 2013 protests against a questionable gold mining project in Roșia Montană — has continued to grow and identify new causes. To ignore it would be a mistake.
* * *
BUCHAREST — Romania's civic revolution resumed 10 days ago, spontaneously and unexpectedly. The movement — self-started, non-utopian, non-ideological and peaceful — doesn't show any signs of slowing. And not only in the capital. It seems that the old mole, in this case the revolutionary spirit of 1989, continues to dig deep.
This protest movement — the first major pro-EU and pro-Western upheaval in post-Brexit Europe, and without doubt the largest in Romania's history — did not appear out of the blue. It has a great deal in common with previous rebellions, in 2012, 2013 and 2015. It is a reassertion of civic courage that is not driven by political parties but is instead an unabashed expression of civil society in action.
Nevertheless, while the link to the "lost treasure," to borrow Hannah Arendt's phrase, of Romania's 1989 revolution is obvious, we are dealing with something new.
Protests have become a regular instrument in the hands of citizens of various ideological backgrounds. Can this new routinization of non-confrontational forms of civic action lead to a society of social movements? In countries like Romania, where democratic societies have decided to face their inner demons head-on, this may very well be the case.
The elements of this new social structure and civic ethos are still a work in progress, but in them we can already see the beginnings of direct democracy. Over the past 10 days, Romanians have tossed around ideas about citizens’ councils and alternative models of democratic representation. This movement acknowledges the modern subject's inner conflicts and rejects the old revolutionary shibboleths. A major shift is happening in civil society, and we ought to explore its dynamics and repercussions.
This latest social movement is not anti-political. Its target is what Romanians call “dirty politics.” Understanding the Social Democratic Party's political culture — its reactions and reckless resort to provocations like the emergency ordinance — is an important part of the puzzle.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD) is the successor of the National Salvation Front (FSN), which itself is the unavowed but undeniable successor to Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Communist Party. Its party leaders — from founding father Ion Iliescu to Adrian Năstase, Mircea Geoană, Victor Ponta, present chairman Liviu Dragnea, and his proxy prime-minister Sorin Grindeanu — have preserved a neo-Bolshevik way of addressing political reality. They live by the maxim, “Whoever is not with us is against us!”
That is why these authoritarian PSD kleptocrats have not entertained the idea of communicating with the protesters. Instead, Iliescu emerged from hibernation to support Dragnea. He blamed president Klaus Iohannis for joining the demonstrations, saying: “Iohannis inflamed the spirits and created this anarchy.” In times of change and social unrest, the current government is indulging in deluded scapegoating.
In Bucharest’s Victoriei Square, one of the main sites of protest, there are no loudspeakers; there is no pre-assigned dramaturgy. No right or left. It is an example of direct, participatory democracy.
The language of protest has been at times funny, sarcastic, poignant and infinitely inventive. Take the conspiracy theories about George Soros being behind all anti-authoritarian protests, from the United States to Hungary, Poland, Romania and Russia. In Bucharest, this is the rebuttal: "Uncle Soros, wouldn't it be cheaper to buy the PSD and close it down?" The verb "a închide" in Romanian has at least two meanings: “to close down” or “to send someone to prison.”
The main message is clear: We want to be free! Not since Paris in 1968 and Prague in 1989 has Europe seen a moment of collective emancipation like this one. At a moment when the Continent is experiencing a dismal slide into authoritarian populism, Romania's mass civic mobilization on behalf of liberal values, accountability, transparency, and the European project may well be a prologue to similar movements elsewhere.
Over the past few days, the Western Balkans have witnessed an increase in calls for anti-corruption measures directly inspired by events in Romania. Bulgaria and Moldova have also seen demonstrations in solidarity with Romanian efforts.
We want to avoid succumbing to wishful thinking, but we can't help seeing what is happening in Romania as the start of a new chapter in global efforts to reinvent politics and root out corruption. What is happening in Bucharest and tens of other cities across the country is uncontainable, inexhaustible, inextinguishable civic courage in action. It should be admired and praised.
At a historical juncture when populist demagogues are questioning the very future of the European Union, one of its small bordering countries is saying: Yes, we belong!
Marius Stan is a Romanian political scientist, currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Bucharest’s research institute. Vladimir Tismaneanu is a professor of politics at the University of Maryland (College Park). They have co-authored numerous books and articles, including, most recently “A Lenin Dossier: The Magic of Nihilism."On the evening of August 11th, Professor Azmi Sharom received a call from a Malay Mail Online reporter asking for his legal opinion on the Khalid Ibrahim drama. He gives his opinion to the reporter and ends the call without too much thought. After all, requests like these are quite common.
On August 14th, the article “Take Perak crisis route for speedy end to Selangor impasse, Pakatan told” is published on the Malay Mail Online’s portal.
Two and a half weeks later, Azmi Sharom is at home getting himself ready for a day of classes at Universiti Malaya when he receives a phone call. On the other end is an official telling him he’s being charged with sedition over the comments he gave to the reporter. Keeping his cool, he ends the call, prepares himself, and heads to court.
And just like that, Professor Azmi Sharom – popular pony-tailed law lecturer, became the first academician to ever be charged with sedition in Malaysia.
“Sedition” has unfortunately been a popular word the past few weeks and, since the news of his arrest broke, so has “Azmi Sharom.” If you’ve been seeing these words popping up on your Facebook feed and wondering who he is and why the sedition charge is such a big deal, we wondered the same thing. After some quick research, we found that the Malaysian Sedition Act was introduced by the Brits during the colonial era to combat the communist insurgence. It was adopted from colonial India and was (probably) in itself based on British sedition laws which have been around since 1661. As for Azmi Sharom, we attended a small gathering at Universiti Malaya yesterday to ask:
“Who is Azmi Sharom?”
*Note that people in the pictures aren’t necessarily the ones who made the statements, and that Azmi Sharom is out on bail. Also, the first three paragraphs are based on feedback from Yap Swee Seng of SUARAM and Zurairi AR, the Malay Mail Online reporter who wrote the article in question.
Azmi Sharom the teacher:
He’s most commonly described as a “fun, cool lecturer” – probably one of the most popular lecturers at the Law faculty thanks to his easygoing, approachable nature. But at the core of that, his students appreciate him for his dedication to academics, always encouraging critical and intellectual debates, as well as his dedication to them.
A dedicated teacher, a dedicated practitioner of the law, a man who is true to himself – that’s a majority of the responses we got. Azmi is said to be casual in both his appearance and in his interaction with his students. Many have grown used to seeing him showing up for lectures in a T-shirt, jeans, and sandals.
He’s also noted to not be particularly political, with many attesting to his principles and dedication to the law as the reason he can always be counted on for a fair and unbiased opinion. Lawyer Michelle Yesudas of Lawyers for Liberty (whom we mistook as a student – sorry!) describes him as one of the most straightforward and honest academicians who will not hesitate to call a spade a spade.
Azmi Sharom the person
He is most fondly remembered for his ponytail (what is it with lawyers and ponytails?) and for jogging around the campus in the evenings. A student recalls an incident when she ran into him at the law faculty, drenched in sweat at 2 in the afternoon. “Did you just go jogging?” she asked. His reply was “No, it’s too hot so I went to the gym instead.”
Another student remembers him showing up for a lecture with his hair let down, as if he’d just taken a shower.
A banner-carrying student (who took some time to come up with a desired nickname for our quote) credits Azmi Sharom as the person who inspired him to take up law
He’s also a huge fan of the Tottenham Hotspurs.
Solidarity for Azmi Sharom
Before we attended the assembly, we got in touch with the admins of the Facebook event page who kept in touch with us, answering questions and giving directions to the venue.
We were quite surprised to find that not all the attendees were students at Universiti Malaya, a few were from private colleges and universities; including one of the admins. While many had shown up in support of Azmi Sharom, there were others who attended to support the right for freedom of expression.
Of course, not everyone knew about Azmi Sharom or wanted to be involved:
So what did Azmi say that was seditious again?
As mentioned in our last article, we couldn’t figure out which part of his statement set off the sedition alarm, so we spoke to Yap Swee Seng, the Executive Director of SUARAM for some insights. BTW, here’s the news report.
According to Mr. Yap, the statement in question was
“You don’t want a repeat of that, where a secret meeting took place.”
The “secret meeting” refers to the 2009 Perak Constitutional Crisis, where the Sultan of Perak allegedly (and we repeat, allegedly) made decisions regarding the formation of the state government after a private meeting with some politicians rather than calling for a fresh vote from the Rakyat. This led to some questioning on whether or not the Sultan had the power to make such calls or not. Professor Azmi’s statement implied that what happened during that time was “legally wrong.”
According to Mr Yap, Prof. Azmi’s comment was academic – he stated his legal opinion on the matter. Soooooo…..yep. He was charged for stating an opinion that someone didn’t agree with. You know what this means for the rest of us, right?
“We are all Azmi”
That’s both the tagline of the solidarity march as well as a potential reality for all of us if Professor Azmi was to be found guilty. A guilty verdict may dissuade others from giving their professional opinion on issues. This form of indirect censorship would end up killing the academic environment because it will no longer allow for opinions and debates.
If you take into account the charge against news reporter Susan Loone and the student who “liked” the “I Love Israel” Facebook page as well, at what point would we have to start worrying about being punished for practicing our right to freedom of speech or for reporters to report the news?
While we’re sure the 1948 act helped in the formation of an independent Malaya, we do wonder what purpose it would serve now. Afterall, the United Kingdom hasn’t used the sedition law since 1971 and eventually abolished it altogether in 2009.
At this point, we might be looking at a repeal of the Sedition Act, of the sedition act being replaced with the National Harmony Bill, or just further assurances that the matter is being looked into. Either way, we’d like end this by leaving you with the words of British Justice Minister Claire Ward:
Sedition and seditious and defamatory libel are arcane offences – from a bygone era when freedom of expression wasn’t seen as the right it is today. Freedom of speech is now seen as the touchstone of democracy, and the ability of individuals to criticise the state is crucial to maintaining freedom. The existence of these obsolete offences in this country had been used by other countries as justification for the retention of similar laws which have been actively used to suppress political dissent and restrict press freedom. Abolishing these offences will allow the UK to take a lead in challenging similar laws in other countries, where they are used to suppress free speech. – PressGazette, 2010.
Cilisos would like to thank the following people for their time and assistance:
Mr. Yap Swee Seng, Executive Director, SUARAM
Zurairi AR, Journalist and columnist, Malay Mail Online
Fahmi Reza for the illustration used as our featured photo
The administrators of the Solidarity4AzmiSharom Facebook page
Our interviewees, anonymous or namedA massive pyramid, topped with a pillar, and then some more — not the Post Office Tower*, but a monument to the Battle of Britain.
Proposed fairly recently, in 1988 by a noted architect, Theo Crosby, it would have stood near Surrey Docks, and at some 500 feet tall, dominated the area.
In fact, it wasn’t an inert monument, but education centre, and tourist attraction, with lifts which would have taken people to the top for views across the city.
Crosby’s scheme would have cost around £30 million, and comprised of a hollow granite clad pyramid, which was to be filled with moving images and apparently, even holograms.
People would enter the pyramid via a vast entrance lined with Doric columns, and around the base, presumably to give the expected queues something to look at — a 20 foot high freeze detailing the history of WW2.
The idea was that these ghostly apparitions would “come whisperingly to life on arrival and die away as the visitor leaves”.
The visitor would in this case be leaving be elevator, which would have taken them to the summit of the monument for the views.
If the plan sounded a bit crazy already, then the summit should convince you. It was to be surmounted by 6-metre high statues of the aviators who fought in the Battle of Britain, and a giant sculpture of a Heinkel bomber crashing alongside a Spitfire plane.
Although the plans had support from the Chairman of the LDDC, unsurprisingly, the monument, and particularly its glorifying summit caused a bit of a scandal, with the Association of Battle of Britain Pilots dismissing it as totally unsuitable.
Crosby’s vision never came to pass, but one of his greatest achievements was built, and unlike the memorial, is a much loved part of London. He was the architect who designed the Globe Theatre at Bankside.
The Battle of Britain itself did eventually get a memorial, a more modest affair on the edge of Green Park.
Sources:
A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London, by Patrick Wrigh
BDOnline, Towering Dreams, July 2010
The Independent, Obituary, September 1994
University of Northampton Archive
@MrTimDunn
*The engineering of the Post Office Tower is a square foundation, upon which stands a pyramid, then on top of that, the main pillar.
More from the Unbuilt London seriesThe world seems to be getting more empathetic. Americans donate to charity at record rates. People feel the pain of suffering in geographically distant countries brought to our attention by advances in communications and transportation. Violence, seen on historical timescales, is decreasing.
The great modern humanitarian project of expanding the scope of our empathy to include the entire human race seems to be working. Our in-group (those we choose to include in our inner circle and to spend our energies on) is growing, and our out-group (everybody else) shrinking. But there’s a wrinkle in this perfect picture: Our instinctive tendency to categorize the world into “us” and “them” is difficult to overcome. It is in our nature to favor helping in-group members like friends, family, or fellow citizens, and to neglect or even punish out-group members. Even as some moral circles expand, others remain stubbornly fixed, or even contract: Just think of Democrats and Republicans, Sunnis and Shiites, Duke and North Carolina basketball fans.
Lance King/Getty Images
The endpoint of the liberal humanitarian project, which is universal empathy, would mean no boundary between in-group and out-group. In aiming for this goal, we must fight our instincts. That is possible, to a degree. Research confirms that people can strengthen their moral muscles and blur the divide between in-group and out-group. Practicing meditation, for example, can increase empathy, improving people’s ability to decode emotions from people’s facial expressions1 and making them more likely to offer a chair2 to someone with crutches. Simply increasing people’s beliefs in the malleability of empathy increases the empathy they express toward ideologically and racially dissimilar others.3 And when all else fails, people respond to financial gain. My co-authors and I have shown that introducing monetary incentives for accurate perspective-taking increased Democrats’ and Republicans’ ability to understand each other and to believe that political resolutions were possible.4
But these exercises can take us only so far. In fact, there is a terrible irony in the assumption that we can ever transcend our parochial tendencies entirely. Social scientists have found that in-group love and out-group hate originate from the same neurobiological basis, are mutually reinforcing, and co-evolved—because loyalty to the in-group provided a survival advantage by helping our ancestors to combat a threatening out-group. That means that, in principle, if we eliminate out-group hate completely, we may also undermine in-group love. Empathy is a zero-sum game.
Just as even the most determined athlete cannot overcome the limits of the human body, we cannot escape the limits of our moral capabilities. Also in Psychology Why You Keep Dreaming About Being Naked By Elizabeth Svoboda I was naked. So was Laura,” begins one dream of the more than 20,000 collected in G. William Domhoff’s DreamBank. “I was re-stringing an unvarnished electric bass, so I guess it was naked, too. At one point I put a...READ MORE
Absolute universalism, in which we feel compassion for every individual on Earth, is psychologically impossible. Ignoring this fact carries a heavy cost: We become paralyzed by the unachievable demands we place on ourselves. We can see this in our public discourse today. Discussions of empathy fluctuate between worrying that people don’t empathize enough and fretting that they empathize too much with the wrong people. These criticisms both come from the sense that we have an infinite capacity to empathize, and that it is our fault if we fail to use it.
In 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama spoke at Northwestern University’s commencement bemoaning the country’s “empathy deficit” and urging people “to see the world through those who are different from us.” Several studies supported Obama’s concern: People in the 21st century exhibit less empathy5 and more narcissism6 than in decades past. A torrent of think-pieces have lamented and diagnosed this empathy decline.
And then the pendulum swung back. People do care, newspaper editorialists and social-media commenters granted. But they care inconsistently: grieving for victims of Brussels’ recent attacks and ignoring Yemen’s recent bombing victims; expressing outrage over ISIS rather than the much deadlier Boko Haram; mourning the death of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe while overlooking countless human murder victims. There are far worthier tragedies, they wrote, than the ones that attract the most public empathy.
Almost any attempt to draw attention to some terrible event in the world elicits these complaints, as though misallocated empathy was more consequential than the terrible event itself. If we recognized that we have a limited quantity of empathy to begin with, it would help to cure some of the acrimony and self-flagellation of these discussions. The truth is that, just as even the most determined athlete cannot overcome the limits of the human body, so too we cannot escape the limits of our moral capabilities. We must begin with a realistic assessment of what those limits are, and then construct a scientific way of choosing which values matter most to us.
We can and do override our moral instincts using our more logical and deliberative mode of thinking, so the in-group vs. out-group opposition is not absolute. But we have limited cognitive resources, which rapidly become depleted. For example, keeping a nine-digit insurance policy number in mind without writing it down requires working memory, and can impair our ability to recall other information, like the phone number of the insurance agent. Similar constraints cause what is known as decision fatigue |
essentially a freak of nature, and he may also be available when the Cowboys make their selection in the first round. While he’s not projected as a first rounder by many NFL experts, his size and speed are something to marvel at. Melifonwu stands at 6’4” 225 pounds and runs a 4.4 in the 40-yard dash. With an athletic profile like that, he could be the kind of player who could really do some damage at the next level.
There are many more players who should be available for the Cowboys in the upcoming draft. King and Melifonwu could both end up going in the second or even third rounds but they have ability that will help any team who decides to give them an opportunity. One or both of them could be the play-makers the team has been looking for all these years.
Romo is on the Roster
As of today, Tony Romo is still on the Cowboys current roster. This is considered an albatross to some, but for others it could end up being just what the doctor ordered. Romo has been an important piece of what the Cowboys have done the past ten plus seasons which isn’t much, if you’re actually looking at post-season success.
Winning In the Post-Season Matters
Nevertheless, the quarterback has proven that he can play at this level, surpassing all of the team’s quarterbacks in almost every statistical category in team history. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t add Lombardi trophies to the trophy case. In fact, former Cowboys quarterback Danny White led his teams to three consecutive NFC championship games.
Romo has only won two of his six playoff games but he did perform very well in those games, as he has an eight to two touchdown,to interception ratio in those contests. Romo shouldn’t get all the blame for every loss but he was the player driving the bus.
A Viable Back-up Option
If the Cowboys can convince Romo to restructure the remaining years of his deal and remain with the team as the backup to newly-anointed Dak Prescott, the team could still claim to have the best quarterback group in the league as they did this past year. It’s doubtful the team can make this happen, because Romo has made it clear he still wants to play.
Romo’s stance was made a few months ago. Maybe things have changed. Having Romo available in the event the Prescott succumbs to an injury would give Jason Garrett and his offensive staff the confidence they’ve lacked the past few years.
Romo’s availability has been an issue, but he could come in and take over the reins until Prescott returns to the line-up, and he might even impress a few suitors with his performance. Romo’s body would take less of a pounding, making it easier for the Cowboys to move him and receive some sort of compensation for him.
Ultimately, the Cowboys don’t have to be in any hurry to make any moves. They can stand pat until the days leading up to the draft and make a move. They can also continue to work behind the scenes to bring in veteran talent to add depth to a roster that looks thin right now. The team appears to be determined to regain its edge against the competition over the long haul. Instant gratification doesn’t look like it’s on the menu at the Star in Frisco, anymore.
Main Photo:American actress and singer
Scarlett Ingrid Johansson (; born November 22, 1984[1]) is an American actress and singer. Johansson is the world's highest-paid actress, has made multiple appearances in the Forbes Celebrity 100, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She aspired to be an actress from a young age, and first appeared on stage in an Off-Broadway play as a child. Johansson made her film debut in the fantasy comedy North (1994), and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Manny & Lo (1996). She gained further recognition for her work in The Horse Whisperer (1998) and Ghost World (2001).
Johansson shifted to adult roles in 2003 with her performances in Lost in Translation, which won her a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, and Girl with a Pearl Earring. She was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards for these films, and for playing an estranged teenager in the drama A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004), and a seductress in the psychological thriller Match Point (2005). Other films during this period, include the mystery thriller The Prestige (2006) and the comedy-drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). She also released two albums: Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008) and Break Up (2009), both of which charted on the Billboard 200.
In 2010, Johansson debuted on Broadway in a revival of A View from the Bridge, which won her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress. Later that year, she began portraying Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She voiced an intelligent computer operating system in the 2013 comedy-drama Her, and played an alien in the 2013 science fiction film Under the Skin, and a woman with psychokinetic abilities in the 2014 science fiction action Lucy. She was the highest-grossing actress of 2016, and is also the highest-grossing actress of all time in North America in nominal dollar terms.
As a public figure, Johansson is a Hollywood sex symbol. She is a prominent celebrity brand endorser, and also supports various charities and causes. She has been married twice, to the Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds from 2008 to 2011 and the French businessman Romain Dauriac, with whom she has a daughter, from 2014 to 2017.
Early life
Scarlett Ingrid Johansson was born in the Manhattan borough of New York City.[2][3] Her father, Karsten Olaf Johansson, is an architect originally from Copenhagen, Denmark, and her paternal grandfather, Ejner Johansson, was an art historian, screenwriter and film director, whose own father was Swedish.[4][5] Scarlett's mother, Melanie Sloan, a producer, comes from an Ashkenazi Jewish family, from Poland and Russia.[6][7] She has an older sister, Vanessa, also an actress; an older brother, Adrian; and a twin brother, Hunter.[8] Johansson also has an older half-brother, Christian, from her father's first marriage. She holds both American and Danish citizenship.[9][10]
Johansson attended PS 41, an elementary school in Greenwich Village, Manhattan.[11] Her parents divorced when she was 13.[12][13] Johansson was particularly close to her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Sloan, a bookkeeper and schoolteacher; they often spent time together and Johansson considered Sloan her best friend.[14] Interested in a career in the spotlight from an early age, she often put on song-and-dance routines for her family. She was particularly fond of musical theater and jazz hands.[15][16] She took lessons in tap dance, and states that her parents were supportive of her career choice. She describes her childhood as very ordinary.[17]
As a child, Johansson practiced acting by staring in the mirror until she made herself cry, wanting to be Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis.[18] At age seven, she was devastated when a talent agent signed one of her brothers instead of her, but she later decided to become an actress anyway. She enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, and began auditioning for commercials, but soon lost interest: "I didn't want to promote Wonder Bread."[18] She shifted her focus to film and theater,[19] making her first stage appearance in the Off-Broadway play Sophistry with Ethan Hawke,[20] in which she had two lines.[19] Around this time, she began studying at Professional Children's School (PCS), a private educational institution for aspiring child actors in Manhattan. At age nine, Johansson made her film debut as John Ritter's daughter in the fantasy comedy North (1994).[19] She says that when she was on the film set, she knew intuitively what to do.[18] Johansson later played minor roles including as the daughter of Sean Connery and Kate Capshaw's characters in the mystery thriller Just Cause (1995), and an art student in If Lucy Fell (1996).[21]
Acting career
Early roles (1996–2002)
Johansson's first leading role was as Amanda, the younger sister of a pregnant teenager who runs away from her foster home in Manny & Lo (1996) alongside Aleksa Palladino and her brother, Hunter. Her performance received positive reviews: one written for the San Francisco Chronicle noted, "[the film] grows on you, largely because of the charm of... Scarlett Johansson,"[22] while critic Mick LaSalle, writing for the same paper, commented on her "peaceful aura", and believed, "If she can get through puberty with that aura undisturbed, she could become an important actress."[23] Johansson earned a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Female for the role.[24]
After appearing in minor roles in Fall and Home Alone 3 (both 1997), Johansson attracted wider attention for her performance in the film The Horse Whisperer (1998), directed by Robert Redford.[19][25] The drama film, based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Nicholas Evans, tells the story of a talented trainer with a gift for understanding horses, who is hired to help an injured teenager played by Johansson. The actress received an "introducing" credit on this film, although it was her seventh role. On Johansson's maturity, Redford described her as "13 going on 30".[26] Todd McCarthy of Variety commented that Johansson "convincingly conveys the awkwardness of her age and the inner pain of a carefree girl suddenly laid low by horrible happenstance".[27] For the film, she was nominated for the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress.[28] She believed that the film changed many things in her life, realizing that acting is the ability to manipulate one's emotions.[29] On finding good roles as a teenager, Johansson said it was hard for her as adults wrote the scripts and they "portray kids like mall rats and not seriously... Kids and teenagers just aren't being portrayed with any real depth".[30]
Johansson later appeared in My Brother the Pig (1999) and in the neo-noir, Coen brothers film The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). Her breakthrough came playing a cynical outcast in Terry Zwigoff's black comedy Ghost World (2001), an adaptation of Daniel Clowes' graphic novel of same name.[31] Johansson auditioned for the film via a tape from New York, and Zwigoff believed her to be "a unique, eccentric person, and right for that part".[32] The film premiered at the 2001 Seattle International Film Festival; it was a box office failure, but has since developed a cult status.[33] Johansson was credited with "sensitivity and talent [that] belie her age" by an Austin Chronicle critic, and won a Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.[34][35]
With David Arquette, Johansson appeared in the horror comedy Eight Legged Freaks (2002), about a collection of spiders that are exposed to toxic waste, causing them to grow to gigantic proportions and begin killing and harvesting.[36] After graduating from Professional Children's School that year, she applied to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts; she decided to focus on her film career when she was rejected.[37]
Transition to adult roles (2003–2004)
Johansson transitioned from teen to adult roles with two films in 2003: the romantic comedy-drama Lost in Translation and the drama Girl with a Pearl Earring.[38] In the former, directed by Sofia Coppola, she plays Charlotte, a listless and lonely young wife, opposite Bill Murray. Coppola had first noticed Johansson in Manny & Lo, and compared her to a young Lauren Bacall; Coppola based the film's story on the relationship between Humphrey Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep (1946).[39] Johansson found the experience of working with a female director different because of Coppola's ability to empathize with her.[40] Made on a budget of $4 million, the film earned $119 million at the box office and received positive reviews.[41][42] Roger Ebert was pleased with the film and described the lead performances as "wonderful",[43] and Entertainment Weekly wrote of Johansson's "embracing, restful serenity".[44] The New York Times praised Johansson, then 18, for playing an older character.[45]
In Peter Webber's Girl with a Pearl Earring, which is based on the novel of same name by Tracy Chevalier, Johansson played Griet, a young 17th-century servant in the household of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (played by English actor Colin Firth). Webber interviewed 150 actors before casting Johansson.[47] Johansson found the character moving, but did not read the novel, as she thought it was better to approach the story with a fresh start.[48] Girl with a Pearl Earring received positive reviews and was profitable.[49] In his review for The New Yorker, Anthony Lane thought that her presence kept the film "alive", writing, "She is often wordless and close to plain onscreen, but wait for the ardor with which she can summon a closeup and bloom under its gaze; this is her film, not Vermeer's, all the way."[50] Owen Gleiberman, of Entertainment Weekly noted her "nearly silent performance", observing, "The interplay on her face of fear, ignorance, curiosity, and sex is intensely dramatic."[51] She was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress[a] for both films in 2003, winning the former for Lost in Translation.[53]
In Variety's opinion, Johansson's roles in Lost in Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring established her as among the most versatile actresses of her generation.[25] Johansson had five releases in 2004, three of which—the teen heist film The Perfect Score, the drama A Love Song for Bobby Long, and the drama A Good Woman—were critical and commercial failures.[54] Co-starring with John Travolta, Johansson played a discontented and suspicious teenager in A Love Song for Bobby Long, which is based on the novel Off Magazine Street by Ronald Everett Capps. Variety's David Rooney wrote that Johansson's and Travolta's portrayals rescued the film.[55] Johansson earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama nomination for the film.[52]
In her fourth release in 2004, the live-action animated comedy The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Johansson voiced Princess Mindy, the daughter of King Neptune. She took the part because of her love for cartoons and The Ren & Stimpy Show.[56] The film was her most commercially successful work that year.[54] She followed it with In Good Company, a comedy-drama in which she complicates the life of her father when she dates his much younger boss. Reviews of the film were generally positive, describing it as "witty and charming".[57] Roger Ebert was impressed with Johansson's portrayal, writing that she "continues to employ the gravitational pull of quiet fascination".[58]
Films with Woody Allen (2005–2009)
Johansson played Nola, an aspiring actress who begins an affair with a married man (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) in Woody Allen's drama Match Point in 2005. After replacing Kate Winslet with Johansson for the role, Allen changed the character's nationality from British to American.[59] As an admirer of Allen's films, Johansson liked the idea of working with him, but felt nervous her first day on the set.[60] The New York Times was impressed with Johansson and Rhys Meyers' performances,[61] and Mick LaSalle, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, said that Johansson "is a powerhouse from the word go", with a performance that "borders on astonishing".[62] The film, a box office success,[63] earned Johansson nominations for the Golden Globe and the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress.[52][64] Also that year, Johansson underwent a tonsillectomy, after which she starred with Ewan McGregor in Michael Bay's science fiction film The Island, in dual roles as Sarah Jordan and her clone, Jordan Two Delta. Johansson found her filming schedule exhausting: she had to shoot for 14 hours a day, and she hit her head and injured herself.[65] The film received mixed reviews and grossed $163 million against a $126 million budget.[66]
Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2007 Johansson on the set ofin 2007
Two of Johansson's films in 2006 explored the world of stage magicians, both opposite Hugh Jackman. Allen cast her opposite Jackman and himself in the film Scoop (2006), in which she played a journalism student. The film was a modest worldwide box office success, but polarized critics.[67][68] Ebert was critical of the film, but found Johansson "lovely as always",[69] and Mick LaSalle noted the freshness she brought to her part.[70] She also appeared in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, a film noir shot in Los Angeles and Bulgaria. Johansson later said she was a fan of De Palma and had wanted to work with him on the film, but thought that she was unsuitable for the part.[71] Anne Billson of The Daily Telegraph likewise found her miscast.[72] However, CNN said that she "takes to the pulpy period atmosphere as if it were oxygen".[73]
Also in 2006, Johansson starred in the short film When the Deal Goes Down to accompany Bob Dylan's song "When the Deal Goes Down..." from the album Modern Times.[74] Johansson had a supporting role of assistant and lover of Jackman's character, an aristocratic magician, in Christopher Nolan's mystery thriller The Prestige (2006). Nolan thought Johansson possessed "ambiguity" and "a shielded quality".[75][76] She was fascinated with Nolan's directing methods and liked working with him.[77] The film was a critical and box office success,[78] recommended by the Los Angeles Times as "an adult, provocative piece of work".[79] Some critics were skeptical of her performance: Anne Billson found her miscast, and Dan Jolin in Empire magazine criticized her English accent.[72][80]
Johansson's only work in 2007 was in the critically panned comedy-drama The Nanny Diaries alongside Chris Evans and Laura Linney, where she plays a college graduate working as a nanny. Reviews of her performance were mixed; Variety wrote, "[She] essays an engaging heroine",[81] and The New Yorker criticized her for looking "merely confused" while "trying to give the material a plausible emotional center".[82] In 2008, Johansson starred, with Natalie Portman and Eric Bana, in The Other Boleyn Girl, which also earned mixed reviews.[83][84] Promoting the film, Johansson and Portman appeared on the cover of W, discussing with the magazine the public's reception of them.[85] In Rolling Stone, Pete Travers criticized the film for "[moving] in frustrating herks and jerks", but thought that the duo were the only positive aspect of the production.[86] Variety credited the cast as "almost flawless... at the top of its game", citing "Johansson's quieter Mary... as the [film's] emotional center".[87]
In her third collaboration with Woody Allen, the romantic comedy-drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), which was filmed in Spain, Johansson plays one of the love interests of Javier Bardem's character alongside Penélope Cruz.[88] The film was one of Allen's most profitable and received favorable reviews.[89][90] A reviewer in Variety described Johansson as "open and malleable" compared to the other actors.[91] She also played the femme fatale Silken Floss in The Spirit, based on the newspaper comic strip of the same name by Will Eisner. It received poor reviews from critics, who deemed it melodramatic, unoriginal, and sexist.[92] Johansson's only role in 2009 was as Anna Marks, a yoga instructor, in the ensemble comedy-drama He's Just Not That Into You (2009). The film was released to tepid reviews, but was a box office success.[93][94]
Marvel Cinematic Universe and stage roles (2010–2013)
Johansson had aspired to appear on Broadway since her childhood. She made her debut in a 2010 revival of Arthur Miller's drama A View from the Bridge.[95][96] Set in the 1950s, in an Italian-American neighborhood in New York, it tells the tragic tale of Eddie (played by Liev Schreiber), who has an inappropriate love for his wife's orphaned niece, Catherine (played by Johansson). After some reservations about playing a teenage character, Johansson agreed to the play when a friend convinced her to take on the part.[97] Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote of Johansson's performance that she "melts into her character so thoroughly that her nimbus of celebrity disappears".[98] Variety's David Rooney was impressed with the play and Johansson in particular, describing her as the chief performer.[99] She won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.[100] Some critics and Broadway actors criticized the award committee's decision to reward the work of mainstream Hollywood actors, including Johansson. In response, she said that she understood the frustration, but had worked hard for her accomplishments.[101]
Johansson played Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in Jon Favreau's Marvel Studios' Iron Man 2 (2010),[102] a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).[103] Before she secured the role, she dyed her hair red to convince Favreau that she was right for the part, and undertook stunt and strength training to prepare for the role.[104] Johannsson said the character resonated with her, and she admired the superhero's human traits.[105] The film earned $623.9 million against its $200 million budget, and received generally positive reviews from critics, but she was mostly criticized for her performance.[106][107] Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph and Matt Goldberg thought that she had little to do but look attractive.[108][109] In 2011, Johansson played the role of Kelly, a zookeeper in the family film We Bought a Zoo alongside Matt Damon. The film got mainly favorable reviews, and Anne Billson praised Johansson for bringing depth to a rather uninteresting character.[110][72] Johansson earned a Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress: Drama nomination for her performance.[111]
Johansson learned some Russian from a former teacher on the phone for her role as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in Marvel Studios' The Avengers (2012),[112] another entry from the MCU.[103] The film received mainly positive reviews and broke many box office records, becoming the third highest-grossing film both in the United States and worldwide.[113][114] For her performance, she was nominated for two Teen Choice Awards and three People's Choice Awards.[b] Later that year, Johansson portrayed the actress Janet Leigh in Sacha Gervasi's Hitchcock, a behind-the-scenes drama about the making of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho.[117] Roger Ebert wrote that Johansson did not look much like Leigh, but conveyed her spunk, intelligence, and sense of humor.[118]
In January 2013, Johansson starred in a Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Rob Ashford. Set in the Mississippi Delta, it examines the relationships within the family of Big Daddy (played by Ciarán Hinds), primarily between his son Brick (played by Benjamin Walker) and Maggie (played by Johansson).[119] Her performance received mixed reviews.[120] Entertainment Weekly's Thom Geier wrote, "Scarlett Johansson brings a fierce fighting spirit" to her part,[121] but Joe Dziemianowicz from Daily News called her performance "alarmingly one-note".[122] The 2013 Sundance Film Festival hosted the premiere of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut, Don Jon.[123] In this romantic comedy-drama, she plays a woman perplexed by the pornography-addicted title character. Gordon-Levitt wrote the role for Johansson, who had previously admired his acting work.[124] The film received positive reviews and Johansson's performance was highlighted by critics.[125] Claudia Puig of USA Today considered it one of her best performances.[126]
In 2013, Johansson voiced the character Samantha, an intelligent computer operating system, in Spike Jonze's film Her, replacing Samantha Morton in the role.[127] The film premiered at the 8th Rome International Film Festival, where Johansson won Best Actress; she was also nominated for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress.[128][129] Johansson was intimidated by the role's complexity, and considered her recording sessions for the role challenging but liberating.[130] Peter Travers believed Johansson's voice in the film was "sweet, sexy, caring, manipulative, scary [and] award-worthy".[131] Time magazine's Richard Corliss called her performance "seductive and winning",[132] and Her was rated as one of the best films of 2013.[133] She also won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 40th Saturn Awards in 2014 for her performance. Johansson was cast in the role of an alien who preys on men in Scotland in Jonathan Glazer's science fiction movie Under the Skin (2013). The film, an adaptation of Michel Faber's novel of the same name, took nine years to complete.[134] For the role, she learned to drive a van and speak with an English accent.[135] Johansson improvised conversations with non-professional actors on the street, who did not know they were being filmed.[136] It was released to generally positive reviews, with particular praise for Johansson.[134][137] Erin Whitney, writing for HuffPost, considered it her best performance to date, and noted that it was her first fully nude role.[138] It earned Johansson a BIFA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a British Independent Film nomination.[139]
Recent work (2014–present)
Continuing her work in the MCU, Johansson reprised her role as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in Marvel Studios' Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). In the film, she joins forces with Captain America (Chris Evans) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) to uncover a conspiracy within S.H.I.E.L.D., while facing a mysterious assassin known as the Winter Soldier. Johansson and Evans wrote their own dialogue for several scenes they had together.[140] Johansson was attracted to her character's way of doing her job, employing her feminine wiles and not her physical appeal.[141] The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $714 million worldwide.[142] Critic Odie Henderson saw "a genuine emotional shorthand at work, especially from Johansson, who is excellent here".[143] The role earned her a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination.[144]
Johansson played a supporting role in the film Chef (2014), alongside Robert Downey, Jr., Sofía Vergara, and director Jon Favreau. It grossed over $45 million at the box office and was well received by critics. The Chicago Sun-Times writer Richard Roeper found the film "funny, quirky and insightful, with a bounty of interesting supporting characters".[145] In Luc Besson's science fiction action film Lucy (2014), Johansson starred as the title character, who gains psychokinetic abilities when a nootropic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream.[146] Besson discussed the role with several actresses, and cast Johansson based on her strong reaction to the script and her discipline.[147] Critics generally praised the film's themes, visuals, and Johansson's performance; some found the plot nonsensical.[148] IGN's Jim Vejvoda attributed the film's success to her acting and Besson's style.[149] The film grossed $458 million on a budget of $40 million to become the 18th highest-grossing film of 2014.[150]
In 2015 and 2016, Johansson again played Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in the MCU films Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War. During filming of the former, a mixture of close-ups, concealing costumes, stunt doubles and visual effects were used to hide her pregnancy.[151] Both films earned more than $1.1 billion, ranking among the highest-grossing films of all time.[152] For Captain America: Civil War, Johansson earned her second nomination for Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in an Action Movie and her fourth for Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.[153][154] Earlier in 2016, Johansson had featured in the Coen brothers' well-received comedy film Hail, Caesar! about a "fixer" working in the classical Hollywood cinema, trying to discover what happened to a cast member who vanished during the filming of a biblical epic; Johansson plays an actress who becomes pregnant while her film is in production.[155] She also voiced the character Kaa in Disney's live-action remake of The Jungle Book, and Ash in the animated musical comedy film Sing (both 2016).[156]
Johansson played Motoko Kusanagi in Rupert Sanders's 2017 film adaptation of the Ghost in the Shell franchise. The film was praised for its visual style, acting, and cinematography, but was controversial for whitewashing the cast, particularly Johansson's character, a cyborg who was meant to hold the memories of a Japanese woman.[157][158] Responding to the criticism, she said she would never play a person of another race, but wanted to take the rare opportunity to star in a franchise with a female protagonist.[159] The film grossed $169.8 million worldwide against a production budget of $110 million.[160] In March 2017, Johansson hosted Saturday Night Live for the fifth time, making her the 17th person, and the fourth woman,[c] to enter the NBC sketch comedy's prestigious Five-Timers Club.[161] Johansson's next 2017 film was the comedy Rough Night, where she played Jess Thayer, one of the five friends—alongside Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, and Zoë Kravitz—whose bachelorette party goes wrong after a male stripper dies. The film had a mixed critical reception and moderate box office returns.[162]
In 2018, Johansson voiced show dog Nutmeg in Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated film Isle of Dogs, released in March,[163] and reprised her MCU role as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in Avengers: Infinity War, which followed the next month.[164] Johansson was due to star in Rub & Tug, a biographical film in which she would have played Dante "Tex" Gill, a transgender man who operated a massage parlor and prostitution ring in the 1970s and 1980s. She dropped out of the project after backlash against the casting of a cisgender woman playing a transgender person.[165]
Upcoming projects
In October 2014, it was announced that Johansson will star in and executive-produce the upcoming eight-episode period series The Custom of the Country, based on Edith Wharton's 1913 novel of the same name. She is set to play Undine Spragg, a young woman from the Midwest who tries to climb her way up the New York City social ladder.[166] Johansson will star alongside Adam Driver in Noah Baumbach's currently untitled film,[167] She will also play Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in Avengers: Endgame, the fourth in the series, scheduled for May 2019, and in her own solo film directed by Cate Shortland.[168][169]
Music career
In 2006, Johansson sang the track "Summertime" for Unexpected Dreams – Songs From the Stars, a non-profit collection of songs recorded by Hollywood actors. She performed with the Jesus and Mary Chain for a Coachella reunion show in Indio, California, in April 2007.[170] The following year, Johansson appeared as the leading lady in Justin Timberlake's music video, for "What Goes Around... Comes Around", which was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year.[171]
In May 2008, Johansson released her debut album Anywhere I Lay My Head, which consists of one original song and ten cover versions of Tom Waits songs, and features David Bowie and members from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Celebration.[172] Reviews of the album were mixed.[173] Spin was not particularly impressed with Johansson's singing.[174] Some critics found it to be "surprisingly alluring",[175] "a bravely eccentric selection",[172] and "a brilliant album" with "ghostly magic".[176] NME named the album the "23rd best album of 2008", and it peaked at number 126 on the Billboard 200.[177][178] Johansson started listening to Waits when she was 11 or 12 years old,[179] and said of him, "His melodies are so beautiful, his voice is so distinct and I had my own way of doing Tom Waits songs."[180]
In September 2009, Johansson and singer-songwriter Pete Yorn released a collaborative album, Break Up, inspired by Serge Gainsbourg's duets with Brigitte Bardot.[181] The album reached number 41 in the US.[182] In 2010, Steel Train released Terrible Thrills Vol. 1, which includes their favorite female artists singing songs from their self-titled album. Johansson is the first artist on the album, singing "Bullet".[183] Johansson sang "One Whole Hour" for the 2011 soundtrack of the documentary film Wretches & Jabberers (2010).[184] and in 2012 sang on a J. Ralph track entitled "Before My Time" for the end credits of the climate documentary Chasing Ice (2012)[185]
In February 2015, Johansson formed a band called the Singles with Este Haim from HAIM, Holly Miranda, Kendra Morris, and Julia Haltigan. The group's first single was called "Candy".[186] Johansson was issued a cease and desist order from the lead singer of the Los Angeles-based rock band the Singles, demanding she stop using their name.[187] In 2016, she performed "Trust in Me" for The Jungle Book soundtrack[188] and "Set It All Free" and "I Don't Wanna" for Sing: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.[189] In 2018, Johansson collaborated with Pete Yorn again for an EP titled Apart, released June 1.[190]
Personal life
Johansson in Germany, February 2012
Johansson is half Jewish and celebrates both Christmas and Hanukkah.[191] She has stated that she dislikes it when celebrities thank God or Jesus in their award acceptance speeches.[192] While attending PCS, Johansson dated classmate Jack Antonoff from 2001 to 2002.[193] She dated her Black Dahlia co-star Josh Hartnett for about two years until the end of 2006; Hartnett said they split because their busy schedules kept them apart.[194] Johansson began a relationship with Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds in 2007;[195] they became engaged in May 2008,[196] married in September 2008,[197] separated in December 2010, and divorced in July 2011.[198]
In November 2012, Johansson started dating Frenchman Romain Dauriac, the owner of an advertising agency;[199][200] they became engaged the following September.[201] The couple divided their time between New York City and Paris.[202] In 2014, she gave birth to their daughter, Rose Dorothy Dauriac.[203] Johansson and Dauriac married that October in Philipsburg, Montana.[204] They separated in mid-2016,[205] and divorced in September 2017.[206] It was confirmed in December 2017 that Johansson had begun a relationship with Saturday Night Live co-head writer and "Weekend Update" co-host Colin Jost.[207]
Johansson has criticized the media for promoting an image that causes unhealthy diets and eating disorders among women.[208] In one article she wrote for HuffPost, she encouraged the reader to maintain a healthy body.[209] She appeared nude on the cover of the March 2006 issue of Vanity Fair alongside actress Keira Knightley and fully clothed fashion designer Tom Ford.[210] This caused some controversy as it was believed the photo demonstrated that women are forced to flaunt their sexuality more often than men.[211] In September 2011, nude photographs of Johansson hacked from her cell phone were published online. Following an FBI investigation, the hacker was arrested, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Johansson said the photos had been sent to her then-husband, Reynolds, three years before the incident.[212] In 2014, Johansson won a lawsuit against French publisher JC Lattès for defamatory statements about her relationships in the novel The First Thing We Look At by Grégoire Delacourt. Johansson was awarded $3,400; she had claimed $68,000.[213]
Public image
Johansson in 2017
Johansson has been called "ScarJo" by the media and fans, but dislikes the nickname,[214][215] finding it lazy, flippant and insulting.[215] She is described as a sex symbol by the media.[216] The Sydney Morning Herald describes Johansson as "the embodiment of male fantasy".[16] During the filming of Match Point, director Woody Allen commented on her attractiveness, calling her "beautiful" and "sexually overwhelming".[217] In 2014, New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane wrote that "she is evidently, and profitably, aware of her sultriness, and of how much, down to the last inch, it contributes to the contours of her reputation."[218] Johansson said that |
It could explain the cosmos as well as everyday life.
Newton’s law of universal attraction, or the “inverse square law,” is as simple as they come. It says that the gravitational pull between two objects is directly proportional to the mass of each object and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. So if you double the mass of one of the objects, the gravitational pull also doubles. And if you double the distance between the two objects, the pull decreases by a factor of four. Over two centuries, Newton’s law kept on giving, explaining any number of physical phenomena. It proved itself most spectacularly not only in explaining the orbits of the known planets but also in predicting the existence of new ones.
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Beginning in the late eighteenth century, there was evidence that the planet Uranus’s orbit had a mysterious wobble. As astronomers amassed observations of Uranus’s orbit, they could slowly map out its path in space with ever more precision. Predicting Uranus’s orbit was not a straightforward exercise. It involved taking Newton’s law of gravity and working out how the other planets influenced Uranus’s motion, nudging it here and there, making its orbit ever so slightly more complicated. Astronomers and mathematicians would publish the orbits in the form of tables that would, for different days and years, predict where Uranus or any other planet should be in the sky. And when they compared their predictions with subsequent observations of Uranus’s actual position, there was always a discrepancy they couldn’t explain.
The French astronomer and mathematician Urbain Le Verrier was particularly skilled at working out the celestial orbits and producing orbits for various planets in the solar system. When he focused his attention on Uranus, he assumed from the start that Newton’s theory was perfect, given how well it worked for the other planets. If Newton’s theory was correct, he surmised, the only other possibility was that there had to be something out there that hadn’t been accounted for. And so Le Verrier took the bold step of predicting the existence of a new, fictitious planet and producing its very own astronomical table. To his delight, a German astronomer in Berlin, Gottfried Galle, pointed his telescope in the direction that Le Verrier’s table indicated and found a big, undiscovered planet shimmering in his field of view. As Galle put it in a letter to Le Verrier, “Monsieur, the planet of which you indicated the position really exists.”
Le Verrier had taken Newton’s theory a step further than anyone before and was rewarded for his audacity. For decades, Neptune was known as “Le Verrier’s planet.” Marcel Proust used Le Verrier’s discovery as an analogy for ferreting out corruption in his "Remembrance of Things Past," and Charles Dickens referred to it when describing hardboiled detective work in his short piece “The Detective Police.” It was a beautiful example of using the fundamental rules of scientific deduction. Le Verrier, basking in the glory of his discovery, then turned his attention to Mercury. It too seemed to have a strange, unexpected orbit.
In Newtonian gravity, an isolated planet orbiting the sun follows a simple, closed orbit with the shape of a squashed circle, known as an ellipse. A planet will go around and around, endlessly following the same path, periodically getting closer to and then more distant from the sun. The point in its orbit at which the planet is closest to the sun — called its perihelion — remains constant over time. Some planets, like the Earth, have almost circular orbits—the ellipse is barely squashed—while others, like Mercury, follow much more elliptical paths.
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Even accounting for all the other planets’ effects on Mercury’s orbit, Le Verrier found that Mercury’s actual orbit was at odds with the predictions of Newtonian gravity; the planet’s perihelion shifted by approximately 40 arcseconds per century. (An arcsecond is a unit of angular measurement; the entire dome of the sky is made up of about 1.3 million arcseconds, or 360 degrees.) This anomaly, known as the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, could not be explained by Le Verrier’s deployment of Newton’s rules. Something else was going on.
Once again, Le Verrier assumed that Newton had to be right, and so, in 1859, he conjectured that a new planet, Vulcan, about the same size as Mercury had to exist very close to the sun. It was a bold, outlandish conjecture. As he put it, “How could a planet, extremely bright and always near the Sun, fail to have been recognized during a total eclipse?”
Le Verrier’s conjecture set off a race to discover the new planet Vulcan. Over the following decades, there were occasional reported sightings of an object nearer the sun, but none of them stood up to scrutiny. Although the search for Vulcan didn’t end with Le Verrier’s death, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury remained firmly entrenched in astronomical lore. Something other than an invisible planet would have to explain the 40-arcsecond anomaly.
When Einstein sat down to worry about gravity in 1907, he had to reconcile Newton’s theory with his principle of relativity. In the back of his mind, he knew that he also had to explain Mercury’s anomalous orbit. It was a tall order.
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Gravity as explained by Newton violates both of the postulates in Einstein’s beautiful and concise principle of relativity. For a start, in Newton’s theory, the effect of gravity is instantaneous. If two objects are suddenly situated near each other, the force of gravity between them would be in effect immediately—it would require no time to travel from one object to the other. But how could this be if, according to Einstein’s new principle of relativity, nothing, no signal, no effect, can move faster than the speed of light? Just as crucial and as vexing was the fact that, while Einstein’s principle of relativity harmonized mechanics and electromagnetism, it left out Newton’s law of gravity. Newtonian gravity looked different in different inertial frames.
Einstein’s first step on his long trek to fix gravity and generalize his theory of relativity came one day as he sat at his chair at the patent office in Bern, lost in his world of thought. Years later he recalled the idea that came to him and led him toward his theory for gravity: “If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.”
Imagine yourself as Alice in the rabbit hole, falling freely with nothing to stop you. As you fall under the pull of gravity, the speed at which you fall increases at a constant rate. The acceleration will exactly match the gravitational pull, and as a result your fall will feel effortless—you won’t feel any force to pull or push against—although it will be undoubtedly terrifying as you hurtle through space. Now imagine a bunch of stuff falling with you: a book, a cup of tea, a similarly panicked white rabbit. All the other objects will accelerate at the same rate to compensate for the pull of gravity, and as a result they will hover around you as you all fall together. If you try to set up an experiment with these objects to measure how they move relative to you so as to determine the gravitational force, you will fail. You will feel weightless and the objects will look weightless. All of this seems to indicate that there is an intimate relationship between accelerated motion and the pull of gravity — in this case one is exactly compensating for the other.
Maybe falling freely is a step too far. There is too much going on around you: the air is rushing by, and the fear that you’ll eventually hit the bottom makes clear thinking a challenge. Let’s try something slightly simpler, and a little more sedate. Imagine that you have just entered an elevator on the ground floor of a tall building. The elevator starts to go up, and in those first few seconds, as it accelerates, you feel just a little bit heavier. Conversely, suppose you are now at the top of the building and the elevator starts to go down. During those initial moments when the elevator picks up speed, you feel lighter. Of course, once the elevator reaches its maximum speed, you don’t feel any heavier or lighter. But during those moments in which the elevator accelerates or decelerates, your sense of your own weight, and hence of gravity, is skewed. In other words, what you sense of gravity is completely dependent on whether you are speeding up or slowing down.
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On that day in 1907 when Einstein conjured up his falling man, he realized that there must be some deep connection between gravity and acceleration that would be the key to bringing gravity into his theory of relativity. If he could change his principle of relativity so that the laws of physics remained the same not only in frames moving at constant speed but also in frames that were speeding up or slowing down, he just might be able to bring gravity into the mix with electromagnetism and mechanics. He wasn’t sure how, but this brilliant insight was the initial step toward making relativity more general.
Under pressure from his German editor, Einstein wrote up his review, “On the Relativity Principle and the Conclusions Drawn From It.” He included a section on what would happen if he generalized his principle to include gravity. He summarily noted a few consequences: The presence of gravity would alter the speed of light and cause clocks to run more slowly. The effects of his generalized principle of relativity might even explain the minute drift in Mercury’s orbit. These effects, tossed in at the end of the paper, could eventually be used to test his idea, but they would need to be worked out in more detail and with more care at a later time. They would have to wait. For a few years, Einstein wouldn’t work on his theory at all.
By the end of 1907, Einstein’s brilliant obscurity was coming to an end. Slowly but surely, his 1905 papers had begun to make an impact. He started receiving a trickle of letters from distinguished physicists asking for his offprints and discussing his ideas. Einstein was excited by the developments, telling a friend, “My papers are meeting with much acknowledgement and are giving rise to further investigation.” One of his admirers quipped, “I must confess to you that I was amazed to read that you have to sit in an office for eight hours of the day. But history is full of bad jokes!” It wasn’t that he had a bad life. His job in Bern had allowed him to begin a family with Mileva. In 1904 they had a son they named Hans Albert. Einstein’s regular hours at the patent office allowed him to spend time at home building toys for his young son, but he was ready to enter the world of academia.
In 1908, Einstein was finally made a private lecturer at the University of Bern, a position that allowed him to give lectures to paying students. He found teaching incredibly burdensome and earned a terrible reputation as a lecturer. Still, in 1909 he was lured over to the University of Zurich as an associate professor. Einstein remained in Zurich for just over a year. In 1911, he was offered a professorship at the German University in Prague. This time he would have no teaching obligations. Without the bustle of his academic teaching duties, he returned to a state of mind much like that enabled by the ordered and isolated environment of the patent office. He could think about generalizing relativity once again.
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Excerpted from “The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle Over General Relativity” by Pedro G. Ferreira. Copyright © 2014 by Pedro G. Ferreira. Reprinted by arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.Apologies for the missing Tater Trot Tracker the last few days. The real world got pretty busy there for a few days. Luckily, it's a great day to return to the tracker because…
Home Run of the Day: Bobby Abreu, Los Angeles Dodgers – 31.56 seconds [video]
There have been five home run trots in the Tater Trot Tracker "era" that have taken more than a half-minute to complete:
David Ortiz May 24, 2010 – 30.59 seconds. This was the very first tater trot to break the barrier. The Roger Bannister moment, if you will. In order for this moment to arrive, a number of things had to line up perfectly. First, it was David Ortiz. Second, the ball was a huge pop-up right down the rightfield line that could have landed fair or foul (batters tend to stay in the box longer on these). And, finally, when Ortiz did start to run, the home plate umpire got in his way for just a moment. None of these things should have caused a 30-second trot, but they all worked together to give us a memorable night. Luke Scott June 30, 2010 – 35.76 seconds. Scott pulled his hamstring rounding first base and was forced to run the whole way on a bad leg. He was doing fine until he rounded third, when he nearly walked the rest of the way. Luis Hernandez September 18, 2010 – 33.08 seconds. On the pitch prior to his home run, Hernandez fouled a ball off of his foot. The trainers came out and looked at it for about five minutes before Hernandez returned to the box. He then hit a home run and trotted home on what would later be determined to be a broken foot. John Buck June 20, 2010 – 36.32 seconds. This is the single longest tater trot recorded. Much like Scott, Buck's slow trot came when he pulled a hamstring (this time on the first step out of the box). However, Buck actually stopped moving for a few seconds just up the line from home plate. As an interrupted trot, the time is technically invalid. Hanley Ramirez July 1, 2012 – 30.3 seconds. Hanley Ramirez hit his first home run in a month and then trotted around the bases really slow. Because he's Hanley Ramirez. There's no other reason for his slow trot.
On Friday night, Bobby Abreu joined this list with the slowest non-injury related trot in the Tater Trot Tracker era. Much like David Ortiz in 2010, Abreu is a slow trotter on any given night and this home run went down the rightfield line, threatening to land fair or foul. A little bit of hesitation out of the box is perfectly understandable. I'm not sure that's what you would call this, however:
That toss of the bat might be in reaction to the way Colorado's Will Harris pitched to him. The first pitch of the at-bat was in Abreu's ear. Vin Scully said, "Maybe a little anger on that pitch from Will Harris." He was referring to the two wild pitches Harris had thrown in the prior at-bats that moved Andre Ethier to third base. Unless Scully was insinuating that Harris was upset at the Dodgers for moving up a base on a wild pitch with a late six-run lead, the "anger" was self-directed.
No matter what, the bat toss is not why Abreu now sits all alone on the slowest trots list (for non-injured batters). Players are that slow out of the box every day. In fact, Abreu touched first base at 9.22 seconds. While slow, that's not an unusual home-to-first time for some of the slower trotters. Nope, like Hanley Ramirez before him (Abreu's current teammate), Bobby Abreu earned this time by choosing to run the bases slow. It's all on him.
During the trot, the Colorado Rockie's television announcers said "He's not showing up the pitcher. Bobby just doesn't run as well as he used to." That was awfully diplomatic of the two, but I disagree.
(For the 2012 Tater Trot Tracker Leaderboard, click here.)
Slowest Trot: Bobby Abreu, Los Angeles Dodgers – 31.56 seconds [video]
Billy Butler was the second slowest trotter on Friday. At 26.82 seconds, he was still nearly five seconds faster than Abreu. That doesn't happen very often.
Quickest Trot: Trayvon Robinson, Seattle Marines – 18.45 seconds [video]
Bobby Abreu touched second base at 15.95 seconds. Two-and-a-half seconds later, Robinson was touching home.
Click here for the ongoing 2012 Tater Trot Tracker Leaderboard. You can also follow @TaterTrotTrkr on Twitter for more up-to-the-minute trot times.While it may seem like tattoos are the norm now, no one has ink like this. A team from the University of Illinois led by John Rogers has devised a method to actually install LED lights under the skin. The research, published today in Nature Materials, saw the team develop flexible arrays 2.5 μm thick and 100 x 100 μm square which are currently smaller than any commercially available array.
In their research, the team printed circuits “directly onto a rigid glass substrate and then transferred them to an inexpensive biocompatible polymer called poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) to create a mesh-like array of LEDs and photodetectors.”
In short, the university team has allowed LEDs to be placed under the skin while allowing for stretching and twisting by as much as 75 percent. As the whole substrate is encased in thin silicon rubber, the ‘LED tattoo’ is also waterproof. The uses are numerous. As well as becoming the latest in tattoo evolution, sub dermal illumination could also aid in the monitoring of wounds, spectroscopy, colour-coding robots and photodynamic drug therapy.
Rogers said of his team’s research that commercializing the technology was “incredibly appealing” and he couldn’t wait to see the impact it has. The team had previously tested the LEDs by integrating a sheet into the fingertip of a vinyl glove, which was then immersed in soapy water.
+ University of Illinois
Via DVICE via PhysOrg
Images from PhysOrg and Natural MaterialsThe size and nature of this financial services debt — and the customers who bought it — are central to the late great credit mania we have just lived through. Banks and other finance companies issued these obligations for relatively short periods — five years or less — and paid investors either variable interest rates or the fixed variety.
Issuance of this financial debt exploded during the mid-2000s. Back in 1999, paper issued by American financial companies made up 30 percent of Barclays’s fixed- and floating-rate corporate debt index. By 2007, this type of debt accounted for almost half of the index.
Of the $172 billion coming due by year-end, Barclays says, $123 billion was floating-rate debt. And of the $245 billion maturing next year, some $141 billion pays a variable rate.
As you can see, the bulk of this debt consisted of floating-rate obligations. During the mania, these issues were snapped up by a group of relatively new money managers operating special investment vehicles, or S.I.V.’s.
S.I.V.’s raised money from investors by selling commercial paper; then they bought residential and commercial mortgages with it, capturing the spread between their cost of money (what they paid investors for commercial paper) and the yield they earned (on mortgages they bought).
These S.I.V.’s also bought a slug of bank debt, for its perceived safety and relatively high yields. Barclays estimated that 40 percent of the assets held in these vehicles was in floating-rate debt issued by United States banks.
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The popularity of these special investment vehicles really began to explode in 2004, Barclays reports; that January, they held roughly $125 billion in assets. By 2007, however, some $400 billion sat in S.I.V.’s. Banks were happy to sell their debt to these money machines, but the assembly line broke down in September 2007, when the credit crisis commenced.
And, as we noted, few buyers of short-term bank debt are around now.
For example, institutions that generated revenue by lending out securities — their own or their customers’ — took that cash and invested it in these short-term bank obligations. Once again, they captured the spread between their capital costs and interest on the debt they purchased.
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Now, however, many of these institutions have curtailed the securities lending game.
A result, said Ashish Shah, co-head of credit strategy at Barclays Capital, is a supply-and-demand imbalance that means the institutions whose debt is maturing will have to shrink their balance sheets. Some institutions can do this, he said, but for many it won’t be easy.
“Some banks have meaningful cash hoards to deal with some of these maturities,” Mr. Shah said last week. “They do have assets on the other side that they can shrink. And the other thing to keep in mind here is institutions are taking in deposits at close to record lengths.”
But Mr. Shah said the wave of bank debt coming due could prove problematic if government programs set up to provide liquidity to financial institutions go away. One potent example is the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program offered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; it backs corporate debt issued by bank holding companies in exchange for a fee.
The F.D.I.C. has said this program will vanish at the end of October.
“It is a real risk if policy makers sit back and say, ‘Things are fine; we don’t need to do this stuff anymore,’” Mr. Shah said. “Things feel like they are getting better in large part because of the policy response. You take away the policy being administered too soon, and you could cause significant damage to confidence.”
POLICY makers have a tough balancing act to achieve here. On one hand, they want to help financial institutions over a rough patch. But they also have an obligation to taxpayers to withdraw from the business of bank assistance as soon as possible.
It is not clear what decisions will be made, of course. If the economy recovers enough, bank balance sheets will look a lot better next year than they do now. But even as many banks have successfully raised equity capital, how they will finance their maturing debt remains a concern.
This much is evident: it is too soon to celebrate the end of the banking crisis. Less debt is the answer, but shrinking balance sheets is hard.The term political entrepreneur may refer to any of the following:
someone (usually active in the fields of either politics or business) who founds a new political project, group, or political party
a businessman who seeks to gain profit through subsidies, protectionism, government contracts, or other such favorable arrangements with government(s) through political influence (also known as a rent-seeker).
a political actor (not necessarily a politician) who seeks to further his or her own political career and popularity by pursuing the creation of policy that pleases the populace.
Politician [ edit ]
In the field of business, entrepreneurship involves people taking a risk in order to create new business ventures, to gain advantage over a competitor, and to maximize profits.
Traditionally entrepreneurs have been associated with the world of business, however the term is used in the political arena also. For example, Choi Taewook in 2004 wrote:
A political entrepreneur refers to a political player who seeks to gain certain political and social benefits in return for providing the common goods that can be shared by an unorganized general public. These common goods that political entrepreneurs attempt to provide to the populace generally include foreign- and domestic-related public policy, while the benefits they hope to gain involve voter support, public recognition, and personal popularity.
History and cultural context [ edit ]
The political activism of American business as a class has surged and ebbed at various historical moments. Variations in both business and countervailing political mobilization should be approached as problems of collective interpretation and action. To explain the historical patterns of class-wide business activism, we need to look at the dynamics of partisan regimes in American politics. Partisan leaders, not businesses or other policy-seekers themselves, have the strongest incentives to absorb the transaction costs associated with either broad-scale business or countervailing collective action. When partisan entrepreneurs see an opportunity to alter the distribution of power at the national level, they engage in a discursive exercise to remold business or oppositional interests and undertake the mobilization of these interests.
An analytical framework for dealing with political entrepreneurship and reform is proposed which is based on some new combinations of Schumpeterian political economy, an extended version of Tullock's model of democracy as franchise-bidding for natural monopoly and some basic elements of New Institutional Economics. It is shown that problems of insufficient award criteria and incomplete contracts which may arise in economic bidding schemes, also – and even more so – characterise political competition. At the same time, these conditions create leeway for Schumpeterian political entrepreneurship. The same is true for various barriers to entry in politics. These barriers affect a trade-off between political stability and political contestability which will be discussed with special emphasis on incentives and opportunities for political entrepreneurship in the sense of risking long-term investments in basic political reforms.
Businessperson [ edit ]
However the term is also used in a very different way by those that wish to contrast what they see as a pure "market entrepreneur" with someone that uses the political system to further a commercial venture or their own career. On this definition a political entrepreneur is a business entrepreneur who seeks to gain profit through subsidies, protectionism, government contracts, or other such favorable arrangements with government(s) through political influence (also known as corporate welfare).
Ed Younkins (in 2000) wrote: "Political entrepreneurs seek and receive help from the state and, therefore, are not true entrepreneurs." Similarly, Thomas DiLorenzo says, "a political entrepreneur succeeds primarily by influencing government to subsidize his business or industry, or to enact legislation or regulation that harms his competitors." He says, in contrast, the "market entrepreneur succeeds financially by selling a newer, better, or less expensive product on the free market without any government subsidies, direct or indirect." He gives the example of a mousetrap manufacturer who seeks to gain market share by making a better mousetrap as being a market entrepreneur, and a manufacturer who lobbies Congress to ban the importation of foreign-made mousetraps as a political entrepreneur. (DiLorenzo, Thomas, Chapter 7 of How Capitalism Saved America) [1]
In practice, the division between the market entrepreneur and the political entrepreneur can be hazy. Many business entrepreneurs share both characteristics in varying degrees. The term appears to have been coined by Burton W. Folsom Jr. in his book, The Myth of the Robber Barons.Best Answer: He needs to generate a conversation with his parents about the many people who we see on the nightly news as they go into courts all around the country in support of someone who is charged with some truly terrible crimes.
Serious assault, rape, murder, and often the victim is the old and frail or a child.
Get them talking about why we see for each accused family and friends in attendance at court offering moral support.
The answer is because that is what family do.
With that secured in their minds, when the gay question next comes up I would say "Yes I am gay."
This will bring out all the abuse you have already spoken about.
Then tell them not to worry, you have decided you will not do that any more as it clearly offends and embarrasses them. As they fall silent, walk to the kitchen and open the draw and pull out a large knife and as you walk towards the door, say instead I will do as you say is acceptable. I will go out and find a 5 year old child, rape and murder her and you can then come to court and support your son.
Must I say don't actually kill or rape anyone but if you really want to give them a scare, be gone for a few hours then come back with your cloths messed up. (Toss the knife in the bin before you go on the street.)
Source(s):
xxx000au · 8 years ago
4 Thumbs up 1 Thumbs down Report AbuseWaxangel Profile Blog Joined September 2002 United States 27026 Posts Last Edited: 2013-09-01 01:40:06 #1
IM, Prime, MVP leave eSF
LG-IM, Prime, and Team MVP have cancelled their registration to the eSF.
Soul joins eSF
Soul (former STX Soul) has joined the Esports Federation. Head Coach Kim Kim Gi stated "I'm very happy to join the eSF. We will work to create a good esports culture, and we'll try to attain the greatest result in GSTL alongside our Proleague victory. I believe the eSF and Soul can do a lot of things together."
The eSF stated "We welcome SOUL into the eSF, and we will help help the players so they can stably compete in the GSTL and participate in foreign tournaments." Source: ThisIsGame 1, Source: ThisIsGame 2 LG-IM, Prime, and Team MVP have cancelled their registration to the eSF.Soul (former STX Soul) has joined the Esports Federation. Head Coach Kim Kim Gi stated "I'm very happy to join the eSF. We will work to create a good esports culture, and we'll try to attain the greatest result in GSTL alongside our Proleague victory. I believe the eSF and Soul can do a lot of things together."The eSF stated "We welcome SOUL into the eSF, and we will help help the players so they can stably compete in the GSTL and participate in foreign tournaments." Administrator Hey HP can you redo everything youve ever done because i have a small complaint?
partydude89 Profile Blog Joined August 2012 1835 Posts Last Edited: 2013-09-01 01:43:14 #2
With so many players leaving Soul, does anyone know their current roster list?
EDIT: so sad about all these teams leaving though Well thats nice for them. i hope they can find sponsors.With so many players leaving Soul, does anyone know their current roster list?EDIT: so sad about all these teams leaving though #1 Official Hack Fan|#2 Bomber behind Wintex.|Curious|Life|Flash|TY|Cure|Maru|sOs|Jin Air Green Wings fighting!|SBENU Fighting!|
Fionn Profile Blog Joined October 2009 United States 20365 Posts #3 So the GSTL champions are going to KeSPA.
The KeSPA champions are going to eSF.
While this whole mess is extremely bad for SC2 in Korea, you have to admit its fucking hilarious. Writer https://twitter.com/FionnOnFire
Paljas Profile Joined October 2011 Germany 6662 Posts #4 esf becomes a very poors man kespa
INNI Profile Joined April 2012 Sweden 249 Posts #5 Plan B?
felisconcolori Profile Blog Joined October 2011 United States 6166 Posts #6 On September 01 2013 10:28 Fionn wrote:
So the GSTL champions are going to KeSPA.
The KeSPA champions are going to eSF.
While this whole mess is extremely bad for SC2 in Korea, you have to admit its fucking hilarious.
Madness. Cats and dogs, living together... what is the world coming to?
Madness. Cats and dogs, living together... what is the world coming to? Yes, I email sponsors... to thank them. Don't post drunk, kids. My king, what has become of you?
Waxangel Profile Blog Joined September 2002 United States 27026 Posts Last Edited: 2013-09-01 01:32:46 #7 On September 01 2013 10:28 Fionn wrote:
So the GSTL champions are going to KeSPA.
The KeSPA champions are going to eSF.
While this whole mess is extremely bad for SC2 in Korea, you have to admit its fucking hilarious.
see this is a great tweet
just to make a point, i'm going to steal it and see how many RTs I get see this is a great tweetjust to make a point, i'm going to steal it and see how many RTs I get Administrator Hey HP can you redo everything youve ever done because i have a small complaint?
Yhamm Profile Blog Joined December 2012 France 6422 Posts #8 lol, Kespa & esf should just merge at this point, such a mess now and so ridiculous... Liquipedia We will have only each other at the last
Fusilero Profile Blog Joined July 2011 United Kingdom 29309 Posts #9 At this point I don't even want to react to what's going on in Korea with anything besides uncontrolled laughter.
So thusly EHEUHEUHEUHEUUE. Glorious SEA doto
Dodgin Profile Blog Joined July 2011 Canada 38849 Posts #10 Fionn just make a Twitter already
Gorribal Profile Blog Joined March 2013 Canada 185 Posts Last Edited: 2013-09-01 01:40:04 #11 + Show Spoiler [Original post] + It's funny how all you people assume IM is going to proleague since they're not participating in GSTL. They have great money problems wince they have no main sponsor, that's probably the reason they're not participating in Proleague. Most IM players don't get paid, and those that do the money from from the Coach's pocket. Everyone's making all these disbanding rumours, they should be making them for these eSF teams...
EDIT: NVM, ignore that, didn't read IM and Prime quit the eSF and the other new rumours/dvelopments. EDIT: NVM, ignore that, didn't read IM and Prime quit the eSF and the other new rumours/dvelopments. "PartinG keeps touching us and groping us (laughs)." - Rain
Zenbrez Profile Joined June 2012 Canada 5957 Posts #12 On September 01 2013 10:30 Waxangel wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 01 2013 10:28 Fionn wrote:
So the GSTL champions are going to KeSPA.
The KeSPA champions are going to eSF.
While this whole mess is extremely bad for SC2 in Korea, you have to admit its fucking hilarious.
see this is a great tweet
just to make a point, i'm going to steal it and see how many RTs I get see this is a great tweetjust to make a point, i'm going to steal it and see how many RTs I get
Oh. You're that kind of person. Oh. You'rekind of person. Refer to my post.
Fionn Profile Blog Joined October 2009 United States 20365 Posts #13 On September 01 2013 10:33 Gorribal wrote:
It's funny how all you people assume IM is going to proleague since they're not participating in GSTL. They have great money problems wince they have no main sponsor, that's probably the reason they're not participating in Proleague. Most IM players don't get paid, and those that do the money from from the Coach's pocket. Everyone's making all these disbanding rumours, they should be making them for these eSF teams...
IM has two League teams. They want to join KeSPA to play in the LoL Proleague. They just rearranged their entire League roster and their #2 team made the Code A finals of Korean LoL. IM has two League teams. They want to join KeSPA to play in the LoL Proleague. They just rearranged their entire League roster and their #2 team made the Code A finals of Korean LoL. Writer https://twitter.com/FionnOnFire
Flossy Profile Blog Joined August 2011 United States 865 Posts #14 On September 01 2013 10:28 Fionn wrote:
So the GSTL champions are going to KeSPA.
The KeSPA champions are going to eSF.
While this whole mess is extremely bad for SC2 in Korea, you have to admit its fucking hilarious.
Perhaps the Benny Hill theme would be somewhat appropriate? Perhaps the Benny Hill theme would be somewhat appropriate? etternaonline.com
Dodgin Profile Blog Joined July 2011 Canada 38849 Posts #15 On September 01 2013 10:33 Gorribal wrote:
It's funny how all you people assume IM is going to proleague since they're not participating in GSTL. They have great money problems wince they have no main sponsor, that's probably the reason they're not participating in Proleague. Most IM players don't get paid, and those that do the money from from the Coach's pocket. Everyone's making all these disbanding rumours, they should be making them for these eSF teams...
Why would IM leave GSTL if they're not joining proleague/kespa, the only reason would be they're disbanding. They're not disbanding so they will join proleague/kespa. Seems fairly obvious to me. Why would IM leave GSTL if they're not joining proleague/kespa, the only reason would be they're disbanding. They're not disbanding so they will join proleague/kespa. Seems fairly obvious to me.
Josh_Video Profile Joined August 2013 Canada 798 Posts #16 I wonder how they will do in GSTL without Innovation, Classic, Mini or Hyvaa. This could be rather interesting. MKP :D ~ MMA ~ Scarlett ~ Taeja ~ Mvp ~ InnoVation ~ Polt | Prime ( RIP :( ) ~ Acer ~ SK Telecom T1 | I enjoyed the locust war of May 3, 2014.
DinosaurJones Profile Joined February 2012 United States 952 Posts #17 On September 01 2013 10:33 Gorribal wrote:
It's funny how all you people assume IM is going to proleague since they're not participating in GSTL. They have great money problems wince they have no main sponsor, that's probably the reason they're not participating in Proleague. Most IM players don't get paid, and those that do the money from from the Coach's pocket. Everyone's making all these disbanding rumours, they should be making them for these eSF teams...
What do you mean you people?? What do you mean you people?? www.savefile.tv - My website for Let's Plays and other general gaming talk. Also, music.
Fusilero Profile |
not feeling it.
But, I told myself,
“No! Today is going to be a good day. I’m in charge of my life and how I feel!”
I was determined to turn things around and have a good day.
So here, I’ve put together my tried and tested (and backed up by actual science) techniques for helping you feel more positive in 10 seconds.
1. Sing your heart out.
It’s thought that the benefits of singing work in a number of ways.
First, when you’re singing you’re focused on the song and therefore distracted from your troubles.
Secondly, singing often involves taking lots of deep breaths, which can help you to feel more relaxed and at ease.
Evidence suggests that singing in a group has the most powerful mood enhancing effects, but that solo singing is also effective. So this morning, I sang in the shower and it helped to brighten my mood.
2. Look at old photos.
Browsing photos of happy times was food to boost positive feelings by as much as 11%, found a study by the Open University. They even compared this with eating chocolate and quaffing wine and found looking at happy snaps the most effective.
Plus, it’s free and low calorie too!
Log onto Facebook and spend some time chuckling over those pictures of the last big night out you had with your friends, or the amazing holiday you had with your partner, then prepare yourself for a wave of positivity and good vibes.
3. Grin.
We all know that we smile when we’re happy, but did you also know that it works the other way too?
By pasting on a smile we can improve our feelings of happiness. Evidence suggests that even if it’s a fake smile, it works because smiling sends a biofeedback message to the brain to let us know that we’re feeling good.
So, in the shower this morning, in between belting out a frankly strained rendition of Alicia Keys’ “If I ain’t got you,” I also fixed a big grin on my face. It seemed to help!
4. Be Kind.
Acts of kindness are really quite powerful.
The giver of the act of kindness, the receiver plus anyone who happens to observe this act, all get a mental boost.
So, this morning, purely for the selfish reasons of wanting to cheer myself up, I bought the homeless man on my street a banana and a packet of crisps (his choice). I felt pretty good about it! I hope someone else saw it and got a mood boost too!
Other acts of kindness could be giving to charity, helping someone out with something, giving someone a sincere compliment or writing a thank you note to someone out of the blue.
5. Three Things.
This neat little written task takes just a few seconds and Action for Happiness says it boosts good feelings fast.
Grab a note book or bit of paper and jot down:
Three things you’re grateful for in your life—people, places, fresh running water in the taps. There’s so much to be grateful for when you think about it.
Three things you like about self. Are you a great cook? Do you look fantastic in shorts? Can you down a flaming sambuca with ninja like ease?
Three things you’re looking forward to—days off, holidays, special meals, an early night!? It could be anything.
Done! Feeling more positive?
I bet you are, and if not, rinse and repeat.
Let me know in the comments what strategies you have for boosting positivity quickly—I’d love some more ideas!
Relephant:
Author: Chloe Brotheridge
Apprentice Editor: Brandie Smith/Editor:Renee Picard
Photo: Scarleth Marie/FlickrAbout 500 people turned out to show their support for the Save the Hellfire campaign at a short protest on Sunday afternoon.
The demonstrators gathered at the Hell Fire Club in the Dublin Mountains to protest against a proposed €19 million major tourism development at the site by South Dublin County Council and Coillte.
The protesters met at the Hell Fire car park before walking to the top of Montpelier Hill.
Group member Elizabeth Davidson told The Irish Times that the committee were delighted with the turnout.
“We had about 500 people turn out for the demonstration and we are very pleased with the turnout. A lot of people incorporated the event into their usual Sunday walking route.
“I think people were very interested in what our speakers had to say, in particular the discussion surrounding the run-off the hill, which can affect water supply.
“Unfortunately, Francis Black was unable to make it [as planned], but the Green Party leader Eamon Ryan spoke about the vision for a national park in the Dublin Mountains which would incorporate land from Powerscourt the whole way over.”
The group expect to hold further discussions with South Dublin County Council on the issue in the coming weeks.
The Hell Fire Club: The planned visitors’ centre would include a visitor facilities building, a glass-fronted cafe looking out over Dublin Bay, and a kiosk, shop, toilets and changing-rooms. Photograph: Abarta Heritage
The proposed development would be part of the Dublin Mountains Project.
It would include a visitors’ centre high up on Montpelier Hill, close to the Hell Fire Club.
Ramblers’ lounge
The centre would encompass an 80-seater restaurant, a ramblers’ lounge, a retail unit, a seminar room and a display area.
The current Hell Fire car park would be expanded, through the felling of many trees.
A smaller project is also planned for Massy’s Wood across the road.
It is hoped that the Dublin Mountains Project will attract 300,000 visitors a year to this location.
However, locals and frequent visitors to the area object to the plans, claiming that the natural habitat would be turned into a “concrete jungle”.
Speaking to The Irish Times, Anna Collins, who is a member of the Save the Hellfire group, explained why local residents and the wider community have organised the rally.
“As you can imagine, this [project] would put great pressure on a small area with unique heritage merit, potentially causing environmental damage and bringing a lot of traffic congestion into a location where the current road infrastructure is below standard.
Richard Boyd Barrett speaks from a window during a protest by the Save the Hellfire group in Co Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
“There would also be an impact on the native wildlife which inhabits the wooded areas. Both the greater spotted woodpecker and the red squirrel have been seen in Hell Fire or Massy’s Wood in most recent times and are a rarity due to the population numbers in Ireland at present,” said Ms Collins.
“We want to raise awareness and indeed stress... the need for sensitive care for the built heritage and the environmental diversity in the area.
“We have been amazed how many people travel to the Hell Fire to walk in these woods, and a lot of people from areas like Crumlin, Tallaght and Walkinstown.
“They don’t have any forest areas where they come from so they come here, and the feedback which we have gotten from families is that they are outraged to think that an area where they can let their children run free is an area that is going to be concreted over and turned into a suburban facility.
“There are big concerns about issues like flooding and water, and also the increased level of traffic the project would bring.”Abstract:
Claims:
Description:
RELATED APPLICATION
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
BACKGROUND
SUMMARY
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
Patent applications by Rony Abovitz, Hollywood, FL US
Patent applications by Samuel A. Miller, Hollywood, FL US
Patent applications by Magic Leap, Inc.
Patent applications in class Operator body-mounted heads-up display (e.g., helmet mounted display)
Patent applications in all subclasses Operator body-mounted heads-up display (e.g., helmet mounted display)
One embodiment is directed to a system for enabling two or more users to interact within a virtual world comprising virtual world data, comprising a computer network comprising one or more computing devices, the one or more computing devices comprising memory, processing circuitry, and software stored at least in part in the memory and executable by the processing circuitry to process at least a portion of the virtual world data; wherein at least a first portion of the virtual world data originates from a first user virtual world local to a first user, and wherein the computer network is operable to transmit the first portion to a user device for presentation to a second user, such that the second user may experience the first portion from the location of the second user, such that aspects of the first user virtual world are effectively passed to the second user.A user display device, comprising: a housing frame mountable on a head of a user; a first pair of cameras coupled to the housing frame to track a movement of the user's eyes and to estimate a depth of focus based on the tracked eye movements; a projection module having a light generating mechanism to generate and modify, based on the estimated depth of focus, a projected light associated with a display object such that the display object appears to be in focus; a lens mounted on the housing frame; and a processor communicatively coupled to the projection module to communicate data associated with the display image to the projection module.The user display device of claim 1, wherein the lens further comprises at least one transparent mirror positioned in front of the user's eyes to bounce the projected light into the user's eyes.The user display device of claim 2, wherein the at least one transparent mirror selectively allows a transmission of light from the local environment.The user display device of claim 1, further comprising a second pair of cameras mountable on the housing frame to capture a field-of-view image of an eye corresponding to each of the second pair of cameras.The user display device of claim 4, wherein the processor calculates a head pose of the user based on the captured field-of-view images.The user display device of claim 1, wherein the projection module comprises a scanned laser arrangement to modify the projected light associated with the display object based on the estimated depth of focus.The user display device of claim 6, wherein the projected light is a light beam having a diameter less than7 mm.The user display device of claim 1, wherein the first pair of cameras comprises infrared cameras paired with infrared light sources to track a movement of each of the user's eyes.The user display device of claim 1, further comprising a sensor assembly comprising at least one sensor to sense at least one of a movement of the user, a location of the user, a direction of the user and an orientation of the user.The user display device of claim 9, wherein the at least one sensor is at least one of an accelerometer, a compass and a gyroscope.The user display device of claim 9, wherein the processor estimates a head pose of the user based on the at least one of the movement of the user, the location of the user, the direction of the user, and the orientation of the user.The user display device of claim 1, further comprising a GPS system.The user display device of claim 1, wherein the processor is communicatively coupled to a computer network to transmit at least a portion of a virtual world data, and receive another portion of the virtual world data.The user display device of claim 1, further comprising an audio speaker module mountable on the head frame to output sounds.The user display device of claim 1, further comprising a microphone mountable on the housing frame to capture sounds local to the user.The user display device of claim 1, wherein the projection module modifies another projected light associated with another object that is not the display object such that the other object appears blurred.The user display device of claim 1, wherein the processor renders frames of the display object at a rate of at least 60 frames per second.The user display device of claim 1, further comprising a haptic interface device communicatively coupled to the projection module to provide tactile feedback.The user display device of claim 1, wherein the display object is at least one of a virtual object, a rendered physical object, an image and a video.The user display device of claim 1, further comprising an environment sensing system to digitally reconstruct an environment of the user.A method, comprising: tracking a movement of a user's eyes; estimating a depth of focus of the user's eyes based on the tracked eye movements; modifying a light beam associated with a display object based on the estimated depth of focus such that the display object appears in focus; and projecting the modified light beam into the user's eyes.The method of claim 21, further comprising: selectively allowing a transmission of light from a local environment of the user based on a visualization mode of the display object, wherein the visualization mode is one of an augmented reality mode, a virtual reality mode, and a combination of augmented and virtual reality modes.The method of claim 21, further comprising: capturing a field-of-view image of each of the user's eyes.The method of claim 23, further comprising: estimating a head pose of the user based on the at least one field-of-view image of the user's eyes.The method of claim 23, further comprising: converting at least one physical object in the captured field-of-view image to a physically rendered virtual object; and displaying the physically rendered virtual object to the user.The method claim 23, further comprising: extracting a set of points in the captured field-of-view image; and creating a fiducial for at least one physical object in the captured field-of-view image based on the extracted set of points.The method of claim 26, further comprising: transmitting the at least one of the extracted set of points and the created fiducial to a cloud computer; and tagging the at least one of the extracted set of points and the created fiducial to a type of object.The method of claim 27, further comprising: recognizing a different physical object as belonging to the type of object based on at least one of the tagged set of points associated with the type of object and the tagged created fiducial associated with the type of object.The method claim 21, wherein the projected light is a light beam having a diameter less than7 mm.The method of claim 21, further comprising: sensing at least one of a movement of the user, a location of the user, a direction of the user and an orientation of the user; and calculating a pose of the user based on the at least one sensed movement, sensed location, sensed direction and sensed orientation.The method of claim 30, wherein the at least one sensor is at least one of an accelerometer, a compass and a gyroscope.The method of claim 21, further comprising: processing a virtual world data associated with the display object to a computer network; and transmitting at least a portion of the virtual world data associated with the display object to a second user located at a second location such that the second user may experience the at least portion of the virtual world data associated with the display object at the second location.The method of claim 32, further comprising: sensing a physical object; and modifying, based on a predetermined relationship with the sensed physical object, at least a portion of the virtual world data associated with the display object.The method of claim 33, presenting the modified virtual world data to the second user.The method of claim 21, further comprising: modifying another light associated with another object that is not the display object such that the other object appears blurred.The method of claim 21, further comprising; receiving user input through a user interface; and modifying the display object based on the received user input.The method of claim 36, wherein the user interface is at least one of a haptic interface device, a keyboard, a mouse, a joystick, a motion capture controller, an optical tracking device and an audio input device.The method of claim 21, wherein the display object is at least one of a virtual object, a rendered physical object, an image and a video.(canceled)The present application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119 to U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 61/776,771 filed Mar. 11, 2013. The foregoing application is hereby incorporated by reference into the present application in its entirety.The present invention generally relates to systems and methods configured to facilitate interactive virtual or augmented reality environments for one or more users.Virtual and augmented reality environments are generated by computers using, in part, data that describes the environment. This data may describe, for example, various objects with which a user may sense and interact with. Examples of these objects include objects that are rendered and displayed for a user to see, audio that is played for a user to hear, and tactile (or haptic) feedback for a user to feel. Users may sense and interact with the virtual and augmented reality environments through a variety of visual, auditory and tactical means.Embodiments of the present invention are directed to devices, systems and methods for facilitating virtual reality and/or augmented reality interaction for one or more users.One embodiment is directed to a user display device comprising a housing frame mountable on a head of a user, a first pair of cameras coupled to the housing frame to track a movement of the user's eyes and to estimate a depth of focus based on the tracked eye movements, a projection module having a light generating mechanism to generate and modify, based on the estimated depth of focus, a projected light associated with a display object such that the display object appears to be in focus, a lens mounted on the housing frame, and-a processor communicatively coupled to the projection module to communicate data associated with the display image to the projection module. The lens may comprise at least one transparent mirror positioned in front of the user's eyes to bounce the projected light into the user's eyes. The at least one transparent mirror may selectively allow a transmission of light from the local environment.The user display device may further comprise a second pair of cameras mountable on the housing frame to capture a field-of-view image of an eye corresponding to each of the second pair of cameras. The processor may calculate a head pose of the user based on the captured field-of-view images.The projection module may comprise a scanned laser arrangement to modify the projected light beam associated with the display object based on the estimated depth of focus. The diameter of the projected light beam may be less than 0.7 mm.In one embodiment, the first pair of cameras may comprise infrared cameras paired with infrared light sources to track a movement of each of the user's eyes. The user display device may further comprise a sensor assembly comprising at least one sensor to sense at least one of a movement of the user, a location of the user, a direction of the user and an orientation of the user. The at least one sensor may be an accelerometer, a compass or a gyroscope. The processor may estimate a head pose of the user based on the at least one of the movement of the user, the location of the user, the direction of the user, and the orientation of the user. The user display device may comprise a GPS system. The user display device may further comprise a haptic interface device communicatively coupled to the projection module to provide tactile feedback. 20. The user display device may further comprise an environment sensing system to digitally reconstruct an environment of the user.The processor may be communicatively coupled to a computer network to transmit at least a portion of a virtual world data, and receive another portion of the virtual world data.The user display device may comprise an audio speaker module mountable on the head frame to output sounds. The user display device may further comprise a microphone mountable on the housing frame to capture sounds local to the user.The projection module may modify another projected light associated with another object that is not the display object such that the other object appears blurred. The processor may render frames of the display object at a rate of at least 60 frames per second.The display object may be at least one of a virtual object, a rendered physical object, an image and a video.In another embodiment, a method comprises tracking a movement of a user's eyes, estimating a depth of focus of the user's eyes based on the tracked eye movement, modifying a light beam associated with a display object based on the estimated depth of focus such that the display object appears in focus, and projecting the modified light beam into the user's eyes. The diameter of the projected light beam projected to the user's eyes may be less than 0.7 mm.The method may further comprise selectively allowing a transmission of light from a local environment of the user based on a visualization mode of the display object. The visualization mode may be one of an augmented reality mode, a virtual reality mode, and a combination of augmented and virtual reality modes.The method may further comprise capturing a field-of-view image of each of the user's eyes. The captured field of view image may be used to estimate a head pose of the user. The captured field-of-view image may be used to convert at least one physical object to a physically rendered virtual object, and to display the physically rendered virtual object to the user.The method may further comprise extracting a set of points in the captured field-of-view image, and creating a fiducial for at least one physical object in the captured field-of-view image based on the extracted set of points. The method may further comprise transmitting the at least one of the extracted set of points and the created fiducial to a cloud computer, and tagging the at least one of the extracted set of points and the created fiducial to a type of object. The method may further comprise recognizing a different physical object as belonging to the type of object based on at least one of the tagged set of points associated with the type of object and the tagged created fiducial associated with the type of object.The method may further comprise sensing at least one of a movement of the user, a location of the user, a direction of the user and an orientation of the user, and calculating a pose of the user based on the at least one sensed movement, sensed location, sensed direction and sensed orientation. The sensor may be at least one of an accelerometer, a compass and a gyroscope.The method may further comprise processing a virtual world data associated with the display object to a cloud network, and transmitting at least a portion of the virtual world data associated with the display object to a second user located at a second location such that the second user may experience the at least portion of the virtual world data associated with the display object at the second location.The method may further comprise sensing a physical object, and modifying, based on a predetermined relationship with the sensed physical object, at least a portion of the virtual world data associated with the display object. The method further comprises presenting the modified virtual world data to the second user.The method may further comprise modifying another light associated with another object that is not the display object such that the other object appears blurred.The method may further comprise receiving user input through a user interface, and modifying the display object based on the received user input. The user interface may be at least one of a haptic interface device, a keyboard, a mouse, a joystick, a motion capture controller, an optical tracking device and an audio input device. The display object may be at least one of a virtual object, a rendered physical object, an image and a video.In another embodiment, a method comprises interacting with a virtual world comprising virtual world data through a head-mounted user display device, wherein the head-mounted user display device renders a display image associated with at least a portion of the virtual world data to a user based on an estimated depth of focus of the user's eyes, creating an additional virtual world data originating from at least one of the interaction of the head-mounted user device with the virtual world and an interaction with a physical environment of the user, and transmitting the additional virtual world data to a computer network. The virtual world may be presented in a two-dimensional format or a three-dimensional format.The method may further comprise transmitting, for presentation the additional virtual world data to a second user at a second location such that the second user can experience the additional virtual world data from the second location. The additional virtual world data may be associated with a field-of-view image captured through the head-mounted user display device. The additional virtual world data may be associated with at least one a sensed movement of the user, a sensed location of the user, a sensed direction of the user and a sensed orientation of the user. The additional virtual world data may be associated with a physical object sensed by the head-mounted user display device. The additional virtual world data may be associated with the display object having a predetermined relationship with the sensed physical object.The method may further comprise selecting, based on user input, an interface for enabling interaction between the user and the head-mounted user display device, and rendering the display object associated with at least the portion of the virtual world data based on the selected interface. The selected interface may be one of a virtual reality mode, an augmented reality mode, a blended reality mode, and a combination of the virtual reality and augmented reality modes.In another embodiment a method enabling two or more users to interact with a virtual world comprising virtual world data comprises displaying the virtual world through a first user display device in a first visualization mode of a first user, transmitting at least a portion of the virtual world data, through a computer network, to a second user display, and displaying the virtual world associated with the transmitted portion of the virtual world data in a second visualization mode at the second user display device of a second user. The first visualization mode may be different from the second visualization mode. The first and visualization modes may be at least one of an augmented reality mode, a virtual reality mode, a blended reality mode, and a combination of the virtual reality and augment reality modes.In another embodiment, a method, comprises processing at least one of a rendered physical image data associated with an image of a real physical object and a virtual image data associated with a virtual display object based on a selection of a user, and selectively displaying to a user the selected combination of a real physical object as seen by the user in real-time, a rendered physical-virtual object, rendered based on the real physical object as seen by the user in real-time, and the virtual display object. The at least one of a real physical object, the rendered physical-virtual object and the virtual display object may be selectively displayed based on user input of a visualization mode. The visualization mode may be at least one of an augmented reality mode, a virtual reality mode, a blended reality mode, and a combination of the virtual and augmented reality modes.The method further comprises receiving an image data associated with another display object through a computer network and converting the image data to a data format compatible with the selected visualization mode such that the user can view the other display object in the selected visualization mode.The method further comprises selectively allowing, based on the selected visualization mode, a transmission of light from an outside environment such that the user can view the real physical object.In another embodiment, a method, comprises selectively allowing, through a lens of a head-mounted user display device, a transmission of light from an outside environment, wherein the head-mounted user display device is configured for displaying either entirely virtual objects, entirely physical objects or a combination of virtual objects and physical objects.The selective allowance of transmission of light may be based on a desired visualization mode, wherein the desired visualization mode is one of an augmented reality mode, a virtual reality mode, a blended reality mode, and a combination of augmented and virtual reality modes.The method may further comprise allowing a complete transmission of light from the outside environment when the head-mounted user display device is turned off, such that the user only views the entirely physical objects.The method may further comprise projecting a light beam associated with at least one display object having a particular shape into the user's eyes, and selectively allowing the transmission of light from the outside environment based on the particular shape of the at least one display object such that the user views the display object along with physical objects in the outside environment. The method may further comprise preventing the transmission of light from the outside environment such that the user only views the entirely virtual objects.In another embodiment, a method enabling two or more users to interact within a virtual world comprising virtual world data comprises creating a remote avatar for a first user accessing the virtual world through a first user device at a first location, placing, the remote avatar of the first user, at a real geographical location, such that the first user can experience the real geographical location through the first user device at the first location, and interacting with a second user accessing the virtual world through a second user device at the real geographical location through the remote avatar placed at the real geographical location. The first location may be different from the real geographical location, or the first location may be substantially the same as the real geographical location.The remote avatar may have a predetermined relationship to a physical object at the real geographical location. The remote avatar may respond to an environmental cue at the real geographical location. The movement of the remote avatar may controlled by the first user. The remote avatar may interact with a second user at the real geographical location.In another embodiment, a method comprises capturing, through a head-mounted user display device, a field of view image of each of the user's eyes, extracting a set of points in the captured field-of-view image, associating the extracted set of points to a particular object, and recognizing a different object based on the associated set of points of the particular object.Another embodiment is directed to a system for enabling two or more users to interact within a virtual world comprising virtual world data, comprising a computer network comprising one or more computing devices, the one or more computing devices comprising memory, processing circuitry, and software stored at least in part in the memory and executable by the processing circuitry to process at least a portion of the virtual world data; wherein at least a first portion of the virtual world data originates from a first user virtual world local to a first user, and wherein the computer network is operable to transmit the first portion to a user device for presentation to a second user, such that the second user may experience the first portion from the location of the second user, such that aspects of the first user virtual world are effectively passed to the second user. The first and second users may be in different physical locations or in substantially the same physical location. At least a portion of the virtual world may be configured to change in response to a change in the virtual world data. At least a portion of the virtual world may be configured to change in response to a physical object sensed by the user device. The change in virtual world data may represent a virtual object having a predetermined relationship with the physical object. The change in virtual world data may be presented to a second user device for presentation to the second user according to the predetermined relationship. The virtual world may be operable to be rendered by at least one of the computer servers or a user device. The virtual world may be presented in a two-dimensional format. The virtual world may be presented in a three-dimensional format. The user device may be operable to provide an interface for enabling interaction between a user and the virtual world in an augmented reality mode. The user device may be operable to provide an interface for enabling interaction between a user and the virtual world in a virtual reality mode. The user device may be operable to provide an interface for enabling interaction between a user and the virtual world a combination of augmented and virtual reality mode. The virtual world data may be transmitted over a data network. The computer network may be operable to receive at least a portion of the virtual world data from a user device. At least a portion of the virtual world data transmitted to the user device may comprise instructions for generating at least a portion of the virtual world. At least a portion of the virtual world data may be transmitted to a gateway for at least one of processing or distribution. At least one of the one or more computer servers may be operable to process virtual world data distributed by the gateway.Another embodiment is directed to a system for virtual and/or augmented user experience wherein remote avatars are animated based at least in part upon data on a wearable device with optional input from voice inflection and facial recognition software.Another embodiment is directed to a system for virtual and/or augmented user experience wherein a camera pose or viewpoint position and vector may be placed anywhere in a world sector.Another embodiment is directed to a system for virtual and/or augmented user experience wherein worlds or portions thereof may be rendered for observing users at diverse and selectable scales.Another embodiment is directed to a system for virtual and/or augmented user experience wherein features, such as points or parametric lines, in addition to pose tagged images, may be utilized as base data for a world model from which software robots, or object recognizers, may be utilized to create parametric representations of real-world objects, tagging source features for mutual inclusion in segmented objects and the world model.Additional and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention are described in the detail description, figures and claims.FIG. 1 illustrates a representative embodiment of the disclosed system for facilitating interactive virtual or augmented reality environments for multiple users.FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a user device for interacting with the system illustrated in FIG. 1.FIG. 3 illustrates an example embodiment of a mobile, wearable user device.FIG. 4 illustrates an example of objects viewed by a user when the mobile, wearable user device of FIG. 3 is operating in an augmented mode.FIG. 5 illustrates an example of objects viewed by a user when the mobile, wearable user device of FIG. 3 is operating in a virtual mode.FIG. 6 illustrates an example of objects viewed by a user when the mobile, wearable user device of FIG. 3 is operating in a blended virtual interface mode.FIG. 7 illustrates an embodiment wherein two users located in different geographical locations each interact with the other user and a common virtual world through their respective user devices.FIG. 8 illustrates an embodiment wherein the embodiment of FIG. 7 is expanded to include the use of a haptic device.FIG. 9A illustrates an example of mixed mode interfacing, wherein a first user is interfacing a digital world in a blended virtual interface mode and a second user is interfacing the same digital world in a virtual reality mode.FIG. 9B illustrates another example of mixed mode interfacing, wherein the first user is interfacing a digital world in a blended virtual interface mode and the second user is interfacing the same digital world in an augmented reality mode.FIG. 10 illustrates an example illustration of a user's view when interfacing the system in an augmented reality mode.FIG. 11 illustrates an example illustration of a user's view showing a virtual object triggered by a physical object when the user is interfacing the system in an augmented reality mode.FIG. 12 illustrates one embodiment of an augmented and virtual reality integration configuration wherein one user in an augmented reality experience visualizes the presence of another user in a virtual realty experience.FIG. 13 illustrates one embodiment of a time and/or contingency event based augmented reality experience configuration.FIG. 14 illustrates one embodiment of a user display configuration suitable for virtual and/or augmented reality experiences.FIG. 15 illustrates one embodiment of local and cloud-based computing coordination.FIG. 16 illustrates various aspects of registration configurations.FIG. 17 illustrates an example of a family interacting with a digital world of the virtual and/or augmented reality system according to one gaming embodiment.FIG. 18 illustrates an example illustration of a user's view of an environment of the digital world as seen by the users of FIG. 17.FIG. 19 illustrates a user present in the physical environment viewed by the users of FIG. 17 interacting with the same digital world through a wearable user device.FIG. 20 illustrates an example illustration of a user's view of the user of FIG. 19.FIG. 21 illustrates an example illustration of another user's view, the other user also present in the physical environment viewed by the users of FIG. 17, interacting with the same digital world of the users of FIG. 17 and FIG. 19 through a mobile device.FIG. 22 illustrates an example illustration of a user's bird-eye view of the environment of FIGS. 17-21.FIG. 23 illustrates an example scenario of multiple users interacting with the virtual and/or augmented reality system.FIG. 24A illustrates an example embodiment of a mobile communications device for interacting with the system illustrated in FIG. 1.FIG. 24B illustrates an example embodiment of the mobile communication device of FIG. 24A removable and operatively coupled into an enhancement console.FIG. 25 illustrates one embodiment of coarse localization.Referring to FIG. 1, system 100 is representative hardware for implementing processes described below. This representative system comprises a computing network 105 comprised of one or more computer servers 110 connected through one or more high bandwidth interfaces 115. The servers in the computing network need not be co-located. The one or more servers 110 each comprise one or more processors for executing program instructions. The servers also include memory for storing the program instructions and data that is used and/or generated by processes being carried out by the servers under direction of the program instructions.The computing network 105 communicates data between the servers 110 and between the servers and one or more user devices 120 over one or more data network connections 130. Examples of such data networks include, without limitation, any and all types of public and private data networks, both mobile and wired, including for example the interconnection of many of such networks commonly referred to as the Internet. No particular media, topology or protocol is intended to be implied by the figure.User devices are configured for communicating directly with computing network 105, or any of the servers 110. Alternatively, user devices 120 communicate with the remote servers 110, and, optionally, with other user devices locally, through a specially programmed, local gateway 140 for processing data and/or for communicating data between the network 105 and one or more local user devices 120.As illustrated, gateway 140 is implemented as a separate hardware component, which includes a processor for executing software instructions and memory for storing software instructions and data. The gateway has its own wired and/or wireless connection to data networks for communicating with the servers 110 comprising computing network 105. Alternatively, gateway 140 can be integrated with a user device 120, which is worn or carried by a user. For example, the gateway 140 may be implemented as a downloadable software application installed and running on a processor included in the user device 120. The gateway 140 provides, in one embodiment, one or more users access to the computing network 105 via the data network 130.Servers 110 each include, for example, working memory and storage for storing data and software programs, microprocessors for executing program instructions, graphics processors and other special processors for rendering and generating graphics, images, video, audio and multi-media files. Computing network 105 may also comprise devices for storing data that is accessed, used or created by the servers 110.Software programs running on the servers and optionally user devices 120 and gateways 140, are used to generate digital worlds (also referred to herein as virtual worlds) with which users interact with user devices 120. A digital world is represented by data and processes that describe and/or define virtual, non-existent entities, environments, and conditions that can be presented to a user through a user device 120 for users to experience and interact with. For example, some type of object, entity or item that will appear to be physically present when instantiated in a scene being viewed or experienced by a user may include a description of its appearance, its behavior, how a user is permitted to interact with it, and other characteristics. Data used to create an environment of a virtual world (including virtual objects) may include, for example, atmospheric data, terrain data, weather data, temperature data, location data, and other data used to define and/or describe a virtual environment. Additionally, data defining various conditions that govern the operation of a virtual world may include, for example, laws of physics, time, spatial |
are improving their treatment of trans women who get caught in the system.
Lieutenant Colonel Ongard Jamdee, a recruitment officer, said that “the army is instructed to treat and respect transgender women as women”.ADVERTISEMENT
The eyes are the "windows of the soul" in Western culture. So how do we make sense of eyes that are both looking at the world and looking at augmented reality? Eyes that might be flicking back and forth from ours, to a tiny screen, and then back again? In other words, how do we make sense of Google Glass, the networked eyeglasses/computer that allows its wearer to check email, get directions, take photos and video, all while never taking his or her eyes off the world? What sort of soul is behind the windows of Google Glass?
We can get an answer from two Glass folk stories.
First is the story of a Seattle restaurant which has banned the use of Glass. The Lost Lake Café made headlines last November after a server there asked a Google Glass-wearer to leave. According to Forbes, one of the owners of the restaurant explained, "It’s one thing to take out a camera and capture a moment, people see you doing it, they have a chance to step out if the want to. With glass people don’t have a chance to do that. We want our customers to feel comfortable, not like they’re being watched." Of course, a story about a man wearing an expensive, exclusive new technology from one of the most powerful tech firms on the planet getting kicked out of a restaurant got a lot of press coverage and inspired countless comments across social media. This story is now part of Glass folklore.
Second is a more recent story of a man who wore his prescription Google Glass in an Ohio movie theater. On January 20, tech blog The Gadgeteer broke the story of how this Glass-wearing moviegoer was forcibly removed from the theater by agents of the Department of Homeland Security because of their fear that he was pirating the movie with Glass's recording feature. He was detained and questioned for several hours. Like the Lost Lake Café story, the story of the Department of Homeland Security protecting Hollywood from Glass will also enter into our cultural understanding of this new technology.
So how do we make sense of these stories? Clearly, we have a new fear of the latest cyborg.
Part of the fear of Google Glass arises from the fact that these devices network our eyes. To capture an event with a smartphone camera, the user has to hold the thing up and "point" it at the event. To capture something with Glass, it's as easy as saying "Ok, Glass, record a video" and then pointing your eyes at the event. Our eyes become windows to a digital world, constantly watching, constantly augmenting what we see, constantly inscribing our vision into databases.
Thus, Glass allows for nearly surreptitious surveillance. We've already seen what happens with nearly ubiquitous, personally-owned cameras in public spaces: Every public moment is potentially a publicized moment, reproduced endlessly across social media. Stepping out the door means that we're on camera and we must perform correctly. Glass makes such publication easier.
So to watch as a camera sinks into a person's very eyes is indeed frightening. If you felt as though you're always being watched before Glass, the feeling is only going to get worse. Hence the reaction to the Google Glass wearer in the Seattle restaurant.
But of course, this fear doesn't explain what happened to the Glass wearer at the Ohio theater. It only makes sense that government agencies will try to curtail the use of Glass when this device is pointed at sensitive things. If people are able to surreptitiously record and distribute things like Hollywood movies, police beatings, or lobbyists writing our laws for us, what next for those in power? How could they sell tickets to movies, oppress protesters, or accept bribes if they're always being recorded and watched?
And yet, given that Google and agencies like the NSA can simply share data about us, perhaps the real fear of Glass should be how the NSA, DHS, FBI and the rest of the alphabet will be able to literally see what we see. Google Glass doesn't operate in a vacuum: All Glass data flows to Google's centralized servers – an easy target for a secret warrant or secret monitoring. If you happen to see something you shouldn't while wearing Glass, a record of your sight will be available to the state to build a case against you. Your digitized sight becomes a government memory. Likewise – as in the case of the Ohio moviegoer – you can try to use Glass to prove you didn't see what you shouldn't have.
Even if the NSA isn't watching, Google itself is. With its search, blogging, video sharing, online tracking, operating systems, office applications, browsers, and social media systems, Google's reach into our lives was pretty extensive before Glass. Now Google will see what we see and remember what we see for us. Or Google can see us, if we're in the line of sight of a Glass wearer. This visual data can be used to know us better and thus sell us more efficiently to the massive marketing system that's working to categorize us and get us to buy things.
Google Glass, in other words, is another set of eyes that merges the wearer with something else: A surveillance system that inevitably will remember everything we see and do. Ultimately, this explains our newest fear of the latest, always-watching cyborg. This is the soul behind the eyes of Google Glass.Now Peter Singer Argues That It Might Be Okay To Rape Disabled People
Advocates for people with disabilities do not care for utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer. This is because Singer has publicly justified killing disabled newborn infants because of their disabilities. In his book Practical Ethics, Singer weighed the moral justifications for taking the lives of disabled babies. He concluded that in severe cases, such as for children with spina bifida, it might well be morally wrong not to take a baby’s life. For less serious conditions, such as hemophilia, Singer concluded that the decision as to whether or not to kill the infant should depend on whether it would make the parents happy, and whether they intended to “replace” the child with another, non-disabled one:
“When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the haemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him.”
Singer’s early statements on euthanizing the disabled led to protests of his talks during the 1990s, and caused controversy when he was appointed Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. In the years since, Singer has done little to repair his reputation among advocates for the disabled, having repeatedly given interviews containing controversial statements about the moral justifications for infanticide. And he has only dug a deeper hole by stating that he wouldn’t be willing to raise a child with Down’s Syndrome because it wouldn’t make him happy (“For me, the knowledge that my [hypothetical Down Syndrome] child would not be likely to develop into a person whom I could treat as an equal… would greatly reduce my joy in raising my child and watching him or her develop), as well as by posing queries like the following:
“Most people think that the life of a dog or a pig is of less value than the life of a normal human being. On what basis, then, could they hold that the life of a profoundly intellectually disabled human being with intellectual capacities inferior to those of a dog or a pig is of equal value to the life of a normal human being?”
This kind of stuff (repeated again and again) has led some disabled people to get the not unreasonable impression that Peter Singer, perhaps the world’s most prominent ethicist, would prefer it if they died. (And unfortunately, Singer’s hideous remarks have undermined the creditable efforts he has made to get people to care more about the suffering of children around the world. For a utilitarian, Singer does not seem to think much about the utility of sabotaging his credibility as an ethicist in order to make callous and inflammatory comments about disabled people.)
One might therefore have thought that Singer could not possibly alienate disabled people any further, or make himself sound like any more of a monster.
But one would be wrong. For now, Singer has co-authored an op-ed in the New York Times in which he appears to defend the morality of raping disabled people.
The actual argument Singer makes in his Times article is jaw-droppingly repulsive. But, first, it’s necessary to understand the incident he’s commenting on. At issue is the case of Anna Stubblefield, a Rutgers University philosophy professor convicted of sexually assaulting her mentally disabled pupil, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The case is, to say the least, extremely unusual. The student, D.J., was a severely impaired 30 year old man with cerebal palsy, who had never spoken a word in his life and communicated through “screams” and “chirps.” Stubblefield acted as his personal tutor, using a discredited pseudoscientific technique to elicit what she insisted were complex communications from D.J. Eventually, based on what she believed D.J. wanted, Stubblefield began engaging in sex acts with him, having become romantically attracted to him over the course of her time assisting him.
D.J.’s family were horrified to discover that Stubblefield, who had supposedly been helping D.J. produce highly intelligent messages demonstrating his complex inner feelings, was in fact committing what they regarded as abuse. Stubblefield insisted that D.J.’s disabilities were only physical, that he was mentally bright and simply needed a means of expressing himself. D.J.’s family believed his mental deficiencies were as extreme as his physical ones, and that believing he could consent to a sexual relationship was like believing a child could consent to one. On the family’s complaint, Stubblefield was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced.
Here’s where we get back to Peter Singer. Singer, along with University of Oxford professor Jeff McMahan, argues that Stubblefield’s sentence was grossly unjust, for several reasons. The judge in the case did not permit Stubblefield to present evidence that D.J.’s cognitive capacities were high enough for him to communicate and consent. The case was filled with assumptions that D.J. was a helpless victim, rather than actual proof that he was. If, as Stubblefield claimed, his abilities were being underestimated, and this could be proven using a (non-discredited) technique, then he could be asked about whether he consented to the sexual relationship. Instead, because of his inability to speak, D.J. was presumed to be voiceless.
This is a perfectly reasonable argument. In fact, as Singer and McMahan note, it’s one made by advocates for the disabled, whose position on the Stubblefield case has not necessarily been what one might intuitively expect. While the disability community is obviously concerned with protecting disabled people from being sexually assaulted, they are also wary of arguments that diminish the agency of the disabled themselves, by portraying them as necessarily childlike and incapable of reasoning or making choices. Some have argued that the prosecution actually demeaned D.J., granting him less personhood than Stubblefield did.
If Singer had stuck to the argument that Stubblefield should have been allowed to present more evidence, and that D.J.’s wishes should have been given more respect, he might actually have earned himself back some favor in the disability community. Not much favor. But perhaps a shred.
Instead, he decided to give another defense of Stubblefield, and in doing so offer one of his most outrageous arguments yet: it might actually not be bad to rape cognitively impaired people. As Singer and McMahan write:
If we assume that he is profoundly cognitively impaired, we should concede that he cannot understand the normal significance of sexual relations between persons or the meaning and significance of sexual violation. These are, after all, difficult to articulate even for persons of normal cognitive capacity. In that case, he is incapable of giving or withholding informed consent to sexual relations; indeed, he may lack the concept of consent altogether. This does not exclude the possibility that he was wronged by Stubblefield, but it makes it less clear what the nature of the wrong might be. It seems reasonable to assume that the experience was pleasurable to him; for even if he is cognitively impaired, he was capable of struggling to resist.
Consider carefully what is being said here. Here, Singer and McMahan are assuming D.J. is severely impaired. But, they say, that means he is too intellectually inhibited to understand the notion of consent. And because he doesn’t understand consent, he can’t withhold it. And because he didn’t fight back, it’s reasonable to assume he was having a good time, making it unclear why it would be harmful to perform a non-consensual sex act on him.
Again, let’s be clear on what they are saying: if someone is intellectually disabled enough, then it might be okay to rape them, so long as they don’t resist, since a lack of physical struggle justifies an assumption that someone is enjoying being raped. (Singer is also offering a variation on his own prior arguments in favor of bestiality, which work because Singer believes disabled people and animals are the same for purposes of ethical analysis.) Note that his reasoning would also justify sexually molesting infants, who are likewise incapable of understanding the notion of consent.
The New York Times therefore just published a philosophical defense of raping disabled people, and Peter Singer has—somehow—reached a new low on disability issues. (Actually, to be precise, an argument that it’s not clear what the harm is in raping disabled people, along with the implication that non-consensual sex acts against physically and mentally incapacitated people aren’t actually rape anyway if the victims do not know what consent is.)
Singer’s casual rationalization of sexual abuse actually offers a useful illustration of why nobody should subscribe to utilitarian philosophy to begin with. Utilitarians are meticulous and Spock-like in their deductions from premises, but their impeccable logic inevitably leads toward utterly horrifying or bizarre conclusions that totally conflict with people’s most basic shared moral values. Utilitarian reasoning can lead you to believe that there’s no such thing as “good” and “bad,” only “better” and “worse” (which means that genocide isn’t inherently bad, and in fact could be fine if it’s the least-worst available option in a certain set of circumstances). It can lead you to believe that it’s less morally justifiable for a couple to remain childless than it it is to murder an elderly homeless person in their sleep (because failing to create a potential happy long life is worse than taking someone’s unhappy short remaining life). It can, as Freddie deBoer has pointed out, lead you to believe that in the Jim Crow South, you should frame an innocent black man for a crime, knowing he will be lynched, if doing so would calm the resentments of the white community and thereby avoid having them perpetrate a wave of far more brutal violence. It can also lead you to be an apologist for sweatshops and factory collapses. Due to the nature of their premises, utilitarians constantly end up endorsing the moral necessity of an endless number of inhumane acts. It’s a terrible philosophy that leads to brutal and perverse conclusions, and at its worst, it turns you into Peter Singer.
I suppose that, at this point, nobody can be surprised at Singer, though it really was somewhat unfortunate that he chose to follow up an argument for granting disabled people their agency with an argument for why sexually abusing them doesn’t cause harm. But he’s made it clear over his career that he doesn’t care about the consequences of dehumanizing people. Perhaps more shocking is the fact that the New York Times either didn’t notice what was being argued, or felt that the argument made a legitimate contribution to debates about consent and disability. Either way, the continued presence of Peter Singer in national dialogue about disability shows just how far we have to go before people like D.J. will actually be granted their full humanity, by prosecutors and philosophers alike.© Independent
© Getty
The 3 questions Destiny asks
Audience members at the Edinburgh Fringe show hosted by the controversial medic known as Dr Death will be 'gassed' as they model how "a peaceful and reliable means of death" is carried out.Right-to-die campaigner Philip Nitschke, 67, will invite people on stage to inhale gas from his updated version of the Deliverance machine that helped end the lives of four terminally people in the 1990s using intravenous drugs. Dr Nitschke said the move to gas made his new Destiny euthanasia machine much easier to use as no special skills, such as inserting an IV tube, are required.Destiny asks three questions before delivering a lethal gas made up of nine per cent carbon monoxide and 91 per cent nitrogen through either a face mask, or nasal prongs, to the patient wanting to die. Volunteers at next month's 'Dicing with Dr Death' show, the first public appearance of the new machine, will receive 100 per cent nitrogen.The new Destiny euthanasia machine is said to be much easier to use than its predecessor DeliveranceDr Nitschke said the change followed discussions during development in Michigan with Neal Nicol, the assistant of American euthanasia activist Dr Jack Kevorkian, jailed for his direct role in a case of voluntary euthanasia, who died in 2011."Suicide is not a crime in the UK, and assistance is not required to use Destiny, which is perfectly legal," Dr Nitschke told The Independent. "The gas that provides the peaceful death is not restricted. Neal Nicol was present at the deaths of over 50 people who died inhaling nine per cent monoxide, and in his opinion, this method is as peaceful and effective as the more difficult administration of intravenous drugs."The new Destiny euthanasia machine will provide people with a peaceful and reliable means of death. In Edinburgh I will ask for volunteers and point out that nitrogen only will be used, but as part of the machine display everyone will see the volunteer's cardiac trace projected - the gas can only be switched on if there is a cardiac trace, and switched off as soon as the trace flat-lines."Deliverance helped four people die in Australia's Northern Territory between 1996-7 in accordance with a state law which came into effect in 1996, but that was overturned a few months later. The machine is now on display in the British Science Museum.Dr Nitschke said the move to a microprocessor replacing the old laptop means that the new machine is much smaller and also has the ability to be used by people who are seriously disabled, such as quadriplegics, or patients seriously disabled by diseases such as motor neurone disease.Destiny was initially commissioned after discussion with lawyers for Tony Nicklinson, the 58-year-old right-to-die campaigner who died three years ago having suffered from locked-in syndrome.His widow Jane continued to fight for a right-to-die ruling but finally lost her case at the European Court of Human Rights last week. She spoke out after the Strasbourg court rejected the case brought by her family and a paralysed former builder, Paul Lamb, saying that the family still believed they would succeed in legalising assisted dying in the UK.Dr Nitschke said: "What was wanted was a device that could be activated by eye movement, or speech as Tony had, and required minimal assistance to use. I provided the machine details to a recent gathering in San Francisco, including to Neal Nicol, and have now sent them on to two people in the US and New Zealand making enquires for their consideration. There will certainly be more interest when details about Destiny become better known."Dr Nitschke remains in battle with authorities in Australia. He had his medical licence suspended following claims he counselled a depressed man to kill himself, but won his appeal at the Northern Territory Supreme Court earlier this month when it found the emergency suspension of his licence by the Medical Board of Australia (MBA) should not have been upheld by a review tribunal.However, the MBA has so far refused to reinstate his membership telling Dr Nitschke that he had two weeks to appeal their original decision yet failed to do so.Dr Nitsche said: "I'm sick of them really. Those two weeks expired well before the Supreme Court hearing on the legality of the decision. They are just using excuses and I'm looking at legal options to deal with it."Are you aware that if you go ahead to the last screen and press the "Yes" button, you will be given a lethal gas and die?Are you certain you understand that if you proceed and press the "Yes" button on the next screen that you will die?In 15 seconds you will be given a lethal gas... press "Yes" to proceed.Several banks, among them Bank of America and Chase, were inspired by Wilmington’s flexible laws to relocate at least their credit card companies to Wilmington. The ability to charge more interest meant that they could offer credit to less credit-worthy customers. Though big banks moved their credit card offices, the response was even greater than DuPont at first estimated. Many smaller banks also set up shop in Wilmington, to take advantage of being able to charge much higher interest rates, while paying lower taxes on their profits.
Wilmington, Delaware experienced the loss of many jobs after World War II, mostly due to it becoming less utilized as a shipping location. To address this matter, the state legislators sought a way to bring new business into the state, starting in the late 1970s. Led primarily by the Governor Pierre DuPont, in the early 1980s, Delaware attempted to lure large banks away from New York and other large financial companies by dramatically redrafting tax laws for banking industries. Laws also changed to allow banks to charge any interest they wished on credit cards.
Since the enactment of liberal interest rate laws and low taxes, Wilmington has become one of the most attractive cities in the US to set up credit card companies. Other states and cities may have caps on interest charged, and in fact the US congress has even attempted to create lower interest rates, and cap fees and interest. This strategy has not worked, and Congress’ response was lukewarm at best, placing the interest cap at no more than 30%.
In 1988, laws in Delaware protecting companies were made even stronger. During a period where hostile takeovers were becoming standard, Delaware changed its laws to make sure that most Delaware companies would not be subject to this process. The new laws meant any one attempting to take over a company would have to own 85% of its stock, or with a majority of stock holding would have to wait three years before initiating takeover proceedings. Companies stationed in Delaware were thus better protected than in other states, strengthening the position of any bank or credit card companies that created their charters within the state.
Today, there are several major credit card companies stationed in Wilmington. These include Bank of America, Chase, Barclays (which used to be Juniper), and ING Direct. A number of smaller companies also have their home base in Delaware. What this means for the consumer, especially if you’re sifting through a lot of credit card offers, is that you’ll find numerous ones coming from Delaware. If you do decide to apply for a credit card that is from a company in Delaware, it’s important to read all fine print carefully. You may pay higher interest rates, especially if your credit is not solid. With the luxury of good credit, you may want to shop around for the best credit card offers, especially those from states with laws less likely to favor the credit card industry.Raw content
S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 08 BANGKOK 002967 SIPDIS STATE FOR EAP/MLS, INR E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/22/2039 TAGS: PGOV, PINR, PREL, TH SUBJECT: THAILAND: CIRCLES OF INFLUENCE INSIDE THE INSTITUTION OF THE MONARCHY IN KING BHUMIBOL'S TWILIGHT REF: A. BANGKOK 2606 (KING HOSPITALIZATION UPDATE) B. BANGKOK 2488 KING HOSPITALIZED) C. BANGKOK 2746 (THAKSIN MANEUVERS) D. BANGKOK 2260 (PALACE OFFICIALS QUASH RUMORS) BANGKOK 00002967 001.2 OF 008 Classified By: Ambassador Eric G. John, reason 1.4 (b,d) 1. (S) Introduction and Comment: With King Bhumibol significantly weakened by a variety of ailments that have kept him hospitalized for two months (refs A-B), realization that the end of his 62-year reign may be drawing near has heightened speculation and rumors about what might come next for the Chakri dynasty. In the short-term, attention now focuses on whether Bhumibol will be physically able to preside over the annual King's Birthday military parade December 2. Bhumibol's eventual passing will be a watershed event in Thai history. It likely will unleash changes in institutional arrangements in Thailand, affecting the size and role of the monarchy, its relationship to the elected government and the military, and the roles of both of the latter, unmatched since the 1932 transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy, which nevertheless retained the monarchy at the core of Thai national identity. 2. (C) The Thai institution of monarchy remains an opaque institution, full truths about which are difficult to fix with any certainty. While many observers often refer to the Thai monarchy as if it were a unified, coherent institution, and use "the Palace" as short-hand in the same way "the White House" or "10 Downing Street" is employed as a metaphor for a clearly defined and located nexus of power, neither description is particularly appropriate in the current Thai context. 3. (S) There are in fact multiple circles of players and influence surrounding the Thai royal family, often times with little overlap but with competing agendas, fueled by years of physical separation and vacillating relationships between principals. Separate centers of influence/players focus around: King Bhumibol; Queen Sirikit; Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn; Princess Sirindhorn; and the Privy Council, though the latter has less access/influence than many suppose. In addition, there are supporting bureaucratic entities such as the Office of Principal Private Secretary, the Royal Household Bureau, the Crown Property Bureau, and the Privy Purse, which employ thousands and manage assets in the billions, as well as a bevy of minor royals whose motorcades routinely clog Bangkok's roads. 4. (S) As with royal courts of old, rumors and alleged machinations abound--two enduring purported "shockers" in 2009 have involved supposed negotiations between representatives of Thaksin and "the Palace," and stories of a supposed "December surprise" involving an abdication announcement. Neither ever seemed likely to us. Such claims and other royal rumint should be assessed in the context of the legal norms of the institution and the personal relationships between principals and marginal players. Many figures in the various circles attempt to appropriate the charisma of the King and prestige of the royal institution for their own purposes without any official remit, a process known in Thai as "ang barami." 5. (S) This is the first of two cables taking an extended look at the players and elements affecting the dynamics and implications of royal succession, both before and after King Bhumibol's death; septel will examine succession scenarios and implications for Thailand and U.S. policy. We offer this "royal primer" mindful of the opaque nature of the institution, the difficulty in establishing absolute truths about public yet very remote royal figures, and the inherent biases of inside players, even those we have known for years (several of whom recently repeated a Thai aphorism about the institution: "those who know aren't talking, and those who are talking aren't in the know"). 6. (C) This assessment draws on Embassy institutional knowledge and understanding based on the observations of royal watchers, both Thai and expat, over the past several BANGKOK 00002967 002.2 OF 008 decades, as well as our interaction with many of the secondary and more marginal players in the various circles described. Most informed observers expect the transition period associated with royal succession and institutional redefinition to last at least five years; the cast of characters and key players will likely change significantly after succession, particularly when/if the Crown Prince becomes King. End Introduction and Comment. The King's Dwindling Circle of Men (and Women) --------------------------------------------- - 7. (C) Cambridge, Massachusetts-born King Bhumibol Adulyadej turns 82 December 5, by many accounts beset long-term by Parkinson's, depression, and chronic lower back pain, and short-term by an extended brush with pneumonia in September-October that caused him to lose weight and, for now, be wheelchair bound (refs A-B). As a result, his current companions are most likely to be doctors and physio-therapists from Siriraj hospital, along with his second daughter Princess Sirindhorn, who often seems to act as his defacto personal assistant, and Queen Sirikit. 8. (S) Until relatively recently, it was much different. The King has lived nearly all of the past decade at his seaside Klai Kangwon Palace (appropriately titled "Far from Worries") in Hua Hin, having abandoned habitual residence in Bangkok in 2000 as his health worsened. Queen Sirikit only rejoined him full time in Hua Hin in mid-2008, concerned about his declining health and with an eye towards more firmly managing the transition to come. Prior to mid-2008, the King and Queen had lived most of the past 20 years largely apart, joint public appearances excepted. This unpublicized reality started after the Queen disappeared from public view in 1986 for about six months to recover from emotional exhaustion, in the wake of the King dismissing her favorite military aide de camp. Their social circles diverged sharply from then on, with very few figures spanning both camps. 9. (S) The King's decade-long sojourn in Hua Hin starting in 2000 significantly limited the amount of interaction he had not only with the Queen but also those whom many outsiders (incorrectly) presume spend significant amounts of time with him: Privy Councilors; as well as officials of the office of the Principal Private Secretary, all of whom are Bangkok-based and do not have regular access to the King. That limited access apparently has not changed during the ongoing hospitalization in Bangkok, with M.R. Thep Devakul the only Privy Councilor allowed into the King's room, and that solely by virtue of his being a cousin of the Queen. 10. (C) Those few whose counsel the King has sought in recent years, according to various sources, are neither household names nor political players, but associated with his charitable development foundations or his closest staff. These include the sharp-tongued Thanphuying Butrie Viravaidya, his deputy Principal Private Secretary (DPPS) and wife of NGO activist Meechai "the Condom King" (Butrie is currently ensconced at Siriraj Hospital); Wud Sumitra, another DPPS; Sumete Tantivejkul, head of the Chai Patana Foundation; Disathorn Watcharothai, Chair of the Rajanukhrao Foundation and son of the Lord Chamberlain; and Pramote Maiklap, former director of the Royal Irrigation Department. The Privy Councilor closest to the King is likely Air Chief Marshal Kamthon Sidhvananda, former long-time head of State Electricity Giant EGAT, whom the King credits for electrifying much of rural Thailand. His most regular social interaction in recent years came in weekly late-Saturday night jam sessions with his pick-up jazz band, whose geriatric members have played with the King for decades. 11. (C) Inner circle proximity to the King may ultimately mean little when it comes to influence/impact, however. In the late 2008 political crisis caused by the occupation of Government House, and ultimately Bangkok's airports, by the yellow-shirt PAD activists claiming to be defending the monarchy, both Sumete and Disathorn joined Princess Sirindhorn in October 2008 in publicly stating that the King did not consider the yellow-shirts to be acting on his behalf. Disathorn went so far as to tell a seminar: "if you BANGKOK 00002967 003.2 OF 008 love the King, go home." Instead, PAD leader Sondhi Lim denounced both men from the PAD stage with curses; Sondhi repeated his criticism of Disathorn at the November 15 PAD rally. For her part, "Mom Butrie" has been known for years as an outspoken opponent of Thaksin and the Crown Prince, both of whom are reputed to regard her as their "enemy number one" within the King's circle. Despite relying on Mom Butrie for general advice and Princess Sirindhorn for assistance, however, all indications are that the King is unwavering in his insistence that the Crown Prince succeed him. The Queen's Women (and Men) --------------------------- 12. (S) As the King withdrew from Bangkok-based public life over the past decade, Queen Sirikit rose in prominence, and she is expected by most to play a crucial role in the succession transition, before and after the King's passing. The Queen long maintained an active social life, with her tradition of twice weekly dinners that would start near midnight and last to dawn only ending with her move to Hua Hin. Based mainly out of Bangkok's Chitralada Palace, she regularly spent extended stretches at palaces in the north (Chiang Mai), the deep south (Narathiwas) and the northeast (Sakon Nakhon) through 2004, years after the King stopped his provincial travels. A 1994 Puma helicopter crash tragically robbed Sirikit of her most valued and respected advisers who could steer her away from trouble. 13. (S) The ladies-in-waiting who are left, the closest of which are Thanphuying Charungjit Teekara, head of the Queen's Support Foundation, and Thanphuying Chatkaew Nandhabiwat, appear to reinforce the Queen's tendency to be more nationalistic than the King. Those sentiments have led her astray in forays into political issues in recent years, both her attitudes towards the Malay Muslim deep south/promotion of Buddhism as the constitutionally- enshrined state religion in 2006-07, and the 2008 People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) yellow-shirt protests. The latter culminated in her disastrous decision to attend the October 13, 2008 funeral of a young female PAD supporter killed by a police tear-gas grenade, a move universally seen as dragging the monarchy, which is supposed to remain above politics, into the partisan fray. 14. (S) The men currently closest to the Queen include GEN Prayuth Chanocha, Army deputy Commander and expected successor to GEN Anupong as the country's most powerful military figure as of October 2010; and Grand Chamberlain/head of the Crown Property Bureau Chirayu Israngkul. Apart from cousin M.R. Thep Devakul, the Privy Councilor closest to the Queen is Palagorn Suwanrath. Two others in her inner circle as recently as early 2009--businessman Piya Malakul and deputy Royal Aide de camp GEN Naphol Boonthap, have now been largely pushed aside with the Queen's assent, though not entirely out of her outer orbits. Charungjit and Chatkaew (in the case of Piya) and Prayuth (with Naphol) intervened, after the Queen accepted the views of her closest associates that Piya and Naphol had damaged her standing due to their freelancing/claims to act on her behalf -- Piya vis-a-vis the PAD, and Naphol, who oversees a Village Defense Force (VDF) project associated with the June 8 mosque massacre in the south. 15. (S) For many years, Queen Sirikit actively promoted Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn's interests and was seen as his greatest backer in the face of widespread public opposition and open preference for Princess Sirindhorn. For instance, she was the driving force behind the Crown Prince's 2003 trip to Washington, which she intended as a cornerstone effort to rehabilitate his image in the eyes of the Thai people as an acceptable future King, one who had recently remarried and would soon produce an acknowledged male heir. 16. (S) The mother-son relationship suddenly changed in 2007 for two reasons: the appearance of video and still photos of Vajiralongkorn's wife Srirasmi in the nude on the internet/CDs then widely available in Bangkok; and a noisy row over the amount of time the Crown Prince was spending outside Thailand. In 2008, the Queen and the Crown Prince BANGKOK 00002967 004.2 OF 008 had a shouting match at a hospital during the Queen's brief hospitalization, with the Crown Prince angrily berating her in front of ladies-in-waiting. Relations were further strained in late 2009 over the Police Chief struggle, with the Queen, supporting Acting Police Chief Pratheep, telling the Crown Prince to back off his support of GEN Chumpol, and he defiantly refusing to do so. Several of the key ladies-in-waiting reportedly now refuse to be present when the Crown Prince visits the Queen. The Crown Prince's Men (and Girls) ---------------------------------- 17. (S) Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn has spent most (up to 75%) of the past two years based in Europe (primarily at a villa at a medicinal spa 20km outside of Munich), with his leading mistress and beloved white poodle Fufu. Vajiralongkorn is believed to be suffering from a blood-related medical condition (varying sources claim he is either: HIV positive; has Hepatitis C; is afflicted by a rare form of "blood cancer," or some combination which leads to regular blood transfusions). His current (third) wife Srirasmi and 4 year old son Adityadornkitigun, known as Ong Ti, reside in his Sukhothai Palace in Bangkok, but when Vajiralongkorn travels back to Bangkok, he stays with his second mistress in the retrofitted Air Force VIP lounge at Wing Six, Don Muang Airport (note: both mistresses are Thai Airways stewardesses; the Crown Prince has shifted from flying F5s to Thai Airways Boeings and Airbuses in recent years. End note). Long known for |
now to admit their children in English-medium private schools as these are believed to be better able to prepare the students to face the challenges of a globalized environment.
In a way, the agitation by the Patels for status is similar to the one by the of Rajasthan who wanted a relegation from their existing backward caste category to a Scheduled Tribe (ST) classification since the recognition of Jats as OBCs in the state eroded the availability of reserved jobs.
This kind of a backward march is the result of dwindling employment opportunities at a time when the private sector is not expanding fast enough to make up for the reduction of government jobs. Besides, the Gujarat model may be more hype than reality.
Till now, the failures of this model have been noted by and other Leftists in social sectors such as infant mortality, whose rate is as high as 60.9 per 1,000 children in Gujarat against 16.2 in Kerala. Moreover, the percentage of people below the poverty line in Gujarat is 31.6 against 19.6 in Kerala.
But the latest disturbances point to failures in the commercial segment as well with the small and medium enterprises not faring well and the capital-intensive industries not creating enough jobs.
While the phenomenon of jobless growth where robots replace humans on the shop floor is one aspect of the scene in Gujarat, another is how reservations have come to be viewed as the panacea for such situations, especially when those searching for jobs or educational opportunities find their prospects blocked not by deserving individuals but by beneficiaries of allotted quotas where castes are the passwords.
In a system where the accident of birth trumps merit, the demand by the leader of the Gujarat agitators, 22-year-old Hardik Patel, that either the provision of all facilities be determined by caste or that the system should be thrown open to all will appear justifiable.
Arguably, the gross misuse of reservations by myopic politicians intent on catering for particular support groups has led to this volatile situation. The worst example of such misuse is how the Supreme Court's directive on excluding the creamy layer or the successful beneficiaries from the quota system has been negated by a constant upward revision of the criteria for such exclusion by the ruling politicians.
For Modi, the fire in his backyard is the most worrisome of the problems which he faces. And there are many - an economy which refuses to look up, the imbroglio over pension for ex-servicemen and an agitation in the Film and Television Institute of India which underlines the government's insensitivity to matters of popular culture.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)During a recent H1Z1 live stream, SOE showcased its development team, giving us a sneak peak behind the development of the game itself.
First things first, many of you are wondering how big H1Z1’s playable map will be. Though they have stated that the map will continue to grow in area, they did show off an early build of what they have so far. Check it out below:
This is, of course, a view of the ‘terrain’, meaning we don’t get to see any of the detailed buildings that are already populated within the world. SOE did, however, give us a glimpse of what apartment complexes would look like, and it seems like they will be rather large.
Apartments will be filled with loot that can be stored in your backpacks, which was confirmed during the stream.
And it does look like the team is indeed listening to the community as many have requested that zombies have some sort of glow in their eyes. They showed off a new zombie design called Bob.
All images come from the H1Z1 sub-reddit.
UPDATE
The developers have confirmed different types of weather, and even went as far as saying that they are thinking about adding natural disasters. SOE specifically mentioned “Tornados” and “Earthquakes” as examples.68: Last Rites #3 story: Mark Kidwell
art / cover B: Jeff Zornow & Jay Fotos
cover A: Nat Jones & Jay Fotos September 16 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 By the flickering light of a scavenged projector, the dark secret behind the zombie plague that destroyed the 1960s is revealed.
8House: Yorris #4 story: Helen Maier & Fil Barlow
art / cover: Fil Barlow September 16 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 A NEW 8HOUSE STORY ARC BEGINS! A young Baroness can see the invisible.
Absolute Proof, Vol. 1 HC story: Alex Grecian
art: Riley Rossmo & Friends
cover: Riley Rossmo September 30 / 256 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $29.99 For the first time ever, the entire cult classic Image Comics series is collected in three hardcover volumes. Book one includes the first two arcs of the original series, plus never-before-reprinted backup stories and sketchbook material.
Airboy #4 story: James Robinson
art / cover: Greg Hinkle September 2 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 The twisted, drug-fueled finale! Is this a dream, reality, or somewhere in between? All JAMES ROBINSON and GREG HINKLE know is that now that they're in Airboy's world and not the bars of San Francisco, they have to put down the bottle, put away the drugs, zip up their flies—and actually act like heroes. Except they don't know how to be heroes. And if they die, will they just wake up...or really perish?
Astronauts In Trouble #4 story: Larry Young
art: Matthew Dow Smith
cover: Charlie Adlard September 9 / 32 pages / B&W / Mature Readers / $2.99 Fifty years after Neil and Buzz's one small step, the world's richest man claims the moon as his own personal property...and Channel Seven is there!
The Beauty #2 story: Jeremy Haun & Jason A. Hurley
art / cover A: Jeremy Haun
cover B: Ben Templesmith September 16 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 The Beauty has transformed average people into beautiful people. But is it killing them too? Detectives Vaughn and Foster are close to learning the truth, and that puts them directly in harm's way. Sometimes the truth isn’t pretty.
Birthright, Vol. 2 TP story: Joshua Williamson
art / cover: Andrei Bressan & Adriano Lucas September 9 / 112 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $12.99 Fugitives from the law, Brennan will need all the survival skills Mikey learned in Terrenos to stay alive. But something has followed Mikey back, that’s strong enough to tear the brothers apart. Collects BIRTHRIGHT #6-10.
Bloodstrike #3 story / art / cover: Rob Liefeld September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 FUGITIVE!
Bloodstrike marshals its forces to stop a deserter that threatens to expose the program and its hideous secrets.
The Covenant #4 story / cover A: Rob Liefeld
art / cover B: Matt Horak September 2 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 Disease breaks out among the Philistines as Samuel and his men pursue the Ark as it is shipped from the Capital.
Dark Corridor #2 story / art / cover: Rich Tommaso September 2 / 24 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 Carter burns through his money like a big-baller. Also, we see The Scalinas death at the hands of deadly daughter Nicole.
Deadly Class, Vol. 3: Snake Pit TP story: Rick Remender
art / cover: Wes Craig & Lee Loughridge September 23 / 128 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $14.99 Marcus and his girlfriend Maria are thrown to the wolves when a Mexican Cartel, the family of a classmate they were forced to kill, comes gunning for revenge. The true costs of the life he’s chosen to live are only just dawning on Marcus. The troubled teen has never been more troubled.
Descender, Vol. 1: Tin Stars TP story: Jeff Lemire
art / cover: Dustin Nguyen September 9 / 136 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $9.99 Collects DESCENDER #1-6.
Drifter #8 story: Ivan Brandon
art / cover A: Nic Klein
cover B: Daniel Krall September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 Things get ugly.
East Of West #22 story: Jonathan Hickman
art / cover: Nick Dragotta September 16 / 32 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $3.50 The war between nations heats up in EAST OF WEST #22.
Elephantmen 2260 Book Three: Learning To Be Human TP story: Richard Starkings
art: Axel Medellin, Gabriel Bautista, Shaky Kane, Marley Zarcone, & Carlos Pedro
cover: Frank Quitely September 30 / 128 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $16.99 Collects ELEPHANTMEN issues #50, 56, 57, 63 & 64.
Empty Zone #4 story / art / cover: Jason Shawn Alexander September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 Corinne comes face to face with the man responsible for the death of her friend during a harrowing battle above the city.
The Empty, Vol. 1 TP story / art / cover: Jimmie Robinson September 30 / 152 pages / Full Color / 12+ / $9.99 Tanoor is a hunter struggling to feed her village in an apocalyptic world of poison and decay, but Tanoor finds hope when she discovers a stranger named Lila who has the ability to grow life from death—a power that could change the world of The Empty. Collects THE EMPTY #1-6.
The Fade Out #9 story: Ed Brubaker
art / cover: Sean Phillips & Elizabeth Breitweiser September 16 / 40 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 NEW STORY ARC.
Act Three begins as the mystery heats up! NOMINATED FOR THE EISNER AWARD FOR BEST NEW SERIES!
The Fade Out, Vol. 2 TP story: Ed Brubaker
art / cover: Sean Phillips September 16 / 120 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $12.99 Act Two of the acclaimed Hollywood Noir from the best-selling team of Brubaker and Phillips. Collects THE FADE OUT #5-8.
Faster Than Light #1 story: Brian Haberlin
art / cover: Brian Haberlin & Geirrod Vandyke September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 SPECIAL LOW INTRODUCTORY PRICE: $2.99! In the very near future we discover the secret of faster-than-light travel. Suddenly the universe is wide open to us, but are we ready for it? With all the idealism of the original Star Trek and the grit and immediacy of Gravity, the story of humanity's first thrilling and terrifying adventures to the stars takes flight! Every issue features Anomaly's free cutting edge Augmented Reality app, which makes it look like interactive holograms are coming out of the book!
The Fuse #14 story: Antony Johnston
art / cover: Justin Greenwood & Shari Chankhamma September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 "PERIHELION," Part Two The Fuse’s annual day of chaos continues! Murder, riots, theft, politics, terrorism—and a break in the “haircut killer” case for Klem and Ralph! “Terrifically thought-through SF, in collision with a Scandinavian noir police drama.”— Alan Moore
Head Lopper #1 story / art / cover: Andrew Maclean
cover B: Rafael Grampá September 9 / 96 pages / Full Color / 12+ / $5.99 Action. Adventure. Fantasy. Decapitation! ApocalyptiGirl creator ANDREW MACLEAN brings this critically acclaimed indie hit to Image Comics! The dark humored quarterly adventure begins with a double-sized first issue, with eighty pages of story and a premium pin-up gallery for the regular price of just $5.99! “HEAD LOPPER is what you’d get if Mike Mignola wrote an issue of Brian Wood’s Northlanders by way of James Stokoe’s ORC STAIN.”– Multiversity Comics.
Injection #5 story: Warren Ellis
art / covers A & B: Declan Shalvey September 9 / 24 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 Maria Kilbride goes underground to save a man from the sound of the haunted future.
Invincible #123 story: Robert Kirkman
art: Ryan Ottley, Cliff Rathburn, & Jean-Francois Beaulieu
cover: Ryan Ottley & Jean-Francois Beaulieu September 16 / 24 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $2.99 Loose ends are tied up, conflicts are brought to a resolution, a door is closed...so that a new one can open.
Invisible Republic #6 story: Gabriel Hardman & Corinna Bechko
art / cover: Gabriel Hardman & Jordan Boyd September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 NEW STORY ARC. This war just got asymmetrical.
Island Magazine #3 story / art: Ludroe, Simon Roy, Brandon Graham, Matt Sheean, Amy Clare, & Malachi Ward
cover: Farel Dalrymple September 16 / 112 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $7.99 THIRD ISSUE OF THE OVERSIZED COMICS MAGAZINE! This issue introduces MATT SHEEAN & MALACHI WARD's sci-fi series ANCESTOR!
IXth Generation #7 story: Matt Hawkins
art / cover B: Atilio Rojo
cover A: Stjepan Sejic September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $3.99 The nine are down to five. Who lives, who dies? The battle for total rule reaches its penultimate chapter.
Lazarus #20 story: Greg Rucka
art: Michael Lark
cover: Owen Freeman September 30 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 “POISON,” Part Four. Johanna makes her move.
Low #10 story: Rick Remender
art / cover: Greg Tocchini & Dave McCaig September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 This is it: Stel Caine has risen from the depths to set foot on the surface of Earth, the first human in millennia to do so. But what she finds there will make her wish she never left the safe darkness of the deep sea.
Manifest Destiny, Vol. 3 TP story: Chris Dingess
art / cover: Matthew Roberts & Owen Gieni September 16 / 128 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $14.99 Deep in America’s heartland, Lewis & Clark’s expedition discovers a civilization unlike any they—or anyone else on Earth—has encountered. An encounter that will push their men to the brink of mutiny. Collects MANIFEST DESTINY #13-18.
Material, Vol. 1 TP story: Ales Kot
art: Will Tempest
cover: Tom Muller September 30 / 128 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $9.99 SPECIAL LOW INTRODUCTORY PRICE OF $9.99! America is unwinding. The world is undergoing massive changes. MATERIAL is a journey through what it means to be alive, today. Collects MATERIAL #1-4.
Minimum Wage: So Many Bad Decisions #5 story / art / cover: Bob Fingerman September 2 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 An old flame rekindled.
Mythic #5 story: Phil Hester
art: John McCrea, Gerardo Zaffino, & Michael Spicer
cover: John McCrea & Rian Hughes September 30 / 24 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 The origin of Killer of Enemies.
Nailbiter, Vol. 3: Blood In The Water TP story: Joshua Williamson
art / cover: Mike Henderson September 2 / 128 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $14.99 Collects NAILBITER #11-#15. Nailbiter will return with #16 in October 2015!
No Mercy, Vol. 1 TP story: Alex de Campi
art / cover: Carla Speed McNeil & Jenn Manley Lee
cover: Carla Speed McNeil September 16 / 120 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $9.99 SPECIAL LOW INTRODUCTORY PRICE OF $9.99! A group of US teenagers on a pre-college service trip are stranded in a remote part of Central America after a horrible accident. Things get worse from there. Collects NO MERCY #1-4.
Oddly Normal #10 story / cover A: Otis Frampton
art: Otis Frampton & Tracy Bailey
cover B: Matt Kaufenberg September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / All Ages / $2.99 Oddly encounters real, live superheroes.
ODY-C #7 story: Matt Fraction
art / cover: Christian Ward September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 He of Troiia must tell the story of his life—or face its violent end.
Outcast By Kirkman & Azaceta, Vol. 2 TP story: Robert Kirkman
art / cover: Paul Azaceta & Elizabeth Breitweiser September 30 / 144 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $14.99 In light of recent revelations, Kyle feels like he’s starting to piece together the answers he’s looking for. But while he feels a new sense of purpose...is Reverend Anderson’s life falling apart? Catch up on the new hit horror series from the creator of THE WALKING DEAD, soon to be a show on Cinemax. Collects OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #7-12.
Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl #2 story: Kieron Gillen
art / cover: Jamie McKelvie & Matt Wilson September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 You will never look at A-Ha's "Take On Me" video in the same way ever again.
Plutona #1 story: Jeff Lemire & Emi Lenox
art / cover: Emi Lenox September 2 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 A brand new heartfelt super-hero series by JEFF LEMIRE (DESCENDER, Hawkeye) and amazing newcomer EMI LENOX! PLUTONA follows the story of five suburban kids who make a shocking discovery while exploring the woods one day after school...the body of Plutona, the world's greatest superhero. A dark and heartbreaking journey about friendship and coming of age all through the lens of the superhero genre.
Poseidon IX #1 (One-Shot) story: Tini Howard
art / cover A: Phillip Sevy
cover B: Stjepan Sejic September 2 / 32 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $3.99 FROM THE PAGES OF IXth GENERATION!
Journey to Triton, where luxury is a cyborg's reward for worship of their God-King Poseidon. But in blue oceans lurks a sleeping terror—from before the Ascension, before even civilization as we know it!
Postal #4 Comicpalooza Limited Variant story: Bryan Hill & Matt Hawkins
art / cover: Isaac Goodhart September 30 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers Limited convention variant, allocations may occur. $10 UNSIGNED, $20 SIGNED BY MATT HAWKINS AND BRYAN HILL.
Postal #7 story: Bryan Hill & Matt Hawkins
art / cover B: Isaac Goodhart
cover A: Linda Sejic September 30 / 32 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $3.99 Mark communicates with his father, exploring the darkest parts of his own nature as the Mayor brings a new threat into Eden, a newcomer that has the power to turn the town against itself.
Rasputin #9 story: Alex Grecian
art / cover: Riley Rossmo & Ivan Plascencia
cover: Riley Rossmo September 30 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 “Koschei the Deathless” keeps his soul in a nail locked inside an iron box. Rasputin returns it to him with a mallet.
Rat Queens #15 story: Kurtis J. Wiebe
art / cover A: Stjepan Sejic September 16 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 "Demons," Part Five. A betrayal changes the Rat Queens forever! Prepare to be shocked!
Rat Queens Deluxe Hardcover Volume One story: Kurtis J. Wiebe
art: Roc Upchurch, Stjepan Sejic, & Tess Fowler November 25 / 304 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $39.99 Collects RAT QUEENS #1-10 plus the never-before reprinted RAT QUEENS SPECIAL: BRAGA #1 plus extras all in an over-sized hardcover with a SILVER-FOIL stamped cover! A collector's dream package just in time for Christmas!
Revival #33 story: Tim Seeley
art: Mike Norton
cover: Jenny Frison September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 NEW STORY ARC. An excellent jumping-on-point issue, focusing on Em Cypress...sister, daughter, mother...reviver.
Reyn #8 story: Kel Symons
art / cover: Nathan Stockman September 23 / 24 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $2.99
Roche Limit: Clandestiny #5 story: Michael Moreci
art / cover: Kyle Charles September 30 / 32 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $3.50 Conclusion of volume two of the sci-fi trilogy.
Rumble #7 story: John Arcudi
art / cover: James Harren September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 The Esu are in full attendance as they return in a Counsel of Monsters! And Rathraq is humbled by a new foe. New for him, anyway.
Saga, Vol. 5 TP art / cover: Fiona Staples
story: Brian K. Vaughan September 9 / 144 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $14.99 While Gwendolyn and Lying Cat risk everything to find a cure for The Will, Marko makes an uneasy alliance with Prince Robot IV to find their missing children, who are trapped on a strange world with terrifying new enemies. Collects SAGA #25-30.
Savior #6 story: Todd McFarlane & Brian Holguin
art / cover: Clayton Crain September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / 12+ / $2.99 John Doe’s past is finally revealed.
Secret Identities #7 story: Brian Joines & Jay Faerber
art: Ilias Kyriazis & Ron Riley
cover: Ilias Kyriazis September 16 / 40 pages / Full Color / 12+ / $3.99 DOUBLE-SIZED SERIES FINALE! The Front Line’s world is rocked when the truth of Crosswind’s deception comes out. Will any of them survive the intruder’s final victory? It all ends here!
Self-Obsessed TP story / art / cover: Sina Grace September 30 / 160 pages / B&W / Mature Readers / $9.99 Cartoonist SINA GRACE returns to his roots with his most personal and intimate work since the 2012 charmer NOT MY BAG. Comes with FREE AUDIOBOOK download!
Sex #24 story: Joe Casey
art: Piotr Kowalski
cover: Piotr Kowalski & Sonia Harris September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 For Simon Cooke, some things can get a little sticky…
Sex Criminals #14 story: Matt Fraction
art / cover: Chip Zdarsky September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / All Ages / $3.50 Why can't we all just get along? Because then the comic would be boring.
Sex Criminals #14 XXX Katie Cook Variant story: Matt Fraction
art: Chip Zdarsky
cover: Katie Cook September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / All Ages / $4.69 That's right. That lovely woman that did Gronk and My Little Pony goes HARD N' FILTHY for the brimpers. One print run only. Sealed in pink polybags. Horribly filthy.
Shutter #15 story: Joe Keatinge
art / cover: Leila Del Duca & Owen Gieni September 16 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 Secret origins and death ballads.
Sons Of The Devil #5 story: Brian Buccellato
art / cover A: Toni Infante
cover B: Francis Manapul September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 The final chapter of the first arc. A traitor revealed.
Southern Bastards Book One Premiere HC story: Jason Aaron
art / cover: Jason Latour September 30 / 256 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $29.99 Welcome to Craw County, Alabama, home of Boss BBQ, the state champion Runnin' Rebs football team and more bastards than you've ever seen. SOUTHERN BASTARDS by JASON AARON (Scalped, Star Wars) and JASON LATOUR (Spider-Gwen, Loose Ends) gets a premiere hardcover, collecting the first eight issues of the Eisner Award-nominated (2015: Best Continuing Series) southern-fried crime series. Collects SOUTHERN BASTARDS #1-8.
Spawn #257 story: Paul Jenkins
art / cover: Jonboy September 16 / 32 pages / Full Color / 12+ / $2.99 Spawn’s enemies think they have the upper hand, but what they don’t know is that they are playing right into his hands.
Starve #4 story: Brian Wood
art / cover: Danijel Zezelj & Dave Stewart September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 Part 1 of “Blood & Sausages,” a.k.a. Kitchen Battle, a.k.a. culinary mayhem, a.k.a. STARVE.
Strange Girl Omnibus story: Rick Remender
art: Eric Nguyen, Jereome Opena, & Peter Bergting
cover: Eric Nguyen September 30 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 The entire STRANGE GIRL saga back in print!
Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses #8 story / art / cover: David Lapham September 23 / 32 pages / B&W / Mature Readers / $3.50 Kretchmeyer must fix his shattered family or risk losing his own carefully constructed sanity.
The Mantle #5 story: Ed Brisson
art / cover: Brian Level September 2 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.99 The final showdown between The Mantle and The Plague! And someone is going to die!
The Tithe #5 story: Matt Hawkins
art: Rahsan Ekedal & Phillip Sevy
cover A: Rahsan Ekedal
cover B: Phillip Sevy September 16 / 32 pages / Full Color / 15+ / $3.99 "ISLAMOPHOBIA," Part One. Dwayne, Jimmy, and Samaritan working together? Hypocrisy and prejudice reach an all-new level with more adrenaline-fueled heists!
The Walking Dead #146 story: Robert Kirkman
art: Charlie Adlard, Stefano Gaudiano, & Cliff Rathburn
cover: Charlie Adlard & Stefano Gaudiano September 9 / 32 pages / B&W / Mature Readers / $2.99 A breaking point reached.
The Walking Dead Book 12 HC story: Robert Kirkman
art: Charlie Adlard, Stefano Gaudiano, & Cliff Rathburn
cover: Charlie Adlard & Cliff Rathburn September 30 / 280 pages / B&W / Mature Readers / $34.99 Who are the Whisperers? And how will their emergence affect the peace and stability Rick has built since the war? Find out in this oversized collected edition, just in time for the season premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Collects THE WALKING DEAD #133-144.
The Wicked + The Divine #14 story: Kieron Gillen
art / cover A: Jamie McKelvie & Matt Wilson
cover B: Grimes September 9 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 Behind the music, Woden's stayed back from the spotlight. But in this issue? We look beneath the mask. Shall we say it's the most audacious and experimental issue of WicDiv yet? I think so.
They’re Not Like Us #8 story: Eric Stephenson
art / cover: Simon Gane & Jordie Bellaire September 30 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99
Thief Of Thieves, Vol. 5 TP story: Andy Diggle
art / cover: Shawn Martinbrough & Adriano Lucas September 23 / 128 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $14.99 There’s a new thief of thieves in town—and they’re using the Redmond name to pull heists. Will stealing Conrad’s legacy be enough to pull the master thief out of retirement? Collects THIEF OF THIEVES #26-31.
Think Tank: Creative Destruction #1 story: Matt Hawkins
art / cover: Rahsan Ekedal September 23 / 32 pages / Full Color / All Ages / $3.99 “CREATIVE DESTRUCTION,” Chapter One. An unknown enemy savages the technological infrastructure of the U.S. Panic and conspiracy theories spread as David Loren and his misfit science team continue work on the TALOS project, trying to make “Iron Man” suits a reality in California.
Tokyo Ghost #1 story: Rick Remender
art: Sean Murphy & Matt Hollingsworth
cover: Sean Murphy September 16 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $3.50 The Isles of Los Angeles 2089: Humanity is addicted to technology, a population of unemployed leisure seekers blissfully distracted from toxic contamination, who borrow, steal, and kill to buy their next digital fix. Getting a virtual buzz is the only thing left to live for. It’s the biggest industry, the only industry, the drug everyone needs, and gangsters run it all.
And who do these gangsters turn to when they need their rule enforced? Constables Led Dent and Debbie Decay. This duo is about to be given a job that will force them out of the familiar squalor of Los Angeles to take down the last tech-less country on Earth: The Garden Nation of Tokyo.
Bestselling writer RICK REMENDER (BLACK SCIENCE, DEADLY CLASS) and superstar art team SEAN MURPHY (CHRONONAUTS, Punk Rock Jesus) and MATT HOLLINGSWORTH (WYTCHES, Hawkeye) examine our growing addiction to technology while thirsting for a nature we continue to destroy.
Trees #13 story: Warren Ellis
art / cover: Jason Howard September 16 / 24 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 Terrible machines have been set in motion.
Virgil OGN story: Steve Orlando
art: JD Faith
cover: Artyom Trakhanov September 9 / 96 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $9.99 Betrayed, beaten, and banished by his own, an outed cop fights his way across Jamaica for revenge!
We Stand On Guard #3 story: Brian K. Vaughan
art / cover: Steve Skroce September 2 / 32 pages / Full Color / Mature Readers / $2.99 What will torture look like in the future?Andre Villas-Boas wants a “project” to re-enter football for, but will require a detailed knowledge of the terms and demands attached to the new Liverpool manager’s job before committing to the club.
Villas-Boas is emerging as a prime contender for the position vacated by the dismissal of Kenny Dalglish last week, with a meeting this week to involve him, his agent Carlos Goncalves and Liverpool ’s owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG).
But despite his interest in Liverpool and theirs in him – revealed by The Independent last Thursday - Villas-Boas will not be rushed. After his traumatic nine-month experience at Chelsea, he will seek assurances about the new structure FSG are putting in place and the resources available for what the Americans view as an entire restructuring after 18 months of ownership at Anfield. On his arrival yesterday at the Portuguese Cup Final between Academica and Sporting, the 34-year-old said: “I'm still choosing the right project and that decision will take the necessary time.” Of his former side’s winning the Champions League, he added: ”The biggest award is to win the Champions League. Congratulations to Di Matteo and the players.“
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He and Roberto Martinez would appear to be front-runners at this stage. Liverpool have now made contact with the Wigan Athletic manager, who was scheduled to depart on holiday yesterday. He may break that holiday to meet FSG.
Villas-Boas has been extremely interested in the Liverpool manager’s position, ever since initial soundings were taken with Goncalves before Dalglish’s dismissal. It was made clear to him from the start that there would be other possible contenders, as the Americans embarked on their process of identifying a number of candidates. FSG first want to replace the successors to director of football Damien Comolli - rather than create the impression they are undermining the new manager by appointing them afterwards. The replacement of Comolli is likely to occur in the next two weeks, in line with the timeframe managing director Ian Ayre has put in place. There may even be Anfield executive appointments this week.
Didier Deschamps' representatives have indicated that he has not been approached by Liverpool, despite a desire to manage in England and the conclusion of a difficult season, from a personal perspective at Marseilles. The side have struggled and the fans have been on his back. Deschamps, who has two years left on his contract and who was approached by Liverpool before Roy Hodgson's appointment was confirmed, has not demonstrated the collegiate qualities FSG appear to be looking for, however. He has been unable to work with the director of football at Marseilles, José Anigo, with whom he has had a fractured relationship.
Keep up to date with all the latest news with expert comment and analysis from our award-winning writersBernie Sanders has been clear that he is not a socialist in the Leninist and Stalinist senses of the term. He has said that he does not “believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production,” and that he believes that “the middle class and working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down.”
The problem with Fugate’s thinking, and that of the Catholic Right on the whole, is that the term socialism is always used equivocally. Socialism is always in the totalitarian sense when coming from the Catholic Right, disregarding every clarification and redefinition over the years. If one reads the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, you will see more than a few similarities between it and Senator Sanders’s definition of democratic socialism. You will see even more similarities between the Compendium and Michael Harrington’s work.
The sloppy use of terms, including that of Christian charity – or simply, caritas – brings up Fugate’s most important point, that a welfare state destroys the necessity of caritas. To this claim, we must first consider the purpose of welfare as such. Social welfare, in its most general sense, is a system of public and private programs that provides for those things owed to the other in justice. This requires a public and private approach based upon solidarity and subsidiarity. Subsidiarity makes it clear that what can be accomplished at lower levels of society – be they individual, familial, or local – should never be simply assumed by a larger level. Solidarity is a social charity, the love of neighbor. Following the social philosophy of Karol Wojtyla, subsidiarity is not even possible without solidarity, for solidarity is preeminent among the social virtues. It is one of the Great Commandments, and is the motivating force in all matters of achieving social justice. But can one say that a promotion of welfare destroys caritas? More pointedly, does Senator Sanders promote the welfare state? The answer to this question stands on the precipice between yes and no, one which should be debated. I would tend to say, “No, he does not,” because his welfare idealism assumes work, even full-time work. Does Senator Sanders’s State subsume all the work of lower levels? Perhaps that is the question that ought to be debated more thoroughly, though that is not my program here. More importantly, Fugate makes an equivocation typical of Christians – of both the Left and the Right – that charity is simply a private act motivated by the desire to do good. But caritas – in its most basic definition – is “willing the good of the other for the other’s own sake.” I do not think that Senator Sanders approaches anything close to destroying this idea.
Joseph Anton |
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When I ask Kate how many jobs she's applied for, she says, "Like a million."
Desperate as she is, the Department of Labor doesn't consider her to be unemployed, because she has two jobs. Instead, Kate, who often works more than 60 hours a week, is in a class of workers who don't show up in government reports. She's one of the "permaterns" — those perpetual interns, mostly in their 20s — who have been battered by the recession and are holding out hope that the conventional career wisdom that an internship leads to a job isn't folklore from a bygone era.
The serial intern isn't unique to D.C. You can find young people languishing at film studios in Los Angeles and magazine empires in New York City. The permatern phenomenon points toward wider trends in the economy — namely the cutthroat competition for knowledge-economy jobs, the lack of investment in this generation, and the skills gap between what a generation weaned on a liberal-arts education is trained for and what the in-demand skills and professions are right now (i.e., not another poli-sci or English major). The result? For many in Washington, the American dream starts with a highbrow internship that pays $4.35 an hour — then another, and maybe another.
That's how much Jessica Schulberg, 22, made for the 10 months she worked at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a haven for academics and journalists researching public-policy issues. Every month, before taxes, Jessica was paid a stipend of $700, supplemented by waitressing and bartending.
"I felt like 10 months was a long time to be there," says Jessica. But with only a bachelor's degree, she felt she wasn't qualified for many entry-level jobs, a suspicion confirmed by numerous rejections. The places where she was applying — think tanks and nonprofits — were all "receiving a million applications from people just like me," she says.
So Jessica went with plan B: two years of graduate school to earn a master's in international politics. A partial scholarship made the decision easier, but Jessica says she'll have to go into debt to cover some of the $50,000 a year in tuition. She'll graduate next year.
Somewhat amazingly, Jessica is upbeat about her situation. The internship at the Wilson Center made her feel like one of the lucky ones. During her stint, she assisted foreign-policy heavyweights like Michael Adler, a foreign correspondent for Agence France-Presse, on a book about diplomacy in Iran. She did research for Mark Mazzetti, a national-security correspondent for The New York Times.
WHEN DID "LUCKY" become working for below minimum wage for months? Jessica doesn't pause when I ask her this — it's clearly a bargain she has mulled many times: "You either do what you like to do for free or you have an entry-level job for $25,000 where you answer the phone and are someone's assistant."
Has it always been this hard to break into even the most competitive jobs in D.C.? In a word, no.
Take Mazzetti, 38, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. When he was starting out, Mazzetti interned at The Economist's Washington bureau. "In the old days, there were internships in journalism that gave paths to more regular jobs," he says. His internship turned into a position that sent him to Austin. "I could pay the rent, and it was a blast," he recalls.
"It does seem like, in general, it is harder to get anything full-time and permanent in Washington now because of the economy," Mazzetti says. "Young and incredibly smart people have to take jobs for no money or very little money."
Internship coordinators around town say they're seeing more applicants with advanced degrees and previous internships than in the past. But the full-time jobs that are supposed to follow a prestigious internship aren't as plentiful as they once were. A 2012 study by consulting firm Millennial Branding found that while 91 percent of the 225 surveyed employers said students should have one to two internships before they graduate, half of the employers hadn't hired any interns in the previous six months. In other words, internships don't always lead to a job offer.
Those internships that offer a path to a full-time position are that much more competitive. At the Atlantic Media Co., which publishes The Atlantic and several other magazines, a high percentage of fellows move into other roles in the organization. But an internship at the company is among the toughest to land: The company receives 1,000 résumés for 25 positions. That's about a 2 percent acceptance rate.
After hearing these numbers, I began to understand why Jessica felt lucky. Maybe she is fortunate to be earning $4.35 an hour at her ivory-tower job while she works nights and weekends as a waitress. Maybe a 10-month paid internship followed by graduate school and then perhaps another internship is the new lucky, particularly at a time when so many young people can't find work at all.
Still, I wondered: Where was the anger at the injustice that a smart young woman couldn't find a permanent job and had to keep prolonging her $4.35-an-hour internship? "I don't think you can be angry," Jessica says. "It's just how it is. People older than me are struggling."
Ross Perlin, 29, author of Intern Nation, views the situation as much more insidious. "Low-paid and unpaid work is the new normal," Perlin says, "and if you can't do those internships you may be totally shut out of certain fields. How is that fair?"
The economics of being a permatern are pretty brutal. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Jessica can stay on her parents' health insurance until she's 26, defraying a major expense. Without that safety net, it's unclear what she'd do — either forgo health insurance or ask for a subsidy from her parents, who can afford mini-bailouts for their daughter.
The job market hasn't always been structured in a way that requires college graduates to work for less than a barista for months or years on end. Perlin says that before the internship boom, in the 1950s and '60s, the expectation was that employers would invest in young people and that they, in turn, would pay the investment back by becoming taxpayers and active members of society.
"There has been a cultural shift toward something more sinister — that you have to invest in yourself and we are each out there on our own," Perlin explains. "There is no idea of a social investment in our promising young people. Increasingly, you invest in your own human capital or your family does. There is no sense of shared responsibility."
BUT AREN'T THERE jobs for the hordes of serial interns? Don't they just need to lower their sights? No one, after all, is forcing them into professions that make getting into Harvard look easy. Isn't this just another example of the entitled Gen Y attitude that sees some work as beneath them?
Kate maintains she isn't holding out for the perfect job but will wait until she gets a career-building job — a luxury she has as the child of 1960s idealists, and, more important, one with no student loans. And she points out that, according to a recent poll, her college major — political science — is among the least employable due to a saturation in the marketplace.
Not everyone in the generation meets such a fate. Jessica's brother, who is 28 and a mechanical aerospace engineer, has been gainfully employed since the day he graduated from college, Jessica says. So here's another chasm in the 20-something cohort: the one between the liberal-arts kids and the engineering and science majors. "Engineering is an in-demand skill," Jessica says. "International relations/policy kids are a dime a dozen, so the intern pay difference makes sense in that regard."
The expectation that one's career should be fulfilling is another reason why the mid-20s, or even early-30s, intern has become a familiar sight in Washington offices. "People in this generation, despite the recession, are looking for what they really want to do, so they take a hit in the form of an internship to land one of those coveted jobs that pays the bills and is fun," says Ryan Healy of career-advice site BrazenCareerist.com.
But Aaron Smith of youth-advocacy organization Young Invincibles sees permaterns to be more a result of the economic rug's being pulled out from under this generation. "The economy needs to add a really high number of youth jobs over the next 10 years to get us back to where we were before," he says.
Like others, Smith sees a mismatch between the jobs that are available and what young people are seeking and trained for. "There is a huge demand for [people in science, engineering, and math], and we don't produce enough of those graduates to fill that need," Smith says. "Students need to be more cognizant of the labor market."
But as long as Washington continues to be a hub of politics, media, nonprofits, and development agencies, young people will continue to flock here to elbow their way into the region's über-competitive ecosystems. They just might find that interning for a year or two is part of the long, hard slog into the permanent, full-time workforce. Or they'll give up or go with plan B.
On the bright side, Lauren Berger, founder of InternQueen.com, a website that helps students find internships, says she isn't seeing serial interns as much as she did during the peak of the recession in 2008 and 2009. She says that when she gets emails from people who have been interning for four years, she replies, "Enough with the internships already."
If only some had that choice.
©2013 by Hannah Seligson. From a longer article originally published in Washingtonian. Reprinted with permission.Authorized translation (ca. 1953-1992) Authorized Arabic text (1995)
The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation. Whoso achieveth this duty hath attained unto all good; and whoso is deprived thereof hath gone astray, though he be the author of every righteous deed. انّ اوّل ما كتب اللهٰ على العباد عرفان مشرق وحيه و مطلع امره الّذي كان مقام نفسه في عالم الامر و الخلق من فاز به قد فاز بكلّ الخير و الّذي منع انّه من اهل الضّلال و لو يأتي بكلّ الاعمال
Haddad translation (1900-01) Provisional Arabic transliteration (1999)
Verily the first thing which God hath ordained unto the servants is the knowledge of the dawning place of His command, which was the station of Himself, in the world of command and creation (that is, the knowledge of Baha, who is the manifestation of God in the world). Whosoever attaineth there unto hath attained unto all good; and he who is deprived thereof is indeed of the people of error - even though he bringeth all good actions. inna awwala mA kataba allAhu `alA al-`ibAdi `irfAnu mashriqi waHIhi wa maTla`i amrihi al-ladhI kAna maqAma nafsihi fI `Alami al-amri wa al-khalqi man fAza bi-hi qad fAza bi-kulli al-khairi wa al-ladhI muni`a innahu min ahli al-DalAli wa lau ya'tI bi-kulli al-a`mAli.
Provisional Literal translation (1999) Earl E. Elder translation (1961)VMworld always has lots of new announcements about various VMware products and initiatives. VMworld 2017 is no different. This morning we had the announcement of PKS, the Pivotal Container Service. Yes, that is a K instead of a C in the acronym – this is to highlight the fact that this container service is using Kubernetes. Using a feature called BOSH from Pivotal, customers can provision Kubernetes onto their on-premises vSphere deployments (including VCF – VMware Cloud Foundation). This provisioning capability has its own project name – “Kubo”. Kubo is a joint project between Google and Pivotal which allows for the creation of Kubernetes clusters on multiple different platforms/cloud.
I guess the first thing to make clear is that this has no reliance on a full-blown Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) here. We are only using the BOSH feature. While BOSH is an essential part of Cloud Foundry, there is no requirement for vSphere customers to have a full-blown PCF to use BOSH to create and manage Kubernetes clusters on vSphere. PKS will ship as a standalone product, and will integrate with a customer’s vSphere infrastructure. [Update] After attending a breakout session on PKS at VMworld 2017, we were informed that PKS will be provided as an OVA for deployment.
The objective of PKS, if it is not immediately clear, is to make the deployment of Kubernetes on vSphere as simple as possible for IT, where their developers have an expressed desire to work with containers.
So lets recap once more what is in PKS:
Kubo – Kubernetes provisioned via BOSH
NSX-T – networking and security for containers
GCP Service Broker – to integrate Google Cloud Services into applications
vSphere Cloud Provider – to enable persistent storage for stateful applications
Harbor – Container Repository which also includes vulnerability checking, and image signing / verification
What should be noted about BOSH is that, alongside the provisioning aspect, it also provides monitoring and self-healing for Kubernetes, making the Kubernetes clusters that it provisions highly available.
Regarding the vSphere Cloud Provider, I’m delighted to see this included in the offering. I know the team have been working on this for some time, and its been available in different guises over the past year. Including this provider will give containers access to persistent vSphere storage (which could be vSAN, traditional SAN storage and/or NAS storage).
However, one of the most compelling parts of this offering is that customers are guaranteed to always have the latest Kubernetes version available to them. PKS will maintain constant compatibility to Google Container Engine (GKE) for the latest Kubernetes releases.
The new offering is expected to become available in calendar Q4 2017. Once I have some hands-on with this offering, and we know how the whole thing will be packaged, I’ll share more details with you.Tuesday night’s result in the semifinals of the Copa America Centenario was far from what U.S. soccer fans were hoping for.
The USMNT were summarily dominated by Argentina, falling by a 4-0 scoreline. After so much hope and promise leading up to the game, it was another less than stellar result against one of international soccer’s titans. Afterwards, the hot take machine across social media and the internet in general was in overdrive mode.
Argentina 4, USA 0: Who or What Deserves the Brunt of the Blame?
Questions abounded as to why the US was so comprehensively outclassed. Was it a shoddy tactical game plan on the part of head coach Jurgen Klinsmann? Were his lineup choices in the wake of multiple omissions due to suspensions to blame? Did the players fail to bring their A-game when it mattered most? Or does there still continue to be a significantly wide talent gap between US players and those of teams such as Argentina?
The honest answer is that it’s a little bit of everything. You could put together a circle graph encompassing all of the above mentioned points and each one would comprise their own percentage. Of course, that graph would vary greatly in look depending on who you asked to design it.
The Jurgen Klinsmann Conundrum
There has been a rather volatile fluctuation in the sentiment towards Klinsmann during this tournament. After the US’ 2-0 defeat to Colombia in the tournament opener, that sentiment was overwhelmingly negative. It was then that most fans would lay at least half the blame of U.S. soccer’s problems at his feet.
Then the Yanks went on a three-game winning streak. That included a comprehensive 4-0 win over CONCACAF foe Costa Rica and two gritty one-goal victories over Paraguay and Ecuador respectively. It was what saw them through to the semis. And suddenly Klinsmann appeared to be on much more solid footing with the fanbase.
But after a game in which the US failed to register a single shot of any kind, it was back to the drawing board for fans and pundits alike. And the graph everyone was crafting in their head tended to have a great deal of the blame going Klinsmann’s way. After all, how could the team look this unprepared in perhaps the biggest game in their careers?
What About the Culpability of the Players Themselves?
Regardless of what you think about Klinsmann, the fact is that the on-field execution against Argentina was atrocious at times. There’s only so much the head coach can control. It wasn’t Klinsmann that was making errant passes, turning the ball over in crucial spots on the field, not to mention committing silly fouls close to goal. By now, we all know what Lionel Messi did in punishing a foul near the box with a flash of set piece salaciousness.
In the lead up to this game, Klinsmann talked about how hungry this team was to shock the world. But from the opening whistle, all we saw was a side that seemed mentally flummoxed. You could make the argument that all four Argentinian goals were the result of frustrating lapses in concentration from certain players. That’s not a recipe for an upset.
A Talent Gap That Speaks To A Bigger Issue Within U.S. Soccer
Beyond Klinsmann’s coaching and players not coming through in the clutch, there is perhaps a bigger issue at hand here. One could not help but notice that the speed of the game at an elite level simply seemed to come more naturally to Argentina. From an eye test standpoint, there still remains a gap in talent between the top US players and those of traditional soccer powers.
If this continues to be the case, what is the cause? The game is so much more established in the United States than it has ever been. Major League Soccer is entering its third decade of existence. There are a multitude of American players on the rosters of clubs in the English Premier League and the Bundesliga among other major European leagues. Yet the USMNT continues to fall short in big international games.
Enter Jason Whitlock. A respected if not controversial (at times) sports columnist, Whitlock is probably the last person U.S. soccer fans would expect to weigh in on the situation. But his take on Wednesday’s edition of “Speak For Yourself,” a new daily talk show with him and radio host Colin Cowherd, has some validity.
"We're not catching up with the rest of the World as long as Soccer's a sport for the upper class." – @WhitlockJasonhttps://t.co/6O2nZXcoOK — Speak For Yourself (@SFY) June 22, 2016
Analyzing Jason Whitlock’s Hot Take on U.S. Soccer
Now it must be said that Whitlock is far from an expert on the game. Don’t expect a Matt Doyle-style weekly treatise on tactics from him. He probably wouldn’t be able to name very many players on the rosters of MLS teams. But his commentary on race, class and how those things translate to sports is about as competent and refreshing as you’re going to get.
For this reason, it may make sense to pay attention to the above comments. The point could still be made that U.S. Soccer continues to struggle attracting players from all socio-economic backgrounds. Or at the very least, the game in the States may still be viewed as a suburban pastime.
Innuendo aside, the soccer mom remains an oft-cited stereotype of the sport in the US. Though it may not have much to do with actual player development, the fact is many top US players emanate from middle to upper middle class environments. This tends to differ in other parts of the world, where soccer is many kids’ path to an escape out of abject poverty.
Soccer, Poverty and the Case of Michael Laudrup
When I first heard Whitlock’s comments, the first thing that came to mind was a passage from “Inverting the Pyramid” by famed soccer writer Jonathan Wilson. Though the book is primarily focused on the game’s history from a tactical standpoint, there’s a section in the final chapter that applies to the topic at hand. It has to do with legendary Danish center forward Michael Laudrup.
Laudrup had a lengthy career that spanned from 1981-1998 and included a six-year stint with FC Barcelona. During that time, his coach was none other than Johan Cruyff. The Dutch soccer sensation was highly complimentary of how gifted a player Laudrup was. But he said there was an inner drive lacking that prevented Laudrup from becoming an all-time great.
“Had Michael been born in a poor ghetto in Brazil or Argentina with the ball being his only way out of poverty he would today be recognized as the biggest genius of the game ever,” Cruyff said of Laudrup.
That same sentiment, in a less magnanimous sense, could be applied to quite a few players in the USMNT talent pool.
U.S. Soccer’s Own Rags to Riches Stories
This isn’t to say that U.S. soccer is completely bereft of players who’ve overcome tough environments early in their life. Clint Dempsey had humble beginnings in Nacogdoches, TX before his ascendance as one of the best strikers in U.S. history. Gyasi Zardes grew up in a tough neighborhood in Hawthorne, CA. Jozy Altidore is the son of Haitian immigrants who settled in New Jersey.
So in certain respects, Whitlock’s comments can be interpreted as a generalization. And it’s not just the aforementioned figures. There are myriad examples of American soccer players, especially nowadays, who don’t fit the mold Whitlock’s crafting. Many have carved out successful careers despite coming from a poor socio-economic background.
But that’s not to say there’s much work to be done. Kids from the inner cities still tend to choose basketball and, despite concussion concerns, football over soccer. The pay-to-play model that still permeates the youth game continues to hinder participation for kids from low-income families. MLS academy systems have a chance to fill the void but have only been around for less than a decade.
Discovering potential game-changing talents from all walks of life remains a work in progress. And it’s just one piece of the puzzle in moving U.S. soccer forward towards becoming an elite world power. Whitlock’s far from a soccer savant. But his take on the state of the game, though a bit of an oversimplification, has some semblance of being prescient.The TALF program emerges in the transcripts as a sticking point for those at the Fed who objected to the ad hoc nature of the rescues. These people, quite rationally, wanted a cost-benefit analysis of the proposals to ensure they would generate real results while limiting downside exposure.
“What’s not clear to me is whether we have the right set of metrics to help us judge how much expansion we need and what the right trade-offs are as we do it,” said Mr. Plosser at the March meeting, referring to balance sheet growth. (That was the meeting at which the Fed staff proposed expanding TALF.) “It seems to me that we do these various programs on almost a one-off basis. I think one of the challenges we face is getting some grasp of how these programs are benefiting us at the margin.”
It took a few more months for the program to start running on all cylinders, but by then, the economy and the stock market had begun showing signs of life. Perhaps because of those improvements, the facility never ballooned in size.
According to the New York Fed, outstanding loans in the program peaked at $48.2 billion in March 2010. Three months later, it stopped making new loans. The final outstanding loan in the facility was repaid in October 2014.
So did the program work? On the surface, it looks like a money generator, having reaped $746 million in fees and income. The New York Fed kept 10 percent of that and sent the rest to the Treasury. But those returns are not adjusted for the risk that the Fed took by being willing to bring dubious securities onto its balance sheet and the true costs of lending money against them.
How effective was it?
Post-mortem research on the program published by the New York Fed in 2012 drew basically positive conclusions. TALF “is likely to have made a significant contribution to restoring liquidity in 2009 and 2010,” the paper said. But even that research, coming from a regional bank that had strongly supported the program, acknowledged that it was difficult to isolate the facility’s true impact.
Obviously, in the 2008 crisis, the Federal Reserve was operating without a guidebook. And there wasn’t much time to do the kinds of cost-benefit analyses of liquidity programs that some in the Fed wanted.
Still, if these transcripts show us anything, it’s that regulators should be armed with precisely these kinds of assessments. And well before the next financial panic ensues.CLOSE A pilot project testing protected bike lanes aims to make Des Moines more safe.
Buy Photo Cyclist ride the new protected bike lanes on East Grand Ave. Monday, Sept. 11, 2017. (Photo: Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register)Buy Photo
Drive times for commuters working in downtown Des Moines could get a little longer in an effort to make the city's streets safer.
A new mobility plan for downtown Des Moines calls for eliminating nearly every one-way street, reducing the number of vehicle lanes and growing the city's network of bike lanes.
If fully implemented, those changes could add one to three minutes for drivers during peak hours, according to the Connect Downtown report released Monday.
"This isn't just an exercise to add bike lines," said Larry James, chairman of the Urban Land Institute of Iowa. "The purpose of the project is to really focus on safety of all users, including drivers, by slowing traffic to the speed limit, and to encourage economic development."
The city worked with the Urban Land Institute of Iowa and the Greater Des Moines Partnership to commission the plan.
Reintroducing two-way traffic will reduce vehicle speeds and end drivers "jockeying" for position, according to the report. Two-way traffic also has been shown to reduce crime and benefit local businesses, it says.
Walkability — feeling safe walking — is really the "canary in the coal mine" in terms of a vibrant downtown, said Paul Moore, an urban transit planner for Nelson\Nygaard, a firm based in San Francisco.
"What we find around the country is that retail is much, much more likely to thrive on two-way streets," he said.
More: Plan cuts downtown one-way streets, adds protected bike lanes
In the 1960s, cities struggled as people migrated to the suburbs, Jeff Speck, author of "Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time" told the Register in an earlier interview.
"The thought was: If everyone is going suburban, we should give them easy access to downtown," he said.
The cities responded by building highways running through their centers and converting streets into one-ways. "But all that accomplished was making it easier for people to leave," Speck said.
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Now, downtown Des Moines is experiencing an unprecedented wave of development, with 2,300 apartment units opening this year. A plan like this would benefit downtown residents and lift up businesses by attracting more foot traffic, said Kris Saddoris, vice president of development for Hubbell Realty Co.
"We have a lot of beautiful places downtown, but the reality is we haven't focused on how to get around other than in your car," Saddoris said. "(The plan) is just as critical to retain the growth that we've experienced as it is to our future."
Connect Downtown could cost $33 million if fully implemented, and another $500,000 in annual maintenance if the city installs bike lanes on nearly every major thoroughfare, which the plan calls for.
Des Moines leaders gave it positive reviews during a Monday morning workshop while openly questioning how the city would pay for its ambitious ideas.
"As much as I’d like to think there’s money to do this, there’s not," Councilman Chris Coleman said.
Councilwoman Christine Hensley said the business community would have to be "an integral part" of funding it.
Operation Downtown, which represents downtown commercial businesses, raises about $3 million annually through a special tax levy. That money is used to fund street cleaning, maintenance and beautification efforts.
Gene Meyer, president of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, which manages Operation Downtown, said the group would look at the levy in 2018, but there have been "no discussions" yet about contributing to the Connect Downtown projects.
"All options are on the table once (the city) approves the vision," he said.
The City Council is expected to consider adopting the plan on Nov. 20.
Grand Avenue/Locust Street
Grand Avenue would be converted to two-way traffic from the river to 18th Street. There would be one vehicle lane running in each direction and a protected bicycle lane on each side of the road. Parallel parking would separate vehicle and bike lanes.
A center turn lane for cars would run from MLK Parkway to 18th Street.
Locust Street would be converted to two-way traffic with one lane in each direction from 18th Street to the Des Moines River. There would be no bike lanes, save a two-way cycle track on the south side of the street from 15th Street to Fleur Drive connecting to the trail. Parking would remain on both sides of the street.
Second Avenue/Third Street
Second Avenue from Wells Fargo Arena to Walnut Street would be reduced from three lanes to two, but remain a one-way street. A bicycle lane would be added on the east side of the street protected by a lane of parallel parking for cars. Third Street would remain a one-way, three-lane street.
University Avenue
University Avenue is a barrier for residents trying to reach downtown from the north, according to the report. Pedestrian crosswalks are often difficult to see, and the sheer size of the road creates hazards for school children at Hiatt Middle School and Carver Elementary.
University Avenue would be reduced from four to three lanes from East 15th Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. Bike lanes would be added in both directions.
Mercy Medical Center supports the plan and agrees it will make streets — including those directly surrounding the hospital’s campus at Sixth and University avenues — safer for all users, interim President Mike Wegner said.
Mercy is a founding supporter of the 6th Avenue Corridor, a group working with the city to reduce the number of vehicle lanes on Sixth Avenue north of University Avenue and add a 13- to 15-foot wide bicycle lane and pedestrian path.
Sixth Avenue "will be strengthened through implementation of the Connect Downtown plan," Wegner said. "And components of the Connect Downtown plan will support Mercy’s campus master plan effort to revitalize and expand its downtown campus."
One ways
Main north-south one-ways going in and out of downtown, including Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth streets, East 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue would be converted into two-way streets.
Parking
Overall, the plan calls for a net increase in the number of on-street parking spaces and time they’re available.
Rush-hour parking restrictions on Sixth Avenue, Seventh Street, High Street and Locust Street would be eliminated.
"It’s a huge problem if you’re a retailer or restaurateur," said Larry James, of the Urban Land Institute.
If you want to go to dinner at 801 Chophouse, you can't park right in front of the building, James said. "That doesn't make sense to me.... This will help retail and restaurants at the street level."
Alejandro Ledezma, who manages the men's clothing store Lord Midas in the Des Moines Building at Locust Street and Sixth Avenue, said the biggest problem for his business is the lack of metered parking spaces.
"They’re always filled. So if you have a store downtown, it’s tough for your customers to find parking," he said.
Bike lanes network
Most cyclists are not comfortable riding in downtown Des Moines, and many find the city's on-street bike lanes confusing, according to the report.
Connect Downtown proposes a network of bike lanes that would touch nearly every major thoroughfare downtown.
Bike lanes would separate cyclists from vehicles and include signalized intersections that could be triggered by bikes and markings at potential “conflict zones” with cars.
Bike lanes would be added on streets where travel lanes are reduced.
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A theme park is advertising a bizarre job vacancy – for an ELEPHANT driver.
Les Machines de l’ile in Nantes, France, is looking for a recruit to operate its 40ft tall mechanical wooden elephant.
The attraction is home to a host of curious mechanical animals that roam amid the crowds, including a giant spider and a horse-dragon hybrid.
But the star of the show is the 40ft tall Grand Elephant, made from 45 tonnes of wood and steel, that carries up to 50 passengers while blasting its steel trunk.
Now bosses at the park, located at the former shipyards of Nantes, are looking for a driver to operate their main attraction.
But the role is not for beginners – the park are looking for a candidate who has five years of experience in agriculture or public works, or an equivalent field.
Applicants will also be required to carry out maintenance on the elephant, and are therefore asked to have skills in hydraulics, pneumatics, mechanics and welding.
A heavy good vehicle (HGV) permit is also desired – and candidates should have good interpersonal skills, a taste for teamwork, and be versatile, vigilant and responsive.
The role offers a starting monthly salary of €1702 (£1483) per month, and benefits include complementary health care, and a 60 per cent discount in the park restaurants.
Weekend and holiday work may also be required.
The elephant takes visitors on a 45-minute stroll around the park as they learn about its intricate structure.
Les Machines de l’ile was created by engineers François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice in 2007, and its mechanical animals have delighted crowds from around the world ever since.
The park also features an aquarium, built over three levels, which takes spectators on a tour from surface to sea floor, with 35 underwater creatures on display.
Entry to the park cost €8.50 (£7.20).
To see the full job advertisement, or to apply for the role, visit the Ouest-France Emploi Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OFemploi/.
RELATEDWhile ominous Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro makes his way across the U.S., invading the “safe spaces” of precious snowflakes who risk being exposed to facts, a growing number of college student groups are eagerly inviting the campus celebrity to blow their own safe spaces.
Students at the University of Rochester defended hosting Shapiro for an event on April 5, during which he is scheduled speak about the the threats to the First Amendment on college campuses. In an editorial letter in the school’s campus paper called “Why we’re bringing Ben Shapiro to campus,” College Republicans student leader Anna Garvey wrote that despite the amount of controversy elicited by Shapiro’s events in the past, “his arguments are always built upon facts, and, more importantly, he has shown himself to be open to discussing dissenting opinions.”
Garvey added, “It is for this reason and due to our resounding belief in the protection of the fundamental right of free speech that Ben Shapiro will be joining us in April.”
The event follows a recent controversy that erupted at the University of Rochester over anonymous comments on Yik Yak deemed intolerant and bigoted. A campaign called “We’re better than that,” was created by administrators to combat racism by erasing “intolerant” speech on campus. The campaign featured an event in which T-shirts that read “We’re better than that” were distributed to students.
“We need to acknowledge the protests and Yik Yak posts and respond to them by promoting zero tolerance for racism at UR,” a campaign advertiser said.
Students expressed distaste for the “We’re better than that” campaign, claiming it was unhelpful and ignorant of the issues leading to the creation of the campaign in the first place. A growing number of students expressed a desire to have Shapiro speak about free speech instead.
@benshapiro @BreitbartNews Seriously, what do I have to do to get you to speak at the University of Rochester? — Jose The Capitalist (@JoseTheBae) December 9, 2015
Can't wait to see @benshapiro speak at University of Rochester next week! — alexa (@simplybyalexa) March 29, 2016
The private New York university has not seen the same backlash against Shapiro’s events that were experienced on other college campuses this year, such as at Cal State LA. Interestingly, the response to Shapiro’s event may reflect a growing sentiment for intellectual debate as promoted by Shapiro himself. One opposing political student group even encouraged attendance to Shapiro’s event, simply for the sake of hearing “what the other side believes.”
“His arguments are always built upon facts, and, more importantly, he has shown himself to be open to discussing dissenting opinions.” University of Rochester College Republicans student leader Anna Garvey, on Ben Shapiro
“While we as Democrats probably disagree with about everything he says, it's always a great opportunity to hear what the other side believes,” the president of University of Rochester’s College Democrats posted to Facebook. “The event is Tuesday, April 5th at 7:30 PM in Hoyt Auditorium. I recommend we all go and support our conservative friends in College Republicans, and listen to the speaker's opinions.”
Anna Garvey, college junior and leader of the University of Rochester’s College Republicans, did not respond to a request for comment in time for this article’s publishing. |
no cooperation for the rest of the year? Dumb.
There are crucial issues facing Americans right now. No, not Americans who are Democrats, not Americans who vote Republican, but Americans who want to see movement on improving schools and roads, reforming the banking industry and other vital issues.
This is where President Obama should say the heck with all of this partisan nonsense. He should say, "Either you get in the game or get out of the way."
We have been debating for years about immigration reform. Right now, an estimated 12 million folks are in the nation illegally. It is affecting our local, state and national economy, our schools, hospitals and other vital areas. So why should confronting that be put on the back burner because Sen. Lindsey Graham has a burr under his saddle?
The nation's schools are in shambles and President Obama wants to make massive changes to the No Child Left Behind Act. Unions are not too enthused with the bill, and Republicans want there to be more accountability for the dramatic amount of money being earmarked for expanding the initiative.
So are we supposed to tell our schoolchildren that they should forget the need for more early childhood learning, more dollars to hire better teachers and improve low-performing schools?
American taxpayers have been totally screwed by Wall Street. Their reckless behavior tanked our economy. We saved their jobs with billions of dollars, and they turned around and rewarded themselves with billions in bonuses. Had Americans not given them money, there would have been no jobs and no bonuses!
So, the Senate has now undertaken financial regulatory reform, and Republicans simply refuse to even negotiate on the issue. It's time for Congress to go after Wall Street and put regulations in place. We cannot trust them to do right this time. They didn't do it before, and no one should think their greed has been tempered by our financial collapse.
This is the nonsense that voters have tired of. If politicians on both sides are there to represent their views, then they have to do it. For the GOP, stop canceling hearings. Stop threatening not to engage in legislative negotiations. And if Republicans make it clear they will say no to everything, the Democrats must learn to lead and go it alone.
The November election is meaningless to me. What matters is trying to fix what is broken with this country. And we can't repair our schools, our borders and Wall Street unless our political leaders in Washington act like grown men and women and not petulant children acting out in a fit of rage.
Grow up and get to work!
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Roland Martin.The final name of a college football player chanted inside this iconic Georgia Dome was that of a person who didn't even play in the game.
That's how much Eddie Jackson, and the spirit of what he represents, means to this special Alabama football team and its fans. That's how much Eddie Jackson means to the sport of college football.
They chanted for Jackson -- "Edd-ie, Edd-ie, Edd-ie" -- before and after the Crimson Tide's 24-7 victory against Washington in the Peach Bowl's semifinal game of the College Football Playoff on Saturday. It was the final college football game scheduled to be played in the Georgia Dome, which will be demolished to make room for Atlanta's new dome.
A senior captain, Jackson broke his leg against Texas A&M in October and since then the All-American safety who returned to school for his final season rather than enter the NFL Draft has turned into an iconic figure for Alabama football. He has been an important source of inspiration for his teammates, and his influence as a positive leader is now an unmistakable part of this team.
The day before Saturday's national semifinal, Jackson's place in Alabama lore was elevated even higher.
On Friday, the South Florida native published an article in The Players' Tribune addressed to his teammates. Written beautifully, Jackson's words further motivated his teammates on the eve of the College Football Playoff. Entitled "To My Brothers," the first-person letter touched on everything that makes college football so special. An excerpt:
"When I found out my season was over, I couldn't stop crying. I think what made me the most upset was knowing that I'd have to miss out on all the fun we were going to have. Playing good football is hard work. It takes hours and hours of sweat and preparation. You have to push yourself to a level you didn't think was possible. But ultimately it's all worth it, because as everyone in this program knows, playing good football is -- more than anything else -- really, really fun."
If he wasn't already, Jackson is now the heart and soul of this Alabama football team heading into next week's national championship in Tampa, Fla. After Saturday's semifinal victory against Washington, players, boosters and coaches all showered Jackson with love and praise in quiet moments of reflection. Linebacker Tim Williams, another star defender who also returned for his senior year, summed up Jackson's role with heartfelt praise.
"The best leadership ever!" Williams screamed during one of Jackson's on-field interviews after the game. "We play this game for you, baby! Thank you for that article, baby! I love you! The greatest safety ever!"
Jackson was a second-team All-American as a junior and projected as a third- or fourth-round pick in last year's NFL Draft. Instead of leaving school early, he returned to Tuscaloosa because he said he still had things to learn and he wanted to earn his degree. Jackson finished his degree last semester, and he is the first in his family to graduate from college.
He learned just as much about himself on the field. Another inspirational passage from Jackson's letter to his teammates:
"I was such a different person when I first arrived in Tuscaloosa. I showed up here as a three-star wide receiver from Florida who hadn't played high school football until his senior year. At first, like a lot of freshmen, I was scared to death that I was out of my league. Yes, I had wanted to attend Alabama because it was Alabama, but I don't think I fully realized until I actually got here the sacrifices I'd have to make in order to play. I didn't just have to learn how to be a defensive back; I had to learn how to be a coachable human being."
Before Saturday's game, Alabama fans serenaded Eddie during the coin toss. Afterwards, fans lined the front row of the Georgia Dome and chanted Eddie's name as he walked off the field. The Peach Bowl wasn't unique in its praise for Jackson either. Fans have been chanting his name at every game since his injury.
"It feels good, man," Jackson said after the game. "We've got the best fans in the world, and I'm just so proud of these guys. The focus needs to be on these guys because the things they are accomplishing today are amazing."
Jackson has remained involved with the team since his injury. He helps break down film during the week and provides coaching during practice and games. He motivates players on the sidelines, and keeps his teammates focused. At this point, Jackson's presence on the sideline is more valuable to the team than most of Alabama's coaches.
And Saban loves him. Alabama's coach referenced Jackson's letter to his teammates multiple times during his postgame press conference:
"I think that one thing that I took from that article that some people don't realize, especially if you haven't played on a team, especially a football team, which is probably the greatest team game there is, because there's more participants -- that no matter what you search for in your life, no matter where you go, what you do...When you're in that huddle, there ain't nobody special," Saban said. "Everybody's together. Everybody has respect for each other, and everybody appreciates the job that everybody else does. And you can go a long way in doing a lot of things, and you may never find that. You may never find that. But you find it when you play football and you play together as a team.
"I think that article epitomized the defensive chemistry that we have and how important those guys are to each other and how they play well together."
In a bowl season dominated by news of players skipping games to avoid injury, it's a senior injured after returning to school who might have the most impact of all.
Joseph Goodman is a senior reporter and columnist for Alabama Media Group. He's on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.Glen Woods had to play detective when his $15,000 motorbike was stolen and his investigation led to charges being laid but feels he has been robbed justice with a recent court decision.
A victim of crime turned detective to retrieve his stolen property after what he describes as police inaction over the case.
A thief stole Glen Woods' $15,000 motorbike while he slept at a Taupo motel last year but he says the real crime was being robbed of his sense of justice by police.
Taupo farm hand Brendan Jay Hewitt, 23, pleaded guilty to charges relating to receiving the stolen bike at Taupo District Court on Monday but Woods will not be satisfied until police have laid theft charges on whoever is responsible for breaking into the motel and stealing his gear.
After battling police to take his case more seriously he turned detective himself and lay the ground work for Hewitt's arrest.
"I did all the police work for them. They've been worthless," he said.
"There were CCTV cameras all over the place. I went through eight hours of CCTV footage and saw the thief on camera."
"I put that on USB for police to see but they didn't seem that interested in it."
After making enquiries Woods' search led him to a Wainuiomata, Wellington, house after he heard a bike similar to his was up for sale.
"The bike is Italian and they only make about 2500 world wide," he said.
"It is likely to be the only one of it's kind in New Zealand so when I heard one was up for sale cheaply I went and checked it out."
Upon inspecting the bike Woods noticed it had been repainted and "thrashed out" but it was definitely his.
He took it from the seller and contacted police.
The subsequent police investigation led to Hewitt being charged with burglary charges but these were dropped by police prosecutors and receiving stolen vehicle charges were later laid.
Judge Snell indicated a prison sentence, after taking into account Hewitt's criminal history.
Hewitt has 19 dishonesty convictions to his name - six are in connection to receiving stolen vehicles.
"He is certainly looking at a term of imprisonment of two years or less," he said.
"Members of the public need to be protected from people who are thieves."
Prosecutors called for reparations to be made to Woods, who was uninsured for the theft, but Hewitt's defence said it was unfair for the full amount of compensation be awarded as Hewitt was not the one who stole the bike.
Woods said that decision was unfair.
"I now know why people keep stealing bikes," he said.
"Even if people get caught they get away with it. They've done more to protect those responsible than me."
Taupo Senior Sergeant Fane Troy said police appreciated Wood's investigative work which led to an arrest and return of stolen property.
"A lot of people end up investigating their own cases," he said.
"Police take all crime seriously but we have to prioritise things."
When talking about Wood's dissatisfaction with Monday's outcome Troy said it could be difficult for victims of crime to think objectively about the situation.
"It can be tough when people get personally involved," he said.
"I understand people can be emotional when a crime is committed but you have to take a step back and think objectively about it."
Hewitt has been remanded on bail with a curfew until sentencing on December 16.Peter Rakobowchuk, The Canadian Press
MONTREAL -- Canadian astronaut Julie Payette admits she was a little skeptical when she got a peek at Montreal's new $48-million planetarium on Friday.
Payette said the scientist in her is used to the normal planetarium where discussions focus on stars and black holes.
She wasn't too sure about the new facility's theatre with its light-and-sound show.
"I was a little skeptical at first of the idea that we'd be into imaginative and creative stuff that is not necessarily rooted in pure science," the 49-year-old engineer told The Canadian Press.
"But I think it will attract people who would not necessarily come to a planetarium in the first place."
The Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium, which officially opens its doors to the public on Saturday, is unique because it contains two very different theatres, which are housed under two enormous shiny cones.
The Milky Way Theatre, which seats about 200, is the traditional astronomical facility where visitors study and learn about the starry sky.
It's described as state-of-the art, with what astronomers say is the most authentic possible representation of the night sky.
There are views of celestial bodies as seen by the naked eye, but visitors will see even more if they bring along a pair of binoculars.
In the second hall, dubbed the Chaos Theatre, visitors sit back on bean bags and are taken on a 20-minute multimedia odyssey through the universe.
The extraterrestrial voyage, called Continuum, begins quietly on the ground as visitors gaze at the stars through the shadow of trees.
They are then propelled out into space and travel to far-off planets and galaxies, visit the Sun and even watch huge space rocks slam into each other.
The planetarium also features a permanent interactive exhibition with projections and multimedia games which ponder the question of whether life exists beyond Earth.
There is also a section containing the largest public collection of meteorites in Quebec. There are more than 300 pieces, including meteorites that originated on the moon and Mars.
Executive-director Charles-Mathieu Brunelle said the Montreal planetarium with its two theatres is unique when compared to other such facilities in Canada.
"The Rio Tinto Planetarium presents (two) different aspects of living with the universe," he said on Friday.
Brunelle also said the Chaos Theatre will be put at the disposal of other artists who want to present shows that focus on astronomy and life on Earth.
Payette described the new 10,000-square-metre-planetarium as "the marriage of arts and science."
"I'd like more people to come to our educational institutions where they are going to further their understanding of who they are," she added.
The new three-level Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium, which is located in east-end Montreal, is about four times larger than the city's old downtown planetarium which closed in late 2011.
More than six million star-struck visitors passed through its doors in the last 30 years.
Officials expect its shiny new replacement at the foot of the Olympic stadium tower to welcome 400,000 people in 2013.Image via Flickr User Ed Webster/Wikimedia Commons
Pro wrestling is a murky business. Even for obsessives, it's hard to make out how it works from the outside. There are codes of conduct and slang stretching back a hundred years; a culture of practical jokes, sometimes borderline sadistic ones, has existed on the road for nearly as long. Drugs ruled the ring and still do in some places; uppers to get you on the road and downers to get you into bed have been the standard for decades. It is opaque, clannish, secretive, and obsessed with its own jargon, codes, and folklore. Picture the exact midpoint between carny culture and the military and you're pretty close.
The sense of pro wrestling as a mysterious otherworld is sustained by the fact that pro wrestlers still don't talk much about how the business really works. Even after the death of kayfabe, wrestlers still close ranks regarding wrestling's reality through a combination of keeping quiet and telling only truths that are so strange or nonsensical that it's hard to take them at face value. This is true—maybe even truer, oddly enough—in these days of WWE's corporate dominance.
Read More: Stan Hansen's, Wrestling's Violent Rambling Man, Has a Home in the Hall of Fame
WWE does not like people talking to the media about the seedier side of their operation, and that goes double for issues like pay and hours; at least the pranks and road stories maintain the illusion of a traveling circus act, whereas the details of John Cena's 401k reduce WWE's manic trip through the looking glass as something that exists within the context of our own workaday world. It kind of sours the story, knowing that WWE Superstars are also, in a very real sense, employees. We don't know precisely how the McMahons operate because, honestly, wrestlers don't talk about it much. When you have a monopoly in North America—and WWE is functionally a monopoly, no matter how good the local indies are—you can do things like blacklist employees or snooping media. And WWE does indeed do that.
One notably disgruntled employee is CM Punk, he of the never-quite-here UFC debut and defendant in a lawsuit filed by his former employers at WWE. Punk had the temerity to publicly go in on WWE's medical services and booking practices. The medical stuff is pretty self-explanatory—he claims WWE worked him too much when he was sick and that their doctor was incompetent—while his dissatisfaction with the natural flow of WWE's version of wrestling tended to fall into the same gripes everyone has with the storylines, a strong distaste for overpaid part-timers like the Rock, and a shade of self-interested promotion for one CM Punk.
One of these people has been accused of steroid use. Photo via Flickr user Miguel Discart/Wikimedia Commons
Punk was the single most vocal critic of WWE's business in recent times, and a rare voice speaking from a position of pure burnout about the cutthroat way the federation does business. This week, he was joined by a somewhat more surprising fellow employee. That would be midcard strongman Ryback, who forcefully spoke out about WWE's pay practices on his Tumblr. (Buried lede alert: Ryback has a Tumblr.) In that post, which is half essay and half rant, Ryback pulled back the curtain on how WWE pays its wrestlers.
It's worth reading in its entirety. Ryback's clearly thought hard about what he wanted to say, and even gets existential at points. "Obviously things have always been this way," he writes, "but does that make them right?" He details something that has long been suspected, but which is no less a bombshell: that there is a winner's purse of some sort, even if it's an abstract one hinging on a wrestler's current push, meaning that losers make less than winners in a wholly predetermined athletic endeavor whose winners are picked by a surpassingly small group of people renowned for pettiness, backbiting, and arbitrariness.
As Ryback describes it, this is something akin to Saturday Night Live paying a cast member less for being the butt of a joke. But even that doesn't quite capture the stupidity of the policy, because wrestling's losers often wind up doing most of the work in making the winner look better than he or she actually is. Whether Ryback is of that quality—popular appraisal of his in-ring ability varies widely but tends to settle somewhere around "merely alright"—is quite beside this point. No jobber means no winner, and no winner means no superstar. To compound things, Ryback stresses that WWE is already an unequal world: the significant pay gap between superstar and midcard exists as expected, but things like merchandise sales mean a loser misses out on added income in addition to the extra money given to wrestling's perpetual winners.
It has to be stressed that Ryback is ambiguous on the Losers Lose Money statement; it's unclear whether he means that, in a larger context, workers lose out on earnings or whether it's that plus a literal winner's purse. It reads more like the latter than anything else, but Ryback is a hugely be-trapezius'ed wrestler, not a writer. What is apparent is that Ryback is frustrated at what is certainly a strange, arbitrary wage structure. He's probably not alone in his frustration.
Ryback's post comes in the context of WWE taking him off television as his contract winds down; it's a contract he shows no intention of renewing, at least not at existing terms. WWE considers its wrestlers independent contractors, but ones that are unable to skip the company at a moment's notice. Essentially, wrestlers with WWE have the worst of possible worlds as employees—unable to leave despite their independent contractor status, perennially underpaid, and dangerously underinsured because of it. WWE running down Ryback's contract rather than letting him work until its termination doesn't just drive down his current wages; by keeping him out of public view, it lowers his value once he leaves. It's the worst, crassest form of hardball imaginable, and Ryback is right to be furious about it.
There's a strange footnote to all this. When CM Punk left and gave his infamous "Hit 'Em Up" of a podcast interview with his friend Colt Cabana, he called out Ryback as an unsafe worker, claiming that the big man broke his ribs with a kick and insinuating that Ryback did steroids. There's been muted but real heat between the two men ever since, albeit mostly from Ryback's quarter, as Punk no longer talks much, if at all, about pro wrestling.
There's a terrible irony that these two men, who should be united by the solidarity that only working for a terrible boss can bring, are at such odds. This is also, sadly, the long and stubborn story of wrestling and labor, which is a generations-spanning game of divide and conquer, with big bonuses for the powerful, encouragement of petty spats by management, and the merciless casting of those who dare to question the status quo into the memory hole. If there is hope for change, it lies in wrestlers talking more and posing less, as Ryback has here. The more we know about the ridiculous framework of their workplace, the easier it is to understand their anger, and the harder it is not to get at least a little bit angry about it ourselves.A Jewish group associated with the Kars4Kids charity is trying to wrest a Staten Island synagogue away from its congregation, the synagogue’s members charge.
Oorah Inc., which is funded by Kars4Kids, claims in a lawsuit that the Young Israel of Eltingville synagogue owes it $1 million, a sum the congregation says it can’t afford to pay.
“It’s so infuriating and so incomprehensible,” said Harriet Goldman, a Young Israel member since the 1970s. “Why would they try to do this to us when their main emphasis is on Jewish outreach?”
The problems began in 2007 when Young Israel synagogue founder Sidney Stadler reached a secret deal to add Oorah to the synagogue’s deed in exchange for $250,000, legal papers charge.
Stadler pocketed most of the cash, saying it was repayment for loans he made to Young Israel, court papers say.
Oorah sought the arrangement to obtain a foothold on Staten Island. It wanted space in the Young Israel building to operate a preschool and hold classes for adults.
Oorah renovated the synagogue building and, for some of that work, it hired a company that Stadler partly owned.
The situation soured in 2013 when Oorah wanted to turn the sanctuary where Young Israel members worshipped into classroom space.
The matter went into arbitration before a religious court known as a “beit din.” It ruled in 2015 that Young Israel owed $1 million. The dispute is now in state Supreme Court in Staten Island.
Synagogue members say Stadler had no authority to make the 2007 deal changing its deed. They also say Stadler had no authority to enter into arbitration with Oorah on their behalf.
Young Israel president Max Robek called the situation “horrendous.”
“Oorah says we owe them $1 million. I have no idea how they arrived at that amount,” he told The Post.
Stadler would not comment. Oorah’s lawyer also declined comment.
In the meantime, the Kars4Kids music ad continues to jingle on radio and TV. Kars4Kids raises money by accepting donations of cars and real estate and then selling them.
The charity took in $34.7 million worth of cars and land in 2014 and spent $14 million on ads promoting its “1-877” phone number, public records show. Another $2.2 million went to salaries.
The largest chunk of Kars4Kids’ grant money — $12.6 million in 2014 — goes to Oorah. The groups share the same Lakewood, NJ, address and have the same president, Eliyohu Mintz. The groups pay for summer camps, schools and other programs for Jewish children and families.
Kars4Kids also gives small grants of less than $2,000 to other nonprofits such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.Three-hundred-and-twenty-one years ago, the College of William and Mary held its first Blowout celebration on the Sunken Garden.
Okay, maybe not. But when did the ‘Blowout’ tradition really start? Or is it technically Last Day of Classes (also known in typical College abbreviation practices as ‘LDOC’)? And what about ‘Breakout?’
As students leave their residence halls this morning, they may sit in the Sunken Garden bouncy castle and ponder the origin of these ‘traditions’ and whether they truly are as old as our second-oldest college in the nation. Or, they might just stock up on free tacos to ruin their appetite for late-night flapjacks.
‘Breakout:’ The beginning?
In the 1960s, students referred to the final day of classes as ‘Senior Day,’ and the day marked a time when some seniors skipped class and rang the Sir Christopher Wren Bell.
“It was a lot calmer and a lot less of a general air of merriment and certainly not the bacchanalian display that it has become now,” Former Vice President of Student Affairs Sam Sadler ’64 said.
Sometime after the College went co-ed in 1918 and before the tradition ended in 1975 (old issues of The Flat Hat limit this to the late-1960s), students at the College participated in an end of classes event called ‘Breakout.’ The celebration began as an act of defiance against the limited visitation and curfew rules in place in the gendered halls.
“Students figured out that, if everybody denied those rules one night, probably nobody was going to get in trouble because the College couldn’t catch them all,” Sadler said.
The ‘Breakout’ festivities began after 11:00 p.m. when the residence halls were considered ‘closed.’
“Men on campus would come to the women’s dorms and ‘break them out’ and charge down to Colonial Williamsburg — [the] Williamsburg Inn — for a big party at the Williamsburg Inn pool,” Van Black ’75 said.
When visitation and curfew practices were relaxed and the College introduced self-determination, the tradition continued as a “symbolic campus-wide observance of the eve of the last day of regular classes for the year,” the May 9, 1975 issue of the paper reads.
“[There was] no advertising really about it anywhere,” Black said. “Everyone just really knew it was going to happen and, all of a sudden, there’s like a groundswell of people running through campus screaming at all the women in the dorms to get out. And then, more and more and more [people joined] as you went to Landrum and Chandler and Barrett and Jefferson and headed to the Williamsburg Inn.”
The Breakout tradition ended, however, in 1975 following the death of a freshman student who died in the pool during the festivities.
The origins of ‘Blowout’
Following the end of the ‘Breakout’ tradition in 1975, the term ‘Blowout’ is first documented in flyers used by the Psi Chapter of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity — or “Pi Lam.”
“Pi Lam used to have a party called ‘Blowout’ and it was their party. … So it was a Pi Lam function and I was always a little surprised, in some ways, to see that name move over to the other [campus-wide] event,” Sadler, a member of the College’s chapter of Pi Lambda Phi, said.
Before going inactive in 2002, posters promoting Pi Lambda Phi’s ‘Blowout’ in the University Archives date to as early as 1982 and Sadler said the event was held in the 1960s. The only poster that references the first ‘Blowout’ is the fall 1984 poster naming that semester’s event the “69th Annual End of Classes Blowout.”
But the timeline of growth for the term ‘Blowout’ into a campus-wide celebration remains questionable, and some, like Director of Housing Operations Chris Durden, attribute the 1970s- and 1980s-era term to the fraternity-specific Last Day of Classes celebration that later evolved into a campus-wide phenomenon.
John Farrell ’88 recalled the word “Blowout,” but could not place the exact meaning of it in relation to campus celebrations.
“I honestly remember that term from the 1980s, but I don’t remember what it originated from or how it came [about],” Farrell said. “But I think I just adopted it like the rest of campus did, but I honestly can’t remember how it originated.”
The evolution and spirit of ‘Blowout’
Although the term “Blowout” evolved in use in the 1980s and 1990s, the spirit of the Last Day of Classes’ festivities remained memorable to alumni.
For example, Farrell recounts a biology professor’s penchant for providing his classes with a cooler of beer at the end of every semester.
“At the time, you just thought that was cool,” Farrell said. “But, you know, after you leave the College … you realize that the faculty at William and Mary holds you at such high expectations and that’s not the same at other places. And I think they teach you to work so ridiculously hard and really kind of kick your rear end because they know what the world has in store for you — but then they’ll share a beer with you when it’s all over.”
“Blowout” has also shifted from primarily a senior-oriented event to a campus-wide one.
“I would say, for about 15 or 20 years from my time as a student forward, Last Day of Classes, when it did occur, was really an activity that seniors engaged in,” Sadler said. “It was seniors taking that day off and sort of defying going to class and, then, wise freshmen decided that, if seniors could do it, they could do it. And more people began to get involved and it just grew of its own momentum.”
Today, the Last Day of Classes includes a number of alcohol-free events around campus. Vice President for Student Affairs Ginger Ambler ’88 Ph.D. ’06 said the current activities began as an alcohol alternative for students as ‘toasting’ rose in popularity. ‘Toasting’ occurs when seniors return to their freshman halls to ‘toast’ the current residents. Derivations of this also occur.
“[Toasting] was something that, I think, started in the mid- to late-90s as something that students started to do,” Ambler said. “And so we really wanted to make sure the Last Day of Classes remained celebrative but also safe.”
Overall, the Last Day of Classes’s festivities offer a time of celebration for students as they finish another year — or in some cases, their last year — at the College.
“That calls for cheers and a drink,” Farrell said.
LDOC in modern memory
While based in tradition, there are some notable Last Day of Classes anomalies in recent memory. Including the 2006 bomb threat, which hampered the celebration but also provided an interesting source of amusement for students.
“[The bomb threat] was almost surreal. … But people had a lot of fun with the police, that was the strange thing. … People were getting pictures with the state troopers,” Durden said. “That was kind of an odd — but odd in a fun way — Last Day of Classes.”
The next year, a less threatening addition to campus altered the usual Last Day of Classes schedule — Queen Elizabeth II.
“All the traditional activities of bell ringing and all of that was moved to Thursday instead of Friday because the Wren Building was the site of the Queen’s visit, so there was a lot of preparation that was being done in advance of her visit,” Ambler said.
Although students might prefer to use the term ‘Blowout’ for the last day of classes event, Sadler may be to thank for the administration-preferred ‘LDOC.’
“I worked hard not to use that phrase, [‘Blowout’], because I think that it suggests an excessive drinking that was dangerous,” Sadler said. “So I tried to stay away from that, and I used to call it the Last Day of Classes, which students abbreviated at one point to ‘LDOC.’”
Steadfast traditions
While they may not date back to 1693 or even to Thomas Jefferson’s graduation nearly 70 years later, some traditions hold fast as staples of the Last Day of Classes experience on the road to graduation.
“[The Class of 1978] started a lot of end-of-the-year traditions, like your [Candlelight Ceremony] that you do the Friday night before graduation. … But some of those traditions that people think have been around since 1693 really haven’t been around as long as you think,” Black said.
One tradition that many, if not all, alumni remembered as indicative of their Last Day of Classes is ringing the Sir Christopher Wren bell.
“You know, it seems like such a little thing to those who haven’t gone through the College, but it’s such a big deal when you go. It’s just kind of a neat finality to it,” Farrell said.
Ambler described her anticipation in ringing the bell.
“[It] was very surreal because, before the age of the internet and being able to send photos via cell phones and things like that, it was very mysterious,” Ambler said. “The whole idea of what actually happens when you go to the Wren building and ‘Where is the bell?’ and ‘How does it work?’ … You sort of have this image in your mind of the Quasimodo moment where you’re jumping up and down and swinging on a giant rope and pulling the bell — it’s not quite that, but it’s still very meaningful.”
Although he didn’t ring the bell when he graduated in 1964, Sadler partook in the tradition when he retired 44 years later.
“Of the alumni that are living — and that’s a large number — I bet you that close to 90 percent have rung the bell at one time or another and most of them on their last day,” Sadler said.
Seniors: generation to generation
Despite evolving traditions, the final day of classes remains a poignant moment for one class in particular — the seniors.
“That very last day of classes, you’re certainly celebrating the accomplishment of finishing at such a difficult school like William and Mary and, at the same time, realizing that there are people that you will never see again, as much as you consider them contacts and friends,” Farrell said.
Farrell, Black and Ambler all spoke to fellow alumni or classmates to remember their final days at the College and to compare anecdotes from the Last Day of Classes. Black reached out to ten fellow graduates and ran into two other alumni before speaking about his last days at the College to The Flat Hat. Ambler spoke to a 2007 graduate and, in the same vein, Farrell spoke to four classmates within an hour after deciding to speak on the subject.
“It was fun to reminisce with them about the final days that they had because it was all that same thing, that feeling of the finality of it and, somewhere deep in your heart, knowing that things were never going to be the same. … It’s certainly a toast to those of the past and to the ones who are finishing [their time at the College],” Farrell said.
And on the ‘Last Day of Classes,’ or ‘Blowout’ or ‘Breakout’ or ‘LDOC,’ the students at the College participate in a collective event that, while ever-evolving, unites them generationally with 321 years’ worth of College alumni.
“A lot of our senior memories, I think, are very personal to us, as it should be, but the collective celebrations are always fun and that’s what ties us from generation to generation,” Ambler said.
As seniors ring the Sir Christopher Wren bell today and in two weeks when they proceed across campus and through the oldest academic building in the country, they follow in the footsteps of Jefferson and Monroe, of Stewart, Black, and Farrell, of Marshall and Ambler and Gates and Close — and, whether symbolically or literally, they become the newest generation of alumni connected to the College’s long history.
Flat Hat Managing Editor Abby Boyle contributed to this article.Gaza's Shattered Airport, Once A Symbol Of Sovereignty
Enlarge this image toggle caption Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images
It's hard to imagine a more compelling monument to the rise and fall of the Palestinian dream of statehood than the bombed-out ruins that the 1.8 million people of Gaza call their international airport.
Sand, scrub and trash have swallowed up the land where a 3,300-yard runway was once used by planes from around the Middle East, and where former President Bill Clinton once, memorably, arrived by helicopter. The golden dome that crowned the VIP terminal is still there — though a missile has punched a hole in it, and shelling by Israel has helped reduce the building below it to a skeleton of white concrete on a carpet of rubble.
Yet this depressing spectacle doesn't deter Palestinians from hoping that Gaza — an overcrowded, enclosed, 25-mile-long strip of land, sandwiched between Egypt, Israel and the Mediterranean Sea — will once again have an airport of its own.
Indirect talks are slated to begin in Cairo in September. Israel and the Palestinians are expected to discuss terms for ending the recent, devastating, 50-day war, following last week's indefinite ceasefire.
A new airport for Gaza is high on the list of demands leveled by Hamas, which controls Gaza and whose military wing led the recent war, firing more than 4,500 rockets into Israel. The Palestinians also want a seaport.
These are major sticking points: Israel fears these ports will be used for smuggling weapons. The government regards Hamas as a terrorist organization and wants it to disarm.
Nearly 16 years have elapsed since Clinton flew into Gaza to meet the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and, amid much fanfare, to open a gleaming new airport by cutting a red ribbon.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Stephen Jaffe/AFP/Getty Images Stephen Jaffe/AFP/Getty Images
Back then, the international community believed the Palestinians and Israelis were inching warily along a path towards peace and the creation of two states, laid out in the 1993 Oslo Accords. The road was proving bumpy |
undance of hellfire-and-damnation preaching, the region produced dozens of new denominations, communal societies, and reform.
Among these dozens of new denominations were free black churches, ran independently of existing congregations that were predominately of white attendance. During the period between the American revolution and the 1850s, black involvement in largely white churches declined in great numbers, with participation becoming almost non-existent by the 1840s–1850s; some scholars argue that this was largely due to racial discrimination within the church. [17] This discrimination came in the form of segregated seating and the forbiddance of African Americans from voting in church matters or holding leadership positions in many white churches.[17] Reverend Richard Allen, a central founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was quoted describing one such incident of racial discrimination in a predominately white church, in which fellow preacher Absalom Jones was forcefully told to leave and grabbed by a white church trustee in the midst of prayer.[18]
Closely related to the Second Great Awakening were other reform movements such as temperance, abolition, and women's rights. The temperance movement encouraged people to abstain from consuming alcoholic drinks in order to preserve family order. The abolition movement fought to abolish slavery in the United States. The women's rights movement grew from female abolitionists who realized that they too could fight for their own political rights. In addition to these causes, reforms touched nearly every aspect of daily life, such as restricting the use of tobacco and dietary and dress reforms. The abolition movement emerged in the North from the wider Second Great Awakening 1800–1840.
Third Great Awakening [ edit ]
The Third Great Awakening in the 1850s–1900s was characterized by new denominations, active missionary work, Chautauquas, and the Social Gospel approach to social issues. The YMCA (founded in 1844) played a major role in fostering revivals in the cities in the 1858 Awakening and after. The revival of 1858 produced the leadership, such as that of Dwight L. Moody, out of which came religious work carried on in the armies during the civil war. The Christian and Sanitary Commissions and numerous Freedmen's Societies were also formed in the midst of the War.
Fourth Great Awakening [ edit ]
The Fourth Great Awakening is a debated concept that has not received the acceptance of the first three. Advocates such as economist Robert Fogel say it happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Mainline Protestant denominations weakened sharply in both membership and influence while the most conservative religious denominations (such as the Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans) grew rapidly in numbers, spread across the United States, had grave internal theological battles and schisms, and became politically powerful.
Terminology [ edit ]
The idea of an "awakening" implies a slumber or passivity during secular or less religious times. Awakening is a term which originates from and is embraced often and primarily by evangelical Christians. In recent times, the idea of "awakenings" in United States history has been put forth by conservative American evangelicals.[24]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]A reckless motorist who swapped seats with a passenger as they sped down a motorway in a social media stunt now owns a driving school.
Osman Omar, 29, from Manchester, grinned and laughed as he changed positions with his friend in a Snapchat video that went viral.
Mr Omar, a father-of-two, runs Suja Driving School in Stretford, which promises on its website to make pupils'safer motorists for life'.
Osman Omar, 29, from Manchester, grinned and laughed as he changed positions with his friend in a Snapchat video that went viral
As the clip begins, a voice off-camera says: 'Yo. You know the car is moving, innit? This guy's looking to swap seats with him'
He told MailOnline: 'I'm now 29 and a father of two kids so I would never ever do that now.
'I didn't know that I was going to become an instructor at the time the video was filmed.'
As the clip begins, a voice off-camera says: 'Yo. You know the car is moving, innit? This guy's looking to swap seats with him.'
The front seat passenger is then seen to reach over and keep the wheel steady while Mr Omar, who is holding a mobile phone, clambers into the back seat.
Mr Omar, who is now in the back seat holds onto the wheel with his right hand and a mobile phone in his left hand, while the front passenger also holds the wheel with one hand.
The front seat passenger, who has not been identified, then climbs over the gear stick into the driving seat and takes over.
The front seat passenger is then seen to reach over and keep the wheel steady while Mr Omar, who is holding a mobile phone, clambers into the back seat
The front seat passenger is then seen to reach over and keep the wheel steady while Mr Omar, who is holding a mobile phone, clambers into the back seat
You can hear the cameraman say: 'Yous are takin' the p***, for f*** sake'.
The camera then turns towards the back passenger, who filmed the dangerous stunt, who shakes his head and laughs
The video ends with two of the men in the back of the car smiling to the camera with the message 'They swapped seats with a moving car omg'.
The footage was viewed more than 7,000 times in 24 hours.
Mr Omar insists the video was filmed 'ten years ago' and is no longer relevant. He says he works in the office at his driving school.
He added: ‘It was filmed about ten years ago before I was even an instructor.
You can hear the cameraman say: 'Yous are takin' the p***, for f*** sake'
Mr Omar insists the video was filmed 'ten years ago' and is no longer relevant. Pictured: The Suja Driving School website
'We are a very successful driving school, one of the most successful ones in Manchester.'
Mike Bristow, spokesman for road safety charity Brake, told The Sun, which first reported Mr Omar's identity: 'This type of idiotic and dangerous behaviour could have resulted in a devastating loss of life.
'If this person is a driving instructor then he's clearly unfit for that role.
Greater Manchester Police are investigating.
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency said Mr Omar could be struck off their register if convicted.NEW DELHI — In a departure from an earlier policy of awarding big-ticket defense programs to state-owned companies on a nomination basis, the Indian Ministry of Defence has decided to source four landing platform docks from private defense companies.
"MoD will shortly invite revised commercial bids for purchase of four LPD vessels costing around $3 billion from two shortlisted private defense companies because the price validity has expired [last month] and government-owned companies have been dropped from the program," according to a senior MoD official.
Under the 2013 tender, only two LPDs were to be built by a domestic private sector company and the remaining two vessels on nomination basis by state-owned company Hindustan Shipyard Limited.
Only domestic defense companies Larsen & Toubro and Reliance Defence and Engineering Limited, or RDEL — formerly known as Pipavav Defence and Offshore Engineering — could clear the financial and technical compliance completed last year.
Currently no defense company in India can build LPD vessels alone. To execute the LPD program, L&T has teamed with Navantia of Spain while RDEL has forged a partnership with DCNS of France.
"The validity date for the tender has expired and the number of extensions that could be asked for from [the] Defence Procurement Procedures (DPP) perspective have also lapsed. Thus, MoD has no option but to ask for a fresh commercial bid," the senior MoD official said.
Welcoming the move to give all four LPD orders to private sector companies, Anil Jai Singh, a defense analyst and retired Indian Navy commodore, said: "Given the full-capacity order book with the government-owned shipyards, it is a welcome and long overdue step to bring the private shipyards into the shipbuilding mainstream with a substantial order which makes it worth their while."
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Ankur Gupta, a defense analyst with Ernst and Young India, held a similar view. "This is a great opportunity for the Indian private defense companies to receive an order that is comparable in terms of numbers to what the public sector defense companies has been receiving over the past decades."
However, one Indian Navy official said the service fears that "private companies could underquote fresh commercial offers in desperation to win the order and eventually not deliver the vessels on time."
In response, the MoD official admitted: "Yes, there is a distinct possibility for such an eventuality."
The selected private shipyard will be asked to deliver the first LPD in eight years and subsequently other vessels in a time frame of two years thereafter, according to the Indian Navy official.
The LPD vessel is expected to accommodate 1,430 personnel and be equipped with a point-defense missile system, a close-in weapon system, an anti-torpedo decoy system, a chaff system, and heavy and light machine guns. In addition, helicopters up to 35 tons are expected to be able to operate from the vessel.
The Indian Navy currently operates only one LPD — the former U.S. Navy Austin-class amphibious transport dock Trenton, acquired in 1997 and renamed INS Jalashwa.No criminal charges are expected to be filed against the two drivers accused of striking and killing a bicyclist in Marietta, police said Tuesday night.
Danny Nation, 49, of Marietta, was struck around 8:30 p.m. Monday as he rode his bike northbound on Powder Springs Road, according to Officer David Baldwin with Marietta police. Investigators believe Nation attempted to cross the northbound lanes and was struck by both a 1994 Cadillac and a 1998 Mitsubishi 3000.
Both drivers stopped after the wreck, called 911 and attempted to render aid to Nation, who died at the scene, Baldwin said.
Although Nation’s bike had a headlight, the area where he was crossing was dark and he was not wearing reflective clothing, according to police.
The crash remains under investigation, but police do not expect to file charges. Anyone with information on the crash is asked to contact Officer Geoff Culpepper at 770-794-5357.Sidney Crosby is perhaps the NHL's biggest star. His incredible career includes three Stanley Cup championships, two Conn Smythe Trophies, two Hart Trophies and countless other awards. He led the Penguins to the Cup again last season.
But to the goalie for St. Cloud State University, he's really no big deal. He's just her older brother, that's all.
Taylor Crosby, a junior goalie for the Huskies, is Sidney's younger sister.
In perhaps the biggest understatement in the history of college athletic biography pages, Taylor's reads this way: "Daughter of Troy and Trina Crosby of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia...Older brother Sidney also plays hockey."
Tweet from @jlhorn33: I love our Captain... but I also love how his sister's college hockey team addresses him in her team bio: pic.twitter.com/ZjjZxvQ1dW
A screenshot of the snippet was making the rounds on Twitter this weekend.
No word on if that sentence came from Taylor herself or the St. Cloud Athletics Department, but bravo all around.An idiot fucker sets himself on fire over on Battlecam.comA man was taken to the hospital by air ambulance to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center California after a terrifying attempt for attention went wrong. The accident was broadcast live on KILM Los Angeles. Bustillos is currently in critical condition.John Bustillos, aka Crazyboy, a regular Battlecam.com member, had his friends set him on fire in order to gain a spot in the upcoming “Battlecam House 2,” a reality game show in which contestants live through horrible experiences in order to win votes from the audience and the big title of house champion.Bustillos’ friend, going by the name “BAMBAM310″ said to Battlecam site administrators that Bustillos had burns to his lungs and had to be put to sleep to have a tube put down his throat for him to breathe. “[H]e was doing all those fire challenges in hopes [of getting] in the BC house,” he said.A Battlecam spokesperson said, “[A]lthough the site is extreme in nature and performances range from the sublime to the ridiculous we do not condone self harm of this nature. This was a stupid and tragic accident in which Mr. Bustillos and his friends are entirely responsible for. We wish him a speedy recovery.”Battlecam features users who broadcast themselves on the site and are voted on and off by the audience at home watching TV or online as they attempt challenges for prizes and attention. Selected live video streams are simultaneously streamed to live television from the FilmOn.TV studio in Beverly Hills.Broadcasters on Battlecam stream to the website and they are voted on and off by the audience at home watching TV or from the site as they attempt various challenges for attention and often cash prizes. Selected live video streams are simultaneously streamed to Live Television from the FilmOn.TV studio in Beverly Hills.Further "alleged" enquiries were made, and this is where the "Crispy Taco" is at just nowLet me tell you what’s going on in South Korea right now and why K-netz are critcizing idols partying and uploading selcas on Halloween/active on SNS, they have legitimate reasons because
i just saw i-nets bashing k-netz left and right when they don’t know the gravity of the situation, so first of all, please read this article, and about this mass protest in Seoul against South Korean President Park Geun-hye just yesterday, calling the president to step down over allegations that allowed a close personal friend to meddle in state affairs. also, this wonderful explanation
the girl’s mother, choi soon-sil, who is currently in germany (she said she couldnt return to seoul yet for official interrogation due to nervous breakdown and heart issues, like lady, please), is said to have influenced president park in private on everything from her wardrobe to her strategy on tackling the north korean regime. and THAT IS SCARY because her dad, choi tae min, was well known in south korea as the head of a cult-like religious group until his death in 1994. he even went as far as to allegedly had helped the-before-president park contact her late mother in the afterlife and has been known to enjoy considerable influence over ms park as a young politician, prompting diplomats to refer to him in private as “korea’s rasputin.”
now rasputin is a russian peasant, mystical faith healer, and trusted friend of the family of nicholas II, the last tsar of russia.
Rasputin (as put out by MiMo, i couldnt have said it better bby i hope youre okay with me putting your comment out here <3) is a hobo who claimed to be a spirit doctor. He gained influence when he was hired to “heal” Tsar Nicholas II’s wife edit: son, eventually coming to rule the country. His fine work as a de facto ruler was the last straw in an already declining Tsarist Russia, triggering the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that gave rise to the Soviet Union. That’s why people are calling out those who are partying right now. 99 years ago, a controversy like this caused a country to self-destruct.
now can you imagine why koreans are freaking out???
i also wanna add here that during a comeback, artists are usually allowed to perform more than one song in their first week of comeback and proceed with just one song for the following weeks of promotion, but just yesterday (on the same day of teh mass protest), we have bangtan performing ‘am i wrong’ on mbc’s music core in their third week promotion, like seriously, how?? what a perfect? timing?? imean, you can read all about what theyre saying here but
LOOK AT THE CHOREO??
UM???
edit: apparently some of you guys didnt get the choreo bit, thats okay ^^ lemme just reiterate what ive already written here, the first gif of suga, v, and jimin, is referencing to ppl just scrolling through the news/comments and not give a damn about whats happening in the country (or around the world), the bystanders are thought to be teh crazier ones hvg able to just live like that in this crazy world. the second gif is the members ‘enacting’ like dogs and pigs, an indirect jab towards their government official who not long ago, during an interview, had made disparaging remarks towards the south koreans, saying that 99% of his country’s people are “like dogs and pigs.”Mike Babcock has pulled very few punches about the current state of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the work it’s going to take to repair the damage that’s been caused under the old regime.
He consistently points out that the Leafs skaters are flush with bad habits. In Babcock’s eyes, these are the priorities for the club in the early going. If Babcock can’t iron out the issues embedded in both the players and the organization, he knows he’s going to have a difficult team turning the ship around.
A big focus early on for Babcock has been player shift length. Babcock’s been adamant about bringing the average shift length for both forwards and defencemen in Toronto way down, and this is consistent with how he’s historically coached. In Detroit, Babcock was almost militant about shift length. It’s worth recalling this quote from an old ESPN the Magazine article, with then assistant coach Paul MacLean talking about how seriously the team takes every passing second:
Detroit assistant coach Paul MacLean is never without his stopwatch, clicking it each time the Wings make a line change. "We use our own time," says Babcock, eschewing the arena stat sheet. For playoffs, he wants short shifts -- 40 seconds, tops -- making sure stars like LW Henrik Zetterberg stay fresh enough to sustain the tempo his two-way game demands. Quick, smart line changes are so crucial that the Wings devoted an entire practice to them during an unexpected layover in St. Louis last season. Bonus benefit: Quick changes prevent positioning breakdowns that result in odd-man rushes.
The 40-second shift has seemingly been passed down from coaching generation to coaching generation, but it’s not a number pulled out of thin air. Player performance starts to go off of the rails once you breach that threshold. (Anything beyond 60 seconds can be utterly disastrous.) I don’t know how coaches first arrived at that number, but by my estimation, it’s a pretty reasonable benchmark:
From the 20-second to 40-second intervals, players are generally enjoying success. The players are reasonably fresh. Their opponents may be fresh, but they may also be growing fatigued. That’s why you see positive shot differentials for players earlier in shifts.
However, as you get past that 40-second mark, things really start to dive south. I’m particularly amazed at how dire things grow for skaters beyond, say, the 60-second mark. We are talking about Corsi% levels that are now replacement level territory – something we would expect from your run-of-the-mill AHLer in an NHL setting. I doubt that this curve hits each player exactly the same; freakishly conditioned skaters like Wild defenceman Ryan Suter may not be impacted as harshly as your pure sniper forward who gets caught on a long shift. Still, at a macro-level, we expect all players to diminish with time.
So, it’s great that Babcock’s trying to drive down shift times, something he observed as problematic in years past with this team, and something he entrenched in his successful Red Wings clubs. But, is he having any impact early in the season? Are Leafs skaters really looking for the bench earlier in the shift?
It’s easy enough to test. Let’s pull every Leafs skater’s average shift length from last year, and then that same skater’s average shift length from this season. The roster turnover has been drastic, but we still have 10 guys who we can look at year over year.
Say what you will about three games of data, but I’m ready to start designating this as Babcock already having an impact. Not a single skater in our group has a higher average shift length this year versus last year, and not a single skater in our group has an average shift length above 44 seconds.
If you’re curious as to how this compares league wide, I looked at Toronto’s average shift length (by position) and ranked them against every other team this season.
How Long? Average Shift Lenth Rank Forwards 40 seconds 2nd Defencemen 42 seconds 3rd
The only team with average shift lengths shorter than the Maple Leafs at the forward position resides in Calgary (about 36 seconds, which are ridiculously quick). Calgary has quick turnaround at the defence position too (40 seconds), as does Vancouver (41 seconds).
The Takeaway
Shift lengths may seem like a minor detail in the grand scheme of things, but it’s consistently been one of the points raised by Mike Babcock and the Leafs as they try to clean-up the mess left for them by prior leadership. And though we may not see Babcock’s team turn up very successful in the win/loss column this year, we can already see the sort of impact he’s having, and how it may pay dividends when this team’s ready to compete a couple of years from now.Armed police arrested a man outside Parliament after he verbally abused officers.
The man was arrested after he verbally abused officers close to the Black Rod Garden in central London.
A Taser was drawn in the course of the incident but was not used.
Scroll down for video
Armed police stand on guard as colleagues search a man on the ground after he was detained
The man was arrested on a public order offence, and although the Taser was deployed, it was not used in the arrest
The man was arrested outside the gates of the Black Rod's Garden on Thursday shortly after midday
Lord Dobbs, a member of the House, tweeted: 'Another arrest on doorstep of Parliament. Handcuffs. Eyes of anger. Seems like daily diet. Hope we all get sick of it.'
Lord Dobbs saw the arrest outside parliament and said the man had 'eyes of anger' as he was led away
He was arrested after verbally abusing police officers and was detained under the Mental Health Act
The man was led away into a police van. A Taser was drawn but was not used during the incident
A spokesman for the Met Police said: 'Shortly after midday today, a man was arrested close to Black Rod's Garden after he verbally abused officers.'
'He was arrested for a public order offence and detained under the Mental Health Act.
'Enquiries continue.'
Video footage shows the man, wearing a stone coloured top and carrying a backpack, being spoken to by an officer before he is led away.Douglas Mark Rushkoff (born 18 February 1961) is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture, and his advocacy of open source solutions to social problems.
Rushkoff is most frequently regarded as a media theorist and is known for coining terms and concepts including viral media (or media virus), digital native, and social currency. He has written ten books on media, technology and culture. He wrote the first syndicated column on cyberculture for The New York Times Syndicate, as well as regular columns for The Guardian of London,[2] Arthur,[3] Discover,[4] and the online magazines Daily Beast,[5] TheFeature.com and meeting industry magazine One+.[6]
Rushkoff is currently Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at the City University of New York, Queens College. He has previously lectured at The New School University in Manhattan[7] and the ITP at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he created the Narrative Lab.[8] He also has taught online for the MaybeLogic Academy.[9]
Biography [ edit ]
Background [ edit ]
Rushkoff was born in New York City, New York, and is the son of Sheila, a psychiatric social worker, and Marvin Rushkoff, a hospital administrator.[1] He graduated from Princeton University in 1983.[10] He moved to Los Angeles and completed a Master of Fine Arts in Directing from the California Institute of the Arts. Later he took up a post-graduate fellowship from the American Film Institute.[11] He was a PhD candidate at Utrecht University's New Media Program, writing a dissertation on new media literacies,[12] which was approved in June, 2012.[13]
Rushkoff emerged in the early 1990s as an active member of the cyberpunk movement, developing friendships and collaborations with people including Timothy Leary, RU Sirius, Paul Krassner, Robert Anton Wilson, Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, Genesis P-Orridge, Ralph Metzner, Grant Morrison, Mark Pesce, Erik Davis, and other writers, artists and philosophers interested in the intersection of technology, society and culture.[14][15][16]
Cyberia, his first book on cyberculture, was inspired by the San Francisco rave scene of the early 1990s. The initially planned publication was scrapped, however; in Rushkoff's words, "in 1992 Bantam canceled the book because they thought by 1993 the internet would be over."[17] It was eventually published in 1994.
As his books became more accepted, and his concepts of the "media virus"[18] and "social contagion" became mainstream ideas, Rushkoff was invited to deliver commentaries on National Public Radio's All Things Considered,[19] and to make documentaries for the PBS series Frontline.[20]
In 2002, Rushkoff was awarded the Marshall McLuhan Award by the Media Ecology Association for his book Coercion, and became a member and sat on the board of directors of that organization.[21] This allied him with the "media ecologists", a continuation of what is known as the Toronto School of media theorists including Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and Neil Postman.
Rushkoff was invited to participate as a consultant ranging to the United Nations Commission on World Culture and the US Department of State.
Simultaneously, Rushkoff continued to develop his relationship with counterculture figures, collaborating with Genesis P-Orridge as a keyboardist for Psychic TV, and credited with composing music for the album Hell is Invisible Heaven is Her/e.[22] Rushkoff taught classes in media theory and in media subversion for New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program,[23] participated in activist pranks with the Yes Men[24] and eToy,[25] contributed to numerous books and documentaries on psychedelics, and spoke or appeared at many events sponsored by counterculture publisher Disinformation.[26]
Influences [ edit ]
References to media ecologist and Toronto School of Communication founder Marshall McLuhan appear throughout Rushkoff's work as a focus on media over content, the effects of media on popular culture and the level at which people participate when consuming media.[27]
Rushkoff worked with both Robert Anton Wilson[28] and Timothy Leary on developing philosophical systems to explain consciousness, its interaction with technology, and social evolution of the human species, and references both consistently in his work. Leary, along with John Barlow and Terence McKenna characterized the mid-1990s as techno-utopian, and saw the rapid acceleration of culture, emerging media and the unchecked advancement of technology as completely positive.[29] Rushkoff's own unbridled enthusiasm for cyberculture was tempered by the dotcom boom, when the non-profit character of the Internet was rapidly overtaken by corporations and venture capital. Rushkoff often cites two events in particular – the day Netscape became a public company in 1995,[30] and the day AOL bought Time Warner in 2000[2] – as pivotal moments in his understanding of the forces at work in the evolution of new media.
Rushkoff spent several years exploring Judaism as a primer for media literacy, going so far as to publish a book inviting Jews to restore the religion to its "open source" roots.[31] He founded a movement for progressive Judaism called Reboot, but subsequently left when he felt its funders had become more concerned with marketing and publicity of Judaism than its actual improvement and evolution.[27] Disillusioned by the failure of the open source model to challenge entrenched and institutional hierarchies from religion to finance, he became a colleague of Mark Crispin Miller and Naomi Klein, appearing with them at Smith College[32] as well as in numerous documentaries decrying the corporatization of public space and consciousness.[33] He has dedicated himself most recently to the issues of media literacy,[34] participatory government, and the development of local and complementary currencies.[35] He wrote a book and film called Life Inc.,[36] which traces the development of corporatism and centralized currency from the Renaissance to today, and hosts a radio show called MediaSquat on WFMU, concerned with reclaiming commerce and culture from corporate domination.[37]
Awards and appointments [ edit ]
Douglas Rushkoff has served on the Board of Directors of the Media Ecology Association,[38] The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics,[39] and is a founding member of Technorealism,[40] as well as of the Advisory Board of The National Association for Media Literacy Education,[34] MeetUp.com[41] and HyperWords[42]
He is the winner of the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, given by the Media Ecology Association, in 2004.[43]
Themes [ edit ]
General [ edit ]
Douglas Rushkoff's philosophy developed from a techno-utopian view of new media to a more nuanced critique of cyberculture discourse and the impact of media on society. Viewing everything except for intention as media, he frequently explores the themes of how to make media interactive, how to help people (especially children) effectively analyze and question the media they consume, as well as how to cultivate intention and agency. He has theorized on such media as religion, culture, politics, and money.[44]
Technology and cyberculture [ edit ]
Up to the late-1990s, Douglas Rushkoff's philosophy towards technology could be characterized as media-deterministic. Cyberculture and new media were supposed to promote democracy and allow people to transcend the ordinary.[45]
In Cyberia, Rushkoff states the essence of mid-1990s culture as being the fusion of rave psychedelia, chaos theory and early computer networks. The promise of the resulting "counter culture" was that media would change from being passive to active, that we would embrace the social over content, and that empowers the masses to create and react.[46]
This idea also comes up in the concept of the media virus, which Rushkoff details in the 1994 publication of Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture. This significant work adopts organic metaphors to show that media, like viruses, are mobile, easily duplicated and presented as non-threatening.[47] Technologies can make our interaction with media an empowering experience if we learn to decode the capabilities offered to us by our media. Unfortunately, people often stay one step behind our media capabilities. Ideally, emerging media and technologies have the potential to enlighten, to aid grassroots movements, to offer an alternative to the traditional "top-down" media, to connect diverse groups and to promote the sharing of information.[48]
Rushkoff does not limit his writings to the effect of technology on adults, and in Playing the Future turns his attention to the generation of people growing up who understand the language of media like natives, guarded against coercion.[49] These "screenagers", a term originated by Rushkoff,[50] have the chance to mediate the changing landscape more effectively than digital immigrants.
With Coercion (1999), Rushkoff realistically examines the potential benefits and dangers inherent in cyberculture and analyzes market strategies that work to make people act on instinct (and buy!) rather than reflect rationally. The book wants readers to learn to "read" the media they consume and interpret what is really being communicated.[citation needed]
Religion [ edit ]
In Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism, Rushkoff explores the medium of religion and intellectually deconstructs the Bible and the ways that religion fails to provide true connectivity and transformative experiences.[51]
Currency [ edit ]
Most recently, Douglas Rushkoff has turned his critical lens to the medium of currency. One of the most important concepts that he creates and develops is the notion of social currency, or the degree to which certain content and media can facilitate and/or promote relationships and interactions between members of a community. Rushkoff mentions jokes, scandals, blogs, ambiance, i.e. anything that would engender "water cooler" talk, as social currency.
In his book, Life, Inc. and his dissertation "Monopoly Moneys," Rushkoff takes a look at physical currency and the history of corporatism. Beginning with an overview of how money has been gradually centralized throughout time, and pondering the reasons and consequences of such a fact, he goes on to demonstrate how our society has become defined by and controlled by corporate culture.
Social media [ edit ]
Rushkoff has long been skeptical of social media.[52] On February 25, 2013, he announced in a CNN op-ed that he was leaving Facebook, citing concerns about the company's use of his personal data.[53]
401K Plans [ edit ]
In 2016, Douglas Rushkoff penned an article critical of 401(k) plans, in which he refers to the stock market as a "pyramid scheme" and states "In the 401(k) game, the patsy is anyone who follows the advice of the human resources department and surrenders a portion of his or her paycheck to the retirement planning industry, all under the pretense of personal responsibility." Rushkoff does not suggest any alternatives to 401K plans for retirement savings.[54]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Articles [ edit ]
Books [ edit ]
Fiction works [ edit ]
2002. Exit Strategy (aka Bull) ISBN 978-1-887128-90-2
(aka Bull) ISBN 978-1-887128-90-2 1997. Ecstasy Club ISBN 978-1-57322-702-5
Graphic novels [ edit ]
2016. Aleister and Adolf ISBN 978-1-50670-104-2
ISBN 978-1-50670-104-2 2012. A.D.D. – Adolescent Demo Division ISBN 978-1-78116-019-0
ISBN 978-1-78116-019-0 2005-2008. Testament ISBN 978-1-4012-1063-2
ISBN 978-1-4012-1063-2 2004. Club Zero-G ISBN 978-0-9729529-3-4
Documentaries [ edit ]
2014. Generation Like. PBS Frontline.
. PBS Frontline. 2009–2010. Digital Nation, Life on the Virtual Frontier. Web site and documentary, PBS Frontline.
. Web site and documentary, PBS Frontline. 2009. Life Inc. The Movie
2004. The Persuaders. This Frontline documentary examines the psychological techniques behind popular marketing and advertising trends, determines how these methods influence how we view ourselves and desires, and postulates on the future implications of these persuasive approaches at work.
. This Frontline documentary examines the psychological techniques behind popular marketing and advertising trends, determines how these methods influence how we view ourselves and desires, and postulates on the future implications of these persuasive approaches at work. 2001. Merchants of Cool, a groundbreaking, award-winning Frontline documentary which explores the people, marketing techniques and ideologies behind popular culture for teenagers. This video attempts to answer whether or not teen popular culture is reflective of its population or manufactured by big business and related groups.
Radio [ edit ]
The Media Squat (creator and host): freeform, bottom-up, open source WFMU radio which examines similarly open source, bottom-up solutions to some of the problems engendered by our relentlessly top-down society.
(creator and host): freeform, bottom-up, open source WFMU radio which examines similarly open source, bottom-up solutions to some of the problems engendered by our relentlessly top-down society. Team Human Podcast (creator and host): a weekly interview show focused on themes of inspecting and subverting technologies effect on human behaviour. The format of the show is typically started with a monologue from Rushkoff and then an interview with a guest.BAGHDAD - US security firm Blackwater ended its operations in Iraq on Thursday closing a controversial era for the company whose guards shot dead 17 civilians in Baghdad in 2007.
"The task order for security protection operations held by Blackwater comes to an end today in Baghdad," American embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh said, adding that Triple Canopy will replace it.
Triple Canopy, a Virginia-based firm, was appointed at the end of March by the US State Deparment to take over the multi-million-dollar contract to protect US government personnel working in Iraq.
Linked agreements such as that for Presidential Airways, part of Blackwater that operates helicopter escorts throughout the country for secure air travel, will expire soon, Ziadeh added.
The State Department refused to renew annual contracts for Blackwater which renamed itself Xe after the Iraq government banned it in January over the killings in Baghdad's Nisur Square on September 16, 2007.
An Iraqi investigation found that 17 civilians died and 20 were wounded when Blackwater guards opened fire with automatic weapons while escorting an American diplomatic convoy through the square.
US prosecutors say 14 civilians were killed in the incident. Five former Blackwater guards pleaded not guilty at a federal court in Washington in January to manslaughter charges.
The shooting focused a spotlight on the shadowy and highly lucrative operations of private security operations. Blackwater guards were reported to earn as much as 1,000 dollars a day each in Iraq.
Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Xe, said the firm remains proud of its work in Iraq.
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"When the US Government initially asked for our help to assist with an immediate need to protect Americans in Iraq |
was noticed by the local Old Believers.
I will not linger on the details of the history of the contact between the Old Believer nastavnik Pimen Simon with the hierarchs of ROCOR (but would only note that the future Vladyka Daniel�then Protopriest Dimitry Alexandrov�played a significant role). I will, however, point out that in 1983, some 80% of the parishioners of the Erie community voted in favor of joining ROCOR while retaining their own divine services and daily traditions. That same year, Fr Pimen Simon was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Laurus (the future Primate of the Church Abroad).
-That is, this was unification yet with the retention of the Old Rite traditions?
-In practice, yes. Though there are two points. The first is the right to our community�s special Ustav, which is different from the typical parish regulations of ROCOR, and in particular that the community had the right to elect their own priests from among themselves, and the right to control our own property. The second, based on the decisions of the Pomestny Sobor of 1917-1918, the right to have our own Old-Rite bishop minister to us who would be subject directly to the First Hierarch of the Church Abroad. Neither condition was contested by the ROCOR Hierarchy.
-And the future Vladyka Daniel was elected?
-Yes, no one doubted his candidacy, though at the time, Fr Dimitry Alexandrov preached to the Old Believer communities of Australia, but upon his return to America, he was tonsured to monasticism with the name Daniel and consecrated Bishop of Erie, Vicar of the Diocese of Eastern America and New York of ROCOR.
-How did this affect the community itself?
-Over the last 20 years, I visited Erie several times and can state firmly that this Old Ritualist community is experiencing dynamic growth. This is in contrast with the Pomorsky communities which, alas, are in fact on the brink of extinction. Today, the Old Ritualist parish of the Nativity of Christ in Erie has several hundred parishioners, and, it should be noted, these are not only locals with Old Believer roots. A great many members of this community travel from other cities of Pennsylvania, and even from other states. At one time I was surprised to see that among the parishioners of the Old Believer church were even African-Americans. Protopriest Pimen Simon teaches at the local university, and many of his former and current students converted to Orthodoxy specifically in the Old Believer community. The parish also has an active life outside of divine services: conferences, festivals of Russian culture and other activities are a frequent occurrence.
-Let us return to how you first came to know Vladyka. What sort of impression did he make on you?
-At the time, I only had an abstract conception of the Old Rite and Old Believers. This movement evoked a certain respect in me even then, but at the time I did not know of one Old Ritualist even in the Soviet Union (indeed, in fact there were almost none left in the USSR, the rebirth of Old Ritualism began in Russian only in the early 1990�s). That is why at the time, curiosity was not the least of my motivations, and so I happily accepted the invitation to visit Nativity of Christ Parish in Erie. At first we met Fr Pimen, who seemed to be a perfectly earnest person, and from my conversation with him I learned that the community is ministered to by an Old Ritualist bishop who, at that time, lived elsewhere.
Soon afterwards a close friend of ours, the granddaughter of a Deputy of the Tsarist State Duma who represented the Old Believers of the city of Dvinsk, SR Kirillov, by the name of Tatiana Makovski (a ROCOR parishioner who knew Bishop Daniel well), proposed that we meet with Vladyka. She invited us to her home (Vladyka drove himself) and we spent the entire time with him.�
My first impressions were unforgettable. Bishop Daniel amazed me in literally every way: his personal manner, his simplicity, his knowledge. The main thing, probably, was his genuine and deeply-felt pain at the ecclesiastical division of the 17th century. It instantly became clear to me that this was not to be our last meeting.
-In the future, you would visit Vladyka during each trip to the US?
More than that: all my following visits were oriented around going to Pennsylvania to the Old Rite parish. During one of my visits, I stayed with Vladyka Daniel, spending about two weeks in his little house after he moved to Erie.
I must say that Bishop Daniel, up until the time when he became completely disabled, took care of himself independently, and I was always uncomfortable that after trapeza he would hasten to wash the dishes, while it was difficult for him. Yet his actions were so natural and straightforward that my admiration for Vladyka, a grandson of the last Russian governor of Alaska, only grew. For I was only a clergyman, and grandson of an Old Rite clergyman, who had lost almost all his civil rights in the Russian Empire. So naturally, we touched upon many questions, including the history of the Schism. I cannot say that we always saw eye to eye, but again, Vladyka Daniel was always able to listen carefully, to understand another point of view.
But the greatest impression Vladyka made on me was what a luminous and prayerful man he was. I saw with my own eyes how he read the Rule of prayer in his cell, how he looked upon things, how he reacted to one circumstance or another. Maybe in some things he had a childlike, naive attitude. Truly he seemed to me an angel to his Church, which was small yet strong in the Spirit, so bright was his soul.
-What did Erie�s Old Rite community gain from the fact that they were ministered to not by a simple priest, but by a bishop?
The responsibility for the primary pastoral care for the members of the community remained on the priests, of whom there are now three. They are aided by several deacons. But when the majority of the Erie Pomorsky community decided to join the Russian Church Abroad, the matter of maintaining a certain degree of autonomy was first discussed. But in strict accordance to canon law, a community, or one of several ministered to by a bishop, retains the fullness of the Church, the absolute fullness of the Mysteries. This is very important for those who come to a different divine service and canonically-organized group of Old Believers, since they are still concerned with retaining their self-identity.
-Father, many have recently recalled the complicated stance Bishop Daniel took on the matter of reunification between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Can you comment on this, to dispel confusion?
It is important to note that these controversial areas did not apply so much to Vladyka Daniel as much as with his helpless and in many ways feeble condition of the last few years. There were many lies disseminated through the internet, according to which Fr Pimen allegedly kept Vladyka behind locked doors, keeping him from speaking out against reunification. Having full knowledge of events, I state that these were unabashed lies. During all of his final years, Bishop Daniel was spiritually and intellectually completely independent, though, I repeat, physically he was noticeably weak.
I think that on the eve of reunification, there was always a cell-attendant with Vladyka who belonged to the opposition. He would bring people to Bishop Daniel who would try to manipulate him to play a decidedly anti-Moscow political card.
I must say that even in the 1990�s, Vladyka and I would often discuss church unity, and he always consistently spoke out in favor of both unity with the Old Believers and unity with the Russian Orthodox Church. An example of this was his unofficial visit to Russia in the early 1990�s, when he visited the renascent Old Rite parish of Mikhailovskaya sloboda in the outskirts of Moscow, where he entered into prayerful communion with the Old Ritualists of the Moscow Patriarchate. Now we can speak openly about this.
On the other hand, he did indeed take a cautious approach to the form that reunification would take, fearing that the reunification would simply become a merger, and that the Russian Church Abroad would completely lose its autonomy. But we know full well that in the end, Vladyka Daniel succinctly outlined his position by severing his ties with the opponents of reunification. In June of 2008, despite his poor health, he participated in the consecration to the episcopacy of his old friend and student, Hegumen John (Berzins), now Bishop of Caracas and South America.
-In conclusion, Father, tell us in your opinion, what should the bright memory of Vladyka Daniel mean for us?
I already mentioned that at the beginning of our discussion, listing the Vladyka�s primary traits. His living prayer, which did not settle into pure habit, was heartfelt in earnestness and honesty, he possessed the desire and ability to understand others. The main thing, I think, was the principle according to which he built his whole life. He always behaved as though the Lord was present right beside you. Any action by a priest, moreover by a bishop, is reflected in social opinion, and this must be taken into account. But even more, we must take into account how every action of ours may be reflected in the Kingdom which we desire. I think that this principle of Bishop Daniel must be the main one for each Christian.
Eternal memory to him!
May Christ save you!
This interview was taken by Mikhail Tiurenkov, Editor-in-Chief of the Expert Analytical Portal of the Sociological Department of the Moscow University, �Pitirim Sorokin Foundation, Senior Director of the journal of conservative thought �Russkoje vremja� [Russian Time], member of the Parish Council of the Moscow Old Rite Church of St Nikola in Studentsy, for �Pravoslavije I mir.�Carl Krauch during the Nuremberg Trial
Carl Krauch (7 April 1887 – 3 February 1968) was a German chemist, industrialist and Nazi war criminal. He was an executive at BASF (later IG Farben); during World War II, he was chairman of the supervisory board. He was a key implementer of the Reich’s Four-Year Plan to achieve national economic self-sufficiency and promote industrial production. He was Plenipotentiary of Special Issues in Chemical Production, a senator of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, and an honorary professor at the University of Berlin. He was convicted in the IG Farben trial after World War II and sentenced to six years in prison.
Education [ edit ]
From 1906 to 1912, Krauch studied at the Justus Liebig-Universität Gießen and the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. From 1911 to 1912, he was an unpaid teaching assistant to R. Stallé at Heidelberg. He received his doctorate in 1912 under Theodor Curtius at Heidelberg.[1]
Career [ edit ]
From 1912, Krauch was employed at BASF, later I.G. Farbenindustrie AG. He was a longstanding member of the board and general committee, and chairman of the supervisory board, 1940 to 1945, succeeding Carl Bosch as chairman. From 1936, Krauch was head of the Research and Development Department of the Amt für Deutsche Roh- und Werkstoffe. From 1939, he was head of the renamed Reichsamtes für Wirtschaftsausbau (Reich Office for Economic Expansion), established in 1936 as part of the Four-Year Plan to achieve national economic self-sufficiency and promote industrial production especially for rearmament. The Amt für Deutsche Roh- und Werkstoffe was nicknamed the Amt für IG-Farben Ausbau ("Office for the Expansion of IG Farben"), due to his dual head positions.[1][2][3]
From 1938 to 1945, Krauch was Plenipotentiary of Special Issues in Chemical Production and a member of the board of the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council). Additionally, he was an honorary professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (later, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). Krauch was also a member of the Senate of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG, Kaiser Wilhelm Society).[1][4]
Krauch was a member of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist Workers Party) from 1937.
I G Farben trial [ edit ]
He was a defendant in the post war IG Farben Trial, found guilty of the indictment of "War crimes and crimes against humanity through participation in the enslavement and deportation to slave labor on a gigantic scale of concentration camp inmates and civilians in occupied countries, and of prisoners of war, and the mistreatment, terrorization, torture, and murder of enslaved persons." and given a six-year prison sentence.[1][5] He was released in 1950. After that, he became a member of the supervisory board of the Bunawerke Hüls GmbH. In the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, as a witness on 19 February 1965, he denied all knowledge of the events in Monowitz, part of the Auschwitz complex and designed to produce synthetic fuel and butadiene rubber. Carl Krauch died on 3 February 1968.[6]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Hayes, Peter Carl Bosch and Carl Krauch: Chemistry and the Political Economy of Germany, 1925–1945, Journal of Economic History Volume XLVII, Number 2, 353-363 (June 1987)
, Volume XLVII, Number 2, 353-363 (June 1987) Hentschel, Klaus (Editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (Editorial Assistant and Translator) Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser, 1996)
(Birkhäuser, 1996) Krauch, Carl Jugend an die Front. Die Nachwuchsfrage in Wissenschaft und Technik, Der Vierjahresplan, Volume 1, 8th Series, August 1937, pp. 456 – 459. This document was translated and republished in Klaus Hentschel (Editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (Editorial Assistant and Translator) Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser, 1996) 161 - 168: Document 58, Carl Krauch: Youth to the Front Line. New Blood in Science and Technology [August 1937].
,, Volume 1, 8th Series, August 1937, pp. 456 – 459. This document was translated and republished in Klaus Hentschel (Editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (Editorial Assistant and Translator) (Birkhäuser, 1996) 161 - 168:. Macrakis, Kristie Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany (Oxford, 1993)
References [ edit ]After buying the rights to J.G. Ballard’s novel High Rise in 1975, British producer Jeremy Thomas failed for years to get his movie adaptation off the ground. Finally, after 40 years in purgatory, Thomas was able to nail down Ben Wheatley to direct and Tom Hiddleston to play the lead role, filling the rest of the cast with notable names such as Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, and Elisabeth Moss.
The Movie (3.5/5)
High Rise is a story of wealth-inequality and strict social classes, where the “High Rise” is a tall, forty-story luxury tower, built in a “futuristic” 1970s British city. Within this tower, the affluent citizens and families dominate the top floors, while the middle and lower class families live at the bottom of the tower. The tower features its own society within the walls, with a supermarket, school, and other conveniences; basically, there is really no reason to ever leave. Dr. Robert Laing (Hiddleston) lives towards the top of the tower, but becomes friends with some of the lower-level residents, including Richard Wilder (Luke Evans) and his wife Helen (Moss) and his new girlfriend, Charlotte (Miller).
As the tower society develops, problems with the infrastructure, electrical services, and plumbing, amongst other issues, cause the society to begin to collapse. As the electricity continuously goes out, debauchery unfolds in the halls and rooms all over the tower. Violence also breaks out between floors as the middle and lower class families revolt against their poor treatment, and with essentially no police involvement in any of these violent attacks, the tower descends into chaos. Dr. Laing tries to dive into the issues and find out what is going on, but after several violent experiences himself, he begins to lose his mind as the murders and violent crimes pile up around him.
High Rise is a fairly brutal movie, with a lot of violence and some uncomfortable scenes. It is not a light-hearted movie by any means, and much like another brutal British film based on a book written around the same time, A Clockwork Orange, there are scenes in this movie which really should only be viewed with a strong stomach. I thought that Hiddleston gave an excellent performance, but the film as a whole was a little messy. I can see why it took so long to come to fruition, as this is an extremely difficult story to adapt from the written version. The most comparable modern movie would be Snowpiercer, which focuses on a similar class-warfare style chaos, although on a train versus a tower; horizontal instead of vertical, but essentially the same story. Snowpiercer was a lot stronger than High Rise, but if you enjoyed Snowpiercer, you will find enjoyment from this film as well.
The Video (4.5/5)
The video quality for this release, from Magnolia Pictures, was solid, although the digitally shot picture was a bit soft at times, with noise dominating a few scenes. As previously noted in reviews, digitally shot movies tend to suffer from more digital noise in darker scenes, and High Rise seems to have the same issue, but it is limited and not distracting.
The picture has a yellow/orange tint throughout the film, which is a popular color for films taking place during the 1970s. Everyone remembers their parents’ or grandparents’ furniture, wallpaper, and clothing from that time period; hence the reason for the tint to establish a time frame. However, I do think that it is a bit overdone in Hollywood. Nearly every movie set in the 1970s features this same tint, and it is becoming as cliched as the lens flare or a cat making you jump in a horror movie. I appreciate the style, but I think it is getting old.
The Audio (4/5)
The audio track for High Rise uses the typical DTS-HD Master Audio technology, with a solid 5.1 track keeping the pace. For a newer and quite dynamic film like this, I really would have appreciated a 7.1 track, or even an Atmos or DTS:x audio experience. The 5.1 track offered plenty of immersion, but being based in a large tower, the use of elevation audio that DTS:X or Atmos offers would have been an exciting audio experience.
That being said, this is still a nice track, although for a new release, it is nothing remarkable. Where DTS-HD 5.1 tracks used to be the top of the line, they are now the standard instead. Great Blu-ray releases will make use of at least the 7.1, if not Atmos, but given that this was a smaller release that had little to no traction at the box office, I am not surprised that the audio technology is fairly standard.
Special Features/Packaging (3/5)
High Rise comes packaged in a single disc Blu-ray ec0-case, with a glossy slipcover in its original run. There is no DVD or digital copy included, but the slipcover is a nice addition for a lower-tier title. The artwork is uninspiring compared to the same release in other countries, but the glossy slipcover is a treat.
As for features, there are some interviews with the cast, a short feature on the book version of the story, and a feature length commentary with Director Ben Wheatley, Producer Jeremy Thomas, and Tom Hiddleston. The commentary is the best piece of the bunch, but I did enjoy the interviews and the feature on the novel as well. The extras are a bit limited, but the quality overrules the quantity.
Technical Specs (click for technical FAQs)
Video
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Audio
DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Subtitles
English SDH, Spanish
Runtime: 119 minutes
Overall (3.5/5)
High Rise is not the best movie, but the story is original, brutal, and chilling. Fans of dark films, dystopian settings, and violent, visceral experience will certainly enjoy this move, but it is definitely not a crowd-pleaser and will make some viewers very uncomfortable during a few scenes. The Blu-ray presentation is solid from an audio/visual standpoint, and the packaging and extras are good enough to warrant a purchase. Magnolia Pictures typically go on sale on Amazon about once a year, when you can get some great deals on fantastic indie films like High Rise. If you want to own it today, it is available on Amazon now for a reasonable price.The government of India has decided to dispense with immediate effect Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes and replace them with new Rs 500 and Rs 2000 notes. This Prime Minister Narendra Modi said was part of his government’s effort to fight corruption, black money and fake currency. Everyone has recognised this as a bold move, his supporters are ecstatic as they usually are about every decision of his.
There is no doubt that currency changes are a blow to the fake currency problem. It certainly destroys the value of those hoarding cash. There are suspicions that businesses will try and retrospectively declare goods and services as sold before November 8 and deposit the money in banks, but there will be a lot left under the rug that will need to be disclosed. The move will not affect the super-rich who usually convert their wealth into land, gold and foreign property.
Notwithstanding the benefits, there are reasons to believe the currency swap is a political blunder. Writer Amit Varma has, among others, tweeted that this is a mistake, pointing out, for instance, that the measure will adversely affect BJP’s base of small traders. He’s right; if a party has consciously kept out foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail (excepting food products) to protect the 10-12 million small traders in the country then what’s the point of threatening their cash reserves? Like counterparts elsewhere, Indian businesses are notorious for evading taxes and thus any attempt to disrupt established practices of unaccounted cash transactions is bound to be deeply resented. One can expect a wave of negative sentiment to radiate through (small) business communities quickly. A nationalism that trashes Pakistan is welcome, a nationalism that wants you to come clean on personal finances is not – regardless who the leader is.
The BJP seems to have calculated that the poor will enjoy the prospect of the rich squirming about what to do with their ill-gotten cash and admire the PM for the nerve to take on the wealthy.
That may be true in theory but the disruption this measure causes can override that sentiment quite quickly. The Modi government seems to have underestimated how the process of lining up in banks to deposit money will infuriate people, including the lower middle class and urban poor. Just imagine, for example, how the experience will be for a poor woman in the cities who stores cash at home, rather than in banks. The family’s money has suddenly become illegal; she is likely to take leave from work, join a long line in a bank; she will have to go through the indignity of asking someone else to fill her bank deposit slips and will seethe when someone inevitably jumps the line and wonder why the government made her do all this. Every person with a Rs 500 note in the country will have to endure a variant of that experience. Imagine the chatter in the queues where mirth and rage alternate and where it will collectively dawn on all present that all this is a pointless use of time.
There is already chaos reported in the cities with petrol pumps refusing to accept old notes and ATMs seeing long lines. What is extraordinary is that the government has effectively ordered a pause to commerce as many millions know it, without any prior warning.
There is the claim about black money that needs to be evaluated. This experiment is predicated on the belief that many will surrender their ill-gotten cash even if they have not disclosed it during the tax amnesty. They may not choose to in order to avoid embarrassment, scrutiny and prosecution – and to that extent demonetisation entails the destruction of value (rather than its creation) and so it does not allow for the redistribution of income which is what the recovery of black money is all about. If the Modi government does manage to recover a lot of money, it will have to pass on the benefit to the people in substantive ways like significant cash transfers or, if it is ambitious, perhaps try a universal basic income initiative.
For now the transition will be painful. The technology and customer service experience at most banks is not at a level that can cope with the volume of demand in the coming days. High on the list of things that governments loathe are crowds gathering in public spaces to discuss government policy. The Modi government will be summoning such very audiences in banks this week onward. No policy sounds good when you are standing for two hours in a queue at an Indian public sector bank.
The views expressed are personal. The author tweets as @SushilAaron
First Published: Nov 09, 2016 19:47 ISTWelcome to the third AFB x JAAC Discussion!
Today, we will be looking at “What’s My Motivation? Video Games and Interpretive Performance” by Grant Tavinor, available in JAAC’s Winter 2017 volume, 75 (1), online here. Grant is Senior Lecturer of Philosophy at Lincoln University, NZ and author of the book The Art of Videogames.
And big thanks to C. Thi Nguyen (Utah Valley University) for providing the critical précis. Grant’s response follows that, and they will both be available to discuss your questions and thoughts in the comments! Check it all out below the fold.
Summary
Video games are, in certain ways, rather odd creations: they can be both interactive and narrative. With a traditional non-interactive fiction, the author provides a narrative with a set of fixed events, and then reader interprets those events. But in video game, the player can be causally entangled with the narrative — their choices and actions partially determine the course of events. The player can interpret past events in order to make narratively informed choices, but this can shape the events to come. The result is a complex feedback system, where events drive player interpretation, and player interpretation drives events. Attending to this complex feedback system, says Grant Tavinor, will yield some rather exciting results — exciting, at least, for those concerned with the thrilling business of aesthetic ontology and the artistic nature of videogames.
But first: what, exactly, is interactivity? Tavinor offers us an account drawn from Dominic Lopes and Berys Gaut. Interactive works are those in which users are authorized, by the work, to take actions which determine its display features; and in which users then attend to the artistic features of that display. In less technical language: a player’s input helps determine the visuals and audio and the like, and then the player has to look at what the game spit out in response to their input, in order to have their tasty artistic experience. The notion of ‘authorization’ here is crucial. I could modify pretty much any art display; I could cut up the Mona Lisa and arrange the squares by color gradient to my heart’s content, but that is not the prescribed use of the object. In interactive works, the users are permitted, even required, to give input.
Tavinor then singles out a special class of interactive games: interactive narratives, where the player’s actions determine features in the narrative. Not all interactive games are interactive narratives — Bioshock Infinite, for example has plenty of interaction for its action sequences, and player input can change the visual landscape, but the story elements are fixed and outside the player’s control. In fact, any video game where interactive sequences are interrupted with pre-scripted cut-scenes, and where all the narrative elements emerge in those cut-scene, is interactive, but not an interactive narrative.
On the other hand, says Tavinor, take a game like Until Dawn, where player choices deeply inform story events. Who lives and who dies, who succeeds and who fails, and how each character meets their probable untimely end, all emerge from player choice. That is an interactive narrative.
Tavinor follows Gaut one step further: the player, says Tavinor, is doing something very much like a performer of, say, a musical work. With a classical musical work, there is a general form (“the composition”) and a specific instantiation (“a performance”). A performer must interpret the composition to create a specific instantiation, which is usually the only way the composition can be appreciated. Similarly, a game-player takes a general form (“the game”) and, through a performance, instantiates it as a particular playing. But there’s a crucial difference: in music, the performer and the audience are separate roles. In games, the game-player is both performer and audience. The game-player performs the work and then appreciates the results of their own performance.
Players of interactive narratives can thus be involved in what Tavinor calls an interpretive performance — where a player explores an interactive game as a way to get a grip on the game’s content and meaning. Interpretive performance isn’t the only way to play a game — if I’m playing just to win, and ignoring all the narrative elements, then I’m not involved in an interpretive performance. But if I’m playing for the sake of having an interpretive experience of the narrative elements and their meaning, then I’m involved in an interpretive performance.
This all becomes particularly interesting for Tavinor when we start to have interpretive relationships to the player characters under our control. We don’t have interpretive relationships like this in all games. In chess, for example, I do not try to imagine how my knight feels to be felled by a lowly pawn, nor to figure out the psychological states of the shadowy general-figure above it all. I simply pursue the goals of the game. Many video games suggest a similarly non-interpretive relationship — in Minecraft, for example, we largely occupy the player-character entirely first-personally and the game presents no cues about that character’s mental state. These sorts of player-character, says Tavinor, are merely epistemic and agential shells for the player. I don’t do any interpreting of my player-character at all; what actions I choose for my character are entirely a matter of my own motivations.
But other games are quite different. Tavinor’s example here is, again, Until Dawn, in which various player-characters often speak and act independently of our control, are often viewed from a third-personal perspective with visible emotional reactions, and then are passed to us for occasional control.
In these cases, says Tavinor, my choice of action can be informed by my interpretation of that player-character. If the game has recently showed me how fearful a character looked, I might choose to have the character run away, not in order to win the game, but simply because it is in-character.
All of this hints at a rather fascinating feedback loop for players enmeshed in any sort of narrative relationship with the game. Players interpret the events of the game, including, perhaps, the player-characters’ motivations. But that interpretation can drive the choices a player makes, which may yield more story elements, which must be interpreted. Crucially, this is not a purely creative act, and is not to be assimilated to, say, telling a story. In most games, Tavinor points out, players do not always know what their choices will do, or what artistic effect it will have, and must learn from the game what story-events their actions have provoked. And past interpretations can drive future interpretations — the fact that I interpreted a character’s running away from a monster as, say, practical and sensible, rather than cowardly, will be added to the nest of cues the game gives me, and my later interpretations will be built on, among other things, my past interpretive contributions.
From this analysis, we get two rather dramatic outcomes, at least for those who care about aesthetic ontology. First, look to the debate about the multiplicity of interpretations. Do narrative works have a single correct interpretation, or multiple? For interactive narratives, the answer is clear, says Tavinor: since the interpretation depends on the narrative, and the narrative isn’t fixed, then the interpretation isn’t fixed. There must be multiple interpretations of a game, since the object of interpretation — the narrative — will vary from playing to playing.
Second: the narrative nature of some video games may supply norms for proper play. Let’s say that some games are meant to be played just for the sake of winning — abstract arcade games like Tetris are a good candidate. These games generate lusory warrant for playing — that is, the warranted actions are those that aim at winning. You’re supposed to try to win the game when you’re playing; otherwise, you haven’t really experienced the game. But, says Tavinor, lusory warrant is not the only kind of warrant. There is also narrative warrant for actions that fulfill some narrative function. Saving a character may help maximize points, but letting them die at a crucial moment may create a more satisfying and poetic narrative arc. Choosing to make my player-character attack, instead, may help me win the game, but may violate interpretation I have of her character. In fact, many games offer both lusory challenges and narrative cues and thus supply both lusory warrant and narrative warrant. Of course, some games may allow, or even force, conflict between these two kinds of warrant; this clash has been called ludonarrative dissonance.
Critical comments
First, a worry: Tavinor claims that there is no single correct interpretation of the work, which is the game. But I worry that this claim is driven by blurring together two distinct entities: the game, and a particular narrative generated by a particular playing of the game. Suppose one wanted to (for some reason) hang on to the view that a work had a single interpretation. I think there is a way to do this, against Tavinor’s analysis.
Tavinor’s argument that a game has multiple interpretations is based in the view that to interpret a game is to interpret a narrative, as it emerges in a playing. Call this the Game as Narrative view. Since the narrative changes from playing to playing, then the interpretation must change. But here is another, quite plausible, view: to interpret a game is to interpret the possibility space of narratives. Call it the Game as Possibility Space view. Tavinor himself flirts with the latter; in some games, he says, we need to play multiple times to interpret the game, to see how the causal networks operate. Lopes holds a similar view about interactive computer art. For Lopes, one can’t appreciate an interactive work by attending to a single set of displays generated by one interaction. Rather, one must interact with the work many times, and use the various different interactions and responses, in order to explore the possibility space, and thus to appreciate the work {Lopes 2010@53-61, 66}. For Lopes, the real object of appreciation isn’t the result of a lone interaction, but, rather, the stable algorithm underlying it all — the different interactions are just a way to come to grips with the algorithm.
Here’s a simplistic example: imagine I am playing a game called Lowlife. In my first play through, I choose to make my character drop out of school and trade drugs; one of my partners kills me, and my character ends up dead in a ditch. I interpret the games’ message as: be careful who your partners are. I then play the game a few more times, and discover that even if avoid taking on partners, once I enter the drug-trade, I end up dead in a ditch. I then interpret the game as saying: don’t deal drugs. But then I play the game more, and make my character stay in school and become a doctor, or a lawyer. But under all these choices, my character ends up dead in a ditch. Once the possibility space has been explored, the real interpretation seems to presents itself: no matter what you do, you’re going to end up abandoned and dead — life is a hopeless and terrible affair. If one held the Game as Possibility Space view, one might plausibly claim, contra Tavinor, that there was a single right interpretation forced by the causal structure of the game, which only came into view after a full exploration of the space.
What’s going on here, I think, is a hesitation between talking about interpreting a particular playing of a game and interpreting the game as a whole. So here’s a path that the defender of single interpretations could take, to resist Tavinor: they could say that, for a single playing, that there was only one narrative, and so only one interpretation. Of course, when we step back and look at the game as a whole, there are multiple narratives — but now the object of interpretation is no longer just one narrative, but the game – the algorithm, the possibility space as a whole. And that possibility space doesn’t change from one playing to another, nor does a player have any control over it. So that could also admit of a single interpretation. Or, to put it another way: the correct interpretation of the game depends on seeing the space of possible narratives, and that space is fixed. Of course, it may be impossible in a human life to see all the possible narratives of a game. Which doesn’t show us that the game has multiple interpretations; we could simply say that the game has one correct interpretation, which is beyond the ken of a single person. Which is also very interesting, but a very different place to end up.
Next, let’s consider ludonarrative dissonance. I find this topic painfully interesting, and here I simply have a number of questions. T |
shame.
But here's the good news: Now we know. Now there is no longer any excuse for making excuses -- either for Kejriwal or for those who will choose to stand with him and his brand of mob politics, be it Yogendra Yadav or Medha Pathkar or Captain Gopinath or Meera Sanyal. It's time for all of them to take a stand, to revolt against the madness of King Kejriwal.
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.Of the many great insights gleaned from rap lyrics, few are as applicable to startup success as The Notorious B.I.G.'s 10 Crack Commandments.
Assuming your business, drugs or otherwise, is legal, you may have overlooked hip hop as a source for business wisdom. If so, you've been missing out on a wealth of smart strategy.
In addition to the What Would Jay Z Do? sign above my desk, when a relevant rhyme drops on my office playlist, I keep an ear out for dime bags of wisdom. Kanye advises me to retain ownership of my content, Nas reminds me to pay attention to customer feedback, and pretty much everyone advises on work-life balance.
In my first book, Exit Stage Right, I explain that if even drug dealing could generate a marketable skill set, any resume can be written to showcase strengths. Likewise, leverage the acumen of an industry leader who went from Brooklyn kid to global legend to strengthen your own hustle.
Shall I proceed? Yes, indeed:
1. Never let no one know how much dough you hold.
Unless you're going public, most people don't need to know the details of your profits or cashflow. Biggie's reasoning is, of course, that more money can bring more problems, including jealousy and even shady dealings by those who are less than trustworthy. On the flipside, if you're still building your business, you don't want to scare away potential partners and customers by giving off a desperate vibe.
2. Never let 'em know your next move.
Today's market is flooded with competitors. When everything moves at the speed of technology, it can be best to hold your next campaign until everything's polished and in place. If you're in idea or development mode, keep your cards close to your chest. Have your team sign non-disclosure agreements if necessary, and better yet, only bring people with a track record of integrity onto your team.
3. Never trust nobody.
While paranoia is no way to do business, neither is blind faith. Still doing business on handshakes and verbal agreements? Don't be surprised if you get burned.
One place I see bootstrapped entrepreneurs get in trouble is avoiding written agreements, especially barter deals. Even if an exchange doesn't include money, you should always clearly outline the responsibilities of each party involved. More on business partnerships here.
4. Never get high on your own supply.
Control your inventory. Everything carries a cost. It's tempting to indulge, but especially when it comes to sharing that privilege, comping is a slippery slope. "Just one" turns into "just one more," and friends expect the same treatment the next time they stop by.
Put a policy in place to protect your inventory and your relationships, whether it's designating giveaways for staff or a standard 10% off for friends and family.
5. Never sell no crack where you rest at.
This one goes out to those who use their Facebook feeds to promote their personal business, usually a network marketing product that encourages sales to friends and family. There's no faster way to get unfollowed on social media or uninvited to real-life events than to pretend you're just casually mentioning this amaaaaazing new wrinkle cream that you also happen to sell.
6. That g--d--- credit? Dead it.
If your customer doesn't have the money to pay you now, they probably won't later either. I'll take it a step further and add that the customers who ask for discounts are generally ones to avoid as well.
As a consultant for new businesses, I also avoid offers of equity in lieu of my fee. To even consider an equity deal, partners should receive the same information and consideration as any other investor - not just, "Hey, this is a great opportunity!"
7. Keep your family and business completely separated.
It's not just the premise for Empire. I've worked for multiple companies run by sets of siblings, and family dynamics always trickle down from the top, for better or worse. It can definitely make sense to go into business with your friend or family member, but in the interest of your relationship, be realistic about what you're getting into.
Shifting into business mode with a loved one can threaten the business, or worse, the relationship. Be very clear on responsibilities, boundaries, and create time to develop your relationship both inside and outside of work. Also be conscious about creating a fair and objective environment for the rest of your team.
8. Never keep no weight on you.
Are you weighing yourself down with too many commitments? In my book Game Plan, I explain how entrepreneurs undermine their goals by taking on roles that should be outsourced to maximize time, team, budget, and your valuable energy.
Or perhaps you're held back by other issues. Do you approach new business with old baggage? Does a chip on your shoulder drive your decision-making? I've had clients whose business instincts were severely undermined by a need to impress others or prove someone wrong. Get your mind right and let go of the past in order to move forward in a way that benefits you and your business.
9. If you ain't gettin' bagged stay the f--- from police.
Know your allegiances. Loyalty counts in business. Your partners, team, and clients should always trust that you have their backs. Deals made solely to benefit you (versus your team) or your business (versus your customer) will always come to light and damage trust that can't be restored.
10. A strong word called consignment: if you ain't got the clientele, say hell no.
Growing your business at the right speed was wisdom long before Lean Startup methodology. Don't over-commit in the early stages. Test your concept and build your audience before quitting your day job, hiring staff, or borrowing money.
Follow these rules, you'll have mad bread to break up. See you on the cover of Fortune 5-double-O.I saw this story yesterday on the BBC, which reports on the danger of collapse of bluefin tuna stocks, and didn’t cover it then because I thought it was the sort of thing that would get plenty of media attention. The fact that the not-terribly-environmentally-minded US is supporting a 3-5 year ban on tuna fishing in the North Atlantic says the situation is serious.
I am stunned to see today that when I put “tuna” into Google News, I got all of 5 articles on this issue (BBC, a New York Times editorial, Fish Update, the Telegraph, and the Edmunton Sun).
Readers may note that I have never advocated any particular pro-environment course of action, so I hope you will take this request seriously.
As much as I am a sushi-holic (and tuna is a prized offering), I have been avoiding tuna for some time, not so much for the stock collapse issue (I was unaware of that until recently) but because it is very high up the food chain. You consume a lot of ocean food energy when you eat tuna. And believe me, I am not as virtuous on the environmental front as I’d like to be, but for the vast majority of people, food is one area where it is relatively easy to implement changes (and I anticipate it will become more a focus of attention in the next few years).
A crude rule of thumb is that every time you go one step up the food chain, you get only 10% of the calories you’d get by consuming the next lower item (note I am not sure how this is measured, whether by weight or portion size. Carbohydrates and proteins have the same amount of calories per unit weight, but fats have more than two times as many calories per gram as carbs and protein). So say you eat corn-fed beef. It took ten times the amount of corn to produce that unit weight of beef (and that may not even allow for waste, like skeleton and hide).
Tuna is a top predator. I recall reading it can be as high as 10 levels up the food chain, and per the chart below, it is routinely 4-5 levels up. So tuna is one of the most environmentally costly foods. (Anyone who has better factoids on this matter is encouraged to contribute, but directionally, this depiction is accurate, even if the particulars are a bit off).
So please, no more tuna! And (nicely) encourage any restaurant you frequent to stop serving it.
From the New York Times, “The Bluefin Slaughter“:
The hunting of highly valued animals into oblivion is a symptom of human foolishness that many consign to the unenlightened past, like the 19th century, when bird species were wiped out for feathered hats and bison were decimated for sport. But the slaughter of the giant bluefin tuna is happening now. An international conference that ends tomorrow in Turkey could help to rescue the bluefin, a noble, ocean-crossing predator, from the brink of collapse — or seal its doom through empty promises and inaction. The United States has gone to the meeting urging a ban on bluefin fishing in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean. The world should heed it. Think of a giant bluefin as an 800-pound torpedo of sushi — some of the finest, fattiest, most expensive there is. Since the 1970s, when the sushi craze took off, purse-seine haulers and longline fishing boats and fish hunters in spotter planes have chased the giant bluefin across the world’s oceans. They have been ruthlessly efficient: The worldwide bluefin population has plunged more than 90 percent in the last 30 years. There are bluefin tuna “farms” — large-scale ranching operations in the Mediterranean, but these are no less destructive than boats on the open seas. Farms catch their fish in the wild, young and small, exploiting a loophole in rules that set limits by weight. The tuna are fattened in pens, like foie-gras geese, using vast supplies of smaller fish whose plundering is its own ecological disaster. Scientists of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas recommended last year that the annual catch in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean be lowered to 15,000 metric tons to let the fish recover. The commission instead set a quota that was practically twice that: 29,500 tons. The evidence so far suggests that the actual catch this year will be 40,000 to 50,000 tons, said William Hogarth, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, who is at the commission’s meeting in Turkey to plead for the moratorium. Blame for the crisis is global. The European Commission has promoted ruinously excessive fishing quotas. The United States is a major source of sushi demand, and must do much more to protect the bluefin in one of its important spawning grounds, the Gulf of Mexico. And a huge slab of raw guilt should be placed on Japan, the world’s most voracious fish consumer, whose appetite for the bluefin has done the most to make it disappear.
And from the BBC:In recent weeks, Democrats have stepped up their effort to caricature McCain as living an outlandishly rich lifestyle -- a bit of payback to the GOP for portraying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as an elitist, and for turning the spotlight in 2004 on the five homes owned by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Pro-Obama labor groups have sent out mailers highlighting McCain's wealth, and prominent Democrats have included references to it in comments to reporters.
Twice in the past two weeks, those Democrats have focused on McCain's houses.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Politico's Ben Smith that it was McCain "who wears $500 shoes, has six houses and comes from one of the richest families in his state."
And David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, referred in an interview with Adam Nagourney of The New York Times to an imagined meeting of McCain strategists "on the portico of the McCain estate in Sedona -- or maybe in one of his six other houses."
McCain's comments came four days after he initially told Pastor Rick Warren during a faith forum on Sunday his threshold for considering someone rich is $5 million -- a careless comment he quickly corrected.Next Chapter >
The Subaru WRC Dream
As some of you might know, I love first generation Subarus Imprezas. In fact, I even have one as an SH Garage project car. But I especially love the Subaru works rally variants.
After watching countless archive videos online, I’d been dreaming of photographing one in detail, and now that hero-car dream has become a reality with a very special machine.
For many Subaru enthusiasts, the legendary 22B variant sits at the top of their dream car list. But without the rally machines, driven by some of the biggest names in the World Rally Championship (WRC) during the 1990s, that halo machine of which only 400 examples were ever built would never even have existed.
Subaru debuted its new Impreza in the WRC during the 1993 season and found instant success with a podium at its first ever event. The 555-branded Group A cars took the late, great Colin McRae to his drivers’ championship win in 1995, and brought home the gold for Subaru in the manufacturers’ championship in both ’95 and ’96. When the WRC moved to a new World Rally Car formula in 1997, Subaru stood atop the podium once again, rounding out a three-year domination of rallying at its highest level.
The idea behind the World Rally Car specification was to attract more manufacturers to the motorsport. Group A homologation required large numbers of production road cars to be built, but the new regulations opened up the WRC to automakers who didn’t necessarily have an all-wheel drive, turbocharged 2.0-liter model in their line-up.
Subaru used evolved versions of its original WRC97 car between 1997 and 2000, the machine we’re looking at today being a Subaru World Rally Team (SWRT) WRC99 replica. Yes, it’s a replica, but not in the normal sense – this one is an inch-perfect recreation of the late Richard Burns’ 1999 rally car, built by Subaru and gifted to him when he won the WRC drivers’ championship in 2001.
The technical force behind SWRT, Prodrive, engineered this Impreza from the ground up to the exact specification of Richard’s WRC99 World Rally Car. Everything from the body and engine to the seats and dash are identical, right down to their original part number tags.
Sadly, Richard was only able to enjoy ownership of this car for a short period of time. A couple of years after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, he passed away on the 25th of November, 2005, aged 34.
Following his death, Richard’s closest family and friends set up the Richard Burns Foundation to aid people suffering from illnesses. Almost 12 years after his passing, it still runs strong under the name of England’s first World Rally Champion.
A few years down the line, Steve Rimmer, the owner of DirtFish, purchased the car from the foundation and had it shipped it over to the States to the rally school’s facility in Snoqualmie, Washington.
In the time since DirtFish has owned the car, it’s been put to good use. When it’s not being driven or is undergoing upkeep maintenance, you can find it parked up in DirtFish’s main lobby alongside a few other historically significant rally machines.
I first saw this car at Global Rallycross Los Angeles in 2015, where the Impreza was on display with an array of other famous Subarus. At that moment I knew I had to find a way to shoot it.
At this year’s GRC Seattle, I asked DirtFish’s marketing manager, Trevor Wert, if I could get a one-on-one with PRO/WRC/99.004, and he was happy to make it happen.
The ’90s is remembered as one of the WRC’s greatest eras, and if you know anything about the championship and its history, you’re likely to already be familiar with this car and know just how much of a weapon it was.
The WRC99’s engine is based on the a JDM EJ207 (found in Version 5 and Version 6 Subaru Impreza STIs) that’s been tweaked for competition use.
While the production cars produced 276hp and 260lb-ft of torque, the Impreza World Rally Car made a solid 300hp and a whopping 480lb-ft of torque – all with a power-sapping FIA 34mm restrictor fitted to the IHI RX turbocharger’s air intake.
But with 2.0bar (29.4psi) boost pressure, anti-lag, and a Prodrive 6-speed semi-automatic gearbox in the mix, this is a quick car.
Not only did it perform exceptionally well, it looked tough, too. Over the production-spec two-door Impreza WRX STI coupe, the World Rally Car featured 3-inch wider steel fenders front and rear, revised bumpers, bonnet and side skirts, and a large rear wing – styling cues that were carried over into the limited edition 22B.
As WRC competition vehicles, the first-generation Subaru Imprezas – in both Group A and World Rally Car guise – have long being resigned to the history books, but their allure still lives on more than a decade and a half later. They say you should never meet your heroes, but in this case I’m very happy that I did.
Louis Yio
louis@speedhunters.com
Instagram: lusciousy
Cutting Room FloorWhen the World Health Organization recently named blood transfusions from Ebola survivors as its priority experimental therapy for the disease ravaging west Africa there was only one major problem: no data indicating that such transfusions work. Blood plasma from survivors contains antibodies that could potentially trigger an immune system response in patients, which would bolster their ability to fight the virus, but clinical data suggesting it has helped patients beat back the virus does not exist.
In the absence of any other approved therapy or vaccine for Ebola, however, a number of patients in the U.S. (including one of the first Americans to contract Ebola in this outbreak, aid worker Kent Brantly) have received blood transfusions from Ebola survivors. Such donated plasma needs to be screened for other blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, which has complicated efforts to set up such protocols in the field. Now, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced that in early 2015 it plans to begin clinical trials in Guinea to test if transfers of blood plasma are effective. The organization is putting up $5.7 million to support the work and is recruiting other donors for trials in Guinea and perhaps other Ebola-affected west African nations. Many details are not ironed out, including how many patients will be included. But the foundation’s grantee, David Hoover, senior medical adviser of Clinical Research Management, Inc., provided me with initial information by email.
[An edited version of the exchange follows]:
Q: Where will the trials be conducted?
A: The trials will be conducted in Guinea and other west-African countries that have been affected by the current Ebola epidemic. To date, we have only announced Guinea as a trial country. We will announce other countries once we have the agreement of national governments to do so.
Q: How will donors be recruited?
A: Donors will be recruited through organized groups of people who have survived Ebola and via survivor donor lists maintained by hospitals.
Q: Who will be qualified to donate convalescent (survivors’) plasma?
A: Ebola survivors who have been free of infection for at least 28 days will be qualified to donate. These survivors will visit a mobile laboratory that is equipped with plasmapheresis and pathogen inactivation devices.
Q: Will there be enough convalescent plasma to treat all interested patients?
A: We expect that demand for convalescent plasma will significantly exceed supply. For every two donors, the trial will be able to provide convalescent plasma to two recipients. [So each recipient will receive plasma collected from two donors rather than a single patient.] Trial participants who match the blood type of the donors will receive 600 milliliters of plasma administered in three, 200 milliliter doses over four days. Trial participants who don’t match the blood type of the donors will not receive convalescent plasma, but they will receive a higher standard of care for their Ebola infection than is generally available in Ebola-affected countries [since they will receive intravenous fluid replacement which is not available in many areas]. The trial has been designed to provide a completely objective selection of people receiving convalescent plasma.
Q: How did the researchers determine the dosage to be evaluated?
A: The dosage determination of three, 200 milliliter infusions of convalescent plasma per patient is based on anecdotal evidence from previous Ebola oubreaks. During the Kikwit outbreak in 1995, seven out of eight people who were treated with whole blood from recovered patients survived their infections. The trial is designed to deliver plasma doses that are equivalent to, or higher than, the doses that the Kikwit survivors received.
Q: What will the standard of care be for participants enrolled in the trial?
A: Everyone who is enrolled in the trial will receive infusions of intravenous fluids and electrolytes, as well as regular monitoring of vital signs, including electrolytes and blood pressure.
Q: How will researchers measure the effect of the convalescent plasma?
A: The effect of the plasma will be measured by tracking the level of virus in recipients’ blood versus the baseline control group [which has yet to be defined]. The trial will not be able to provide plasma to every patient who qualifies for trial enrollment, and plasma will be administered to the first available trial participants whose blood types match the available plasma.
Q: How will donors be compensated for their participation in the trial?
A: Donors will not be paid for the plasma that they have contributed. They will, however, receive subsidized travel and accommodation to facilitate their participation in the trial, and they will be compensated [financially] for their time.The Mazda RX8 is a great performance car for a relatively low cost. Rather than your conventional engine, the RX8 has a rotary engine and as you may know, rotary engines can suffer from flooding relatively easily. Once you have a flooded RX8 they can seem impossible to start, but in the article below I will show you how to start a flooded RX8 Mazda without the huge mechanic bill.
Problems – Get It Started Fast
RX8 engines are known to have lots of problems some won’t start, some have hot start issues and some have misfires. But most owners will come across the not starting problems.
On this occasion, the flooded RX8 engine was caused by moving the car from one location on the drive to another, without letting it warm up enough.
Click – All RX8 Engine Swap Options
Proof It Works
Here you can see our flooded RX8 starting using this method.
How to start a flooded RX8 in 15 minutes
What you need:
A car battery charger
Set of high-quality jump leads or portable jump pack
Another car to jump off
One phillips screwdriver
De-flood Your RX8 Process Fast
First, we are going to disconnect the power from the fuel pump and then crank the engine over to clear out some of the additional fuel that is in the engine, then we will reconnect the fuel pump and jump start the car to get it started. Unless you are very lucky, it is unlikely to start on the first try and could take 10-15 iterations of this process to get it started. Make sure you leave around 30 seconds between cranking the engine over to allow the starter motor to cool down.
Click – How To Rebuild an RX8 – Video Series
Step 1 – Charge Up
Put the car on charge beforehand to ensure it has maximum power to crank the engine over.
Step 2 – Remove Rear Seat
Remove the rear passenger seat by pulling the base of the seat upwards to reveal the fuel pump cover.
Step 3 – Remove Cover
Use a phillips screwdriver to undo the 4 screws on the cover and lift off the cover.
Step 4 – Look at the fuel pump
Here you see the fuel pump and the connector that we will be disconnecting.
Step 5 – Set up jump leads
Set the car up for a jump start. I used heavy duty jump leads as you may be cranking the car over for around 15 minutes on and off, use another powerful car for the jump start, and make sure the other car is running at the time of jumping.
If you don’t have another car you, might be able to get away with a mobile power bank. I have successfully done this a few times.
Step 6 – Disconnect and Crank
Back in the driver’s seat, ensure the car is out of gear and remove the fuel pump connector from the fuel pump. Once removed crank the car over with the clutch depressed for 30 seconds to clear out the excess fuel from the engine.
Step 7 – Keep Cranking and connect pump
Whilst still cranking the engine, plug the fuel pump back in, apply 1/3 throttle and continue to crank the engine with the clutch depressed for 30 seconds. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until the car starts to fire up. When the car begins to catch, don’t let go of the key until you’re sure it will stay running. It can take many attempts to get it started. See the video below for an idea of how the process looks.
Click – How To Rebuild an RX8 – Video Series
Step 8 – Take the car for a run
Once running take the car on a good 20-minute run ensuring all fuel is burned off out of the exhaust properly. Fixed.
Flooded RX8 – Recommendations – Get a Boost Pack
I found that I was getting a bit nervous of stalling the RX-8 whilst out and about. Without a jump car it was impossible to get the car started again. But with a mobile jump pack I have been able to get the car going again. It might not work in all instances, but you can crank the car over around 20-30 times with these packs for are a great help.
Mazda RX8 Motor Swap
If your RX8 engine is truly broken then you might want to consider an engine swap, we have a full guide looking at everything from V8s, 1JZ, 2JZ or even 13B-REW engines. Take a look and plan your new engine.
Click – All RX8 Engine Swap OptionsCleaners are a huge part of our service industry here in the UK and are a massive part of our economy. Interestingly, cleaners apparently earn more in 10 other European countries than they do in the United Kingdom, according to the latest research. A study from London Cleaning System showed that the average wage of a cleaner is £7.27 an hour, significantly less than the top players across the continent - and even the rest of the world.
With a large proportion of the workers in the British cleaning industry being from an EU country, it begs an interesting question as to why pick the UK with lucrative offers elsewhere like in Luxembourg and Belgium? Moreover, with Brexit looming, the disparity in pay in the UK with some European countries as well as political uncertainty makes it an even more interesting question.
Our infographic not only looks into the averages of the cleaners but also national minimum wages as well as the unemployment rates of EU countries. See for yourself, find out how much cleaners get paid and more, right here.
Embed it on your websiteSporting Kansas City midfielder Brad Davis announced Sunday that he will retire from professional soccer at the end of the 2016 MLS season.
Davis will leave Major League Soccer after a brilliant 15-year career highlighted by 2006 and 2007 MLS Cup championships, 2011 MLS Best XI accolades, six MLS All-Star selections and a 2005 MLS Supporters’ Shield. His 123 assists and 392 games played rank third and fourth on the all-time MLS regular season charts, respectively.
“I can’t believe that the last 15 years have gone by so fast and that this journey has come to an end,” Davis said. “Along the way, I have met a lot of great people and have had the privilege to play alongside many great players. There are so many individuals that I look forward to thanking who have made me the person and the player I have become.”
“Brad has been a tremendous professional throughout his career and during his time with us,” Sporting Kansas City Manager Peter Vermes said. “This was a very difficult decision for him, but I have the ultimate respect for Brad because he wanted to leave the game being remembered for playing at a very high level. My only disappointment is that Sporting KC didn’t get him earlier in his career, because he would have been a great asset for this club – just as he was this year. It’s sad to see him go, but at the same time I’m very happy for everything he has accomplished.”
“Brad was one of the most naturally gifted soccer players I have ever been around,” said San Jose Earthquakes head coach Dominic Kinnear, who coached Davis in San Jose and Houston from 2005-2014. “He has had a great career and I wish him the best of luck. It was a pleasure to coach him for as many years as I did, and I felt lucky to have him on the field helping our team.”
Including playoffs, Davis has amassed 60 goals 132 assists in 419 MLS appearances. He became the fifth player in league history to reach 400 MLS appearances when Sporting Kanas City faced FC Dallas on April 17. He retires as the all-time MLS leader in corner kicks (1,269) and is one shy of the all-time lead in game-winning assists (40).
A member of MLS for the duration of his career, Davis joined Sporting Kansas City in January after spending 10 seasons with the Houston Dynamo. He has recorded three goals and two assists in 27 appearances during the 2016 campaign, helping Sporting KC contend for a club-record sixth straight berth in the MLS Cup Playoffs.
Davis, 34, ended a 10-year stint in Houston as the Dynamo’s all-time regular season leader in games played (271), starts (252) and assists (104). The left-footed midfielder guided Houston to consecutive MLS Cup titles in 2006 and 2007 and seven total postseason trips between 2006-2015, including two more MLS Cup appearances in 2011 and 2012.
A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Davis has reached double digits in assists seven times throughout his career, joining Landon Donovan as the only MLS players to accomplish the feat. His career blossomed in his first two seasons at Houston, where he played in every playoff match of both MLS Cup runs in 2006 and 2007.
Davis was named an MLS All-Star every year from 2009-2013, earning MLS Best XI honors in 2011 when he notched a career-high 16 assists. He totaled at least four goals and 12 assists every season from 2009-2012, a stretch that saw Houston reach the MLS Cup twice more.
During Major League Soccer’s Opta era (2011-present, including playoffs), Davis ranks first in assists (64), third in chances created (415), second in chances created from set pieces (215), second in corner kicks (678) and fourth in successful crosses from open play (110).
A two-year college star at Saint Louis University, Davis was taken third overall in the 2002 MLS SuperDraft by the MetroStars. Following his rookie campaign in New York, Davis moved to the Dallas Burn where he was a regular starter from 2003-2004. He then joined the San Jose Earthquakes in 2005, landing his first MLS All-Star selection and a Supporters’ Shield title during his only season in San Jose before the club relocated to Houston in 2006.
Davis tallied four assists in 17 career appearances for the United States Men’s National Team. He earned his senior team debut in 2005 and converted the game-winning penalty kick in the 2005 Gold Cup Final against Panama. Davis cemented a spot in head coach Jurgen Klinsmann’s squad during 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifying, making his lone World cup appearance with a start against eventual champion Germany on June 26, 2014. As a youth international, Davis represented the U.S. at the U-18, U-20 and U-23 levels.
Davis attended Chaminade College Preparatory School in suburban St. Louis and culminated his high school career as the 1999 Missouri Gatorade Player of the Year.
Brad Davis: Career Honors
MLS Cup champion — 2006, 2007
MLS Cup finalist — 2011, 2012
MLS Supporters’ Shield — 2005
MLS Best XI — 2011
MLS All-Star — 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup champion
2014 FIFA World Cup veteran
Brad Davis: All-time MLS ranks (regular season)Enter...David Wise...
This is the part where I probably embarrass him just a little bit and tell you the tale of David’s very first trip to the Sumo studios. As we all crammed around a desk in the Snake Pass meeting room, Seb was evidently distracted and whilst he tried to maintain a professional composure, he could hold it no more… In an explosion of enthusiasm, Seb leaped practically across the table to where David was sat greeting him like a long-lost friend. “I cannot, not do this! I’ve listened to your music for 25 years. I can tell you every track and hum every song to perfection. I grew up on your music. It’s amazing to be in your presence. THANK YOU”
A slightly startled David was taken back for a second and responded with a slightly confused “Ok…” And thus began our wonderful relationship.
“Once I played the game and saw the captivating world Sumo created, it set my mind on fire. I immediately began composing melodies, then worked with the team to develop these and nail down the feel of the soundtrack,” said David Wise. “We’ve ended up with something that not only pays tribute to the game’s classic inspirations, but also brings something new to the table, just as the game’s mechanics do!”2degrees customers with the right phones will be able to make and receive calls over wifi if they find themselves in a mobile blackspot but with access to the internet.
Carrier-based wifi calling has been offered by many mobile phone companies overseas for several years, but 2degrees – which plans to turn on the service "within days" – believes it will be first to launch the service in New Zealand.
One of the benefits is that it allows people to still use their mobiles if they are in a mobile blackspot in their home or office or at a holiday spot with wifi coverage.
The technology can also save people money when travelling overseas.
READ MORE: When is wi-fi calling coming to NZ?
Calls made over wifi in New Zealand will be charged in the same way as if they had been placed through 2degrees' mobile network, chief marketing officer Roy Ong said.
CARL COURT/GETTY IMAGES 2degrees expects wifi calling will be a popular alternative to mobile roaming when customers are travelling overseas.
But if people made a call over wifi while travelling overseas, they would be charged as if they were still in New Zealand.
There would also be no charge for receiving incoming calls over wifi while overseas.
2degrees did not expect it would lose money from that overall, as most customers currently tended to avoid calling altogether when overseas, Ong said.
"Introducing wifi calling to New Zealand represents a genuine innovation in telecommunications that will be of significant benefit to our customers both locally and as they travel internationally," he said.
"We've all had to stand on the picnic table, dash up the hill or seemingly hop on one leg to successfully make a call or send a text from some of our great Kiwi holiday spots. With wifi calling, if you have got wifi you've got 2degrees cell coverage."
There are a variety of third-party apps that let people make cheap or free calls over the internet from their mobiles, such as Skype and Viber, but these require extra steps, such as firing up an app and re-entering contacts.
Ong said 2degrees needed the cooperation of cellphone manufacturers to offer its service, as it required a software update.
2degrees will first offer wifi calling as an option to about 30,000 customers who have Samsung S8 and S8+ handsets. Ong expected it would support a wide-range of mid-range to high-end smartphones by the middle of next year, potentially including iPhones.
Customers would need to select wifi calling as an option on their device. Their phone would then automatically make and receive calls and texts over wifi as the default option if they were logged on to a wifi network.
Ong said calls over wifi would be secure and he expected most customers would simply leave the option enabled, rather than turning wifi calling off and on.Abstract
Resource depletion aspects are repeatedly used as an argument for a shift towards new battery technologies. However, whether serious shortages due to the increased demand for traction and stationary batteries can actually be expected is subject to an ongoing discussion. In order to identify the principal drivers of resource depletion for battery production, we assess different lithium-ion battery types and a new lithium-free battery technology (sodium-ion) under this aspect, applying different assessment methodologies. The findings show that very different results are obtained with existing impact assessment methodologies, which hinders clear interpretation. While cobalt, nickel and copper can generally be considered as critical metals, the magnitude of their depletion impacts in comparison with that of other battery materials like lithium, aluminum or manganese differs substantially. A high importance is also found for indirect resource depletion effects caused by the co-extraction of metals from mixed ores. Remarkably, the resource depletion potential per kg of produced battery is driven only partially by the electrode materials and thus depends comparably little on the battery chemistry itself. One of the key drivers for resource depletion seems to be the metals (and co-products) in electronic parts required for the battery management system, a component rather independent from the actual battery chemistry. However, when assessing the batteries on a capacity basis (per kWh storage capacity), a high-energy density also turns out to be relevant, since it reduces the mass of battery required for providing one kWh, and thus the associated resource depletion impacts. View Full-TextI |
crime bureau.
Spalding worked undercover, making buys. Because she was known on the streets of the South Side, she worked the West Side. Echeverria did enforcement — surveillance, intelligence gathering, and debriefing of those arrested — working out of a satellite office maintained by the organized crime bureau in the 2nd District, which he shared with his immediate superior, Sgt. Roderick Watson. The point of such operations is to work up the food chain. If those at low levels cooperate and provide good information, prosecutors may agree to a reduced charge.
Watts had returned to the 2nd District after public housing south was disbanded, and his office was just down the hall from the organized crime office. According to Echeverria, Watts was on friendly terms with Watson. He would regularly stick his head in the office and inquire casually about what they were working on.
Prior to landing at the 2nd District, Echeverria hadn’t known Watts personally, but he was aware of the rumors and had heard his name on the street. Drug dealers he nabbed in public housing would say things like “Can we buy you lunch?” or “Can we bond out here?” Echeverria was initially confused. “Shut up! They’re not the crew,” he recalled one of the young men saying. “They ain’t like Watts.”
As he did debriefings, Echeverria heard more and more references to Watts. This was particularly true of those arrested at the Ida B. Wells development. They would say things like “Why are you messing with me, when your man Watts is out there running his game?”
Initially, Echeverria told me, he didn’t give much credence to these statements. Guys facing time can be inventive, he said, and they weren’t providing him with much in the way of specifics. It was after he encountered Bernard Brown, a drug dealer whose picture was posted in the office as one of the top targets in the district, that he began to take the stories about Watts more seriously. Several members of Brown’s crew had been arrested. Echeverria had been debriefing them, when he caught sight of Brown on the street and picked him up.
“He had this Afro with two pony tails,” recalled Echeverria. “He looked like a big black Mickey Mouse.”
Brown was sharp. He immediately recognized Echeverria and Spalding were not officers from the 2nd District because they had different radios.
“You’re the indictment police, aren’t you?” said Brown. Looking for some leverage to cut a deal for himself, he asked, “Do you guys know Watts?”
“That name rings out,” replied Echeverria. “What can you tell me?”
“He’s the motherfucker that be running the dope in the projects,” replied Brown. “Are you sure you’re the indictment police? Instead of fucking with us niggers, that’s who you should go indict.”
Brown provided enough concrete information that Echeverria could verify some of what he said with arrest reports and other police documents. He described a criminal enterprise in which Watts and several members of his team were systematically extorting money from drug dealers in public housing. The payoffs were known on the street as the “Watts tax.” If a dealer paid the tax, his operation was protected from police interference. Watts, according to Brown, was protecting dealers allied with him, while targeting the competition and redirecting seized drugs to his own dope lines.
“For me,” Echeverria recalled, “it was like Big Foot. I’ve always heard about the guy, but is he real? Then I go to the 2nd District, and there’s Big Foot standing in front of me. So I’m thinking, maybe there’s something to what I’ve been hearing.”
The suspect also described an operation in which Watts was extorting money from drug dealers and running his own dope lines.
Among the things he was hearing were rumors that Watts had been involved in the murder of Wilbert Moore — aka Big Shorty — a drug dealer who operated out of the Ida B. Wells development. On January 19, 2006, Moore had been shot down outside a barber shop at 43rd and Cottage Grove.
For Echeverria, “pieces of the puzzle were beginning to come together.” A turning point came when they brought in another “player” who started talking about Watts. “You’re going to lock me up for four bags, when your guy Watts is moving the dope. They run that shit.”
“This guy put it together for me,” Echeverria recalled. The suspect also described an operation in which Watts was extorting money from drug dealers and running his own dope lines. “This was no pizza fund,” said Echeverria. For a popular drug line sold at multiple sites, according to the arrestee, the Watts tax could be as high as $50,000 a week.
He also told essentially the same story about the fate of Big Shorty that Echeverria was hearing from other sources. In the course of interrogating him, Echeverria threw out various different names, including some phony ones, then asked him about Big Shorty.
“Why you asking me about a dead man?”
“What can you tell me?”
“Do you want the street version or the paper version? The street version is you all did it. Watts did it. The paper version is a beef inside the GDs.”
Echeverria was impressed. “You hear a lot of stuff,” he recalled, “guys just lying to live. Not this guy.”
He confronted a dilemma. How could he report what he was hearing without having the code of silence enforced against him for ratting on another officer? “If I put pen to paper on this, my career will be over, not Watts’s.”
He called Spalding. “What the fuck do I do with this?” he asked.
“Go get a supervisor and make him do his job,” she replied.
Ida B. Wells Homes, 2007. Photo: David Schalliol
The plan was to create a situation in which the supervisor would have to file a report. Procedure would be followed, the allegations would be reported, but it wouldn’t come back to Echeverria.
He requested that Sgt. Watson come to the room where the suspect was being held. He used a pretext. “He’s asking for a white shirt,” he told Watson. “He’s got something to say.”
Watson entered the room and went to undo the man’s handcuffs. While his back was turned, Echeverria made hand gestures to prompt him to talk about Watts. The man launched into a riff about Watts, reiterating to Watson what he had told Echeverria.
“We’re not trying to hear that shit,” said Watson.
Afterward, Echeverria asked Watson, “Hey, Sarge, how do you want me to handle that information he gave us in the report?”
“Make that shit a negative,” said Watson.
Echeverria entertained the possibility that Watson would follow procedure and open a confidential complaint register, or CR. Had he done so, Echeverria would have been contacted by investigators, but the call never came.
One day, while he was typing up a report, Echeverria recalled, he heard the name “Watts” and tuned into a conversation several detectives were having about Watts’s possible involvement in the killing of Big Shorty. He was struck by the tenor of the conversation. The detectives seemed resigned that the department would not pursue the matter.
Spalding had also heard details about the Big Shorty homicide from a CPD officer detailed to work with the Drug Enforcement Administration, with whom she occasionally exchanged information on an informal basis. The officer told her that the DEA had Big Shorty on a homicide charge. He had offered up Watts and was in the process of proffering when he was killed. (A 2005 report on an interview with Wilbert Moore conducted by the DEA, CPD, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which recently became public in the case of a man who claims to have been framed by Watts and his team, establishes that Moore was cooperating with federal law enforcement and was providing information about Watts.)
Spalding didn’t know whether the stories about Watts were true — “I didn’t want them to be” — but she was losing her confidence that serious allegations of misconduct were being investigated by the department. “I’m getting more and more confused,” Spalding recalled feeling at the time. “How could these high officials not be doing their jobs? Did I take a different oath?”
While Spalding and Echeverria didn’t have definitive proof that Watts and members of his team had committed crimes, they were convinced there was sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation. And they felt obligated to do something.
They decided to go to the FBI. Once they provided their information, they assumed that would be the end of their involvement. Contacting the FBI, however, would prove to be less an end than a beginning. It would alter the trajectory of their lives and set in motion a sequence of events now moving inexorably toward a full public reckoning in Chicago with the nature and consequences of the code of silence within the CPD.Dawn of War 3 campaign lead Brent Disbrow says the team wants to “quite honestly raise our game” with the singleplayer campaign for Dawn of War 2. That's quite a claim from the studio that crafted Homeworld's story, and built some top class singleplayer missions such as Carentan Counterattack in Company of Heroes.
The studio has experimented with different singleplayer formats over the years, from the territorial system map of Soulstorm to more conventional linear campaigns. Dawn of War 3 will be different again, jumping from faction to faction with each mission as Space Marine, Eldar and Ork forces move to seize a powerful, nameless weapon.
“One thing that was really important to me and to Frank and other members of the team to show off the three factions quickly in the campaign rather than have the system where you play through like an entire act as one race and then an entire act as another race”, says game director Phillippe Boulle. “That's always fun except if you're the fan of the third race and then you feel that you have to wait for two-thirds of the campaign.”
“[Orks] field the most bodies of any of the armies on the field of battle. It's like a group of tazmanian devils from Looney Tunes.” Campaign lead Brent Disbrow, Relic
The format serves a few other purposes. It provides a varied and lore-light introduction to the universe for newcomers, quickly communicating the personality and capability of each faction. The Space Marines are a heavily armoured phalanx that strikes from the sky with super weapons. The Eldar are, as Disbrow describes them, the “sword wind”—masters of hit and run tactics. The Orks are a “maniac horde” who overrun enemies with sheer numbers. “They field the most bodies of any of the armies on the field of battle,” says Disbrow. “It's like a group of tazmanian devils from Looney Tunes.”
The campaign structure allows each faction to grow in power as the conflict escalates. As the story moves on, new objectives and rules are introduced and new elite units unlock, adding tactical depth. These heroes are vital, bringing Dawn of War 2's character development and micro abilities to Dawn of War 3's busier battlefields. “We wanted to take the epic scale of Dawn of War 1, the large over-the-top battles, and inject into that the awesome heroes from Dawn of War 2, make them the centrepoint of that battle, but have the battle be as large as Dawn of War 1, and bigger still” says Boulle.
Dawn of War 3 moves away from Dawn of War 2's heavy reliance on wargear. Levelling heroes up will unlock new abilities, but each elite's role is carefully defined, as Boulle explains. “One of the things with a really deep equipment system is that you can move units, they become a little mushy—they can do a little bit of everything. Dawn of War 3 units are built to do specific things. You unlock the option to make them do those things in a slightly different way but Gabriel is still an up-close melee brawler tank and Soleria [the Imperial Knight] is always going to be a ranged powerhouse.”
Each army has three elite slots that you fill before each battle. One of those slots will almost always be occupied by the army's leading hero character—Blood Raven captain Gabriel Angelos, in the case of the Space Marines. The other two slots can house super units such as the Imperial Knight, elite squads, or other individual heroes.
“We're going to suggest what heroes you might take in on a given mission, but we're going to let the player choose as well” says Boulle. “If you don't really know what you're doing there's a suggested hero selection for this mission. If you do, but you want to try something else, there's room to do that so you can experiment. That gives you the opportunity to learn more of the elites.”
Relic suggests that there will be a wide variety of elites to choose from, for all three factions. Since Dawn of War 2, hero customisation and progression has been a key part of the series. We'll have to wait and see how Dawn of War 3's wide range of heroes plays, not just in the campaign, but in multiplayer too. That's where players' favourite hero combinations will be put to the ultimate test.Kassem Gharaibeh (Arabic: قاسم الغرايبة; born October 10, 1983), known by his stage name Kassem G, is an American[1] comedian and actor, best known for his online content. His YouTube channel, "KassemG", hosts several hundred videos, most notably the California On, Going Deep and Street Music webseries.[2] He won the 2013 Streamy Award for Best Host for his work on California On.
Early life [ edit ]
Gharaibeh was born in Amman to an Egyptian mother and a Jordanian dad. He lived in Saudi Arabia at a very young age then moved to Florida when he was four years old.[2][3] He grew up in Ventura County, California.
Career [ edit ]
Before his YouTube career, Gharaibeh was working at a Best Buy and doing stand-up comedy on the weekends, mostly performing in small venues like restaurants. He got the idea to start making YouTube videos when his friend Cory Williams had a video that went viral. After working in retail for 10 years, Gharaibeh finally quit his job and began making videos full-time.[3]
In June 2011 and January 2012, he guest hosted the popular web series Equals Three, created by Ray William Johnson.[4][5] In 2011, he co-starred in the YouTube film, Agents of Secret Stuff starring Ryan Higa as Mr. Anderson.
He won the 2013 Streamy Award for Best Host, beating out four other nominees including Larry King.[6]
He has appeared on the cannabis culture-oriented podcast Getting Doug with High six times. He also appeared in a brief role in the 2014 film Transformers: Age of Extinction.[7]
In 2009, he co-founded Maker Studios along with Shay Butler and Lisa Donovan.[8] On March 24, 2014, Maker Studios accepted a buyout offer from The Walt Disney Company for $500 million, rising to $950 million if financial milestones were met.[9][10]
Webseries [ edit ]
Gharaibeh's YouTube channel features multiple episodic webseries.
California On [ edit ]
Gharaibeh interviews passersby on a specific topic, typically along the Venice Boardwalk. Topics have included gun control, marijuana and internet dating. Gharaibeh has also conducted interviews at numerous fan conventions, interviewing attendees about their costumes and film roles.
Going Deep [ edit ]
Gharaibeh interviews pornographic actors in a deadpan manner. He asks them comedic questions about their careers, and often implores them to perform skits with him. Notable guests have included Asa Akira, Ron Jeremy and Stoya.
Street Music [ edit ]
Gharaibeh and fellow YouTuber and musician NicePeter sing improvised songs throughout the streets of Los Angeles about the things and people they see, often to the displeasure or confusion of the subjects.Record-breaking temperatures prompt BOM to launch heatwave service early
Updated
The Bureau of Meteorology has brought forward the annual launch of its online heatwave service after months of record-breaking temperatures.
The service normally runs from November 1 to the end of March.
Key points The Bureau of Meteorology has launched its heatwave service early after high temperatures
The service compares the forecast for the next three days to long-term 'normal' temperatures
Extreme heat has killed more people in Australia than all other natural disasters combined
National heatwave project director John Nairn said the bureau had noticed increasing heat episodes in northern Australia and parts of the east coast, prompting it to bring the service forward by three weeks.
He said starting the service early was unusual.
"It won't happen every year. On occasion, particularly if you have sections of the country being affected by drought, it is likely that we will see some earlier heat events," he said.
Why does it matter?
Extreme heat has killed more people in Australia than all of the other natural disasters combined.
In February 2009, now infamous for the Black Saturday fires, 173 people died directly as a result of the fire.
It is less well known that 374 people died because of the heatwave leading up to the fires.
Fatalities in extreme weather: Hazard Period Fatalities High-risk states Extreme heat 1900-2011 4,555 Vic, NSW, SA Flood 1900-2015 1,859 Qld, NSW Tropical cyclone 1900-2015 1,216 WA, NT, Qld Bushfire 1900-2011 825 Vic, NSW, Qld Wind storm 1900-2015 525 NSW, Vic, Qld Source: Andrew Gissing, Risk Frontiers Source: Andrew Gissing, Risk Frontiers
While the elderly and young are most at risk from high temperatures, for most a moderate level heatwave is just part of an Australian summer.
But Mr Nairn said it was something everyone should be aware of.
"If normally fit people don't adapt and change their behaviour under extreme conditions, they too can be affected by the heat," he said.
"They are fairly rare events so it is hard to get the message through sometimes, but as they build into extreme events it becomes important for everyone to pay attention.
"Unfortunately under the warming environment that we're seeing, we are seeing more extreme events turning up more frequently."
How does the heatwave service work?
The service works by comparing the forecast for the next three days to the long-term 'normal' temperatures and how hot it has been leading up to the event.
It takes into account how unusually hot it is and how adapted people will be when the heatwave hits.
The bureau's definition of a heatwave is three or more days of high maximum and minimum temperatures that are unusual for a location.
Mr Nairn said overnight temperatures were the most important.
"The minimum temperature is probably the more dangerous temperature when you're looking at a heatwave," he said.
This is because hot overnight temperatures mean the maximum temperature is reached earlier the following day, so people are exposed to extreme temperatures for a longer period.
Comparing extreme heat events
The methods behind the service also allow for comparison between events, providing context between heatwaves in different locations.
It is a difficult task because the effects of a heatwave are highly dependent on how different events are from normal conditions — what is considered a heatwave in London would be very different from what is considered a heatwave in Alice Springs.
Mr Nairn said without that context, in south-east Australia we would have to go back to 1939 for the previous event that was at the same level of intensity as 2009.
"There is not much living memory of that event [1939]," he said.
"The trouble with rare events coming up infrequently is that if we haven't learnt … we're not likely to be doing the right thing."
But there are other more recent events globally that we can learn from.
Mr Nairn said the 2009 heatwave event was equivalent to the 2003 heatwave in western Europe, where there were about 30,000 deaths.
He said even considering population differences, Victoria had fared better than Europe.
"It's because we have relatively reliable power that feeds our air conditioning," Mr Nairn said.
"The French only have between a 5 and 15 per cent penetration for their air conditioning for cooling.
"But it does mean we have a very strong reliance upon power in order to keep that cooling operating."
This reliance could be a problem in the future.
"The longer a heatwave goes on, particularly if it is an extreme heatwave, it can begin to challenge our ability to maintain these utilities, such as power," Mr Nairn said.
"What we need now is for the public to understand their role in protecting themselves when they see these much larger events come through."
Topics: weather, disasters-and-accidents, health, qld, act, nsw, nt, sa, tas, vic, wa, australia
First postedAfter a torrid past few days, David Moyes nearly pulled off a tactical masterstroke as Manchester United return to England unscathed from a daunting trip to Ukraine.
No team has ever beaten Shakhtar Donetsk at the Donbass Arena so a 1-1 draw was a fairly impressive result for Moyes’ troops.
What follows is an analysis of the Scot’s exquisite tactics.
Three-Man Midfield and Controlling Tempo
Shakhtar deployed a 4-2-3-1 formation on Wednesday night and if Moyes would have chosen to play his usual 4-4-1-1 set-up, then United could have been easily outnumbered in midfield. Moreover, this could have left United’s defenders and midfielders vulnerable to the pace and physicality of Shakhtar’s players.
Moyes was aware of this, and hence, decided to put up a three-man midfield wall in front of his backline and instructed the two wingers to drop deep while defending.
Michael Carrick closed down the space in between the lines for Alex Teixeira, often making United’s formation a structured 4-1-4-1. Tom Cleverley and Marouane Fellaini (later Ryan Giggs) stayed very tight to Fernando and Tomas Hubschman respectively.
United’s midfielders performed their marking duties to such expertise that Shakhtar’s midfielders were unable to play freely and could only attempt a total of 37 attacking third passes. By contrast, the hosts’ right-back Darijo Srna alone had 39 registered to his name.
Douglas Costa plucked in from left-flank, but either he couldn’t find any space ahead of Nemanja Vidic and co or was closely monitored by Danny Welbeck or Patrice Evra.
This ensured Shakhtar were unable to attack down the centre and United’s first task was accomplished.
Now, in order to completely strike down Shakhtar’s threat with pace, Moyes instructed his players to play with a very slow tempo.
United were clam and patient in possession. They didn’t push men forward hurriedly or in large numbers. Attacks were slowly built up.
The Red Devils’ midfielders were sitting quite deep and were slow in making the attacking transition so this approach suited them, albeit it often left Robin van Persie isolated up-front when long balls were played to him.
Nonetheless, Moyes wanted his team to dominate possession so that they could set their own tempo and for the first 30 minutes, the Red Devils did so admirably well.
When Shakthar tried to catch their English counterparts on the break, United reorganized quickly owing to the limited number of players involved in an attack.
So, in turn, the Miners had no other option but to play at a slow tempo themselves- they needed more time to break up United.
This was a breathtaking tactical ploy by Moyes.
In possession, United set the tempo but even out of it, they controlled the pace of the game, thanks to a wonderful defensive set-up.
Task two accomplished.
The slow tempo and compact organization prevented Shakhtar from using their speed and strength to trouble United.
Frustrated, the Ukrainian champions shifted out wide. They tried overloads but United generally nullified the extra-men. Shakhtar’s full-backs and midfielders still managed to get space to cross, but their crossing was atrocious, while Vidic in particular dealt well with all the deliveries into the box, expect the low ball that pounced in Taison’s way in the 76th minute.
So, one can say United shut down Shakhtar’s all possible avenues of attack. This compelled Mircea Lucescu’s men to pass the ball among themselves in the defending third.
And United let their opposition keep possession as long as it didn’t enter their half (United’s). Thus, Shakhtar’s four defenders saw a lot of the ball and made a total of 326 passes.
Inability to Keep Possession
There was one flaw in United’s cautious approach.
Handing over possession to Shakhtar didn’t really harm them, but it wasn’t part of Moyes’ tactical plan.
“We said at half-time we needed to keep the ball better, but we actually gave it away more in the second half, so I was disappointed we didn’t pass it better,” noted the Scot.
Moyes wanted United to keep hold of the ball but his players stuttered in doing so after around the 30-minute mark. Fellaini was horrendous. He got dispossessed five times and gave away the ball needlessly. Moyes brought on Ryan Giggs so that United could control the game in the final stages and protect the one goal lead.
Lack of Goal Attempts
Lack of possession after initial domination meant United had to play on the counter. But the visitors were unwilling to risk increasing the tempo of the match so they rarely attempted any fast-pace counter-attacks.
Whenever United regained possession, the English champions tried to build up slowly from the back. As a result, United had only four shots on goal.
But this wasn’t an issue for Moyes for, his prime aim was to prevent Shakhtar from scoring and United had already pocketed an early away goal via Welbeck.
“On paper this looked a hard away tie and we have picked up a good point,” said the former Everton manager, implying he wasn’t really concerned with the lack of attacking impetus.
Conclusion
Moyes’ set-up was excellent and well-planned. His players could have done better but a point on the road is a very good result and this game proves Moyes’ tactical acumen.
How do you think Moyes did in his second Champions League match? Comment in the section below.One of my favorite Mormon books this year has been BYU historian Craig Harline’s funny and wise memoir Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Live Mormon Missionary.
Here’s the endorsement I gave the book, and a Q&A with the author:
Craig Harline’s experiences as a Mormon missionary in Belgium in the mid-1970s are ingeniously funny, but they also point to important issues: how religious people deal with apparent failure and navigate grown-up faith after childish certainties have proven inadequate.
RNS: When you left for your mission, you had sky-high expectations about what you’d accomplish in Belgium. What were you hoping for?
Craig Harline: It was to make a lot of converts. And unusually, I did have a specific number in mind: 84 converts. It just came in to my head, as I describe it in the book.
I think a lot of missionaries just expect people to immediately respond to what you have always believed to be true. I just thought people would be so glad to see us, and hear us.
RNS: You say you felt like a failure most of the time. What was the most discouraging part?
Harline: When people did not respond in the way that I hoped. I really expected that they would be thrilled. The first family we went to see were so kind to us, I was just sure they would convert. But that happened over and over again, where people were kind but did not want our religion.
It just made you feel really lousy, like you were doing a bad job or there was something wrong with you.
RNS: In a time of great discouragement you had an epiphany of sorts: that you were supposed to just be yourself on your mission. But the answer to prayer you’d really been hoping for was “magical proselyting techniques” or a “new dose of heroic resolve” to get those 84 converts. The idea that God wanted you to just be yourself seemed to fly in the face of the idea you’d had growing up that you’d transform into some kind of super-missionary.
Harline: I imagined that I was going to become this other stupendous person, rather than what I’d been so far. I had definitely failed at some things – at sports, or with girls, or even at religious things. I just imagined that a mission would transform that. I was going to morph into the kind of missionary who would “overcome objections”—that was the language we used—and magically make these people convert. I always thought that if I just had the right answers, others would see that.
Just being yourself is hard to accept at first, because it’s so much less than what you imagined yourself becoming.
RNS: What happens if your mission doesn’t work out according to the “One True Missionary Story” that says if you stay righteous and work hard, you’ll make converts?
Harline: Yeah, that’s when you have the crisis. That’s when you have to find some other way of coping. The first thing you do is to fix the things that might be wrong with you, and there are lots of those. You can keep doing that forever. The next thing is that you lose faith. Maybe you lose faith in that missionary story, or even faith in all of it.
Or a third path is that you just alter the missionary story. And that’s part of maturing. It’s hard to do. But adjusting your ideals and accepting yourself is an important part of growing up. You begin to realize that your missionary story is the One True Missionary Story. You help create this new ideal of beauty and truth. It’s not a selling out. You still have an ideal, but you have taken responsibility for creating it.
RNS: I was totally fascinated to read that you, and other RMs, still have nightmares that you’re suddenly called back on a mission.
Harline: I started asking people about it maybe 10 or 15 years after I got home. Some people had no idea what I was talking about, but so many others had the same kind of dreams. People who have the dream never felt quite good enough on their mission.
A 60-year-old man, a university professor, emailed me last week and said, “I thought that was own my private struggle all these years.” And even though he hasn’t been in the Church for years, in the dream he always agrees to go when he’s told that he has to serve another mission!
It helps just knowing that someone else has also experienced all this, that their mission was really difficult for them. There are plenty of us who are happy to be Mormon, but didn’t like everything about our mission.
Never miss a Flunking Sainthood blog post! Sign up at the top right to receive an email alert for each new post.Despite many earlier reports stating that Kanye West was doing “much better” and suggesting he may be able to go home on Monday, TMZ is now reporting that the rapper is “not stable enough” and will not be released as planned. A source close to the situation states that West is struggling with “extreme paranoia” and therefore no exact date for his release has been set as of yet. Kim Kardashian has been by his side almost nonstop with Us Weekly reporting that she ”wouldn’t leave his side except to see the kids. She’s been at the hospital all the time. Kim has been keeping a very close watch on him and not letting people disturb him. All kinds of people have called and sent flowers, but she’s being very careful about not letting him get wound up and making sure he rests and recovers.”
It’s been almost a week since Kanye was admitted to the hospital after some bizarre antics at his Saint Pablo Tour shows including rants aimed at Jay Z and Beyoncé. The remainder of the tour was later canceled.Introduction to PnP
The Office 365 Developer Patterns & Practices (PnP) initiative was originally formed in 2013 by a group of Microsoft consultants who were working on helping on-premises customers to move their SharePoint deployments to cloud. As part of this customer facing work we came up with initial transformation patterns and collected input on what works and what does not work from enterprise development perspective using add-in model.
Since there was clearly a growing interest for customers to move to cloud, all of these learnings and patterns were initially shared cross Microsoft with a project name as ‘Gapps’. At the time this was not really that official and ‘Gapps’ was great name since we provided guidance on how to address gaps in the add-in mode. It did not refer to “Google-Apps”, which was my manager’s initial question when he heard about this first time.
Since these patterns and code had significant demand also from other customers and partners, we decided to move to CodePlex and program was renamed as Office App Model Samples or Office AMS. We released this project in the SPC 2014. There was clearly a massive demand in the community for this material and project was the most visited project at CodePlex immediately on the week it was released.
Based on the success and demand, Microsoft Product Marketing wanted to ensure more visibility for the program and on end of July 2014, program was relaunched using the brand “Office 365 Developer Patterns and Practices” or simply as PnP. At the same time, we made also a decision to move to GitHub were also many other Microsoft driven programs and solutions were gradually moving.
As part of the initial efforts we also started creating new PnP Core component, which was then released as it’s own Nuget package as part of our monthly releases. PnP Core component is managed code, which encapsulates common CSOM operations to more simplified interface and is targeted to simplify development and therefore also to increase productivity of developers. New versions of the Core component is released on monthly basis as part of the PnP monthly releases and it has different versions for on-premises and SPO due the different capabilities supported on both sides.
Lot of the PnP samples and guidance concentrates on the SharePoint add-in model and more specifically on showing how to implement typical SharePoint customizations using add-in model techniques. One of the key reason for this is that many of the PnP Core team members are working full time on this area with enterprise customers and we feed PnP guidance from this customer facing work. This is also the reason why many of the PnP samples and solutions demand full permissions to host web, site collection or to tenant, which makes them not suitable to be distributed using SharePoint store. We are however absolutely open for contributions for other areas as well and start now growing program outside of the SharePoint samples.
We have come a long way from the start together with the community members. From day one objective was to provide first internal and then public channel where community can easily share their learnings and patterns, which are also approved and reviewed by Microsoft engineering. By sharing our learnings between others in the community, we can start building on common knowledge cross the community.
Some of initial thinking behind the model working with community to solve the problems together on SharePoint and Office 365 development is coming from years back. Obviously this is not unique model cross the industry. Here’s a slide from my SharePoint MCM delivery decks around site provisioning from SP2010 time frame (this is from 2010 or 2011). It’s great to see that with community we have been able to create something as unique as PnP Provisioning engine for this specific area, not obviously forgetting all the other guidance and code what the PnP is providing.
Note. this slide is referencing more towards cloud transition, but you can also use remote provisioning models on-premises. There’s growing interest on driving consistency cross development models for cloud and on-premises.
Usage and growth during past year
Growth of the PnP guidance usage and interest has been really great during the past year. Obviously the fact that we have released new community contributed content constantly on monthly basis has kept the interest on-going. We are also delightful to see how community members are helping each other in the GitHub and in Yammer. We have tracked different numbers during past year (starting from November 2014) and here’s two charts showing the growth in practice. These are pretty impressive and big thank belongs for the people who have contributed and shared their learnings.
During June 2015 we did quick PnP usage survey for the community to collect feedback on making decisions around following steps in PnP program. We wanted to understand value what the program provides and also collection input on following concentration areas. Here’s quick notes based on the collected information. We get 150 responses on the survey.
60% of responses stated that PnP guidance has saved at least 10 days of development time in their project. 10% stated that overall save with PnP is more than 50 days.
80% of responses had used PnP in their on-premises or Office 365 deployments
80% of responses had custom site provisioning solution built, from which 82% were using PnP provisioning engine
40% of the responses indicated that next concentration area should be Office 365 APIs. ALM, additional SP add-in guidance and on-premises guidance were equally important and only 10% indicated that Office Add-Ins would be important
We are also highly grateful on the free comments which were part of the survey. Here’s few quotes on them.
“One of the greatest things done to devs. Thank you and keep up the good work.”
“You guys seem to have the experience of what is needed out in the field. A lot of the stuff you guys built should make it in to the product right away.”
“Amazing effort by the team from both MS and community members (love the Core and PowerShell)!”
“Office PnP is by far the most collaborative and open forum I have ever seen in my 15 years working with Microsoft. It’s helping us drive O365 projects and advise our customers on technical direction. Please keep up the good work!”
“This is the most valuable resource for developers Microsoft has ever produced.”
Community involvement and contributions
PnP Core team is the group of people who have sufficient permissions to approve pull requests in the GitHub |
feel like a musical instrument, with you as the virtuoso.
One of the series’ most controversial design elements is its sense of fairness, or lack thereof. Ever since Mario Kart 64 introduced the spiky blue shell—a weapon that punishes success by homing in on the race leader to unleash a momentum-sapping blast—Mario Kart has struggled to find the best balance between luck and skill. While driving prowess needs to make a difference, Nintendo wants less talented players to have a chance at the winner’s podium, too.
It’s a tough compromise to strike, and Mario Kart 8 nails it. Overall, Nintendo has moved the needle a bit toward skill. But that’s a pat way to summarize a complex interaction of power-ups, weapons, and artificial intelligence that rewards experienced drivers while keeping novices very much in the mix. Yes, I’d still lose races on the white-knuckle 150cc difficulty when one of my opponents picked up a choice item at the last minute and swooped in for a cheap victory. Usually, though, this happened after I’d left an opening through some shortfall in my own driving.
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In any case, I had to laugh at these final-lap high jinks. I’m happy to take my lumps here because this sequel isn’t as dispiritingly random as some Mario Kart titles that have came before. (There’s even a semi-obscure way to thwart the blue shell now, although I won’t reveal that secret.) Beginners don’t get short-changed, either. My wife, hardly a kart-racing veteran, admired the fact that Mario Kart 8 is “fun even when you’re losing.”
Battle Mode, which invites players to pound each other with Mario Kart’s Koopa shells, banana peels, and other adorable ordnance, is the one major letdown. Rather than constructing bespoke Battle Mode arenas, Nintendo repurposed full racetracks from the main game. What used to be a frenzy is now a dull affair, as the tracks are so large that combatants spend a lot of time just looking for someone else to attack. It’s likely that Nintendo made a conscious choice to punt on Battle Mode in order to focus on perfecting the meatier parts of the game. That’s an acceptable trade-off.
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I’ve had Mario Kart 8 for weeks now, and I’m still discovering delightful details. A whole article could be written, for instance, about how the game uses sound design to keep players oriented on its loopy, dazzling courses. With console games like Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D World, and Game & Wario, the company has recaptured the whimsy and confident vision that made the NES era so memorable. I don’t mean to imply that Nintendo ever hit a true slump with its home consoles—and its portable offerings have been more consistent—but the creatively erratic Wii years were a low point, and the Wii U is looking more like a high point.
The only trouble is that too few people are witnessing this renaissance: It’s no secret that sales of the Wii U have failed to gain much traction. Gameological doesn’t make purchase recommendations, but if you’re one of those people who admires Nintendo’s yesteryear, let me encourage you to at least give this humble console another look. Mario Kart 8 may look different from its pixelated forebears of the ’80s and ’90s, but it’s infused with the same magical spirit and exacting craftsmanship. It’s the kind of game that’s bound to inspire nostalgia someday."For every Kentuckian that has enrolled in Obamacare, 40 have been dropped from their coverage."
Now that more than 8 million Americans have signed up for coverage under Obamacare, the White House has all but declared victory after the law’s initially troubled rollout. But many of the law’s critics continue to see the law as a disaster.
A reader sent us a newsletter to constituents released by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a critic of the law and a potential presidential candidate in 2016.
Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter, which was dated May 2, 2014:
"Since the implementation of Obamacare, hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians have received cancellation notices from their current health care providers. For every Kentuckian that has enrolled in Obamacare, 40 have been dropped from their coverage. Obamacare has been presented to the American people through twisted rhetoric, smoke and mirrors. Obamacare is not good for America and it certainly (is) not good for Kentucky. I would like (to) hear how Obamacare affected you, your family or your small business. Share your story by visiting my website."
The claim that leapt out at us was, "For every Kentuckian that has enrolled in Obamacare, 40 have been dropped from their coverage." Could that really be true? We took a look at the data.
How many Kentuckians have received cancellation notices?
Tracking cancellations isn’t so easy, because cancellations are issued by private health insurance companies, and regulations differ in each state. The Associated Press assembled a comprehensive, 50-state look at Obamacare-related cancellations and concluded that, in Kentucky, 130,000 people received cancellation notices. Meanwhile, the Kentucky Department of Insurance has put the number at 168,000.
So a reasonable number for cancellations in Kentucky is probably between 130,000 and 168,000.
How many Kentuckians have signed up for Obamacare?
The answer depends on your definition of "Obamacare."
The broader measure includes both signups for private insurance at the state-run Kynect insurance marketplace, as well as signups for Medicaid, the longstanding government-run health insurance program for the poor that Kentucky chose to expand under Obamacare.
In late April 2014, the state announced that 82,795 Kentuckians had purchased private plans on Kynect and 330,615 others had qualified for Medicaid coverage, for a total of 413,410. Data from the federal Department of Health and Human Services that counts a few more weeks of signups had slightly higher numbers.
Comparing the two numbers
Using just these numbers, Paul is either wrong or very wrong.
The smaller number -- private-insurance number of signups (82,795) -- is exceeded by the number of cancellations (up to 168,000), but at most, the discrepancy is only twice as big, not 40 times as big.
But it’s not clear that this is the right number to use. Paul’s newsletter didn’t only refer to private plans, and the Medicaid expansion was just as much a part of Obamacare as the marketplaces for private health insurance plans.
So if you include both types of signups (413,410), then the combined Medicaid and private-insurance signups in Kentucky actually exceeded the number of cancellations by more than double. So Paul’s claim is not just off-base, it’s actually going in the opposite direction.
In fact, the 40-times-higher claim is ridiculously off-base.
If you take the smallest possible number of signups (82,795, counting just the new private plans) and multiply it by 40, you’d need more than 3.3 million cancellations to make the math work.
Yet as of 2011-12, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, there were only about 2.2 million Kentuckians who had insurance that could even theoretically be canceled -- either insurance purchased individually or provided by employer. The remainder either had government-provided insurance such as Medicare or Medicaid or were uninsured.
Gail Wilensky, who headed Medicare and Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush, said that the number of employers who drop coverage in the future "could be a real issue," but for the 2014 statistics, she said, Paul’s calculation seemed "wildly off base."
Our inquiries to Paul’s office were not returned.
Our ruling
Paul said that "for every Kentuckian that has enrolled in Obamacare, 40 have been dropped from their coverage." That’s not mathematically possible. If you take the narrowest definition of "sign-ups," there would have to be 3.3 million cancellations in the state for Paul’s statement to be accurate -- and there aren’t even that many Kentuckians with private insurance plans that could theoretically be canceled. In fact, it’s reasonable to argue that more people in Kentucky have coverage through Obamacare than have been canceled. Paul’s statement is so wildly off that we rate it Pants on Fire.
UPDATE, May 6, 2014: After we published this item, Paul’s office contacted us to explain how they calculated the 40-to-1 ratio of cancellations to signups. The office said that "the numbers he used were accurate as of November of last year" but that staffers failed "to update the numbers for the newsletter." Specifically, Paul’s office said that a Nov. 8, 2013, news release from the Kentucky governor’s office reported that 7,011 Kentuckians had enrolled in a private health plan through Nov. 8, compared to the 280,000 Kentuckians who the state believed at the time might be subject to cancellation notices.
However, in the six months since, the number of private-plan signups has soared by a factor of 10, while the state released a smaller estimate of cancellation notices (168,000). Even in November, Paul’s estimate was cherry-picked; it excluded the 33,561 Kentuckians who enrolled in Medicaid, a program that saw its eligibility expanded under Obamacare.
Even though the new numbers were available to Paul’s staff at the time the newsletter was put together, Paul’s office counted only the first two months of signups and ignored the final six months, a period when enrollment rose steadily. Our ruling stands: Pants on Fire.Happy Friday!
Now before you go watch any other videos of cable news personalities “grilling” or “battling” with each other, take a break from all that political stuff and watch this gem of a live news blooper.
NBC’s Philadelphia affiliate recently debuted its brand-new “News Chopper SkyForce 10” with an incredibly high-def camera. Naturally, they’ve been taking it out for a spin at every opportunity.
This week, they decided to spend much of an afternoon hovering over a Germantown, Pa., home under investigation for allegedly running a dogfighting ring. And viewers got a taste of just how good that HD camera was when it focused on two of the dogs having a grand ol’ humpin’ time in the backyard.
As WCAU reporter Christine Maddela attempted to report on her findings, the SkyForce 10 camera caught a dog mounting his pal.
“You can see that one dog is, um, chained up, ” Maddela said with obvious hesitation before the camera quickly zoomed out and the copter moved to film the front yard instead.
Watch below, via WCAU:
[h/t FTVLive]
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>> Follow Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comIn the wake of superstorm Sandy in 2012, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo led the way in linking a rise in extreme weather to climate change. “The denial and deliberation from extremists on both sides about the causes of climate change are distracting us from addressing its inarguable effects,” he wrote in an op-ed after the storm. But Cuomo has been notoriously silent on what’s causing more extreme weather. On Sunday, he did it again.
After a press conference, he linked last week’s catastrophic snowstorm in western New York to extreme weather, but he dodged what he called a "political debate" on the causes of climate change.
"I don't want to get into a political debate at this time about climate change causes, et cetera," he said. "Forget the causes. Is it global warming? Is it reliance on fossil fuels? Forget the causes. What is inarguable is the result."
Cuomo has avoided discussing the causes of climate change in the past, too. In that same post-Sandy op-ed, Cuomo scarcely mentioned fossil fuels. As Capital New York notes, Cuomo also avoided how human activity plays a role in his memoir. “There's debate over global warming, but surely we must all agree that extreme weather patterns have developed,” he says. “And most scientists believe these will accelerate in the coming years.”CHICAGO (CBS) — One man was electrocuted, another man was seriously hurt from being electrically shocked Tuesday morning from a power line while tree-trimming in Addison.
Crews from the Addison Fire Department and Addison Police Department responded Tuesday around 11 a.m. to a call of a person who had fallen from a tree near Villa Avenue and Myrick Avenue.
Officials in Addison said two men were cutting limbs from a tree near a Com Ed electrical line, when contact was made and the two men received an electric shock from a power line. Both critically injured. WBBM’s Steve Miller reports.
One man was in cardiac arrest when paramedics arrived on the scene – in a yard near Villa Avenue and Myrick Avenue – said Scott Walker, Deputy Chief of the Addison Fire Protection District. The man was believed to have been thrown from the ladder. He was transported to an area hospital in critical condition.
“We had two individuals that were tree-trimming in a back yard. It appears one of them came in contact with a high voltage line that basically shocked them both,” Walker said. “We had one individual that was found on the ground and the other individual – unresponsive at the top of the ladder tied to a tree.”
A second man was still secured in the tree and had to be extricated. He was shocked twice and ended up unconscious. Com Ed was notified and promptly responded to turn off the electrical power.
Both the Addison and Lombard Fire Department assisted in taking the man down from the tree. He was then air lifted to a local trauma center in serious condition, according to statement from Addison officials.
There was a third person working with the men who called 911.
Investigators are calling the incident an accident that could have been prevented. CBS 2’s Marissa Bailey reports.
“I must emphasize, if you are not a professional, you really should not be up in the trees in the power lines trimming them,” said Addison Fire Protection District Chief Joe Leone.
Walker said the men were working within a foot of a power line. He said the general rule is: Don’t get within 10 feet of a power line.
“It appeared to be just a small line,” he said, “but it did turn out to have much higher voltage than anyone would’ve expected.”
The victim has been identified as Jose Fulgencio-Hueramo, 51, of Melrose Park.
The identity of the other man involved is still being investigated; however, it appears to be private homeowners and not a tree cutting service, according to Addison officials.
“It doesn’t appear that they were professional tree trimmers and it may have been one person helping out another person, homeowners,” Chief Joe Leone said.
Com Ed personnel and the Addison Fire Department are investigating the incident.Game Title: The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel II
Developer: Falcom, XSEED
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 3.1 GB
NA Availability: Retail | Digital Download
EU Availability: Retail | Digital Download
The Legend of Heroes series is something PS Vita gamers have been looking at a lot these days. Trails of Cold Steel has gotten a lot of reputation since its western release and as such, its sequel has received a lot of hype and interest as well. The lengthy journey of Cold Steel is continuing in the west soon, and many are both looking forward to it and asking the question of whether or not the sequel lives up to the original.
Past all of this hype and “God status” some people may have placed upon the series, Cold Steel II is now out for PlayStation gamers to get into and enjoy. I’ve been working tirelessly since I received my copy to be able to review it for you on release day. So, here it is. After having beaten the final boss just last night, here’s my review of the Vita version of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II!
Story
1 month after the events of Trails of Cold Steel, Class VII is scattered throughout Erebonia and the country is in the middle of an intense civil war. Rean, the main character of the first game, finds himself in a mountain range in the aftermath of the final battle. Upon recovering, he then vows not only to reunite with his fellow classmates, but also do what he can to find his place in the world and in the war.
The story really makes the game feel more like a continuation than a brand new game. Everything proceeds as if it were just a part of the first game, coming in right where it was left off. Even many parts of the game help give it this feel.
As far as starting the series with 2, it is possible. In the main menu of Cold Steel II, there is a rather extensive and lengthy “Backstory” section which goes into great detail on the events of the first game. So, if you don’t wanna play the 50-60 hour journey that is CS1 before playing this game, you very much can.
Gameplay
Like its predecessor, Trails of Cold Steel II is a turn-based RPG with a variety of other elements thrown into the mix. For the majority of the game, you’ll be exploring towns and dungeons, fighting off enemies and bosses, and developing bonds with other characters on off days. So, it’s pretty much the same kind of game as the first Cold Steel.
Among the changes between the first and this game is the fact that this isn’t a school simulation style of RPG. Rather than going through classes each chapter, you will be exploring various towns and dungeons across the world like many traditional RPGs do. You’ll still have days to spend bonding points on developing relationships with other characters, but that’s the only thing reminiscent of that school life. It feels much more like a traditional RPG.
The other major addition to the game, outside of balancing and vehicles that you can use in dungeons, are mech battles. In many sections of the game, you’ll have to fight by controlling a giant robot fighting other giant robots. This feels like a completely different game since it plays out very different from normal fights. It’s still turn-based, but focuses more on finding weak points and managing energy than normal JRPG battles.
There is also the ability to customize your mech, both with weapons as you progress through the game as well as creating equipment that will increase its stats. This is something crucial towards the end of the game, but something you’ll be using for a good amount of it.
With all of this in mind, the game progresses in three parts. Two of those parts are heavily story-led while the middle section gives you a lot more freedom to go where you choose, do side-quests, recruit allies to enhance your base of operations, and the like. While the series is known for the linear story progression, this is a nice way to mix things up.
Combat, itself, isn’t much different from before. Most of the changes here are balancing and a couple extra features, like obtaining new S-Break Ultimate Attacks and a couple story-involved abilities for Rean which I am unable to talk about in this review. The playable character count has been upped, though. While you’ll mostly be using Class VII in your party, there will be a lot of temporary party members, bringing the total up around 20 different characters.
One thing that has changed is the length. If you recall, Cold Steel was about 50-60 hours long. Those looking for a super-long RPG won’t find it in Cold Steel II. While it is a long game and has a ton happening across its story, it only took me around 30-35 hours to finish Cold Steel II, not counting the side story chapter after the main story (which is more tying in with another Legend of Heroes game). Granted, that’s still long for an RPG, but not nearly as long as the first game was.
Controls
Not really a whole lot to say about the controls. But, Cold Steel II is compatible with the PlayStation TV. Unlike the first game, you will not have to update the game with a patch to get it working. It will work fine right out of the box.
Pretty much the same controls as before. Left analog moves your character and Right analog moves the camera. D-Pad is used for menus and zooming in and out while in the field. The L and R buttons are used in battle for Linking with other characters or swapping out party members. Then the X button is used for selecting commands, Square for looking at enemy information, Triangle for opening the menu, and Circle for cancelling options in menus.
Presentation
This is pretty much the same song and dance as the first game. There’s a lot of detail and the visual presentation is very pretty. There are a couple jagged edges here and there, but all in all, the game is really well done in terms of graphical presentation.
The biggest technical mishap from the first game is the fact that a lot of cutscenes had lag and frame dips. This still happens in some scenes, but is overall better than the first game. There are still big frame drops in cutscenes, but there aren’t nearly as many scenes that do that here than in the original Cold Steel. No frame drops in actual gameplay, which means they won’t affect how the game is played.In November, 1981, Aoki and three other men made a harrowing and record-breaking 5,208 mile balloon ride across the Pacific. The Double Eagle V balloon set sail from Nagashima, Japan; the balloon picked up ice and floated at low altitudes across the ocean. It crash-landed 84.5 hours later in the mountains of Northern California during a driving rainstorm. In an effort to slow the balloon’s descent, the crew had thrown equipment overboard; Aoki was knocked unconscious in the landing. The whole crew was fished out the tree the following day and received by well-wishers and a mariachi band in Albuquerque. “If you are afraid to die, you are probably afraid to live,” Aoki said at the time.
The Double Eagle V’s record was finally broken this January when an American and Russian flew across the Pacific.by MICHAEL PECK
In the blazing ruins of Stalingrad, where men hunted men with such savagery that even the dogs fled howling into the night, occurred the greatest sniper duel in history.
Too bad it’s more myth than history.
On one side was Vasily Zaitsev, the Soviet army’s deadliest sniper, with some 400 kills. On the other was one “Major Konig,” the head of the German army’s sniper school in Berlin, whom the Nazi high command had dispatched to Stalingrad to hunt down Zaitsev. They met on a fateful afternoon—two marksmen stalking each other on the battlefield. Only Zaitsev survived. Or so the popular retelling would have you believe.
This epic contest between two supersnipers has been immortalized in numerous books and most famously in the 2001 movie Enemy at the Gates. In his autobiography Notes of a Russian Sniper, Zaitsev himself describes how he carefully studied the battlefield until he deduced that Konig was hidden under a sheet of iron surrounded by a small pile of bricks, in the no-man’s-land between the German and Soviet lines.
Mindful that Konig had already picked off several of his fellow snipers, Zaitsev baited a trap with his friend Kulikov.
Kulikov fires off a blind shot. We have to arouse the sniper’s interest. We decide to sit out the first half of the day; light reflecting from the scopes could give us away. In the afternoon our rifles are in the shade while the direct light of the sun falls upon the German’s position.
Something sparkles by the edge of the sheet. Is this a piece of glass that just happens to be there, or is the telescopic sight of a sniper’s rifle? Very carefully, as only the most experienced sniper would do, Kulikov starts to raise a helmet. The German fires. Kulikov raises himself for a brief moment, shouts loudly and falls.
It was then that Konig paid for his final mistake, Zaitsev writes. Thinking his Soviet nemesis was dead, Konig “sticks half of his head out from under the sheet. I fire. The German’s head sinks, and the optical sight of his rifle sparkles in the sunlight.”
Could there be a more dramatic war story? No—considering it’s probably not true.
Above — Valery Zaitsev. At top — German sniper at Stalingrad. Photos via Wikipedia
British historian Frank Ellis, in his 2013 book The Stalingrad Cauldron skillfully shoots the story full of holes.
First, there is no mention in German that a master sniper named Major Konig (Ellis spells it “Konings”) ever existed. Nor had the Germans established a sniper school in Berlin in 1942 or ’43, when the Battle of Stalingrad was fought.
Ellis also notes that while Zaitsev usually provides specific dates for the events in his book, there is no date listed for when he killed Konig. “In view of the vast amount of interest in this duel then and long after the war, it is striking that no Soviet account provides the precise date on which Konings succumbed,” Ellis writes.
Ellis also points to inconsistencies in Zaitsev’s account. Zaitsev describes slaying Konig in the afternoon after sunlight glints off the German’s rifle or scope. But for that to happen, Konig must have been facing west into the setting sun, even though the German lines were facing east.
It would not be unusual for a sniper like Konig to have infiltrated behind the Soviet positions so that he was facing west, but then Zaitsev states the Konig’s sniper hole was in the no-man’s-land in front of German lines, suggesting he was indeed facing east. “Zaitsev shows himself to be aware of the hazard of sunlight,” writes Ellis. “Are we to believe that his formidable opponent was not, and that he made this elementary and fatal error?”
According to Zaitsev, he and Kulikov dragged Konig’s body back to Soviet lines after dark. “We removed his documents and handed them over to the divisional commander,” he writes. But Ellis says that he has “yet to come across a single Soviet or post-Soviet source that provides any details of these documents or that even acknowledges their existence, apart from Zaitsev’s account.”
Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad. Wikipedia photo
The Soviet and German armies in World War II used hordes of snipers—far more than the American and British armies—to pick off enemy officers, artillery observers and machine-gun crews. The Soviets were especially aggressive in using them in Stalingrad; German records are filled with complaints about moving out their trenches only at the risk of their lives.
Thus it is quite possible that Zaitsev fought and killed a German sniper that day. That his victim was some German uber-sniper, who fell for a simple ruse, is a more dubious proposition.
While the image of today’s sniper is of a highly-trained professional, such training would not have been a necessity in a close-range urban battle such as Stalingrad, Ellis tells me. When engaging an enemy at ranges of less than 100 meters, “keeping one’s cool is essential, especially if the enemy is allowed to pass over a soldier’s position so that the enemy can then be engaged from the rear,” the author says by email.
“It can also be noted that in the dense forests of Finland, Finnish snipers would engage Soviet troops at very close ranges—Japanese also in World War II,” Ellis continues. “At these sorts of ranges, most soldiers do not need to be highly qualified snipers and are able to kill with one shot.”
So why the legend of Zaitsev versus Konig? Because propaganda is as formidable and useful a weapon as a rifle or tank. In the hands of a skilled writer such as Vasily Grossman, who wrote that Zaitsev had never hurt a living creature until motivated by hatred of the German invaders, the Soviet people could find a hero to inspire them in the long and bloody struggle against Nazi Germany.
A nation that sustained millions of deaths in a terrible conflict can be forgiven for needing heroes.
Yet the enduring appeal of the Stalingrad story also shows our fascination with snipers, those skilled hunters of men. If the duel involves two such craftsmen pitted against each other, then so much the better. The Great Stalingrad Duel may be myth. But that makes it no less a dramatic story.Democratic Rep. Andre Carson (Ind.) said on Friday that Trump's presidency is "unraveling before our eyes."
"Condemning neo-Nazis and white supremacists should be easy," he said. President Trump, he argued, decided "to stand up for... bigots and defend a domestic terrorist organization," he said on an ABC's Powerhouse Politics" podcast.
Carson also weighed in on the recent firing of White House strategist Steve Bannon, saying that the former Breitbart News boss "should never have been hired in the first place."
"It was disgraceful to hire someone who said the terrible things he did," Carson added. "This is long overdue.
Carson's comments come just a few days after he and fellow Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) co-sponsored a bill urging President Trump to fire advisers and White House staff who are white supremacists.
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon, policy adviser Stephen Miller and Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka were all specifically named in the resolution, which claimed they had supported white supremacists and demanded their firing.
Trump has faced mounting pressure in recent days to disavow hate groups after he appeared during a Tuesday news conference to equate white nationalists with counterprotesters who had turned out in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend to oppose them.
In that press conference, Trump also criticized those he called "alt-left" demonstrators, accusing them of violently confronting racist groups protesting the city of Charlottesville's decision to remove a Confederate statue from a park.
Trump's comments on the matter have reignited a national debate over Confederate statues and monuments and whether they should be removed from government buildings and public locations.PHILADELPHIA -- After a sparkling start to his Rangers’ tenure last season, Derick Brassard wasn’t quite sure what to expect heading into camp this fall.
Though he emerged as one of the bright spots of the Rangers' disappointing playoff run with 12 points in 12 games last spring, Brassard came to New York knowing there would be a new coach, new system and plenty of new faces on the team.
From the looks of it Tuesday night, the 25-year-old center is poised to build on last season’s success.
In leading the Rangers to a 3-2 win over the Flyers in Philadelphia (and the first under new coach Alain Vigneault), Brassard finished with a goal, an assist and what appeared to be some pretty good chemistry with linemates Benoit Pouliot and Mats Zuccarello.
“I was pretty pleased with how our line played tonight,” said Brassard, who earned first-star honors for the night.
He admittedly did not have to do much to notch his first goal of the preseason. Zuccarello made a beautiful behind-the-net feed right to Brassard’s tape. Brassard roofed it from the right circle to beat Flyers goaltender Steve Mason and give the Rangers a 1-0 lead just 1:10 into play in the second period.
“Zuke, honestly, I got to know him a lot and he’s a special player. When you look at him, he’s not big but he’s really shifty. He sees the ice really well,” Brassard said. “All credit to him, I didn’t do too much.”
Brassard picked up an assist later in the game when he scooped a rebound and dished off to Pouliot, who darted to the crease for the go-ahead goal that snapped a 2-2 draw in the second period.
“It’s a little confidence-booster to score a goal, whenever it is,” Pouliot said.
Though Pouliot has never played with Brassard outside of training camp, he’s played against him enough to know what type of skill he possesses.
“For him, when he gets the puck, he’s real dangerous,” Pouliot said. “If you play against him, you don’t want him to have the puck down low. He’s shifty, he’s quick... he’ll make that sauce pass. That tough one that’s hard to make, he’ll make it.”
On a night where he could have identified a lot that he’d like to tweak or fix, Vigneault was encouraged to see that sort of production and play from Brassard’s line.
"There seems to be a little bit of chemistry there, and hopefully it’s going to continue to improve," Vigneault said.
The Rangers are hoping that Brassard will continue to develop like he did toward the end of last season, when he was traded to New York at the deadline and gave his new team a much-needed offensive jolt.
Considering the Rangers are still without Derek Stepan, who has missed training camp while locked in a contract stalemate with the club, there is some significant pressure for Brassard to provide that depth and production down the middle.
“I know last year I had another level in my game that I wanted to show," he said. "Maybe I showed it, but now it’s a new season, only one game, one preseason game.”In a previous post, I provided an outline for exporting models from Google Earth into 3DSMax. The next step is to export the models from 3DSMax into UDK.
After a few weeks of extremely manual work, mostly revolving around textures, here is my neighborhood in UDK.
Notes:
Models exported from 3DS into UDK (originating from Google Earth) will not have collision data out of the box. However, there is a simple work around: In 3DS max, create a copy of every model, and rename all the copies with "UCX_" in front of the original name. Export the whole scene from 3ds max as an FBX. When importing into UDK, in the Import Options menu, under Static Mesh -> Advanced, check "One Convex Hull Per UCX." The collision with that isn't the greatest, but it's good enough to be able to walk around in the city for the most part and it's certainly a lot faster than doing all the collision by hand in 3ds Max. If you don't check the One Convex Hull Per UCX box (normally you wouldn't if you'd built the model and collision mesh yourself), the collision goes completely bonkers in UDK because of all the planes and concave meshes. The textures associated to the models captured from 3D Ripper DX and imported into 3DS Max will be in the.dds format. That's fine if you stay in 3DS Max. However, if you wish to export the models with textures into UDK, the.dds extension is not recognized (thankfully, the texture coordinate data will still be there, just not the textures themselves). To get around this, you need to batch convert the.dds files into.tga. I used the IrFanView batch convert to accomplish this task. However, you will also need to extend the extension capability of IrFanView by installing "All PlugIns." This will allow the program to recognize the.dds extension, from there you can proceed with the batch conversions. If you need assistance on the settings you should be using in IrFanView to create the tga files ready for UDK, reference this video (about 1:30min in). Finally, with all of your tga textures ready to go, import them all into UDK. Next, double click your static mesh in UDK to launch the Static Mesh Editor. Under LODInfo > [0] > Elements is a listing of all the textures mapped to the model. Simply expand out each element to reveal the texture mappings. For each Material, locate and select the equivelant Material in the Content Browser, and click the green arrow next to the Material to "Use selected object in Content Browser." This will overwrite the missing texture mapping with your imported tga texture. Rinse and repeat until all Materials for the model have a tga association.
That was about as far as I decided to take this project in UDK. Ultimately, the texture/mesh quality is just too low to be useful for anything other than extremely rough blocking out of a city. To that end, it was a fun project. 🙂
Update: See my last post on this subject here to simplify a majority of the steps above.In Wednesday night's episode of Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, which was dedicated to the growing threat of climate change, the late-night host called out the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for "stabbing the environment with a deregulation shiv."
Bee introduced EPA administrator Scott Pruitt—a key player in the Trump administration's efforts to roll back environmental regulations—with a series of clips displaying his commitment to bolstering the U.S. coal industry.
"Putting Pruitt in charge of the EPA was like putting the fox in the henhouse," Bee said. "I'm sorry—for future viewers, foxes and hens were two animals that lived on earth before climate change rendered them extinct."
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Bee also used segment to make an official request for a public hearing to discuss Pruitt's plans to withdraw from former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which aimed to cut emissions from U.S. power plants. The deadline to submit a hearing request is Oct. 31.
Watch:A month ago, Apple officially told people that they’ve been slowing down iPhone performance to cater the needs of the battery. According to Apple, old batteries wear out and could possibly result in immediate shut down at peak performance.
Well after that, people panicked out and then there were YouTube videos and articles accusing Apple of their wrong ideology.
So Apple made out an official apology statement on their website and told people that iOS will again optimize the iPhone when the battery is replaced with a brand new one and discounted the battery replacements to just $29. Nice strategy, Apple!
“We expected to need more time to be ready,” the company said in a statement offered up to TechCrunch this weekend, “but we are happy to offer our customers the lower pricing right away. Initial supplies of some replacement batteries may be limited.”
Many users are likely to jump on the opportunity to breathe a little extra life into their phone. The competition has certainly made the most out of the news. Chief competitors including Samsung, HTC, LG and Motorola have all used the opportunity to note that they haven’t taken similar approaches with their handsets.
Yesterday, meanwhile, iFixit used apology as an excuse to discount its |
izon Wireless said it is partnering with ride-sharing service provider Lyft on a multiyear deal to offer monthly discounts for Lyft drivers and embed the Lyft application on new Android-powered smartphones.
The carrier said that beginning May 11, Lyft drivers can access the company’s Accelerate Premier Driver Rewards program that allows new and existing Verizon Wireless customers to shop with a register for the program’s discounts through a Web portal. The program provides Lyft drivers with discounts on auto maintenance, various services and head-of-the-line perks depending on the number of rides the driver provides per month.
Lyft drivers interact with customers through an application that allows those in need of a ride to summon a driver using the application and embedded GPS in their smartphone. Customers also pay for their rides through the application. The service is similar to Uber, which is a competing ride-share offering.
Verizon Wireless also reported that beginning immediately all new smartphones running Google’s Android operating system would come preloaded with the Lyft application.
“Lyft represents an emerging and innovative partner for Verizon in the transportation and sharing economy space. This is an exciting opportunity for us to chart new territories and create a broader user base,” said Russ Preite, region president for Verizon Wireless.
The preloading of the application could be more controversial as a segment of smartphone users tend to dislike having applications preloaded onto their mobile device that can then not be fully removed thus taking up space on a device’s memory or draining battery resources by running in the background unless they are fully disabled.
AT&T last year announced a partnership with Uber to embed the Uber application in new Android-powered smartphones. The partnership also included AT&T Mobility becoming one of Uber’s “key providers of new wireless service” to Uber drivers in the United States. The two companies said the new arrangement builds on an ongoing partnership with AT&T managing device and data needs for Uber’s partner drivers.
Bored? Why not follow me on TwitterA military wife faces attempted murder charges after police say she slashed her children's throats with a kitchen knife to keep them quiet for her soldier husband. Police believe she may have been overwhelmed by the demands of caring for a 2-year-old daughter and 6-month-old twins.Christina E. Booth, 29, was arrested early Sunday morning at her home in Olympia, Wash. on suspicion of attempted murder, ABC affiliate KOMO-TV reports. Her children were stable after surgery at a hospital a half-hour away from Tacoma. They are now in protective custody.Thomas Booth told police his wife had been "very stressed out" raising the children and was on medication for post-partum depression, according to court papers. He said he and his wife had watched a movie at home Saturday night and each had two large glasses of wine. He described his wife as sufficiently intoxicated that she was slurring her words.According to the detectives' account, Christina Booth said she had been having a tough time caring for the children. She said her husband "never helps her with the children and that Thomas gets very annoyed when the children cry and make noise," detectives said in the probable cause account.The woman said the twins started crying after she took the toddler up to bed and "she hit her breaking point," the document said. She described going downstairs to get a knife from the dishwasher, then cutting her toddler daughter's throat with a knife and covering her with blankets so she would be hidden. She then described cutting the twins' throats before calling 911."My babies won't calm down, Ive breastfed them, Ive formula fed them, they are not calming down," Booth is heard saying during the 911 call."Christina said she knew if she killed all of the kids, the house would be quiet for Thomas," the probable cause document said she told detectives. "During the interview, Christina broke down crying several times, yelled about Thomas never helping with the kids and vomited once. Christina made the comment 'they will be quiet now' several times."Thomas Booth told detectives that he found the injured twins after he saw his wife wearing only her underwear, crying and screaming, a short time after she took the little girl upstairs to put her to bed. He said grabbed his medical kit and started trying to stop the twins' bleeding with gauze, while yelling at his wife to call 911. Thomas Booth said he saw the toddler in her bed but didn't see anything wrong with her.Police have said Thomas Booth, who is a member of the 1st Special Forces Group at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, is not suspected of a crime.Christina Booth faced a judge on Monday in Thurston County Superior Court, KCPQ-TV reports. The judge set her bail at $3 million.To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Tom Hiddleston has given his seal of approval to Benedict Cumberbatch joining the Marvel universe.
The Crimson Peak actor, 34, revealed that he was overjoyed that his old friend had been cast as Doctor Strange in an upcoming adaptation alongside Rachel McAdams, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Tilda Swinton.
He told Metro.co.uk in an exclusive interview: ‘I’m very happy about it and I gave him no tips. He needs no advice from me.
‘I don’t know much about Doctor Strange but I’m sure he’ll be excellent.’
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Hiddleston of course has plenty of experience that he could share with Cumberbatch having played Loki in Thor, its sequel The Dark World and The Avengers.
Cumberbatch probably does have this covered but we still like the idea of Loki and Doctor Strange shooting the breeze together.
Spin-off film, please?
Watch Tom talk about Crimson Peak, getting naked and working with director Guillermo Del Toro in our full interview below.
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Crimson Peak is out in UK cinemas on Friday.
MORE: Tom Hiddleston explains why Loki isn’t in Avengers: Age Of Ultron
MORE: Tom Hiddleston admits he’d ‘enjoy’ playing James BondThe Forever 27 Club
27 Club - it’s a club that the famous are dying to get into, but unlike the nightspots and dives in Hollywood or New York, there’s no bouncer. Anyone can get in, and there is no cover charge.
As early as the 60’s fans began to notice their favorite rock stars were literally short lived. In an industry noted for drug and alcohol induced lyrics it’s almost a surprise when a musical artist actually manages to outlive their career. The strange part is in the number who died at the age of 27 years. Most were at the peak or just on the downside of their fame when fate made sure their fans would never see them grow old.
1. Membership fees waved: Brian Jones
Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was born Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones on February 28th 1942. When eclectic clothing came in style during the 1960’s Brain was known for wearing the strangest outfits he could find, but he was also known for being an outstanding musician proficient in more than one instrument. Of course, he was also known for his non-stop recreational drug use. Jones is the one credited with come up with the name Rolling Stones and really being the moving force in getting the band started. In the early days, the original band mates Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Jones practical lived in each other’s pocket sleeping on the low-rent side of London. As their fame and pocketbooks grew so did their egos and the arguments started. Jones was troubled with legal issues from his drug use, and mood swings. The Rolling Stones had toured the U.S. success early in the decade and by 1969, they wanted to tour again. But not with Brian Jones as by that time their former friend was not only hard to live with his arrest from drug charges left him with a record which could bar them from traveling. His health was deteriorating as well and when the band tried to record this was aptly demonstrated when his mouth started to bleed after a session of playing the harmonica. The band forced him out, but allowed him to make the announcement he was leaving to save face.
Jones had taken on a bloated appearance by that time, but according to friends he was in a positive state of mind. He was talking to other artists about getting another band together and contacted Ian Stewart and Jimmy Miller among others. It was not to be. Sometime around midnight on July 2nd Jones was found by his girlfriend Anna Wohlin and other friends where he was lying motionless at the bottom of his pool. Anna insisted that when he was pulled out, he still had a pulse, but by the time doctors arrived Brian Jones was declared dead. The ruling despite his drug damaged liver and heart was death by misadventure. Jones was 27 years and 125 days old.
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2. Touched the sky
James Marshall ‘Jimi” Hendrix was born November 27th 1942 and by the mid-1960's, he was considered one of the greatest electric guitarists in rock music history. He toured Europe and the United States. Following his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival everyone knew Hendrix. The band that backed him The Hendrix Experience short circuited in the glare of Hendrix’s popularity and Hendrix wound up performing at Woodstock with a new group he’d hired. Nothing seemed to dim his fame. On September 18th 1970 Jimi Hendrix died in London in what was at first reported as a suicide. To this day stories keep changing as to how he died. Foul play, suicide or overdose Hendrix was dead at 27 years and 295 days.
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3. Come on, Break our Heart
Janis Joplin was born on January 19, 1943 in the tiny town of Port Arthur Texas, but her need for attention and her amazing talent took her far, far away from small town life. As she moved up the ladder of success, she also discovered the effects of drugs. Overweight as a teen she found drugs like amphetamine lost her the weight and gave her the energy to perform for long hours. She rose to fame, but she didn’t get to ride it long. Her last recordings were made in October of 1970. She was found dead in the Landmark Motor Hotel the change from her last fix still in the hand. She was 27 years and 258 days old.
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4. Rider at the Door
James Douglas Jim Morrison was born on December 8, 1943. Destined to be the lead singer for the Doors his behavior had always seemed erratic, but fame gave him an even more bizarre edge. Morrison seemed to enjoy exploiting his own alleged emotional pangs while giving little thought to anyone else. His rise to fame followed the predictable path and ended much the same. After a drunken recording session, he was found dead in the bathtub of his Paris apartment by his girlfriend DEHE. As there was no evidence of foul play no autopsy was done leading to speculation that continues to this day about what might have happened to the singer. He was 27 years and 207 days old.
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5. Straight to Nirvana
Kurt Cobain was born on February 20, 1967 and he became the voice of Generation X. He started out small in the Seattle grunge music scene which gained wider and wider recognition propelling Cobain’s group Nirvana to fame. By all accounts, this wasn’t what Cobain had expected, and he wasn’t comfortable with the attention. The shy singer complained of lifelong troubles with his stomach, battled addiction and by all accounts was often in a state of combat with his wife the controversial musician Courtney Love as well. Cobain was found dead a shotgun nearby. His death was legally ruled a suicide, but many of his fans believe otherwise. There’s been much speculation regarding the contentious relationship with Love. He was 27 years 44 days.
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Of course these are just the headliners. The over the top famous, there are many others before and since. Is this the first?
6. Louis Chauvin
Louis Chauvin was a well known ragtime musician who was born March 13, 1881 and died of neurosyphilitic sclerosis at age 27.
7. Or is it a cross-roads curse?
Robert Johnson famous bluesman whose 29 songs influenced generations of musicians who followed him and the artist was so good with the guitar, he inspired a legend. According to the story Johnson, a young black man living in rural Mississippi desperately wanted success. He was instructed to take his guitar to the crossroads near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by large man allegedly the Devil himself who tuned Johnson’s guitar. The Devil then played some songs on the instrument before giving it back to Johnson. This gave Johnson his unique abilities with the guitar at least according to the rumors the musician probably started himself.
In regard to the 27 Club some dismiss the earliest death that of Chauvin as being part of the genuine group and credit this Deal with the Devil as being the reason for the ‘curse’. Johnson at the height of his fame had a few enemies. He was often in the company of women who were married, and his fame made others jealous enough of his good fortune to kill him. In late 1938 it was not a surprise to friends when Johnson’s body was found an apparent victim of strychnine poisoning. He was as the legend points out just 27 years old.
Fact: Did you know he sold his soul to devil? - Read story...
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And some more for the list:
8. Nat Jaffe
Nat Jaffe was a blues musician who had just become well known. He died 1948 from high blood pressure at the age of 27.
9. Malcolm Hale
Malcolm Hale was just getting some singing gigs after being a member of Spanky and Our Gang when he was younger. He died when a space heater went out in the room where Malcolm was sleeping filling his closed off sleeping area with carbon monoxide. He was 27 years old.
10. Ron McKernan
Ron McKernan also known as Pigpen was the founding member and keyboard artist for the Grateful Dead. He died at age 27 from a hemorrhage probably caused by alcoholism.
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Fame is fleeting it is said, but for these artists it seems so unfair their time was cut so short. What other music could Cobain, Joplin and Hendrix created if they’d been given only a few more years. Would the music world be any different if the 27 Club had a few less members?
There are many more that have strangely died at the age of 27 and some die hard fans have a very difficult time accepting these tragedies as a complete coincidence. Some find it especially strange how many of these cases are still unresolved in the public’s mind. It can leave a person wondering---will there be more to join the club, and perhaps more importantly when?
Written by Kacey Stapleton – Copyrighted © www.weirdworm.comThe Persecution of Cats
Cats came under suspicion for a variety of reasons. Unlike dogs, they did not behave subserviently toward humans. This was considered unnatural, because it violated the biblical view that humans should have dominion over animals. Also, cats were very active at night and engaged in loud, raucous mating rituals. Though cats had always behaved in this manner, to the superstitious minds of the Middle Ages, cats were practicing supernatural powers and witchcraft. Most accused witches were older peasant women who lived alone, often keeping cats as pets for companionship. This guilt by association meant that roughly a million cats were burned at the stake, along with their owners, on suspicion of being witches.
In the early thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX (1145–1241) declared that a sect in southern France had been caught worshipping the devil. He claimed the devil had appeared in the form of a black cat. Cats became the official symbol of heresy (or religious beliefs not advocated by the church). Anyone who showed any compassion or feeling for a cat came under the church's suspicion. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, Europe's cat population had been severely depleted. Only semi-wild cats survived in many areas.
In 1347 the bubonic plague swept across Europe. Called the Black Death, it killed twenty-five million people (nearly a third of Europe's population) in only three years. Thousands of farm animals died as well, either from the plague or from lack of care. The death rate peaked in the warm summer months and dropped dramatically in the wintertime because the plague was being spread to humans by fleas on infected rodents. The plague revisited Europe several more times over the next few centuries. In addition, millions of people are thought to have suffered from food poisoning during the Middle Ages because of the presence of rat droppings in the grain supply. Centuries of cat slaughter had allowed the rodent population to surge out of control.
Cats Under Welsh Law
Cats weren’t always persecuted in Europe. In the 900s, the Welsh took the sensible position of assigning value to cats, recognizing their ability to protect human food stores. The Welsh ruler Hywel the Good created laws that imposed strict penalties for stealing or murdering cats. Hywel mandated that if anyone were to kill or steal a cat
more at:
http://www.suite101.com/content/cats-persecuted-as-familiars-a16564
http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2149/History-Human-Animal-Interaction-MEDIEVAL-PERIOD.html
HKA southern Alberta father convicted in the death of his 18-month-old son said his conviction has left him concerned for Canadians.
David Stephan, 32, and his wife Collet Stephan, 35, were found guilty of failing to provide the necessaries of life on Tuesday in connection with the death of their son Ezekiel, who died of meningitis in March 2012.
During their trial, court heard the couple thought the boy had croup or flu and treated him for over two weeks with home remedies that included hot peppers, garlic, onions and horseradish, even though a family friend who was a nurse told them she thought Ezekiel had meningitis.
READ MORE: Should parents be forced to give kids conventional medicine? Alberta case raises ethical questions
On Wednesday, David Stephan posted a letter to the jury on his Facebook page.
“I only wish that you could’ve seen how you were being played by the crowns deception, drama and trickery that not only led to our key witnesses being muzzled, but has also now led to a dangerous precedent being set in Canada. The flood gates have now been opened and if we do not fall in line with parenting as seen fit by the government, we all stand in risk of criminal prosecution,” he wrote.
“The flood gates have now been opened and my main concern is no longer for Collet and I, but rather for Canadian’s as a whole,” David added.
READ MORE: Alberta meningitis death trial shines light on natural medicine
The maximum penalty for failing to provide the necessaries of life is five years in prison.
A sentencing date is scheduled to be set in June.
BELOW: Read David Stephan’s complete Facebook post
READ MORE: A primer on naturopathic medicine
– With files from Tony Tighe and The Canadian PressBETHESDA, MD—In an effort to make a dent in the arms manufacturer’s excess inventory, members of the Lockheed Martin sales team were reportedly instructed during their staff meeting earlier this week to really push the company’s supply of tactical air-to-surface missiles. “Hey, guys, I really need you to step up your game this week—I know we were throwing our weight behind shoulder-fired anti-tank systems last month, but we’ve got a quota to meet and need all these JASSM missiles to move before the end of Q3,” said sales director Peter Donaldson, adding that staff members should make an effort to upsell the infrared homing missile when filling aircraft-integrated guided weaponry orders for their regular clients. “Do whatever it takes to unload this stuff: place a few cold calls to foreign defense agencies, offer to throw in a couple Stalker drones for free. I don’t care what you have to do, just so long as we can hit our numbers and make way for the anti-aircraft shipments we’ve got coming in at the end of the month.” Members of Donaldson’s team said they weren’t particularly worried about the directive, noting that they can always reach out to their congressional contacts and move however many missiles they need to via a last-minute rider on any pending bill.
AdvertisementUPDATE: A previous version of this post went up under the editor’s byline. The author of the piece is Chris Nicholson.
Quitting Twitter is easy — I’ve done it a hundred times. Someone called it “a clown car that drove into a gold mine,” and like all clown cars, Twitter makes the passengers get out once in awhile.
If I go back, it’s because I’m addicted. The tight news cycle, tweetstorms, gossip mongers, insight, argument, factoids, snark and one-liners. For an information junkie, that little bubble is hard to resist.
But Twitter — and Facebook, for that matter — is desperately broken in ways that alienate users, spread hate and endanger us as a species. The elections have revealed how broken they are better than anything else could have.
First, let’s talk about what’s broken. One set of problems are the collisions between unlike users, and the offense, outrage, and remorse that follow. Another, much larger set of problems arise from the falsehood, hate and lies that go viral on social media, and their electoral consequences.
These two sets of problems are interrelated. We’re getting too much trolling and not enough facts: we need to screen out one and let in the other. The right filters can address both problems.
People who have left Twitter in the last year, at least temporarily, include Leslie Jones of the Ghostbusters remake, the British comic Stephen Fry, and Marc Andreessen of A16Z. Other notable recent departures include Zelda Williams, who was attacked after the suicide of her father Robin.
That’s right: She was attacked on Twitter after the suicide of her father. They sent her fake mortuary photos of him. That’s an example of the first problem.
Offense and Open Communities
A lot of people, especially in San Francisco, think that open communities are great and that social media should be all about connecting people.
But not everybody should be connected. Umberto Eco said that television gave us the village idiot so that we could feel superior, while the Internet gave us the village idiot as a source of truth. Nobody wants to argue with the village idiot, let alone millions of them.
On Twitter, you have to block them one at a time. That’s a lot of work, and by then it’s too late. Their trolling idiocy has infected your life. Their work is done before the rules can be enforced.
Perfectly open communities always go sour. You need filters. Every functional community has them. And that’s where machine learning comes in.
The natural-language processing to detect trolls, racism and insults isn’t hard, and Tweets as a data genre have been analyzed to death. We can build filters that work. (If you want to know how, you should read about neural nets and deep learning.) Deep learning is setting new records in accuracy for a lot of difficult problems, including image and voice recognition. It will achieve similar gains with text classification using algorithms like Word2vec and Doc2vec.
If you can detect trolls, you can protect the people they’re trolling by muting or putting a warning over the trolls’ posts. Twitter could even figure out who likes a few threats of violence now and then and personalize the masking.
Personally, I go on Twitter to learn new things and hear new voices. But there have been some interesting studies from liberal scholars that certain kinds of diversity can hurt civic life and erode trust. At the very least, it’s something that online communities should pay attention to, if they want to keep people coming back.
There’s a radical openness to Twitter, which is cool some of the time, and uncool other times. It’s the uncool times that stick with you. You can’t unsee morgue shots of your father, like those that were Tweeted at Zelda.
Twitter can do something about it, and they should. They already have a way of screening out porn. Why don’t they do the same thing with ethnic slurs, death threats and other kinds of trolling? Just draw a curtain over them. After a while, people will figure out that they don’t really want to see what someone said, if Twitter masks it. And their day will be better. And they will keep using Twitter.
Tweeting to the Choir in a Post-Fact Bubble
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Winston Churchill said that. With social media, a lie probably circles the world a couple times…
The algorithms of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter may not shield us from hate, but they do encourage the spread of emotion-rich content among like-minded people, especially when that content triggers outrage. The more shares a post gets, the more it will be promoted to similar individuals because Facebook et al optimizes for engagement, period.
Unfortunately, a lot of that content is false, and its popularity has consequences.
One of the main problems with U.S. politics is a yearslong shift away from facts and science. It’s the replacement of a reality-based community, as formulated in the years of George W. Bush, with a platform of wishful thinking … backed by nukes.
That’s problematic for a lot of different reasons, notably the way it breaks our ability to understand cause and effect, trade, war and indifferent nature. It’s particularly harmful to how we relate to each other. Because facts are something that can unite very disparate people, while beliefs are endlessly divergent. Without them; bubbles all the way down.
We live in an age of self-reinforcing beliefs, and the reinforcement of groupthink happens in a feedback loop with the media, especially social media.
We need to stop the flow of hate and lies and help the spread of facts, because words matter.
What do I mean by lies? I mean this fake news. And the weird way Macedonian teenagers pumped out disinformation about Trump during this election cycle. Not only are our social media channels filled with garbage, but Americans are being gamed by foreigners. It should be illegal, but even if it’s not against the law, it’s something tech companies could control, if they wanted to…
They can control it because we now have the ability to detect hidden patterns in text to — say — identify a book’s true author. (The pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante was outed by a statistical textual analysis of her work before an investigative journalist doxed her this year.) Just like Google can build a highly accurate spam filter to keep you from wasting time on the pleas of Nigerian princes, deep learning can classify text by many measures, including its degree of factuality, falsehood or truthiness.
Algorithms can do that because we know how to “vectorize” text. That is, we can turn any text into a column of numbers, and those are called neural embeddings. It’s a simple, yet unlikely, translation to represent language in numbers.
Doing that makes natural language computer-readable. Then we can perform powerful mathematical operations on text to detect patterns and similarities, make predictions and apply categories to it. Those categories might be: “probably false” or “probably true.” And once we know the likelihood of a text’s factualness, we can decide how far it should spread.
We have fact-checkers at organizations like Snopes, Politifact or Media Matters applying judgments to news stories already. Those could be turned into labeled datasets to train algorithms to categorize text they’ve never seen before. If that’s not neutral enough, Facebook could build its own team of fact-checkers.
The real question is, do the tech companies want to control it?
Mark Zuckerberg is still thinking about that one. Facebook and Twitter flattered themselves that they played a role in the Arab Spring, but Zuckerberg said this weekend that it’s a “pretty crazy idea” that fake news on Facebook affected this tight election. You can’t have it both ways.
A smug, amoral response from the people at the top of powerful tech companies isn’t what we need. They have a responsibility to the public, to the species and to themselves to promote the facts and to mute the hate and lies, even if that responsibility is not enshrined in law. Not least because Mark Zuckerberg is Jewish, and Donald Trump rode a wave of anti-Semitism and white nationalism to power. It doesn’t matter how you identify when they start handing out the yellow stars.
While media endorsements meant diddly squat this election cycle, the way that media and social media promoted false stories week after week to increase their eyeballs and mindshare had a huge effect. This presidential election tipped on a couple percentage points in a few key states. Or to be precise, 107,330 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania handed America to Trump. That’s the equivalent of the population in Boulder, Colorado; West Palm Beach, Florida; or Daly City, California.
Do you think Comey’s untimely announcements, the months of Russian hacking, or Wisconsin’s vote-suppressing ID laws might have accounted for a town’s worth of ballots? If so, why wouldn’t the algorithms of a powerful social media platform used by tens of millions of US voters?
Broadcast media spent much more airtime covering the non-scandal of Hillary’s emails as it did covering the issues, or her policies, and social media amplified instead of remedied that distortion.
Some great journalists wrote some great stories this year. They reported on Trump’s mafia connections, his virtually non-existent philanthropy, and his extensive ties to Russia.
But those stories didn’t have legs. They never reached the larger audience that needed to hear them most, because we have become polarized. We go looking for opinions that agree with ours. Each of us needs some windows opened onto the disagreeable facts and inconvenient truths that will slap us in the face no matter what we wish for.
The tech platforms powering social media can help reconcile us with reality in many quiet ways, or they can join the indifferent and venal attention merchants that ushered a conman, a bigot and a sexual predator into the White House for the sake of an earnings report.
Until then, what we read on Twitter and Facebook will add nothing to our understanding of the world. It will just be our own breath backing up on us. And on that note, I think I need a Tic Tac.No matter how you slice it, Tennessee’s 2016 was a disappointment. This was a team many of us (myself included) thought would win the SEC East. Hell, they even beat Florida and Georgia. Conventional wisdom tells you the division should always go through one of those three schools. But injuries, embarrassing losses, and the best offensive player transferring midseason conspired to tank the Vols in 2016.
Then, Jones uttered the woeful words about his team:
Tennessee fans watching Butch's press conference pic.twitter.com/y78FG4wlJU — O&W Report (@OandWReport) November 21, 2016
“They’ve won the biggest championship, and that’s the championship of life.”
In a pre-bowl press conference, Jones extrapolated on the comment in probably the worst way possible.
Butch Jones on champions for life "I want to say 7 college football programs have that motto so when I said it it didn't resonate very well" — Rhiannon Potkey (@TennesseeBeat) December 26, 2016
Let’s dig a little deeper here. If seven other teams have the motto, then the Vols aren’t even really the champions of life after all. At best, they’re merely co-champions. We need a life championship series to sort all this out, perhaps a life playoff.
Either way, we now must add this to the list of championships that Tennessee has missed out on this season:
The national championship.
The conference championship.
The SEC East championship.
The Tennessee state championship.
The life championship.
We gotta recall the rings now, too. It’s a shame because they looked good.
When you lose the SEC East again, but it's okay because you're a champion at life #ButchJones #voLs pic.twitter.com/5TyY6i7BV3 — Jonathan Arnholz (@JArnholz) November 21, 2016
At least you beat Florida.Harsh driving conditions in winter are already hard on your car, but you could be making things a lot worse if you’re turning your vehicle on in the morning so it can “warm up” before you drive off.
If you’re one of the many drivers who thinks it’s important to idle your car — turn it on and let it sit — in these frigid winter months to protect the engine, you’ve likely fallen victim to a myth that may be doing more harm than good.
We spoke with mechanical engineer and former drag-racer Stephen Ciatti about the pervasive myth that you need to warm up your car in the winter.
For the last 26 years, Ciatti has worked on combustion engines — engines that generate power from burning fuel, like gasoline — and currently oversees all of the combustion engine work at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
To get straight to the point, Ciatti said that idling your car in the cold not only wastes fuel, but it’s also stripping oil from critical components that help your engine run, namely the cylinders and pistons.
How it works
Under normal conditions, your car engine runs on a mixture of air and vaporized fuel, gasoline in this case. When that mixture enters a cylinder, a piston compresses it, which — at the risk of oversimplifying — generates a combustion event, powering the engine.
But when it’s cold outside, gasoline is less likely to evaporate. Your car compensates for this initially by adding more gasoline to the air-vapor mixture — what Ciatti calls running “rich” — and that’s where the problem begins. Here’s an animation that shows how pistons drive the cylinders in your car to generate a combustion event:
“That’s a problem because you’re actually putting extra fuel into the combustion chamber to make it burn and some of it can get onto the cylinder walls,” Ciatti said. “Gasoline is an outstanding solvent and it can actually wash oil off the walls if you run it in those cold idle conditions for an extended period of time.”
Over time, that washing action can “have a detrimental effect on the lubrication and life of things like piston rings and cylinder liners,” which are critical to running the cylinders and pistons that breathe life into your engine, Ciatti said.
The bottom line: Contrary to popular belief, idling your car does not prolong the life of your engine, rather it shortens it.
A simple solution
Thankfully, your car doesn’t run rich the entire winter. It only happens when the gasoline is cold. Once your engine warms up to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the car transfers to normal fuel consumption rates.
So you might think by idling your car, you’re warming it up, which will prevent this problem. But don’t confuse warm air coming from your car’s radiator with a warm engine. Idling is, in fact, the root of the problem.
“Idling isn’t really getting the engine up to temperature, and until that happens the little brain box on the engine is going to keep sending rich fuel mixture to the cylinders so that it can ensure that enough is evaporated for a consistent combustion event.”
The fastest way to warm your engine up is to use it, aka drive!
Some might tell you that the power steering fluid — the oil that pushes on pumps enabling you to control the car’s wheels — might be too cold to flow properly. To that, Ciatti said no way.In Hong Kong, 2017 opened with a march of thousands protesting China-backed efforts to unseat four new pro-democracy legislators.
The Civil Human Rights Front, which organized the rally, also wanted to help contribute to a drive to raise about $645,000 for the legislator's legal costs, the South China Morning Post reports. About $183,108 was raised during the march.
© REUTERS / Svein Ove Ekornesvaag/NTB Scanpix Snowden Asks Internet to Support Refugees in Hong Kong Who Helped Him
Hong Kong city courts, backed by Beijing, have already ousted two democracy advocates recently elected to Hong Kong's legislative council, Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Leung, for failing to swear their oaths of office correctly.
Now, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, Edward Yiu Chung-yim, Lau Siu-lai and "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung have been targeted for the same offence.
Led by the four rebel legislators, crowds chanted "sovereignty belongs to the people" as they marched.
"We are here to oppose political suppression," University of Hong Kong student Sarah Chen Sin-yu told the South China Morning Post. "It is very unfair of the government to use taxpayers' money to disqualify lawmakers popularly returned by voters."
In taking the oath of office, new lawmakers are required to swear allegiance to Hong Kong as part of China, which the new lawmakers refused to do in a variety of ways, including by changing the wording of the oath, adding extra phrases, mispronouncing names and displaying contradictory banners.
"We can see that under Hong Kong's rule of law, the government, with its unlimited resources, will use legal procedures to bully leaders and representatives with fewer resources," student leader Joshua Wong told AFP at the rally.
"This has shown that 'One Country, Two Systems' is a failure and we should use the 20th anniversary of the handover to reflect on our political situation," he said.
© REUTERS / Bobby Yip Beijing Accuses Taiwan, Hong Kong Independence Activists of Conspiracy
Organizers claimed the rally drew more than 9,000 but apologized for the low number. Local police put the crowd size at fewer than 5,000. Organizers blamed the relatively small crowd on last month's announcement by hardliner Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying that he would not seek a second term.
In a statement, the government of Hong Kong said it respected the legislators' electoral mandates and the right of Hong Kong citizens to protest, but that taking oaths in the legally prescribed manner is equally important, according to the South China Morning Post.When I was in college, I had two career plans lined up. First, I could become a philosophy Ph. D and eventually professor. Second, I could go into medicine.
I still remember the moment I chose the latter. I was hiking the summer of my junior year, and I decided to spend a day just comparing pros and cons and coming up with a final conclusion, and although I can’t remember the reasoning involved I decided it was definitely the doctor one.
And that went well, because now I hear all grad student would-be professors are kind of doomed, philosophers not excepted. But I still give some thought to my poor counterfactual self, lost in a hostile career market with no |
affordable housing units.
Developers have raised concerns that the additional costs will be passed on to new homeowners, driving up house prices.
Larivee said all taxpayers are currently sharing those costs.
"We're just making sure that the people who are benefiting are the ones who are paying," she said.
She said she anticipates any potential increase in home prices will be small. The decision to actually use these options will be left to individual cities and towns.
No new taxes
Morinville Mayor Lisa Holmes, president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, said her organization was disappointed the government does not plan to allow cities to apply any new taxes.
"We just have one revenue source right now, which is property tax," she said.
Communities had hoped for new sources of cash, such as a hotel tax, for example, to help fund their operations.
"We also want to discuss how municipalities can share in provincial revenues," Holmes said.
Morinville Mayor Lisa Holmes, president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, said she hoped cities and towns would have the power to introduce new taxes as part of the Municipal Government Act review. (CBC)
Calgary and Edmonton may be granted new taxation powers as part of the Big City Charter negotiations, which are expected to go to public consultations in the fall.
But Holmes said the vast majority of municipalities will be excluded from those talks.
Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson has long asked the province to update the way it funds policing.
He has maintained that a number of provincial responsibilities are downloaded onto city police, such as dealing with mental illness and homelessness, which drive up municipal property taxes.
The MGA did not deal with policing, but Iveson said it's understandable given the fiscal situation the province is coping with.
Wildrose municipal affairs critic Pat Stier was less understanding.
"Wildrose has long been adamant about the necessity for a predictable, stable, long-term funding model for our municipal partners, and that is not among these changes," Stier said.
"That's concerning."
Businesses could get a tax break
Larivee said there are tax changes to the MGA that will be good news for businesses, which may get a tax break.
Right now, cities can tax businesses and homes at different rates. In Wood Buffalo, for example, businesses are taxed at a rate 18 times higher than residences.
The changes would cap business taxes at five times higher than the residential tax rate. Edmonton and Calgary are already well below that ratio.
The updated MGA would also allow cities to charge lower property tax rates for small businesses than they do large businesses. The government is working on regulations that would define which businesses fall into which category.
Putting an end to competition between towns
The new legislation makes it mandatory for municipalities to share the cost of services that benefits the entire region, which could include anything from parks to drinking water supply.
All municipalities that share a border will be required to reach agreements.
Larivee said traditionally, cities and towns have been competing with each other. These agreements are meant to put a stop to that.
"We need to recognize that our communities are interconnected and transcend municipal boundaries," she said.
Iveson said the province is holding the Capital Region Board up as a positive example, and he's glad to see the government taking it even further, though there's no details about the cost sharing expectations between municipalities.
"I think the implication is pretty clear that no municipality will be an island to itself in its region," he said.
Public to weigh in
The province has been working on changes to the act for the last four years.
The bill passed first reading on Tuesday. The minister and other MLAs will tour the province this summer to collect feedback before the legislation is finalized.
After that, more specific regulations will be developed to decide how the changes will work in practice.
The government hopes to have the new rules in place in time for the next municipal election in October 2017.Airbnb will offer free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed into the U.S. That’s according to the company’s cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky, who made the offer earlier today. “Not allowing countries or refugees into America is not right, and we must stand with those who are affected,” Chesky tweeted at 8:35 pm E.T. Saturday evening.
The company’s decision comes a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that temporarily bans refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries. Since the order was issued, 100 to 200 people have been detained in airports around the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The executive order, however, has been challenged by advocacy groups and hundreds protesting at major airports. Earlier in the evening on Saturday, in response to a complaint filed by the ACLU, a federal judge in New York City granted an emergency stay to refugees and nationals of the listed countries already detained in the U.S.
Chesky, who cofounded Airbnb in 2008 and whose net worth FORBES estimates at $3.8 billion, was not the only billionaire criticizing President Trump’s recent executive order. “I'm here because I'm a refugee," Google founder Sergey Brin said at San Francisco International Airport, where he joined protesters on Saturday. Brin came to the U.S. at age 6 after his family fled Russia due to concerns about anti-Semitism. He is now the richest foreign-born billionaire in the U.S.
Uber’s billionaire founder Travis Kalanick also criticized the order on Facebook earlier on Saturday. He announced that the company was working on a compensation plan for drivers who have gone back to their home countries to visit their families and cannot reenter the United States. “This order has far broader implications as it also affects thousands of drivers who use Uber and come from the listed countries,” Kalanick said. The ride-hailing company’s cofounder, Garett Camp, is a Canadian national.
An advocate for immigration reform in the U.S., Mark Zuckerberg raised his concerns on his platform on Friday, after the president signed the executive order. “Like many of you, I'm concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “Had we turned away refugees a few decades ago, Priscilla's family wouldn't be here today,” the Facebook founder added. Priscilla Chan, whose parents were refugees from China and Vietnam, is a physician and the cofounder of Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple's effort to improve science, health, education and more.Lisp, Common Lisp and Clojure
Immediately after reading Beating the Averages from Paul Graham I wanted to learn Lisp:
By induction, the only programmers in a position to see all the differences in power between the various languages are those who understand the most powerful one. (This is probably what Eric Raymond meant about Lisp making you a better programmer.) You can’t trust the opinions of the others, because of the Blub paradox: they’re satisfied with whatever language they happen to use, because it dictates the way they think about programs.
However, I didn’t have enough time to do it. At that moment I was coding a lot in Ruby, Python, C++ and Java in order to earn enough to live by my own.
Now that I am a better paid code monkey and that I have enough free time, I am reading The Land Of Lisp. As I dive down into the rabbit hole of the Lisp world, I am trying to create my own emacs distribution called Lunfardo. I think it’s a good way to learn Emacs and Lisp. I hope to finish reading the book and the Lisp Koans in the following weeks.
A few weeks ago I read some chapters from Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks by Paul Butcher. The chapter The Clojure Way — Separating Identity from State got my attention. After reading it, I investigated core.async and its channels. It appears that, as in many great languages, there are many flavors of concurrency in Clojure.
Then I watched Persistent Data Structures and Managed References by Rich Hickey, author of Clojure. Since I am interested in concurrency-related things and in Lisp, Clojure seems like a good next stop in my roadmap. So I added Clojure for the Brave and True to the list of books I have to read in the next few weeks. As I read it I hope to play with Clojure Koans.
However, as most developers, I think that the best way to learn a language is to use it in a real project. Therefore, I will try to implement a few ideas I got in Clojure.The sex life of corn
Corn, the key species in modern industrial agriculture, is completely incapable of reproducing itself in nature. The cobs that concentrate the seeds so nicely for us are not conducive to reproduction because, if planted, the corn grows so densely it dies. As such, the continued existence of Zea mays depends upon people continuing to divide the cobs and plant a portion of the seeds.
Corn is apparently a descendant of an earless grass called Teosinte. It is hard to overstate the consequences of a heavily mutated strain of Teosinte finding a species capable of closing a reproductive loop that would otherwise be open, leading to swift extinction.
The actual mechanics of corn reproduction are similarly odd. Male gametes are produced at the top of the plant, inside the flower-like tassel. At a certain time of year, these release the pollen that fertilizes the female gametes located in the cobs. It reaches them through single strands of silk (called styles) that run through the husk. When a grain of pollen comes into contact with one of these threads it divides into two identical cells. One of them tunnels through the strand into the kernel, a six to eight inch distance crossed in several hours. The other fuses with an egg to form an embryo, while the digger grows into the endosperm.
Another curious aspect of corn reproduction is that, because of seed hybridization (not genetic modification), every stalk of corn in a field is a clone of every other stalk. This is because the seeds came from inbred lines: each made to self-pollinate for several generations, eventually yielding batches of genetically identical seeds that farmers buy every year. They do this because the yield from the identical seeds is higher than that from the mixed generation that would follow it by a degree sufficient to justify the cost of buying seeds.
Such hybrid corn pushed yields from twenty bushels an acre – the amount managed by both Native Americans and farmers in the 1920s – to about two hundred bushels an acre. Given the degree to which we are all constructed more from corn than from any other source of materials (most of the meat, milk, and cheese we eat is ultimately made from corn, as are tons of processed foods), these remarkable processes of reproduction and agriculture deserve further study. For my part, I am reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I am only 10% into it, but it has been quite fascinating so far.San Francisco Chronicle Business columnist Thomas Lee is seen on Wednesday, March 5, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. San Francisco Chronicle Business columnist Thomas Lee is seen on Wednesday, March 5, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Russell Yip, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Russell Yip, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Mind Your Business: Slow flex of tech's lobbying muscle 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
The cool kids are still learning the ropes in Washington.
Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley heavyweights are finding that their clout - and cash - doesn't translate as well in the nation's capital.
Last week alone, the valley suffered two major defeats: the House of Representatives passed a watered-down version of a bill that the tech industry hoped would limit the National Security Agency's ability to collect data on users. And the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to advance a bill that would curtail "patent trolls" - firms that survive by suing tech companies for violating intellectual property rights.
And then there's the stalled effort to reform immigration, another issue near and dear to this region.
"Valley companies have gotten a lot more active in D.C. during this administration," said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "But it has been a slow process. They are still trying to figure out the right relationship with the government."
A little political impotence is a good thing for Silicon Valley. It reminds the tech world that, for all of its self-reverence, the industry is subject to the same system that makes life so complicated for the rest of us.
When it comes to pricing e-books or pledging not to poach each other's employees, Apple and Google have frequently skirted the law. Persuading the NSA to stop breaking into their networks is an entirely different matter.
To be fair, tech companies, especially social media firms, are relatively new to the influence game.
In 2013, Twitter and LinkedIn spent a combined $120,000 on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Facebook and Netflix were more active, doling out $7.6 million on lobbyists, the group said.
But money tells only part of the story. As newcomers to Washington, tech firms need to master the nuances of power politics.
"Washington is a different world than (tech companies) are used to," said Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of The Internet Association, a 2-year-old group whose members include Airbnb, Uber, Salesforce and Yelp. "They think, 'We're trying to do something positive, so everybody should understand us.' But that's not how D.C. works. There are going to be entrenched interests. It takes time. The bar is going to be different for the tech industry because we are used to things moving quickly."
Tech companies also must learn to pool resources, not a natural thing to do considering the egos and fierce rivalries at play.
The tech world, however, is starting to do just that. Recent revelations that the NSA accessed consumer data prompted Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft to form the Reform Government Surveillance coalition in a bid to limit the government's authority to collect user information. The coalition even hired Monument Policy Group, a well-connected lobbying firm, to press its case.
Read Full ArticlePatanjali is now in trouble with a home-grown giant over advertising battles. The spat is over the company's advertisements for its honey products, which has been contested by Dabur.
Dabur had earlier complained to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) about Patanjali's advertisement claims on honey which it thinks contains'misleading' and 'unsubtantiated' claims on purity, according to this report in Economic Times. The report says Baba Ramdev company has been pulled by the ad regulator now.
Patanjali has, through its advertisements, laid claim to its honey as being 'Purity ki Double Guarantee', according to the ET report. However, Dabur, which has a dominant share of the Rs 600 crore branded honey market, filed a case against the firm's advertising claims to the ASCI. Acting upon the complaint, the ASCI has directed Patanjali to either 'withdraw or modify its advertisement', says the report.
However, Patanjali has claimed that its honey product goes through hundred tests based on BIS and FSSAI guidelines. The company says that ASCI has no experts on board to verify Dabur's complaints against its honey and has gone to court against the regulator.
The controversies surrounding Patanjali's advertisements is nothing new. The ASCI had pulled up the firm in July for running "misleading" ad campaigns that disparages competitors products. The ASCI said had then said that Patanjali Ayurved "unfairly denigrates" products of its rivals in the advertisements, according to a PTI report.
The Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) found that Patanjalis claim for its Kachi Ghani Mustard Oil that rival makers are selling mustard oil "adulterated with oil made by solvent extraction process with neurotoxin containing Hexane", was not substantiated. "Also, the claim is grossly misleading by exaggeration," the ad regulator said in its list for the month of April, 2016, in which it upheld 67 complaints against several companies.
Besides, Patanjali also failed to substantiate its claims for Patanjali Fruit Juice, where it had claimed rival brands as "expensive juices containing less pulp".
According to the regulator, the ad was accompanied by reference to the prices of other branded juices and "by implication unfairly denigrates the entire class/category of fruit juices".
Similarly, it also failed to substantiate its claims in the ad for cattle feed Patanjali Dugdhamrut as "other companies mix 3 to 4 per cent urea and other non-edible things in their cattle feed."
ASCI also held Patanjali Ayurveds ads for toothpaste Patanjali Dant Kanti as misleading as it did not substantiate claims of it being effective against pyorrhoea, swelling and bleeding of gums, yellowing of teeth, sensitivity and bad breath and provides a natural shield against germs. When contacted, a Patanjali Ayurved spokesperson said the company is looking into the details and exploring legal options in this matter.
In May this year, ASCI had rapped Patanjali Ayurved for "false and misleading" claims in its various advertisements, including its hair oil and washing powder brands, while issuing list for month of March.
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.Luke Russell, left, Hecla's vice president for external affairs, and General Manager Douglas Stiles look over the reclamation fields at the Troy Mine on June 13, 2017. Greg Lindstrom | Flathead Beacon
Opponents and proponents of a proposed copper and silver mine in Sanders County are both celebrating after the U.S. Forest Service announced it would issue only a partial approval for the project in an upcoming Record of Decision.
Conservation groups say that the decision to withhold a full development permit for the Rock Creek Mine proves that a massive industrial project should not be developed beneath a wilderness area for fear that it will dewater the land above. But officials with Hecla Mining Company, the Coeur d’Alene-based mining company heading up the project, said that a phased approval has always been part of the plan.
In a letter dated Oct. 31, Deputy Regional Forester David E. Schmid announced that the final Record of Decision would only approve phase 1 of the Rock Creek Project, allowing the construction of a mine adit and an environmental evaluation of the site, which is located near Noxon.
“While models and estimates of groundwater conditions can be developed based on the best available information, actual knowledge of underground conditions may not be fully known, or knowable, until underground operations are underway and additional data can be collected,” Schmid wrote.
Upon completion and evaluation of phase 1, the Forest Service would consider approving phase 2, the actual development of the mine.
In a press release, a coalition of conservation groups called the partial approval the “latest in a series of setbacks” for the project. In October, the Clark Fork Coalition, Earthworks, Montana Environmental Information Center, Rock Creek Alliance and Save Our Cabinets asked the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to cancel Hecla’s permits for Rock Creek and the nearby Montanore Project because of a “bad actor” provision in state law. The coalition of groups stated that Hecla should not receive permits until one of its executives, CEO Phillips Baker, is held responsible for the environmental cleanup of a mine he previously oversaw in eastern Montana.
“All the evidence to date shows that these mines cannot be excavated under the Wilderness without lasting harm to the overlying streams and the fish and wildlife that find refuge there,” said Bonnie Gestring, northwest program director for Earthworks. “That’s something the agency simply can’t ignore.”
“This mine would be a disaster for the small population of grizzly bears that inhabit the Cabinet Mountains,” said Andrea Santarsiere, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are glad to hear that the Forest Service is taking a step back to consider the damage this mine may cause.”
But Hecla officials, who stand by their claims that the mine will not damage the wilderness above, read the letter differently. Luke Russell, vice president of external affairs for Hecla, said the mining company always expected the Forest Service to issue their approval in phases.
“It’s business as usual for us,” he said.
Russell said Hecla officials remain hopeful that a final Record of Decision will be released in early 2018.
Hecla was founded in 1891 and currently operates mines in Idaho, Alaska, Mexico and Quebec, Canada. In 2015, Hecla expanded into Montana when it purchased the Revett Mining Company, Inc., which owned the Troy Mine and the Rock Creek Project, and Mines Management, which owned the Montanore Mine project south of Libby. Hecla shuttered the Troy Mine but has vowed to develop Rock Creek and Montanore. The two mines could produce more than 500 million ounces of silver and 4 billion pounds of copper in their lifetime. The two deposits are separated by about 7,000 feet of earth and a fault line, suggesting that at one time it was actually one ore body.
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commentsFor 20 years, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been the subject of intensive fundamental as well as applied research. With their extraordinary mechanical, thermal and electronic properties, these tiny tubes with their graphitic honeycomb lattice have become the paragon of nanomaterials. They could help to create next-generation electronic and electro-optical components that are smaller than ever before, and thus to achieve even faster switching times.
As uniform as possible
With a diameter of roughly one nanometre, single-wall CNTs (or SWCNTs) need to be considered as quantum structures; the slightest structural changes, such as differences in diameter or in the alignment of the atomic lattice, may result in dramatic changes to the electronic properties: one SWCNT may be metallic, whilst another one with a slightly different structure is a semiconductor. Hence, there is a great deal of interest in reliable methods of making SWCNTs as structurally uniform as possible. In fact, corresponding synthesis concepts were formulated about 15 years ago. However, it is only now that surface physicists at Empa and chemists at the Max Planck Institute have successfully implemented one of these ideas in the laboratory. In the latest issue of "Nature", they describe how, for the first time, it has been possible to “grow" structurally homogenous SWCNTs and, hence, managed to clearly define their electronic properties.
Scanning tunneling microscopy images the precursor, the «folded» end cap, and the resulting carbon nanotube, together with the corresponding structural models. (Source: Empa / Juan Ramon Sanchez Valencia)
For some time, the Empa team working under the direction of Roman Fasel, Head of the "nanotech@surfaces" Laboratory at Empa and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Berne, has been investigating the subject of "how molecules can be transformed or joined together to form complex nanostructures on a surface". For instance, by means of "bottom-up" synthesis, the Empa researchers managed to produce specific nanostructures such as defined chains of "buckyballs" (essentially, CNTs shrunk into ball form) or flat nanoribbons on gold substrates. "The great challenge was to find the suitable starting molecule that would also actually 'germinate' on a flat surface to form the correct seed," says Fasel, whose team has gained broad expertise in the field of molecular self-organisation over the years. Finally, their colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart successfully synthesised the suitable starting molecule, a hydrocarbon with no fewer than 150 atoms.
Molecular origami
Now how does the process actually work? In the first step, in a manner reminiscent of origami, the flat starting molecule must be transformed into a three-dimensional object, the germling. This takes place on a hot platinum surface (Pt(111)) by means of a catalytic reaction in which hydrogen atoms are split off and new carbon-carbon bonds are formed at very specific locations. The "germ" – a small, dome-like entity with an open edge that sits on the platinum surface – is "folded" out of the flat molecule. This "end cap" forms the "lid" of the growing SWCNT. In a second chemical process, further carbon atoms are attached, which originate from the catalytic decomposition of ethylene (C2H4) on the platinum surface. They position themselves on the open edge between the platinum surface and the end cap and raise the cap higher and higher; the nanotube grows slowly upwards. Only the germ defines the latter's atomic structure, as the researchers were able to demonstrate through the analysis of the vibration modes of the SWCNTs and scanning tunnel microscope (STM) measurements. Further investigations using the new scanning helium ion microscope (SHIM) at Empa show that the resulting SWCNTs reach lengths in excess of 300 nanometres.
On a Platinum surface, the planar hydrocarbon precursor folds into an end cap, that in turn acts as seed for the growth of a well-defined carbon nanotube. (Source: Empa / Juan Ramon Sanchez Valencia)
It works!
Thus the researchers have proved that, by using made-to-measure molecular "germs", it is possible to clearly predefine the growth (and thus the structure) of long SWCNTs. The SWCNTs synthesised in this study are mirror-image symmetrical entities. However, depending on the manner in which the honeycombed atomic lattice is derived from the starting molecule ("straight" or "oblique" in relation to the CNT axis), it would also possible be possible to produce helically-wound nanotubes, i.e. nanotubes twisting to the right or left, which are not mirror-image symmetrical. And this very structure also determines the electronic, thermoelectric and optical properties of the material. Therefore, in principle, the researchers can produce materials with different properties in a targeted manner, by selecting the starting molecule.
As their next step, Fasel and his colleagues intend to gain an even better understanding of the way in which SWCNTs populate a surface. Although well over 100 million nanotubes per square centimetre are already grown on the platinum surface, actual "fully-grown" nanotubes only grow from a comparatively small proportion of the germs. This raises the questions: which processes are responsible for this, and how can the yield be increased? The project was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (FNSNF).There are currently thousands of forest fire evacuees in Saskatchewan, including children who are desperate for fun and a smile. There are also countless people in the province who just want to help.
Put it together and what have you got? Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo.
A "magical little" children's store in Saskatoon — called Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo — is bringing some exciting guests to children forced from their homes.
Amara Haywood is one of those guests: Snow White.
She and three other princesses visited Prince Albert and North Battleford on Wednesday.
"The mood hasn't been that bad, considering the situation families are in," she said.
Haywood said she and her royal cohorts have been spending time with evacuated kids, listening them to tell stories about what's it been like away from home.
A really touching moment, she said, was when a young girl "wrapped her arms around me and fell asleep."
The girl's mom explained to Haywood that her daughter wasn't sleeping much at night, because she's scared to be around so many other people in a large evacuation centre.
"Parents seem to be coping," and people are generally trying to lift each other's spirts at the centre, Haywood said.
Haywood's next stop for the day was North Battleford, where she travelled with Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.
Haywood's store teamed up with Cameco to send their staff — which also includes Elsa from Frozen and Belle from Beauty and the Beast — to brighten the day of young evacuee.
On July 7, they visited children at the Cold Lake, Alta. shelter.
Cameco & partners proud to bring kids carnival to <a href="https://twitter.com/RedCrossSK">@RedCrossSK</a> shelter in Cold Lake. <a href="https://twitter.com/WestWind_SK">@WestWind_SK</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/skfires?src=hash">#skfires</a> <a href="http://t.co/MV0l8oupEX">pic.twitter.com/MV0l8oupEX</a> —@camecocommunity
Cameco, with help from other local companies including West Wind Aviation, is taking a travelling kids carnival and supplies for families to several locations this week.
Haywood and company will be in Regina during the morning and early afternoon on July 9, followed by Saskatoon later in the afternoon.According to new research, changing the way the issue of income inequality is framed moves conservatives closer to a liberal position.
It is a fundamental fault line of contemporary American politics: Republicans adamantly oppose higher taxes on the wealthy, while Democrats consider such taxes a moral and fiscal imperative. This disagreement plays a central role in the election campaign, and it threatens to derail any deal to cut the deficit.
But conservative opinion on this issue may be more malleable than anyone realizes. Newly published research suggests that, for those on the right, support for this specific form of wealth redistribution depends on how the issue is framed.
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Writing in the journal Psychological Science,Rosalind Chow and Jeff Galak of Carnegie Mellon University describe an online study featuring 79 American citizens (mean age 28) who expressed their views about income inequality.
A third of the participants read an introductory passage in which they were informed that the rich make far more than the poor. Specifically, they were told census data indicates that the top 5 percent of wage earners make, on average, $111,000 more than the median wage earner.
For another third of the participants, that equation was semantically reversed. They were informed that the median wage earner makes, on average, $111,000 less than the those in the top 5 percent.
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Note that they received identical information, but the emphasis was on the poor making less, rather than the rich making more. The final one-third received no information on income inequality.
Afterwards, all the participants answered a series of questions probing their beliefs about why the rich are wealthy and the poor are not. They then indicated their level of support for two tax plans: one that would create a new tax bracket for those with incomes over $1 million, and another that would create a new tax bracket for those with incomes over $5 million. Finally, they indicated their political ideology and household income.
Not surprisingly, among those who received no information on inequality, self-described conservatives were less likely to support the increased taxes. This also held true when the issue was framed as the poor making less than the rich. “In both of those conditions, the more conservative participants were, the lower was their support for the redistributive policies,” the researchers write.
However, among those in the first group—where the issue was framed as the rich making more than the poor—“liberals and conservatives were equally likely to support raising taxes on the wealthy,” the researchers report.
Analysis of their reasoning reveals that “framing inequality in this way makes conservatives more likely to question whether the wealthy are responsible for their own success,” Chow and Galak write.
Specifically, most of the right-leaning participants attributed wealth to the internal qualities of the individual, such hard work and talent. But the conservatives in that first group were just as likely as liberals to attribute wealth to a combination of internal and external variables, such as inherited money, or simply being in the right place at the right time.
On an issue where politicians refuse to compromise (no doubt at the behest of the billionaires who bankroll their campaigns), this small study suggests their supporters have decidedly mixed feelings. If a simple change in wording is enough to get conservatives to move closer to a liberal position, perhaps compromise is closer than we realize.A little while ago I had a discussion about how we consume content, and how aggregates like Reddit cause problems for discovery.
The quick-and-dirty is this: if you’re relying on upvotes and algorithms to show you what is “best,” you stop searching out new things, and can potentially miss out when those methods fail. Because algorithms and upvotes favor those already successful, they take up “space” that prevents newer or alternative creators from growing.
Essentially, Reddit creates bad habits in consuming content, and because the consumers are there, it affects production as well. This is my attempt to offer a free resource to help fix things, even to a small audience.
This is a bundle of over 125 RSS feeds that can be imported into major RSS readers (Feedly, TheOldReader, InoReader) in order to read content directly and totally.
It is pay what you want: you can put in “$0” below under the “name a fair price” to get it for free.
Updated 4/19/2016.
How to use
After downloading this file to your desktop, you can import the feeds into one of the three readers I mentioned above, or any reader that supports it.
Feedly
Largely considered the frontrunner for RSS readers after the closure of Google Reader, it has a ton of nice apps and good design.
After creating an account, scroll to the bottom and click “Import OPML”. From there, upload the file and wait for the feeds to import. From there, you can click the “X” icon on folders of games to delete their feeds if they don’t interest you.
InoReader
InoReader is a newer product, and what I like about it is that you can subscribe to hosted OMPL files so that if the bundle updates, your feeds do as well. You can subscribe to the URL for the Feed Bundle and it will be updated regularly.
TheOldReader
TheOldReader is the closest thing to Google Reader’s UI, and if you liked its no-frills design, this is the simplest. However, you can only put in 100 feeds before it prompts you to pay more, which really kind of limits its usefulness if you’re trying to follow a lot of things.
More about RSS/why you should care
RSS (Really Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary) reads sites and imports new posts into a reader as soon as they’re published, in chronological order. It means you’re not going to miss new posts, and can visit them directly, supporting the creators who make them.
This is actually an older way of doing things, as sites like Google Reader (RIP) allowed people to consume content before aggregators (like Reddit, Digg and Google News) emerged.
The difference is that RSS allows you to decide what you want to see, rather than letting someone else (upvoters, aggregates, algorithms) do it for you.
In short, I want to encourage people to be a little bit more responsible in consuming content, mostly because reliance on aggregators means that you either need to try to game that system or cross your fingers and hope you get lucky. I believe this isn’t sustainable, especially for content creators trying to do offbeat or controversial stuff; I’ve made an effort to try to be diverse with the voices that are included.
By providing this bundle, I’m reducing the amount of gruntwork that people need to do in order to get an initial group of sites. This removes the excuse to be lazy; if you want a better esports ecosystem, this is a step to doing it.
I encourage people to add or remove feeds as they see fit; this is your reader, and you can do what you want with it. Removing feeds will not affect the bundle.
Notes
Some blogs did not have RSS feeds, or covered gaming (and esports) but didn’t offer specific enough feeds. When people add those RSS feeds, I can include them in the bundle.
For now, if there are any sites you’d like to see included, fill out this form below. There will be updated versions of this file, and I will announce them as they come out on my Twitter.Image copyright SPL
A single dose of an experimental vaccine can protect mice against the Zika virus, raising renewed hope of a vaccine for humans, say scientists.
The US team say the results, published in Nature, are "striking" and should "galvanise" research efforts.
Tests in humans could begin in months.
But even if these go well, a licensed vaccine for widespread use to protect those at most risk - such as pregnant women - would still be years away, experts advise.
Urgent need
Zika has been spreading across Central and South America and, most recently, Africa.
More than 60 countries and territories now have continuing transmission of the disease, which is carried by mosquitoes.
The virus causes serious birth defects during pregnancy and has been declared a global public health emergency.
Image copyright AP Image caption A baby from Brazil who has microcephaly - a birth defect linked to Zika
Developing a vaccine for pregnant women to protect their unborn babies is an international research priority.
Zika jab
US scientists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School tested two types of Zika vaccine in mice - one based on bits of genetic code from the virus and another that is an inactive (and therefore harmless) replica of Zika.
Both worked well, protecting every mouse that was immunised against the virus. In comparison, all of the mice not given the vaccine caught Zika after they were exposed to it.
Image copyright AP
The WRAIR says it will push ahead with developing the purified inactivated virus vaccine, because this approach is well chartered ground - there are many existing vaccines for other disease that use this type of technology, whereas there are relatively few DNA-based vaccines.
Future tests will need to check the vaccine is safe and effective in humans, as well as how long the immunity might last.
Researcher Dr Dan Barouch said: "There's a lot of unknowns.
"With the preclinical demonstration of efficacy of these Zika virus vaccines, then we hope that this news will electrify and galvinise the vaccine effort against Zika virus."
Other researchers have been testing what effect Zika infection has on the immune system of monkeys.
They have shown that once the animals have recovered from the infection, they have lasting immunity against the disease - at least for the few months the researchers have been able to |
21. Sometimes, it's about giving up control
22. Seven-year-olds can be brats, sometimes
Whether or not you agree with these parents and their deep resentment of their children, you have to admit that these moms and dads are under an immense amount of pressure. Not everyone is cut out for parenting, and I hope that everyone considering becoming a mother or father thinks long and hard about their decision.Saltzman heads to Airlines - The Wisconsin cash aftermath - Ogilvy, Chevron dustup continues - Ben & Jerry's co-founder wants you to (illegally?) stamp money with anti-Citizens United slogans
With Abby Phillip
PI SCOOP… SALTZMAN HEADS TO AIRLINES: Josh Saltzman, the top aide to Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), is joining the Airlines for America trade group as VP of global government affairs. He comes on after 12 years on Capitol Hill, most recently as Sessions’s chief of staff, serving as his chief policy and political aide and primary liaison with Republican leadership offices. “Josh has a proven track record of working cooperatively with leadership and with members of both parties and will be a strong addition to our growing advocacy team that is drawn from the White House and top Hill leadership staffs,” said A4A President and CEO Nicholas Calio. Sessions also praised Saltzman: "Josh is a smart, loyal and trusted professional whose service has been a tremendous asset to my office. While I will miss his experience, skill and leadership, Airlines for America could not have hired a more hard-working or dedicated advocate."
Story Continued Below
THE WISCONSIN CASH AFTERMATH: Welcome to a new norm for big-state elections, where massive, national-level groups play an outsized, even overriding role. Roughly $66 million was spent on the recall in Wisconsin — a state with 5.7 million people. Sure, in 2010, several prominent gubernatorial elections, including those in California, Ohio and Florida, attracted significant dollars from national political interests. “But they’re not going to hold a candle to this recall election,” said Denise Roth Barber, managing director of the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in State Politics. “This kind of recall spending could be what we see regularly in future races that have national implications.” And while the left drove the recall, it was Republican Gov. Scott Walker (He survived the recall, if you’ve been living in a bomb shelter.) and conservative forces who won the day on the cash front — in a battle that wasn’t even close.
Walker spent $29.25 million through May, roughly 10 times the amount by Democrat Tom Barrett ($2.93 million), according to the tally from the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. The amount of reportable money that poured in from outside organizations was also dramatic — $18 million from conservative groups like the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity, the American Majority Action, Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, FreedomWorks for America, the National Rifle Association and the Tea Party Patriots. From the left, groups such as the AFL-CIO, the Democratic Governors Association, the Human Rights Campaign, MoveOn.org and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund spent roughly $15.5 million. States should be alarmed, said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. "We're little more than a pawn on a national chessboard," he said. "This is something we've never seen before."
More on the recall aftermath from Jim VandeHei, Robin Bravender and David Catanese: http://politi.co/Kie52F
OGILVY, CHEVRON DUSTUP CONTINUES: The brouhaha over an Ogilvy Public Relations employee attending an Amazon Watch lunch and allegedly talking about Ogilvy PR and Ogilvy Government Relations' client Chevron is continuing to cause problems at the firm. Chevron, which had separate contracts with Ogilvy Public Relations in California and Ogilvy Government Relations in Washington, was upset over what it perceived as a conflict of interest in Felipe Benitez allegedly discussing the company in public. But instead of assuaging the client's concerns, Ogilvy PR's Christopher Graves had a heated conversation with Chevron that resulted in the oil and gas company terminating both contracts, according to a source intimately familiar with the matter. WPP execs also were involved in the snafu. WPP is the holding company that owns the trio of Ogilvy companies— advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, Ogilvy Public Relations and Ogilvy Government relations.
"We were innocent bystanders. It was a drive-by shooting," the source told PI. To be sure, Chevron was no small client for the lobby shop, which originally signed them in 2004, billing about $600,000 a year for the firm. Last year, Chevron was the lobby shop's second largest client.
An Ogilvy spokesperson sent PI a statement when questioned on the incident. "Chevron informed Ogilvy & Mather of its decision to end its relationship with Ogilvy Government Relations because of a perceived conflict with Ogilvy PR," the spokesperson said. "As this is primarily a personnel matter, we are unable to provide further detail."
How the matter was handled hasn't sat too well with top rainmaker Wayne Berman, who is responsible for bringing in the majority of the lobby shop's business. "From a client relation's standpoint, it is unthinkable," the source said. The situation has created grave concern about how other clients could be affected by the Ogilvy companies and WPP. So far, it appears that Berman is staying put. Stay tuned.
HAPPY WEDNESDAY! Where in 2005, the Supreme Court put a harsh on many a weed smoker's mellow when it upheld a federal law banning cannabis, including medical marijuana, in Gonzales v. Raich. Got a good buzz? Shoot us any and all tips — even those half-baked to apalmer@politico.com and dlevinthal@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter at @davelevinthal and @apalmerdc.
Now back to the show …
BEN & JERRY’S CO-FOUNDER WANTS YOU TO (ILLEGALLY?) STAMP MONEY WITH ANTI-CITIZENS UNITED SLOGANS: Ben & Jerry’s ice cream co-founder Ben Cohen is planning next month to distribute rubber stamps, for use marking U.S. currency, that feature the slogans such as “corporations are not people,” “money is not speech” and “not to be used for bribing politicians.” The stamp giveaway, which will begin with an event July 4 in Philadelphia, is being coordinated in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street movement and political group Move to Amend, which is advocating for a constitutional amendment that overturns the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. “This action will be a way for citizens to express their outrage at the ties between big money and political corruption," said Move to Amend spokesman David Cobb. “Politicians rubber stamp legislation that benefits profit over people. We are rubber stamping money to remind lawmakers that they serve ‘We the People,’ not ‘We the Corporations.’”
But isn’t defacing currency illegal? Generally speaking, it sure is, according to Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Anyone convicted of defacing currency — virtually no one ever is, to be sure — “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both,” the code states. Currency defacement also falls under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service, so there’s that to contend with, too. Cobb, however, tells PI that because the statute requires specific intent to deface currency in order to take it out of circulation, their campaign should be in the clear. “We want this currency to circulate,” he said. “We are not concerned that we would be convicted if prosecuted.”
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LOBBY DAY STARTS WITH CONGRESSIONAL BREAKFAST: The National Network to End Domestic Violence hosted a breakfast event this morning at the Washington Court Hotel attended by a handful of members of Congress. The organization is kicking off its annual lobby day for the Senate version of the Violence Against Women Act, which is still embroiled in some controversy. In attendance, according to a PI tipster, were Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) who arrived bright and early at 6:45 a.m., Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa).
Brown got a standing ovation when talking about his wife and daughters, and offered some personal remarks about two of his four stepfathers, who he said were abusive and manipulative.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who also delivered remarks, was introduced by a home-town advocate who reminded the crowd that Leahy told Heath Ledger "we're not afraid of you thugs" in his Batman cameo.
"I'd like to think of my mark as getting VAWA thru," Leahy responded.
CASEY TO RAISE FORK, CASH: Sen. Bob Casey (R-Pa.) is holding a breakfast fundraiser at Charlie Palmer Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. Cost to attend: $2,500 to co-host and $1,000 to come as a guest.
BROYDRICK SIGNS RATINGS COMPANY: Egan-Jones Rating Company has brought on Broydrick & Associates to lobby on its behalf. William Broydrick is manning the account lobbying on financial services issues like independent ratings and SEC regulations.
NAM KICKS OFF ANNUAL MANUFACTURING SUMMIT: The National Association of Manufacturers begins its 2012 Manufacturing Summit today with nearly 400 manufacturers expected in town for a series of events over the next two days. House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) talked tax issues when he addressed the NAM executive board on Tuesday and on Wednesday, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) will deliver the keynote address at the Summit luncheon. The manufacturers are expected to meet with members of Congress on tax, energy and workforce issues throughout the summit.
SIERRA CLUB FIGHTS FOR WIND TAX CREDIT: The Sierra Club launched a new campaign to push for the renewal of the production tax credit for wind, set to expire at the end of the year. “Wind Works” will tout the job creating potential of wind energy and its contribution to public health. The Sierra Club plans to devote “significant resources” to the campaign through paid media and grassroots organizing. “The ‘Wind Works’ campaign is the Sierra Club’s move to the next level, in advocating for renewable energy jobs and ensuring America transitions to a clean energy economy,” said Dave Hamilton, director for clean energy of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.
THE NEW FRONTIER …THE DEBATE OVER POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE: Should there be more disclosure of political intelligence firms operating in Washington? They’re technically not lobbyists, but a breakfast panel this morning agreed that they often act like them on behalf of corporations and hedge funds. The event organized by influence research platform First Street and Women in Government Relations featured The Cypress Group’s J. Patrick Cave, Heather Podesta of Heather Podesta + Partners, Robert Walker of Wiley Rein, and Michael Mayhew of Integrity Research Associates.
The rise in political intelligence gatherers drew scrutiny after a "60 Minutes" story brought light to the potential for insider trading among members of Congress and their staff and eventually resulted in Congress passing the STOCK Act. “Congress got it right. The irony of it is that it’s a law that confirms a law — but that’s important,” said Cave, a registered lobbyist who also does work for political intelligence clients.
Podesta said the STOCK Act won’t be the last of the scrutiny the growing industry may face. In response, the political intelligence firms will continue to evolve their business to keep up. “The bill clearly had a chilling effect on the industry,” Podesta said. “We are in a cooling off period as people reassess the situation. We can expect things to morph because the information is so valuable.”
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Are media organizations — BGOV, POLITICO Pro, the National Journal and others — engaged in political intelligence business? Half the panelists seemed to think so. Cave and Mayhew, an expert on the industry, agreed that burgeoning media services designed to give subscription-only information about Congress and regulators should be regulated. Podesta and Walker both worried that such restrictions could result in a chilling effect on freedom of the press. “When you talk about a chilling effect in that area — that would be a big price to pay.” Walker said.
INFLUENCE INDUSTRY MUD BUGGING OUT FOR LANDRIEU: The question isn’t so much who from the influence industry is coming to the 11 th annual Crawfish Fest fundraiser in honor of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), but who isn’t. Among the many hosts for the event, which begins at 6 p.m. Thursday in downtown D.C., are the political action committees of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Bridgestone Americas, CompTIA, Cox, Dow Chemical, General Electric, L-3 Communications, Monsanto, National Association of Broadcasters, Fox / News America, Viacom and Wal-Mart, as well as the American Pilots Association and American Sugar Cane League. See the invitation here: http://bit.ly/LvTEPQ
WARNER SEEKS SOURCES OF CAMPAIGN CASH: The Source, an intimate high-end eatery not so far from the White House, plays host this afternoon to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) for a lunch fundraiser where the minimum suggested donation is $1,000. See the invite here: http://bit.ly/LlhFMZ
GROCERS LOBBY BOLSTERS GOVERNMENT, PUBLIC AFFAIRS OPERATIONS: The National Grocers Association has named Hayley McConnell director of communications and Kailee Tkacz a government affairs manager. McConnell had worked at CRC Public Relations, while Tkacz, whose work will include developing policy positions and grassroots efforts and bolstering lobbying activities, comes from the American Legislative Exchange Council. “Hayley's expertise and Kailee's skills will be an asset as NGA continues to increase the profile of the independent grocer in Washington and throughout the country," said association President and CEO Peter Larkin. Additionally, the association has named Christine Cunnick, previously director of communications, director of marketing and promotions. In recent years, the National Grocers Association has spent from $260,000 to $370,000 annually on federal lobbying efforts. And it is on pace this year to hit $300,000, congressional disclosure records indicate.
CHARITY BASH DRAWS INFLUENCE SET: A gaggle of K-Streeters and other influence industry notables gathered Tuesday night on the rooftop of downtown D.C.’s Beacon Hotel to benefit the Dress for Success program, which provides professional clothing and career support for poor women. The asset management firm Carlyle Group, which typically spends from $500,000 to $1 million annually on federal-level lobbying, was a sponsor, as was former White House Office of Management and Budget and House Government Reform Committee official Barbara Kahlow. Host committee members included Heran Getachew and Alexander Hills of IBM, Kristi Guillory of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and Julia Debes of U.S. Wheat Associates.
TRIO OF COLORADO REPUBLICANS FORM JOINT FUNDRAISING COMMITTEE: Republican Reps. Scott Tipton and Mike Coffman have joined House candidate Joe Coors in forming the Colorado Congressional Majority Fund. The federal joint fundraising committee may raise cash in support of any of the three candidates, distributing money to them at its discretion so long as disbursements adhere to federal campaign finance limits. The Colorado Republican Committee is also a member of the new joint fundraising committee.
NEW POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE REGISTRATIONS:
Infinium Capital Holdings LLC of Chicago — Treasurer: Gregory Francis Eickbush
Developing Communities Initiative of Houston — Treasurer: Shefa Hoten
Liberty Unleashed of Sunrise, Fla. — Treasurer: Jae Kim
Slam Dunks, Fireworks and Eagles SuperPAC of Washington, D.C. — Treasurer: Daniel Bassali (super PAC)
Indiana Republican Assembly Super PAC of Beech Grove, Ind. — Treasurer: JD Miniear (super PAC)
Oklahoma Conservative Values Delegates of Oklahoma City — Treasurer: Lukus Collins (super PAC)
Progressives for Prosperity of Burlingame, Calif. — Treasurer: Remy Smith (super PAC)
American Veto of Telluride, Colo. — Treasurer: Jerry P. Davidian (super PAC)
Together We Thrive of Carmel, Ind. — Treasurer: Christopher Zullo (super PAC)
NEW LOBBYING REGISTRATIONS: Nada.Earlier today John Wilbanks sent out this tweet:
Help me build a @23andme health data export app. $500 reward. Details at http://t.co/dC2ZX1F2OK — John Wilbanks (@wilbanks) December 11, 2013
John was lamenting the fact that he couldn’t export and store the genome interpretations that 23&Me provides (they do provide a full export of a user’s genotype). By the afternoon two developers, Beau Gunderson and Eric Jain, had submitted their projects. (You can view them here and here).
We’ve doing some exploration and research about QS APIs over the last two years and we’ve come to understand that having data export is key function of personal data tools. Being able to download and retain an easily decipherable copy of your personal data is important for a variety of reasons. One just needs to spend some time in our popular Zeo Shutting Down: Export Your Data thread to understand how vital this function is.
We know that some toolmakers already include data export as part of their user experience, but many have not or only provide partial support. I’m proposing that we, as a community of people who support and value the ability to find personal meaning through personal data, work together to provide the tools and knowledge to help people access their data.
Would you help and be a part of our Personal Data Task Force*? We can work together to build a common set of resources, tools, how-to’s and guides to help people access their personal data. I’m listening for ideas and insights. Please let me know what you think and how you might want to help.
Replies on our forum or via email are welcomed.
*We’re inspired by Sina Khanifar’s work on the Rapid Response Internet Task Force.Newsen via Nate1. [+480, -80] The comments on previous articles were all manipulated by their stupid fangirls talking about how fun and amazing the episode was but reality is that no one's interested in watching a group full of criminals2. [+432, -59] Honestly, from marijuana scandals to that right-wing b*tch, their image is an utter mess. I'm surprised they even have fans left. The general public has no interest in watching them at all.3. [+395, -69] YG kids in general have no variety talent. I've never seen them do well on a variety show before.4. [+52, -6] I just started avoiding them after a while because of how arrogant they've gotten.5. [+40, -7] Daebak ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ what an utter embarrassment ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ this is going to follow them for the rest of their careers6. [+36, -6] I admit they're musically talented but their private lives are just too dirty...7. [+30, -3] Taeyang's really the only one who hasn't had a scandal8. [+27, -5] I'm a non-fan who has never taken an interest in them but I've noticed that articles about their variety appearances are always the same. #1 always put down Seungri #2 MCs hype up GD #3 talk about TOP's acting #4 Daesung's jokes #5 put down Yang Hyun Suk as a joke9. [+26, -3] Why would anyone watch a bunch of criminals laughing on screen??? ㅋㅋ10. [+25, -14] I like their music but I don't like them as people which is why I didn't watch11. [+21, -4] Proof that anyone with a moral sense doesn't view Big Bang positively anymore. The only ones commenting that they like them are the ones in the fandom without any moral sense. Their music is good but it's not good enough to forgive everything else. Yoo Seung Jun has always been known for his exceptional singing and dancing but look at how that's not enough for the public to forgive him.12. [+18, -3] Ah really? Guess I wasn't the only one who didn't watch ㅋㅋㅋ13. [+17, -1] Proof that only fans watched ㅋㅋㅋ honestly, who cares if their song is good when they're just a bunch of trashy criminals with a leader who's a druggie dating a right-wing. Who would watch this other than their fans?14. [+16, -1] I remember reading comments by their stupid fangirls talking about how daebak and hilarious the episode was.SB277 passed. And some political campaigns got richer and more powerful in the mean time. But let’s start with the spin factory. (this disgust me)
(via sacbee) “We aren’t pushing this bill behind the scenes,” said Priscilla VanderVeer, the senior director for communications for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, the industry’s main trade group. The group has no taken no position on SB 277, although the group has long backed vaccinations as sound public health policy, she said.
This statement from VanderVeer is absolutely absurd and panders to the lowest denominations of our society’s intelligence. Who would believe this stuff? This can’t be real life.
Sen. Richard Pan, a Sacramento Democrat, himself nabbed $95,000 during the 2013-14 year. That’s a serious amount of cash from Pharmaceutical companies who just don’t seem to care about mandatory vaccinations, no? I wonder what policies he supports which they enjoy? It couldn’t be a more transparent situation.
The overall spend from Big Phama was $3 million to lobby legislature, the governor and the state pharmacists’ board. Again, a lot of cash for a group that isn’t “pushing the bill behind the scenes.”
State records show that pharmaceutical companies and trade groups donated more than $2 million to current lawmakers in 2013-2014.
Courtesy of the Sac Bee, this is a total joke. I hope everyone who supported this bill understands what these numbers mean. And when Big Pharma comes calling for more mandatory drugs, like forced SSRI treatment to depressed kids, please understand where it all started.
Pharmaceutical company or group Campaign donations to current state legislators Direct lobbying payments Johnson & Johnson Inc. $86,300 $583,926 GlaxoSmithKline $32,250 $561,479 Eli Lilly & Company $193,100 $280,863 Gilead Sciences Inc. $77,600 $196,732 Biocom PAC $30,000 $223,224 Sanofi $48,000 $172,500 Abbott Laboratories $173,600 $42,500 Astellas Pharma US Inc. $47,900 $161,440 AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LLP $157,300 $49,583 Merck & Co. Inc. $91,600 $108,204 California Pharmacists Association $53,389 $134,176 Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers Assn. $137,950 $45,455 Eisai Inc. $92,000 $88,000 Bristol-Myers Squibb Company $32,300 $144,101 Pfizer $150,600 $21,250 AbbVie $138,425 $25,530 Amgen $105,600 $45,455 Allergan USA Inc. $120,100 $22,757 Takeda Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. $40,000 $83,348 Pharmacy Professionals of California $32,000 $0
Lawmaker Party/District Amount Sen. Richard Pan* D-Sacramento $95,150 Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins D-San Diego $90,250 Sen. Ed Hernandez* D-Azusa $67,750 Sen. Holly Mitchell* D-Los Angeles $60,107 Assemblyman Brian Maienschein* R-San Diego $59,879 Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León D-Los Angeles $56,648 Sen. Isadore Hall D-Compton $52,400 Sen. Jerry Hill D-San Mateo $50,209 Assemblyman Henry Perea D-Fresno $49,550 Assemblywoman Shirley Weber D-San Diego $47,000 Assemblyman Mike Gatto D-Los Angeles $46,491 Assemblywoman Susan A. Bonilla* D-Concord $45,600 Sen. Andy Vidak R-Hanford $42,800 Assemblyman Tom Daly D-Anaheim $40,300 Assemblyman Kevin Mullin D-South San Francisco $38,400 Assemblyman Adam Gray D-Merced $37,000 Assemblyman Rob Bonta* D-Alameda $36,750 Assemblyman Anthony Rendon D-Lakewood $36,200 Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez* D-Los Angeles $33,850 Assemblyman Richard Gordon D-Menlo Park $33,100
*Member of the Assembly or Senate health committees
Source: Bee analysis of secretary of state campaign finance and lobbying reportsIt appears that GLORY finally has a new television home.
The world's leading kickboxing promotion has apparently come to an agreement with the worldwide leader in sports, ESPN. The company has been very hush-hush recently as well as those close to it, but news leaked early on Thursday morning (Nov. 5, 2015) via Twitter that the "Watch ESPN App" does in fact have the GLORY 25 event listed.
An official announcement has not yet been made.
Based off those listings, the GLORY fight cards would air live on ESPN3, which is the network's online streaming service, and re-air at a later time on ESPN2.
ESPN3 (formerly ESPN 360.com) launched in 2005 and features a wide variety of live sports including: FIFA World Cup global qualifiers, NCAA College Football, Canadian Football league, NBA and WNBA, Golf, Major League Lacrosse, and NCAA Lacrosse.
ESPN2, which launched in 1993, is currently available in over 94 million households and has featured both mainstream and non-mainstream events including: The Australian Open, Wimbledon, Major League Soccer, World Series of Poker, Extreme Sports, Major League Baseball, and Arena Football League.
This would be a huge platform for GLORY to start its next chapter and a home that could see the promotion gain new fans and have highlights featured on SportsCenter and other areas within the brand's realm.
GLORY was broadcast on Spike TV over the last two years, but after 14 fight cards the Viacom network announced last Tuesday (Oct. 27, 2015) it would not be renewing its deal, thus officially leaving the promotion without a broadcast partner.
The writing was on the wall long before that, and Franklin had told MMAmania back in September that the promotion would have an announcement soon, as it was in the process of locking up a new television deal, and that GLORY 25 -- which is set to take place in Monza, Italy on November 6, 2015 -- would be televised in the U.S.
The GLORY CEO released a statement last week following the Spike news, saying the promotion "needs a partnership with a dedicated sports broadcaster, an established destination for the world's greatest athletic events. With more original content, shoulder programming, and a view to brand building for the organization and our athletes coming up, GLORY will be able to take its next step as a global sports property."
It seems GLORY has found what it has been looking for.
This isn't ESPN's first venture into kickboxing. The network was home to Professional Karate Association (PKA) kickboxing from 1979 through 1986 and featured fighters like Bill "Superfoot" Wallace, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez and Dennis "The Terminator" Alexio. Those fights featured two-minute rounds with no kicks above the waist and an eight-kicks per round minimum. The fighters also wore four-ounce pads on their feet.
MMAmania.com has reached out to both GLORY and ESPN, but has not yet heard back at this time. We will provide more information as soon as it becomes available.
Update: GLORY has confirmed to MMAMania that the deal with ESPN is official. GLORY 25 will air tomorrow afternoon on ESPN3 at 4 p.m. ET and replay later on ESPN2 at 1:30 a.m. ET.
GLORY CEO Jon J. Franklin had this to say about the deal.
"We couldn't be happier to be on multiple platforms of the most watched, most talked about sports network in the world," said Franklin. "This Friday will be the first time our stacked card will be available live on both coasts - joining live international broadcasts already scheduled in more than 100 countries, with almost 80 more on delay - and we're excited to be working with ESPN."As Fraser points out, David Cameron has gone from saying the deficit has been brought down by a third to claiming it has been halved, but with the often unspoken caveat that this is as a share of GDP. After the Prime Minister dropped this claim into his speech today without that very important small print, journalists grilled his official spokesman on whether Cameron was misleading voters at the afternoon lobby briefing. I’ve written up the transcript of our attempts to ask the same question many different ways.
Journalist: When the Prime Minister said in his speech this afternoon the government had halved the deficit, did he qualify that in any way?
Spokesman: How do you mean?
Journalist: In the sense that the deficit in cash terms has not halved, not even nearly halved, it’s thirded.
Spokesman:I think it’s fallen half as a percentage of GDP, hasn’t it?
Journalist: Yes, but he didn’t say halved as a percentage of GDP.
Spokesman:Well, it has halved as a percentage of GDP, which is why the Prime Minister was saying what he said.
Journalist: Why has the government switched from talking about the deficit using one set of metrics to talking about it using another? So previously Osborne wasn’t talking about it as a share of GDP, but now that you want to say that you’ve made progress on it, when actually you’ve still only thirded it, you’re now saying you’ve halved it using it as a share of GDP. Why have you switched?
Spokesman:Well, um, we haven’t. Those numbers will be in the Budget and Autumn Statement.
Journalist: But the numbers will be but the way you’re expressing it has changed so the way Cameron is expressing it today is different to the way that Osborne has previously expressed it before the Autumn Statement.
Spokesman: I said that the numbers that have been published by the OBR and by the government just in the Autumn Statement, people have been poring over them, the numbers will be there, so, er, as a percentage of GDP, it’s halved. That’s the point he was making. I dispute the premise.
Journalist: When the government said that they had reduced it by a third previously was that as a percentage of GDP as well?
Spokesman: Well, I’ll let you go back into the history books.
Journalist: It would be helpful if you could just tell me now.
Let me ask it in another way now. Is it the same number, is it the same amount? Are we talking about the same thing?
Spokesman: Look, the point is that at the Autumn Statement the government was able to set out further progress in reducing the deficit, and the Prime Minister was talking about that and it has halved as a percentage of GDP.
Journalist: But it’s not true that the deficit has been halved not as a share of GDP.
Spokesman: It is true that it has halved as a percentage of GDP. So that’s why the Prime Minister said what he said today.
Journalist: But that’s not what the Prime Minister said. The Prime Minister just said we’ve halved the deficit.
Spokesman: That’s what when you open up the tables and look, as a percentage of GDP it’s halved. So that’s exactly what’s happened. I’m afraid we’re going to continue to disagree on the premises here, but I’m very happy to keep disagreeing.
Journalist: Does the Prime Minister accept the deficit in 2013/14 was £98bn?
Spokesman: The numbers will be set out by the… one of the reforms that this government brought in… was of course an independent Office for Budget Responsibility and, er, well the figures are the ones the Office for Budget Responsibility will have set out.
Journalist: And he also accepts that’s about a 35% reduction?
Spokesman: The numbers set out show exactly the point the Prime Minister was making.
Journalist: Why did the Prime Minister say at the start of December we’ve got the deficit down by a third and then a few days later the Chancellor say we’ve halved it?
Spokesman: Well, I think one was before the Autumn Statement, one was after.It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
The Cloud was supposed to be mostly hype, and the part that wasn’t had something to do with Google. If this year’s ESRI Users’ Conference was overly focused on ArcGIS Online, you reasoned, it was merely the new shiny bauble in Redlands. If its president seemed a little fixated on The Cloud, well, he’s an excitable guy eager to communicate his excitement about exciting things. But with the conference being the great venue to catch up with colleagues and clients (not to mention the car-free nightlife), you told everyone it was a “good conference”: mostly meaning that San Diego is one of the few pleasant places left in America to spend a week in July. Maybe after the conference you went on vacation to recover spend quality time with the family. Two weeks out of the office–you know how the game is played.
Let me bring you up to speed on what you missed while you were away: ESRI killed your business model.
See, you make your money as an “intergrator”: tweaking software, servers, and interfaces to meet end-user needs. Your bread and butter are the big government contracts: federal agencies (DoD and Homeland Security if you’re especially lucky) and some larger state projects. Margins are nice, and they make for a comfortable office building in a suburban office park (see: Reston, VA).
First, during the UC, a press release dropped on a Lockheed/ESRI collaboration on web-based apps using ESRI’s cloud infrastructure aimed particularly at the DoD/Homeland Security sector. In and of itself, not red-flag worthy. But then this little gem dropped, detailing a USDA-wide implementation of ESRI’s cloud infrastructure. Read between the lines: ESRI is no longer content to merely have its software be a line-item in the large contracts: it’s selling its platform and all of the ancillary services around it, with “scalability” being code for “we plan on being the dominant provider for the largest clients.” Think about this way: ArcGIS Online means fewer ArcServer licenses for small- and medium-sized shops; direct-connect to spatial databases means a lot less use cases for ArcSDE (thank goodness). That loss of revenue has to be made up somewhere, and Redlands has pushed its chips on the square marked “Cloud”. See this as a page out of the IBM playbook where the real money is in high-margin services, with software merely being the means to that end.
So where does leave you, the ESRI Business Partner? You better have some serious stroke in your business domain (e.g. Lockheed), or have analytic “secret-sauce” services not easily replicated by ESRI. The “me-too” stuff and the marginally useful branded add-ons won’t be enough anymore in a world where ESRI is no longer shy about doing ESRI better than you do ESRI.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
But let’s stop being gloomy and address the situation in a proactive way, a forward-leaning posture if you will. Change doesn’t happen overnight, so I’d estimate you have about two years to figure out how you’re going to make money five years from now. If there was ever a time to engage in a little of that out-of-the-box thinking, now would be that time. Because you need ideas. If the phrases “Vice President”, “Strategic”, “Accounts”, “Marketing”, etc., appear anywhere on your business card, your company is looking to you to figure this one out. Lucky for you I can help out. In mid-September, the brightest minds in geospatial will be gathering in Denver, Colorado discussing software and possibilities without the vendor pep rally vibe.
“Open source? But there’s no business model there.”
Yeah, we knew you would say that. So we set up a special day-long event that is both an introduction to geospatial open source as well as a broad discussion of how people are making money integrating open source components. And then we take the discussion to a microbrewery.
Details here.
We realize it’s a busy world, so you can just pay for this one-day event, or add it on to a full-conference registration. If time is tight, my playbook would be to go to the one-day event on September 13th, and have your most trusted geek do the deep-dive sessions during the rest of the week. You’ll come away with a bunch of intriguing ideas; the rest is up to you.
Get with the program.
—Brian TimoneyAs you know on March 7th Toronto FC will be hosting the L.A Galaxy in the CONCACAF Champions League quarter finals, first leg, and rather than at BMO Field, it's going to be at the Rogers Centre. With tickets sold reportedly creeping towards the 50,000 mark, there should be plenty of fans there that are new to this TFC supporting thing, and maybe dear reader, that means you.
The Supporters Groups will as always be doing their thing, but in order to ensure that Toronto FC has a strong home field advantage, we are counting on everyone to contribute, so if you fall into that "new supporter" category, a) welcome, have fun, then please come back for more games, and b) here are some things you can do to participate:
Visually.
Wear Red (just not a Man Utd shirt with number 7 and you know who on the back).
Bring your scarf. Make a banner. Bring a flag. Toronto FC, Canada, or your own creation, bring your flags and wave them proudly |
izio, which has now become problematic. Vizio claims that instead of the full payout, LeEco offered to create a joint distribution deal. The proposed deal would involve LeEco paying $40 million outright, $10 million after the new deal closed, and $50 million turned into a contribution for the joint venture.
The dispute has now turned into a full-fledged lawsuit (or as I like to call it, a LeSuit), with Vizio claiming that LeEco never intended to pay the full $100 million termination fee. The lawsuit also alleges that LeEco lied about their financials to Vizio, and that the company used the intended merger to gain access to Vizio's corporate customer database (including contact info, account history, purchasing needs, etc). If you've ever watched The Office, this is like when Dwight stole corporate contacts from Staples to sell paper to them.
I'll be interested to see the results of the lawsuit, but judging from the past few months, I don't think LeEco will come out triumphant.Yego flung himself forward as he released his third round effort, hitting the synthetic runway as his javelin sailed out to 92.72 metres.
Egypt’s Ihab El-Sayed posted a season’s best to take silver with 88.99m, despite fouling with his final four throws.
Finland’s Tero Pitkamaki won bronze with a mark of 87.64m.
Yego missed out on a bronze medal in heart-breaking circumstances at the 2013 edition in Moscow as home favourite Dmitriy Tarabin snatched third with his final throw.
The 26-year-old is perhaps best known for coaching himself with the assistance of YouTube.
There was a thrilling conclusion to the women’s 3000m steeplechase as Hyvin Kiyeng Jepkemoi claimed victory.
Jepkemoi was abreast with Tunisia’s Habiba Ghribi and Germany’s Gesa Felicitas Krause down the home straight, but had the strength and speed to triumph.
Ghribi finished second in 9:19.24, with Krause placing third in 9:19.25.
In the women’s 400m hurdles, Zuzana Hejnova defended her title with an impressive 53.50s clocking.
American duo Shamier Little (53.94s) and Cassandra Tate (54.02s) took silver and bronze respectively.Sherlock and Harry Potter are the same story, and we have all the proof you need. Note: This piece has two mentions of Sherlock series 3, but we don’t spoil.
We never thought that these two English properties were actually so similar, but once we started thinking about it we realized that they’re equal in twenty different ways.
A know-it-all
An iconic address
A motherly figure always looking out for her loved ones
A lead character always making headlines
Article Continues Below
… And the fame that comes with it
A series of puzzles needing to be solved to crack a case
A red-headed older brother who thinks he’s better than you
A leader who falls to his death out of necessity
This actor (Alfred Enoch)
A wedding interrupted by trouble
A sidekick who’s with his best friend until the very end
A really long wait
A mind palace
An (im)mortal enemy
A bank break in
Created a must-see London destination
St. Barts Street
Kings Cross
‘Mad and hairy? You wouldn’t be talkin’ about me, now would ya?’
A cryptic wall message
A best friend’s other half is totally badass
A creator who can be a TOTAL troll
Sherlock series 3 premieres this Sunday in the United States on PBS. It already finished airing in the United Kingdom.
Do you know any other ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Sherlock’ comparisons?
For more, check out our favorite moments from series 3’s episode 1, episode 2, and episode 3.
Fan art at the top of this article created by y0do on deviantART.
Written by Andrew Sims, Tariq Kyle, Kristen Kranz, Kristina Lintz, and Angelica Yap.We are fast approaching that long overdue moment when the country wakes up to the scale of the disaster we are being led into by the absurdly unreal, global-warming-obsessed energy policy of our “greenest ever government”. Yet another disturbing instance of this was the announcement tucked away in George Osborne’s Budget that he will impose a “£16 a ton floor price for carbon”, a measure seemingly so arcane that no one has really bothered to spell out its implications.
What it means is that for every ton of CO2 emitted by British industry, and by our electricity companies in particular, we shall all indirectly have to pay what is in effect a hidden tax of £16, rising over the next nine years to £30.
Last year, the coal-fired power stations which supply nearly a third of our electricity used 40 million tons of coal, each emitting up to 2.9 tons of CO2. For this 116 million tons, we shall see nearly £2 billion added to our electricity bills.
The same tax on gas will add a further £1 billion to our bills, thus increasing them by a total of £3 billion a year, rising to £5 billion by 2020. This will add more than 25 per cent to the price we presently pay for electricity, or £200 a year for every household.
This is on top of the price we will have to pay for all the Government’s other “green” dreams, such as the £100 billion it wants spent on 10,000 giant wind turbines, plus another £40 billion to hook them up to the grid. The 100 per cent subsidies for onshore wind power and 200 per cent subsidies for offshore will add further billions to our bills, in return for what will still be only a fraction of the electricity we need.
Already we have seen one estimate, from analysts at Matrix Group, that Mr Osborne’s new “carbon tax” will so skew the economics of coal-fired electricity that four of our larger French- and Spanish-owned power stations at Kingsnorth, Didcot, Tilbury and Cockenzie will have to shut down by 2013, even earlier than their forced closure under the EU’s Large Combustion Plants Directive. This will knock such a hole in our generating capacity that we can look forward to the first of those long-predicted power cuts and blackouts.
What has also shocked British industry is that we will be the only country in the world that has to pay this new tax, thus eroding our competitiveness still further. It is not only electricity which will take the brunt of the tax, but all major CO2 emitters, such as what remains of Britain’s steel industry. Among those already hinting that Osborne’s tax could lead to plant closures and the loss of thousands of jobs have been Welsh MPs, conscious that one of South Wales’s biggest employers is Tata Steel, with 7,500 workers. Tata itself has warned that Osborne’s tax will cost its British operations £20 million a year by 2020, representing a “potentially severe blow to the sustainability of UK steelmaking”.
David Cameron’s response to this is that, on the contrary, he is “hugely heartened by the fact that Tata is putting more investment into the UK”. But what is the main proclaimed purpose of that investment? To make the blades for those useless windmills. Alas, Mr Cameron could not begin to understand what this tells us about the babyish little green dreamworld in which he and his Government live.Zackary James Anthony
An Arizona detention officer was arrested on Thursday after allegedly punching an uncooperative inmate several times in the face and breaking his jaw in a clash inside a jail psychiatric unit, sheriff’s officials said.
Zackary James Anthony, 27, was taken into custody while still in his uniform and booked on suspicion of aggravated assault in connection with the Aug. 8 incident at the Lower Buckeye Jail in Phoenix, officials said.
Anthony had “gone out of his way” to repeatedly strike the unidentified inmate after he failed to obey officers’ orders, said sheriff’s spokesman Lieutenant Brandon Jones.
“The inmate was not being aggressive at all,” Jones said. “He was almost in a retreat mode.”
Investigators said the incident started when the inmate, housed in a unit for the seriously mentally ill awaiting trial, was able to obscure the view of a security camera inside his cell being watched by medical staff.
The man then refused to be handcuffed and removed from his cell by responding officers, who had entered the area to clear the camera.
At least five officers were present at the time, Jones said, but they have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
The inmate was awaiting court determination on a minor charge, Jones said, but he declined to be more specific. He has since been released on bail.
(Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Mohammad Zargham)I’ve always said that if you want to learn something really well, teach it to someone. I’ve been doing internal PowerShell training for several years at my company. I’m very grateful for the opportunity for a number of reasons, but in this post I’m going to call out how something I learned in a recent trip to our San Diego office.
When I’m starting to talk about cmdlets, I usually use get-childitem for the simple reason that almost everyone knows what the DOS DIR command does. It gives us a point of reference to compare and contrast cmdlets with.
I mentioned the -Recurse switch and explained that it was analogous to the /S switch in DIR, but one person in the class didn’t quite get the context switch. When he did one of the examples, he tried get-childitem -s. I told him that he needed to use -Recurse, to which he replied “But it works!”.
I always keep a pad of paper when I’m teaching so I can write down anything puzzling (it happens in almost every class). When the class took a break, I opened a fresh PowerShell session and tried it.
Of course, it worked.
Now, to determine why it worked.
First of all, I thought that parameter disambiguation would have been a problem. because of the -System parameter. That wasn’t a problem.
Then, I realized that the PowerShell team must have included a “legacy alias” for the -Recurse parameter, similar to how they include cmdlet aliases to ease the transition from DOS or *NIX (dir, ls, ps, cat, etc.). I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone mention legacy aliases for parameters, though.
PowerShell easily verifies that this is the case:
Of course, I verified this on my work computer. As I sit here writing on my home laptop, it didn’t list any aliases until I updated help. Blogging is a lot like teaching in that you’re bound to find surprises whenever you try to explain something.
Anyway, this was a fun discovery for me.
Can you think of any other parameter aliases that are there for legacy reasons? I might have to try to work up a script to find candidates.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
-MikeOn these archives Check all Uncheck all
Anonymous
gen y is too contentious even with heavy narcotics
If you know where to look, it never really left.
Anonymous
more feedbackThe main theme (melody) is pretty great. The beat is nice, but the drum sound is off - it feels very plastic and stiff as opposed to everything else, which sounds warped / processed. If that's intended - then I would emphasize on the contrast by making the drums really in your face and crispy digital.Really nothing bad to say about Sapphire, except that the guitar sounds a bit thin. The track portrays a certain mood and does it very well / consistently throughout the whole song. Great job.Folded sounds fantastic. I pretty much got goosebumps on my face. Your vocals are really nice and you don't over-complicate things while maintaining a straightforward idea.Listening to Wading and yeah, I resonate with your bittersweet vibes quite well (as far as "poppy" stuff goes, anyway) - hats off to you and your music, dude.pretty fun, sometimes the noise / distortion feels a bit too obviously digital. Try buying a fuzz pedal and if you have an audio interface which allows looping back (sending the output to one of your inputs) - run some of the sounds or the drums through the pedal, might enjoy the result. I've enjoyed the way you played around with the beats and never really clung onto anything, even though that can also be a bad thing, if the ideas you're presenting aren't too memorable (like waster, which wasn't as memorable as waste). The noise at the beginning of Wasted is super dope. And we're getting interesting beats again. Good shet. Although it kind of, again, becomes too abstract for its own good at the end. Wastend sounds crazy in a fascinating way. Shame it ends so quickly, cause it sounds very adventurous and trippy and wonderful. My fav songs of the pack most definitely.
sorry, but this is pretty bad, the vocals could MAYBE work but the overall production (especially the guitar sound) is pretty much horrible. Invest in a decent audio interface and a DIbox / preamp if you're recording without an amp, otherwise get a better amp and maybe an attenuator. Also don't get demotivated because of comments like this, making music sound good is very difficult.The first track I didn't really care for, but the 2nd one sounds pretty nice. I don't care for rap generally, but the production is pretty nice. Maybe a bit overcompressed? I like the contrast between the rough rapping dude and the poppy vocals. The only thing I would improve are the vocals, feels like they stand out a bit too much? Especially with the poppy vocals, they feel a bit too heavy in the low-mids and not smooth enough.For example, the vocals that appear in the middle of dull lull sound perfectly mixed in (maybe even a BIT too quiet).I don't think I've ever enjoyed even one instrumental metal song, so it's very hard to judge.I like the rawness of the mix. Some of the moments sound really dope, but it's kind of hard to understand the structure of the song. Having said that - I wish there was a bigger climax before it returns to the main theme at the very end, because that moment sounds like you've just been through a lot, like an intense adventure, when it wasn't really there. Sorry, hard to give proper feedback on the track, but it def has good potential.Char limit capped, will give some more feedback in 2nd post.
thisshows you everything you need to know about the average SoundCloud user
Anonymous
Parson Sound International Harvestor Salamander Hash Jar Temple Roy Montgomery Sun burned hand of God Dadamah Avarus What else would I like?
What's worth keeping is up to you. I still have tapes from 10 years ago that no one would give a shit about and I still love and listen to them. Maybe it's just a nostalgic thing but whatever.
do you ever think it will be possible to sort what's worth keeping of this stuff? who gets to decide and by what criteria? this kind of thing is so easy to make *and make it sound good* so why did marble surf and rifts become memes and something like 'a place to live in dreams' or 'imagination' become almost forgotten?
So, just like any other bloke in the scene. Really, at some point all I remember from this era is dudes and girls kneeling down in front of their gear.I don't know why it all just died out but it was good fun. I think it was just the fact that people suddenly realized they could start their project/label with next to no money and just give it a shot.
original thread died but if you're looking for artist + label recs i put a bunch of shit in the original (in no particular order)no one did this in the original thread but if you know stuff like this that's coming out now or would like to share your own stuff we can do that here. actual discussion of the artists mentioned in the original thread (or stuff we overlooked) is also encouraged.
Anonymous
Quoted By:Italy's cost of borrowing has touched a new record, a day after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he would resign once budget reforms were passed.
If Italy tried to borrow money today, payable in 10 years, it would have to pay an interest rate of more than 7%.
Investors fear that Italy could become the next victim of the debt crisis.
In a bid to calm markets, President Giorgio Napolitano said reforms would be passed and Mr Berlusconi would resign "within a few days".
The 7% level is widely viewed as unsustainable and was the point at which Portugal, Greece and the Irish Republic were forced to seek a bailout.
This so-called yield on Italian government debt is the highest since the euro was founded in 1999. In comparison, Germany's implied cost of borrowing for 10 years is 1.73%.
The BBC's business editor Robert Peston said: "No-one wants to lend to a country when that country would use the loan to pay the interest on previous loans - that's throwing good money after bad."
The debt was also pushed up as a clearing house asked for a larger deposit to trade Italian bonds - to cover the increased risk of non-payment.
Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn called the situation in Italy "very worrisome". A team from the European Union is due in Rome on Wednesday to begin monitoring how Italy plans to cut its soaring debt burden.
It is expected that Italy's parliament could approve a package of budget reforms by the end of the month, after the Italian president engages in consultations with the political groups on the way forward.
"Within a short time, either a new government will be formed which can take any further decisions needed with the support of parliament or parliament will be dissolved and an election campaign will begin within the tightest time-frame," the Italian president said.
Auction
LCH Clearnet, a clearing house for buying and settling debt, has asked for a larger margin, or deposit, for trading debt of the eurozone's third-biggest economy.
Rates on the 10-year bonds are currently the highest since June 1997, when Italy still had the lira.
They are even higher on one- and two-year Italian debt, meaning that it is considered even less likely that Italy will pay back what it owes immediately than in a decade's time.
One-year Italian debt is now yielding more than 8%. An auction of the debt is due to take place on Thursday.
The higher the yield - the implied cost of borrowing - goes for Italy, the more likely it is that the country's huge economy will need to be bailed out - something that the eurozone has been desperately trying to avoid.
Italy has to roll over more than 360bn euros (£309bn) of debt in 2012.
On Tuesday, Mr Berlusconi said that he planned to resign after failing to win an absolute majority in the lower house of parliament in a vote on the budget.
Concerns are spreading to other previously safe nations.
The gap, or spread, between French and German 10-year bonds reached a record high of 1.47 percentage points. France has proposed a round of reforms recently to prevent it from losing its highest AAA rating.
Shares fall
The euro fell almost three cents against the dollar.
Shares fell sharply, with London, Paris and Frankfurt indexes down around 2%. The Dow Jones in New York fell 3.2%.
Italian stocks dropped 3.8%.
Financial stocks led the way down, with JP Morgan Chase falling 7.1%, Bank of America losing 5.7%, Commerzbank down 6.1% and Allianz 5.0% lower.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Economics editor Stephanie Flanders explains why Italy is such a problem
Shares in Mediaset, the media group controlled by Mr Berlusconi, fell almost 10%.
In France, BNP Paribas dropped 2% and Societe Generale dropped 3%.
On Tuesday, SocGen reported that quarterly profits had fallen by 31% because of a 60% write-off on its Greek loans.
Greek concerns
Greece, which has been bailed out twice and is undergoing painful austerity cuts, also looks close to forming a new government.
The country has more than 340bn euros of debt - and fears over its default have spread to worries about the fiscal health of other eurozone nations.
In October, eurozone member countries agreed a plan to expand their rescue fund and have banks take larger losses on Greek debt.
The fallout over the deal led to Prime Minister George Papandreou resigning and a new government that will implement the terms of the deal.
The head of the Greek opposition has reportedly balked at eurozone demands for a written commitment to the fiscal targets and measures demanded by the country's lenders before they get the next tranche - worth 8bn euros - from the first bailout.
Without it, Greece will run out of money within weeks.It happens around this time each deer season--a late-season hunter shoots a buck, but when he grabs an antler to drag him out of the woods, it comes off in his hands. Worse yet, a late-season hunter looking to fill his antlerless tag, connects on a doe only to find that it's a buck that has already shed his rack.
So what causes bucks to shed their racks? Is it colder-than-normal temperatures? Heavy snow? Truth of the matter is that although those factors may come into play, it's more about testosterone than anything else.
Antler casting typically begins sometime in mid-December in the North and is for the most part, completed by mid- February. It begins somewhat later in the South and extends somewhat longer.
A drop in testosterone levels triggers specialized cells called osteoclasts to activate. Osteoclasts eat away at the bone at the base of an antler and allow the antler to be cast. The process occurs quickly; antlers that are seemingly irremovable one day, readily fall off of their own accord a day or two later.
As of this writing (12-18-20), reports of cast antlers from the North have started to come in. They will continue for a month or two and then switch to reports of antlers still attached. This is very common as antler casting typically extends from early winter until early spring.
There appears to be a relationship between a deer's physical condition and early shedding. Wounded or otherwise injured deer often cast their antlers early. Biologists surmise injuries result in testosterone levels to drop early and trigger osteoclasts activation. Physically declining deer also seem to cast earlier than physically thriving deer; as do bucks that have rutted so aggressively so as to weaken their overall physical condition.
Dominant bucks in good condition in mild climates with high quality habitat are often reported to retain their antlers well into spring and keep them longer than subordinate bucks. Dominant breeding bucks in poorer condition in areas with harsh winters and limited nutrition often shed earlier than subordinate bucks.
The implications of early shedding for late season hunters are twofold: 1. that big dominant buck you have been hunting all season may be losing his antlers any day now and 2. the doe you shoot to help control deer numbers might just be a buck.
Bottom line, this time of year look for red, raw, or scabbed over areas on either side of the forehead before pulling the trigger.Last issue, Divinity II ended with the potential for a massive time paradox and/or implosion. This week, the fallout begins.
Is it good?
Divinity II #3 (Valiant Entertainment)
Observations
Divinity needs some skin cream or something…
…and maybe a little help. Divinity II is wiping the floor with him.
TIME CHASE!
We’re about to step on a whole lot of butterflies.
Dang. Divinity II is ruthless—even by Soviet standards.
Kind of weird seeing these two god-like forces fight during the era of my childhood.
Kind of cool, too.
Every 80’s kid who ever watched the news knows that birthmark. If you thought the last image of Planet of the Apes was eerie, wait until you see this…
Is It Good?
Now THIS is how you do a good time travel story.
Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of it, however, hats off to artist Trevor Hairsine for what may be the best work I’ve ever seen from him. His characters and action sequences were all up to their usual high standard (with inker Ryan Winn and colorist David Baron making it all look even more beautiful). But for any aspiring comic book artists out there, this issue is a master class on paneling inventive paneling.
Hairsine does a fantastic job ordering the chaotic, time bending sequences in such a way that they’re gorgeously simple. On some of the more static panels, he makes artistically bold choices that turn them into poster-worthy images.
Story-wise, Matt Kindt deftly executes a time travel tale without the benefit of a ‘fixed timeline.’ (See the handy chart below).
Instead, he wrangles the always ornery ‘dynamic timeline’ and weaves it with just the right amount of multiverse—all from a completely organic place that is set against the backdrop of an incredible, century-spanning battle.
The characters explain what’s happening in an elegant and visceral manner. It never feels like they’re breaking the fourth wall to spew exposition vomit at the reader. Instead, we’re treated to two gods bickering over what they believe their titantic battle will achieve. By the end of the issue, we’re left with an ending that is both plausible (despite the insane/fantastic nature of the narrative) and chilling.
My only quibble with this issue is that I would have loved to have seen a bit more of the various stops in time (particularly the 1980’s). That may be something that Kindt will explore later, but even if he doesn’t, I can live with it.
Writing a time travel tale is hard. Writing a book in which the two main characters are virtually omnipotent is arguably even harder. Kindt took both and crafted Divinity II #3 into one hell of a good issue.Normally, you won’t find an inch of room between Sen. Chuck Schumer and the Anti-Defamation League. Yet now even the left-leaning ADL has come out against making Rep. Keith Ellison the next head of the Democratic Party — while Schumer is sticking by him.
The ADL only turned against Ellison on Thursday, after audio surfaced of 2010 remarks where he complained that Israel essentially controls America’s Mideast policies.
That gripe is a regular trope on the left — but Ellison was suggesting it was true even under President Obama. Really, Keith?
Schumer routinely calls himself the “guardian” of Israel in the Senate, and his voting record on the issue is impeccable.
But his Democratic Party is turning increasingly hostile to the Jewish state. Indeed, most self-described liberals now prefer to call themselves pro-Palestinian.
The senator had been dodging questions almost from the moment he endorsed Ellison. Finally, after we called to ask, Schumer issued a statement late Thursday affirming his support, claiming that Ellison had helped “orchestrate one of the most pro-Israel [Democratic] platforms in decades.”
That’s bizarre: The 2016 platform was, at best, a bit less pro-Israel than 2012’s.
We guess that leaves Schumer as thinking the ADL is extremist.Giselle admitted to sometimes skipping days. “The medicine gets you sick,” she said. “It messes up your mental state. Or it can be freezing and I’m sweating.”
Missed doses let the virus rebound, sometimes in drug-resistant strains, experts said.
Other risk factors include depression and fatalism. In a 2012 project by the National Youth Pride Services, an advocacy organization for gay black youths, more than half of the young gay black people questioned said they feared their friends or families would disown them if they came out as gay, and about 4 in 10 said they had contemplated suicide over being gay.
“The image of a black gay man almost doesn’t exist,” said Shariff Gibbons, 25, who works with other young men at GMHC. “In the black community, the image that ‘gay men are sissies’ is amped up a billion times. And we all have an aunt who goes to church and says, ‘Being gay is wrong.’ That makes young men hide.”
Fighting Isolation
Roderick, 22, said his aunt, who took him in after his parents were arrested on drug charges, became furious after he told her at age 15 that he was gay. Later he attended a small New Jersey university and studied to be a veterinarian. But when his aunt learned that he was dating a white man, she demanded that he return home and go to a local community college.
She and his cousins called him an “Oreo” and even viler names, he said. “It got to where I felt I was going to snap, and kill myself or kill them. I didn’t want to do either, so one night I took my cousin’s bike and I left, and took a train to New York. I’m just basically dead to my family now.”
In New York, he found housing through the Ali Forney Center, which is named after a young gay rights advocate murdered in 1997 and which shelters gay minority youths, who are often abused in regular shelters. Roderick briefly supported himself by having sex for money at parties organized through Craigslist. But he gave that up, he said, has one partner and is applying for veterinary scholarships.Whistling Dixie -- Again
Does Haley Barbour really have a warped and offensive view of America’s racial history? Or is he just playing a dangerous game?
Perhaps both.
The Mississippi governor, considered a potential Republican candidate for president in 2012, keeps displaying what appears to be an astonishing level of ignorance about our nearly 400-year struggle with issues of race. At this point, it’s more than a pattern. It’s either a pathology or a plan.
The latest outrage — and I don’t use that word lightly — came Tuesday, when Barbour was asked to comment on a proposal for a state license plate honoring one of the most notorious figures of the Civil War era, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. I question whether any Confederate officer is worthy of such recognition, given that they were all committing treason. But even for the Sons of Confederate Veterans — the group proposing the license plate — Forrest should be an embarrassment.
For those who do not see the Civil War through a revisionist gauze of gallantry and Spanish moss, Forrest is an abomination. In 1864, his troops mowed down scores of black Union soldiers who were trying to surrender, in what became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre. After the war, Forrest became one of the founding fathers of the terrorist Ku Klux Klan — and was the group’s first national leader, or “grand wizard.”
Barbour was asked whether he would denounce the idea of honoring such a figure. “I don’t go around denouncing people,” he told reporters. “That’s not going to happen.”
But of course, Barbour denounces people all the time. Just last weekend, at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, he denounced President Obama and the Democratic Party. Denouncing is part of any politician’s job, and Barbour does it with brio and elan. Why would he refuse to say what he thinks about honoring a founder of the KKK?
This odd reticence follows three recent episodes in which Barbour was all too glib. Last April, he was asked to comment on Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s “Confederate History Month” proclamation that neglected to mention slavery. McDonnell quickly apologized and corrected what he described as a serious error. Barbour, however, maintained that the controversy “doesn’t amount to diddly” and that there was no need “to explain to people that slavery is a bad thing.”
In September, Barbour claimed that “my generation” in the South went to “integrated schools” and that he “went to integrated college — never thought twice about it.” Barbour actually went to all-white Mississippi schools. His college, the University of Mississippi, was integrated in 1962 when federal marshals escorted James Meredith onto campus while white students rioted in protest. When Barbour arrived a few years later, the few black students at Ole Miss were harassed and shunned.
In December, Barbour praised the White Citizens Council in his hometown of Yazoo City for its role in the fight over desegregation. In fact, the Citizens Councils throughout the South were implacable in their defense of segregation. They just favored nonviolent tactics — such as having “uppity” blacks fired from their jobs — instead of burning crosses.
Barbour quickly retracted his praise of the Citizens Councils. But here we are again, just a couple of months later, trying to bridge the distance between Barbour’s version of history and what actually happened.
If this is the way Barbour thinks, the prospect that he might run for president should be alarming. I have to acknowledge the possibility, however, that in this instance he’s just being insincere and clever.
Nothing about the way Barbour has acted in his long public life suggests that he really admires the first grand wizard of the KKK. But by dodging the question, he avoids alienating voters who might think that Forrest was a prince of a guy. In other words: “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think.”
Hold it, that quote isn’t from Barbour, it’s from House Speaker John Boehner. That’s what he said Sunday on “Meet the Press,” when asked why he doesn’t forthrightly tell the “birthers” who doubt President Obama’s citizenship that they’re wrong. Like other prominent Republicans, Boehner was encouraging the wing nuts with careful equivocation and strategic silence.
“I’ll take him at his word,” Boehner said, when asked whether he believes Obama is a Christian. I suppose, then, that I’ll have to take Barbour at his word that he’s not a racist.
Is that how you play this game?
Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.LATROBE, Pa. – The Steelers’ initial depth chart for 2017 has been released, and it’s a non-traditional one in that it makes an allowance for the dozen players currently not participating in practice.
As an example, because quarterback Landry Jones is not practicing because of an abdominal injury, he isn’t listed as the backup to Ben Roethlisberger. He isn’t listed anywhere on the depth chart, but his name does appear among those players under the designation “not participating as of Aug. 8, 2017.” Being on the “not participating” list does not mean being ruled out of Friday’s preseason opener.
In addition to Jones, the other players on the “not participating” list are WR Martavis Bryant, WR Sammie Coates, WR Demarcus Ayers, CB Cam Sutton, FS Mike Mitchell, RB Le’Veon Bell, CB Senquez Golson, RB James Conner, C Maurkice Pouncey, C Mike Matthews, and OLB Keion Adams.
Besides injuries, Bryant is on this list as he awaits reinstatement from the NFL, and Bell has not yet signed his franchise tender and cannot report to camp without a contract. Coates is on the physically unable to perform list as a result of knee surgery, and he cannot participate until he passes a physical and is moved to the active roster.
So, with those players removed from the equation, this initial depth chart offers few surprises, but it does confirm/clarify some things:
At tight end, it’s Jesse James as the starter, followed by David Johnson and Xavier Grimble.
With Pouncey on the “not participating” list, B.J. Finney is listed as the No. 1 center and as the backup to Ramon Foster at left guard. This indicates Finney is the team’s primary backup along the interior of the offensive line, which is a designation that becomes significant once the game day roster is set at 46 during the regular season.
At running back, Fitz Toussaint is listed ahead of Knile Davis.
At defensive end, L.T. Walton is listed as Cam Heyward’s backup, and Tyson Alualu is listed as Stephon Tuitt’s backup.
Dan McCullers is behind Javon Hargrave at nose tackle.
Bud Dupree is the No. 1 left outside linebacker, and behind him it’s third-year pro Anthony Chickillo followed by Arthur Moats.
William Gay is No. 1 at right outside linebacker, followed by T.J. Watt..
Behind Ryan Shazier, it’s L.J. Fort, Steven Johnson, and Tyler Matakevich; behind Vince Williams, it’s Steven Johnson, Tyler Matakevich, and L.J. Fort.
The backups listed at both cornerback spots are the same guys in the same order: Will Gay, Coty Sensabaugh, and Mike Hilton.
With Mitchell on the “not participating” list, Robert Golden is the No. 1 free safety, with Jacob Hagen behind him. Behind Sean Davis at strong safety is Jordan Dangerfield.It’s been a little over a month since software developer Ed Summers created the Twitter account @congressedits, which tweets out any anonymous Wikipedia edits made from Congressional IP address ranges. And it looks like it’s finally found something newsworthy, if unsurprising: Somebody in the House Of Representatives is transphobic.
Shortly after 10 p.m. last night, somebody from within the House Of Representatives changed the Wikipedia entry for Laverne Cox, a transgender actress who plays transgender inmate Sophia Burset on Orange Is The New Black. The entry originally said that an article in The Advocate “touted that Orange Is The New Black contains the first ever women-in-prison narrative to be played by a real transgender woman.” But the anonymous elected representative (or someone from their staff) changed the line to the hateful “a real man pretending to be a woman.” The elected official (or their staff member) also added a link to a National Review article published last month that claimed Cox is “not a real woman.” The IP address was banned from making edits for one month.
Advertisement
Wikipedia editor JohnValeron wrote this morning on Wikipedia’s user talk pages:
143.231.249.138 has been repeatedly blocked for short periods but since his return this week has resumed disruptive edits, including attempts at spreading hate speech, and otherwise vandalizing Wikipedia with typically malicious contributions. Admins must stop pussyfooting around this willful, long-term abuse just because it emanates from the U.S. House of Representatives. That’s all the more reason to take immediate and |
trash-talking because he talked to the refs, talks to the fans.
"He was similar to Charles Barkley, but under control a little more," Garnett added. "I don't think, not as public. I don't think -- you know, Charles was a little [forward] at times, and [it] kind of carried him off the floor. Thought GP did a great job of just controlling the game with his trash-talking."
And what about KG's own trash-talking skills?
"Me?" Garnett asked. "You just hear stories about me talking trash. You never have living [proof] that I talk trash."How to keep track of your payout rewards in RISE
Table of Contents
Prologue Useful links to bookmark List of delegates and their respective payout sites
TL;DR: Go to part 3 to see the list of sites and calculation method
1. Prologue
A while ago, I wrote this article about how to "maximize your voting rewards profit in LISK" (link HERE!). Now, since the release of Python SDK last week, RISE has caught my attention again and I have decided to stack up my RISE and jumped into this potential coin.
Since there are quite a lot of articles out there showing you how to vote, I believe showing you HOW TO TRACK your payout is a better topic to focus on. So here are some results from my research.
Note: If you still wondering how to vote, here is a good article on steemit from @jeffblogs https://steemit.com/rise/@jeffblogs/how-to-vote-with-rise-to-earn-a-passive-income-with-dpos-delegated-proof-of-stake
2. Useful links to bookmark
DPOS Tools - RISE
I believe most of you know this website from vekexasia developer: https://dpostools.com/RISE
It can simulate how much RISE you would earn if you vote for those delegates in the list. Just type in your RISE address or the amount of RISE you have, then look at the MD - monthly dividends - to see how much you will get.
Official delegate proposals
This is from the official RISE VISION forum, if you truly want to contribute to the network, I highly recommend you to go to the delegate you want to vote and read their proposals!
Link: https://forum.rise.vision/category/5/delegates-proposals
3. List of delegates and their respective payout sites
Since the TOP 101 list is subjected to changes, I would only post some notable delegates here with their pages to help you track your payout. As far as I know there are 2 ways to calculate your payout:
a. Go to delegate's site and put in your address (if they have their official site). Here are the delegates with their sites:
b. Manual calculation method
If your delegate doesn't have his/her official website. You can do the calculation base on the info from https://dpostools.com/RISE. Even though it will not 100% accurate, this method will help you estimate the payout time. I will put an example here with delegate "trnpallypool" (currently rank 1 and I can't find his/her official page). The steps are:
Type in your amount of RISE (no need for address) - or if you have already voted, just type in the address. Scroll down to see the "weighted" of your wallet. Here with the example, I use 1000 RISE:
Navigate to https://explorer.rise.vision/, type in the delegate name, then scroll down to see through the transactions list. Here with delegate "trnpallypool", the link is https://explorer.rise.vision/address/18103881046813301656R
After scrolling through the transaction list, I can deduce that "trnpallypool" does daily payout (transactions happen around 4 - 6 PM UTC + 0 with minimum threshold at 2.8 - 3 / i believe 0.1 tx fee is counted in the payout so let's go with 3 RISE minimum)
So to calculate PAYOUT TIME for this example of 1000 RISE, we have
Monthly payout is 13 RISE
Take that divide by 30 days ==> we will have ~ 0.43 RISE/ day
Minimum threshold is 3 RISE ==> would take around 6.9 - 7 days for your first payment
for your first payment Then you can add up your payout to your current RISE ==> 1000 + 3 = 1003 RISE and repeat the process. The next payout might come earlier since you have more RISE in your wallet now!
That's it. Hope you guys like it!
Donation Address - if you like this guide :). Thank you!
BTC
1GL9ZnLGu1zvTRPieXKMXURKLfrshtZv9
ETH
0xa2492f8263c3ec3b6e8cb8b4dc88f676eea19984
IOTA
UTUOSZWYWBQKZABVBPQRMDOSOJPGPVUWPPGFQFDTR9BUMOVNZHDVKOPOMWFDEQY9FHKAYBVTHYOLCWP9WIZDLDTBJX
LTC
LYpidHJmkk7fPeKKBtLUHmEnvh5sfr6QW8
BCH
16gRYgdTWnA7kKiUTTDoEHhkh5TmCULPGX
DOGE
D7VWpk1RHTemFSBeUrETAdXnE4rToNUMx6The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History by Jill Lepore Princeton University Press, 207 pp., $19.95
America’s Founding Fathers have a special significance for the American public. People want to know what Thomas Jefferson would think of affirmative action, or how George Washington would regard the invasion of Iraq. No other major nation honors its historical characters in quite the way we do. The British don’t have to check in periodically with, say, either of the two William Pitts to find out what a historical figure of two centuries ago might think of David Cameron’s government in the way we seem to have to check in with Jefferson or Washington about our current policies and predicaments. Americans seem to have a special need for these authentic historical figures in the here and now.
It is very easy for academic historians to mock this special need, and Harvard historian Jill Lepore, as a staff writer for The New Yorker, is an expert at mocking. Her new book, which mingles discussions of the present-day Tea Party movement with scattershot accounts of the Revolution, makes fun of the Tea Party people who are trying to use the history of the Revolution to promote their political cause. From her point of view, “What would the founders do?” is an “ill-considered” and “pointless” question. It has nothing to do with the scholarly science of history. “No NASA scientist decides what to do about the Hubble by asking what Isaac Newton would make of it.” The fact that many ordinary Americans continue to want to ask about the Founders evokes no sympathy or understanding whatever from Lepore.
Of course, it is not just people on the political right who use the founding era to advance their causes. As Lepore concedes, the American Revolution is everyone’s favorite event. “When in doubt, in American politics, left, right, or center, deploy the Founding Fathers.” The antiwar movement of the 1970s seized the Bicentennial of 1776 to further its cause. Jeremy Rifkin of the People’s Bicentennial Commission urged Americans to form TEA parties (the acronym stood for Tax Equity for Americans), and his commission competed with the Nixon administration over who were the true heirs of the American Revolutionary tradition. Brought to trial in 1970 for blocking an army base, the radical historian Howard Zinn told the court that he was acting “in the grand tradition of the Boston Tea Party.”
Indeed, in Lepore’s view the left’s use of the Bicentennial in the 1970s lies behind the Tea Party movement of the present. She claims that “Jeremy Rifkin wrote the Tea Party’s playbook.” In reaction to the protests from the left in the 1970s, the right created “a reactionary—and fanatical—version of American history” that simmered for decades only to boil over following Obama’s election. Although Lepore recognizes that “the Revolution has been put to wildly varying political…If you needed yet another reminder not to install untrusted applications without fully knowing where they come from, here it is: researchers with Check Point Software Technologies recently published details on new Android malware named “Gooligan” that has compromised more than 1 million Google Accounts. Check Point said that figure is increasing by an additional 13,000 accounts as users continue to download infected applications.
Snap Point traced Gooligan’s roots back to an app named “SnapPea,” which it identified as malware last year. It has since popped up in “dozens of legitimate-looking apps on third-party Android app stores,” the research firm explained. Third party app stores aren’t controlled by Google, which is why Google always recommends its users download applications from Google Play, where they can be scanned for malware and other issues.
As Check Point explains, Android users often seek out illegitimate third-party app stores as a way to find free versions of paid applications. It might work most of the time, but it also exposes you to malware and, in this case, very dangerous malware that can gain access to your entire Google account. “Gooligan-infected apps can also be installed using phishing scams where attackers broadcast links to infected apps to unsuspecting users via SMS or other messaging services,” the company explained.
Check to see if your account is exposed to Gooligan
A device infected by Gooligan is potentially granting access to data stored in any of Google’s applications including Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Photos, Gmail and Google Play. The majority of infected accounts, 57 percent, are in Asia, according to Check Point. 19 percent of accounts originate in the Americas, 9 percent are infected in Europe and 15 percent of affected accounts are in Africa.
Attackers get more than private data, however. They can actually turn your Android device into a money-making machine. Check Point said attackers will first steal your account and authentication token information, and then use your credentials to install adware that ends up generating revenue. They also use infected accounts to “install apps from Google Play and rate them to raise their reputation.” That explains why you sometimes see really terrible apps with high ratings.
Check Point said it believes this is the “largest Google Account breach to date” and said it has alerted Google to the problem. “We’re appreciative of both Check Point’s research and their partnership as we’ve worked together to understand these issues,” Google’s director of Android security Adrian Ludwig told the researchers. “As part of our ongoing efforts to protect users from the Ghost Push family of malware, we’ve taken numerous steps to protect our users and improve the security of the Android ecosystem overall.”
Check Point has a tool that allows you to check if your account is affected, so be sure to run yours through it (it was down at the time of publication, sadly enough, but be sure to check back.) Hit the source for more information, including a full list of apps that are infected with Gooligan.Thousands of air travelers in the Bay Area and around the nation may be in for long delays this summer because of a shortage of Transportation Security Administration personnel that clogged security check lines in San Jose and other airports over spring break.
In the Bay Area, the epicenter of the problem was at Mineta San Jose International Airport, where travelers arriving well before their scheduled flights found the usual preparations just didn’t cut it.
“There were people who missed flights and had to wait eight hours to start their vacation,” said Mineta spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes. “There were people who missed job interviews. We heard about a child who tripped and fell while running to catch a flight.”
San Francisco “didn’t experience any significant issues during spring break, despite strong volumes,” said San Francisco International Airport spokesman Doug Yakel. And at Oakland International Airport, spokeswoman Keonnis Taylor said that “while we certainly have had our challenges, I wouldn’t say we were hit as hard” as San Jose.
Hun Kim, of Orange County, who was flying out of San Jose Monday night and at the end of a fairly light queue, said it was a different scene two weeks ago when the line stretched toward the rotating sculpture in Terminal B.
“Even the security lady was shaking her head,” he said.
Barnes said TSA has since increased staffing and brought in a dog team during certain peak hours — the sniffer pooch detects explosives and can eliminate the need for shoe removal to speed things up.
“However, these solutions need to be permanent and long-term,” Barnes said, adding that the airport’s “passenger activity is expected to increase by 13 percent this summer with the addition of new domestic and international flights.”
The airport has since recommended that passengers arrive at least two hours ahead of time for domestic flights; three hours for international. They’ve also posted signs along the security line queue letting people know where to direct their complaints — to the Transportation Security Administration, which staffs the checkpoints.
“We are so focused on having good partnership with other agencies, but it was getting so bad,” Barnes said. “People are standing in line for two hours during lunch time, and they are losing business hours, and they’re raging at your Twitter account.”
Which they certainly did.
“One TSA checker … are you kidding me?” tweeted Jordan Keddie on Friday Friday. “@FlySJC everyone around us has already or is about to miss flights.”
Dozens more echoed the same sentiments, as did emails sent to the airport’s customer service address.
Other airports around the country have also expressed frustrations with TSA staffing, including Atlanta, the busiest in the world. There, airport manager Miguel Southwell fired off a letter to TSA in February threatening the possibility of hiring a private contractor to take over security because of “unacceptable” security check wait times of 52 minutes.
In San Jose, U.S. Representatives Mike Honda and Zoe Lofgren, both San Jose Democrats, said they would ask TSA to examine how they allocate their resources.
TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said that even with additional staffing, there can be bottlenecks at airports that simply don’t have room for more screening lanes and equipment.
Part of the problem in San Jose could be related to the increased passenger load that’s been steadily rising in recent years. Her prediction of 13 percent growth expected this summer is nearly twice the TSA’s cited national average uptick of 7 percent over spring break. SFO officials said they predict summer travel to spike by 7 percent. Oakland officials predicted an increase of 11 percent to 14 percent in the summer months.
“Those are very high levels that we have not seen in many years,” said John Albrecht, marketing and communications director at the Oakland airport. “We will be working with TSA to increase staffing and make sure all our lines are open and people are directed to the lines they need to be in to make operations as efficient as possible.”
In Oakland on Tuesday morning, a line 50 people deep waited in the standard security queue while Pre-Check fliers could often walk straight to the security agent or at most wait behind 10 people.
Marc Atlantic, of Austin, Texas, who was in town for business, said he’s seen the line get a bit longer during peak times when more people not officially registered are allowed in.
“Sometimes they do let a bunch in, and it definitely clogs it up,” he said.
Another issue involves under use of the TSA Pre-Check screening program, which allows passengers to pay a fee, have a background check conducted in advance and go through expedited screening. It’s still in use but hasn’t been popular enough to reduce the lines in the main checkpoints.
Jim Lites, executive director of the California Airports Council that represents the commercial airports throughout the state, said predictions for the summer travel season are bleak.
“Most of our membership is anticipating a challenge,” he said. “We expect that the manpower may not be sufficient to handle the volume of travelers, which we expect to be on the upswing compared to recent years.”
He said there was hope that the Pre-Check process would help, but that’s questionable at best.
“While it has helped,” he said, “I don’t think the program has penetrated deep enough to offset the increase in travelers most airports are anticipating.”
Contact Eric Kurhi at 408-920-5852. Follow him at Twitter.com/erickurhi.Angular 5.1 & More Now Available
Stephen Fluin Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 6, 2017
We are pleased to announce version 5.1.0 of Angular. This is a minor release containing several smaller features and bugfixes. We are also releasing v1.6 of the Angular CLI, and the first stable release of Angular Material.
New Angular releases to celebrate the holidays!
What’s new?
Angular Material & CDK Stable Release
Service Worker support in the CLI
Improved Universal & AppShell Support in the CLI
Improved decorator error messages
TypeScript 2.5 support
For the complete list of features and bugfixes please see the Angular, Material, and CLI changelogs.
Angular Material & CDK Stable Release
After 11 alpha releases, 12 beta releases, and three release candidates, we’re happy to now mark the full 5.0.0 release of Angular Material and the Angular CDK, and the graduation of the CDK from Angular Labs. Based on Google’s Material Design visual language, Angular Material offers 30 UI components for your Angular applications. Conjointly, the Angular CDK (Component Dev Kit) provides a set of building blocks to help you build your own custom components without having to solve common problems all over again. These components are already used in production by a number of Google applications, including Google Analytics Suite, Google Cloud Platform Developer Console, and Google Shopping Express.
Starting with this release, Angular Material will be following the same SemVer philosophy as Angular, with major versions of Angular Material and Angular CDK releasing at the same time as major versions of the rest of the platform. Patch releases will follow a weekly cadence, while minor feature releases will become available as features are completed.
Visit material.angular.io for documentation, demos, and our getting started guide. You can also follow our progress on GitHub as we continue to work on further additions to the library. In the coming months, keep an eye out for features like a new mat-tree, virtual scrolling, component test harnesses, and drag-and-drop helpers.
CLI 1.6 Service Worker Support
Performance has always been an important goal for web developers, and it’s especially important in today’s world of flaky WiFi and mobile connections. Modern browsers have a new API for building sites that load reliably and quickly, called the Service Worker API.
Angular 5.0.0 shipped with a new Service Worker implementation customized for Angular applications, and Angular CLI 1.6 includes support for building applications which take advantage of this new feature. Using @angular/service-worker can improve the loading performance of your applications in browsers which support the API, and make your application’s loading experience more like that of a natively installed app.
Learn about getting started with the Angular Service Worker on our documentation site.
CLI 1.6 Improved Universal & App Shell Support
Also with the release of Angular CLI 1.6 comes better support for adding Universal to your existing projects via Schematics, as well as bringing App Shell support.
Angular Universal
To add Universal in your current CLI application, you can now use the following commands in your project:
ng generate universal <name>
Replacing <name> with the name you want to give your universal app. This will take your current application and create a Universal module, and configure your angular-cli.json file automatically for you. You can then skip to step 4 in our guide to using universal.
To build your Universal app, simply run the following command:
ng build --app=<name>
App Shell
The other feature added is App Shell support; you can now generate and build an application shell, which uses a special universal build to create a static first render of your application in your index.html. This gives users a better experience while your application is being bootstrapped.
First, make sure you have a RouterModule imported in your application’s NgModule, and a <router-outlet></router-outlet> in your application component’s template. App Shell uses the router to render your application.
Then run the following command:
ng generate app-shell [ --universal-app <universal-app-name>] [ --route <route>]
This will add support for the app shell to your angular-cli.json main application, using the universal application passed in argument. If the universal app isn’t passed in, it will create a universal application by running the universal schematic first. The route argument specify the route to generate during build (router is required for App Shell support). By default this is /shell.
After this step, simply build your application as normal using ng build and the index.html file will include the route from your application automatically rendered for you.
Improved decorator error messages
The diagnostics produced by the compiler have been significantly improved, specifically when decorators contain unsupported or incorrect expressions.
For example, calling a function to produce a template is not supported:
This would previously produce an error:
Error encountered resolving symbol values statically. Calling function ‘genTemplate’, function calls are not supported. Consider replacing the function or lambda with a reference to an exported function, resolving symbol MyComponent in components.ts, resolving symbol MyComponent in components.ts
This error has been improved and clarifies the source and nature of the problem:
component.ts(9,16): Error during template compile of 'MyComponent'.
Function calls are not supported in decorators but 'genTemplate' was called.
TypeScript 2.5 support
We have added support for TypeScript 2.5, which is recommended for all developers. This release of TypeScript includes several helpful advanced features.
You can upgrade TypeScript by running yarn add typescript@'~2.5.3' or npm install typescript@'~2.5.3'.
This update is optional, and TypeScript 2.4 continues to be supported for Angular 5.x.x. We do not yet support TypeScript 2.6. Our plan is to add support in a future minor release.A new nuclear power station at Hinkley point in the south west of England has been given the go ahead after Brussels approved its funding.
The French utility company EDF is to build the plant – the first in Britain for almost 20 years – at an estimated cost of 30.4 billion euros.
Two reactors are planed for the site which will provide power for about 60 years and help in the current government’s drive away from fossil fuels towards low-carbon power.
But the project has been highly criticised due to the government guaranteeing EDF a price per energy unit of more than twice the current wholesale cost in compensation for building the plant.
Brussels stepped in saying it was against state aid rules and has insisted on some changes.
However the project is still being resisted by some EU members and Austria is to challenge it in court.Labour General Secretary Iain McNicol has written to party staff over accusations that Jeremy Corbyn’s PMQs preparations are being regularly leaked to the Conservatives by employees.
The allegation was made by Corbyn’s chief spin doctor Seumas Milne during a documentary released yesterday. In the film Milne, the director of strategy and communications, can be seen saying that details of the pre-PMQs meeting in the leader’s office “leaked” – and that it happens regularly.
A source told The Times that Milne was not suggesting the leaks come from members of Corbyn’s own staff, and that it only happens when workers from the party HQ are present.
Asked whether the Conservatives were aware of the questions Corbyn was going to ask in advance, Milne replies: “This time they did because it leaked. It leaked from that meeting.
“It’s very annoying because it only happens about a third of the time, but it obviously gives them a little bit of extra time. Whenever there is a leak it gives them that advantage. It gives them the advantage on TV as well.”
The suggestion has angered members of staff in the party’s Southside headquarters, and General Secretary Iain McNicol has written to them in an attempt to diffuse the row.
In the letter, McNicol says that he appreciates “this matter has upset a great many of you”, and promises to discuss the issue with trade union representatives. He also hails the “the dedication, commitment and professionalism displayed by Party staff” and says that “your work does not go unappreciated or unnoticed”.
You can read the full letter here:
Dear all
I wanted to write to you personally regarding the article in today’s Times “Corbyn spin doctor accuses Labour staff of PMQs leaks” and in light of the recent fly-on-the-wall documentary entitled “Corbyn: The Outsider”.
As many of you know, I was elected as the General Secretary of our Party in 2011.
Over the last five years I have seen first-hand the dedication, commitment and professionalism displayed by Party staff on a daily basis. As I have said on a number of occasions, I am incredibly proud of the work that you do, whether with elected representatives, activists and members to campaign and win elections, dealing with members of the public who contact us, or making sure our movement reacts quickly and effectively to the disastrous decisions of this dreadful Tory Government, to name but a few.
Every day, including weekends and bank holidays, you work to put our values in to action and for that I am extremely grateful and in awe of your sheer ability to get things done.
I wanted you to know, directly, that your work does not go unappreciated or unnoticed. A couple of Conferences ago I said that we were a ‘movement on the march’. Every single one of you is an integral and vital part of that march.
I know this matter has upset a great many of you and I am meeting with the JTUC this afternoon to discuss it.
Thank you.
IainOn the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places.
I found Jean Stafford’s The Mountain Lion at a thrift in Marfa. I thought, I ought to read some Western fiction, you know? It just seemed like, The Mountain Lion—who could be interested in that? I almost bought it as a joke. I don’t like reading logically. I love having a library of lots of odd books around me, and whenever I’m staying somewhere for a while, I buy a ton of books; I like to reproduce a kind of mini used-bookstore experience wherever I am. So I picked this book up on a whim.
Right away, I could see what a fine stylist she was, though there were so many things that were of the period, including amazing racism, just casual racism. But as the book proceeded I began to see a doubleness there—Stafford’s speaking truthfully about her era without being simply of it. I started to realize that this is an astonishing writer.
The Mountain Lion is a family novel, and it starts with four kids living with their widowed mother, who’s been through a couple of husbands. They’re in Los Angeles, and then they have this opportunity to go to Colorado to live with their booze-swilling, big-booted grandfather, who their mother disapproves of. The family’s sort of divided into two older, perfect, preppy daughters and two confused, skinny, slightly ailing younger kids who are the narrators of the book—Molly and Ralph.
At some point the two of them go there for a whole year, and in that year their very close relationship falls apart. Molly keeps getting weirder and weirder, while Ralph quickens and thickens and starts to become a man. The grandfather kicked off on their porch maybe the year before, so his son, Claude—who’s sort of a dumber, less sophisticated version of him—becomes their guide through the western world. He takes up with Ralph, starts to take the boy hunting; ultimately, the great hunt becomes about a mountain lion, which the two of them have spotted near the ranch, even though there haven’t been any mountain lions in the area for decades. When Ralph gets told by his uncle Claude that they can share in the pursuit of the mountain lion, he, for a second, fantasizes that he might be the one to kill her. It’s a great moment of imaginary triumph, one that kicks us into this passage:
For a few minutes his joy was immediate and unspoiled, and then it was smashed and he remembered again what he had said to Molly in the tunnel, for through the quiet—all other noises were suspended for this new sound—came the roaring of the car, tearing along the road with the cut-out open, and he could see it, a scarlet Model A roadster with the top down as it appeared and disappeared in the lacy sarvis berry that grew along the bank.
This seems so cinematic to me, the activeness and the complete momentum of the roadster appearing and disappearing. It’s such a modern perspective on detail in fiction. The car is there, and the car is vanishing, and that’s how we know something is actually moving, that the place is a real place. It designates time and space in one swift gesture. We all participate in primitive ways of thinking about time and space, ways that are really childlike and peekaboo. Is the thing gone? Is the thing here? That’s what drew me to the passage initially.
But when I went back and looked over the whole thing a second time, I realize the incredible complexity of this passage, this single sentence. There’s the flicker of the roadster against the daintiness of the lace, that butch/fem combination. And then the fact that time exists in multiples. There’s the time of the train moving. The time of the berries growing. And the time of the roadster, moving and then disappearing down the road. It’s exacting, vivid, and real in a way that just seems very post-painting—post-literary, even. She allows so much unknowingness, too. I didn’t bother looking up what a sarvis berry was, but somehow that detail adds to the reality of the moment.
If you’ve read the book, you know that, just as the train is about to go into the tunnel, Ralph says to his sister, “Tell me all the dirty words you know.” That interaction is the beginning of the end of their relationship, which you sense here: the moment starts with this kid’s great joy, which is then smashed by the offstage revelation of what he’s just said to Molly as they go into the tunnel. Stafford never describes it, but I imagine a look of horror on her face. It just perfumes the whole last quarter of the book, this feeling that her brother is dirty. And he feels enormously guilty himself. He’s just discovering sex, and he wants to know what his sister knows. What this hot car is about, by the way, is that the girl Ralph has a crush on has a boyfriend who has a roadster. The flickering roadster, it’s like sex and guilt. Just waves of it.
It’s so emotionally true: the high of joy, and then suddenly that shitty, dirty feeling, and then quiet. It pairs pleasure and shame, interior and exterior, nature and the machinic. And suddenly, along comes the girl that he loves in a car, and it’s like he’s being betrayed or robbed of his future love even, all so swiftly, in one sentence. It seems incredible that she did so much at once, like a scene from a movie. That filmic quality is probably not an accident: in 1947, when she published this, every writer and every consciousness was completely imbued with the cinematic. You couldn’t look at the world anymore without looking at it like a movie. And yet text is the higher movie, somehow: Here, multiple times are collapsed into one in a way that would be hard for any film to accomplish so fluidly.
Part of what’s so exciting, too, is the consciousness of the writer who made this. We’re talking about a female writer describing male joy, after all (even paired with a kind of sexual violence). The violence of his guilt, the sweetness of the loss of his innocence—all of it comes from a woman writer constructing a man. That’s part of what’s beautiful, and sensitive, and quickening about this passage, too. We’re used to drag in literature, but by and large, when I read male characters written by women in conventional fiction, I still feel just this weighty burden of trying to prove that you’re in a male body and you know it. This must be what a man feels like when he sweats, and so on. Likewise, I was just reading a novel-in-process by a friend of mine, and there was something about the woman going to the toilet that he felt like he needed to describe, and it was written in a way that would just never be female. There’s such lightness in this passage. Stafford just gets the feelings of the man, and it’s a testament to how we’re all pretty gender-fluid. That’s part of what great fiction is, really: transcending gender by anyone.
It’s funny to think I just stumbled on this book by chance. I must have been escaping from something much more heavy—I love the turgid pace of an academic book, if it’s a topic I really care about, about once a year. I think I probably escaped to Jean Stafford from something like that, and I didn’t expect much of her. I thought, Oh, this is just good old-fashioned fiction, I’ll try that for a change. So often you’re just reacting to the last book you read, and you want something that’s a little bit of an antidote to that. I’ve found that if I live a more programmatic life where I’m reading the books that I’m supposed to read—if I’m accomplishing all my little chores of reading what everybody else is reading—I stop having time to read in a way that’s rich and multiple.
I loved college, and I hated college, because for the first time in my life, my reading was being organized in some external way. I was supposed to read these books now. It created a procrastination and an unwillingness about reading in me, and I experience the same thing now. If I’ve got to read a book for a purpose, I start to read other sub-books around it almost out of rebellion, and those sub-books often are the most wild ones. I’d sooner read the books I found on a table on Avenue A last night than the latest thing everyone else is reading.
I never go all the way and read real mass-market crap, but I’ll read things that seem middle-of-the-road or conservative just as a reaction to whatever I’ve been reading. Right now, Thomas Bernhard is who I’m excited by, and I’ve been resisting Thomas Bernhard for about ten years. As soon as somebody’s in the air, I just feel like—no. I mean, I don’t know when I will ever read Karl Ove Knausgaard. I may never get to that guy for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I’m supposed to read him. I need to read perversely. Reading is a space that is absolutely mine, that always was mine, and I’m always reclaiming it. As writers, we just need so much time to lie around, and waste time, and dream, and just be private, and flow. You can’t tell me what to think. You can’t tell me what to look at. You can’t tell me what to know.
I always like reclaiming that perverse pleasure—even reclaiming it from myself. When I was a kid growing up in Catholic school, it was one kind of thing that I was sneaking under my desk. And now, when I’m supposed to be some kind of literary queer, I still want to read something else. As soon as I know who I am, I don’t want to be that person, you know? Part of it is the constant destruction and construction of the self. The texts aren’t changing, but we are—and I think that changing lens is the thing that I’m alive in.
Used bookstores seem like the place to browse most widely now. The commercial marketplaces are just so chosen. As much as all of us want our books out on the table, the fact there even is a table just pisses me off. What I love to do is go into a bookstore right near Café Mogador on Saint Mark’s Place. I think it’s called Eastside Books. I can’t even remember the name of it, but it’s been there forever, and you always go in there looking for something, but you always come out with something else.
With all that’s going on in the abstract web, and with social media, I feel like the grottiness of the used bookstore is more important than ever before. Used bookstores were where I discovered avant-garde literature, even more so than in my college classes. You just picked shit up, and you’re, like, What is this? I think the hand-eye connection is unseverable for passionate readers.
For me, the Internet is more of a writing place than a reading place. I just really don’t enjoy reading on my computer. For a few years around 1999, 2000, I had a loft in Times Square, and it was the best space I had ever had as a person living in Manhattan or in New York. And I remember the moment when I was working on some piece on my computer—and suddenly, I realized that here I was, at last, finally, in this wonderful, beautiful space, and I had turned my back to it in order to inhabit the crappy, abstract space of the computer. The computer managed to take that all away. So I’m always carrying a portable printer around. I’m always printing shit out.
Part of what we love about Europe now is what a world of bookstores it is, especially because our country, in so many ways, is becoming the opposite of that. If I had any money, I would give it to the libraries. That’s something I really feel strongly about. How many writers have I met who found some weird thing in the library, and it changed their lives? Those places have to exist.
I want to be in praise of the happy accident. It wasn’t even a bookstore where I found Jean Stafford. It was a thrift store, and that’s what’s so amazing—finding books in the wrong places. When I’m finished with a book, I often like to put them on a bench of a café outside. It could just wind up in a dumpster, but somebody could find it, you know? I believe in the wrong reader, in the wrong book. We’re just bodies moving in space and |
world the next day. The story moved CNN anchor Kate Bolduan to tears.
Omran. Aylan. Those who don't make it to the front pages. What was done about it then, what will be done now? #Syria pic.twitter.com/nCPhqgpcXP — Joseph Willits (@josephwillits) 19 августа 2016 г.
Meanwhile some social media users quickly took the opportunity to blame Russia for the airstrike, with American actress Mia Farrow suggesting that "Russian bombings have now killed more civilians than Isis."
Russian bombings have now killed more civilians than Isis. Brother of Omran has died https://t.co/Mf9MuaoaqF pic.twitter.com/UTG11ismu6 — mia farrow (@MiaFarrow) 20 августа 2016 г.
The Russian military refuted the claims, Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov stressing that Russian aircraft "never engage targets within the boundaries of settlements. This especially concerns the Qaterji district of Aleppo, which is directly adjacent to the two recently opened Russian humanitarian operation corridors for the safe exit of local residents."
Moreover, Konashenkov noted that a Defense Ministry analysis of the video of Omran's rescue "shows that if the strike did take place, it would come not from aircraft munitions, but a mine or a gas cylinder used in large numbers by the terrorists."
But while most Western mainstream media and many on social media may not trust the Russian Defense Ministry's explanations, one disturbing element behind the photo not reported in the press is beginning to grab the attention of many social media users.
Photos circulating online from the social media account Omran's photographer, a man by the name of Mahmoud Raslan, appear to show him commiserating with the killers of another child – 12-year-old named Abdullah Tayseer Issa, who was gruesomely beheaded by US-backed'moderate rebels' last month.
The photos, circulating on social media and collected by LiveLeak (warning, graphic images), show screenshots of Raslan's Facebook page, including an image showing him posing and smiling with the terrorists from the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement who murdered Issa in cold blood.
Raslan provided Western media outlets with the harrowing details about his account, even penning a piece about it for The Telegraph titled 'I took the picture of little Omran in Aleppo'.
Capturing the photo of the little boy brought him to tears, Raslan said. "Today when I woke up to see the whole world using the photo and talking about it I thought to myself, I hope all photos of children and attacks in Syria go viral so the world knows what life is like here," he added. "If people know what it is like maybe the war will stop, the bombing will stop."
Same photographer(Mahmoud Rslan) shot photos of gang that beheaded 11yr boy(Abdallah Issa) & the photos of Omran pic.twitter.com/WMJO42G3EW — Tony Man™ (@MrTonyMan) 19 августа 2016 г.
But the photo of Raslan in a very different situation, jubilantly posing with the killers of another child, has led to outrage among social media users, with some even suggesting that the photo of the shell-shocked little boy from Aleppo was staged. But while that seems unlikely, the photographer's apparent camaraderie with child-murdering Salafist terrorists does question the sincerity of his claim about wishing to end the plight of Aleppo's children.
@ABarnardNYT @APDiploWriter Irony is photog of Omran (Mahmoud Raslan) took happy selfies with Zenki child beheaders https://t.co/rBetXplF5c — Ludwig W (@LudWitt) 21 августа 2016 г.
Is that a journalist or a captagon fueled terrorist? This is Mr Raslan, the man who took Omran's viral photo. #Syria pic.twitter.com/HpbdgBBRN1 — Walid (@walid970721) 19 августа 2016 г.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said she would revoke visas for Amazon officials in India if ‘insulting’ products were not take down from Canada site
Indian court orders cinemas to play national anthem before films Read more
Amazon has been forced to remove a doormat depicting the Indian flag from its Canadian store after India’s top diplomat threatened to expel all foreign employees of the online retailer if it did not withdraw the product.
Sushma Swaraj, the country’s external affairs minister, used Twitter to demand Amazon “tender [an] unconditional apology” and “withdraw all products insulting our national flag immediately”, after another user alerted to the listings.
Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) Indian High Commission in Canada : This is unacceptable. Please take this up with Amazon at the highest level. https://t.co/L4yI3gLk3h
Amazon’s Canadian store offered a range of doormats depicting the Indian flag as well as those of other countries, including the US and the UK. The Indian flag doormats, sold by a third party, were taken down by the site on Wednesday.
A spokesman for Amazon said: “The item is no longer for sale on the site.”
Earlier, Swaraj had asked the Indian high commission in Canada to “take this up with Amazon at the highest level”. She added: “If this is not done forthwith, we will not grant [an] Indian visa to any Amazon official. We will also rescind the visas issued earlier.”
The 64-year-old minister, who has nearly seven million followers on the social network, has become well-known for her “Twitter diplomacy”, regularly responding to problems and questions tweeted at her by other users.
In August 2015, she helped to organise the release of an Indian woman who was allegedly being illegally held in a Dubai hotel room, after the woman’s brother tweeted at Swaraj for help.
Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) I have asked our Ambassador in UAE to help. He will speak to you and do the needful. @Devtamboli
Earlier that year she organised – and tweeted live updates about – an operation to rescue a group of Indians being detained in Iraq, after footage of them circulated online.
Amazon is aggressively trying to expand its Indian business, more than doubling its revenue in 2015-16 but also suffering deep losses as it chases market share from a homegrown rival, Flipkart. It has invested more than $5bn in India since 2014.
Flipkart and Ola, an Indian ride-sharing service, called in December for the government to enforce protectionist measures against Amazon and Uber.A LANDMARK High Court hearing which could enshrine freedom of speech in the Australian Constitution will be heard on Tuesday.
Thanks to Adelaide's controversial street preachers, the challenge could see free speech recognised as a Constitutional right - comparable to the US First Amendment - and trigger a rewriting of state and council laws that were drafted to stop people being able to "preach", "canvass" or "harangue".
Tuesday's hearing in Canberra has such widespread ramifications that South Australia's Attorney-General has been joined in the matter by the Attorneys-General for the Commonwealth, NSW, Victoria, Queensland and WA.
The Human Rights Law Centre has sided with the Adelaide street preachers Caleb and Samuel Corneloup.
High Court Chief Justice Robert French has made it clear the hearing will be about legal principles rather than religion, telling the preachers: "It will not really be anything to do with, as you would appreciate, the merits of your preaching".
At present there is no guarantee of freedom of speech written into the Constitution.
If the court decides in favour of the preachers it may opt for a narrow interpretation limiting such freedom to political speech - but the justices could use the case as a vehicle for a much broader and more significant decision regarding rights relating to freedom of communication.
The case was triggered by anger at the aggressive style of preaching in public spaces such as Rundle Mall.
Attempts to silence the preachers under Adelaide City Council bylaws, saw the preachers appeal to the full bench of the Supreme Court which in August 2011 ruled certain bylaws were invalid to the extent they prevented free political communication.
The State Government appealed to the High Court, with a spokesman for Attorney-General John Rau saying the appeal concerns the ability of the City Council to regulate its streets.
"It constrains the legislative and executive power necessary to maintain the system of responsible and representative government required by the Constitution," he said.
While the hearing is likely to take an hour, a decision could take months.
SA Law Society president Ralph Bonig said the decision had considerable implications.
"The legal community will be interested in the outcome given its potential for the concept of freedom of speech to be implied in the Constitution," he said.
Lawyer Peter Campbell of Kelly and Co. said the case had the potential to drastically alter the legal landscape.
"A number of legal restrictions and permit regimes may be invalid and unenforceable," he said.There is a tradition among embassy staff called the “Wheels Up Party”. An official overseas visit by a president or prime minister will inevitably mean months of gruelling preparatory work. The diplomats, security staff and advance teams from the home capital will exhaust themselves ensuring even the smallest detail has been planned out, tested and tested again before the delegation arrives.
When the leader is finally in town, it is not uncommon for embassy staff to work 24 hours straight, keeping track of every moving part, adjusting on the fly and praying that nothing goes wrong. Then, after the meetings have met and the sites have been seen, they will stand on the tarmac to watch their leader board his airplane, taxi and takeoff.
And when they can see the wheels on the aircraft retract, meaning their VIP is officially someone else’s problem now, there is a collective whoop of relief, and everyone heads back to the embassy to crack into the duty-free liquor for the biggest party of the year.
WATCH:
I imagine the Wheels Up parties at the American embassies in Saudi Arabia, Israel, The Vatican, Brussels and Italy this week, after President Donald Trump flew off on Air Force One, were among the biggest in living memory. I cannot think of another visit by an American leader that was in as much peril of going horribly, horribly wrong. But to the relief of many and surprise of more, it didn’t. When you think of the possible misadventures, I must assume that the mood among American diplomats was joyous.
There were still a few cringing gaffes, of course. At the NATO summit, for example, the world was treated to the sight of Trump pushing other leaders out of the way so he could preen in front of the cameras. If Alec Baldwin had acted out the scene during one of his Saturday Night Live appearances, it would have been too over-the-top to get a laugh.
We were looking so hard for these sorts of pratfalls that some important items were largely ignored. Consider that Trump chose Saudi Arabia as his first overseas visit, committed to an unprecedentedly large arms deal with Riyadh, and then invited almost every Sunni leader in the world to listen to his speech. America is now officially picking sides in the Middle East’s long and bloody Shia/Sunni rivalry. This is a move that will inevitably only increase tensions in the Middle East.
In Israel, Trump revelled in one of the coziest visits in decades between a sitting U.S. president and an Israeli leader. One White House press release had the dateline “Jerusalem, Israel” which, in the arcane world of diplomatic subtleties, was a big step towards the United States recognizing that city as the Israeli capital—another move that will only increase tensions in the region.
But even these diplomatic developments were not the real story. While Trump was feted in the Middle East, he was treated with surprising indifference in Europe. For the first time since the Second World War, an American president stood among allies, not as a first among equals, but almost like an outsider—someone who had to be invited, but who no one really was going to take very seriously.
At one point, Trump used a commemorative address to instead complain that NATO allies were being unfair to “American taxpayers”. The other leaders standing nearby exchanged wry looks; a few even seemed to roll their eyes. By all accounts, there was no scramble to appease the president, no panic among delegations about how to “defuse” the American anger. No one really cared that much. Likewise, when the president refused to endorse the Paris Climate Agreement, or NATO’s policy of mutual defence, no one was willing to bend even a little to mollify the Americans. They shrugged.
Even a month ago, the reaction would have been entirely different. When Trump came to power there was universal agreement he had to be treated with kid gloves, he had to be taken seriously, otherwise who knows what chaos he would unleash. But now, no one seems especially worried. Rapidly, over the last few weeks, America’s rivals and allies stopped seeing the United States as the “indispensable nation” whose opinion mattered, whose approval was always necessary.
What changed? The world has a much better measure of the man now. They see him as inconsistent—even if you convinced him on Monday to support the Paris deal, he will quite likely repudiate it Tuesday morning in a tweet. He has also proven so ineffective in controlling the bureaucracy and even his own party, it is unlikely that a repudiation will change much any time soon.
And beneath all of that is Trump’s unprecedented ignorance—Merkel at one point was reduced to showing him a map of the former Soviet Union to explain Russian objectives in Eastern Europe. What is the point of trying to get his support on one issue or another when he has literally not even read the summary of the relevant briefing note?
Trump’s first world tour may well end up also being his farewell tour. Not because it will be his last, although with the accelerating pace of the Russian scandal that is not impossible. But rather because it marked the official end of the American century—when Air Force One took off and finally headed back to Washington, it left behind a new world where the United States no longer counts, where America has effectively abandoned the field to Europe, China, and Russia. Wheels up.During the 1990s, for example, three communities in Massachusetts implemented a vigorous enforcement campaign against under-age tobacco sales. Advocates promised teen smoking would fall sharply when it became harder to buy cigarettes. High-profile "stings" exposed the stores that were selling to youths.
The result, according to a two-year study by medical school researchers? Failure. Strict enforcement of minimum-age laws did make it so fewer stores sold tobacco to minors. But surveys of high school students in those same communities revealed no effect on the ability of teens to get cigarettes and no reduction in the prevalence of smoking. In fact, there was an increase in teenage smoking compared with nearby communities that hadn't cracked down.
Similar patterns have played out on a national scale. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, youth smoking was on a slow decline. Then in 1992, Congress passed the Synar Amendment mandating the nation's first legal smoking age of 18. Over the next six years, the decline ended and youth smoking generally leveled off.Posted by, Laurence Moroney, Developer Advocate
With the rollout of Google Play services 8.1 finally finished, there’s a lot of new information to share with developers about the release!
Marshmallow Permissions
Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) has introduced a new permissions model allowing users to control app permissions at runtime. As an app developer, it’s important for you to adopt this and give your users good control over the permissions your app needs. You can find more details here.
If your app is using Google Play services SDK versions prior to 8.1, you must update to use this new version to ensure your app is fully compatible with Android 6.0. This will enable you to manage the permission flows appropriately for your app and avoid any potential connection issues. For more details, and a step-by-step guide to what your app should do for the best user experience, take a look at this blog post on the Android Developers site.
App Invites
App Invites allows you to grow your apps audience by letting existing Android and iOS users invite their Google contacts via email or SMS to try your app out. Google Play services 8.1 adds the ability for developers to customize the email invitation, including adding a custom image, and specifying a call-to-action button text. These improvements should help developers increase user engagement and conversions with app invites.
Ambient Mode Maps
Android Wear provides a feature called ambient mode, enabling apps to stay visible, even when they aren’t actively being used. Now, with Google Play services 8.1, the Google Maps Android API supports ambient mode. In this mode, a simplified low-color rendering of the map will be seen. This reduces power consumption by lighting fewer pixels, but the camera and zoom level are retained, so user context will be kept. To learn more about ambient mode, check out this blog post.
Nearby Status Listener
Google Nearby allows you to build simple interactions between nearby devices. A new addition in Google Play services allows your app to receive callbacks when an active Nearby publish or subscribe expires. This frees you from tracking the TTL and allows your app's UI to accurately reflect whether Nearby is active or not.
Play Games Player Stats API
The new Play Games Player Stats API allows you to build better, smarter, games. It will let you tailor user experiences to specific segments of players and different stages of the player lifecycle. For example, you can give your most valuable players that are returning from a break in play a special welcome back message and reward.
Breaking Changes
In this release, there are some changes to GoogleApiClient and PendingResult, making them abstract classes, which may lead to breaking changes in your code. Learn more about these changes and how to handle them in the release notes.
SDK Now available!
You can get started developing today by downloading the Google Play services SDK from the Android SDK Manager. To learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it, visit our documentation on Google Developers.Despite a shortage of corneas for transplant purposes, new research reveals that eyes are the one body part we are least likely to donate.
While more than a quarter of British adults (26 per cent) interviewed by www.optegra.com have registered for organ donation, almost two thirds (64 per cent) state they would not donate their eyes for transplant. They are far more likely to agree to donate their heart, kidney and lungs.
Which body parts would you donate for transplant or medical research?
51% would donate their kidney
49% would donate their liver
48% would donate their heart
47% would donate their lungs
36% would donate their eyes (cornea)
Base: Optegra.com research with 2,016 UK adults, aged 16 plus
Specialist eye hospital group, Optegra Eye Health Care, has joined forces with the UK’s main eye research charity, Fight for Sight, to discover why people would not donate their corneal tissue - despite 86 per cent of people in the UK valuing their sight above any other sense.
The new study highlights that three in 10 adults say their eyes are unique to them; 29 per cent say eyes are the most personal part of their body and more than a quarter (27 per cent) say it would upset their family. Finally, one in six say it is for a spiritual reason.
Yet around 10 million people worldwide are blind due to damaged corneas – usually from scarring caused by injury or infection[iii], and currently the NHS performs around 4,000 corneal transplants a year, all of which rely on human organ donation.
Fight for Sight played a key role in helping to set up the UK Corneal Transplant Service in 1983. Since then, according to NHS Blood and Transplant:
Corneal transplants are successful sight-saving operations, with 93 per cent of transplants functioning after one year.
By five years, 74 per cent of transplants are still functioning and many will continue for many more years after that.
Rory Passmore, Managing Director for Optegra Eye Health Care, said:
This research has explored patterns of behaviour around organ donation, and offered some fascinating insights into how adults regard their eyes. There is such importance, and sensitivity connected to eyes, and sadly this is at the cost of not being able to help others to see. With more and more people suffering eye conditions, particularly with an ageing population, it is more important than ever that we help if we can. We would really encourage people to discuss this with their families and complete a donor registration if they feel they can.
Optegra’s corporate charity, Fight for Sight, funds research into early detection and prevention of many sight-threatening conditions. It is developing new treatments and ultimately trying to find a cure for many different eye conditions, such as keratoconus and Fuchs dystrophy, which can often lead to patients needing a corneal transplant.
Fight for Sight Director of Research, Dr Dolores Conroy, says:
There is a need for 70 corneas per week with the main indications being keratoconus in younger people and endothelial failure - Fuchs dystrophy - in older people. Fight for Sight is funding research into these conditions and we have a better understanding of the genetic cause of corneal dystrophies. With the lack of corneas available for transplants, it’s vital to have new treatments. We are developing stem cells therapies to repair the damage to the cornea, gene-replacement therapies and drugs that may be delivered as eye drops to repair faulty genes.
Kenilworth resident Elizabeth Keell, age 36, appreciates the need for people to join the organ donor register and donate their corneas, as she has been diagnosed with keratoconus and may one day need a transplant.
She says:
I was first diagnosed in 1995 and it came as a great shock as I did not know much about the condition. The vision in my left eye is particularly poor and I have been offered a corneal transplant but am worried about the procedure itself as well as the time off work, and not being able to drive as I have young children still at infant school. But I understand that if the deterioration continues I will have to take up the corneal transplant. I am grateful that corneal transplant is an option, and so truly value the donations which are given. But I am also eager to support Fight for Sight’s research to find less invasive treatment options – I worry that one of my daughters may inherit keratoconus and so it is a deeply personal issue for me.
Watch Elizabeth's story here:Resveratrol induces mitochondrial biogenesis and protects against metabolic decline, but whether SIRT1 mediates these benefits is the subject of debate. To circumvent the developmental defects of germline SIRT1 knockouts, we have developed an inducible system that permits whole-body deletion of SIRT1 in adult mice. Mice treated with a moderate dose of resveratrol showed increased mitochondrial biogenesis and function, AMPK activation, and increased NAD + levels in skeletal muscle, whereas SIRT1 knockouts displayed none of these benefits. A mouse overexpressing SIRT1 mimicked these effects. A high dose of resveratrol activated AMPK in a SIRT1-independent manner, demonstrating that resveratrol dosage is a critical factor. Importantly, at both doses of resveratrol no improvements in mitochondrial function were observed in animals lacking SIRT1. Together these data indicate that SIRT1 plays an essential role in the ability of moderate doses of resveratrol to stimulate AMPK and improve mitochondrial function both in vitro and in vivo.
This study was aimed at testing whether the ability of resveratrol to activate AMPK and increase mitochondrial function requires SIRT1 in vivo, and whether SIRT1 overexpression is sufficient to mimic these effects. The main impediment to studying SIRT1 in vivo has been the poor survival, impaired growth, and developmental defects of germline SIRT1 knockout mice (). While studies performed in outbred mice suggest that the effects of resveratrol treatment on cancer may be impaired in SIRT1 knockout mice (), the knockout mice used in these studies were small, sterile, and suffered from craniofacial abnormalities and eyelid inflammatory conditions, making interpretation of the data extremely difficult. To circumvent these issues, we have developed an adult-inducible SIRT1 knockout mouse. This mouse shows efficient deletion of SIRT1 across a variety of tissues and appears grossly normal and healthy beyond 1 year of age. Using these animals, as well as cell culture models, we observe that the stimulation of AMPK activity and increase in NADlevels, mitochondrial biogenesis, and mitochondrial function in skeletal muscle by a moderate dose of resveratrol are entirely dependent upon SIRT1. Further, overexpression of SIRT1 mimics the effects of resveratrol on both mitochondria and AMPK activation. Interestingly, an ∼10-fold higher dose of resveratrol activates AMPK in a SIRT1-independent manner, though improvements in mitochondrial function are SIRT1 dependent. Taken together, these data highlight the differences resveratrol treatment can have at different doses and demonstrate an important role for SIRT1 in activating AMPK and mediating the benefits of resveratrol in vivo.
Unfortunately, studies to date have been unable to determine which model is most relevant under physiological conditions. We and others have shown that resveratrol activates AMPK in cell culture and in vivo (), and a study of AMPK knockout mice established that AMPK is required for many of the beneficial effects of resveratrol on metabolic function (). On the other hand, recent enzymological studies have presented evidence for direct SIRT1 activation by small molecules (), and there is a growing literature of cell culture studies in which the effects of resveratrol are lost after knocking down or inhibiting SIRT1 (). Moreover, resveratrol's central effects on liver gluconeogenesis () are abrogated when SIRT1 activity is impaired in the hypothalamus (), and treatment of mice with a SIRT1 activator that is structurally unrelated to resveratrol, SRT1720, increases mitochondrial capacity in skeletal muscle () and liver in a SIRT1-dependent manner (), while improving the health and survival of mice on a high-fat diet, similar to what has been observed with resveratrol ().
Effects of resveratrol on NO secretion stimulated by insulin and its dependence on SIRT1 in high glucose cultured endothelial cells.
Induction of manganese superoxide dismutase by nuclear translocation and activation of SIRT1 promotes cell survival in chronic heart failure.
SIRT1 activation by small molecules: kinetic and biophysical evidence for direct interaction of enzyme and activator.
One of the most robust and reproducible effects of resveratrol treatment is an increase in mitochondrial mass (). SIRT1 promotes mitochondrial biogenesis through deacetylation and activation of PGC-1α (), a master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis that coactivates the nuclear respiratory factors (NRF-1 and NRF-2), which induce the transcription of genes involved in mitochondrial biogenesis (). PGC-1α is also activated by another important metabolic sensor, the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) (). Though the effects of resveratrol and SIRT1 on PGC-1α are well established, there is considerable debate about the mechanism by which this regulation is achieved. One school of thought is that the direct activation of SIRT1 by resveratrol is an in vitro artifact () and that resveratrol works primarily by activating AMPK (), potentially by inhibition of phospodiesterases (PDEs), ATPase, or complex III (). It has been proposed that AMPK then activates SIRT1 indirectly by elevating intracellular levels of its cosubstrate, NAD). Alternatively, resveratrol may first activate SIRT1 in vivo, leading to AMPK activation via deacetylation and activation of the AMPK kinase LKB1 ().
SIRT1 modulation of the acetylation status, cytosolic localization, and activity of LKB1. Possible role in AMP-activated protein kinase activation.
In obese rodents, treatment with resveratrol produces a variety of health benefits including improved metabolic and vascular function, decreased hepatic steatosis, reduced inflammation, greater endurance, and a gene expression pattern resembling CR (). Recent clinical studies show that resveratrol also confers metabolic benefits in humans (). Understanding how resveratrol exerts its effects is important, not only for the potential insights into the biological causes of age-related diseases, but also to allow the development of more potent and specific molecules.
The polyphenol resveratrol (2,3,4′-trihydroxystilbene) first attracted scientific attention when it was linked to the cardiovascular benefits of red wine and was subsequently found to possess potent antitumor activity (). In 2003, a screen for small molecule activators of SIRT1 identified 21 different SIRT1-activating molecules, the most potent of which was resveratrol (). In the majority of studies to date, resveratrol has been found to increase life span in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Caenorhabditis elegans, and Drosophila melanogaster in a sirtuin-dependent manner, although the life span extension in yeast and flies, and the Sir2 dependence in worms, has been challenged (). In addition, resveratrol extends life and delays the onset of age-related phenotypes in a short-lived species of fish ().
The mammalian sirtuins (SIRT1–SIRT7) are a conserved family of NAD-dependent deacetylases and ADP-ribosyltransferases involved in numerous fundamental cellular processes including gene silencing, DNA repair, and metabolic regulation (). Deletion of SIRT1 in outbred strains of mice abrogates the effect of caloric restriction (CR) on physical activity () and life span extension (), whereas overexpression of SIRT1 mimics many of the salutary effects of CR, including a reduced incidence of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases (), cancer (), and neurodegeneration (). Recent human genetic studies also support a role for SIRT1 in maintaining human health status with age ().
SIRT1 mRNA expression may be associated with energy expenditure and insulin sensitivity.
SIRT1 is associated with a decrease in acute insulin secretion and a sex specific increase in risk for type 2 diabetes in Pima Indians.
Neuronal SIRT1 activation as a novel mechanism underlying the prevention of Alzheimer disease amyloid neuropathology by calorie restriction.
To further elucidate the epistasis of SIRT1 and AMPK, we treated primary hepatocytes and myoblasts isolated from SIRT1 KO mice with AICAR, an AMP mimetic that directly activates AMPK and promotes its phosphorylation by LKB1. Phosphorylation of AMPK by AICAR was blunted in both the primary hepatocytes and primary myoblasts lacking SIRT1 ( Figure 7 G and Figure S7 J). Moreover, the ability of AICAR to increase mitochondrial DNA copy number and ATP in the liver and muscle KO cells was completely blocked ( Figures 7 H and 7I and Figures S7 H and S7I). In further support of SIRT1 acting upstream of AMPK, treatment of C2C12 cells with 25 μM resveratrol resulted in a SIRT1-dependent decrease in LKB1 acetylation ( Figure 7 J). These findings are consistent with previous work done in C2C12 cells () and support previous findings that resveratrol-stimulated, SIRT1-mediated deacetylation of LKB1 plays a direct role in the activation of AMPK (). Taken together, these findings show that treatment of mice on a high-fat diet with moderate doses of resveratrol results in increased phosphorylation of AMPK, induction of mitochondrial biogenesis, increased ATP and NADlevels, and a shift toward more oxidative muscle fibers, all of which are SIRT1-dependent effects.
SIRT1 modulation of the acetylation status, cytosolic localization, and activity of LKB1. Possible role in AMP-activated protein kinase activation.
Treatment with 25 μM resveratrol elevated ATP levels at 4, 6, and 12 hr, consistent with what we observed in vivo ( Figure 7 D). In contrast, the 50 μM dose significantly decreased ATP levels early as 1 hr after treatment. At the 25 μM dose, activation of AMPK occurred in a SIRT1-dependent manner, while the 50 μM dose activated AMPK independently of SIRT1 ( Figure 7 E). Importantly, the increase in ATP was evident before any changes in cellular NADlevels were detected ( Figure 7 F), indicating that improvements in mitochondrial function and elevation of cellular ATP levels are both dependent upon SIRT1 and occur prior to increases in cellular NAD
(K) Moderate doses of resveratrol activate AMPK and stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis in a SIRT1-dependent manner that results in improvement of mitochondrial function.
(J) C2C12 cells infected with SIRT1 or nontargeting shRNA and expressing Flag-LKB1 were treated with resveratrol 25 μM for 24 hr, and LKB1 acetylation was tested in Flag immunoprecipitates. Total LKB1 was evaluated in total extracts as input.
(I) ATP content in primary myoblasts isolated from wild-type and SIRT1 knockout mice and treated with 500 μM AICAR for 24 hr (n = 3, ∗ p < 0.05 versus DMSO).
(H) Mitochondrial DNA content analyzed by quantitative PCR in primary myoblasts isolated from wild-type and SIRT1 knockout mice and treated with 500 μM AICAR for 24 hr. Relative expression values were normalized to control (n = 3, ∗ p < 0.05 versus empty DMSO).
(G) Representative immunoblot for for p-AMPK (Thr172), and total AMPK in primary myoblasts isolated from wild-type and SIRT1 knockout mice and treated with 500 μM AICAR for 24 hr.
(F) NAD + content in C2C12 cells treated with 25 or 50 μM resveratrol for 1, 4, 6, and 12 hr (n = 4, ∗ p < 0.05 versus 50 μM DMSO, #p < 0.05 versus 25 μM DMSO).
(E) Representative immunoblot for for p-AMPK (Thr172), and total AMPK in C2C12 cells treated with 25 or 50 μM resveratrol for 1, 4, 6, and 12 hr.
(D) ATP content in C2C12 cells treated with 25 or 50 μM resveratrol for 1, 4, 6, and 12 hr (n = 4, ∗ p < 0.05 versus DMSO).
(C) Mitochondrial membrane potential in C2C12 cells treated with 25 or 50 μM resveratrol for 24 hr (n = 4, ∗ p < 0.05 versus DMSO).
(A) Representative immunoblot for p-AMPK (Thr172) and total AMPK in C2C12 cells infected with SIRT1 or nontargeting shRNA and treated with 10, 25, or 50 μM resveratrol for 24 hr.
Resveratrol has been implicated in the direct modulation of numerous targets (), but it has been difficult to discern which of these targets are physiologically relevant. Part of the difficulty has arisen from the fact that doses of resveratrol given to animals are wildly variable and concentrations used on cells vary greatly as well (). To provide some clarity, we performed a series of dose and time course experiments with resveratrol. Treatment of C2C12 cells with a moderate dose of resveratrol (25 μM) activated AMPK in a SIRT1-dependent manner, while at a higher dose of resveratrol (50 μM) AMPK was activated in a SIRT1-independent manner ( Figure 7 A). Similarly, treatment with the lower dose of resveratrol for 24 hr mimicked the effects on muscle in vivo by increasing ATP and mitochondrial membrane potential. In contrast, the 50 μM dose reduced mitochondrial membrane potential and cellular ATP levels, indicative of mitochondrial dysfunction, an effect of resveratrol that was not observed in vivo ( Figures 7 B and 7C).
Treatment with a moderate dose of resveratrol increased the levels of phosphorylated AMPK and NADin gastrocnemius of WT mice ( Figures 6 F–6I). Strikingly, none of these changes were observed in SIRT1 KO mice. Consistent with these findings, the regulation of AMPK-regulated genes involved in fatty acid metabolism (LCAD, MCAD, CPT1b, FAS, and Scd1) was also dependent upon SIRT1. Interestingly, at the higher dose of resveratrol, many of these effects were SIRT1 independent, demonstrating that the dose is critical to the outcome ( Figures 6 F and 6G, Figures S7 F and S7G). SIRT1-overexpressing mice had significantly increased levels of AMPK phosphorylation ( Figures 6 J and 6K). Together these data demonstrate that SIRT1 is necessary for moderate doses of resveratrol to activate AMPK and increase NADand that SIRT1 acts upstream of AMPK. Interestingly, despite the different requirements for resveratrol to activate AMPK in the SIRT1 KO mice, neither dose of resveratrol improved mitochondrial function in the absence of SIRT1 ( Figure 2 ).
(K) Quantification of AMPK activity evaluated by the ratio of quantification of p-AMPK and AMPK in gastrocnemius of WT and SIRT1 Tg mice (n = 6, ∗ p < 0.05 versus WT).
(J) Representative immunoblot for p-AMPK (Thr172), and total AMPK in gastrocnemius of WT and SIRT1 Tg mice.
(G) Quantification of AMPK activity evaluated by the ratio of p-AMPK and AMPK in gastrocnemius of WT and SIRT1 KO mice on experimental diets (n = 8).
(F) Representative immunoblot for p-AMPK (Thr172) and total AMPK in gastrocnemius of WT and SIRT1 KO mice on experimental diets.
(E) Mitochondrial DNA content analyzed by quantitative PCR in C2C12 cells infected with AMPKα or n |
Still, the idea of changing your brain to make you feel something… I mean, that’s what my druggy friends did in college, right?
But the obvious difference is that Thync is cutting out such damaging drugs. Drugs that I would admittedly use for different reasons, especially at this show: I’m basically shooting coffee and Emergen-C, and I would not say no to a Xanax for my flight back. I would substitute these for Thync, hands down.
Thync will be released sometime this year, but a date hasn’t been set. “Still to be determined,” says Pal. “We are just working things out and don’t want to be one of those companies that unveils it and then there’s a huge lag.
“We’re doing a lot of testing now and finishing the technology.” Pal says that Thync has hugely changed since the team started, and that after more than 100 internal studies and mass research, the product is finally edging toward a launch. “We wanted the vast majority of people to wear this and have a meaningful experience from it.”
Photo via neil conway/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)The full-face covering has inflamed passions in France A French parliamentary committee has recommended a partial ban on women wearing Islamic face veils. The committee's near 200-page report has proposed a ban in hospitals, schools, government offices and on public transport. It also recommends that anyone showing visible signs of "radical religious practice" should be refused residence cards and citizenship. The interior ministry says just 1,900 women in France wear the full veils. A law may follow, but MPs are divided over what to do
Gavin Hewitt
BBC Europe editor
Read more in Gavin Hewitt's blog In its report, the committee said requiring women to cover their faces was against the French republican principles of secularism and equality. "The wearing of the full veil is a challenge to our republic. This is unacceptable. We must condemn this excess," the report said. The commission called on parliament to adopt a formal resolution stating that the face veil was "contrary to the values of the republic" and proclaiming that "all of France is saying 'no' to the full veil". Presenting the report to the French National Assembly, speaker Bernard Accoyer said the face veil had too many negative connotations. "It is the symbol of the repression of women, and... of extremist fundamentalism. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. "This divisive approach is a denial of the equality between men and women and a rejection of co-existence side-by-side, without which our republic is nothing." The report is expected to be followed by the drafting of a bill and a parliamentary debate on the issue. The BBC's Hugh Schofield, in Paris, says the reasoning behind the report is to make it as impractical as possible for women in face veils to go about their daily business. There is also a fear that an outright ban would not only be difficult to implement but would be distasteful and could make France a target for terrorism, our correspondent says. France has an estimated five million Muslims - the largest such population in Western Europe. Months of debate The report follows months of public debate, including President Nicolas Sarkozy's intervention, saying all-encompassing veils were "not welcome in France". REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS Parliament should pass a resolution denouncing full Muslim face veils Ban the veil in all schools, hospitals, public transport and government offices Bar foreign women from obtaining asylum or French citizenship if they insist on veiling their faces in state buildings Take into account in asylum requests the coercion to wear the full veil as an indication of a wider context of persecution Create a national school of Islamic studies
The Islamic veil across Europe However, he did not explicitly call for a ban, saying "no-one should feel stigmatised" by any eventual law. Opinion polls suggest a majority of French people support a full ban. However, the parliamentary deputies have recommended that - for now - restrictions should be limited. The committee suggests a ban inside public buildings, with those who defy the ban denied whatever services are on offer there - for example state benefits. There are several types of headscarves and veils for Muslim women - those that cover the face being the niqab and the burka. In France, the niqab is the version most commonly worn. The niqab usually leaves the eyes clear. It is worn with an accompanying headscarf and sometimes a separate eye veil. The burka covers the entire face and body with just a mesh screen to see through. Find out about different styles of Muslim headscarf
In graphics
The issue has divided France's political parties. The Socialist opposition has come out officially against a ban, saying it would be difficult to enforce. It says it is opposed to full veils in principle, but some members have expressed fears about any ruling that could stigmatise Muslim women. Meanwhile, the head of Mr Sarkozy's right-wing UMP party has already presented a bill in parliament supporting a full ban on grounds of security.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The moment Nathan Filer was named winner of the Costa Book of the Year
Nathan Filer has won the Costa Book of the Year with The Shock of the Fall, his debut novel about loss, guilt and mental illness.
The book follows the experience of Matthew Holmes, a 19-year-old who is haunted after witnessing his brother's death at a holiday park in Dorset.
Chairman of the judges author Rose Tremain said it was "astonishingly sure-footed" for a first novel.
"It is not just about schizophrenia - it is about grief," she said.
Filer, a former mental health nurse, looked shocked as he picked up his £30,000 prize at a ceremony in central London.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nathan Filer: "I'm a good combination of shocked and delighted"
He said he hadn't prepared a speech as he had checked the betting odds earlier. He thanked the judges and his wife Emily, whom he married last week.
Filer beat best-selling novelist Kate Atkinson, whose Life After Life - a tale of perpetual resurrection - was the bookmakers' favourite to win the overall prize.
NATHAN FILER Nathan Filer, 32, is a writer and lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. He is a qualified mental health nurse and for many years worked for the mental health service in Bristol, where he still lives. The Shock of the Fall was subject to an 11-way auction and bought by HarperCollins for a substantial six figure sum. It was selected for BBC Radio 2's Bookclub and a Specsavers National Book Award. Filer's stand-up poetry has been a regular fixture at festivals and spoken-word events across the UK, including Latitude, Port Eliot, and Wilderness. It has been broadcast on BBC 3 and BBC Radio 4, 7 and 5 Live. He has also appeared at the Cheltenham Literature Festival and Hay Festival. His 2005 comedy short film Oedipus won the BBC Best New Filmmaker Award and numerous other prizes.
Also in the running were Lucy Hughes-Hallett for The Pike, an account of the life of Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, and poet Michael Symmons Roberts for his sixth collection Drysalter.
The shortlist was completed by Chris Riddell, for his children's book Goth Girl And The Ghost Of A Mouse.
Tremain said there had been "no blood" during the final judging process but added that the decision was "not quite unanimous".
"This book stood out in a very good list. The voice in which the author has chosen to tell his story is perfectly aligned with the subject matter and very well sustained to the end.
"The book is exceptionally moving without being sentimental - we're very much hoping there will be more from this writer."
She added: "To have taken such a marvellously articulated thing from his professional life and to have brought it to life in the way that he has was a fantastic achievement."
The Shock of the Fall was snapped up by HarperCollins for a "substantial" six-figure sum.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The final five: (l-r) Nathan Filer, Kate Atkinson, Michael Symmons Roberts, Lucy Hughes-Hallett and Chris Riddell
Jo Brand - another former mental health nurse - has called the story, in which Matthew is "managed" by his local community health team, "one of the best books about mental illness".
The Shock of the Fall is the fifth first novel to take the overall prize. Kate Atkinson won for her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, in 1995.
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney was the last first novel to win the overall award in 2006
Since the introduction of the Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won eleven times by a novel, five times by a first novel, five times by a biography, five times by a collection of poetry and once by a children's book.
Tremain chaired a final judging panel that included actress Natascha McElhone, Texas singer songwriter Sharleen Spiteri, presenter Richard Osman, columnist and scriptwriter Emma Kennedy, writer John Burnside, and authors Anne de Courcy, Matt Cain and Gerard Woodward.
The Costa Book Awards, formerly known as the Whitbread, is open to authors resident in the UK and Ireland. All five shortlisted authors receive £5,000 with the overall winner getting a further £30,000.
Last year's top prize went to Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. It was the first book to be named as Costa book of the year and win the Man Booker Prize in the same year.
Tuesday's ceremony also saw the announcement of the winner of the Costa Short Story Award. Writer and poet Angela Readman, from Newcastle, won the public vote to win £3,500 for her story, The Keeper of the Jackalopes.A new photo of a young boy holding a sign talking about how he survived abortion as one of the 10 percent of Down syndrome children not victimized by abortion before birth has gone viral on Facebook today.
The photo has received thousands of shares and likes and is inspiring pro-life people across the world, including Josh Mercer of CatholicVote.
“This powerful message is making its way around Facebook,” he said after viewing the photo. “When I speak with friends who have a child with Down Syndrome, unfailingly they all say how much joy their child brings into their life. It makes me feel ashamed to live in a country that chooses death instead of life for 90% of babies who are diagnosed with Down Syndrome.”
Recently, LifeNews reported on a new study showing how researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston surveyed families where a member had Down Syndrome and found that Down Syndrome is a positive. From MSNBC.com:
The Reillys represent some of the experiences reported in three surveys conducted by doctors at Children’s Hospital in Boston that suggest the reality of Down syndrome is positive for a vast majority of parents, siblings and people with Down syndrome themselves. Among 2,044 parents or guardians surveyed, 79 percent reported their outlook on life was more positive because of their child with Down syndrome…. Skotko also found that among siblings ages 12 and older, 97 percent expressed feelings of pride about their brother or sister with Down syndrome and 88 percent were convinced they were better people because of their sibling with Down syndrome. A third study evaluating how adults with Down syndrome felt about themselves reports 99 percent responded they were happy with their lives, 97 percent liked who they are, and 96 percent liked how they looked.
As writer Rebecca Taylor noted her in LifeNews post, “So once again the culture of death distorts the truth by suggesting that parents are doing the right thing by killing their Down Syndrome child. The culture of death says, “Better dead than have Downs.” But 99% of adults with Down Syndrome report they are happy with their lives. I doubt you would find anything close to that percentage in the “healthy” adult population. And yet it is these very happy adults that are being targeted for destruction in the womb.”Donald Trump’s linguistic dexterity may be questionable, but the US president’s lexicon has had an impact on the English language, which is reflected in the latest additions to oxforddictionaries.com, the online reference guide to current English. New coinages that reflect the latest wave of online political activism form a significant section of more than 300 new definitions in the database, which is a sister work to the Oxford English Dictionary, The Guardian reported.
Additions including “clicktivism” (a pejorative word for armchair activists on social media), “haterade” (excessive negativity, criticism, or resentment), “otherize” (view or treat – a person or group of people – as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself) and “herd mentality” (the tendency for people’s behaviour or beliefs to conform to those of the group to which they belong) all emerged during the 2016 battle for the White House, said head of content development Angus Stevenson.
“We are getting a convergence of high-level politics and online language in quite a new way,” Stevenson said. “We had all the words around Brexit in the last update and we are now starting to see all the words around Trump coming into the dictionary.”
Stevenson said that new terms from Trump, his supporters and opponents were emerging more rapidly than in the past. “We have lots to add all the time. We don’t have ‘fake news’ or ‘alternative fact’ this time, because they have just started gaining currency, but I am sure they will be in the next update,” he added.FIRST REGULAR SESSION
SENATE COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE FOR
HOUSE COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE FOR
HOUSE BILL NOS. 294,
123, 125, 113, 271 & 21596TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Reported from the Committee on General Laws, April 27, 2011, with recommendation that the Senate Committee Substitute do pass.
TERRY L. SPIELER, Secretary.
1118S.04C
AN ACT
To repeal sections 50.535, 302.181, 407.500, 407.505, 571.020, 571.030, 571.101, 571.107, and 571.117, RSMo, and to enact in lieu thereof thirteen new sections relating to firearms, with penalty provisions.
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Missouri, as follows:
Section A. Sections 50.535, 302.181, 407.500, 407.505, 571.020, 571.030, 571.101, 571.107, and 571.117, RSMo, are repealed and thirteen new sections enacted in lieu thereof, to be known as sections 50.535, 144.064, 302.181, 571.020, 571.030, 571.063, 571.085, 571.087, 571.101, 571.107, 571.117, 1, and 2, to read as follows:
50.535. 1. Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 50.525 to 50.745, the fee collected pursuant to subsections 10 and 11 of section 571.101 shall be deposited by the county treasurer into a separate interest-bearing fund to be known as the "County Sheriff's Revolving Fund" to be expended at the direction of the county or city sheriff or his or her designee as provided in this section.
2. No prior approval of the expenditures from this fund shall be required by the governing body of the county or city not within a county, nor shall any prior audit or encumbrance of the fund be required before any expenditure is made by the sheriff from this fund. This fund shall only be used by law enforcement agencies for the purchase of equipment, to provide training, and to make necessary expenditures to process applications for concealed carry endorsements or renewals, including but not limited to the purchase of equipment, information and data exchange, training, fingerprinting and background checks, employment of additional personnel, and any expenditure necessitated by an action under section 571.114 or 571.117. If the moneys collected and deposited into this fund are not totally expended annually, then the unexpended balance shall remain in said fund and the balance shall be kept in said fund to accumulate from year to year. This fund may be audited by the state auditor's office or the appropriate auditing agency.
3. Notwithstanding any provision of this section to the contrary, the sheriff of every county, regardless of classification, is authorized to pay, from the sheriff's revolving fund, all reasonable and necessary costs and expenses for activities or services occasioned by compliance with sections 571.101 to 571.121. Such was the intent of the general assembly in original enactment of this section and sections 571.101 to 571.121, and it is made express by this section in light of the decision in Brooks v. State of Missouri, (Mo. Sup. Ct. February 26, 2004). The application and renewal fees to be charged pursuant to section 571.101 shall be based on the sheriff's good faith estimate, made during regular budgeting cycles, of the actual costs and expenses to be incurred by reason of compliance with sections 571.101 to 571.121. If the maximum fee permitted by section 571.101 is inadequate to cover the actual reasonable and necessary expenses in a given year, and there are not sufficient accumulated unexpended funds in the revolving fund, a sheriff may present specific and verified evidence of the unreimbursed expenses to the office of administration, which upon certification by the attorney general shall reimburse such sheriff for those expenses from an appropriation made for that purpose.
4. If pursuant to subsection 12 of section 571.101, the sheriff of a county of the first classification designates one or more chiefs of police of any town, city, or municipality within such county to accept and process applications for certificates of qualification to obtain a concealed carry endorsement, then that sheriff shall reimburse such chiefs of police, out of the moneys deposited into this fund, for any reasonable expenses related to accepting and processing such applications.
144.064. No sales tax levied under this chapter on any firearms or ammunition shall be levied at a rate that is higher than the sales tax levied under this chapter or any other excise tax levied on any sporting goods or equipment or any hunting equipment.
302.181. 1. The license issued pursuant to the provisions of sections 302.010 to 302.340 shall be in such form as the director shall prescribe, but the license shall be a card made of plastic or other comparable material. All licenses shall be manufactured of materials and processes that will prohibit, as nearly as possible, the ability to reproduce, alter, counterfeit, forge, or duplicate any license without ready detection. All licenses shall bear the licensee's Social Security number, if the licensee has one, and if not, a notarized affidavit must be signed by the licensee stating that the licensee does not possess a Social Security number, or, if applicable, a certified statement must be submitted as provided in subsection 4 of this section. The license shall also bear the expiration date of the license, the classification of the license, the name, date of birth, residence address including the county of residence or a code number corresponding to such county established by the department, and brief description and colored photograph or digitized image of the licensee, and a facsimile of the signature of the licensee. The director shall provide by administrative rule the procedure and format for a licensee to indicate on the back of the license together with the designation for an anatomical gift as provided in section 194.240 the name and address of the person designated pursuant to sections 404.800 to 404.865 as the licensee's attorney in fact for the purposes of a durable power of attorney for health care decisions. No license shall be valid until it has been so signed by the licensee. If any portion of the license is prepared by a private firm, any contract with such firm shall be made in accordance with the competitive purchasing procedures as established by the state director of the division of purchasing. For all licenses issued or renewed after March 1, 1992, the applicant's Social Security number shall serve as the applicant's license number. Where the licensee has no Social Security number, or where the licensee is issued a license without a Social Security number in accordance with subsection 4 of this section, the director shall issue a license number for the licensee and such number shall also include an indicator showing that the number is not a Social Security number.
2. All film involved in the production of photographs for licenses shall become the property of the department of revenue.
3. The license issued shall be carried at all times by the holder thereof while driving a motor vehicle, and shall be displayed upon demand of any officer of the highway patrol, or any police officer or peace officer, or any other duly authorized person, for inspection when demand is made therefor. Failure of any operator of a motor vehicle to exhibit his or her license to any duly authorized officer shall be presumptive evidence that such person is not a duly licensed operator.
4. The director of revenue shall issue a commercial or noncommercial driver's license without a Social Security number to an applicant therefor, who is otherwise qualified to be licensed, upon presentation to the director of a certified statement that the applicant objects to the display of the Social Security number on the license. The director shall assign an identification number, that is not based on a Social Security number, to the applicant which shall be displayed on the license in lieu of the Social Security number.
5. The director of revenue shall not issue a license without a facial photograph or digital image of the license applicant, except as provided pursuant to subsection 8 of this section. A photograph or digital image of the applicant's full facial features shall be taken in a manner prescribed by the director. No photograph or digital image will be taken wearing anything which cloaks the facial features of the individual.
6. The department of revenue may issue a temporary license or a full license without the photograph or with the last photograph or digital image in the department's records to members of the armed forces, except that where such temporary license is issued it shall be valid only until the applicant shall have had time to appear and have his or her picture taken and a license with his or her photograph issued.
7. The department of revenue shall issue upon request a nondriver's license card containing essentially the same information and photograph or digital image, except as provided pursuant to subsection 8 of this section, as the driver's license upon payment of six dollars. All nondriver's licenses shall expire on the applicant's birthday in the sixth year after issuance. A person who has passed his or her seventieth birthday shall upon application be issued a nonexpiring nondriver's license card. Beginning January 1, 2013, notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, a nondriver's license containing a concealed carry endorsement shall expire three years from the date the certificate of qualification was issued pursuant to section 571.101. The fee for nondriver's licenses issued for a period exceeding three years is six dollars or three dollars for nondriver's licenses issued for a period of three years or less. The nondriver's license card shall be used for identification purposes only and shall not be valid as a license.
8. If otherwise eligible, an applicant may receive a driver's license or nondriver's license without a photograph or digital image of the applicant's full facial features except that such applicant's photograph or digital image shall be taken and maintained by the director and not printed on such license. In order to qualify for a license without a photograph or digital image pursuant to this section the applicant must:
(1) Present a form provided by the department of revenue requesting the applicant's photograph be omitted from the license or nondriver's license due to religious affiliations. The form shall be signed by the applicant and another member of the religious tenant verifying the photograph or digital image exemption on the license or nondriver's license is required as part of their religious affiliation. The required signatures on the prescribed form shall be properly notarized;
(2) Provide satisfactory proof to the director that the applicant has been a U.S. citizen for at least five years and a resident of this state for at least one year, except that an applicant moving to this state possessing a valid driver's license from another state without a photograph, shall be exempt from the one-year state residency requirement. The director may establish rules necessary to determine satisfactory proof of citizenship and residency pursuant to this section;
(3) Applications for a driver's license or nondriver's license without a photograph or digital image must be made in person at a license office determined by the director. The director is authorized to limit the number of offices that may issue a driver's or nondriver's license without a photograph or digital image pursuant to this section.
9. The department of revenue shall make available, at one or more locations within the state, an opportunity for individuals to have their full facial photograph taken by an employee of the department of revenue, or their designee, who is of the same sex as the individual being photographed, in a segregated location.
10. Beginning July 1, 2005, the director shall not issue a driver's license or a nondriver's license for a period that exceeds an applicant's lawful presence in the United States. The director may, by rule or regulation, establish procedures to verify the lawful presence of the applicant and establish the duration of any driver's license or nondriver's license issued under this section.
11. No rule or portion of a rule promulgated pursuant to the authority of this chapter shall become effective unless it is promulgated pursuant to the provisions of chapter 536.
571.020. 1. A person commits a crime if such person knowingly possesses, manufactures, transports, repairs, or sells:
(1) An explosive weapon;
(2) An explosive, incendiary or poison substance or material with the purpose to possess, manufacture or sell an explosive weapon;
(3) [A machine gun;
(4)] A gas gun;
[(5) A short barreled rifle or shotgun;
(6) A firearm silencer;
(7)] (4) A switchblade knife;
[(8)] (5) A bullet or projectile which explodes or detonates upon impact because of an independent explosive charge after having been shot from a firearm; or
[(9)] (6) Knuckles; or
(7) Any of the following in violation of federal law:
(a) A machine gun;
(b) A short barreled rifle or shotgun; or
(c) A firearm silencer.
2. A person does not commit a crime pursuant to this section if his conduct involved any of the items in subdivisions (1) to (6) of subsection 1, the item was possessed in conformity with any applicable federal law, and the conduct:
(1) Was incident to the performance of official duty by the armed forces, national guard, a governmental law enforcement agency, or a penal institution; or
(2) Was incident to engaging in a lawful commercial or business transaction with an organization enumerated in subdivision (1) of this section; or
(3) Was incident to using an explosive weapon in a manner reasonably related to a lawful industrial or commercial enterprise; or
(4) Was incident to displaying the weapon in a public museum or exhibition; or
(5) Was incident to [dealing with] using the weapon [solely as a curio, ornament, or keepsake, or to using it] in a manner reasonably related to a lawful dramatic performance[; but if the weapon is a type described in subdivision (1) or (4) of subsection 1 of this section it must be in such a nonfunctioning condition that it cannot readily be made operable. No short barreled rifle, short barreled shotgun, machine gun, or firearm silencer may be possessed, manufactured, transported, repaired or sold as a curio, ornament, or keepsake, unless such person is an importer, manufacturer, dealer, or collector licensed by the Secretary of the Treasury pursuant to the Gun Control Act of 1968, U.S.C., Title 18, or unless such firearm is an antique firearm as defined in subsection 3 of section 571.080, or unless such firearm has been designated a collectors item by the Secretary of the Treasury pursuant to the U.S.C., Title 26, Section 5845(a)].
3. A crime pursuant to subdivision (1), (2), (3)[, (4), (5) or (6)] or (7) of subsection 1 of this section is a class C felony; a crime pursuant to subdivision [(7), (8) or (9)] (4), (5) or (6) of subsection 1 of this section is a class A misdemeanor.
571.030. 1. A person commits the crime of unlawful use of weapons if he or she knowingly:
(1) Carries concealed upon or about his or her person a knife, a firearm, a blackjack or any other weapon readily capable of lethal use; or
(2) Sets a spring gun; or
(3) Discharges or shoots a firearm into a dwelling house, a railroad train, boat, aircraft, or motor vehicle as defined in section 302.010, or any building or structure used for the assembling of people; or
(4) Exhibits, in the presence of one or more persons, any weapon readily capable of lethal use in an angry or threatening manner; or
(5) Has a firearm or projectile weapon readily capable of lethal use on his or her person, while he or she is intoxicated, and handles or otherwise uses such firearm or projectile weapon in either a negligent or unlawful manner or discharges such firearm or projectile weapon unless acting in self-defense;
(6) Discharges a firearm within one hundred yards of any occupied schoolhouse, courthouse, or church building; or
(7) Discharges or shoots a firearm at a mark, at any object, or at random, on, along or across a public highway or discharges or shoots a firearm into any outbuilding; or
(8) Carries a firearm or any other weapon readily capable of lethal use into any church or place where people have assembled for worship, or into any election precinct on any election day, or into any building owned or occupied by any agency of the federal government, state government, or political subdivision thereof; or
(9) Discharges or shoots a firearm at or from a motor vehicle, as defined in section 301.010, discharges or shoots a firearm at any person, or at any other motor vehicle, or at any building or habitable structure, unless the person was lawfully acting in self-defense; or
(10) Carries a firearm, whether loaded or unloaded, or any other weapon readily capable of lethal use into any school, onto any school bus, or onto the premises of any function or activity sponsored or sanctioned by school officials or the district school board;
(11) Possesses a firearm while also in possession of controlled substances that are sufficient for a felony violation under section 195.202, unless such possession is reasonably associated with or is necessary to the fulfillment of such person's official duties.
2. Subdivisions (1), (3), (4), (6), (7), (8), (9) and (10) of subsection 1 of this section shall not apply to or affect any of the following [when such uses are reasonably associated with or are necessary to the fulfillment of such person's official duties]:
(1) All state, county and municipal peace officers who have completed the training required by the police officer standards and training commission pursuant to sections 590.030 to 590.050 and who possess the duty and power of arrest for violation of the general criminal laws of the state or for violation of ordinances of counties or municipalities of the state, whether such officers are on or off duty, and whether such officers are within or outside of the law enforcement agency's jurisdiction, or all qualified retired peace officers, as defined in subsection [10] 11 of this section, and who carry the identification defined in subsection [11] 12 of this section, or any person summoned by such officers to assist in making arrests or preserving the peace while actually engaged in assisting such officer;
(2) Wardens, superintendents and keepers of prisons, penitentiaries, jails and other institutions for the detention of persons accused or convicted of crime;
(3) Members of the armed forces or national guard while performing their official duty;
(4) Those persons vested by article V, section 1 of the Constitution of Missouri with the judicial power of the state and those persons vested by Article III of the Constitution of the United States with the judicial power of the United States, the members of the federal judiciary;
(5) Any person whose bona fide duty is to execute process, civil or criminal;
(6) Any federal probation officer or federal flight deck officer as defined under the federal flight deck officer program, 49 U.S.C. Section 44921 whether such officers are on or off duty, and whether such officers are within or outside of the law enforcement agency’s jurisdiction;
(7) Any state probation or parole officer, including supervisors and members of the board of probation and parole;
(8) Any corporate security advisor meeting the definition and fulfilling the requirements of the regulations established by the board of police commissioners under section 84.340;
(9) Any coroner, deputy coroner, medical examiner, or assistant medical examiner; [and]
(10) Any prosecuting attorney or assistant prosecuting attorney or any circuit attorney or assistant circuit attorney who has completed the firearms safety training course required under subsection 2 of section 571.111[.]; and
(11) Any member of a fire department or fire protection district, who is employed on a full-time basis as a fire investigator and who has a valid concealed carry endorsement under section 571.111 when such uses are reasonably associated with or are necessary to the fulfillment of such person's official duties.
3. Subdivisions (1), (5), (8), and (10) of subsection 1 of this section do not apply when the actor is transporting such weapons in a nonfunctioning state or in an unloaded state when ammunition is not readily accessible or when such weapons are not readily accessible. Subdivision (1) of subsection 1 of this section does not apply to any person twenty-one years of age or older transporting a concealable firearm in the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle, so long as such concealable firearm is otherwise lawfully possessed, nor when the actor is also in possession of an exposed firearm or projectile weapon for the lawful pursuit of game, or is in his or her dwelling unit or upon premises over which the actor has possession, authority or control, or is traveling in a continuous journey peaceably through this state. Subdivision (10) of subsection 1 of this section does not apply if the firearm is otherwise lawfully possessed by a person while traversing school premises for the purposes of transporting a student to or from school, or possessed by an adult for the purposes of facilitation of a school-sanctioned firearm-related event.
4. Subdivisions (1), (8), and (10) of subsection 1 of this section shall not apply to any person who has a valid concealed carry endorsement issued pursuant to sections 571.101 to 571.121 or a valid permit or endorsement to carry concealed firearms issued by another state or political subdivision of another state.
5. Subdivisions (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), and (10) of subsection 1 of this section shall not apply to persons who are engaged in a lawful act of defense pursuant to section 563.031.
6. Nothing in this section shall make it unlawful for a student to actually participate in school-sanctioned gun safety courses, student military or ROTC courses, or other school-sponsored firearm-related events, provided the student does not carry a firearm or other weapon readily capable of lethal use into any school, onto any school bus, or onto the premises of any other function or activity sponsored or sanctioned by school officials or the district school board.
7. Unlawful use of weapons is a class D felony unless committed pursuant to subdivision (6), (7), or (8) of subsection 1 of this section, in which cases it is a class B misdemeanor, or subdivision (5) or (10) of subsection 1 of this section, in which case it is a class A misdemeanor if the firearm is unloaded and a class D felony if the firearm is loaded, or subdivision (9) of subsection 1 of this section, in which case it is a class B felony, except that if the violation of subdivision (9) of subsection 1 of this section results in injury or death to another person, it is a class A felony.
8. Violations of subdivision (9) of subsection 1 of this section shall be punished as follows:
(1) For the first violation a person shall be sentenced to the maximum authorized term of imprisonment for a class B felony;
(2) For any violation by a prior offender as defined in section 558.016, a person shall be sentenced to the maximum authorized term of imprisonment for a class B felony without the possibility of parole, probation or conditional release for a term of ten years;
(3) For any violation by a persistent offender as defined in section 558.016, a person shall be sentenced to the maximum authorized term of imprisonment for a class B felony without the possibility of parole, probation, or conditional release;
(4) For any violation which results in injury or death to another person, a person shall be sentenced to an authorized disposition for a class A felony.
9. Any person knowingly aiding or abetting any other person in the violation of subdivision (9) of subsection 1 of this section shall be subject to the same penalty as that prescribed by this section for violations by other persons.
10. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person who pleads guilty to or is found guilty of a felony violation of subsection 1 of this section shall receive a suspended imposition of sentence if such person has previously received a suspended imposition of sentence for any other firearms or weapons related felony offense.
11. As used in this section "qualified retired peace officer" means an individual who:
(1) Retired in good standing from service with a public agency as a peace officer, other than for reasons of mental instability;
(2) Before such retirement, was authorized by law to engage in or supervise the prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of, or the incarceration of any person for, any violation of law, and had statutory powers of arrest;
(3) Before such retirement, was regularly employed as a peace officer for an aggregate of fifteen years or more, or retired from service with such agency, after completing any applicable probationary period of such service, due to a service-connected disability, as determined by such agency;
(4) Has a nonforfeitable right to benefits under the retirement plan of the agency if such |
Yet recall that those females with higher left hand digit ratio (and supposedly lower fetal testosterone levels) were reportedly better musicians (more highly ranked). This may be reflective of differences in the importance of early exposure to androgens versus adult circulating levels, which in fact may be unrelated with one another. Within the sample of female music students, those with the most senior chair position (and presumably the most advanced musicians) had higher testosterone levels compared to other female musicians. Again, this was not the case for males. Testosterone was unrelated to total AMMA score in men and women, music and non-music students. Hassler and colleagues [41], [42] have found that testosterone levels are lower in male composers and higher in female composers, compared to non-musicians and instrumentalists. They further suggest that there may be an ‘optimum’ range of testosterone for musical creativity: at the bottom of the normal range for males, and at the top of the normal range for females. Here, we show a relationship between circulating androgen levels and musical aptitude, independent of musical creativity, in females. Perhaps it is the case that testosterone is functionally linked to musical aptitude, not simply creative ability, in females more so than in males. Unfortunately, our analysis cannot account for differences in instrumental groups (e.g., 3rd chair out of 10 violinists, versus 3rd chair out of 3 oboes). Nor can we account for differences in amount of training or differences between vocalists versus instrumentalists in this small sample size. It is also unclear if testosterone levels are elevated in female (or all) musicians relative to non-musicians, and higher in more senior performers, as a result of competition over placement in the orchestra/band. Competition is related to social dominance and testosterone levels in human [43] and nonhuman primates [44] in complex ways. While testosterone exposure might facilitate the acquisition of musical aptitude, which may result in better chair position in an orchestra/band, the acts of continual practice and competition for chair position may itself lead to elevated testosterone levels. It must of course be noted that non-music students could have been extensively trained in music, and may of course possess superb musical abilities, despite not being music majors. Our analyses do not control for this possible covariate. Although in our study the saliva samples were taken prior to exposure to the AMMA test, previous studies suggest that testosterone levels increase in women but decrease in men in response to listening to music [45], [46]. Fukui [45] demonstrated that this effect is strongest when each participant listens to their favorite music as opposed to other types or silence control. Although our study suggests some possible gender differences, it is unknown how chronic music exposure influences hormone levels, as previous studies have only focused on acute effects. We found no significant relationships between self-reported musical exposure (a potential measure of chronic music exposure) and hormone levels in males or females, which may indicate that no relationship exists between hormones and chronic music exposure. Any link between music and testosterone may be mediated by their independent relationships with spatial ability. Women with higher testosterone typically score higher on measures of spatial/mathematical ability than women with lower testosterone [47]. Listening to music also increases spatial-temporal reasoning in college students [48], and musical training enhances spatial-temporal reasoning in children [10], [11]. Exposure to music during pregnancy in rats increases neurogenesis in the hippocampus and enhances spatial learning ability in subsequent offspring [49]. Listening to classical music as well as playing the piano activate brain regions important for spatial-temporal reasoning [50], [51]. Select areas of the dorsal parietal lobe have been observed to be active during both mental rotation tasks [52] and while listening to novel piano melodies [53]. Androgen receptor mRNA-containing cells have been found throughout the brain, with a heavy concentration in the vestibular nuclei, the cochlear nuclei, the medial geniculate nucleus, and the nucleus of the lateral lemniscus, suggesting that androgens may alter the central relay of auditory information [54], including music. Testosterone’s actions on brain function at the cellular level may be a mechanism by which both spatial and musical abilities are affected. Musical aptitude is obviously a complex trait. The effects of testosterone are probably a small part of a poorly understood system of biological and environmental stimuli that contribute to musical aptitude. Parental, social, cultural and economic factors play important roles in exposure to music and musical training. It is also possible that hormones may play a role in modulating musical aptitude, and that these effects may vary by gender. Our work provides tentative support for a link between musical aptitude and androgens within females. This relationship may be dependent on competition within an orchestral setting. Lack of relationships among testosterone levels and our various measures within the male sample may be interpreted as providing no support for the costly signaling hypothesis of musical aptitude, or as a result of low statistical power in our small sample size. Additional research into the potential biological, social and environmental determinants of musical aptitude are warranted.
Acknowledgments We wish to thank the participants at Indiana University, Eugene O’Brien, Gwyn Richards, Thomas Wieligman, the faculty and administration at the Jacob’s School of Music, and the Evolutionary Physiology and Ecology Laboratory. Della Cook and Greg Demas provided valuable feedback throughout the project.
Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: JCB AC MPM. Performed the experiments: JCB AC MPM. Analyzed the data: JCB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MPM. Wrote the paper: JCB MPM.1 of 11 View Caption
(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Homelessness advocate Pamela Atkinson, left, joined Lt. Governor Spencer Cox in a p... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Homelessness advocate Pamela Atkinson speaks in a panel discusion to Utah homeless... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah homeless service providers listen to panel discussion about the long-term plan... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lt. Governor Spencer Cox, left, chat with homessness advocate Pamela Atkinson at Ut... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski speaks in a panel discusion to Utah homeless... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah homeless service providers listen to panel discussion about the long-term plan... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Panel discussion including Lt. Governor Spencer Cox, Speaker of House, Greg Hughes,... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski, left, Josh Romney and Speaker of the House G... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Homelessness advocate, educator, Iain De Jong speaks at a breakout session to Utah... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Homelessness advocate, educator, Iain De Jong speaks at a breakout session to Utah... (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski, left, Josh Romney and Speaker of the House G...Image copyright Jonathan Webb/BBC Image caption Detectors like these in the CMS experiment will soon be pushing new boundaries for physics
A new record has been set by the Large Hadron Collider: its latest trials have smashed particles with vastly more energy than ever before.
On Wednesday night, two opposing beams of protons were steered into each other at the four collision points spaced around the LHC's tunnel.
The energy of the collisions was 13 trillion electronvolts - dwarfing the eight trillion reached during the LHC's first run, which ended in early 2013.
"Physics collisions" commence in June.
13 TeV is a new regime - nobody's been here before Prof David Newbold, University of Bristol
At that point, the beams will contain many more "bunches" of protons: up to 2,800 instead of the one or two currently circulating. And the various experiments will be in full swing, with every possible detector working to try to sniff out all the exotic, unprecedented particles of debris that fly out of proton collisions at these new energies.
For now, however, the collisions are part of the gradual testing process designed to ensure nothing is missed and nothing goes awry when the LHC goes into that full "collision factory" mode.
New territory
"We begin by bringing the beams into collision at 13 TeV (teraelectronvolts), and adjusting their orbits to collide them head-on," said Ronaldus Suykerbuyk from the operations team at Cern - the organisation based near Geneva in Switzerland that runs the LHC.
Image copyright Jonathan Webb/BBC Image caption All systems go: Cern's control room allows engineers to monitor all the LHC systems
The huge collider has been through a planned two-year refit, after the conclusion of its first run - which in 2012 produced the first solid evidence for the famous Higgs boson.
So physicists are excited to see the machine winding back up again, although it is an overwhelmingly incremental process.
In early April, after a slight delay, twin proton beams circulated the LHC's 27km ring, 30 storeys below the Swiss-French border, for the first time in two years. This was at a much lower, preliminary energy; five days later the energy reached 6.5 TeV per beam for the first time.
The first collisions followed in early May - again, at a lower, safer energy to begin with. Thursday's collisions are in new territory.
Numbers game
Prof David Newbold, from the University of Bristol, works on the CMS experiment. He said the new energies present new technical challenges.
"When you accelerate the beams, they actually get quite a lot smaller - so the act of actually getting them to collide inside the detectors is really quite an important technical step," Prof Newbold told BBC News.
"13 TeV is a new regime - nobody's been here before."
Image copyright SPL Image caption Protons first circulated at the new energies (without collisions) on April 10
Now that collisions are under way, Prof Newbold explained, the engineers in charge of the beams can start to pump in more and more protons.
"The special thing about the LHC is not just the energy we can collide the beams at, it's also the number of collisions per second, which is also higher than any other accelerator in history.
"The reason for that is - like the Higgs boson last time - what we're principally looking for is incredibly rare decay particles. And the more collisions you have per second, the more chance you have of finding something that's statistically significant."
So the build-up that will now unfold, from one or two bunches of protons to thousands, will make even more history. But these early tests are critical to make sure that the 6.5 TeV beams can be steered onto collision course without damaging any of the detectors, or the massive magnets that steer the protons and accelerate them to very near the speed of light.
Image copyright CERN Image caption The collisions showered particles onto detectors inside the LHC experiments
Dan Tovey, a physics professor at the University of Sheffield who works on the LHC's Atlas experiment, said the teams were having to "re-learn" how to run their detectors.
"We know how everything worked back in 2012, but a lot has changed since then, both with the machine and with the experiments as well," Prof Tovey told the BBC.
"At this stage it's not telling us anything about new physics. Mainly it's helping us learn about the performance of our experiments."
Come June, however, the data emerging from the LHC will shift the scientific horizon. Researchers hope to tackle big, unanswered questions and push our knowledge beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.
"It's tremendously exciting," Prof Tovey said.
"Individually, we all have the things that we're particularly interested in; there's a variety of new physics models that could show up. But to be honest, we can't say for certain what - if anything - will show up.
"And the best thing that could possibly happen is that we find something that nobody has predicted at all. Something completely new and unexpected, which would set off a fresh programme of research for years to come."
Follow Jonathan on TwitterThe BBC is not reflecting the views of its audience on immigration and asylum, a former top executive said.
Ex-editorial director Roger Mosey said the broadcaster suffers from ‘dysfunctional’ government and had succumbed to a ‘liberal group-think’ attitude.
Mr Mosey, once head of the corporation’s television news, claimed the Ten O’Clock News had been ‘sanitised’ and was ignoring white communities’ grievances.
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Critique: Former editorial director Roger Mosey has accused the BBC of suffering from ‘dysfunctional’ government and ignoring white communities’ grievances
He also mocked a BBC leaflet in which it said its target radio listeners were ‘Dave and Sue’ who had friends from many different ethnic backgrounds.
In his memoirs published in the Times, Mr Mosey said: ‘It must have been something of a shock to the writers of this leaflet when many real-life Daves and Sues went off and joined Ukip.’
The 57-year-old, now Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, was once the de facto deputy to director general Tony Hall.
The BBC has been under increasing pressure about its alleged bias following its General Election coverage. Mr Mosey also criticised the BBC Trust, an internal body which monitors bias at the broadcaster, calling them a ‘shadowy force’ facing an ‘existential crisis’.
Mr Mosey was once the de facto deputy to director general Tony Hall (pictured)
His other revelations include how BBC Trust figures considered offering a £1million salary to the director general – seven times that earned by the Prime Minister – due to ‘salary inflation’. Lord Hall earns £450,000.
At the height of the Jimmy Savile crisis, Mr Mosey said Newsnight was almost taken off air after it emerged the programme had shelved its own investigation into the former BBC star.
Mr Mosey said he remains a huge supporter of the corporation, but is uncomfortable about its 70 per cent share of television and radio news.
He believes the BBC must reflect the ‘age of austerity’, but fears its management is ill-equipped to cope with ‘a sky full of black clouds’.
Writing about the Savile controversy, Mr Mosey said: ‘When the stress tests have been at their most extreme, the corporation has tended to fracture rather than unite.’
The response by BBC chiefs to initial investigations into Savile were ‘an enormous cock-up in which there was miscommunication and misunderstanding’, he said.
Mr Mosey added that Lord Patten of Barnes, then BBC Trust chairman, ‘intensified the crisis’, placing an ‘indefensible strain’ on individuals.- Who would win a race in our parking lot between action sport athlete and Nitro Circus star Blake "Bilco" Williams vs. the Anaheim Ducks mascot Wild Wing, while Travis Pastrana called it?
It's the most random thing ever. But we found out—and it was hilarious (watch the video above for big finish).
Pastrana, Williams and dozens of other incredible action sport athletes from the MTV show are taking their talents across the country as part of Nitro Circus Live.
The show features record-breaking tricks in freestyle motocross, BMX and skate. Unique to Nitro Circus, the event also uses contraptions like tricycles, snow skis, bath tubs and even a Barbie Car, which are all launched off of a 50-foot high Nitro Giganta Ramp.
Yes, a Barbie car.
Nitro Circus Live is scheduled for Nov. 6 in Los Angeles at the Staples Center and Nov. 7 in Anaheim at the Honda Center. Tap here to purchase tickets.
Copyright 2015 FOX 11 Los Angeles: Download our mobile app for breaking news alerts or to watch FOX 11 News | Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.A longtime Clinton ally and donor has a theory about black Republicans: They’re like the Jewish guards in concentration camps who tried to save their own skins by helping the Nazis kill other Jews.
In a hidden-camera video released Wednesday by Project Veritas Action, author and academic Benjamin R. Barber compared black Republicans to the “Sonderkommandos” during a Sept. 19 fundraiser for North Carolina Senate candidate Deborah Ross.
He described the Sonderkommandos as “Jewish guards who in effect helped murder Jews in the camps so they could live a little longer.”
“So there were even Jews who were helping the Nazis murder Jews. So blacks who are helping the other side are seriously f***ed in the head,” Mr. Barber said in the footage.
Mr. Barber, a Rutgers University professor emeritus and City University of New York senior research scholar, isn’t some fringe figure: He served as an informal consultant on civic affairs to President Bill Clinton, wrote a book about the Clinton administration and donated to Hillary Clinton’s presidential bids in 2008 and 2016.
Mr. Barber did not respond immediately Wednesday to a request for comment. Project Veritas, known for its undercover sting operations against liberals, has been accused of selectively editing its undercover footage, which the group has denied.
Black Republicans are “only helping the enemy who wants to destroy them,” Mr. Barber said in the video. “Maybe thinking that, ‘If I help them, maybe it’ll be different, maybe I’d get off OK; somehow, I’d save my race by working for the murderers.’”
At the same fundraiser, Ms. Ross stressed her commitment to civil rights, saying that she opposed voter-identification laws as ‘Jim Crow’ because they discriminate against blacks, young people and women.
“Republicans know that young people, that young people, African-Americans and women are less likely to have the ID, so they won’t vote,” the candidate said in the undercover video. “Yes, yes, yes. It’s Jim Crow. Just put the roadblock in.”
Black Republicans in North Carolina who viewed the Project Veritas footage prior to Wednesday’s release were flabbergasted, calling on Ms. Ross to return any donation to her campaign from Mr. Barber.
“Wow. So that’s what they think of us,” Robert Foster said in the video. “I’m speechless for the most part. It’s wrong. It’s an eye-opener. But that’s what happens when we as blacks vote [in] the majority just for one party.”
No listing of a Ross donation from Mr. Barber has appeared on Federal Election Commission records, even though he attended her fundraiser in New York.
Patrick L. Wooden Sr., bishop of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, North Carolina, said the comments on the video showed someone “basically calling blacks stupid and ignorant and saying that we’re voting against our own self-interest if we support any Republican.”
“I am appalled, I am incensed, and Deborah Ross should be called to task for something like that,” Mr. Wooden said.
Pastor William Cooper turned Mr. Barber’s comments on their head, saying, “As a matter of fact, I think I’m benefiting my race by voting against the Democratic Party. [It] takes the African-American vote for granted. They don’t offer us anything.”
While Democrats have long enjoyed a virtual lock on the black vote, black Republican candidates have challenged that dominance this year.
They include retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who lost his high-profile bid for the Republican presidential nod and now serves as an adviser to nominee Donald Trump; Colorado Republican Senate nominee Darryl Glenn; and Colorado Republican House candidate Casper Stockham.
Mr. Barber is described as a “steady informal adviser to the White House” in the Amazon introduction to his 2001 book, “The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton Administration” (W.W. Norton & Co.).
Federal Election Commission records show that Mr. Barber has made frequent donations to Democratic causes, including the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democracy for America.
He is the first Distinguished Senior Fellow at Fordham School of Law’s Urban Consortium, president and founder of the Interdependence Movement and founder of the Global Parliament of Mayors Project, according to the biography on his website.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu graced the World Economic Form meet on Delhi.When the host reminded him he was one of the first few persons in the country to say IT is gonna crucial and asked him why can't he make a suggestions to Government of India over digital revolution in the country, Chandrababu reminded he fought with Prime Minister Vajapayee for high bandwidth against the only the only two public sector BSNL & VSNL which are monopoly. "Cutting down and Melting copper is the best way for fibre-optic connectivity. I went all the way to USA to observe this process in the manufacturing unit. Laying fibre isn't a big issue and cost effective as well. Spending money on fibre and connectivity considering it as a best infrastructure, Growth gets multiplied and it will help economy like anything. Government of India is thinking about connecting Panchayats. Connecting Panchayats isn't a big issue and that won't help in any way.We need to provide 100 MBPS to each and every house to have access to everything. Its realistic and not too expensive as well. We would try to convince Prime Minister, take up the mission to accomplish this goal in Andhra Pradesh within 1 to 1-and-a-half year. I will make sure all the information is accessible to every household in the state".The delegates felt Naidu's vision of 100 MBPS to Every Household would be probably one of the most revolutionary things ever happened in the country.APTThe White House sent a stern warning Wednesday to Iran that the administration would not let its hostile acts go unchallenged, as President Trump tried his hand at saber-rattling for the first time since taking office.
The tough talk — including the threat that Mr. Trump’s national security team wasn’t taking any options off the table — came days after an Iranian missile test and a deadly attack by Tehran-backed Houthi militants on a Saudi naval vessel in the Red Sea near Yemen.
If Tehran was testing the new president, the White House attempted to show that Mr. Trump was not only ready for it but also more willing than the previous administration to tempt conflict.
“As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,” National Security Adviser Michael Flynn said at the daily White House press briefing.
The message, delivered by Mr. Flynn in front of TV cameras and by top national security aides at a briefing with reporters, was simple: Tehran had better get in line — or else.
The surreal warning came from the White House rather than from the State Department, which typically handles diplomatic gestures, to underscore the importance Mr. Trump has placed on the issue, said a senior administration official.
While the posturing could be expected to thrill Mr. Trump’s base, it was just as likely to raise alarm for critics who fear he will needlessly start a war.
Adding to Mr. Flynn’s remarks, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the administration was “making sure that they understood that we weren’t going to sit by and not act on those actions.”
During the election campaign, Mr. Trump railed against what he described as the Obama administration’s weak and ineffective dealing with Iran, including a pact intended to dissuade Tehran from developing nuclear weapons and a deal in which the U.S. gave the country $1.7 billion in cash in exchange for hostages.
Mr. Trump had vowed to tear up the nuclear deal, but officials at the White House said they were addressing Iran’s destabilizing activities separately from the nuclear issue.
Declining to specify what actions the U.S. was prepared to take to retaliate against Iran, the officials said several options were being considered and that a “deliberative process” was under way.
Earlier, at a meeting with supporters of his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump gave a glimpse of his reaction to the threats brewing around the world and what he inherited from Mr. Obama.
“We have problems that are a lot bigger than people understood. I was left something with a lot of problems,” he said, adding that he would “straighten them out very strongly.”
Mr. Flynn also blamed the previous administration. He said Mr. Obama’s policies encouraged Iran’s belligerent behavior, which included the ballistic missile test that violated a U.N. resolution prohibiting Tehran from testing missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
“The Obama administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran’s malign actions, including weapons transfers, support for terrorism and other violations of international norms,” he said. “The Trump administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East which places American lives at risk.”
The United Nations has not identified the ballistic missile test as a violation. Tehran insists that it does not possess nuclear weapons and therefore the prohibition does not apply to the missile test.
The Trump administration argued that a ballistic missile is obviously a warhead-delivery system. “It’s inherent in physics,” said a top adviser.
The 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers stipulated that Iran would abide by an eight-year extension of the U.N. ban on ballistic missile development, a move backed by the U.N. Security Council.
Since signing the deal, however, Iran has repeatedly defied the prohibition.
Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan acknowledged the latest test but declared that “we will not let any foreigner meddle with our defense issues.”
After being briefed by Mr. Flynn, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican, praised the administration’s resolve.
“I am very encouraged by the seriousness with which President Trump is approaching the full range of threats Iran poses to American interests,” he said. “It is clear that Iran will no longer be given a pass and will be held accountable for its illicit behavior.”
Capitol Hill Republicans, most of whom opposed the nuclear deal with Iran, had clamored for a tougher stance throughout the Obama administration.
They have introduced bills in both chambers that would place more sanctions on Tehran, replacing sanctions removed under the nuclear deal and punching the country for its support of terrorist and other actions that threaten their neighbors in the Middle East.
“Iran has made a mockery of the international community with its missile program, support for terrorism and human rights abuses,” said Rep. Peter J. Roskam, Illinois Republican and a co-sponsor of the sanctions bill introduced Wednesday in the House.
“The United States will no longer stand idly by and allow the mullahs to flout international law and threaten the peaceful coexistence of nations with its reckless, belligerent behavior,” he said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.If you collect dozens of altcoin, then it’s a crime to download (every blockchain) and update every wallet. Unfortunately, most of the time a new blockchain project doesn’t provide a electrum wallet to store your coins. That means you’re left to the core wallets, which means lot of gigabytes of blockchain. It’s a waste to use your computer for that, because there’s a mini computer that can do the same: The Raspberry Zero!
Note: I’m not an expert in cyber security! I can’t give you any advice on virus scanners, firewalls and other measures to keep crooks outside your digital door.
The Raspberry Zero is a mini-computer: both in price, size and power. Lucky enough the little brother of the Raspberry Pi is manly enough to run wallets.
Nice read: What’s a wallet and which one should you use?
In the explanation below, I will explain how to create your own altoin computer for less than 25 dollars. “But Michiel, why should I?” Well:
Handy to stake (PoS).
You can leave your wallets open (so the blockchain can be updated) without using your ‘regular’ computer.
Much more energy-efficient than your laptop or desktop.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkey. In this case, it means “a lot of patience” as the Raspberry Zero is not a supercomputer, you’ll have to wait a long time before something is installed!
The ingredients for your altcoin wallet
Raspberry Zero
For 5,50 euro via Kiwi Electronics. The Raspberry Zero W costs 11 euros and then you have the version with built-in WiFi and bluetooth. For this setup no must but nice to have. The delivery costs are 2 euros.
Optionally, you can purchase an acrylic protective cover (0.89 euro via AliExpress) and cooling element (0.22 euro via AliExpress).
MicroUSB to USB + Ethernet
Since the Raspberry Zero does not have normal USB ports – necassary cause you need to connect your keyboard and mouse – and not a standard ethernet cable, it’s important to look again at our Chinese friends at AliExpress. Once again they help you out with a MicroUSB to USB + Ethernet converter. Certainly, it exists. (2.41 euros via AliExpress)
Mini HDMI to HDMI
Do you want to have a Graphic User Interface (GUI) for your Raspberry Zero? Then an HDMI cable is convenient so you can connect the device to a display (2.99 euro via AliExpress).
MicroSD card
You expect I will advice you to buy microSD card at AliExpress? Naha, my friend. The 32gb microSD card I bought for no more than 8 euros is not compatible with an RPi Zero.
I changed it with the microSD from my dash cam: a Kingston 32 gb class 10. I can tell you that *Dutch saying alert* that works like a little sun.
Step 1: Install Raspbian on the MicroSD card
In an hour you have installed the Raspbian operating system. I’m not going to re-invent the wheel: You can find an explanation about installing Raspbian here.
Step 2: Link to your Raspberry Zero
Of course, I do not want to explain this step because you have read this for a long time in my article ‘Build your own Gulden miner for less than 100 euros ‘. If you have not taken the post yet, take your chance now 😉
Step 3: Download a wallet of an altcoin
In this step-by-step plan, I use two blockchain projects to explain how to install a wallet on your RPi Zero.
Myriad (Electrum Wallet with a graphical user interface, better known as GUI)
Stratis (Core Wallet with GUI)
Myriad (installation time: 15 minutes)
With my miner, I also earned a Myriad a blue Monday. Although the coin does not enjoy much popularity, it has a very active community that has also developed an electrum wallet that appears to work on Raspbian!
Myriad’s wallet runs on Python programming language. This language must therefore be installed first on your Raspberry Zero.
Sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade
Sudo apt-get install python-qt4
Mkdir Myriad && cd Myriad && wget https://cryptap.us/myr/electrum/Electrum_myr-2.7.17.0.tar.gz && tar-zxvf Electrum_myr-2.7.17.0.tar.gz
You will find the Myriad Wallet in Myriad/Electrum_myr-2.7.17.0. I would suggest you keep it in this map, so if a new Electrum Wallet for Myriad ever will be released, you will know which version you’re using 🙂
Stratis (installation: 180 minutes)
The blockchain project Stratis ensures that blockchain applications can be developed in the programming language C#. The coin (STRAT) associated with it, is a token that gives you a (sort of) share in the company Stratis.
The most important thing: STRAT is a Proof of Stake coin: if you keep STRAT in your wallet, you will receive more STRAT as a reward. Since I do not want to leave my computer on for 24 hours a day, the Raspberry Zero is ideal!
The following steps I distilled from a larger blog post by Stratis itself.
Sudo nano / etc / dphys swap file
Change CONF_SWAPSIZE to 512 or 1024 and save the file. Then we restart the service.
Sudo service dphys swap file restart
To generate the Stratis wallet, we use the following code. Note that this takes a while.
Sudo apt-get install -f build-essential autoconf automake git g ++ libtool make unzip wget qt5 default qt5-qmake qtbase5-dev qtbase5-dev-tools libqt5webkit5 libqt5webkit5-dev libqt5qml5 libqt5quickwidgets5 qml-module-qt-labs-settings qtdeclarative5-dev -tools qttools5-dev-tools libboost-all-dev libssl-dev libdb ++ - dev libdb5.3 ++ - dev libdb5.3-dev libminiupnpc-dev libqrencode-dev libprotobuf-dev
Then
CD
Git clone https://github.com/stratisproject/stratisX.git
If the above processes are completed, it is time for a step that is particularly time consuming. For me, the action below took about three hours! So please relax, and you know what that means, a glass of wine, your favourite easy chair, and of course this compact disc playing and your home stereo.
Cd stratisX; qmake; make; strip stratis-qt
Tadaa! The Stratis Wallet will work on your Raspberry!
In the coming time I will put more wallets on a Raspberry. Updates follow below. For now:
Working wallets
Myriad
Stratis
Pivx, explanation.
Gulden, explanation + read this if you got stuck.
Hyperstake, explanation.
Signatum, explanation.
Navcoin, explanation.
Out of order
Teslacoin
Reddcoin
Blackcoin
Step 4: Creating a desktop shortcut
To make life easier, you can create shortcuts on your desktop’s Raspberry Zero desktop. Open a text editor on your RPi and paste the code below:
[Desktop Entry] Name = Name Comment = Alt text at the shortcut Icon = /usr/share/pixmaps/logo.xpm Exec = /pad/to/wallet Type = Application Encoding = UTF-8 Terminal = false Categories = Wallet;
For Myriad, that could be so:
[Desktop Entry] Name = Myriad Comment = Electrum Wallet Myriad Icon = /usr/share/pixmaps/myriad.xpm Exec = /Wallets/Myriad/electrum Type = Application Encoding = UTF-8 Terminal = false Categories = Wallet;
Then click “Save as” and name the file “name-of-wallet.desktop”. And yes, the shortcut is made!
Step 5: Create a folder with your addresses
I find it useful to view the public keys of my altcoins via SSH / Terminal (see step 2). Therefore, I created a text file with all addresses and stored on the desktop. To get your address list from your computer, first connect to your Raspberry and type:
Less <path / your_file>
For me, that means
Less /Desktop/wallet-public-key.txt
Step 6: Just stake (and make backups)!
As previously mentioned, Stratis is a so-called stake coin; So you will receive a mining reward if you stake your wallet.
FAQ
Since I have spent some beautiful summer days finding answers. Again a useful FAQ.The Delhi government’s proposed excise policy for 2015-16 may open the gates for 24-hour restaurants and bars, giving the capital’s nightlife a facelift.
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“The policy will come into effect subject to Cabinet approval. It proposes slashing the annual 24-hour excise licence fees by 45 to 60 per cent for restaurants and bars inside hotels or motels,” sources told The Indian Express.
Along with slashing the fee, the policy also proposes doing away with prerequisites for a 24-hour excise licence, to serve alcohol in restaurants, such as a tourism licence, police registration and fire clearance, said sources.
According to sources, the proposed policy is aimed at encouraging more and more restaurants located in seven-star and five-star hotels and motels to run round-the-clock. This, authorities feel, will aid tourism and enhance the restaurant business.
“Procuring a 24-hour licence under the proposed policy will enable restaurants and bars in five-star and seven-star hotels, as well as many others in motels in Paharganj, Shahpur Jat and Chandni Chowk run all night,” said a source. According to government data, there are about 150 restaurants and bars in hotels that are five-star or above and about 300-350 such joints in motels in Delhi.
The 24-hour license, sources claimed, was not too popular earlier as it attracted an annual fee of Rs 40 lakh for restaurants and bars in hotels that were above five-star. These hotels did not have too many visitors through the night and, therefore, did not find the licence necessary, said sources.
“The closing time for restaurants and bars is 1 am. However, many restaurants had approached the excise department seeking four-hour extension licences as the police would not allow them to continue service after 12:15 am. Instead of issuing an extension of four hours, the excise department thought it would be better to make the 24-hour licence more feasible for restaurant and hotel owners,” said a source.
The annual 24-hour excise licence fee in the existing policy, sources said, was Rs 40 lakh for seven-star hotels, Rs, 30 lakh for five-star and deluxe hotels and Rs 20 lakh for motels. The new policy envisages a fee of Rs 12.60 lakh for seven-star restaurants of less than 75 seating capacity and Rs 16.80 lakh for seating capacity above 75.
Similarly, for restaurants and bars in five-star and deluxe hotels, the annual fee for the 24-hour liquor license will be Rs 10.50 lakh for less than 75 capacity and Rs 13.70 lakh for more than 75, said sources.
The excise department also proposes to relax various conditions for procuring the licence. Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra Monday wrote to the tourism secretary to immediately do away with the tourism licence issued to restaurants, which is mandatory for procuring a liquor licence.
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“The conditions mentioned and the process that is followed causes unnecessary trouble to the restaurant owners and serves no tangible benefits of regulation for the government. As part of our initiative to improve ‘ease of doing business’ in Delhi, we should remove this licence immediately,” Mishra wrote.Antares CRS Orb-1 Photo Feature: Rider on the Storms
This stunning image was captured at dusk as the launch vehicle was readied for launch the following day. SpaceFlight Insider's team and affiliates have gathered the following imagery from this historic mission. Photo Credit: Elliot Severn/SpaceFlight Insider
SpaceFlight Insider
WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, Va — Orbital Sciences Corporation’s first launch of 2014, the Orb-1 mission and the first under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract took to the skies on Jan. 9 under cruelly |
recent CNBC article by Zack Guzman, published this week, there are concerns that a knee jerk ban on trophy hunting could be detrimental to the Zimbabwean economy. The article quotes Amy Dickman, a researcher with WILDCRU, the team that were studying Cecil the lion along with other animals, as saying,
“If you completely stop something like hunting, it will have an economic impact,” she told CNBC. “While that might help conservation in the short-term, there aren’t any guarantees (that) others won’t find economic reasons like mining to destroy habitats that trophy hunting has shared an incentive to protect.”*
I am as sorry as everyone else that beautiful wild animals are killed for their body party and our vanity, but I am sorry too for the poor families who struggle for survival in areas where they have no means to earn a living. These people need to eat, and it is very easy for us to judge over the glass of wine that follows our evening meal.
In my very naive, unqualified opinion. I think that this whole area has suffered from too many well-meaning, badly considered & self-serving international decisions. Africa is a vibrant continent, home to many nationalities. We have a history of imposing rule, then turning our backs and leaving fledgling nations broke and alone, at risk of total indebtedness to countries who have lots of money & no respect for human rights.
The situation is not ideal. We arguably facilitated the move to democracy in many of them from almost no vote to universal suffrage with the full knowledge that our own road to democracy was gradual, and processes and checks and balances were in place to manage the growing electoral base. Experienced and skilled government bodies and NGOs monitored and held government to account. Not so in the African countries that Europe once ruled.
We have smugly watched these far away countries falter & fail. The Right Wingers have had their say, while the Lefties tut in disgust before crossing these crime torn, poverty-stricken regions off their holiday lists.
Power mad people have grabbed control, and we have sat immune, griping only when economic migrants flood into the West which quite honestly, doesn’t want them. We then say we will process and decide who has come here for Asylum worthy reasons. Ummm, starvation causes death too, though perhaps slower than a machete.
We cannot have it both ways. Africa is run by Africa now, Beijing has poured money in since we walked away with our cheque book. We seldom more than skim read anything about Africa’s achievements, but seem to delight in her plight. Our own countries are struggling as the world power bases shift. Maybe it’s time to stop playing the fiddle while Rome burns, and regain what influence we still can in Africa by building an alternative solution to the one offered by China & Russia.
Last word – Corrupt governments have little use for land that doesn’t bring in cash. If it doesn’t earn its keep as grazing, it will have to earn its keep some other way. If there are minerals, it’ll be mined. If there aren’t any, it’ll be farmed by unskilled subsistence farmers until it becomes barren, after the trees are cut down for fuel. Africa is not a zoo that must be kept pristine by poor people in case we want to visit one day. One day? When peace and stability magically return,long haul flights get cheaper, and we once again have comfortable access to the game park of the world for a week each year?
If we want to conserve and reserve these beautiful areas, we need to help, partnership & assist. This part of the world has had enough dictatorship.
Citation : Article refers CNBC article, Photos courtesy of Ernie Van Staden. Don’t steal, just ask.
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LinkedInMaking Money Via Blogging Without Turning Off Your Readers
The purpose of this post is two-fold:
To keep my followers updated on exciting changes in, and how I feel about, advertising here at The Caffeinated Day Tripper. To welcome other bloggers, advertisers, critics and experts into a conversation regarding how best to balance the needs of the blogger versus the needs of followers.
You just want to immerse yourself in something about which you are passionate: Fashion, food, exciting but affordable day travel…
*cough*
You love to write, or snap photos, or share valuable advice with family and friends. You think, “If only I could combine all of these inclinations.” Then it hits you…a blog!
You start planning out this amazing blog utopia.
<–insert dream-sequence music here–>
It’s a pretty picture, in your mind: Stunning graphics, clean themes, exciting video, photo galleries, slide shows! You begin looking into hosting platforms. Sure, some are free (www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com, for example) and perfectly fine, if you are just beginning, but you do get what you pay for. For the most part, they offer limited customization, cookie-cutter themes and what about the almighty plugin? The functionality and (well, I’ll just say it) SUPER-BITCHIN’-COOLNESS that plugins add is impossible to resist!
For starters, you’ve got to have an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Pack, XML Sitemaps to help Google (and, yes, others) index your posts, something to reduce the file size of your images so your page can load faster (reducing your bounce rate) and that Anti-Spambot plugin that keeps “Hot Thai Masseurs” from commenting, “We enjoy this. Please Click Here For Free Exciting Offer!” on your post, 8 Reasons to Go Air-boating With Your Family in Florida’s Everglades.
Awkward! (And, sadly…true story.)
Also, how can a real blogger live without their own domain name?
For example:
You have a name, right? Wow, me too! Okay, now imagine your incredibly awesome, lovingly-chosen-by-your-adoring-mommy-&-daddy, name with a.com after it. Are you kidding me? That’s killer, right?
What about space? How much does your free provider offer as opposed to a paid service? You have GOT to have tons of space for all that slick content you’re going to offer!
You start looking at the limited possibilities available with some services and wishing you could bring a bit more to the table for your followers.
How Do You Become Profitable (Or Break Even) Without Pestering?
Let’s also talk about *looks around and whispers*…monetizing. I know talking about making money blogging can be a bit like putting on an itchy wool scarf but the reality is that a lot of bloggers, eventually, need to earn a little cash, even just to break even and pay the costs associated with providing a professional blog that features high-quality content. That is what’s most important, right?
That’s where this post comes in.
How I’m Handling The Dilemma of Making Money Blogging
You’ve probably already noticed that I use Google AdSense ads and search tools on the blog. Yesterday, I also opened up The Caffeinated Shopper: An Online Shopping Mall For Travelers and Hikers, powered by Amazon.com.
Here’s the thing. I’m trying to walk that delicate balance between providing interesting content and, well, paying for it. What I don’t want to do is bog you guys down with a bunch of pop-ups, ill-placed ads and flashing gizmos. So, I’m trying the store out. I’ll do my best to hand-pick quality Travel and Hiking Gear & Essentials (maybe even a cute travel-related gift item or two for the Day-Tripper in your life) that can actually better your experience here. I want to offer a more targeted solution so we can help one another out. That includes my fellow travel bloggers!
So, if you need anything for your next trip, stop in and take a virtual look around. See something you like? Consider buying it through our store. If you don’t, no worries. In the end, what’s most important is that you enjoy your time here, learn a little something, find a new adventure and return to interact. I value your time spent here at The Caffeinated Day Tripper. I know how busy you are!
Are you a blogger, walking that fine line between becoming profitable and pestering?
How do you handle the costs of running a blog via potentially alienating your followers? Have any advice for new bloggers on making or saving money on services?
Are you a fan/ follower of blogs who wants to offer your opinion on what sort of ad you’d prefer to see? Are you an advertiser with other ideas to offer?
I love hearing from readers so, please, leave your feedback in the comment box below!
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Thanks for all of your support, as always![The Cult Club is where Flixist's writers expound the virtues of their favourite underground classics, spanning all nations and genres. It is a monthly series of articles looking at what made those films stand out from the pack, as well as their enduring legacy.]
First and foremost, I must admit that I'm not into "cult" films. We each have our own cinematic interests that we tend to gravitate to, and cult films are unfortunately not one usually one of mine. However, exceptions exist for everything, and this holds true for cult films. I may not be a cult king or queen like Xander or Liz, but when a film's good, it's good.
And damn, is Battle Royale good.
Battle Royale is a Japanese action film adaptation of the manga of the same name. Due to an increasing unemployment rates and growing dissent amongst its teenagers, the Japanese government decides to enact the Millennium Educational Reform Act, also known as the Battle Royale Act. Under the new law, a random junior high class is sent to a deserted island where students are forced to kill each other within a three day time frame. The last survivor is allowed to escape from the island, but if there's more than one survivor remaining after time is expired, then everybody dies. What.
To complement the premise are the various archetypal characters that any anime fan would find familiar. A large majority of the 42 students get sizable screen time, allowing some back story to help shape their individual narratives. For example, Mitsuko Souma (Kou Shibasaki) is depicted as a vindictive, psychotic bitch until you find out her Mom attempted to sell her into child prostitution at an early age in an unsettling flashback scene.
Battle Royale also casts Chiaki Kuriyama as one of the students. Most of you might remember her as Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill. Do I even need to explain why she gets to be singled out in her own paragraph? Mmm...
Of course, an amazing premise wouldn't mean anything without the film actually living up to its potential, and Battle Royale doesn't let down. Each student is given a survival kit with a random object to assist them in their battles. Of course, not every object actually proves to be useful. Main protagonist Shuya Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara), for example, receives a pot lid. While it does help him on one occasion, let's be honest: Nanahara is no Captain America.
Real weapons and guns are distributed amongst the students, leading to lots of bloodshed... no, "bloodshed" is too much of an understatement. Like any good cult/exploitation film, blood simply sprays out like an exploding juice blood from every wound inflicted, dousing both victim and assailant in crimson. However, as the characters are students and seemingly inexperienced with battle, they wield their weapons awkwardly and tend to stumble either into or out of sticky situations. In one scene, for example, an homage to the Mexican standoff plays out with three female students awkwardly wielding their weapons at one another, resulting in blood showers, uncontrollable body writhing, and school girl underwear shots.
Battle Royale is the kind of film you'd watch with your friend to show off how much more violent Japanese films are than American films. Some of the film's death scenes are amongst my favorites, such as Kuriyama's Takako Chigusa repeatedly stabbing a prospective rapist in the penis. It has garnered a large following, especially amongst the Japanophile crowds; it's like a real-life anime film (but actually good). Quentin Tarantino himself has gone on to call Battle Royale his favorite film to be released since his directorial debut in 1992.
Furthermore, Battle Royale served to be the US' first taste of the extreme Asian cinematic style. Considering the Columbine shootings happened just a year prior to its theatrical release, you can imagine the kind of controversy it'd have received had it gotten proper American distribution. The depiction of overt teenage violence also fueled backlash against the film, as well as the overarching theme of adult distrust. Upon its release, Japanese Parliament labeled the film "crude and tasteless."
If you haven't already seen Battle Royale, you can rent it out from Netflix or find one of a handful of Japanese import stores. Anchor Bay Entertainment is rumored to release the film in 3D this year for the US' first official release if you're into 3D conversions. Whatever the case, I implore you to catch this film, if not for the blood-filled violence, then for the basketball flashbacks/montages.
Next Month... jolly kid Jenika Katz will cover Top Secret!
PREVIOUSLY SHOWING AT THE CULT CLUB
March: Django (1966)
April: Alice In Wonderland XXX (1976)
May: Troll 2 (1990)
June: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
July: Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991)
You are logged out. Login | Sign up<flyleaf>
pret 8d
Nabed Efyhik, Wfnzo Cpmkfe
<3r>
Before Whitsunday 1662.
Vsing the word (God) openly 1 Eating an apple at Thy house 2 Making a feather while on Thy day 3 Denying that I made it. 4 Making a mousetrap on Thy day 5 Contriving of the chimes on Thy day 6 Squirting water on Thy day 7 Making pies on Sunday night 8 Swimming in a kimnel on Thy day 9 Putting a pin in Iohn Keys hat on Thy day to pick him. 10 Carelessly hearing and committing many sermons 11 Refusing to go to the close at my mothers command. 12 Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them 13 Wishing death and hoping it to some 14 Striking many 15 Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese. 16 Stealing cherry cobs from Eduard Storer 17 Denying that I did so 18 Denying a crossbow to my mother and grandmother though I knew of it 19 Setting my heart on money learning pleasure more than Thee 20 A relapse 21 A relapse 22 A breaking again of my covenant renued in the Lords Supper. 23 Punching my sister 24 Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugar 25 Calling Dorothy Rose a jade 26 Glutiny in my sickness. 27 Peevishness with my mother. 28 With my sister. 29 Falling out with the servants 30 Divers commissions of alle my duties 31 Idle discourse on Thy day and at other times 32 Not turning nearer to Thee for my affections 33 Not living according to my belief 34 Not loving Thee for Thy self. 35 Not loving Thee for Thy goodness to us 36 Not desiring Thy ordinances 38 Not long { longing } for Thee in {illeg} 39
<3v>
40 Fearing man above Thee 41 Vsing unlawful means to bring us out of distresses 42 Caring for worldly things more than God 43 Not craving a blessing from God on our honest endeavors. 44 Missing chapel. 45 Beating Arthur Storer. 46 Peevishness at Master Clarks for a piece of bread and butter. 47 Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne. 48 Twisting a cord on Sunday morning 49 Reading the history of the Christian champions on Sunday
<4v>
Since Whitsunday 1662
1. Glutony 2. Glutony 3. Vsing Wilfords towel to spare my own 4 Negligence at the chapel. 5 Sermons at Saint Marys (4) 6 Lying about a louse 7 Denying my chamberfellow of the knowledge of him that took him for a sot. 8 Neglecting to pray 3 9 Helping Pettit to make his water watch at 12 of the clock on Saturday night
<5r> 1665 Received 10li May 23d whereof I gave my Tutor 5li ———— 5. 0. 0 Remaining in my hands since the last Quarter ———— 3. 8. 4 In all — 8. 8. 4. Paid Iohn the Taylor ———— 2. 0. 0. Paid Master Bychiner ———— 0. 3. 6. To Caverly ———— 0. 1. 0. To my Laundresse ———— 0. 0. 6. To my Bedmaker ———— 0. 5. 0. A paire of Gloves ———— 0. 2. 0 A paire of Stockings ———— 0. 5. 4 A hatband ———— 0. 2. 0. Paid Goodwife Powell for my Laundresse ———— 0. 5. 0. Given more to my Tutor ———— 5. 0. 0 My Iourney to Cambridge Mar 20. 0. 6. 6. In all 8.10.10. Lent Master Newton ———— 0.18. 0
March 25 1666. Lent Wilford ——X—— 0. 1. 0. To the Poore on the fast ———— 0. 1. 0. To Master Babintons: Wom, 6d. Porter 6d ———— 0. 1. 0. Spent with Rubbins 4d. ———— 0. 0. 4 Lent to Sir Herring ———— 1. 6. 0. Lent to Sir Drake ———— 1. 0. 0. Payd my Laundresse ———— 0. 5. 6. ffor a paire of shoos ———— 0. 4. 0. Caverly ———— 0. 0. 4. <6r> Payd Iohn Falkoner ———— 0.11. 6. A paire of shooestrings ———— 0. 0. 8. Payd my Bedmaker 0. 5. 0. Dew from Iohn Euans ———— 0. 1.10. Euans The summe of my expences 1.10. 4. + 8.10. 10 In all 10. 1. 2 Dew to mee ———— 3. 5.10 More from Master Guy ———— 0.10. 0 Lent In all ———— 3.15.10.
1666. Received 10li March 20th ———— 10. 0. 0 Remaining in my hands ———— 8. 8. 4. In all 18.8. 4 Expences & what I lent deducted the rest is ———— 4.11. 4. 1667 Apr 22 Received 10 - 0 - 0 In my hands besid debts 14 -11 - 4d My Iourney to Cambridg 0 - 6 - 6. Two paire of shoos ———— 0 - 8 - 0 dying & mending 0 - 0 - Lath & Table ———— 0 -15 - 0 Iron worke for it 0 - 9 - 0 <6v> Drills, Gravers, a Hone & Hammer & a Mandrill 0. 5. 0 A Magnet ———— 0.16. 0 Compasses ———— 0. 3. 6 Glass bubbles ———— 0. 4. 0 Chappell Clarke ———— 0. 2. 6 My Bachelors Act ———— 0.17. 6. At the Taverne severall other times &c ———— 1. 0. 0 Spent on My Couz Ayscough 0.12. 6.. On other Acquaintance ———— 0 -10 : 0 Shoos ———— 0. 4. 0 Cloth 2 yards & buckles for a Vest. 2. 0. 0 ffor Woosted Prunella 8yds 1 2. 1. 5. 6 ffor the lining 4yds ———— 0. 9. 4 Philosophicall Intelligences 0. 9. 6. the Hystory of the Royall Ssoc: 0. 7. 0. To Goodwife Powell ———— 0. 7. 6 To my Laundresse ———— 0. 8. 6 To Caverly ———— 0. 1. 6 To the Glasier ———— 0. 1. 0 New fire cheeks & pointing the chamber & windows ———— 0. 1. 6 Gunters book & sector &c to Dominus ffox 0. 5. 0 Letters, wyer, files, boats, ———— 0. 2. 6. ffor a ffellows key ———— 0. 1. 0 To the Taylor Octob 29. 1667. ———— 2.13. 0 To the Taylor. Iune 10. 1667 ———— 1. 3.10 For keeping Christmas ———— 0. 5. 0 Lost at cards { twice } 0.15. 0 <7r> At the Taverne twice ———— 0. 3. 6. 6 1 2 sacks of coales, carriage & sedge ———— 0.11. 0 Shoos & mending ———— 0. 4.10. Two paire of Gloves ———— 0. 5. 0 with Master Lusmore, Hautrey, Salter 0. 3. 6 Received of my Tutor
which I lent Perkins 0.10. 0 I went into the Countrey December 4th 1667. I returned to Cambridg Feb 12. 1667. Received of my Mother ———— 30. 0. 0 My Iourney ———— 0. 7. 6 ffor my degree to the Colledg 5.10. 0 To the Proctor ———— 2. 0. 0 ffor 3 Prismes ———— 0. 3. 0 4 ounces of Putty ———— 0. 1. 4 To the Painter ———— 0. 3. 0 To the Ioyner ———— 1. 1. 8 Lent to Dominus Wickins ——X—— To the shoe maker ———— 0. 5. 0 Bacons Miscelanys ———— 0. 1. 6 Expences caused by my Degre 0.15. 0 <7v> Subscribing 6d, Reading Græke. 0. 5.10. A bible binding ———— 0. 3. 0. Humphrey 1668 ———— 0. 1. 0. 18 yards of Tammy for my Master of Arts Goune 1.13. 0 Lining —— 3, 6 ———— 0. 3. 6. Making that & turning my Bachelors Goune ———— 1. 0. 6. Received of Master Io: Herring 0.10. 0 Payd my Laundresse ———— 0. 5. 6. Payd to Caverly ———— 0. 5. 6. Payd Goodwif Talbot from Feb 12 to Mar 25 1668 0. 2. 6 Payd to my Laundresse 0. 2. 6. To the Porter ———— 0. 5. 6. ffor oranges 1667 for my sister ———— 0. 4. 2. Bedmaker & Laundresse 0.10. 0. Shoemaker ———— 0. 5. 8. A Hatt ———— 0.19. 0. Taverne 0.10. 0. Carpets of Neats Leather 0.18. 0 My part of A Couch. 0.14. 0. 1 Bowling Greene ———— 0.10. 0 To Master Ieffreys for a Suit 3. 6. 0 A Tickin for a ffeatherbed. 1.10. 0 New ffeathers ———— 0. 8. 0 A Hood ———— 1. 3. 6. Making &c of my last suit ———— 1.11. 9 <8r> Dew to Iohn Hauxy ——X—— 1.10. 0. Spent in my Iourney to London 5.10. 0 As also 4li 5s more which my Mother gave mee in the Country 4. 5. 0 Received for Chamberrent 1.11. 0. Received from my Mother 11. 0. 0. I went to London on Wednesday Aug 5t & returned to Cambridge on Munday Sept 28, 1668. Bedmaker & Laundresse 0. 4. 0 Lent Dominus Wickins ——X—— 0.11. 0 Lent Master Boucheret ——X—— 0. 5. 0
Aprill 1669. Lent to Master Wadsley ———— 0.14. 0 16 yards of Stuffe for a suit 2. 8. 0 ffor making &c ———— 1.13. 0 For turning a Cloth suit 1. 3. 3 For shoe strings &c ———— 0. 2. 0 For Glasses in Cambridge 0.14. 0 For Glasses at London ———— 0.15. 0 For Aqua ffortis, sublimate, oyle { y } erbe, fine silver, Antimony, vinegar Spirit of Wine, White lead, Allome Niter, Tartar, Salt of Tartar, ☿ 2. 0. 0. A ffurnace ———— 0. 8. 0 A tin ffurnace ———— 0. 7. 0 Ioyner ———— 0. 6. 0 <8v> Theatrum Chemicum ———— 1. 8. 0 Lent Wardwel 3s
& to his wife 2s ———— 0. 5. 0 Carrriage of the oyle ———— 0..2. 0 Payd I Stagg ———— 0.18. 6 Payd the Chandler ———— 0. 8. 0 A Table cloth ———— 0.10. 0 Six Napkins ———— 0. 6. 0
<9v>
Friedadolff Lewys Langerhanss. Carolus Gottlob de Theler Georgius Bernhardus de Theler Equites ex Superiore Lusatia Iohannes Christophorus Ritter Wurcenâ-Misnicus.
[Editorial Note 2] <1r> Sep. 25 1727
Not fit to be printed T Pellet
<2r>
Nova
Cubi Hæbræi Tabella [Editorial Note 3]
<3r>
Of right angled triangles. h = hypotenusa.
b = basis.
c = Cathetus.
p = perpendicular.
hdc = diff: hypot & Cath
bdc = diff: basis & cathet:
bdh = difference basis & hyp{ot}
dsh = diff: seg: hypoten:
sh = segment: hypoten:
bh = greater seg hyp:
ch = lesse seg: hypot: I. Any two leggs given to find the other 1. bq + cq = hq. 2 r: hq - bq: = c. 3 r: hq - cq = b Eucl. lib 1. pr: 47. II the b. c. & h given to find p. 1. b x c h = p Euclid 6.8. III c. h. p. given to find dsh. 1. H - 2r: bq - pq: = dsh. IIII. b. p. h given to find dsh. 1. 2r: bq - pq: h = dsh. V. b. c. h given to find dsh. 1. H - 2r: cq - Q: b x c h : = dsh. 2 2r: bq - Q: b x c h : + h = dsh. VI b.c or b. h or h. c given to find p: 1 b x c r: bq + cq: = p 2 b x r: hq - bq: h = p. 3 c x r: hq - cq: h = p VII b. h. or c. h. or b. c given to find dsh.
<4r>
Theorem 1 As the difference twixt the base & cath (in rectang: triang:) is to the greater side:: so is the difference of the segment of the base; to the greater segment of the base & perpendicular.
Theorem 2. As the difference twixt the base & cathetus to the less side:: so the diff of the segments of the base to the lesse segment of the base & perpendicular
Theorem 3d. base – Cathetus: hypotenusa:: :: greater segment: base - less seg base : base + Cathetus.
Theor. 4. If within a circle be described an Ellipsis touching the Circle in 2 opposite points if the Diameter cut it at right angle in any points except the touch point yn a line drawn fm either touch point perpendicular to the former diameter will bisect it & being produced will cut the circle in the other touch point & all the lines drawne twixt the circle & that line <4v> parallell to that diameter shall be divided by the Ellipsis so as one segment shall bee to the other as the segments of the semidiameter are to one another they being divided by the same Ellip: let ab bee equall to 10 pts. eb = 157979 = Periph: & priph - Rad: Rad:: Rad: db. db = 175, 1938394. de = 18,1142067
<5r>
To describe an ellipsis Let fe & gc be two lines ef make right angles with gc. let a point be taken in bd as at a & let that point move along the line gc. & d the one end of the line db move on the line ef & the other end b shall describe the Ellipsis gbc. f. Let c & a be two fixed points about which let a loose cord be put haveing both ends tyed together. as is signified by the 3 lines cb. ba. ac. Strech it out with another point as b. & keeping it so streched out draw the point b about & it shall describe the Ellipsis bd. Chartesij Dioptr Let the line ae be infinitely extended in it take the point o about the line oc shall turne at the point c in oc let the point c in the line ab be fastened & let a the end of the line ab move on the line ae & oc turning round, each point of the line ab betwixt ac will describe an Ellipsis whose transvers axis is equall to oc & parallell to ae but each point on the other side c describes Ellipsis whose right axis <5v> is equall to oc & parallell to ae Extend de both ways take the lines ca & ab equall to one another fasten together at one end as at a. set the other end of ca at the point c in db. & let the other end of ab slide on db. yn take a point in ab as o & turne ac about & it shall describe the ellipsis dgoe Shooten in lib. 2d Cartesij Geometria: Cut the cone abc so that the diam of the section ed produced cute the base of the triangle ac produced without the cone as at r & makes right angles with gh the base of the section If eg be moved twixt the lines ed & gd. a point in it as (θ) shall describe an ellipsis whose semi-axis ad is equall to bd & semiaxis dc = eb <6r> If dc revolve abute the center d. & to the other end b be fastend a triangle bca & db = ba = bc & the angle a moves on the line ad the other end c will describe the streight line cd & the angle cba = 2cda & a point in the line (ca) as (e) shall describe an Ellipsis ehg whose diam 2dh =2dg = 2ec & the other diameter conjugated to it is od & od = 4db x db - ec x ec - 2 ec x ea for op = ec. oq = ea. dp = 2db. & if in the line bc be taken a point as s, it shall describe an ellipsis the one diam: being 2ab + 2bs, the other diam = 2cs. If o & a be the foci & cp = oa & ca = op = it theire section in s shall describe an ellipsis If ab = bc = ci = ai = if or greater yn (if) & bh = fp & ac bisects the angles bai. bci. yn if bh turne round the intersections of bh & ac shall describ{e} an Ellipsis. & hi & i are the foci.
<7r>
To describe a Parabola Let bc fall perpendicular on ad & let c the one end there of move uppon ad a given line & if bc x k a given line be equall to ac x cd yn shall b the other end of bc describe the Parabola afd. Draw ah perpendicu{lar} to ap. & ab from ah parallell to ap divid{e} bh into equall parts as bcdefgh. & divide ap into parts equall to the former as iklmnop. draw lines cros to each part of the lines ah & ap as cb. kc. ld. me. nf. &c with half of each line descri{bing} a circle as brc with 1 2 cb. from bu in the poi{nt} cut by the diameters of the circle draw lines perpendicular to the diameter <7v> untill they reach the circle from whose diameter they are drawne as the lines pw, qx, ry, sz, t&, u+. Erect those lines perpendicular to the line bu as p♉, q♈, r♊, s♋, t♌, u♍. & by the end of those lines draw a line & it shall be a parabola. as b♉♈♊♋♌ If abc be a cone: de (the diameter of the Section fgd) parallell to ac: & fg (the base thereof) cutting bc at right angles yn is the section dfg a Parab Make db perpendicular to ef on the center b let the right angled figure pbgh turne. Let gh move perpendicularly on ef ever intersecting ef & bh in one point yn pbgh moveing rownd the intersections made twixt pg gh describe the parabola qbg. <8r> If ab = bd = do = ao is greater then ac & ac = cs the corner (a) fasten{ed} to the focus (a). & the line de fastened to the corner d & moveing perpendicularly o{r} on sd & the line boe crossing the corners b & o. yn the line boe & de at theire intersections shall describe a Parab & the line boe always toucheth the Parabola in (e) &c If (d) be the focus od = oe the ruler fc = to the thred fad & thred fastened to the ruler at f & to the focus d & the ruler move perpendicular to ce & parallell to de. yn the parting of the thred from the ruler as at (a) shall describe a Parabola
<9r>
To describe an Hyperbole Let fa fall on ag suppose at right angles let one end of the line lg move up & downe in the line fa & towards the other end let it cut the line ga in g. let mp keepe parallel to df haveing one end p moveing in the line fa but yet keeping an equall distance from l the end of gl. that is let the triangle npl be immutable. let yn the lines mp & gl thus move to & fro & theire intersections shall describe an Hyperbola. & the rectangle de x ea = ic x cb = qo x op. Cartes Geom: ffasten a pegg as at a & another as at b upon which let the line |
, TFMG has decided to aggregate these maturing sports competitions into an entirely new category of television sports broadcasting we call Emerging Sports TV.
“Being around disc golf for so many years, we’ve noticed that are a ton of other ‘disc golf-like’ sports that had incredible events, world-class athletes and beautiful venues,” explained Dr. John G. Duesler, Jr., Principal of Terra Firma Media Group. “After a year of research, and a great deal of networking, we were able to gain permission to cover an incredible variety of sporting events that we know are exciting and well-run. We believe getting these first dozen or so sports under the Emerging Sports TV banner and harnessing the combined marketing power and spirit of these sports is going to be a key factor towards taking all these sports over the top,” Duesler concluded.
Emerging Sports TV will include disc golf, of course, as well as Olympic sports like curling and BMX cycling, the renowned Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, as well as newer competitions like slacklining and collegiate roller hockey. Our complete television broadcast schedule will include 12 one-hour TV episodes that typically cover two emerging sports per episode. DiscGolfPlanet.tv will continue to serve as the livestreaming arm of TFMG, and we are planning to cover as many as four championship events this season. We are finalizing both our TV and livestream schedule at this writing.
The rationale behind aggregating these up-and-coming sports is based on the idea that each one of the sports we cover share the same passion, the same dedication, and the same goals of becoming more widely known to the world. Most of the events we cover are national and world championship events that are extremely well-run, yet have not been able to unlock the media potential that each one so rightly deserves. Our work for the last two seasons with disc golf and the Beach Sports Network has helped us to unlock what many consider the Holy Grail of their sport “making it:” Getting on Television.
Emerging Sports TV will be distributed on 15-25 regional sports networks with some 50-90 million household subscribers. Terra Firma Media Group is still working with affiliates around the national and the world to gain distribution rights from them, so the final TV affiliate count is still in flux. Regardless, we are convinced that by aggregating a dozen or so of these emerging sports into one new broadcast category, each of of the sports will be in position to continue and even accelerate their growth. Moreover, by joining their forces, these sports will be in a more powerful position to realize their full potential that they all dream of…finding outside businesses and brands to sponsor their events and their athletes.
For more information, visit the Emerging Sports TV Web site, or contact Dr. John G. Duesler, Jr. via Email.Story highlights One of women arrested had letter pledging allegiance to ISIS, prosecutor says
Women arrested in connection with gas cylinders found in car at Notre Dame Cathedral
Paris (CNN) Three women arrested in raids this week in France were part of a terror cell directed by ISIS from Syria, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Friday.
The women were arrested Thursday in connection with gas cylinders found inside a car left in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. One of the women had a letter in her purse swearing allegiance to ISIS, Molins said.
Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, according to Molins. Adnani, one of the highest-ranking figures in ISIS, was In the letter, she said she was answering the call ofAbu Mohammad al-Adnani, according to Molins. Adnani, one of the highest-ranking figures in ISIS, was killed in late August
The letter also said that "I am attacking you in your lands in order to terrorize you," according to Molins.
The prosecutor said one of the terror cell members, identified as Sarah H., was supposed to marry Larossi Abballa, the man who killed two police officers in Magnanville, France, in June.
Read More“Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for a 90 minutes, and at the end the Germans win.” Gary Lineker’s famous quote does not translate into Italian. When Germany and Italy meet in Bordeaux on Saturday, it will be their ninth competitive match, all at major tournaments. Germany have never won.
Euro 2016 power rankings: Germany and Italy on top as England nosedive Read more
Joachim Löw, the Germany coach, says he is unperturbed by the past but others cannot escape it. After Germany beat Slovakia on Sunday, Franz Beckenbauer said Spain were his preferred quarter-final opponents. “Italy,” he said, “eliminated us too often without being the better team.” His comments reflect the way many Germans feel about Italy. They are a team who are not to be trusted, because they do unto Germany what Germany do unto everyone else: win whether they play well or not.
His suspicion stems originally from Italy’s 4-3 victory in the incomparable 1970 World Cup semi-final, a match in which Beckenbauer – in those days a midfielder – spent extra time sauntering from box to box with his arm in a sling because of a serious shoulder injury. The first competitive meeting came at the World Cup in Chile eight years earlier, a 0-0 draw that had been forgotten before it even finished. Their next World Cup match will last for ever.
When West Germany’s Milan defender Karl-Heinz Schnellinger made it 1-1 in stoppage time after an interesting but unexceptional 90 minutes, the match exploded. The 30 minutes of extra time were not so much “you attack, we attack” as “you score, we score”. Gerd Müller’s supernatural awareness helped him score twice from a combined distance of 0.1 yards to make it 2-1 and then 3-3, but his equaliser had not even been properly digested when Gianni Rivera settled the match. The last six goals were scored in 22 minutes. In the context of catenaccio’s golden age, the Italy defenders would probably have been tried for treason had they not won the match.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest West Germany’s goalkeeper Sepp Maier laments being beaten by Gianni Rivera’s winning goal for Italy in a 4-3 thriller at the 1970 World Cup. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images
After the game there was an animated discussion as to whether it was a classic or merely incredible in the truest sense of the word – lacking credibility because the defenders were so exhausted by the altitude. That discussion has been going on ever since.
It’s true some players had their own private postcode at the time of scoring; equally, there will probably never be another World Cup semi-final with a last-minute equaliser followed by five goals in extra time, and the overload of drama was such that it has been immortalised as The Game of the Century. It even has a commemorative plaque at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico, where the match was played.
Even during the game, West Germany were aggrieved with the performance of the generally excellent referee Arturo Yamasaki, who to their eyes denied a series of penalty appeals and indulged Italy’s penchant for visiting the turf. At one point, an exasperated German radio commentator said he could “make out that Tarcisio Burgnich has just perished in the penalty area”.
That is about as controversial as this fixture gets. It is not so much a rivalry as a classic. No one has motioned to wipe their backside with an opponent’s shirt, as Ronald Koeman did with Olaf Thon’s when the Holland beat West Germany at Euro 88. They could mention eight World Cups and four European Championships – that’s the collective haul between the sides, which makes this the biggest match in European football.
This will be the first time the two sides have met in a quarter-finals. All their contests have been before or after, like the 0-0 draw in the second group stage of the 1978 World Cup and the 1-1 draw in the opening match of Euro 88. They have never met in qualification as they are both usually among the top seeds. Their biggest match was the World Cup final of 1982. West Germany were public enemies No1-11 after their brazen villainy at the tournament, when they conspired with Austria to eliminate the neutrals’ favourites Algeria and then beat the other neutrals’ favourites, France, on penalties in the semi-final after their goalkeeper Harald Schumacher knocked Patrick Battiston unconscious with an appalling challenge.
Italy were thus installed as neutrals’ favourites by default for the final, and won 3-1 with surprising ease. Antonio Cabrini missed a first-half penalty, but after half-time Paolo Rossi scored his sixth goal in three games – which won him the Golden Boot and the Ballon d’Or – and then Marco Tardelli and Alessandro Altobelli ensured Paul Breitner’s late goal would not even be a consolation.
Tardelli’s brilliant second goal, at the end of a languid counterattack sparked by the magnificent sweeper Gaetano Scirea, is often forgotten because of what followed – the greatest celebration in World Cup history. Tardelli went on an off-the-wall run, shaking his head, screaming and eventually bursting into tears. Iconic feels inadequate to describe it. This is how it feels to score in a World Cup final.
Although Germany have never beaten Italy at a major tournament, that does not mean Italy have never suffered. A 0-0 draw in the final group match of Euro 96 eliminated Arrigo Sacchi’s side on a night of operatic intensity at Old Trafford. Gianfranco Zola’s meek early penalty, easily saved by Andreas Köpke, summed up his frustrating international career, and a late Vladimir Smicer equaliser for the Czech Republic in a 3-3 draw against Russia at Anfield put Italy out.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Italy’s Gianfranco Zola missed an early penalty against Germany as his side drew 0-0 and exited the competition after the group stage. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
The teams were scheduled to meet in the semi-finals of the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, only for one or both to let the side down. They did come together at that stage in 2006 in a match so refreshing and lacking in cynicism that it could have been sepia-tinted. Mexico’s Benito Archundia produced one of the great refereeing performances, allowing some strong challenges early on and setting the tone for a match that never stopped flowing.
It was somehow still goalless after 119 minutes when, following a half-cleared corner, Andrea Pirlo played the pass of his career, reversing it through a gap no one else saw for Fabio Grosso to curl a superb goal. Grosso homaged Tardelli’s celebration before being buried at the bottom of one of the happiest bundles ever seen on a football field.
With the final kick of the match, Alessandro Del Piero – one of three attacking substitutions by Marcello Lippi, with penalties the alternative – scored an exhilarating second on the counterattack. Italy had put the hosts out but after a triumphant tournament and a match of rare goodwill, even most of the German fans went home happy.
And so to 2012, the most recent competitive meeting. Germany may never have been stronger favourites for a match against Italy. They had won their previous 15 competitive matches, a world record, whereas Italy had won only one of their three group games at the tournament and had needed penalties to beat a limited England in the quarter-finals. Germany also had two extra days off but their performance was peculiarly listless and Italy won more comfortably than the 2-1 scoreline suggested. Both goals came from Mario Balotelli, the second a blistering drive.
Germany have had some success against Italy in friendlies, most recently with a 4-1 win in Munich in March. Overall, however, Italy lead in the head-to-head: 15 wins to eight, with 10 draws. The rest of the world might be terrified of Germany but Italy are the bogeyman’s bogeyman.Three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act expired last night, after the Senate was unable to pass legislation renewing them before a midnight deadline. The expiration of the spying authorities occurred in part because of a dramatic filibuster staged two weeks ago by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and several other senators critical of National Security Agency spying. As a result, the Senate was unable to pass legislation extending three provisions of the Patriot Act, including one that the NSA has invoked to justify its controversial phone records program, which were scheduled to expire at midnight.
On Sunday, the Senate returned from a weeklong recess to resume debate on the expiring Patriot Act provisions. And continued opposition from Paul and other privacy advocates forced surveillance hawks to accept compromise legislation supported by most Democrats — but opposed by Paul — called the USA Freedom Act. The USA Freedom Act has already passed the House, but as of a week ago its chances looked dim in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was against it. But McConnell now believes it is "the only realistic way forward."
Even so, the Senate wasn't able to pass the USA Freedom Act quickly enough to prevent the Patriot Act provisions from temporarily expiring. That would have taken an expedited process that could only happen with the unanimous consent of the Senate. And Paul had no intention of giving his consent.
"Little by little, we've allowed our freedom to slip away," he said on Sunday. "We allow the Fourth Amendment to be diminished."
If the Senate passes the USA Freedom Act without changes, it will go to President Obama's desk for signature. But there's still room for the Senate to make changes to the legislation, which would send the bill back to the House and prolong the debate over NSA spying.
In the end, though, Paul's tactics are likely to end in the passage of legislation both Paul and McConnell opposed — but that the White House and congressional Democrats support.
Three Patriot Act provisions have expired
Three provisions of the Patriot Act expired at midnight on Sunday, May 31.
Most of the debate in recent weeks has focused on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the government to obtain business records that are relevant to an anti-terrorism investigation. The government has argued that this provision allows it to collect the phone records of every American, since some of those records will eventually prove useful for counterterrorism purposes. Critics, such as Patriot Act author Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, say the government is misreading the law and that the NSA's phone records program is illegal.
Also expiring was a "roving wiretap" rule that allows the government to file one application to spy on multiple phone lines owned by the same suspect. And there was a provision that allows the government to ask the secretive FISA courts for warrants to spy on "lone wolf" terrorists who are not associated with any known government or terrorist group.
The government warned that if these programs expire, even temporarily, the consequences for America's national security could be catastrophic. "What you’re doing, essentially, is you’re playing national security Russian roulette," one anonymous White House official said this week.
But civil liberties advocates disagreed. While Section 215 is undoubtedly helpful in counterterrorism investigations, civil liberties groups point out that the government has lots of other ways it can get access to business records in order to spy on terrorists. The same goes, they say, for the roving wiretaps and lone wolf provisions. In fact, the "lone wolf" language has reportedly never been used.
The USA Freedom Act prohibits the bulk collection of phone customer data — but it doesn't go as far as some civil liberties groups want
If, like most Americans, you've never heard of the USA Freedom Act, here's a primer:
The USA Freedom Act has drawn criticism from some of the most ardent privacy advocates, including Paul, who see it as a vehicle for perpetuating, rather than ending, NSA spying. These hard-liners believe it's better to simply allow a controversial Patriot Act provision, known as Section 215, to expire. That would reduce NSA spying authority without granting the agency any new powers.
But advocates of the USA Freedom Act point out that Section 215 isn't the only government spying power that could be subject to abuse. Other powers, such as National Security Letters, are not scheduled to expire at midnight tonight. And so advocates say the USA Freedom Act — which contains a number of procedural and transparency reforms — would be an important step toward holding the NSA accountable.
At the same time, privacy experts say the USA Freedom Act has some flaws. Amie Stepanovich, a legal expert at the pro-privacy group Access, told me two weeks ago that "the bill allows for the collection of information 'two hops out' — records of entities who communicate with or are otherwise connected to a target. This would wrap in sensitive information of potentially millions of non-targets."
Advocates of the USA Freedom Act argued that the imminent expiration of Section 215 gave privacy advocates a strong bargaining position. In their view, Paul's purist stance risked squandering a golden opportunity to achieve reforms that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
Major civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have taken an ambivalent stance on this debate. They agree with Paul that the USA Freedom Act doesn't go far enough to rein in NSA spying. But they also haven't rallied behind Paul, who has yet to put forward a constructive alternative.
Paul left the Senate with three options
The Senate had three options. It could pass the USA Freedom Act, which was approved by the House in mid-May and was supported by the White House and many privacy advocates. It could renew the Patriot Act provisions without changing them — this is the choice McConnell preferred. Or it could do nothing and simply let the Patriot Act provisions lapse.
Last weekend, when McConnell brought these first two options to a vote, neither was able to muster the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster. The USA Freedom Act got 57 votes — including all Democrats and a handful of Republicans. A "clean" reauthorization of the Patriot Act got only 45 votes — mostly from Republicans.
On Sunday, after conferring with his Republican colleagues, McConnell concluded that accepting the limits of the USA Freedom Act was the only way to preserve the Patriot Act powers — albeit in weakened form. With McConnell no longer urging his caucus to vote against it, the Senate voted 77-17 to overcome a filibuster on Sunday.
But the Senate's rules didn't allow debate over the legislation to wrap up quickly enough to forestall the expiration of the Patriot Act powers. And there's still a possibility that the Senate will adopt amendments to the legislation that could prove unacceptable to the House, creating yet another impasse.Image caption Jatropha seeds can be used to produce biofuel but the plant itself can absorb large amounts of CO2
Scientists say that planting large numbers of jatropha trees in desert areas could be an effective way of curbing emissions of CO2.
Dubbed "carbon farming", researchers say the idea is economically competitive with high-tech carbon capture and storage projects.
But critics say the idea could be have unforeseen, negative impacts including driving up food prices.
The research has been published in the journal Earth System Dynamics.
Seeds of change
Jatropha curcas is a plant that originated in Central America and is very well adapted to harsh conditions including extremely arid deserts.
It is already grown as a biofuel in some parts of the world because its seeds can produce oil.
I think it is a good idea because we are really extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - and it is completely different between extracting and preventing Prof Klaus Becker, University of Hohenheim
In this study, German scientists showed that one hectare of jatropha could capture up to 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. The researchers based their estimates on trees currently growing in trial plots in Egypt and in the Negev desert.
"The results are overwhelming," said Prof Klaus Becker, from the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart.
"There was good growth, a good response from these plants. I feel there will be no problem trying it on a much larger scale, for example ten thousand hectares in the beginning," he said.
According to the researchers a plantation that would cover three percent of the Arabian desert would absorb all the CO2 produced by cars and trucks in Germany over a 20 year period.
The scientists say that a critical element of the plan would be the availability of desalination facilities. This means that initially, any plantations would be confined to coastal areas.
They are hoping to develop larger trials in desert areas of Oman or Qatar. Prof Becker says that unlike other schemes that just offset the carbon that people produce, the planting of jatropha could be a good, short term solution to climate change.
"I think it is a good idea because we are really extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - and it is completely different between extracting and preventing."
Image caption To make the idea work the trees would need brackish water from desalination plants like this one in Israel
According to the scientist's calculations the costs of curbing carbon dioxide via the planting of trees would be between 42 and 63 euros per tonne. This makes it competitive with other techniques, such as the more high tech carbon capture and storage (CCS).
A number of countries are currently trialling this technology but it has yet to be deployed commercially.
Growing jatropha not only soaks up CO2 but has other benefits. The plants would help to make desert areas more habitable, and the plant's seeds can be harvested for biofuel say the researchers, providing an economic return.
"Jatropha is ideal to be turned into biokerosene - it is even better than biodiesel," said Prof Becker.
But other experts in this area are not convinced. They point to the fact that in 2007 and 2008 large numbers of jatropha trees were planted for biofuel, especially in Africa. But many of these ventures ended in tears, as the plants were not very successful in coping with dry conditions.
Lucy Hurn is the biofuels campaign manager for the charity, Actionaid. She says that while jatropha was once seen as the great, green hope the reality was very different.
"When jatropha was introduced it was seen as a miracle crop, it would grow on scrubland or marginal land," she said.
"But there are often people who need marginal land to graze their animals, they are getting food from that area - we wouldn't class the land as marginal."
She pointed out that jatropha is highly toxic and can pollute the land it is grown on, even in a desert. And she also had concerns about the fairness of the idea.
"It is still somebody else's land. Why go in and grow these massive plantations to deal with a problem these people didn't actually cause?"
Follow Matt on Twitter.Nostalgia is not a precious commodity, but it is a powerful one all the same. Few publishers are better at harnessing that power than Nintendo, which over the last 30 years has found ways to innovate on console design on the backs of universally adored franchises like Mario and Zelda.
Last year, the company launched the NES Classic, an all-in-one trip down memory lane. The adorably tiny box housed some of the most memorable games of Nintendo’s first home console while, simultaneously, upending the sleepy plug n’ play video game market.
The new SNES Classic, which launches this Friday, continues the tradition with near-perfect renditions of the company’s greatest hits from the 16-bit generation. For $79.99, you get a time capsule of 21 classic experiences both expansive and frenetic. It’s far from perfect — in fact, most if not all of our issues are identical to those in the NES Classic — but even its flaws serve as a reminder of an important, highly transitional era in gaming.
Hardware
Measuring roughly 5.25 x 4.25 x 1.5 inches, the SNES Classic is approximately one-seventh the size of the original Super Nintendo — seriously, it’s pretty hilarious to compare the two side by side. Nintendo has, unsurprisingly, done an amazing job in recreating the original look. Perhaps a bit too well — whereas North America gets the classic, grayish industrial look, Europe and Japan get the objectively prettier “Super Famicom” design that we’ve been envious of since 1990.
What’s changed is largely functional: The eject button no longer depresses, the cartridge flap no longer flaps and all the ports have been overhauled. On the back, it’s just an HDMI-out for video and micro-USB for power; on the front, a cover with etchings of the original SNES controller ports hides the new inputs, which match that of both the NES Classic Controller and the Wii Remote extension port. (The cover remains attached via a small rubber connector, which so far feels sturdy enough, although frankly it’d look fine without it.)
While the console has shrunk in size, the controller is virtually identical to the original SNES gamepad, down to the clickiness of the face buttons. Seriously, the only discernible differences are the color of the ‘L’ and ‘R’ letters on the shoulder buttons and the cord, which measures just over 4.5 feet in length — a distance far too short for many living room setups. For me, that meant either leaning uncomfortably forward on the couch or sitting on the floor staring at the screen — either hurting my back or neck, respectively. It’s a marked improvement from the NES Classic Controller’s cable, which was just about 30 inches in length, but it’s still annoying. Thankfully, and thanks to the aforementioned port compatibility and the NES Classic Controller’s shorter cord, there are extension cables out there you can buy now.
NES Classic, SNES Classic, OG SNES pic.twitter.com/xc1QdkCG48 — GameXplain (@GameXplain) September 25, 2017
Software
Though the SNES Classic offers largely the same experience as its predecessor, Nintendo has taken the time to improve its menu system from last year’s model, giving it a more 16-bit aesthetic and adding in a few new tricks. The biggest carryover — the ability to suspend a game at any point and pick up later — is still there, and works largely in the same way. If you need to take a break, hit the reset switch on the console, then press down on the D-pad to pick between four save slots per game.
With so many SNES games having their own save systems, the suspend points may feel less vital, but it’s still a welcome addition that means less backtracking. Also, there’s no way to trigger this without hitting reset on the console itself. This design choice was confusing for the NES Classic and remedied only by third-party solutions, both software and hardware; it’s even more frustrating to see it continued here.
The suspend points have two additional functions. One is as a screensaver: Leave your SNES unattended long enough, and (16-bit-era) Mario pops up on the screen and goes through an assortment of your suspended points, playing footage from the last minute or so before you saved — even if it’s just going through menus.
The other new use, rewind, is way more interesting. From any suspended point, you can rewind the actual game and replay about a minute or so of gameplay. It’s not something I turned to very often, since getting to it requires being on the home screen, which in turn requires physically hitting the reset button on the console. But the few times I tried it out — in particular, a rather frustrating stretch of a Donkey Kong Country stage involving mine carts and a broken track — were clutch.
Once again, as with the NES Classic, Nintendo is offering three display options for your games: CRT filter, 4:3 mode (the original appearance on a 4:3 TV), and the extra-sharp “Pixel Perfect” (which is slightly narrower). Of the three, I found myself using the CRT filter almost exclusively. The emulated scan lines never felt too jarring, and the extra blur actually helped cover up some of the older titles’ jankiness. In particular, Star Fox 2’s early-era 3D graphics and very thin, italicized text were hard to look at in any other mode than CRT.
Games
The 21 titles in the SNES Classic represent not only some of the best games of the generation, but arguably some of the best of all time.
Contra 3: The Alien Wars
Donkey Kong Country
Final Fantasy 6 (née Final Fantasy 3)
EarthBound
F-Zero
Kirby’s Dream Course
Kirby Super Star
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Mega Man X
Secret of Mana
Star Fox
Star Fox 2
Street Fighter 2 Turbo: Hyper Fighting
Super Castlevania 4
Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Super Mario World
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
Super Metroid
Super Punch-Out!!
The lineup offers a diverse range of both pick-up-and-play titles as well as more involved RPGs like Final Fantasy 6 and EarthBound, each of which takes dozens of hours to beat. And while I didn’t play through each title to the end for the review — there aren’t enough hours in the year for me to do that — I did sample a good chunk of every game, and the emulation felt solid and relatively glitch-free. (And yes, we know it’s missing the three most important games of the SNES era: Chrono Trigger, Uniracers and Rock n’ Roll Racing.)
Unlike last year, Nintendo smartly chose to include a second controller in the SNES Classic package. Having the ability to play multiplayer out of the box meant that I spent most of the time with two-player titles like Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario Kart, the latter of which is infinitely more fun with someone else. It’s one thing to revisit my childhood alone; it’s another to ruin someone else’s memories in a 50cc Grand Prix.
The biggest surprise of the collection is Star Fox 2, a previously unreleased sequel and a radical departure from the original game. It’s the only game you can’t play when you first turn on the console, appearing as a gift-wrapped selection until you play through the first level of the original Star Fox.
Star Fox 2 is a bit difficult to explain. The game plays out somewhat in real time as you move your ship on an overhead map between space battles (which take place in first-person view) and various missions on planets and large space carriers, which take place in third person and let you shift between the classic Arwing ship and a tank mode. You can “beat” the game in less than a half hour; the point is to repeat the game multiple times to try and get a better score/ranking. It feels like an ambitious idea, especially for the time. I enjoy Star Fox 2 a lot, but given some of the roughness in graphics and the high-level concept, I can see why the game wasn’t released at the time. Still, I’m glad it’s here now.
Sadly, though, the only way to play Star Fox 2 right now is to get an SNES Classic, and as with its predecessor, supply seems nowhere near able to meet demand. Nintendo seems confident that it’ll do a better job this year with producing more hardware, and it’s also looking to fix last year’s shortage issues by bringing the NES Classic back next year. Given the track record, we’ll just have to see how that plays out. (Update: So far so good!)
Those who do manage to pick up an SNES Classic will not be disappointed, though. Even enjoying a fraction of these games justifies the $80 price tag. The steadfast adherence to antiquated hardware standards (the most pronounced being the lack of a home button) cuts into some smart software choices, but overall it’s an incredible package and easily one of the best ways to enjoy these games since their original debuts.The Operative Biographical information Gender Male Occupation(s) Operative Title(s) Operative Statistics Weapon(s) Sword Affiliation Union of Allied Planets
"I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin." ―The Operative [src]
The Operative was an agent of the Union of Allied Planets government. Similar to a black ops agent, the Operative's work was not acknowledged by the government. He didn't officially exist; he gave up his name upon becoming an operative, and he did not hold an official rank in the Alliance.
His status as an operative could get him access to most (possibly all) Alliance facilities as well as respect from those who knew what an operative was. He had been highly trained in close armed and unarmed combat. Until he had his faith broken, he was unswervingly devoted to his cause.
Contents show]
Biography Edit
Serenity Edit
After Hands of Blue failed to secure River Tam, the Operative was called in to hunt her down. He first visited the facility where River was held before her brother Simon broke her out, reviewing a holographic recording of the escape. When Dr. Mathias found him and asked to see his security clearance, the Operative showed his position. Though the Operative understood that Simon was acting out of love for his sister, he was more concerned about keeping whatever secrets River gleaned from the minds of key members of Alliance Parliament during her training, which Mathias mentioned to Simon on record. For this, the Operative killed Mathias' bodyguards with his sword before paralyzing Mathias with a nerve jab, letting Mathias fall on the Operative's upturned sword.
To locate River, the Operative began broadcasting subliminal messages in advertisements all over the Alliance. Eventually, he found her on Beaumonde, having gone on a rampage through a bar, the Maidenhead, before her brother subdued her with a Russian safe word. Noticing on camera another man picking River up, the Operative ran a search and identified the man as Malcolm Reynolds, a former Browncoat and captain of Serenity. Tracing leads to any of Mal's associates, the Operative located Inara Serra and used her to lure Mal into a trap. He tried convincing Mal that River would "rain destruction upon [him and his] ship" and would be better off returned to the Alliance. His threats to fire on Serenity via its pulse beacon proved futile, as Mal had already removed it and continued to insult the Operative, who proved resistant to his taunts. Mal then shot the Operative in the chest, unaware that he was wearing body armor, enabling him to gain the element of surprise when Mal's back was turned. Once the Operative had Mal beaten, he was thrown back by a flash bomb prepared by Inara, enabling the two to escape. Once he regained his senses, he called his ship in orbit to track Serenity via NAVSAT, but his quarry had deployed several decoys.
The Operative soon ordered simultaneous attacks on any ports that once harbored Serenity, including Haven, to give his quarry no place to hide. He then contacted Mal, promising more of the same until River was handed over. In response, Mal had his ship modified to look like a Reaver vessel to bypass Reaver lines blockading the planet Miranda, where they attempted to locate whatever secret the Alliance was hiding. The Operative suspected that Mal would try and broadcast this secret to the Verse and tracked down Mr. Universe, the reclusive hacker who had a transmitter capable of overriding all Cortex channels. Once he forced Mr. Universe into luring Serenity into a trap, the Operative killed him, destroyed his transmitter and called in an entire fleet to intercept Serenity.
The Operative failed to anticipate Serenity luring an entire Reaver fleet to Mr. Universe's planet, forcing him to order his fleet to focus fire on the Reavers. During the battle, a large Reaver ship rammed into the Operative's, splitting it in half. Grabbing a stun gun from a fallen soldier, the Operative took an escape pod and followed Serenity to the surface. Making his way back into Mr. Universe's complex, the Operative came across Mr. Universe's love-bot, Lenore, who had left a message for Mal, directing him to a secondary transmitter he missed. Confronting Mal, who smugly noted that he had finally made him angry, the Operative reminded him that he was responsible the deaths of innocent people in bringing the Reavers. Mal stated that he didn't know how true that was and that he knew the secret the Alliance was intent on keeping hidden and planned to expose it. He then outdrew the Operative, shooting the gun out of his hand and forcing him to take cover. The Operative chased Mal to the transmitter before fighting him, only to be defeated when his traditional nerve cluster strike failed due to an old war wound's having caused the cluster to be moved. Mal punched the Operative's throat, leaving him gasping for air, before dislocating his arms. Instead of finishing him off, Mal decided to show the Operative his "world without sin" and forced him to watch a report by another Alliance officer, Caron, revealing that it was the Alliance itself that had been responsible for accidentally creating the Reavers during their attempt to calm the population of Miranda. His faith in the Union of Allied Planets shattered, the Operative ordered his troops, poised to kill River, to stand down.
The Operative soon arranged for repairs to Serenity on Persephone and called off the search for the Tams. He then faced Mal one last time, telling him that exposing the truth about Miranda might have weakened the Alliance regime, but he couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't come after him. As for himself, the Operative confessed that he would leave the Alliance. Mal threatened to kill the Operative if he saw him again, which the Operative assured him would not happen.
Serenity: Leaves on the Wind Edit
At some point, the Operative exiled himself to a snowy planet, where his cabin was later visited by Mal. The Operative assumed the Browncoat was going to kill him, but Mal explained that he needed his help, which the former was willing to do.
Personality Edit
Working directly for the Alliance Parliament, the Operative single-mindedly hunted down River Tam because he believed that his actions "make the world a better place". He was shown to have little problem with killing as part of his job, ruthlessly murdering several people with his sword, and also ordering the attacks that were responsible for the death of, among others, Derrial Book.
Book said that people like the Operative never used a direct attack. Instead they smiled and "come at you sideways", using the target's blind spot to gain the element of suprise.
While the Operative may have found the killing of innocents wrong, he believed that he was serving a greater good in the end, and thus the killings were necessary. He dreamed of |
. However, the actual atmospheric concentrations have been found to be much higher.[xiv] This gap suggests that gas companies have underreported the levels of methane being vented or leaking from drill sites, and have funded ‘studies’ that have been used to provide ‘scientific’ data suggesting the levels of methane being released are far lower than they actually are.[xv]
It would be difficult to exaggerate the significance of this issue. Even a modest level of methane leakage from drilling sites — between 1.5%-3% — would erase all of the climate-related benefits of burning gas instead of coal.[xvi] Statistically, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel have fallen in the U.S. since 2007 due to the recession and switching to natural gas from coal to generate electricity. Leading climate scientist Robert Howarth told the White House recently, “Total greenhouse gas emissions – after dipping slightly in 2007 – have been rising since at their most rapid rate ever, due to shale gas development and large methane emissions…Reliable data from satellite and airplane surveys show much higher emissions and indicate that global increases in methane in the atmosphere over the last decade may well be the result of increased emissions from the United States.”[xvii] According to Howarth, “If the U.S. wants to meet the COP21 target – to which we have agreed – we need to recognize that natural gas – and shale gas, in particular – is not a bridge fuel” [xviii]
That LiUNA might be unaware of the data on methane is, frankly, inconceivable. Overall, Clean Power Progress looks like union greenwashing of the most irresponsible kind, a poor attempt to sanitize an industry that resists even the weakest of regulations and refuses to allow independent verification in the chemicals it uses during the fracturing process.
Progressive Labor’s Construction Project
The unions that opposed Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline, along with those who have opposed fracking and coal and gas export terminals, are becoming ‘energy unions’ because energy fights will largely what type of future we can look forward to.For NABTU, having unions in health care, public transport, and public services, etc. invade and trample on the sacred territory they call home–energy and infrastructure development–is beyond infuriating.
Progressive labor must, however, develop its own vision of an energy future, one grounded in fully-unionized public renewable power systems, scaled up low-carbon mass transit, and radical energy conservation in the country’s housing stock and commercial buildings. This is a political ‘construction’ project that, if implemented, could create millions of ‘climate jobs.’ But this will require consistent engagement. Many in the Trades can and will support such a progressive approach to climate and energy policy.
For now, having waged a successful putsch, NABTU is the voice of the AFL-CIO regarding a big chunk of labor’s energy policy. The Federation’s reputation is now so low that it seems to be no longer concerned about ‘reputational damage.’ By linking arms with Standing Rock Sioux, progressive labor is keeping alive the best traditions of labor environmentalism pioneered by Tony Mazzocchi and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers in the 1970s.
If it is constructed, the DAPL will require union labor digging a ditch, and the only difference between a ditch and a grave is that one is normally a little deeper than the other.
[i] https://youtu.be/r89lKwockYY
[ii] http://www.aflcio.org/Press-Room/Press-Releases/Dakota-Access-Pipeline-Provides-High-Quality-Jobs
[iii] Sean McGarvey NABTU, letter to Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO, Sept 15, 2016
[iv] http://www.aflcio.org/Press-Room/Press-Releases/Statement-by-AFL-CIO-President-Richard-Trumka-on-New-EPA-Power-Plant-Emission-Rules
[v]https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/content/list_of_supporters_of_the_clean_power_plan_in_court.pdf
[vi] LiUNA and Operating Engineers, Letter to the Honorable John Boehner, Speaker and The Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader, Sept 9, 2015; https://energycommerce.house.gov/news-center/letters/letters-support-hr-702-adapt-changing-crude-oil-market-conditions. See also:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/9/oil-export-ban-support-pits-obama-against-organize/?page=all; http://www.ongil-mc.org/about Leadership Chairman: Sean McGarvey, President, Building-Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO; Secretary/Treasurer Jack Gerard, President and CEO, American Petroleum Institute
[vii] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/afl-cio-president-opposes-lifting-ban-on-crude-oil-exports/444186/
[viii] http://www.aflcio.org/About/Exec-Council/EC-Statements/America-Should-Exploit-the-Advantages-of-Domestic-Oil-Production-Not-Give-Them-Away
[ix] http://www.usw.org/workplaces/oil/oil-documents/USW-SC-ltr-opposing-lifting-the-crude-oil-export-ban-6-8-15.pdf
[x] http://cleanpowerprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Factsheet-UnitedStates-11.pdf
http://www.liuna.org/news/story/hillary-clintons-natural-gas-policy-common-sense-approach-to-address-climate-change-create-good-jobs-and-affordable-energy
[xi] http://cleanpowerprogress.org/update-u-s-natural-gas-production/
[xii] Scientific American, November 26, 2013 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-methane-emissions-prove-higher/
[xiii] Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT). “Oil and natural gas boom causes methane emissions to increase: Study reveals relationship between oil and natural gas production in the USA and increase in atmospheric methane.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 15 March 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160315104213.htm>.
[xiv] http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends_ch4/
[xv] http://www.ncwarn.org/wp-content/uploads/EPA-OIG_NCWARN_Complaint_6-8-16.pdf See also: http://www.skepticalscience.com/frackingupdate2016.html
[xvi] Alvarez, Ramon A., Stephen W. Pacala, James J. Winebrake, and William L. Chameides. “Greater focus needed on methane leakage from natural gas infrastructure.” Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America. 109.17 (2012): 6435-6440. Web. 13 Dec. 2013. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/17/6435. Howarth, Robert, et al. Climatic Change, Volume 106, Issue 4, pp 679-690. 6/11. “Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations;” Lovett, Richard A. Scientific American. 2013. “Study Revises Estimate of Methane Leaks from U.S. Fracking Fields Leaks are minimal during removal of fracking fluids but increase once gas is flowing.” Retrieved 1/15/14 from: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=study-revises-estimate-of-methane-leaks-from-us-fracking-fields; Howarth, Robert W., Renee Santoro, and Anthony Ingraffea. Climatic Change. 1/10/12. “Venting and leaking of methane from shale gas development: response to Cathles et al.” Retrieved 1/15/14 from: http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/howarth/publications/Howarthetal2012_Final.pdf
[xvii] Howarth Alerts White House of the Growing Methane Danger, http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/06/howarth-alerts-white-house-growing-methane-danger See also: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT). “Oil and natural gas boom causes methane emissions to increase: Study reveals relationship between oil and natural gas production in the USA and increase in atmospheric methane.” Science Daily. Science Daily, 15 March 2016. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160315104213.htm
[xviii] http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/06/howarth-alerts-white-house-growing-methane-dangerInjuries:
Arsene Wenger has revealed that his squad will likely remain unchanged for this weekend’s FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City. Whilst he expressed uncertainty over a recovery for Danny Welbeck, he did confirm that Shkodran Mustafi is still out. However David Ospina could be back in 10 days, though Lucas Perez remains on the long-term injury list, and is joined there by the unfortunate Jeff Reine-Adelaide who has suffered a season-ending ankle injury. On Jack Wilshere, he added that he hadn’t spoke to Jack yet, but that his understanding is that the fracture is minor, that it doesn’t need surgery, and that he expects Wilshere to be back training in July. I feel like we’ve all heard that before : (
Confidence:
On the state of the team ahead of the clash with City, Wenger said that they were “focused, highly-motivated [but] maybe not at the maximum of our confidence because we recently had some disappointing results”, but he did say his side were up for the challenge, adding that this was “a good opportunity to show how much we are ready for a fight and how much we are ready to go to the final because it’s maybe our only opportunity to get a trophy this season.”
On the Semi-Final:
“What I expect when I go in the semi-final, is to go in the final” – OKAY THEN!
On Man City:
Reflecting on the recent 2-2 draw with Guardiola’s men in the league, Wenger said that he expected an intense attacking game, saying of City that they “are a team that are very positive going forward, they like to have the ball, they like to take initiative and we do as well.” He felt that the league draw had been 50-50 in terms of possession, and he was anticipating a spectacular game “once the first goal was scored… so let’s hope it’s us!” (said with Arsene smirk + Arsene raised eyebrow)
Back 3 the Future?
AW was somewhere between non-commital and disinterested on the subject of the back 3, and played a killjoy par excellence when confronted by the media’s excited questions about the formation. “Will we be seeing it again?” “Does it make you more unpredictable?” “Does it show your adaptability?” All these were batted away with the same lack of enthusiasm he showed in the aftermath of deploying it the first time – he thought it would be useful to try away against Boro; he did it to arrest the concession of goals away from home; all top-level players need to be adaptable, otherwise they are not top-level players;
Essentially he’s being as hipster as possible about the fact that he’s gone and gotten himself a trendy back three.
On HIS future: * yawn *
AW remained steadfast with his rhetoric on the whole new contract / his future stuff. He said the usual stuff about him being absolutely committed and professional and only concerned with the future of AFC, and said that success in the FA Cup would have absolutely no bearing on his future.
This was typified by this exceptionally terse exchange with one journalist:
Journo: “Just to be clear on this Arsene, have you told your players or potential new signings that you’re staying at the club for two more seasons?”
AW: “No”
Journo: “You’ve not told them or you’re not staying”
AW: “I didn’t tell anything to anybody”
That’s that then!Police yesterday charged a couple with murder in connection with the death 11 years ago of the woman’s previous Japanese husband after her Thai partner confessed to having killed him for his business.
The death in October 2003 of Katsutoshi Tanaka was at that time declared an accident.
He was reported by his then-wife Phornchanok Chaiyapa to have died after falling from the stairs at his home.
Phornchanok and her Thai partner, Somchai Kaewbangyang, have been charged with premeditated murder and hiding a corpse in another case, involving the death of the woman’s other Japanese husband Yoshinori Shimato.
Somchai had confessed to killing and dismembering Shimato, with Phornchanok’s knowledge.
Police yesterday accompanied Somchai and Phornchanok, both 47 years old, to a shophouse in Samut Prakan’s Bang Phli district for re-enactment of the alleged crime that took place on October 3 in 2003.
‘Suffocated man with foot’
Somchai confessed to police that he had pushed Tanaka down the house stairs and used his foot to suffocate him while the Japanese man was unconscious, according to police investigators at the re-enactment yesterday.
The man said that he was jealous of Tanaka, who was with Phornchanok at the time, and that he wanted to take over Tanaka’s shop selling farming tools.
Phornchanok also reportedly had claimed Bt3 million in insurance money following Tanaka’s death in 2003.
Police Lt-General Suwira Songmetta, an assistant national police chief, said yesterday that investigators were collecting evidence against Somchai and Phornchanok before filing the case with the Criminal Court.
“We have evidence to prove that Tanaka’s case was not caused by a fall from the stairs and that the people involved had benefited from his death. We will seek court permission for the arrest of Somchai and Phornchanok for pre-meditated murder,” Suwira said.
Somchai has confessed to killing Tanaka while Phornchanok, while not entirely denying her involvement, did not admit to committing the murder, according to the senior police officer.
Suwira said that police were collecting evidence before suggesting to public prosecutors to bring this murder case to court against the couple.
During yesterday’s re-enactment of the crime, Phornchanok appeared to suffer from stress and fainted. Officials later helped her regain consciousness.
Somchai’s younger brother Somsak Saelim, a witness in this murder case, told police that after Tanaka’s death, Somchai and Phornchanok had told him that if he was asked by anyone about the cause of the Japanese man’s death, he should tell them that Tanaka had died after falling from the stairs, according to a police source.
Meanwhile, the Criminal Court yesterday granted a police request for rejection of any bail for Somchai and Phornchanok during the police investigation.
Somchai was yesterday taken to Bangkok Special Prison for detention and Phornchanok was taken to Bang Khen Women’s Prison.These black bean patties evoke classic rice and beans but in a patty form, easy to freeze and highly portable if you bring your lunch.
The trick to these patties, and to any veggie burger, is to keep them from drying out. To do this, make sure there’s no excess moisture in the ingredients by draining the beans and rice well. Also, the addition of an “egg-replacer” such as Ener-G Egg Replacer helps to bind ingredients. Finally, refrigerate the mixture for an hour before cooking.
Once you’ve formed and refrigerated the patties, you’re simply baking them for 12-15 minutes so that they firm up and a light crust forms. These black bean patties have great flavor, and this spice combination is one you can use with a variety of bean dishes.
I like to serve these black bean patties with avocado and salsa. A non-dairy sour cream would be great too.
Black Bean and Brown Rice Patties Print Prep time 75 mins Cook time 15 mins Total time 1 hour 30 mins Author: Sara Hohn Recipe type: Main Dishes Serves: 3 Ingredients ½ t olive oil
1 t garlic, minced
½ c scallion, chopped
1 t ground cumin
¼ t cayenne
½ t salt
½ c bell pepper, chopped
1 15-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
¾ c cooked brown rice
1½ t egg replacer (or other non dairy equivalent to 1 egg, such as flaxseed meal)
1 T lime juice
optional garnish: sliced avocado, tomato salsa, non dairy sour cream Instructions In a medium sauté pan, heat olive oil. Add garlic and scallion and cook, stirring occasionally about one minute. Stir in cumin, cayenne and salt. Stir in bell pepper and saute two minutes. Remove from heat. In a small bowl, combine egg replacer plus 2 tablespoons of water. Stir well and set aside. In a large bowl, mash three quarters of the black beans until smooth. Stir in brown rice and the remaining whole black beans. Stir in pepper mixture, egg replacer and lime juice and combine well. Form into patties each ⅓ cup in size. (Recipe should make about six patties). Refrigerate patties for one hour. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place patties on a non-stick baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Serve with avocado and salsa, if you like. Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe 3.5.3208
Share it! Pinterest Tumblr emailHP announced it will no longer produce hardware running its webOS mobile operating system, discontinuing operations on future TouchPad tablets and the Pre smartphone devices.
"HP plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones," the company said in a statement. "HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward."
"Our WebOS devices have not gained enough traction in the marketplace with consumers," said HP CEO Leo Apotheker in a conference call on Thursday. "Continuing to execute our current device approach in this space is no longer in the interest of HP or its shareholders."
In its first major push into mobile in years, HP launched its TouchPad tablet in June. The tablet runs the webOS mobile operating system. The company also launched its Veer smartphone earlier this year.
But HP's proprietary mobile platform, acquired from Palm just over a year ago for $1.2 billion, hasn't taken off. Major competitors Apple and Google dominate the smartphone arena with their respective iOS and Android platforms, while RIM's BlackBerry OS and Nokia's Symbian round out the competition. Along with Microsoft's puny Windows Phone OS, HP trails behind all the other leading platforms in market share.
"It's obvious that they were using the TouchPad as a make or break event for webOS devices," said Ben Galbraith, former director of developer relations for webOS, in an interview.
The news comes in the wake of a huge announcement from Google earlier this week, when the Mountain View company announced its acquisition of hardware company Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion. Traditionally a software-only company, Google is making its first foray into the hardware business. (The company did test the waters slightly with recent partnerships with Samsung and Acer, which both make the Chrome OS-powered Chromebook.)
The news of the Motorola acquisition set the technology world abuzz, with pundits speculating that Google would alienate its other hardware partners – HTC, Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson. The new relationship between Google and Motorola could make Google's partners wary that competitor Motorola may be privy to inside information on Android, cutting others out of the loop.
Tech pundits speculated that rivals HP and Microsoft could potentially capitalize on Google's acquisition by licensing webOS and Windows Mobile OS out to these manufacturers.
"OEM's like Samsung, HTC, and LG are looking to hedge their smartphone strategy in the wake of Google's Motorola acqusition," said Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps in an interview. "They’re looking at Windows, but potentially webOS is now in the mix."
HP CEO Leo Apotheker said recently that the company had plans to license its software to third-party manufacturers.
"We're looking at all business models, from licensing to any other possibility for webOS," Apotheker said in a conference call on Thursday.
HP's TouchPad tablet arrived DOA, despite an extensive TV ad campaign that features actor and comedian Russell Brand and Glee star Leah Michele (seen below). Best Buy retailers offering the tablet for sale are reportedly sitting on hundreds of thousands of unsold units, according to AllThingsD.
It's also possible that HP could follow in Motorola's footsteps, putting its patent portfolio on the market for a hefty sale. Google claimed multiple times that its acquisition was important for Motorola's valuable trove of software patents, which would help protect Google from the deluge of lawsuits the company is currently facing.
"They made the first official mass-consumer smartphone. I’m sure they hold some very valuable patents," said Galbraith.
In the wake of this week's news, all eyes are now on key mobile players Microsoft, Nokia and RIM – the three major companies trailing clear mobile industry leaders Apple and Google – to see which OS will take on iOS and Android.
"There’s absolutely room for three operating systems out there," said Rotman Epps. "The question was whether there was room for a fourth or a fifth. HP just answered that question."Our new issue, on what a President Bernie Sanders could actually do in office, is out now. Subscribe today to receive it!
Flash mobs may not seem like events that need government oversight, but Japanese authorities see things differently. The mayor of Ebina — a city west of Tokyo — prohibited these gatherings in March, claiming that they violate local ordinances against public performance. Those charged with breaking the rule must pay five thousand yen — about fifty dollars. The mayor’s decision came after Mothers’ Action for Peace and Democracy organized a flash mob in February. They were protesting the government’s controversial security legislation, which would give Japan permission to engage in foreign conflict and seems to be the first step toward revising the country’s pacifist constitution. Dressed in black, denim, and sunglasses, members of Mannequin Flash Mob Kanagawa — a spinoff of Mothers’ Action — walked around Ebina Station’s raised walkways, carrying signs with messages critical of Prime Minister Shinzō Abe. At set intervals, one or two would stop on the busy platform and pose like a mannequin. The rest joined the stationary group one by one. They stayed motionless for short periods before moving on and repeating the performance in another part of the station. Their aim was to create an air of mystery and draw the attention of people passing, without violating Japan’s notoriously strict regulations on public assembly and political activity. In June, the activists filed suit against the city’s ban on flash mobs. They argue that because of the small number of participants, the protest does not constitute a political gathering nor does it violate the laws against public assembly. Further, they point out that Japan’s Road Traffic Act allows any gathering as long as it does not significantly impede traffic. Judging from video of the action, they did not get in any pedestrian’s way. While a ban on flash mobs in a Tokyo suburb would seem to be a minor development, it highlights the disquieting and growing threat to civil liberties in Japan.
Squeezing Politics Freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate are protected by Japanese law, so the police or government cannot directly ban a group or individual from protesting. But protests are heavily controlled and codified, both physically and geographically, which diminishes their effect. Any demonstration or march has to be registered in advance to avoid violating traffic laws or ordinances against unlawful assembly. Once approved, demonstrators receive a large police escort that sometimes outnumbers them. Left marches seem to draw the most attention from authorities, but hate groups are also policed strictly, in part to protect the participants from aggressive counterprotesters. During a march, participants are typically corralled into one lane while traffic continues around them. They must stop for traffic lights — making larger marches appear small and easy to manage — and police may change the registered site to hide or minimize demonstrations. Further, pedestrian zones have restrictions against busking, performances, street stalls, and, of course, protests. In certain cities, like Tokyo, the topography makes it hard to protest: open space is limited and prime areas, such as the Kasumigaseki government district, are not amenable to mass gatherings. The police make it even harder. For example, they often block off the road in front of the parliament building with large trucks, which restricts protesters to narrow sidewalks around the edge that are covered in trees, making it extremely uncomfortable to participate. Physical restriction of protest is matched by behind-the-scenes police repression and unfavorable media coverage, which often presents radical groups as criminal and antisocial. In 2015, there were mass demonstrations against the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) security bills. Media coverage painted the publicity-savvy student activists, known as Students’ Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs), in a largely positive light as well-dressed and politely spoken liberals rallying youth to Kasumigaseki to protest the security legislation. But as this was happening, the police were actually arresting and raiding more radical groups. Similarly, ahead of the G7 summit in Japan this year, the mainstream media focused on the prestige of the event and President Obama’s landmark visit to Hiroshima. The police, though, applied pressure to veteran New Left groups, such as Kakurokyo (Revolutionary Workers) and Chukaku-ha (Central Core Faction). Several activists were nabbed on minor charges, apparently as a warning or to target the groups’ resources for mobilizing.
Dancing Around the Law Mothers’ Action for Peace and Democracy was founded in 2015 as the Kanagawa chapter of Mothers Against War, just one of a flurry of civil bodies formed to protest the LDP’s security bills. The spinoff actions of Mannequin Flash Mob Kanagawa started in November 2015 at stations around Kanagawa Prefecture. After Ebina City’s heavy-handed response, the flash mobs have unexpectedly ignited a debate on freedom of assembly in Japan. In Japan, flash mobs are not a new phenomenon per se. They have previously been employed by brands as marketing stunts and have also appeared at arts festivals. There is even a current trend for people to make marriage proposals through flash mob events. But what about political flash mobs? In 2012, a handful of protesters utilized the model to demonstrate against the sudden enforcement of a 1948 law restricting dancing in bars and clubs. It had been ignored for decades, but became a police priority again, resulting in a series of nightclub closures and police raids. However, Mannequin Flash Mob Kanagawa probably marks the first time flash mobs have been used effectively in Japan for political purposes. Flash mobs sidestep (or even defy) some of Japan’s restrictions on protesting, which is why the Ebina ban is so worrying. Their small size does not violate the traffic and assembly laws that otherwise block mass action. Also, the element of surprise — an essential aspect of the flash mob’s efficacy — means that protesters do not register the events with authorities.
Press Freedom The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has continued to curb civil liberties in Japan. In 2013, it passed a much-contested state secrets law that makes it easier for the government to classify information as a state secret and carries heavy fines and prison sentences for violators — whether they are officials leaking information or journalists and activists soliciting information. Critics argue the new legislation — which came into effect in 2014 — will further weaken Japan’s press and discourage whistleblowers from coming forward. Partly as a result of the law, Reporters Without Borders dropped Japan’s press freedom by eleven places in this spring. Japan now ranks 72 out of 180 countries. David Kaye, UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, visited Japan this spring to investigate media freedom and described his unease at the declining situation. “The independence of the press is facing serious threats,” he cautioned at a press conference. For now, at least, the weekly tabloid magazines remain in good health and have hit back by publishing a slew of damning exposes of certain politicians and celebrities. These effectively ended the careers of one LDP lawmaker and a famous writer who had been set to enter the political arena. Nor are the tabloids partisan: a sex scandal scoop was a key factor in the defeat of the joint opposition parties’ candidate for Tokyo governor in the recent gubernatorial election.A woman who tried to tear off her husband’s genitals has been jailed for three days.
Barbara Ann Hamilton, 52, of Sarnia pleaded guilty in Sarnia court to the Dec. 26, 2013 assault and the May 20 violation of a no-contact order.
The couple had been married for 30 years, but had recently been arguing regarding accusations of infidelity. Police had intervened.
There had been a series of physical confrontations between the couple, leading to the assault. During prior confrontations, and following the assault, a grandchild intervened to stop the incidents.
On Dec. 26, while her husband was on the toilet, Hamilton grabbed and pulled on his genitals while biting his face. The man told police it appeared to be an attempt to rip them off.
The man pushed Hamilton away and later struck her.
On May 20, while under a court order to stay away from her husband, Hamilton went to his home. She was knocking on the door and talking.
He called the police.
Violence cannot be tolerated, but Hamilton can hardly be faulted considering what she has been through, said defence lawyer James Guggisberg, noting the husband repeatedly demonstrated he was the authority figure in the marriage.
Her husband was a foot taller and 80 pounds heavier than Hamilton.
In 2013 Hamilton was convicted of assault causing bodily harm to her husband because she was angered by him having sex with another woman during his birthday party.
It was not a healthy relationship, said Justice Anne McFadyen.
There was a joint submission from Crown and defence lawyers for the three-day sentence Hamilton had served in pre-sentence custody.
It will be followed by 18 months probation when Hamilton must take anger-management and domestic-violence counselling while staying away from her husband.
Hamilton said she wants no further contact with him.
neil.bowen@sunmedia.caWatchdog Group Sees Conflicts In Jared Kushner's Vast Wealth, Responsibilities
Enlarge this image toggle caption Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
A liberal watchdog group says Jared Kushner, who is both President Trump's son-in-law and an adviser with far-reaching duties, should recuse himself from working on a sweeping array of tax, financial and foreign policy issues.
In a letter to Kushner, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer writes that Kushner brings to the White House an unprecedented mix of official responsibilities and personal business interests. Kushner is married to President Trump's daughter Ivanka.
"Given the unique role that you are playing with President Trump," Wertheimer writes, "there is no way for the public to know which policy matters you are discussing with the President and how they relate to your family business holdings."
Washington lawyer Jamie Gorelick, representing Kushner, said she will review the letter. She answered Wertheimer's analysis with a statement: "Mr. Kushner has consistently said that he would follow government ethics requirements, including by recusing from particular matters consistent with the conflict-of-interest and impartiality rules."
Over the winter, Gorelick guided Kushner and Ivanka Trump through five divestitures, for each of them and their three children. Their wealth is estimated to be as high as $740 million, including Ivanka Trump's international fashion business and her stake in the Trump International Hotel near the White House.
While President Trump is officially exempt from the federal conflict-of-interest laws, his daughter and son-in-law are federal employees with no exemption. The laws include criminal penalties.
By Democracy 21's analysis, Kushner faces two huge conflict-of-interest hurdles — one legal, the other an issue of public perception.
The legal hurdle involves China, because foreign business interests there are controlled by the Chinese government. The federal conflict-of-interest laws cover not only Kushner's own holdings but also his spouse's holdings — in this case, trademarks and other business activities in China.
The public perception issue sweeps in all of Kushner's duties in the Trump administration. As senior adviser, he gives Trump confidential advice. He also heads up a new White House Office of American Innovation, created to reorganize the federal government, and has other responsibilities including veterans care, opioids, China, Canada, Mexico, the Middle East and solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The letter concludes that Kushner should recuse himself from involvement in tax, real estate, trade, banking and financial services matters, along with everything involving China and other countries where Ivanka Trump's merchandise is marketed.
Wertheimer writes that complying with a strict interpretation of the conflict-of-interest laws, as Kushner has pledged to do, isn't enough. He contends Americans have a right to know that "you are not using your unique role in the Trump administration for personal gain."November 13, 2009
The spread of illegal violence around the drug trade in Mexico has provided an opening for the rich to engage in their own, says Stuart Easterling.
THERE WERE two recent events in Mexico that few news organizations, if any, bothered to connect.
The first was the massacre of 15 people in the northern state of Sonora on October 30. It was, sadly, not even the largest massacre this year, thanks to the "drug war" raging along the border with the United States.
This massacre was different in one key way, however: Its principal target was Margarito Montes, leader of the General Worker, Peasant and Popular Union (UGOCP), a peasant organization based largely in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. Montes was killed, along with his wife, his children (of 4, 7 and 9 years of age) and a number of people in his entourage, as they drove along a rural highway.
Many in the press quickly blamed the affair on "the narcos," members of Mexico's powerful drug organizations. The peasant leader Montes must have somehow been tied up in the drug trade, it was implied.
The second event, seemingly unrelated to the first, was the public announcement by a mayor in the northern state of Nuevo León, Mauricio Fernández, that he was forming a private paramilitary organization. It would be composed of "rudos"--tough guys--recruited from the military and police. They would operate outside the law in collecting intelligence and fighting crime. They would be given tasks of "limpieza especial"--special cleansing. The problem, Mayor Fernández says, is the narcos.
Margarito Montes, the murdered leader of the General Worker, Peasant and Popular Union
Certainly no one can underestimate the power of the narcos in Mexico, and of organized crime more generally. They own large numbers of local police and government officials, particularly in the north. Public figures who don't cooperate are routinely assassinated, their quartered bodies often dumped in the street. Far more unknown individuals are also killed, often young men in their 20s, their bodies dumped en masse and frequently displaying signs of torture.
Indeed, more Mexicans died due to the "drug war" in 2008 than all Americans killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan since both those wars began. The drug war was, of course, escalated by Mexico's conservative President Felipe Calderón, who has vowed to somehow defeat the organizations that serve the world's largest market for illegal drugs: the United States.
Meanwhile, organized crime in Mexico has also increasingly entered into the lucrative business of kidnapping in recent years. It has historically been the wealthy and near-wealthy who are targeted for kidnapping. But now it's not just the rich any more. Migrants from Mexico and Central America trying to reach the U.S. are now seized by kidnappers posing as coyotes, the people who facilitate border crossings. Relatives of migrants already in the north are forced give up what little they have to free their loved ones.
Some of the stories of kidnapping are truly horrific. One woman, recently rescued three years after having been seized, had given birth to two children in captivity, due to her having been sexually assaulted on so many occasions.
In such a climate, people like Mayor Fernández can gain support for extreme law-and-order policies. In fact, 76 percent of Mexicans currently support introducing the death penalty in Mexico.
And many people, not just the rich, support taking the law into their own hands. In a town near Mexico City, an attempted kidnapping of a local small-business owner led to protests and riots by roughly 3,000 people. They blockaded roads, burned cars and set fire to the police station because the authorities wouldn't hand over four would-be kidnappers to be lynched.
BUT AS with everything else, the elite in Mexico has attempted to manipulate the fear of crime and violence for their own interests. The narcos have become a super-scapegoat--everything can be blamed on them, including the killing of a peasant leader.
They can be denounced in the press as corrupt nouveaux riches who exploit the common people--while little is said about the far more numerous corrupt nouveaux riches in Mexico who exploit the common people completely legally. They can be denounced by the government as being at the root of Mexico's public insecurity, while completely ignoring the country's growing levels of economic insecurity.
More significantly, the spread of illegal violence provides an opening for perfecting the use of legal violence. The various weapons that the state develops, ostensibly to fight organized crime, can and will be employed against their critics and the left.
This is where Mayor Fernández comes in. The spread of illegal violence also provides an opening for the rich to engage in their own.
The community that Fernández represents is one of the wealthiest in Mexico. In recent years, so its fearful residents claim, it has gone downhill. The poor who have always lived in and around town have increasingly turned to the drug trade. Rich narcos now drive around town in fancy cars.
And so it's time to turn to "special cleansing." One conspicuous narco, who liked to show off his yellow Lamborghini, was recently rubbed out in Mexico City. The mayor was somehow able to announce his elimination even before the police knew about it.
Privately funded "special cleansing" groups are already known to exist in various parts of the country, exterminating the sorts of petty criminals--like car thieves--who harass the rich and the upper middle class. But it's also likely that they will start expanding their definition of pests who need to be cleansed--if they haven't already.
One such category of pests is journalists, for example. |
of interest mentioned in the voiceover, general shots to cover edits we make in my or the guest's talky bits.
Image caption There is no escape from the camera's view on a 360-degree shoot
We decided it would be incredibly jarring to cut to different shots in 360, so for the most part, each two-to-five minute section was recorded "as-live", in one take. My words, interviewee's answers, and, in one case, a massive pool of water overflowing and nearly soaking our shoes.
As a presenter, it feels much more "live" than normal. The energy is higher, you can have more fun and be freer, knowing that whatever you do, and wherever you go, it will be in shot, with no need for repeats in close-up.
Image caption Filming in 360 degrees can create unusual views like this shot taken at a Swiss university
Whenever you want to talk about something, you just point to it, and let the audience look around. It's a lot less formal, and more like talking to a person than a camera.
But there's a lot of pressure to get everything right in one go, and it tends to go best after a good dose of the three R's: rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
Of course, not every story works in 360, and this has certainly been an education in telling them in a compelling way without all the usual tricks of exciting cutaways and fast edits.
What happens next - the post-production - is a whole world of weird. But that's Steve's story.
You can follow Spencer on Twitter @spenley.
Stephen Beckett - Producer
Image caption Stitching the video files together was not without problems
Nearly all 360 camera rigs - including ours - share one problem: parallax.
If you watch most of their videos carefully, you might see some strange things happen.
Perhaps someone's body will be briefly chopped in two as they circle the camera, or an arm might split into multiple ghostly limbs.
The problem happens because each camera lens involved is in a slightly different place.
Image caption The videos from the different cameras are stitched together by software
The issue became apparent when we "stitched" the recordings together.
Where the footage overlapped, what each camera saw was a tiny bit different.
You can replicate the effect yourself.
Hold a finger right in front of your nose, and alternately close each eye. Your finger will jump into different positions. Open both eyes and your finger might look a little ghostly.
Fixing the parallax problem for 360 videos takes a huge amount of time, sweat and clever software - and sometimes it's just impossible. You'll certainly see a few ghosts if you watch the Click 360 show carefully enough.
What we and other 360 producers are doing is the equivalent of the first grainy attempts at film over a century ago.
Image caption Behind-the-scenes footage was filmed with a traditional video camera
Many of the problems that we wrestled with will probably be solved by the next generation of kit and software.
And the more people make things, the more we'll all discover about what works best in this new 360 world.
It's pretty exciting, and once I've had a little liedown, maybe I'll start thinking about Click 720.
Click's guide to watching the show in 360
On a computer
You can view it from all angles using a simple web browser.
As long as the software is a fairly recent version, you should be able to drag the screen around to view things from whichever angle you fancy.
If your broadband and computer are up to it, switch to 4K to enjoy the programme in full quality.
On a mobile device
For a better experience, we recommend viewing it on a mobile device, using the YouTube app.
This will make use of the gyroscopes embedded in your device so you can move around freely to explore the programme all angles.
The virtual reality experience
For those of you looking for a totally immersive experience, you can also view it using a pair of simple VR goggles like Google Cardboard.
If you are strapping in an Android device, just touch the VR goggle icon and then place your handset inside.
If the video does not look quite right to you, you may need to calibrate your device using the settings menu in the app.
For those of you viewing it on an iPhone, the VR option is not yet available on the YouTube app but you can download the in360tube app and then navigate to the page.
Some clips from the show are also available to view via the Kolor Eyes app - just search for BBC Click 360.
Samsung Gear VR
You can view the programme by navigating to YouTube using the Gear VR's inbuilt web browser. The option to switch to 360 should appear in the left-hand corner.
Facebook 360
Some of the best bits of the show are also available on Facebook, which can be viewed through the Facebook app on mobile devices or on the Facebook page.
On Samsung Gear VR, Facebook 360 videos are available through the Oculus Video app. You should see all our clips on the main page.The European Space Agency made history when their Philae lander touched down onto a comet. This was a major accomplishment, not just for science, but for humanity. The comet, 67P, is only 2.5 miles wide and can travel tens of thousands of miles per hour.
But unfortunately — albeit also unsurprisingly — feminazis cared not a whit about what an incredible achievement this was, and zeroed in on one thing: the shirt that Dr. Matt Taylor was wearing in an interview:
The shirt is clearly famous women in science fiction, such as the 50 Foot Tall Woman and Wonder Woman — and was made for Taylor by a female friend of his. But because the shirt had women sort of scantily clad, it was apparently unacceptable — and the Atlantic writer Rose Eveleth kicked off the feminazi mob when she sent out the following tweet:
No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt. https://t.co/r88QRzsqAm pic.twitter.com/XmhHKrNaq5 — Rose Eveleth (@roseveleth) November 12, 2014
The femisogynists talk constantly about how women are so interested in science, technology, and engineering, but when there is a major, groundbreaking story involving those exact subjects, the only thing they can do is whine about how a shirt hurt their feelings. The mob was relentless, until Taylor actually broke down in tears apologizing, at a time when he should have been celebrating the greatest achievement of his life.
In response to this ridiculousness, Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds penned a column at USA Today that was nothing short of brilliant:
It seems to me that if you care about women in STEM, maybe you shouldn’t want to communicate the notion that they’re so delicate that they can’t handle pictures of comic-book women. Will we stock our Mars spacecraft with fainting couches? Not everyone was so censorious. As one female space professional wrote: “Don’t these women and their male cohorts understand that *they* are doing the damage to what/whom they claim to defend!?” No, they don’t. Or, if they do, their reservations are overcome by the desire to feel important and powerful at others’ expense. Thus, what should have been the greatest day in a man’s life — accomplishing something never before done in the history of humanity — was instead derailed by people with their own axes to grind. As Chloe Price observed: “Imagine the … storm if the scientist had been a woman and everyone focused solely on her clothes and not her achievements.” Yes, feminists have been telling us for years that women can wear whatever they want, and for men to comment in any way is sexism. But that’s obviously a double standard, since they evidently feel no compunction whatsoever in criticizing what men wear. News flash: Geeks don’t dress like Don Draper.
Because Reynolds committed the ultimate sin of using a feminist’s own words against her, the bully mob set their sights on him next, because how dare anyone do such a thing?! The lunatics clearly had nothing they could say to rebut Reynolds’ argument, so they resorted to flat-out lying, claiming that he had “doxxed” her a la Anonymous, or published Eveleth’s personally identifiable information. It wasn’t even remotely true, of course, but that didn’t stop them from making it up and doing everything they could to smear him and ruin his reputation.
The problem here is that everything Reynolds said was right. Feminazis relentlessly bark about how empowered women are — thanks to so-called feminist leaders like Eveleth, Jessica Valenti, and Amanda Marcotte, of course — yet they lose their minds because, oh no, someone wore something that they didn’t like! A woman that actually was strong and empowered wouldn’t act like a Victorian-era woman fainting because they saw too much skin somewhere. And they’re hypocrites about it too, considering that they organize Slutwalks and encourage women to dress as skankily as possible — but heaven forbid a man wear a shirt that they don’t approve of.
Even worse is a man making them look like the shrill, hysterical harpies that they actually are. That’s unforgivable. Wear something or say something that the feminazis don’t like, and they’ll set out to destroy you, all because they can’t actually make a coherent, logical argument defending their ridiculous behavior. It’s especially ridiculous considering that there’s no room in feminism for perpetually offended whiners who get their panties in a wad over imagined sexism and fake misogyny when there is actual real misogyny and oppression in the world. When is the last time that these “feminists” were concerned about Yazidi women being sold as sex slaves? Or the injustices visited upon Middle Eastern women on a daily basis because they have to live under sharia law? There’s a rape epidemic in India, women are dragged off the streets and forced into late-term abortions in China, and women are executed for killing their rapists in Iran. Yet the people who claim to be fighting for women’s equality are raising hell over a shirt that a scientist wore and because someone quoted them accurately and made them look like the nutjobs that they are.
It almost makes me embarrassed to be a woman — but then I remember that only about a third of all American women identify with these raving lunatics, and I feel so much better. No wonder they have to invent reasons to be offended. It must be hard to realize that you’re utterly irrelevant.Share. Mario's back - and this time he's HD. Mario's back - and this time he's HD.
While Nintendo has returned to the concept of a 2D Mario time and time again in recent years, none of these retro revivals have recaptured the quality of their predecessors. Rather than developing proper evolutions of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, the New Mario series watered down successful formulas to the point where it was good, but not nearly as great as its legacy. In other words, the brilliance of the NES and SNES formulas has eluded Nintendo’s modern teams.
New Super Mario Bros. U changes that pattern. Though it doesn’t necessarily redefine Nintendo’s iconic hero, it still manages to capture the sense of carefree adventure that many of us felt as kids. More importantly, the game contains a significant amount of challenge, both within its story mode and outside of it. This game has clearly been designed by a team that regards Super Mario World with as much affection as those of us who grew up with it. Were it not for the game’s weak graphics and audio, plus the return of the irritating chaotic, bouncy multiplayer mode, this game might rival some of Nintendo’s better 2D accomplishments.
Exit Theatre Mode
For many of us, Super Mario World shifted the Mushroom Kingdom from numbered, sequential stages to something more organic. The term “world” never felt more appropriate. New Super Mario Bros. U is the first 2D Mario game not only to return to that approach, but to take it subtly to the next level. The vast, seamless overworld not only houses the requisite levels, fortresses and castles, but also features items that can be picked up off the ground, roaming enemies that must be defeated, secrets, alternate paths and even some boss fights that occur within their own context, outside of any platforming sequence. Why Nintendo ever moved away from this approach seems even more baffling now that it’s returned.
The imaginative approach to the overworld is just the beginning of the great design housed in New Mario U. The game starts off slow; some of the earliest stages are so simplistic you’d be forgiven for assuming nothing greater lies ahead. Yet the game continues to escalate in complexity, with layouts that beg for exploration, numerous hidden secrets and an overworld that subtly updates as you progress through the game. New enemies, power-ups and threats continuously introduce themselves along classic ideas in a perfect balance that will call back to old NES and SNES adventures while still feeling fresh.
The level of difficulty feels just right, allowing you to keep moving at a reasonable pace while killing you plenty of times along the way. You’ll never run out of lives, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll still lose enough of them to feel like you’re being challenged. If that wasn’t enough, collecting all of the game’s Star Coins will certainly push your skills – and there is definitely a reward to doing so. Finding this balance haunted New Mario games in the past. None of them have been particularly challenging. None of them felt like they were anything but a routine trip back into 2D Mario, tamed to appeal to all audiences without regard for players that wanted a test of their skills. What’s more impressive about Mario U is that while its Story Mode does serve up some of that challenge, Nintendo opted to do even more. They created an independent challenge mode. And it will kick your ass.
Challenge Mode shatters the traditional Mario experience, and will truly test a player’s resolve and ability. It places you on narrow platforms with enemies hurling projectiles at you, simply seeing how long you can survive. It forces you to traverse an entire level without killing an enemy – or perhaps not touching the ground. That even some of the simplest tasks will cause you to throw down your controller in frustration – and then immediately pick it back up to try again – is precisely what the Mario series has needed. In some respects it overshadows the Story Mode, and it’d be interesting to see if Nintendo can find a way to work more unconventional ideas like these into its main adventure. The diversity would be more than welcome.
Exit Theatre Mode
New Super Mario Bros. U does have two critical technical flaws. Its visual and audio designs aren’t nearly as bold as its contemporaries, merely reaching the bare minimum of expectations for a HD Mario title. Wii U is a powerful system, and should be more than able to create a stunning platformer with layers upon layers of depth, great lighting and particle effects, and another world-class soundtrack. Mario U feels like it’s just achieving the minimum in any of those areas. The improvements from New Mario on Wii surface immediately, but that’s not nearly enough in an era where Rayman Legends also exists. Mario U features moments of graphical brilliance – particularly in later worlds and a the sublime level featuring Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ – but they only serve to reinforce that difference. This isn’t a bad looking game. It just fails to be memorable.
The same applies to sound, where much of the game’s music feels like a retread of the past. Familiar Mario themes are certainly present, and they’re as good as always, but the routine, generic ‘New Mario’ theme is back as well – the one that features the emphasized beats that cause Koopas and Goombas to briefly stop mid-step and dance. Much like the visuals, nothing here is outright bad. It just doesn’t reach the standard set by its predecessors. Considering some of the brilliance contained in recent 3D Mario games, it’s frustrating to see Nintendo not attempt the same here. Mario games are known for their music. That should always be the case.
Wii brought multiplayer to the Mushroom Kingdom, but many players were put off by the chaotic four-player format. The same problems apply here, as so many characters attempting to leap and run through an environment simply leads to more deaths, not more fun. And there’s certainly no reason to have more than one player present – everything is achievable alone. Adding a fifth participant in the form of someone who can place blocks with the GamePad doesn’t help either. Players still ricochet off each other like pinballs, and deaths and power-ups still momentarily pause the action for everyone. Families and friends might enjoy the madness for brief moments, but if at any time anyone is actually trying to accomplish something, playing with others isn’t really a suitable option.For the Atari 8-bit computer magazine, see ANALOG Computing
TR-10 desktop analog computer
An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computer that uses the continuously changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved. In contrast, digital computers represent varying quantities symbolically, as their numerical values change. As an analog computer does not use discrete values, but rather continuous values, processes cannot be reliably repeated with exact equivalence, as they can with Turing machines. Unlike machines used for digital signal processing, analog computers do not suffer from the discrete error caused by quantization noise. Instead, results from analog computers are subject to continuous error caused by electronic noise.
Analog computers were widely used in scientific and industrial applications where digital computers of the time lacked sufficient performance. Analog computers can have a very wide range of complexity. Slide rules and nomograms are the simplest, while naval gunfire control computers and large hybrid digital/analog computers were among the most complicated.[1] Systems for process control and protective relays used analog computation to perform control and protective functions.
The advent of digital computing made simple analog computers obsolete as early as the 1950s and 1960s, although analog computers remained in use in some specific applications, like the flight computer in aircraft, and for teaching control systems in universities. More complex applications, such as synthetic aperture radar, remained the domain of analog computing well into the 1980s, since digital computers were insufficient for the task.[2]
Setup [ edit ]
Setting up an analog computer required scale factors to be chosen, along with initial conditions—that is, starting values. Another essential was creating the required network of interconnections between computing elements. Sometimes it was necessary to re-think the structure of the problem so that the computer would function satisfactorily. No variables could be allowed to exceed the computer's limits, and differentiation was to be avoided, typically by rearranging the "network" of interconnects, using integrators in a different sense.
Running an electronic analog computer, assuming a satisfactory setup, started with the computer held with some variables fixed at their initial values. Moving a switch released the holds and permitted the problem to run. In some instances, the computer could, after a certain running time interval, repeatedly return to the initial-conditions state to reset the problem, and run it again.
Timeline of analog computers [ edit ]
Precursors [ edit ]
This is a list of examples of early computation devices which are considered to be precursors of the modern computers. Some of them may even have been dubbed as 'computers' by the press, although they may fail to fit the modern definitions.
The south-pointing chariot, invented in ancient China during the first millennium BC, can be considered the earliest analog computer. It was a mechanical-geared wheeled vehicle used to discern the southern cardinal direction.
The Antikythera mechanism, dating between 150 and 100 BC, was an early analog computer.
The Antikythera mechanism was an orrery and is claimed to be an early mechanical analog computer, according to Derek J. de Solla Price.[3] It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 100 BC. Devices of a level of complexity comparable to that of the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until a thousand years later.
Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī in the early 11th century.[4] The astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries BC and is often attributed to Hipparchus. A combination of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy. An astrolabe incorporating a mechanical calendar computer[5][6] and gear-wheels was invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan, Persia in 1235.[7] Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī invented the first mechanical geared lunisolar calendar astrolabe,[8] an early fixed-wired knowledge processing machine[9] with a gear train and gear-wheels,[10] circa 1000 AD. The castle clock, a hydropowered mechanical astronomical clock invented by Al-Jazari in 1206, was the first programmable analog computer.[11][12][13]
The sector, a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion, trigonometry, multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cube roots, was developed in the late 16th century and found application in gunnery, surveying and navigation.
The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by tracing over it with a mechanical linkage.
A slide rule
The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, shortly after the publication of the concept of the logarithm. It is a hand-operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions. Aviation is one of the few fields where slide rules are still in widespread use, particularly for solving time–distance problems in light aircraft.
Mathematician and engineer Giovanni Plana devised a Perpetual Calendar machine which, though a system of pulleys and cylinders and over, could predict the perpetual calendar for every year from 0AD to 4000AD, keeping track of leap years and varying day length.
The tide-predicting machine invented by Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location.
The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. In 1876 James Thomson had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball-and-disk integrators.[14] In a differential analyzer, the output of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output. The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in the 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers.
Modern era [ edit ]
Heathkit EC-1 educational analog computer
The Dumaresq was a mechanical calculating device invented around 1902 by Lieutenant John Dumaresq of the Royal Navy. It was an analog computer which related vital variables of the fire control problem to the movement of one's own ship and that of a target ship. It was often used with other devices, such as a Vickers range clock to generate range and deflection data so the gun sights of the ship could be continuously set. A number of versions of the Dumaresq were produced of increasing complexity as development proceeded.
By 1912 Arthur Pollen had developed an electrically driven mechanical analog computer for fire-control systems, based on the differential analyser. It was used by the Imperial Russian Navy in World War I.[citation needed]
Starting in 1929, AC network analyzers were constructed to solve calculation problems related to electrical power systems that were too large to solve with numerical methods at the time.[15] These were essentially scale models of the electrical properties of the full-size system. Since network analyzers could handle problems too large for analytic methods or hand computation, they were also used to solve problems in nuclear physics and in the design of structures. More than 50 large network analyzers were built by the end of the 1950s.
World War II era gun directors, gun data computers, and bomb sights used mechanical analog computers. In 1942 Helmut Hölzer built a fully electronic analog computer at Peenemünde Army Research Center.[16][17][18] V-2 rocket trajectories[20] Mechanical analog computers were very important in gun fire control in World War II, The Korean War and well past the Vietnam War; they were made in significant numbers.
In the period 1930–1945 in the Netherlands Johan van Veen developed an analogue computer to calculate and predict tidal currents when the geometry of the channels are changed. Around 1950 this idea was worked out into the Deltar, an analogue computer supporting the closure of estuaries in the South West of the Netherlands (the Delta Works ).
The FERMIAC was an analog computer invented by physicist Enrico Fermi in 1947 to aid in his studies of neutron transport.[21] Project Cyclone was an analog computer developed by Reeves in 1950 for the analysis and design of dynamic systems.[22] Project Typhoon was an analog computer developed by RCA in 1952. It consisted of over 4000 electron tubes and used 100 dials and 6000 plug-in connectors to program.[23] The MONIAC Computer was a hydraulic model of a national economy first unveiled in 1949.[24]
Computer Engineering Associates was spun out of Caltech in 1950 to provide commercial services using the "Direct Analogy Electric Analog Computer" ("the largest and most impressive general-purpose analyzer facility for the solution of field problems") developed there by Gilbert D. McCann, Charles H. Wilts, and Bart Locanthi.[25][26]
Educational analog computers illustrated the principles of analog calculation. The Heathkit EC-1, a $199 educational analog computer, was made by the Heath Company, USA c. 1960.[27] It was programmed using patch cords that connected nine operational amplifiers and other components.[28] General Electric also marketed an "educational" analog computer kit of a simple design in the early 1960s consisting of a two transistor tone generators and three potentiometers wired such that the frequency of the oscillator was nulled when the potentiometer dials were positioned by hand to satisfy an equation. The relative resistance of the potentiometer was then equivalent to the formula of the equation being solved. Multiplication or division could be performed depending on which dials were considered inputs and which was the output. Accuracy and resolution was limited and a simple slide rule was more accurate; however, the unit did demonstrate the basic principle.
Analog computer designs were published in electronics magazines. One example is the PE Analogue Computer, published in Practical Electronics in the September 1978 edition. Another more modern hybrid computer design was published in Everyday Practical Electronics in volume 31, number 11 (September 2002). An example described in the EPE Hybrid Computer was the flight of a VTOL aircraft like the Harrier jump jet. The altitude and speed of the aircraft were calculated by the analog part of the computer and sent to a PC via a digital microprocessor, to be displayed on the PC screen. Visit the EPE website to download the two part hybrid computer article [1]. More information on Analog and Hybrid computers is also available in this link [2]
In industrial process control, thousands of analog loop controllers were used to automatically regulate temperature, flow, pressure, or other process conditions. The technology of these controllers ranged from purely mechanical integrators, through vacuum-tube and solid-state devices, to emulation of analog controllers by microprocessors.
Electronic analog computers [ edit ]
The similarity between linear mechanical components, such as springs and dashpots (viscous-fluid dampers), and electrical components, such as capacitors, inductors, and resistors is striking in terms of mathematics. They can be modeled using equations of the same form.
However, the difference between these systems is what makes analog computing useful. If one considers a simple mass–spring system, constructing the physical system would require making or modifying the springs and masses. This would be followed by attaching them to each other and an appropriate anchor, collecting test equipment with the appropriate input range, and finally, taking measurements. In more complicated cases, such as suspensions for racing cars, experimental construction, modification, and testing is both complicated and expensive.
The electrical equivalent can be constructed with a few operational amplifiers (op amps) and some passive linear components; all measurements can be taken directly with an oscilloscope. In the circuit, the (simulated)'stiffness of the spring', for instance, can be changed by adjusting the parameters of a capacitor. The electrical system is an analogy to the physical system, hence the name, but it is less expensive to construct, generally safer, and typically much easier to modify.
As well, an electronic circuit can typically operate at higher frequencies than the system being simulated. This allows the simulation to run faster than real time (which could, in some instances, be hours, weeks, or longer). Experienced users of electronic analog computers said that they offered a comparatively intimate control and understanding of the problem, relative to digital simulations.
The drawback of the mechanical-electrical analogy is that electronics are limited by the range over which the variables may vary. This is called dynamic range. They are also limited by noise levels. Floating-point digital calculations have a comparatively huge dynamic range.
These electric circuits can also easily perform a wide variety of simulations. For example, voltage can simulate water pressure and electric current can simulate rate of flow in terms of cubic metres per second. An integrator can provide the total accumulated volume of liquid, using an input current proportional to the (possibly varying) flow rate.
Analog computers are especially well-suited to representing situations described by differential equations. Occasionally, they were used when a differential equation proved very difficult to solve by traditional means.
The accuracy of an analog computer is limited by its computing elements as well as quality of the internal power and electrical interconnections. The precision of the analog computer readout was limited chiefly by the precision of the readout equipment used, generally three or four significant figures. The precision of a digital computer is limited by the word size; arbitrary-precision arithmetic, while relatively slow, provides any practical degree of precision that might be needed.
Many small computers dedicated to specific computations are still part of industrial regulation equipment, but from the 1950s to the 1970s, general-purpose analog computers were the only systems fast enough for real time simulation of dynamic systems, especially in the aircraft, military and aerospace field.
In the 1960s, the major manufacturer was Electronic Associates of Princeton, New Jersey, with its 231R Analog Computer (vacuum tubes, 20 integrators) and subsequently its 8800 Analog Computer (solid state operational amplifiers, 64 integrators). Its challenger was Applied Dynamics of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Although the basic technology for analog computers is usually operational amplifiers (also called "continuous current amplifiers" because they have no low frequency limitation), in the 1960s an attempt was made in the French ANALAC computer to use an alternative technology: medium frequency carrier and non dissipative reversible circuits.
In the 1970s every big company and administration concerned with problems in dynamics had a big analog computing center, for example:
Analog–digital hybrids [ edit ]
Analog computing devices are fast, digital computing devices are more versatile and accurate, so the idea is to combine the two processes for the best efficiency. An example of such hybrid elementary device is the hybrid multiplier where one input is an analog signal, the other input is a digital signal and the output is analog. It acts as an analog potentiometer upgradable digitally. This kind of hybrid technique is mainly used for fast dedicated real time computation when computing time is very critical as signal processing for radars and generally for controllers in embedded systems.
In the early 1970s analog computer manufacturers tried to tie together their analog computer with a digital computer to get the advantages of the two techniques. In such systems, the digital computer controlled the analog computer, providing initial set-up, initiating multiple analog runs, and automatically feeding and collecting data. The digital computer may also participate to the calculation itself using analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters.
The largest manufacturer of hybrid computers was Electronics Associates. Their hybrid computer model 8900 was made of a digital computer and one or more analog consoles. These systems were mainly dedicated to large projects such as the Apollo program and Space Shuttle at NASA, or Ariane in Europe, especially during the integration step where at the beginning everything is simulated, and progressively real components replace their simulated part.[citation needed]
Only one company was known as offering general commercial computing services on its hybrid computers, CISI of France, in the 1970s.
The best reference in this field is the 100,000 simulations runs for each certification of the automatic landing systems of Airbus and Concorde aircraft.[citation needed]
After 1980, purely digital computers progressed more and more rapidly and were fast enough to compete with analog computers. One key to the speed of analog computers was their fully parallel computation, but this was also a limitation. The more equations required for a problem, the more analog components were needed, even when the problem wasn't time critical. "Programming" a problem meant interconnecting the analog operators; even with a removable wiring panel this was not very versatile. Today there are no more big hybrid computers, but only hybrid components.[citation needed]
Implementations [ edit ]
Mechanical analog computers [ edit ]
While a wide variety of mechanisms have been developed throughout history, some stand out because of their theoretical importance, or because they were manufactured in significant quantities.
Most practical mechanical analog computers of any significant complexity used rotating shafts to carry variables from one mechanism to another. Cables and pulleys were used in a Fourier synthesizer, a tide-predicting machine, which summed the individual harmonic components. Another category, not nearly as well known, used rotating shafts only for input and output, with precision racks and pinions. The racks were connected to linkages that performed the computation. At least one US Naval sonar fire control computer of the later 1950s, made by Librascope, was of this type, as was the principal computer in the Mk. 56 Gun Fire Control System.
Online, there is a remarkably clear illustrated reference (OP 1140) that describes[29] the fire control computer mechanisms. For adding and subtracting, precision miter-gear differentials were in common use in some computers; the Ford Instrument Mark I Fire Control Computer contained about 160 of them.
Integration with respect to another variable was done by a rotating disc driven by one variable. Output came from a pickoff device (such as a wheel) positioned at a radius on the disc proportional to the second variable. (A carrier with a pair of steel balls supported by small rollers worked especially well. A roller, its axis parallel to the disc's surface, provided the output. It was held against the pair of balls by a spring.)
Arbitrary functions of one variable were provided by cams, with gearing to convert follower movement to shaft rotation.
Functions of two variables were provided by three-dimensional cams. In one good design, one of the variables rotated the cam. A hemispherical follower moved its carrier on a pivot axis parallel to that of the cam's rotating axis. Pivoting motion was the output. The second variable moved the follower along the axis of the cam. One practical application was ballistics in gunnery.
Coordinate conversion from polar to rectangular was done by a mechanical resolver (called a "component solver" in US Navy fire control computers). Two discs on a common axis positioned a sliding block with pin (stubby shaft) on it. One disc was a face cam, and a follower on the block in the face cam's groove set the radius. The other disc, closer to the pin, contained a straight slot in which the block moved. The input angle rotated the latter disc (the face cam disc, for an unchanging radius, rotated with the other (angle) disc; a differential and a few gears did this correction).
Referring to the mechanism's frame, the location of the pin corresponded to the tip of the vector represented by the angle and magnitude inputs. Mounted on that pin was a square block.
Rectilinear-coordinate outputs (both sine and cosine, typically) came from two slotted plates, each slot fitting on the block just mentioned. The plates moved in straight lines, the movement of one plate at right angles to that of the other. The slots were at right angles to the direction of movement. Each plate, by itself, was like a Scotch yoke, known to steam engine enthusiasts.
During World War II, a similar mechanism converted rectilinear to polar coordinates, but it was not particularly successful and was eliminated in a significant redesign (USN, Mk. 1 to Mk. 1A).
Multiplication was done by mechanisms based on the geometry of similar right triangles. Using the trigonometric terms for a right triangle, specifically opposite, adjacent, and hypotenuse, the adjacent side was fixed by construction. One variable changed the magnitude of the opposite side. In many cases, this variable changed sign; the hypotenuse could coincide with the adjacent side (a zero input), or move beyond the adjacent side, representing a sign change.
Typically, a pinion-operated rack moving parallel to the (trig.-defined) opposite side would position a slide with a slot coincident with the hypotenuse. A pivot on the rack let the slide's angle change freely. At the other end of the slide (the angle, in trig, terms), a block on a pin fixed to the frame defined the vertex between the hypotenuse and the adjacent side.
At any distance along the adjacent side, a line perpendicular to it intersects the hypotenuse at a particular point. The distance between that point and the adjacent side is some fraction that is the product of 1 the distance from the vertex, and 2 the magnitude of the opposite side.
The second input variable in this type of multiplier positions a slotted plate perpendicular to the adjacent side. That slot contains a block, and that block's position in its slot is determined by another block right next to it. The latter slides along the hypotenuse, so the two blocks are positioned at a distance from the (trig.) adjacent side by an amount proportional to the product.
To provide the product as an output, a third element, another slotted plate, also moves parallel to the (trig.) opposite side of the theoretical triangle. As usual, the slot |
I said: “Shall we be married in this House?” and he said: “No, this is only the House where the business is carried on. All the Palace rests upon this House; but you are called Lola because you are the Key of Delights. Many people stay here all there lives though.” I made him kiss me, and we went on to another passage which opened out of the Servants' Hall. This passage was all fire and flames and full of coffins. There was an angel blowing on a trumpet, and people getting out of the coffins. My Fairy Prince said: “Most people never wake up for anything less.” So we went (at the same time it was; you see in dreams people can only be in one place at a time; that's the best of being awake) through another passage, which was lighted by the Sun. Yet there were fairies dancing in a green ring, just as if it was night. And there were two children playing by the wall, and my Fairy Prince and I played as we went; and he said: “The difference is that we are going through. Most people play without a purpose; if you are travelling it is all right, and play makes the journey seem short.” Then we came out into the Third (or Eighth, it depends which way you count them, because there are ten) House, and that was so splendid you can't imagine. In the first place it was a bright, bright, bright orange colour, and then it had flashes of light all over it, going so fast we couldn't see them, and then there was the sound of the sea and one could look through into the deep, and there was the ocean raging beneath one's feet, and strong dolphins riding on it and crying aloud, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” in such an ecstasy you can't think, and rolling and playing for sheer joy. It was all lighted by a tiny, weeny, shy little planet, sparkling and silvery, and now and then then a wave of fiery chariots filled with eager spearmen blazed through the sky, and my Fairy Prince said: “Isn't it all fine?” But I knew he didn't really mean it, so I said: “Kiss me!” and he kissed me, and we went on. He said: “Good little girl of mine, there's many a one stays there all his life.” I forgot to say that the whole place was just one mass of books, and people reading them till they were so silly, they didn't know what they were doing. And there were cheats, and doctors, and thieves; I was really very glad to go away.
There were three ways into the Seventh House, and the first was such a funny way. We walked through a pool, each on the arm of a great big Beetle, and then we found ourselves on a winding path. There were nasty Jackals about, they made such a noise, and at the end I could see two towers. Then there was the queerest moon you ever saw, only a quarter full. The shadows fell so strangely, one could see the mysterious shapes, like great bats with women's faces, and blood dripping from their mouths, and creatures partly wolves and partly men, everything changing one into the other. And we saw shadows like old, old, ugly women, creeping about on sticks, and all of a sudden they would fly up into the air, shrieking the funniest kind of songs, and then suddenly one would come down flop, and you saw she was really quite young and ever so lovely, and she would have nothing on, and as you looked at her she would crumble away like a biscuit. Then there was another passage which was really too secret for anything; all I shall tell you is, there was the most beautiful Goddess that ever was, and she was washing herself in a river of dew. If you ask what she is doing, she says: “I'm making thunderbolts.” It was only starlight, and yet one could see quite clearly, so don't think I'm making a mistake. The third path is a most terrible passage; it's all a great war, and there's earthquakes and chariots of fire, and all the castles breaking to pieces. I was glad when we Came to the Green Palace.
It was all built of malachite and emerald, and there was the loveliest gentlest living, and I was married to my Fairy Prince there, and we had the most delicious honeymoon, and I had a beautiful baby, and then I remembered myself, but only just in time, and said: “Kiss me!” And he kissed me and said: “My goodness! But that was a near thing that time; my little girl nearly went to sleep. Most people who reach the Seventh House stay there all their lives, I can tell you.”
It did seem a shame to go on; there was such a flashing green star to light it, and all the air was filled with amber-coloured flames like kisses. And we could see through the floor, and there were terrible lions, like furnaces for fury, and they all roared out: “Holy! Holy! Holy!” and leaped and danced for joy. And when I saw myself in the mirrors, the dome was one mass of beautiful green mirrors, I saw how serious I looked, and that I had to go on. I hoped the Fairy Prince would look serious too, because it is a most dreadful business going beyond the Seventh House; but he only looked the same as ever. But oh! How I kissed him, and how I clung to him, or I think I should never, never have had the courage to go up those dreadful passages, especially knowing what was at the end of them. And now I'm only a little girl, and I'm ever so tired of writing, but I'll tell you all about the rest
vel De Collegio Externo.
Explicit Capitulum Primumvel De Collegio Externo. PART II
I was telling you how we started from the Green Palace. There are three passages that lead to the Treasure House of Gold, and all of them are very dreadful. One is called Terror by Night, and another the Arrow by Day, and the third has a name that people are afraid to hear, so I won't say.
But in the first we came to a mighty throne of gray granite, shaped like the sweetest pussy cat you ever saw, and set up on a desolate heath. It was midnight, and the Devil came down and sat in the midst; but my Fairy Prince whispered: “Hush! It is a great secret, but his name is Yeheswah, and he is the Saviour of the World.” And that was very funny, because the girl next me thought it was Jesus Christ, till another Fairy Prince (my Prince's brother) whispered as he kissed her: “Hush, tell nobody ever, that is Satan, and he is the Saviour of the World.”
We were a very great company, and I can't tell you of all the strange things we did and said, or of the song we sang as we danced face outwards in a great circle ever closing in on the Devil on the throne. But whenever I saw a toad or a bat, or some horrid insect, my Fairy Prince always whispered: “It is the Saviour of the World,” and I saw that it was so. We did all the most beautiful wicked things you can imagine, and yet all the time knew they were good and right, and must be done if ever we were to get to the House of Gold. So we enjoyed ourselves very much and ate the most extraordinary supper you can think of. There were babies roasted whole and stuffed with pork sausages and olives; and some of the girls cut off chops and steaks from their own bodies, and gave them to a beautiful white cook at a silver grill, that was lighted with the gas of dead bodies and marshes; and he cooked them splendidly, and we all enjoyed it immensely. Then there was a tame goat with a gold collar, that went about laughing with everyone; and he was all shaved in patches like a poodle. We kissed him and petted him, and it was lovely. You must remember that I never let go of my Fairy Prince for a single instant, or of course I should have been turned into a horrid black toad.
Then there was another passage called the Arrow by Day, and there was a most lovely lady all shining with the sun, and moon, and stars, who was lighting a great bowl of water with one hand, by dropping dew on it out of a cup, and with the other she was putting out a terrible fire with a torch. She had a red lion and a white eagle, that she had always had ever since she was a little girl. She had found them in a nasty pit full of all kinds of nasty filth, and they were very savage; but by always treating them kindly they had grown up faithful and good. This should be a lesson to all of us never to be unkind to our pets.
My Fairy Prince was laughing all the time in the third path. There was nobody there but an old gentleman who had put on his bones outside, and was trying ever so hard to cut down the grass with a scythe. But the faster he cut it the faster it grew. My Fairy Prince said: “Everybody that ever was has come along this path, and yet only one ever got to the end of it.” But I saw a lot of people walking straight through as if they knew it quite well; he explained, though, that they were really only one; and if you walked through that proved it. I thought that was silly, but he's much older and wiser than I am; so I said nothing. The truth is that it is a very hard Palace to talk about, and the further you get in, the harder it is to say what you mean because it all has to be put into dream talk, as of course the language of the wake-world is silence.
So never mind! Let me go on. We came by and by to the Sixth House. I forgot to say that all those three paths were really one, because they all meant that things were different inside to outside, and so people couldn't judge. It was fearfully interesting; but mind you don't go in those passages without the Fairy Prince. And of course there's the Veil. I don't think I'd better tell you about the Veil. I'll only put your mouth to my head, and your hand - there, that'll tell any body who knows that I've really been there, and that it's all true that I'm telling you.
This Sixth House is called the Treasure House of Gold; it's a most mysterious place as ever you were in. First there's a tiny, tiny, tiny doorway, you must crawl through on your hands and knees; and even then I scraped ever such a lot of skin off my back; then you have to be nailed on a red board with four arms, with a great gold circle in the middle, and that hurts you dreadfully. Then they make you swear the most solemn things you ever heard of, how you would be faithful to the Fairy Prince, and live for nothing but to know him better and better. So the nails stopped hurting, because, of course, I saw that I was really being married, and this was part of it, and I was as glad as glad; and at that moment my Fairy Prince put his hand on my head, and I tell you, honour bright, it was more wakeup than ever before, even than when he used to kiss me. After that they said I could go into the Bride-chamber, but it was only the most curious room that ever was with seven sides. There was a dreadful red dragon on the floor, and all the sides were painted every colour you can think of, with curious figures and pictures. The light was not like dream light at all; it was wake light and it came through a beautiful rose in the ceiling. In the middle was a table all covered with beautiful pictures and texts, and there were ever such strange things on it. There was a little crucifix in the middle, all of diamonds and emeralds and rubies, and other precious stones, and there was a dagger with a golden handle, and a cup of the most delicious wine, and there was a curious coin with the strangest writing on it, and a funny little stick that was covered with flames, like a rose tree is with roses. Beside the strange coin was a heavy iron chain, and I took it and put it round my neck because I was bound to my Fairy Prince, and I would never go about like other people till I found him again. And they took the dagger and dipped it in the cup, and stabbed me all over to show that I was not afraid to be hurt, if only I could find my Fairy Prince. Then I took the crucifix and held it up to make more light in case he was somewhere in the dark corners, but no! Yet I knew he was there somewhere, so I thought he must be in the box, for under the table was a great chest; and I was terribly sad because I felt something dreadful was going to happen. And sure enough, when I had the courage, I asked them to open the box, and the same people that made me crawl through that horrid hole, and lost my Fairy Prince, and nailed me to the red board, took away the table and opened the box, and there was my Fairy Prince, quite, quite dead. If you only knew how sorry I felt! But I had with me a walking-stick with wings, and a shining sun at the top that had been his, and I touched him on the breast to try and wake him; but it was no good. Only I seemed to hear his voice saying wonderful things, and it was quite certain he wasn't really dead. So I put the walking-stick on his breast, and another little thing he had which I had forgotten to tell you about. It was a kind of cross with an oval handle that he had been very fond of. But I couldn't go away without something of his, so I took his shepherd's staff, and a little whip with blood on it, and jewels oozing from the blood, if you know what I mean, that they had put in his hands when they buried him. Then I went away, and cried, and cried, and cried. But before I got very far they called me back; and the people who had been so stern were smiling, and I saw they had taken the coffin out of the little room with seven sides. And the coffin was quite, quite empty. Then they began to tell us all about it, and I heard my Fairy Prince within the little room saying holy exalted things, such as the stars trace in the sky as they travel in the car called “Millions of Years.” Then they took me into the little room, and there was my Fairy Prince standing in the middle. So I knelt down and we all kissed his beautiful feet, and the myriads of eyes like diamonds that were hidden in his feet laughed joy at us. One couldn't lift one's head, for he was too glorious to behold; but he spoke beautiful words like dying nightingales that have sorrowed for the fading of roses, and pressed themselves to death upon the thorns; and one's whole body became a single eye, so that one saw as if the unborn thought of light brooded over an eternal sea. Then there was light as the lightening flaming out of the east, even unto the west, and it was fashioned as the swiftness of a sword.
By and by one rose up, then one seemed to be quite, quite dead, and buried in the centre of a pyramid of the most brilliant light it is possible to think of. And it was wake-light too; and everybody knows that even wake-darkness is really brighter than the dream-light. So you might just guess what it was like. There was more than that too; I can't possibly tell you. I know too what I.N.R.I. on the ring meant: and I can't tell you that either, because the dream-language has such a lot of important words missing. It's a very silly language, I think.
By and by I came to myself a little, and now I was really and truly married to the Fairy Prince, so I suppose we shall always be near each other now.
There was the way out of the little room with millions of changing colours, ever so beautiful, and it was lined with armed men, waving their swords for joy like flashes of lightening; and all about us glittering serpents danced and sang for joy. There was a winged horse ready for us when we came out on the slopes of the mountain. You see the Sixth House is really in a mountain called Mount Abiegnus, only one doesn't see it because one goes through indoors all the way. There's one House you have to go outdoors to get to, because no passage has ever been made; but I'll tell you about that afterwards; it's the Third House. So we got on the horse and went away for our honeymoon. I shan't tell you a single word about the honeymoon.|
Capitulum Secundum
vel
De Collegio ad S. S. porta
Collegii Interni.
ExplicitCapitulum SecundumvelDe Collegio ad S. S. portaCollegii Interni. PART III
You mustn't suppose the honeymoon is ever really over, because it just isn't. But he said to me: “Princess, you haven't been all over the Palace yet. Your special House is the Third, you know, because it's so convenient for the Second where I usually live. The King my Father lives in the First; he's never to be seen, you know He's very, very old nowadays; I an practically Regent of course. You must never forget that I am really He; only one generation back is not so far, and I entirely represent his thought. Soon,” he whispered ever so softly, “you will be a mother; there will be a Fairy Prince again to run away with another pretty little Sleepy head. Then I saw that when Fairy Princes were really and truly married they became Fairy Kings; and that I was quite wrong ever to be ashamed of being only a little girl and afraid of spoiling his prospects, because really, you see, he could never become King and have a son, a Fairy Prince without me.
But one can only do that by getting to the Third House, and it's a dreadful journey, I do most honestly assure you.
There are two passages, one from the Eighth House and one from the Sixth; the first is all water, and the second is almost worse, because you have to balance yourself so carefully, or you fall and hurt yourself.
To go through the first you must be painted all over with blood up to your waist, and cross your legs, and then put a rope round one angle and swing you off. I had such a pretty white petticoat on, and my Prince said I looked just like a white pyramid with a huge red cross on the top of it, which made me ever so glad, because now I knew I should be the Saviour of the World, which is what one wants to be, isn't it? Only sometimes the world means all the other children in the dream, and sometimes the dream itself, and sometimes the wake-things one sees before one is quite, quite awake. The Prince tells me that really and truly only the First House where his Father lives was really a wake-house, all the others had a little sleep about them, and the further you got the more awake you were, and began to know just how much was dream and how much wake.
Then there was the other passage where there was a narrow ledge of green crystal, which was all you had to walk on, and there was a beautiful blue feather balancing on the edge, and if you disturbed the feather there was a lady with a sword, and she would cut off your head. So I didn't dare hardly to breathe, and all around there were thousands and thousands of beautiful people in green who danced and danced like anything, and at the end there was the terrible door of the Fifth House, which is the Royal armoury. And when we came in the House was full of steel machinery, some red hot and some white hot, and the din was simply fearful. So to get the noise out of my head, I took the whip and whipped myself till all my blood poured down over everything, and I saw the whole House as a cataract of foaming blood rushing headlong from the flaming and scintillating Star of Fire that blazed and blazed in the candescent dome, and everything went red before my eyes, and a great flame like a strong wind blew through the House with a noise louder than any thunder could possibly be, so that I couldn't hold myself hardly, and I took up the sharp knives of the machines and cut myself all over, and the noise got louder and louder, and the flame burnt through me and through me, so that I when my Prince said: “You wouldn't think it, would you, sweetheart? But there are lots of people who stay here all their lives.”
There are three ways into the Fourth House from below. The first passage is a very curious place, all full of wheels and ever such strange creatures, like monkeys and sphinxes and jackals climbing about them and trying to get to the top. It was very silly, because there isn't really any top to a wheel at all; the place you want to get to is the centre, if you want to be quiet. Then there was a really lovely passage, like a deep wood in Springtime, the dearest old man came along who had lived there all his life, because he was the guardian of it, and he didn't need to travel because he belonged to the First House really from the very beginning. He wore a vast cloak, and he carried a lamp and a long stick; and he said that the cloak meant you were to be silent and not say anything you saw, and the lamp meant you were to tell everybody and make them glad, and the stick was like a guide to tell you which to do. But I didn't quite believe that, because I am getting a grown-up girl now, and I wasn't to be put off like that. I could see that the stick was really the measuring rod with which the whole Palace was built, and the lamp was the only light they had to build it by, and the cloak was the abyss of darkness that covers it all up. That is why dream people never see beautiful things like I'm telling you about. All their houses are built of common red bricks, and they sit in them all day and play silly games with counters, and oh! Dear me, how they do chat and quarrel. When any one gets a million counters, he is so glad you can't think, and goes away and tries to change some of the counters for things he really wants, and he can't, so you nearly die of laughing, though of course it would be really sad if it were wake-life. But I was telling you about the ways to the Fourth House, and the third way is full of lions, and a person might be afraid; only whenever one comes to bite at you, there is a lovely lady who puts her hands in its mouth and shuts it. So we went through quite safely, and I thought of Daniel in the lions' den.
The Fourth House is the most wonderful of all I had ever seen. It is the most heavenly blue mansion; it is built of beryl and amethyst, and lapis lazuli and turquoise and sapphire. The centre of the floor is a pool of purest aquamarine, and in it is water, only you can see every drop as a separate crystal, and the blue tinge filtering through the light. Above there hangs a calm yet mighty globe of deep sapphirine blue. Round it there were nine mirrors, and there is a noise that means when you understand it, “Joy! Joy! Joy!” There are violet flames darting through the air, each one a little sob of happy love. One began to see what the dream-world was really for at last; every time any one kissed any one for real love, that was a little throb of violet flame in this beautiful House in the Wake-World. And we bathed and swam in the pool, and were so happy you can't think. But they said: “Little girl, you must pay for the entertainment.” [I forgot to tell you there was music like fountains make as they rise and fall, only of course much more wonderful than that.] So I asked what I must pay, and they said: “You are now mistress of all these houses from the Fourth to the Ninth. You have managed the Servants' Hall well enough since your marriage; now you must manage the others, because till you do you can never go on to the Third House.” So I said: “It seems to me that they are all in perfectly good order.” But they took me up in the air, and then I saw that the outsides were horribly disfigured with great advertisements, and every single house had written all over it:
FIRST HOUSE This is his Majesty's favourite Residence. No other genuine. Beware of worthless imitations. Come in HERE and spend life! Come in HERE and see the Serpent eat his Tail!
So I was furious, as you may imagine, and had men go and put all the proper numbers on them, and a little sarcastic remark to make them ashamed; so they read:
Fifth House, and mostly dream at that.
Seventh House. External splendour and internal corruption. and so on. And on each one I put “No thoroughfare from here to the First House. The only way is out of doors. By order.”
This was frightfully annoying, because in the old days we could walk about inside everywhere, and not get wet if it rained, but nowadays there isn't any way from the Fourth to the Third House. You could go of course by chariot from the Fifth to the Third, or go through the House where the twins live from the Sixth to the Third, but that isn't allowed unless you have been to the Fourth House too, and go from there at the same time.
It was here they told me what T.A.R.O. on the ring meant. First it means gate, and it is the name of my Fairy Prince, when you spell it in full letter by letter.
There are seventy-eight parts to it, which makes a perfect plan of the whole Palace, so you can always find your way, if you remember to say T.A.R.O.. Then you remember I.N.R.I. is short for L.V.X., which means the brilliance of the wide-wake Light, and that too is the name of my Fairy Prince only spelt short.
The Romans said it had sixty-five parts, which is five times thirteen, and seventy-eight is six times thirteen. To get into the Wake World you must know your thirteen times table quite well. So if you take them both together that makes eleven times thirteen, and then you say “Abrahadabra,” which is a most mysterious word, because it has eleven letters in it. You remember the Houses are numbered both ways, so that the Third House is called the Eighth House too, and the Fifth the Sixth, and so on. But you can't tell what lovely things that means till you've been through them all, and got to the very end. So when you look at the Ring and see I.N.R.I. and T.A.R.O. on it that means that it is like a policeman keeping on saying “Pass along, please!” I would have liked to stay in the Fourth House all my life, but I began to see it was just a little dream House too; and I couldn't rest, because my own House was the very next one. But it's too awful to tell you how to get there. You want the most fearful lot of courage, and there's nobody to help you, nobody at all, and there's no proper passage. But it's frightfully exciting, and you must wait till next time before I tell you how I started on that horrible journey, and if I ever got there or not.
vel
de Collegio Interno
Explicit Capitulum Tertiumvelde Collegio Interno PART IV
Now I shall tell you about the chariot race in the first passage. The chariot is all carved out of pure, clear amber, so that electric sparks fly about as the furs rub it. The whole cushions and rugs are all beautiful soft ermine fur. There is a canopy of bright blue with stars (like the sky in the dream world), and the chariot is drawn by two sphinxes, one black and one white. The charioteer is a most curious person; he is a great big crab in the most glittering armour, and he can just drive! His name is the mysterious name I told you about with the eleven letters, but we call him Jehu for short, because he's only nineteen years old. It's important to know though because this journey is the most difficult of all, and without the chariot one could never do it, because it is so far - much farther than the heaven is from the dream world.
The passage where the twins live is very difficult too. They are two sisters; and one is very pure and good, and the other is a horrid fast woman. But that shows you how silly the dream language is - really there is another way to put it: you can say there are two sisters, and one is very silly and ignorant, and the other has learnt how to know and enjoy.
Now when one is a Princess it is very important to have good manners, so you have to go into the passage, and take one on each arm, and go through with them singing and dancing; and if you hurt the feelings of either of them the least little bit in the world it would show that you were not really a great lady, only a dress lady, and there is a man with a bow and arrow in the air, and he would soon finish you, and you would never get to the Third House at all.
But the real serious difficulty is the outdoors. You have to leave the House of Love, as they call the Fourth House. You are quite, quite naked: you must take off your husband-clothes, and your baby-clothes, and all your pleasure clothes, and your skin, and your flesh, and your bones, every one of them must come right off. And then you must take off your feeling clothes; and then your idea clothes; and then what we call your tendency clothes which you have always worn, and which make you what you are. After that you take off your consciousness clothes, which you have always thought were your very own self, and you leap out into the cold abyss, and you can't think how lonely it is. There isn't any light, or any path, or anything to catch hold of to help you, and there is no Fairy Prince any more: you can' even hear his voice calling you to come on. There's nothing to tell you which way to go, and you feel the most horrible sensation of falling away from everything that ever was. You've got no nothing at all; you don't know how awful it all is. You would turn back if you could only stop falling; but luckily you can't. So you fall and fall faster and faster; and I can't tell you any more.
The Third House is called the House of Sorrow. They gave me new clothes of the queerest kind, because one never thinks of them as one's own clothes, but only as clothes. It is a House of utmost Darkness. There is a pool of black solemn water in the shining obsidian, and one is like a vast veiled figure of wonderful beauty brooding over the sea; and by and by the Pains come upon one. I can't tell you anything about the Pains. Only they are different from any other pains, because they start from inside you, from a deeper, truer kind of you than you ever knew. By and by you see a tremendous blaze of a new sun in the Sixth House, and you are as glad as glad as glad; and there are millions of trumpets blown, and voices crying: “Hail to the Fairy Prince!” meaning the new one that you have had for your baby; and at that moment you find you are living in the first Three Houses all at once, for you feel the delight of your own dear Prince and his love; and the old King stirs in his Silence in the First House, and thousands of millions of blessings shoot out like rays of light, and everything is all harmony and beauty below, and crowned above with the crown of twelve stars, which is the only way you can put it into dream talk.
Now you see you don't need to struggle to go on any more, because you know already that all the House is one Palace, and you move about in your own wake world, just as is necessary. All the paths up to the Second House are open - the path of the Heirophant with the flaming star and the incense in the vast cathedral, and the path of the Mighty Ruler, who governs everything with his orb and his crown and his sceptre. There is the path of the Queen of Love, which is more beautiful than anything, and along it my own dear lover passes to my bridal chamber. Then there are the three way to the Holy House of the old King, the way by which he is joined with the new Fairy Prince, where dwells a moonlike virgin with an open book, and always, always reads beautiful words therein, smiling mysteriously through her shining veil, woven of sweet thoughts and pure kisses. And there is the way by which I always go to the King, my Father, and that passage is built of thunder and lightening; but there is a holy Magician named Hermes, who takes me through so quickly that I arrive sometimes even at the very moment I start. Last of all is the most mysterious passage of them all, and if any of you saw it you would think there was a foolish man in it being bitten by crocodiles and dogs, and carrying a sack with nothing of any use at all in it. But really it is the man who meant to wake up, and did wake up. So that is his House, he is the old King himself, and so are you. So he wouldn't care what anyone thought he was.
Really all the passages to the first Three Houses are very useful; all the dream-world and the half-dream world, and the Wake-world are governed from those passages.
I began to see now how very unreal even the Wake-world is, because there is just a little dream in it, and the right world is the Wide-Wide-Wide-Wake-World. My lover calls me little Lola Wide-awake, not Lola Daydream any more. But it is always Lola, because I am the Key of Delights. I never told you about the first two houses, and really you wouldn't understand. But the Second House is gray, because the light and dark flash by so quick it's all blended into one; and in it lives my lover, and that's all I care about.
The First House is so brilliant that you can't think; and there, too, is my lover and I when we are one. You wouldn't understand that either. And the last thing I shall say is that one begins to see that there isn't really quite a Wide-Wide-Wide-Wake-World till the Serpent outside has finished eating up his tail, and I don't really and truly understand that myself. But it doesn't matter; what you must all do first is to find the Fairy Prince to come and ride away with you, so don't bother about the Serpent yet. That's all.
Explicit Opusculum in Capitulo Quarto
vel de Collegio Summo.As Form Based Code for the neighborhood containing The Grove works its way through the Board of Alderman, a fast food chain is mounting an early challenge. Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers is proposing a fast food outlet at the intersection of Vandeventer and 40 (I-64). For those exiting the highway on their way to Ikea, The Grove or St. Louis University, this property will be their first impression of the city. Preliminary plans show a one story fast food restaurant with a drive through surrounded by a parking lot and drive-thru lane. Steve Noles of Noles Properties is the developer and has the property under contract. NAI DESCO is representing Raising Cane’s.
The location will be zoned Boulevard Type 2 once the FPSE Form Based District sees final approval. The legislation is awaiting its second reading in the Board of Aldermen. At a bill’s third reading — called perfection — it becomes law. That process typically takes several weeks.
This fast food proposal may prove to be the first test of whether the the city plans to uphold the requirements of the new code. Boulevard Type 2 zoning requires properties to be between 2 and 6 stories tall and to be built up to the zero-lot-line or sidewalk. The code envisions Vandeventer an office and business mixed-use corridor. A one story fast food outlet will be in violation of the new code.
Park Central Development is recommending approval of the fast food chain on condition that the developer moves the structure to the zero-lot-line, therefore reconfiguring the drive-thru lane. While a well-intentioned step in the right direction, this recommendation does not go far enough. Elsewhere, drug store proposals have been required to add a second level — even if it only houses air conditioning equipment. That was the case with the CVS on Lindell Blvd a few blocks to the north. We do not want a one story fast food restaurant with big asphalt parking lot serving as the gateway to our city. Even moved to the sidewalk, such a structure will not contribute to the new zoning district’s vision and will not be compliant with its pending regulations. The Form Based District was developed to prevent this type of auto-centric suburban development within its boundaries.
Residents spent years working toward a vision of what Forest Park Southeast ought to be. This fast food proposal is not it.Mourning the recent death of his father, Abdulrahman decided to return home after the roads had cleared. Encouraged by his cousins to join an outdoor barbeque on the evening of October 14, 2011, Abdulrahman suddenly heard drones piercing the sky moments before the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles executed him. Methodical in application, the UAVs indiscriminately butchered everyone within his vicinity.
Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi was born in Denver, Colorado. Before his government sanctioned death, he loved hip-hop music and talking with his friends on Facebook. He had been living with his grandparents in Yemen when he ran off in search of his estranged father, Anwar al-Aulaqi, commonly misspelled as “al |
It looks to me like this is not an issue for distros since their packaging just drops rustup and its proxies directly where it wants without running the rustup installer (basic rustup install is purposely simple like this).
Interaction between packaged Rust software that expects particular versions of rustc and rustup is bad. If Rust software wants to depend on rustc 1.10 it can do this traditionally via the package manager, but there is no way to express this if rustup is controlling the rustc version. Tricky issue.
The above case is most obviously manifested when building packages from source written in Rust. These expect to be built by the system’s toolchain. There may be ways to signal to rustup that these compilation scenarios should automatically use the “system” toolchain. e.g. if the source of these packages is always built in a specific subtree, there could be an override set on that subtree that tells rustup to use the "system" toolchain. Some complications here in the current design since you can’t just drop a configuration file into the tree itself to configure that like with rbenv.
rustup doesn’t have an option to install toolchains globally. Desirable feature, but needs careful design, haven’t put much effort into it.
Thoughts
To the suggestion of installing the rustup proxies as /usr/bin/{cargo,rustc}-rustup. This poses several difficulties, that I’m inclined not to do it. First, usability-wise it means that rustup users need to know to type cargo-rustup when working in Rust. This is pretty counter to rustup being a transparent drop-in for cargo; and I expect that if you install rustup it’s because you want to be in a rustup-world. Second, tools (primarily cargo) expect to be able to invoke rustc, etc. as ‘rustc’, and in rustup-world that rustc should be the rustc proxy. There are potential solutions to this, but I’d rather avoid.
There are some problems where it’s tempting for rustup and the system package manager to communicate about the active toolchain. I’d like to avoid this if at all possible. Very complex.
The idea to install rustup without its proxies is doable, but rustup would be quite crippled. It does break the primary functionality.
There will likely be situations in the future where rustup wants to create and delete proxy bins dynamically. This could change the calculus of the issues here in ways I’m not sure about yet, but istm the problems are not major - rustup will just create those proxies in ~/.cargo/bin as if it was doing cargo install.
I like the idea of a “system” toolchain where rustup can search the PATH for a copy of the tool it isn’t managing and defer to that, but the obvious problem is that both the rustup package and the rust package want their bins to be installed at the exact same place. I think if that issue is solved there is some path forward for solving the others.
Is it possible for the rustup package to modify the system-wide PATH variable? One solution would be to let the “normal” rust packages have the sweet /usr/bin location on the file system, and just put rustup somewhere else, with PATH precedence. Then let rustup defer to the system rustc via the rustup "system" toolchain, have rustup modify the override for the system package build directory to use the “system” toolchain during its install.Samuel Kealoha Keli Roaque and Immanuel Tre Collins have been identified as two of the suspects in a violent home invasion of an elderly couple. (LVMPD/KSNV)
TUESDAY 11:40 A.M. UPDATE - Two of the three suspects have been arrested in connection with this case. They have been identified as Immanuel Tre Collins and Samuel Kealoha Keli Roaque.
ORIGINAL STORY - Home invaders attacked a 97-year-old man inside his house along with a couple in their 70s. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department says three armed men broke into the house and fled in the family's Tesla.
In an update on Saturday, police obtained photos of the three male suspects, as well as women suspected in the illegal usage of the victim's credit cards.
Steve Schifer witnessed the home invaders flee from the scene.
"I started to hear some arguing. Mostly a woman's voice screaming and yelling," said Schifer.
Schifer tells us he still can't get the screams he heard coming from the central valley home out of his head. He lives right across the street. Investigators say a busted side window next to the front door shows where the invaders gained entry into the house.
"The sound of the screams, I could still hear it. It just -- it was shivering. It was like oh my gosh there is something going on," said Schifer.
LVMPD says just after 1 a.m. Wednesday, three men armed with knives entered the home on Holbrook Drive, a neighborhood near Flamingo and Lindell. Investigators say a couple in their 70s and a 97-year-old man were inside when the home invaders confronted them. Police say the thieves ended up stealing property and left with the couple's royal blue Tesla Model S car. Schifer witnessed the violent suspects get away.
"I came outside and was looking through my gate here and what I saw was the garage door was open and a car was racing off. I should say it was opening and closing and a car was racing off," said Schifer.
Police say as the thieves sped off in the Tesla, the homeowner ended up getting dragged across the driveway. The victim and his wife needed to go to the hospital after suffering injuries from the home invaders.
The unoccupied vehicle was later found by the North Las Vegas Police Department near the 2200 block of Travis Street.
Family members, off camera, say their 97-year-old grandfather was roughed up. Police believe this home invasion may have been random.
"I’ve been here for over 30 years. This is about the first time something like this has happened. It's usually a very quiet neighborhood," said neighbor Horacio Lopez.
Lopez says he will now live in fear. Police have not released a description of the three home invaders.
"That scares the neighborhood, you have to be more careful. May formulate a neighborhood watch program," said Lopez.
Anyone with information is urged to contact the LVMPD Spring Valley Area Command Patrol Investigations Section at 702-828-2640 or Crime Stoppers at 702-385-5555.Today marks the official release of Bitcoin Core 0.12.0, the twelfth generation of Bitcoin's reference client as first launched by Satoshi Nakamoto seven years ago. Developed by close to 100 contributors over seven months, the latest version of Bitcoin Core includes more than 20 improvements, particularly regarding performance, security and usability.
These are the sixth most notable changes.
Memory Pool Limiting
Memory pools are the collections of unconfirmed transactions as stored individually by all full nodes. Memory pools fill up in between blocks as new transactions are transmitted over the Bitcoin network and are depleted when these transactions are included in blocks. But if a series of subsequent blocks remain full for an extended period – either due to legitimate transactions or spam attacks – memory pools might not deplete completely, and backlogs could build up. With no maximum limit, the backlog might even grow to the point where nodes run out of memory and crash. (This is the “crash landing” scenario former Bitcoin XT lead developer Mike Hearn feared.)
Memory pool limiting, as the name suggests, enforces a hard limit on the maximum size of memory pools to prevent this scenario. If the maximum is reached, nodes reject or clear their memory pools of transactions that offer the lowest amount of fees per byte.
Full node operators can configure their limits, but the default maximum size in Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 is set on 300 megabytes.
Blockchain Pruning for Wallet Users
One of the burdens of running a full node is the requirement to store the complete blockchain. This adds up to 55 gigabytes at the time of this writing, and can grow another 50 gigabytes per year under the current 1-megabyte block size limit.
To decrease this requirement, Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 allows users to prune the blockchain, which means they can get rid of older data once their node has verified it. The amount of data to keep is configurable, though Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 will still require a minimum 2 gigabytes of disk space.
Pruning the blockchain does mean these nodes will no longer be able to share all the blockchain data with peers, such as full nodes syncing with the network for the first time.
(It should be noted that pruning the blockchain was first introduced in Bitcoin Core 0.11.0, but was not yet available for users running Bitcoin Core as a wallet.)
Upload Traffic Limiting
Full nodes continually transmit and relay transactions and blocks to each other over Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer network. This typically requires a modest amount of data to be downloaded, but sharing that same data with several peers at the same time can add up to significant upload costs.
Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 introduces a configurable data cap for upload traffic. If this cap comes within reach, the node will seize uploading blocks older than a week, typically requested by nodes first syncing with the network. Additionally, any light clients will be disconnected and no longer served any block data.
Opt-in Replace-by-fee
As the number of transactions on the Bitcoin network increases, not all transactions might fit into blocks. As such, miners will probably pick the transactions sent by users who included most fees. This means that some transactions – from users that paid too low a fee – could never confirm at all. And since many full nodes and miners currently reject conflicting transactions (sent from the same inputs as an earlier transaction), low fee transactions can get “stuck” on the network.
To solve this, Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 introduces opt-in replace-by-fee. If a transaction is sent using opt-in replace-by-fee, users can replace their own transaction with a newer transaction by including a higher fee. (This also means that miners can increase their income, as they get to pick transactions that include higher fees.)
The “opt-in” part of opt-in replace-by-fee means these types of transactions will not be the default, and will be flagged as replace-by-fee transactions on the Bitcoin network. Anyone relying on zero-confirmation transactions should want to monitor for these replace-by-fee transactions, as these could very easily be reverted until they are confirmed. (Of course, zero-confirmation transactions were never secure.)
Whether opt-in replace-by-fee will actually be useful depends on Bitcoin miners; they ultimately decide which transactions to include in blocks, and under what policies.
Tor by Default
While Bitcoin is often claimed to provide anonymity to users, this is not entirely true. Bitcoin users can be de-anonymized, for example, through the peer-to-peer network. If it is determined from which IP-address a transaction originated, this information can be used to identify Bitcoin users.
To protect users' privacy, Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 automatically connects to the Bitcoin network through anonymizing tool Tor (The Onion Router) – if Tor is installed on the same computer. Tor encrypts data and routes it through several nodes all across the world before broadcasting it. This makes it hard – perhaps impossible – to trace where a Bitcoin transaction originated.
(It should be noted that using Tor in itself might not be sufficient to protect a Bitcoin user’s identity. See Bitcoin Magazine's Beginners Guide to Bitcoin Privacy for more information.)
Faster Signature Validation
Signatures are the cryptographic trick where private keys are “combined” with any other data to calculate a unique string of numbers. Corresponding public keys can be used to verify that the signatures were created using the private keys. In Bitcoin's case, signatures are effectively used to prove ownership of bitcoin, and, as such, to validate transactions.
But there are several ways to conduct this cryptographic trick, which could result in different signatures – all valid in their own way. And if different Bitcoin nodes apply different methods for validation, some nodes might consider certain transactions valid while other nodes do not, which could split the Bitcoin network.
Following up on a soft fork to solve this problem last year, Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 now switches all validation from the “OpenSSL” cryptographic library to “libsecp256k1”, developed by Dr. Pieter Wuille, Gregory Maxwell and other Bitcoin Core developers.
As an added benefit, this new signature validation scheme requires less CPU-power, lowering the cost of running a full node and significantly decreasing block validation time.
For a full list of improvements, see Bitcoin Core 0.12.0's release notes on GitHub.
Thanks to Bitcoin Core lead developer Wladimir van der Laan, and Ciphrex CEO and Bitcoin Core developer Eric Lombrozo for proofreading and added feedback.You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters
— Cocoa Cinnamon plans to open a micro-roastery and third retail location in Durham, owners said Tuesday.
"We've been in development on this for about a year and now that Hillsborough Road (the second Cocoa Cinnamon location) is out of beta mode, we are starting on our final location," owner Leon Grodski de Barrera said.
The micro-roastery, which will be located alongside the new retail store at 2013 Chapel Hill Road, will supply Cocoa Cinnamon's three locations with coffee, in addition to the blends from guest roasters.
"The three shops together will make one cohesive whole, each part a piece of the puzzle," Grodski de Barrera said.
Areli and Leon Grodski de Barrera started their business as bikeCoffee, a mobile coffee shop that was a staple at many food truck rodeos. That success led them to open Cocoa Cinnamon's flagship location, at 420 W. Geer St., in 2013. The second location opened earlier this year at 2627 Hillsborough Road.
David Solow Art and Design, which worked on the first two locations, plans to create a look for the third location that will gel with the Lakewood neighborhood. Expect the new shop location to have a more Mexican feel, to pay homage to co-owner Areli Barrera de Grodski
"We visited a place around the corner from Areli's Tia Nenna's house that we went into in Guadalajara and the feel of some of our family's residences in Nayarit will be touch points for design, plus some elements of the trip we just took in the Mediterranean that play in to the histories of coffee and chocolate," Leon Grodski de Barrera said.
The third shop's menu will also feature some new items like made-to-order churros with chocolate.
No word on when the new location will open.All of the people who insisted that the new face of the 2015 Ford Mustang would prevent it from succeeding in the United States are clearly incorrect, as the Mustang posted incredible sales numbers in April 2015. The Chevrolet Camaro posted growth over the past two months and the Dodge Challenger posted record sales figures in April 2015, but the Mustang still beat the Camaro and the Challenger in April sales.
April 2015 Mustang Sales
With a stunning total of 13,144 units sold last month, Ford sold more Mustangs than I have ever seen in my 4 years of covering the segment sales race and this comes after the Mustang posted a similar record in March when “only” 12,663 units were sold. 13,144 Mustangs sold in April marks an increase of 82% over the same month last year, when only the 2014 Mustang was available – clearly showing the popularity of the next generation models.
Back to back monster sales months for the 2015 Ford Mustang have led to very strong sales numbers through the first third of the calendar year, with a whopping 42,955 units sold thus far. Through all of 2014, Ford sold 82,635 Mustang coupes and convertibles and while we are only 4 months into 2015, the Mustang has already sold 52% of the total from all of 2014.
At this rate, Ford is on pace to sale over 128,000 Mustangs in 2015, but I don’t think that the current average of 10,739 units per month will continue all year long. However, the Mustang has a very real chance of topping 100,000 units sold in 2015. To do so, Ford needs to average just 7,130 units per month from May through December and during the 2014 calendar year, Ford averaged 6,880 Mustangs sold per month with just the previous generation models available.
Camaro and Challenger Sales
The Chevrolet Camaro posted another lackluster month in April 2015, moving just 6,909 units, but that was enough for the Chevy muscle car to pull back into the second spot in segment sales after trailing the Mustang and the Challenger in March. Camaro sales are solid, but they are surely down a bit from where they would be if not for a new generation model on its way.
On the other hand, things are going great for the Dodge Challenger, as the Mopar muscle car continues to enjoy the sales boom of both an exterior refresh and the arrival of the Hellcat models with 707 horsepower. Dodge sold 6,771 Challengers last month, which is a new sales record for the modern era of the Challenger.
Mustang Versus the Competition
While some critics will insist that these strong sales are due to the new 2015 Mustang and that same boom is to be expected of any brand new sports car, so I dug up the sales figures from the Chevrolet Camaro in its first year of existence in modern form. For those unsure, the Camaro was introduced for the 2010 model year in the summer of 2009 after the Camaro had been out of production since 2003. GM fans were frothing at the bit to finally have their muscle car back and when the Camaro arrived, it instantly became the bestselling performance car in America.
However, during the first 12 months of sales for the 5th generation Camaro, the best month was June 2009, when 9,320 Chevy muscle cars were sold. At no point in the first year of sales did the Camaro top 10,000 units and in the past four years in which I’ve been covering the muscle car segment sales, Camaro has only topped 10,000 units once – the Mustang has topped 12,000 each of the last two months.
In other words, when you compare the early success of the 2015 Ford Mustang to the early success of the current Chevrolet Camaro, the Mustang has a huge sales advantage, but it is hard to compare two calendar years that far apart, as the economic climate also plays a big part in performance car sales.
The big test will come when the 2016 Chevrolet Camaro hits the market later this year. It will be interesting to see if the new Camaro can match the insane sales figures of the new Mustang.MATCH MOVIE
@rainmakerXokada vs @KennyOmegamanX on #njdominion shocked the world!!
Subscribe & watch it on https://t.co/Tj7UBJ4PjP#njpw #njpwworld pic.twitter.com/WNFjEKq5mj — njpwworld (@njpwworld) 2017年6月11日
WRESTLER COMMENT
-- A 60 minute draw. This wasn't the best result for you, but an unbelievable encounter. Reflecting on it now, what are your thoughts?
Okada:
‘It’s all too much. I never thought I'd have an opponent that took me to the 60 minute mark, let alone beyond that and not be beaten. He took me to my limits, past them. It was a real surprise.’
Gedo:
‘Superhuman.’
-- There were a lot of moments in that match where it could easily have been over. What kept you going?
Okada:
‘Foremost was this (title). We both wanted the belt, both wanted to be champion at the end of it all, and that match was the result. It wasn't about who was better, it was about who was going to give up the title and neither of us did.’
-- You said on the mic you were going to make it rain the world over. Where did that come from?
Okada:
‘It was a tie in the end, but I am still champion, it was a successful defence, and next is LA. There were people all over the world watching that match, that saw just how great New Japan Pro Wrestling is. Next time I defend the IWGP title it will be in America, so the time has come to make it rain worldwide.’
-- What do you think of Cody’s challenge?
Okada:
‘He's welcome to try. He and I have only shared a ring once so neither I nor the NJPW fans have a clear idea of how good he really is. It's clear he is very able, it's a fresh opponent for me, and he has an international name. So if the company decide to make it official, he's a good challenger for LA.’
-- You made it clear tonight that the IWGP Heavyweight Championship is indeed on a whole other level. As we head to LA, what kind of title match do you want to have there?
Okada:
‘I want to have a match that says “this is New Japan Pro Wrestling”. The American fans want that, and of course the Japanese fans will be watching on NJPW World. To Japanese fans maybe it's the same NJPW, but it has a different nuance to bring that to America. I want to show the level of an IWGP title match and have people say “come back to LA”. Or, “Come to New York”. Basically to have people all over the world wanting us to bring our product there. This is the first step toward that.’
-- This was your first 60 minute draw. How are you feeling, mentally and physically after all that time?
Okada:
‘Honestly not all that different to any other challenge, I'm sore, I'm weak, my hands feel numb. Obviously I took a lot of punishment, but as time went on, it became harder and harder to stand, I was spaghetti legged. It was my first 60 minute match, but it was hard fought all the way. And Kenny too- I can't honestly say “we drew at 60 but if we had 70 minutes I would have beaten him”. I just don't know. That's how tough Kenny was. I haven't felt that way about an opponent for a long time.’
-- What had changed about him since January 4?
Okada:
‘It has to be how he feels toward the belt. Back in January, he fell a step short. When the LA shows were decided, he had a different mindset, that he wanted to be a champion by then and take the belt to America. That, plus the disappointment from before really drove him to be as good as he was tonight.’
-- He had said that he came back to New Japan to beat you.
Okada:
‘I said after the Dome “that match was enough for now” between us, but then we went to a draw tonight. He's definitely someone I have to face again, no question. It can't end in another draw. I have to show everyone that Okada is better.’FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler and supplier Robert Bosch [ROBG.UL] are teaming up to develop self-driving cars in an alliance aimed at accelerating the production of “robo-taxis”.
The pact between the world’s largest maker of premium cars and the world’s largest automotive supplier forms a powerful counterweight to new auto industry players like ride-hailing firms Uber and Didi which are also working on self-driving cars.
Technology companies and carmakers are striving to adjust to a shifting landscape in the auto industry as consumers increasingly use smartphones to locate, hail and rent vehicles, rather than going out and buying cars.
The alliance not only marks an end to Daimler’s efforts to develop an autonomous car largely on its own, but moves the auto industry’s ambitions beyond simply developing prototype vehicles towards industrial-scale production of self-driving cars.
Financial terms were not disclosed of the deal between the two German companies, which was announced on Tuesday.
Bosch - which was founded in 1886, the same year that Mercedes founder Carl Benz patented the motorcar - will develop software and algorithms needed for autonomous driving together with the carmaker.
Bosch said Mercedes would be able to use the jointly developed system for two years before it could be offered to competitors.
The deal will help the automotive supplier make up ground in a competitive autonomous driving system sector where rivals Continental, Delphi, ZF [ZFF.UL] and others have also made heavy investments.
For Daimler and its Mercedes division, teaming up with Bosch helps them throw more engineering resources at autonomous cars, allowing them to speed up the process of creating a production-ready system for autonomous cars by several years.
The autonomous system will now be ready by the beginning of next decade, Daimler said, without disclosing when it had first envisaged the commercial launch of automated taxis, or robo-taxis.
“The prime objective of the project is to achieve the production-ready development of a driving system which will allow cars to drive fully autonomously in the city,” Daimler said in a statement on Tuesday.
The company will continue to build and sell vehicles that can be manually operated by individual drivers.
CAR COMES TO DRIVER
The market for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles is expected to grow from about $3 billion in 2015 to $96 billion in 2025 and $290 billion in 2035, Goldman Sachs said last year.
Daimler is focusing its efforts on the app-based car-sharing and ride-hailing sector dominated by China’s Didi, and U.S.-based Uber [UBER.UL] and Lyft. Like autonomous cars, this market is a big global growth area and is expected to expand by 28 percent a year to 2030, according to consultancy McKinsey.
FILE PHOTO - A company logo on BOSCH building is pictured at the company's new research and advance development centre Campus Renningen during a guided media tour in Renningen, Germany, September 30, 2015. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo
“Within a specified area of town, customers will be able to order an automated shared car via their smartphone. The vehicle will then make its way autonomously to the user,” Daimler said. “The idea behind it is that the vehicle should come to the driver rather than the other way round.”
The cutthroat competition to launch self-driven cars has forced carmakers to shift strategy from an evolutionary towards a revolutionary approach.
Instead of evolving driver assistance systems to achieve full autonomy, carmakers are now experimenting with radical car designs combined with software-driven development - which has led to alliances with technology companies.
Mercedes-Benz’s arch rival BMW teamed up with Israeli autonomous vehicle tech company Mobileye and chip maker Intel last year to develop new technology that could put autonomous cars on the road by 2021.
Intel has since agreed to buy Mobileye for $15.3 billion, a deal which followed Qualcomm’s $47 billion move to acquire Dutch automotive chip supplier NXP.
Before deciding to partner with Bosch, Mercedes-Benz had two engineering teams, totaling about 500 people, working on autonomous vehicles. One took an evolutionary approach, upgrading the capabilities of conventional vehicles, while the other team took a more radical approach to the car’s design.
Bosch and Mercedes did not disclose how many additional engineers they would assign to the teams in Stuttgart and Silicon Valley.
“Cars which do not rely on any driver input have a different architecture and sensor setup, with more radar and cameras,” Christoph von Hugo, a senior Mercedes-Benz safety manager, told Reuters at a recent event to present safety systems.
NO STEERING WHEEL NEEDED
The current Mercedes E-Class can cruise without driver input on highways, keeping the distance to the car in front and staying in lane using a system which has “level 2” autonomy.
Full autonomy - known as an “eyes off, brains off” or “level 5” system - does away with even the need for a steering wheel.
“We don’t want to wait until level 3 has arrived before we start with level 4/5. That will be too late,” von Hugo said, adding the prospect of new revenue streams from maintaining fleets of robo-taxis was a big motivating factor for doubling up the carmaker’s R&D efforts.
Autonomous vehicles came closer to road-going reality after Google unveiled a prototype car which it developed with the help of Bosch back in 2012. Mercedes-Benz responded by developing an S-class limousine that drove 103 km (64 miles) between the German towns of Mannheim and Pforzheim a year later.
Real commercial applications for autonomous cars will start to take off between 2020 and 2025, Ola Kaellenius, Daimler board member and head of Group Research and Mercedes-Benz Cars development told Reuters last month.
“If you take the robo-taxi, you start perhaps in a city or several cities or areas of cities, and then you grow from there,” he said. “The key is to get to something that you can commercialise, scale up.”
Slideshow (2 Images)
Bosch is already one of the world’s largest suppliers of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and recently announced an alliance with U.S. tech firm Nvidia to develop a self-driving computer for production cars. Mercedes-Benz and auto supplier ZF also have separate alliances with Nvidia.
The Bosch-Daimler alliance will rely on high-definition mapping systems provided by HERE, the digital mapping firm owned by BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Intel.The Los Angeles Clippers' options for dealing Eric Bledsoe should they reverse course and decide to part with their prized young point guard appear to be increasing before Thursday's NBA trade deadline.
Sources with knowledge of the situation told ESPN.com late Saturday there is a level of mutual interest between the Clippers and Utah Jazz in exploring a deal that would feature Bledsoe as the headliner in a trade package for Jazz forward Paul Millsap.
Although two sources with knowledge of the Clippers' thinking insisted during All-Star Weekend that Bledsoe would not be moved in coming days and strongly predicted L.A. would stand pat, two other sources indicated the Clippers and Jazz will at least discuss the feasibility of a trade headlined by Bledsoe and Millsap before the deadline.
The Boston Celtics have expressed the league's most well-chronicled interest in trading for Bledsoe, through a deal that would require Celtics forward Kevin Garnett to waive his no-trade clause so Boston could send Garnett to L.A. for Bledsoe and either young center DeAndre Jordan or veteran forward Caron Butler.
But Garnett was adamant Saturday in a media session with reporters in conjunction with the East's All-Star practice in Houston that there is no scenario in which he'd consent to waive the no-trade clause, irrespective of his close relationship with Clippers guard Chauncey Billups or the fact that he makes his offseason home in Malibu.
The Clippers have been telling teams for weeks they value Bledsoe too highly to move him. It's widely presumed he'll be traded eventually, given the fact he's playing behind Chris Paul and is only expected to continue to improve. But rival executives have been pessimistic about the likelihood of prying Bledsoe away until Paul is signed to a long-term deal, which won't happen until July. Bledsoe himself, isn't a restricted free agent until summer 2014, which is said to only add to the desire of Clippers management to be patient.
Yet there is a school of thought the Clippers' best move to increase the chances of the sort of deep playoff run that would clinch Paul's signature on a new long-term deal this summer is trying to trade for Garnett or Boston teammate Paul Pierce to fortify the roster with more playoff experience.
The appeal of Millsap, by contrast, is he'd conceivably help the Clippers in the frontcourt immediately, as well as in the future because of his age (28). Utah's interest in finding a good young point guard, meanwhile, is an open secret around the league that has led to longstanding speculation that either Millsap or Al Jefferson would be moved by the deadline, given that both are scheduled to become free agents such as Paul in July.People in the Netherlands have reason to celebrate today, following the expected passing into law of new net neutrality regulation. The legislation in question was agreed upon back in June last year, but it's only on Tuesday that the nation's second legislative chamber gave its blessing to the move, making everything official. Under the new law, mobile internet providers like KPN won't be able to charge for access to particular services like Skype or throttle traffic through them — both techniques that the company was intent on using to manage its mobile traffic.
Some exceptional reasons, such as network congestion and security, are allowed for slowing down users' connections, but the general thrust of the law is that operators ought to be blind to the traffic they carry and treat all of it equally. Dutch lobbying group Bits of Freedom also notes that the net neutrality law includes anti-wiretapping provisions, making it unlawful to use deep packet inspection on users' internet communications without their express consent or a legal warrant. All in all, it's a good day for privacy and internet freedom in the Netherlands, now how about we spread the good cheer throughout the whole European Union?Variance Explained, and kindly contributed to (This article was first published on, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)
This year Julia Silge and I released the tidytext package for text mining using tidy tools such as dplyr, tidyr, ggplot2 and broom. One of the canonical examples of tidy text mining this package makes possible is sentiment analysis.
Sentiment analysis is often used by companies to quantify general social media opinion (for example, using tweets about several brands to compare customer satisfaction). One of the simplest and most common sentiment analysis methods is to classify words as “positive” or “negative”, then to average the values of each word to categorize the entire document. (See this vignette and Julia’s post for examples of a tidy application of sentiment analysis). But does this method actually work? Can you predict the positivity or negativity of someone’s writing by counting words?
To answer this, let’s try sentiment analysis on a text dataset where we know the “right answer”- one where each customer also quantified their opinion. In particular, we’ll use the Yelp Dataset: a wonderful collection of millions of restaurant reviews, each accompanied by a 1-5 star rating. We’ll try out a specific sentiment analysis method, and see the extent to which we can predict a customer’s rating based on their written opinion. In the process we’ll get a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of sentiment analysis, and explore another example of tidy text mining with tidytext, dplyr, and ggplot2.
Setup
I’ve downloaded the yelp_dataset_challenge_academic_dataset folder from here. First I read and process them into a data frame:
library ( stringr ) library ( jsonlite ) # Each line is a JSON object- the fastest way to process is to combine into a # single JSON string and use fromJSON and flatten reviews_combined str_c ( "[", str_c ( review_lines, collapse = ", " ), "]" ) reviews fromJSON ( reviews_combined ) %>% flatten () %>% tbl_df ()
We now have a data frame with one row per review:
reviews
## # A tibble: 200,000 x 10 ## user_id review_id stars date ## ## 1 PUFPaY9KxDAcGqfsorJp3Q Ya85v4eqdd6k9Od8HbQjyA 4 2012-08-01 ## 2 Iu6AxdBYGR4A0wspR9BYHA KPvLNJ21_4wbYNctrOwWdQ 5 2014-02-13 ## 3 auESFwWvW42h6alXgFxAXQ fFSoGV46Yxuwbr3fHNuZig 5 2015-10-31 ## 4 uK8tzraOp4M5u3uYrqIBXg Di3exaUCFNw1V4kSNW5pgA 5 2013-11-08 ## 5 I_47G-R2_egp7ME5u_ltew 0Lua2-PbqEQMjD9r89-asw 3 2014-03-29 ## 6 PP_xoMSYlGr2pb67BbqBdA 7N9j5YbBHBW6qguE5DAeyA 1 2014-10-29 ## 7 JPPhyFE-UE453zA6K0TVgw mjCJR33jvUNt41iJCxDU_g 4 2014-11-28 ## 8 2d5HeDvZTDUNVog_WuUpSg Ieh3kfZ-5J9pLju4JiQDvQ 5 2014-02-27 ## 9 BShxMIUwaJS378xcrz4Nmg PU28OoBSHpZLkYGCmNxlmg 5 2015-06-16 ## 10 fhNxoMwwTipzjO8A9LFe8Q XsA6AojkWjOHA4FmuAb8XQ 3 2012-08-19 ## #... with 199,990 more rows, and 6 more variables: text, ## # type, business_id, votes.funny, votes.useful, ## # votes.cool
Notice the stars column with the star rating the user gave, as well as the text column (too large to display) with the actual text of the review. For now, we’ll focus on whether we can predict the star rating based on the text.
Tidy sentiment analysis
Right now, there is one row for each review. To analyze in the tidy text framework, we need to use the unnest_tokens function and turn this into one-row-per-term-per-document:
library ( tidytext ) review_words reviews %>% select ( review_id, business_id, stars, text ) %>% unnest_tokens ( word, text ) %>% filter (! word %in% stop_words $ word, str_detect ( word, "^[a-z']+$" )) review_words
## # A tibble: 7,688,667 x 4 ## review_id business_id stars word ## ## 1 Ya85v4eqdd6k9Od8HbQjyA 5UmKMjUEUNdYWqANhGckJw 4 hoagie ## 2 Ya85v4eqdd6k9Od8H |
recently complained to Quebec’s French language office and Cooper received a letter ordering her to translate the page, or she could face a fine.
Lawyer Michael Bergman, who specializes in constitutional and human rights issues, told CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning the Quebec government can’t regulate Facebook because it is fleeting, free communication.
Bergman believes this could become a human rights issue.
“The language charter was enacted before social media existed and, for that matter, before the internet was popular," Bergman said.
"(The French language office) is expanding into the cyber sphere an ancient concept, so to speak, of traditional advertising. Social media is far from advertising, it's an interactive dialogue."
Bergman also said the law does not stipulate all advertising must be in French and it specifically mentions just paper items such as catalogues, pamphlets or brochures.
The law in question is Quebec’s Bill 101, which Bergman said has never been challenged in court.
“The reason I joined Facebook in the first place - I didn’t do a website - was because it was a way to communicate,” she told CBC News.
Facebook an advertising tool
But the provincial language office argues Facebook is more than just a conversation.
Lawyer Michael Bergman says Bill 101, the language law in Quebec, was enacted before social media or the internet existed and has never been altered to include new forms of advertising. (McGill College) Blanc, a language office spokesman. “More and more we see businesses using social media to advertise, to sell products. This is where the law comes in.” “When it’s used for commercial publication, or commercial advertising, then it has to be written in French,” said Jean-Pierre Le, a language office spokesman. “More and more we see businesses using social media to advertise, to sell products. This is where the law comes in.”
On Thursday, social media users agreed with Cooper and expressed their opinions on, you guessed it, Facebook and Twitter.
Cooper has benefited from this story, in a way. Her Facebook page has been “liked” more than 5,200 times since her story was aired on CBC News late Wednesday night.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A transgender woman from Staten Island is finally out of prison, but she is far from free.
Antonio Bohanna, who fled from the south to New York City three years ago, thought life would be better in the big city.
But after an abusive relationship and a traumatic stint in jail for killing her partner during a domestic dispute, it's been a tumultuous transition.
"I thought I could be more free here," Bohanna said in an interview with the Advance. "But I still feel like I'm in jail."
Bohanna spent about a year behind bars before pleading guilty to manslaughter for fatally stabbing her boyfriend last year.
She was sentenced to six months in prison and five years' probation, and released on time served.
"Even though I'm out, my life will never be the same," Bohanna said. "Sometimes I don't want to live."
'IT WAS AN ACCIDENT'
On March 4, 2016, Bohanna and her partner, Kamel Milhouse, 26, got into a heated verbal altercation that quickly escalated into a physical struggle, she said.
Bohanna claims Milhouse was drunk and desperate for drugs when he initiated the fight in their Sea View home.
She claims he beat her for 15 minutes before he grabbed a four-inch kitchen knife off the counter and jumped at her. When Milhouse came at her, she said, she twisted his hand that was holding the knife and he stabbed himself in the left side.
"It was an accident," Bohanna said. "He tried to choke me. I had knots on my head, a swollen face and cuts on my hand from fighting with him."
Bohanna claims Milhouse begged her not to call 911 because he had an active bench warrant against him, but after a few minutes she called for help because he was bleeding.
Officers responding to a 911 call about an assault found Milhouse with a stab wound to his back at about 12:15 a.m., according to an NYPD statement.
When the ambulance arrived, she said, an EMS worker was trying to stop the bleeding, but Milhouse was resisting.
He was then rushed to Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze, where he was pronounced dead.
"I'm sorry he's gone," she said. "I hurt every day."
'NEVER KNEW HE WAS DEAD'
Bohanna was taken to the 121st Precinct stationhouse in Graniteville and interrogated by homicide detectives.
She said she was there from 2:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. answering questions about the incident.
"I stuck him," Bohanna told detectives as they arrested her for allegedly knifing her partner to death, according to the criminal complaint.
But, she said, she thought the police were trying to help her because they were treating her like the victim, when she was really a suspect.
"I never knew he was dead while they were questioning me," Bohanna said. "I was in shock when they told me. I still feel shock. Sometimes I can't believe it's real."
Bohanna was initially charged with second-degree murder, but a grand jury declined to indict her on that charge. Instead, she was indicted on counts of second-degree manslaughter and fourth-degree criminal weapon possession.
She was arraigned in state Supreme Court and bail at $100,000 bond or $50,000 cash was set.
But Bohanna didn't have the money, and spent a year bouncing around to various city jails, including a harrowing stay at Rikers, where there is no transgender unit.
During her incarceration in general population, she said, she was raped twice and assaulted three times.
She was then placed in protective custody at the facility, she said.
Before her third day in jail, Bohanna admitted she tried ending her life by taking 100 pills. She then spent two weeks at Bellevue recovering, she said.
"I couldn't take it anymore," Bohanna said. "Jail is hard for transgender people.
"That's why I took the plea. I wanted to go to trial, but knew it would take a long time."
A Department of Corrections spokesperson did not provide specifics about Bohanna's time at Rikers.
But in a statement to the Advance said: "DOC has a zero tolerance policy with regard to sexual abuse. As part of our top-to-bottom reform initiative, we are working to bring our agency into compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act."
'ADDICTED TO ABUSE'
Bohanna said she and Milhouse dated for about 15 months, and it was physical and violent throughout the relationship.
She claims her ex would punch, choke, spit on her, hit her with a bottle and even pulled a gun on her.
In one incident, she said he was attacking her outside the 121st Precinct stationhouse and a plainclothes detectives brought two officers to help her. In another incident, Milhouse charged at her with a knife while she was on the phone with 911, she said.
Court records show Milhouse was arrested on Staten Island 10 times after Bohanna filed complaints. The charges included robbery and assault.
"He was never locked up," she said. "They would just let him go and give an order of protection."
Milhouse, an ex-con, had a total of 66 arrests and was incarcerated several times, according to court records.
Bohanna documented the abuse by visiting Safe Horizon, a victim's assistance organization. In 2015, she went there about 40 times to get help with safety planning, crisis intervention and counseling.
But, she admits, if Milhouse was still alive, she would be with him.
"I'm addicted to abusive relationships," she said. "It made me feel like a woman because he was controlling and would put his hands on me."
--
Want to discuss this report? Click here for the comments section.Harry Kane scored 21 times in the top flight in 2014-15 and won the Golden Boot with 25 league goals last season
Tottenham striker Harry Kane says he has "no doubts" he will sign a new contract with the Premier League club.
The 23-year-old earns a reported £50,000 a week in a deal running until 2020 and talks have opened with Spurs about improving that.
Despite being out for seven weeks with injury, the England player has scored five goals this term, including two in a 3-2 win over West Ham on Saturday.
"I am happy at the club and want to be here for a long, long time," said Kane.
"We are in talks and I'm sure we will get something sorted. I'm not panicking and I'm not demanding anything as I've read in the paper."
"We're having a conversation and I have no doubts that we will get it sorted," added Kane.
Harry Kane's goals-per-game ratio in league games in 2016 is the 13th best in Europe's top five leagues
Kane scored 21 times in the top flight in 2014-15 and won the Golden Boot with 25 league goals last season.
After the West Ham match on Saturday, Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino said Kane was "one of the best strikers in the world".
"Hopefully we will have no issues with the contract - we have only just started talking about it. Get that down and get that wrapped up," said Kane.
"We've got a great young team, new training ground, new stadium being built, great young manager. The future is very bright.
"It's important that we keep hold of all our players and keep building on this great team that we have."
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox.Marten's boss is named Scott, in case you were curious. His lackadaisical attitude towards office dress code is one of the few perks of Marten's job. We'll be seeing a little more of Scott this week, thanks to the powers of continuity.In case you missed it, I did a guest strip for Wigu over the weekend. Here's a direct link if you don't feel like scrolling back one or two strips. I had tons of fun drawing it. Thanks to JeffR for the opportunity!My friend Charles V recently started a webcomic of his own. It is called Lead and Wax and is a delight to read and look at. You should check it out, Charles is a hecka nice guy as well. Incidentally, if any of my readers do PHP-type stuff, he'd probably be really happy to have a database and updating interface so that he doesn't have to hand-code every new strip into the site. I used to do that back in the early days of QC (can you believe it's been more than six months since I started this? OMGWTF) and it is not much fun. So yeah, if you want to help a guy out as he gets his feet of the ground (lead and wax wings nonwithstanding), drop him a line.People really seem to like the new shirts I put up for sale! Just think, if you order a shirt not only are you obtaining a kick-ass piece of quality apparel, you are making a grown man's eyes mist up a little with gratitude. Also, depending on which shirt you order you might be making fun of emo. Everyone likes that! Well, except the emo kids I guess. But they're already miserable.The account activation script for the forums has been acting up lately, so if you registered but never got an account activation email, please drop me a line (jephco at yahoo dot com) and let me know. I will activate your account manually, because I am nice like that.So apparently Buzzcomix reset itself a little early this month. Okay, two weeks early. They are dumb. Still, being in the top 10 for this long has been completely awesome. Thanks as always to everyone who votes, you are wonderful people for choosing to spread the word about QC.That's all for now, I have some more Unreal Tournament 2004 to play before Adult Swim comes on. Have as nice a Monday as possible (be sure to file those TPS reports) and I will see you later on in the week!After the recent surprises brought about by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, many are questioning whether democracy is an effective system. In last year’s edition of our annual Democracy Index, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s analysts identified public anxiety as a stress point for democracies in 2016 (watch out for the next edition of the Democracy Index, due in January). For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), electoral travails in some of the world’s leading democracies provide succour and reinforce its message to the people of China that democracy is not desirable. However, there is no avoiding messy politics; it is just a matter of the means through which it happens and to what extent it does so in public view.
China has its own messy elections. Fluid power alliances within the CCP, combined with certain set-piece events, fulfil a role similar to multi-party electoral processes in democracies. One critical such event is the reshuffling of the politburo, which will take place at the end of 2017. Just as in the US election, punditry here is based on speculation and gossip, along with occasional facts. The CCP election process can be just as messy as a democratic election, and China is not immune to the risk of unexpected outcomes.
Do you think China has a better system for political transition than the US? [My bolding.] How might the leadership changes affect your business? Let me know your thoughts via Twitter @Baptist_Simon or email on simo[email protected].
Best regards,
Simon Baptist
Chief EconomistA raucous crowd of supporters and protesters from both ends of the political spectrum showed up outside President Barack Obama's appearance in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, with some of his detractors turning to racially charged attacks to express their opposition.
From the Arizona Republic:
Obama foes at one point sang, "Bye Bye Black Sheep," a derogatory reference to the president's skin color, while protesters like Deanne Bartram raised a sign saying, "Impeach the Half-White Muslim!"
The Republic reported that hundreds of people gathered outside Desert Vista High School as Obama unveiled a plan to overhaul the nation's mortgage finance system. Some protesters came from Obama's left, urging him to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline and take other actions on climate change. But a prevailing theme among many in the protest appeared to be issues of race. Some even suggested that Obama himself was to blame for racial tensions.
“We have gone back so many years,” Judy Burris told the Republic, arguing Obama had taken the nation back to pre-Civil Rights era levels of racism. “He’s divided all the races. I hate him for that.”
Others carried signs calling for Obama to be impeached, Tucson News Now reported, though despite the negativity, the majority of those in attendance were Obama fans.AKC Introduces AKC Scent Work Contractors
AKC Scent Work is beyond pleased to introduce our Scent Work Contractors: Angela Ogle, Lisa Russell, Penelope Scott-Fox, and Stacy Barnett. These individuals have extensive Scent Work experience, and they will act as advisers to the program and assist judges and clubs in the administration of trials. Click each contractor's picture to read about their experience!
Angela Ogle
Angela Ogle
Valparaiso, Indiana
Angela Ogle brings to AKC Scent Work years of experience – she is a certified judge in three different Scent Work venues, and has hosted trials, organized new clubs, created educational programs, and even served on breed standard committees. She is a Hall of Fame breeder producing World Champion Disc Dogs, Versatility Winners and multiple National Specialty breed winners, as well as working dogs including cadaver, search and rescue, and canine entertainment. Angela’s interests in the dog world are wide ranging, including Conformation, Rally, Obedience, Shed Hunting, Dock Diving, Dog Parkour, Disc Dog, and Herding, in addition to Scent Work. Angela is the perfect person to introduce current dog clubs to this new sport, and AKC Scent Work is fortunate that she has agreed to lend her expertise. Angela is located in Valparaiso, Indiana. Angela can be reached at AXO@akc.org.
Lisa Russell
Lisa Russell
Ocala, Florida
Lisa Russell has been working with dogs professionally since 1980. She began her career in the United States Air Force where she worked as a Patrol Dog/Drug Detection Dog handler. In that role, she routinely conducted narcotics searches of military quarters, prisons, and naval ships. Lisa has been teaching Scent Work since 2013, and she was pivotal to bringing the sport of Scent Work to the state of Florida, which is now one of the most active areas of the country in AKC Scent Work. Lisa brings unmatched enthusiasm and a unique perspective to the AKC Scent Work program. Lisa is located in Ocala, Florida. Lisa can be reached at LXR2@akc.org.
Penelope Scott-Fox
Penelope Scott-Fox
Altadena, California
Penelope Scott-Fox is one of the 'orginal' seven founding instructors of the National Assocation of Canine Scent Work and has judged and certified innumerable trials. She was the first Chief Search Designer and judge for United States Canine Scent Sports. Penelope's dog Turner competed in all of NACSW’s National Invitationals to date – winning the 2015 trial in Colorado. Her dog Blaze is the first Nova Scotia Duck Tolling retriever to earn his Elite title. Penelope has been instrumental in the creation, establishment, and spread of Scent Work in the United States, and AKC Scent Work is very lucky to have her expertise. Penelope is located in Altadena, California. Penelope can be reached at PXS1@akc.org.
Stacy Barnett
Stacy Barnett
Belivdere, New Jersey
Stacy Barnett is a Fenzi Dog Sports Academy scent work instructor who has competed successfully at the National Association of Canine Scent Work 2017 National Invitational with placements and who has achieved ELT-CH on her Labrador, Judd. Stacy has a Chemical Engineering degree which uniquely positions her with extensive knowledge in scent theory. She also teaches extensively in the US as well as abroad, both online and in seminars. Stacy brings a strong understanding of odor and hide placement to the AKC Scent Work program. Stacy is located in Belvidere, New Jersey. Stacy can be reached at SXB1@akc.org.
AKC Scent Work- the newest sport!:
Updated Regulations:The Six Nations is on the lookout for a new sponsor after it was confirmed that the Royal Bank of Scotland Group would not continue its sponsorship of the championship beyond 2017.
RBS has been the title sponsor of the Six Nations since 2003, but the championship will bear the name of a different company from 2018.
"All good things must come to a natural end at some point," Six Nations Rugby chief executive John Feehan said. "As mutually beneficial as the relationship is, it is now time after 15 successful and fulfilling years to seek a new title sponsor to partner our great event and go forward with us into the future.
"We wish to extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to RBS for the valuable support we have received from the Bank over many years.
"We look forward to our final year with RBS in 2017 and we will wish them well in the future, as they also move on to other opportunities and initiatives."Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Nov. 19, 2014, 4:19 PM GMT / Updated Nov. 19, 2014, 3:51 PM GMT
Uber is looking into claims that an executive tracked a reporter with its "God View" tool without her consent, according to Buzzfeed News, as the company publicly released its data privacy policy for the first time. Johana Bhuiyan, a Buzzfeed News reporter, claimed that Josh Mohrer, the general manager of Uber New York, was waiting for her as she stepped out of her Uber car in front of the company's New York City headquarters. He reportedly told her, "I was tracking you." Corporate employees have access to something called the "God View" tool that can track any driver or user that has requested a car, two ex-Uber employees told Buzzfeed News. An Uber spokesperson told NBC News that "access to and use of data is permitted only for legitimate business purposes" and that "violations of this policy do result in disciplinary action, including the possibility of termination and legal action."
The report comes on the heels of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick apologizing on Twitter for comments made by Emil Michael, Uber's senior vice president for business, who said that Uber should hire opposition researchers to dig up dirt on reporters who write negative things about the company, as was separately reported by Buzzfeed News. Some celebrity users have chimed in on the controversy. They include John Hodgman from "The Daily Show," who said he was quitting the service, and Ashton Kutcher, an Uber investor, who defended the company on Twitter.
IN-DEPTH
SOCIAL
— Keith WagstaffANALYSIS/OPINION:
When President Obama chose a Friday before a three-day holiday weekend to address a matter as profound as the National Security Agency (NSA) spying scandal, I suspected he would raise issues that he hoped the media would ignore. That’s because the Reagan White House did a study in the early 1980s and concluded that Fridays are low-value news days, and thus, a good time to bury the lead, so to speak. Every president since then has followed that lead.
Instead of addressing the massive violations of the natural and constitutionally protected right to privacy; instead of acknowledging that but for the personal courage of Edward Snowden, his administration would still be pulling the wool over our eyes; and instead of re-establishing the serious constitutional and civil liberties bona fides he established for himself as a U.S. senator, the president defended his massive spying as a necessary tool in the fight to maintain national security and offered only a placebo to its critics.
Just how massive is this scandal? The Washington Post has reported that the NSA hacks into 500,000 American buddy lists and 600,000 American address books every day, and The Guardian of London reported last week that the NSA seizes 200 million American text messages every day. This is in addition to seizing the content of all cellphone- and landline-generated telephone conversations and copies of all emails sent or received in the United States. All of that is in addition to seizing all bank records, utility bills and credit card bills of everyone in the United States.
By not addressing or refuting any of this, the president obviously plans to continue it. He also plans to reject the most basic principles of American government. If the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, as the Declaration of Independence declares it does, and if the governed lack the lawful authority to hack and seize our neighbors’ texts, phone calls and utility bills, how could we have given that authority to the government?
In the president’s world, that’s an easy question to answer: Do it in secret. Enact legislation that lets a dozen NSA-sycophantic members of Congress speak for the legislative branch, tell only that dozen about the spying in secret and swear them to secrecy. Enact legislation that lets a dozen secret judges issue search warrants based on the government’s wishes rather than probable cause, and seek permission from any one of those judges in secret and swear them to secrecy. Then in public, deny and lie, and change the subject.
In a thinly disguised effort to change the subject, Mr. Obama’s Friday speech focused on where the seized data is stored, rather than on whether the government in a free society is empowered to collect it. He proposed that the data seized by the NSA be stored at nongovernment locations that he did not identify and kept there and be made available to the NSA after approval by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.
Even if a third party willing and able to store this data could be found, the additional step to the FISA court is no additional constitutional protection whatsoever. Every federal and state court in the United States follows the constitutional requirement that whenever any government is seeking a search warrant to conduct surveillance, the government must present particularized evidence identifying its target, and the evidence must constitute probable cause of criminal behavior on the part of that target — every court, that is, except the FISA court. That court issues general warrants that do not name a target and are based on the NSA’s wishes, rather than evidence of probable cause.
That silent exhalation of relief from the NSA last week was generated by the realization that this third-party storage proposal will not restrict the massive spying one iota.
Added to this placebo is the president’s proposal to employ a defender of the Constitution (what a great job title!) to appear before the FISA court, along with lawyers for the NSA, and argue against the NSA’s wishes. This is another diversion that would add another level of unconstitutional and irrelevant complexity to the current scheme.
Currently, the persons on the FISA court may be federal judges, but they are performing clerical functions, not judicial functions. That’s because, unlike state courts, which are courts of general jurisdiction, the jurisdiction of all federal courts can only be invoked when there are real cases and controversies brought to them. If the defender of the Constitution appeared in front of the FISA court, he could only do so by representing a real client in a real dispute with the federal government. However, the NSA does not identify its targets, much less deal with their lawyers. The president’s proposal would turn this non-court court into a law school moot-court exercise.
His third proposal adds insult to injury. He offers to stop the NSA from doing to foreign leaders what it has been doing to Americans. No doubt, that is to enable him to save face with his selfie-snapping European colleagues. It hardly smacks of understanding the problem of massive spying, though. It may be an insult to spy on his fellow heads of state, and it may affect diplomacy with them, but stopping it hardly enhances the natural right to privacy for the rest of us.
This mass spying is uniquely and profoundly un-American, and will continue to undermine our freedoms. I am not arguing here that all spying is illegal — just that spying on all of us is illegal. Why bother with the formality of warrants when they permit all spying all the time? Spying on anyone not named in a warrant, or employing a warrant not based on probable cause, is the hallmark of those totalitarian regimes against which we have fought our just wars and our cold wars. Yet today, the government in America seems more like the former enemies we vanquished than the place of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness the Framers established.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is an analyst for the Fox News Channel. He has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.KINGSTON Jamaica (Reuters) - The U.S. Coast Guard said on Sunday it abandoned its search for a small, private American plane that strayed into the Caribbean on a flight to Florida before apparently crashing near Jamaica, with the pilot and at least one passenger presumed dead.
A member of the Jamaica Defence Force stands on their vessel next to a US Coast Guard cutter during the search for the plane belonging to real estate executive Larry Glazer offshore of Port Antonio, September 6, 2014. REUTERS/Jamaica Defence Force/Handout via Reuters
The plane, whose pilot became unresponsive during the flight, went down northeast of Jamaica on Friday after veering off course and triggering a U.S. security alert that prompted two fighter jets to trail the wayward aircraft until it entered Cuban airspace.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command suggested on its Twitter page that the plane’s pilot was overcome by “possible hypoxia,” a rare condition caused by a loss of cabin pressure that could have rendered everyone on board unconscious.
The crash site of the single-engine, seven-seat plane, a Socata TBM700, was believed to be about 14 miles (22 km) north of the coastal Jamaican town of Port Antonio.
The U.S. Coast Guard had deployed a cutter, search helicopter and other crews to assist in looking for wreckage and possible survivors, but those units returned to base on Sunday, said Petty Officer Sabrina Laberdesque.
“We are no longer engaged in an active search but will be providing other assistance to the Jamaican authorities,” she said.
Jamaican officials said on Sunday their search and recovery operation would continue, led by the Jamaica Defense Force Coast Guard and Air Wing.
Major Basil Jarrett of the Jamaica Defence Force told a news conference there was little hope of finding survivors.
Two people on board the plane were presumed killed - Larry Glazer, a real estate executive from Rochester, New York, and his wife, Jane Glazer. It was not known if anyone else was on the plane.
The pilot stopped responding to radio calls about an hour after takeoff from Greater Rochester International Airport on a flight bound for Naples Municipal Airport in Florida, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration reported.The global supply glut in the oil market is even bigger than expected and could push prices to as low as $20 a barrel, Goldman Sachs warned in a report on Friday.
Over the past two months, crude oil CLV5, +0.00% has plunged from around $60 a barrel to below $40 a barrel at one point, underscoring the weak fundamentals in the energy markets, analysts at the investment bank said. Brent UK:LCOV5 futures have slumped from around $65 in June to below $50 in recent days.
“In fact, the oil market is even more oversupplied than we had expected and we now forecast this surplus to persist in 2016 on further [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] production growth, resilient non-OPEC supply and slowing demand growth, with risks skewed to even weaker demand given China’s slowdown and its negative [emerging-market] feedback loop,” the analysts including Damien Courvalin and Jeffrey Currie said.
The downbeat assessment of the 2016 supply landscape led the Goldman analysts to cut their already bearish price forecast again: they now expect West Texas Intermediate crude oil to average $45 a barrel next year, down from $57 expected previously. And the forecasts for the next few months are even bleaker as laid out in the table below.
Forecast horizon New outlook Old outlook One month $38 $45 Three months $42 $49 Six months $40 $54 12 months $45 $60
For Brent, the bank cut its 2016 forecast to $49.50 a barrel from $62 expected previously, citing Iran’s potential to ramp up production in 2016 as well as surprisingly high OPEC supply.
To clear the oversupply, oil prices will need to stay lower for longer in order to force production cuts, the analysts argued.
“While not our base case, the potential for oil prices to fall to such levels, which we estimate near $20 a barrel, is becoming greater as storage continues to fill,” they said in the report.
In that vein, the International Energy Agency said in a report on Friday that the recent oil-price slump could force the U.S. and other non-OPEC countries to cut production next year by the most since the early 1990s.
Goldman also noted it expects U.S. production to fall “sufficiently to start rebalancing the market”, which should help oil prices find a bottom over the next six to nine months.
“We would expect equities to bottom with commodity prices,” the analysts said, raising their coverage view on the European integrated oil companies to neutral from cautious.
Providing critical information for the U.S. trading day. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Need to Know newsletter. Sign up here.After the revelation that a paper on “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” was submitted as a hoax to the journal Cogent Social Sciences there’s sure to be a lot of merriment at the expense of Gender Studies departments. But it turns out that the joke’s on the hoaxers themselves–both for failing to spot some very obvious red flags about this “journal,” and for their rather bizarre leaps of logic.
It might be. But their hoax gives us absolutely no reason to believe this. First, let’s look at the “journal” that they were accepted at. Like all the digital, open-access journals run by Cogent (a house most people have never heard of before now) it charges authors fees to publish. No reputable journal in the humanities does this. Worse yet, it allows authors to “pay what they can”. This appears to signal that this journal publishes work from authors who can’t get institutional support to publish in it. (Or, if they could, don’t seek this as they would prefer it not be widely known that they’re paying to publish.) The journal boasts also that it is very “friendly” to authors (a clear sign of a suspect outlet) and notes that it doesn’t necessarily reject things that might not have any impact. (!) It also only uses single blind review. The whole thing just screams vanity journal.
Now, the hoaxers are aware of all of this. But they try to duck the “facile” objection that they submitted to a junk journal by noting that it’s part of the Taylor and Francis group, and that it’s “held out as a high-quality open-access journal by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)”. Yet even a quick perusal of the journal’s website makes it clear that it operates entirely independently of Taylor & Francis, and that its publishing model is utterly different to theirs. And the DOAJ is a “community run” agency with (it seems) no official standing–and whose express criteria for something being a peer-reviewed journal with quality control is that it “must exercise peer-review with an editor and an editorial board or editorial review…. carried out by at least two editors”. As far as I know, most vanity presses meet this very minimal standard.
Having managed to pay for a paper to be published in a deeply suspect journal the hoaxers then conclude that the entire field of Gender Studies is suspect. How they made this deductive leap is actually far more puzzling than how the paper got accepted. (It’s thus more than a bit embarrassing that one of them’s a philosophy professor–who, ironically, teaches critical thinking.) I’ve no doubt that there are many things to criticize about Gender Studies. But that a suspect journal published a hoax paper whose topics was gender studies-ish isn’t one of them.
UPDATE: The first journal that Bognossian and Lindsay submitted their hoax paper to, and that rejected it, was The first journal that Bognossian and Lindsay submitted their hoax paper to, and that rejected it, was NORMA: The International Journal for Masculinity Studies. This journal doesn’t even hit the top 115 journals in Gender Studies. So, what happened here was that they submitted a hoax paper to an unranked journal, which summarily rejected it. They then received an auto-generated response directing them to a pay-to-publish vanity journal. They submitted the paper there, and it was published. From this chain of events they conclude that the entire field of Gender Studies is “crippled academically”. This tells us very little about Gender Studies, but an awful lot about the perpetrators of this “hoax”…. and those who tout it as a take down of an entire field.“They’re going to keep him from getting the number one spot because they are concerned.”
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Republican strategist Dee Dee Benkie revealed during a radio show appearance last night that the GOP establishment has resolved to prevent Ron Paul from winning tonight’s Iowa primary by offering sweetheart deals to move large voting blocks to vote for Romney or Santorum.
The host of the show refers to state GOP insiders showing “great concern” that Ron Paul is performing well in Iowa because they fear a Paul win would undermine Iowa’s position as being the first Republican primary. He implies that influential members of the Republican establishment within the state are offering sweetheart deals to prominent voting blocks in key swing districts in order to “sway” the result and ensure Ron Paul doesn’t win.
Despite the fact that this is brazenly unethical and, if bribery was involved, without doubt illegal, the host dismisses such conduct as “just politics”.
“Is it possible that the party apparatus here could be silently asking those District Chairmen to start swaying some important caucus members over to the anti-Paul side which may end up being Santorum…do you see a scenario like that happening,” he asked Benkie.
“I’ve talked to the party officials, I know they’re concerned about it,” said Benkie, adding, “Ron Paul doesn’t do us any good in Iowa, doesn’t do the country any good, will never get there, so let’s figure out what we need to do.”
Benkie said that the GOP establishment was concerned about splitting the vote between Santorum and Romney because it could increase the chances of a Ron Paul win, remarking, “We really don’t want Ron Paul to win.”
“I kind of think they’re going to keep him from getting the number one spot because they are concerned,” said Benkie, adding that the party apparatus were “tight-knit” and “trying to figure out” how to “deal with the Paul-bots,” an arrogant characterization of Ron Paul’s supporters.
“They’re not going to want him to get number one, it’s very bad for Iowa, it’s terrible,” said Benkie, adding that she hopes for her “friends” that Paul is not victorious.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
{openx:74}
It’s necessary to emphasize the fact that Dee Dee Benkie is by no means decrying the subversion of the Iowa primary. She is openly anti-Paul and is brazenly advocating that he be prevented from winning Iowa by means of establishment insiders exerting undue influence on voters, despite the fact that only last week she was decrying the threat posed by “rampant” voter fraud.
Ominously, Iowa election officials recently announced that they were moving the site of the final vote count to a secret undisclosed location, a factor that will only increase concerns about vote fraud being used to disenfranchise anti-establishment candidates like Ron Paul.
As we have previously documented, the GOP establishment is so terrified of Ron Paul performing well in Iowa that influential Republican officials have attempted to all but sabotage the legitimacy of the Iowa primary.
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad rhetorically undermined the sanctity of his own state’s poll by encouraging people, in the event of a Paul victory, to ignore the will of the voters and instead concentrate on who comes second and third.
“People are going to look at who comes in second and who comes in third,” said Branstad, adding, ““If [Mitt] Romney comes in a strong second, it definitely helps |
game and then off to the next appointment. I have actively disclosed anything further than that.
"I’ve asked directly many times. Deafening silence."
This probably has something to do with the fact that you posted it in the middle of the night. I apologise if my recovery from surgery is inconvenient for your Twitter-argument schedule ;)
" have seen several videos and never seen him mention it."
Perhaps that's because I didn't have any relationship with the developer? Why again would I disclose something that I didn't do? Here's how my business works. I live on the East Coast. I work out of my office. I don't go to studios. I go to very few industry events. I don't go and meet developers for drinks. My interaction with developers is almost solely done through my PR guy. He asks for code, I get it, I look at the game, I move onto the next game. That's it. Hobnobbing and rubbing shoulders with devs is something I avoid doing because it could colour my ability to give an honest first impression of their game. This doesn't seem too difficult to understand to me. You sending all this stuff has already compromised my ability to look at your game from a neutral perspective. That's why I avoid interacting with developers as much as possible. Apparently you don't seem to understand just how important that is though.
"Huh, I didn’t realize he was actually opposed to social justice."
"Social justice" is a completely nebulous idea that represents different things to different people, so is "feminism". By some definitions I am a feminist, by some I am not. There are some ideas that I oppose in these ideologies, some I support. I believe that all people regardless of race, gender, sexuality and creed are equal and should be treated as such. I believe in not slut-shaming women. I believe in a womans right to choose. I simultaneously believe that there are problems for boys in education and that some laws, particularly related to child custody are scewed against men. Feel free to try and label me, you will fail. My views are nuanced enough that they can't be defined by political buzzwords. One thing I will not support is people running around claiming to be proponents of "social justice", all the while spewing hatred, shaming people, dogpiling them, calling them shitlords and literal human garbage while chanting nonsense like #killallmen. Those aren't proponents of justice, they're bullies.
"Incidentally where were these people when Rab Florence got booted?"
Not your quote but I'll address it anyway. Well, I was making videos condemning his firing and supporting his career - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2keHyS_Ooo&channel=TotalHalibut
That was from 2012.
Now, if you have any more specific concerns might I suggest emailing me instead of throwing out uninformed soundbytes to your large audience. This is extremely silly.
I would ask all my followers to refrain from dogpiling this person. Harassment from his followers does not beget harassment in kind. Be reasonable and assume the best in people, thank you.Welcome back to the week 10 edition of Bullpen Briefing. I’ll pick up this week’s edition in Pittsburgh where I left off last week, then move on to the Texas Rangers who could very well see a closer change coming soon. I’ll also discuss Washington and Philadelphia, two of the more fluid bullpens in the league, as well as a couple of updates to Atlanta, Oakland, and the Los Angeles Angels. Here we go.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Tony Watson blew his fourth and fifth saves of the season in back to back appearances on Tuesday and Wednesday. Both blown saves included two run home runs, and both ended in Pirates losses. The home runs marked Watson’s 5th and 6th home runs allowed on the season. The long ball continues to plague him. Pirates manager Clint Hurdle admitted over the weekend to internal conversations regarding Felipe Rivero’s future as the team’s closer, then said Wednesday night that Juan Nicasio is also being considered to close games. It seems the Pirates are focused on trying to get some value out of their relief pitchers at the trade deadline. Nicasio is 30 years old and will be a free agent at season’s end, as will Watson. The attempt to boost Watson’s trade value has failed, so Nicasio could be next up. He’s yet to allow a home run this season, strikes out just under one batter per inning, and should make a fine closer. If Rivero and Nicasio are both available on your waiver wire, Nicasio is the short term saves play. I added Rivero myself last week and am confident Rivero will be closing by season’s end. It may take a couple of months, but in a head to head league, I am more than happy to live with his 0.58 ERA and 0.74 WHIP until then.
Texas Rangers
It seems like ages since we last discussed the Rangers bullpen, back when Matt Bush took the reigns as closer and held on tight. His reigns appear to be loosening though; he allowed three home runs in his last three appearances, one of which was a blown save and another a blown tie. Bush hasn’t lost the closing gig yet, but don’t be surprised if Keone Kela gets the next save opportunity. Kela leads the Rangers bullpen with 27 strikeouts and has done so in 21.1 innings. If Bush has another bad outing this weekend, a more permanent chance could be made. Save speculators that missed out on the opportunity in Pittsburgh should think about adding Kela now. Bullpen changes have a way of materializing very quickly.
For those of you in holds leagues, consider adding Rangers’ reliever Jose Leclerc. He returned from the disabled list this week and has 19 strikeouts, a 2.13 ERA, and a 0.95 WHIP through 12.2 innings this year. He will rise quickly in the Rangers pen regardless of their closer situation.
Washington Nationals
Just when things were starting to settle down in Washington, Koda Glover and Shawn Kelley combined for 6 earned runs in Sunday afternoon against Oakland, though they managed a hold and a save a piece. Here’s how it went down:
Glover relieved Tanner Roark with a runner on second and two outs in the 8 th inning in a 6-4 ballgame, presumably in for the 4-out save.
inning in a 6-4 ballgame, presumably in for the 4-out save. Glover gets Jed Lowrie to ground out, ending the inning.
Washington puts up 5 runs in the top of the 9 th inning off Frankie Montas to take a 11-4 lead.
inning off Frankie Montas to take a 11-4 lead. Glover gives up one run on four straight singles and a walk before being removed with the bases loaded. Washington’s lead is now 11-5.
Shawn Kelley replaces Koda Glover. He gets Rajai Davis to fly out, then gives up a grand slam to Matt Joyce. Score is now 11-10.
Kelley gets the next two batters out to earn the save.
Glover got himself into a lot of trouble, but Shawn Kelley eventually gave up the grand salami, with 3 of the 4 runs being credited to Glover. Both guys took their lumps in this one and did not pitch the following day. Instead, Dusty Baker opted for a combination of Matt Albers and Oliver Perez to close out the ninth. Glover got the save chance Tuesday night and nailed it down with Oliver Perez recording the hold.
Matt Albers might be the most trustworthy arm in the National’s pen right now with a 1.25 ERA on the season. Don’t look for him to get save opportunities, but since Shawn Kelley has taken a step backwards this year, Albers should be moving into the setup role in the near future.
Philadelphia Phillies
Hector Neris has been removed from the closer role in Philadelphia to be replaced by veteran Pat Neshek. The announcement comes after Neris was removed from a save opportunity Tuesday night after recording one out and allowing two consecutive singles. This was the second time in four days that Neris was removed from a save situation, the first coming last Saturday when Neris got the hook in favor of Jeanmar Gomez. Neris is having issues with his slider and will have time to work on fixing it in non-save situations. The Phillies will look to get some use out of the 36-year-old Neshek, then look to trade him toward the deadline. This means that Neris could return to closing should he figure things out, but likely isn’t worth holding onto unless you play in a holds league. Neshek is worth an add for saves. He strikes out just under a batter per inning and his ERA currently sits at 0.82, though his ERA was 3.06 and 3.62 in 2016 and 2015, respectively. No matter who is closing in Philly, there haven’t been a ton of save chances this year. You won’t be missing out by avoiding this bullpen altogether.
Los Angeles Angels
Cam Bedrosian was slated to return to the club on Tuesday, but was pushed back so he could make one more minor league appearance. Bedrosian made that appearance and was pulled with discomfort in his injured groin. The setback appears to be short term, but often times a 1 week setback turns into 1 month. The longer Bedrosian is out, the better odds Bud Norris keeps the closing job upon Bedrosian’s return.
Oakland Athletics
Sean Doolittle is set to return from the Disabled List today after missing just over a month with shoulder inflammation. Doolittle was part of Oakland’s closer-by-committee prior to his injury, then Santiago Casilla took full ownership of the role. Casilla has been adequate holding down the closer role for Oakland, although I expect the A’s to return to the committee-style closer once Doolittle gets a couple of clean appearances under his belt.
Atlanta Braves
After blowing a save last Friday, Jim Johnson bounced back the following day with two scoreless innings and the win in an extra inning affair against the Reds. Johnson has had some rough patches in prior years, but he’s been more than adequate in 2017, along with Braves middle relievers Arodys Vizcaino and Jose Ramirez. Their season stats are in the table below.
Player IP K BB HR ERA WHIP Saves Holds Blown Saves Jim Johnson 24.2 27 5 1 3.65 1.01 11 0 4 Arodys Vizcaino 24.1 29 4 4 2.22 0.95 0 12 1 Jose Ramirez 24.2 21 7 2 2.19 0.85 0 9 3
Three Stars of the Week
Raisel Iglesias, Cin – Iglesias pitched five innings, recording three saves, one win, and eight strikeouts. He allowed just one hit and one walk over this stretch.
Chris Devenski, Hou – Five innings, six strikeouts, two holds and a win. Devenski continues his middle relief dominance in 2017.
Pedro Strop, ChC – In four innings, Strop recorded two wins and one hold. He struck out three and allowed one hit.
That’s all for this week. Enjoy the weekend and see you all next Friday.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
(Click the RED link below to listen)
Major League Fantasy Baseball Radio Show: Join Corey D Roberts, and Kyle Amore live on Sunday June 4th, 2017 from 7-9pm EST for episode #89 of Major League Fantasy Baseball Radio. We are a live broadcast that will take callers at 323-870-4395. Press 1 to speak with the host. We will the latest information in the world of fantasy baseball.
Our guests this week are Craig Mish, Craig Mish is the host of a fantasy baseball show on Sirius Satelitte Radio along with Jim Bowden from 9-11am EST Monday through Friday. Craig is also the host for a show on Sirius every Sunday morning with FSWA Hall of Famer Lenny Melnick from 7-10am EST.
You can find our shows on I-Tunes. Just search for Major League Fantasy Sports in the podcasts section. For Android users go to “Podcast Republic,” then download that app, and search for “Major League Fantasy Sports Show”
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
(Click the RED link below to listen)
Major League Fantasy Baseball Radio Show: Join Corey D Roberts, and Kyle Amore live on Sunday June 11th, 2017 from 7-9pm EST for episode #90 of Major League Fantasy Baseball Radio. We are a live broadcast that will take callers at 323-870-4395. Press 1 to speak with the host. We will the latest information in the world of fantasy baseball.
Our guest this week is Mark Bloom better known in the industry as Dr Roto of scoutfantasy.com. He also hosts a show every morning Monday through Friday on Sirius from 7-9am EST on the Fantasy Sports Radio Station XM 89/Sirius 210.
You can find our shows on I-Tunes. Just search for Major League Fantasy Sports in the podcasts section. For Android users go to “Podcast Republic,” then download that app, and search for “Major League Fantasy Sports Show”
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WhatsAppImage Credit: Chris Hatcher/PR PhotosDirector Ron Howard wants Javier Bardem to play troubled hero Roland Deschain in his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. Imagine Entertainment confirms the news first reported by Deadline that the No Country For Old Men star has been offered the lead role in the horror-fantasy-western adaptation, which is currently planned as a big-screen trilogy along with a TV series. (Busy week for Bardem — first he was nominated for an Oscar, then his beautiful wife gave birth to a genetically perfect child, and now this.) The Dark Tower series comprises seven books and forms the connective material between much of King’s work, so there has been much anticipation for the film/TV series. (Early rumors had indicated that fan favorite Viggo Mortensen was also in the running.) The first Dark Tower film is currently scheduled for summer 2013.Dr. Ricardo De Mambro Santos, associate professor of art history at Willamette University, rediscovered Peter Paul Rubens’ “Portrait of Archduke Albert VII.” The piece will be on exhibit at Hallie Ford Museum of Art from Oct. through March. The exhibit’s exact dates are pending. (Photo: Courtesy of Willamette University )
The Hallie Ford Museum of Art has secured a rare and exclusive U.S. exhibition of a rediscovered painting by Old Master and Flemish baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens. Dr. Ricardo De Mambro Santos, associate professor of art history at Willamette University, rediscovered the portrait of Archduke Albert VII of Austria two years ago in Rome. Since then, he has worked to authenticate it. The piece will be on exhibit at Hallie Ford from Oct. through March.
President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust James Cuno put the 17th century painting's rediscovery in perspective.
"Without question, in a century of towering geniuses which included Poussin, Bernini and Rembrandt, Rubens is not only one of the towering geniuses as a draftsman and painter but also a diplomat and friend of kings and princes of great importance," Cuno, who sits on Willamette University's board of Trustees, said. "To have a painting from his earliest years and of one of his most important patron is more exciting. It allows us to see the young Rubens at his moment of contact with the great artistic legacy of ancient and renaissance Rome."
De Mambro Santos calls the rediscovered portrait Rubens' "laboratory" and believes it will change scholars' understanding of the Master's early artistic development and transformation from an unknown apprentice painter in Antwerp into the 17th century's most influential baroque painter.
Ricardo De Mambro Santos, associate professor of art history at Willamette University, rediscovered that baroque Master Peter Paul Rubens painted “Portrait of Archduke Albert VII.” The work will be on exhibit at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art Oct. through March. Exact dates are yet to be determined. (Photo: Courtesy of Ricardo De Mambro Santos )
"We have the tendency to believe that everything has been said about art history," De Mambro Santos said. "I still believe this is an open narrative. Therefore as a scholar, I see it as an essential part of my task to fill gaps whether intellectual, critical or historical."
Impact
This rediscovery fills such a gap. Only two of Rubens' portraits, both from his time in Antwerp, predate the rediscovered piece. Rubens traveled from Antwerp to Italy in 1600 to study the renaissance Masters, such as Leonardo and Michelangelo. De Mambro Santos dates the portrait to the early years of Rubens' Italian residency between 1600 and 1604 and hopes that ongoing studies will further pinpoint the date. No other known Rubens portraits from this period have survived.
"We did know Rubens' early work between 1596 and 1599, but we didn't know any works from the very beginning of his career in Rome," De Mambro Santos said. "The Rubens we know today started in this portrait that we're bringing to the Hallie Ford. This particular portrait could be considered the preliminary workshop for his future baroque style."
Oil on wood, the portrait of Archduke Albert VII is as detailed as a photographic rendering. It has the formal characteristics of Nordic art from Rubens' early training as well as references to the 16th century Italian Masters he was studying. Unlike theirs, his brushstrokes are visible. The subject's eyes evoke emotion. There's a dramatic contrast between light and shade. These latter characteristics defined baroque painting and were key in the identification and rediscovery of this "lost" work, said De Mambro Santos.
"Rubens Self-portrait" by Peter Paul Rubens, 1623 (Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons )
"It's rediscovered in that the work had never been materially lost. It belonged always to the same family, as far as we can tell, from the 19th century on. The painting was known, but its author and master was not known. Thanks to the research, we came up with an attribution," De Mambro Santos said.
The mystery
The search to uncover the artist behind the portrait began when De Mambro Santos' former student, Cecilia Paolini, called him from Rome two years ago. Paolini, an independent scholar and expert in restoration and conservation of paintings at the Laboratory of Restoration in Rome, has been De Mambro Santos' longtime collaborator on Flemish and Dutch art research. The owner of the painting, who wishes to remain anonymous, hired Paolini to to clean and restore the painting. Paolini had immediate questions about its origin and contacted De Mambro Santos, who flew to Rome to assist.
"I realized at once that we were dealing with a very important and creative Master," De Mambro Santos said. "Through the cleaning and restoration process, we realized that it was not by a minor Master but by someone who was really experimenting with some new solutions in Rome at the time."
Analyzing the portraits' material and chemical composition and its style, they tested and confirmed their hypothesis that Rubens was the portrait's creator. Key factors were the presence of a yellow pigment used only by Flemish Masters in the Roman workshops of the time and the piece's curvilinear brushstrokes.
"Rather than painting from left to right he used wavelike brushstrokes. This is a tendency that he will develop later in his career," De Mambro Santos said. "So far, this is the oldest painting that could be attributed to Rubens in which these techniques are used."
"There will be people who doubt it, but that's the nature of scholarship," Cuno said of De Mambro Santos' conclusion. "We can all be grateful to the owner of the painting that he was willing to share it with the public. It will allow others to come to their own conclusions about the authorship of the painting, and that's the exciting thing about scholarship."
The rediscovered portrait also has historical implications. It is now Rubens' earliest known portrait of Archduke Albert VII, who became Rubens' most important patron throughout what became a grand and influential career. De Mambro Santos said that before this discovery, it was assumed that Rubens and Albert met after 1604 and didn't become closely tied until 1608. The portrait may have launched Rubens' career.
"At that time, when Rubens first met Albert in Rome, he got a very good and important public commission thanks to Albert's support," De Mambro Santos said. "This is the very starting point of their mutual respect and future collaboration. So important that Rubens would eventually undertake diplomatic missions for Albert's wife … We now have the historical confirmation that Rubens met his patron much sooner than scholars used to believe."
The rediscovered portrait is small and was likely used as reference point for Rubens' future work and numerous portraits of Albert that have similar attributes. The archduke appointed Rubens his court painter in 1609. Rubens traveled a great deal, especially for his diplomatic work. He probably used visual references like this piece when he had to complete a commission and was miles from Albert.
In spite of the rediscovered portrait's historical and artistic relevance, the piece's value is still being determined.
"I have no idea really," De Mambro Santos said of its value. "It could be 4,000 euros or four million euros."
Coming to Salem
With De Mambro Santos' assistance, the anonymous owners agreed to lend the piece to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art for the only exhibit of the painting in the United States.
"This is a great opportunity for our students, members and visitors to see this important Rubens portrait," John Olbrantz, the Maribeth Collins Director of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, said. "For them to be able to study and look at this Rubens is going to be an amazing experience, for the community as well, all of Oregon and the whole West Coast. We're hoping people will hear about this and drive to see it."
The museum staff and De Mambro Santos have been working hard to plan the exhibition, the exact dates of which will soon be determined. In the gallery near the rediscovered portrait, they plan to project a progression of the various portraits by Rubens and his contemporaries of Archduke Albert VII — there are a plethora — to illustrate the development of the baroque style.
This is not the first time De Mambro Santos has secured works that he rediscovered and identified for exhibit at Hallie Ford. In 2011, a collection of Italian drawings that he identified in Monte San Giusto were exhibited in "Timeless Renaissance: Italian Drawings from the Alessandro Maggiori Collection." Next year, Hallie Ford will feature a Book of Prayer illustrated by northern renaissance artists that De Mabro Santos identified for an Oregon art collector.
The significance of these historical and artistic exhibitions is not lost on Stephen Thorsett, president of Willamette University.
"Through the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette's students and faculty have unparalleled access to work directly with premier artists and scholars. Director John Olbrantz, his staff and faculty such as professor De Mambro Santos have brought outstanding exhibitions to our community, and we hope that readers take the opportunity to learn more about this cultural gem in Salem," Thorsett said.
In our culture, where duplications and the digital mass production of art are commonplace, De Mambro Santos stressed the importance of seeing a Master's original.
"My students or anyone else could just buy the book, but it's a whole different universe when you see an original," De Mambro Santos said. "You can see the technique, the choices, mistakes and the doubts of an author while they were making the work. Therefore you can fully understand the creative process behind it."
Andrea Foust, the museum's manager of membership and public relations, summed up the experience awaiting those who will view Rubens' "Portrait of Archduke Albert VII."
"I've been floored over and over again when I've gotten in front of the actual piece, when I thought I had a good understanding of it, and I realize that it's been rewritten in this magical moment of actually seeing the work," Foust said.
TRastrelli@StatesmanJournal.com, (503) 983-6030 or follow on Twitter @RastrelliSJ
Peter Paul Rubens
(1577-1640)
Was born in Siegen, Germany. From age 10 he lived in Antwerp where he began his art studies. From 1600 to 1608, he studied in Italy where he developed his baroque style known for extravagance, movement, color and sensuality. He is one of the most famous, successful and prolific artists of the 17th century. Some of his works include "The Descent from the Cross," "Samson and Delilah," "The Disembarkation at Marseilles" and "The Festival of Venus." Rubens also had a successful career as a diplomat and spy for the Spanish Hapsburg rulers. He had eight children by two wives, the first of which he outlived. He died after suffering with gout for several years.
Ricardo De Mambro Santos
Ricardo De Mambro Santos has been an associate professor of Art History at Willamette University since 2006. He is an expert in a wide range of visual culture from the 15th to 18th centuries including Flemish and Dutch art, northern and Italian renaissance art and Mannerism. Before coming to Salem, De Mambro Santos taught at the University of Rome for 12 years and as a visiting professor at the University of Washington and Whitman College.
Education
B. A., M.A., Università di Roma "La Sapienza" (Italy)
Ph.D., Università degli Studi di Bologna (Italy)
Post-Doctoral, Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane – Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze (Italy)
At a glance
• An unattributed painting hangs in an Italian family's private collection since at least the 19th century.
• The anonymous owner brings the painting to a restoration lab in Rome, Italy.
• Restoration specialist Cecilia Paolini has suspicions about the painting's origin and calls her research collaborator.
• Ricardo De Mambro Santos, associate professor of art history at Willamette University and expert in renaissance and baroque art, is immediately struck by the portrait's superb technique.
• They form the hypothesis that Peter Paul Rubens' authored the portrait.
• Stylistic analysis reveals techniques particular to Rubens such as his peculiar curvilinear brushstrokes.
• The portrait is dated to 1600-1604. De Mambro Santos is hopeful further study will pinpoint the date.
• Material and chemical analysis reveal a yellow pigment, "Roman yellow," particular to Rubens in that time and location.
• A series of primarily nondestructive tests, including X-ray, infrared reflectography and ultraviolet radiation, confirm the stylistic, material and chemical findings.
• The hypothesis is affirmed. The portrait is attributed to Rubens.
• The anonymous owner agrees to loan the rediscovered portrait to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University for an exclusive U.S. exhibition.
• Titled "Portrait of Archduke Albert VII," the painting features the man who became Rubens' influential patron and helped launch his career.
• Rubens is one the 17th century's most prolific and celebrated painters of the baroque era.
• He is considered an Old Master, a title also attributed to the likes of Leonardo di Vinci and Michelangelo.
Read or Share this story: http://stjr.nl/1txj5rkAs California descends ever deeper into a potentially devastating drought, with residents facing unprecedented demands to cut water use, everybody is looking for somebody else to blame. But perhaps the most high-profile scapegoat in the parched Golden State is not a somebody but a something: the highly nutritious, increasingly notorious almond.
California grows 80 per cent of the world’s almonds, but it is two other widely reported statistics that have caused controversy: cultivating a single thirsty almond takes more than a gallon of water, and almonds alone account for almost 10 per cent of California’s agricultural water consumption. Agriculture takes up 80 per cent of the state’s total human water usage, which means almonds use some 8 per cent of the precious supply: more than the entire city of Los Angeles.
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Now, however, almond growers are pushing back against the negative coverage, with a PR drive to persuade consumers that the much-criticised kernel is as healthy for the environment as it is for their digestive systems. “All food requires water,” said Stacey Humble, marketing chief for the Almond Board of California (ABC). “When you read that one gallon figure without any context, it may sound like a lot. But almonds don’t use that much more water than many foods do.” California produces about half of the fruits and vegetables in the US. “To say a particular crop is to blame for the drought situation is neither fair nor useful,” said Professor Richard Howitt, an expert in agricultural economics at the University of California’s campus at Davis. “Almonds are a market crop and people like them. Nuts are high water users, but so are apricots and peaches and other fruit. To single out almonds, which are healthy, water-efficient and in demand, is misguided.”
Shape Created with Sketch. Incredible pictures of the California drought Show all 15 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Incredible pictures of the California drought 1/15 Lemoore A sign referencing the drought is posted next to a fallow field in Lemoore 2/15 Fresno Dead trees stand in a field in Fresno 3/15 Lemoore A dust devil kicks up dirt as it forms over an empty field in Madera 4/15 Oroville Low water levels are visible at Lake Oroville near the Bidwell Bar Bridge in Oroville 5/15 Raymond A fisherman sits on the banks of Hensley Lake in Raymond as California enters its fourth year of severe drought, the State's reservoirs are shrinking due to lack of Sierra snow pack and very little rain. Hensley Lake is currently at 8 percent of its 90,000 acre feet capacity 6/15 Raymond Low water levels are visible at Hensley Lake in Raymond 7/15 Raymond A bouy sits on what used to be the bottom of Hensley Lake in Raymond 8/15 Los Padres National Forest Dead and dying trees are seen in a forest stressed by historic drought conditions in Los Padres National Forest near Frazier Park. According to an aerial survey conducted by the U.S. Forest Service in April 2015, about 12 million trees have died in California forestlands in the past year because of extreme drought 9/15 Firebaugh Dry cracked earth is visible near an almond orchard in Firebaugh 10/15 Los Angeles An empty water reservoir is seen in the hills above Los Angeles 11/15 Rancho Santa Fe Aerial view overlooking landscaping in Rancho Santa Fe, California Getty 12/15 Rancho Santa Fe Aerial view overlooking landscaping in Rancho Santa Fe, California Getty 13/15 San Diego Aerial view overlooking landscaping in San Diego, California 14/15 San Diego Aerial view overlooking landscaping in San Diego, California Getty 15/15 San Diego Aerial view overlooking landscaping in San Diego, California Getty 1/15 Lemoore A sign referencing the drought is posted next to a fallow field in Lemoore 2/15 Fresno Dead trees stand in a field in Fresno 3/15 Lemoore A dust devil kicks up dirt as it forms over an empty field in Madera 4/15 Oroville Low water levels are visible at Lake Oroville near the Bidwell Bar Bridge in Oroville 5/15 Raymond A fisherman sits on the banks of Hensley Lake in Raymond as California enters its fourth year of severe drought, the State's reservoirs are shrinking due to lack of Sierra snow pack and very little rain. Hensley Lake is currently at 8 percent of its 90,000 acre feet capacity 6/15 Raymond Low water levels are visible at Hensley Lake in Raymond 7/15 Raymond A bouy sits on what used to be the bottom of Hensley Lake in Raymond 8/15 Los Padres National Forest Dead and dying trees are seen in a forest stressed by historic drought conditions in Los Padres National Forest near Frazier Park. According to an aerial survey conducted by the U.S. Forest Service in April 2015, about 12 million trees have died in California forestlands in the past year because of extreme drought 9/15 Firebaugh Dry cracked earth is visible near an almond orchard in Firebaugh 10/15 Los Angeles An empty water reservoir is seen in the hills above Los Angeles 11/15 Rancho Santa Fe Aerial view overlooking landscaping in Rancho Santa Fe, California Getty 12/15 Rancho Santa Fe Aerial view overlooking landscaping in Rancho Santa Fe, California Getty 13/15 San Diego Aerial view overlooking landscaping in San Diego, California 14/15 San Diego Aerial view overlooking landscaping in San Diego, California Getty 15/15 San Diego Aerial view overlooking landscaping in San Diego, California Getty
America’s almond consumption has more than tripled over the past decade. Though strictly a seed, not a nut, the almond recently surpassed the peanut as the most popular snack in the genre. It is thought to be effective in combating obesity, diabetes and arthritis, and recent research has suggested it can also reduce the spread of cancers and lower the risk of Alzheimer’s. It is little wonder, then, that the shelves of health food shops across California and beyond heave not only with packets of almonds, but with jars of almond butter and cartons of almond milk. Almond growers and their allies note that the kernel’s hull is also put to use as feed for dairy cattle, which means almonds help to make not only almond milk, but also good old-fashioned cow’s milk.
More than two-thirds of California’s almond crop is exported, much of it to China, which some critics argue constitutes an export of valuable water. Yet a report by the ABC claims California earned $11bn (£7.2bn) from its almonds last year, accounting for 15 per cent of the state’s total agricultural value, and making its 10 per cent water share seem like a bargain.
READ MORE: Farmers struggle to survive in golden state
Starbucks continues to sell water drawn from California
One drought for the rich and another for everyone else
For farmers, those margins are too big to resist, even during a drought. Many fields that once grew cotton or vegetables are now filled with nuts. Between July 2013 and July 2014 the state’s growers bought more than eight million young almond trees – although many of those would have been ordered from nurseries before the scale of the dry spell became clear. Almond orchards now cover close to a million acres of California.
Earlier this month, with the drought entering its fourth year, Governor Jerry Brown unveiled an action plan that for the first time in the state’s history includes mandatory cuts of 25 per cent in urban water usage. Some complained that the cuts did not extend to the agricultural sector, although farmers pointed out that they were already suffering.
For the second year in a row, farms have been allocated a 0 per cent share of the water from the irrigation canals of the federally controlled Central Valley Project, which carries rainfall and melt water from the wetter regions of northern California to the state’s agricultural heartland. As a result, at least half a million acres of farmland lay fallow in 2014. While some producers uprooted almond trees, most chose to do without other, less profitable crops.
That is another source of controversy: unlike vegetables, almond trees must be watered year round. Without access to federally allocated water from the irrigation canals, many farmers now source their supply from wells. Excessive groundwater use, says Prof Howitt, is the most pressing water problem faced by the state. Underground aquifers that collected over centuries are being quickly depleted, in some areas causing the very earth to sink by several feet. Late last year Mr Brown at last signed legislation to manage and regulate groundwater use.
Almonds are undoubtedly a thirsty crop, but growers point out that they are far more efficient than beef or dairy. Recent figures compiled by the Los Angeles Times suggest that it takes more than 100 gallons of water to produce an ounce of beef, compared with less than 50 for an ounce of almonds. Advances in irrigation technology, the ABC says, have lowered the amount of water needed to produce almonds by a third.
Some say the wrong product has been demonised, and that opprobrium ought instead to be heaped on alfalfa hay, a low value crop sold as feed to dairies overseas, which takes up even more of the state’s agricultural water supply than do almonds: a whopping 15 per cent in recent years.
Figures from UC Davis suggest that almonds generate more jobs for the state economy per unit of water consumed than alfalfa, rice, beans or corn. But, said Ms Humble, “We don’t think there’s a lot to be gained from pitting one crop against another. The human diet should have a lot of variety. California is an amazing land of bounty that allows people to accomplish that.”
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SUSE® today announced it has received Common Criteria Certificates at Evaluation Assurance Level EAL4, augmented by ALC_FLR.3 (EAL4+) for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2 including KVM virtualization and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z 11 SP2. To achieve the certifications, SUSE’s products and processes for developing and maintaining its products passed a rigorous security evaluation performed by atsec information security. The certificates were issued by Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik ( |
ulenburg Books, p. 79.
Thoreau, Henry David 1994 [1862], Walking, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Tzara, Tristan (1992) [1918], Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries, trans. Barbara Wright, London, Paris and New York: Calder Publications.
Wrights & Sites (2003), An Exeter Mis-Guide, Exeter (UK): Local Heritage Initiative/Arts Council England.
- (2005), unpublished draft for A Mis-Guide to Anywhere (to be published 2006). View and/or download the text as a pdf here.In this week’s politics chat, we examine the cracks in the Democratic Party’s coalition. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): The WikiLeaks dumps of hacked Hillary Clinton campaign emails have mostly been 💤. “Clinton Campaign Found To Be Doing Things Campaigns Do” does not a good headline make. But one interesting theme in the emails is the bad-mouthing by Clinton staffers of Bernie Sanders specifically and the left generally. As POLITICO reported:
Some of the left’s most influential voices and groups are taking offense at the way they and their causes were discussed behind their backs by Clinton and some of her closest advisers in the emails, which swipe liberal heroes and causes as “puritanical,” “pompous”, “naive”, “radical” and “dumb,” calling some “freaks,” who need to “get a life.”
So although Clinton is a favorite to win this election, our question for today’s chat is more structural: Are Democrats heading for a foundational split, similar to what the GOP is undergoing, between liberal and centrist Democrats or between outsiders and the more establishment wing of the party?
Let’s start with this, though: Is there evidence of a meaningful split beyond these emails?
julia (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): There’s some. Part of this is change over time. The Democratic Party 20-plus years ago, when Clinton was first lady, was much more moderate. And the more liberal Democratic Party is kind of a recent and partial development. Until 40 years ago, it had a strong conservative wing. (It even had more of a moderate wing until several years ago.) The Democratic Party wasn’t formed to address economic inequality, and I think that’s an issue — perhaps a constellation of issues — that some Democratic voters would like to see it address in a more programmatic, ideological way.
natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): The split seems to have been patched up in the short term, as Clinton is now getting a fairly typical share of the vote among Democrats — partly because Trump is so unappealing to Democrats of all stripes. But I agree with Julia that it’s becoming a different sort of party in the long term.
micah: So you’re saying the party’s voters have moved further left, at least on some issues, than the party itself (elected officials/the Democratic National Committee/operatives/etc.)?
natesilver: Maybe we can say “activists,” as opposed to voters?
julia: I think it’s not just further left but a qualitative difference in purpose.
harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): Technocratic vs. activist.
natesilver: I remember in 2006, you had lots of support for explicitly moderate, blue dog-type Democrats from Daily Kos and other progressive blogs. Because the important thing was that they had a “D” in their name. Now, that’s much less true. You had Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly a couple of years ago, but otherwise, not very many moderate Democrats winning seats in Congress.
julia: I’d call it a lurching coalition vs. ideological.
micah: Wait — explain that, Julia.
julia: GEEK OUT WARNING!
The Democratic Party has historically been a coalition party — a bunch of different groups in society patched together. The New Deal coalition is a classic example of this — you had Northern African-Americans, various ethnic and religious minorities and Southern farmers. You can come up with policy ideas to appeal to all these groups, but there’s not necessarily a core idea that brings them all together.
harry: And what are we seeing now?
julia: This history basically underlies how the party works now. You’ve got unions. You’ve got LGBT groups, interest groups associated with African-American and Latino concerns, increasingly other minority groups. Pro-choice activists. Etc. These groups probably agree about a bunch of different things, but what unites them under the Democratic banner, according to some recent political science research, is the idea that the party is better for their (historically marginalized) group. (I should note dissenting views to this characterization of Democrats.)
natesilver: Well, it seems like the new coalition is college-educated whites and basically all minority voters (including the growing and not-to-be-overlooked Asian-American community).
julia: It’s not that hard to imagine that coalition as Nate described it not all being on the same page.
harry: I guess what’s interesting to me is that the split in the Democratic Party in this year’s presidential primary was age- and somewhat income-based. But it basically teamed up black voters and older white voters who are better off economically.
natesilver: Yeah, does it make sense in the long term to have college-educated whites — who are generally doing pretty well for themselves — in the same coalition as working-class black and Hispanic voters?
julia: I think there are two ways this could go:
Those groups can generally agree on policy but disagree on priorities. With apologies for the broad brushstroke here, the energy for a True Left seems to be among the college-educated whites — the Bernie Sanders wing, which was pretty overwhelmingly white, with a few exceptions. (I use True Left somewhat ironically. I look forward to the Twitter hate.)
micah: Nonwhite Democrats tend to be more moderate, right?
natesilver: Sort of, but that may be changing along generational lines. Younger Hispanic voters are pretty liberal on gay marriage, for instance.
julia: Yeah, I understand that to be true in a very, very broad sense, but not deeply true, if that makes any sense.
harry: What made very little sense to me in the Democratic primary was that college-educated or wealthier whites were much more pro-Clinton in 2016 than they were in 2008.
natesilver: And if you look at the issues that really unite Democrats, it’s the cultural stuff. Gay marriage was the one thing that was guaranteed to get cheers on the convention floor in Philadelphia. Well, that and critiques of Trump’s racism and sexism.
julia: Harry, I think that actually makes sense if you think about what’s preceding the primary. One hypothesis that I had was that Sanders’s support was coming from people who are on the left but did not come out of the Obama years very well, while Clinton support came from people who were doing OK.
But race complicates the hell out of this picture. One thing I found most interesting, which I may have said before, is that prominent black intellectuals — the ones who are reshaping the discourse around mass incarceration and other racial justice issues, like Michelle Alexander and Ta-Nehisi Coates — were on Team Bernie, but Clinton’s support among black voters was strong.
micah: OK, so let’s talk about how this would play out: Would a split manifest itself during a Clinton presidency? In fights over legislation/Supreme Court appointments/etc.? Or would we have to wait until the next Democratic presidential primary to see the split in action? As in, maybe (if she wins this year) Clinton is challenged for the nomination in 2020.
harry: I tend to doubt that Clinton would face a serious renomination fight if her overall approval ratings were high. I would expect problems over stuff like trade. Big problems.
natesilver: Clinton could get herself caught in a position where there are high expectations, but she doesn’t have a lot of ability to enact her agenda. And that seems like a textbook case for party in-fighting.
julia: One big question IMO is whether liberal Democrats actually hold up legislation over their ideas. Kind of the liberal version of the House Freedom Caucus. It’s hard to argue that it’s been a positive development for the Republicans (I’m allowed to talk about Republicans, right?) — but they sure get their ideas out there. How many people knew the phrase “debt ceiling” before 2011?
harry: But here’s the biggest thing: Sanders had very few backers in Congress.
julia: Yeah. And Democrats aren’t, at the moment, getting primaried the way that Republicans have been.
micah: But Sanders will have more political capital now, and he has vocal supporters. He’s said he’ll try to keep Clinton honest, from his POV.
harry: I think this stuff becomes more of a thing if Clinton becomes less popular.
micah: She’s already not that popular, Harry.
harry: Among Democrats she is.
micah: Ah, yeah.
julia: Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, but in a lot of ways, he’s really the ideological heir to the Progressive movement. He talks about a “movement,” but his candidacy was all about himself and his voters, not a bigger coalition in government, as Harry points out. This is a model of politics that a lot of people find very appealing, but its potential is limited when it comes to governing. Parties really do matter.
But that kind of procedural stuff can divide a party. (By procedural stuff, I mean how we do politics — how much a candidate directly engages voters in a grassroots movement, Sanders-style, versus the perceptions that Clinton is the candidate of party elites.)
natesilver: If Clinton wins by 5+ percentage points, Democrats are going to feel like it’s a big triumph. And the reality — when Clinton is having trouble getting anything passed through what will probably still be a Republican-controlled House — could create some resentment. How are they going to handle the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for example? Budget stuff? Policy toward the Time Warner-AT&T merger?
In theory, you have a centrist, establishment coalition and populists on both wings who might be in opposition. But the way it plays out is pretty unpredictable and potentially pretty dysfunctional, I think.
julia: To some extent, I see the split between the two wings of the Democratic Party being as much about the role of parties and how party politics are practiced as about trade or whatever.
IMO this has certainly been the story of the Republicans. The rebellion within the Republican Party is partially about the power of party elites, the representation of rank-and-file voters, and the issue of compromise with the other side. These themes were all prominent in Sanders’s campaign too, alongside topics like campaign finance reform. There’s a definite strain of “if we just empower the people, we’ll get what we want,” alongside skepticism about compromise with Republicans and suspicion of the DNC as an organization.
micah: Let’s give a sense of scale here: The fractures in the Democratic Party are nowhere near as bad as in the GOP, right? I mean, you have a Republican Party right now in which a majority of the party’s voters don’t really care about the agenda of the Republican House speaker.
harry: You have the Republican presidential nominee bashing the Republican speaker of the House. Clinton, meanwhile, won more endorsements during her primary than anyone since 1972.
natesilver: The Republicans are experiencing like a magnitude 8.8 on the political Richter scale. And Democrats are at like a 6.2. And remember that the Richter scale is exponential.
micah: So let’s use the Richter Scale to put all this in context: Where would the GOP’s structural problems rate and where would the Democrats’?
jinx
julia: Did you guys come up with that independently? I’m kinda weirded out now.
micah: haha
harry: This is weird.
micah: I’ve worked with Nate for too long.
julia: I’m now imagining that you are also dressed alike.
micah: Actually, Nate’s in a suit today!
julia: But, yeah, at the moment it’s nowhere near as bad for Democrats. Which is pretty impressive after a two-term presidency. But the concern I would have if I were a Democratic activist is that the Democrats, like the Republicans, don’t have a lot of mechanisms by which to resolve party disputes. Their organization has suffered a pretty bad blow to its legitimacy.
harry: The thing to remember here is that reliable Democratic voters were far more likely to back Clinton than Sanders. That’s very different than on the Republican side, where Trump voters were the reliable ones. Ergo, Democratic incumbents don’t really need to fear a primary challenge as much as Republicans do (as Julia mentioned earlier).
julia: I’d put the Democrats at 5 and the Republicans at 7.
natesilver: Here’s another question: What happens to #NeverTrump Republicans who cross over to vote for Clinton? Do Democrats have any hope of holding on to them?
micah: Only I am allowed to ask questions here, Nate.
julia: Maybe if the Republicans have another cycle in the woods, which I think is a possibility.
micah: I think it’ll be very hard for Democrats to hold onto the John Kasichs of the world. They just disagree on so much.
julia: I don’t think the Republicans are going to collapse; I think they are going to have a protracted period of division and suffering, outcome unknown. But I don’t see the Democrats ideologically moderating enough to make that strategy a possibility (appealing to the Kasich crowd).
micah: Right. And without Trump as a sword of Damocles, the Kasich voter doesn’t have enough motivation to set up camp long term with Clinton.
harry: “Sword of Damocles”? What is going on here?
julia: I don’t know. I’m Googling … Here’s an explainer from NPR.
micah: Ah, apparently I’m misusing that reference. From that NPR piece: “The real point of the story is very clearly a moral parable. It’s not just, oh, something terrible is going to happen, but it’s about realizing that what looks like an enviable life, a life of wealth, a life of power, a life of luxury is, in fact, fraught with anxiety, terror and possibly death.”
natesilver: But we haven’t explored the other half of this, which is what happens when the GOP comes to be even more dominated by working-class white voters, particularly working-class men. Does the Kasich voter who’s making $200,000 a year as a lawyer in Shaker Heights feel like she’s a part of that coalition?
harry: You have said, Nate, that Trump is helping to exacerbate trends already seen in the electorate.
natesilver: Yeah, but it might leave those Kasich-y Republicans without a home. Even though they’re very active and turn out to vote at high rates and donate a lot of money.
julia: An important twist on that question is whether those two groups can keep coming together on taxes, or abortion, for different reasons.
My literal answer to your question, Nate, depends on whether your hypothetical voter is a woman or a man.
natesilver: Yeah, for sure. I struggled with what gender pronoun to use in that sentence.
harry: You can have a real divergence between the Park Avenue Democrat and the Youngstown Democrat.
natesilver: But … part of what I think you’re saying, Julia — or maybe this is what I’m saying — is that Democrats are becoming a more ideological party, with some notion of egalitarianism being central to that ideology. So I wonder how the “please keep my taxes low but also don’t hate on gay and black people” Republicans are going to fit in, especially with Democrats moving to the left on fiscal policy.
julia: Yeah, and this was an especially prominent line (wrt gay people) during the George W. Bush years. I suppose it comes down to what matters more to people — that sense of identity, or pocketbook-related policy. I suspect that differs across individuals.
natesilver: Yeah, it seems dangerous in a lot of ways when all the elites (cultural, financial, intellectual) wind up in one party.HANOVER, N.H. - Virtual and augmented reality have the potential to profoundly impact our society, but the technologies have a few bugs to work out to better simulate realistic visual experience. Now, researchers at Dartmouth College and Stanford University have discovered that "monovision" -- a simple technique borrowed from ophthalmology that dates to the monocle of the Victorian Age - can improve user performance in virtual reality environments.
The findings will be presented May 9 at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Virtual and augmented reality provide a unique platform for entertainment, education, collaborative work, basic vision research and other uses. But these displays still need to overcome technical and perceptual issues to provide high-quality and immersive user experiences. In particular, one long-standing challenge has been the mismatch between convergence and accommodation - or the visual cues that our eye muscles send to our brains as our eyes fixate and focus on objects in 3D - that are inherent to most stereoscopic displays.
A collaboration between electrical engineers at Stanford and a perceptual scientist at Dartmouth has examined how novel optical configurations can improve user experience and performance in virtual reality. Using the Oculus Rift VR headset, the research team created a prototype system with focus-tunable liquid lenses allowing for a range of optical modifications. On the one hand, this prototype allowed for creating adaptive focus cues, which resulted in higher user preferences and better performance in virtual reality. On the other hand, the system also allowed for testing of an extremely low-tech modification that leverages monovision, a technique that allows each eye of an observer to focus to a different distance. While the monovision technique is common practice in ophthalmology, the Stanford-Dartmouth team is the first to report its effectiveness for VR applications with a custom built set up.
"My lab has been conducting research on computational near-eye display optics for a few years now, and tapping into the wealth of techniques commonly used in ophthalmology and by vision science is key for delivering better experiences with virtual reality systems," says co-author Gordon Wetzstein, an assistant professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford.
"In addition to showing how adaptive focus can be implemented and can improve virtual reality optics, our studies reveal that monovision can also improve user performance in terms of reaction times and accuracy, particularly when simulating objects that are relatively close to the user," says lead author Robert Konrad, a graduate researcher at Stanford.
Co-author Emily Cooper, a research assistant professor in Dartmouth's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, adds: "Practical optical solutions for virtual reality are crucial to moving this technology to increasingly more comfortable and immersive experiences. Our work shows that monovision has the potential to be one such solution."
###
Dartmouth Research Assistant Professor Emily Cooper is available to comment at emily.a.cooper@dartmouth.edu.Feisty former vice president Dan Quayle is cheerfully engaged in the presidential election, but is not without a cautionary tale. Indeed, the man who was George H.W. Bush’s running mate almost a quarter century ago was recently in the nation’s capital to honor the Points of Light Foundation, an organization founded by Mr. Bush, and devoted to volunteerism. The event was aglow with peach-colored lanterns and ivory draping; guests dined upon beef tenderloin embellished with yakatori noodles and fresh endamame beans. And no wonder. It was staged at the official residence of Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki.
Among the convivial guests: Neil Bush, former White House counsel Boyden Grey, author Alexandra deBorchgrave, basketball great Dikembe Mutumbo and NBC “Today” co-host Al Roker.
“Where’s the optimism, where’s the simplicity of the candidates message in this year’s race? Voters pay attention to such things, and I think both are missing from the campaign trail,” Mr. Quayle tells Inside the Beltway. “Everybody knows we’ve got a bitter pill to swallow as far as the economy goes. But the reality is we’ve got to grow the economic pie here, and we’ve got to create a society of opportunity for all Americans.”
Mr. Quayle, incidentally, declared President Obama guilty of “failed leadership” and “a darling of the fawning media” nine months ago, then enthusiastically endorsed Mitt Romney for president.
“He has demonstrated he is capable of making tough decisions and turning things around,” Mr. Quayle said in December. “He is a man of integrity. He understands budgets and financial markets. He balanced budgets and met a bottom line. He is strong on national defense and has a deep love of the principles that make America great.”
POLITICAL CURRENCY
“The president believes as much that God should be taken off a coin as he does that aliens are going to come attack Florida.”
(White House campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki, during the White House press briefing on Sunday, denying press accounts that President Obama had considered removing “In God We Trust” from U.S. money).
NEVER FORGET
As the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks dawns Tuesday, there’s unfinished business about the day itself. Some insist it should it be a national “day of service,” an idea opposed by those who say it sanitizes the stark reality of the attacks. Politicians dicker over the public role of the Ground Zero memorial itself; there are intense discussions about decorum at what many say is a sacred site. Tourists wander casually past bronze panels inscribed with the names of victims, tourists picnic in planted areas. Trash was recently thrown into the dark memorial pools.
“People laughed and took pictures smiling, and so many people leaned on the tablets with all my friends’ names engraved in them, holding Starbucks cups, like it was a kitchen table,” advised Marianne Pizzitola, president of the FDNY/EMS Retirees Association, in a public letter to Joe Daniels, president of the memorial.
The public still struggles with the anniversary, says Rep. Scott E. Rigell. But the Virginia Republican is convinced that the citizenry clearly remembers the patriotism that shined during “this dark time in America.
“Together as a nation, we renew our solemn pledge to stand and fight for our freedom,” Mr. Rigell adds. “As we come together around this noble conviction, renewing our commitment in the face of challenges and enemies, we summon the words of Todd Beamer, who died when Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania. ‘Let’s roll.’ “
O’DONNELL REINVENTED
Two years ago, a gleeful Bill Maher aired damaging video footage of then-Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell, revealing she had once dabbled in witchcraft. She lost the race. But Mr. Maher displayed some uncharacteristic remorse when Miss O’Donnell came to call on his HBO show this weekend.
“I know when I brought out the witch tape I made your life hell and I’m sorry about that. I don’t agree with your ideas, but it shouldn’t have hung on that stupid witch thing,” he told the one-time tea party favorite, who has since formed a new political action committee. Miss O’Donnell shrugged off the incident as ancient history, more eager to dish on Bill Clinton’s speech before the Democratic National Convention.
“You would think he were running,” she observed. “He was out there talking about his record because Obama can’t stand on Obama’s own record.”
A D’SOUZA EYE VIEW
It’s confounded liberal critics, made $26.2 million at the box office, is in 2,000 theaters and ranks second on the list of the most popular U.S. political films. “2016: Obama’s America,” a documentary based on Dinesh D’Souza’s book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” is a hit. Now Mr. D’Souza has offered Part Two: “Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream” is already No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list.
“The book shows, in horrifying detail, exactly what President Obama has planned for his second term, and how his re-election could sound the death knell for the American dream,” says publisher Regnery Books. “D’Souza reveals Obama’s real aim: to diminish the footprint of America in the world, because he believes America is stepping on the world. In order to achieve his idea of global justice, Obama has appointed himself the architect of American decline.”
POLL DU JOUR
• 80 percent of retired Americans with $100,000 or more in “investable assets” say they do not work outside the home.
• 69 percent say the recession has had little effect on them, 64 percent are “on target” for their retirement planning goals.
• 58 percent are not concerned about leaving their children an inheritance.
• 47 percent say “living within my means” is the most important retirement-related decision they ever made.
• 35 percent say they started saving “at an early age.”
Source: A PNC Financial Services Group survey of 1,038 U.S. adults with over $100,000 in investable assets and at least $25,000 in liquid investable assets conducted July 1-31 and released Wednesday.
• Crabby observations, press releases to [email protected]
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.THEY have appeared in more than 1800 games between them, booted nearly 900 goals, won two premierships and a best and fairest, and one player has even captained his club.
But when things go awry on the field, they are the whipping boys fans love to target.
Who's in the mix to return for round 10?
AFL.com.au's reporters have put their heads together to pick a team featuring one player from each club who cops it from his own supporters.
Without question, the poster boy for this side is Melbourne's No.1 draft pick Jack Watts.
The 24-year-old regularly bears the brunt of fans' frustrations, with coach Paul Roos claiming that he "would be in Hawaii by now" if he was Watts.
But the talented Demon is not alone in feeling his own supporters' wrath.
Bryce Gibbs is Carlton's reigning club champion, however Blues fans are quick to direct their displeasure at the gun midfielder when performances head south.
Securing Hawthorn premiership Clinton Young was a recruiting coup for Collingwood in 2012, but no matter how highly he's regarded internally, the Magpie Army has struggled to forget a match-defining dropped mark late in last year's loss to Gold Coast.
Also picked in this side is another premiership player, Sydney Swans defender Heath Grundy, despite his obvious value to the 'Bloods' having played in 82 of the past 84 games.
That former Crows captain Nathan van Berlo makes the 'Whipping Boys XVIII' is further proof that when fans' frustrations boil over, rational thinking goes out the window.
Then there's much-maligned defender Zac Dawson, who has held down a key position in four Grand Finals under master coach Ross Lyon, but has been an easy target for fans at three clubs – Hawthorn, St Kilda and now Fremantle.
And if you listen to supporters, then the Hawks' swingman Ryan Schoenmakers, Kangaroos defender Sam Gibson, Richmond big man Ty Vickery and Essendon veteran Brent Stanton should be among the first players dropped when their side doesn't perform.
Certainly, AFL players are handsomely rewarded financially and lead a lifestyle most can only dream of. But who said life at the elite level isn't tough?Jose Mourinho has insisted he will not force any of Manchester United's fringe players to leave Old Trafford in January, but said it "hurts" to leave the likes of Memphis Depay, Ashley Young and Marouane Fellaini out his match-day squads.
The United manager, who has admitted that Bastian Schweinsteiger could remain at the club for the rest of the season after a surprise return to contention, has handed Depay and Young just a handful of appearances this season, with Belgium international Fellaini dropping out of the picture in recent weeks.
Uncertainty also surrounds the futures of Matteo Darmian, Morgan Schneiderlin and Marcos Rojo, with Mourinho to target at least one new signing in the transfer window.
But the Portuguese admits that all of his out-of-favour players are impressing him with their effort and commitment, making it harder for him to tell them they have no future at the club.
"I will not push anyone because nobody deserves that," Mourinho said. "The way they work, they don't deserve that.
"On Wednesday I was in my hotel and my assistants came here to train the group of five who were not selected and stayed here. They told me what I expected -- amazing effort, amazing commitment, amazing professionalism.
"Memphis Depay, Ashley Young, Marouane Fellaini -- the people who stay here were fantastic.
"It hurts me not to select them, so you see that sometimes I do a little bit of rotation. One day I play one, another day I leave one at home, then put one on the bench.
"Nobody deserves to be pushed, for me to say 'it's better for you to leave.'"
Mourinho has conceded, however, that he will not stand in a player's way if he claims that the frustration of being overlooked is too great.
"I have to understand that frustration is something that comes to the players now and again in certain moments of their careers and seasons," he said.
"Frustration is something that arrives and we will analyse it if anyone who shows me that frustration has a desire to leave.
"For me, it's very comfortable to have all of them. But it hurts me."
Mark Ogden is a senior football writer for ESPN FC. Follow him @MarkOgden_"Cheat Codes" redirects here. For the gaming website, see CheatCodes.com. For the American electronic dance music group, see Cheat Codes (DJs) Cheating in video games involves a video game player using non-standard methods to create an advantage or disadvantage beyond normal gameplay, in order to make the game easier or harder. Cheats may be activated from within the game itself (a cheat code implemented by the original game developers), or created by third-party software (a game trainer) or hardware (a cheat cartridge). They can also be realized by exploiting software bugs; this may or may not be considered cheating based on whether the bug is considered common knowledge. Contents
History Edit
Cheating in video games has existed for almost their entire history. The first cheat codes were put in place for play testing purposes. Playtesters had to rigorously test the mechanics of a game and introduced cheat codes to make this process easier. An early cheat code can be found in Manic Miner, where typing "6031769" (based on Matthew Smith's driving license) enables the cheat mode.[1] Within months of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord's 1981 release, at least two commercial trainers appeared.[2] 1983 advertisements for "The Great Escape Utility" for Castle Wolfenstein (1981) promised that the $15 product "remodels every feature of the game. Stop startup delays, crashes and chest waiting. Get any item, in any quantity. Start in any room, at any rank. Handicap your aim. Even add items".[3] In a computer game, all numerical values are stored "as is" in memory. Gamers could reprogram a small part of the game before launching it. In the context of games for many 8-bit computers, it was a usual practice to load games into memory and, before launching them, modify specific memory addresses in order to cheat, getting an unlimited number of lives, currency, immunity, invisibility, etc. Such modifications were performed through POKE statements. The Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC range and ZX Spectrum also allowed players with the proper cartridges or Multiface add-on to freeze the running program, enter POKEs, and resume. Some games tried to detect the Multiface and refused to load if it was present. The earliest models had no ability to "hide". Later revisions either included a switch, hid if been opened and closed the menu before loading the game, or automatically hid. For instance, with POKE 47196,201 in Knight Lore for the ZX Spectrum, immunity is achieved. Magazines such as Crash regularly featured lists of such POKE instructions for games. In order to find them a hacker had to interpret the machine code and locate the critical point where the number of lives is decreased, impacts detected, etc. Sometimes the term POKE was used with this specific meaning. Cheating was exploited by technology-oriented players due to the difficulty of early cheats. However, a cheat industry emerged as gaming systems evolved, through the packaging and selling of cheating as a product.[4] Cheat-enablers such as cheat books, game guides, cheat cartridges helped form a cheat industry and cemented cheating as part of gaming culture.[5] However, cheating was not universally accepted in early gaming; gaming magazine Amiga Power condemned cheaters, taking the stance that cheating was not part of their philosophy of fairness. They also applied this in reverse; games should also not be allowed to cheat the player. Guides, walkthroughs, and tutorials are sometimes used to complete games but whether this is cheating is debated. Later, cheating grew more popular with magazines, websites, and even a television show, Cheat!, dedicated to listing cheats and walkthroughs for consoles and computer systems. POKE cheats were replaced by trainers[6] and cheat codes. Generally, the majority of cheat codes on modern day systems are implemented not by gamers, but by game developers. Some say that as many people do not have the time to complete a video game on their own, cheats are needed to make a game more accessible and appealing to a casual gamer.[7] In many cases, developers created cheats to facilitate testing, then left them in the game as they expanded the number of ways people could play it.[8] With the rise in popularity of gaming, cheating using external software and hardware raised a number of copyright legal issues related to modifying game code. Many modern games have removed cheat codes entirely, except when used to unlock certain secret bonuses. The usage of real-time achievement tracking made it unfair for any one player to cheat. In online multiplayer games, cheating is frowned upon and disallowed, often leading to a ban. However, certain games may unlock single-player cheats if the player fulfills a certain condition. Yet other games, such as those using the Source engine, allow developer consoles to be used to activate a wide variety of cheats in single-player or by server administrators.[citation needed] Many games which use in-game purchases consider cheating to be not only wrong but also illegal, seeing as cheats in such games would allow players to access content (like power-ups and extra coins) that would otherwise require payment to obtain. However, cheating in such games is nonetheless a legal grey area because there are no laws against modifying software which is already owned, as detailed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.[9]
Cheat codes Edit
Bots Edit
Main article: Video game bot In the online game, there are methods called bots (robots), which are programs that emulate human behavior to perform actions (repetitive or not) that enable advantages to be achieved.
Modification of runtime game data Edit
Unusual effects Edit
Cheat codes may sometimes produce unusual or interesting effects which don't necessarily make the game easier to play. For example, one cheat in Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis makes dinosaurs appear "undead". Another example occurs in the game Dungeon Siege, where activating the cheat to extend the range of a bow also allows the enemies to fire at the same distance, thereby eliminating the advantage the cheat would have given. A cheat may even make the game harder to play; for instance, one could give the enemy special abilities, increase general difficulty, make neutral bystanders attack the player or grant the player a disadvantage such as low health points. Cheats in Grand Theft Auto games can make NPCs start rioting or wield weapons. In Grand Theft Auto III, the player can activate a cheat to enable blowing off the limbs of NPCs, a feature originally included in the game. Recently, however, Rockstar Games has not included such violent or unusual cheat codes in its games, instead choosing to focus on cheats such as vehicle spawns, player effects (for example, invincibility) and weapon spawns. Some games humorously penalize the player for using another game's cheat codes. For example, using cheat codes from Doom in Descent only displays sarcastic messages from the programmers on screen; using codes from Descent in its sequel Descent II lowers the player's shields and energy to 1%.[17] Codes from Doom used in Heretic give the opposite of the desired effect, such as instant death instead of invulnerability or stripping weapons instead of providing them.[18] The original Doom's "god mode" code "IDDQD" is non-functional in Doom 3, but produces a console message: "Your memory serves you well." Other codes make purely cosmetic changes—for example, to what the player character is wearing—but do not enhance the progress of the game. Most of the Grand Theft Auto games have a code to change the player character into an NPC. Other peculiar cheats may invoke "big-head mode" (GoldenEye 007[19]), replace weapons with other objects, or change the colors of characters. Easter eggs are a related feature. Although such hidden content has no impact on gameplay, these 'eggs' can be found in many games and may hint at future games in a series or give more information on a topic. Some easter eggs can only be found by cheating commands such as noclip mode.
Counter-cheating measures Edit
Cheating in online games Edit
Main article: Cheating in online games Cheating exists in many multiplayer video games. While there have always been cheat codes and other ways to make single-player games easier, developers often attempt to prevent it in multiplayer games. With the release of the first popular internet multiplayer games, cheating took on new dimensions. Previously it was rather easy to see if the other players cheated, as most games were played on local networks or consoles. The Internet changed that by increasing the popularity of multiplayer games, giving the players relative anonymity, and giving people an avenue to communicate cheats. Examples of cheats in first-person shooter games include the aimbot, which assists the player in aiming at the target, giving the user an unfair advantage, the wallhack, which allows a player to see through solid or opaque objects or manipulate or remove textures, and ESP, with which the information of other players is displayed. There are also cheats that increase the size of the enemies' hitbox which allows you to shoot next to the enemy, which would usually result in a miss, but the game would detect as a hit. In role-playing games, twinking, the practice of passing on valuable items not normally available at player |
details Antshares have partnered up with two trusted and reputable institution which will get one key to the multi-signature wallet each. HaoBTC.com, Chinese famous mining & BTC wallet provider. This 2-of-3 multi-signature is powered by HaoBTC, too. DACA.asia, Digital Assets Coalition Asia. It was initiated by the companies of :, and some well-known experts :, etc. Asia BlockChain DACA Association is committed to serve the Bitcoin and Blockchain development in Asia area.to be continued...The transfer on Antshare is conducted in the form the e-contracts. In most cases, the transfer of assets requires the digital signatures signed with the private keys from both the sender and the receiver. In certain cases, an extra signature from the issuer of the asset is required. Recording transfers of assets on the Antshare is merely an onchain solution of the transfer of offchain assets. There are no new legal relationships that parties could enter into, so unlike the tokenization, flaws in laws are eliminated.Antshare employs digital certificate to perform user identity authentication. Users (individuals or institutions) may apply for digital certificates from the certificate authority (CA) to prove the correlation between the identity and the public key controlled. CAs will not be appointed by Antshare, but freely chosen by the parties of a trade. For example, Chinese users may choose any one of the 38 CAs recognized by the MIIT, or choose the company who registered the equity to be the CA, to perform identity authentication and issue the certificate.Rather than the X.509 digital certificate solution, Antshare employs blockchain to maintain the certificate revocation list and is set to gradually develop a blockchain-based digital certificate and identity authentication solution.Antshares uses Joint mode for bookkeeping. Joint mode is advantageous over consistency and finality, it requires nodes to authenticate themselves to achieve a weak trust from other nodes.Crypto-currencies like bitcoin could deliver a sound function as the medium of exchange, i.e. users may transfer assets globally via bitcoin. However, inflexible supply of crypto-currencies makes them highly volatile in price and jeopardizes their capacity to function as bookkeeping units and value storage.This is to say, while ANS is the stake and ANC is the gas, fiat currency can be directly used as currency on the Antshares Blockchain.With Antshare, our design goal is to have a clear division of the systems workload. Bookkeeping nodes are at the center of the Antshare Blockchain. They are trusted by the holders of AntShares in reaching consensus and generating new blocks. Full nodes are critical participants of the Antshare network. They are run by service providers to store complete historical data and detect and relay transactions.At the moment, the block generating rate is manually set at 15 seconds. With low enough latency in inter-nodes connection in the future, most blocks will be generated by every 1 second. With the bandwidth at 100Mbit/t and external cryptographic computing hardware, the Antshare Blockchain is capable of handling thousands, if no tens of thousands, of transactions per second.Our hierarchical design places the order-book-keeping and order-matching functions on the second layer while achieving the full trading capacity through a mechanism called superconducting transaction.We have ourhere: https://www.antshares.org/en-US/Blog/Details?id=21 Our short video here: https://youtu.be/eVawK0volwA (Our investment process changed a little bit from what's shown in the video to make it more user friendly, process shown in video is just for reference)- 20 million ANS will be issued; in addition, a 4 million ANS weighted reward (early bird reward), amounting 20% and 4% of the total ANS respectively, or 40% and 8% of the volume in circulation of the first year.- This ICO does not have a pre-set price. The price shall be determined by the market. The ANS distribution will be proportional to the investment. To calculate: ANS received by a participant= (BTC invested by the participant/all valid BTC investment)*20,000,000*weighted factor.- A 120% factor is rewarded to those who participate between Aug. 8th and Aug. 13th. Beginning on Aug. 14th, the weighted factor will decrease by 1% each day until the termination of the ICO. For example, the factor will be 119% on Aug. 14th, 118% on Aug. 15th, 117% on Aug. 16th, and finally 100% on Sept. 2nd- When the ICO terminates on Sept. 7th, 2016(Beijing Time), ICO participants could have the option of continuing or quitting based on the general conditions of the funds raised.- When a refund takes place, 100% of the bitcoins invested by the participant shall be refunded to the bitcoin address designated by the participant in his/her refund application. The refund option will become unavailable upon the formal release of Antshares software, which is under development- The refund policy does not support a partial refund and is not revocable once applied.2016-06-29 超级账本中国首次公开见面会，探讨区块链行业标准制定2016-06-28 Onchain与微软合作探索区块链应用，小蚁二期众筹将于七月开启2016-05-23 Onchain小蚁加盟超级账本，参与制定区块链国际标准2016-04-07 Onchain发布小蚁共识算法白皮书2015-11-02 10天2100个比特币，小蚁股众筹你抢到了吗？2015-10-09 小蚁众筹目标公布，2100BTC致敬中本聪？Any bounty questions, please contact antshares belowfor detailsLAS VEGAS ― Hillary Clinton questioned Donald Trump’s ability to close a deal during Wednesday night’s presidential debate here.
“When it comes to the wall that Donald talked about building, he went to Mexico, he had a meeting with the Mexican president, didn’t even raise it,” Clinton said, referencing a meeting between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in August. Peña Nieto said afterward that he told Trump Mexico wouldn’t pay for the wall as Trump had repeatedly promised his supporters.
“He choked,” Clinton said, using a line her campaign has deployed against Trump before.
Clinton dissed Trump’s visit with Peña Nieto in the course of an answer in which she portrayed herself as the much more humane candidate on immigration.
“I don’t want to rip families apart,” she said. “I don’t want to be sending parents away from children. I don’t want to see the deportation force that Donald has talked about in action in our country. We have 11 million undocumented people. They have four million American citizen children.”
Trump, for his part, initially seemed to confirm that he wanted to focus on deportation, saying that Mexican drug lords had to be rounded up, which has been a core theme of his campaign.
“We have some bad hombres here and we’re going to get them out,” Trump said.
But he glossed over his plans to deport as many other undocumented immigrants as possible. He also veered between arguing Clinton wants amnesty and an open border and insisting she wanted a wall along the southwest border and tying her to President Barack Obama’s deportation numbers. He was referring to Clinton’s vote for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which mandated the creation of hundreds of miles of border fencing that is still unfinished. Trump has said his border wall would be different from the fencing that currently exists ― in suggesting Clinton’s position was the same as his, he was really just arguing against his own claims that she opposes border security.
“Hillary Clinton fought for the wall in 2006 or thereabouts,” he said. “Now, she never gets anything done, so naturally the wall wasn’t built. But Hillary Clinton wanted the wall.”
Each of the candidates brought guests to call out while they discussed immigration. Trump invited four people whose family members were killed by undocumented immigrants, while Clinton called out 11-year-old Karla Ortiz, a U.S. citizen whose parents are undocumented.
Immigration is a huge issue in Nevada ― undocumented immigrants make up 7 percent of the state’s population, a higher share than any other state, according to the most recent estimates from Pew Research Center.
The fates of those undocumented immigrants and their families would be vastly different under Trump or Clinton.
Trump launched his campaign by vowing to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico ― that Mexico would pay for ― to prevent what he painted as a scourge of criminals crossing the border without authorization. He repeatedly promised over the ensuing year that all undocumented immigrants would have to leave the country should he become president, although some might be able to return legally. In August, Trump encouraged speculation that he was reconsidering his hardline stance on deportations, before confirming in early September that he would ramp up enforcement and attempt to drive out other undocumented immigrants by making it harder for them to live in the country.
Clinton supports legislation to grant legal status to many of the undocumented immigrants with longstanding ties to the country, and eventually allow them to gain citizenship. In the meantime, she has said she would use her executive powers to protect some from deportation ― going beyond what President Barack Obama attempted. She also made a spate of other immigration reform promises, such as shutting down private detention centers and expanding access to lawyers for people in deportation proceedings.
Immigration isn’t typically the top issue for Latino voters, but does rank higher among them than the overall population. And Trump appears poised for a bigger loss with Latino voters than failed 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who infamously called for undocumented immigrants to “self-deport” and then received only 27 percent of the Latino vote.
Latino voters heavily favor Clinton to Trump: An NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll released this week found that 70 percent would choose Clinton and 17 percent would choose Trump in a head-to-head matchup.The Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and it owns nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. See the map for more. It is time for a sale. Selling even some western land could raise hundreds of billions of dollars – perhaps trillions of dollars – for the Federal government at a time when the funds are badly needed and no one want to raise taxes. At the same time, a sale of western land would improve the efficiency of land allocation.
Does a sale of western lands mean reducing national parkland? No, first much of the land isn’t parkland. Second, I propose a deal. The government should sell some of its most valuable land in the west and use some of the proceeds to buy low-price land in the Great Plains.
The western Great Plains are emptying of people. Some 322 of the 443 Plains counties have lost population since 1930 and a majority have lost population since 1990.
Now is the time for the Federal government to sell high-priced land in the West, use some of the proceeds to deal with current problems and use some of the proceeds to buy low-priced land in the Plains creating the world’s largest nature park, The Buffalo Commons.
Hat tip to Carl Close for the pointer to the map.John Oliver says he has no interest in booking Donald Trump. (AP/File)
Donald Trump has feuded with plenty of people during his presidential campaign. The latest: John Oliver.
Last week, the “Last Week Tonight” host said he has no interest in booking Trump on his late-night show.
“I don’t really care about him in any capacity,” Oliver said Friday on “CBS This Morning.” “I’ve really got nothing to say to him. He’s said everything he wants to say. He’s got no internal monologue, that man. It’s not like you’re going in to find the secret nugget he’s been holding back.”
“He’s an open book,” Oliver continued. “And that book doesn’t have that many interesting words in it.”
The real estate mogul fired back via his preferred medium — Twitter — claiming the weekly HBO program had reached out to him.
“John Oliver had his people call to ask me to be on his very boring and low rated show,” Trump tweeted. “I said ‘NO THANKS’ Waste of time & energy!”
.@thehill John Oliver had his people call to ask me to be on his very boring and low rated show. I said “NO THANKS” Waste of time & energy! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2015
But Oliver’s people say they did no such thing.
“A couple of points,” read a tweet from the “Last Week Tonight” Twitter feed. “1. Yes, we have a boring show. 2. At no point did we invite Donald Trump to appear on it.”
A couple of points… 1. Yes, we have a boring show. 2. At no point did we invite Donald Trump to appear on it. https://t.co/qjpg9FLb0V — Last Week Tonight (@LastWeekTonight) November 1, 2015
Trump’s presence in the 2016 race has led to big ratings for cable networks that have hosted the Republican debates — and for the late-night hosts who have managed to book him.
Late last month, Trump’s appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” gave the CBS show its best viewership since Colbert’s Sept. 8 debut.
But in his own appearance on “The Late Show,” Oliver said he wasn’t interested in even covering Trump.
“I couldn’t give less of a s—,” he said. “It’s physically impossible.”
He added: “It’s 2015 right now. So I don’t care until we’re in the same year as the thing I’m supposed to care about. That’s the beauty: We’re on half an hour a week; we don’t have to care about the election.”by
One of the challenges in understanding privacy is how to square what people say about privacy with what they actually do. People say they care deeply about privacy and resent unexpected commercial use of information about them; but they happily give that same information to companies likely to use and sell it. If people value their privacy so highly, why do they sell it for next to nothing?
To put it another way, people say they want more privacy than the market is producing. Why is this? One explanation is that actions speak louder than words, people don’t really want privacy very much (despite what they say), and the market is producing an efficient level of privacy. But there’s another possibility: perhaps a market failure is causing underproduction of privacy.
Why might this be? A recent Slate essay by Reihan Salam gives a clue. Salam talks about the quandry faced by companies like the financial-management site Wesabe. A new company building up its business wants to reassure customers that their information will be treated with the utmost case. But later, when the company is big, it will want to monetize the same customer information. Salam argues that these forces are in tension and few if any companies will be able to stick with their early promises to not be evil.
What customers want, of course, is not good intentions but a solid commitment from a company that it will stay privacy-friendly as it grows. The problem is that there’s no good way for a company to make such a commitment. In principle, a company could make an ironclad legal commitment, written into a contract with customers. But in practice customers will have a hard time deciphering such a contract and figuring out how much it actually protects them. Is the contract enforceable? Are there loopholes? The average customer won’t have a clue. He’ll do what he usually does with a long website contract: glance briefly at it, then shrug and click “Accept”.
An alternative to contracts is signaling. A company will say, repeatedly, that its intentions are pure. It will appoint the right people to its advisory board and send its executives to say the right things at the right conferences. It will take conspicuous, almost extravagant steps to be privacy-friendly. This is all fine as far as it goes, but these signals are a poor substitute for a real commitment. They aren’t too difficult to fake. And even if the signals are backed by the best of intentions, everything could change in an instant if the company is acquired – a new management team might not share the original team’s commitment to privacy. Indeed, if management’s passion for privacy is holding down revenue, such an acquisition will be especially likely.
There’s an obvious market failure here. If we postulate that at least some customers want to use web services that come with strong privacy commitments (and are willing to pay the appropriate premium for them), it’s hard to see how the market can provide what they want. Companies can signal a commitment to privacy, but those signals will be unreliable so customers won’t be willing to pay much for them – which will leave the companies with little incentive to actually protect privacy. The market will underproduce privacy.
How big a problem is this? It depends on how many customers would be willing to pay a premium for privacy – a premium big enough to replace the revenue from monetizing customer information. How many customers would be willing to pay this much? I don’t know. But I do know that people might care a lot about privacy, even if they’re not paying for privacy today.I had just about given up on receiving any gifts after a month went by with no contact from my Santa or gift mark shipped. I had even been rematched and was anxiously awaiting for my shipping info to be pulled when I received an update that my original Santa had marked my gifts shipped on Jan 7th. I was very happy to come home from work yesterday to a package from Amazon sitting on my doorstep. My Santa came through with some very fun kitchen gifts! I may have casually mentioned that I enjoy cooking and drinking, but the truth is these gifts are the kinds of things I secretly want but will never buy for myself.
I still have absolutely no idea who my Secret Santa was as the package came with no note, packing slip, or card. Thank you for the fun gifts and remembering me!The continental F3 category has expanded its prize money programme, which had been introduced in 2016 as a combined total reward of 200,000 Euros for the rookie champions.
With European F3's new prize money hike, a further 200,000 Euros will trickle down to the series' teams "according to a performance distribution scale".
The champion, meanwhile, will be rewarded with 100,000 Euros, provided he is moving to a different FIA-run series.
A media spokesperson for the European F3 series confirmed to Motorsport.com that drivers moving on to F1 feeder category GP2 or its own feeder GP3 would not be eligible for the prize money.
In the four years since its 2013 rebranding, European F3 had one champion moving up to GP2 in Raffaele Marciello and another switching to GP3 in Esteban Ocon.
There are currently no active junior single-seater championships ranked above European F3 by points awarded towards the FIA Super Licence, although that would change if long-standing plants to introduce an FIA Formula 2 category finally came to fruition.
"The general economy in single-seater racing makes it necessary for us to continue to work on the value of the championship for drivers and teams," said Stefano Domenicali, FIA Single-Seater Commission President.
"With the newly-introduced prize money incentive, which has already been awarded to the rookie drivers last year and will be extend to the teams this year, we want to establish some financial assistance for our competitors. This way teams will be able to broaden their search for drivers and offer seats to young talents who might lack some funding.
"All parties involved in the series are working together to strengthen the series and to retain an attractive platform for all competitors."
Announced in 2016, the rookie championship prize money - 100,000 Euros for the top newcomer and 50,000 Euros each for second and third place – was only payable if the drivers in question remained in the series for a second year.
Last season's rookie champion Joel Eriksson and rookie runner-up Ralf Aron are both staying put in European F3 in 2017, although third-placed Anthoine Hubert looks increasingly likely to end up a GP3 driver.The Palestinian driver who struck three Israel Defense Forces soldiers in the West Bank late Wednesday apparently did so by accident, and not as a deliberate terror attack, a senior Israeli security official said Thursday after the suspect was questioned.
The suspect turned himself in on Thursday morning, and a second suspect was also arrested.
The three soldiers have been wounded just hours after one person was killed and 13 wounded in a similar attack in Jerusalem. Two of the soldiers were moderately wounded and one seriously when they were hit by a car. Magen David Adom rescue services were evacuating the soldiers to Hadassah Hospital at Ein Karem with chest injuries, bruises and limb fractures.
The incident took place on Route 60 near the town of Al-Arroub in the Gush Etzion bloc. The soldiers were hit by the vehicle when they were standing by a pillbox guard tower. After hitting them, the vehicle drove away to the south.Background
Before getting into the numbers it’s important to highlight the basis of HelloGold’s ambitious plans.
Precedent. In Robin’s previous life as CFO of the World Gold Council, he was responsible for the world’s largest gold fund with US $30 billion in physical gold. He also worked with ICBC to build a gold business from 0 to 11 million customers and US$6 billion gold sales within four years. This idea has legs. Partners. With HelloGold’s B2B2C market approach we are able to leverage on trusted brands to directly market to huge customer bases. Our launch partner, AEON has 4 million customers in Malaysia and 100 million customers across Asia. We are in talks with a major telco in the region (300 million customers in Asia) to be part of their mobile wallet, and have the right proposition to partner with many more.
A quick recap on the HelloGold reward structure is also useful (you should, however, always check the documentation yourself):
HelloGold charges a 2% annual management fee, calculated daily and charged monthly (in gold). On a side note: the 2% actually works out to ~1.98% due to the magic of compounding — to be explored in another blog post. 10% of that monthly fee (in gold) is given each month as an endowment to the HelloGold Foundation (“Foundation”). The HelloGold Foundation (along with its advisors) may, at its discretion, reward HelloGold Token (HGT) holders with Gold Backed Tokens (GBT), fully backed by the gold received from the endowment by HelloGold. The reward is split across all 1 billion HGT until the total maximum cap of 3.8 million grams is reached.
The HGT holder will benefit in two ways:
The speed at which HelloGold’s AUM grows Any increase in the underlying gold’s value
NB: we do plan to expand to other asset-backed tokens (eg silver, platinum) as shared in our roadmap, but as we don’t have those products in place right now we decided not to model any rewards from them.One of Utah’s largest newspapers, located in the heart of Mormon country, has endorsed President Obama over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
The Salt Lake Tribune endorsed Mr. Obama on Friday in an editorial that praised the president for engineering passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to stimulate the economy and accused Mr. Romney of flip-flopping and being “willing to say anything to get elected.”
SEE RELATED:
The paper acknowledged that their choice may be surprising to some, considering Mr. Romney’s Mormon faith and his leadership and financial turnaround of the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City.
The Tribune also endorsed Mr. Obama in 2008 and endorsed George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.
The article made brief mention of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy — arguing that it minimized long-term damage from the 2008 financial meltdown — but most of its words were spent accusing Mr. Romney of betraying his record as a bipartisan governor and successful businessman in an effort to cater to right-wing Republicans and wealthy donors.
While Utah is a majority-Republican state, its capital city of Salt Lake is considered largely left-leaning.
Mr. Romney is expected to win the state by a wide margin this year, and no Democrat has carried Utah since then-President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.The NHS delayed for at least six months a controversial plan to share data from people's medical records on Tuesday following concerns from doctors and patients' groups, acknowledging there was insufficient public confidence in the scheme.
The postponement by NHS England was welcomed by critics who had complained too many people did not properly understand the planned new system and the reasons for its introduction, or how they could opt out. Under the original plan, the first medical records were to have been compiled by the care.data system from the start of April.
Supporters say that sharing data, which will include information from GPs' surgeries for the first time, as well as from hospitals, will make medical advances easier and ultimately save lives because it will allow researchers to investigate drug side-effects or the performance of hospital surgical units by tracking the impact on patients.
But privacy experts have warned there will be no way for the public to work out who has their medical records, or to what use their data will be put. There have been questions raised about commercial companies buying data.
Some doctors' groups complained that the scheme, while valuable, was poorly understood and badly explained by NHS England, which has said the majority of the data would be anonymised or made impossible for patients to be identified. All 26 million households in England were sent leaflets about the plan but polls showed about two-thirds of people had not seen them.
In a statement, NHS England said the collection of data from GPs' surgeries would now begin in the autumn – it did not give a more precise date – to permit "more time to build understanding of the benefits of using the information, what safeguards are in place, and how people can opt out if they choose to".
A delay so close to the proposed start of a major scheme is a significant embarrassment for the NHS and its attempts to inform the public about the benefits of the database. Labour's junior health minister, Jamie Reed, was quick to call the delay "another NHS shambles of this government's own making".
Tim Kelsey, national director for patients at NHS England, said: "We have been told very clearly that patients need more time to learn about the benefits of sharing information and their right to object to their information being shared. That is why we are extending the public awareness campaign by an extra six months."
The extracted information will contain a person's NHS number, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender. Once live, organisations such as university research departments – but also insurers and drug companies – will be able to apply to the new Health and Social Care Information Centre to gain access to the database. Last year it emerged that the private health insurer Bupa was one of four firms that had been cleared to access sensitive patient data.
The British Medical Association said on Tuesday it had become increasingly plain that people did not know enough about care.data and even with a delay the database should only be implemented with proper public backing.
Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA's general practitioner's committee, said: "While the BMA is supportive of using anonymised data to plan and improve the quality of NHS care for patients, this must only be done with the support and consent of the public, and it is only right that they fully understand what the proposals mean to them and what their rights are if they do not wish their data to be extracted."
The Royal College of GPs called on NHS England to use the extra time to clarify aspects of the system, for example whether amber data – anonymous but containing details that could potentially identify an individual – will be provided for commercial use, and that information to third parties would not be sold for a profit.
Professor Nigel Mathers, honorary secretary of the RCGP, has written to NHS England suggesting a more thorough public information campaign, including TV adverts and a letter to each patient affected.
He said: "We would like to thank NHS England for listening to the concerns of RCGP members and for acting so quickly to announce this pause. The extra time will provide it with the chance to redouble its efforts to inform every patient of their right to opt out, every GP of how the programme will work, and the nation of what robust safeguards will be in place to protect the security of people's data."
The scheme's rollout has been beset by criticisms about the clarity of the information provided to the public. Earlier this month, the information commissioner's office criticised the campaign for failing to adequately explain what data was involved and how patients could avoid their medical records being shared.
The delay came a day after the solicitors Leigh Day began a legal challenge on behalf of a campaign group, medConfidential, arguing the leaflet sent to households was misleading. The online campaign group 38 Degrees polled 150,000 people, of whom more than 90% said they would opt out.
Sharmila Nebhrajani, chief executive of the Association of Medical Research Charities, said care.data was a good idea in principle that had been "stymied by its execution". She said: "Charities and their supporting patient groups have always said that sharing data for research can be a really valuable opportunity to speed medical research but it must be done with care, competence and consent."A call has been made to ban balloon releases in Cork to protect wildlife from the resulting waste.
Independent Councillor Marcia D’Alton is looking to ban balloon releases in Cork and is calling for new bylaws to be introduced to prevent all future balloon releases in the county.
Balloon releases pose a serious threat to wildlife and are contributing to the millions of tonnes of plastic we have already dumped in the sea. What goes up, must come down and while the hundreds of colourful balloons released at an event may look pretty they typically end up in the ocean where hapless marine creatures are fooled into thinking they are food. Fragments of burst balloons can look like tasty jellyfish and turtles and other creatures ingest the plastic and slowly suffocate. The strings attached also pose threats to birds and other wildlife who get tangled and ensnared.
Marcia D’Alton’s call has got the backing of the Cork County Council’s Environment Directorate to draw up bylaws to prevent balloon releases and is hopeful that the law will be passed.
Similar laws have been passed in the UK, US and Australia and hopefully this will set an example for other counties to follow.
Read Next: Find out more about balloon releases and their dangers to marine lifeAPI versioning using Laravel’s Resources
Juampi Barreto Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 7, 2017
Maintaining API versioning can be difficult. Specially if you have core changes.
I’m not gonna cover the heavy API change, when also the database and core models are changed, but the ones that make a change so significant that the Application Programming Interface should adapt.
TL;DR: Dynamically instantiating Resources to format the json response, depending on the version of the API, but leaving everything else (controllers, models) as one version.
Update: Since publication I decided to build a composer package to abstract this behavior. I’d like for you to also read this article, as it explains the logic behind it and a glimpse of how it does work.
🤘 https://github.com/juampi92/api-resources
Feel free to use it, give it a star, fork it, and send PRs 🙂
Introduction
Leaving aside this model/database breaking changes API, we usually have modifications on the controllers.
Imagine we have a Business, that has a location. On the API/v1, the location was a string, but now you’d like to store street, number, lat, long, city. You could change your json response using location_street, location_number, …etc, and will not break the original implementation of location:string, but that’d be nasty, cause now location is an object.
First step is to create a new v2 of the API. Probably you will have to add a new set of routes to the RouteServiceProvider, containing the exact same copy of previous routes, and copy every controller to fit in the following folder structure:
app/Http/Controllers/App/v2
Then we will migrate the database, add those fields, then update the model and the way it’s edited on the controller. Probably you will have to live with the idea that API/v1 users will not have a way to input location’s coordinates, but you will allow these fields to new API/v2 users.
So now we are changing the inputs of the controller. So it’s easy cause we are using a duplicated controller, add that simple logic (grab the other location’s parameters), and fill the model, and then return the new business json structure, having the location as an object.
But wait…
If we take a closer look, the only thing that has really changed was the response. The only thing that will break previous API users is the json output, cause the input was also optional on the model.
If there was a way of telling the controller to respond something if it’s API/v1, and something else if it’s API/v2… that’d solve a lot the code duplication, and make the versioning process way simpler.
So let’s make a way of changing the response, and to keep the same controller, that will work for both versions now.
Here’s when the new Laravel’s 5.5 API Resources are really handy.
API Resources
(official doc)
The idea is for now to have versioned resources, so that’d be like
app/Http/Resources/Api/v1/Business.php
app/Http/Resources/Api/v1/BusinessCollection.php
app/Http/Resources/Api/v2/Business.php
app/Http/Resources/Api/v2/BusinessCollection.php
We are now gonna focus on the Business.php. The first implementation should be something like
app/Http/Resources/Api/v1/Business.php
public function toArray($request)
{
return [
'id' => $this->id,
'name' => $this->name,
'location'=> $this->location_street.''.
$this->location_number,
];
}
app/Http/Resources/Api/v2/Business.php
public function toArray($request)
{
return [
'id' => $this->id,
'name' => $this->name,
'location' => [
'street' => $this->location_street,
'number' => $this->location_number,
'lat' => $this->location_lat,
'lng' => $this->location_lng,
],
];
}
Look. Same Model, same controller, but different output.
The Implementation
To achieve this, we need to: first, make the routes aware of the api_version, then change the way we initiate the resources, and use the route’s api_version on this.
So, we’ll do this by creating a middleware which simple function will be set the api_version.
config/app.php
/*
|-------------------------------------------
| API Version
|-------------------------------------------
|
| This value is the version of your api.
| It's used when there's no specified
| version on the routes, so it will take this
| as the default, or current.
*/
'api_latest' => '2',
Then create a middleware, alias api.version
<?php
namespace App\Http\Middleware;
use Closure;
class APIversion
{
/**
* Handle an incoming request.
*
* @param Request $request
* @param Closure $next
*
* @return mixed
*/
public function handle($request, $next, $guard)
{
config(['app.api_version' => $guard]);
return $next($request);
}
}
Note that api_version is not api_latest. This way we could keep track of the latest API always. So we apply those to the routes:
// App v1 API
Route::group([
'middleware' => ['app', 'api.version:1'],
'namespace' => 'App\Http\Controllers\App',
'prefix' => 'api/v1',
], function ($router) {
require base_path('routes/app_api.v1.php');
});
// App v2 API
Route::group([
'middleware' => ['app', 'api.version:2'],
'namespace' => 'App\Http\Controllers\App',
'prefix' => 'api/v2',
], function ($router) {
require base_path('routes/app_api.v2.php');
});
Now to the Resource construction. We now know the api_version of the request by accessing config(‘app.api_version’). If it’s null, we could assume it’s equal to config(‘app.api_latest’).
So what I did on my project, was adapting my APIController. Now I’m able to instantiate Resources using the syntax:
$response = $this->resource(‘Api\Business’, Business::find($id));
return $this->respond($response)->send();
So we add this two methods on every controller.
Note: You can use traits, or add this methods into a generic APIController that every controller extends from.
/**
* @param string $resourceName
* @param array...$args
*
* @return object
*/
public function resource($resourceName,...$args)
{
// Get's the request's api version, or the latest if undefined
$v = config('app.api_version', config('app.api_latest'));
$className = $this->getResourceClassname($resourceName, $v);
$class = new \ReflectionClass($className);
return $class->newInstanceArgs($args);
}
/**
* Parse Api\BusinessResource for
* App\Http\Resources\Api\v{$v}\BusinessResource
*
* @param string $className
* @param string $v
*
* @return string
*/
protected function getResourceClassname($className, $v)
{
$re = '/.*\\\\(.*)/';
return 'App\Http\Resources\\'.
preg_replace($re, 'Api\\v'. $v. '\\\$1', $className);
}
We replace the App\Business for App\vX\Business, and using ReflectionClass we create an instance with the rest of the arguments.
Bonus Track
If we add these small lines of code:
if (!class_exists($className)) {
$className = $this->getResourceClassname($resourceName,
config('app.api_latest'));
}
We can check if that class exists, and if not, we use the app.api_latest.
So that way, we only keep in v1 the Resources that have changed on v2, and we prevent more file duplication.
Conclusion
I know this might not be your regular API versioning procedure, but if you are maintaining a controllable API, for example your own mobile app, that has updates but not everyone updates at the same time, this versioning is quite helpful, cause I lets you modify the code as one, but keep the old interfaces, at least for a while.
Then you can send a deprecated exception on every sub-route, and that way |
al-Tanf near the Jordanian border, where "a US military mission" is headquartered.
"If US officials view such actions as unforeseen ‘contingencies’, Russia’s Aerospace Force is ready to begin the complete elimination of such ‘coincidences’ in the area of their control," he said.
"In all appearances, success of the Syrian army with the support of the Russian Aerospace Forces, as well as a swift liberation of Euphrates River Valley from IS (Islamic State, outlawed in Russia) runs counter to plans of the US colleagues," said the major general.
Attack on government forces
Terrorist attacks over government forces in Syria on September 28 were made from a zone controlled by the US military, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
Overnight into September 28, dozens of off-road vehicles carrying about 300 Islamic State (IS, a terror organization outlawed in Russia) militants advanced towards the town of al-Qaryatayn, Homs Governorate, from the community of Rukban, he said. Notably, militants successfully skirted all covert posts of the Syrian army, "having direct coordinates at hand that can be acquired only through aerial reconnaissance studied by specialists and then carefully presented for execution of terrorist sabotages," Konashenkov said. Another IS unit carried out a series of coordinated attacks over other Syrian army posts located along the strategically important Palmyra - Deir ez-Zor highway.
"One thing unites the specified terror attacks: All of them were carried out from a 50km zone around the community of At Tanf on the Syrian-Jordanian border, the one where ‘the US military mission’ is stationed and that the Syrian forces chasing terrorists were kept off at gunpoint by Americans," Konashenkov stressed.
To all appearances, the success of the Syrian army with the support of the Russian air task force, and also the swift liberation of the Euphrates River valley from the IS run counter to the plans of US colleagues, the spokesman said.
"A terrorists’ attempt to carry out an attack coordinated by its time and place in the rear of the Syrian troops at the end of last week served as a new example of this. Overnight to September 28, about 300 ISIL gunmen advanced in a dozen of cross country vehicles towards the town of Al-Karatein in the province of Homs from the settlement of Rukban," the Russian general said.
According to the general, a large detachment of terrorists successfully bypassed all hidden posts of the Syrian troops in the communities of Harbat Ash-Shkhemi and Al-Basiri "not due to fortune but because they had completely exact coordinates that can be obtained only thanks to air reconnaissance data processed by specialists" and transferred to terrorists for carrying out terrorist acts.
"At the dawn, this terrorist detachment attempted to seize the dominant terrain around the settlement of al-Karatein," the general noted.
According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, "on the same day, ISIL terrorists carried out a series of coordinated attacks on other posts of Syrian troops located along the strategically important Palmyra - Deir ez-Zor road, which is used for supplies for the grouping of Syrian forces in the Euphrates River valley and for the delivery of humanitarian aid."
As the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said, the Syrian army had to take considerable efforts to neutralize mobile IS groups on the road and liberate populated areas seized by the terrorists.
50-km zone
"The above-mentioned terrorists’ attacks have one thing in common: all of them were conducted from the 50-km zone around the community of Al-Tanf on the Syrian-Jordanian border. This is the zone where the US military mission is located and where Americans did not let Syrian forces chasing terrorists literally come within a firing range of it," the Russian general said.
"If the US side considers such operations as unforeseen occurrences, then the Russian air task force is ready to start completely destroying all such occurrences in its controlled zone," the spokesman said.
Source: TASSWhat's timers, precious?
Just do nothing! Let your research happen. Then, when your research is at an important milestone the addon will show you the relevant single timer automatically. Log in - the timers can be configured to display when you first log in to a character. Via a key binding Use the slash command /timers
1 hour left
15 minutes left
1 minute left
Cross-character timers
The game API does NOT provide a means to actively check other characters timers, so I have had to implement my own timekeeping, based on snapshots of timer data taken at regular intervals from the character you are logged in to Therefore you must log in to every character who has research timers periodically to allow the addon to gather up-to-date data from them, which it can then use offline. The timer data from your other characters is saved in a SavedVariable - which is what addon settings generally use - which means it will be'reset' every time the game is patched. Just log in to each character and it will work again. The UI presentation degrades if you have LOTS of timers on multiple characters, because the list goes off the screen. This is something I really want to fix, but have not currently got the time or inclination to address.
Configuration
Enable/disable the addon functionality (n.b. the addon will still be loaded, just inert)
Enable/disable sounds - the addon re-uses sounds from the stock ESO UI to draw your attention to timers.
Enable/disable alarms (timers automatically appearing)
Enable/disable timers being shown when you log in
Enable/disable showing timers from all characters on login, when you use the keybind, or when you run /timers.
Enable/disable alarm notifications for research on other characters (also applies to research completion notifications).
The time remaining which triggers 'alarms' to be displayed.
The time remaining which causes timers to be in red, amber or green state.
Whether or not you care about un-used research slots.
Known Issues
Yellow ones
If you have lots of timers they go off the screen.
TODO List
Localisation - if you can translate into French or German, get in touch
As of 2015-06 I am not actively maintaining this mod any more as I have moved on to other things. Thank you to everyone who downloaded and used the mod. The source code is available on github (MIT license) should anyone wish to take over.PL Research Timers adds visual timer indicators to the UI which tell you how long you have left on your research. These times pop up either when you ask, or at certain important milestones. What do they look like? Like this:These appear for a short period just below the compass/target name/target title. They tick in real time, then they go away again, so the UI isn't permanently cluttered. The addon can be configured to show you just one character at a time, or all the characters on your account.You can show the timer info in these ways:Timers will automatically appear when the research is at one of these default important milestones:.. but you can configure these via the settings menu (under Research Timers > Alarm 1/2/3 time). You can even turn of the automatic timers completely (turn off Research Timers > Enable alarms).PL Timers can show you timer information from all the characters on your account. Each character's timers and other information is displayed beneath a header when the timers are invoked (slash command, keybind, or log in).This feature is optional and can be turned off in parts via the addon settings menu.Alarms will also be displayed for research on other characters, if they pass through one of the milestones defined in the settings (default 1h, 15m, 5m).This feature is provided to prevent you needing to switch characters as often, but bear the following in mind:You can configure the following things via Settings > Research Timers:An optional keybinding can also be configured, but by default it is not. Find it under Controls > Keybindings > General > Research Timers.I'm sure there's lotsHere's a list of issues I do know about.are my top priorities.From Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.
The Bug type (Japanese: むしタイプ Bug type) is one of the eighteen types. Notable Trainers who specialize in Bug-type Pokémon are Bugsy of Azalea Town, Aaron of the Sinnoh Elite Four, Burgh of Castelia City, Viola of Santalune City, and Team Skull Boss Guzma. Prior to changes in Generation IV, all damaging Bug-type moves were physical, but they may now also be special depending on the attack.
Statistical averages
Overall
Stat HP: 57.23 Attack: 72.73 Defense: 72.17 Sp.Atk: 55.93 Sp.Def: 65.12 Speed: 62.81 Total: 385.99
Fully evolved
Stat HP: 67.11 Attack: 91.61 Defense: 84.46 Sp.Atk: 70.80 Sp.Def: 80.54 Speed: 75.37 Total: 469.89
Battle properties
Generation I
Offensive Defensive Power Types Power Types 2×
½×
½×
2×
0× None 0× None
Generations II to V
Offensive Defensive Power Types Power Types 2×
½×
½×
2×
0× None 0× None
Generation VI onwards
Offensive Defensive Power Types Power Types 2×
½×
½×
2×
0× None 0× None
Characteristics
Defense
On average, Bug Pokémon have the lowest base HP and base stat total of all types.
Offense
Bug is tied with Grass as the most resisted type, with seven types resisting each of them. These resistant types are most effectively covered by Water-type attacks.
On average, Bug Pokémon have the lowest base Special Attack of all types.
Contest properties
In Contests, Bug-type moves do not favor any one Contest category.
Pokémon
As of Generation VII, there are 77 Bug-type Pokémon or 9.5% of all Pokémon, making it the 6th most common type.
Pure Bug-type Pokémon
Half Bug-type Pokémon
Primary Bug-type Pokémon
Secondary Bug-type Pokémon
# Name Type 1 Type 2 347 Anorith Rock Bug 348 Armaldo Rock Bug 451 Skorupi Poison Bug 751 Dewpider Water Bug 752 Araquanid Water Bug
Moves
Abilities
Interacting with the Bug type
A Pokémon with Color Change, Protean, Imposter, RKS System, or Multitype will become a Bug-type Pokémon if (respectively) it is hit with a Bug-type move, uses a Bug-type move, is sent out against a Bug-type opponent, is holding a Bug Memory, or is holding an Insect Plate or Buginium Z.
Gen Ability Description V Rattled Raises Speed one stage upon being hit by a Dark, Ghost, or Bug move. III Swarm Powers up Bug-type moves when the Pokémon is in trouble. All details are accurate to Generation VI games. For details that have changed between generations, please see an individual Ability's page.
Exclusive Abilities
Only Bug-type Pokémon can have these Abilities. This does not include signature Abilities.
Gen Ability Description III Compound Eyes Boosts the Pokémon's accuracy. III Swarm Powers up Bug-type moves when the Pokémon is in trouble. III Shield Dust Blocks the additional effects of attacks taken. All details are accurate to Generation VI games. For details that have changed between generations, please see an individual Ability's page.
Items
Name Description Bug Gem A gem with an ordinary essence. When held, it strengthens the power of a Bug-type move one time. Bug Memory A memory disc that contains Bug-type data. It changes the type of the holder if held by a certain species of Pokémon. Buginium Z It converts Z-Power into crystals that upgrade Bug-type moves to Bug-type Z-Moves. Insect Plate An item to be held by a Pokémon. It's a stone tablet that boosts the power of Bug-type moves. Silver Powder An item to be held by a Pokémon. It's a shiny silver powder that will boost the power of Bug-type moves. Tanga Berry If held by a Pokémon, this Berry will lessen the damage taken from one supereffective Bug-type attack. All details are accurate to Generation VII games. For details that have changed between generations, please see an individual item's page.
In the TCG
Due to the decreased amount of types in the TCG, Bug-type Pokémon are generally listed as Grass-type Pokémon.
Bug-type Pokémon in the TCG are generally weak to Fire-type Pokémon and have a resistance to Fighting-types. They are strong against Fighting and Water, whilst Metal Pokémon resisted it until the EX Power Keepers expansion set.
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God Bless.“The heresy of heresies was common sense”—George Orwell
The stories we tell affect the lives we lead. I do not mean to be abstract here. I mean, literally, the stories that are told make up a kind of meta-reality that soaks in us to form a “truth”. This “truth” affects policy, which affects investment, which affects bricks and mortar, pocketbooks, and power. Eventually, the “truth” trickles down into a more real reality that defines the lives of the powerless.
The story du jour in urban policy is one of density. The arc of the story is that cities are places where “ideas come to have sex”. The lovechild is innovation. The mood lighting is creative placemaking.
The Kama Sutra of density reads this way: creative people cluster in cities that are good at lifestyle manufacturing. The more people that are sardined the higher likelihood there will be “serendipitous” encounters. The more serendipity in a city the better chance the next “big thing” will occur. The next “big thing” will lead to a good start-up, which will lead to an agglomeration of start-ups, termed an “Innovation District”. Detroit becomes Detroit 2.0 then.
The story of density is a seductive story. Society-making is sobering and full of harsh realities. The story of density is seamless, velvety. It is no wonder the story gets sold, implemented, and then told and re-told, despite the validity and logic of the story being pretty awful.
Take the recent New York Times piece entitled “What It Takes to Create a Start-up Community”. In it, the writer interviews urbanist Richard Florida. “Population density, [Florida] said, allows for the serendipitous encounters that inspire creativity, innovation and collaboration,” reads one key passage in the piece.
The story goes on to highlight the emerging tech hub of Boulder as the exemplar of the story of density. One problem: Boulder, a city of less than 100,000, isn’t dense, with a population per square mile of 3,948. The writer moves the goal posts a bit and says the city “is an unusual case of density”, before going on to question whether a start-up community can be created in a city like Detroit that “lacks density”. Yet Detroit, despite being a land mass comprised of one-third vacant land, is denser than Boulder, at 5,144 people per square mile. In all, Aristotle would have a field day with the piece.
Such illogic peppers the story of density, particularly as it relates to the correlation—to say nothing of the causation—between household clustering and tech growth. For instance, in a recent analysis of America’s top “high tech hot spots” by the Progressive Policy Institute, the top 25 counties experiencing the highest percentage of tech job growth reads like a “Where’s Waldo” list, if Waldo was Thoreau-like. There’s Madison County in Alabama (417 people per sq. mile). Utah County in Utah (258 people per sq. mile). Denton County in Texas (754 people per sq. mile). Fayette County in Kentucky (1,043 people per sq. mile). Snohomish County in Washington (342 people per sq. mile).
To be fair, also on the list are San Francisco, Boston, and New York. In the case of Boston and San Fran, the tech clustering is a legacy asset---including large venture capital funds --- from decades prior, not the result of the story of density. New York, under Mayor Bloomberg, has supposedly gone whole hog on the “idea-sex in the city” script, yet tech is but a speck on the universe that is New York City’s economy.
For example, Kings County, home to Brooklyn, numbers 25 on the list of places with highest percent of tech job growth, yet Brooklyn’s Job Index—calculated as new tech/information jobs between 2007 and 2012, as a share of 2007 total private sector employment—is just 0.4, meaning the number of new tech jobs in Brooklyn represents less than half a percent of total private employment. Given the information sector as a whole is hemorrhaging jobs according to a recent Harvard Business Review, the scaling of fledgling tech towns is unlikely. This is especially true for cities like New York that—while enriched with the chattering class buzz stoking the story of density—simply lacks the engineering talent of Boston, Silicon Valley, Houston and yes, Detroit, to make the “scene” something than just that: a scene.
But let’s play along anyway, as that’s the power of the story of density: reality doesn’t bite. So, say Brooklyn can become the next Silicon Valley. This likelihood depends on two assumptions that define the story of density: “cooling” a city will draw top tech talent, and then packing them in to luxury condo towers and mixed use districts will form creativity incubators.
First, the idea that manufacturing cool spurs a start-up scene is spurious at best. I mean, has this ever worked? Please don’t say Austin, or any number of college towns or state capitals or places with boutique streets that depend largely on transfers from taxpayers --- and parents! --- to their privileged burgs. Many of these place, like Austin and Raleigh, are themselves far from dense urban nodes, but are exceptionally spread out.
What about Boulder? In the piece “How Boulder Grew Into a Hub for Start-Ups”, the writer questions venture capitalist Brad Feld, a huge player in the Boulder tech scene, about what brings entrepreneurs to communities like Boulder. Feld throws his hands in the air:
“People want to live where they want to live. You should figure out where you want to be and build a life around it. Different geographies attract different people.”
Why did Feld move to Boulder?
Actually, I moved here in 1995 because Amy said "I'm moving to Boulder - you can come with me if you want." And I did.
There are things that do appeal to innovators, however. Affordability is an appeal, so says a recent survey of London techies who are decamping from the capital, if only because outrageous rents prevent a “start-up” of anything.
Over in Berlin, the tech scene is struggling despite the “Berlin geek chic” culture that unfolded. The city’s tech leaders think Berlin needs to be more conventional than cool. “[T]he jury is still out on whether [Berlin’s] a great place to truly grow that company into a mature startup," notes Marc Strigel, head of SoundCloud. "Both the authorities and startups could do much more in promoting Berlin for families, for these world-class talents we definitely need."
The second assumption relates to the idea that sardining people will ultimately lead to serendipity and innovation. I smell underpants gnomes. Specifically, in an episode of South Park, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone expose the blind loyalty attached to the façade of “expertise”. The episode goes like this: the characters need a presentation for class. One of the boys talks about a group of gnomes that inexplicably sneak into his house to steal underpants. There’s got to be a reason, right? They confront the gnomes who, claiming to be business experts, explain their business plan as thus: Step 1: Collect Underpants. Step 2:?. Step 3: Profit.
The story of density has the same logic gap. Step 1: Population density. Step 2:?. Step 3: Innovation. Density gurus will claim Step 2 relates to serendipity. But serendipity is chance. How do you plan for chance? Even if you could, creative classification is largely a process of homogenization by class, age, and profession, which, according Rita King of Science House, erodes the possibility of meaningful chance encounters. “Artists bumping into other artists or business people bumping into other business people or Mormons bumping into other Mormons, etc., isn’t real serendipity,” notes King. San Francisco in many ways is more a monoculture than the highly diverse suburbs that surround it.
Okay, so if the story of density really isn’t about innovation then what is it about? The answer can be found in a recent article entitled “Urban Prophet” in the real estate trade mag Property Week. The piece quotes Albert Ratner, chairman of US real estate firm Forest City Enterprises, on his reading of Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Classes, the first book in the story of density. “You have given real estate developers the playbook,” notes Ratner.
Put simply, the point of sardining is to make as much money as possible for those who already have the most. This is the raw truth that fuels the hype, and of course pays for it as well. But it’s a tough sell to neighborhoods and cities increasingly experiencing the negative effects of real estate wealth jamming, and more broadly wealth inequality. Enter the story of density to make another “truth”.
In reality, the story of density is a fiction and it’s high time we start rewriting the book.
Richey Piiparinen is a writer and policy researcher based in Cleveland. He is co-editor of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology. Read more from him at his blog and at Rust Belt Chic.Revealing the Ocean's Hidden Fertilizer
Marine Plants Play Major Role in Phosphorus Cycling
May 14, 2015 Phosphorus is one of the most common substances on Earth. An essential nutrient for every living organism—humans require approximately 700 milligrams per day—we are rarely concerned about consuming enough of it because it is present in most of the foods we eat. Despite its ubiquity and living organisms' utter dependence on it, we know surprisingly little about how it moves, or cycles, through the ocean environment.
Scientists studying the phosphorus cycle in the ocean knew that it was absorbed by plants and animals, and released back to seawater in the form of phosphate as they decay and die. Over the last 10 years, a growing body of research has hinted that phosphorus was being transformed by microbes in the ocean in ways that remained a mystery.
A new study by a research team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Columbia University reveals for the first time a marine phosphorus cycle that is much more complex than previously thought. The work also highlights the important but previously hidden role that some microbial communities play in using and breaking down forms of this essential element.
The paper is published May 15, 2015, in the journal Science.
"This is an exciting new discovery that closes a fundamental knowledge gap in our understanding of the marine phosphorus cycle," says the study's lead author Ben Van Mooy, a biochemist at WHOI.
Much like phosphorus-based fertilizers boost the growth of plants on land, phosphorus in the ocean promotes the production of microbes and tiny marine plants called phytoplankton, which compose the base of the marine food chain. It's been unclear exactly how phytoplankton are using the most abundant forms of phosphorus found in the ocean—phosphates and a strange form of phosphorus called phosphonates.
"Phosphonates have always been a huge mystery," Van Mooy says. "No one's been able to figure out exactly what they are, and more importantly, if they're made and consumed quickly by microbes, or if they're just lying around in the ocean."
To find out more about these mysterious phosphonates and how microbes metabolize them, the researchers took samples of microbes like phytoplankton from seawater obtained at a series of stations during a cruise from Bermuda to Barbados in the summer of 2014. They added phosphate to the samples so that they could see the microbes in action.
The research team utilized ion chromatography on board the ship for water chemistry analyses, which allowed them to observe how quickly the microbes reacted to the added phosphate in the seawater.
"The ion chromatograph (IC) separates out the different families of molecules," explains Van Mooy. "We added radioactive phosphate and then isolated the phosphonate to see if they became radioactive too. It's the radioactive technique that let us see how fast they transform phosphate to phosphonate."
They saw that about five percent of the phosphate in the shallow water samples were taken up by the microbes and changed to phosphonates. In the deeper water samples, which were taken at depths of 40 and 150 meters (131 feet and 492 feet), about 15 to 20 percent of the phosphates were reduced to phosphonates.
"Although evidence of the cycling of phosphonates has been mounting for nearly a decade, these results show for the first time that microbes are producing phosphonates in the ocean, and that it is happening very quickly," says coauthor Sonya Dyhrman, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. "An exciting aspect of this study was the application of the IC method at sea. In near real time, we could tell that the phosphate we added was being transformed to phosphonate, and everyone on the ship got to share in this moment and the process of discovery."
A better understanding of phosphorus cycling in the oceans is important since it impacts the marine food chain and, therefore, the ability of the oceans to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide. The researchers say that solving the mystery about phosphonates also reinforces the need to identify the full suite of phosphorus biochemicals being produced and metabolized by marine microbes and what physiological roles they serve for these cells.
"Such work will help us further resolve the complexities of how this critical element is cycled in the ocean," Dyhrman adds.
"A reason to be excited about the findings of this elegant study is in the paper's last sentence: 'the environmental, ecological, and evolutionary controls... remain completely unknown.' There's still a lot we don't know about the sea," says Don Rice, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research.
The work was also supported by grants from the Simons Foundation.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the ocean's role in the changing global environment. For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu.By Orion Armon, IP Litigation practice group, Cooley LLP
Until now, the mHealth industry has experienced relatively few patent infringement conflicts, and little or no litigation instituted by non-practicing entities. But these trends may be disrupted within the next few years. Companies in the medical device, computer, networking, and communications industries are all patenting in the mHealth space, and the likely result will be a thicket of overlapping patents on mHealth products and their components. As the patent thicket grows, patent infringement conflicts likely will increase—especially as mHealth technologies mature and winners within the industry emerge.
To help you navigate the patent thicket, this article discusses the current patent landscape in the mHealth industry and concludes with recommendations that mHealth companies could pursue to manage their intellectual property more effectively and reduce patent infringement risk.
Summary of Findings
The number of mHealth patents issued by the Patent Office has increased steadily since 2000 (when the number of mHealth patent applications was negligible), and will continue to surge until at least 2014.
Large companies are winning the mHealth patent race by obtaining the vast majority of newly-issued mHealth patents.
Intellectual Ventures, a non-practicing patent aggregator, is patenting aggressively in the mHealth space. Licensing demands and litigation from IV (and possibly other NPEs) are sure to follow.
Almost half of the top twenty mHealth patent holders are not mHealth companies, or even medical device developers.
The incidence of mHealth patent infringement conflicts likely will increase as companies become more profitable and patent portfolios mature. To manage patent infringement risk, companies should consider the following options: If you have never been sued, consider purchasing insurance; Properly structure IP indemnification rights and obligations; Build-out your patent portfolio—even ancillary improvements in the mHealth space may become critical if they are widely adopted by your competitors; Streamline your internal invention disclosure, review, and patent filing processes, and where appropriate, use the USPTO’s Track 1 process to accelerate examination of key patent applications; Monitor competitors’ patent filings and patent portfolios, and consider making pre-issuance submissions of prior art during prosecution of competitors’ patents; Proactively cross-license patents with key IP owners to expand your freedom to operate—or utilize commodity components from major companies who will indemnify you for their use; and If competitors are infringing, consider enforcing your patents before your competitors’ patent portfolios mature.
So Far, No Significant Uptick in mHealth Litigation Activity
The mHealth industry has seen a few patent infringement lawsuits this year, including the following notable cases:
CardioNet filed lawsuits against MedNet Healthcare, MedTel 24, Rhythm Watch, AMI Cardiac Monitoring, ScottCare, and Ambucore Health Solutions;
Robert Bosch Healthcare filed lawsuits against ExpressMD, MedApps, Waldo Health, and Cardiocom; and
BodyMedia filed a lawsuit against Basis Science.
The volume of patent litigation in the mHealth industry is low relative to related industries such as the computer, smartphone, and medical device industries. The following factors likely play a role in damping the amount of patent litigation in the mHealth industry:
The difficult funding environment and poor economy make the expense of litigation unpalatable;
The industry is rapidly evolving and it is unclear which technologies and solutions will be profitable “winners”; and
Many companies are still in the process of building their patent portfolios.
The influence of these factors will wane as the economy stabilizes, the mHealth industry matures, and companies obtain more patents on mHealth technologies. Some mHealth companies are already becoming more aggressive about defending their intellectual property rights.
For example, AirStrip, a company that offers a mobile patient monitoring platform, announced in September 2012 that it obtained a patent (U.S. Patent No. 8,255,238) on technology for sending and displaying physiologic data on a mobile device. In an interview with MobiHealthNews, AirStrip’s President and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Cameron Powell, claimed that his company’s patents cover “taking any type of physiologic data—whether that’s from a sensor in the shoe, a home monitor, a blood pressure cuff, or a monitor in the hospital—and then re-rendering it on a native or HTML5 application on a mobile device.” At the time, Powell noted that, “[t]he message here to the industry is not that we are issuing this press release to stop every company out there who is doing this, [but], who knows, there may be a few fringe players who we have an issue with.” More recently, on October 18, 2012, AirStrip filed a lawsuit against mVisum, Inc. in the Southern District of New York alleging that mVisum’s CCS, Live Stream, OB, and onDemand products infringe AirStrip’s ‘238 patent. As is typical in such lawsuits, AirStrip’s Complaint requests an injunction barring future infringement, treble damages, and attorneys’ fees.
Similarly, after filing several lawsuits against competitors in the home health monitoring field, Robert Bosch Healthcare’s spokeswoman declared that “[w]e feel it is important to demonstrate that IP is important, and not just to our company. Bosch Healthcare Systems, like most high-tech companies, values its intellectual property as an essential asset of its business. Bosch is open to working with those companies that are interested in securing this technology through a licensing agreement, and we are in discussion with numerous companies in this regard.”
Patent owners in many industries tout their patent rights and use their patents to attack alleged infringers. AirStrip’s and Robert Bosch Healthcare’s actions are notable because they seem to indicate that mHealth companies are becoming more assertive about their patent rights. Loudly advertising patent rights and filing patent infringement lawsuits tends to create insecurities in competitors that may spark patent arms races or precipitate business disputes that result in additional litigation.The owner of a BMW 3-Series Coupe parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant last week. Sadly, the man's gamble didn't pay off, and his Bimmer suffered the consequences.
When Boston firefighters responded to an 8-alarm fire across the street from the parked car that evening, they broke through the car's front windows to get access to the hydrant's water and ran the hose through.
Local news station WCVB reports that the driver, who lives in the neighborhood, will be slapped with a $100 parking ticket. The fire originated in the engine compartment of an SUV across the street and spread to nearby houses, displacing 30 people.
The ultimate lesson from this story is: Don't park in front of fire hydrants!
Here's some footage of the aftermath, from Good Morning America.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption First police drone unit launched in Devon, Cornwall and Dorset
The first dedicated police drone unit in the UK has been launched.
Devon and Cornwall Police began testing the drones with Dorset Police in 2015, but have now established a permanent unit with three full-time staff.
It is hoped the drones could be used to track suspects in firearm incidents as well as in counter-terrorism operations.
The unit's six drones have already been used to find missing people and gather evidence to secure court convictions.
Image caption Some of the drones are fitted with thermal imaging cameras
It is aiming to have 40 officers complete their Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) drone training and up to 18 drones in operation by the start of 2018.
Some of the drones have a police livery and are equipped with zoom cameras and thermal imaging.
As well as crime scene and road searches, the drones will help scour the forces' 600 miles (900km) of coastline and extensive woodlands to help combat wildlife crime.
Drones have been trialled by other police forces, including Merseyside, Gwent and Kent for various uses including monitoring drug raids and searching for missing people.
Ch Supt Jim Nye, who leads the new unit, hopes the team will be able to shape how other forces used drone technology in the future.
"The helicopter isn't always available and you want to have it available for life-threatening situations," he said.
"I think the public would expect that if we can get value for money with a drone over a helicopter, that we do so."
Rules on flying drones
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Drones should be flown no higher than 400ft
In November 2016, the UK's drone code was revised and updated to help pilots ensure they fly the gadgets safely. It is:
D on't fly near airports or airfields
on't fly near airports or airfields R emember to stay below 120m (400ft) and at least 50m (150ft) away from people
emember to stay below 120m (400ft) and at least 50m (150ft) away from people O bserve your drone at all times
bserve your drone at all times N ever fly near aircraft
ever fly near aircraft Enjoy responsibly
UK revises safe flying drone codeRoyal Bank is backing away from a plan to charge customers transaction fees for loans, mortgage payments and debit transactions on some kinds of accounts.
The new rules, which were to go into effect June 1, met with complaints and outrage from customers.
The so-called "pay-to-pay" fees would have applied to:
RBC Royal Bank mortgage and loan payments from RBC personal banking or savings accounts.
RBC Royal Bank investment contributions from RBC banking accounts.
RBC Royal Bank credit card payments from RBC savings accounts.
RBC said it changed its policies because it is listening to customers.
"We are listening to our clients and will not include transactions like mortgage and loan payments as debit transactions," the bank said in a statement.
"The impact of not proceeding with these as countable debits will be modest, as most of our clients are already in accounts with unlimited transactions. We encourage our clients to call us or meet with us at their local branch and ensure they are in the right package for their needs," the statement read.
The change means mortgage and loan payments, investment contributions and credit card payments will not count toward a customer's monthly transaction limit.
The bank had proposed fees for customers for mortgage and loan payments on top of the interest rate it already charges.
"It looked like double-dipping when I saw that we could be paying on top of our interest a fee for making our mortgage payments," RBC customer Gordon Murray told CBC's Go Public.
Customers who have accounts with unlimited debit transactions would not have been affected.
All of Canada's big banks have announced hikes to transaction and account charges, but Royal Bank stood out for charging customers to make payments to itself.
The NDP has a petition calling for an end to so-called "pay-to-pay" fees by Canada's big banks. The federal government banned pay-to-pay fees from telecom companies.
"We have been long calling for an outright ban on pay-to-pay fees," said Toronto NDP MP Andrew Cash. "The government continues to fall back on its poor argument that we've got a voluntary code of conduct here and that should suffice."
The code |
8fps
burst speed up to 11fps with AE/AF Tracking
both the a6300 and a6500 are the cheapest options on the list
excellent video capabilities
To consider:
ergonomics and ease of use are not their strongest points
battery life is short but you can find third-party battery grips
Sony lenses are more expensive in comparison to competitor brands
AF is good with adapted lenses (A-mount, EF-mount) but the combo feels unbalanced with most lenses
The Math:
Best kit: a6300, FE 100-400mm GM and TC 1.4x ($3950 / £3900 / €4400)
Affordable kit to begin with: a6300 and FE 70-300mm ($2000/£2050 / €2300)
Note: add $400, £550 or €590 for the a6500.
Check price of the Sony a6500 on
Amazon | Amazon UK | B&H Photo | eBay
Check price of the Sony a6300 on
Amazon | Amazon UK | eBay | B&H Photo
Second-hand Sony cameras on
MPB US | MPB UK
Choice #5: Panasonic G9
Micro four thirds system – 20MP sensor – 60fps (S-AF), 20fps (C-AF)
The Lumix G9 is as close as you’re going to come to a DSLR in terms of design and ergonomics. It is the largest and heaviest on the list and comes with a robust grip that feels like a natural extension of your hand. The body is very well-built and is completely weather-sealed. The shutter release button is a little too sensitive for my taste but others may prefer it that way.
There is a rich range of physical controls including 19 function buttons and an AF Joystick on the rear (although I wish the latter weren’t so close to the EVF). The top LCD screen is very handy as a way of checking settings on the fly and the electronic viewfinder is excellent thanks to the high resolution of 3.68M dots, 120fps refresh rate and variable magnification (the highest being 0.83x). There are also dual SD card slots with UHS-II compatibility, and the battery life is very good.
The continuous shooting speeds go up to 12fps or 9fps with continuous AF when using the mechanical shutter. Switch to the electronic version and you can increase these speeds to 20fps (with AF/AE Tracking) or 60fps just like the E-M1 II. And just like the Olympus, you can use a mode similar to Pro Capture (called Pre-Burst) to save up to 15 images before fully depressing the shutter button. Bear in mind though that there is still some distortion due to rolling shutter. It is less noticeable for birds in flight but slightly worse than the sensor readout of the E-M1 II.
Up to 9fps, the G9 shows you a live view with blackouts. At higher speeds, it’s the last image taken that is shown instead. Although this results in a delay between what you see and what is actually happening, shooting at 20fps does help you to track fast moving subject more effectively because the frame rate is really smooth.
The buffer capabilities are not particularly good when shooting at these high bursts, but one alternative is to take advantage of the 6K/4K Photo mode, where you can record 6K/4K videos at 30fps and save any frame you want as an 18MP or 8MP JPG. And since the camera is in fact recording a video, there aren’t any buffer limitations besides the usual 30 minute allowance per clip.
The G9 features in-body stabilisation with 5 axes on the sensor and Dual IS (sensor + optical stabilisation). It’s the best Panasonic has ever designed in the Lumix range and comes close to the performance of the E-M1 II for both stills and video. The image quality is similar to the E-M1 II but the Lumix has an excellent JPG engine (better noise reduction and sharpness, warmer colours) if you like straight out-of-camera results.
Despite not being as advanced as the GH5 for video, the G9 still has some nice features on offer if you are interested in this genre for wildlife. It can record 4K up to 50/60p and offers slow motion capabilities up to 180fps in 1080p, although unfortunately you can’t control the exposure manually. The quality is excellent thanks to the many colour profile improvements.
In many ways, I would have loved to see this camera at the top of the list. It ticks all the boxes but does have one limitation that can’t be overlooked: the autofocus.
The AF of the G9 excels in almost every way and in our in-depth comparison with the E-M1 II, we found it to be better in most situations except for birds in flight, or more precisely, birds flying against a busy background. There the DfD contrast detection technology still struggles more than phase detection. The performance decreases even more if you shoot at 20fps with the electronic shutter, unlike the Olympus. This is why we put other cameras in front – their autofocus systems are simply better equipped for the most difficult of moving subjects. However, if BIF is not your main interest, the G9 could be exactly what you’re looking for.
One thing I also prefer about this camera is the better variety of AF area options, as well as the control you have over autofocus responsiveness.
The lens list is the same as that of the E-M1 II:
Leica DG 100-400mm f/4-6.3 (200-800mm)
Leica DG 200mm f2.8 (400mm equivalent, 560mm f/4 with TC 1.4x, 800mm equivalent with TC 2.0x)
Lumix G 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 II (200-600mm)
Olympus 300mm f/4 Pro (600mm equivalent, 840mm with TC 1.4x teleconverter)
Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro (80-300mm, 112-420mm with teleconverter)
Lumix G 45-200mm f4-5.6 II (90-400mm)
Olympus 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 II (150-600mm)
Please note that the performance may not be as good with Olympus lenses because the DfD system is officially only compatible with Lumix/Leica lenses. In my personal experience with the G9, I found that the performance mainly decreased for birds in flight, whereas in many other situations, it performed much better. Another thing to keep in mind is that Dual IS is not compatible with Olympus lenses so you’ll have to choose between sensor or optical stabilisation.
Why the Panasonic G9 can be an interesting choice for wildlife and bird photography:
up to 60fps or 20fps with continuous AF, 9fps with live view/blackouts
6K/4K Photo gives you 30fps/60fps without any buffer limitation
very good image stabilisation
complete weather-sealing, excellent build, good battery life, dual SD card slot and optional battery grip
Micro Four Thirds gives you the best selection of lenses
excellent video quality with slow motion options
To consider:
the autofocus struggles more for birds in flight or when shooting at 20fps with the electronic shutter
6K/4K Photo only gives you a JPG file
The math:
Best kit overall: G9 and Leica DG 200mm + TC 1.4x which is included ($4700 / £4200 / €4700)
Most affordable kit: G9 and 100-300mm II ($2350 / £2000 / €2350)
Check price of the Panasonic Lumix G9 on
Amazon | Amazon UK | eBay | B&H Photo
Second-hand Panasonic cameras on
MPB US | MPB UK
Promising new releases
Nothing at this time.
About other mirrorless cameras
Before wrapping up, I’d like to mention a few other cameras I’ve used for wildlife photography. I don’t consider them the very best for the genre but some of them are less expensive and others offer other advantages.
Sony A7 III
The A7 mark III is the latest addition to Sony’s full-frame series. Its autofocus system is based on that of the Sony A9 (693 phase detection points) and in our tests we found the performance quite close to the flagship camera. It doesn’t feature the blackout-free live view nor the 20fps speed, but it has an excellent 24MP BSI sensor, decent 10fps burst shooting, and the same long-lasting battery and design. It is half the price of the A9 and this is why it deserves a mention here.
Additional read:
Sony A7r III
The 42MP full-frame sensor of the A7r III not only gives you stunning dynamic range but also more room for cropping thanks to the higher resolution. The hybrid AF system is improved and while it doesn’t reach the same level as the A9, it is close. The maximum speed of 10fps (or 8fps with live view) and increased buffer make it a better option that its predecessor, the A7r II.
Additional read:
Fujifilm X-H1
The X-H1 offers a larger grip and better ergonomics than other Fuji models which makes the camera more comfortable to use with large lenses such as XF 100-400mm. It has everything you need including two SD card slots. The continuous shooting speeds go up to 8fps, or 11fps with the optional battery grip. The AF system isn’t the latest generation but it remains more than valid for wildlife and birds in flight. I got very good results with it and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the camera. There is however the X-T3 which costs less and is even faster. If Fujifilm decides to release an X-H1 successor with the same technology as the X-T3, it could become a killer camera for this genre.
Additional read:
Fujifilm X-Pro2
I got very good results with the X-Pro2 since its AF system is the same as the one found on the X-T2. Furthermore, the optical viewfinder and its display options proved a good ally for BIF, mimicking the use of a red dot sight (more info here). I wouldn’t recommend the camera for this genre primarily but if you are interested in Fuji gear, perhaps it could be an interesting back-up option.
Additional read:
Olympus OM-D E-M1
I started to get more serious about wildlife and BIF while using the original E-M1 and testing the 300mm Pro lens. The AF doesn’t lock as fast as the E-M1 II and is more inconsistent but if you aren’t interested in fast moving subjects, it remains an interesting solution for those on a budget. It can shoot up to 9fps with live view, has excellent image stabilisation and is fully weather-sealed. Note that the camera is soon to be discontinued but you may still find deals online or on the second-hand market.
Additional read:
Panasonic GH5
Before we had the chance to test the G9, the GH5 was on the main list. It doesn’t reach the same level of performance with the electronic shutter but the camera remains an interesting alternative thanks its superior video capabilities. More than any other camera mentioned in this article, it is definitely the one I would choose for wildlife video work.
Panasonic GX8 and G85
I had the chance to take wildlife pictures with various Panasonic cameras. They offer good stabilisation and have a robust build quality but the main limitation is the DfD AF system with BIF and fast subjects. It simply isn’t as good as other cameras but for more static situations, they work well and you can take advantage of extra features like 4K Photo and the good video capabilities.
Conclusion
The truth is that DSLRs still rule if you are looking for the best autofocus performance and a wider selection of camera bodies and lenses for every need and budget. However it isn’t the only camera system that can give you excellent results in this field these days.
Products like the Sony A9 have already closed the gap in terms of AF performance and are reaching new heights when it comes to continuous shooting speeds, the electronic viewfinder and the shutter mechanism. In fact, all four mirrorless brands are working hard to push the boundaries further than ever before. They may not yet have a complete offering for wildlife photographers but it’s only a question of time.
Whether you already invested in a DSLR or are new to the genre, I feel that Micro Four Thirds remains the most interesting solution because of the reduced weight and size, wider selection of lenses and additional choice for people on a budget.
Although Sony provides the best products when it comes to quality and speed, they are still lacking a little in terms of ergonomics and ease of use in comparison to the competition. The flagship A9 is also more expensive than any other mirrorless camera for this genre. The lens selection isn’t bad but they can be pricey too.
As for Fujifilm, the brand offers excellent autofocus capabilities and image quality but we still need more lenses for the system to be complete.
You may also like:It was entertaining. It was electrifying. It was probably the best segment on RAW in recent memory.
It was The Rock, returning to WWE after a seven year absence to cut one of the best promos on the show in the past few years. As the esteemed David Bixenspan pointed out, it may have been too good.
He didn't just come back for a cheap pop in a comedy segment that everyone would forget a month later. He didn't just return for a one-night appearance in a pre-determined city to help promote a movie (although, conveniently he does have one coming out around mid April). He returned to say he's going to be the host of WrestleMania 27 and he will not ever be leaving again.
Is he actually coming back to WWE in any sort of full-time capacity? Not likely. In even a part-time capacity? Also unlikely. But, based on his words, it does sound like we can expect much more than a sporadic appearance every few years.
That said, let's get into what he did on RAW. To be blunt, he killed it. He did what he's always done, and cut one of the most amazing promos in quite some time. I think a lot of that comes from his status as an all-time great. But he was also seemingly allowed to say what no other superstar on the roster would be.
He was allowed to utterly and completely bury John Cena. The promo:
"There is one man who the Rock has to see face-to-face. A guy who I met. A guy who I thought was a cool guy. Wished him well, happy for his success. When the Rock leaves, he comes in and out of the blue, eventually, he starts talking trash about the Rock. I don't know why and I don't care but I'm back now. You might have heard of him; his name is John Cena. So let me get this straight: the WWE has gone from the powerful "Austin 3:16" to the dominant and iconic "Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?" all the way to... (cue baby voice) "You can't see me." Oh, believe me, we all can see you. A blind-folded, sleeping, stuck in the basement, Stevie Wonder can see your monkey ass. How in the hell do you think we can miss? You come out here with your bright ass purple shirts. And before that, your bright green shirt, before that your bright orange shirt; your running around here looking like a big fat bowl of fruity pebbles. John Cena -- the Rock will see you at WrestleMania."
Uh, Vince McMahon? Paging Vince McMahon to Creative... we have a bit of a problem.
That was more than just a promo Rock cut on Cena. That was one of the greatest of all time taking a gigantic dump on the companies current number one babyface. Actually, if there was one guy you would say the WWE has tried their best to use to replace Rock in the past five or so years, it would be Cena.
The problem, as Bix pointed out, is that Cena simply doesn't measure up. He never has and he probably never will. That's not to say he's not extremely talented; no one can question that he is. It's just that he's nowhere near as talented as Rock.
And that's why they shouldn't have allowed Monday night's promo to happen.
Think of this -- if anyone on the current roster came out with what Rock did, how would it have been received? Rather well at first, I'm sure, but then Cena gets booked to win in a squash match or two, before coming back with a better, more charismatic promo, and alas, he's the top guy again.
That's not going to happen here. Because it can't. He can't go over Rock the way he can with guys like Randy Orton or Wade Barrett or even Triple H.
So how does WWE recover their top babyface?
There are a few ways to do this. Obviously, the booking will have to be on point. It's not going to be easy to have Cena look like anything but the bad guy if you stand him across from Rock. A few ways to pull this off:
Rock turns heel. This is doable and actually a good option if they continue the refusal to turn Cena. Plenty of ways to make this work without actually having a match between the two. Rock could screw Cena out of the title and cut a promo on the fans afterward and make the crowd switch at the right moment. He's the best at it.
They book Cena as superior to Rock for actually sticking around WWE throughout his time with the company. When Rock left, he became Dwayne Johnson and more or less severed all ties with the organization that made him what he is, whereas Cena has done a few movies while maintaining a rigorous schedule and carrying the promotion on his shoulders. As much as everyone loves "The Great One," there are quite a few people that are still upset with him for bailing. And no one believes he's back to stay. Cena can exploit that if he gets back to actually putting some edge on his promos as opposed to the PG image he's currently crafted for himself. It's worked for years but with Rock around, it looks like the minor league. He can't compete with that persona. So get rid of it.
Don't acknowledge anything. This isn't going to happen because they've already set this up for some sort of payoff but a good way to avoid any real damage is to have Cena break kayfabe for a minute and say -- "I'm not going to pay him any mind. He has nothing to do with this company other than an appearance at Mania. My goal is the title." He'll catch heat for it at first but once Rock is gone what is everyone left with? There are only so many choices at the moment and the sad fact is, Cena is best of the bunch.
The way things are looking now, it appears as if Cena will go on to Elimination Chamber where he will come out victorious to set up a match against Miz for the WWE title at WrestleMania. At some point within the next couple months, Rock will insert himself to set up some sort of angle at Mania.
So what to do?
It's time. There is no better time than right now to turn John Cena heel. Screw the merchandise sales, screw the fact they don't currently have a proper top babyface to replace him, screw the man-crush Vinny Mac has always had on him. Pull the trigger on a John Cena heel turn.
The set-up is there. Rock came back and completely took a dump on everything Cena represents. The crowd ate it up. They loved every second of it. They wanted more.
So give them more.
And give them Cena, asking the question he should be asking -- why? Why turn their backs on him after he stuck around and broke his neck and back for them? Some Hollywood wannabe comes back for a night and suddenly they forget about all the years of hard work he has put in?
Now let me ask you this. If there was ever a guy who could help get Cena over as a mega-heel who would it be?
The Rock.
So, to answer the headline question, yes; WWE CAN recover their top babyface. But it's not the right thing to do. The right thing to do is what so many fans in the WWE Universe have been waiting for -- turn John Cena heel.WEARING make-up and a dress, Travis Alabanza stood in line with friends at the women’s changing rooms at the Manchester branch of Topshop.
With a dress to try on, Travis was about to walk in when the attendant turned the group away and suggested they used the men’s changing area instead.
13 Artist Travis Alabanza called Topshop up on its treatment of transgender customer after being denied access to the women's changing rooms
The reason?
Despite identifying as trans-feminine, in the attendant’s eyes Travis was still clearly a man.
Furious, the performance artist from Bristol posted a series of tweets to Topshop: “Who made you in charge of deciding who is woman enough to use ur changing room?”
Within 24 hours, amid a social media storm, the high-street chain had responded, flagging up that it had already abolished sex-segregated changing areas and recently updated its changing-rooms policy.
Getty Images - Getty 13 Topshop and Topman have since made their changing rooms gender neutral last month
Since this incident last month, the debate has raged on.
Should someone who identifies as a woman be allowed to use women-only spaces such as changing rooms, toilets and domestic violence refuges? Or should they have fully transitioned first?
The debate is only set to intensify as the UK government prepares to change the Gender Recognition Act, aiming to make the transitioning process easier.
Under current law, anyone who wants to legally change gender has to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).
This involves having lived in your preferred gender for two years, receiving a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria (the condition where a person feels they don’t belong in their biological sex), and a panel assessment.
In reality, many trans people don’t actually apply for their GRC as they find the process lengthy and demeaning.
Under new proposals, however, trans people could be able to self-declare the gender they choose to live in without needing any medical evidence or proof.
Twitter 13 Travis' tweet caused a media frenzy after confronting Topshop
In short, if someone says they identify as a woman, they can have their gender legally recognised through a simple administrative process and then they’ll be able to access places previously only available to people who were born female (AKA cisgender or “cis” women).
Equalities minister Justine Greening has hailed the move as “the next step forward” in advancing transgender rights for the estimated 300,000-500,000 people living in the UK who don’t feel comfortable with their birth gender.*
But as well as those who support the bill, it has plenty of critics, too – especially because there would be no requirement for male-to-female trans people to take female hormones or even have genital reassignment surgery.
Twitter 13 Feminist author Sarah Ditum said men using female changing rooms could make people feel uncomfortable
As it stands, around 70% of trans women still have male genitals intact.
“While I’m sympathetic to transgender people who also need safe spaces, the majority of people who identify as trans don’t have surgery of any kind, and women generally don’t like being naked and feeling vulnerable around men,” explains feminist author Sarah Ditum.
“The idea that someone like Travis, who looks male and hasn’t transitioned in any way, could use the same curtained-off changing room as me makes me feel uncomfortable.
Standing up for women's privacy is deemed transphobic Feminist author Sarah Ditum
"But we’re in a situation now where standing up for women’s right to privacy is deemed transphobic.”
And Sarah isn’t the only one to feel this way.
As news of Travis V Topshop hit headlines, outraged comments flooded social media forums.
One Mumsnet user wrote: “I fully support the right of people to dress how they like, call themselves what they like, and 99% of the time do whatever job they like or live wherever they like… But 1% of the time – women’s prisons, women’s spaces where they are naked and vulnerable, women’s shelters and rape crisis centres – people with penises should not be in these spaces or taking jobs in those places.”
News Group Newspapers Ltd 13 Equalities Minister Justine Greening has championed advancing transgender rights
Another posted: “Topshop have thrown women and girls under the bus because of three tweets from one man.”
Other users even called for a boycott of the high-street store, expressing fears that gender-neutral changing rooms could allow “predatory” men access to women-only spaces, putting Topshop’s target market of teenage girls at risk.
It’s an issue Miranda Yardley, a 50-year-old accountant who was born male but had gender reassignment surgery seven years ago, agrees with.
AFP - Getty 13 Some people have threatened to boycott the retailer over fears gender-neutral changing rooms could allow 'predatory' men access to women-only spaces
“No one is saying trans people are a problem or more likely to commit assault against women,” she says.
“What we’re saying is it’s impossible to determine who is and who isn’t genuinely trans or non-binary [someone who doesn’t identify as male or female], and women need certain protections and privacies living in a society dominated by men.
"It’s not bigoted and it’s not transphobic. Men and women, and trans men and trans women, have different needs and requirements.”
Carl Fox - The Sun 13 Miranda Yardley is happy to be labelled transgender
However Maria Miller, chair of the Women And Equalities Committee who produced the government report on transgender rights, responded to concerns about the bill compromising women’s safety by saying: “These spaces [such as rape crisis centres] carry out a risk assessment before individuals are allowed to use them, and those that pose a risk to safety are not necessarily one gender.”
She also expressed surprise that criticism of the report came from “women who purport to be feminists”.
But concerns aren’t without basis.
Getty Images - Getty 13 Author Juno Dawson transitioned from male to female three years ago
In 2012 in Toronto, Canada, Christopher Hambrook claimed to be a trans woman in order to gain access to female shelters where he sexually assaulted two women.
Last year in Seattle, USA, a man undressed in a female locker room at a swimming pool, arguing that he had a right to be there and “testing” a new state rule that allows people to choose a bathroom based on gender identity.
Here in the UK, just last month a report published by campaign group Fair Play For Women revealed that up to half of trans prison inmates may be sex offenders.
Previously unpublicised evidence from the British Psychological Society (BPS) had warned the Commons that some biological men convicted of sex crimes had even falsely claimed to be transgender.
The BPS went on to say the convicts had done so as a means of demonstrating reduced risk and gaining parole, or to seek access to females and young children through presenting in an apparently female way.
Getty Images - Getty 13
There’s also the argument that proposed changes to the gender identity bill might actually weaken the position of transgender people.
“At the moment, people know that you have to go through a long process to live in your non-birth gender,” explains Miranda.
“Replacing the GRC with self-identification means that those [who are hostile to trans people] could simply say: ‘We don’t believe you.’
“When I think about what I went through to transition over many years – two years of counselling and planning the consequences of my decision for all the members of my family – this devalues and trivialises what it means, not least because it’s easy to challenge.”
However, Juno Dawson, 32, an author and activist from Brighton who had surgery to transition from male to female three years ago, says the current system isn’t fit for purpose.
To give trans people special areas is telling us: 'You are different' Author and activist Juno Dawson
“I know a lot of trans people who haven’t bothered applying for a GRC – myself included – because you can change your passport, driving licence and bank account yourself,” she says.
“So having a panel of strangers who’ve never even seen you judge whether you get a birth certificate or not is a very strange system.”
Juno also adds that the idea that men might use this law change to pose as women is “highly unlikely”.
And the suggestion by some that the answer could be having a third separate space for those who identify as trans or gender-neutral is simply another form of segregation, she says.
“To insist we need special areas is like telling trans people: ‘You are different,’” Juno explains.
13 Director of Critical Sister Jo Bartosch said 'Travis Alabanza was behaving with classic male entitlement'
“Someone who feels uncomfortable in a changing room with a trans person is the same as someone saying: ‘I don’t want to get on a plane with a Muslim because they’re all terrorists.’
It’s appalling. There are no crime statistics to back up these unfounded fears. It’s similar to the ‘80s, when gay men were deemed to be a threat to the general population.”
But Jo Bartosch, director of the women’s group Critical Sisters, disagrees. “While it would be disingenuous to suggest that every trans woman is a potential danger, it is fair to assume that a pair of knickers will not magic away the socialised norms of male behaviour,” she says.
“And this is where the heart of the problem lies – we have a collective blind spot around male violence. It is a sad fact that male violence does not change with gender identities.
Alamy Live News 13 Britain's Next Top Model's Talulah-Eve had full gender reassignment surgery last year
"The reason single-sex facilities exist is not because women are prudes, it’s because a significant minority of men are predators.”
So what’s the solution? Jo suggests anyone who wants to be accepted by women should respect their boundaries.
“Travis Alabanza was behaving with classic male entitlement,” she says.
“The #metoo campaign demonstrated just how widespread sexual violence is. Sadly it is a near universal experience for women. Anyone who wants to live as a woman needs to be respectful of this painful truth.”
It’s not a view shared by 23-year-old model Talulah-Eve, who had full gender reassignment surgery last year.
“If anything, I’ve earned more right to womanhood than a cis woman,” she insists.
Getty - Contributor 13 She says she has earned the right to be a woman and to separate 'types' is wrong
“I’ve had to fight to be the woman I am now. When I think about all the struggles that I’ve had to go through – being bullied, dismissed by people, rejected from jobs… To separate a trans woman from any other type of woman is just wrong.”
However, Miranda looks at it from a different stance.
“I’m not trying to lay any claim to being a woman,” she explains.
“I have not had the same life, and that’s why I’m happy to define myself as a transsexual woman.”
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And while many trans women are already able to use female changing rooms without being noticed, Miranda says she goes out of her way to avoid them.
“I tend to buy two of something, try them on at home and take one back,” she explains.
“I don’t particularly like getting changed around people, but I also respect women and girls – and their right to privacy.”Russia was pointedly disinvited from a gathering Thursday of the exclusive Group of Seven nations, but it was clear that the international big chill imposed on Moscow over its actions in Ukraine is starting to thaw.
President Obama and other leaders meeting here offered an olive branch to Russian President Vladimir Putin, inviting him to begin to resolve the seven-month Ukrainian crisis and rebuild trust with the West after an estrangement that invited comparisons to the Cold War.
Putin has an opportunity “to seize this moment” and turn the page, Obama said.
Putin should recognize that Ukraine’s newly elected president, Petro Poroshenko, is the “legitimate leader of Ukraine,” he said. Obama also said he was pleased to see Putin not denounce Poroshenko’s May 25 election, adding that it “offers the prospect that he’s moving in a new direction.”
Although the Group of Seven warned that Russia would face harsher sanctions if it fails to ease months of tension, new economic penalties are on hold, to the evident relief of European nations.
The detente with Russia continued with scheduled meetings between Putin and the British and French leaders Thursday in Paris. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to see Putin on Friday. Only Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to meet with Putin one on one when the allies of World War II gather in France to commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day.
Putin’s Russia was pushed out of what had been known as the Group of Eight over the invasion and annexation of Crimea this spring. The gathering of heads of state was abruptly moved from Sochi, Russia, to the Belgian capital, home to the European Union and NATO.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday that Russia had lost its seat in the economic club by actions that are “totally at odds with the values of this group of democracies.” He went on to offer what appeared to be specific criteria for avoiding stricter sanctions: the end of Russian support for separatists operating in eastern Ukraine and the recognition of the Poroshenko government.
“If these things don’t happen, then sectoral sanctions will follow,” Cameron said, referring to much tougher penalties targeting sectors of the Russian economy.
Modified sectoral sanctions, largely targeting the Russian defense industry, were readied in May in anticipation of potentially heavy Russian interference in the Ukrainian elections, which Russia had called illegitimate. Those sanctions were considered a last resort by many European nations that trade heavily with Russia. Moscow surprised and pleased European nations by refraining from overt meddling in the election, and European diplomats said the strong hope now is that sectoral sanctions will quickly become unnecessary.
Obama and Cameron suggested that Putin has roughly until the end of the month to decide whether he will change course in Ukraine.
“If he continues a strategy of undermining the sovereignty of Ukraine, then we have no choice but to respond,” Obama said at a news conference with Cameron, who expressed the same view.
“Sectoral sanctions are broader; they’d be more significant,” Obama said. “My hope is, is that we don’t have to exercise them because Mr. Putin has made some better decisions.”
The comments by Obama and Cameron were striking because they suggested that the leaders would seek to impose harsher sanctions on Russia if Putin does not take active steps to resolve the crisis in Ukraine.
Many in Eastern Europe have worried that the West would not impose additional punishments if the current situation continues in eastern Ukraine, where separatists widely believed to be backed by Russia are stirring unrest and violence.
“I think Europeans understand that the reason we’ve seen such extraordinary growth and peace on this continent has to do with certain values and certain principles that have to be upheld,” Obama said. “And when they are so blatantly disregarded, the choice is clear: Europeans have to stand up for those ideals and principles even if it creates some economic inconvenience.”
A joint statement from the G-7 condemned what it called Russia’s illegal annexation and “unacceptable interference” in other areas of Ukraine and said the body will refuse to recognize Crimea as a part of Russia.
“We stand ready to intensify targeted sanctions and to implement significant additional restrictive measures to impose further costs on Russia should events so require,” the statement said.
U.S. officials later said certain provocative actions — such as Russian troops crossing the border into Ukraine — would trigger more punitive measures. But they would not define exactly what Putin would have to do, nor would they set an exact deadline.
“Clearly sectoral sanctions are on the table,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “If we see the status quo continuing, we are going to move.”
Obama and Cameron acknowledged that there are differences of opinion among the 28 European Union nations and that rallying them all to favor stricter sanctions would be difficult.
“Do I expect unanimity among the 28 E.U. members?” Obama joked.
“Welcome to the club,” Cameron interjected with a laugh.
Cameron said his meeting with Putin was a reasonable way to keep the lines of communication open to Moscow.
U.S. officials have been clear that they would have preferred a unified rebuff to Putin this week, although Obama said it is entirely appropriate for Putin to attend D-Day commemorations in Normandy on Friday. “I have no doubt that I’ll see Mr. Putin” there, he said, “and should we have the opportunity to talk, I will be repeating the same message that I’ve been delivering to him throughout this crisis.”
While Obama would not meet with Putin, Secretary of State John F. Kerry met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Paris on Thursday. Kerry repeated that he hopes Russia will validate and meet with the new Ukrainian government. The goal, he said, is for Ukraine not to be a pawn.
“The Russian-American agenda is much broader than just Ukraine,” Lavrov said. “We would like to see other countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, many others, also to be in peace, not to be used as a pawn, and I hope that we can discuss all these things.”
As the leaders talked in Brussels, civilians were evacuating the eastern Ukrainian regions where the Ukrainian military has been engaged in ongoing clashes with pro-Russian separatists.
In the past 24 hours, more than 8,300 Ukrainians, many of them children, have sought refuge in Russia’s southern Rostov region, said the region’s governor, Vasily Golubev, according to the Russian Interfax news agency. About 4,000 Ukrainians have applied for refugee status in Russia, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at a government session Thursday.
Ukrainian military officials said there had been several sporadic ambushes on troops deployed in the east. The Ukrainian Border Guard Service said insurgents fired Thursday on guards and |
appears to deflect most blame for the crisis away from the church. However, the study acknowledges that there was little evidence before 2002 “that diocesan leaders met directly with victims.’’ Instead, church leaders focused on the abusive priests rather than on their victims.
Abusive priests have often been branded pedophiles, but the report — in a declaration that appears destined to stir controversy — insists that fewer than 5 percent actually met that definition. In the process, however, the study’s authors seem to redefine what constitutes pedophilia.
Major associations of psychiatrists typically define pedophilia as interest in children 13 and younger, calling them “prepubescent.’’
But to reach their conclusion about the low incidence of the disorder among priests, the report authors seem to suggest that the prepubescent period ends at age 10.
“The majority of victims were pubescent or postpubescent,’’ the report states. “Thus,’’ they wrote, “it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as pedophile priests.’’
The researchers called the sexual abuse scandal, which began unfolding in Boston in 2002, a “historical problem.’’ They said reports of abuse rose sharply in the mid-1960s, peaked in the late 1970s, and declined in the 1980s, mirroring the trend in society generally.
The report also states that “the documented rise in cases of abuse in the 1960s and 1970s is similar to the rise in other types of “deviant’’ behavior in society, and coincides with social change during this time period.’’
The study, which cost about $2 million, about half of which was paid for by the church, was to be released today by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, but the Religion News Service first reported its findings on its website last night. The Globe also obtained a copy of the report last night.
The study met with quick criticism, however.
“The study seems to focus on the offending priests in a way that minimizes the gravity of their crimes, and gives short shrift to the ‘other crime’ — the enabling, concealing, and fostering of abuse by the US bishops and the Vatican bureaucracy,’’ said Terence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, in a statement on news reports concerning the leaked study last night.
“The report also grotesquely emphasizes the ‘vulnerability’ of the priests who committed the crimes, and neglects the defenseless children who suffered them. In these respects, the first Causes and Context report — the Bennett Report of 2004 — was a better report than its successor.’’
Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.The Wheel of Time is a truly epic fantasy series, spanning three decades and fourteen books, and representing many lifetimes’ worth of creativity both on and off the page. Its world is staggeringly detailed and full of mystery and the rewards for those who delve into it are immense.
But it sure is a lot to take on!
A Memory of Light, the long-awaited final volume of this titanic series, comes out from Tor Books on January 8, 2013. With the end finally in sight, there has never been a better time for fans of epic fantasy to see what makes this series great. (Or to send it on to friends who have been holding off on committing to a big series.) To that end, the first half of The Eye of the World, “From the Two Rivers” is currently available as a 99 cent ebook and is available from all ebook retailers and for all devices, including Nook, Kindle, and iPad.So, yeah, I don’t like the sacrifice bunt. I don’t like the way it’s scored. I don’t like the way managers use it. I don’t like percentages. I don’t like people’s hyper-eagerness to just give away an out, like it’s nothing, like it is actually worth just one base. I suspect I’ll be talking about all this at some length with Brian Kenny at 9:35 a.m. on his radio show.
But there is a kind of bunt I like, a kind of bunt I’d like to see players use more: The bunt against the shift.
Wait, let’s start with the NBA. From 1965 to 1980, as you probably know, Rick Barry shot underhand free throws. He made a rather extraordinary 89.3% in his career — but shot an even more incredible 92% his last six years. He got better as he got older. He was convinced — and he remains convinced — that anyone who takes the time to learn the underhand free throw and develops it can shoot 80% free throws, minimum. There is some science that backs him up.
Do you know much how much good 80% free throw shooting can do for some players? Last year, Dwight Howard averaged 17.1 points per game despite making just 49.2% of his free throws. He would have scored 222 more points total and averaged 20 points per game had he made 80% of his free throws. DeAndre Jordan made just 39% of his free throws — even at 70% he scores maybe 100 more points this past season and is an infinitely more valuable player at crunch time. Seventeen NBA players who averaged at least 20 minutes per game shot worse than 60%. I’m not saying this as some sort of old fogey “oh the kids today with their free throws” … I’m just saying: Why wouldn’t they TRY to shoot underhand?
The answer seems to be: It looks silly. It’s embarrassing. Great athletes simply find it intolerably demeaning to shoot a free throw underhand, like they were Betty White. For a little while, Wilt Chamberlain — a dreadful free throw shooter — tried the underhand method. It’s hard to find the numbers, but anecdotally there is some suggestion he improved a little bit from the line. Thing is, his heart wasn’t in it. Wilt Chamberlain shot 51% in his long career and still averaged 30.1 points per game. If he had shot 80%, he would have scored 3,400 more points and averages 33.4 points per game. Anyway, he did not stick with it. But he stopped shooting underhand because, as he wrote in his autobiography, “I slept with 20,000 women.” No, wait, he also wrote that shooting underhand free throws made him feel like a sissy, and the other players mocked him. Even an iconoclast like Wilt Chamberlain could not stand up to the intense pressure of not shooting underhand.
Rick Barry finds all this maddening. What’s a little taunting when you can SCORE MORE POINTS? In his mind, you are hurting your team and hurting yourself by not doing everything in your power to excel. It drives him crazy that players would rather miss free throws and look conventional than make free throws and look out of place.
So it brings us back to the bunt against the shift. As we know, it’s become more and more popular to play three infielders on the right side against power lefties … and put the third baseman close to shortstop. it’s proven to be quite effective against many players. But there is a way to beat it consistently. You could bunt the ball down the third base line. This works, even for players we have come to know as very slow. Three examples:
David Ortiz is 6-for-11 on bunts.
Jim Thome was 2-for-4 on bunts.
Jason Giambi was 2-for-3 on bunts.
We don’t have a lot of data for this because, of course, hitters rarely bunt against the shift. Ryan Howard never has. Josh Hamilton tried it once, unsuccessfully, and took much abuse over it. Ted Williams once bunted against the shift and it was national news, the Splinter giving in. He did not give in again. “Like Ruth before him,” John Updike would famously write of Williams pulling balls relentlessly into the teeth of the defensive shift, “he bought the occasional home run at the cost of many directed singles — a calculated sacrifice certainly not, in the case of a hitter as average-minded as Williams, entirely selfish.”
No, it’s not selfish … but the more interesting question: Is it productive baseball? How often would a player need to be successful on bunts against the shift for it to be clearly the better strategy. I asked our pal Tom Tango if he had some numbers for the occasion and, not surprisingly, he did. He looked specifically at situations with the bases empty.
“If you are successful on a bunt with bases empty,” he wrote, “you add +.26 runs. If you are out, it’s -.16 runs. If you are successful 60% of the time, then you have added:.26 x.60 –.16 x.40 = +.092 … And that’s pretty much the limit to what an exceptional hitter can add (with the bases empty). Therefore, ANYONE who can bunt at least 60% of the time into an open field (with bases empty) should do it every single time.”
This makes sense to me. But even if you don’t do it every time, why wouldn’t you bunt against the shift at least now and then. I mean LOOK AT THIS? I’m not saying it’s as easy as Robbie Cano makes it look there, but it’s an opportunity to get on base a very high percentage of the time. And as Bill James points out, it also could have the auxiliary benefit of stopping the other team from using the shift. Why wouldn’t hitters take greater advantage of that?
I think the reason few players bunt is two-fold. One, obviously, revolves around the Rick Barry underhand free throw. Bunting against the shift is embarrassing, it’s demeaning, it’s somehow admitting defeat. Of course, that’s the cunning power of the defensive shift. The shift in many ways is like the final Tom Cruise maneuver on Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” — it is a play on the subject’s ego and hubris and refusal to look weak. Nicholson, who clearly had no misgivings about lying through his teeth, only had to say, “No, I didn’t order the code red,” and Tom Cruise is off somewhere getting disbarred. But he didn’t. A batter has only to bunt a few balls down that third base line to completely destroy the defensive shift. But he doesn’t.
Two, baseball remains inextricably tied to what people want to believe. In so many ways, I think that’s why the sacrifice bunt is still such a viable baseball play — it’s because, it SHOULD be a good play. I mean, look, this guy’s giving himself up for the good of the team. This guy’s moving into scoring position. That should increase our chances of scoring! The inconvenient fact that it doesn’t increase chances of scoring — not mathematically, not historically, not at all — simply cannot overwhelm the optics.
And so speedy guys still keep getting put at the top of batting orders, and little guys who can’t necessarily hit but can “handle the bat” still hit second and the team’s best hitter are hitting third, and the bopper keeps hitting cleanup even though there are many, many reasons to believe (and many studies that prove) that this is a poor way to construct a lineup. Why? It SEEMS right. It feels right. It looks right. I mean the fast guy gets on, he steals second, the stick man hits behind the runner and moves him to third, the team’s best hitter hits a sacrifice fly … great inning, right?
People have to understand, logically, that pitchers don’t win games. But the pitcher win seems right. People have to know that walks are valuable. But, wait, don’t you see that Joey Votto only has 72 RBIs? People have to know that sluggers will help their team more by bunting and getting on base at a very high rate than by trying to bang ball into a tiny gap in a defensive shift. But, wait, then they won’t hit home runs. Baseball, very often, focuses on what SHOULD be true rather than what actually IS true.Giants Unveil New Retro-Inspired Orange Jersey
The San Francisco Giants have unveiled a new retro-inspired orange alternate jersey set to be worn for every Friday home game during the upcoming 2014 season. The unveiling came courtesy a Tweet on their official Twitter account.
The jersey brings back a uniform script not seen on an in-game uniform in 32 years, the Giants wore this logo on their jerseys originally from 1977-1982.
There are several differences between the 1982 version and 2014. Most notably is the new jersey is button-up rather than pullover (thankfully). The stripes around the collar are now a simple single black pipe, which also runs down the front… there is no sleeve stripe on the new look.
There is also a slight beige drop shadow on the new script outside the white border, this beige drop shadow is present on all the modern-day Giants jersey logos.
With this new jersey, the orange alternate worn from 2010-13 is gone. The Giants wore their Friday orange alternate last season 12 times to an even 6-6 record.
The Giants become the second MLB team in two days to unveil a new alternate uniform, yesterday the Los Angeles Dodgers revealed their new grey road alternate jersey.
UPDATE (Jan 31/14 10:15pm ET):
The San Francisco Giants just tweeted out a new photo which shows that the new orange jersey indeed has numbers on the front, just like the originals!Vermont Business Magazine Governor Peter Shumlin seems to have gotten his way so far in Vermont taking a deliberate course toward legalizing marijuana. The Senate Judiciary Committee this morning passed, by a vote of 4 to 1 S.241, legislation to legalize marijuana in Vermont. The governor has opposed the legalization as a tax revenue grab, instead wanting the state to use legalization to benefit law enforcement and drug rehabilitation. He wants legal marijuana to be cheap enough to help drive out illegal drug dealers. He has also opposed edible forms, at least for now, until a new committee can review the matter. Supporters of edibles mostly have come from supporters of medical marijuana.
The bill states that there would be a set number of marijuana retailers. Individuals who are at least 21 could possess up to one ounce. If passed as is, marijuana would become legal on January 1, 2018. The bill so far includes the strictest regulations now governing alcohol and cigarettes. One could not legally grow marijuana at home. The bill has a long way to go before becoming law. Speaker of the House Shap Smith said earlier this month that he believes the Vermont Legislature will pass a bill legalizing marijuana, but not this year. S.241 next goes to the Senate Finance Committee.
“I want to thank Senator Sears for his leadership and the entire Judiciary Committee for their hard work on this bill," the governor said in a statement. "This legislation meets the principles I outlined in my State of the State Address and I believe it provides the framework for our state to cautiously, step-by-step and in the Vermont way end the failed war on drugs policy of marijuana prohibition. This debate is about whether we can take a smarter approach towards marijuana, which is already widely available and used by tens of thousands of Vermonters. Promoting prevention, keeping marijuana out of the hands of kids, getting rid of illegal drug dealers, and doing a better job responding to impaired drivers already on our roads, I believe this legislation is a huge improvement on the failed war on drugs. I look forward to working with the Legislature as they continue to debate this issue.”
SEE DRAFT
SEE RELATED STORIES
Stuart Savel: Legalizing marijuana
Shumlin, Sears outline bill to 'cautiously' legalize marijuana in Vermont
In his State of the State Address, the Governor outlined five principles he will insist on in any legislation to legalize marijuana.
A legal market must keep marijuana and other drugs out of the hands of underage kids. With 83 percent of Vermont youth saying that marijuana is easy or somewhat easy to obtain, the current system doesn’t do this.
he tax imposed must be low enough to wipe out the black market and get rid of the illegal drug dealers.
Revenue from legalization must be used to expand addiction prevention programs.
Law enforcement’s capacity to improve the response to impaired drivers under the influence of marijuana who are already on Vermont’s roads must be strengthened.
The sale of edibles must be prohibited at first.
“The legislation outlined today meets these criteria,” Gov. Shumlin said. “I want to thank Senator Sears for his thoughtful approach on this issue.”
Because Vermont has already taken steps to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, the legislation introduced today does not require repealing any criminal penalties under Vermont law.
On the critical issue of keeping marijuana out of the hands of underage kids, the legislation outlines a number of steps, including:
No person under the age of 21 will be permitted on the premises of a marijuana establishment.
Advertising and labeling may not be used to appeal to children or youth.
Marijuana establishments are prohibited from being located within 1,000 feet of a school or child care center.
And civil and criminal penalties will be established for furnishing marijuana to those under 21. Current civil and criminal penalties will also remain in place for those using or possessing marijuana underage.
In order to improve the response to impaired drivers under the influence of marijuana, alcohol, and other substances already on Vermont’s roads, the legislation calls for ten additional law enforcement officers to be trained as drug recognition experts and an additional 25 new State Troopers to be added over the next three years. It also calls for the Governor’s Highway Safety Program to expand its public education and prevention campaign to discourage impaired or drugged driving and adds to Vermont’s open container law, preventing its use in a motor vehicle.
Going forward, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee will work with the Department of Health to include prevention provisions and the Senate Finance Committee will work to set a tax rate that undercuts the black market.Individual Position Rankings
History hasn’t changed. The SEC’s once again loaded at running back as we near the opening kickoff of another college football season.
Ranked in terms of talent and potential impact, here’s how the SEC’s impact running backs stack up this season:
10. Marlin Lane, Tennessee: The Vols’ featured back heading into Butch Jones’ second season, Lane is hoping to stay healthy for the first time in his career and showcase burst and vision that’s been a contributing factor to his nearly 5-yard per carry career average. Lane’s a reliable every-down option, but five-star freshman Jalen Hurd will also see his share of totes as the quicker, more explosive ballcarrier.
9. Kelvin Taylor, Florida: This sophomore took advantage of playing opportunity as a true freshman after an injury to Matt Jones with 457 yards and four touchdowns over Florida’s final seven games. A strong spring put Taylor ahead of Jones and Mack Brown on the depth chart. He’s better suited as a run-catch threat in Kurt Roper’s new system and should flourish alongside a healthy Jeff Driskel.
8. Jonathan Williams, Arkansas: The thunder to Alex Collins’ lightning, Williams could be the best of the Razorbacks’ three-headed monster backfield also featuring lesser-known talent Korliss Marshall. Williams, like Collins and Marshall, has breakaway speed but his calling card is his power and low pad level in third-and-short situations. In need of a crucial yard, Arkansas will give it to Williams this fall.
7. Cameron Artis-Payne, Auburn: He’s not expected to produce 1,800 yards like predecessor Tre Mason, but Artis-Payne seems to be the guy who will see the bulk of the workload in the Tigers’ run-heavy attack as a senior unless Corey Grant impresses over the next few weeks. Artis-Payne averaged 6.7 yards per carry last season, fourth-best in the SEC for players with at least 85 attempts and is especially productive inside the red zone.
6. Leonard Fournette, LSU: The wild-card of the bunch, the hype alone surrounding Fournette warrants a Top 10 ranking just to avoid the repercussions of biggest snub questions at season’s end if the five-star freshman’s at 900 yards and nine touchdowns. Depending on how quickly Fournette adjusts to Cam Cameron’s offense, he’ll play a healthy number of snaps in the opener. It’s important to note that while Terrence Magee’s the No. 1 option for the Tigers heading into camp, it’s Fournette who will likely own the job by November.
5. Alex Collins, Arkansas: Being a marked man always makes the following season that much more difficult, but Collins has the talent to overcome whatever obstacles he may face defensively as a sophomore. Coming off a 1,026-yard campaign, expectations are for the Ft. Lauderdale native to produce. Collins and Williams aren’t on Darren McFadden and Felix Jones’ level yet, but another near 2,000-yard rushing season combined puts them in the conversation. Arkansas’ win-loss results will determine whether or not their numbers are again buried at the bottom of the standings.
4. Derrick Henry, Alabama: This sensational sophomore looks a lot like Trent Richardson when he hits the hole, showing off the perfect blend of strength and burst with a dab of nastiness. It was doubtful highly-touted freshman Bo Scarbrough would’ve been in Alabama’s 2014 rotation, but after failing to qualify, Henry’s only competition for the second-most carries behind T.J. Yeldon is Kenyan Drake. Unlike Fournette, an underclassman with a similar skill set, we know what Henry’s capable of at the SEC level.
3. Mike Davis, South Carolina: Tempted to throw the Gamecocks’ top offensive stud ahead of Yeldon in the two-hole, Davis is capable of a memorable 1,500-yard, 20-touchdown season in Columbia this fall as one of the SEC’s Heisman threats with breakaway speed often unmatched at the running back position. But is he durable enough to sustain the nearly 300 carries needed to surpass that total? Due to South Carolina’s depth at the position, Davis doesn’t have the same workhorse strain that ultimately led to Marcus Lattimore’s weathering. Then again, Steve Spurrier’s acknowledged his expectation that this is Davis’ final season and if the Gamecocks plan on winning an Eastern Division championship, this junior will do much of the heavy lifting.
2. T.J. Yeldon, Alabama: Electric out of the Alabama backfield as a ballcarrier and receiving option, Yeldon’s posted back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons as the Crimson Tide’s primary offensive threat. Naturally-gifted Henry has received most of the preseason pub, but Yeldon has the reps and is a proven impact player. If he tones down the fumbles, Yeldon could be the next elite running back to emerge from Tuscaloosa, joining Mark Ingram, Trent Richardson and Eddie Lacy.
1. Todd Gurley, Georgia: Possessing everything coaches look for in a bruising power back, Gurley is cut from a different mold than the rest. Ballcarriers with defensive tackle-sized legs aren’t supposed to out-run safeties in a foot race to the pylon or make linebackers miss with precision in the open field. Watch one of Gurley’s game films and you’ll run out of fingers trying to count the number of broken tackles. College football’s rhinoceros at the position, you don’t come to Gurley’s watering hole unless you’re invited.Johannesburg - President Jacob Zuma is fighting for political survival after another motion of no confidence was tabled against him at a meeting of the ANC's national executive committee (NEC) in Pretoria.
At least four sources with direct knowledge of events inside the closed NEC meeting confirmed to News24 that African National Congress policy guru and NEC member Joel Netshitenzhe tabled a motion for Zuma to step down.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, his deputy Joe Phaahla and axed tourism minister Derek Hanekom spoke out in support of Netshitenzhe's motion.
READ: Does South Africa need a new NEC?
An inside source told News24 Netshitenzhe argued that the case against Zuma had "worsened" since Hanekom's call in November 2016 for him to go.
"He mentioned all the things we read about in the news: The Cabinet reshuffle, the downgrade [to junk status], the reports on state capture... the litany of problems all linked to him [Zuma]."
READ: Council of Churches report on state capture can be used in NEC discussions - Mantashe
Zuma scandals
Netshitenzhe is a former head of the government's communications department, the GCIS.
The meeting which adjourned on Saturday early evening was expected to continue on Sunday.
Netshitenzhe's motion came in spite of ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe telling journalists earlier that the motion was not on the agenda.
READ: Netshitenzhe opportunistic for claiming ANC has lost control - Mantashe
According to News24 sources, there are long lists of speakers for and against the motion.
In November, a similar motion put forward by Hanekom at the NEC failed. He was supported by several Cabinet ministers.
Those who want Zuma to go fear the party is losing credibility by the many scandals linked to the president.
Zuma's supporters who have always dominated the NEC have argued the structure does not have constitutional powers to recall Zuma. They have also added that the power is vested in the branches which elected him to the position.
Former president Thabo Mbeki was recalled by the ANC NEC as state president in 2008 after the KwaZulu-Natal High Court ruled he had interfered in the prosecution of Zuma on charges of corruption.
The judgment was later overruled by the Supreme Court of Appeal.
The ANC's alliance partners have previously supported the motion for Zuma's removal, citing that it would be dangerous for the ANC to keep him on as president ahead of the policy conference which takes place at the end of June.
An NEC member told News24 it would be irresponsible for the party not to discuss Zuma's recall, while the SACP's deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila urged the party to deal with the matter or accept the demise of the 105 year old liberation movement.
WATCH Joel Netshitenzhe talking on corruption:Since our first sloth rescue in 1992, we have always aimed to act in the best interest of the sloths of Costa Rica. For over two decades there were no other sloth-only rescue facilities in the world. With so little known about these enigmatic mammals, we basically taught ourselves how to care for them. We expanded when more sloths required rescuing due to development of land for habitation and infrastructure. We have worked closely with the Costa Rican government to ensure we are providing the best possible care within our self-funded means.
Right now the core issue for us is the release of rescued infant sloths. While earlier this year we were working on a protocol for hand-raised sloths, this initiative was recently placed on hold. Our concern: Sloths that are hand-raised due to their mothers’ death or disappearance do not have the life skills to be released into the wild. They do not innately know which trees to forage or what naturally-occurring dangers (such as rivers and hornets’ nests) to avoid. Unlike newly-hatched sea turtles that inherit distinct survival skills, newborn mammals learn survival skills and self-sufficiency from their mothers. Wild baby sloths spend months with their mothers observing the choices they make. If this cycle is interrupted (most often due to human encroachment in their habitat), there is no other way for the baby to learn what it needs to take care of itself.
Another problematic facet is abandonment due to health deficiencies. When sloth mothers, like other wild animals, observe/sense a deficiency in their offspring many instinctively abandon it—removing it from the gene pool (Darwinism). As rescuers, we try to save the baby from dying, but the conundrum arises when considering it for release: is it safe to reintroduce these “deficient” sloths back into wild sloth populations?
We are currently involved in a massive genetics study with Swansea University (UK) PhD candidate Rebecca Cliffe in collaboration with renowned geneticist Dr. Sofia Consuegra. This study will provide invaluable data on sloth species and the potential of subspecies as well as genetic diversity—their findings are vital for the success of a release program. We are not the only ones dealing with the genetic reintroduction issue. Scientists just recently raised concerns about the alarming ramifications of mixing genetically distinct populations with the release of more than 90 rehabilitated orangutans into the wilds of Borneo. For full information, please refer to Dr. Graham Banes’ paper here.
Sweeping statements (made by others) that almost all rescued infant sloths can be safely released has absolutely no scientific or historical data to support such actions, and releasing them without monitoring would constitute inhumane treatment and potentially wreak havoc within their gene pool.
We recently ordered small, lightweight GPS tracking collars that will provide us essential data about the success rates of rescued sloths released back to the wild. We are looking to collaborate with educational institutions and scientists in Costa Rica or elsewhere who can provide the requisite expertise and background to create and implement a genetically acceptable and humane release program. If you have input or interest, please email release@SlothSanctuary.com
Addenda: Fascinating video featuring Dr. Sarah Bexell discussing the essential survival skills that giant panda babies can only get from their mothers if allowed the proper time together. This parallels our assertion that baby sloths can only learn life skills from their mothers. If orphaned or abandoned, the sloth does not know how to survive on its own. This is why many sloths that were hand-reared cannot be humanely released. At about 16:50 minutes into Dr. Bexell’s lecture, she talks about reintroducing mammals to the wild:Erdogan seeks to create the image of an Islamic civilization on the rise once again with the Turks acting as the vanguard of this revival.
Giulio Meotti The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. More from the author ► The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a great passion for mosques. Since he took power in Turkey, Mr. Erdogan has built 17,000 Islamic prayer sites. The largest in the world stands on the Camlica Hill, dominating the Asian side of Istanbul, where the East, in the words of Cocteau, extends to Europe “its old bejeweled hand”.
The Turkish president is committed to the construction of mosques in European capitals as well.
In the words of Erdogan, “the minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks.”
Erdogan seeks to create the image of an Islamic civilization on the rise once again with the Turks acting as the vanguard of this revival. Ten mosques have been financed by the Turks abroad, from Mali to Moscow; five of them in the past year. Ten more are in the planning stage, including one in Cambridge, UK.
Next summer, Mr. Erdogan will be in Amsterdam at the opening of the famous “Westermoskee”, the mega mosque in the Dutch city. 2,500 people will pray there every Friday. For twenty years the work has gone on among lots of controversy, especially after the Netherlands was shocked by the murder of Theo van Gogh. The minaret of 42 meters will dominate the Amstel River that traverses Amsterdam. “It will be the most beautiful mosque of Europe”, proudly says Selemi Yuksel, one of those in charge of it.
Recently, Erdogan financed the largest mosque in the Balkans in Tirana, before flying to the US to inaugurate a mega mosque in Maryland. In Gaza, Erdogan has personally pledged to rebuild Palestinian Arab mosques damaged during the war between Israel and Hamas and used by the terrorists to fire rockets into Israel.
The Turkish government is also financing thirty places of worship in Switzerland. In Bucharest there is a controversy about the great mosque that the Turks are funding in the Romanian capital.
To build these mosques, at home as abroad, Erdogan has expanded the Diyanet, the Ministry of Religious Affairs of Turkey, which has a budget of two billion euro, equal to twelve ministries combined, and 120,000 employees (they were 72 thousand in 2004).
As revealed this week by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Turkey controls 900 mosques in Germany. These mosques and imams have a big influence on German public opinion (see Jan Boöhmermann’s case, the comedian on trial for offending Erdogan).
In December, the Qatari television Al Jazeera screened a film on the “Mosque of West Amsterdam”. A pair of Dutch elderly persons passes in front of the building under construction and says, laughing: “It is beautiful. Our church is closing”. And since Erdogan also has a great sense of irony, the Turkish president decided to build the mega mosque in Amsterdam copying the famous Cathedral of St. Sophia, that remote sentinel of Western civilization, the heart ripped from Christianity when Instanbul fell into Turkish hands in 1453.
In the words of Erdogan, “the minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks.” Europe is the new land of conversion.
Why not start building a mega mosque in Vienna too, where the Turks were defeated by a Christian army in 1683?Despite thousands of objections from the medical community and pro-choice advocates, the Texas Department of State Health Services this week finalized an error-riddled booklet required for abortion-seeking women.
The ironically titled “A Woman’s Right to Know” pamphlet is chock-full of misleading anti-choice spin, including the scientifically erroneous link between abortion and breast cancer (debunked by the National Cancer Institute), associating abortion with risk of suicide, which is not recognized by the American Psychological Association, and listing non-medical crisis pregnancy centers as resources. A 2003 state law mandates physicians hand the inaccurate booklet to patients considering abortion care.
The health department updated the already long-criticized text with even more untruths this summer, like the notion fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks gestation and – throwing accurate medical terminology out the window – refers to the “fetus” and “embryo” as “your baby.” The pamphlet also encourages women to call 911 if they feel pressured into choosing an abortion. In a statement, anti-choice lobby group Texas Right to Life said “several changes” they requested were included, and thanked the health department for their cooperation.
Reproductive health advocates delivered more than 5,000 comments of opposition to the state health department in July, the Chronicle previously reported. Overall, the health department received nearly 13,000 comments and say they took them into consideration. “We very carefully reviewed the booklet for accuracy and took to heart the feedback we received over the summer,” said Carrie Williams of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission in an email to the Chronicle. “Our focus was on making sure the booklet is helpful, user friendly, and medically accurate, and we carefully studied the medical and scientific research available to us along the way. In the end, it's about making sure pregnant women have access to the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves.”
While some of the language was softened, reproductive health advocates say the booklet continues to drastically mislead women and perpetuate dangerous myths about abortion care. Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, said the state is “ignoring the concerns of its citizens and the medical community by playing politics” with women’s health and “interfering in the doctor-patient relationship” yet again. “This pamphlet is riddled with errors and promotes misinformation designed to stigmatize abortion and dissuade women from making their own decisions about their health care.”
Over the summer, Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, a former nurse and vice chair of the bipartisan Texas House Women’s Health Caucus, slammed the booklet as a “propaganda piece.” She continued her criticism of the faulty text on Wednesday. "This latest edition of the 'Woman's Right to Know' pamphlet is yet another example of our Texas health agencies disregarding facts and data, and jeopardizing the wellbeing of women,” Howard said. “The state ignored comments of not just the general public, but also of medical professionals, to compile a document which contains obvious falsehoods, misleading information, and coercive language. This is a disservice to health care providers and their patients, and I am ashamed of the state's actions on this matter."
While legislation specifically targeting correction of the book’s misinformation has yet to be filed (as in sessions past), Howard has put forth HB 262, which would help ensure doctors can’t be penalized or prosecuted for refusing to comply with certain abortion restrictions. The protection would apply if the medical provider believes complying would force the patient to hear inaccurate or inappropriate information (such as the link between abortion and breast cancer), undergo unnecessary procedures, or receive substandard care.
More than 35% of the information in the state-mandated booklet is made up of medical inaccuracies, a panel of experts at Rutgers University found earlier this year. The nonpartisan American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Texas Medical Association, and Texas Hospital Association have all previously supported legislation that fixes the booklet language.Islamist brigades have grown exponentially in Syria’s rebel ranks over the past three years, partly due to the decline of the mainstream groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). In northwestern Syria, one of these ascendant Islamist factions is a group that analysts know very little about but that now helps shape the crucial battles in Syria’s coastal region: the Ansar al-Sham Battalions.
Ansar al-Sham, whose name translates in English to “Helpers of the Levant,” is mostly active in the Latakia and Idlib Provinces in Syria’s north, where I recently traveled to report on and study the Syrian uprising. It is clear that the group has grown in strength over the last three years. It has allied itself |
than this theory. Here are some dropped pronouns in English:
From the beginning, Chomsky has focused on the generative side of language. From this side, it is reasonable to tell a non-probabilistic story: I know definitively the idea I want to express—I'm starting from a single semantic form—thus all I have to do is choose the words to say it; why can't that be a deterministic, categorical process? If Chomsky had focused on the other side, interpretation, as Claude Shannon did, he may have changed his tune. In interpretation (such as speech recognition) the listener receives a noisy, ambiguous signal and needs to decide which of many possible intended messages is most likely. Thus, it is obvious that this is inherently a probabilistic problem, as was recognized early on by all researchers in speech recognition, and by scientists in other fields that do interpretation: the astronomer Laplace said in 1819 "Probability theory is nothing more than common sense reduced to calculation," and the physicist James Maxwell said in 1850 "The true logic for this world is the calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability which is, or ought to be, in a reasonable man's mind."
Finally, one more reason why Chomsky dislikes statistical models is that they tend to make linguistics an empirical science (a science about how people actually use language) rather than a mathematical science (an investigation of the mathematical properties of models of formal language). Chomsky prefers the later, as evidenced by his statement in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965):
Linguistic theory is mentalistic, since it is concerned with discovering a mental reality underlying actual behavior. Observed use of language... may provide evidence... but surely cannot constitute the subject-matter of linguistics, if this is to be a serious discipline.
Plato's cave Plato's cave
Plato's answer was that the knowledge is'remembered' from an earlier existence. The answer calls for a mechanism: perhaps the immortal soul... rephrasing Plato's answer in terms more congenial to us today, we will say that the basic properties of cognitive systems are innate to the mind, part of human biological endowment.
Lascaux Horse Lascaux Horse
It was reasonable for Plato to think that the ideal of, say, a horse, was more important than any individual horse we can perceive in the world. In 400BC, species were thought to be eternal and unchanging. We now know that is not true; that the horses on another cave wall—in Lascaux—are now extinct, and that current horses continue to evolve slowly over time. Thus there is no such thing as a single ideal eternal "horse" form.
We also now know that language is like that as well: languages are complex, random, contingent biological processes that are subject to the whims of evolution and cultural change. What constitutes a language is not an eternal ideal form, represented by the settings of a small number of parameters, but rather is the contingent outcome of complex processes. Since they are contingent, it seems they can only be analyzed with probabilistic models. Since people have to continually understand the uncertain. ambiguous, noisy speech of others, it seems they must be using something like probabilistic reasoning. Chomsky for some reason wants to avoid this, and therefore he must declare the actual facts of language use out of bounds and declare that true linguistics only exists in the mathematical realm, where he can impose the formalism he wants. Then, to get language from this abstract, eternal, mathematical realm into the heads of people, he must fabricate a mystical facility that is exactly tuned to the eternal realm. This may be very interesting from a mathematical point of view, but it misses the point about what language is, and how it works.
Thanks
Annotated BibliographySimply take your desired team and count how many members of each type it is comprised of.
Types are group, subunit, and year group: you can see those Types by clicking on a card at the top if you don't know them by heart (highlighted in the screenshot below).
To give a clear example, here's my Smile team.
Here, I have:
9 µ's members
4 3rd year members (Eli and Nico)
4 1st year members (Rin and Maki)
1 2nd year member (Honoka)
6 BiBi members (Eli, Nico, Maki)
2 lily white members (Rin)
1 Printemps member (Honoka)
To know which center skill would be the most optimal, you need to look at which Type (excluding main group) has 5 or more members, as that is the optimal minimum. Here, I have 6 BiBi members which is above 5 and is my highest amount, which means that for my Smile team, a BiBi boost would be the best.
However, another key point is that with 4.0 and the introduction of School Idol Skills, on-attribute center skills (Smile Princess, Pure Angel, Cool Empress) are much, much more efficient than off-attribute center skills. Hence, for each attribute team, it is better to choose an on-attribute center skill along with the secondary boost that fits your team the best. But, if you use many off-color cards in one of your teams, you might want to calculate the 12% and see fi it beats a 9%.
We've said that for my Smile team, a BiBi boost would be the best, which means I need a Smile Princess BiBi boost: that would be Kunoichi Nico. Hence, when I play Smile songs and want to focus on getting a high score, I will choose Kunoichi Nico as my guest center.
But as you can see, I do not have a Kunoichi Nico in my team, but I have two other URs. In order to find which one is the best as center of my Smile team, simply see the Type counts above: I have a China Dress Nico which is a Smile Princess with a 3rd year boost, and November Maki which is a Smile Princess with a µ's boost.
I have 4 3rd year members, which would be a 4*6=24% boost, whereas the µ's boost would be 9*3=27% boost, hence where the µ's bonus from November Maki is better.
(this simple math is also why at least 5 cards of a Type are required to be more optimal than a group boost: 5*6=30% > 27%)
Use this page to find which cards fit your teams in the most optimal way!7 years ago
(CNN) - Donald Trump is set to get a 'unique' gig at the Republican National Convention in late August, an aide to the real estate titan confirmed on Friday.
"Mr. Trump's role will occur at the Tampa Bay Times Forum (site of the convention), though the specifics of the role are not being released at this time. The role, like Mr. Trump, is unique and will be memorable for all those in attendance at the convention and those watching around the country. Stay tuned," Executive Vice President and Special Counsel Michael Cohen told CNN.
- Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker
- Check out the CNN Electoral Map and Calculator and game out your own strategy for November.
Late Friday morning on Twitter, Trump suggested he would be doing something other than delivering a speech at the event: "I was asked to speak at the RNC but said no, because I will be doing something much bigger–just watch!"
Trump, known as an outspoken critic of the Obama administration and a pusher of the so-called birther issue, is set to be recognized as the 2012 Statesman of the Year by the Sarasota, Florida, Republican Party one day before the GOP convention opens in Tampa later this month.
After flirting with his own presidential bid last year, Trump came out in support for Romney in February of this year. The chairman of the Republican National Committee, however, would not say whether Trump would get a special spot at the national party's major gathering.
"I don't know right now what he's going to do at the convention," Reince Priebus told CNN's John Berman on "Starting Point." "But I do know that he's important to us and that he's somebody that we appreciate, because he's telling us the truth as far as where we're at in this economy."
As for the 'birther' controversy–in which some argue President Barack Obama was not born in the United States–Priebus said he has long viewed the claims as a "distraction."
"I have been, from the very moment that I've been chairman of this party, very clear as for where I stand on that issue. It's just as much of a distraction as it is for people to ask for more and more tax returns," Priebus said, referring to demands by Obama's re-election campaign and some Republicans for Romney to release more tax documents.
The RNC committee has announced the names of several headliners this week for the upcoming convention, which include many Republican governors and other high-profile Republicans.
ABC News first reported news of Trump's role at the convention.
- CNN's Paul Steinhauser, John Berman, and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.Can we all just agree, Spider-Man is the best superhero out there? He’s not a brooding emo like Batman or a stuffed-shirt conservative like Superman. He’s completely vulnerable, unlike Wolverine and he isn’t impotent like The Hulk.
Why do we love him so much? Because his origin story could happen to any of us.
We all got beaten up at high school in front of the hot girl. We all excelled at science. We all lost our parents at an early age. And his radioactive spider bite could have happened to anyone.
We could never be Superman because we were born on Earth. We could never be Batman because frankly, who’d want to be? But any one of us could walk through a scientific laboratory and getting bitten by a spider. He is by far the best superhero to fantasise about being (as opposed to Catwoman who is the best superhero to fantasise about being with).
So with all my Spidey love, why didn’t I walk out of the cinema with a raging-huge mega-hard fully erect sense of appreciation for the dramatic representation of my special boy?
Well, I’d already seen it.
You remember? It was ten years ago and everybody was saying, “Really? Tobey Maguire as a superhero?” Then we saw it and went, “Huh. That totally worked.”
I still love the moment where he puts on his glasses and everything is blurry till he takes them off again. His sudden-onset washboard stomach and slow motion bully beatdown were iconic moments. It combined some great awkward puberty jokes (Aunt May tries to walk in while his room is covered with sticky white web) and the tragic reality of what it means to stand by when evil is afoot.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This latest version, directed by the appropriately/awkwardly named Marc Webb is pretty good. It really does everything right, it just doesn’t do it new. Peter’s powers unleash themselves while on the train in a scene that was actually pretty damn funny. He takes out the school bully in a wonderfully satisfying way. Uncle Ben’s death is no less heart-wrenching.
I’d just seen it all before.
Anyway, enough of the comparisons and onto the film itself.
The plot is pure old-school Spider-Man. He doesn’t work for the Daily Bugle yet. Mary-Jane is not on the scene and Norman Osborne is the faceless owner of Oscorp. His web-slinging ability isn’t internal, it happens via a machine of his own design. This is Spiderman before he was cool. I really liked this aspect, I felt like I was experiencing the original stories, not just the ones that seemed good for a movie.
Andrew Garfield, a relatively unknown actor who portrayed Zuckerberg’s screwed-over friend, Eduardo Saverin, takes on the title role,. Garfield did a fantastic job, being enough of a nerd to make me feel for him but with a cute enough smile to my make wife just want to feel him. Emma Stone is his pre-MJ girlfriend, Gwen Stacey. Stone is a current favourite of mine but at 23 she’s starting to push believability as a high-school girl. Still, her presence was really the only reason my wife came to see it with me in the first place.
Old Spider-Man fought bad guys based on animals, like my favourite, The Rhino. This incarnation fights The Lizard, played by Rhys Ifans. As Dr. Curt Connors he just wants to make the world a better place but when The Lizard takes over he lives for carnage. Yeah, it’s basically the same idea as the Green Goblin but who cares, it works.
Sally Field and Martin Sheen play Aunt May and Uncle Ben and I totally bought them. May is kind and mothering and Ben is kind and fathering. You know they’re responsible for Parker growing up to be such a fine, young man.
Stan Lee makes yet another cameo appearance which was very funny but totally inappropriately positioned. Its appearance completely destroyed the pacing of a scene and really felt jarring. I love these cameos (especially in Iron Man) but they blew it with this one. At least it wasn’t as vomit-inducing as his appearance in Spider Man 3.
The plot was simple. Spider-Man has powers, therefore responsibilities. He learns the hard way what ignoring these responsibilities means. He gets a chance to redeem himself by beating the snot out of a giant lizard and he takes it.
What was great was the sense of causation. What happens to Uncle Ben was indirectly Parker’s fault. Likewise the creation of The Lizard. Basically every bad thing that happens in the story can be traced back to Parker. He has to deal with this guilt and learn to stop moping and start punching.
There are rumours flying around about Spider-Man making an appearance in The Avengers 2 but my guess is that it’s just a fantasy. Unless Disney and Sony can shake hands like adults we won’t be seeing this. Garfield himself commented on how it killed him to be watching The Avengers and knowing he should be in it. He wanted it, the fans wanted it but it just wasn’t meant to be.
Overall, I enjoyed the film but I didn’t feel any need to rave about it to others. When asked what I thought I shrugged and said, “Yeah, it was ok.” You’ll probably like it, especially if you’re already a Marvel fan. Let’s be honest though, if you’re a Marvel fan you’ll see this movie regardless.
Go. Enjoy. I hope your experience is better than mine.
AdvertisementsForget package delivery. Drone owners have found a much more thrilling use for their radio-controlled flying machines: racing. The hobby has soared in popularity over the last few months, with a rapid rise in the number of new tournaments across North America.
Drone racing is quickly climbing from casual hobby to legitimate sport. Collingwood will host a drone race weekend on August 22 and 23.
More than a hundred pilots converged in California last month for the United States’ first drone racing championship, and Canada is set to follow suit with a tourney in Collingwood on Friday. Racing drones, unlike those flown by police, are small, weighing less than a kilogram, and can reach breakneck speeds — more than 100 km/h. They’re controlled differently, too. Before a race starts, pilots don video goggles that let them see what the drone sees.
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“The whole idea of putting on a set of goggles and flying this thing is like nothing else,” said Paul Dowling, the owner of Autobotix, a store that specializes in racing drones in Toronto. “You are flying it. You will crash. You will feel like you crashed. It’s not uncommon to see someone flying and see them fall over when they crash.” Jason Ambeault, project manager at a tech company, discovered drone racing after watching a YouTube video last December that showed a dozen UAVs whizzing through a forest in France. As an avid gamer, the feeling of immersion from a first-person perspective was a huge draw, he said. “I’ve always been interested in remote-control cars and airplanes, from my great uncle years and years ago,” he said. “It’s like being in a real-life video game, basically.” Now that he’s become an adept pilot, he hopes to win his first big race at the Collingwood Nationals. But he’ll face stiff competition with rivals from around the world, including the U.S and China.
Paul Dowling with his drone outside his shop. ( Vince Talotta / Toronto Star ) Paul Dowling with his drone in his shop. ( Vince Talotta / Toronto Star )
Winning that race, he said, will require more than just a quick machine. “It’s won in the corner,” he said. “If you can do efficient moves in the corners, then you’ll have a chance at winning. It’s about skills. The faster you are, the higher chance you have of crashing.”
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In Toronto, rules surrounding the commercial use of drones remain murky. In April, Mayor John Tory’s executive committee unanimously approved a motion by Councillor James Pasternak asking city staff to report back on a “strategy governing the use of drones in the City of Toronto’s outdoor spaces.” Drone flights are also regulated by Transport Canada. But those restrictions have yet to dampen enthusiasm for the hobby. “The market is growing exponentially worldwide by the day. It’s inconceivable the amount of growth in the past few months,” Dowling said. “People are starting to see that this is not a fad.”
Read more about:Shrew Culture, Myths, Stories and Poisonous Facts...
Poisonous Shrews
"...it biteth deep and poysoneth deadly..." (E. Topsell, 17th century)
There is evidence that a few shrew species produce a toxic secretion, which probably helps to immobilise especially large prey, such as other small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish and larger invertebrates, by its effects on the nervous system. This poisonous bite has been reported from North American Blarina and European Neomys. The bite can be quite painful to a human hand for, although shrew's teeth rarely puncture the skin, the toxin in the saliva of some species seems to produce a slight inflammation and reddening of the skin which can persist for several days.
The learned author of the "Speculum Mundi" thus portrayed the shrewmouse: "...In Latine it is called Mus araneus, because it containeth in it poison or venime, like a spider, and if at any time it bite either man or beast the truth of this will be apparent..."
Already the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that shrews were evil. Throughout history they have been thought of as poisonous and even deadly. English rustics still say so. If a shrewmouse ran over the limb of man or beast, paralysis of such limb followed. Horses or cattle stiff in the joints or otherwise lame, were asserted to be "shrew-struck". In "Historia Animalium" by Aristoteles there is a passage about the effect of the shrew bite to horses: "Shrew's bites are dangerous, as also to other beasts of burden: blisters develop. The bite is more dangerous if the shrew is pregnant when it bites; for then the blisters burst, while otherwise they do not. (Translated by D.M.Balme).
There are many records of these dangerous beasts dating from the 17th century to the present, but the scientific results are sometimes controversal and lack toxicologic analysis. It would be interesting to know more about the neurotoxic agent in the saliva of shrews and what the exact concentrations are. Three mammal groups are said to have some kind of toxic agent: platypus from Australia, solenodons from Cuba, and of course shrews. In some literature moles are said to also have venomous saliva.
After so many years this topic was warmed up by a simple question Brent (Iowa State University) posted to the Mammal-L newsgroup:
I've always thought that Blarina brevicauda has a neurotoxic venom in it's saliva. Where I got this particular idea, I have no idea, but assuming that it is true, does anyone know what the behavioral effects of this might be on a stricken adult Microtus pennsylvanicus? And, is this venom sufficiently potent that a good bite into the vole's musculature will transfer sufficient venom to kill the animal without further attacking the animal? I ask in as much as I found a M. penn. that would only run in counter-clockwise circles this morning. It was a mature adult. I easily caught it, and found that it was bleeding from very minor tail and foot wounds, but otherwise unharmed as far as I could tell. I could think of no reason for it's odd behavior, which frantically continued as soon as I released it, other than some sort of toxic effect. And, Blarina are the only candidates for toxic critters in this area. Last I saw, it was spiralling across the prairie making easy hawk bait of itself, but no Blarina was to be found lurking nearby. - Brent
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Accounts & Descriptions of the effects of shrew bites:
According to hitherto accounts on the effect of a shrew bite, the topic is quite controversal, and it might be useful to also hear reports of Blarina 'victims' that showed no reaction to the bite. Blarina's poison might cause an allergic reaction such as an anaphylactic shock, to which not everybody is susceptible.
These data were compiled for a review of shrew poison. I would be thankful to receive any further reports on this topic.
Maynard, C. J. 1889. Singular effects produced by the bite of a short-tailed shrew, Blarina brevicauda. Contributions to Science, 1:57-59.
"All this occupied perhaps thirty seconds, when I began to experience a burning sensation in the first two bites, followed by a peculiar sensation... in the right hand. I walked to the house, only a few hundred yards away, but by this time, the pain which had been rapidly increasing, had become quite severe, and by the time I had placed the shrew in an improvised cage, I was suffering acutely. The burning sensation, first observed, predominated in the immediate vicinity of the wounds, but was now greatly intensified, accompanied by shooting pains, radiating in all directions from the punctures but more especially running along the arm, and in half an hour, they had reached as high as the elbow. All this time, the parts in the immediate vicinity of the wounds, were swelling, and around the punctures the flesh had become whitish. I bathed the wounds in alcohol and in a kind of liniment, but with little effect. The pain and the swelling reached its maximum development in about an hour, but I could not use my left hand without suffereing great pain for three days, nor did the swelling abate much before that time. At its greates development, the swelling on the left hand caused that member to be nearly twice its ordinary thickness at the wound, but appeared to be confined to the immediate vicinity of the bites, and was not prominent on the right hand; in fact, the first wound was by far the most severe. The burning sensation disappeared that night, but the shooting pains were felt, with less and less severity, upon exertion of the hand, from the elbow downward, for a week, and did not entirely disappear until the total abatement of the swelling, which occured in about a fortnight."
(Excerpt provided by Luis A. Ruedas)
I am not at all sure that the toxin is used to subdue anything and suggest that it is not. The literature suggests they eat mice, and they do at times (see old paper by Bob Eadie in J.M.), but apparently only when mouse populations are huge, and then probably only young ones. Blarina feeds mostly on earthworms, snails, centipedes, beetles, etc. They are not about to start feeding on larger animals. I have been bitten by a Blarina. I put my finger down at the far end of a 10 gallon aquarium. The shrew immediately came running over and bit me. It got me pretty good. I had no reaction whatever. Either I am not alergic to Blarina bite, orperhaps the toxin in the saliva is only emitted under certain conditions.
John Whitaker
One of my colleagues was once bitten by Blarina - the shrew managed to really chomp her - the arm became very swollen, and she was also in a lot of pain. Cannot remember the timeframe for all the post-bite events, but somehow do recall many of the symptoms lasting for at least a day.
Lita Pinter
I have been bitten by Blarina. The bite was painful, but more odd feeling than severe. My skin was broken and I did bleed a bit. I had a mild 'tingly' feeling, but no other major symptoms. I do recall that my finger was a bit numb for a few hours afterwards. We have observed our short-tails attacking live voles, etc., and consuming dead M. ochrogaster, S. hispidus, P. maniculatus., etc.
Billy Schweiger
Over the last year and a half I have kept several Blarina in captivity, and have watched them rather intently, particularly when they feed. The first individuals I had were fed solely crickets and earthworms. The shrews would immediately run around quite quickly in the 10 gallon aquarium and "bite" each of the crickets, then cache them together often in a corner or a piece of tubing in the aquarium. On more than one occassion I returned several hours later to discover that the insects, although unable to move, were still alive. The only movement that could be detected, which was slight and slow, was in antennae and some legs. The insects were very much alive and the shrews would simply go and partake at their leisure. When a Blarina was fed a large earthworm, they would frequently bite all along the length of the body, which appeared to immediately numb those regions, followed quickly by total paralysis and assumed death. If it was a particulary large earthworm however, the part that remained was usually also cached for further consumption later.
Robert L. Connour II
In the June 20 newletter, a question was posed concerning Blarina bites and the effect in humans. In an early paper, a reaction to a Blarina bite was described in which it swelled up and hurt for days. However, I have been bit and had no such reaction. It is rare that the skin is broken to where the venon can be "applied". Even when this occurs, the reaction may depend on the person (this may or may not be similar to anaphylactic shock).
For original papers, see:
O. Pearson, 1942, J. Mammalogy 23: 159-166
O. Pearson, 1956, in VENOMS edited by E. Buckley AAAS 44 S.
Ellis & O. Krayer, 1955, J. Pharm Exper Therapeutics 114: 127-137
T. Tomasi, 1978, J. Mammalogy 59: 852-854
Tom Tomasi
question about how poisonous shrews prevent the neurotoxin from being self-reactive...
(... )lack of data on the chemical makeup of the venom and its target cells in the prey. However one could speculate that to be active the venom must enter the blood stream or the extracellular fluid in the immediate vicinity of the target cells. In the shrews, the venom in the saliva would normally be swallowed and enter the stomach where the acidic environment and digestive enzymes would break it down and deactivate it. Why wouldn't venom be absorbed through oral tissues and enter the blood stream? The venom molecule may be too large to move readily into the blood stream from the oral cavity (evidence suggests that the venom is a protein), or the shrew may have a protein in its blood that binds to the venom and inactivates it when it enters the shrews blood stream. Another possibility is that the venom is not present in the saliva at all times, but is only released into that fluid when the shrew attacks a prey. Any or all of these are possibilities, but only time and further research will clarify the situation.
Keith A. Carson In view of the, sometimes controversal reports on the severity of shrew bites, it might be appropriate to take into account the possibility of "passive toxicity", at least in some cases, as W. Bujatti suggested:
Some animals are not actively poisonous, but their victims still suffer from toxic effects, e.g. 1) Moray eels (Muraenidae, Pisces) do not produce venom, but it is assumed that "ptomaine poisons" account for their victims being 'poisoned'. 2) Komodo dragons (Varanidae, Reptilia), also scavengers, were shown to bite their prey only once and then wait until their victims become weak, which can take upto two weeks.
If this were the case with the shrew Blarina, the 'ptomaine poison' should be detectable in the shrew's saliva.
Acknowledgements:
For providing literature and sharing personal accounts and thoughts I would like to thank Wolfgang Bujatti (Univ. of Vienna, Federal Ministry of Environment of Austria), Keith A. Carson (Dept. of Biology, Old Dominion University, Norfolk), Robert L. Connour II (Dept. of Biology, Western Illinois Univ.), Lita Pinta, Luis A. Ruedas (Museum of Sothwestern Biology, Univ. of New Mexico), Jukka Savolainen (Dept. of Biology, Univ. of Joensuu), E. William Schweiger (Dept. of Systematics and Ecology, Univ. of Kansas), Thomas E. Tomasi (Southwest Missouri State University), and John Whitaker (Indiana State Univ.).
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Please also see the inquiries by
Further Literature:
591 Bücherl, W., E. Buckley, V. Denlofen (eds.) (1968): Venomous animals and their venoms. Vol. I. Venomous vertebrates. Academic Press, New York.
719 Carson, K.A., R.K. Rose (1985): Ultrastructure of the submandibular gland of the venomous short-tailed shrew, Blarina carolinensis. Anat. Rec. 211 (3): 35a-36a.
xxx Carson, K.A., R.K. Rose (1993): Fine structure of the submandibular gland of the venomous short-tailed shrew, Blarina brevicauda Say (Insectivora, Soricidae). Eur. J. Morphol. 31: 111-128.
908 Cranbrook, The Earl Of (1959): The feeding habits of the water shrew, N. fodiens bicolor Shaw, in captivity and the effect of its attack upon its prey. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 133(2): 245-249.
1055 Demeules, D.H. (1954): Possible anti-adrenalin action of shrew venom. J. Mamm. 35 (3): 425.
xxx Dufton, M.J. (1992): Venomous mammals. Pharmacol. Ther. 53: 199-215.
1265 Eadie, W.R. (1944): The short-tailed shrew and field mouse predation. J. Mammalogy 25: 359-364.
1268 Eadie, W.R. (1948): Shrew-mouse predation during low mouse abundance. J. Mammalogy 29: 35-37.
1270 Eadie, W.R. (1949): Predation on Sorex by Blarina. J. Mammalogy 30: 308-309.
1271 Eadie, W.R. (1952): Shrew predation and vole populations on a localized area. J. Mammalogy 33: 185-189.
1310 Ellis, S., O. Krayer (1955): Properties of a toxin from the salivary gland of the shrew, Blarina brevicauda. J. Pharm. Exp. Therapeutics 114 (2): 127-137.
2939 Kraft, R., G. Pleyer (1978): Zur Ernährungsbiologie der europäischen Wasserspitzmaus, Neomys fodiens (Pennant, 1771) an Fischteichen. Z. Säugetierk. 43: 321-330.
3089 Lawrence, B. (1945): Brief comparison of short-tailed shrew and reptile poisons. J. Mammalogy 26 (4): 393-396.
xxx Lopez-Jurado, L.F., J.A. Mateo (1996): Evidence of venom in the Canarian shrew (Crocidura canariensis): immobilizing effects on the Atlantic lizard (Gallotia atlantica). J. Zool. Lond. 239: 394-395.
3340 Martin, I.G. (1981): Venom of the short-tailed shrew (Blarina brevicauda) as an insect immobilizing agent. J. Mammalogy 62(1): 189-192.
3419 Maynard, C.J. (1889): Singular effects produced by the bite of a short-tailed shrew, Blarina brevicauda. Contr. Science 1: 57-59.
3918 O'Reilly, R.A. (1949): Shrew preying on ribbon snake. J. Mammalogy 30: 309.
4096 Pearson, O.P. (1942): On the cause and nature of a poisonous action produced by the bite of a shrew (Blarina brevicauda). J. Mamm. 23 (2): 159-166.
4105 Pearson, O.P. (1956): A toxic substance from the salivary glands of a mammal (short-tailed shrew). In: E.E. Buckley, N. Porges (eds.). Venoms. Publ. no. 44, Amer. Ass. Adv. Sci., Wash. 44: 55-58.
4258 Pournelle, G.H. (1967): Classification, biology and description of the venom apparatus of insectivores of the genera Solenodon, Neomys, and Blarina. In: Pournelle, G.H. (ed.): Venomous animals and their venoms. Pp. 31-42. New York: Academic Press.
4298 Pucek, M. (1957): Die toxische Wirkung der glandulae submaxillares bei Neomys fodiens fodiens Schreb. Bull. Acad. Pol. Sci., Cl. II, Ser. Sci. Biol., 5 (9): 301-306.
4299 Pucek, M. (1959): The effect of the venom of the European water shrew (Neomys fodiens fodiens Pennant) on certain experimental animals. Acta Theriol. 3(6): 93-104.
4300 Pucek, M. (1959): Venomousness in mammals. Przegl. Zool. (A7) 3: 106-115.
4304 Pucek, M. (1967): Chemistry and pharmacology of insectivore venoms. In: Pounelle, G.H. (ed.): Venomous animals and their venoms. Vol. 1: 43-50. New York: Academic Press.
4305 Pucek, M. (1969): Neomys anomalus Cabrera, 1907, a venomous mammal. Bull. Acad. Pol. Sci., Cl. II, Ser. Sci. Biol., 17: 569-573.
5488 Tomasi, T.E. (1978): Function of venom in the short-tailed shrew, Blarina brevicauda. J. Mammalogy 59(4): 852-854.
This web site was created byA 12-year-old Seminole County student found three swastikas and the phrase "why are the ovens getting hotter?" scrawled on her bus seat nearly two weeks ago.
Stella Cohen, who is Jewish, snapped a photo of the defaced seat and the next day reported the incident to a dean at Rock Lake Middle School, where she's a sixth grader.
Her mother, Tracey Kagan, said school administrators took the incident seriously. They told her that they used video from a bus camera to identify the child who'd drawn the graffiti and that the student had been punished.
But Kagan said given the rash of recent ant-Semitic incidents reported nationwide, including bomb threats at the Jewish Community Center in Maitland, she wishes the school would discuss the what happened with the entire student body.
"Let the kids know this will not be tolerated. It’s a form of bullying," Kagan said.
In her view, the election of Donald Trump as president has made some people feel free to express hatred. "As a Jew my antennas are up. The JCC, the cemeteries... People feel more emboldened to say what they feel."
A Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia was vandalized this past weekend, while one in Missouri was damaged the week before.
In December, a teacher at Lake Brantely High School found a swastika painted on a sign in the school’s parking lot. Similar graffiti was found in May.
Mike Lawrence, a spokesman for the Seminole County school district, said administrators often are leery about discussing such incidents publicly, fearful they might end up providing identifying information about the student who got in trouble, in violation of state law.
But he said they also have tried to be proactive by sharing that students will face consequences if caught defacing school property or harassing other students, for example.
Kagan said she was proud of Stella for speaking to administrators about what happened.
Stella said she has no doubt the graffiti was directed at her since it appeared where she usually sits and the day after she mentioned to friends on the bus that she attends Hebrew school.
"I don't know why somebody would be so rude," she said, adding that she even wondered, "Did I do something?"
There have been no other incidents on her bus ride since then, and the graffiti has been removed. Still, she said |
a full-size version
What were some of the most surprising findings of your research?
By far the most surprising finding was that violent video games were negatively related to aggravated assault and homicides. This really surprised me. However, after this discovery we replicated this finding examining violent movies. It turns out, like violent video games, the popularity of violent films is inversely related to violent crime.
It seems to me like a major limitation of this study is that it only accounts for one risk factor for violent behavior--violent video games. What's your response to this?
Obviously correlation does not imply causation so one needs to always be cautious when interpreting ecological data--this same issue applies to whether we are examining links between autism and vaccines or smoking and lung cancer. However, in this study we did not simply look at the relations between violent video games and crime. We also accounted for various trends in the data which might explain this relationship. For example, we eliminated seasonal trends which remove any extraneous results which might have occurred because video game sales tend to be high in the winter and crime tends to be high in the summer. We also removed linear trends which might occur if violent crime is generally going down and video game sales are generally increasing. We also examined various predictors (video game sales, searches for violent video games, release dates of violent video games) both annually and monthly. Even with all these issues considered the same result emerged--violent video games were negatively related to violent crime.
"I think the biggest 'take home' of this study is that violent video games were not related to increases in violent crime--not even a little" -- Professor Markey
Why did you decide to conduct your study using the methods that you did? What other possibilities were considered?
Ecological studies, like this one, are probably the best way to examine events like homicides. Such a--fortunately--rare behavior cannot really be studied in the laboratory.
Some of your results suggest that there is actually a decrease in violent crime in response to violent video games; are you saying here that playing violent games might potentially make the world a safer place?
This is where we need to be careful--otherwise, we run the risk of being sensationalistic. I think the biggest 'take home' of this study is that violent video games were not related to increases in violent crime--not even a little. However, if we assume that violent video games are actually related to decreases in violent crime, we can speculate about why this might have occurred. It is possible that violent media might reduce severe acts of violence because it effectively removes violent individuals from other social venues where they might have otherwise committed a violent act. In other words, violent individuals might attend a movie, watch television, or play a video game instead of engaging in other activities--going to a bar, socializing on the streets---that are more likely to result in a violent altercation.
"There is no evidence that, even in the laboratory, violent video games have a different effect on mundane acts of aggression than other forms of violent media" -- Prof. Markey
Was it difficult for you when conducting this study to separate, as you say, scientific results from scientific conjecture? How did you overcome that?
As scientists--and reporters--we need to use caution when generalizing results from laboratories and questionnaires to things like violent crime rates. In a similar manner, restraint is warranted when research collected in university laboratories is used to explain the idiosyncratic behavior of a specific individual--e.g., the Aurora, Colorado shooter, James Holmes. Given that the public, media, and lawmakers tend to be concerned about trends in violent behavior and specific acts of violence, it is understandable why some researchers might be tempted to make sensationalistic claims based only on laboratory and questionnaire research. However, it is important for us, as researchers, to be aware of the tentative nature of such claims and consistently acknowledge these limitations.
Your study is not the first to reach this conclusion, yet video games continue to be singled out as movies, books, and other mediums are often overlooked in the popular discussion on the role violent video games might have on behavior. Why do you think this is?
There is no evidence that, even in the laboratory, violent video games have a different effect on mundane acts of aggression than other forms of violent media--the 'effect sizes' found in studies are similar regardless of the media examined. However, you are correct that violent video games are always the focus. Probably the best explanation for this is what Dr. Chris Ferguson calls a 'Moral Panic.' That is, people who are the leaders of a society often blame things which they do not value for societal ills.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, many lawmakers proposed new measures against violent video games, though none have really panned out. What effect do you think your research could have on future legislative action?
As a researcher my job is to present the science and let others figure out what should be done with it. My hope is simply that others consider these data whenever a person suggests violent video games are 'a major contributing cause of the high rate of violence in modern U.S. society,' or that 'an estimated 10% to 30% of violence in society can be attributed to the impact of media violence.'
"I do hope results from studies like ours will cause researchers to reevaluate their previously held beliefs about violent video games" -- Prof. Markey
As I understand it, your study was conducted prior to the arrival of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, new consoles from Microsoft and Sony that offer better graphics than their predecessors. Do you think that as time goes on and games become far more life-like and fully realized, we could see a different trend than the one you observed?
During each new generation of game consoles there has not been a noticeable change in violence. Additionally, research in laboratories has not found that more'realistic' graphics have bigger effects of even mundane acts of aggression. So it is unlikely the next generation will alter the trends observed in the study.
What are you looking at for further research on this topic?
No idea--maybe your suggestion about looking at different countries.
You have been studying games and violence for a long time now. Over the course of those years, how has your perception of the video game industry shifted?
I don't really have a strong opinion about the game industry itself. They make a product and my job is basically to figure out if that product might be harmful. However, I do hope results from studies like ours will cause researchers to reevaluate their previously held beliefs about violent video games. After all, we all want pretty much the same thing. We want to uncover the 'truth.' We want science, not sensationalism, to inform policies concerning violent video games. We want to protect others from any threats posed by violent video games, but we do not want violent video games to distract from the more important causes of horrific acts of violence.
Analyses featured in this study included data from GameFAQs, which is owned by CBS Interactive, the parent company of GameSpot.
Eddie Makuch is a news editor at GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @EddieMakuchYes, I believe they will!
Today, October 1, 2016 is the opening day of the last of Obama’s driving efforts to change America by changing its people.
A few weeks ago he presented to Congress his determination to admit 110,000 refugees from around the world over the next 12 months with the largest numbers coming from the Middle East and Muslim-controlled countries of Africa.
But, if Hillary is elected president on November 8th, Obama will look like a piker.
No where did Obama ever say he wanted 65,000 Syrians admitted to the US, but Hillary is on record (Face the Nation, September 2015) saying that, and I am guessing that will only be the beginning for her.
After all, she just this week said that the foreign leader she admired most is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel!!! who is widely believed to be destroying Germany and has thrown all of Europe in chaos with her ‘welcome’ of any refugee from Africa and the Middle East who can get there!
Remember the other day I wrote about the fact that the number determined by the President at the end of the fiscal year for the following year is a ceiling set by the President in consultation with Congress.
‘Consultation’ is a squishy term as we have seen for the last 35 years and is virtually non-existent (except for a brief chit chat between the Secretary of State and two key committees on the Hill). Each September, the President sends up his refugee numbers for the upcoming year and for years Congress simply slipped his plan into a drawer somewhere and never even held hearings. Senator Sessions’ hearing last fall (2015) was the first since 9/11.
The only real power the Congress has is to limit the funding for the federal agencies involved, something I have never seen done!
So, back to Hillary and the power of the Presidency as it relates to this law.
One of Hillary’s long time political allies is John Podesta, Chairman of her 2016 Presidential campaign. Do you know that his organization (an organization Hillary helped create with George Soros) proposed an AIRLIFT in 2009 of 100,000 Iraqis to America which they pushed on the new President Obama? He didn’t bite.
The plan called for Iraqis to be held offshore somewhere until they could be processed in to the US. More recently Canada’s boy Trudeau airlifted tens of thousands of Syrians to Canada. If President, could Hillary do this? Yes she can!
Refugee Act’s emergency provision
There is a very clear provision, which I don’t think has been used (the large crush of Vietnamese came before the Refugee Act of 1980 became law), but I think Hillary will use it. By defeating Donald Trump, she will feel she has a mandate to open our borders. There definitely won’t be a border fence built and I predict she will use every lawful means available to admit as many migrants as she can, including the emergency provisions of the Refugee Act of 1980.
Could she add her 65,000 Syrians to the 110,000 refugees Obama proposed for FY2017, or could she go even higher? Yes, she could knowing that the Congress, even if Republicans still hold the majority, is weak and will be further demoralized by her win.
Heck her role model, Mama Merkel, admitted over a million in the last year. Not to look ‘unwelcoming’ by comparison, Hillary could easily bump our numbers up to a quarter of a million! (That would be in addition to the masses of asylum seekers—-phony refugees—now streaming across our southern border.)
See here (Refugee Act of 1980):
Consultation with Congress, big deal! No teeth! And, I expect no fight if Hillary is in the White House!
Will Hillary go there? Yes, I believe she will.Skip to 3:50 below for the key bit. Good lord. He’s about as far off-script from the usual Democratic message as you can get.
After all the Democrats' concern about voter suppression, this is an interesting response from Obama to Al Sharpton in a new interview pic.twitter.com/9qrJ3riT6a — Chris Megerian (@ChrisMegerian) November 4, 2016
I assume the left will walk this back after the election by claiming that O deliberately underplayed the impact of voter-ID laws and fewer early-voting hours in order to boost morale among minority voters. If he had complained loudly here about “voter suppression,” it might have backfired by inadvertently convincing black viewers that they shouldn’t bother showing up to vote on Election Day. So he went the other way: Anyone who doesn’t vote, he insists, is doing it because they couldn’t be bothered, not because someone stopped them. In fact, although black turnout was slow nationally in early voting last week, worrying Democrats, it’s bounced back over the last several days. In Florida there were actually more black early voters this year than there were in 2012, consistent with turnout exploding across demographics in that state. The same is true in Georgia and Louisiana:
Something went very wrong for African-Americans' voting in North Carolina pic.twitter.com/ZpwjyEavmd — Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) November 6, 2016
North Carolina is the exception, which is why the left has been screaming all week about Republican efforts there to reduce early-voting hours. Read this fact check by Mary Katharine Ham, though, noting that there are actually more cumulative hours available in districts with large black populations this year than in 2012. I think black North Carolinians are the audience Obama’s speaking to most directly in the clip, in fact, given how important the state is and how tight the margin’s apt to be. The fact that the new early-voting hours may have been less convenient this cycle isn’t an excuse not to vote, he’s suggesting.
As for Latino early turnout, the media’s spent the last week marveling over it. The “Hispanics beat Trump” pieces are already in the can, I assume, and are ready to be rolled out at midnight tomorrow night once final numbers are available, assuming Clinton does in fact win the election. Here’s a sample from Miami-Dade County:
There are 1.5 million registered voters in Miami-Dade county (56 percent of whom are Hispanic), including nearly 30,000 added during a last-minute voter-registration drive in October, after Democratic Party officials went to court to extend the deadline in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. Through Saturday, according to Smith, 707,844 county residents had already voted: 44 percent were Democrats, 30 percent Republican, and 25 percent had “no party affiliation,” a group that tends to skew younger and Hispanic, and thus toward Clinton. The demographic mix of early voters also looks highly favorable to Clinton: 58 percent Hispanic, 17 percent African-American and 20 percent white. But the late registrants, Smith says, give the clearest indication that sentiment in Miami-Dade is running strongly against Trump. Of the 29,657 voters who registered last month, 41 percent are Democrats, 44 percent are unaffiliated, and only 12.5 percent are Republicans. “That’s nuts,” said Smith. “These are the barometers that indicate the hostility toward the GOP candidate.”
Statewide in Florida, Latino turnout is up nearly 75 percent(!) over 2012, and more than a third are people who didn’t vote four years ago. And it’s not just Florida. If you believe Jon Ralston, Latinos may have already sealed Nevada for Clinton, a blow to Trump’s path to 270. At a Trump rally over the weekend, the head of the state Republican Party complained that polls had been kept open late Friday (for people who were already in line) so that “a certain group” could vote. Like Obama says: If you really want to, you can. They really wanted to.Robin Pack and Kyle Johnson have been friends since high school, long before their shared interest in rock and recording technology led them to found Rocket Science Audio. Pack, an IT project manager by day, and Johnson, who works full time as a sound engineer, were hoarding all of the audio gear they could get their hands on with the eventual goal of starting a recording studio. "There are so many people doing so much great stuff in this town, and we're just trying to document it," Pack says.
But what sets Rocket Science apart from other studios is their eagerness to get out of the studio space and into the clubs. "We do studio albums, and we are happy to do it, and Kyle is really, really good at it," Pack says. "But we specialize in live stuff."
"Reigning Sound Live At Goner was the first official Rocket Science project," Johnson says. The 2005 album started out as an experimental recording of an in-store performance by Greg Cartwright's garage group. "We were just trying stuff to see if it would work," Johnson says. But Goner Records' Zac Ives and Eric Friedl were so impressed by the results that they put out the recordings as a full-fledged live album and subsequently asked the pair to record the second Gonerfest, which would eventually be married with a Live From Memphis-produced video for a DVD. Both the record and the DVD were mixed in Johnson's tiny Midtown apartment, where he had crammed a full studio mixing board into the living room.
"We've tried to get progressively larger," says Pack, who describes Rocket Science as "little pranksters just seeing what we can do and document.
"We just want people to be able to play their show," Pack continues. "Every musician who has ever walked into a studio is totally cognizant of the fact that they are playing for a recording." That influences how they play. "Live performance is the ultimate test of a band."
"That's when you really know what a band is," Johnson adds.
In addition to recording Gonerfest, the Memphis Hates You metal festival, and the Church Health Center benefit Rock For Love, they also branched out into live-streaming audio and video from shows over the internet, a set of skills that, like everything else the pair does, was learned by trial and error. "It's only in the past two years that we have been able to record and stream every act from every venue [at Gonerfest]," Pack says.
The Gonerfest streams have steadily increased in popularity over the years, pulling in well over a thousand unique IP addresses. "And that's fully worldwide, from Australia, all over Europe, and Japan," Johnson says.
In 2011, Rocket Science found a home in a makeshift studio space on Madison Avenue, and the guys decided to branch out into something new. Pack says the idea for a variety show came from "hanging out late-night at the studio and talking. We're always asking, 'What else can we do?'"
On the last Thursday of the month, Rocket Science Audio invites two bands into their studio to perform in front of a small, motley audience and streams it live on the internet. "It's live! It's a variety show! It's just like Sonny and Cher!" says Pack, the show's host.
The bands alternate songs, their performances punctuated by the occasional prerecorded remote segment and comedy bits. "We decided to add comedians from Memphis, because that's another scene that doesn't get enough attention," Pack says. "We could have gone the cable-access route, but then we would have to be beholden to the FCC and that would limit what the comedians could say and what the bands could play."
With help from technical director Jackson Gilman and IT admin Chris Hoerske, Pack says they want to give some exposure to Memphis' vast, underrated pool of talent. "People get to catch bands that they normally wouldn't go out to see or they have wanted to see and never got around to it." And so far, they seem to be succeeding. After their first show, Chris Owen's new band Time, whose first record hasn't even been released yet, got rave reviews. "My 73-year-old dad even liked Time," Johnson says.
The audio quality for the first shows has been good, the video, produced by pawn-shop cameras, is much rougher. But that adds a charming, cable-access '80s feel to the proceedings. "Bit by bit, we're figuring this out. We've been a studio. We've been a live recording entity. Now we have to figure out how to be a TV show, and do that on the fly," Pack says.
The next show, which airs Thursday, July 25th, will feature two bands that Pack says are "in his top five all-time Memphis bands": Gringos and True Sons of Thunder. Mike McCarthy will provide the comedy, and there will be lots of lo-fi hijinx. "Everything we do is put together by duct tape and Radio Shack," Pack says.
"And we just bought more duct tape," Johnson says.
Rocket Science Audio Variety Show
Thursday, July 25th, 9 p.m.
Live streaming at rocketscienceaudio.comIf any single place in Rhode Island is most vulnerable to rising seas, it could be this city of 24,000 people on the Atlantic Ocean.
NEWPORT, R.I. — If any single place in Rhode Island is most vulnerable to rising seas, it could be this city of 24,000 people on the Atlantic Ocean.
With portions of its centuries-old downtown sitting on filled land and with storm surges and extreme high tides already causing the occasional flooding of its waterfront streets, Newport is facing a future in which it must adapt to higher seas or suffer the consequences through property damage or loss.
Consider that nearly 17 percent of Newport’s 11,787 buildings and other structures are located in the flood zone, Melissa A. Barker, GIS coordinator for the city, told a special legislative commission on sea level rise at a recent meeting. Or that one small area of infill in the historic Point neighborhood is home to $5 million worth of buildings, including a Marriott hotel.
“We always have flooding issues in that area. Mother Nature tries to reclaim what was once hers,” Barker said to the members of the House Commission on Economic Risk Due to Flooding and Sea Rise.
With 968 historic structures in the flood zone, the City By the Sea is at the extreme end of what communities throughout the state are dealing with. There are 294 historic structures in the flood zone in North Kingstown, 319 in Bristol and hundreds more in other cities and towns. Part of the commission’s task is looking at ways to make those structures, which are key to the state’s tourism industry, more resilient, said Rep. Lauren H. Carson, who chairs the group.
“It’s an important issue for us,” the Newport Democrat said.
Sea levels have risen 9.1 inches in Newport since 1930 and state regulators say the trend will continue. The Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council is now in the midst of considering new projections for rising seas to account for a faster rate of increase than is currently in its planning documents.
Under a proposal that will be reviewed at a meeting Tuesday, the state Coastal Resources Management Council would adopt figures compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that project one foot of sea level rise by 2035, two feet by 2050 and seven feet by 2100.
The proposal to adopt the higher figures aims to help builders and planners better assess coastal projects for future vulnerability, said Jim Boyd, coastal policy analyst for the council.
“The CRMC is promoting the use of these [sea-level rise] curves in evaluating projects to ensure public safety and to minimize risk in public and private expenditures,” Boyd said in an email.
The special House commission is also working to mitigate the risks from rising seas to the Rhode Island economy. It was created through a bill in the General Assembly last year and its members include state legislators and academics, as well as representatives of the insurance and tourism industries.
They have held four meetings so far that have included case studies on the effects of superstorm Sandy on Westerly in 2012 and the potential risks from rising seas to the Port of Providence and presentations from state Department of Environmental Management director Janet Coit and CRMC director Grover Fugate.
The commission has one more meeting scheduled so far, on Feb. 25, in which its members will consider making policy recommendations and whether there is a need for additional research.
At the recent meeting on Newport, Teresa Crean, community planner with the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island, showed a photograph of Ann Street Pier underwater during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and another of a kayaker paddling along Market Square, flooded during superstorm Sandy.
“We’re likely to see these water levels as the new normal,” she said.
The threat to Newport and the rest of Rhode Island is clear, Carson said.
“We’ve learned some alarming things about risk and exposure in the state,” she said.
akuffner@providencejournal.com
(401) 277-7457
On Twitter: @KuffnerAlexTehran: The death toll in one of Iran's worst rail disasters in which two trains collided and caught fire in a remote northern region had climbed to 44. Provincial governor Mohammad Reza Khabbaz told state television that the crash took place in Semnan province on the main line between Tehran and Iran's second city Mashhad.
An express train operating from Tabriz in the northwest to Mashhad had stopped, Khabbaz said, initially suggesting the cause could have been mechanical failure or extreme cold, although it was later put down to human error. Two coaches on the express burst into flames when a passenger train behind smashed into the back of it at 7:50 am (0420 GMT) yesterday.
The front four coaches of the second train -- running from Semnan to Mashhad -- derailed and overturned. "One minute I was sleeping and the next I was being carried out of a coach on fire," one hospitalised passenger told state television.
Television broadcast images of a huge column of black smoke and flames shooting into the sky from coaches with their windows shattered, as firefighters battled the blaze and rescue workers searched for victims.
With the toll climbing throughout the day, Hossein Kulivand, head of Iran's emergency services, said late Friday that 44 people were killed and 82 hospitalised, of whom 17 were treated for light injuries and released.
Human error was determined to have caused the accident. "For some unknown reasons due to human fault, the train (from Semnan) was ordered to move and so it hit the other train from behind," said Mohsen Poor-Seyed Aghaie, the head of Iranian railways.
The province's Red Crescent director, Hassan Shokrollahi, said the remote location of the crash site, between Semnan and Damghan, the next major town, had complicated rescue efforts. "Due to the difficulty of access, only our helicopter has managed to reach the scene," he said. The injured were airlifted to hospitals in Semnan and Damghan.
The Tehran-to-Mashhad line was briefly closed to allow an investigation into the cause of the crash, said Sadegh Sokri, spokesman for Iran's railways. A collision on the same line between a freight train and a passenger train left two dead and 30 injured in June 2014.
President Hassan Rouhani called for "all technical, administrative and preventive measures to be taken to prevent the recurrence of such an accident".
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.[/caption]
America’s OTHER space program is how John Powell bills his airship to orbit program. This endeavour, wonderfully encapsulated in his book Floating to Space, describes a less than typical application of a well-known technology. Using the concept of dynamic climbing, he believes and shows that airships are the better method to putting people and material into space.
Airships aren’t new. The Montgolfier brothers made the first modern edition and, since then, lighter-than-air transportation has been used to make determinations of weather in high latitudes, as well as to film sports events. Effectively, by trapping a less dense gas within an envelope, the envelope and a payload ascend. John Powell is fine tuning this concept for travelling into orbit and plans to soon elevate appreciable payloads to above 400 kilometres. And, as we all know, at that height, space travel becomes quite achievable.
Given this unconventional concept, Powell’s book follow the standard fare of all space dreamers. Like these, his book starts by admonishing the reader to accept physics and forgo tradition. Next, he justifies his beliefs by providing a review history. For example, did you know that the Nazca drawings might have been directed by a fellow in a hot air balloon? Continuing on, he provides a rational description of the current abilities of airships and their kin and ably convinces the reader that airships have got potential.
Now, if the reader perseveres through this brief background, they will get into the really exciting stuff. For it seems that John Powell is as much an engineer as he is a dreamer. Having amassed more than 80 missions over the previous 15 years, he can draw upon real experience and he does so in presenting the reader with steps he’s made of real progress. For example, during the early times he describes shooting rockets from balloons, nicknamed rockoons. Toward the end, he describes how he’s now floating platforms to above 100 000 feet. This story would warm any engineer’s heart. The technical progress described would set their hearts on fire.
Complementing the book is an enclosed DVD that is part documentary and part fanfare. In it, Powell’s placed some choice video taken from payloads as they climb to way-up-high and other videos that show a quite rapid descent from the same height. Equally exciting segments include footage of the next generation craft, Ascender 90, with ‘wings’ over 90 feet in length. It gently rises massively above a hanger floor as if coming to life for the first time. Given that this is a taste of things to come, this book is a wonderful place marker of what’s happened to date in Powell’s program and where things will hopefully be going.
In sum, this book’s got the touch of a visionary and the feel of a practitioner. It showcases a small cadre of people working against the grain of the norm. Yet, similarly, their goal is to achieve a great benefit for everyone. Optimism exudes from the pages as do technical triumphs. And, success just seems around the corner so that the reader may feel themselves getting drawn into the excitement and look to contribute.
Though not as flashy as rockets, airships provide similar capabilities. Both loft massive payloads up above the atmosphere. John Powell’s book Floating to Space – The Airship to Orbit Program shows the feasibility of this endeavour as well as results of his own efforts. With time, it seems, this program is destined for a lofty future.
Read more reviews online, or purchase a copy from Amazon.com.Body shaming is becoming a deep-rooted problem in the industry and many people have been targetted because of that. Recently, Fardeen Khan being one of them.
Sonarika Bhadoria played the Goddess Parvati in the popular serial Devon Ke Dev Mahadev. She was quite famous for essaying this role.
Recently, the actress caught the attention of the media when she shared her vacation pictures where she had donned a bikini.
Here are the pictures:
1.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BFtjUO2Augx/?taken-by=bsonarika
2.
3.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BF3VvshAuqU/?taken-by=bsonarika
4.
That obviously piqued people’s interest, but in another way. They were annoyed and the questions were raised on how can a ‘Goddess’ don a bikini? People had the guts to question her move to wear a bikini just because they have seen her in traditional avatar on television.
She got so pissed off and in her defense, she posted this message on her Instagram.
Maybe posting this gave her the solace from the unending backlash. But was the backlash justified?
No. Not in any way. 🙁
Source: Instagram
Cover Image Source 1 & 2Modern football has become a game of numbers, systems and structures. A team wins and we are told that it is because they won contested possession or their defensive system was sound. A team loses and it is because their kicking efficiency was terrible or their forward structure is no good.
I suppose it is human nature to seek reasoning that we can see and measure. The human brain craves control. We are constantly trying to find and apply formulas that will guarantee an outcome. "A team can't win a grand final without previous finals experience." Or, "for a side to be successful it needs two quality key position forwards". We have made the game a science. But as with all sciences, mysteries remain and there are anomalies that defy the accepted formulas.
Richmond's rise doesn't make sense by the numbers. Photo: AAP
The premiership-winning Western Bulldogs defied a swag of them in 2016. Depleted by injuries, missing their captain, with no recognised key forward, they finished outside the top four, endured late back-to-back trips to Perth and somehow won the flag. All the while being led by a rookie coach.
While it is human nature to want control, the thing most of us love about football is that it takes it away. Which is why we all love an underdog, why everyone except Sydney supporters wanted the Dogs to win last year.
It's also the reason I find myself attracted to Richmond this year.
The raw numbers don't really substantiate their ladder position, and their unique structure and game style contradicts previously accepted formulas.
Their unconventional small forward line makes us reluctant to accept them as genuine contenders, yet they sit a game clear inside the top four. They have climbed to fourth without Bachar Houli, who behind Dustin Martin, Trent Cotchin, Alex Rance and Jack Riewoldt, is probably their next most damaging player. He returns on Saturday night, fit and hungry for redemption, after a four-match suspension for an incident he would undoubtedly regret.
Statistically the Tigers don't jump off the page, either. They are second-last in the competition for disposals, and kick more clangers than any other team. Only three teams have kicked fewer goals.
They're middle of the pack for contested possessions (9th) and tackles (11th) and give away more free kicks than any other side. Ruckman Toby Nankervis, who was plucked from the back of a long line of big men at Sydney at the end of last year has shouldered the majority of the ruck work and been very serviceable but the Tigers sit last for hit-outs and are 13th in clearances.
Keep in mind also that this is a team who in round 23 last year lost by 113 points. They finished 13th, with an average losing margin of 45 points and there were calls for coach Damien Hardwick to be sacked.
So, what has changed?
The list was bolstered in the off season; Nankervis has been good, Dion Prestia and Josh Caddy add midfield depth. Martin has gone from potential game breaker to a reliable superstar and Hardwick has developed a game style that allows the list to play to their strengths. But none of that, on face value, would have convinced me that the Tigers could go from a team that languished outside the eight last season, to a top-four contender in less than 12 months.
It seems that the single most significant change at Richmond has been an emotional one. Hardwick has spoken openly about the soul-searching he did at the end of last year and the valuable lessons he learnt from his "darkest places". His players now describe a coach who is enjoying himself more, more open, more connected.
Captain Trent Cotchin credits his move to stand up in front of his teammates during the off season to share his vulnerabilities as a defining moment in his life and career. He has spoken of how he now feels he can be himself. "I am not scared of sharing tears or pain in front of my teammates... It's incredible when you start to open up doors and show that things hurt, that anxiety, that shame, that emotion. The more you talk about it, the less it has power over you … I feel free in 2017…" Cotchin is playing freely, too, and he, like Martin, is having his best, most consistent season yet.
I have noticed throughout the year when listening to Richmond's leaders, that unlike much of the football world they don't default to jargon about ball movement, structures or statistics. They talk about heart, enjoyment, pride and emotional connection.
For Hardwick to have thought-up Richmond's markedly different game plan for this season is one thing. To have a playing group who has bought in and willing to play it is another, particularly when it is a game style that relies heavily upon trust. Defend aggressively by trusting your teammates will apply pressure on the kicker up-field. Kick long and direct; trust that your teammates will work hard to get there and compete. Don't try to do too much, bring the ball to ground, trusting that the small forwards will be there to win it at ground level.
Trust is built through emotional connection and speaking post-match after beating the Giants last week Alex Rance hinted at the fact that it has been Richmond's biggest focus this year, "This year is all about connection, creating personal connections that transfer to on-field," he said.
So while their statistical profile and team structure doesn't add up using conventional premiership formulas, Hardwick has nurtured a very passionate and emotionally invested group. Maybe they are a chance this year because at no stage in football is emotion and passion in higher demand than during the finals.
Wherever they finish, I have loved watching the Tigers this year because they are proof that even in this scientific era of football, passion and emotion still trumps numbers and systems.What If Atheists Were Defined By Their Actions?
Enlarge this image Mark Poprocki/iStockphoto Mark Poprocki/iStockphoto
We classify people in all sorts of ways.
Some categories are based on a person's beliefs: A theist, for instance, is a person who believes in one or more gods. Some categories are based on behavior: A vegetarian, for example, is a person who doesn't eat animals. And some categories seem to straddle beliefs and behavior: Being politically conservative could be defined in terms of beliefs, but also in terms of corresponding behaviors, such as voting for conservative political candidates or donating one's time or money to conservative causes.
These different ways of defining categories of people — and in particular the category "atheist" — form the backdrop to an interesting episode of the Rationally Speaking podcast in which co-hosts Julia Galef and Massimo Pigliucci query astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on his resistance to identifying (or being identified) as an atheist.
For Tyson, eschewing the atheist label is not a matter of rejecting core atheist beliefs — he admits that he's not compelled by any arguments that have ever been put forth for the existence of God, and he accepts Pigliucci's suggestion that we're just as warranted in rejecting the existence of God as in rejecting the existence of unicorns. Rather, for Tyson the matter is one of behavior. The inferences that people make when classifying him as an atheist don't align well, he feels, with his frequent choice of Jesus Christ Superstar as musical accompaniment on family drives, or with his habit of standing for the "Hallelujah" chorus of Handel's Messiah. He has as much interest in meeting with other people to discuss their absence of belief in God as in meeting with non-golfers to talk about their absence of a passion for watching golf. In short, he doesn't take himself to exhibit the behaviors typically associated with being an atheist.
Now, this is a strange response if being an atheist is strictly a matter of belief (or lack of belief, as the case may be). Consider a vegetarian making the opposite move — esch |
but impossible if street-based sex work were the only option or if traffickers start turning to the dark web.)
But in the delusional minds of folks like Goodlatte and Wagner, everyone engaged in sex work will simply stop if there are no web-ad platforms and all the sex traffickers will simply let their victims go. (Drugs went away when we made those illegal, too, right?) So their goal is to eradicate any web platforms where sex buyers might communicate with sex sellers.
After all, catching actual evildoers is too hard. "Advertisements rarely, if ever, will say the person advertised is a 'victim of sex trafficking,'" Goodlatte lamented. Easier for authorities to stop distinguishing between forced or underage prostitution and sex that free adults consent to have.
More profitable, too. Wringing assets from petty pimps hasn't proven too valuable for the feds so far, but sites like Backpage and Facebook are much bigger fish. And Congress is always ready to approve a bigger net.
During Tuesday's meeting, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York) was the only committee member who expressed reservations about the bill, saying he was concerned that it had not been fully vetted, did not have support from surivors of sex trafficking or other relevant stakeholders, did not provide "appropriate protection for civil liberties," and could be redundant in light of a similar bill. Nadler asked that the committee refrain from voting the bill forward until more work could be done, but his colleagues did not agree.
* This post previously stated that intent was not required for prosecution, which is incorrect. The original version of this bill, authored by Wagner, stated that nothing in the measure should "be construed to require the Federal Government in a prosecution, or a plaintiff in a civil action, to prove any intent on the part of the information content provider." But the version agreed to yesterday, authored by Goodlatte, says people or entities are only guilty if they use or operate a digital platform "with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution" (emphasis mine).
The new language is certainly an improvement, but not necessarily that reassuring. Prosecutors and politicians already accuse platforms of intending to facilitate prostitution for things like labeling an ad or messageboard section as "adult," and even for forbidding direct mentions of prostitution (under the theory that telling users which words or phrases were not allowed amounted to encouraging users to covertly post prostitution ads).
To be guilty of an aggravated violation under Goodlatte's version, one must intend to "[promote or facilitate] the prostitution of 5 or more persons" or show "reckless disregard" for the possibility that digital content could lead to sex trafficking.The Masters 2014
Venue: Augusta National Dates: 10-13 April Coverage: Live BBC Two coverage on 12 April from 19:30 BST and on 13 April from 18:00 BST. Live Red Button, online and mobile coverage on 12 and 13 April plus highlights, previews and reaction on 11, 12 and 13 April. Daily live text and radio commentary.
This week there's a real chance we could have a rookie winner of the Masters for the first time since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979.
But whoever it is will have to quickly get used to a place that has a unique aura and mystique.
I played with Harris English a few weeks ago at Bay Hill and if he was on the leaderboard come the weekend I would not be shocked
One of my first Augusta memories was getting in trouble with the locker room attendant. The changing room in that historic clubhouse is a sacred place.
Effectively you use a member's locker. You are a guest, and I'd left mine in a mess. I'm always in the same one and it is Mr Palmer's locker - Arnold Palmer.
I felt like a naughty schoolboy when the attendant came up to me and said: "Your locker was a bit of a mess there and I tidied it up for you." As in: "Don't do it again."
That was me getting a rap on the wrists. It was almost blasphemous of me to keep it like that.
In that room, it's not the same feel you get at other tournaments. There are the locker room attendants, who have been there year after year, and it's like walking into a bit of a time warp - it feels like nothing's changed there in 50 or 60 years.
You do feel like you are walking on egg shells, scared to break a rule. You feel like the boss could walk round the corner and all of a sudden your invite disappears the following year. Not that it would happen, but it feels that way.
There's an eating area just off to the side and then, through into the clubhouse, there's another dining area.
But it's pretty small, with maybe room for 40 or 50 players to eat from a simple but delicious menu - stuff like Caesar salad and clam chowder.
Harris English Age: 24 Turned Pro: 2011 PGA wins: 2 (2013 FedEx St Jude Classic and OHL Classic in November 2013, part of 2014 Tour calendar) This season: 13 events, 13 cuts made, six top-10s, one win
It's the same every year - with the same staff - and you can almost imagine Bobby Jones sitting there experiencing the exact same vibe that we do.
Every step you take, your eyes wander to the pictures and the memorabilia on the walls. It has a wow factor that stops you in your tracks.
On the course, it is a similar feeling, especially when you turn up for practice rounds the week before and there are no crowds. There's a huge expanse you never see in Masters week between the ninth green and eighth tee that is just immaculate like the fairways are.
It's perfection really and you do feel bad taking a divot out of the fairway and walking on the pristine greens.
It's probably the only golf course in the world that has lived up to my expectations with regard to how good I thought it would be from just watching it on TV as a kid growing up.
The Wednesday night preview on BBC TV used to signal the start of my golfing year. The weather was just changing and you got that buzz and excitement from the coverage.
If I could play one golf course for the rest of my life, it would be Augusta. It never gets old and every time I go there I learn something new about it.
You have to learn to not be afraid going round there. When I think back to my debut in 2005, I played with the handbrake on for the two rounds. I played with Ben Crenshaw and I putted like a rookie, having six or seven three-putts.
McDowell made his Masters debut in 2005 and has missed the cut in four of his six appearances
I was gobsmacked watching Crenshaw, rolling like an artist on the greens really. He made me feel really inferior and it was certainly a wake-up call for me regarding putting on greens of that style. He was like Van Gogh on the canvas.
But some of the rookies today have a great chance. I played with Harris English a few weeks ago at Bay Hill. There's a kid making his Augusta debut and if the 24-year-old American was on the leaderboard come the weekend I would not be shocked.
He's long, hits his irons very high, very cool, and has a good short game and putter. You know he's got the tools to win around Augusta. These young players are just so well equipped nowadays.
They are better athletes and they're fearless. They're growing up in an era where they've watched Tiger Woods do things with a golf ball that seemed impossible.
The belief level globally now for a young professional is so much better than it used to be. The Zoeller-type first-time, rookie champion could happen in any of the majors now - this one included.
It could be an amazing week for the game, with one of the new breed making a name for himself and coming out of the shadow of Tiger. He has taken the game to new heights but with him absent there's a real chance for someone else to take the headlines.
McDowell at the Masters 2013: Missed cut (73, 76) 2012: Tied 12th (75, 72, 71, 68) 2011: Missed cut (74, 73) 2010: Missed cut (75, 74) 2009: Tied 17th (69, 73, 73, 69) 2005: Missed cut (79, 70)
For me, my putting this year gives me great confidence. Leading the PGA Tour's Strokes Gained category is a great stat to show how I'm doing relative to everybody else.
Augusta tests every facet of your game and putting on fast greens is key. I putted well on quick surfaces at Doral and at Bay Hill recently and I feel like I'm stroking it really, really well.
I'll spend the practice days finding myself some fast six and eight-footers and really concentrate on getting that speed, dropping the ball in the front edge. It's all about feel and touch.
I can't wait for it to start. I love hitting down the hill on the 10th but my favourite shot is the second into 11, which is often a five iron but can be anything up to a five wood for me.
You see Amen Corner for the first time after a blind tee shot. You come to the brow of the hill and there's the famous 11th green with water to the left. You can also see the short 12th waiting quietly for you and the 13th tee.
To me that's what Augusta is all about. That and keeping my locker tidy.
Graeme's tip: Here's a putting drill that I'll be using to help me this week at Augusta. If you do a putting drill from five feet you can hole those putts at three different speeds. One is thumping the back of the hole, two is dropping in the middle of the hole and speed three is letting it fall in at the front edge. Practise holing out at all three speeds and you will become very aware of how to make a putt at the right speed to suit the greens you are putting on.
Graeme McDowell was speaking to BBC golf correspondent Iain CarterBy Michael Lello
Photo by Maureen Hunter
Robert Hunter’s words have left an indelible imprint on pop culture – “what a long strange trip it’s been” and “drivin’ that train, high on cocaine,” anyone?
But during his time as the lyricist for the Grateful Dead during the band’s 30-year run, and his continued output since the 1995 death of his writing partner Jerry Garcia, Hunter has chosen his lyrics to speak for themselves, granting only the occasional interview.
His live performances have been sporadic, too; last year’s tour dates, following a health scare, were his first in 10 years. The concerts went so well, Hunter has returned to the road this week for a string of East Coast dates that kicked off with three shows at City Winery in New York on Monday, and he’ll perform at Newport Folk Festival on July 25 before hitting the FM Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre on Wednesday, July 30.
Hunter, who last year accepted a Lifetime Achievement honor from the Americana Music Association, continues to write for country singer Jim Lauderdale, former Dead cohorts and even Bob Dylan – who has only collaborated extensively with one other lyricist during his career.
We recently spoke with a jovial Hunter, who in part one of our phone interview talks about his return to the road, the importance of bringing songs to life on the stage and his time in the hospital. In part two, he opens up about his relationship with Garcia and Dylan.
H81R: You toured last year for the first time in many years. How did that go for you?
RH: I was a little afraid I might have lost my edge after all that time. And I got on stage – and you never know until you’re on stage – and I took to it like a fish to water. It made me wonder why I had completely cut out one of my favorite things, which is to stand in front of a microphone and sing songs that people appear to love (laughs) and get good response. It was wonderful. It’s the best thing there is.
H81R: Do you feel that a song needs to be played live for it to be truly a living, breathing song?
RH: Yes. Every time I do those songs I discover something new about them, and it’s not a question of getting up there and being a jukebox. There’s different things you can do with the rhythm sometimes, sometimes I might change a word or two here or there. Yes, they’re alive, and I really dig the way people are doing ’em. People out there are forming bands and playing these songs, and people are starting to have their favorite Dead bands like Cubensis. It’s all just…well, I feel like a grandfather (laughs).
H81R: How do you put together your concert setlists?
RH: There’s definitely a feeling of openers and closers, things you do at the beginning of the set, things you do at the end of the set, or things you do in the second set. I tend to do a short first set then a nice long hour-and-a-quarter second set. What happens in between, a good kickoff starter and a nice leave-’em-wantin’-more ending, it’s whatever feels right at the time. I don’t necessarily do the same setlist every night, although I’m going to be opening the shows with three nights at the Winery, and I’m going to try and do as varied a show as I can, and I’ve been working extra hard at repertoire just to be able to do that. Because ordinarily I only need about 18 songs or so together to go out with a bit of variety on a show 10 years back. I do roughly similar shows from night to night, but I don’t think that I’ll be doing that three nights in a row at the Winery.
Whatever works best those three nights, I’ll throw together a one-hour show for Newport.
H81R: Are there songs you’ve wanted to play live that didn’t work for whatever reason?
RH: Yeah. That’s true. It happens.
H81R: Do you remember which songs?
RH: Oh Jeez. I’ve been working really hard on trying to get a nice version of “Mississippi Halfstep Uptown Toodeloo” for this run of performances. Worked pretty hard at it, and all of a sudden last week, I said, “Why spend your time on this? Because you’re not gonna do it.” I think it’s a great song – that “across the Rio Grande-o” chorus on it is magnificent — but I thought “one guy singing this” – well, of course the audience will sing along – no, onto something else.
H81R: Are there any songs you never tire of performing?
RH: “Sugaree,” “Ripple,” “Tiger Rose.” Yeah, I can’t imagine doing a show without those, although I may (laughs) do a show without closing with “Ripple,” although it will feel like something’s lacking, but three nights in a row, with a lot of the same people.... What I’m going to consider it to be is one long show.
I’m nervous about it. I’ve never gone out with this large a repertoire of worked-up material before. But it put me on my mettle and I’m glad I chose to open up with three nights.
H81R: What are you working on currently? Are you in a writing mode?
RH: I’m trying to get back into it. I was afraid that I didn’t have that spark anymore after getting out of the hospital, but basically I’ve been putting all my energy into guitar, which I started playing as soon as I was beginning to recover.
I was in the hospital for a couple months with a spinal injury, and as soon as I could pick up my guitar, I just started playing. Because there’s nothing else to do in a hospital, and I had a private room, and the nurses would come in, and they’d want me to play for them, and I would. It was fun. I became the minstrel of the hospital (laughs).
I had put (the guitar down). I hadn’t been playing much guitar. So I really got into it and I wrote a bunch of songs, a bunch are on Mickey Hart’s last album, and I think they seem to be pretty good. They have that keenness of perception that you have when you’re staring death in the eye, but later on, when I decided to go on the road, I put all my attention on guitar playing, and I started in the hospital and decided to keep it up, and very apparently it’s time to go on the road again. Everybody was really surprised, including my doctor, my wife (laughs). I felt that I had to. And I had to find out if I could still do it. It was really important to me. Because I always told my wife, I said having my guitar and repertoire worked up is like the bullets in my gun belt, and if I don’t have that together, there’s an insecurity that comes over me. It’s real true.
H81R: It sounds like your health has taken a turn for the better.
RH: Slowly but surely, and I’m perfectly confident to stand up at a microphone.
They had to move a vertebrate around to get at this abscess in my spine, so walking is not what it used to be for me. I used to be a hiker. I don’t really expect to do that again. But I’m pleased to say that I don’t believe it’s old age that’s slowing me down, it’s the after effects of the serious operation. So instead of walking now, I swim.
H81R: As a man in your 20s, were you thinking ahead that you’d be singing these songs in your 70s?
RH: No. I always had a very high opinion (laughs), immodestly speaking, of what Jerry and I were turning out, and I thought we just hit some magical combination. I thought it was going to continue on and that we were doing something special.
H81R: And that proved to be true obviously.
RH: I wasn’t just a fantasy, it was only partly fantasy (laughs).
H81R: Are there contemporary lyricists you enjoy?
RH: Nick Cave. Brilliant.
H81R: Do you keep an ear out for new music?
RH: No. I’m only aware of Nick Cave because my daughter is such a fan and she makes me listen to him and she makes me listen to Trent Reznor. So there’s a couple of things I know about, mostly it’s a mystery to me.“…it’s rewarding, relaxing, fulfilling to engage with Vish, as the exchanges have always been just rife with that rarest rarity: communication.” – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
“…Khanna lives in Canada, so his take is especially interesting…” – a feature in A.V. Club’s Podmass
One of “The Year’s Best Music Podcasts” – CBC (2016) Chart Attack (2014)
“Do You Compute, his extensive and comprehensive documentary on Drive Like Jehu, could be the best audio rock doc ever made” – CBC’s Podcast Playlist
“Music Podcasts for Your DIY Heart” – Post-Trash (2018)
“10 Essential Episodes of Kreative Kontrol with Vish Khanna featuring Canadian musicians” – DOMINIONATED (2018)
Vish has a number of questions for interesting people who provide a number of answers. Musicians, comedians, writers, politicians, athletes, and more will be featured on this regularly scheduled podcast. Kreative Kontrol is part of the Entertainment One Podcast Network and is available via most iOS and Android podcast platforms, including:
Also tune in to hear this show broadcast live on CFRU 93.3 FM in Guelph, ON and enjoy the live stream wherever you are in the world. For weekly updates, please sign up for the Kreative Kontrol newsletter (scroll down and you’ll see how to do this). Also of note, we now have shirts for sale via our Patreon page.
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Ep. #279: U.S. Girls
Ep. #278: Jane Bunnett
Ep. #277: Rob Benvie of Bankruptcy
Ep. #276: Katie Monks of Dilly Dally
Ep. #275: Incredible Love – Alan Vega & Suicide Remembered by Steve Albini, Jehnny Beth, Brendan Canty, Kid Millions, Robyn Phillips, Priya Thomas, & Mike Watt
Ep. #274: Hari Kondabolu
Ep. #273: Mary Lynn Rajskub
Ep. #272: Gord Downie
Ep. #271: Andy Shauf
Ep. #270: TUNS
Ep. #269: Baroness von Sketch Show
Ep. #268: PUP
Ep. #267: Adrian Teacher
Ep. #266: William Tyler
Ep. #265: David Cross
Ep. #264: Choir! Choir! Choir!
Ep. #263: Jay Arner (& Jessica Delisle)
Ep. #262: Mare Sheppard, Jim Guthrie, & Shaw-Han Liem
Ep. #261: Hooded Fang
Ep. #260: Long Night with BRAIDS, Dan Meades, Freyja & Zamudio, and Eastern Owl
Ep. #259: Savak’s Sohrab Habibion
Ep. #258: Shotgun Jimmie
Ep. #257: Piya Chattopadhyay & MINOTAURS’ Nathan Lawr
Ep. #256: Daniel Romano
Ep. #255: Shehzaad Jiwani of Greys
Ep. #254: Scott Aukerman
Ep. #253: Several Futures
Ep. #252: Bob Mehr on The Replacements
Ep. #251: The Burning Hell
Ep. #250: Long Night with Dr. Carys Massarella, Hadani Ditmars, and Omar Musa
Ep. #249: Puff Pieces
Ep. #248: Ray Robertson
Ep. #247: Cupcake Ductape
Ep. #246: Mauno
Ep. #245: Joe Casey of Protomartyr
Ep. #244: Long Night with Shad, Sloan’s Jay Ferguson & Patrick Pentland, Caitlin Durlak, So Long Seven, & Bobby Ruin
Ep. #243: Toronto Blue Jays Panel with Stacey May Fowles, Desmond Cole, Drew Fairservice, & Josh Zucker
Ep. #242: Josh Gondelman
Ep. #241: Rangda
Ep. #240: A Way That’s Clear – Tortoise & The Making of ‘The Catastrophist’
Ep. #239: Long Night with Jordan Ferguson, STACEY, Sam Sutherland, and Carol Zoccoli
Ep. #238: Stuck in Your Head – Idée Fixe is 5!
Ep. #237: Geoff Berner
Ep. #236: Junior Boys
Ep. #235: Long Night with Tom Power, Deadpan Powerpoint, TUNS, & Michelle McAdorey
Ep. #234: Michelle McAdorey
Ep. #233: Steven Lambke
Ep. #232: Long Night with Casey Mecija, Denise Benson & Matt O’Brien
Ep. #231: Evan Gordon
Ep. #230: Peter Demakos of Blimp Rock
Ep. #229: Willie Thrasher
Ep. #228: Long Night with Desmond Cole, Matt Collins, & Elaquent
Ep. #227: John Wright & Frank Barnes of Compressorhead
Ep. #226: Scharpling & Wurster
Ep. #225: Tony Levin of King Crimson
Ep. #224: Ian MacKaye & Steve Albini (Part II)
Ep. #223: Ian MacKaye & Steve Albini (Part I)
Ep. #222: Peter Guralnick
Ep. #221: Ryan Nelson of Soccer Team
Ep. #220: Esmerine
Ep. #219: Eugene Mirman
Ep. #218: I am Robot and Proud
Ep. #217: Do You Compute – The Story of Drive Like Jehu
Ep. #216: Russell Mael & Alex Kapranos of FFS
Ep. #215: Destroyer
Ep. #214: Ani DiFranco
Ep. #213: Cameron Esposito
Ep. #212: Ike Turner of MINUTES & Brown Company
Ep. #211: Julie Fader & Graham Walsh of Etiquette
Ep. #210: Mick Jenkins
Ep. #209: Justin Small of Do Make Say Think
Ep. #208: Gary Taxali
Ep. #207: Slim Twig
Ep. #206: Faith No More’s Billy Gould
Ep. #205: Nick Ferrio
Ep. #204: Michael Franti
Ep. #203: Elaquent
Ep. #202: Doldrums
Ep. #201: LIDS
Ep. #200: Daniel Lanois
Ep. #199: Rhys Darby
Ep. #198: Nigel Chapman of Nap Eyes
Ep. #197: Nels Cline
Ep. #196: José Miguel Contreras of By Divine Right
Ep. #195: Terra Lightfoot
Ep. #194: Will Currie & The Country French
Ep. #193: Angel Olsen
Ep. #192: Marker Starling
Ep. #191: Buffy Sainte-Marie
Ep. #190: Lee Reed
Ep. #189: Raekwon
Ep. #:188: Chad VanGaalen on doing Stupid Human Tricks on David Letterman
Ep. #187: Mike Sacks on David Letterman
Ep. #186: Socalled
Ep. #185: Steven Kado of Blocks Recording Club
Ep. #184: METZ
Ep. #183: Long Night with the Burning Hell, Amery Sandford, Elisabeth de Mariaffi, Eva Ísleifs, Rakel McMahon, Erin Turcke, & Suds
Ep. #182: Scott Thompson answers Exclaim!’s Questionnaire
Ep. #181: Andrea Warner
Ep. #180: Phosphorescent
Ep. #179: Long Night with Rachel Giese, Sabrina Ramnanan, Daniel Schulman, Lee Reed
Ep. #178: Shary Boyle
Ep. #177: Sohrab Habibion on Obits calling it Quits
Ep. #176: Rob Lind of The Sonics
Ep. #175: Sir Richard Bishop
Ep. #174: Andy Kindler
Ep. #173: Will Butler
Ep. #172: Long Night with Scott Thompson, Damian Rogers, Don Pyle, and Overnight
Ep. #171: Dan Mangan + Blacksmith
Ep. #170: Andy Gill of Gang of Four
Ep. #169: Matt Braunger
Ep. #168: Dan Boeckner of Operators, Wolf Parade, Divine Fits, and Handsome Furs
Ep. #167: THEESatisfaction
Ep. #166: Tom McCaffrey
Ep. #165: Bob Nastanovich of Silver Jews
Ep. #164: Long Night with Jesse Brown, David Heti, and L CON
Ep. #163: Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington
Ep. #162: Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney
Ep. #161: Siskiyou
Ep. #160: PS I Love You
Ep. #159: Carl Newman of the New Pornographers
Ep. #158: Bruce McCulloch
Ep. #157: Long Night with Me, Aisha Alfa, Freddie Rivas |
a period of 12 weeks.[26]
The BBC issued an apology on 8 November, stating that the telephone calls were "grossly offensive" and a "serious breach of editorial standards".[27] The corporation apologised specifically to Sachs and Baillie, and also to licence fee payers. The evening before this formal apology, David Barber, head of specialist music and compliance at Radio 2, also resigned. Like Douglas,[28] he had been aware of the contents of the show, and had sanctioned the segment's broadcast.[29]
Reactions from politicians and the media [ edit ]
Fifteen MPs signed a motion in the House of Commons, tabled by Labour MP Andrew MacKinlay and Conservative MP Nigel Evans, calling for Brand and Ross to no longer be funded by the licence fee (which funds the BBC). The chairman of the House of Commons select committee on culture, media and sport, John Whittingdale, stated that an investigation by the BBC was needed, but stopped short of calling for Ross and Brand to be sacked.[30] The chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on Communication, Lord Fowler, in a letter to The Times (see Fowler in Further reading) stated that there were fundamental flaws in the way that the BBC was regulated and governed, and that there was "confusion all round" because two parallel bodies, the BBC Trust and Ofcom, were investigating the incident, and it was both unclear which of them the public should complain to and which of them had precedence over the other.[31]
Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, speaking on the Radio 4 Today Programme on 30 October, also refused to say whether he thought Ross should be sacked, asserting that politicians should remain at "arm's length" from such decisions. In a speech at the London School of Economics the previous day he had criticised the decision by the BBC to broadcast the programme, which had been recorded 2 days prior to its transmission, saying that "[t]he BBC was quite wrong to take the decision to broadcast the offensive phone calls". He also demurred about calling for the resignations of anyone in BBC management, saying that "[i]t is wrong, in principle, for politicians to be calling for heads of individual broadcasting to be removed", and criticised the BBC for not releasing the name of the person who had given the green light for the show to be broadcast.[32][33]
Hunt was speaking to the LSE about socially responsible broadcasting, and stated "I do think the BBC is a socially responsible broadcaster, I just think we need to hear that." He argued that broadcasters were not being ambitious enough, and outlined his party's plans, should it be elected to government at the next general election, to relax regulation for those broadcasters who agreed to provide only socially responsible output. In addition to citing the Ross/Brand/Sachs affair as a "perfect example" of where such a "responsibility deal" could have operated, he also pointed to Channel 4 as an example, stating that it was "not good enough" for it to produce "worthy" programmes such as Dispatches documenting alcohol abuse in the US, whilst at the same time it was broadcasting programmes such as Hollyoaks where such abuse took up, according to his estimates, 18% of screen time. The culture spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, Don Foster, criticised this idea, stating that it threatened the very foundational principles of freedom and independence of British media, arguing that such government interference in television programming would be "a very sad day for British broadcasting", and pointing out that regulatory mechanisms already exist to deal with issues such as this.[33][34][35]
On 29 October, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries had already called for the BBC to terminate the contracts of both Ross and Brand, and in the Commons David Hanson had criticised the comments for being inappropriate and not "in keeping with broadcasting".[36] The conservative journalist Charles Moore announced he would not pay his television licence after the BBC's failure to sack Ross,[37] a decision which eventually led to Moore being fined in May 2010.[38]
Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw, writing in his local newspaper the Lancashire Telegraph on 30 October (see Straw in Further reading), became the first Cabinet Minister to call for the pair to be sacked, arguing that if both presenters had worked in local radio "they'd have been given their P45 before you could say 'Jack Robinson'."[31][39]
On the same day, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, Theresa May, called for a Commons debate on the BBC's handling of the affair.[40]
Reaction against censures and suspensions [ edit ]
In the days following the suspensions, a number of celebrities, particularly from television and radio, came out in support of Brand and Ross. Many felt that, whilst the incident was unacceptable, it was not deserving of the strong criticism it received, especially when there were other issues troubling the United Kingdom.
Rod McKenzie, the editor of BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat, observed on the BBC Editors' weblog (see Further reading) that audience reactions to Brand's and Ross' remarks had been polarised, noting that whilst his colleagues at Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, television, and the BBC World Service had been seeing one thing, the younger audiences of Radio 1 had been reacting quite differently, and were broadly supportive of Ross and Brand. Some were amazed at the comments of the Prime Minister, with one person observing that "[t]he financial markets are wrecked and all he can do is talk about a petty joke." Others stated that people should "calm down", "get a grip", and that the subject had been "blown out of all proportion". McKenzie also characterised the reaction from the news media as containing "anger: some genuine, some of it synthetic. Some of it comes from the BBC's usual critics." He stated that for the people who worked in the media "profile and salary-envy and schadenfreude may play a part in all this. But how many heard the original transmission and how many are responding to the newspapers' quotes or others' arguments?"[41]
Tim Shaw, disc jockey for Absolute Radio, also supported Ross and Brand, appearing on BBC News wearing a T-shirt that read "I back Brand."[42] The television presenter Paul O'Grady stated that the comedians' behaviour was, "...well out of order". However, he also suggested that the Prime Minister should get on with more important matters than complaining about media gossip.[43] Carol McGiffin, a presenter on ITV's daytime programme Loose Women similarly supported the pair, criticising those who complained and stating that she could not wait to download the official podcast which included the incident.[44]
Then-Oasis leader and friend of Russell Brand, Noel Gallagher, complained that the press had "dictated the tone" of the controversy, and thought it "typical of the English in general" when "10,000 people get outraged, but only days after it has happened". Gallagher claimed to have spoken to Brand, who told Gallagher he was "going to fall on his sword".[45][46][47]
A petition on the GoPetition web site, calling for the BBC "to turn blame on the 'Andrew Sachs' incident away from Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, and instead onto whoever green lighted the show" had garnered 336 signatures by 29 October. At the same time, a similar group on Facebook had over 1,000 members.[48] By 30 October, the petition had risen to 4,000 signatures and the Facebook group to 15,609 members.[49] By 2 November, the Facebook group had over 30,000 members,[50] which had risen to over 43,000 members by 5 November.[51]
On 30 October, fans of Ross and Brand protested outside of the offices of the BBC. On 31 October, fans prepared to hold a protest outside of the offices of the Daily Mail and of the BBC.[49]
Comedian Jimmy Carr also expressed his support for Ross, saying the issue had been blown out of proportion, and blamed the media themselves for escalating it further, and that Ross was a "national treasure".[52]
Former celebrity publicist Max Clifford played down the apparent outrage aimed at Brand. In an interview he said "I don't think this will cause any problems for Russell Brand. He's known to be controversial and, if anything, it will make him more popular amongst his fans, who will have thought this was hilarious...They won't see anything wrong in what he did. It is a big PR success for him...He will have no problem with his career."[53]
TV critic and columnist Charlie Brooker stated on his show, Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, his worry that the controversy would lead to a chilling effect on comedy, and that the BBC and others would self-censor too much in future. He went on to say that the attitude displayed by the complainants and the BBC's backing down would have, in earlier times, precluded the production of much of what was at the time edgy comedy and made culture poorer for it (citing Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Day Today and The Young Ones amongst others as shows that would have not been commissioned owing to their controversial content). While pouring scorn on those who had complained without seeing the programme, and attacking newspapers that attempted to stir up further controversy (in particular the Daily Mail), he did not appear to defend Brand and Ross in particular, stating that the possibility of people being offended by some misjudged humour is "the price you pay for freedom of speech." In a further column in The Guardian, he reiterated this point as well as saying that "people who retrospectively complain to Ofcom about material they've only read about second-hand are, in essence, a bunch of sanctimonious crybabies indulging in a wretched form of masturbation."[54][55][56][57][58]
Reaction from Georgina Baillie [ edit ]
Interviews [ edit ]
Reacting to the suspension of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross on 29 October, Baillie remarked: "I'm thrilled because justice has been done...It's despicable. Calling me that in public, not only does it damage my relationship with my granddad but it could permanently damage my life as well," despite having declared apathy to the sentiment referenced in the latter sentence on her Myspace page.[55][56]
A week later, on 5 November 2008, UK television channel Five broadcast a 1-hour documentary on the incident, titled Russell & Ross: What the F*** Was All That About? featuring an exclusive interview with Baillie.[57] Baillie stated in the interview that "I think it's way out of proportion what's happened and I don't hate either of them – I don't at all", going on to say "I think they're really talented comedians and I think a world without Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand would be a very sad, dull place." She concluded by saying that Brand needed to learn about respecting women, while Ross should just think before he speaks, "I don't have any harder feeling than that."[58] Baillie also made clear that she would not object to the reinstatement of both Brand and Ross.[27]
On 14 May 2009, Baillie was a guest on the BBC politics and current affairs programme This Week. She was questioned by host Andrew Neil and regular guests Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott about the Brand row within discussion of the general subject of the present day worth and genuineness of public figures saying sorry, in the wake of public apologies from members of parliament (MP's) and Prime Minister Gordon Brown following the events of the MP's expenses row. Asked by Neil if receiving an apology from Brand and Ross had mattered to her, she said yes, as she had been "publicly offended and humiliated", and her father "had been humiliated too". When asked by Abbott if all the publicity surrounding the Brand row had helped her career, she responded "not necessarily... one would think so, but not really." Neil further asked if the apology she received had helped, she replied yes, stating "definitely" to the follow-up comment from Neil of "better to get it than not get it?" When asked finally on the row by Neil if she thought the apologies from Brand and Ross were genuine, she replied that she thought Ross' was, but the fact that Brand had joked about the row on his later tour negated his apology.
Songwriting [ edit ]
In 2010, Baillie teamed up with singer Adam Ant (whose drummer Hayley Leggs had been a member, alongside Baillie, of burlesque troupe The Satanic Sluts) to compose the song Gun in Your Pocket, about Ross, Brand and the entire affair. He intended to release the song as the lead single for his ninth album Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter (with a rerecording of early 1980s outtake Who's A Goofy Bunny Then? as the B-side in tribute to the recently deceased Malcolm McLaren).[59] Gun in Your Pocket was performed live on at least one occasion, at a guerilla gig (one of several he played around this time) at London's Troubadour Café on 2 April 2010,[60][61] and was setlisted, (but not performed) at Adam's Pirate Metal Extravanganza concert at the Scala on 30 April 2010, while the recording received a club play when Adam DJ'd at the Family Affair clubnight in Shoreditch, London on 24 April.[62]
The single, along with its parent album, was put on hold when Adam Ant (who has a history of bipolar disorder and was widely suspected around this time to have been undergoing a manic episode)[63] was once again sectioned on 18 May 2010 and it remained to be seen if a medicated and stabilised Adam would wish to continue this project or not.[64] However, interviewed by The Sun on 31 December 2010 Adam Ant – by his own admission once more unmedicated and now including Baillie on backing vocals in his live band – confirmed the song as still on the album. "Georgina is a friend of mine who has really been through it. Her grandad still won't speak to her because he is so hurt."[65]
Gun in Your Pocket was finally released in October 2012 as the B-side to Cool Zombie, the eventual first single from the album (which finally emerged in January 2013). In addition to this song, Baillie and Adam Ant composed a second track about the Ross-Brand affair, Rubber Medusa, a song focussed mainly on Brand and written from Baillie's perspective. Baillie's band, the Poussez Posse, performed this second song regularly in live support slots for Ant's UK tours during 2011–2012. Commenting on the two songs in an interview by John Robb, Baillie noted "The first one that Adam and I wrote was about an ex of mine- guess who! Which is not on the album, which is called Gun in Your Pocket...(Subsequently) the first one Adam and I wrote together was Rubber Medusa, which was about Russell, Adam came up with the title which is a quote from the Jubilee film, (Brand) does look like a rubber Medusa so I see why he said it."[66]
Support for Lesley Douglas [ edit ]
A number of radio personalities employed by the BBC came out in support of Lesley Douglas, after her resignation. Douglas was aware of the contents of the programme, but had not heard them before they were broadcast. She sanctioned its broadcast with a single word e-mail of "Yes" sent from her BlackBerry.[67] Amongst her supporters were Chris Evans and Terry Wogan, both of whom worked for BBC Radio 2 at the time, and Dame Liz Forgan, who called her one of the "outstanding broadcasters of her generation", and said that the BBC had "lost its wits". Mark Thompson said that because of her knowledge of the broadcast, she had to shoulder some of the responsibility.[28]
Subsequent appearances by Brand and Ross [ edit ]
Ross had been scheduled to host the 2008 British Comedy Awards for ITV during the period of his suspension from the BBC; however, on 31 October he stepped down.[68][69]
On 31 October, Brand left the country, saying that he had work to do in America, including TV programmes and film collaborations with Judd Apatow and Helen Mirren.[28][70] The second series of Brand's Channel 4 television show Russell Brand's Ponderland aired as normal on the previous evening, attracting 1 million viewers, the show's largest ever audience. A further 180,000 watched the show time-shifted on the Channel 4+1 timeshift channel. The first series of Ponderland, aired in October 2007, had been watched by 840,000 viewers, including those watching Channel 4+1. The channel reported that it had received 164 complaints from the public, many of these criticising the decision to broadcast the programme, rather than a reflection on the content, and the majority before the programme was transmitted; the show also attracted 212 emails and phone-calls of praise from fans and as such was the most praised programme screened on Channel 4 for that month.[71][72][73][74]
Brand similarly continued to be on the front cover of PETA's "Vegetarian Starter Kit" booklet, despite people protesting to the organisation. PETA's director, Robbie LeBlanc, said that Brand, who had previously won PETA's Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity contest twice, would remain on the cover "because Mr Sachs, who is also a PETA supporter, has accepted Mr Brand's apology, and that's good enough for us."[75][76]
Brand went on to win the British Comedy Award for Best Live Standup Performer. In his acceptance speech, Brand dedicated his award to Ross.[77]
After being taken off the air due to Ross' suspension, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross returned to BBC One on 23 January 2009, featuring guests Tom Cruise, Lee Evans and Stephen Fry. The show was watched by 5.1 million viewers, an increase from the 3.74 million of the last show before going off air. Ross' return attracted 25 complaints and 3 messages of support to the BBC.[78]
In 2009, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross was nominated for a BAFTA. According to The Times, Ross was nominated soon after he was banned.[79] Melody Sachs complained about Ross being nominated so soon after the controversy in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, saying: "I am amazed that Ross should get rewarded with a mouth like his. Nobody is saying he hasn't got talent, but what he did was so disgusting. Of course he is not worth the money, but he is good at his job. However, I don't think he should be rewarded so soon after what happened. It is like people are saying, 'Let's forget all about it and see what we can give him.' It is wrong and bad timing to give or even put up this guy for recognition when he has done such a terrible thing. It was unforgivable, really. I'm not angry, I just don't believe it."[80]
Sachs himself said that the nomination was: "a bit of a surprise", and that: "One would question the reasons when it comes so quickly after what happened. I wonder how much it has to do with trying to comfort him. I don't know. That is how it happens. That is showbusiness."[80]
BBC Trust ruling [ edit ]
On 21 November 2008, the BBC's watchdog BBC Trust said that the phone calls were a "deplorable intrusion with no editorial justification."[81] The Trust found that the existing BBC guidelines should have been sufficient to have prevented the incident, and that the "very offensive" programme should "never have been recorded."[82] It found the failures lay in mistakes made by BBC editorial and compliance management.[82] The Trust gave its backing to the BBC's response to the incident and Ross' 12-week suspension.[83]
Echoing the findings of the BBC Trust, the BBC itself stated the incident was a "very, very serious failure in a radio programme where editorial judgement was exercised that seriously let the BBC down."[84]
The Trust also criticised Brand's "so-called apology" of 25 October, and the staff of Chris Moyles' BBC Radio 1 show for also breaching BBC guidelines for comments by Brand in an interview on the morning of 21 October at a time when children were likely to be listening.[85] The Trust recommended tighter controls for programmes such as Brand's, made by companies owned by their performers.[85] Long-term effects of the controversy would include the setting up of a register of high-risk programmes.[86]
References [ edit ]Two lower-tier teams in the U.S. have launched a claim with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to try and impose promotion and relegation in the U.S. Soccer pyramid.
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In a joint statement on Thursday, Miami FC of the NASL (second-tier) and Kingston Stockade FC of the NPSL (unofficial fourth-tier) revealed they’ve appealed to CAS to force the FIFA, CONCACAF and the US Soccer Federation (USSF) to usher in promotion and relegation in the U.S. soccer pyramid.
They say the “claim contends that unlike the way the game is played throughout the world where results on the pitch define which division a team plays in, American teams are illegitimately blocked from the same opportunity because of the USSF’s failure to follow FIFA’s rules.”
Major League Soccer is the undisputed top-tier of club soccer in North America with the only way to enter the league via paying an expansion fee (currently set for over $140 million) and being selected by an “expansion committee” as a viable location for a new team.
Below is the statement in full with FIFA, the USSF and CONCACAF named as defendants in the claim.
“When it comes to soccer success, America lags behind the rest of the world. One reason is because our system is not an open system and is actually blocked from becoming an open system,” said Kingston Stockade FC owner Dennis Crowley. “By embracing pro/rel and using this tried-and-true system, we would have a greater ability to unlock additional soccer markets, reward investment in those markets, and create new talent pools within the United States.”
“The closed system for soccer used here in the United Sates is in violation of FIFA rules,” said The Miami FC CEO Sean Flynn. “By adopting the rules followed by virtually every other soccer playing nation around the globe, soccer in America will be open, resulting in better teams through all divisions, compelling story lines to increase fan excitement and greater financial success for everyone involved in this beautiful game.”
Recently the owner of Miami FC, Riccardo Silva, used his media company to offer Major League Soccer $4 billion for a 10-year TV deal but with one condition: promotion and relegation had to be implemented.
With USL (second-tier) growing and NASL (also second-tier) recovering from a rough spell, in general lower tier teams across the USA and Canada are experiencing rapid growth with high-profile owners such as Didier Drogba (Phoenix Rising) and Eden Hazard (San Diego, NASL) flooding to the lower leagues.
With MLS and USL now intertwined there was no way a USL club would come out and publicly back this but there’s no doubt there’s a strong hunger for some form of promotion and relegation, even if it’s only outside MLS, to be introduced.
The timing of this announcement is also telling, less than 24 hours after the MLS All-Stars lost on penalty kicks to Real Madrid at a packed Soldier Field stadium in Chicago where Don Garber mentioned David Beckham’s MLS franchise in Miami is close to being finalized.
Follow @JPW_NBCSportsLet’s start with news—if you’re one of the many Warriors fans mourning the impending retirement of broadcaster Jim Barnett, who has been calling Golden State games for 29 years, take heart.
Barnett will be back in the team’s broadcast mix next year in some fashion. The team is still looking for a new full-time, long-term analyst, but Barnett will do some home television games and some radio alongside Tim Roye next season.
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Barnett will only be sort-of retired, and next season, he will celebrate his 30th year behind the team’s microphone.
On a visit to Barnett’s home in Orinda on Wednesday, the status of his impending retirement was Issue No. 1. However, with nothing officially agreed upon, Barnett could not confirm, deny or comment on what he will be up to with the Warriors next year.
But Barnett could partake in one of his top pastimes: storytelling.
Both on the air and in person, Barnett has a unique ability to bring experiences and people—from Red Auerbach to Elvin Hayes to Pat Riley—from his nine-year playing career to life, and over the course of a couple of hours at the Cooperage American Grille in Lafayette, California, he did just that.
So get yourself a coffee, have a seat and prepare to be entertained by …
… The Red Auerbach story …
Barnett had his first encounter with legendary Celtics coach and executive Red Auerbach after he was drafted by the Celtics out of Oregon, in 1966. Barnett was only 21 at the time, and Auerbach had just retired as a coach to focus solely on running the team.
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Barnett: “After I got drafted, I met with Auerbach, to talk about my contract. The whole time, I had told myself I would stand firm, I wanted $15,000 and I would not take no for an answer. You know, I had really talked myself up in my head.
“So I walk into Red’s office, and he is there, he has the cigar and all. He barely looks at me. And he tells me he will read me a letter, from an attorney acting as the agent for Leon Clark, the Celtics’ second-round pick. He gets to the part where the agent is asking for a two-year contract for $22,000. Then he looked up at me and said, ‘You know what I think about this?’
“I shook my head. I was confused and nervous. He didn’t flinch, he ripped the letter right in half. I must have looked like I saw a ghost. So Red said, ‘How does $12,000 sound?’ And I just nodded. I’d have said yes to anything. It was Red Auerbach, you know?”
… The 1967 playoffs story …
In Barnett’s rookie year in Boston, the Celtics were accustomed to winning, having earned eight straight championships. But they were also transitioning from Auerbach to player-coach Bill Russell, who was 32 at the time. Not only did Boston not win a championship, but they failed to reach the Finals.
Barnett: “We lost to Philadelphia in the East Finals. We lost the first game, and we were trailing in the second game, and we got desperate, because they put me into the second game at the Boston Garden. I was scared to death. It was a Sunday, on national television. I played long enough to take nine shots. I was 2-for-9.
“I was playing good defense, though, and we had come back to get the score to 103-102. I stole the ball from Wali Jones on an inbounds pass and I had it, but was scared. I was wide open, but I couldn’t take the shot. I threw it over to K.C. Jones in the corner, and I could see he was mad. K.C. wasn’t a scorer, he hardly ever shot. He whipped the ball back to me, and said, ‘Shoot the damn ball.’
“So I shot. It hit the back of the rim, the front, the back again, the side, then trickled out. We would have had the lead. We lost, 107-102, and we lost the series in five games.
“Philadelphia really killed us in the final game, scored 140 points. It was a very quiet locker room. It was pretty grim. They took it like men, nobody was angry or crying. But they were upset—it was a rude awakening. It was tough.”
… The 1967 expansion draft story …
Barnett’s tenure with the Celtics was short-lived. After a year in Boston, he was selected as an expansion draft pick by San Diego, which was joining the league along with Seattle.
Barnett: “Auerbach helped me out a lot, he got me into the National Guard that year so that I would not have to go off to Vietnam. After my rookie season, I was there at Fort Dix, New Jersey, for 120 days. But that was when the expansion draft was happening, and I was on the Army base when I read in the paper that the Rockets had chosen me. That’s how I found out I was in the expansion draft, I read it.
“I got a phone call a few days later, and it was Jack McMahon, coach of the Rockets. It turned out, he took me with the third pick in the expansion draft, but I didn’t know that. The paper didn’t list the order, but it went Toby Kimball first, then the Sonics took Walt Hazzard, then I went to San Diego. I was basically the second player in franchise history.
“That gave me some leverage. But I didn’t know it, I was on an Army base. I could have asked for a lot in my contract. Jack put out his number, and I should have said, $15,000, but I didn’t, I said, $14,500. Jack said, ‘How about 14?’ And I said, ‘Fine.’
“That’s how it went, really, the whole conversation was like that, less than a minute. Jack told me later, ‘You were the easiest player I ever negotiated with.’ I probably should have been a little tougher. But I was on an Army base.”
… The Pat Riley story …
NBA fans universally know Pat Riley now, of course. But if it had not been for Barnett, both in San Diego and then in Portland, Riley might never have landed with the Lakers and gone on to be a kingpin in L.A., New York and Miami.
MORE: Riley, Spoelstra, Jackson—it's complicated
Barnett: “Riley was the first college pick for the Rockets, they took him seventh in that (1967) draft, out of Kentucky. He came in, and we did not say one word to each other. We really did not like each other. He played my position. That’s how it was. I like Pat now, but at the time, we did not have guaranteed contracts, he was after my job. I was friends with the big guys, like Dave Gambee and Toby Kimball. But guards were not friends with other guards. In practice, Pat and I, we really went at each other.
“Strangely enough, when the league expanded to Portland, Pat Riley was one of the players they took. And the Blazers made a trade for me, they got me from the Rockets. So we were on the same team again, but in training camp, Portland had me, they had Rick Adelman. They put Riley on waivers, he was the last player cut in camp. They kept two players—Ronnie Knight and Walt Gilmore—who only played one year in the NBA, ahead of Riley.
“So the Lakers got Riley on waivers for $1,000. Then Riley goes and plays the next five or six years in L.A. and becomes the head coach and, well, everyone knows what happened from there.”
… The Elvin Hayes story, Part I …
As talented as he was—he averaged 21.0 points and 12.5 rebounds in 16 seasons—Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes was known as a difficult guy to get along with during his NBA career, though he matured as his career went on. “Elvin really did come a long way over time,” Barnett said, “but he could be difficult in his early years.”
MORE: Hayes added to 2013 Hall of Fame
Barnett has an example, from a day in which Hayes and Abdul-Jabbar would reprise their roles from the Game of the Century, the Houston-UCLA collegiate matchup that captured the sporting world’s attention in 1968.
Barnett: “We were in Milwaukee, and it was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s rookie year, and those two were going to be facing off. The game was on a Sunday, and it was nationally televised and getting a lot of attention.
“Earlier, Elvin and I had gotten into an argument, we got a little heated, and he was not happy. I said some things I shouldn’t have, and he started chasing me around the locker room. I was quicker than he was, though, and he could not catch me. So, finally, about 30 minutes before the game, Elvin is sitting in front of his locker, in street clothes.
“Jack McMahon comes in and says, ‘Elvin, get in your uniform.’ Elvin points to me and says, ‘If that man play, I don’t play.’ I am just trying to ignore it, but McMahon comes to me and says, ‘Jim, step outside, let me talk to you.’
“We get out of the locker room, Jack says, ‘You like playing in San Diego, right? You told me you’d take a pay cut just to stay, didn’t you?’ I said yes, yes of course.
“Jack says, ‘All right,, if I go to ownership and tell them that we have a problem between Barnett and Elvin Hayes, what do you think they’ll tell me to do? Who would they tell me to trade?’
“I thought about that for about a minute. Then I went back in and apologized to Elvin. He put on his uniform and played.”
… The Elvin Hayes story, Part II …
In their third season, McMahon’s Rockets were struggling. That, coupled with Hayes’ disapproval, spelled doom for McMahon, but gave a wake-up call to Hayes when the Rockets hired Alex Hannum, a Hall of Fame coach known for challenging Wilt Chamberlain to a fight when he was in Philadelphia.
Barnett: “Elvin had a game where the first three plays were all called for him, and he let passes slip right through his hands for turnovers. It was bad. Jack always called the first play for Elvin. So Jack called timeout and said to Elvin, ‘If you can’t catch the ball, I am putting you on the bench.’
“And right there, Elvin says, ‘F--- you, McMahon. I’ll catch ball. But you be gone soon.’ Sure enough, a few days later, McMahon got fired and they brought in Alex Hannum.
“Now, the thing about Elvin, he was naïve. The Rockets fired McMahon and hired Hannum—he was a former Marine and he ran things like a drill sergeant. Soon after Hannum took over, we are doing the three-man weave drill, and we’re doing it and doing it and doing it, for a really long time. Alex is just there, smiling with his arms folded. Finally, one of the guys says, ‘Alex, can we stop this drill?’ And Alex says, ‘We will stop it when Elvin stops jogging and starts running.’
“Elvin heard that and he didn’t care. He kept jogging. Finally, Alex tells all of us to leave the floor for a few minutes, except Elvin. We did, and we come back in after, and we go back into the three-man weave drill, and all the sudden, Elvin is flying around at full speed, passing, dunking. We were all amazed.
“Stu Lantz was Elvin’s roommate at the time, and he told us later what happened. Alex had grabbed Elvin by the jersey and shoved him against a wall, and really laid into him, said he’d fight him. Alex was a big guy, and intimidating. So when we went back in, Elvin was a little transformed.”
… The intro to broadcasting story …
Barnett did not intend to get into broadcasting after his playing career. He knew he did not want to coach but, despite a successful business career, he did not want to give up on basketball altogether. That led him to broadcasting—and nearly led him to the seat now occupied by Walt Frazier of the Knicks.
Barnett: “Originally, it started because Bill Russell was supposed to call a playoff game in 1976, Suns and Warriors. But Russell had been stranded in Seattle because of fog. They called me, I figured why not? They liked me, and the next year, HBO—it was a new network at that time—had me do the first-round series with Dick Stockton, Portland and Chicago. I did the games in Portland.
“I did not know that Mike Burke, the head of Madison Square Garden, was watching. He liked me, and I had been playing for the Knicks before I finished up the year in 1977 with Philadelphia.
“So Mike told me to come up and talk to him after the season was over, and he said he wanted to give me the job, doing color commentary. I thought, wow. I went back to California and considered it for a few weeks. But they were not offering to pay much and I would have to move my family to New York. I decided I couldn’t do that.
“I called Mike back and told him, ‘Mike, thank you, but I think what I want to be is a regular, rich businessman.’ Mike laughed and said, ‘That’s probably a good decision.’ The job eventually went to Butch Beard, my roommate when I was with the Knicks, and he wound up going from there into coaching. I did get into sales.
“But obviously, I got into broadcasting, too.”Topaz has announced that it will be dropping fuel prices in 14 locations over the bank holiday weekend to 99c per litre for 99 minutes.
Topaz has announced that it will be dropping fuel prices in 14 locations over the bank holiday weekend to 99c per litre for 99 minutes.
A number of Topaz stations across Ireland will offer 99c per litre fuel this weekend
The fuel offers are to celebrate the rollout of Miles, Topaz’s new fuel additive and fuel brand, across its 430 service stations in Ireland.
The rollout of Miles is set to be completed at all Topaz sites by August this year, and Topaz will announce further fuel offers across the country as the rollout progresses.
“Following the huge success to date with the rollout of our Miles fuel brand across Ireland, we are excited to continue offering these incredibly low fuel prices to our customers to celebrate the introduction of our new innovative fuel at these service stations,” Gordon Lawlor, fuels |
| D:5 | Reached skill level 1 in Summonings 3761 | D:5 | Reached XP level 7. HP: 28/32 MP: 18/18 3813 | D:5 | Got a silk robe 3830 | D:5 | Identified the +0 robe "Awea" (You found it on level 5 of the Dungeon) 4141 | D:5 | Acquired Nemelex Xobeh's second power 4213 | D:5 | Found a sand-covered staircase. 4255 | Ossuary | Entered an ossuary 4722 | Ossuary | Noticed an elf zombie 4722 | Ossuary | Noticed an elf zombie 4863 | Ossuary | Killed an elf zombie 4863 | Ossuary | Reached XP level 8. HP: 25/36 MP: 19/19 5546 | Ossuary | Killed an elf zombie 6528 | D:6 | Reached skill level 5 in Spellcasting 6581 | D:6 | Found a staircase to the Ecumenical Temple. 6754 | D:6 | the staircase to the Ecumenical Temple was a mimic. 6761 | D:6 | Reached XP level 9. HP: 36/39 MP: 22/25 6807 | D:6 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 6877 | D:6 | Noticed Prince Ribbit 6880 | D:6 | Killed Prince Ribbit 6895 | D:6 | Gained mutation: Your magical capacity is low (-10% MP). [helix card] 6920 | D:6 | Reached skill level 1 in Evocations 6992 | D:6 | Gained mutation: Armour fits poorly on your strangely shaped body. [mutagenic glow] 7032 | D:6 | Gained mutation: You are dopey (Int -1). [mutagenic glow] 7052 | D:6 | Lost mutation: Your magical capacity is low (-10% MP). [mutagenic glow] 7758 | D:6 | Reached skill level 1 in Bows 8066 | D:6 | Acquired Nemelex Xobeh's third power 8068 | D:6 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 8091 | D:6 | Noticed Eustachio 8211 | D:6 | Killed Eustachio 8925 | D:7 | Reached skill level 1 in Long Blades 9029 | D:7 | Reached skill level 1 in Polearms 9120 | D:7 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 9462 | D:7 | Reached XP level 10. HP: 44/44 MP: 9/27 9487 | D:7 | Found Clum's Food Boutique. 9504 | D:7 | Bought a meat ration for 40 gold pieces 9504 | D:7 | Bought a meat ration for 40 gold pieces 9504 | D:7 | Bought a meat ration for 40 gold pieces 9544 | D:7 | Reached skill level 5 in Short Blades 10270 | D:8 | Acquired Nemelex Xobeh's fourth power 10271 | D:8 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 10278 | D:8 | HP: 2/44 [manticore/volley of spikes (17)] 11122 | D:8 | Learned a level 6 spell: Invisibility 11220 | D:8 | Found a blossoming altar of Fedhas. 11224 | D:8 | Reached skill level 10 in Hexes 11224 | D:8 | Reached skill level 5 in Evocations 12225 | D:8 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 12581 | D:8 | Gained mutation: Your muscles are strong (Str +1). [helix card] 12582 | D:8 | Reached skill level 10 in Spellcasting 12582 | D:8 | Reached skill level 13 in Hexes 12582 | D:8 | Reached XP level 11. HP: 47/47 MP: 27/32 12617 | D:8 | Acquired Nemelex Xobeh's fifth power 12619 | D:8 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 12738 | D:8 | Found an iron altar of Okawaru. 12773 | D:8 | Learned a level 2 spell: Repel Missiles 13509 | D:9 | Reached skill level 1 in Ice Magic 13867 | D:9 | Reached skill level 14 in Hexes 14245 | D:9 | Reached skill level 1 in Unarmed Combat 14805 | D:9 | Reached skill level 10 in Stealth 14805 | D:9 | Reached skill level 1 in Transmutations 15188 | D:9 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 15699 | D:9 | Found a basalt altar of Yredelemnul. 15974 | D:10 | Entered Level 10 of the Dungeon 16184 | D:10 | Noticed Urug 16186 | D:10 | Killed Urug 16280 | D:10 | Reached XP level 12. HP: 34/51 MP: 21/32 16384 | D:10 | Found a shattered altar of Ashenzari. 16384 | D:10 | Noticed a yaktaur captain 16425 | D:10 | Found a glowing golden altar of the Shining One. 16428 | D:10 | Killed a yaktaur captain 16430 | D:10 | Noticed a hill giant 17024 | D:10 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 17037 | D:10 | Killed a hill giant 17765 | D:11 | Found a labyrinth entrance. 17779 | Lab | Entered a labyrinth 20994 | Lab | Noticed a minotaur 21007 | Lab | Killed a minotaur 21009 | Lab | Got a fine iron ring 21009 | Lab | Got a scintillating bone ring 21012 | Lab | Got a bronze swamp dragon armour 21013 | Lab | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 21027 | D:11 | Identified the cursed -4 swamp dragon armour "Kelif" (You found it in a labyrinth) 21108 | D:11 | Reached skill level 10 in Stabbing 21598 | D:11 | Found a staircase to the Orcish Mines. 21625 | D:11 | Noticed a vapour 21625 | D:11 | Noticed a vapour 21917 | Orc:1 | Entered Level 1 of the Orcish Mines 21917 | Orc:1 | Found an iron altar of Okawaru. 21918 | Orc:1 | Found Veamuapt's Food Shop. 21930 | Orc:1 | Identified the ring "Muironoubo" (You found it in a labyrinth) 21930 | Orc:1 | Identified the ring "Husunka" {Str+2 Int+3} (You found it in a labyrinth) 22193 | Orc:2 | Found a roughly hewn altar of Beogh. 22227 | Orc:2 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 22304 | Orc:3 | Noticed Nergalle 22304 | Orc:3 | Noticed a stone giant 22337 | Orc:3 | Noticed Grum 22338 | Orc:3 | Killed a stone giant 22345 | Orc:3 | Killed Grum 22363 | Orc:2 | Killed Nergalle 22772 | Orc:4 | Entered Level 4 of the Orcish Mines 22777 | Orc:4 | Noticed an ogre mage 22807 | Orc:4 | Found Klaonki's Jewellery Boutique. 22817 | Orc:4 | Bought the ring of Yluassou {+Blink rC+ Str+3 Stlth++} for 445 gold pieces 22841 | Orc:4 | Killed an ogre mage 22861 | Orc:4 | Noticed a centaur warrior 22870 | Orc:4 | Killed a centaur warrior 22870 | Orc:4 | Reached skill level 15 in Stabbing 22877 | Orc:4 | Found Ixelon's Distillery. 22877 | Orc:4 | Found Kaoch's Magic Scroll Shop. 23198 | Orc:4 | Found Irikowk's Magical Wand Shoppe. 23199 | Orc:4 | Found Joumyo's Antique Armour Boutique. 23213 | Orc:4 | Reached skill level 16 in Stabbing 23221 | Orc:4 | Bought a warped cloak for 162 gold pieces 23266 | Orc:4 | Identified the +1 cloak of Defence (You bought it in a shop on level 4 of the Orcish Mines) 23313 | Orc:4 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 23349 | Orc:4 | Bought a potion of mutation for 36 gold pieces
RAW Paste Data
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.11.0 (tiles) character file. Matt the Backstabber (Spriggan Enchanter) Turns: 23358, Time: 01:13:11 HP 45/51 AC 7 Str 11 XL: 12 Next: 99% MP 32/32 EV 19 Int 17 God: Nemelex Xobeh [******] Gold 8 SH 2 Dex 20 Spells: 4 memorised, 21 levels left Res.Fire : + + + See Invis. : + p - +2,+1 dagger (venom) Res.Cold : +.. Warding :. v - +0 robe "Awea" {Dex+1 Int+1} Life Prot.: +.. Conserve : + (shield restricted) Res.Poison: + Res.Corr. :. j - +2 wizard hat Res.Elec. :. Clarity :. m - +1 cloak of Defence {+Blink rF+} Sust.Abil.:.. Spirit.Shd :. (gloves unavailable) Res.Mut. :. Stasis :. (boots unavailable) Res.Rott. :. Ctrl.Telep.:. u - amulet of conservation Saprovore :... Levitation :. b - ring of Yluassou {+Blink rC+ Str+3 Stlth++ Ctrl.Flight:. s - ring "Muironoubo" {rPois rF++ rN+} @: very slightly contaminated, very quick, quite resistant to hostile enchantments, extraordinarily stealthy A: unfitting armour, see invisible, deformed body, herbivore 3, speed 3, slow metabolism 2, AC +2, SH +2, Int -1, Dex +2 a: Draw One, Peek at Two, Triple Draw, Deal Four, Stack Five, Renounce Religion, Evoke Blink You are on level 4 of the Orcish Mines. You worship Nemelex Xobeh. Nemelex Xobeh is exalted by your worship. You are not hungry. You have visited 3 branches of the dungeon, and seen 16 of its levels. You have also visited: Labyrinth and Ossuary. You have collected 751 gold pieces. You have spent 763 gold pieces at shops. Inventory: Hand weapons p - a +2,+1 dagger of venom (weapon) y - a sabre G - a +0,+1 dagger of holy wrath Missiles d - 12 darts (quivered) Armour h - a buckler j - a +2 wizard hat (worn) m - the +1 cloak of Defence (worn) {+Blink rF+} (You bought it in a shop on level 4 of the Orcish Mines) It protects you from fire. It lets you blink. q - a +1 cloak v - the +0 robe "Awea" (worn) {Dex+1 Int+1} (You found it on level 5 of the Dungeon) It affects your intelligence (+1). It affects your dexterity (+1). Magical devices e - a wand of frost {zapped: 1} l - a wand of cold B - a wand of enslavement (19) P - a short bone wand Comestibles o - 4 bread rations Scrolls k - 6 scrolls of remove curse F - 2 scrolls of fog I - a scroll labeled PNEYVA QAYGO K - a scroll labeled TEDDUO RIMIL M - a scroll labeled FOBIEN MNIT Jewellery b - the ring of Yluassou (right hand) {+Blink rC+ Str+3 Stlth++} (You bought it in a shop on level 4 of the Orcish Mines) [ring of strength] It affects your strength (+3). It protects you from cold. It lets you blink. It makes you much more stealthy. n - an uncursed ring of teleport control s - the ring "Muironoubo" (left hand) {rPois rF++ rN+} (You found it in a labyrinth) [ring of life protection] It greatly protects you from fire. It protects you from poison. u - an amulet of conservation (around neck) x - a +4 ring of evasion E - an uncursed amulet of warding N - a +3 ring of protection Q - the ring "Husunka" {Ice Str+2 Int+3} (You found it in a labyrinth) [ring of ice] It affects your strength (+2). It affects your intelligence (+3). R - an uncursed amulet of guardian spirit Potions g - a gluggy blue potion i - a cyan potion r - an inky potion t - a blue potion z - a glowing blue potion A - a gluggy black potion D - 2 potions of mutation L - 2 orange potions Books c - a book of Maledictions Spells Type Level *Corona Hexes 1 Sure Blade Hexes/Charms 2 *Ensorcelled Hibernation Hexes/Ice 2 Confuse Hexes 3 Enslavement Hexes 4 *Invisibility Hexes 6 Miscellaneous a - a legendary deck of summonings {drawn: 2} {god gift} f - an ornate deck of escape {drawn: 3} {god gift} w - an ornate deck of destruction {drawn: 2} {god gift} C - a legendary deck of escape {drawn: 4} {god gift} T - a plain deck of summonings {drawn: 7} {god gift} Skills: - Level 6.4 Short Blades Level 3.3 Long Blades Level 1.5 Polearms Level 3.9 Bows - Level 1.7 Throwing - Level 3.0 Dodging + Level 13.3 Stealth - Level 16.6 Stabbing - Level 3.1 Unarmed Combat - Level 10.6 Spellcasting - Level 14.0 Hexes Level 1.0 Summonings Level 0.2 Necromancy Level 4.4 Transmutations - Level 3.6 Ice Magic - Level 5.1 Evocations You have 21 spell levels left. You know the following spells: Your Spells Type Power Failure Level Hunger a - Corona Hex #######. 1% 1 None b - Ensorcelled Hibernat Hex/Ice ######. 1% 2 None c - Invisibility Hex #######.. 4% 6 ######. d - Repel Missiles Chrm/Air ##........ 14% 2 None Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations Branches: Dungeon (11/27) Temple (1/1) D:4 Orc (4/4) D:11 Elf: Orc:3-4 Lair: D:8-13 Altars: Ashenzari Cheibriados Elyvilon Fedhas Kikubaaqudgha Makhleb Nemelex Xobeh Okawaru Sif Muna Trog Vehumet Xom Yredelemnul Zin the Shining One Beogh Shops: D:7: % Orc:1: % Orc:4: /!?[= Annotations D:8 exclusion: 2 oklob saplings Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations You are tiny and cannot use many weapons and most armour. You have supernaturally acute eyesight. You are a herbivore. You cover ground extremely quickly. You need consume almost no food. You are partially covered in large bone plates (AC +2, SH +2). You have a somewhat thin skeletal structure (Dex +2, Str -1, Stlth). Armour fits poorly on your strangely shaped body. You are dopey (Int -1). Your muscles are strong (Str +1). Message History Things that are here: an orcish glaive; an orcish crossbow; 10 bolts You hit the toadstool but do no damage. You hit the toadstool. You destroy the toadstool! Things that are here: an orcish scimitar; an orcish chain mail; an orc corpse Things that are here: an orcish scimitar; an orcish plate armour; an orc corpse There is an entrance to Ixelon's Distillery here. D - 2 potions of mutation (gained 1) Thank you for shopping at Ixelon's Distillery! There is an entrance to Irikowk's Magical Wand Shoppe here. Okay, then. There is an entrance to Ixelon's Distillery here. There is an entrance to Kaoch's Magic Scroll Shop here. There is an entrance to Kaoch's Magic Scroll Shop here. Things that are here: an orcish scimitar; an orcish chain mail; an orc corpse Char dumped to 'C:/Documents and Settings/User/Application Data/crawl/morgue/Matt.txt'...####### ######.................................. #..##..##...#..##..##..........˜˜# ˜˜................˜˜˜# #˜˜˜.............˜˜˜˜#####˜˜˜˜.........˜˜˜˜####n## #˜˜˜˜......˜˜˜˜####).)####˜˜˜˜.....))))...))n))....))).....))))...)@n))...)))). ).).˜˜˜˜####).)####˜˜˜˜. )....˜˜˜˜####n####˜˜˜˜.f..).)..˜˜˜˜#####˜˜˜˜..f..........˜˜˜# ˜˜˜................˜˜# #˜˜....... #..##..##...###...##..##................................................ ###..####.#.)...######## #.....##.........### #...................# There are no monsters in sight! Vanquished Creatures A stone giant (Orc:3) A minotaur (Lab) A yaktaur captain (D:10) An ogre mage (Orc:4) Urug (D:10) A centaur warrior (Orc:4) A hill giant (D:11) 3 orc knights (Orc:4) 2 elf zombies (Ossuary) A yaktaur (D:10) An ugly thing (D:10) Prince Ribbit (D:6) A troll (D:10) 2 two-headed ogres (Orc:4) 3 wandering mushrooms (D:8) A wyvern (D:11) 15 yaks Eustachio (D:6) A hungry ghost (D:11) Grum (Orc:3) 3 hippogriffs A war dog (Orc:3) A manticore (D:8) 2 human zombies (Ossuary) 4 ice beasts 27 orc warriors 12 ogres A giant goldfish zombie (D:9) 3 sky beasts 8 centaurs A crocodile (D:8) A warg (Orc:1) 6 giant frogs A water moccasin (D:10) A wolf (D:8) 11 two-headed ogre zombies (D:9) A basilisk skeleton (D:10) A manticore simulacrum (D:8) An eye of draining (D:11) 3 killer bee zombies 10 killer bees 2 jellyfish (D:6) 3 electric eels 2 big kobold zombies 4 crimson imps 3 ogre zombies (D:11) 2 big kobold skeletons 3 goliath beetles 4 big fish 14 orc priests A shadow (D:9) A gnoll shaman (D:8) 3 hounds A hound skeleton (D:5) A scorpion (D:6) A worker ant zombie (D:8) 10 worker ants 21 orc wizards A big fish zombie (D:9) 4 jellies 2 mummies (Ossuary) 9 gnolls An inept feature mimic (D:6) 14 adders An adder zombie (Ossuary) An iguana skeleton (D:9) An iguana zombie (D:6) 2 white imps (D:8) 2 worms (D:6) An ufetubus (D:8) 3 giant eyeballs A giant mite zombie (D:5) A gnoll zombie (D:5) An ooze (D:5) 85 orcs 15 bats 6 giant cockroaches 13 hobgoblins 21 jackals 3 quokkas 5 ball pythons 8 giant geckos 6 giant newts 17 goblins A goblin skeleton (D:11) 3 goblin zombies 12 hobgoblin zombies A jackal skeleton (D:6) 2 jackal zombies (Ossuary) 10 kobolds 10 kobold zombies (Ossuary) 5 orc skeletons 13 orc zombies 16 rats 2 rat skeletons 3 rat zombies 9 toadstools 526 creatures vanquished. Vanquished Creatures (collateral kills) Nergalle (Orc:2) A hill giant (D:10) A hungry ghost (D:11) A war dog (Orc:2) A phantom (D:11) An ice beast (D:8) A centaur (D:8) A cyclops simulacrum (D:8) 2 ogre zombies (D:11) A big kobold skeleton (D:8) An orc priest (D:11) A white imp (D:8) An orc (D:11) A goblin skeleton (D:11) A goblin zombie (D:11) An orc zombie (D:11) 17 creatures vanquished. Vanquished Creatures (others) A war dog (D:11) A small abomination (D:8) A hound (D:11) 13 toadstools 16 creatures vanquished. Grand Total: 559 creatures vanquished Notes Turn | Place | Note -------------------------------------------------------------- 0 | D:1 | Matt, the Spriggan Enchanter, began the quest for the Orb. 0 | D:1 | Reached XP level 1. HP: 9/9 MP: 4/4 167 | D:1 | Reached skill level 4 in Hexes 255 | D:1 | Reached XP level 2. HP: 7/13 MP: 6/6 1179 | D:2 | Reached skill level 5 in Hexes 1206 | D:2 | Reached XP level 3. HP: 16/16 MP: 9/9 1508 | D:2 | Learned a level 2 spell: Ensorcelled Hibernation 1605 | D:2 | Found a glowing golden altar of the Shining One. 2192 | D:3 | Reached XP level 4. HP: 21/21 MP: 6/11 2342 | D:3 | Reached skill level 6 in Hexes 2479 | D:4 | Found a staircase to the Ecumenical Temple. 2501 | Temple | Entered the Ecumenical Temple 2567 | Temple | Became a worshipper of Nemelex Xobeh 2585 | D:4 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 2597 | D:4 | Gained mutation: You are partially covered in large bone plates (AC +2, SH +2). [helix card] 2598 | D:4 | Reached skill level 7 in Stealth 2598 | D:4 | Reached skill level 8 in Hexes 2598 | D:4 | Reached XP level 5. HP: 24/24 MP: 13/13 2598 | D:4 | Acquired Nemelex Xobeh's first power 2598 | D:4 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 2601 | D:4 | Gained mutation: You have a somewhat thin skeletal structure (Dex +2, Str -1, Stlth). [helix card] 3335 | D:4 | Reached XP level 6. HP: 22/28 MP: 16/16 3637 | D:5 | Entered Level 5 of the Dungeon 3761 | D:5 | Reached skill level 9 in Stealth 3761 | D:5 | Reached skill level 1 in Summonings 3761 | D:5 | Reached XP level 7. HP: 28/32 MP: 18/18 3813 | D:5 | Got a silk robe 3830 | D:5 | Identified the +0 robe "Awea" (You found it on level 5 of the Dungeon) 4141 | D:5 | Acquired Nemelex Xobeh's second power 4213 | D:5 | Found a sand-covered staircase. 4255 | Ossuary | Entered an ossuary 4722 | Ossuary | Noticed an elf zombie 4722 | Ossuary | Noticed an elf zombie 4863 | Ossuary | Killed an elf zombie 4863 | Ossuary | Reached XP level 8. HP: 25/36 MP: 19/19 5546 | Ossuary | Killed an elf zombie 6528 | D:6 | Reached skill level 5 in Spellcasting 6581 | D:6 | Found a staircase to the Ecumenical Temple. 6754 | D:6 | the staircase to the Ecumenical Temple was a mimic. 6761 | D:6 | Reached XP level 9. HP: 36/39 MP: 22/25 6807 | D:6 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 6877 | D:6 | Noticed Prince Ribbit 6880 | D:6 | Killed Prince Ribbit 6895 | D:6 | Gained mutation: Your magical capacity is low (-10% MP). [helix card] 6920 | D:6 | Reached skill level 1 in Evocations 6992 | D:6 | Gained mutation: Armour fits poorly on your strangely shaped body. [mutagenic glow] 7032 | D:6 | Gained mutation: You are dopey (Int -1). [mutagenic glow] 7052 | D:6 | Lost mutation: Your magical capacity is low (-10% MP). [mutagenic glow] 7758 | D:6 | Reached skill level 1 in Bows 8066 | D:6 | Acquired Nemelex Xobeh's third power 8068 | D:6 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 8091 | D:6 | Noticed Eustachio 8211 | D:6 | Killed Eustachio 8925 | D:7 | Reached skill level 1 in Long Blades 9029 | D:7 | Reached skill level 1 in Polearms 9120 | D:7 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 9462 | D:7 | Reached XP level 10. HP: 44/44 MP: 9/27 9487 | D:7 | Found Clum's Food Boutique. 9504 | D:7 | Bought a meat ration for 40 gold pieces 9504 | D:7 | Bought a meat ration for 40 gold pieces 9504 | D:7 | Bought a meat ration for 40 gold pieces 9544 | D:7 | Reached skill level 5 in Short Blades 10270 | D:8 | Acquired Nemelex Xobeh's fourth power 10271 | D:8 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 10278 | D:8 | HP: 2/44 [manticore/volley of spikes (17)] 11122 | D:8 | Learned a level 6 spell: Invisibility 11220 | D:8 | Found a blossoming altar of Fedhas. 11224 | D:8 | Reached skill level 10 in Hexes 11224 | D:8 | Reached skill level 5 in Evocations 12225 | D:8 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 12581 | D:8 | Gained mutation: Your muscles are strong (Str +1). [helix card] 12582 | D:8 | Reached skill level 10 in Spellcasting 12582 | D:8 | Reached skill level 13 in Hexes 12582 | D:8 | Reached XP level 11. HP: 47/47 MP: 27/32 12617 | D:8 | Acquired Nemelex Xobeh's fifth power 12619 | D:8 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 12738 | D:8 | Found an iron altar of Okawaru. 12773 | D:8 | Learned a level 2 spell: Repel Missiles 13509 | D:9 | Reached skill level 1 in Ice Magic 13867 | D:9 | Reached skill level 14 in Hexes 14245 | D:9 | Reached skill level 1 in Unarmed Combat 14805 | D:9 | Reached skill level 10 in Stealth 14805 | D:9 | Reached skill level 1 in Transmutations 15188 | D:9 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 15699 | D:9 | Found a basalt altar of Yredelemnul. 15974 | D:10 | Entered Level 10 of the Dungeon 16184 | D:10 | Noticed Urug 16186 | D:10 | Killed Urug 16280 | D:10 | Reached XP level 12. HP: 34/51 MP: 21/32 16384 | D:10 | Found a shattered altar of Ashenzari. 16384 | D:10 | Noticed a yaktaur captain 16425 | D:10 | Found a glowing golden altar of the Shining One. 16428 | D:10 | Killed a yaktaur captain 16430 | D:10 | Noticed a hill giant 17024 | D:10 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 17037 | D:10 | Killed a hill giant 17765 | D:11 | Found a labyrinth entrance. 17779 | Lab | Entered a labyrinth 20994 | Lab | Noticed a minotaur 21007 | Lab | Killed a minotaur 21009 | Lab | Got a fine iron ring 21009 | Lab | Got a scintillating bone ring 21012 | Lab | Got a bronze swamp dragon armour 21013 | Lab | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 21027 | D:11 | Identified the cursed -4 swamp dragon armour "Kelif" (You found it in a labyrinth) 21108 | D:11 | Reached skill level 10 in Stabbing 21598 | D:11 | Found a staircase to the Orcish Mines. 21625 | D:11 | Noticed a vapour 21625 | D:11 | Noticed a vapour 21917 | Orc:1 | Entered Level 1 of the Orcish Mines 21917 | Orc:1 | Found an iron altar of Okawaru. 21918 | Orc:1 | Found Veamuapt's Food Shop. 21930 | Orc:1 | Identified the ring "Muironoubo" (You found it in a labyrinth) 21930 | Orc:1 | Identified the ring "Husunka" {Str+2 Int+3} (You found it in a labyrinth) 22193 | Orc:2 | Found a roughly hewn altar of Beogh. 22227 | Orc:2 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 22304 | Orc:3 | Noticed Nergalle 22304 | Orc:3 | Noticed a stone giant 22337 | Orc:3 | Noticed Grum 22338 | Orc:3 | Killed a stone giant 22345 | Orc:3 | Killed Grum 22363 | Orc:2 | Killed Nergalle 22772 | Orc:4 | Entered Level 4 of the Orcish Mines 22777 | Orc:4 | Noticed an ogre mage 22807 | Orc:4 | Found Klaonki's Jewellery Boutique. 22817 | Orc:4 | Bought the ring of Yluassou {+Blink rC+ Str+3 Stlth++} for 445 gold pieces 22841 | Orc:4 | Killed an ogre mage 22861 | Orc:4 | Noticed a centaur warrior 22870 | Orc:4 | Killed a centaur warrior 22870 | Orc:4 | Reached skill level 15 in Stabbing 22877 | Orc:4 | Found Ixelon's Distillery. 22877 | Orc:4 | Found Kaoch's Magic Scroll Shop. 23198 | Orc:4 | Found Irikowk's Magical Wand Shoppe. 23199 | Orc:4 | Found Joumyo's Antique Armour Boutique. 23213 | Orc:4 | Reached skill level 16 in Stabbing 23221 | Orc:4 | Bought a warped cloak for 162 gold pieces 23266 | Orc:4 | Identified the +1 cloak of Defence (You bought it in a shop on level 4 of the Orcish Mines) 23313 | Orc:4 | Received a gift from Nemelex Xobeh 23349 | Orc:4 | Bought a potion of mutation for 36 gold piecesPhilip Markoff was in his second year of medical school when he was arrested for robbery and murder. He earned the moniker "Craigslist Killer" because it was believed that he found his victims through the exotic ads that they placed on Craigslist.
Early Life
Philip Markoff, born Feb. 12, 1986, grew up in the small town (population 3,147) of Sherill, New York. Philip's parents divorced when he was in elementary school. He stayed with his mother, and his older brother went with his father who was a dentist in Syracuse.
Those who remembered Philip Markoff as a child described him as being well behaved and a good student.
High School Years
Throughout high school, Markoff's behavior was exemplary. He was clean-cut, popular and involved in student activities including the youth court and history club.
Physically he was good looking and stood out from a lot of the boys his age. He was six-foot-three-inches tall with broad shoulders and a husky frame. Most boys his size would have been going out for the football team, but Markoff was a strong competitor on the bowling team and liked to play golf.
Academically, Markoff was very serious about his education and preparing for his future. His accomplishments included being an honor student and a member of the National Honor Society. Phillip Markoff's future looked bright.
College Years
After high school, Markoff went to the University of Albany where he showed an intense desire to excel. He took on extra courses and graduated in three years with a bachelor's degree in biology.
Socially, Markoff was reserved with friends and awkward around women. He studied a lot and worked as a volunteer at the emergency room of the local hospital. The one thing he would do for fun was play in all-night poker games with his friends. He earned a reputation for being a good, but serious player—sometimes too serious. He wasn't a very good loser.
Megan McAllister
Markoff met Megan McAllister at the hospital where he volunteered. Megan was attractive and sophisticated and two years older than Markoff. She asked him out on a date, and he accepted. They continued to date regularly and became college sweethearts.
After graduating from college, Markoff and McAllister moved to Boston. Markoff had been accepted to Boston University Medical School. McAllister also planned to go to medical school, but one of the only schools that would accept her was in the St. Kitts in the Caribbean.
On May 17, 2008, Markoff proposed to McAllister and she accepted. She put her medical school plans on hold and began to focus on their wedding plans. The date was set for August 14, 2009.
Everything about their wedding was going to be first class. The wedding registry listed mainly expensive name brands of china, silver, and crystal. It was as if she was planning everything for the successful future she knew the two would eventually share together.
The differences in their backgrounds became more apparent as the wedding date neared. Markoff |
N'Djamena, and tested by routine microbiology or by latex test; the latex test is also being used in the field. The completeness of case ascertainment is unknown. From March 1, 2012, to June 30, 2012, surveillance was enhanced, with support from the MenAfriCar consortium, in the three regions (N'Djamena, Chari-Baguirmi, and Mayo-Kebbi Est) in which individuals aged 1–29 years (target population 1·8 million) had been vaccinated with PsA–TT during 10 days in December, 2011, shortly before the 2012 epidemic season. A nurse and a laboratory technician were identified at each hospital and given responsibility to complete a case report form on any suspected case of meningitis and to ensure that CSF samples were transported to the national reference laboratory in a plain tube and in trans-isolate medium. Additionally, case surveillance was established during an outbreak from March 4, to May 5, 2012, in one district (Moissala) that had not received PsA–TT and where reactive vaccination was undertaken.
Chad is one of the largest countries in Africa with a surface area greater than 1 million km 2. The north of the country is desert, the centre is arid Sahel, and the south a more fertile Sudan Savanna zone. The central and southern parts of the country have a typical Sahelian climate with a short rainy season, maximum in the south, and a long dry season during which epidemics of meningitis can happen. The population, roughly 11 million, is concentrated in the southern part of the country. Health care is provided through about 800 health centres, 60 district hospitals, ten regional hospitals, and two tertiary hospitals in N'Djamena.
The prevalence of meningococcal carriage in the rural area of Mandelia varied with age, and was most frequent in individuals aged 1–29 years. The overall prevalence of meningococcal carriage was low in two surveys undertaken before, and one survey undertaken after vaccination of individuals aged 1–29 years with PsA–TT ( table 2 ). Serogroup A carriers were defined according to the characteristics of their pharyngeal isolate—namely, whether the isolate provided DNA corresponding to either serogroup A capsule region, rplF allele 1 (rplF-1) and a porA gene encoding the subtype P1·20,9 (criterion one); or to a serogroup A capsular gene alone (criterion two). The first definition was regarded as confirmation that the individual was carrying an epidemic strain—ie, a serogroup A, ST-5 clonal complex meningococcus. Most of the individuals with serogroup A capsular DNA were probably also carrying such a strain, perhaps at a low density. 2–4 months before vaccination, 32 of 4278 individuals (0·75%) met criterion one and an additional 12 met criterion two. 4–6 months after the vaccination campaign, only one of 5001 individuals tested (0·02%) met criterion one, a 98% difference in prevalence (adjusted odds ratio 0·019, 95% CI 0·002–0·138), and no additional individual met criterion two. The one serogroup A carrier detected after vaccination was a 15-year-old boy who, according to his vaccination card, had been vaccinated with PsA–TT 4 months before detection. The number of individuals carrying serogroup A fell in the unvaccinated age groups from seven of 1374 before vaccination to zero of 336 individuals after vaccination (p=0·19).
Other serogroups include specimens that were confirmed as Neisseria meningitidis, but not characterised as serogroup A subtype P1·20,9 or serogroup X or W. Further inf ormation about these specimens are given in the appendix
The incidence of meningitis reached the epidemic threshold in weeks 6–22 in 12 districts, initiating reactive vaccination campaigns undertaken by the Ministry of Health, WHO, MSF, and other agencies. The effect of reactive vaccination was studied in detail in one district (Moissala, attack rate 148 per 100 000 population, case fatality rate 3·4%) where CSF samples were obtained from 176 of 334 (53%) reported cases. Before vaccination with PsA–TT, 48 serogroup A infections were detected by latex agglutination and 35 by culture or PCR; the data for serogroup W were 18 and 17, respectively. After the vaccination campaign, only one further case of serogroup A meningitis was detected in a 9-year-old girl who had been vaccinated 5 days previously ( appendix ).
In 2012, laboratory confirmation of a diagnosis of meningococcal meningitis was made in 65 of 366 CSF samples (18%) submitted to the national reference laboratory in N'Djamena. A diagnosis of serogroup A meningococcal meningitis was made by culture or latex test in 59 of 329 samples from people in regions where vaccination had not been done previously with PsA–TT. Serogroup A meningococcus was not isolated from any of the 37 samples from the three vaccinated regions with enhanced surveillance ( table 1 ), even though only individuals aged 1–29 years had been vaccinated. Ten serogroup A isolates obtained from cases of meningitis studied at the National Institute for Public Health, Oslo, Norway, were all characterised as belonging to ST-7 of the ST-5 clonal complex, subtype P1·20,9.
The incidence of reported cases of meningitis during the first 26 weeks of 2012 in the three regions where vaccination with PsA–TT of individuals aged 1–29 years had been undertaken the previous year was 2·48 per 100 000 (57 cases per 2·3 million population). By contrast, the incidence in areas where PsA–TT vaccination had not been undertaken as part of the mass campaign, including the areas where reactive vaccination was undertaken in response to an outbreak, was 43·8 per 100 000 (3809 cases per 8·7 million population), a 94% difference in total incidence in 2012 (p<0·0001). 17 districts reached the alert or epidemic threshold in 2012, none of which were in the three vaccinated regions ( figure 2 ). The difference in incidence between vaccinated and unvaccinated regions recorded in 2012 showed a marked change from the pattern recorded in the previous 3 years ( figure 3 ). Results from a negative binomial regression model suggest a 90·4% (p<0·0001) overall reduction in the risk of meningitis after mass vaccination, with an estimated incidence rate ratio of 0·096 (95% CI 0·046–0·198).
Reactive vaccination campaigns with serogroups A and C or serogroups A,C, and W plain polysaccharide vaccines were implemented in response to outbreaks in nine districts in 2009 (A+C), in eight districts in 2010 (A+C [three]; A+C+W [five]), and in 12 districts and the refugee camp of Tréguine (district of Adré) in 2011 (A+C). Between February and May, 2012, reactive vaccination campaigns with the PsA–TT conjugate vaccine were done in nine districts that had passed the epidemic threshold and in three other districts next to epidemic districts. Vaccine coverage with PsA–TT in the target population (1·5 million) during the 2012 reactive vaccination campaigns was estimated to be 94%. In five of the 12 districts that received PsA–TT in 2011, reactive vaccination with polysaccharide serogroups A and C vaccine had been done in 2009. Reactive vaccination campaigns with polysaccharide vaccines were not undertaken in any of these 12 districts in 2010, 2011, or 2012.
The present epidemic of meningitis in Chad began in 2009 with an upsurge in cases of both serogroup A and serogroup W meningococcal meningitis. 3058 cases were reported in 2010, 5960 in 2011, and 3795 in 2012 ( figure 2 ). During 2011 and 2012, most meningococcal isolates obtained were serogroup A (data not shown). In the three regions in which vaccination was undertaken in December, 2011, estimated vaccine coverage was 102%. These regions were chosen for logistical reasons. Nationwide vaccination of the 1–29-year-old population was achieved in three further phases between June and December, 2012, with estimated vaccine coverage of 95%, 95%, and 81%, respectively. Coverage in the last phase of the vaccination campaign fell after reports of adverse events after vaccination, concerns that were subsequently shown to be unfounded.
Green shading shows the districts where mass vaccination of people aged 1–29 years was undertaken at the end of 2011, before the 2012 meningitis season. Red shading shows the districts where the alert or epidemic threshold was reached during the course of the 2012 meningitis season. PsA–TT=serogroup A meningococcal polysaccharide–tetanus toxoid conjugate vaccine.
Discussion
This study has established the ability of a new serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine (PsA–TT) to prevent epidemic meningitis in Chad, a country within the African meningitis belt where epidemics are frequent and severe. The vaccine halted a continuing epidemic in districts around the capital N'Djamena while the epidemic continued in other parts of the country. Vaccination was associated with a marked drop in pharyngeal carriage of the serogroup A epidemic strain, and this probably contributed to the substantial effect of the vaccine.
28 Maiden MC
Stuart JM MCMaidenJMStuart for the UK Meningococcal Carriage Group Carriage of serogroup C meningococci 1 year after meningococcal C conjugate polysaccharide vaccination. Measurement of the effectiveness of a vaccine after its introduction is especially important when licensure has been based solely on safety and immunogenicity, as has been the case for PsA–TT and other conjugate vaccines. Studies done before and after vaccination can provide some evidence for an effect,but can be affected by temporal changes in disease incidence that are independent of any intervention. This constraint applies especially to infections that tend to be epidemic such as meningococcal infection. The fact that only part of Chad was vaccinated at the end of 2011 provided a unique opportunity to measure the effect of PsA–TT on serogroup A meningococcal disease by measurement of disease incidence in vaccinated and unvaccinated areas at the same time.
At the end of 2011, shortly before the 2012 epidemic season, vaccination of individuals aged 1–29 years (target population 1·8 million) was undertaken in three regions of Chad. The estimated coverage of the mass campaign was 102%. This apparently anomalous figure might be indicative of inaccuracies in the census data used as a denominator because the census was done 3 years before vaccination. Other possible explanations could be that individuals older than the targeted limit of 29 years were vaccinated, people travelled to the region to be immunised, or some individuals were vaccinated twice.
During the 2012 meningitis season, the incidence of meningitis fell substantially in areas of Chad where individuals aged 1–29 years had been vaccinated with PsA–TT a few months previously while the epidemic continued in neighbouring non-vaccinated areas. The disparity between vaccinated and non-vaccinated groups was probably even greater than we have reported here for two reasons. First, surveillance for cases of meningitis was enhanced in the vaccinated areas but, for financial and logistical reasons, not in the rest of the country where reporting of cases was dependent upon a less rigorous routine surveillance system. Despite enhanced surveillance, no case of serogroup A meningitis was detected in a population of roughly 2 million residents in the vaccinated areas. Second, reactive vaccination was undertaken in the middle of the 2012 meningitis season in 12 districts that had passed the epidemic threshold. Had reactive vaccination not been undertaken in these districts, more cases would probably have been recorded, increasing the disparity in incidence between unvaccinated and vaccinated areas.
Because vaccinated and non-vaccinated districts were not randomised, the difference in incidence of meningitis between vaccinated and non-vaccinated areas could have been caused by random fluctuations in disease incidence. However, we think that this situation is very unlikely for two main reasons. First, surveillance data suggest that the epidemic was progressing in a similar way in vaccinated and in unvaccinated areas before vaccination ( figure 3 ), and second, the geographical distribution of cases in the 2012 outbreak ( figure 1 ) suggests that the vaccinated areas where no cases were recorded are surrounded by areas where the epidemic or alert threshold was reached.
The drop in the number of cases of meningitis recorded in vaccinated areas was accompanied by a 98% decrease in the prevalence of serogroup A meningococcal carriage in all age groups in a rural area where the serogroup A meningococcal carriage rate had been about 1% before vaccination with PsA–TT. This decrease was equally large when the definition of carriage was detection of the serogroup A epidemic strain or the likely presence of a serogroup A meningococcus. For logistical and financial reasons, carriage studies in non-vaccinated areas during the period in which post-vaccination carriage findings were made in the vaccinated population were not possible. However, the fact that the incidence of serogroup A disease remained high in these non-vaccinated areas suggests that transmission of the serogroup A meningococcus was continuing in these districts and that carriers were present.
17 Novak RT
Kambou JL
Diomandé FV
et al. Serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccination in Burkina Faso: analysis of national surveillance data., 18 Kristiansen PA
Diomandé F
Ba AK
et al. Impact of the serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine, MenAfriVac, on carriage and herd immunity. 17 Novak RT
Kambou JL
Diomandé FV
et al. Serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccination in Burkina Faso: analysis of national surveillance data., 18 Kristiansen PA
Diomandé F
Ba AK
et al. Impact of the serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine, MenAfriVac, on carriage and herd immunity. Panel Research in context Systematic review 29 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine coverage after the first national mass immunization campaign-Burkina Faso, 2011. 30 Kim SH
Pezzoli L
Yacouba H
et al. Whom and where are we not vaccinating? Coverage after the introduction of a new conjugate vaccine against group A meningococcus in Niger in 2010., 31 Caini S
Beck NS
Yacouba H
et al. From Agadez to Zinder: estimating coverage of the MenAfriVac™ conjugate vaccine against meningococcal serogroup A in Niger, September 2010–January 2012. 18 Kristiansen PA
Diomandé F
Ba AK
et al. Impact of the serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine, MenAfriVac, on carriage and herd immunity. 19 Massenet D
Vohod D
Hamadicko H
Caugant DA Epidemic meningococcal meningitis, Cameroon. We searched PubMed with the search terms “Africa” AND (“Neisseria” OR “meningococci”) AND “vaccine” AND “conjugate” AND (“evaluation” OR “impact” OR “effectiveness” OR “uptake” OR “coverage”), to identify papers published between Jan 1, 2010, and May 1, 2013, because 2010 was the first year that serogroup A meningococcal polysaccharide–tetanus toxoid conjugate vaccine (PsA–TT, MenAfriVac) was used after phase 1 and 2 clinical trials. Five of the 27 papers retrieved were relevant to understanding the effect of population-based vaccination campaigns with PsA–TT. Three studies reported high vaccine uptake in Burkina Fasoand Niger.Two papers from Burkina Faso reported the effect of PsA–TT introduction on rates of meningitisand meningococcal carriage.In the study of meningitis rates, which analysed meningitis incidence rates from surveillance data, a mass vaccination campaigns in people aged 1–29 years was estimated to reduce the risk of meningitis by 71% overall, whereas the risk of disease caused by laboratory-confirmed serogroup A Neisseria meningitidis fell by 99·8%. However, the incidence of serogroup A meningitis was low at the time of vaccine introduction in this country. The carriage surveys in Burkina Faso did not identify any serogroup A carriers after vaccination, compared with a baseline prevalence of 0·39%. Interpretation Our study is the first to measure the effect of PsA–TT on meningococcal disease and carriage in a country with an epidemic of serogroup A meningitis at the time of vaccine introduction. The incidence of meningitis fell substantially in vaccinated areas whereas the epidemic continued in unvaccinated parts of the country. PsA–TT seems to be highly effective against both serogroup A meningococcal disease and carriage. Questions remain about the duration of protection provided by this vaccine and whether elimination of the serogroup A meningococcus will be followed by an upsurge in cases caused by meningococci belonging to other serogroups. To answer these questions will need continued surveillance for meningitis and further carriage studies in countries of the African meningitis belt. No cases of serogroup A meningitis were detected in residents of the vaccinated areas who were too young or too old to be vaccinated. Only eight cases of meningitis of any kind were reported in this population, although about 100 would have been expected in view of the overall attack rate in the unvaccinated population and the age distribution of cases detected in the unvaccinated Moissala district. These findings, together with the absence of any serogroup A meningococcal carriage in the unvaccinated population in the areas where mass vaccination had been undertaken, suggest that PsA–TT has an important, indirect effect on serogroup A carriage and disease, in keeping with the results of studies in Burkina Faso ( panel ).The result of studies done before and after intervention in Burkina Faso suggested that PsA–TT had a major effect on both the incidence of meningitis and of serogroup A carriage in that country,but the incidence of serogroup A disease in Burkina Faso was falling before the introduction of the vaccine and so the further decrease recorded in 2011 could have been caused by naturally acquired immunity to the epidemic clone. Because national vaccination coverage was achieved within a short period in Burkina Faso, the comparison of data from vaccinated and non-vaccinated areas was not possible. By contrast, in Chad, we were able to describe the incidence of meningitis in vaccinated and unvaccinated areas over the same period during an epidemic.
32 Altmann D
Aseffa A
Bash M
et al. DAltmannAAseffaMBash for the Dakar discussion group on priorities for research on epidemic meningococcal disease in Africa Priorities for research on meningococcal disease and the impact of serogroup A vaccination in the African meningitis belt. Data from studies done in Chad strongly suggest that PsA–TT has a major effect on serogroup A meningococcal disease and carriage and support the continuing roll-out of this vaccine across the African meningitis belt. However, several more years of active surveillance are needed to establish the duration of protection provided by PsA–TT, whether the vaccine can prevent future epidemics, and whether reduction of serogroup A meningococcal carriage will lead to an increase in carriage with other meningococci.Replacement could be beneficial if the strain that replaces the serogroup A meningococcus is non-pathogenic, or it could be a major concern for future vaccination strategies if the replacement strain is able to cause epidemics.Production on the stalled season of Bachelor In Paradise will resume next week, according to various cast members’ tweets confirming their participation.
ABC will announce a new premiere date in the next few days, informed sources say. And this season is likely to run for two fewer hours to compensate for the halt of production, the sources say. Contacted for comment, a Warner Bros rep declined.
The reality series was on track to debut its fourth season August 8, until production was halted after an allegation of sexual misconduct on the set.
Don’t expect Bachelor in Paradise to debut on August 8, sources suggest.
Do expect the show to address the shut-down on-air in that debut.
This past Tuesday, in a surprise twist worthy of a hit reality-TV series storyline, Warner Bros TV announced it was resuscitating production on the Bachelor summer spinoff, saying its own internal investigation into the allegation failed to turn up evidence to support any charge of misconduct by a cast member.
ABC followed Warner Bros’ statement with one of its own, saying, “given their results, the series will resume production, and will air this summer on ABC.”
No details were given at the time those two statements halted media buzz, at least temporarily, that the show was toast for the summer if not forever.
Warner Bros had suspended production in Mexico after just a few day of shooting, due to what the studio called an “allegation of misconduct” by a show participant. The investigation was triggered when a producer on the show filed an internal complaint the day after an incident in which contestant DeMario Jackson and a “fellow contestant” reportedly engaged in a sexual act while they were “both intoxicated,” ABC News reported on Good Morning America. The “female contestant” allegedly was so inebriated she did not remember any of it the following day, ABC News added.
Corinne Olympios, a participant in this season of the reality series, issued her own statement, saying, “I am a victim and have spent the last week trying to make sense of what happened on June 4. Although I have little memory of that night, something bad obviously took place.”
In Tuesday’s announcement, Warner Bros said:
“Our internal investigation, conducted with the assistance of an outside law firm, has now been completed. Out of respect for the privacy interests of those involved, we do not intend to release the videotape of the incident,” the studio said. “We can say, however, that the tape does not support any charge of misconduct by a cast member. Nor does the tape show, contrary to many press reports, that the safety of any cast member was ever in jeopardy. Production on this season of Bachelor in Paradise will be resuming, and we plan to implement certain changes to the show’s policies and procedures to enhance and further ensure the safety and security of all participants.”
But Olympios’ attorney, Hollywood legal heavyweight Marty Singer, said Tuesday that, despite Warner Bros’ announcement, his own investigation of the incident continues.
“It needs to be made crystal clear that production of Bachelor In Paradise was shut down because of multiple complaints received from BIP producers and crewmembers on the set,” Singer said in a statement. “It was not shut down due to any complaint filed by Corinne against anyone.”
“It comes as no surprise that Warner Bros, as a result of its own internal investigation, would state that no wrongdoing had occurred,” Singer continued. “Our own investigation will continue based on multiple new witnesses coming forward revealing what they saw and heard.”
The fourth season of the summer reality series originally was billed with a cast comprised of former fan favorites “and controversial characters” from previous seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, according to the show’s website. The season’s cast was set to include Raven Gates, Olympios, Amanda Stanton, Alexis Waters, Derek Peth, Jackson, Lacey Mark, Kristina Schulman, Nick “St. Nick” Benvenutti, Danielle Maltby, Taylor Nolan, Robby Hayes, Ben Zorn, Jasmine Goode, Vinny Ventiera, and Alex Woytkiw.As some of you may know, Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai provides updates on the game’s development through Miiverse on a regular basis, which usually includes information on character attacks, assist trophies, and more. Today’s update, however, details some changes they have made to edge-grabbing in the upcoming Wii U and 3DS title.
According to Sakurai, there are many changes being made to both the offensive and defensive aspects of edge-grabbing, an example of which is highlighted in the daily image below.
He went on to explain a few more specifics on the changes they’ve made, mentioning how invincibility periods will work as well as their removal of accumulated damage-specific edge controls.
Air time and accumulated damage will determine your period of invincibility while hanging on an edge.
Grab controls will no longer be affected by whether you have above or below 100% damage.
Feel free to let us know what you think of these adjustments in the comments below.
Source: Miiverse via TheRedKirbyMoving Sidewalks in the 1920's
In the midst of a pretty normal report on how to save Georgia Power's Atlanta transit system, the Beeler Organization threw in a proposal right out of Astounding Magazine.
To thin the hords of pedestrians on the surface, they proposed an underground people mover. One North/South for the Peachtree corridor and one East/West for the Marietta St- Edgewood corridor. They imagined a cavern with it's own shops and pedestrians.
And there, similar to a Robert Heinlein story are bands of moving sidewalks that get progressively faster towards the middle; the middle being a six mile-per-hour track with bench seats.
It appears Beeler wasn't kidding about this, as it shows up in the introduction on page vi under the main title Summary of Principal Recommendations
Moving Underground Sidewalks Moving platforms or sidewalks underneath the present sidewalks, (1) on both sides of Whitehall and Peachtree Streets between Mitchell Street and Carnegie Way; (2) on Marietta Street and Edgewood Avenue between Spring and Ivy Street. These sidewalks virtually will be subways without trains. From a stationary sidewalk underneath existing sidewalks, pedestrians will step to a platform moving continuaously at a speed of two miles an hour, thence to a platform moving at a speed of four miles an hour, and if a greater speed is desired, to a sidewalk equipped with seats and moving at six miles an hour. This plan also permits of new store and office building entrances below the present sidewalk.
Now, this is being proposed to a company making half what they made four years before! I can't imagine how expensive this plan would have been to implement.
Within the report, they go into alot of detail and it's too bad a subway wasn't conceived at this time. The BMT was being built around then in New York and that kind of infrastructure under the ground would have lasted long past the 1940s when most of Atlanta's surface tracks were finally abandoned. This would have been a much different city.
Anyways, this definitely was a case of "out of the box" thinking!Two suspects in the stabbing of Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone are seen in police sketches released by the Sacramento, California Police Department October 17, 2015. REUTERS/Sacramento Police Department/Handout via Reuters
(Reuters) - Police in Sacramento on Saturday released sketches of suspects believed to have been involved this month in the stabbing of U.S. Air Force airman Spencer Stone, one of the Americans who thwarted an August train attack in France.
The two composite sketches are based on eyewitness accounts of the Oct. 8 assault in the Northern California city, where Stone was stabbed several times during a fight outside a bar, police said.
Police have said the altercation began outside a bar in the California capital’s midtown district, a gentrifying area with many popular clubs, restaurants and art galleries that retains some rough edges.
Investigators said they believe the male suspects were wearing white shirts and blue jeans. The sketches released by police showed one of the men had a goatee and spiked hair.
Police have not disclosed what caused the fight that led to “significant injuries” to Stone, who was taken to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. He was released on Thursday.
Authorities have said the fight was not related to Stone’s role in subduing a gunman on an Amsterdam-to-Paris train in August. Stone’s assailants are not believed to have known Stone’s identity, police said.
Stone and two friends, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos, who is part of the Oregon Army National Guard, took down a man armed with a box-cutter, a pistol and an AK-47 assault rifle on the high-speed train. They received accolades for their actions from the presidents of France and the United States.
The three men, who grew up in the Sacramento area, were touring Europe at the time of the train incident, partly to celebrate Skarlatos’ return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.Criminal psychopathy can be both repulsive and fascinating, as illustrated by the vast number of books and movies inspired by this topic. Offenders diagnosed with psychopathy pose a significant threat to society, because they are more likely to harm other individuals and to do so again after being released. A brain imaging study in the Netherlands shows individuals with psychopathy have reduced empathy while witnessing the pains of others. When asked to empathize, however, they can activate their empathy. This could explain why psychopathic individuals can be callous and socially cunning at the same time.
Why are psychopathic individuals more likely to hurt others? Individuals with psychopathy characteristically demonstrate reduced empathy with the feelings of others, which may explain why it is easier for them to hurt other people. However, what causes this lack of empathy is poorly understood. Scientific studies on psychopathic subjects are notoriously hard to conduct. "Convicted criminals with a diagnosis of psychopathy are confined to high-security forensic institutions in which state-of-the-art technology to study their brain, like magnetic resonance imaging, is usually unavailable", explains Professor Christian Keysers, Head of the Social Brain Lab in Amsterdam, and senior author of a study on psychopathy appearing in the Journal Brain this week. "Bringing them to scientific research centres, on the other hand, requires the kind of high-security transportation that most judicial systems are unwilling to finance."
The Dutch judicial system, however, seems to be an exception. They joined forces with academia to promote a better understanding of psychopathy. As a result, criminals with psychopathy were transported to the Social Brain Lab of the University Medical Center in Groningen (The Netherlands). There, the team could use state of the art high-field functional magnetic resonance imaging to peak into the brain of criminals with psychopathy while they view the emotions of others.
The study, which will appear on the 25th of July in the journal Brain (published by Oxford University Press) and is entitled "Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy", included 18 individuals with psychopathy and a control group, and consisted of three parts. "All participants first watched short movie clips of two people interacting with each other, zoomed in on their hands. The movie clips showed one hand touching the other in a loving, a painful, a socially rejecting or a neutral way. At this stage, we asked them to look at these movies just as they would watch one of their favourite films", Harma Meffert, the first author of the paper, explains. Meffert was a graduate student in the Social Brain Lab while the study was conducted, and is now a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda.
Next, the participants watched the same clips again. This time, however, the researchers prompted them explicitly to "empathise with one of the actors in the movie", that is, they were requested to really try to feel what the actors in the movie were feeling.
"In the third and final part, we performed similar hand interactions with the participants themselves, while they were lying in the scanner, having their brain activity measured", adds Meffert. "We wanted to know to what extent they would activate the same brain regions while they were watching the hand interactions in the movies, as they would when they were experiencing these same hand interactions themselves."
Our brains are equipped with what scientists call a "mirror system". For example, the motor cortex of the brain normally allows you to move your own body. Your so called somatosensory cortex, when activated, makes you to feel touch on your skin. Your insula, finally, when activated makes you feel emotions like pain or disgust. In the last decades, brain scientists have discovered that when people watch other people move their body, or see those people being touched, or have emotions, these same brain regions are activated. In other words, the actions, touch or emotions of others become your own. This "mirror system" possibly constitutes a crucial part of our ability to empathize with other people, and it has been previously shown, that the less you activate this system, the less you report to empathize with other people. It has been suggested that individuals with psychopathy might somehow suffer from a broken "mirror system", resulting in a diminished ability to empathize with their victims.
As it turns out, however, the picture seems to be more complex. When asked to just watch the film clips, the individuals with psychopathy indeed did activate their mirror system less. "Regions involved in their own actions, emotions and sensations were less active than that of controls while they saw what happens in others", summarizes Christian Keysers. "At first, this seems to suggest that psychopathic criminals might hurt others more easily than we do, because they do not feel pain, when they see the pain of their victims."
As the second part of the study revealed, however, it's not quite so simple. Instead of generally activating their mirror system less, individuals with psychopathy rather seem not to use this system spontaneously, but they can use it when asked to. "When explicitly asked to empathize, the differences between how strongly the individuals with and without psychopathy activate their own actions, sensations and emotions almost entirely disappeared in their empathic brain", explains Valeria Gazzola, Assistant Professor at the UMCG and second author of the paper. "Psychopathy may not be so much the incapacity to empathize, but a reduced propensity to empathize, paired with a preserved capacity to empathize when required to do so". The brain data suggests, that by default, psychopathic individuals feel less empathy than others. If they try to empathize, however, they can switch to 'empathy mode'.
There might be two sides to these findings. The darker side is that reduced spontaneous empathy together with a preserved capacity for empathy might be the cocktail that makes these individuals so callous when harming their victims and at the same time so socially cunning when they try to seduce their victims. Whether individuals with psychopathy autonomously switch their empathy mode on and off depending on the requirements of a social situation however remains to be established. The brighter side is that the preserved capacity for empathy might be harnessed in therapy. Instead of having to create a capacity for empathy, therapies may need to focus on making the existing capacity more automatic to prevent them from further harming others. How to do so, remains at this stage uncertain.
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Contact:AAP national convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday dubbed former Maharashtra Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse a "traitor" for his alleged conversation with Dawood Ibrahim, while coming out in support of Patidar leader Hardik Patel, who is lodged in jail over alleged seditions charges.
Kejriwal, whose party is trying to get a foothold in BJP ruled Gujarat, said Patel has been charged with sedition even when he has not done anything against the country, but on the other hand alleged call records show that Dawood Ibrahim, one of India's most wanted criminals working against the nation, made calls to Khadse. Khadse was in the eye of a storm over allegations of corruption including irregularities in a land deal resigned today.
The AAP also alleged that he received calls from Ibrahim, a charge which was not only refuted by Khadse, but also by the Mumbai Police which gave him a clean chit.
Kejriwal said the real test for the BJP will be if Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan chief ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje also resign. "Now there is a minister from Maharashtra (Eknath) Khadse sahab. Through (call) records, his talks with Dawood Ibrahim, who works against the country, have come to light. Then Khadse is a traitor and not Hardik Patel. "The government does not take action against Khadse sahab. It takes action against Hardik Patel. How is Hardik Patel a traitor? Traitors are leaders like Khadse," Kejriwal said in a video posted on Aam Aadmi Party's twitter handle. Kejriwal said one may not agree with Patel or have difference of opinion, but he has not acted against the country.
The AAP chief said people of Gujarat are angry and upset over the sedition charges slapped on the Patidar leader, who is in jail since October last year.
The AAP chief said terming Patel a traitor is like terming lakhs of Gujaratis traitor. "What is Hardik Patel's mistake? He raised his voice for Gujaratis and his community, he struggled for their rights. He never raised voice against India. He never supported forces trying to break the country. Lakhs of Gujaratis were saying what Hardik Patel is saying. Then have lakhs of Gujaratis become traitors? So, terming Gujaratis traitors, insult Gujaratis is not good. This is wrong," Kejriwal said.Comcast and Netflix, which in past years have engaged in a public fight over bandwidth issues, have reached a deal that will make Netflix’s streaming-video service available to the cable giant’s X1 set-top platform later in 2016.
“Comcast and Netflix have reached an agreement to incorporate Netflix into X1, providing seamless access to the great content offered by both companies,” the companies said in a joint statement Tuesday. “We have much work to do before the service will be available to consumers later this year. We’ll provide more details at that time.”
For Netflix, the agreement is its biggest deal to date with a pay-TV operator to offer its |
I did sessions with different producers, and I got to do a lot of experimenting and discovering, which was really fun. It was very different.
Did being a part of Dirty Projectors previously make it easier to ease into making this first album on your own?
Yeah, I’m sure it did. That’s one thing I’ve been really grateful for, is that I had a decade of experience being on records, and touring, and working with different people. I think that was extremely helpful, but I guess also I got to realize what my own process is for the first time, in a way. My own way of working, which is definitely its own thing—it’s quite different from what I was used to. That’s just being allowed to take my time. I don’t know; I think also my process will evolve, and the way that I make records will change from record to record, most likely.
But for this first one, it wasn’t the kind of thing where I would sit down and write a song in a day. An idea would come, a seed would come, and then I would just sort of sit on it for a while, and it would keep coming back to me, and then something else would attach itself to the idea. I would put down the demo, just to have the idea down, and sometimes take a break from an idea once I felt like I had gone as far as I could, and come back to it in a couple months and finish it down the line. These songs, for the most part, came together piece-by-piece over a long period of time. So that was definitely a new thing.
I really like how the album is a mix between slower and faster songs. My favorite is probably “Dark Night,” which is super fun and fast, and then the singles were “All to Myself,” which is slower, and “No Coffee,” which is kind of right in the middle. Were you conscientious when putting the record together of switching up the pace?
That’s definitely something that I’ve wanted, but because each song would pop up on it’s own day over the course of a few years that I was working on it, I didn’t have a skeleton map of the album as a whole at all. I wanted it to be a mixture; I wanted it to be a something for everyone kind of record, and to reflect on the different shades of my own experiences and personality. I think I have two sides: one is upbeat and fun and wild and crazy, and the other is pretty introverted and reflective. It just wouldn’t feel like me to make a record that was all one sound; it wouldn’t feel like a good representation.
You said in an interview with Pitchfork, that you felt totally comfortable being honest and transparent recording the album, regardless of who else was in the room. Do you still feel that way as you move towards the album’s release?
Yeah, I think the album does feel pretty naked in that way, and I guess I’m proud of it. It’s also nerve wracking, because I don’t know what people are expecting. I can’t really worry about it, but you don’t know how it will be received, and how people will feel about these things.
I think that for me, if I had tried to write a bunch of super-elusive lyrics, and use a bunch of effects on my voice, and stuff like that, that would’ve been really a safe way to go. We’re so used to hearing that in music over the last decade or so—I really just wanted to make something that was super straightforward, and none of that elusiveness that can cover up people’s emotions sometimes.
You were on the Frank Ocean album Blonde [on opening track, “Nikes”] last year?
Yeah.
How did that happen? That was one of my favorites.
Oh man. I love that record, and was just beyond honored to be a part of it at all. I love him so much. Yeah, I obviously listened to Frank Ocean a lot leading up to making the record too. We were introduced through Wes— Diplo —initially, a few years ago. I guess he had my number, and would just hit me up from time to time when he came to town to work on his record, and he would just be here in L.A., and I would go in and put down a part. Went in a couple different times, so I’ve just absolutely loved his music so much. It was really fun to do that.
You got to be on the first track of that album that everyone was waiting so long to hear!
Yeah! I had no idea it was going to be the first track. It was a surprise to me, too. It was super exciting.
That’s special. You’ve gotten to work now, outside of your primary projects, with J. Cole, Diplo, and Frank. Who else would you want to collaborate with?
There are so many people that would be amazing to work with. I don’t even know where to start. That’s a tough one! I’d like to work with more women—female producers, female writers, and singers, and things like that. I’d like to see more women collaborating together. I guess it would be amazing to work with Missy Elliott or something [LAUGHS].
Amber Coffman’s debut solo album City of No Reply is out via Columbia Records on June 2. Check out the video for “No Coffee” below:
This interview has been condensed for content and clarity.
Photos courtesy of Jason Frank RothenbergIf you type in “characteristics of the Millennial generation” into trusty Google you will find a list of interesting headlines. Some of the titles given to Millennials are: Generation Y, Generation WE, The Boomerang Generation, and The Peter Pan Generation. Part of this stems from the way many were raised by baby boomers who were promising their kids the world. Many felt that leaving college with any degree would be enough for a high income and an avalanche of jobs hitting their email box. None of this really materialized. Unrealistically high expectations. Denmark, which typically ranks among the “happiest” countries in the world carries one interesting trait – have low expectations. In fact, most Millennials are struggling in the current economy. The Millennial generation leads the way in the amount of student debt it carries. Many are stuck in low wage jobs earning so little, they are living with their parents deep into adulthood. How broke are Millennials? Pretty broke when you look at the data.
Blame it on income
A very high number of Millennials don’t even work or if they are working, are stuck in a low wage job. Close to half of recent college graduates are working in jobs that don’t even relate to their undergraduate degree. Not a problem when you pay little for college but this can be an issue when you are going into tens of thousands of dollars of debt to finance your studies.
Income for Millennials has fallen across virtually all employment sectors:
It should be noted that the Great Recession officially ended in the summer of 2009 yet somehow, incomes continue to go down for Millennials. This is why younger Americans are angered and keenly focused on issues like income inequality and student debt.
Millennials are the poorest income group in the United States:
This is expected given age and where they stand in their career but the problem is many Millennials are in positions that have little future progression. Millions are stuck in service industry jobs that provide no benefits aside from the immediate wages to pay daily bills.
This also ties into the problems of home buying. Millennials are in their prime home buying age, for some years now, yet somehow home buying isn’t picking up outside of big investors and boomers. So what happens? Millennials live at home.
Living at home
The number of Millennials living at home is staggering:
The number jumped from 27 percent from 1994 to 2008 to nearly 32 percent in recent years. This percentage change represented millions of Millennials. The number is slightly moving lower but this is partly due to some Millennials moving out to form rental households, not in purchasing new properties.
And when you look at their current income level and the typical home price, it is clear that many Millennials shouldn’t be buying homes. Many already carry levels of debt looking like mortgages.
High levels of debt
Millennials already have a massive amount of debt from going to college:
Just look at the debt-to-income ratio for college educated Millennials. It is expected that younger generations start at the lower range of the income scale but in the past, people simply weren’t saddled with ungodly amounts of debt starting off their careers. How broke are Millennials? Much more broke than their baby boomer parents.
If you enjoyed this post click here to subscribe to a complete feed and stay up to date with today’s challenging market!The Kazam Screencaster development has stopped a while back, but luckily a new developer has taken over the project and Kazam is updated frequently again. With the new 1.0 version, Kazam is finally GTK3 ready, but that's not all. Here are the changes since the previous Kazam version we wrote about (a long time ago, I know):
It's finally possible to record arbitrary screen regions
Support for two audio channels, with volume settings
Output can be saved in WebM or Matroska
Uses gstreamer instead of ffmpeg
Countdown timer is now customizable
Countdown window has now variable width
Adjustable framerate
Ability to turn off recording of mouse cursor
Audio device selection is now done directly from PulseAudio. To record application sounds instead of microphone input you will have to select one of the monitor devices.
Even though it uses an Ubuntu AppIndicator, Kazam works in other desktop environments too, like GNOME Shell for instance (GNOME Shell has a built-in recording tool which works great, but it doesn't let you select an arbitrary screen region), where it falls back to a regular tray icon.
Unfortunately the resulting videos aren't so great at least on my computer, and it seems I'm not the only one. This is actually the reason I've used 10 for the framerate in the video above - using the default value of 25, the video was very choppy, with many skipped frames. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future release; until then, if the screencasts you create are choppy, try using a framerate of 10-15.
If the video doesn't show up, click here.
Install Kazam in Ubuntu
Kazam 1.0 is available in its stable PPA for Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04. To add the PPA and install it (Ubuntu Oneiric and Precise only!), use the commands below:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kazam-team/stable-series sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install kazam
Arch Linux users can install the latest Kazam from BZR via AUR.
Get the source code from Launchpad.
Kazam Screencaster 1.0, a cool screencasting application for Linux, has been released today.And speaking of the cool region record option:, in which selecting a region on the screen is quite difficult.Here's a quick Kazam screencast I've recorded using... Kazam Screencaster:Report any bugs you may find @ LaunchpadThe glory days of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th century, and Angkor Wat are the pride of Cambodia. The Khmer Empire was in its time a major power in Southeast Asia in terms of military might, diplomacy and trade. Unfortunately, it did not last. The collapse of the empire combined with internal conflict signaled the beginning of the Dark Ages of Cambodia, colonization, and conflict..
Today, Cambodia is perceived as a war-torn country, one plagued by civil war, landmines, and foreign intervention. Nevertheless, with civil war at an end, the country has the potential to start of a promising new chapter, one in which it pursues its core national interests, most notably stability, sovereignty, economic development, and image building. After successful national reconciliation and regional integration, Cambodia is now well on its way to becoming a lower middle-income country with annual GDP growth of around 7 percent.
However, as the international landscape changes, for instance with the rise of China and the U.S. “rebalancing” to Asia, new regional challenges are emerging. If it is to deal successfully with these challenges and become a relevant player within the region, Cambodia must have a grand strategy for its foreign policy. According to Hal Brands, a grand strategy can be an integrated set of principles and priorities that helps a country navigate a complex and dangerous international environment to achieve its national interests.
In looking at what the Cambodian government has done with its foreign policy to date, it appears that Cambodia’s grand strategy rests on three pillars.
Asian Century
The first of those pillars we might call the “Asian Century.” Certainly, the gravity of global power has shifted to the Asia-Pacific and the 21st century is shaping up to the Asian century, with most countries in the region, such as China, India, and the ASEAN countries, among them Cambodia, enjoying strong economic growth in recent years. China, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, is also ASEAN’s largest trading partner.
Not surprisingly, Cambodia has focused most of its diplomatic efforts on ASEAN and other ASEAN-led regional forums, such as the East Asia Summit. It has strengthened its existing diplomatic ties with major powers in the region, such as China and Japan. Cambodia upgraded its diplomatic relations with China and Japan to the level of strategic partnership in 2010 and 2013, respectively.
Recently, Cambodia has also launched a diplomatic charm offensive* targeting countries such as Belarus and Azerbaijan, hoping to promote economic and trade relations. This signals another major shift in its foreign policy, from political diplomacy to economic diplomacy.
In a regional context, ASEAN and its Dialogue Partner countries are negotiating comprehensive free trade deals, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). All of these efforts are designed to reap the benefit of regional integration, and represent a golden opportunity for Cambodia to focus on the Asia-Pacific to sustain its economic growth. In the context of the Asian century, ASEAN should remain the cornerstone of Cambodia’s foreign policy. But Cambodia also needs to balance its economic, military and political interests among its immediate neighbors, China, the U.S., and ASEAN. This will need to be done with skill if Cambodia wishes to remains prosperous over the long term.
Post-Conflict Cambodia
The second pillar is post-conflict Cambodia, which has been an environment favorable to its own national development effort. The post-Cold War environment offered Cambodia both challenges and opportunities for development and proactive engagement with the regional and international communities. Today, diplomatic efforts to rebuild its prestige in the region is one of the priorities of Cambodia’s foreign policy. Cambodia needs an active foreign policy so that it can mobilize resources and international assistance for its development, especially in physical infrastructure and poverty eradication. After decades of civil war and chaos, now is the time for Cambodia to improve its status in regional and international forums. The establishment of the ASEAN Regional Mines Centre (ARMAC) in Cambodia, as the first ASEAN center to address landmines and explosive remnants of wars in the region, could be a first step in helping Cambodia build influence.
However, post-conflict Cambodia also requires a grand vision to reap opportunities and address challenges in the long run. This vision must entail democracy, rule of law, good governance, a free market economy, and peace and stability.
Six-Point Principle
Third, Cambodia is following a set of six foreign policy principles, described in Article 53 of its Constitution. First, it follows a strict policy of permanent neutrality and non-alignment. Second, Cambodia maintains a policy of peaceful co-existence with its neighbors and with all other countries. Third, it will not invade any country, nor interfere in any other country’s internal affairs, and shall solve problems peacefully. Fourth, Cambodia is prohibited from having any military alliance or military pact with any other country that is incompatible with its policy of neutrality. Fifth, it shall not permit any foreign military base on its territory and shall not maintain its own military bases abroad, except within the framework of United Nations Peacekeeping missions. Sixth, it reserves the right to receive foreign military assistance and training of its armed forces for self-defense purposes.
Failure to follow these principles would result in political chaos and conflict of the kind Cambodia endured in the 1970s and 80s. The recent political chaos in Thailand and Cambodia’s decision not to grant a safe haven to any anti-Thai coup activists demonstrates that Cambodia is serious about following the principle of not interfering in the internal affairs of its neighbors. As a result, Cambodia-Thailand relations have improved significantly since the military junta took power in Thailand in May 2014.
Transparency
Building on this three-pillar grand strategy will be critical if Cambodia is to have an active foreign policy. This must be done in an open and transparent process, with the participation of think tanks, civil society, and the general public. Cambodia also needs to score a major foreign policy goal, for example a substantive contribution to settling regional disputes. Perhaps the South China Sea dispute.
The current tensions in the South China Sea are a serious challenge to ASEAN, and an opportunity for Cambodian diplomacy, given the country’s close relations with China. In 2012, during the 21st ASEAN Summit, Cambodia successfully hosted the ASEAN Global Dialogue, which sought to mobilize assistance and resources to implement the Phnom Penh Agenda on ASEAN Community Building. It should now aspire to come up with another major regional initiative to contribute to regional peace and stability, just as it did twelve years ago during its first ASEAN Chairmanship in 2002, when the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in South China Sea (DOC) were signed by ASEAN and China. One possible idea would be to initiate and host a regular annual dialogue on the DOC, a Phnom Penh Dialogue on the DOC say, providing a forum for ASEAN and China to exchange views on how to achieve a full and effective implementation of the DOC, and to build trust and confidence among the parties. The dialogue could also help to find a consensus towards an eventual conclusion of a Code of Conduct, one of the objectives set out by the DOC in 2002.
Compared to its fellow ASEAN members, Cambodia enjoys a unique position. First, it has maintained closer relations with China. Second, Cambodia is not a claimant state in the South China Sea. Third, Cambodia has balanced foreign policy interests and objectives with regards to its neighbors and ASEAN. Indonesia cannot be the best mediator in the South China Sea dispute since it also has overlapping claims with China’s nine-dash line in the area around the Natuna Islands. Another two major achievements for Cambodia in 2012 were the ASEAN Six-Point Principles on South China Sea, and the Joint Statement on the 10th anniversary of DOC, which were of strategic significance for ASEAN’s diplomacy and efforts to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea, while maintaining a good strategic partnership between ASEAN and China.
The South China Sea dispute will be a key test of Cambodia’s foreign policy, as will developing a successful foreign policy grand strategy that addresses the challenges often faced by smaller states. Whether Cambodia passes these tests will depend on the political commitment of its leaders and foreign policymakers.
Heng Sarith is a Research Fellow (non-resident) at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP). He can be reached by [email protected] or through his blog: www.goodluckcambodia.com.
*Corrected from the original.'To my many enemies': Trump's barbed New Year wishes to friends and foes
'To my many enemies': Trump's barbed New Year wishes to friends and foes
Donald Trump will take the reins on 20 January
Donald Trump has wished his "enemies" a Happy New Year in a barbed tweet posted just weeks before he takes office in the White House.
In the gloating New Year's Eve message, the President-elect wrote: "Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies.
"Those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don't know what to do. Love!"
It comes in the same week Mr Trump repeated his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him a "very smart" man for not retaliating against the expulsion of 35 suspected spies from the US.
America's future leader has a reputation for drawing a clear line between friends and foes and has had no shortage of spats with his opponents in 2016 - including several public rows on Twitter in his election year.
As well as stirring up tensions with the likes of China and Iran, his domestic political rivals, Hollywood A-listers and prominent US media figures have also been in the firing line.
Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don't know what to do. Love! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2016
Before the presidential nomination, Mr Trump branded some of his Republican adversaries as "horrible liars" and "not smart".
They included South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, but the hatchet appeared to have been buried when both emerged as contenders for senior roles.
During a highly divisive campaign, Mr Trump chose the nicknames "Lyin' Ted" and "Crooked Hillary" to describe political opponents Hillary Clinton and rival Republican Ted Cruz.
Image: Mr Trump and Mr Romney went from foes to friends as he was considered for a top role
President Barack Obama has also been a target - the tycoon accused his administration of actively supporting the Islamist group that later became known as Islamic State.
Following last week's UN Security Council call for an end to Israeli settlements, Mr Trump again voiced his support for Israel while criticising the Palestinian Authority for "refusing to stop the terror".
Also on the President-elect's list of geopolitical enemies is Iran, whose international nuclear agreement Mr Trump opposes.
Tensions between the US and China have escalated since Mr Trump's victory, with the President-elect suggesting he is willing to abandon the "One China" policy which guides Washington's position on Taiwan.
Image: Alec Baldwin's Saturday Night Live sketch mocked Mr Trump's social media feed
Relations have been strained with Mexico, too, since he threatened to build a wall on the country's border with the US.
Figures from world of entertainment and media have also been in the firing line.
Mr Trump has been vocal over his dislike for most broadcasters, naming NBC's Brian Williams, ABC's Barbara Walters and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin among others.
Barack Obama's last New Year message
But it's in Hollywood - where many former Presidents found their strongest platform of support - that Mr Trump has encountered some of the greatest hostility.
Robert De Niro threatened to "punch him in the face" in the run-up to the election - but changed his mind when it was clear he had won the keys to the White House.
Jerry Seinfeld called Mr Trump "God's gift to comedy, while Alec Baldwin's satirical portrayal of the future President on Saturday Night Live has prompted a prolonged social media feud.
Mr Trump will be sworn in as 45th President of the United States on 20 January."You’re either with the government, or with the child pornographers."
— Public Safety Minister Vic Toews
Don’t be an idiot.
There is a huge difference, Minister, between demonizing child pornographers and those of us who believe in the democratic right to privacy and free speech.
The legislation, Bill C-30, tabled this week as the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, had virtually no safeguards to protect law-abiding Canadians, including the media, from being spied upon by police, bureaucrats, CSIS — even the competition bureau.
Until Prime Minister Stephen Harper punted the bill straight to committee for a badly-needed overhaul, his government appeared unconcerned about its own inconsistency.
Earlier this week, for example, the long-gun registry was finally put down, killed by the Harper majority for one reason and one reason alone.
It was rightly deemed to be an intrusion into the privacy of law-abiding Canadians.
This leaves Bill C-30 indefensible in its present form.
Requiring telecommunications providers to hand over personal information — without a warrant — to law-enforcement agencies opens the door to incredible abuses, and not just by Big Brother.
"This is going to be like the Fort Knox of information that the hackers and the real bad guys will want to go after," said Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s privacy commissioner.
"The government will say they can protect the data, and they can encrypt it. Are you kidding me?" she asked. "The bad guys are always one step ahead."
Anyone who follows Sun Media and the Sun News Network knows we loathe child pornographers and those who prey on children, and would like nothing better than to see each and every one of them jailed for life.
Their evil knows no bounds.
But also boundless is the right of law-abiding Canadians to have their privacy protected when it comes to their Internet and cell usage. The risk here is far worse than the long-gun registry ever threatened.
Two weeks ago, more than 200 charges were laid in a massive central-Canada kiddie-porn bust that came as a result of police using solid investigative techniques to locate 8,940 IP addresses suspected of being involved in child pornography.
They didn’t need Bill C-30 then, and they don’t need it now.
And neither does Canada.Back in the olden days, when video games still came on cartridges, the engineers and programmers making these carts had a lot of options. One of the most inventive, brilliant, and interesting cartridges to come out of the 90s was Star Fox for the Super Nintendo. Star Fox featured a coprocessor chip, the Super FX, that was effectively a GPU used to draw polygons in the frame buffer. Without this, Star Fox wouldn’t be 3D, Yoshi’s Island wouldn’t be as cute, and there wouldn’t be an always-on processor in your computer with the potential to spy on everything you do.
The Super FX chip, the Capcom-developed Cx4 coprocessor, and the Nintendo DSP all lived in a cartridge, but the technology to put a better computer in a cartridge never made it to Nintendo’s handheld devices. Cheap, powerful microcontrollers are everywhere now, and it’s not that hard to make a board with card edge connectors, leading [Anders] to build a Super FX for the Game Boy Color.
Game Boy cartridges are simple — just a memory controller and some memory is all you need. Drop in a microcontroller, and you have a Game Boy coprocessor. This cartridge features the MBC1 memory bank controller, 512kB of Flash, and 8KB SRAM. These are fairly standard parts, but there’s one last trick up the sleeve of this board: a KE04 from NXP, an ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller running at 48MHz. This microcontroller is, effectively, the GPU for the Game Boy.
This ARM-powered coprocessor is able to convert the framebuffer into tiles in just 2ms, giving the system plenty of time for image processing and rendering. Due to the limitations of the Game Boy, the best resolution offered by this coprocessor is either 160×96 or 128×128 pixels, short of the complete 160×144 pixel display in the Game Boy Color.
Even though [Anders] is still working on programming this thing to show off the power of his Game Boy coprocessor, he has a few demos to show off. The most impressive is a Wolfenstein-like clone. That’s extremely impressive and categorically impossible on a stock Game Boy Color.And there is plenty of scientific basis for this; a 1989 study showed that men were far more likely to accept solicitations for casual sex than women. Male and female students were approached by "moderately" attractive students of the opposite sex and awkwardly propositioned. The men, being 18 and in immediate proximity to a vagina, said, "Fuck yes." Most of the women said no. Obviously.
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"So, um... can we do it right here? Or should we find a bathroom?"
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But Actually...
A University of Michigan psychologist named Terri Conley decided to dig a little deeper. Her study found that women were no less likely to be down for some consequence-free coupling, as long as it was in a safe situation with a sexually competent partner. The difference wasn't in the expected commitment, but in how much harder it is to bring a woman to orgasm.
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"You'd better have a GPS and four hours to spare."
So both genders seek sex for the awesome, toe-curling pleasure it brings. But the difference is that men know they're going to get an orgasm no matter how bad the girl is in bed, and in fact know that it will happen even if she leaves halfway through. But women only orgasm 35 percent as often in first-time sexual encounters. Why commit yourself to a night of getting some guy off if you aren't getting anything but filthy sheets out of it?
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Studies of bisexual women showed that their hesitance to bone disappeared as soon as the partner wasn't a man. That infamous female prudishness all came down to the fact that most men have awful cocksmanship.
They call it the pleasure theory -- it says simply that our desire for sex comes from the joy it brings us, not the raw evolutionary need to make babies. In other words, men and women both screw because it feels just great. And if we aren't confident we'll enjoy the experience, it isn't worth having.Sandy Hook 911 tapes: Scanner Feeds Reveal Scandal!
It has been quite a long night for me, after the CT Newstimes published their article yesterday, stating that the Sandy Hook 911 tapes reveal that Police was told to wait before entering Sandy Hook Elementary school.
UPDATE
The abridged investigative report has been released. We will publish about the contents shortly. 911 calls are still sealed but not the final answer. Why don’t you read the reports in the meanwhile.
Summary
Sandy Hook Investigative Report
Sandy Hook Final Report
Compressed Sandy Hook Report
Could it be, that the MSM and local newspapers are finally realizing something isn’t quite right with the official Sandy Hook story? I did my homework until this morning and went over all the 911 scanner feeds and existing timelines from great Sandy Hook researchers once more.
I realized that the Scanner feeds are Sedensky’s secret, as they reveal the scandal that took place on December 14th 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Without you guys, this research and our blog wouldn’t be possible. A couple of months ago, there was always something new to focus on regarding Sandy Hook and easy to get sidetracked. New leads and rabbit holes, a tangled web of conspiracy threads. But slowly the puzzle pieces are falling into place..
State Attorney Stephen Sedensky will only release a summary of the final investigative report to the public and is currently fighting to keep the Sandy Hook 911 tapes a secret. He continuously delays the release of final investigative report from the State Police that allegedly consists of 2,000 pages.
It is now perfectly clear to me, why State Attorney Stephen Sedensky passed draconian secrecy laws without a hearing last June to keep the Sandy Hook records sealed. It seems quite scandalous what took place at Sandy Hook Elementary school, December 14th 2012.
Superior Court Judge Eliot Prescott will make his decision regarding the release of the 911 calls to the public on Monday, November 25th. It’s the final straw for the CT State police, Dannel Malloy and Stephen Sedensky to prevent the scandal from unfolding.
The NewsTimes stated yesterday, that the gunman had entered the school at 9:45 AM. This piece of information alone was a bit stunning, considering that the Newstimes should know as a respected publisher that this is not possible according to the scanner feeds. It is unclear at this point if they made an editorial mistake, or if this time was released to them from official sources and they just didn’t do their homework. They later updated their article to add the following:
UPDATE 1:30 p.m.
The head of the Newtown Police Union Scott Ruszczyk said that the order for first responders to wait before entering Sandy Hook Elementary School was directed towards ambulance personnel, not police officers.
Little does Mr Ruszezyk understand, how damaging this statement is. Is the president of the Newtown police union aware of the fact that the entire world has access to the Sandy Hook 911 scanner feeds of that day?
Note: The Newstimes updated their article 3 times, yet they have failed to correct the conflicting time of 09:45AM.
In July, 2013 the Newstimes reported: Newtown police response to shooting under review
Video and audio from cruiser cameras of Newtown police who responded to the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School show officers did not enter the building while about 10 shots were fired by gunman Adam Lanza, says a source familiar with the State Police investigation into the shootings.
The source declined to specify how much time elapsed during the period when up to 10 shots were fired by Lanza while officers who had arrived at the scene were yet to enter the school.
The Courant wrote the following today, November, 22: Police Response In Sandy Hook Shooting Scrutinized
Among the aspects of the response under scrutiny was a decision by the first responding Newtown officer to park nearly a quarter mile away on the street to the school and wait for other officers to arrive, sources familiar with the investigation said. Those officers moved to the school on foot along the tree line.
State police offices are approx. 7 min. away from Sandy Hook school, NPD offices are less than 2 min. away. Why did they wait for state police? Perhaps they were following orders from headquarters, just like the Newstimes reported yesterday:
The most disconcerting sound between the school and Newtown police may be the apparent order from headquarters for police responders to “wait” before entering the school, Hearst Connecticut Newspapers has learned.
“Wait until you go into the building,” one person says from police headquarters toward the end of the five-minute shooting spree. “I’m not going to send them in yet.”
In October, 2013 the Courant wrote the following: – Details Emerge On Sandy Hook Shooting
“Several troopers from Troop A (Connecticut State Police) rushed to the school, including barracks commander Michael Hoffbauer, Sgt. William Cario and members of the narcotics task force, who were arriving at the troop for a case meeting. Two troopers, Carlo Guerra and Ken Cournoyer, were driving on I-84 transporting a prisoner to Danbury, when they diverted to the school. Guerra and Cario ran into Rousseau’s room and found the children in the bathroom.
Cario and Trooper Patrick Dragon carried children out of the school to waiting cruisers, which whisked them away to Danbury Hospital. They died there.”
The latest Newstime article also mentions the following:
“There are no anguished cries of children in the controversial 911 telephone recordings of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.”
This was one of Stephen Sedensky’s arguments for keeping the 911 calls sealed.
See our article here:
“The calls are from intended crime victims and witnesses to the crimes,” Sedensky argued in court papers. “Said crimes are also child abuse as it relates to the children in the school.”
In court, Sedensky asked the judge to take into consideration the anguish releasing the tapes would cause Newtown families if their voices wound up in an AP story or on a newscast.
The Newstimes continues:
But there is the sound of two apparent rifle shots, according to sources who have listened to about nine calls made to Newtown police on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012.
Note: According to witness accounts there were 100’s of shots. Stephen Sedensky stated in March, 2013 that Adam Lanza spent more than 150 rounds and killed the victims within 5 minutes.
“In less than five minutes, a gunman shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 26 people inside, then took his own life, leaving more than 150 spent rounds in his wake, according to documents released Thursday.”
“Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky says Adam Lanza killed 20 first-graders and six adults using a Bushmaster.223-caliber rifle before taking his own life with a Glock 10-mm. handgun. Sedensky says Lanza had another loaded handgun with him inside the school, as well as three, 30-round magazines for the Bushmaster.”This was also confirmed by Lt. Vance.
The Newstimes continues: At another point,Rick Thorne, a school custodian who has declined comment on the shooting but who has been hailed for alerting staff to Lanza’s assault-weapon rampage, is disconnected by dispatchers.
“It was weird that they hung up on him,” said one source who listened to the recordings. Another source who heard the 911 recordings agreed.”
“There’s a shooting going on,” Thorne says during one of the first calls to police. “I keep hearing shooting.”
In one of the last calls, Thorne says, “I’m standing in a corner not knowing what to do. I’m a custodian. The shootings happened five minutes ago.”
NOTE: I have been over all existing timelines and the scanner feeds. This is Sedensky’s secret, because the scanner feeds reveals a huge scandal! Not only did they tell NPD police officers to STANDBY, they NEVER allowed EMT personnel to enter the school!
First, let’s read a good write up by a member of the Sandy Hook Investigation team:
Bob Nute dispatched at 9:35 AM. According to LT Vance and Sedensky’s statements the shooting would have had to be over with by 9:40 AM.
Note : Dispatch records indicate the first 911 call came in just before 9:36 and the first officer arrived at the school at about 9:37:30. – Courant, November 22, 2013
In the official story, it was stated that the last shot fired was the gunman’s shot to his own head, “as officers entered the school.”
That means the gunman died no later than 9:40 AM.
He was not difficult to find; he was not in a closed room; officers reported “seeing a rifle” in a room and then seeing the gunman’s body. He was in the same hallway as the bodies of several adults; there is no reason for them not to have seen him immediately. In fact, officers describe entering the school and immediately seeing the bodies of Hochsprung and Sherlach lying in that hallway, and then seeing the gunman’s body.
If the gunman was dead at or before 9:40 AM, why did Newtown police officer William Chapman wait until 9:57 AM. to take out the injured child?
“Officer Chapman cradled her in his arms and ran with her outside, to an ambulance. Officer Chapman, a parent himself, tried to comfort her. “You’re safe now; your parents love you,” he recalled saying. She did not survive |
driving the pickup as it sped off, taking the hose.
Try typing in "jerk"
Deputies were called to commercial garage August 23. There they met with a woman who told them of a former employee. The man had resigned (she used the word "quit") and when he left took all the business’s insurance contracts.
Before he left he changed the password for the business’s Email, as well as deleting all business forms stored on the company computer.
He quit his job suddenly, she told the deputy.
They had tried to call the man, but their numbers had been blocked on his phone. He had been an employee of the business for four years, and had been, up to the day he quit, a good employee. Arrangements were made to get copies of security camera footage as part of the report.
No good deed
A couple called sheriff’s deputies to their home August 24.
The man of the house met officers as they arrived. He said he and his wife took in a guest overnight the previous night, a woman who had just been released from jail.
The evening they went to their lockbox and took a pistol from it, putting it on a table by a chair in the living room.
The next morning at 5:30 the man woke up, and found the guest was gone. His wife’s phone was also missing, and the lock box, which had a smaller pistol in it, was also missing.
Shoot the crackers
A woman called the sheriff’s office about gunshot damage August 22. The officer arrived and met with the woman, who told him of finding some crackers in her home which "had a bullet in them," the report stated. The woman told the officer her neighbor was a firearms enthusiast and his shooting had been an ongoing issue with her home.
The deputy spoke with the neighbor. He said he had been shooting, but his shooting area was surrounded by a berm. He was going to build the berm even higher soon, he told the deputy. He also confirmed his shooting had been an ongoing issue with his neighbor.
No further action was taken.
Wait, what?
A woman called sheriff’s deputies to her home August 23. There they met a woman who told them of a man named Chad who knocked on her windows at night. She felt Chad had scratched her car because Chad doesn’t like her and is doing witchcraft on her.
The woman was given a report number, and arrangements were made for extra patrols in the area.
Taking it well
Sheriff’s deputies were called to a Bayou Road address August 24.
There they met the man of the home. He told them of lying in bed the previous night when, sometime between midnight and 5 a.m. he heard someone come into his home.
Thinking it was a member of his family he didn’t stir, he told the deputy.
That morning when he got out of bed he found his TV missing, he said. He called family members to make sure one of them had not taken it, and when none had, he called the sheriff.
It was the only thing missing from his home, he told the deputy.MIKE PETICCA
Special to The Plain Dealer
INDEPENDENCE, Ohio -- Another championship game and another celebration for a Cleveland team.
The final whistle blew and the AFC Cleveland Royals streamed toward goalkeeper Anthony Flowers. Then, many in the standing-room crowd of 2,205 at Independence High School followed gleefully onto the field, hailing the Royals for their 4-2 win over the Sonoma County Sol in the National Premier Soccer League national championship game.
AFC stands for "A Fan's Club." And the Royals' fans sensed title when Antonio Manfut's goal put Cleveland up, 3-2, with about eight minutes left.
The Royals' Tom Beck, from Cleveland State, was about 15 yards to the left of the Sol net and near the back line when he passed a few yards directly behind him to Manfut.
The 21-year-old Manfut is an Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary High School graduate like LeBron James, who led the Cavaliers to their NBA championship over the Golden State Warriors. The southern edge of Sonoma County is about a 40-minute drive north of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay area.
Then Manfut drilled the game-winner to the left of Sol goalie Sean Taufer.
"Me and Beck had been playing together well," Manfut said as the trophy presentations began. "He beat his guy and laid it back to me. I got it off to the far post and it deflected off the post and in..... I've got to get with my teammates!"
Ryder Bell clinched the win with four minutes to go, scoring on a breakaway from 15 yards.
The Royals, in their fifth NPSL season, finished 12-2 overall, including four playoff wins. To earn this victory, they had to overcome 1-0 and 2-1 Sol leads, both times tying the game on goals by Vinny Bell, of Valley Forge High School and Case Western Reserve University. Bell was named Player of the Game.
"It means a lot to do this with these guys," said Royals second-year coach Carter Poe, 26, who is also the head coach of the Mount Union College men's team. "We have a lot of players who have been under-rated, great players who maybe don't get the respect they deserve.
"We knew if we hung in there, we'd get chances. We have so many good attacking players. We hung in there defensively and continued to attack."
Sonoma County (12-5-2) got the game's first goal from Taylor Varnadore in the 15th minute. Varnadore, stationed about 15 yards from the Cleveland net and in the middle of the field, fielded the first pass off a corner kick and immediately headed a shot inside the right post. Flowers had no chance to deny the perfectly executed play.
Bell and Beck had already created a couple of scoring opportunities for the Royals, and then finished one in the 31st minute of the half, tying the game, 1-1.
Beck sped some 25 yards down the left side with a dribble and then fed Bell, sprinting directly ahead of him. Bell caught up to the pass deep into the left side of the box, then maneuvered around Sol defenders to the right side of the net. From there, he drilled a shot inside the left post, well beyond the reach of Taufer.
"Any time your team goes down, that 'fight or flight' kicks in and something happens," said Bell, who was the first player signed by the Royals five years ago. "Even when we went down, we knew we'd get our chances. We knew if we would be patient, we'd be in good shape.
"It's amazing to go through five years and finally cap it off like this. It's been a fun journey."
Varnadore and Bell again exchanged goals in the second half for a 2-2 tie.
Varnadore put the Sol ahead again in the 59th minute, converting from five yards in the middle of the box by grounding a shot inside the left post.
The Royals caught up four minutes later. David Jordan (Mentor High, University of Akron) placed a corner kick in the middle of the box. Bell gained control of the ball and tapped it home from about eight yards.
Poe was a Royals captain in the team's first two seasons (2012-13) before a knee injury ended his playing career.
Cleveland's championship run began earlier this year when Eastlake native Stipe Miocic won the UFC 198 heavyweight championship, and the Lake Erie Monsters won the American Hockey League's Calder Cup championship.Douglas Engelbart, an internet pioneer and developer of the early computer mouse, passed away early this morning at the age of 88.
Engelbart was involved in the development of the ARPANET—the precursor to the modern internet—and showed off hypertext long before most people had interacted with a computer, let alone touched a networked computer. On December 9, 1968 Douglas Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos" from Menlo Park, California showcased what was considered incredibly futuristic technology for the time, including his mouse. You can watch the demo on YouTube.
From the Computer History Museum:
While at SRI, Engelbart's most important work began with his 1959 founding of the Augmentation Research Center, where he developed some of the key technologies used in computing today. Engelbart brought the various strands of his research together for his "mother of all demos" in San Francisco on December 8, 1968, an event that presaged many of the technologies and computer-usage paradigms we would use decades later. His system, called NLS, showed actual instances of, or precursors to, hypertext, shared screen collaboration, multiple windows, on-screen video teleconferencing, and the mouse as an input device. This demo embodied Engelbart's lifelong commitment to solving humanity's urgent problems by using computers as tools to improve communication and collaboration between people.
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Engelbart's legacy can be shared thanks to the incredible tools he helped create. Our hats are off to you, Mr. Engelbart.Many of us live in fear of possibly losing a job.
After all, the job is what provides income stability in the household, and is often the source of benefits, like health insurance, for your family. Without a job, you are on the hook for a number of these costs, and may find it difficult to make ends meet.
Losing your job doesn’t have to be the end of the line, however.
There are steps you can take to alleviate the situation, as well as ways to make unemployment an opportunity.
Before you panic into doing something unwise, take a deep breath, step back, and consider the following actions if you lost your job:
Apply for Unemployment Benefits
The very first thing you should do after you are laid off is to apply for unemployment benefits.
You want to get the paperwork moving as soon as you can so that you can start collecting as quickly as possible. While your unemployment benefits aren’t likely to completely replace your salary, they can still be helpful. They reduce your need to rely on an emergency fund, at at least provide some income.
Realize, though, that you probably have to make an effort to find a new job if you want to keep collecting the benefits, as well as meet other requirements. Make sure you understand the eligibility requirements, and then get the ball rolling ASAP.
Assess Your Budget
Now that you have the ball rolling on your unemployment benefits, it’s time to assess your budget.
The first thing you need to do is understand where your money is going. Prioritize your bills, and consider which items can be cut from your budget. When push comes to shove, you probably don’t need to keep paying for cable, and it probably doesn’t make sense to eat out every single week.
Look for ways to cut back now, before the situation becomes desperate.
You should also recognize which bills you can let slide. If you have to make a choice between paying your mortgage and making credit card payments, it makes sense to focus on the mortgage if you want to keep your home. Hopefully, though, it won’t come to that. But it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
Recognize your assets.
Look at your emergency fund, and other assets. You may need to draw on them later. Consider the order that you use. Start with an income that you have from a part-time job, and then add the emergency fund. Consider selling investments and using your retirement accounts later on, if you have to.
Contact Creditors
You might need to contact a few creditors in order to make other arrangements to repay your obligations.
Be up front about your situation. In many cases, you can arrange a new repayment plan.
Student loans can often be deferred because of hardship, and many utility companies offer programs for those suffering from financial hardship.
Find out what’s available to you, and apply for programs that can help you meet your obligations — or at least stave off problems associated with not paying.
Look for Other Income Sources
While you are trying to find another job, look for other income sources.
Perhaps you need to take on temporary work, or a part-time job. You might consider the job “beneath” you, but any job is better than no job, particularly if your state has a fairly low cap on unemployment benefits. Consider doing odd jobs, as well as finding other ways to make money.
Many people find that losing a job is the perfect opportunity to start a business.
You can become self-employed, working for yourself; you don’t have to worry about “the man” firing you, and being in control of your financial destiny. Your unemployment benefits, emergency fund, and income from odd jobs might be able to help you get by while you start a business. Your life partner might even be willing to go back to work to help with household income.
You will also need to replace employment benefits.
You will have to find ways to pay for self-employed health insurance, but that is possible when you shop around. Find ways to build up diverse income streams so that, even if you do go back to work in a traditional job, you never have to rely on a single income source for your financial well being again.
Develop New Skills
Finally, now is a great time to develop new skills.
You can learn new things while you work part-time or start a side business. Upgrading your skills can help you become more marketable during your job search, and it provides a solid reason behind your sint as an unemployed person.
Filling gaps on your resume is important. Even if you take an internship, or volunteer for a while, you can show that you are using your time wisely, and that you have been developing valuable skills and experience.
Finally
Perhaps the most important thing is to stay busy. It’s easy to become discouraged when you lose your job. However, you need to stay motivated, and have a plan for getting back on your feet if you expect to survive financially.
What other steps should someone who lost their job take?Maddie Meyer/Getty Images
The Boston Celtics are "aggressively" shopping Marcus Smart, Avery Bradley and Jae Crowder in an attempt to carve out the cap space necessary to sign Gordon Hayward to his four-year, $128 million max contract, ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne and Adrian Wojnarowski reported Wednesday.
Citing a source, the Norman Transcript's Fred Katz first reported Tuesday the Celtics were fielding calls for Smart.
According to Shelburne and Wojnarowski, the Celtics have talked to "half a dozen teams" about different "trade concepts."
However, the Celtics likely won't have much leverage since teams know they're hell-bent on clearing cap space to finalize a deal with Hayward.
Furthermore, parties interested in acquiring Smart, Bradley or Crowder know they can likely snag one of those three players on the cheap since the Celtics can't afford to take significant salaries back in a trade.
As a result, teams with cap space that can absorb a contract without sending one back figure to be the most logical trade partners for the Celtics.
Needless to say, all three wings would be valuable additions to teams in need of quality perimeter defenders.
Smart is due $4.5 million this season and will become a restricted free agent next summer if he's extended a $6 million qualifying offer.
Bradley, meanwhile, will earn $8.8 million in the final year of his contract.
Crowder is the best value of the bunch, though, at $6.8 million next season, $7.3 million for the 2018-19 campaign and $7.8 million in the final year of his deal (2019-2020).
Contract information courtesy of Spotrac.com.Roy Moore. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Three camps are emerging in the Republican Party regarding what it believes should happen to Alabama's Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore after The Washington Post reported Thursday that he initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32.
Moore has vehemently denied the allegations made against him in The Post. Multiple women told the publication that Moore pursued relationships with them while he was in his 30s and they were teens, and one woman described a sexual encounter she had with Moore when she was 14. He has shown no signs that he will drop out of the Senate race with just a month left before the election.
That, in turn, has led to a major battle over whether Moore should stay in the race. It's the latest such skirmish to show the fault lines in the longstanding intraparty feud.
But unlike past divisions, this one has split into three distinct groups rather than two.
The first of the three camps is saying Moore should drop out "if" the allegations are true
Almost immediately after The Post published its investigation, Republican senators were asked about whether they still supported Moore or thought he should stay in the race.
And nearly every Republican senator said he should leave the race "if" the allegations were true.
The problem with that stance is that the "if true" qualifier left the door open to speculation over how much additional proof would be possible to obtain for instances that occurred decades back. The only obvious standard for this, aside from the women coming forward on the record with the allegations, would be for Moore to admit he committed the acts laid out in The Post.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans qualified their statements by saying he should drop out if the allegations were true.
"It's devastating," Republican Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, a top congressional ally of President Donald Trump, told a reporter Thursday. "I think if those allegations are true, he should step aside. I mean, I'm sorry but this is untenable — if they're true. I have no facts, I just saw the story. But it's very serious."
"These are serious and troubling allegations," Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who endorsed Moore, said in a statement. "If they are true, Judge Moore should immediately withdraw. However, we need to know the truth, and Judge Moore has the right to respond to these accusations"
President Donald Trump decided to join with the Republican senators in the "if true" camp.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on the president's trip to Asia that Moore "will do the right thing and step aside" if the allegations against him are true.
"Like most Americans the president believes we cannot allow a mere allegation, in this case one from many years ago, to destroy a person's life," she said. "However, the president also believes that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside."
It should be noted that both Trump and Sanders have accused the dozen women who claimed last year that the president sexually harassed them of lying.
The second camp is actively backing Moore despite the allegations
A number of prominent Alabama Republicans and members of the insurgent right have taken to bashing The Post or the accusers, or suggesting that the revelations were made with a political motive.
Some also suggested that the allegations are not a big deal even if true.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon pointed to The Washington Post as having been the outlet to publish both the Moore allegations and Trump's "Access Hollywood" tape last fall, suggesting there is a political motive at play.
Speaking at the "Taking On The Establishment" fundraiser in New Hampshire Thursday, Bannon raised doubt about the accusations, saying it was the "politics of self-destruction." He pointed to The Post, attacking its credibility.
"But it's interesting," Bannon said in a recording obtained by CBS News. "The Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped that dime on Donald Trump, is the same Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped the dime this afternoon on Judge Roy Moore."
"Now is that a coincidence," Bannon continued. "That's what I mean when I say opposition party, right?"
Daniel Dale, a reporter with the Toronto Star, contacted dozens of Republican state officials in Alabama after the Moore story went live. Those who returned his inquiries defended Moore from the accusations.
"It was 40 years ago," Alabama's Marion County Republican Party chair, David Hall, told Dale. "I really don't see the relevance of it. He was 32. She was supposedly 14. She's not saying that anything happened other than they kissed."
"It does not really surprise me," John Skipper, the chair of Alabama's Mobile County Republican Party, reportedly said. "I think it is a typical Democratic — Democrat — ploy to discredit Judge Moore, a sincere, honest, trustworthy individual."
Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler said the report was "much ado about nothing," even if true.
"The allegations are that a man in his early 30s dated teenage girls," Zeigler told The Washington Examiner. "Even the Washington Post report says that he never had sexual intercourse with any of the girls and never attempted sexual intercourse."
Zeigler even compared Moore's alleged actions to biblical figures.
"Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist," Zeigler told The Examiner. "Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus."
"There's just nothing immoral or illegal here," Zeigler said. "Maybe just a little bit unusual."
The final camp isn't qualifying their statements with "if true" — they just want Moore out
A handful of Republican politicians aren't worrying about qualifying their statements with "if true." They are simply calling for Moore to drop out immediately.
"Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman," 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney tweeted. "Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside."
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, was the first major Republican politician to call for Moore to quit the race immediately.
"The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying," he said in a statement. "He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of."
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, often a critic of Trump, joined the camp as well.
"I've long opposed Roy Moore & his divisive viewpoints," he tweeted. "The actions described make him unfit for office. The GOP must not support him. He should step aside."12 0 0 3 0 0
Take a sit, grab a cold beer, some snacks and get ready for an awesome compilation of World of Warcraft related jokes.
1. Why didn’t the Warrior cross the road? No path available.
2. What’s a Rogue’s favourite drink? Subtle tea.
3. How does Naxxramas fly? With its four wings.
4. How do you know someone’s been playing since Vanilla? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
5. One day, a Centaur and a Quilboar are telling stories, but the Quilboar won’t stop rambling. Eventually, the centaur snaps!
Centaur: I can’t take it anymore!
Quilboar: What’s wrong?
Centaur: Don’t you get it? You’re quil-boring me to death here!
6. How does a Tauren hide in a cherry bush? He paints his hooves red.
7. There is only one minute difference between Dreadlord and a Deadlord.
8. What do you call 5 Mogu rolling down the hill? The Rolling Stones!
9. Your mum’s so fat, when she logs into WoW she automatically gets World Explorer.
10. Your mom is so fat, when a rogue Shadowstepped her, he got loading screen…
11. What do Rogues and noobs have in common? They both pick locks!
12. How many Blizzard employees does it take to fix a lightbulb?
Why? It is working as intended.
13. What do you call it if paladins and druids share a bath?
A HoT tub with Bubbles.
14. How many rogues does it take to kill a paladin?
Two. One to ambush him, one to wait at his hearthstone location.
15. Yo momma so fat, she fell off her flight to Silithus and created the Un’goro crater.
16. Yo momma so fat, Mages need to grease up their portals and summon a table on the other side to get her through.
17. Yo momma so ugly, her racial passive is ‘Fear’.
18. Why do developers always fail at gymnastics?
They suck at balancing.
19. Why did the Mage have sore eyes?
Because his blink didn’t do anything.
20. How do you solve famine, poverty, war, epidemic diseases and natural disasters?
Resilience will fix it.
21. Why do Restoration Druids hate maths?
Because they just don’t get square roots
22. How do you call 100 paladins in Lake Everstill?
Bubble bath.
23. How many gnomes do you need to paint a wall?
Depends on how hard you throw them.
24. Why do many girls pick druids?
So they can purr like a kitten 3 weeks/month and rage like a bear the 4th.
25. Arthas and Uther walk into a building, Arthas asks “what is that switch for?”
Uther: FOR THE LIGHT
26. Your Mom is so fat she gets hit by Chain Lightning 3 times.
27. How many blizzard devs does it take for them to light a room? None, they will just nerf Darkness next patch.
28. What’s Tauren’s most famous racial? They can’t pass through doors.
29. You know you have been playing WoW for too long when the Microwave dings and you yell “GRATS!”
30. Why aren’t Warriors using intellect enchants?
Because they don’t want their weapons to be smarter than themselves.
31. What’s the difference between hookers and Death Knights? Nothing, they’re both cheap and spread diseases.
32. Your mama’s so fat, even Frostmourne wasn’t that hungry.
33. What do you get if you cross a gnome and a tauren?
A mini-taur.
34. You know you raid too much when you see a huge wave on the beach you´ll yell: “IT’S A WIPE!”.
35. What is Arena?
A place where some virtual humanoids bash at each other for 10 minutes and then the Warlock wins.
36. What happens when the unstoppable force hits the immovable object?
Chuck Norris dies.
37. Why do hunters get smashed in bars?
They’re always multi-shotting.
38. Why did Arthas become a Death Knight?
They didn’t let him raid as Retribution.
39. Why Didn’t the undead cross the road?
Because he didn’t have the guts
40. Yo mama so fat that when she took a bath she flooded Thousand Needles.
Vote your favorite joke and you might get some in addition. Also, feel free to reply in the comment section below your hilarious WoW related jokes! I will post other WoW related jokes in the nearest future! Stay tuned!
Related Images:MALERKOTLA: Indefinite curfew has been clamped at Malerkotla in Punjab's Barnala district following violence in which a wooden plank kept in a Church and a police motor cycle were set on fire by miscreants.Malerkotla has a sizeable Muslim population. The protest was sparked after a rumour spread that some Christians had desecrated the Quran in Michigan, US. Sangrur SSP Harcharan Singh Bhullar said SMSes in this regard were circulated by miscreants after which some people gathered near a Church where a wooden plank kept there was set on fire.There was no other damage to the church, Bhullar said, adding the situation was now under control following strict enforcement of the curfew restrictions.The protesters also tried to torch a PCR motorcycle and policemen had to fire in the air to control the situation. The protesters did not let the fire brigade bring the situation under control. The violence mainly took place in the Loha Bazaar area of the town where police patrolling has been intensified to maintain peace and prevent any further damage.Bhullar said a decision on continuation of curfew would be taken later in the evening after reviewing the situation.BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - The work of America's best black poets will find a new home on Sunday, set to organ music.
On Aug. 25 at 2:30 p.m., East Lake United Methodist Church will partner with singers from St. Paul United Methodist and other churches to present "Courage My Soul and Let Us Journey On," a program in honor and celebration of African-American poets and hymnody.
The program is in observance of Birmingham's Fifty Years Forward commemoration, said East Lake Methodist organist Barry Norris.
Guest artist Roderick George of the University of Montevallo will perform four new musical settings of works by African-American poets, George Moses Horton, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, composed by East Lake organist emerita Mary K. "Mimi" Jackson.
James Smith of Sixth Avenue Baptist Church will be the organist.
Spirituals and hymns, including hymns by Charles Albert Tindley and harmonies by William Farley Smith will be sung by the mass choir.The writers of Saturday Night Live delivered a third anti-Obama/pro-Hillary skit this weekend, confirming their new status as an unofficial branch of the Clinton organization. And they seem to have become infected with the same problems that afflict the rest of that team: Their latest anti-Obama sketch was mean-spirited, misleading, confused... oh, and humorless.
SNL staffers helped their candidate a lot in Texas and Ohio. The sheer shock value alone must have created something of a boomlet for her. (And they certainly intimidated the media, which is asking far fewer tough questions of Sen. Clinton now.)
I was just a kid in 1968, so I might have missed it: Did people sit around wondering who Morey Amsterdam was gonna endorse? (Actually, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In did something for Richard Nixon that was very much like what SNL did for Hillary. They had a cameo of Nixon repeating their "sock it to me" tagline, and it undoubtedly helped him the way SNL helped her. But Morey Amsterdam, rest his soul, just kept on doing his schtick.)
The premise of SNL's latest little skit -- that Obama's too inexperienced and shallow to be president and needs to call Hillary for help at 3 a.m. -- shows the same tone-deafness that's infected the other arms of the Clinton campaign. It demonstrates that the SNL-ers:
* don't know when a theme is played out
* are willing to alienate half the Democratic Party
* will sacrifice their own "capital" to get what they want
* can't stay on point with their leader's ever-changing message
That "3 a.m." schtick is so yesterday. It was yesterday last Thursday, and it was three days before yesterday by Saturday. It was dead. To use it over the weekend was ringtone-deaf, just more "hanging on the telephone."
Can you hear me now? Sorry, wrong number.
It was dead like that.
The "capital" SNL has sacrificed includes the perception that they can comment on political developments as independent outsiders. They seem like Clinton subordinates now, pure and simple. It also looks like they're also willing to sacrifice what people think of as their main job -- to be funny -- in support of a vindictive agenda.
But squandering vital capital on mean-spiritedness has been a hallmark of this campaign. No less a personage than the former President, Bill Clinton, did it in South Carolina. Now he's reaching out to Obama supporters with inspiration and an olive branch -- something I suggested months ago -- but it's too late. Many Obama supporters view him now with discomfort, if not outright hostility. That's a huge loss for the Clinton team. And President Clinton's credibility is undermined every time his wife's campaign demeans the credentials of a candidate who is older than he was when he took office, and has four years of foreign policy experience where he had none.
And when I say "his wife's campaign" is undermining President Clinton's credibility, I mean you, too, SNL.
As far as their leader's shift in message and direction, the SNL-ers apparently didn't pick up on her latest campaign theme, which was elucidated by the former president the morning their routine was aired: namely, that Obama would be a dynamite vice president. When they attacked Obama on Saturday night as vain, talentless, and inexperienced, they were still on Friday's campaign message.
I can sympathize. It is hard to keep up with all the shifts in messaging. But if you're going to join the team you need to follow the playbook.
Nothing they did on Saturday descended to the level of their "bitch is the new black" routine a couple weeks back. Let's set aside the racial charge in the phrase (hopefully unintentional) and concentrate on the premise: Bitches get sh*t done.
Huh? Which "bitches" are we talking about? Where do we draw the line on this gender-only requirement? Would Madame Nhu be acceptable? How about Countess Elizabeth Báthory, who murdered hundreds of young girls (bathing, according to legend, in the blood of virgins)? Would any so-called "bitch" do, just as long as SNL women can say "I'm one, too"? That comes across as the narcissism of the famous, not the political engagement of concerned citizens.
And what "sh*t" are we talking about getting done here? Clinton's been a good Senator on everything except foreign policy, where her presidential ambitions have led her to tack right. A lot of people have suffered as a result, including the 100 American women who have died in Iraq since the start of the war. Do we want more of that kind of "sh*t"?
Now, fair is fair. My favorite Tina Fey joke is about a female head of state, Catherine the Great ("You can be a murderous tyrant and the world will remember you fondly. But f**k one horse...) And Hillary Clinton is a person of great abilities. Ironically, she was warmer and funnier on SNL than the pros were. Too bad she and her team made the decision to mount such a joyless, cold, and humorless campaign, when that wasn't necessary.
But then, she's made a lot of bad decisions as head of this campaign. And, don't forget, she's responsible for the strategy. Not Bill, not Mark Penn, not Patti Solis Doyle. No amount of pro-Clinton SNL spin can provide her with executive experiences she hasn't had, or cover up the management mistakes that plagued her health reform initiative and now dog her campaign.
No doubt SNL's writers feel they're performing a valuable public service. But in this case their involvement seems sadly misplaced, born more of vanity than idealism. Maybe that's because of the harsh and jaded way they framed their skits -- but then, that's a tone problem that's affected the Clinton campaign overall. Maybe there's some communicable form of counterproductive cynicism going around, and the people on this team have all caught it.
SNL has served the Clinton campaign well. But they've had their moment in the sun. It's time to move on. They can't help Sen. Clinton or harm the Democratic Party much more than they already have, but they can certainly harm themselves if they keep going.Shot on goal by David Krejci saved by James Reimer(Wristshot 32 ft)
Shot on goal by David Krejci saved by James Reimer(Wristshot 10 ft)
David Krejci credited with hit on Nikolai Kulemin in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Jaromir Jagr saved by James Reimer(Wristshot 33 ft)
Shot missed by Chris Kelly, Wide of Net(Wristshot 35 ft)
Rich Peverley credited with hit on Nazem Kadri in neutral zone
Chris Kelly credited with hit on Mikhail Grabovski in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Patrice Bergeron saved by James Reimer(Wristshot 11 ft)
Shot on goal by Patrice Bergeron saved by James Reimer(Snap 8 ft)
Zdeno Chara credited with hit on James van Riemsdyk in defensive zone
Brad Marchand credited with hit on Dion Phaneuf in neutral zone
Daniel Paille credited with hit on James van Riemsdyk in defensive zone
Milan Lucic credited with hit on Carl Gunnarsson in offensive zone
Chris Kelly credited with hit on Joe Colborne in defensive zone
Chris Kelly credited with hit on Joe Colborne in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Jaromir Jagr saved by James Reimer(Wristshot 38 ft)
Adam McQuaid credited with hit on Jay McClement in defensive zone
Shot missed by Johnny Boychuk, Wide of Net(Slapshot 61 ft)
Matt Bartkowski credited with hit on Joffrey Lupul in defensive zone
Patrice Bergeron credited with hit on Nazem Kadri in offensive zone
Chris Kelly credited with hit on Ryan O'Byrne in offensive zone
Shot missed by Zdeno Chara, Wide of Net(Slapshot 58 ft)
Shot missed by Tyler Seguin, Over Net(Snap 33 ft)
Shot on goal by Gregory Campbell saved by James Reimer(Wristshot 16 ft)
Johnny Boychuk credited with hit on Matt Frattin in defensive zone
Gregory Campbell credited with hit on Jake Gardiner in offensive zone
Adam McQuaid credited with hit on Nazem Kadri in defensive zone
Shot missed by Patrice Bergeron, Wide of Net(Snap 32 ft)
Chris Kelly credited with hit on Carl Gunnarsson in offensive zone
Zdeno Chara credited with hit on Colton Orr in offensive zone
Dougie Hamilton credited with hit on Mikhail Grabovski in defensive zone
Shawn Thornton credited with hit on Carl Gunnarsson in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Gregory Campbell saved by James Reimer(Wristshot 11 ft)
Shot missed by Jaromir Jagr, Wide of Net(Snap 13 ft)
Johnny Boychuk credited with hit on Mikhail Grabovski in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Dougie Hamilton saved by James Reimer(Snap 63 ft)
Shot on goal by Chris Kelly saved by James Reimer(Slapshot 12 ft)
Chris Kelly credited with hit on Nikolai Kulemin in defensive zone
Gregory Campbell credited with hit on Carl Gunnarsson in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Daniel Paille saved by James Reimer(Wristshot 46 ft)
Daniel Paille credited with hit on Jay McClement in neutral zone
Milan Lucic credited with hit on Carl Gunnarsson in offensive zone
Shot missed by Zdeno Chara, Wide of Net(Slapshot 60 ft)
Dougie Hamilton credited with |
Forward 63 (19) Emily van Egmond 12/07/1993 Midfielder 52 (14) Lydia Williams (gk) 13/05/1988 Goalkeeper 52 (0)
Match Details
Westfield Matildas v New Zealand
Saturday 4 June 2016
Morshead Park Stadium, Ballarat
Kick-Off: 3:00pm AEST
LIVE on FOX SPORTS and ABC TV
Click here for ticketing details.
Westfield Matildas v New Zealand
Tuesday 7 June 2016
Etihad Stadium, Melbourne
Kick-Off: 5:00pm AEST
Click here for ticketing details.
Both matches will be LIVE on FOX SPORTS and ABC TVGreat Stocking Stuffers For The Prepper or Survivalist In your Life
Well folks it’s that time of year once again, have you finished your Christmas shopping yet? I know I haven’t. Are you having trouble finding that special gift for the prepper in your life? Or do you know someone who is just getting started in prepping or survival?
Who wants to get up early and travel to the local malls only to fight your way through all of the crowds and traffic? I for one DO NOT! We have all heard the horror stories of people fighting over low priced electronics and other digital products. I went to Best Buy the other day and it was a zoo a literal mad house of gadget hungry zombies scooping up as much stuff as they possibly could. I saw one lady fighting with another over a Kindle Fire. Crazy I tell you just plain crazy!
Stocking Stuffers and Gadgets for Survivalists and Preppers
My team and I have searched the web high and low to find you the latest stocking stuffers and gifts for that special prepper in your life. We looked at hundreds of items such as survival kits, tools, weapons, gear, food, and other goodies to bring you this list of our top Survival Stocking Stuffer gifts.
These were just a few of our favorites, you can visit our Shop page and find more great stocking stuffer ideas. From all of us to you and yours… Have a Happy Holiday Season!Crafting for Alias
The Following Rules will be enforced for crafting with regards to Alias's crafting ideas.
Guild Member Level Crafting
On Myier, all crafters of any worth are members of the Kundarak Guild of Crafters. These are two basic reasons for this:
Access to the highest quality of crafting equipment and components
Access to the resevoir of previous schematics for refrence
In order to perform the high end level of crafting that Alias is interested in, he'll need to join the Guild of Crafters in order to gain access to the equipment and components he will need.
Joining the Kundarak Guild requires a completion of an entrence process.
Step one: Find a sponser - Every member of the Kundarak Crafter's Guild was sponsored by a previous member in good standing.
Step two: Present an audition piece - enter one of your crafted items to be considered for entrence into the Guild
Step three: Complete an entrence interview and basic crafting test - You'll be interviews by the Guild leaders and a basic knowledge demonstration will be completed.
Once all of the entrence processes are completed, you will be a member of the Kundarak Crafter's Guild, gaining access to a couple of benefits - along with access to some of the materials you will need to do any advanced crafting.
Crafting Process Steps
Following membership being approved, Alias will be able to start work on any level 1 items that are provided on the list. These are items that are either prerequisits for advanced items, or simple crafts that do not pose too great a challenge for a budding crafter. To Craft any item (Regardless of level) Alias will need to follow the crafting process:
1 Create a Schematic
2 Build a prototype
3 Test and adjust as needed
4 Build finished product
(It is possible to repeat steps 2 and 3 multiple times depending on how the crafting goes.) Each Step in the process can take a minimum of a single day to complete, thus making it so that any crafted goods can be completed in a minimum of 4 days. (Time can be lessened with specific circumstances)
It is possible to fail some steps and move on to the next step only to have it fail automatically and start over. Crafting is a Science, and Science is an art of trial and error. Any member of the Kundarak Crafting guild will agree. For instance, if Alias fails the Schematic Step, he still creates a schematic he believes will work, but once he goes into the Build step, the crafting does not work, or once he goes into the Testing step, the item will backfire and not work as it's supposed to, causing him to have to go backto square one.
This will be more likely to happen on higher level items, where complexities allow for minor mistakes to cause greater havoc.
Step one: Create a Schematic
The first step in any advanced crafting is to have a solid idea of what the outcome should be. To that end, a Schematic must be made for even the simpliest of creations. (Not only is making a schematic good for planning, it is requred for the Kundarak Guild that a schematic be kept on file for any new crafting projects)
To make a schematic, Alias will need to make intelligence checks based off the difficulty of the item and the intricacies required to make it work. The DC for basic advanced crafting is 8 + ( [Crafting items Level] x 2) - so a level 1 item would have a difficulty check to make a schematic of 10, where as a level 2 would have a difficulty check of 12, and so on. This check Does Not take any tool proficienies into consideration, so Alais will be making the check using only the d20 + Int mod (+ prof. bonus if proficient in INT checks)
Failing this check means you make a difficult to follow schematic, and your next Int Roll will have disadvantage. Failing this check by 5 or more means you make an unknown major error in the schematic and the next step will fail, forcing you to come back to schematic. A Critical Fail on the schematic level means you have caused a critical Error in the schematic. The effects of this can be determined later by the DM.
A Critical Success on the Schematic means you have drawn up a schematic that is so detailed and easy to follow that you have very little issue using it to build your prototype (gain advantage on the next crafting step.)
Once a Schematic is completed, Alias can move forward to the next step - allowing that he has enough time.
Step two: Building a Prototype
Once a schematic is finished, the first prototype must be crafted to test on. The prototype will be tested first for any miscalculations.
To Build the prototype, Alias will make two crafting checks to build the item.Cyber Studio CAD-3D (or just CAD-3D) is a 3D modeling and animation package developed by Tom Hudson for the Atari ST computer and published by Antic Software. The package is a precursor to 3D Studio Max.[2][3][4]
CAD-3D is a basic polygonal 3D modeling and rendering program. An operator can assemble a scene out of geometric primitives or custom extruded or lathed objects. Various view ports are available to adjust lighting and camera positioning. The limited rendering functionality allows for flat shading in 16 shades. Rendered images can be exported in Degas Elite or NeoChrome format.
By making changes between rendering separate cels, CAD-3D can be used for simple animations. Without its scripting extension Cyber Control changes have to be made by hand.
History [ edit ]
The first version was published in 1986 titled CAD-3D.[1] It still lacked advanced modeling features (boolean subtraction) and any animation.
In early 1987 Tom Hudson extended the application and it was renamed 'Cyber Studio CAD-3D v.2.02 '. The name Cyber Studio was proposed by Antic Software publisher Gary Yost due to his interest in William Gibson's seminal 1984 book "Neuromancer" which had introduced the term Cyberspace to describe a virtual 3D environment.[5] As of 1987 the software was packaged together with Cybermate, a Forth-based authoring language written by Tektronix engineer Mark Kimball, the creator of the StereoTek liquid crystal shutter 3D glasses that Antic Software sold as an add-on to Cyber Studio.[6] Cybermate was used to edit, sequence and present the animation files along with sound. The scripts allowed an operator to control when and how fast a video or audio segment played and whether it should loop. In combination with the other scripting language, CyberControl, users were capable to create video animations up to five minutes long.
Extensions [ edit ]
Antic Software published a variety of related Cyber-products to extend the software's functionality:
Cyberpaint - A Cell-based 2D-painting and animation software
CyberControl - Scripting language for CyberStudio CAD-3D
CyberSculpt - An extended modeling software
CyberTexture - A texturing extensionunderstanding fandom and the influence-attraction cycle. a guest Nov 20th, 2015 47 Never a guest47Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 0.88 KB understanding fandom and the influence-attraction cycle. how you can go from liking someone to really being a fanatic you like someone and that person influences you that person influences you to a great extent you feel so much of yourself is made from that person you can sense the person’s influence on you you now strongly identify with that person and that person is good and very much like you people like meeting people like themselves. and finally you think of how whatever this person says may enhance your life greatly after all, their body of work made you what you are so if you want to be a better person, then the words and advice that person may have could be of great advantage and personal growth. At that point it’s self help whatever the great person says is inherently good because you ARE the persons influence. meaning you are the product of the influence
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understanding fandom and the influence-attraction cycle. how you can go from liking someone to really being a fanatic you like someone and that person influences you that person influences you to a great extent you feel so much of yourself is made from that person you can sense the person’s influence on you you now strongly identify with that person and that person is good and very much like you people like meeting people like themselves. and finally you think of how whatever this person says may enhance your life greatly after all, their body of work made you what you are so if you want to be a better person, then the words and advice that person may have could be of great advantage and personal growth. At that point it’s self help whatever the great person says is inherently good because you ARE the persons influence. meaning you are the product of the influenceSexual purgatory, better known as the friend zone, is every man's worst nightmare. At one point and time in your life, you will be friend zoned by a chick that you really want to sleep with. This usually happens when she mistakes your kindness for you just wanting to be friends.
In such an instance, both parties are mistaken: the man for being soft and not letting his true intentions be known and the woman for thinking this man is nice to her solely to be her friend. No matter how great a girl might be as a friend, being stuck in the friend zone when you want it to be more isn't something to write home about. Keep your eyes on the prize, young fella.
if you spend too much time talking to her and being friendly, you're taking your mind off the true objective. Sure, if you only want to be her friend, it's all well and good, but if you want to be more, you have to demonstrate this intention outright.
This is a social investment and every hour you spend talking about her exes or watching movies without getting some is a loss on your investment. Once you sense you've been put in the friend zone, you can either continue to be a good friend and understand that nothing you do will get you action or you can just cut your losses and move on.
You actually sit and watch full movies with her.
When you're trying to woo a woman, you might suggest watching a movie at home in your apartment in hopes of it leading to sex either during or after the movie. If you find yourself watching a whole movie just so you guys can talk about it afterwards, then you're probably in the friend zone. You might as well watch the movie alone.
You get drinks with her at happy hour.
There is a proper time to get drinks with a friend and a proper time to get drinks with someone you're trying to sleep with. Should you find yourself constantly going to happy hour with a particular girl -- then you have landed yourself in the friend zone.
It is rare that she is going to give it up to you after happy hour because she's probably just priming herself for dinner with another dude that she keeps mentioning to you.
You either walk her dog or babysit her cat.
Cute Animals
If you're taking care of her pets and she is not giving you anything in return, you're probably either a veterinarian or in the friend zone. While she makes for a great friend, you definitely want it to progress further. Some men will go to extreme measures just to get a girl, but if you notice yourself pet-sitting with no action involved, you're probably never escaping that sexual limbo.
She's excited to have you meet her friends and introduces you as "her friend"
We Heart It
"This is my friend, (insert your name here)"… is something that no man wants to hear from a girl he is trying to sleep with. This, for sure, means that you are in the friend zone and all your chances to court your mate are flushed down the drain.
She has obviously told her friends about you, but not in the way that you were thinking -- so just accept the fact that you have been friend zoned.
She asks for you opinion on the clothes she's buying.
Now not every girl is going to sleep with you on the first date; however, what this girl wants from you is probably evident from the activities she asks you to participate in.
If she constantly begs you to go shopping with her and asks for your opinion on clothes, then there is little chance of action in your forecast. Her gay best friend will get more than you would and it is almost certain that you are giving your opinion on outfits she is going to wear on dates with another man.
She gets comfortable mentioning the names of other men she's slept with around you.
It's A Lifestyle
For the most part, a girl will not bring up other men she has slept with when talking to a man she is planning on dating or sleeping with. There should be no reason she mentions other dudes' names around you... unless you are in the friend zone.
None of this information is pertinent to you as you couldn't care less who she's been sleeping with if it doesn't include you. Now that you're in the friend zone, have fun listening to all the men she's slept with.
She tells you that you're the type of guy she would marry.
Young Free Wildlike
For some reason, marriage and dating don't go together for some people. Just because she said she would marry you doesn't mean she would date you now. Once you hear her describe you in such a manner, know that you have secured a warm seat in the friend zone.
You have all the qualities of someone she would marry, but not someone she wants to sleep with currently -- tough luck for you. Good luck in the friend zone.
You find yourself consoling her through a breakup.
Jak & Jil
No advice like friendly advice, right? It is great that you are easy to talk to and people can look to you for advice. However, there is a time and place for that, talking about relationships is common amongst people our age. There's no reason the girl you want to sleep with should be reaching out to you for dating advice -- that is unless you've made your intentions unclear and lost sight of your goal.
You've had dinner at her house, but never ate her box.
Dinner dates are loads of fun. What can be better than staying in your apartment, cooking for a girl you like, having some drinks, then getting it on? Seems like the perfect scenario... unless she decides to have her meal and just dip. After that meal you best believe you should be getting some dessert, if you're not chowing her down then you definitely did something wrong.
You didn't have sex on the first date
We Heart It
Life is a game of percentages, and if you haven't slept with this girl the first night you met, the chances of you being friend zoned drastically increase.
Of course, all women have sex at different times in the dating process, but if you don't successfully invite this woman to your bed on the night you met her, she may stop thinking about you sexually. And that, young fella, is your ticket to sexual purgatory.
Top Photo Courtesy: Healthy and BelovedLONDON - JUNE 10: A woman walks along Little Green Street in Kentish Town on June 10, 2008 in north London, England.
Photo by Cate Gillon/Getty Images
DC’s Office of Planning recently released a roadmap for what they’re calling the “Midcity East” area—essentially the next frontier for rising land values and gentrification in the District of Columbia. The plan contains a lot of worthy aspirations, but lurking near the heart of it is a basic contradiction. They want to do various things with reconnecting streets and parks that will make the neighborhood a better place to live. And they want to ensure that the neighborhood remains affordable. But they also want to “Strengthen the Zoning Code to preserve the availability of the current supply of single family housing stock” — i.e., make it harder than it currently is to replace existing structures with denser ones.
But this just doesn’t work. If a neighborhood becomes a better place to live, then you inevitably get some combination of more homes are built and the price of homes rises. To the extent that you prevent homebuilding, you only intensify the affordability concerns.
I get that the worry is that new multifamily construction in DC tends not to feature the kind of large three-bedroom units that would be suitable for families with kids. But this is not an inherent property of multifamily housing. It’s a response to developers’ perception of what there’s demand for. If you want a regulatory intervention that’s likely to increase the amount of big, family-sized homes the answer is to upzone not downzone. When buildable square feet are at a premium, you get the most value with small units. When you can get permission to build many square feet of housing it makes more sense to serve other segments of the market. But trying to “preserve” single-family homes means a small, fixed number of lucky folks will live there and everyone else will be priced out.I have been in the process of moving all week. My gifter was AWESOME and stalked me enough to know this and confirmed my NEW address. The old tenants knew I was moving in and saved the package for me. I would like to thank my gifter for being SO PATIENT on this received notice as I just received control of my house today. I walked in and went straight to my package, how exciting!!
First I got a KORG Tuning Mic for my flute!! I am sososooo excited as I want to do more ensemble playing and this is the perfect thing for tuning in a large ensemble.
In addition I got the Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure. I'm moving in with my mom who has 5 cats and I have 1... so I think we count as the model for this toy. Am I a crazy cat lady? Se pics and YOU decide!In March 2014 during the Newsweek-Nakamoto scoop (that wasn’t) and the following manhunt we experienced the ugly face of irresponsible journalism. The real problem, however, is lazy journalism.
If you are reading this article, you most probably are a Bitcoin user and have drunk the Kool-Aid already. However, when you first started your journey into the rabbit hole that is crypto currencies you were probably sceptical. Typically it takes weeks or months to fully grasp the entire concept.
In my first job as a financial journalist I had about 45 minutes to identify, research, summarize, write and publish a ‘story’. There is no way that a writer at a local newspaper or a news editor from a TV broadcaster can intelligibly write a Bitcoin article in between twenty other pieces on the same day. This is why the knee-jerk reaction from most media is to always jump on the juicy stories that are easy to write with clear bad-guy, good-guy characters: The big scandals, the most recent arrests or legal action, the major thefts and scams, and isn’t it true that Bitcoin’s main use is drugs and gambling anyway? As Matt Miller from Bloomberg Television recently told me in New York in an interview “These are the fun stories. We aren’t telling the stories that aren’t scandalous. That’s not what we do. No one would tune in.” Remember this is coming from a media company with a highly finance-savvy audience.
Now imagine how a regular journalist (without a background in economics, finance, cryptography, and technology) would embark on his or her research. The first Google result is the Wikipedia article. After struggling to understand the concept of the blockchain, distributed trust, peer-to-peer, mining, etc. It is not long before you scroll down to the chapter about Criminal Activity — what a treasure trove of juicy stories.
It’s impossible to change the behavioural patterns of most journalists, so what can the Bitcoin community do to improve the image of the crypto currency?
1. Get people to use Bitcoin via faucets or projects like the MIT initiative.
2. Rather than trying to explain Bitcoin to friends in theory, create a wallet for them and send them 0.01 BTC on the spot instead. Then tell them “this could have been a penny or a billion dollars”
3. Find the use case that really appeals to the particular person or group you are explaining it to. For your mother it might be online shopping, for a friend with family in South America or Asia it will be remittances, for Wall Street types the investment opportunity, etc.
4. Make easy-to-understand explanation videos or share the ones that are already out there
5. Have a sense of humor
6. For every drug trafficking and money laundering story, let’s spread one about organic farmers using Bitcoin
7. For every bank scandal, let’s publish news about how Bitcoin can help the poor
8. For every additional trillion dollars in money supply, expose the problems with central banking
9. Try to channel as much of our daily purchases through the Bitcoin ecosystem (via giftcards if need be) so that it makes sense for merchants to accept Bitcoin
10. Start or attend a local meetup group.
11. Support Bitcoin start-ups and charities that accept crypto
12. Ask merchants whether they accept Bitcoins. If this happens often enough, shop owners will notice
13. Start YouTube channels, publish a blog, make a film, start a podcast, write a song, create a meme
14. Keep a list of ELI5 Bitcoin articles ready and send them to friends who are curious
Creating this sort of social movement does prompt change, however small it may be. But let’s be realistic, it’s likely none of the above will entirely convince your parents and won’t bring your auntie into the ecosystem. So, what will?
I truly believe in the transformative effect of documentaries. They can spark a change in attitude and perspective, alter human behaviour, influence public opinion and even kickstart legislative change. Supersize Me has brought the health aspect of fast food to our attention just as An Inconvenient Truth has elevated the climate change discussion into the mainstream. Filmmakers have recently even directly influenced a policy revision within the U.S. military!
In order to achieve this type of impact a documentary’s production must meet some basic criteria. The documentary must have a level of credibility in both its interviewees and team behind it. The choice of language is fundamental in capturing the attention of the audience. No ‘geek speak’. Specifically for a Bitcoin documentary there must be an examination of the financial and technological context that Bitcoin has emerged from; the problems with fiat money, inflation and the legacy banking system. These issues must be fully explored to realise the vital role Bitcoin can play in our daily lives. We hope that with our documentary we hit the right tones and balance between educational and entertaining in order to achieve global distribution. Please check out our trailer, the production team, the list of interviews and the rewards of our Kickstarter campaign and get in touch with any questions or comments.
Written by Torsten Hoffmann, Media Entrepreneur and Producer of Bitcoin: The End of Money As We Know It. Torsten has licensed documentaries to global customers including Netflix, CCTV in China (800 million TV households), Samsung, Virgin Media, LG Electronics, Sky Italia, Orange (France), Canal+ (Poland), Deutsche Telekom, NBC Universal and several DVD labels and smaller broadcasters in 20 countries. Some of the unedited interviews are published on YouTube.Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a technique that uses solar power to produce clean hydrogen from biomass.
In a news release on Tuesday the university said that up until now lignocellulose – the main component of plant biomass – had only been converted into hydrogen via a gasification process that uses high temperatures to "decompose it fully."
The university said that the new technique involved the addition of catalytic nanoparticles to alkaline water containing biomass.
The solution is put in front of a lab based light mimicking solar light, and was described as being "ideal" for absorbing the light and turning the biomass into gaseous hydrogen.
"There's a lot of chemical energy stored in raw biomass, but it's unrefined, so you can't expect it to work in complicated machinery, such as a car engine," David Wakerley, from the University of Cambridge's Department of Chemistry, said in a statement.
"Our system is able to convert the long, messy structures that make up biomass into hydrogen gas, which is much more useful," Wakerley added.
"We have specifically designed a combination of catalyst and solution that allows this transformation to occur using sunlight as a source of energy. With this in place we can simply add organic matter to the system and then, provided it's a sunny day, produce hydrogen fuel."
Different types of biomass, including wood and leaves, were used, and did not need to be processed prior to the experiments, the university said.
"Our sunlight-powered technology is exciting as it enables the production of clean hydrogen from unprocessed biomass under ambient conditions," Erwin Reisner, head of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable SynGas Chemistry, where the technology was developed, said.
"We see it as a new and viable alternative to high temperature gasification and other renewable means of hydrogen production," Reisner added, before going on to say that a range of potential commercial options were being explored.Injured British middle-distance runner Kelly Holmes struggles to finish the women's 800-meter race at the 2005 Norwich Union British Grand Prix. Alex Livesey/ Getty Images Sport
When you're running, you can take up to 200 strides every minute [source: Sundquist]. Each stride makes an impact that sends forceful energy through your feet, ankles, shins, calves and knees. The force is transmitted to your hips, and even to your abdomen and lower back. Eventually, all those impacts will inevitably cause some pain. For serious runners, running pain is unavoidable; beginning or recreational runners have their own pain issues to deal with.
You can't just "run through" the pain, though. The key to managing it is knowing the difference between a temporary ache, pain serious enough to employ ice and compression, and something that requires a doctor's visit. More importantly, what can a runner do to minimize running pain and avoid the worst running injuries? We'll take a look at the 10 most common causes of running pain and how to deal with them.Science Nugget: Modeling Extreme Space Weather
› Download video
When explosions on the sun known as coronal mass ejections or CMEs collide with Earth's magnetic fields, the fields change shape and strength. Changing magnetic fields, in turn, can cause electrical currents, known as geomagnetically induced currents to form underground and in Earth's electrical systems. Credit: NASA/GSFC Conceptual Image Lab
Karen C. Fox
, Greenbelt, MD
Karen C. Fox NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Explosions on the sun regularly disrupt the magnetic envelope surrounding Earth, but that envelope, the magnetosphere, largely protects the surface of the planet itself from space weather – with one exception. As a rule, changes in magnetic fields cause electric currents and vice versa, so all that change in the magnetosphere causes electric currents to form on the ground. Called geomagnetically induced currents or GICs, such currents extend some 60 miles underground, electrifying any conductors – power grid lines, or oil pipes, for example – along the way.A big enough electrical surge from a GIC can knock out the transformers in a power grid. Electric companies can protect the grid from such surges by shutting down or lowering the power load on the system, but this, of course, costs money so they also don't wish to be overly cautious by reducing power output unless it is really necessary. New analysis by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., published online in Space Weather on February 23, 2012, provides some basic guidelines to help model some of the largest, most damaging GICs.Risk analysis and adequate risk protection both rely on numerous factors. Modeling an extreme, devastating GIC is a crucial part of that picture. Referred to as 100-year events, that is, events so extreme they only happen on average once every 100 years, such currents could cause significant damage to Earth's power grids worldwide. But proper preparation and accurate space weather forecasting could mitigate intense damage, the same way that communities can evacuate or protect their homes if given enough advance warning of a hurricane."Our main goal here is to provide the initial piece that power engineers need to calculate the risk that such a large 100-year GIC could pose," says Antti Pulkkinen, who is the first author on the paper and who is a solar scientist at Goddard and at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.To do that, Pulkkinen identified four different factors needed for risk analysis: the conductivity of the ground, the power grid's position on Earth, the frequency of the GIC, and its geographical effects.The first, ground conductivity refers to how well electricity travels through any patch of Earth. This depends strongly on local geology, what minerals lie in the dirt, and the characteristics of the planet's crust some 60 miles down into the ground. Any given power station will need to take this into consideration when analyzing its own risks.A second consideration is geographical placement. The magnetic fields in space are driven by different causes in different places, meaning that the very source of the GICs changes at different latitudes on the globe."Magnetic fields near the poles, for example, exhibit more violent, larger perturbations that are closer to Earth," says Pulkkinen. "So at high latitudes, one sees larger induced currents."Next one must consider the frequency of the electrical currents themselves, and how the fluctuations change with time. Transformers don't blow in an instant. It takes time for the heat to build up to dangerous levels, perhaps ten or twenty minutes. So how quickly a GIC transfers energy to the transformer will determine the risk in each case. Generally speaking, short GIC pulses are less damaging than long-lasting large amplitude ones.The last constraint Pulkkinen and his team say needs to be incorporated into risk analysis is just how large of an area any given model covers. The team found that every scenario is quite complex and, consequently, quite localized. Each modeling scenario is applicable in any direction for a few hundred up to a thousand miles. In the case of large power grids, therefore, scenarios must be developed for individual parcels of the grid and cannot be assumed to be universal across the system.As the science of space weather grows to its full potential, understanding how events on the sun could affect something as small as a single transformer on Earth will require sketching out the physics with minute attention to detail. This is an important step in producing and fine-tuning those models, says Pulkkinen."A comprehensive analysis of the full risk requires a multidisciplinary approach," says Pulkkinen. "No one individual or group can do it themselves. We need a good group of solar and geospace experts, power engineers, and risk analysis experts, all working together in a coherent way."This work builds on earlier work by Pulkkinen’s team that generated the first physics-based GIC forecasting system known as "Solar Shield".For more on Solar Shield, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/next-solarstorm.htmlOk – I’m going to be brief, and I’m going to cut Jimmy some slack. I’m going to cut him some slack because:
I saw the movie twice – I thought it was great, and I enjoyed the 3D effects I loved the trailer mashups I don’t think it’s coincidence he’s talking about the oil sands right before the Avatar home release on DVD and Blu-ray? He’s willing to admit he needs to learn more about the situation
CBC posted “Avatar director slams Alberta oilsands” today, and of course everyone immediately ran outside to see if there were five foot arrows sticking out of the nearest heavy hauler tire… but no. It’s all good.
I am amused.
I am amused that the DVD/Blu-ray release is being held on Earth Day. I am amused by the Avatar merchandising, the “125 products, that encompasses the worlds of video games, toys, apparel, and publishing.” [source]
I am amused by his quote:
“For us to be doing greater and greater environmental damage, pursuing a dead-end paradigm, which is fossil fuels…” [source]
I would love to see an environmental breakdown or impact assessment on all of the stuff that comes along with making, selling and branding the world’s biggest movie of all time (plastic toys, advertising, distribution efforts, DVD/Blu-ray discs etc.) – all of which would have been impossible to produce and distribute without the cursed “dead-end paradigm” which is oil. Just sayin’.
But like I said. I’ll cut him some slack. CBC says “he expects to learn more about the issues this weekend when he meets with the secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York.” Hopefully he’ll try to develop an informed opinion from multiple sources.
But then again, when you make a gazillion dollars, you can do almost whatever you want, right?
For more information about this topic, I reccommend you read this blog post by Don Thompson: Avatar: fantasy not reality
AdvertisementsHow do you feel about seeing Tatiana Maslany from Orphan Black in a Star Wars movie? She’s been rumored for a role in the past (in Rogue One, which ultimately went to Felicity Jones), and now she’s one of three names on a shortlist of young women who are reportedly in contention for a primary role in Star Wars Episode VIII.
Note that potential very vague spoilers for the new films follow along with the full Star Wars Episode VIII shortlist is below.
Update: This list may only feature two people now, as Olivia Cooke has reportedly been cast in Ready Player One. (Story on that forthcoming.) While it might not be totally impossible for her to do both Episode VIII and Ready Player One, chances are she would really only be able to do one or the other. Original story follows.
The Wrap has the list, which features Maslany, Gina Rodriguez of Jane the Virgin, and Olivia Cooke of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Reportedly, these three are the top choices for a role but that there are a few other people yet to test.
We don’t know anything about the role, and I’d be happy to see any of these three women in a Star Wars film. From a distance I kind of hope Maslany is the best choice. She’s proven anything she has to prove via Orphan Black, while Gina Rodriguez still has a lot to explore in Jane the Virgin. Cooke is the wild card for me, as I haven’t yet seen Me and Earl or her work on Bates Motel. Incidentally, this report says Cooke is also in the running for a major role in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One.
One of the most interesting aspects of the news is that this trio, and potentially a few more choices, will do a chemistry test with The Force Awakens star John Boyega later in September. That is already giving rise to curiosity about not just what this role might be, but about the role Daisy Ridley’s character Rey plays in the new set of films.
Rey has been assumed by some to be a love interest for Boyega’s character Finn. That could still be true; this new character could have any number of different relationship possibilities with existing characters. She could be a friend, comrade, enemy, love interest, rival, or even, if some rumors are correct, the daughter of another major character.
Perhaps this chemistry test is just working with an actor that is known to the production, and the only indication to take from this chemistry test is that the character will have something to do with Boyega’s guy Finn.
Rian Johnson is directing Star Wars: Episode VIII from his own script. Benicio del Toro will play a villain in the film; whatever characters survive The Force Awakens (most of them, we’d expect) should also make an appearance. Ram Bergman is producing with Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy. The film is expected to shoot early in 2016. Star Wars: Episode VIII has a release date of May 26, 2017.LONDON, United Kingdom – The leader of the UK's main opposition party, Jeremy Corbyn, has outraged his own party by joking about nuclear weapons being unable to protect America on 9/11. The Labour Party boss made the comments as he admitted that if he is elected Prime Minister at the next general election he would never use nukes anyway.
He said: "Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction that take out millions of civilians. They didn't do the USA much good on 9/11." The comments were part of his ongoing campaign to get the United Kingdom to end its role as a nuclear power, which has sparked a major debate within his party. His own choice to be Defense Secretary if he wins the election described the comments as unhelpful.
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exist by the corruption of good, but through God's agency Who first illumines and then divides. Thus righteous Abel chose the good, but unrighteous Cain fell upon evil."[22]
In the ninth chapter, Columbanus presents mortification as an essential element in the lives of monks, who are instructed, "Do nothing without counsel." Monks are warned to "beware of a proud independence, and learn true lowliness as they obey without murmuring and hesitation."[22] According to the Rule, there are three components to mortification: "not to disagree in mind, not to speak as one pleases with the tongue, not to go anywhere with complete freedom." This mirrors the words of Jesus, "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me." (John 6:38) In the tenth and final chapter, Columbanus regulates forms of penance (often corporal) for offences, and it is here that the Rule of Saint Columbanus differs significantly from that of Saint Benedict.[1]
The habit of the monks consisted of a tunic of undyed wool, over which was worn the cuculla, or cowl, of the same material. A great deal of time was devoted to various kinds of manual labour, not unlike the life in monasteries of other rules. The Rule of Saint Columbanus was approved of by the Synod of Mâcon in 627, but it was superseded at the close of the century by the Rule of Saint Benedict. For several centuries in some of the greater monasteries the two rules were observed conjointly.[1]
Character [ edit ]
Columbanus did not lead a perfect life. According to Jonas and other sources, he could be impetuous and even headstrong, for by nature he was eager, passionate, and dauntless. These qualities were both the source of his power and the cause of his mistakes.[1] His virtues, however, were quite remarkable. Like many saints, he had a great love for God's creatures. Stories claim that as he walked in the woods, it was not uncommon for birds to land on his shoulders to be caressed, or for squirrels to run down from the trees and nestle in the folds of his cowl.[1] Although a strong defender of Irish traditions, he never wavered in showing deep respect for the Holy See as the supreme authority. His influence in Europe was due to the conversions he effected and to the rule that he composed. It may be that the example and success of Saint Columba in Caledonia inspired him to similar exertions.[1] The life of Columbanus stands as the prototype of missionary activity in Europe, followed by such men as Saint Kilian, Vergilius of Salzburg, Donatus of Fiesole, Wilfrid, Willibrord, Suitbert of Kaiserwerdt, Saint Boniface, and Ursicinus of Saint-Ursanne.[1]
Miracles [ edit ]
The following are the principal miracles attributed to his intercession:[1]
Procuring food for a sick monk and curing the wife of his benefactor Escaping injury while surrounded by wolves Causing a bear to evacuate a cave at his biddings Producing a spring of water near his cave Replenishing the Luxeuil granary Multiplying bread and beer for his community Curing sick monks, who rose from their beds at his request to reap the harvest Giving sight to a blind man at Orleans Destroying with his breath a cauldron of beer prepared for a pagan festival Taming a bear and yoking it to a plough
Jonas relates the occurrence of a miracle during Columbanus' time in Bregenz, when that region was experiencing a period of severe famine.
Although they were without food, they were bold and unterrified in their faith, so that they obtained food from the Lord. After their bodies had been exhausted by three days of fasting, they found so great an abundance of birds, just as the quails formerly covered the camp of the children of Israel, that the whole country near there was filled with birds. The man of God knew that this food had been scattered on the ground for his own safety and that of his brethren, and that the birds had come only because he was there. He ordered his followers first to render grateful praises to the Creator, and then to take the birds as food. And it was a wonderful and stupendous miracle; for the birds were seized according to the father's commands and did not attempt to fly away. The manna of birds remained for three days. On the fourth day, a priest from an adjacent city, warned by divine inspiration, sent a supply of grain to Saint Columban. When the supply of grain arrived, the Omnipotent, who had furnished the winged food to those in want, immediately commanded the phalanxes of birds to depart. We learned this from Eustasius, who was present with the others, under the command of the servant of God. He said that no one of them remembered ever having seen birds of such a kind before; and the food was of so pleasant savor that it surpassed royal viands. Oh, wonderful gift of divine mercy![24]
Legacy [ edit ]
Monastery ruins at Annegray
Coat of Arms of Bobbio with doves, symbol of Columbanus
In France, the ruins of Columbanus' first monastery at Annegray are legally protected through the efforts of the Association Internationale des Amis de St Columban, which purchased the site in 1959. The association also owns and protects the site containing the cave, which acted as Columbanus' cell, and the holy well, which he created nearby.[12] At Luxeuil-les-Bains, the Basilica of Saint Peter stands on the site of Columbanus' first church. A statue near the entrance, unveiled in 1947, shows him denouncing the immoral life of King Theuderic II. Formally an abbey church, the basilica contains old monastic buildings, which have been used as a minor seminary since the nineteenth century. It is dedicated to Columbanus and houses a bronze statue of him in its courtyard.[12]
In Lombardy, San Colombano al Lambro in Milan, San Colombano Belmonte in Turin, and San Colombano Certénoli in Genoa all take their names from the saint.[25] The last monastery erected by Columbanus at Bobbio remained for centuries the stronghold of orthodoxy in northern Italy.[1]
If Bobbio Abbey in Italy became a citadel of faith and learning, Luxeuil Abbey in France became the "nursery of saints and apostles".[1] The monastery produced sixty-three apostles who carried his rule, together with the Gospel, into France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.[26] These disciples of Columbanus are accredited with founding over one hundred different monasteries.[27] The canton and town still bearing the name of St. Gallen testify to how well one of his disciples succeeded.
The Missionary Society of Saint Columban, founded in 1916, and the Missionary Sisters of St. Columban, founded in 1924, are both dedicated to Columbanus.
Veneration [ edit ]
The remains of Columbanus are preserved in the crypt at Bobbio Abbey. Many miracles have been credited to his intercession. In 1482, the relics were placed in a new shrine and laid beneath the altar of the crypt. The sacristy at Bobbio possesses a portion of the skull of the saint, his knife, wooden cup, bell, and an ancient water vessel, formerly containing sacred relics and said to have been given to him by Pope Gregory I. According to some authorities, twelve teeth of the saint were taken from the tomb in the fifteenth century and kept in the treasury, but these have since disappeared.[28]
Columbanus is named in the Roman Martyrology on 23 November, which is his feast day in Ireland. His feast is observed by the Benedictines on 24 November. Columbanus is the patron saint of motorcyclists. In art, Columbanus is represented bearded bearing the monastic cowl, holding in his hand a book with an Irish satchel, and standing in the midst of wolves. Sometimes he is depicted in the attitude of taming a bear, or with sun-beams over his head.[29]
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Citations [ edit ]Someday those clever genetic engineers will design an apple with the bar code bred right into the skin, but until then someone has to tell the checkout person that is is a Mackintosh or an Empire or even that it is an apple. Designer Scott Amron, who never ceases to amaze with his endless progression of crazy ideas like the Keybrid, Brush & Rinse and my alltime favourite, Die Electric offers up the Vanishing Fruitwash Label to solve this intractable problem that has challenged designers forever.
Instead of peeling off the label and sticking it on your kid's nose or whatever you have done with it in the past, you wash the apple and the label dissolves into an organic fruit cleansing Produce Wash that helps remove wax, pesticides, dirt and bacteria. No need to buy produce wash (although I didn't know there was any need to buy produce wash) and no need to worry about the landfills piling up with mountains of produce stickers.
My favourite rabbinical quote is "my life was blessed, because I never knew I needed something until I had it." Scott Amron is like that: I never knew I had a problem until he discovered it.
More at Amron Experimental
More wonders from Scott:
You'll Never Think About "Energy Savings" The Same Way Again
You Decide: Turn on the Lights or Hang Up Your Jacket
Heatswell
Cigarette Fridge MagnetTen pigeons with tiny backpacks are flying over London for the next two days monitoring the city’s pollution levels. Pigeon Patrol, as they’re called by the companies behind the project, are live tweeting the pollution data at their account @PigeonAir. Meet the squad.
Good day London! Rumour has it that your air is totally toxic, so we pigeons are coming to investigate. #PigeonAir pic.twitter.com/ad1EAHnAcn — Pigeon Air Patrol (@PigeonAir) March 10, 2016
People can follow along and tweet at them for updates on local pollution data.
Our #PigeonAir patrol are all roosting and we're signing off for tonight. Goodnight London - see you in the morning! pic.twitter.com/R8MkU1Gz1V — Pigeon Air Patrol (@PigeonAir) March 14, 2016
The backpacks detect nitrogen dioxide and ozone gases, and so far, the readings indicate the city wavers between moderate and high pollution levels. A "high" level is one that's above the World Health Organization's recommendations for air quality. London's air has only been deemed "fresh" a few times so far.
We're seeing lots of areas showing high levels of air pollution right now. Stay safe, London! #PigeonAir pic.twitter.com/gT1K7FKB5P — Pigeon Air Patrol (@PigeonAir) March 15, 2016
London's air pollution track record is notoriously bad. The city broke its annual EU air pollution limit within the first week of 2016, The Guardian reports, and also broke that annual cap during the previous five years. The persistent dirty air ultimately pushed the country's Supreme Court to publish an action plan last year on how to deal with the crisis. Even with the plan, however, London and other cities expect to exceed nitrogen dioxide levels for at least another five years.
The pigeons will tweet until Wednesday, the day they’re scheduled to reach their home in a suburban area of London. After that point, 100 people will be recruited to beta test a new pollution monitor for humans to wear. Pigeons aren't the cutest birds, but hey, they can do a lot of cool things! Here's to hoping they get to keep the backpacks.Head coach Buddy Ryan of the Philadelphia Eagles on August 6, 1989 in London, England. The Eagles defeated the Browns 17-13. Photo by Pascal Rondeau/Getty Images
Legendary NFL coach Buddy Ryan died Tuesday at age 82. Ryan, who was the father of Buffalo Bills head coach Rex Ryan and Bills defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, was a defensive genius—and as brash as he was innovative. He beefed with opposing coaches, called quarterbacks “overpaid, overrated, pompous bastards,” and once punched one of his fellow coaches on the sideline.
But there’s another story, mentioned in nearly every Buddy Ryan obituary, that illustrates his brawling style. On Oct. 25, 1987, Ryan’s Philadelphia Eagles were up 10 on the Dallas Cowboys, apparently letting the clock run down until the final whistle. That is, until Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham faked taking a knee in the game’s waning seconds and launched a pass to the end zone. The Cowboys were flagged for interference, and moments later the Eagles ran the ball in for a touchdown as time expired. This was nasty, salt-in-the-wound stuff that broke about 17 unwritten rules of the game. (Imagine if this happened in 2016! We’d be at hot-take Defcon 1!)
At the time, Dallas coach Tom Landry was … not pleased.
“It’s not worthy of comment. Everybody has to live with themselves. I don’t have to live with it. I was afraid it might be like this,” he said of the play, according to a Houston Chronicle article from the following day.
But Ryan’s decision to call the play was rooted in more than his merciless desire to win. It was revenge, carefully planned and perfectly executed, for the Cowboys victory two weeks earlier against an Eagles team depleted by a 24-day players’ strike.
According to a Dallas Morning News article from Oct. 12, 1987, seven Dallas regulars—all of whom had recently crossed the picket line to get paid—suited up for the game against the Eagles. Among them were quarterback Danny White and running back Tony Dorsett. As no Eagles players had broken rank, the team played with replacement players and was trounced, 41-22.
“I don’t have a lot to comment on,” a seething Ryan said after the game, according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. ”I thought our offensive line did a super job, compared to who they were blocking. (The Cowboys) ended up playing Randy (White) and “Too Tall” (Jones) toward the end there, when we were on the 10-yard line, so the kids gave a good effort.”
Ryan staked out no position regarding the strike, except to demand that his players act as one, no matter the decision. This was as close as any coach in the league was going to get to a pro-labor position, and in fact that’s how it was received by Ryan’s own boss. After the Eagles’ loss to the Cowboys, the team’s owner, Norman Braman, dismissed Ryan’s calls for team unity and begged players to cross the picket line. At the time, the Eagles were one of seven teams who had yet to have a union member defect, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.
“Of course I’m not glad that our players are all out,” Braman told the paper. ”Only an ass would say that we’re glad they’re out.” The article continued:
This, of course, is a direct contradiction of what the club’s line—as enunciated by coach Buddy Ryan—had been all along. Every time he has been asked, Ryan has said that he wants the striking Eagles to do whatever they do as a team, and not to cross the picket line in twos and threes.
“My head coach can speak for himself,” Braman said. “I think it’s regrettable that our players are out. And I think that our players should ask some very basic questions of their leaders as to what the situation is concerning these negotiations and draw their own conclusions.”
Ryan, though, held firm, waiting for the strike to end. He said: “I’m just looking forward to (the Cowboys’) butts coming to Philadelphia. I’ll tell you that. … I want to play them with the real Eagles and get after them. You can tell them that.”
Two weeks later, the strike was over, and Ryan had gotten his revenge. “That last touchdown,” Ryan said, “was very satisfying.”Indiana Pacers coach Frank Vogel says a No. 11 pick in the NBA draft could be more like third, fourth or fifth pick for the team. (Photo: Matt Kryger / The Star)
Indiana Pacers coach Frank Vogel says the upcoming NBA Draft is so deep that his team's No. 11 pick is not really a No. 11 pick.
"There are a lot of guys that we feel are going to be available at our spot at 11 that we really think are going to help us," he said Monday. "In our minds, we have a chance to succeed at what's more like a third, fourth or fifth pick. It's a pretty deep draft."
Vogel was officially on the phone not to talk basketball but to talk suits — yes, suits. He has been raiding his closet looking for clothes to donate to the Men's Wearhouse National Suit Drive later this month.
He has come up with eight that are "in pretty good shape" that he just doesn't wear much anymore.
"Donating some suits that we have to help a lot of young professionals out there going on interviews, trying to get jobs and maybe haven't made enough money yet to buy a nice suit, that's great," he said. "Any chance we have to give back to the community and be involved in charity organizations, we're there."
As we chatted about his giving back to the community, we also slid in some other questions:
Warriors or Cavs in the NBA Finals?
"Who I think will win or who I want to win?" Evidently the answers are different... and he would not give us either.
"I'm going to plead the fifth because I don't want to step on any toes."
Are you watching?
"I've been watching it for more of a study of what is happening with our game. How successful can the small ball approach be? I understand it's going to be growing in popularity. Playing small, little like Cleveland or ultra small like Golden State. We are going to be making adjustments."
On David Letterman's retirement:
"I guess he had a hell of a run, obviously. America is going to miss him. To me, in particular, for my first glimpse of being in the spotlight at 13 years old, it's something that has really stayed with me. It's a great conversation piece when people find out."
Vogel was on the show as a kid in 1986 performing a stupid human trick, spinning a basketball on a toothbrush while brushing his teeth.
Are you more popular for the Letterman stunt or NBA coaching?
NEWSLETTERS Get the IndyStar Motor Sports newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong The latest news in IndyCar and the world of motor sports. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-357-7827. Delivery: Sun - Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for IndyStar Motor Sports Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
"It really exploded when I had gotten the interim job here; I got 75 to 100 texts. Three months later, that video was revealed on the Internet that I had been on Dave Letterman as a child. I got 200 texts. I got more texts from that video going viral than getting the interim coaching job."
How are you filling your time, not coaching right now?
"I coach soccer. We have two goals set up in our backyard and, basically, a full soccer field. I love getting out there and teaching (my two daughters) the game and playing with them and their friends. We also have a lot of backyard barbecues with friends."
Follow Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow.
Men's Wearhouse National Suit Drive
When: Suit donations begin June 22
What: In its eighth year, the drive is trying to hit the 1 million mark for the number of items collected since the program's conception. The effort helps more than 180 local non-profit organizations that assist unemployed men who are trying to get back into the workforce through job readiness programs and workforce assistance.
Where: More than 900 Men's Wearhouse locations -- including all Indianapolis area stores -- across the United States will be participating.
Bonus: Donate a suit and receive a coupon for 50 percent off your next purchase of regular priced items at Men's Wearhouse.Image copyright Reuters Image caption Moscow marks the second anniversary of the annexation of Crimea
A conference often has an official theme or issue that features in all the panel discussions and debates.
At this year's Moscow International Security Conference, the official theme is fighting terrorism.
But there is an unofficial theme, too - blaming the West.
A string of Russian military figures and experts have accused the US and Nato of causing global insecurity and waging an "information war" against Moscow.
"Terrorism has become the number one problem for all of us," said Russia's Defence Minister, Sergey Shoygu.
He promptly went on to accuse the US and Nato of "building up military infrastructure close to Russia's borders and carrying out dangerous plans for missile defence".
Speaking at the conference, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, said the rise of terrorism was partly the result of "attempts to transfer the values of Western democracy to countries with their own mentality, spiritual values and traditions... this had exploded North Africa and the Middle East".
When I ask Veronika Krasheninnikova, a member of the Russian Public Chamber, who she views as the greatest threat in the world today, she points to Washington.
"The biggest threat is the adventurous military and political policy of some countries, like the US and its close allies, in the Middle East," she tells me.
Putin creates new National Guard in Russia 'to fight terrorism'
Putin warns of 'foreign foes'
West faces up to Putin aggression
Another Cold War?
Russia and Syria 'weaponising' migration
Forget Crimea
Mr Shoygu described the security situation in Europe as "deplorable".
But neither he nor any other Russian official has acknowledged Moscow's annexation of Crimea is in any way responsible for this state of affairs.
Crimea is not on the conference agenda.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption A billboard in Crimea says: "Crimea. Russia. Forever"
"For the Russian leadership, the question of Crimea is now closed," Russia's ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Alexander Lukashevich, tells me.
The message from Moscow is clear - Russia wants improved relations with the West, but the West must accept Russia as it is.
"One of the common themes of this conference is that we need to rethink issues, rethink the security environment, rethink our relationship," says Richard Weitz, from US think tank the Hudson Institute.
"But when you get specific, what they're saying is that the West needs to rethink its approach to Russia."
But, if Russia is serious about improving ties with the West, doesn't it take two to tango? Ms Krasheninnikova is in no mood to share the dance-floor.
"It takes two to tango, but it takes one to start a war," she tells me. "It takes one country to bomb other countries such as Libya."
"The West would argue, 'It takes one country to annex Crimea,'" I respond.
"Wasn't what Russia did in Crimea a watershed moment for international security?"
"It wasn't Russia that annexed Crimea," Ms Krasheninnikova replies.
"It was Crimea that ran away from the Kiev regime after a state coup."
When it comes to security issues, it often feels as if Russia and the West are talking past each other. But some delegates here sense cause for optimism.
"The Russians are always blaming the Americans, of course, and we have a lot of reasons to blame Russia, as well, for example on Crimea," says August Henning, former director of Germany's Federal Intelligence Agency.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sergey Shoygu blames the West for global insecurity
"But my impression is that there is more openness in Russia to go ahead and find solutions.
"We should do this in a more discreet manner, not publicly - that would be not be very helpful.
Mr Henning says a solution to the question of Crimea is possible.
"I have made some proposals privately, even on Crimea," he tells me.
"I have no doubt the majority of the population of Crimea voted for being part of Russia.
"Nevertheless, the way it happened is not acceptable for us.
"My idea is to try to establish a free trade zone in Crimea, we should try to have a [kind of] Hong Kong, for example, in consensus with Ukraine, with the West, with the European Union.
"We need more [imagination] for this question. Now is not the time, but there may be an opportunity in the future."[May 12, 2015] Akanda Releases Version 1.0, the Open Source Network Virtualization Solution for OpenStack
Akanda, the only open source network virtualization solution built for OpenStack clouds, today announced Akanda 1.0, a network orchestration platform that simplifies the delivery and management of network services in OpenStack clouds. As the centralized management layer for all OpenStack networking decisions, Akanda enables key virtualized network functions providing routing, load balancing, firewall and more. Akanda also interacts with any L2 overlay based on OVS and Linux bridge, as well as most proprietary solutions to provide lifecycle management of a complete networking stack. "DreamHost is a global leader in web hosting and cloud services for entrepreneurs and developers," said Jonathan LaCour, Vice President of Cloud and Development at DreamHost. "We have been a part of the open source community for many years and have decided to replace our proprietary infrastructure with Akanda's open source network virtualization platform. Combined with our white box switches running Cumulus Linux, Akanda gives us an open, full network stack that is simple to manage at a fraction of the cost." "Over the past year OpenStack momentum has continued to grow, yet virtual networking for OpenStack, a key element in the software stack, continues to be confusing with many vendor-specific, or even vendor-proprietary, approaches being promoted," said Peter Christy, networking research director at 451 Research (News - Alert). "By fully adhering to the beliefs of the open source community and bringing the DreamHost experience to bear, Akanda is providing a powerful and fully open network automation capability for OpenStack clouds, which can only benefit the use and futureof OpenStack."
The Akanda project lives in two main repositories on Github to ease packaging and management: Akanda Rug - Orchestration service for managing the creation, configuration and health of Akanda Software Routers in an OpenStack cloud.
Akanda Appliance - Supporting software for the Akanda Software Router appliance, which is a Linux-based service VM that provides routing and L3+ services in a virtualized network environment. This includes a REST API for managing the appliance via the Akanda Rug orchestration service. "The first generation SDN solutions were not built for OpenStack. Akanda is providing the critical functions of the OpenStack Neutron API and takes the place of many of the agents that OpenStack Neutron communicates with, acting as a single control point for all networking services," said Henrik Rosendahl, CEO of Akanda. "Akanda removes the complexity of OpenStack networks to manage DHCP and L3, orchestrate load balancing and VPN Services and overall reduce the number of components required to build, manage and monitor complete virtual networks within your cloud."
Supporting Resources Company Blog: http://akanda.io/blog/
Twitter (News - Alert) : https://twitter.com/akandaio
Facebook (News - Alert) : https://www.facebook.com/akanda.io
LinkedIn (News - Alert) : https://www.linkedin.com/company/akanda-inc About Akanda, Inc. Akanda, Inc. is the major developer and supporter of the open source Akanda network virtualization software project. Akanda's networking platform for OpenStack clouds is changing the future of networking by delivering an open, extensible and cost effective platform for enterprises and service providers to virtualize their networks. Akanda is layer 2 agnostic and powers network virtualization for DreamCompute, the OpenStack-based public cloud offered by DreamHost. Akanda interfaces with the OpenStack Neutron REST APIs and includes a sophisticated management and orchestration platform to monitor, configure, and manage 3rd party virtualized routers, load balancers and firewalls. For more information, visit www.akanda.io.
[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]A man is dead after his motorcycle crashed in Huntly on Monday.
Eleven people died on New Zealand roads during the long weekend, crowning it the worst Queen's Birthday in 27 years.
The high toll - compared to a zero toll on 2013 - has road safety campaigner Clive Matthew-Wilson questioning the police's approach to safety and the reasons behind the deaths.
"When petrol is cheap, the high-risk groups start using cars for joyriding rather than just transport. A car full of young, excited, working-class males on Saturday night is a perfect setup for a fatal accident."
He believed police were "wasting their breaths" when asking drivers to take care on our roads.
READ MORE:
* Horror road toll continues as seven dead in crashes across New Zealand
* Road toll hits five after fatal head-on highway crash near Mt Bruce
* Record zero holiday road toll
"The high risk groups: drunks, motorcyclists, tourists, very young drivers and very old drivers, already think they're driving okay.
Philips Search & Rescue Trust The Palmerston North Rescue Helicopter was dispatched to Mt Bruce, North of Masterton, to a crash which killed two people
"They may even agree with road safety messages, but they don't believe it applies to them."
Police would be using their time better by lobbying the government to improve New Zealand's "third world roads and cars", he said.
"I know it's natural to blame bad driving when people get killed, but blaming bad driving doesn't change anything. Nor does issuing millions of tickets to ordinary drivers who've drifted a few kms over the speed limit.
STACY SQUIRES/FAIRFAX NZ A truck and two cars crashed in Greta Valley, north of Christchurch, on Saturday evening.
"What does work is changing the cars and the roads, so that silly behaviour doesn't kill innocent people."
Road policing manager Steve Greally issued a statement saying the prime responsibility for police was the safety of road users.
"Our approach continues to be to educate road users first and, where they do not heed the warning, enforce the law via the appropriate means.
"Quite often, many road crashes can be prevented had drivers driven to the conditions and ensured they followed the road rules."
Most adhered to road rules but there were those who did not.
"These will likely end in tragedy on our roads, as seen so far, and police will continue to do everything we can to ensure the message gets to those who need to hear it – if only to prevent another crash from occurring."
An NZTA spokesman said the Government's Safer Journeys Strategy had "four pillars", including safer roads and cars.
The Queen's Birthday holiday period started at 4pm on Friday and ends at 6am on Tuesday.
In 2013, the road toll was zero during Queen's Birthday Weekend, the first time there were no fatalities on the country's roads for the holiday weekend period since records began.
On Monday afternoon, a person died in a collision between a car and motorbike in Huntly, Waikato.
Police were called to the incident on Harris St, west of the Waikato River, at 3pm on Monday afternoon.
The north-bound driver of the motorbike died after crashing into a car that was heading south, police said.
The driver of the car was not hurt.
There was also a crash west of Tauranga on SH2 on Monday afternoon that caused considerable delays for people travelling between Waikato and Bay of Plenty.
Diversions were put in place while the scene between Katikati and Bethlehem was cleared. Motorists were asked to avoid that section of State Highway 2 and take an alternate route via Hamilton or delay their travel if possible.
The driver of a car that crashed near Mt Bruce, Wairarapa, on Sunday died after being freed from the wreck of the car, while another man, who had been flown to Wellington Hospital, died on Monday.
In the final fatal crash of the long weekend, A 4WD carrying six people crashed into a tree at about 6.45pm on the corner of Bayleys Coast Rd and Baylys Basin Rd, near Dargaville.
Fire Communications shift manager Jaron Phillips said three of the occupants had died, while three had sustained serious injuries.
On Friday evening, a Kaikoura man, aged 64, died in a four-car crash on SH1 between Waikouaiti and Waitati, north of Dunedin.
On Saturday, one person died in a crash on State Highway 3 between Te Kuiti and Piopio, a motorcyclist died after colliding with a parked car in south Auckland, another person died in a crash north Christchurch, and a man died after his car crashed into a tree near Rotorua.Republicans in the U.S. Senate on Thursday unveiled a bill that would dramatically transform the nation’s Medicaid program, make significant changes to the federal health law’s tax credits that help lower-income people buy insurance and allow states to water down changes to some of the law’s coverage guarantees.
The bill also repeals the tax mechanism that funded the Affordable Care Act’s benefits, resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy and health care industry.
Most senators got their first look at the bill as it was released Thursday morning, and some immediately voiced concerns. It had been crafted in secret over the past several weeks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is seeking a vote on the bill before Congress leaves next week for its Fourth of July recess.
Use Our Content This KHN story can be republished for free ( details ).
Four conservative Republicans — a number large enough to stop the bill from passage — announced in the afternoon that they were withholding support. “Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor,” said the statement from Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah). “There are provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current health care system, but it does not appear this draft as written will accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to repeal Obamacare and lower their health care costs.”
Senators had promised that their ACA replacement would be very different than the version that passed the House in May, but the bill instead follows the House’s lead in many ways.
At lightning speed and with a little over a week for wider review, the Republicans’ bill could influence health care and health insurance of every American. Reversing course on some of the more popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act, it threatens to leave tens of millions of lower-income Americans without insurance and those with chronic or expensive medical conditions once again financially vulnerable.
Like the House measure, the Senate bill, which is being called a “discussion draft,” would not completely repeal the ACA but would roll back many of the law’s key provisions. Both bills would also — for the first time — cap federal funding for the Medicaid program, which covers more than 70 million low-income Americans. Since its inception in 1965, the federal government has matched state spending for Medicaid. The new bill would shift much of that burden back to states.
The bill would also reconfigure how Americans with slightly higher incomes who don’t qualify for Medicaid would get tax credits to help pay insurance premiums and eliminate penalties for those who fail to obtain insurance and employers who fail to provide it. It also would make it easier for states to waive consumer protections in the ACA that require insurance companies to charge the same premiums to sick and healthy people and to provide a specific set of benefits.
“We agreed on the need to free Americans from Obamacare’s mandates, and policies contained in the discussion draft will repeal the individual mandate so Americans are no longer forced to buy insurance they don’t need or can’t afford; will repeal the employer mandate so Americans no longer see their hours and take-home pay cut by employers because of it,” McConnell said on the floor of the Senate after releasing the bill. He also noted that the bill would help “stabilize the insurance markets that are collapsing under Obamacare as well.”
As expected, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) assailed the bill, saying it would “strip away health care benefits and protections from Americans who need it most” through changes in Medicaid and the ACA’s essential health benefits. “Even though much of the early reporting says the bill will keep certain protections for Americans with preexisting conditions,” he added, “the truth is it may well not guarantee them the coverage they need. By allowing states to waive essential health benefits, what the bill is saying to those Americans is: Insurance still has to cover you, but it doesn’t have to cover what you may actually need; it doesn’t have to cover all or even most of your costs.”
The White House had no immediate comment, but President Donald Trump has been pressuring Congress to pass a health bill quickly.
It is not clear that the bill will make it through the Senate, or that all of it will even make it to the Senate floor. The Senate (like the House) is operating under a special set of budget rules that allow it to pass this measure with only a simple majority vote and block Democrats from dragging out the debate by using a filibuster. But the “budget reconciliation” process comes with strict rules, including the requirement that every provision of the bill primarily impact the federal budget, either adding to or subtracting from federal spending.
For example, the legislation as released includes a one-year ban on Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. That is a key demand of anti-abortion groups and some congressional conservatives, because Planned Parenthood performs abortions with non-federal funding. But it is not yet clear that the Senate parliamentarian will allow that provision to be included in the bill.
Read The Bill The Senate bill — once promised as a top-to-bottom revamp of the health bill passed by the House last month — instead maintains its structure, with modest adjustments. View More
Also still in question is a provision of the Senate bill that would allow states to waive insurance regulations in the Affordable Care Act. Many budget |
lars' were shot during break-in
Andy Ferrie, 35, and his wife Tracey, 43, have been arrested on suspicion of GBH
Couple had been burgled multiple times and were hoping to start a new life in Australia
Police received 999 call from homeowner Mr Ferrie, who allegedly opened fire on intruders at the isolated cottage in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire
Four men have been detained on suspicion of aggravated burglary
Supporter: Alan Duncan MP said the couple should have a right to defend their property
A government minister has issued an impassioned defence of two of his constituents, saying they should not be prosecuted for shooting two suspected burglars who allegedly broke into their remote farm cottage.
International Development Minister Alan Duncan, who is MP for Rutland and Melton, spoke out in support of homeowners Andy Ferrie, 35, and his wife Tracey, 43.
The couple were arrested in the early hours of Sunday after they were disturbed by the break-in at their home in the Welby area of Leicestershire, near Melton Mowbray.
They are presently being questioned by Leicestershire Police on suspicion of GBH.
It is understood Mr Ferrie grabbed a legally-owned shotgun and fired at two of the four intruders before calling the police himself.
Minister Mr Duncan said the Ferries should not face charges for defending their home.
'If this is a straightforward case of someone using a shotgun to defend themselves against burglars in the dead of night, then I would hope that the police will prosecute the burglars and not my constituents,' he said.
'The householder is the victim here and justice should support them and prosecute the burglars.'
Mr and Mrs Ferrie have reportedly been burgled three or four times at their 200-year-old farm cottage.
Police investigation: Forensic officers arrive at the house where Andy and Tracey Ferrie were arrested
The couple had only been back in the property for four weeks - after moving out because they were fed up with being targeted - when crooks struck again.
Mr Ferrie's stepfather Maris Spilner, 60, said the couple, who have been married for four years, had decided to emigrate to Australia in 2013.
The service engineer said: 'In the time they have lived in the cottage, I think they have been broken into a couple of times at least, but I couldn’t say for definite.
'This is very out of character, we were very shocked when we heard on Sunday.
'But if someone breaks into your home its a violation of your privacy, I’m sure there was a very good reason for what has happened.
'We don’t know what went on, we haven’t spoken to either of them since it happened and no one will tell us anything.
'They haven’t lived in the property again for that long - a few months maybe.
'They were preparing for their move overseas, they were hoping to emigrate to Australia - for the weather mainly.'
Mr Spilner confirmed that the couple did have a gun licence but could not confirm for what type of firearm.
He said: 'They weren’t part of any gun club that I am aware of, but they did have a gun license.
'I have never seen the firearm.'
Analysis: Leicestershire Police cordoned off the stone cottage, which had reportedly been burgled several times already
Taking notes: Police were first called to the property shortly after midnight on September 2, by homeowner Mr Ferrie
The couple - who have not been officially identified by police - run a caravan and motor home firm in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire.
They are being questioned by Leicestersire police today.
The Ferries are believed to have called the police immediately after the latest burglary at 12.26am on Sunday morning.
It is understood that the man who dialled 999 told officers he had fired his shotgun, which is licensed and legally held, and that the intruders fled.
Police examine a shotgun after attending reports of a shooting at the 200-year-old property
Shortly after police received the emergency call they were alerted by the ambulance service that they had been called to the same address to treat a man with shotgun injuries.
The two wounded men, whose injuries are not life-threatening, were allegedly part of a four-man burglary team.
The four suspected burglars, aged 23, 27, 31, and 33, were all arrested at Leicester Royal Infirmary where the injured pair were taken for treatment.
Police said they could not comment on whether the raiders had been armed.
Mr and Mrs Ferrie were held after suspected burglars were shot at their home
Police stand at the front door of the property as they attend the scene of the shooting at Melton Mowbray
Detectives and scenes of crime officers have cordoned off the stone cottage, and forensic investigations are underway.
Eve Hobill, whose family owns the land that the cottage is on, said today: 'We do not know what is happening, and we are not allowed to say anything.'
A police community support officer stands guard at a track near the isolated cottage
Local resident Ted Hutchin, 63, said the suspected break-in and shooting were a shock to the quiet, rural community.
He said: ‘I’m a former magistrate and Melton Mowbray has the usual crimes associated with a market town.
‘But in the immediate vicinity the worst crime we can remember is lead stolen from the church roof.’
Mr Hutchin said he had seen the police cordon outside the cottage on his way to church last night, adding: ‘I thought it was strange because this is such a quiet spot.’
The case is likely to reignite public debate over a householder’s right to defend his home against intruders.
In 1999, Norfolk farmer Tony Martin was arrested after shooting burglars during a break-in at his remote farmhouse. He did not have a firearms licence.
Fred Barras, 16, was killed and his friend Brendan Fearon, 29, suffered gunshot wounds to his legs.
Fearon later admitted conspiring to burgle the farmhouse, accompanied by Barras, but Martin was tried at Norwich Crown Court and jailed for life for murder in 2000.
His murder conviction was later reduced to manslaughter and he was released from jail in 2003.
The four suspected burglars, aged 23, 27, 31, and 33, were all arrested at Leicester Royal InfirmaryOn this day in 1787, Shays’ Rebellion effectively ended in Springfield, Mass., when its forces failed to capture a federal armory. The uprising was one of the major influences in the calling of a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
The tax protest showed the federal government, under the Articles of Confederation, couldn’t put down an internal rebellion. It had to rely on a state militia sponsored by private Boston business people. With no money, the central government couldn't act to protect a “perpetual union” guaranteed by the Articles.
The events leading to and including Shays’ rebellion alarmed Founders like George Washington, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton to the point where delegates from five states met in Annapolis, Maryland in September 1786 to discuss changing the Articles of Confederation.
The group in Maryland included Madison, Hamilton and John Dickinson, and it recommended that a meeting of all 13 states be held the following May in Philadelphia. The Confederation Congress agreed and the Constitutional Convention of 1787 effectively ended the era of the Articles of Confederation.
Daniel Shays, a former Continental Army captain, led a group of upset western Massachusetts residents that clashed with the state government over the forgiveness of wartime debt and high taxes. In some cases, Army veterans who had never received pay for their service saw their property seized.
In August 1786, the protesters mobilized and seized several local courts after the state government refused to consider debt-relief provisions. Shays led a force of about 1,500 men in an attempted raid of the Springfield armory on January 26. The group was intercepted on the day before its planned attack; four protestors died in a brief conflict with the militia and the group dispersed.
When learning of the conflict, Washington remarked that it threatened “the tranquility of the Union.”
“If three years ago any person had told me that at this day, I should see such a formidable rebellion against the laws & constitutions of our own making as now appears I should have thought him a bedlamite - a fit subject for a mad house,” he wrote to Henry Knox.
At that time, Washington was leaning against attending the constitutional convention, but the impact of Shays’ rebellion and the influence of his friends led Washington to change his mind.Buy Photo P&G CEO David Taylor answers questions at a news conference following Procter & Gamble's shareholder vote, which prevented Trian Partners CEO Nelson Peltz a seat on the company's board, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017, in Cincinnati. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)Buy Photo
Procter & Gamble won its proxy fight with hedge fund CEO Nelson Peltz, P&G chairman David Taylor announced at the end of the company's annual meeting Tuesday morning.
But Peltz, who had predicted the vote would be "extremely close," wasn't conceeding after the meeting. The result was "as close to a dead heat as you can find," he said in an interview on CNBC, adding "ultimately the numbers will come out in our favor."
Taylor, in his own CNBC interview, said the message that he and other CEOs should take from the vote was simple: "Deliver better results."
CLOSE Procter & Gamble shareholders will cast the final votes Tuesday on whether to allow hedge fund investor Nelson Peltz on the company's board of directors. Sarah Brookbank/Alex Coolidge
The shareholders met at P&G's Downtown headquarters starting at 9 a.m. After a 30 minute Q&A session, Taylor recessed the meeting at 10:28 a.m. "for an update." When he came back in three minutes, he announced the preliminary vote but said "we will continue to listen to Nelson Peltz." Taylor did not give vote totals or say when they would be final.
To win, Peltz needed a groundswell of support from dissatisfied investors. His firm, Trian Fund Management, owns 1.5 percent of P&G, which is worth about $3.5 billion. Peltz and Trian are veterans of other proxy fights at Heinz and DuPont, but the fight with P&G was described as the largest in U.S. corporate history.
Foggy morning at @ProcterGamble HQ as shareholders prepare final vote on #NelsonPeltz of Trian bid for board seat. @Enquirer$PG MTK pic.twitter.com/9nioHF22nj — Alex Coolidge (@alexcoolidge) October 10, 2017
Buy Photo Trian Partners CEO Nelson Peltz, right, and other attendees walk into the Procter & Gamble headquarters for the annual shareholders meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017, in Cincinnati. Peltz is seeking a board seat at Procter & Gamble after the company rejected his request for one after months of meetings. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)
The outcome of the vote could affect thousands of positions at P&G. The consumer products giant employs 10,000 workers in Greater Cincinnati and 95,000 total worldwide.
Applause breaks out in the full auditorium as P&G Board of Directors walks in. More applause as CEO David Taylor takes the stage. @Enquirer — Sarah Brookbank (@SarahBrookbank) October 10, 2017
More: Big P&G proxy vote Tuesday: What to expect
During the CNBC interview, Peltz reiterated that he had no plans to move P&G's headquarters from Cincinnati although he wants to cut the company's bureaucracy.
He asked Taylor to end the fight by adding him to the board. "Make it 12," Peltz said.
Buy Photo Trian Partners CEO Nelson Peltz prepares for an interview by CNBC's Sara Eisen after losing the shareholder vote for a seat on Procter & Gamble's board, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017, in Cincinnati. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)
Taylor, in a subsequent CNBC interview, laughed when asked if P&G would honor Peltz' request. If the final tally shows Peltz won, Taylor said the company would follow "the will of the shareholders."
Being on the board would give Peltz access to internal financial statements as well as direct access to general managers and others inside P&G, including board members, Peltz said. Peltz now talks directly to Taylor only.
Peltz criticized the P&G board for not meeting with him as a group. He also complained about the personal tone of the proxy fight. "It got nasty on their part. I think we were gentlemanly," he said.
"I’m not mad at David," Peltz continued, because things happen in proxy fights. But then he added, "I don’t think they’re serving their shareholders properly."
Taylor later said he had always treated Peltz with courtesy and disputed that he had ever called the investor "dangerous," adding that it was Peltz's "ideas that I'm concerned about."
In speaking for his proposal during the meeting, Peltz urged the board to a adopt "owner mentality" that he would represent.
Peltz sought a seat on the 11-person board, which oversees senior executives and company strategy, while company officials have urged shareholders to reject his bid.
He also wanted shareholders to approve a separate vote to add a board seat, taking it to 12. Again, the current board recommended a vote against Peltz's proposal.
Buy Photo Trian Partners CEO Nelson Peltz takes questions reporters after losing the shareholder vote for a seat on Procter & Gamble's board, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017, in Cincinnati. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)
Peltz wanted the seat to give him a bigger say in the company's ongoing restructuring, which has dragged on for much of the decade. He says P&G hasn't done enough to restore growth and still has too many layers of management holding it back.
Peltz didn't specify how many jobs he thinks could be affected, but has called for "flattening" management and eliminating "bureaucracy." Several companies he has targeted have shed tens of thousands of jobs through divestitures and layoffs.
P&G says Peltz is late to the game: It's already implemented or rejected many of his ideas during its restructuring and is already seeing results improve. P&G CEO David Taylor says Peltz and his "outdated" ideas would be an unwelcome distraction in the boardroom.
The P&G vote camesa day after another company with a large Cincinnati footprint, General Electric, agreed to give Trian a seat on its board. GE announced Monday the addition of Trian co-founder Ed Garden to the board. The move came a week after the resignation of longtime chairman Jeff Immelt, a Finneytown native and former P&G employee.
In his presentation to shareholders, Taylor said P&G "was willing to change anything" that wasn't counter to its values to make the company perform better.
Taylor described P&G as "profoundly" different company than a few years ago, since it has shed dozens of brands to focus on a core of daily used products.
A video showed by Taylor highlighted better results from China, P&G's second largest market with annual sales of $7 billion. All seven of P&G's product groups now are performing as expected in China, Taylor said, compared to lagging sales virtually across the board when he took over as CEO roughly two years ago.
Taylor highlighted the company's viral marketing, with videos designed to reach Millennials, such as the Like A Girl series that has generated 550 million views.
Cost cutting to boost productivity has helped P&G cushion itself from the negative effects of foreign currency exchange (due to the strong dollar), Taylor said. The steps include creating regional "mixing hubs," where it can manufacture and then distribute closer to consumers.
"We're on the road to meeting current and future consumer needs," he said, as well as boosting shareholder value.
Buy Photo P&G CEO David Taylor answers questions at a news conference following Procter & Gamble's shareholder vote, which prevented Trian Partners CEO Nelson Peltz a seat on the company's board, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017, in Cincinnati. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)
Taylor took shareholder questions near the close of the meeting. When a retiree siding with Peltz criticized how long it takes for P&G to bring innovations to market, Taylor said the speed of innovation was a concern and management was working to improve it.
One shareholder asked why P&G sent out so many mailings about the proxy fight. "We did everything we thought was necessary," Taylor said. Both sides made more than 80 filings, which went to more than 2.5 million shareholders.
Shareholder Tom Bookman asked about P&G's share price. "Management is very impressed with performance but the market, not too much impressed," he said. "Even people who are in it for the long term" want better returns, he said.
Foreign currency exchange and getting off track in China "hurt the top line," Taylor said. "I share your dissatisfaction.... We're not saying success, we're saying improvement. We're not satisfied with results until they're outstanding."
"We have to do more and we have to do it faster,' Taylor said, responding to another shareholder's comment that if senior management and the board can't get the company and its share price growing, they should be replaced.
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More: Big P&G proxy vote Tuesday: What to expect
More: P&G proxy vote this week: Huge stakes for Cincinnati
More: P&G investor Nelson Peltz's deals have cost 100K jobs at other companies
More: P&G's David Taylor vs. hedge funder Nelson Peltz: Who are these guys?
Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/2yVKw6eAs I have discussed before here, there is a way of writing about liberty in a conscious focus on political thought, which finds liberty to be emulated in some respect, going back at least to the first century Roman historian Tacitus. He was referring to the condition of the ancient Britons, within the Roman Empire, but rebelling against it, and the ancient Germans who could not be incorporated into the Empire.
The latter situation may have been at least as much for economic reasons as for the German fighting spirit, but they were certainly difficult to overcome and inflicted one of the great defeats on the Roman legions, at the height of Roman power in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 25CE.
The image of barbarian liberty in Tacitus was certainly in some part shaped by Homer given the deep impact of Greek culture on the Romans, and most relevantly in this instance through the continuation of Homer in the greatest latin epic, Aeneid, which links Rome with the Trojan prince Aeneas. As I pointed out before here, Tacitus’ idea of barbarian liberty strongly influenced Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748, a work I will be posting on in future), whose view of liberty in modern Europe, in brutal but meaningful summary, was of a combination of Roman law and Germanic individualism.
Montesquieu was of course a great part of Classical Liberalism and we can follow up his interest in barbaric liberty with reference to other classical liberals. David Hume and Adam Smith, who were writing after Montesquieu, tended to write on ‘barbarism’ and a related idea of ‘savagery’ with some anxiety regarding the possibility that such societies, or societies closer to that stage than those European nations where civil society had advanced the most, might overwhelm commercial legalistic nations with their unrestrained force.
However, some element of respect for liberty in the most simple societies does manifest itself at times, but mostly through an interest in the earliest stages of the Roman and Greek republics of antiquity, which in Montesquieu’s thinking come between the Germanic individualism and the late Roman legalism. Tacitus was thinking of the ‘virtue’ (in the sense of patriotic courage and love of law) of the early Romans when addressing the courage, rough individuality, and fierce independence of the Britons and Germans.
The most interesting way of linking back from Enlightenment liberalism of the Eighteenth century, for me at least, is via Wilhelm von Humboldt, a thinker I will address in at least one dedicated post in future. Humboldt’s major contribution to political thought, The Limits of State Action, was written in the 1790s, so another generation on from Montesquieu, just after Smith and Hume.
At this point, we might think of a movement from Enlightenment to Romanticism in European thought. While we should be very careful about such general distinctions, and amongst other things not engage in simplistic oppositions, it is appropriate to think of Humboldt as belonging to a phase of interest in the history and current meaning of aesthetics, literature, culture, and language as part of the study of political ideas.
He was in fact a major thinker about language and the infinite capacities inherent in the combinatory nature of language, which was part of his thinking about individual human capacity and the power of voluntary co-operation.
It is the interest in aesthetics, language, culture, historical existence, and the capacity of the inner human which makes him ‘Romantic’ rather than ‘Enlightened’, though again we should avoid stereotype and simple opposition here. Humboldt was very much not against Enlightenment respect for reasons, and some of these ‘Romantic’ themes are in ‘Enlightenment’ texts.
One of the earlier big classics of Enlightenment, The New Science (1725, 1744) by Giambattista Vico, is a good example and that is a book giving great importance to Homer. Vico is someone else who merits at least one dedicated post, so there will be more about him at some point. I am not aware of any evidence that Humboldt read Vico, but he certainly made an impression on German thinkers of the time.
Anyway, Humboldt was a learned classicist from a philological and literary way, which has an impact on his idea of how liberty was strengthened in antiquity, which compensated for the tendency of the ancient state to interfere in the soul, as Humboldt thinks of antique laws and institutions to promote moral and religious traditions.
What compensates for this pressure on liberty is the struggle in the lives of ancient humans, which has two main aspects. First the struggle with nature to have enough food and shelter to preserve life. Second the military struggle with rival states and communities, which was a very frequent experience in antiquity, and was an aspect of the history of the early Greek and Roman republics.
The best place to look for that in antique sources is Homer, because of the breadth of the Homeric world, as well as its poetic qualities, as well as its enormous influence on Greek and Roman culture. I had meant to address how the kind of struggle which can promote some kinds of liberty does appear in Homer, but this post is already long enough, and the best thing is to address Homer directly in the next post.
In the meantime, careful reading of any of the translations in books and post on websites, of The Iliad and The Odyssey (or indeed the original Greek for those fortunate enough to have that linguistic capacity), should I hope provide material to confirm what I’m suggesting.Each crisscrossed the state and took the stage for another town hall, battling for every last vote in what’s considered a bellwether for the November election
On the eve of Michigan’s crucial primary, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders clashed on the campaign trail, with the Vermont senator on the defensive over his support for the auto industry and the former secretary of state already looking far beyond the primary.
“The sooner I could become your nominee, the more I can begin to turn attention to the Republicans,” Clinton told the hundreds of supporters who had gathered in the rotunda of the Wright Museum of African American History on Monday night.
Sanders and Clinton crisscrossed the state on Monday, battling for every last vote ahead of Tuesday’s crucial primary. Michigan, the first major industrial state to vote, is considered a bellwether for the November election.
Clinton spent the afternoon meeting with employees of a tech software firm in Grand Rapids before her evening rally in Detroit while Sanders drew large crowds at three rallies across the state. Both later attended a town hall event hosted by Fox News.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Clinton and Sanders have heated exchange over trade in Sunday’s Democratic debate: ‘Excuse me, I’m talking’
At each rally, Sanders accused Clinton of “mischaracterizing” his 2009 vote to release funds as part of a financing package to save the auto industry and called her contention in one of the sharpest exchanges from Sunday’s debate “absolutely untrue”.
“Secretary Clinton went out of her way to mischaracterize my history as it relates to the 2008 auto industry bailout,” Sanders said in Kalamazoo. “Let me be as clear as I can: there was one vote in the United States Senate on whether or not to support the auto bailout and protect jobs in Michigan and around this country. I voted for the auto bailout.”
The debate spilled over into an hourlong town hall hosted by Fox News in downtown Detroit, during which the candidates took turns speaking to prospective Michigan voters. There, they both struck a cooler tone having fiercely debated trade and the auto industry bailout during Sunday night’s CNN debate.
Sanders, the Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist, first answered questions from Fox News anchor Bret Baier over his comments in Sunday’s debate that white people “don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto”. The remark had drawn swift condemnation on social media.
Sanders said he knows “about white poverty” from living in Vermont, and added the US has “too many people living in poverty” for being “the richest country in the history of the world”.
“We have got to change our national priorities,” he told the crowd of 250 in Detroit’s Gem Theatre. “We have got to deal with those issues.”
Sanders was also asked about his December 2008 vote to support the bailout of the auto industry. On Sunday, Clinton said her opponent “was against the auto bailout” and “voted against the money that ended up saving the auto industry” – a damning accusation to make in Michigan, the heart of the US automotive industry.
Not quite, Sanders told Fox.
“In this case, there was one vote to support the automotive industry,” he said, adding: “What I did not vote for was the bailout of Wall Street.”
Despite Clinton’s claim that Sanders opposed the automotive industry, he is on the record in December 2008 opposing a separate plan to rescue carmakers General Motors and Chrysler during the economic crisis.
While it’s true that in January 2009 Sanders voted against releasing the second half of the $700bn relief package that included funds for the auto bailout, the vast majority of that money went to keep the nation’s largest banks from failing. In effect, Sanders could not have voted to save the automotive industry without voting to save the very banks he rails against in every campaign speech he gives.
“What I did not vote for – and [I] make no apologies – is to bail out the crooks on Wall Street whose illegal behavior and greed brought this economy into the worst downturn since the 1930s,” Sanders said during a morning rally in Kalamazoo.
But the war of words continued on the airwaves. On Monday, Clinton’s campaign began running radio ads that highlighted the debate moment when Clinton said: “When it came down to it, you were either for saving the auto industry or you were against it. … I voted to save the auto industry.”
Sanders’ campaign responded with a radio ad of its own that accused Clinton of “trying to distort the truth about Bernie’s record”.
Clinton has maintained a relatively consistent and substantive lead over Sanders in recent polls. A Monmouth University poll released on Monday showed Clinton with a 13-point advantage. Yet a victory here for Sanders could reset his campaign.
After the debate on Sunday, Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said he thought Sanders would “do well here” and noted that their internal polling tells a slightly more optimistic story.
Still, he maintained that Sanders wasn’t finished if he didn’t win Michigan.
“There’s no state you have to win,” he said. “We have a long race ahead of us.”
Despite a narrow path to the nomination, Sanders has pledged to stay in the race until the party’s convention in July.Maynooth trainee priests to be supervised during meal times in wake of Grindr gay dating app scandal BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A closer eye will be kept on how trainee priests in Maynooth spend their time from now on in the wake of the 'gay culture' revelations at the seminary. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/maynooth-trainee-priests-to-be-supervised-during-meal-times-in-wake-of-grindr-gay-dating-app-scandal-34998119.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/article34991986.ece/91435/AUTOCROP/h342/PANews%20BT_P-57ffecd4-ef3e-417b-b756-f110f5fd5be3_I1.jpg
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A closer eye will be kept on how trainee priests in Maynooth spend their time from now on in the wake of the 'gay culture' revelations at the seminary.
A stricter regime is being introduced in the wake of the 'Grindr' gay dating app scandal at the college.
All trainee priests will now be required to eat evening meals in the college rather than being allowed to dine wherever they choose, the Irish Independent has learned.
The seminarians will also be required to attend evening rosary at 9pm, which has not been obligatory until now.
The seminary council of senior staff will now eat both breakfast and dinner with the seminarians in the historic Pugin Hall, rather than in the Professors' Refectory.
The tighter controls are part of a suite of measures announced on Wednesday by the trustees of Maynooth, which included a review of "appropriate use of the internet and social media" by the 50 or so trainee priests and their staff.
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin withdrew his seminarians from Maynooth following allegations that students were using the gay dating app. Now the country's most senior bishops have admitted concerns about an "unhealthy atmosphere" there.
Irish Independent
Independent.ieGetty Images
Five of the top 10 picks in the draft remain unsigned. The 22 picks after that are all signed, with the exception of two.
Taken consecutively at No. 24 and No. 25, the unsigned first-rounders beyond the top 10 are Raiders cornerback Gareon Conley and Browns safety Jabrill Peppers.
The reason for Conley’s lack of a contract is obvious; he’s the subject of an unresolved sexual assault investigation in Ohio. So why is Peppers the only first-round pick beyond the top 10 other than Conley who isn’t signed?
Per a league source with knowledge of the situation, the amount of the guaranteed money is one of the primary terms holding up the deal.
A fairly broad range has been set by the players taken at No. 26 (Falcons defensive end Tak McKinley) and at No. 23 (Giants tight end Evan Engram), with full guarantees for the first three years and a fourth-year guarantee of $655,000 for McKinley and $1.55 million for Engram. That’s a $900,000 spread in fourth-year guaranteed money over three picks; without the benefit of Conley being under contract, Peppers doesn’t have a direct, practical ceiling on his guaranteed money.
Another problem could be that last year’s 25th overall pick, Steelers cornerback Artie Burns, received in the fourth year of his contract not a partial salary guarantee but an $800,000 roster bonus due on the third day of training camp. Peppers, based on that precedent, may be pushing for the same thing, even though the players taken directly ahead of Burns and directly behind Burns didn’t get it.
None of this means that a deal won’t be done before the start of training camp. But with Peppers missing the first day of his rookie minicamp due to an issue with the standard letter of protection, it makes sense to keep an eye on what happens with this issue over the next couple of weeks.
Holdouts currently are rare, but holdouts from rookie minicamp are even more rare. Peppers already has done the former, if only for a day. The question now is whether he’ll do the latter. If only for a day.- GERMAN COUPLE IN BED -
Ahhh, the pleasures of the 80's. In bed with your beautiful German wife and your sexy C64 toy. What a night to remember... - taken from Gizmodo -
Choose Here French pong advert Portable Osborne 1 The better alternative Atari - They laughed... A handle for the PET WHAT IF? SOMETHING'S WRONG Welcome to someday NES box Leave me some room! Mr Pocket Happy lawyers The success according to Apple DAI portable system Who's keeping up with Commodore? The Silver VIC owned by a mime! I just come back from jogging Yannick Noah Tennis ZX-81 high technology Videopac family life Jonathan & Stanislas VCS-2600 bike Atari aerobics FIL a son filon creation Do I really look that stupid? Anorexic Billou As fast as a quick disk drive... Odyssey 1 french advert Happy family Teleludic family Barbie and Ken play the Intellivision VIC-20 quiz Genius childhood Computer scientist wanted! Applemania A good texan Play soccer on your TV! Philips family propaganda TO CHIE BAS Asteroids rulez! This kid sucks Women like frogs! Golite family Atari 800 crowded
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Your Comment :A new additive manufacturing technology is 25 to 100 times faster than conventional 3-D printing, and produces stronger parts at a lower cost.
A five-centimeter-tall model of the Eiffel Tower being produced by a new manufacturing method.
The technology was developed by a startup called Carbon3D, which was founded in 2013. The process is described today in a paper published in the journal Science.
3-D printing produces objects by depositing or solidifying one layer of material at a time, a process that lends itself to making very complex objects, but it’s much slower and more expensive than large-volume manufacturing techniques.
Carbon3D’s technology is fast enough that it could compete with conventional mass manufacturing in many cases, says Joseph DeSimone, cofounder and CEO of Carbon3D.
The new technology has some features in common with 3-D printing, but it makes objects continuously rather than in discrete layers, making it much faster. In a video of the process, it looks as if an object gradually emerges from a thin layer of liquid.
The new process is related to stereolithography, in which lasers trace a pattern on a liquid that is engineered to solidify when exposed to light. Normally, to form each layer, the laser has to be turned off so that more liquid can be spread out. This slows the process, and the “interfaces” between layers create weak points in a finished object.
The founders of Carbon 3D, who are researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina, developed a way to make the process continuous and ensure that there are no interfaces between layers. The key is to modify the liquid so that it doesn’t immediately solidify when exposed to light. They achieved this by introducing a thin layer of oxygen that temporarily blocks the reactions that produce a solid.
The process works with a variety of commercial plastics, and the researchers are working on using different liquids during the process, to make parts from blended materials. Carbon3D has raised over $41 million in venture funding to date from firms such as Sequoia Capital.Her smart phone was 14-year-old Preeti’s best friend. She would eat, sleep and play with it, preferring to be alone rather than meeting friends and relatives. Her internet addiction reached a level where she would be depressed if her Facebook posts didn’t get enough ‘likes’.
Worried, her parents took her to the Centre for Children in Internet and Technology Distress, Delhi’s first internet de-addiction centre.
Preeti currently spends her weekends at the Centre where she is counseled on the harmful effects of being online for long hours. She is also encouraged to play indoor and outdoor games such as hopscotch and seven stones, read books, practice yoga, and participate in story-telling sessions. “The idea is to let her discover the joys of traditional games and physical interactions,” said Rahul Verma, founder of Uday Foundation.
Children play indoor games as part of their counselling at the internet de-addiction centre in Delhi. The centre’s walls (right) are adorned with posters and photos warning of the ill-effects of internet addiction. (Arun Sharma/HT Photo)
The Centre — located in south Delhi’s Sarvodaya Enclave — was started three weeks ago by the Uday Foundation, an NGO. It has a counselling room, an activity-cum-play- room and a library. The walls are adorned with black-and-white photos of children playing outdoors and posters warning children of the ill-effects of internet addiction and safe usage of social media such as ‘Life was much easier when Apple and Blackberry were just fruits’.
Around 60 children are undergoing de-addiction at the centre. “While younger children are hooked to online games, older ones are addicted to Facebook and Whatsapp. We try to help them make emotional connections in the real world,” said Dr Tara, a counselor at the centre..
Delhi’s centre is the second in the country after the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Nimhans) started a de-addiction clinic in Bangalore called Shut (Service for Healthy Use of Technology) this April.
“We had a case where a child was so addicted to online games that he lost all interest in studies |
resources where the needs are and there are needs outside inner-city areas of Sydney."
The Opposition's spokeswoman for the status of women, Sophie Cotsis, says the Government must provide assurances that the refuges will not close.
"Already we've heard that women are being turned away, that evictions are imminent," she said.
"It creates uncertainty for the professional staff. And of course for those women who are at risk of homelessness in Sydney, it will no longer happen.
"This is a time where we need additional funding for those services. And they are vital services. They've saved thousands of lives over the last 40 years and we've really got to fight for those specialist services for women."
Ms Upton says she understands that the uncertainty has been difficult.
"The decisions will be made. Providers were all communicated personally with this week," she said.
"I ask them to be patient, to continue doing the very important work they do in the community. When we're able to communicate the outcomes, we will."
Topics: homelessness, community-and-society, states-and-territories, government-and-politics, women, sydney-2000, killara-2071, nsw, australia
First postediStock iStock
Prior to the demise of the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare, Ryan Lizza, in questioning whether Steve Bannon could revive Trumpcare, reported this:
In the White House, Steve Bannon’s office, on the first floor of the West Wing, is called the war room. Bannon, the Administration’s chief strategist, has cleared out much of the furniture, and on one wall has hung an enormous whiteboard on which he has scrawled every promise that Donald Trump made during the campaign. Bannon and the war room are the heart of the effort to turn Trump’s populist campaign into a policy agenda that can pass Congress or be implemented through executive actions.
According to Mike Allen, when it came to Trump’s promise to repeal Obamacare, Bannon didn’t exactly help the cause. When meeting with the Freedom Caucus, he told them:
Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill.
One member responded with this:
You know, the last time someone ordered me to do something, I was 18 years old. And it was my daddy. And I didn’t listen to him, either.
As much as anything else you’ll find, that captures exactly my point about how Trump doesn’t make deals, just enemies. Bannon helped ensure that one promise on that white board would not be fulfilled.
But perhaps the most signature promise of Trump’s campaign was that he would build a wall along the entire stretch of our southern border, and that Mexico would pay for it. He’s already ceded the second half of that promise and is now going hat in hand to Congress for the money to pay for it. As Martin recently reported, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
I’ve already discussed the people and terrain that will also pose a challenge to the wall. One issue that I didn’t bring up is the fact that 1,200 miles of the border is defined by the Rio Grande. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recently identified the problem.
“The border is complicated, as far as building a physical wall,” Zinke said at an event held by the Public Lands Council, according to E&E News. He went on to say, “The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall? We’re not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we’re probably not going to put it in the middle of the river.”
Zinke’s answer to that problem was similar to Bannon treating the members of the Freedom Caucus like a child who can be ordered to comply with your wishes.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposed Tuesday that the U.S. build its border wall on Mexico’s side of the border.
Of course, there is that little problem of sovereignty to contend with! It was easily one of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard from Trump or any of his associates. I doubt that Mexico will respond any differently to that idea than the Freedom Caucus member did to Bannon.
This is what passes for problem-solving in the Trump administration. Every challenge is seen as a contest between dominating or being dominated. But in order for that to work, you have to wield complete power over those you want to dominate. While the presidency comes with a certain degree of positional power, our founders made sure that it wasn’t absolute. Beyond our borders, it is limited by the degree to which the president is willing to use military and/or economic interventions to enforce his will, but even then it is not assured.
This is Trump’s playbook as we’ve seen throughout his life. While it is threatening at times, this approach to problem-solving by the leader of a democratic republic will leave many of the promises on Bannon’s white board unfulfilled.Now that Donald Trump has made it official and named Stephen Bannon as Chief Straegist and Senior Counselor in the White House, here are the top 10 best reactions we’ve seen from journalists and the loony-left on the man who will be advising the president.
No. 1: For David Axelrod, it’s “troubling”:
Lots of chatter. Breitibart's Bannon in WH is deeply troubling. Bannon as COS would have been more so. Not "normalization." Just a fact. — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 13, 2016
No. 2: Judd Legum from “Think Progress” call him “one of the most powerful people in America”:
Very dangerous to try to comfort ourselves with flimsy distinctions. Bannon now one of the most powerful people in America https://t.co/CLiICOdlnB — Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) November 13, 2016
No. 3: Ben Stiller is curious about Hanukkah (you’ll see that this is a recurring theme)
Can't wait for next year's Menorah lighting ceremony at the White House. #SteveBannon — Ben Stiller (@RedHourBen) November 13, 2016
No. 4: Former NFL punter Chris Kluwe plays the Nazi-card with “solutions”:
So the anti-Semitic guy is chief strategist. I wonder what his *strategy* might consist of. I'm guessing he has some solutions. — Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft) November 13, 2016
No. 5: Igor Volsky from the Center for American Progress says he’s “repugnant”:
Reminder: the website the president's new chief strategist oversaw is repugnant. pic.twitter.com/nUm2pT2c9x — igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) November 13, 2016
No. 6: Alan Colmes thinks he’s a “white nationalist”:
White nationalist figure is now ‘chief strategist to the president’ https://t.co/u2AtkBWYVW — Alan Colmes (@AlanColmes) November 13, 2016
No. 7: Or he’s both says the Boston Globe’s Michael Cohen:
And an anti-Semite & white nationalist will have the ear of the president https://t.co/1nCBTqrI24 — Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) November 13, 2016
No. 8: The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery doesn’t like the Breitbart connection:
in first official decision as president-elect Trump announces guy who runs racist hate site will be his closest adviser in the White House https://t.co/sUQlcJYzG5 — Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) November 13, 2016
No. 9: Jeff Jarvis played the Nazi card, too:
And then two minutes later, he appoints Göring https://t.co/IzcMBF2QTm — Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) November 13, 2016
And finally, No. 10: Actor Patton Oswalt keeps it simple:
***New Delhi: China on Wednesday denied that it was blocking India's bid for a membership in elite Nuclear Suppliers Groupor NSG and said it will "work" with the members of the 48-nation grouping as well as India to find a solution for India's entry into it.
Liu Zhenmin, China's Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, also said that the issue needs to be deliberated on among among relevant parties.
"That's not true. I think, the membership of NSG is not a new issue. It has been an issue for many years. This should be sorted out together with the members of the NPT," Liu Zhenmin told PTI when asked whether China was blocking India's entry to the elite club.
"Members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group should be party to NPT. So, I think China will also work with others including Indian colleagues together to find a solution.
"This should be consulted among relevant parties. As a very friendly country, China wants to have good cooperation with India at the international arena on all issues," the Chinese minister said. He is in Delhi to attend a multi-lateral legal meet.
Earlier this week, China claimed that several members of the group shared its view that signing of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was an "important" standard for NSG's expansion.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang in Beijing had said that not only China but also a lot of other NSG members are of the view that NPT is the cornerstone for safeguarding the international nuclear non-proliferation regime. The Chinese action is apparently at the behest of Pakistan, which is also seeking an entry into the bloc.
India is not a party to Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, the international pact aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, maintaining that it was discriminatory.Steve Roth at Asymptosis offers a remarkable, detailed discussion of Modern Monetary Theory’s notion of “private sector surplus” with an emphasis on aggregate accounting. Roth’s core point is well taken: “Private sector surplus” (equivalently the increase in “private sector net financial assets”) should not be conflated with the economic saving of households. As Roth points out, household sector saving is the difference between household sector income and household sector (noninvestment) expenditure. “Private sector surplus” is likely to increase household sector income, and so in that sense it forms a component of household sector saving, but it is quantitatively small relative to total household income — especially, as Roth emphasizes, if you use comprehensive measures of income that include capital gains and losses. [1]
Roth is right about all this. But I think he is talking past MMT economists a bit. Roth invites us to think about comprehensive saving by households. But that’s very far from what MMT’s baseline sectoral balances decomposition claims to capture. Instead “net financial assets” capture only the financial position of the aggregated (domestic) private sector, including both households and businesses. MMT enthusiasts sometimes mix these things up, and when that happens it should be called out. But this confusion has been called out a lot over the years, and I think for the most part MMT economists have become pretty precise in expressing themselves. There is a great deal of value in the MMT decomposition, not as a measure of household saving, but of something else entirely. Let’s try to understand it.
I’m going to steal from my own, old post, a derivation of the MMT-standard decomposition (usually attributed originally to Wynne Godley). We start with a tautology:
Every financial asset is also some entity’s liability. The sum of all financial positions is by definition zero. So we can write: NET_WORLD_FINANCIAL_POSITION = 0 [0] Suppose that, quite arbitrarily, we divide the world into a “foreign” and a “domestic” sector. Then we have: NET_FOREIGN_FINANCIAL_POSITION + NET_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION = NET_WORLD_FINANCIAL_POSITION = 0 [1]
NET_FOREIGN_FINANCIAL_POSITION + NET_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION = 0 [2] Suppose that, again arbitrarily, we decompose the domestic economy into a public and private sector: NET_PRIVATE_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION + NET_PUBLIC_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION = NET_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION [3] Substituting into our previous expression, we get NET_FOREIGN_FINANCIAL_POSITION + NET_PRIVATE_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION + NET_PUBLIC_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION = 0 [4] We can also write this in terms of changes or flows. Since the sum above must always be zero, it must be true that any changes in one sector are balanced by changes in another: ΔNET_FOREIGN_FINANCIAL_POSITION + ΔNET_PRIVATE_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION + ΔNET_PUBLIC_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION = 0 [5] Two of the flows in the equation above have conventional names, so we can rewrite: CURRENT_ACCOUNT_DEFICIT + ΔNET_PRIVATE_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION + CONSOLIDATED_GOVERNMENT_SURPLUS = 0 [6] Rearranging… ΔNET_PRIVATE_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION = -CURRENT_ACCOUNT_DEFICIT + -CONSOLIDATED_GOVERNMENT_SURPLUS [7]
ΔNET_PRIVATE_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION = CURRENT_ACCOUNT_SURPLUS + CONSOLIDATED_GOVERNMENT_DEFICIT [8]
The highlighted Equation 8 is where the action is. NET_PRIVATE_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION is often described as net financial assets of the domestic private sector. MMTers (domestic) “private sector surplus” is precisely ΔNET_PRIVATE_DOMESTIC_FINANCIAL_POSITION.
The crucial thing to understand is what the net means in net financial assets. It is precisely financial savings net of domestic real investment by the private sector. It is the farthest possible thing from a comprehensive measure of household savings. It is private sector savings excluding the vast preponderance of household savings, which is backed by private sector assets (whether owned by households directly or owned by businesses who then issue financial claims to households). “Ordinary” private sector savings either doesn’t show up as financial assets at all (a home without a mortgage is just a real asset owned by a family, like a television or a baseball card), or else they “net out” when we aggregate, because one private sector entity’s asset is precisely extinguished by another private sector entity’s liability. If a household is “long” a share of stock, a firm is “short” that same position, and owes the household whatever that claim represents. The aggregate financial position of the private sector combines the financial positions of businesses and households, so the financial claims of households against firms are matched by mirror image liabilities of firms to households. They annihilate one another like matter and antimatter.
So why do we care about this odd sliver of savings? Why do MMT economists make it so central to their analysis? Private sector net financial assets are “special” precisely because they are not backed by domestic real assets, but instead by promises that are credibly independent of domestic real asset values, especially promises of states. Saving that takes the form of real stuff, whether that stuff is directly held or hidden behind financial claims, is inherently risky. House prices fall. If you own a factory, or shares in a firm that owns a factory, the factory can burn down. Even if you hold a diversified stock portfolio, you will find it subject to wild swings in value. If you own private sector debt, you expose yourself to credit risk. If you own a diversified portfolio of domestic stocks and bonds, your own circumstances and that of your investment portfolio will be correlated in an unpleasant way. The times when you lose your job and need to draw on savings are likely to be the same times when stocks have crashed and people are defaulting on their debts. People desperately covet assets that are divorced from the risks of the domestic real economy. And that is precisely what “net financial assets” are.
Net financial assets are special, because they serve insurance functions that assets produced by the domestic private sector simply cannot provide. When households are risk-averse, they covet these assets especially. For firms, these assets offer protection against insolvency risk that real assets, whose values both fluctuate idiosyncratically and covary with the real economy, cannot provide. MMT economists often suggest that if the public sector fails to accommodate the private sector’s appetite for net financial assets, recession and financial instability will result. That makes sense. It’s conventional, if a bit vapid, to describe recessions as times when “animal spirits” are low, when people are risk averse. But what matters is not the courage in people’s hearts (or lack thereof). What matters is how people behave. If people’s behavior is counterproductively risk averse, you can encourage greater risk-taking by offering insurance. That’s precisely what injections of “net financial assets” into an economy provide. If firms are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, you can flood the economy with safe assets they can use to shore up their balance sheets to reduce their risk of default. That’s precisely how the United States saved its banks in 2008 (for better or for worse). The headline bailouts and TARPs and accounting forbearance were all expedients to keep those firms alive until a flood of assets immune to correlated private sector collapse could find their way onto bank balance sheets (with the help of opaque subsidies). Those special assets are “net financial assets”.
“Net financial assets” are a heterogeneous category. They include both claims against the domestic state and claims on foreign public and private sectors. A claim on a foreign firm in foreign currency does not provide the same insurance as claim against the domestic government in domestic currency. Nevertheless, claims on the foreign sector do provide insurance against domestic shocks that do not impair the foreign counterparty. And note that contrary to naive financial theory, which predicts developed economies will net-accumulate claims on emerging economies to invest in their growth, in practice emerging economies tend to net-accumulate claims on developed economies. The insurance function of safer foreign assets outweighs the investment function of accepting foreign capital (or at least it has since the Asian Financial Crisis). For firms and households in an emerging economy, foreign claims and claims on government are both useful insurance. In developed as well as emerging economies, negative positions with respect to foreign creditors increase the domestic private sector’s exposure to risk as surely as indebtedness to the state would, assuming debt contracts are uniformly enforced.
All this terminology — private sector surplus, net financial assets, etc. — is associated with heterodox, lefty MMT, but it maps very nicely to discussion of “safe asset shortages” in the mainstream financial press or Gary Gorton’s schtick on the importance of “informationally insensitive” assets. The main difference has to do with whether we can or ought to rely upon the domestic private sector to produce these kinds of assets. The MMT analysis, by construction, excludes private sector “triple-A” assets, where people like Gorton emphasize a role of private sector in producing assets that might provide this sort of insurance. The MMTers have it right. The domestic private sector simply cannot produce assets that provide insurance against systematic risks of the domestic economy without the help of the state. (Gorton tacitly recognizes this when he suggests the state should supervise and guarantee assets produced by shadow banks like it insures bank deposits. No thank you.)
The insurance function of “net financial assets” is not unambiguously a good thing. Net financial assets are special precisely because they provide insurance against systematic risk. When net financial assets are claims on foreign debtors, they are not so problematic, they just represent a form of diversification that can insure against domestically (but not globally) systematic shocks. Claims against the domestic state, however, offer safety to their holders in a manner that can be quite dangerous to the rest of us. “Insurance” against a truly systematic shock is necessarily a zero-sum game. If we are all collectively poorer, the only way the state can make some claimants whole is by shifting their share of the aggregate loss to people who don’t hold the government’s promises. We’ve experienced this very painfully over the past decade, as both the European and American policymakers refused to accept any risk of inflation (thereby prioritizing the value of past promises). Policymakers chose to make absolutely sure that holders of state assets would be made whole in real-terms, and imposed severe costs on debtors and the marginally employed to do so. (I think policymakers overshot the inherent zero-sum-ness of providing insurance during a systematic shock and have played a sharply negative-sum game.) It would be better, I think, if states downgraded the insurance they provide by weakening the promise they make to asset holders from price stability to an NGDP path target. And I worry much more than I think most MMT economists do about the unjust distribution of risk-bearing that might accompany a large stock of net financial assets very unequally distributed. (Unusually, I’m with Greg Mankiw on this one.) I think the economy includes people who are already overinsured by their stock of net financial assets, and those people tend disproportionately to accumulate new issues. So we should think more about how we can accommodate private sector entities’ need for some degree of insurance by redistributing existing net financial assets rather than creating new ones.
This sentence is a pithy conclusion.
[1] Should you? Or should you use a NIPA-style accounting that “looks through” capital gains? That’s a complicated question. Looking through capital gains entirely is clearly unsuitable, because household capital gains include revaluations of shares due to e.g. retained earnings, which represent increases in the quantity of real assets that households’ shares lay claim upon. This kind of capital gain is economic saving. But what about price appreciation of the existing housing stock? On the one hand, this is certainly perceived by individual households as real wealth and a form of savings. On the other hand, housing price increases also represent a kind of liability on the part of households and households-to-be who are not yet homeowners. If our object is to study distributional questions, differences between households, capital gains of this sort should obviously take center stage. They are real wealth to the households who enjoy them, and often represent costs in some form to households who don’t. But if we are aggregating, it’s not as clear that mere repricings of existing assets should be included in household saving. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible in practice to disentangle gains due to real growth in the assets backing claims from repricings of existing assets. Consider our prototypical example of “mere repricing”, price appreciation of an existing home. If a home remains entirely unchanged in an unchanged neighborhood in an unchanged city, then that is mere repricing. But perfect stasis is impossible outside of a thought experiment. If an “existing home” is renovated, and its price appreciates, how much of the price appreciation is “mere repricing” and how much of it reflects the change in real assets? If the neighborhood surrounding a largely unchanged home improves dramatically, then the house is a more efficiently deployed real asset, and a change in price may reflect new real value, which does constitute a form of economic saving — a claim on real growth — rather than mere repricing. Similarly, while stock appreciation can reflect an increase in the quantity or real-economic usefulness of the assets backing shares, it can also result from a mere revaluation of largely unchanged firms. When the Fed eases, stock prices rise, but the real assets that back them are not meaningfully improved. I think on the whole Roth’s choice to include capital gains in his analysis of aggregate household saving is right, much better than the alternative choice of ignoring it. But neither choice can be “correct”.Skip to comments.
Middle school issues ban on intentional flatulence
Posted on by null and void
CAMDEN (Feb 1): The Merriam Webster Dictionary definition for flatulence is brief: "flatus expelled through the anus." And while it's a natural bodily function, it seems some Camden-Rockport Middle School eighth-grade boys are taking it to new heights and making a game of seeing who can expel the loudest and grossest flatus. Advertisement
According to this week's Fire Cracker school newsletter though, the joke's on the boys as the penalty for "intentional farting" is now a detention.
"Strange, but true, thanks to a bunch of 8th grade boys, intentional farting has been banned from CRMS," the newsletter said. "It started out as a funny joke and eventually turned into a game. This is the first rule at CRMS that prevents the use of natural bodily functions. The penalty for intentional farting is a detention, so keep it to yourself!"
According to a group of seventh-grade students milling around downtown following Friday's storm-related early release, the eighth-graders' escapades are well known in the school.
"They would do it in science class and other places," said Jordan Tyler. "It's a natural occurrence and we all do it 16 times a day."
When questioned where he learned that information, Tyler and the other students all said it was true, though they couldn't remember where they heard it.
One of the other students, Kyle Ruger, said the act by the boys was funny, but he had mixed feelings about whether it was appropriate.
Jordan Knowlton minced no words when she expressed how she felt, saying, "It's gross."
Remy LeVine said he was in the class when CRMS science teacher Brad LaRoche talked to all the eighth-grade boys about the issue, as well as the consequences.
Attempts to reach CRMS Principal Maria Libby Friday afternoon were unsuccessful and school Superintendent Patricia Hopkins said she had not heard anything about the issue or the alleged suspected result, though she did get a good chuckle out of the news.
VillageSoup/Knox County Times Senior Reporter Holly S. Anderson can be reached at 207-236-2496 or by e-mail at holly@villagesoup.com.
TOPICS:
Crime/Corruption
KEYWORDS:
flatulence
publikskoolz
If they can't fart, can they fly?
To: null and void
King, the school mascot agrees with the ban.
To: null and void
But, mine don't stink. Do I get an exception? What if it is a silent but deadly one does the "smelt-her, dealt-her rule apply?
by 3 posted onby Michael.SF. ("democrat" -- 'one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses " - Joseph J. Ellis)
To: null and void
Well, at least they weren’t lighting them on fire.
To: null and void
You have got to be kidding me.....this is insane.
To: null and void
Well, they just banned about 50% of eighth grade boy humor.
by 6 posted onby Will88 ( The Worst Case Scenario: McCain with a Dhimm majority in the House and Senate)
To: null and void
Sounds like a clear invitation to eat beans & franks everyday for lunch.
by 7 posted onby Excuse_My_Bellicosity (...and forgive us our farts, as we forgive those that fart against us...)
To: austinaero
*sigh* Ya THINK?!?!?
To: Will88
I’d say maybe more. (My son is in 8th grade)...
To: null and void
Al Gore would be proud...contributes to Global Warming doncha know!?!
To: null and void
Maybe it will just be a fart in the wind....
by 11 posted onby Califreak (Hangin' with Hunter-under the bus "Dread and Circuses")
To: null and void
“I fart in your general direction”.....(Monty Python)
To: Allegra; ErnBatavia; Lurkin Lurch; humblegunner
PING!!
To: Disambiguator
If they hold them in, they might spontaneously combust. This is dangerous. On the other hand, think of the implications for the globalist warmening hoax. Announcer: ‘...and Mrs Clinton’s a&s keeps getting bigger and bigger...” All the answers can be found in old South Park epsiodes. Also, these kids could use “Under-Ease” activated carbon underpants.
by 14 posted onby NDpapajoe (Way to go Ohio, We're all Buckeye Fans now!)
To: null and void
I know of a 7th grader who used to clear out a quarter of the classroom every day with noisy and very smelly gas. He would sit there and strain and all the kids would yell “Somebody stop him. He’s doing it again!” He was offered a bathroom pass, which he declined - That is when the detention was writen and he was kicked out of class for a week...It is now legend at the school.
To: null and void
"Good thing my grandma don't go to school. With her walkin' farts problem she'd be in detention the rest of her life."
by 16 posted onby OB1kNOb (What a pathetic state of GOP affairs it has come to, picking a lesser evil nominee.)
To: null and void
It's natural, right? Go 'head... prove it's intentional! HaH!! My 14 yo son and his buddy roll around, laughing their asses off when they get into farting contests. I miss being that free... God bless boys that can let go a fart and laugh like hell about it... and burp... and pick their noses and fling their boogers... these guys grow up to be warriors. God bless 'em, I say.
by 17 posted onby knarf (I say things that are true... I have no proof... but they're true.)
To: null and void
Pull my finger...
by 18 posted onby Incorrigible (If I lead, follow me; If I pause, push me; If I retreat, kill me.)
To: Califreak
I did consider putting this in wind-Breaking News...
To: null and void
I’m so glad our young are receiving a quality education.
by 20 posted onby MrsEmmaPeel (7/9 of the Supreme Court justices at the time of Kelo vs New London were appointed by Republicans...)
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FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John RobinsonWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has hit out at a Hollywood film about his organisation as a "massive propaganda attack" against the whistle-blowing website.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has hit out at a Hollywood film about his organisation as a "massive propaganda attack" against the whistle-blowing website.
Delivering a speech to the Oxford Union from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, he revealed he had acquired a script of the film, which stars British actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
Holding a copy of the script, he said the film, being released in the United States in November, was also an attack on Iran.
Publicity photographs released earlier shows the actor as Assange in the movie, The Fifth Estate, which has now begun filming. It traces the early days of the WikiLeaks site as he sought to bring confidential information into the public domain.
But Assange said Dreamworks was spending millions of dollars on the film, which he said was "fanning the flames" of war against Iran. The British public should be concerned about the film because of the involvement of Cumberbatch, said Assange, who has been inside the embassy since last summer.
He has been granted political asylum as part of his campaign to avoid extradition to Sweden where he faces allegations of sex charges, which he denies. Reading from the script, he said the opening scene was inside a military complex in Iran, with documents containing nuclear symbols.
The suggestion is that Iran is working on an atomic weapon, said Assange, adding: "How does this have anything to do with us? It is a lie upon lie. The movie is a massive propaganda attack on WikiLeaks and the character of my staff."
He quotes from the script, saying scientists are seen meeting a US agent. "How is it that a lie gets into a script about WikiLeaks?"
The film's director Bill Condon said earlier: "It may be decades before we understand the full impact of WikiLeaks and how it's revolutionised the spread of information.
"So this film won't claim any long view authority on its subject, or attempt any final judgment. We want to explore the complexities and challenges of transparency in the information age and, we hope, enliven and enrich the conversations WikiLeaks has already provoked."
Press AssociationMGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren believes Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate to become the 45th president of the United States.
A self-avowed lifelong Republican and member of the MGM family since 1998, Murren said in a USA TODAY op-ed published on Monday that he’s making his first-ever public endorsement, citing his belief that Clinton and Donald Trump are advocating for two very different Americas.
Murren’s reasoning for backing Clinton is largely grounded in her economic policies. He also claims that Trump’s stance on immigration and a potential travel ban on certain ethnicities and religious groups would impede tourism in America.
“I believe that few presidential candidates are as prepared for the job as Clinton,” Murren wrote. “I speak from... personal experience... Each time I have met with her to discuss complicated matters such as trade and energy policy, I have been incredibly impressed by her knowledge, command of the facts and solution-oriented approach.”
MGM is the largest gambling operator on the Strip, with 10 casinos and a total of 14 resorts in Las Vegas.
“I’ve crossed the aisle only a few times in elections past, and almost never at the presidential level. But this year it’s an easy choice,” Murren declared in his op-ed.
Casino Power Player Politics
Murren is certainly not the first CEO to publicly support the former first lady and secretary of state. Clinton has received over 100 endorsements from well-known business leaders, including such luminaries as Warren Buffett, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Mark Cuban.
But when it comes to the gambling industry and Las Vegas, the high rollers aren’t buying into the Democratic nominee’s efforts.
MGM might be the biggest gaming operator in Sin City, but Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s Sheldon Adelson is the richest. Worth some $30 billion, the LVS chairman is one of Trump’s most ardent and generous supporters, and has pledged $100 million to Super PACs supporting The Donald’s campaign.
In a Washington Post column in May, Adelson wrote, “I am endorsing Trump’s bid for president and strongly encourage my fellow Republicans, especially our Republican elected officials, party loyalists and operatives, and those who provide important financial backing, to do the same.”
Billionaire Phil Ruffin is also Team Donald. The former New Frontier and current Treasure Island owner said at the Republican National Convention in July that “I have known Donald Trump as a friend and a business partner for over 20 years. You can’t be my friend and my business partner for long if you’re not honest with me and good to your word.”
And another billionaire casino owner, Carl Icahn, is on the Trump train as well, as is Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship president.
Steve Wynn reportedly served as an unofficial Trump advisor while the Republican candidate was still in the runoffs for the GOP nominee position. The Wynn Resorts boss has been fairly quiet of late on his current views, however.
MGM Gaming Influence Notable
MGM is bullish on the US gaming market. The company is currently building new billion-dollar resorts in Massachusetts and Washington, DC, and recently acquired Boyd Gaming’s 50 percent stake in Atlantic City’s Borgata, giving the company 100 percent ownership of the flourishing casino.
Trump’s campaign theme is to “Make America Great Again.” He’s repeatedly stated his business expertise would help reach that goal. And his past personal connection to the gaming industry would seem to make him a more amenable choice for someone in the industry.
That’s why it’s certainly noteworthy that Murren, one of the most influential and powerful casino executives in the world, believes a Clinton presidency would be better for the American economy. But with Sheldon Adelson’s power and bankroll behind Trump, the opera still ain’t over from a casino industry standpoint.Queen Walk to GoWiWi TH11 3-Star Attack Strategy Guide
Queen Walk to GoWiWi Town Hall 11 3-Star Attack Strategy
I am very pleased to present the Queen Walk to GoWiWi TH11 3-Star Attack Strategy Guide to you. TH11 has only been out for a couple of months, but we have been hard at work trying to figure out how you can grab the 3-star against it.
What Bases will this Work Against?
Now to get the 3-star against a Max Town Hall 11 with this strategy, you will need to attack a certain type of base layout. This base has been pretty popular recently and works perfectly for the strategy.
Eagle Artillery: You need to go up against a base that has the eagle defense somewhere outside of the middle, as you will use your queen to take that out before sending in the main force.
Air Defense: Another thing that you have to look for is the Air Defense placement. It is best if they are close together in the middle, just like this base is. You need the Air D to be away from the area that you are going to queen walk, as they will tear through your healers.
Wall Structure: You want to go against bases that have a pretty open layout without too many compartments. You will open up these compartments with an Earthquake and your witches will have free range to walk all over the base. This base is perfect because we can open up the compartments while damaging some of the high damage defenses (single inferno/wizard tower/x-bow)
What Troops/Spells do I use?
Heroes: You will need high level heroes to 3-Star max th11s. This attacker has close to max on this example (40 King/40 Queen/17 Warden) so I am not sure how low that you can have yours and still pull off the 3. I would highly suggest King and Queen in the high 30’s and Warden in the high teens to try this.
2x Golem: You can either build 2 in your camps, or bring one in your camp and one in your Clan Castle. We brought one in the Clan Castle with a giant to soak up a couple extra hits.
7x Witches: You will need to have your witches up to max level to pull this off. The extra 2 skeletons per spawn is critical.
4x Healers: These will be dropped with your queen to keep her alive during the queen walk.
7x Wall Breakers: |
1st and 2nd Anti-Tank Co., 2nd Recon.Bn., 1st Weapons Co., 2nd Motorcycle Co., and the I/3/I Mot.Eng. Platoon.Brigade Pilfousek advanced through Lvov and towards Vinnitsa. Around July 8th, 1941, the Brigade had advanced beyond the tactical control of the Slovak command, so control of the unit was handed over to the German 17.Armee. It was at this time that the remaining forces of the former Slovak Army Group (no longer an independent formation), were used behind the German lines in conjunction with the 103rd Rear Area Command of Army Group South in security duties and helping to eliminate pockets of Soviet resistance. By July 22nd, the Brigade, now under German control, had advanced to Vinnitsa and had pushed on towards Lipovets. The Brigade experienced heavy fighting against the Soviets during this time. Next, the Brigade moved north through Berdichev, Zhitomir, and on towards the region of Kiev.In the beginning of August 1941, the Slovak Army Group was pulled out of the lines when it was decided to form two new units that would be better suited to the actions, they would be taking part in. The best units of the former Slovak Army Group were now organized into two new divisions, the 1st Slovak (Mobile) Infantry Division and the 2nd Slovak (Security) Infantry Division. The 1st Slovak (Mobile) Infantry Division was also known as the Slovak Fast Division.The Slovak Fast Division was originally commanded by Gustav Malar, one of the original commanders from the Slovak advance into Poland back in 1939. By the middle of September 1941, the 1st Slovak (Mobile) Division was back in the front lines, this time near Kiev. After the fighting near Kiev ended with its final capture, the Slovak Mobile Division was transferred to the reserves of Army Group South. Here the unit moved along the Dnieper River, through Gorodishche, Kremenchug, and Magdalinowka, where heavy fighting took place. As of October 2nd, the Mobile Division was a part of the 1.Panzer-Armee fighting on the eastern side of Dnieper River near the region of Golubowka and Pereshchino. The Mobile Division was then moved on to the areas of Maripol and Taganrog, after which it spends the Winter of 1941-42 along positions on the Mius River. Later, the Mobile Division took part in the German advance into the Caucasus Region where it played a vital role in the assault and capture of the vital Soviet city of Rostov. Late in the Summer of 1942, the Divisional commander became Jozef Turanec. He led the Mobile Division across the Kuban River all the way to the region of Taupze. In late 1942, the 31st Artillery Regiment from the 2nd (Security) Infantry Division was transferred to the 1st Mobile Division. Command of the Mobile Division changed again in January 1943, when Lt.Gen Jurech took over command.After the horrible loss at Stalingrad in the Winter of 1942/1943, the entire position of the Germans in the Caucasus region was altered, as now any further advance south would only ensure the complete loss of all forces south of the Mius River if and when the Soviets reached Rostov in the North, thus trapping them. As a direct result of the losses in the north, the forces in the Caucasus region were quickly pulled back north to escape possible entrapment. The 1st Slovak (Mobile) Infantry Division, as a part of the German forces fighting in the Caucasus region was pulled back. The Mobile Division was nearly encircled and trapped near Saratowskaya, but managed to escape. The remaining portions of the Mobile Division were then airlifted out of the Kuban, but in so doing were forced to leave behind all their heavy equipment and weapons. The Mobile Division was then used to help cover the retreat of over the Sivash and Perkop land bridges. From here, the Divisions history becomes unsure for the next few weeks, as a specific record of its operations could not be located in this section. What is known though is that it later ended up being commanded once again by a new commanding officer, Elmir Lendvay. It looks as if the Division was pulled from the lines for a short while until it was again thrown into action, this time near the area of Melitopol. Soon after, the Division was caught by a massive Soviet surprise attack that had managed to break through the German lines. The Mobile Division was routed and over 2000 men were taken by the Soviets. The Mobile Division, routed and destroyed, was then pulled from the lines.A hollow shell of the former Mobile Division was created in the early part of 1944. It consisted of II/20 Inf.Reg., III/20 Inf.Reg., a few 150mm howitzers from the I/11 Art.Bn., some 37mm anti-tank guns, the 9th and 13th light Flak Companies, and the 45 Construction Company. The new formation was dubbed the Tartarko Combat Group and it contained 12 officers, 13 NCOs, and 775 men. It was sent back to the region of the Crimea for defensive operations, while the remainder of the Mobile Division was used in security operations behind the lines of Army Group South. Finally, in June of 1944, the Division was pulled from the lines a final time and disarmed, being formed into a construction brigade for use in Rumania as a result of its continued unreliability in combat.The 2nd Slovak (Security) Infantry Division was used mainly in security and anti-partisan operations in the rear areas of the German lines. Originally, the Security Division was used to clean up pockets of Soviet resistance that the Germans had passed up in the advance eastwards. Later, the Slovak Security Division was used in anti-partisan operations in the region of Zhitomer. A number of the Security Divisions units were removed from its ranks and transferred to the 1st Slovak (Mobile) Infantry Division, including the 31st Artillery Regiment. After the defeat at Stalingrad, as the morale of the Slovak troops began to fall, it was moved to the area of Minsk, a much more quiet sector of the front. Soon after, on November 1st, 1943, as a result of continued problems with desertion in the unit, the Security Division was heavily disarmed and transferred to Ravenna, Italy to act as a construction brigade.As a result of the heavy partisan actions against the German lines in 1943, the Slovak 12th Engineer Battalion was sent to the rear area of Army Group South, where it took part in vital rail repair operations to fix lines, cut by the Soviet partisans. It was later merged with the 1st Slovak (Mobile) Infantry Division when it was formed into a construction brigade in June of 1944.This photo is of Alojz Esterle in 1941-42. Alojz was a soldier in the Slovak Army during WWII and he fought alongside the German Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front after 1941. After serving on the Eastern Front, notably in the Caucasus region, his unit took part in the retreat west after serious reversals in 1942-43. In 1943, His unit of 2,500 - 3,000 men defected en masse to the Soviets, officers included. He then served in the Red Army from 1943 to 1945 when WWII ended and Slovakia was "liberated" from Axis control. Alojz survived WWII and still lives in Slovakia today.Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday called for sweeping Washington reform including term limits for congressional lawmakers, telling supporters “it’s time to drain the swamp.”
Under Trump's proposal, members of the House of Representatives would serve a maximum of six years, while Senators would be limited to 12 years in office.
“Decades of special interests, decades of failure must come to an end,” said Trump, who vowed, if elected, to try to impose the term limits through a constitutional amendment.
In announcing the proposal at a rally in Colorado, Trump also called for five other “major” changes.
He wants to re-institute a ban to prevent Executive Branch officials from lobbying the government for five years after they leave government service and to ensure the ban cannot be lifted by executive order.
Trump also wants Congress to institute its own five-year lobby ban for members and their staff.
And he wants to close “loopholes” that he says allow former congressional and Executive Branch officials to lobby while calling themselves consultants and advisers.
“We all know they are lobbyists,” Trump told the crowd.
Trump is also calling for a lifetime ban on senior Executive Branch officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government and for Congress to pass campaign-finance reform to keep registered foreign lobbyists from raising money in U.S. elections.
“In 21 days … we are going to end the government corruption and drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.,” Trump repeated.As bad news — in the form of thousands of barrels of oil and gas a day — continues pouring into the Gulf of...
As bad news — in the form of thousands of barrels of oil and gas a day — continues pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, the oil company behind the gusher says it will put a half-billion dollars toward studying how the spill will affect the region’s marine and shoreline environment.
While $500 million is nothing to sneeze at, and the research will certainly be critically needed, we have to take the announcement with a very large grain of salt considering BP’s performance so far. By all appearances, it appears the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that led to the leak was largely the result of a combination of lax regulation and corporate carelessness. And BP’s failure so far to stem the well’s flow into the Gulf pointedly shows how little the company was actually prepared for such a possible disaster.
BP officials say the new research initiative was inspired by the many questions asked during hearings on the accident in Washington, DC, last week. Among the areas of study the new fund will support are:
How ocean currents are affecting the spread of oil and dispersants under water;
How oil, dispersant-treated oil and dispersants themselves behave on the seabed, in the water, on the surface and on the shoreline;
How the spill and dispersants are affecting life at the seabed, in the water, on the surface and What are the impacts of the oil, the dispersed oil, and the dispersant on the biota of the seabed, the water column and on the shoreline;
How accidental releases of oil compare to natural seepage from the seabed (tell us if that one doesn’t sound PR-inspired);
Whether the dispersant chemicals are helping the oil to biodegrade, or are making the spill worse;
How tropical storms might affect the impacts of the spill; and
How technology could be improved to detect oil, dispersant-treated oil and dispersants, and to limit the impact of oil spills.
How do you take this latest announcement from BP? Is it encouraging? Cynical? Desperate? Simply necessary? We’d like to know your take.
As you consider this, by the way, we thought you’d might enjoy checking out a campaign of a different sort from Greenpeace UK, which has launched a competition for the best rebranded logo for BP. You can browse the entries so far at Flickr.The Lions Beat The Bears 27-24. Here’s How It Happened.
1st Quarter
The Bears received the ball to open this game and got off to a red hot start. On their first possession, they marched down the field and kicked a 23 yard field goal to take a 3-0 lead. On their next drive, they got into the end zone with a one yard touchdown pass from quarterback Mitchell Trubisky to tight end Adam Shaheen.
The Lions offense couldn’t get anything going in the first quarter, as quarterback Matthew Stafford lost a fumble on the first Detroit possession and they had to punt the next time they had the ball.
Score: Chicago Leads 10-0
2nd Quarter
Early into the 2nd quarter, Trubisky fumbled a snap. Lions cornerback DJ Hayden was able to scoop up the ball and return it for a touchdown, cutting the Detroit deficit to 10-7.
Chicago had a strong answer to this though, as they went 78 yards in eight plays and scored their second touchdown of the game, this time on an 11 yard run from running back Jordan Howard.
The Lions were able to score touchdowns on both of their last two possessions before the half though. Matthew Stafford found receiver Marvin Jones for a 28 yard touchdown pass, then running back Ameer Abdullah for a two yard touchdown right before the half.
Score: Lions Lead 21-17
3rd Quarter
The third quarter of this game was entirely forgettable, as every possession ended in a punt. Each team booted the ball away three times with the Lions offense only netting 49 yards in this quarter while the Bears had 39.
Score: Lions Lead 21-17
4th Quarter
The Lions were able to bust out of their offensive funk and put together a lengthy 12 play drive that resulted in a 27 yard field goal to start the fourth quarter. This score put them up by seven, 24-17.
However, the Bears were not going down without a fight and they scored on a long possession of their own. A strong running game headed their eight play, 78 yard ensuing possession and rookie running back Tarik Cohen scored on a 15 yard run to tie the game midway through the fourth quarter.
Now, tied most of the way through the fourth quarter, the game rested on the shoulders of Matthew Stafford. He led the Lions into field goal range and with 1:35 left, kicker Matt Prater made a 52 yard field goal to put the Lions up by three points.
Then it was Trubisky’s turn to answer. He got the Bears offense into field goal range with eight seconds left but Chicago kicker Connor Barth missed a 46 yard field goal attempt wide right.
Score: Lions Win 27-24
Key Stats
Chicago rushed for 222 yard at 7.4 yards per rush
This was the second week in a row that the Lions defense allowed over 200 rushing yards. In the last two games, they have allowed 423 rushing yards at 6.7 yards per carry. Both the defensive line and linebackers need to improve if the Lions want any shot at making the playoffs.
Detroit ran for just 65 yards at 2.7 yards per carry
The running game continued to be a struggle for the Lions on Sunday. They are now the 28th ranked rushing offense in the NFL and average just 80.8 yards per game. This also needs to improve for Detroit to truly compete this year.
Matthew Stafford was sacked three times
Despite the return of Taylor Decker, the Lions offensive line still struggled to protect Matthew Stafford. He was sacked another three times on Sunday and has now been sacked 33 times on the season, on pace for 53 and the third most in the NFL.
Matt Prater was 2/2 on field goals, Connor Barth was 1/2
In this three point game, field goals ended up being the difference. Prater was able to make the kicks when he needed to (as he usually does) and Barth was not.
The Lions out-passed the Bears 287 to 176 yards
The Lions passing offense had a very good day on Sunday and it was contrasted by a not so good Bears passing attack. Against a good Chicago defense, Detroit was able to put together several scoring possessions with almost all passing plays. On the other side of the ball, the Lions secondary was able to keep Mitchell Trubisky in check, for the most part.
Detroit scored another defensive touchdown
The Lion defense scored a touchdown on a fumble recovery for the second week in a row, and now lead the NFL in non-offensive touchdowns. They have scored seven such touchdowns, five on defense and two on punt returns.
Positives
The passing game is hot right now
Right now, the Lions passing attack is one of the best in the NFL. In the four games since the bye week, Matthew Stafford has thrown for 1,332 yards, seven touchdowns and one interception at a completion percentage of 67.4% and 9.86 yards per passing attempt. This is on pace for 5,328 yards, 28 touchdowns, 4 interceptions and a quarterback rating of 139.81 when projected over the course of a full 16 game season.
It’s not just Stafford though, the pass catchers on this team are doing a very good job right now too. Since the bye, Golden Tate has averaged seven catches for 82 yards per game with a touchdown, Marvin Jones five catches for 85.5 yards with three total touchdowns.
TJ Jones and Kenny Golladay have both been solid receivers as well, Jones averaging 43.5 yards per game since the bye and Golladay with a catch of more than 40 yards in each of the last two games.
Theo Riddick is averaging just over 25 receiving yards per game in the last four. Even Eric Ebron has looked good since the bye, averaging three catches for 45.25 yards per game with a touchdown in the last four weeks.
Right now, this passing offense is firing on all cylinders. Matthew Stafford looks really sharp and he has as many good targets to throw to as he ever has in his career. If the passing attack keeps playing at this level, Detroit will likely find themselves in the playoffs this year.
On this 3rd and 15 conversion, Matthew Stafford did a fantastic job of hanging in the pocket near is own goal line long enough for TJ Jones to get open on the sideline. Stafford took a shot but still managed to fire a pin point accurate pass in between the Bears zone coverage. Jones did a good job of securing the catch and the Lions got a first down.
This 40 yard pass to Kenny Golladay displayed excellent play design from Jim Bob Cooter. Stafford first fakes the hand off to Ameer Abdullah, then the reverse to rookie Jamal Agnew. Meanwhile, Kenny Golladay was streaking across the field and getting behind Chicago’s shallow man coverage. Golladay was able to make the catch after Stafford zipped the football over the head of the Bears linebackers and Detroit enjoyed a big gain.
On Marvin Jones’ 28 yard touchdown, he ran a fantastic stutter and go route. He completely faked out the Bears cornerback with a juke move and came wide open deep. Stafford was able to buy just a little bit of time with the designed roll out and delivered a downfield touchdown strike for the first Lions offensive points of the game.
Matt Prater is the best kicker in the NFL
Matt Prater made yet another game winning field for the Lions on Sunday. On the torn up grass and in the wind, Prater had no problem booting a 52 yard field goal right through the uprights, despite reports of him struggling with 45 yarders in pre game. Having a kicker as good as Prater has proven to be invaluable time and time again and there’s no other kicker in the NFL that I would rather have.
Negatives
The run defense
The Lions run defense has been abysmal for two games in a row now. The defensive line is entirely unable to get penetration, while the linebackers over pursue plays or outright whiff on tackles. Just two weeks ago, the Lions had a top ten run defense statistically. Now, they are the 19th run defense in the NFL.
The only bright side here is that the Lions have been without Ziggy Ansah for the last two games, and should get him back eventually. It is now abundantly clear that he is the best player at defending the run on the Lions front seven, so hopefully this area of the defense will improve with his return.
On this 50 yard Jordan Howard run, the Lions defense gets absolutely embarrassed by the Chicago offensive line. Detroit’s defensive line gets pushed back about three yards down the field as the Bear offensive line moved the line of scrimmage, opening up a massive running lane for Howard. Howard was easily able to get through the hole and picked up a huge gain.
On Jordan Howard’s touchdown run, Detroit’s front seven was similarly embarrassed. Again, the Bears offensive line pushed several Lions defenders down the field. All Howard had to do was follow his blockers into the end zone for an easy Chicago touchdown. Detroit’s front seven has just been completely out-muscled like this for two games in a row now.
The offensive line has not been a lot better, even with the return of Taylor Decker
As I mentioned before, the Lions offense has continued to struggle mightily with running the football and allowed a lot of pressure on Matthew Stafford, in spite of the success of the passing game since the bye week.
There is also hope here though. This was only Taylor Decker’s second game of the season and the first game of the season where all five starters played together. As time goes on, the offensive line should theoretically only get better as they develop chemistry with each other. I have confidence that the offensive line can keep getting better each week if everybody stays healthy.
Player Of The Game
Matt Prater is the Lions player of the game for this week. He made both of his field attempts, including a 52 yarder and all three of his extra points. He continued to be a fantastic weapon for the Lions and scored the game winning points on a long field goal in the wind.
Prater is now 21 of 24 for the year on field goal attempts, including six made from 50 or more yards. He has proven himself to be one of the best kickers in the NFL and will continue to be a huge part of this Lions team going forward.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, please follow me on Twitter @lucasjwalker00, and don’t forget to pay a visit to the Detroit Lions Subreddit!By Betty Clermont | 31 May 2016
Daily Kos
“Zika Does Not Justify Abortion or Contraception” declared the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Three powerful cardinals — from New York, Washington DC and Boston — plus five archbishops — including those of Los Angeles and Philadelphia — are among the board of directors.
“Republicans’ fears about the use of taxpayer money for abortion and possible increased use of contraception” are “lurking beneath the surface” of their opposition to legislation to fight the Zika virus.
Because the virus can cause severe birth defects in babies of infected mothers, Republicans have had concerns that taxpayer funds might somehow be used to help provide abortions. As a precaution, Senate Republicans insisted on writing language into their measure on Zika financing that reiterated the Hyde Amendment — a provision named for the longtime Illinois congressman Henry Hyde that bans the use of government money for abortions… There has also been debate about whether the government should stress contraception or abstinence in public education campaigns about how the Zika virus can be transmitted even more readily by sexual intercourse than by mosquitoes.
The Senate measure includes money for community health programs that might stress the effectiveness and importance of contraception.
By making contraception their bludgeon against Obamacare and the foundation of their “religious freedom” campaigns, the US bishops have boxed themselves into a corner. “Even though the Zika virus can be transmitted even more readily by sexual intercourse than by mosquitoes,” the bishops have no choice but to use their considerable political muscle to make sure no government funding provides for any program “stressing the effectiveness and importance of contraception.”
The administration and Democrats in Congress know that, at enormous taxpayer expense, as of October 2015 over 100 lawsuits had been filed in federal courts challenging the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit. The vast majority were brought by Catholic bishops and their affiliated institutions.
Time is of the essence in addressing Zika. “This is no way to fight an epidemic,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in regards to Congressional failure to approve federal funds. “Three months is an eternity for control of an outbreak,” he said, adding: “There is a narrow window of opportunity here and it’s closing. Every day that passes makes it harder to stop Zika.”
So in the face of an epidemic, government funding may have to be restricted to eradicating mosquitoes in order to avoid lengthy legal battles brought by the bishops and their proxies.
USCCB launched their election year campaign with a fright video against birth control.
In early May, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) released a nine minute video implying that our government will first become a police state and then brutally totalitarian unless their “religious freedom” to deny coverage for contraception prevails.
The first few minutes are devoted to extolling the care provided by the Little Sisters of the Poor who, we are told, “are being harassed by the United States government” for adhering to the “precepts of their faith.” The bishops don’t mention the nuns were only asked to file a simple form requesting the exemption offered by the Obama administration to religiously-affiliated organizations so they could deny their employees the contraception coverage provided under the Affordable Care Act.
Skip to footage of Hillary Clinton with the narrative, “the government stopping us from practicing our faith.” Followed by disturbing scenes of storm-trooper-like militias battling protesters and marching down the street while a speaker intones “religious freedom is under siege.”
The video resorts to horrifying images of victims of ISIS brutality, at least five of ISIS prisoners being led to their executions and then triumphant ISIS soldiers. Voice-overs by clerics and academics imply this will be the similar martyrdom of American Christians at the hands of our government unless we stand with them for “religious freedom” against contraception.
The bishops followed their video with the “bi-partisan” National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on May 17 in Washington DC. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and the “communications director” for the Little Sisters of the Poor, who can now afford such a position, were special guests. Justice Antonin Scalia’s son led a prayer favored by conservative Catholics.
The keynote speaker was Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, appointed by Pope Francis as prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments in 2014. “In your nation, God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated,” Sarah told the attendees.
Sarah condemned same-sex marriage, contraception and transgender bathroom laws as “demonic idolatry.” “All manner of immorality is not only accepted and tolerated today in advanced societies, it is even promoted as a social good,” the cardinal declared. “The result is hostility to Christians and increasingly, religious persecution.”
The cardinal warned, “The violence against Christians is not just physical, it is also political, ideological and cultural. This form of religious persecution is equally damaging, yet more hidden. This is the will of the Evil One.” “Do we not see signs of this insidious war in this great nation of the United States?” Sarah asked.
“This is why the Holy Father openly and vigorously defends Church teaching on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, the education of children, and much more,” Sarah added.
National and International Unity
Unlike evangelical pastors, the 454 American bishops speak in national unity through the USCCB and, through the pope, unity with the global Church providing both political muscle and access to domestic and international dark money.
By June 2015, about $3.5 billion was spent on sex abuse settlement-related costs by US Church officials according to the USCCB. Yet, the bishops still have available “millions to fight clergy sex abuse accountability. Lobbying funds have gone towards opposing bills that would extend statutes of limitations for child sex abuse cases” for all Americans.
After the Supreme Court sent their lawsuit, Bishop David Zubik v Burwell, back to the lower courts on May 16, Washington DC Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl said “this struggle will continue,” meaning the bishops’ seemingly unlimited funding is still available to continue fighting against contraception.
Unity with the pope on contraception
When asked about the Zika virus during an in-flight interview, Pope Francis said: “On avoiding pregnancy, we are speaking in terms of the conflict between the fifth and sixth commandment. Paul VI, a great man, in a difficult situation in Africa, permitted nuns to use contraceptives in cases of rape. [A]voiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one, or in the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear. I would also urge doctors to do their utmost to find vaccines against these two mosquitoes that carry this disease. This needs to be worked on.”
Knowing that “avoiding pregnancy” is not a “conflict” between “You shall not kill” and “You shall not commit adultery,” that Paul VI did no such thing, and that the Church has always approved of “avoiding pregnancy” by abstinence or Natural Family Planning, the US episcopate and Cardinal Sarah are confident in disregarding the pontiff when he says what others want to hear. Except for this occasion, Pope Francis has always been firmly opposed to birth control.
In 2014, Pope Francis beatified Pope Paul VI, infamous for issuing the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” which reaffirmed the Church’s prohibition of contraception. In an interview with an Italian newspaper, Pope Francis praised his predecessor. Paul VI was “prophetic, he had the courage to take a stand against the majority, to defend moral discipline, to exercise a cultural restraint, to oppose present and future neo-Malthusianism,” he said.
During his trip to the Philippines in 2015, “Pope Francis reaffirmed the Church’s ban on contraception, leading us to conclude that abstinence is his answer to rampant population growth and its consequential poverty and environmental destruction.”
Pope Francis “reaffirms the Church’s virtually absolute condemnation of contraception” in his April 2016 exhortation, “Amoris Lætitia.”
Pope Francis’ understanding of women is part of the same ideology that led to the creation of Draconian anti-abortion laws in El Salvador as well as countless Catholic-sponsored movements to keep contraceptives out of the hands of women, particularly poor women, whose need to manage the size of their families is a matter of life and death.
Unity with the pope on hyperbole
“Argentina is being harmed by demagoguery, totalitarianism, corruption and efforts to secure unlimited power,” Cardinal Bergoglio stated the year before he became pope when the administration “pushed for mandatory sex education in schools, free distribution of contraceptives in public hospitals, and the right for transsexuals to change their official identities on demand.”
Earlier, Bergoglio called same-sex marriage an “anthropological regression,” a phrase he repeated as pope in 2014.
In 2015, the pope compared transgender people to nuclear weapons.
[Pope Francis] calls the dominant “uniform thought,” atheist and “libertine,” the “new opium of the people.” His vision of the world is apocalyptic, of a cosmic battle with the devil as the great adversary. He speaks of it often, especially in his morning homilies. He is not silent about his aversion to the advent of new self-proclaimed families without “the masculinity and femininity of a father and a mother.” He is inflexible in calling abortion an “abominable crime.”
Unity with the pope on “religious freedom”
When Pres. Obama met in private with the pope in March 2014, the Vatican statement said the pontiff “pressed Obama ‘on questions of particular relevance for the Church, such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life and conscientious objection’ — all coded language for the fallout from [the Affordable Care Act contraception] mandates … In that light, it’s difficult to imagine it won’t come up in some fashion when Francis and Obama have their tête-à-tête in Washington.”
Vatican reporter John L. Allen Jr., author of the above quote was correct. At the White House last September, Pope Francis said: “[Religious] freedom remains one of America’s most precious possessions. And, as my brothers, the United States Bishops, have reminded us, all are called to be vigilant, precisely as good citizens, to preserve and defend that freedom from everything that would threaten or compromise it.”
Christians are persecuted “for wanting to have and to manifest the values of a Son of God,” the pope stated on April 12. “We see every day that the powerful countries create laws that force us to go through this path … It’s a persecution that robs man of his freedom, even from conscientious objection!” he added. These persecutions have “a boss,” the pope said, meaning Satan. Pope Francis “has used similar vocabulary to object to what he calls an ‘ideological colonization’ of developing countries by Western nations … on matters such as contraception, abortion and gay marriage.”
Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America (Clarity Press, 2009).
Professor Milton Siegel, who for 24 years was the Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization, speaks to Dr. Stephen Mumford in 1992 to reveal that although there was a consensus that overpopulation was a grave public health threat and would be a major cause of preventable death not too far in the future, the Vatican successfully fought off the incorporation of family planning and birth control into official WHO policy. This video is available for public viewing for the first time. Read the full transcript of the interview here.
Be sure to ‘like’ us on FacebookBaron Batch: When ripples collide
Baron Batch is a former gridiron standout at Midland High and Texas Tech university. Baron Batch is a former gridiron standout at Midland High and Texas Tech university. Photo: File Photo Photo: File Photo Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Baron Batch: When ripples collide 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Let me start by saying I'm not sure how to convey this story in words. Words don't do it justice but I'll try.
Have you ever watched rain fall on a lake? Each raindrop creates its own ripple.
When you combine the millions of raindrops and the millions of ripples that each singularly creates, you have a countless number of overlapping ripples that all have an effect on one another. The cool thing about this is that each raindrop ripple has an effect on the other ripples in the lake, even if it's just in a small way. This is how people operate on a daily basis. We are individual raindrops in a huge lake.
Of course each of us has our own ripple, but our lives are primarily made up of other peoples ripples crashing into our own. Many people like to think that our ripples crash randomly into each other without purpose or reason. Maybe that's true, but then again maybe it's not true at all. Perhaps I can help you decide. Maybe this story is the result of many ripples just coincidentally crashing into each other. Or maybe each ripple was ordered, measured, weighed, named, and timed perfectly to synchronize with the others to save a life.
The story I am about to tell shows what happens when ripples collide perfectly.
Ripple 1.)
Just about every day someone approaches me and tells me how much they enjoy my writing, this is always humbling because I was never a good writer while I was in school. It's strange to now be a published writer and have zero writing experience or background.
It's even more insane to get a request to speak to a high school creative writing class! What do I say? "Hi, my name is Baron. I failed English, let me show you my writing skills?"
I'm not really sure how things got to this point where writing is such a huge part of who I am. Maybe it's all a coincidence. Maybe everything is just random, and this is another one of my crazy hobbies that I have picked up; just like the time I watched the Karate Kid marathon and then researched bonsai trees and decided I needed one. Or maybe there is a reason, maybe there is an order, maybe there could possibly be a plan.
Maybe someone, somewhere, at some time, needed to read something that I would at some point write.
Would it be far-fetched to say that there is a reason you are standing where you are standing at this exact moment and reading these words at this exact time?
Would it be far fetched to say that a small decision that you see as pointless or routine could save a life? Perhaps we are all far more connected than anyone can see or comprehend. Maybe one day you will save my life. It's not as far-fetched as you may think. Maybe everything is just a coincidence, but maybe its not.
Get on board, buckle up, and lets take a trip.
Ripple 2.)
Back in August I approached the Midland Reporter Telegram and the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal about possibly writing a weekly column chronicling my senior year at Texas Tech. After talking with both papers I came to the decision that my column would run every Wednesday.
Maybe the fact that we agreed on Wednesday was simply random. What if we would have decided on a Thursday? No biggie right? Would if be far-fetched to say that this would be a life or death decision?
Ripple 3.)
As the season progressed I continued to write every week. However, it became increasingly difficult to write my column especially after a loss.
People said that I wasn't focused and it was hurting the team. There were weeks I told myself that I was just going to quit writing. I rationalized my thinking by telling myself that I should probably just focus all my attention on football, and that writing was distracting me.
It probably wouldn't have been a big deal if I had missed a week right? Every part of me wanted to quit writing my column. After the Oklahoma State loss I decided I was going to discontinue my column. A friend talked me into continuing my writing by saying "maybe someone needs to hear something you have to say Baron." I decided not to stop. I'm glad I didn't.
This is where ripples collide.
Ripple 4.)
Last Monday I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed. It's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, so the next day I decided that I wanted to have a steak. As I was strolling through the meat section of the supermarket directly violating the dentists orders to eat only soft foods, something happened that changed the way I will use the word random.
As I was checking out the price on ribeye steaks an older man came up to me with his hand extended and said, "Your Baron Batch and I just want to shake your hand and say, Thank You."
I could tell by the look in his eyes that the handshake meant much more than I imagined. The look in his eyes was different than if he was just a regular Texas Tech fan.
The man just continued to shake my hand while staring at me; it started to get awkward the amount of time his hand clung to mine |
and my immediate takeaway was an overall positive. He communicated well and he is focused on making an NFL roster. In my opinion, Muhammad "has everything to gain" if he can become grounded in football and stay out of trouble in New Orleans.
New #Saints DE Al-Quadin Muhammad has good size & athleticism, left the U after getting wrapped up with shady booster's rental car business — John Sigler (@JSiglerNFL) April 29, 2017
If it were not for his early college suspension and later dismissal from the University of Miami, Muhammad had talent and size to be a higher pick in the 2017 NFL Draft.
Review his workout video from the University of Miami's Pro Day:
If you listen to the young man, one can sense that he has been humbled by this process. In his interview with Sun Sentinel's reporter, Omar Kelley, Muhammad says a team is getting a "humble dude, a team guy, and a guy that's gonna help them win a Super Bowl." "Certainly, he made some mistakes, but they were ones we were comfortable with," Payton said. "This guy made some mistakes, but he's been a real good teammate and a guy the coaches felt strongly about. When you talk to the school, they had a strong opinion about his football makeup. This is a guy that loves football. He's a pressure player. He's physical. He was heavily recruited to Miami." - Shreveport Times - Glenn Guilbeau reporting
No one can accurately predict a rookie player's career with a team and in the NFL. There are too many variables - injuries, coaching, the team(s), personal performance and life choices all will impact a player's NFL career. It makes me wonder if the Saints have located another late round gem in Muhammad. Time will tell. His "Life in the NFL" will tell us better.
Loading...Fifty years ago science-fiction author Frank Herbert seized the imagination of readers with his portrayal of a planet on which it never rained. In the novel Dune, the scarcest resource is water, so much so that the mere act of shedding a tear or spitting on the floor takes on weighty cultural significance.
To survive their permanent desert climate, the indigenous Fremen of Dune employ every possible technology. They build “windtraps” and “dew collectors” to grab the slightest precipitation out of the air. They construct vast underground cisterns and canals to store and transport their painstakingly gathered water. They harvest every drop of moisture from the corpses of the newly dead. During each waking moment they dress in “stillsuits”—head-to-toe wetsuit-like body coverings that recycle sweat, urine, and feces back into drinking water.
Described by Dune’s “planetary ecologist,” Liet-Kynes, as “a micro-sandwich—a high-efficiency filter and heat exchange system”—the stillsuit is a potent metaphor for reuse, reclamation, and conservation. Powered by the wearer’s own breathing and movement, the stillsuit is the technical apotheosis of the principle of making do with what one has.
Someday, sooner than we’d like, it’s not inconceivable that residents of California will be shopping on Amazon for the latest in stillsuit tech. Dune is set thousands of years in the future, but in California in 2015, the future is now. Four years of drought have pummeled reservoirs and forced mandatory 25 percent water rationing cuts. The calendar year of 2014 was the driest (and hottest) since records started being kept in the 1800s. At the end of May, the Sierra Nevada snowpack—a crucial source of California’s water—hit its lowest point on record: zero. Climate models suggest an era of mega-droughts could be nigh.
Which brings us to Daniel Fernandez, a professor of science and environmental policy at California State University, Monterey Bay, and Peter Yolles, the co-founder of a San Francisco water startup, WaterSmart, that assists water utilities in encouraging conservation by crunching data on individual water consumption. Fernandez spends his days building and monitoring fogcatchers, remarkably Dune-like devices that have the property of converting fog into potable water. “I think about Dune a lot,” Fernandez says. “The ideas have really sat with me. In the book, they revere water, and ask, what do we do?” Similarly, Yolles says, “I remember being fascinated by the stillsuits. That was a striking technology, really poignant.” And inspiring. The fictional prospect of a dystopian future, Yolles says, “helped me see problems that we have, and where things might go.”
Also in Technology The Catch 22 of Hacktivism By Tung-Hui Hu In the run-up to NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya, a Dutch radio hacker named Huub (@fmcnl) tweeted to the United States military that one of their F-16 fighter jets was mistakenly broadcasting its identity in the clear due to a...READ MORE
Science fiction boasts a long history of influencing the course of scientific and technological development. The inventors of the submarine and the helicopter credited Jules Verne for dreaming up both their inventions. Star Trek’s tricorder inspired generations of engineers to perfect the smartphone. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman credits a character in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy for his motivation: “I grew up wanting to be Hari Seldon, using my understanding of the mathematics of human behavior to save civilization.” “Anything one man can imagine, another man can make real,” wrote Verne in Around the World in 80 Days. The future is as malleable as the written word.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that two innovative thinkers devising means to address drought in California should be talking about Dune. As I visited with Yolles and Fernandez to learn about their work confronting drought, I realized the missions of both men embodied a deeper ecological message in Dune. The novel’s ecologist Kynes is famous for teaching that “the highest function of ecology is understanding consequences.” The implicit lesson for society, as it marshals technology to address a waterless world, is that technological fixes work only in the context of an environmentally and socially connected vision. It’s the vision that guided Herbert in creating Dune, and it owes as much to our ancient past as it is a speculation on the future.
According to a biography of Herbert, Dreamer of Dune, written by his son Brian, the genesis of the novel came when Herbert, a long-time journalist who worked for a string of Northern California newspapers, landed an assignment in 1957 to write a story about a United States Department of Agriculture project to control spreading sand dunes with European beach grasses on the coast of Oregon. Surveying the highway-encroaching dunes from a low-flying aircraft, Herbert became fascinated by the implications of this clash between human and nature. The project, he later wrote, “fed my interest in how we inflict ourselves upon our planet. I could begin to see the shape of a global problem, no part of it separated from any other—social ecology, political ecology, economic ecology.” He chose the title Dune, he said, because of its onomatopoetic similarity to the word “doom.” He hoped Dune would serve as an “ecological awareness handbook.”
His wish came true. Along with Rachel Carson’s environmental call to arms, Silent Spring, published in 1962, Dune, says Robert France, a professor of watershed management at Dalhousie University, “played a very important role in increasing global consciousness about environmental concerns in general.” France says the massively popular reaction to Dune was a key part in the events that led up to the creation of Earth Day. Herbert frequently corresponded with the founder of Earth Day, Ira Einhorn, and was a featured speaker at the first Earth Day, in 1970.
The Dune Fremen are inspired by ancient Nabateans, celebrated by archaeologists for their amazing waterworks.
Herbert’s role in the budding environmental movement is proof science fiction can and does play a role in how we live in the present. But one of the more remarkable things about Dune is how rooted its story is in the ancient past. According to Brian Herbert, his father spent five years researching desert cultures and “dry-land ecology” before writing the novel. There’s a reason why the Fremen language looks and sounds like Arabic, and the Fremen people bear more than a passing resemblance to Bedouin nomads. Herbert did his homework. A civilization flourished in the Middle East 2,000 years ago that, by necessity, used every bit of available technology to maximize their access to water. “The closest historic parallel to the Dune Fremen,” says France, “are the Nabateans, proto-Semitic Arabs who lived at the southern end of the Dead Sea.”
From around 300 B.C. to 500 A.D. the Nabateans flourished in the Middle East, in territory that now includes Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Palestine. Centered around the trading emporium of Petra, a major stop for caravans crossing the Negev desert, the Nabateans are celebrated by archaeologists for one thing above all others—their amazing waterworks.
Charles Ortloff, a specialist in fluid dynamics and author of Water Engineering in the Ancient World, has studied the Nabatean waterworks in depth. He says the Nabateans consolidated their position at the center of the regional caravan trade by constructing an elaborate system of catchment basins, pipelines, and storage cisterns. The Nabateans utilized “all possible above- and below-ground water supply and storage methodologies simultaneously,” writes Orloff—enabling them to capture, transport, and stow away every bit of rain that did fall. In Arabic, the word “nabat” means for water “to percolate from underground to the surface.”
What made the Nabateans “outstanding,” says Ortloff, was their ability to comfortably support a population of 30,000 in Petra, “in an extremely dry area where the rain can only be measured in centimeters per year.”
Yolles, co-founder of WaterSmart, visited Petra in 1994, while a graduate student in Yale’s department of forestry and environmental studies. He still sounds slightly awed as he recalls walking across hills where the traces of 2,000-year-old Nabatean landscaping survive. The Nabateans painstakingly cleared hillsides of stray rubble and sand so that only the bare bedrock was exposed, increasing the total run-off.
“When the rain came,” says Yolles, “they would channel the flows with little rock fences, one or two inches high. These would direct the flow of the water that came over the bare rock, and into the underground cisterns. They captured every little drop that fell and ran off the sandstone hills.”
Yolles grew up in Northern California in the 1970s and ’80s, at a time and in a place where the environmental movement was rapidly consolidating its hold on the hearts and minds of locals. The incredible lengths that Dune’s Fremen went to in their conservation efforts is reflected in a comment Yolles likes to make to interviewers: “The cheapest water is the water we already have.”
Individual users are not inspired to cut back on their water use by appeals to their economic bottom line. What works is shaming.
Sit down with Yolles and he’ll quickly start sketching out the economics of water: This is how much it costs to buy an acre-foot of water from a California desalination plant ($2,200); this is how much it costs to buy water directly from San Francisco’s Sierra Nevada reservoirs ($1,700). And this is how much it costs to hire WaterSmart to achieve an acre-foot of “demand reduction”—$250 to $500. The math is inescapable: It is far cheaper to use less water than to get more.
Like so many other business models popular in present-day Silicon Valley, WaterSmart’s strategy relies on data crunching and clever behavior modification. Yolles says numerous studies, and WaterSmart’s own experience, show individual users are not inspired to cut back on their water use by appeals to their economic bottom line (cheaper bills) or potential environmental impact. What does move the needle, however, is showing them how their use compares to their neighbors. In other words: water-shaming.
WaterSmart’s strategy is working. An independently funded study of a pilot program with one Northern California water utility showed consistent savings of about 5 percent after deployment of WaterSmart’s program. The implication of WaterSmart’s success is intriguing; while there’s plenty of technology involved in analyzing the water trends of millions of water utility customers, the key to making real change is cultural, in positioning water consumption within a social context. A Fremen tribal member who wasted water like a typical Californian does today would be harshly ostracized; likely left to die in the desert without the protection of a stillsuit. WaterSmart’s tactics are considerably less lethal, but the company has made a business out of exerting social pressure in the service of maximizing our existing resources.
The entire state of California, Yolles hopes, will follow a similar path. He sees hopeful signs. Just a few years ago, California started loosening laws that restricted the use of treated wastewater for irrigation or recharging depleted aquifers. And in 2013 Californians were finally legally allowed to harvest rainwater and use it to flush their own toilets. This is a far cry from the world of Dune, but definitely one step closer. Drip by drip, Californians are acting more like Fremen.
On an unseasonably warm and sunny day in April, I drive to the Monterey Peninsula home of Fernandez. Along with a dozen other interested parties, I have come to learn how to make a fogcatcher, a relatively low-tech device that siphons drinking water directly from Northern California’s notorious marine layer.
The visitors include a post-doc from the University of California, Santa Cruz, researching the intersection of fog and agriculture, a father and son from Fresno mulling a science fair project to catch the Central Valley’s interstate-clogging tule fog, and a Santa Clara Health Services official looking into low-cost water conservation methods. It becomes quickly apparent that we are not here to just watch. In classic California DIY style, Fernandez puts us all to work on his front lawn, hacksawing galvanized pipe and cutting short sections of copper tubing, painstakingly sewing polypropylene mesh onto a square meter frame, and bolting the whole thing together into a structure about 10 feet high.
The model of fogcatcher we are building was invented by a Canadian, Robert Schemenauer, the founder of FogQuest, a nonprofit that specializes in setting up fogcatchers in rural areas in developing countries that have no access to drinking water. But the applicability of the technology to a water-starved region like California, which boasts, at least in its northern half, abundant fog, seemed at first glance quite obvious.
The devices are simple, but effective. They are basically finely meshed nets that intercept fog. The miniscule droplets of water that make up fog adhere to the mesh, and then drip down into a steel trough. Hoisted 10 feet above the ground, in a spot where offshore winds send Northern California’s mighty marine layer slamming into the coastal ridge, on a good day, a single fogcatcher can capture up to 8 gallons of potable water in 24 hours.
Fernandez and his students have set up 20 fogcatchers around California, along with meters that measure the resulting accumulations. Fernandez is testing out different meshes for efficiency (a cheap mesh made in Chile is the current cost-efficient standard, but researchers in Germany and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised high-tech meshes that supposedly significantly hike the percentage of fog that can be captured) and working with colleagues who are analyzing the chemical composition of the resulting fog. The closer you get to the ocean, it appears, the larger the traces of salt and mercury one finds in the captured water.
Bonnie Fernandez
I’m transfixed by fogcatchers because they seem as close an analog to the dew collectors of Dune as one could expect to find. But Fernandez quickly quashes any dreams that fog-catching will make a meaningful difference in California’s drought. Californians simply consume too much water, he says. The average Californian gobbles around 100 gallons of water a day. While one can build larger-scale fogcatchers that ramp up the total catch, there are natural limits to just how much netting California can strap on to its ridgelines. Fogcatchers can’t supply the demand created by the city of San Francisco or the almond farms of the Central Valley. Fogcatchers, says Fernandez, only make sense at the margins. They’re not a comprehensive solution on their own, though they do serve as a useful reminder of how excessive our current consumption is. “Let’s look at how much water we are using, and how much water we could get back from fog,” he says. “That might give us another perspective on our own water use.”
But there’s another, more profound way to think about fogcatching. Schemenauer, the inventor of the fogcatching technology deployed by Fernandez, sketches out a provocative possibility, underscoring the Dune Fremen’s ecological mission.
The redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest have evolved to become extraordinarily effective fogcatchers. Redwood needles serve the same function as Chilean polyprolene mesh. But it isn’t just the redwoods that benefit from their fog-catching facility, says Schemenauer. Much of the fog that adheres to the redwood needles ends up dripping down to the ground where it eventually recharges the local aquifer, supplying the entire region with a store of water.
But in areas where the forests have been clear-cut, that process is short-circuited. The fog simply evaporates, and the aquifers remain depleted, leaving the land without enough moisture to support a new forest—or wells for drinking water.
Schemenauer sketches out a situation in which you could use fogcatchers to reboot the forest. The first step would be to plant new redwood seedlings in a foggy region, along with manmade fogcatchers to provide for their sustenance during their crucial first few years. Once the seedlings have grown into trees capable of supporting themselves, you could move the artificial fogcatchers to a new region. “If you build enough forest in foggy zones, they will start to provide water to aquifers in large amounts,” says Schemenauer.
Herbert, who grew up in Washington and Oregon and spent much of his life in California, would no doubt be delighted the Golden State is turning out to be a major test case for his ideas in Dune. Yolles and Fernandez are deploying technology in concert with an ecological vision that would make the Fremen proud. This world we have now is the only one we’ve got. And it’s getting hotter. When the protagonist of Dune, Paul Atreides, first learns of the existence of stillsuits shortly before he moves to the planet, the fact “that people could want so for water they had to recycle their body moisture struck him with a feeling of desolation.”
“ ‘Water’s precious there,’ he said.”
Andrew Leonard is a freelance writer living in Berkeley, California, and trying to keep his showers short.
Lead illustration bt Gary Jamroz-Palma // artofgray.com
You can listen to the story here.Designing the instrumentation amplifier, with its few external components, appears to be a simple task, but to obtain a reliable design, you must avoid certain traps. You must correctly match the instrumentation amp and the transducer to obtain the optimum performance with reliable operation. High-output-impedance sensors, such as piezoelectric and pH electrodes, require high-input-impedance, low-bias-current instrumentation amps, and that requirement dictates JFET and CMOS IC processes. The instrumentation-amp input impedance must be higher than the sensor-output impedance, or excessive loading reduces the sensor-output signal. The instrumentation-amp bias current must be small, because when it flows through the large load resistor, it creates input-offset-voltage errors in some circuit configurations. Also, a rule of thumb is that very-low-noise instrumentation amps require low source impedance; hence, they are unusable with high-output-impedance sensors.
All instrumentation amps require an input-bias current regardless of how small that bias current may be. The standard circuit configuration that capacitively couples the input signal directly to the instrumentation amp requires adding external resistors (connected to the return or ground) to complete the bias-current path. You can complete the bias path through an input transformer or inductor.
All instrumentation amps have common-mode-voltage limitations, and power-supply voltage, gain, and reference-pin voltage all influence the common-mode-voltage range. Determining the instrumentation amp's common-mode-input-voltage operating range is difficult because you must make detailed calculations, including those for internal instrumentation-amp nodes, for the complete operating range. Normally, manufacturers provide minimal data describing the common-mode-voltage range for selected operating conditions, and this data is inadequate if you are operating the instrumentation amp outside the prescribed operating conditions. You can measure the common-mode-voltage range with an analog storage scope, or you can download some calculation programs from the Web and draw a graph of the safe common-mode-voltage range. Beware: Three-op-amp instrumentation amps invert the output signal under certain operating conditions, so it is mandatory that you control the common-mode voltage and gain when using these instrumentation amps.
RFI can get into the input signal and cause dc-offset voltages, offset-voltage drift, or arbitrary jumps in the output voltage. The errors originate in the instrumentation-amp input circuitry, which rectifies and filters the RF signal into a dc voltage. Filtering, or shielding the input, output, and power leads can eliminate these errors. A lowpass filter effectively eliminates the RFI before it gets into the internal instrumentation-amp circuits. Simply adding a lowpass filter in series with each instrumentation-amp input lead accomplishes some of the filtering, but this method is inadequate because it reduces the instrumentation amp's differential bandwidth too much. Connecting a capacitor (approximately 100 times the lowpass-filter-capacitor value) across the instrumentation-amp input leads somewhat relieves the differential-bandwidth problem, but a loss of differential gain still exists at high frequencies. Adding a lowpass filter works effectively when the input-signal bandwidth is low; the filter pole can be low under these conditions, and the differential-signal error is so far down the attenuation-roll-off curve of the instrumentation amp that it contributes little to the common-mode error.Save your Google Docs drafts as WordPress blog posts in seconds.
We are happy to announce WordPress.com for Google Docs, a new add-on that lets you write, edit, and collaborate in Google Docs, then save it as a blog post on any WordPress.com or Jetpack-connected WordPress site. Your images and most formatting will carry over too. No more copy-and-paste headaches!
To get started, just go to the Google Web Store page and click to install it.
You will be prompted to give our plugin access to post on your behalf, and then you are ready to write.
When you’re ready to save a Google Docs draft as a blog post, go to the Add-ons menu and open WordPress.com for Google Docs. A sidebar will appear where you can add WordPress.com or Jetpack-connected sites.
Click the Save Draft button — when it’s saved, a preview link will appear so you can see how it looks on your site. Edit the post in WordPress.com to make any small tweaks, then hit publish when you’re ready to go live!
You can find the source code on GitHub if you want to take a closer look at how things work. And, of course, this post was composed in Google Docs and posted with the WordPress.com Add-on for Google Docs.After losing the first presidential debate to Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump apparently grabbed a female reporter's wrist and pushed her phone away. That reporter is Alexi McCammond of Bustle, who has published the details of her disturbing encounter with Trump.
This behavior is reminiscent of Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grabbing a female reporter by the arm during the primaries.
When @realDonaldTrump grabs my wrist, tells me to "put that down" and pushes my phone away #Debates2016 pic.twitter.com/0puNWFfhwC — Alexi McCammond (@leximccammond) September 27, 2016
That's as he's ignoring my question re: how he responds to women who are nervous to vote for him #Debates2016 https://t.co/Uggk6mdsLE — Alexi McCammond (@leximccammond) September 27, 2016
McCammond elaborates on her encounter with Trump:
I asked, “How would you respond to young women who are nervous about voting for you?” This question was inspired by the countless students I spoke to earlier that day who told me they were nervous about the future of women’s rights if Trump were elected. My phone was out and already recording in anticipation of the answer Trump would hopefully give me to my question. Instead, another reporter behind me yelled a question to him (something about what he’d say to the people of Westchester, New York). He then looked at me, grabbed my right wrist (which was the hand holding the phone), said, “Put that down” and pushed my hand down.
Incredibly, this story has yet to receive coverage in corporate news outlets. For the millionth time: What would happen if Hillary Clinton had done the same thing?
[Updated 9/28/16]Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is receiving threats after she announced changes to the Title IX program Thursday as it was known under President Obama. Sexual assault abusers are still going to be punished, she emphatically stated, but from now on the accused will be offered due process.
"One university leader was rightly appalled when he was asked by an Office for Civil Rights official: 'Why do you care about the rights of the accused?'" she said.
With the Trump administration changes, sexual abuse cases will now be based on a notice-and-comment process. As for accusers, they will now have to provide more proof of guilt, instead of just a "preponderance" of guilt.
Protesters outside of DeVos's speech at George Mason University accused her of protecting rapists.
The worst offenders came on Twitter though. Some said DeVos's changes are the next step toward authoritarianism.
DeVos wiping away Title IX protections for college sexual assault is just the next step on our path to authoritarianism. #StopBetsy
1/ — Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) September 7, 2017
Then there was Texas lawyer Rob Ranco, who told the world he would have no issues with DeVos being the victim of sexual abuse. He has since deleted his account.
So looks like @rancolaw deleted his account. I guess wanting a federal official to get sexually assaulted has consequences. pic.twitter.com/THl5ucm8lB — Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) September 9, 2017
“She’s made the world more dangerous for my daughters," Ranco later explained. "I need her to understand.”
Along with the Twitter account, outraged social media users demanded he lose his law credentials.As I listen to the news of the horror that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I'm terrified at the irony that only a couple days prior, both chambers of the Michigan legislature passed a National Rifle Association-backed bill to make it permissible for gun owners to carry handguns into schools, day care centers, stadiums and even churches. Amazingly, Republicans described the measure as being "pro-public safety" because it would, supposedly, allow a gun owner to be an "asset" to public safety officials during violent situations?
Really? How completely ignorant does a person have to be to actually believe that nonsense -- other than Republicans in the Michigan Legislature? It wasn't that long ago that the majority of Americans would consider it abhorrent for anyone to carry a weapon into a school. How did Republicans so grotesquely lose their sanity in their immoral effort to satisfy the gun lobby? How did they lose sight of what's truly the most important thing in every American's life -- the health and safety of our children?
What more needs to happen? How many more innocent lives need to be lost and how many families need to face such overwhelming tragedies before this nation finally tells the NRA to kiss its collective ass!
The NRA is on one mission, to eliminate any barrier for any person to own and carry firearms. Thanks to the NRA, it has become entirely too easy for even the most unstable person to gain access to a gun. The NRA has wielded too much political power for way too long. It's time for that to change.A retired Air Force captain says Pentagon covered up real cause of deadly chopper crash
WATCH | A retired Air Force captain says the Pentagon lied to families about what caused the Extortion 17 tragedy.
A decorated retired Air Force officer who witnessed one of the most deadly attacks on Navy SEALs in U.S. history is breaking her silence, saying the government covered up evidence detailing that the 2011 downing of a Chinook helicopter gunship that killed 38 fighters in Afghanistan could have been prevented had it not been for restrictions to the military's rules of engagement that were changed under the Obama administration.
The mission
August 6, 2011: Retired Air Force Capt. Joni Marquez and her crew were working the dark morning hours aboard an AC-130 gunship after being summoned to a mission she describes “as almost like a 9-1-1 type of a situation.”
The gunship was ordered to fly close-in air support above Afghanistan’s dangerous Tangi Valley, in Wardak Province, assisting troops with the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment who were being fired on by eight heavily armed Taliban insurgents.
Retired Air Force Captain Joni Marquez was on the AC-130 gunship the night Extortion 17 was shot down. (Photo, Joni Marquez)
The Rangers had called in for assault helicopters to engage the enemy hiding among the rocky valley. The air weapons team fired on the Taliban fighters, but not all of the insurgents were killed as originally believed.
“I had the sensor operators immediately shift to the eight insurgents the helicopters had taken out,” Marquez told Circa, in her first interview about the incident. “Two were still alive.”
Marquez was the fire control officer aboard the AC-130 gunship, making sure that the sensors and weapons were aligned and allowing the crew hone in on targets.
Retired Air Force Captain Joni Marquez in Afghanistan during a night combat support mission. (photo/ Joni Marquez)
Permission denied
That night it didn’t matter, because the gunship was not given permission to fire. “We had seen two of them (insurgents) moving, crawling away from the area, as to not really make a whole lot of scene,” she recalled.
Monitoring the scene from above, she relayed the scene to the ground force commander. “You have two enemy forces that are still alive,” she said. “Permission to engage.”
They were denied.
A retired Air Force captain says Pentagon covered up real cause of deadly chopper crash
Marquez told Circa the ground commander's decision to not allow her crew to engage the two enemy fighters sealed the fate of those involved in Extortion 17.
38 dead
There was little left to do for Marquez and her team but simply track the two enemy insurgents with the surveillance equipment. She watched as the two moved tactically through the open field, making their way to a village where they began to rally more fighters.
Meanwhile, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, with the call sign Extortion 17, was called into the hours-long firefight.
If we would've been allowed to engage that night, we would've taken out those two men immediately. Retired Air Force Captain Joni Marquez
U.S. Central Command’s official investigation concluded that a rocket-launched grenade from a Taliban fighter hit the Chinook and sent the helicopter into a downward spin. The crash killed all 38, including thirty Americans and eight Afghans. Seventeen of the U.S. servicemen were Navy SEALs. Months before, SEALs were made famous for the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Deaths prevented?
Marquez believes that had her team been allowed to fire, those deaths could have been prevented.
“They continued to essentially gain more and more force behind them because they just kept knocking on doors,” she said. “And the two personnel that initially fled ended up becoming a group of 12 people.”
Pleas and warnings from her crew to turn the Chinook back or cancel their mission went unheeded, she added.
“Whenever we reached out to the Joint Operations Center, they would essentially just push back with, ‘Find a, a good infill location. Find a good helicopter landing zone,’” said Marquez, adding that by the time Extortion 17 was coming in, everything was mired in confusion.
'Dying on the ground'
One of the SEALs was ejected from the burning Chinook helicopter and Marquez watched from her infrared monitor as his heat signature faded from red to blue as life was slipping from his body.
“We had to sit and watch that, and I think that was one of the hardest things that I had to do," she said. "That man was, you know, dying on the ground.” Marquez says the pain of living with what happened has taken its toll and she was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and is in therapy.
Her account is corroborated by a previously top-secret report by the Defense Department inspector general that includes interviews with some of Marquez’s colleagues on the gunship, including the commander.
“If we would've been allowed to engage that night, we would've taken out those two men immediately. I mean, it's just one of those things where you know that it could've all been prevented,” she said, tearing up at times as she recollected that night.
Major US-Russia controversies from recent history Times Washington and Moscow didn't always play nice. Take quiz
Rules of engagement
The battlefield rules of engagement were tightened by Gen. Stanley McChrystal under President Obama in 2009, citing an "overreliance on firepower and force protection.” The idea was that this would reduce civilian casualties and win the cooperation of locals.
But Marquez said rules of when to engage the enemy, which continuously changed depending on who was in charge, prevented her crew from doing what they knew needed to be done.
“Ridiculous rules of engagement that basically state that you can't shoot until being shot upon. A weapon has to be pointed, and essentially fired at you, in order for you to shoot and you have the proper clearance so that you don't, you know, go to jail, that you're charged with a war crime,” said Marquez, who had reached out to Congress, and some of the victims' families.
U.S. Central Command did not respond for comment about Marquez's account or about the changes in the rules of engagement.
But Jeffery Addicott, who served 20 years as a senior legal advocate for U.S. Special Forces and is an expert in rules of engagement, told Circa that Marquez's story is one of the most tragic for U.S. troops battling not only enemy fighters, but unrealistic rules that do nothing more than tie the hands of military personnel and endanger lives.
“In Afghanistan, we had rules of engagement that became more restrictive the longer we stayed,” said Addicott. “Right now, the rules of engagement are absolutely bizarre.”
Addicott is pushing for congressional oversight of the Department of Defense’s rules of engagement.
Here’s some of the unclassified rules of engagement for Afghanistan
No night or surprise searches
Villagers warned prior to searches
U.S. units on searches
U.S. soldiers may not fire at the enemy unless the enemy is preparing to fire first
Afghan National Army or Afghan National Police must accompany
U.S. forces cannot engage the enemy if civilians are present
Troops can fire at an insurgent if they catch them placing an IED, but not if they’re walking away from placing an IED.
Only engage an enemy fighter if you see a weapon, and they’ve fired first
Right now, the Rules of Engagement are absolutely bizarre Jeffery Addicott, military lawyer
Addicott says placating foreign governments at the expense of American lives became a death sentence for some U.S. troops.
He said under the recognized “Law of war, if you do or you suspected that someone was an enemy combatant, they had a weapon, they were carrying it openly, you could kill them before they shot at you.”
He said overly restrictive rules of engagement do nothing to help the war fighter win, but are enforced against war fighters under political pressure from host nations.
“Under our current rules of engagement, you cannot shoot them until they shoot at you first. Now many people -- of course people on the ground, the military soldiers -- they know that this is a recipe for disaster,” he said. “And so, we basically have these rules that are made by the president.”
Marquez agrees and hopes revealing the secret of what happened the night Extortion 17 crashed will bring change that saves lives.
“I won't rest until some kind of justice is served, in a manner of either, you know, the people that were responsible for that night, for making those calls, come forward and are honest about it,” Marquez said. “I know that's kind of a lofty goal but, if that's something that doesn't happen, then obviously the ROE's to change, for them to be realistic.”
Follow Sara A. Carter on Twitter @SaraCarterDCMANITOWOC COUNTY — Steven Avery has filed an appeal — asking a judge to throw out his conviction for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach. Avery wants to be released from prison while the Wisconsin Court of Appeals considers his latest challenge to his 2007 murder conviction.
The appeal was signed by Avery on January 7th. It was received by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals on Monday, January 11th.
Avery has filed two motions alleging violations of due process rights in his prosecution for the rape and murder of Halbach. One of the motions claims a search warrant executed on the property was invalid, meaning evidence from the search should have been inadmissible. The second motion claims a juror pressured others into voting guilty. The motion seeks a stay of enforcement of the judgment and release on bond.
According to the court documents, Avery says the jurors were tainted, because one juror made repeated comments that he was “(expletive) guilty.”
Avery says the juror in question also told the other jurors, “If you can’t handle it, why don’t you tell them [the judge] and just leave.”
The new legal documents show Avery claims the search that ultimately produced incriminating evidence against him — including his blood in Halbach’s vehicle, and the key to Halbach’s vehicle which was located in Avery |
's reddish outer edges are largely due to light emitted by nitrogen, which marks the coolest gas visible in the picture. WFC3 is equipped with a wide variety of filters that isolate light emitted by various chemical elements, allowing astronomers to infer properties of the nebular gas, such as its temperature, density, and composition.
The white-colored regions are areas where light is emitted by sulfur. These are regions where fast-moving gas overtakes and collides with slow-moving gas that left the star at an earlier time, producing shock waves in the gas (the bright white edges on the sides facing the central star). The white blob with the crisp edge at upper right is an example of one of those shock waves.
NGC 6302 was imaged on July 27, 2009, with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur from the planetary nebula were used to create this composite image.
These Hubble observations of the planetary nebula NGC 6302 are part of the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release Observations.
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Credits
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO TeamJorge Sampaoli, the man Chelsea almost appointed as head coach, is the leading contender to succeed Luis Enrique at Barcelona.
Enrique is under huge pressure, following the shock last-16 Champions League thrashing at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday night, and his Barca contract expires at the end of the season.
Barca are a point behind Real Madrid in La Liga, having played two games more, and are only two points ahead of Sampaoli’s Sevilla.
Sampaoli was interviewed by Chelsea last year and claims to have only lost out to Antonio Conte because his command of English was not good enough.
What is certain is that Sampaoli got down to the last three candidates Chelsea considered before Sevilla appointed him to succeed Unai Emery, who took over at PSG.Getty Images
The Giants aren’t the only ones making way for a youth movement.
According to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, the Texans are releasing veteran outside linebacker Lamarr Houston.
Acquired earlier this season after Whitney Mercilus was lost for the season (when it made sense to add veteran parts), Houston had a sack in five games, and returned a fumble for a touchdown against the Colts.
But with last night’s loss to the Ravens effectively killing their slim playoff hopes (such that the losses of J.J. Watt and Deshaun Watson didn’t do that already), they apparently figured they might as well play some younger players.
The 30-year-old Houston was plagued by injuries during his time with the Bears, but could be of service to someone else down the stretch.DATE: Jul 24, 2014 | BY: Brent McKnight | Category: Sci-Fi
Abandon all logic ye who enter here, because we are about to start talking Lucy. You might want to leave reason and science by the door while you’re at it, you won’t have much call to use either of those for the next 90 minutes or so. French action auteur Luc Besson has made his version of 2001, or at least his Tree of Life, and it is a wild, wild time. People are going to walk into what they think is a Scarlett Johansson-fronted action movie and have their minds broken. This is very much not the movie you were led to expect, but goddamn if it isn’t a total freaking blast. There will be those who laud this as the most fun movie of the summer, while others will condemn it as complete and utter nonsense, and somehow they’ll both be right.
Right away, you learn that Lucy is like a roller coaster. When that big metal restraint clanks down over your shoulders to hold you in place, you’re like, fuck it, I’m here, and all you can do is throw your hands in the air and scream weeeeeeee as the propulsive momentum whips your head back and forth and pummels your common sense. This is like the meth-addicted sibling of Transcendence, it’s strange and funny—sometimes deliberately, other times unintentionally so—but it’s always exciting and unpredictable. You can never be sure what crazy shit is about to come around the corner, but after the main character starts disintegrating in an airplane bathroom, everything is up for grabs.
Much has been made of this film being based on the we-only-use-10%-of-our-brains myth, which as you probably know is total bullshit, but if you can look past a radioactive spider bite causing super powers, or gamma radiation turning an angry man big and green, you can get past this. Besides, you have way, way bigger hurdles to get over. Lucy (Johansson) is a student in Taipei. Through a series of events that are like a bad urban legend cautionary tale, she winds up with an unwanted parcel of a new drug stitched into her belly. When it invariably ruptures, pumping magic purple dust into her blood stream, she gains access to as yet unexplored regions of her brain, unlocking all kinds of cool powers, like being able to control every cell in her body. Every once in a while the film flashes a little card that counts down how much of her brain she’s using, like at 60% she turns a Chinese gangster into an inadvertent mime.
While all of this is going on, Besson cuts in stock nature footage intended to illustrate the predator/prey dynamic, natural selection at work, and all kinds of animals humping all over the place, often with a jaunty tune superimposed over the images. It’s bizarre. Depending on your perspective, the editing is either brilliant or insane, juxtaposing footage of natural disasters and chaos with the calming, dulcet tones of Morgan Freeman’s Professor Norman, an expert in this non-science.
There’s no real goal or narrative thrust, or point. Lucy is little more than a build up to 100%, where action scenes, like an crazy-ass car chase through the streets of Paris, happen for no solid reason—in this case her only explanation is, “We’re late.” Ostensibly, Lucy is after the rest of the drugs, while over-the-top crime boss Mr. Jang (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik) chases her every step of the way, that’s about it. You’re never entirely sure what she is trying to accomplish, but watching her go about her business is damn entertaining.
Lucy tries to be scientific, it isn’t; it tries to be philosophical, and fails in miserable fashion; and it wants to be smart so damn bad, but it just isn’t in any way. What the movie is, however, is totally audacious and nuts, the work of either a genius or a lunatic, or both. Full of action movie tropes that Besson helped create, like a character clutching two guns, walking in slow motion as classical music plays—in my book Besson is every bit as responsible for overexposing this kind of flair as John Woo—or my personal favorite, a camera, background, and character all spinning at spinning at the same time, but at different speeds.
Outside of the first act, where there is some sharp dialogue, and snappy negotiations, Johansson doesn’t do much acting wise aside from channel Keanu Reeves flat delivery from The Matrix. But after that, watching her kick ass and fling people around like she’s a Jedi Knight using the Force, is way more fun than it reasonably should be. Freeman is there to sound soothing, like he knows what he’s talking about, and to add an air of class to the proceedings, which he doesn’t. Everyone else is just a plaything for Lucy’s whims, a canvas to show off her newly acquired skills and abilities, like making stock bad guys levitate and flail around like turtles stuck on their backs.
Every summer there is one movie that flies under my radar, one that I know is coming but I’m not super invested in, but winds up surprising the hell out of me and being totally awesome. This year that movie is Lucy. Delirious and gleeful, Besson has created something bizarre and outlandish, that is totally ludicrous in the best possible way. By the time Lucy is blasting back through history to the very origins of the human race, everything is so chaotic and insane that you can’t help but wear a huge, shit-eating grin. This is a hard movie to recommend, because while I loved it, many people will absolutely despise every frame. If you’re looking for something bat-shit crazy, and more than a little mindboggling, Lucy may be just what you’re looking for.I just did a search on the Revenue Canada Website to check some tithing numbers for the lds church in Canada. At first I couldn't find the church until I did a search for All and noticed all the branches with a status of "revoked". The default status is "registered" on the search. What's going on here?Here is the my search link, hope it works.If it doesn work visit the CRA site http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca and navigate to charities and do a search.Interessting.Hopeful, but maybe they just have not file their taxes. =)Definition of a Revoked charity on the CRA website:--------------RevokedRegistration as a charity or Canadian amateur athletic association has been cancelled and the privileges that go with it have been taken away. The organization can no longer issue official donation receipts and is no longer eligible to receive gifts from registered charities.Registration as a charity or Canadian amateur athletic association is officially revoked when a notice is published in the Canada Gazette.Registration may be revoked because the charity or Canadian amateur athletic association:•chooses to give up its registration (voluntary revocation);•does not file its annual return or does not file it on time (revocation for failure to file); or•is found to be non-compliant with the requirements for registration under the Income Tax Act (revocation for cause).Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2014 06:17PM by deconverted2010.DUBAI (Reuters) - A judge on Thursday sentenced a Saudi blogger and activist to 15 years in jail for taking part in protests and defaming the kingdom by communicating with foreigners and through publishing articles on the Internet, his lawyer said.
Fadhel al-Manasef, 26, is the latest activist to be convicted this week on charges which international human rights groups and activists in the kingdom say are part of a new drive to curb political, religious and social dissent. The government denies there is any crackdown.
The Special Criminal Court in the capital Riyadh also fined Manasef 100,000 riyals ($26,700) and barred him from traveling abroad for 15 years after he completes his sentence, the lawyer, Waleed Sulais, told Reuters by email.
Officials from the Justice Ministry were not available to comment on the report.
Sulais said the court found Manasef guilty of charges that included incitement and participation in demonstrations, writing articles against state security and posting them online, signing an anti-government petition and contacting foreign judicial and media outlets without authorization and taking reporters to protests and giving them harmful information on the kingdom.
Sulais said Manasef, who has been in detention in a jail in Dammam since October 2011, was convicted in three cases that date back from 2009.
Sulais said he planned to appeal the verdict and said Manasef, who is also a photographer, denied the charges and demanded proof of the charges of giving harmful information.
The ruling came two days after prominent Saudi rights lawyer and activist, Waleed Abu al-Khair, was detained by authorities after appearing in court in Riyadh on sedition charges, according to his wife, Samar Badawi.
Human Rights Watch called for Abu al-Khair’s release.
“Saudi authorities have repeatedly harassed Abu al-Khair for his human rights work, and now they’ve suddenly jailed him without letting him notify his family,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement on Thursday.
“The authorities should free Abu al-Khair immediately and drop the charges against him.”
State news agency SPA also reported on Thursday that an unidentified activist was sentenced to six years in jail on charges including taking part in illegal demonstrations and organizing women’s protests.
Another unidentified activist was also sentenced to three years in jail for spreading lies against King Abdullah and inciting the public against him, SPA said.
The world’s top oil exporter has regularly dismissed criticism of its human rights record by Western countries and campaign groups.28th March 2017
New drug can dramatically cut bad cholesterol
A new drug, evolocumab, is shown to reduce bad cholesterol by 59%.
Coronary heart disease is the single biggest killer worldwide – causing over 7 million deaths each year – and "bad" LDL-cholesterol is a major cause. Statins can reduce the risk of heart disease, but they are not tolerated by everyone and only reduce cholesterol by a certain amount.
This month, the results of a major clinical trial have shown that a new cholesterol-lowering drug could further reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke for those already taking statins. The study of evolocumab (trade name Repatha) is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This looked at over 27,500 patients in 49 countries living with heart disease and taking statins. The drug was found to lower cholesterol by an average of 59% and reduced the risk of a heart attack by 27% and stroke by 21% in the two years of follow-up.
Repatha is a human monoclonal antibody that inhibits PCSK9, an enzyme encoded by the PCSK9 gene. Repatha binds to PCSK9 and prevents it from binding to the Low-Density Lipoprotein Receptor (LDL-R), increasing the number of LDL-Rs available to clear bad cholesterol from the blood.
"It is much more effective than statins," said Prof. Peter Sever, from Imperial College London, a member of the study's executive committee. "It is probably the most important trial result of a cholesterol-lowering drug in over 20 years."
"This trial is a significant advance," said Prof. Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation. "Giving patients evolocumab, a PCSK9 inhibitor, on top of statins, not only helped to further reduce LDL-cholesterol, but also reduced the risk of cardiovascular events in people already affected by heart disease, without causing major side effects."
"We now have definitive data that by adding evolocumab to a background of statin therapy, we can significantly improve cardiovascular outcomes and do so safely," said Dr Marc Sabatine, of Harvard Medical School in Boston. "We need to treat LDL cholesterol more aggressively, and now we have a new validated means to do so."
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Comments »AUSTIN, Texas — A lawsuit warns that U.S. aid to Israel violates a law meant to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation, even as the United States prepares to increase the already massive Israeli aid program.
Filed Aug. 8 by Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, or IRMEP, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the suit alleges that U.S. aid to Israel violates two amendments to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, known as the the Symington and Glenn Amendments, which collectively ban support for countries engaged in clandestine nuclear programs.
In the lawsuit, Smith alleges that violating these amendments means that Israel has received approximately $234 billion in illegal aid since the passage of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976.
The lawsuit reads:
“This lawsuit is not about foreign policy. It is about the rule of law, presidential power, the structural limits of the U.S. Constitution, and the right of the public to understand the functions of government and informed petition of the government for redress.”
U.S. foreign policy is in sharp focus right now, as President Barack Obama prepares to sign off on a record-breaking aid package that would add to the $3.1 billion in annual military aid that Israel already receives.
Despite the U.S. government, and a compliant mainstream media, raising the alarm about the supposed dangers of the Iranian nuclear program, Israel possesses dozens of nuclear weapons — with some reports indicating the Jewish State possesses over a hundred — while showing no sign of halting its development of more.
And the WikiLeaks archive of Hillary Clinton’s emails suggests this is unlikely to change after November, with the potential future president heavily invested in maintaining Israel’s claim to a near monopoly on nuclear power in the Middle East.
Israel’s dangerous ‘nuclear ambiguity’
The IRMEP lawsuit argues that Israel’s policy of official secrecy on its nuclear weapons program perfectly fits the definition of the 1976 Export Control Act, and that the U.S. government broke the law through its “failure to act upon facts long in their possession while prohibiting the release of official government information about Israel’s nuclear weapons program, particularly ongoing illicit transfers of nuclear weapons material and technology from the U.S. to Israel.”
Smith wrote that the U.S. offers material support to Israel’s nuclear program while helping suppress information about the program. He continued:
“These violations manifest in gagging and prosecuting federal officials and contractors who publicly acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons program, imposing punitive economic costs on public interest researchers who attempt to educate the public about the functions of government, refusing to make bona fide responses to journalists and consistently failing to act on credible information available in the government and public domain.”
This policy of secrecy goes by many names, he noted. “These acts serve a policy that has many names all referring to the same subterfuge, ‘nuclear opacity,’ ‘nuclear ambiguity,’ and ‘strategic ambiguity.’”
Although long denied by both American and Israeli politicians, Israel’s nuclear program was first revealed by whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who spent 16 years in prison for sharing secret details of the program with Britain’s Sunday Times in 1986, and has been repeatedly arrested for continuing to publicly speak out.
Watch “Stakeout:IsraelNuclear” from Washington Stakeout:
Although the program is still not officially acknowledged, a November report by the Institute for Science and International Security suggested the Israeli government has amassed enough material to create at least 115 nuclear warheads. That would put Israel, a country roughly the size of New Jersey, on nearly equal nuclear footing with India and Pakistan.
Writing in 2011 for antiwar.com, Sam Husseini noted that some estimates put the number of warheads as high as 400.
Regardless of the actual number, the warheads are real, and they represent a real danger to regional stability.
“These weapons pose a real—not a potential or an imagined—threat to millions upon millions of people in and beyond the region,” Husseini wrote. “So do nuclear weapons held by other countries, but at least they are acknowledged.”
And unlike every other country in the Middle East, Israel refuses to sign the nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty of 1970. The country has even reportedly shared its nuclear technology, as Matt Peppe noted in January 2015 in MyMPN, MintPress News’ reader submission blog. He wrote:
“Israel has not only amassed its own nuclear arsenal, but also exported nuclear technology and capabilities abroad. Not to just any country, but to the racist, pariah state of apartheid South Africa — surely the most despicable regime of the last century other than possibly Israel itself.”
WikiLeaks: Sec. Clinton helped Israel maintain ‘nuclear monopoly’ in Middle East
At least some respected figures in the U.S. government have voiced concerns over the Israeli nuclear program, at least according to the WikiLeaks archive of thousands of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
In an August 2010 email to Hillary Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, an American journalist who worked as an aide to President Bill Clinton, shares a Haaretz interview about the Israeli nuclear program, adding comments of his own about the need for Israel to end the secrecy and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Blumenthal wrote:
“Another idea, don’t know if it can be made to work: How to introduce Israel entering the NPT and ending its nuclear ambiguity, which is its state policy, but which itself is the model for Iran now. Can this issue be used profitably in negotiations, a wild card, as it were? Can options be developed on whether it can, how it might work, potential effect on peace process? Israel’s nuclear ambiguity policy is certainly a big issue coming given Iran.”
While Blumenthal suggests that Israel’s nuclear program may serve as inspiration for Iran’s nuclear development, there’s actually little evidence that Iran ever intended to construct nuclear weapons, much less use them to threaten Israel. In June, Efraim Halevy, former head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, told Al-Jazeera that Iran was not an “existential threat” to Israel, although he also refused to acknowledge the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons. And leaked diplomatic cables show that, behind the scenes, Mossad agents contradicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alarmist views of Iran’s nuclear program by admitting that Iran’s nuclear material was not pure enough for use in nuclear weapons rather than for civilian energy generation. The cables go on to show that Iran was never interested in creating nuclear weapons.
Watch “Ex-Israeli spy chief: Iran isn’t an existential threat” from Al-Jazeera English:
Halevy’s testimony stands in contrast to Clinton’s own statements on Iran. Despite last year’s landmark deal to scale back Iran’s nuclear program, the Democratic Party nominee called for new sanctions against Iran, claiming the country was still a threat to regional peace.
In reality, maintaining Israel’s power while undermining its rivals like Iran and Syria was a key part of Clinton’s strategy as secretary of state, and something likely to carry over into her potential presidency. In May, the Center for a New American Security, a neoliberal think tank, published “Extending American Power: Strategies to Expand U.S. Engagement in a Competitive World Order,” which in many ways could serve as a “blueprint” for military strategy under Clinton.
Although the report emphasizes conventional (rather than nuclear weapons), the authors write: “[I]t is important for a new administration to make absolutely clear that the U.S. commitment to the security of the State of Israel is unshakable now and in the future.”
And an unclassified case file published by the State Department in 2001, and found in the WikiLeaks archive of Clinton’s emails, suggests U.S. support for so-called “moderate” rebels in Syria is actually designed to prop up Israel at the expense of Syria and Iran.
“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad,” it reads. “Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly.”
In light of the Aug. 9 anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, it’s important to remember that the U.S. is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in war, even going so far as to use them on civilian areas of Japan.
Clinton, as a servant of the U.S. government and its military-industrial complex, seems set to continue America’s policy of determining who has access to nuclear technology, despite the hypocrisy inherent in that stance, as Robert Fantina noted in an October 2015 report for MintPress News.
“Its lethal nuclear history isn’t stopping the U.S. from strutting across the world stage today, deciding which countries can (Israel) and can’t (Iran) have nuclear weapons,” Fantina wrote. “The fox, having usurped the power over the henhouse, decides which other foxes can enter and which are forbidden.”Here’s how Hollywood works today: Somebody writes a script. And especially if it’s an animated feature–a piece that will take hundreds of Pixar artists years to produce–there’s almost no chance it will be made. So filmmakers turn to low budget YouTubing, or even playing out their stories inside video game engines (machinima) in lieu of professional production and distribution.
Plotagon (free) is an ingenious alternative. It’s screenwriting software that’s been merged with 3-D animation software. So as you type actions, lines, and settings for your characters, those characters will actually play out your vision on screen, complete with auto-directed cuts.
“Now that computers have become so strong that they can be used to produce movies…everything else will be handled by the artists themselves,” foretells Plotagon Founder and Director Christopher Kingdon. “There’s no need for a middle man, no reason to ask for anyone’s permission to make a movie (like a producer). People will express themselves and share directly.”
We can’t pretend that Plotagon films look vastly better than a game of The Sims, but the core experience of actually using this software is incredibly impressive. It helps that screenplays, by nature, are a sort of code. They establish a scene (you know, INT. Bar – Night). They say who is around, doing what (John, a typical middle aged man, and Sara, a dragon princess, stand at the bar). Then those people talk and interact, one line and action at a time.
In Plotagon, each line of script is essentially a line of code in a directed program. But rather than needing to learn C++ or something, natural language drives the writer’s experience. When “John hugs Sara,” John is recognized as a 3-D model, Sara is recognized as a 3-D model, and they’re simply connected through a pre-scripted, verb-based motion in Plotagon’s library. (It definitely helps that every minimal bit of UI flourish makes finding these preset characters, verbs, and locations as seamless as using Google autocomplete.)
But even still, are we looking at Plotagon through rose-tinted glasses? Can auto-machinima really take off to create high-end media that people could become emotionally invested in? According to Kingdon, it can. The Swedish startup has 24 people behind the product, including painters, sculptors, animators, programmers, designers and one classically trained composer. Plotagon is also working closely with KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Scotland, to develop algorithms for “multimodal communications”–basically combining the logic behind a character’s facial expressions, gestures, and body position in a more believable way than animations work today.
“Within five years we will be completely photorealistic,” Kingdon promises. “You will be able to make a 3-D avatar of yourself and make a movie when you interact with Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.”A Sacramento apartment complex has a duck dilemma — and it's distressing many neighbors.
Dozens of ducks are roaming the Selby Ranch Apartment Homes — living in the grass and drinking out of small buckets of water provided by neighbors — after two ponds on the property were drained leaving them with no place to go.
Many people who live at the complex are upset about the treatment of the ducks.
"Residents are basically feeding them water out of little tiny pans, so it's a very sad scene to see," Gary Boram, who has lived there for two years, told ABC10. "And we just hope the best for them and it's not right, and we know they deserve better."
Boram, who said the building's management has brushed off his concerns, added that if the ponds aren't built back, that he believes the next best thing is to find the ducks a new home.
ABC10 reached out to the complex's management office and was told there was no one available to speak on the issue.
Another challenge is that ducks are domesticated, so they can't just be put back in to the wild.
"It's a no-man's land for these domestic ducks," Boram, who has been doing his research on ducks so he can try to help, explained.
Wildlife experts doing consider them wildlife, but animal control doesn't consider them domesticated, he said.
After posting about the situation on the NextDoor app, he said he's had people reach out offering to take the ducks to ponds of duck sanctuaries. He would like to take them up on the offer, but said he needs to wait for management approval.
Copyright 2017 KXTVDERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone strike killed eight people in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, three intelligence sources said, the latest in a series of drone attacks that come as a retired U.S. general warns their overuse may threaten American foreign policy goals.
A foreign tactical trainer for al-Qaeda was reportedly among those killed in the latest strike, although reports differed on his nationality. Some intelligence officials said he was from Somalia but others said he was from the United Arab Emirates.
Three others were also injured in the attack on Haiderkhel village, about 30 kms (19 miles) east of the provincial capital of Miranshah in North Waziristan, a region along the Afghan border that is a key stronghold of the Taliban.
Al-Qaeda’s top strategist Abu Yahya al-Libi was killed nearby in a drone attack last year.
On Monday, retired U.S. General Stanley McChrystal said that drones had helped U.S. troops but were hated around the world and that their overuse could jeopardize American security.
Opinion in Pakistan is divided over drone strikes. Many criticize them as an infringement of the country’s sovereignty and because they have killed civilians. Others say the strikes reach militants who are terrorizing the local population in areas the Pakistani army cannot go.
There has been an increase in drone strikes in recent weeks. Last week Mullah Nazir, a strong supporter of attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was killed in a drone strike along with his deputy and top commanders. On Sunday a drone strike killed between 10 and 12 militants, local residents said.FPS fix for Dota 2 Reborn a guest Sep 12th, 2015 18,234 Never a guest18,234Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint Bash 0.61 KB 1. Make sure to uncheck all "DLCs" for Dota 2 in your Library. Optional, but recommended: re-install Dota 2 after 1st step 2. Use the 32 bit version ( put -32bit in launch options ) 3. Check Dota 2 cpu core affinity ( Run Dota 2, open taskmanager, go todetails, rightclick dota2.exe, click affinity, set to all cores ) 4. Use high process priority ( put -high in launch options ) 5. Try out different directx versions ( -dx9 or -dx11 in launch options ) or OpenGL if you use an nvidia GPU ( re-tick OpenGL support DLC and -gl in start options ) 6. Set up your graphics settings to your likings 7. Play Dota 2 8. Lose anyway
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1. Make sure to uncheck all "DLCs" for Dota 2 in your Library. Optional, but recommended: re-install Dota 2 after 1st step 2. Use the 32 bit version (put -32bit in launch options) 3. Check Dota 2 cpu core affinity (Run Dota 2, open taskmanager, go todetails, rightclick dota2.exe, click affinity, set to all cores) 4. Use high process priority (put -high in launch options) 5. Try out different directx versions (-dx9 or -dx11 in launch options) or OpenGL if you use an nvidia GPU (re-tick OpenGL support DLC and -gl in start options) 6. Set up your graphics settings to your likings 7. Play Dota 2 8. Lose anywayTenants barricade their house against bailiffs trying to evict them (Photo by Jake Lewis)
Every year I've lived in London I've had to move house because the place was too much of a dump, or rent went up and I couldn't afford it, or both. Last time I moved, my flatmates ended up locked in a bitter dispute with the estate agent over a fiver charge on a lost lamp, part on principle and part because the extortionate rent they charged left us – a bunch of just-grads – so broke we desperately needed our fiver back.
This story is by no means unique, and with rents soaring, it's unsurprising that a recent poll shows that almost nobody in the UK is opposed to introducing a rent cap. The logic is pretty direct – rent is too high, so the government should take action to force it down. It sounds completely obvious, but would it work?
A rent cap could come in many different forms, but realistically the most likely is a proposal by housing organisation Generation Rent, backed by Diane Abbott, one of the few MPs to support capping rent. Under this scheme, the monthly cap would stand at half annual local council tax, but landlords would be allowed to charge over this, providing they're willing to pay a 50 percent surcharge on anything above the cap.
According to Abbott, "The funds raised through this could then be channelled towards building genuinely affordable housing and we can begin the process of alleviating the intense pressure the current property market is placing on Londoners." So, lower rent, more affordable housing and landlords would probably be a little bit less smug, too. In theory this is a triple win.
However, lots of people think it's a bad plan – and they're not all greedy landlords coming out in hives at the thought of their income being attacked. Among the detractors to the idea – and there are many – are homelessness and housing charity Shelter, who oppose the idea on the grounds that a rent cap could end up making things worse for struggling renters. Welcome to the world of unintended consequences.
Writing on the Shelter blog, Toby Lloyd, head of policy, says that he believes that implementing a rent cap in the current housing market could have pretty undesirable side effects. Most of these are connected to the idea that if property owners weren't allowed to charge extortionate rents, they wouldn't bother renting their places out in the first place. That could mean demand for places to rent massively outstripping supply – it would be even more of a sellers' market, with landlords in a stronger position and renters with little option to take the few properties on the market.
A petition demanding a rent cap has reached over 60,000 signatures, further demonstrating the policy's popularity. But the comments section is littered with doubters picking holes in the idea. Some are idiots, sure, but a lot aren't. Emma Reynolds – one of the more clued up nay-sayers in the comments on the petition – has an MSc in Housing from the London School of Economics and works in housing policy and development. She suggests that fewer landlords would mean less competition, meaning minimum standards might drop even lower and revenge evictions could increase as tenants become desperate enough to take anything they can get, and uppity tenants would be easy to replace with more desperate tenants.
Lloyd suggests that this would be most harmful to the people who need the most help – the poorest renters. That's because landlords, who already believe well off City workers to be more reliable than badly paid benefits claimants, could become increasingly discriminatory as there are more people looking for homes than there are houses. The poorest could be forced into a black market with no controls, and a landlord would have more incentive to turn a big flat into two tiny flats to get as much as possible out of their property.
A banner outside last year's MIPIM property conference (Photo by Oscar Webb)
When the UK had a rent cap in the 1970s, many landlords went bust. Emma is worried that in the UK's current, oversubscribed housing market, a rent cap would cause the private rental sector to dry up almost completely, leading to "extreme deprivation" in some areas, as tenants find it difficult to rent property at all. Back in the 1970s, though, social housing could pick up the slack somewhat. With that now largely sold off and almost no new social housing having been built since the 80s, that couldn't happen. Housing scarcity could increase, making the housing crisis much worse than it already is. When you consider these scenarios, punishing private landlords seems little more than a populist vote winner. We may not like them, but private landlords provide a service – albeit a shitty one. If they were driven out of business, there would be a vacuum – so the argument goes.
Let's row back on the scepticism for a minute though. The situation described above probably isn't far off what many people have experienced already; revenge evictions and poor minimum standards are already a massive problem in London, even though we don't have a rent cap. Housing is already scarce. How many people do you know who live in a formerly functioning house that has been converted into more than one cramped "maisonette"?
But bad housing isn't inevitable. According to Alex Hilton, director of Generation Rent, housing standards are better in Germany – even in places where rent is controlled. Hilton believes that a rent cap could be implemented cleverly, alongside new regulations to protect tenants' rights. "[Poor conditions are] only a valid concern if it isn't addressed," he told me. "So yes, there was an era in this country, back in the olden days, when that happened but it doesn't happen in Germany. In Germany you have a right to stop paying your rent if the landlord doesn't maintain your property, so the landlord has to maintain your property. We want very, very strict minimum standards." In other words, rather than a panacea, a rental cap could work as part of a wider package of reform.
Almost by its nature, a rent cap merely addresses the symptoms of a screwed up housing market, not the cause. If the market worked, you wouldn't need these fixes. In the past decade the UK's private rental sector has doubled in size, to larger than it was before rent caps implemented widely in the 1960s and 1970s. Meanwhile, research suggests that 65 percent of renters would rather own their own home, and 10 percent would rather be in social housing. This leaves only 25 percent of private tenants renting because they want to, according to Hilton, the rest are "just captured consumers being exploited." In this situation, we don't need private rental properties that are a bit less eye-wateringly overpriced, we need house prices to drop and more social housing so that people have genuine alternatives to renting privately.
A protester outside last year's MIPIM property conference in London (Photo by Oscar Webb)
Ultimately, a rent cap working, or house prices coming down, are both dependent on another factor – how much affordable, social and every-other-kind-of housing is being built. "Rents can only be reduced sustainably by increasing the overall supply of all types of homes," writes Lloyd on the Shelter blog, "so that more |
sign for Walmart is seen in Duarte, Calif. Tuesday, May 28, 2013. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges the company dumped hazardous waste in Calif. Wal-Mart entered the plea in federal court in San Francisco to misdemeanor counts of negligently dumping pollutants from Walmart stores into sanitation drains across California, a company spokeswoman said. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
In her nearly two years with Walmart, Maya'Neisha Johnson has typically worked about 20 hours a week at her Western Arkansas store, while pursuing a bachelor's degree. But lately, when her class schedule permits, Johnson has managed to pick up an extra shift or two a week, often logging more than 30 hours.
For Johnson, who's 20 years old, the additional hours are significant. They mean not only a bigger paycheck but also more on-the-job experience outside the apparel department.
"I've added anywhere from five to 12 hours a week," Johnson said. "It gives you a feel for working in other departments... It's like building a resume."
Johnson has found the extra work through a new Walmart program called Access to Open Shifts, which lets workers sift the internal scheduling system for available slots. Launched as a pilot program at her Walmart store in Fort Smith, Ark., about a year ago, the system will be made available at the retailer's more than 4,000 U.S. stores by next week. As it has expanded in recent months, the program has helped part-timers work their way closer to full-time schedules.
Many of the Walmart employees who took part in walkouts and protests over the past two years have criticized the company for limiting hours and opportunities for part-timers. Workers at some stores even submitted petitions asking the company to stop cutting hours and to make more people eligible for full-time status.
The Access to Open Hours program appears to address that very critique, although a Walmart spokesman said it would be "inaccurate" to characterize the program as a response to any protests.
"Our associates are the best generators of ideas," said Kory Lundberg, the spokesman. "They've been telling us they want to know what opportunities are there in the store. This is one way to bring a little more transparency to the folks in the store to see what's available... We're excited about where this can go."
Cynthia Murray, a 14-year employee who works at the Walmart store in Laurel, Md., and is a member of OUR Walmart, a labor-backed employee group, said, "We fought for this from the beginning."
"We were very adamant about it that workers were not getting enough hours," she said.
In some cases, the access to additional shifts can make a huge difference. Meiasha Bradley, a 26-year-old Walmart employee in Sacramento, Calif., told HuffPost that since her store launched the program last month she's managed to roughly double her hours. She called the rollout a "victory" for employees who demanded changes.
"A lot of the associates at our store and I know nationwide were going to management, saying, 'Hey our hours are getting cut, we need more,'" said Bradley, an OUR Walmart member. "I think that if we had given up we wouldn't have won this. We stood our ground."
"It will open up a lot of doors for our associates to become full-time," she added.
Last January, after a series of Black Friday strikes gained national attention, Walmart U.S. President Bill Simon announced that the company would make new efforts at bringing full-time work to employees who wanted it. As part of that, Simon said the world's largest private-sector employer would make its scheduling system more transparent to associates looking to pick up more hours.
In most stores, that used to mean speaking one-on-one with a manager about what shifts were vacant. But under the new system, employees can log onto Walmart's intranet system and immediately see what's available in different departments. The employees can then try to reserve it; if they're qualified, the shift is theirs.
It's a rare instance of retail workers reaping the benefit of technological advancements in scheduling. So-called just-in-time scheduling software has primarily helped retailers, rather than workers, by allowing them to determine precisely how many workers they'll need for how much time on a given day. Such fine-tuning has left a lot of these workers at the beck and call of managers, their schedules fluctuating and their hours rising and falling from week to week.
As the largest retailer in the world, Walmart has a way of setting trends in the industry, and it's possible other retailers will follow suit in adopting more open scheduling systems that better benefit workers.
In a sign of how well-received the scheduling program has been, even Dan Schlademan, director of Making Change @ Walmart, a campaign of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, has praise for the company's new system. The group has aggressively criticized Walmart for years over its pay and scheduling practices, and played a lead role in organizing the recent protests.
"There are people now who can work their schedules better. It's a great thing," Schlademan told The Huffington Post. "One of the number-one issues that workers have really been struggling with is hours."
Schlademan went on to say that the ongoing national discussion on low-wage work has often left out the question of scheduling. Pay and hours, he said, go "hand in hand."
"You can have the highest wage out there but without hours it doesn't mean anything," he said.
In recent years, workers across the retail industry have said that a lack of full-time hours has made it harder to make ends meet, particularly on wages that are generally low to begin with. The average retail salesperson earned $10.29 per hour, or $21,410 per year, in 2012. That's more than $2,000 below the federal poverty line for a family of four.
According to Walmart, the average wage for an hourly worker in its U.S. stores is $11.83 per hour. The company doesn't say how large its part-time workforce is, only that a majority of its workers are full-time.
Lundberg, the Walmart spokesman, said the new scheduling program will expose workers to more departments and potentially groom more of them for managerial roles. In Johnson's case, she's been able to pick up shifts as a cashier even though she's in the apparel department.
"I think every associate, if they can, should take advantage of it," she said.
Murray, the OUR Walmart member, said making more hours available is a step in the right direction, but she also said she wants to see more workers classified as full-time in order to receive benefits. Even if a worker brushes up against full-time hours on many weeks, if the worker is technically a part-timer, he or she doesn't enjoy the same health coverage, sick leave or other perks that full-timers do, Murray said.
"I think it's time that Walmart steps up and moves these part-time workers into full-time positions and gives them the benefits," she said.
The new scheduling system isn't the only change to come out of Walmart's human-resource department recently. Last month, the company revamped its policies for pregnant workers after employees and women's groups criticized them as inhospitable and perhaps even illegal. As The Washington Post reported over the weekend, the new guidelines should make it easier for pregnant workers to qualify for light duty.
Correction: The original post misspelled Johnson's first name.How to adjust prices or what are the different price adjustment strategies on the basis of which organization final its prices. The basic prices are adjusted by the organizations in order to deal with changing situations & customer differences. Following are the six price adjustment strategies that are employed in all over the world by different sorts of the organizations.
The basic aim of every price adjustment strategy is to earn a sufficient profit by satisfying the customers needs in best possible manners. So here the question is what are some price adjustment strategies that may allow you to earn enough profit by satisfying your customer need and demand.
Defensive Strategies in Strategic Management
How to Adjust Prices? Price Adjustment Strategies
How to adjust prices? Below are different price adjustment strategies on the basis of which company settled its prices.
Discount & Allowance Pricing Segmented Pricing Psychological Pricing Promotional Pricing Geographical Pricing International Pricing
Discount & Allowance Pricing:
In this price adjustment strategy, the early responses of the customers are rewarded by the adjustment of the basic price like volume purchases, early payments and off season buying. These price adjustments are regarded as discounts & allowance and it may take the following shapes.
Cash Discount:
Those customers who pay their bills quickly, cash discount is given to them. Fox example, for cash discount a term is used like “2/15, net 30” which means that if a customer pays the bill within 15 days, then he will get 25 discount where the normal duration of payment of that bill is 30 days. All the customers that fulfill these conditions should be availed cash discount. In many organizations the cash discounts are given in order to reduce bad debts, improve cash situation of seller & reduce credit collection costs.
Quantity Discount:
The customers who purchase large volume of products are given price reduction, which is generally called quantity discount. For example, there is a term “$ 15 per unit for less than 200 units & $ 13 per unit for more than 200 units”. It is according to the law that all the customers have access to the offering of quantity discount & also the amount should not be more than the cost saving of sellers that are linked with huge quantities.
Functional Discount:
It is also known as trade discount & seller provide it to the members of trade channel who are involved in performing certain functions storing, selling & record keeping. The functional discounts may vary for different trade units on the basis of varying functions, but it must be same in members of the particular trade unit.
Seasonal Discount:
The customers who purchase those products that are out of season are provided with special discount called seasonal discount. For example, the retailer purchasers of lawn & garden equipment are given are provided with a seasonal discount by the producer during fall & winter months so that the retailer would make early order by anticipating heavy selling seasons of spring & summer months. The Seller keeps his production steady during the whole year through seasonal discount.
Allowances:
Another kind of reduction in price is called allowance like trade-in-discounts which are mostly given in the automobile industry, but these can also be offered for the durable products. Another kind of allowances includes a promotional allowance which is offered to the dealers who helps in the sales support programs & advertising.
Segmented Pricing
Another sub-heading under the content of price adjustment strategies is segmented pricing. The differences among customers, locations & products are allowed by the organizations by adjusting their basic prices. When an organization is involved in Segmentation, then it sells its products at two or more different prices, although the costs of these different priced products are same.
There are many forms of segmented pricing. In case of customer based segmented pricing, Different prices are charged for different customers for the same product. For example, lower fee is charged from senior citizens & students in museum as compared to other visitors. In case of product based segmented pricing, different prices are charged for different versions of products but not on the basis of difference in their costs. Finally, under location based segmented pricing, different pricing is charged for the same product at different location in spite of the same cost of distribution. Time pricing is another form of how to adjust prices? In time segmented pricing, organizations charge different prices according to the time.
Psychological Pricing
Psychological pricing is also included in price adjustment strategies. Something about the product is represented by its price. Most customers judge quality on the basis of price. For example, a bottle which contains the scent worth of $ 400 may be purchased willingly by a customer for $ 1000 because this higher price is considered to be indicative of the special quality of the scent. In considering the psychological pricing by the seller, instead of focusing only on economics the psychology of pricing is also focused. For example, there is a study conducted which shows that the customers considers high priced cars as a high quality one. In some cases the customers examine the cars or call the relative past experience to determine the quality on the basis of priceless elements. Psychological pricing also includes reference pricing which is the conceptual price when a customer looks at a particular product.
Promotional Pricing:
Price adjustment Strategies also include promotional pricing in which certain organizations keep the prices of their product lower than the list price or even lower than the costs. There are many forms of promotional pricing. There are some stores & supermarkets that offer certain products at a much lower price in order to attract a lot of customers to purchase other products also. Special event pricing is also used in certain seasons to capture high traffic of customers. Sometimes producer also provides cash rebates to customers who purchase his product from a particular dealer. Besides the useful aspects, there are certain harmful aspects of promotional pricing too.
Geographical Pricing:
Geographical pricing is another way of How to Adjust Prices? In geographical pricing, the organization determines the pricing of its products in different locations of the country or the world. There are certain customers who are much distant from the organization, location & many are quite closer. So there are a number of pricing techniques used on the basis of the geographic location like FOB pricing in which the far away customers are charged a higher price than the closed ones. Uniform delivered pricing is another promotional pricing in which all the customers at different location are charged a similar price on the basic price plus average freight charges. Another technique is called zero pricing in which a particular city is nominated as base city and the organization charges freight charges from the customers on the basis of the distance from that base city. As the distance between the location of the customer & base city increases, the price of the product becomes higher. Each promotional pricing method has its own advantage & disadvantage.
International Pricing:
International pricing also impact the price adjustment strategies of the business organization. The organizations that operate in different countries of the world have to decide the prices of their products in different countries. One method is to charge a single uniform price throughout the whole world. But the price of international product is based on many other factors like costs, laws & regulations of countries, economic conditions, retailing & wholesaling system, competitive situations & consumer perceptions etc. So the other method is to charge different prices in different countries of the world.With all the drama surrounding last month’s presidential preference election in Arizona, it can be hard to remember there are other powerful political seats up for grabs in November, but according to the latest political polls and election experts, the Senate race between John McCain and Ann Kirkpatrick is just getting tighter and tighter.
For months, polls have shown Kirkpatrick rising, so much that the two candidates now are in a statistical dead heat. And recently, the Washington Post — which maintains an authoritative list of the most competitive Senate races – moved the Arizona race up a notch, meaning that of the 34 Senate seats to be decided in November, McCain is now considered to be the eighth most likely incumbent to lose.
McCain may be running for a sixth term, but many in his own party really don’t like him – the Republican Party of Maricopa County passed a resolution earlier this year to support “anyone but McCain” in the GOP senate primary August 30. (State Senator Kelli Ward and businessman Alex Meluskey also are running in the GOP primary, but they are widely considered to be long shots.)Happy Launchiversary! It's been two years since World IPv6 Launch in 2012, the day many major Internet Service Providers (ISPs), home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world started permanently enabling IPv6 for their products and services.
In the last two years, participation and interest in IPv6 has only grown. Today nearly 250 network operators around the world are participating in World IPv6 Launch measurements, and we continue to see increased IPv6 deployment by network operators, websites, and home router vendors. (Read some of the recent case studies.)
What is remarkable is that this is the fourth straight year that IPv6 use on the global Internet has doubled!
Even more, in some cases we are seeing dramatic increases in IPv6 usage, such as the recent measurement of Verizon Wireless' network having over 50% IPv6 deployment! We are now well beyond the "IF we ever deploy IPv6" phase of even a few years ago.
All this week over at the Internet Society we have been celebrating the Launchiversary with blog posts, social media activities, and a great amount of new deployment content.
Here are some of our activities:
I encourage all of you to (a) follow along with the World IPv6 Launch, Internet Technology Matters, and Deploy360 blogs and social media properties, and (b) share the information with your own circles. If you are a network operator, you can also still join World IPv6 Launch and participate in the IPv6 measurements program!
And… if you can you do one thing today to help with IPv6 deployment, PLEASE ASK YOUR ISP WHAT THEIR PLAN IS FOR IPv6 if they do not already offer it! And if your ISP does offer IPv6 but you haven't yet made the transition with your network, please check out our "Start Here" pages to explore how you can get started with deploying IPv6.
Thanks, and Happy Launchiversary — may we see even more IPv6 deployment growth between now and the third Launchiversary next year!John Edgar Rust was arrested Wednesday for threatening to kill black students at Howard University, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
It all started with a threat on 4chan, a website and discussion forum where users can post anonymously. The FBI probable cause affidavit said the agency got a tip from a Washington D.C. resident on Nov. 11, 2015 about those threats.
In the threatening post, written that same day, the anonymous user ranted about black people. They wrote, “I mean we might as well just bend over and let the niggers fuck us right in the ass.” The writer later said:
Any niggers left at Howard University after 10 tomorrow will be the first to go. And any of those cheapskate niggers who try to get out using the metro will regret that choice real fast. Sure, the po po will take me down, but I’ll go out a hero knowing I made the world better.
The message wrapped up with the line, “After all, it’s not murder if they’re black.” That same day, a Reddit user who goes by the handle “watchouthoward” posted on Reddit with a link to the 4chan threat.
“Hey Reddit, my roommate just posted this on 4chan. Just consider yourselves warned,” watchouthoward wrote.
Investigators linked both posts to the same Panera Bread wifi network in Alexandria, Virginia. From there, they were able to link Rust to the case–his credit card was used to buy something at the restaurant.
Investigators say they found evidence proving Rust himself made the threat. There was nearly identical text on his computer, and apparent drafts on his old cell phone. Rust’s hard drive also turned up text documents and images of books and articles on subjects like explosives, poisoning, firearms, and how to kill people via hand-to-hand combat.
Rust, a registered sex offender after a 2012 felony conviction for aggravated sexual battery and indecent liberties with a child by a custodian, wasn’t even supposed to use the Internet because of the terms of his probation. He has now been charged with the transmission in interstate commerce of a communication containing threats to injure the person of another. That charge carries a maximum 5-year prison sentence, though the U.S Attorney’s press statement said the actual sentence could be lower if Rust is convicted.
Rust, once again a criminal defendant, is scheduled for a preliminary and detention hearing at an Alexandra federal court at 2 p.m. on Thursday, October 5. Records do not say if he has an attorney.
[Mugshot via Virginia State Police]“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”—Osama bin Laden (October 2001), as reported by CNN
What a strange and harrowing road we’ve walked since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state.
What began with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in October 2001 has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse. Since then, we have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance. The bogeyman’s names and faces change over time—Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and now ISIS—but the end result remains the same: our unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security.
Ironically, just a short week after the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we find ourselves commemorating the 227th anniversary of the ratification of our Constitution. Yet while there is much to mourn about the loss of our freedoms in the years since 9/11, there has been little to celebrate.
The Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—which historically served as the bulwark from government abuse.
Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, roving VIPR raids and the like—all sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—a recitation of the Bill of Rights would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.
As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the Constitution has been on life support for some time now. We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document. However, the reality we must come to terms with is that in the America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.
Consider the state of our freedoms, and judge for yourself whether this Constitution Day should be a day of mourning, celebration or a robust call to action:
The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind and protest in peace without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. Yet despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being arrested and charged with bogus charges such as “disrupting the peace” or “resisting arrest” for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. And protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” But to the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.
The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against government agents armed to the teeth with military weapons. Police shootings of unarmed citizens continue to outrage communities, while little is being done to demilitarize law enforcement agencies better suited to the battlefield.
The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen's home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly posing as military forces—complete with military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a violent standing army on American soil. Moreover, as a result of SWAT team raids where police invade homes, often without warrants, and injure and even kill unarmed citizens, the barrier between public and private property has done away with this critical safeguard.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits the government from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or invading you, unless they have some evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.
The use of civil asset forfeiture schemes to swell the coffers of police forces has continued to grow in popularity among cash-strapped states. The federal government continues to strong-arm corporations into providing it with access to Americans’ private affairs, from emails and online transactions to banking and web surfing. Coming in the wake of massive leaks about the inner workings of the NSA and the massive secretive surveillance state, it was recently revealed that the government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 every day for failing to comply with the NSA’s mass data collection program known as PRISM.
The technological future appears to pose even greater threats to what’s left of our Fourth Amendment rights, with advances in biometric identification and microchip implants on the horizon making it that much easier for the government to track not only our movements and cyber activities but our very cellular beings. Barclays has already begun using a finger-scanner as a form of two-step authentication to give select customers access to their accounts. Similarly, Motorola has been developing thin “digital tattoos” that will ensure that a phone’s owner is the only person who may unlock it. All of this information, of course, will be available to the spying surveillance agencies.
The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. And now the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Obama, allows the military to arrive at your door if the president thinks you’re a terrorist (a.k.a. extremist), place you in military detention, jail you indefinitely and restrict access to your family and your lawyer.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. However, when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears.
The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether. For example, if you are thrown into a military detention camp, then what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment is up to your jailers.
The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so. Thus, once the government began violating the non-enumerated rights granted in the Ninth Amendment, it was only a matter of time before it began to trample the enumerated rights of the people, as explicitly spelled out in the rest of the Bill of Rights.
As for the Tenth Amendment ’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC power elite—the president, Congress and the courts. Indeed, the federal governmental bureaucracy has grown so large that it has made local and state legislatures relatively irrelevant. Through its many agencies and regulations, the federal government has stripped states of the right to regulate countless issues that were originally governed at the local level. This distinction is further blurred by programs such as the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which distributes excess military hardware to local police stations, effectively turning them into extensions of the military.
If there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded. In this regard, ironically, Osama Bin Laden was right when he warned that freedom and human rights in America are doomed, and that the U.S. government would be responsible for leading us into an “unbearable hell and a choking life.”
The choices before us are simple: We can live in the past, dwelling on what freedoms we used to enjoy and shrugging helplessly at the destruction of our liberties. We can immerse ourselves in the present, allowing ourselves to be utterly distracted by the glut of entertainment news and ever-changing headlines so that we fail to pay attention to or do anything about the government’s ongoing power-grabs. We can hang our hopes on the future, believing against all odds that someone or something—whether it be a politician, a movement, or a religious savior—will save us from inevitable ruin.
Or we can start right away by instituting changes at the local level, holding our government officials accountable to the rule of law, and resurrecting the Constitution, recognizing that if we follow our current trajectory, the picture of the future will be closer to what George Orwell likened to “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”
WC: 1869The Linden Endowments for the Arts is hosting a series of 16 “interim” art projects through until the end of January 2013. I’ve already covered a number of them – see the related links at the end of this piece – and here I turn my attention to the installations by Asmita Duranjaya and Maikelkey Resident and by Martini Discovolante and Marion Questi.
Tales of the Future – LEA25
Tales of the future is a joint piece by Asmita Duranjaya and Maikelkey Resident which presents “5 immersive environments of 5 ambient études”, together with a live performance space.
Asmita has been immersed in art since her childhood, seeing it s a way to express her emotions and communicate in a non-verbal way. She works in a range of genres, including still-life, portraiture and surrealism, as well as producing applied art such as book covers, event posters, etc. More recently she has become increasingly involved in the medium of digital art using a tablet and pen. Within SL, her work has been presented at a number of venues, and she has her own exhibition space at Space 4 Art, where she exhibits both her own work and the work of other SL artists. At LEA25, she has produced the immersive environments.
Maikelkey is actually the digital persona of German science-fiction author, writer, translator and composer Michael K. Iwoleit. As well as being a published author in his own right, he is the co-founder of the German science-fiction magazine Nova and the international SF magazine InterNova. He has translated works by Iain M. Banks, Cory Doctorow, Sean Williams, Chris Moriarty and David Wingrove, among others. At LEA25, he is responsible for the 5 ambient études.
Traditionally, an étude is a short instrumental musical composition of considerable complexity designed to help perfect a particular musical skill. It’s a technique that will certainly be well-known to those who have been formally taught the piano, although it is by no means restricted to that particular instrument. Here, the use of the term is somewhat broader, the pieces on offer seeking to present a specific atmosphere or mood.
All five of the ambient environments are located in the sky and reached via anywhere door-style teleports located around the edge of the ground-level performance area. Each has a short description of the piece over the door, which will carry you to the environment when clicked. Once there, and with the exception of one of the environments, you’ll be asked to activate the required étude by following a web link. There are interactive elements to some of the environments, so keep an eye out for poseballs and hovertext when visiting them.
The use of web links is perhaps a little less than perfect, at least to me, as they form an intrusion into four the immersive aspects of the build, as the visitor either has to swap between viewer and browser to start the associated étude, or (if using the viewer’s built-in browser), have a floater open which then blocks a fair portion of the in-world view. Both of these points left me wondering why each of the ambient environments couldn’t have been presented within its own parcel, with the étude streamed into it for a more seamless immersive feel.
The performance area itself sits within a “depression” in the centre of a rocky landscape bathed in a suitably blue sci-fi like light and covered by a blue dome. Anti-grav chairs together with poseballs provide room for the audience to hover (or float) before a small stage area. The latter will be used for live performances by – I assume – Maikelkey Resident. The first of these, at 14:00 on Saturday January 19th, will be a reading. The second, at 14:00 on Sunday January 19th, will be a musical presentation.
LEA28 – AetherTrope
And now for something completely different, as they say, and a visit to an installation by Martini Discovolante and Marion Questi of Questi & Discovolante fame, and which brings something of a bang to the world of art. Or rather, the rapid staccato of small arms fire!
AetherTrope is at first a seemingly random collection of art pieces scattered at ground level, and over which can be heard the sound of a man crying. The pieces on display are certainly an electic mix, ranging for huge mechanical skeletal arms and hands through to ornate pieces such as Bunny Tower and Love Flies Home. Some have been combined to form eye-catching works (such as the aforementioned Bunny Tower with one of the huge mechanical arms), others of which stand alone. There is also the “Accidental Museum of Prim Folk Art”, a whimsical piece looking and prim builds and items from SL’s past, including some “adult” items.
While exploring the installation, the visitor will come across signs for the Kraken Hunt, together with score lists hovering above them. These are a hint to the “bang” part of the exhibit. Follow the path through the middle of the rgeion to a hand pointing up in the sky. Here you will find two teleports. One is to an observation platform, the second will require that you are a) flying prior to teleporting, and b) armed with a suitable projectile weapon, as it will take you to do battle with the Kraken.
This is (a quite addictive) shoot-’em-up, which requires you fly around trying to kill the aforementioned Kraken – a task which is not as easy as it sounds as a) it take a fair few hits to kill the tentacled buggers; b) they defend themselves with black smoke (and also give off a lot of black smoke when hit, prior to exploding), c) they fight back and – as damage is enabled on the land – can apparently kill you (teleport you home).
I say this is actually addictive, as I opted to give it a go for “a couple of minutes” and ended up playing for over half an hour … and then went back for more … Oh, and if you opt to take a break in the observation dome, be warned: these Kraken have little respect for the bystander 🙂.
So there you have it. Art and guns. Together. So lock, load, and admire! Now, where did I just put my handguns …?
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AdvertisementsSPYTAIL Ginger Rum!!! The most stunning press kit just arrived from our friends at Biggar & Leith - you know, the folks behind the delicious and beautiful Malfy Gin we tried last March. Well SPYTAIL Ginger Rum taps right into all my childhood loves of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, Tintin’s Shark Submarine, Bathyspheres and undersea adventuring (and the amazing gear that goes with it)… It blew my mind to open up a box and see a porthole staring back at me! Of course with a stunning bulbous bottle of rum staring out from within.
Sipping it straight while i work on this post, it’s deliciously warming, with quite the gingery punch. As for the story ~ “SPYTAIL Black Ginger Rum - Caribbean Rum blended and bottled in Cognac, France. SPYTAIL is based on a 19th Century traditional recipe of aging fresh ginger root and spices in barrels of Rum - resulting in a rich, spicy and complex spirit. SPYTAIL is named after a legendary submarine - plans for which were discovered by our distillers. The first mechanical submarines in the world were invented in France - and tested on the Charente River which flows nearby our distillery. These were the submarines which Jules Vernes used as the inspiration for his famous novel - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” From a packaging standpoint, the bottle is so beautiful, even those who don’t love ginger might want it on their bar!
But on to the press kit ~ through the porthole ~ and into all the packaging details on the next page.
p.s. On amazing little details - hidden within the bottle porthole are the co-ordinates of the final resting place of Jules Vernes.Handmade, bootleg 1911 pistols are all the rage in the Philippines.
Illegal gunsmith families crank out these pistols in secrecy.
The video below shows us how bootleg 1911 pistols are made and distributed in the black market in the Philippines..
In a video by Underworld Inc., we learn what a real ghost gun is.
In the Philippines, whole families are employed to illegally manufacture Colt Model 1911 pistol clones. They work in hidden workshops with crude tools to turn out descent pistols for paying customers. Their work is surprisingly good, and they do this to feed their families. Buyers line up for these untraceable pistols.
The idea that banning guns will make them disappear clearly isn’t practical |
have been a senior clergyman at the Cathedral, William of Wilton who worked for the dean and chapter of the cathedral and potentially even for the bishop himself, Herbert Poer (or Poore), who had been involved in the Pope’s excommunication of King John.
Other recent research has also revealed that Canterbury Cathedral once had its own copy of Magna Carta. Professor David Carpenter of King’s College London has discovered that one of the copies of Magna Carta, currently held by the British Library, was originally the property of Canterbury Cathedral. Other research – by Dr. Sophie Ambler of the University of East Anglia – has revealed that another ecclesiastical institution, the Cistercian Byland Abbey in Yorkshire, also had one, probable given to it by one of northern England’s greatest medieval barons, William of Mowbray, one of the magnates who had forced the king to issue the charter.
The new research has “important historical implications,” said the University of East Anglia’s Professor of Medieval History, Nicholas Vincent.
“King John had no real intention that the charter be either publicized or enforced,” he explained.
“It was the bishops instead who insisted that it be distributed to the country at large and thereafter who preserved it in their cathedral archives,” said Professor Vincent.
He now believes that those aware of Magna Carta in the 13th century “would have seen not a royal charter, but something produced, published, preserved and even physically written by the English church.”
“What contemporaries would have seen in Magna Carta, both as texts and as physical artefact, was an ecclesiastical document.
“This serves as an important reminder of the ways in which our modern ideas of freedom, democracy and the rule of law emerged from a close co-operation between church and state,” said Professor Vincent.
King’s College London’s Professor of Medieval History, David Carpenter, believes that the new revelations are “exciting discoveries”.
“We now know that three of the four surviving originals of the charter went to cathedrals – Lincoln, Salisbury and Canterbury. Probably cathedrals were the destination for the great majority of the other original charters issued in 1215,” he said.
“This overturns the old view that the charters were sent to the sheriffs in charge of the counties. That would have been fatal since the sheriffs were the very people under attack in the charter. They would have quickly consigned Magna Carta to their castle furnaces.
“The church, therefore, was central to the production, preservation and proclamation of Magna Carta. The cathedrals were like a beacon from which the light of the charter shone round the country, thus beginning g the process by which it became central to national life,” said Professor Carpenter.
The new research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy - a unique exhibition on the great charter is being held at the British Library until September 1. Tickets £5-£12.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowAnd the euro seemed so happy after its recent surge, that it completely forgot it is backed by an insolvent continent. Luckily, here's Ireland to remind us stuff is much, much worse than expected. According to the Irish Independent the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore, came very close to suggesting that Ireland is considering defaulting on its debts "when he talked about the Government "negotiating'' with bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank." Additionally, the same newspaper also reported that Ireland is on the verge of calling in the IMF for a bailout, citing "a report from Barclays, one of Europe's largest banks, said Ireland may yet need financial help from the IMF or the EU if conditions got any worse. But a spokesman for Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said last night: "The Government's strategy for dealing with the economic and financial challenges has been commended by the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and many other international experts." In other words, domino #2 has at most a few more days. Net result of all this: Irish-Bund spread explode, and gold hits a new all time high of $1,282.
More from the Independent:
While there is almost unanimous agreement now that the subordinated bondholders should be either given nothing or very little by the Irish State, the more pressing issue is whether Ireland, which now owns Anglo, should welch on obligations to the senior debt holders, most of them German, British and French asset and pension funds.
Mr Gilmore said he was not recommending a default on these debts, but instead was suggesting negotiations begin with the holders. This suggestion has a populist ring to it, because as long as the bondholders don't absorb any losses, it means all of the Anglo losses are absorbed by the Irish taxpayer instead.
But Mr Gilmore's problem and the deficiency in his argument is a lack of detail on how such an approach would work. Presumably the negotiations would be aimed at forcing some of the losses on the bondholders, otherwise there would be no point in such conversations.
The problem is that technically Anglo would be defaulting on its debts if it tried to get the bondholders to accept anything less than what they are owed.
Of course, Mr Gilmore (and his position got some support from Barclays last night) has some options. One is to simply press to reduce the total amount owed to the bondholders, allowing Anglo to book a gain from having to pay out less interest than originally agreed.
The second approach, one championed by the 'Financial Times', is to tell the bondholders you intend to swap their bonds for shares in Anglo.
This would effectively leave the bank, which is a heartbeat away from technical insolvency, in their hands. This is known as a debt-for-equity swap and is very common in downturns when companies run into problems. Technically it is also known as a distressed exchange offer. This approach could be taken, but again it comes with significant risks which need to be acknowledged by political commentators like Gilmore and others pressing for this course of action.
The problem with this idea is that there is no way Anglo Irish Bank is worth €16.5bn at the moment. So if the bondholders swapped all their bonds for Anglo shares they would be settling for less than par value. This is a selective default.
Of course, the big danger is not what would happen in Anglo if this course is taken, but what would happen at the other Irish banks. By how much would their fund-raising costs go up? The answer, of course, is nobody knows, including all the commentators who give views on this subject regularly.
The punchline:
The final danger is: would an Anglo technical default raise the funding costs for Ireland Inc itself? Again it is hard to say. There are two schools. One suggests that by cutting Anglo loose, Ireland becomes a better credit risk and funding costs could actually drop.
Others suggest once you welch on any debts, your funding costs elsewhere rise and you may even be locked out of the bond market entirely.
While Mr Gilmore's contribution is welcome, it is only right that he spell out the huge unknowns embodied in the approach he has recommended.
Lehman deja vu.“Hot hands”—perhaps not a myth after all. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images and Shutterstock.
Do basketball players actually have brief runs of superhuman “hot hands,” when the basket looks 5 feet wide and sinking a free throw is as easy as opening a door? Or are basketball shots more or less a random sequence, on which our pattern-seeking monkey brains impose illusory order after the fact?
The latter view has been conventional wisdom among psychologists and math-y types ever since a famous paper of Gilovich, Tversky, and Vallone showed that the so-called hot hand, if it existed at all, was too faint an effect to show up in statistical tests.
Now the hot hand is back in the news with a new finding by economists Joshua Miller and Adam Sanjurjo threatening that consensus. They’re not the first to go heterodox on the hot hand. (In Deadspin last year, I rounded up some of the reasons the hot hand may have been laid in the grave too quickly.) But they’ve found something truly new—a serious mathematical flaw in the Gilovich-Tversky-Vallone study, missed by the many scientists, me included, who’ve combed through the paper in the 30 years since it came out. That’s impressive.
So what’s the math snafu?
To understand it, let’s start with a simple example.
Think about all the families with kids in Nashua, New Hampshire. What’s the average ratio of boys to girls?
It’s natural to suppose the answer is 1, or pretty close. Boys and girls are born in just about equal numbers, so shouldn’t the ratio average out to an equal distribution?
But that’s wrong. I know the answer to the question on the nose, and I’ve never even been to Nashua. It’s not 1. It’s infinity. And it’s infinity for a kind of stupid reason: If there’s even one family with sons and no daughters, the boy-to-girl ratio for that family is infinite, and when you average a bunch of quantities, one of which is infinite, the average has to be infinite, too.
Of course, the average number of boys per family is the same as the average number of girls per family—how could it be otherwise? The ratio between those two averages is 1. But the ratio of the averages is not necessarily the average of the ratios. That’s just a fact of mathematical life. (It’s also the key to unlocking a much puzzled-over Google interview question.)
Or how about this? You roll out a new standardized math test in your school district. In Central High School, 60 out of 120 students, or 50 percent, pass. Meanwhile, Outlying Charter School has only two students, and both pass—a 100 percent rate. An enterprising educrat might crow, “Our average school passing rate is 75 percent.” And that is, in a sense, true! But this average percentage conveys a completely wrong impression of how well kids are doing.
Gilovich, Tversky, and Vallone looked at strings of free throws shot by 26 Cornell basketball players. They computed each player’s shooting percentage in two different contexts: after three straight hits, and after three straight misses. If players’ shooting tended to run hot and cold, as the average fan believes, you’d expect a shooter to be more likely to hit a free throw after three straight hits than after three straight misses. But the authors found no such effect. The average percentage after three straight hits was just about the same as the average percentage after three straight misses.
Given what happened with the children of Nashua, those words average percentage should produce a vague sense of unease. A percentage is a kind of ratio, and averaging ratios can yield screwy results, even when infinity doesn’t come into play, as we saw with the standardized math test. Miller and Sanjurjo found just such a wrinkle in Gilovich, Tversky, and Vallone’s method. The new study showed that if there’s no hot hand—if shots were utterly random and independent from each other—the average shooting percentage following three misses will, strange as it seems, be higher than the average shooting percentage following three hits. So the original data, showing that the two averages are roughly the same, is actually evidence that players are shooting better after they make a few hits. In other words, the study turns its coat, providing evidence for the hot hand instead of against it!
I know this sounds weird. Another example will help; it’s not exactly the same as the hot-hand study but close enough to display the same math quirk. Go back to Nashua. Are boys in those families more likely to have little sisters or little brothers? Surely the likelihoods are equal. But take a look at the eight possibilities for a three-child family, each one of which ought to be equally prevalent:
BBB
BBG
BGB
BGG
GBB
GBG
GGB
GGG
For each family that has a boy, we can calculate the percentage of boys who have a younger brother and the percentage of boys who have a younger sister. (Some boys, like the oldest boy in the second family, have both, and some boys—the youngest ones in their families—have neither, so these percentages don’t have to add up to 100.) For instance, in that second family, 100 percent of boys have a younger sister, while only 50 percent have a younger brother. In the first family, 67 percent of boys have a younger brother, and 0 percent have a younger sister.
If you average over all families, you find what looks like asymmetry: The average percentage of boys with a younger sister is 50 percent, while the average percentage of boys with a younger brother is only 31 percent.
Does that mean having a boy makes it more likely there are female babies to follow? Nope—it just means that averaging percentages, as Gilovich, Tversky, and Vallone did, is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
Can we believe in the hot hand again? The case seems pretty good. Gilovich has a response: “Because our samples were fairly large, I don’t believe this changes the original conclusions about the hot hand,” he told the New York Times. But that isn’t compelling; Miller and Sanjurjo show that the sample of 100 shots in the original study is definitely small enough for the bias to show its face. And in another paper, Miller and Sanjurjo go back and reanalyze the data from just about every hot-hand study ever done. Their method is charming: Take a real-life sequence of hits and misses and rearrange it completely at random. If there’s no hot hand, the resulting sequence should be no more or less streaky than the original. Miller and Sanjurjo find the opposite: Real-life data consistently becomes less streaky when rearranged, suggesting that shooters really do run hot and cold. It may be time to put the myth of the myth of the hot hand to rest.Major Meadow Restoration in Hope Valley Complete The much anticipated and needed Hope Valley Meadow Restoration Project is now complete! This project restored about one mile of stream channel in beloved Hope Valley Meadow, located on the West Carson River.
A major and long anticipated effort to restore iconic Hope Valley Meadow has been completed this fall!
The project will reduce erosion, improve floodplain connectivity and enhance aquatic and wet meadow habitat for birds, fish and other wildlife.
This effort started decades ago with an admirable grassroots effort to protect and restore Hope Valley, a beloved recreational site and fishery, and important ecological refugia.
Historically, Hope Valley was an important stopover site along the Mormon Emigrant Trail and was heavily grazed as summer pasture, which caused lasting impacts to the meadow and stream channel. The stream channel became eroded and disconnected from its floodplain, and lost much of its willow cover, reducing the meadows storage capacity, impairing water quality and degrading habitat for fish, birds and other wildlife.
In addition, Hope Valley was once threatened by a plan to dam and inundate the valley with a reservoir. Luckily, local community members and organizations, Friends of Hope Valley and Alpine Watershed Group, took action to prevent the dam and place the valley into public agency ownership. These groups have been working to restore Hope Valley Meadow by ever since, and have been planting willows to improve meadow conditions for over 20 years!
In 2011, American Rivers joined these local groups to help carry out project planning for large-scale restoration of the meadow. And now, after years of planning, major restoration is complete!
The project repaired approximately 1 mile of stream channel by stabilizing banks, planting willows and reconnecting the channel with its floodplain. This work, coupled with the activities of the local beaver population who are also helping to repair the stream channel, have set the meadow on the road to recovery.
The project was a highly collaborative effort that included the US Forest Service, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Friends of Hope Valley, Alpine Watershed Group, Waterways Consulting, Habitat Restoration Sciences, Institute for Bird Populations, Trout Unlimited, Great Basin Institute and more, and received funding from six sources including National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Sierra Nevada Conservancy, California Wildlife Conservation Board, California Department of Water Resources, Wildlife Conservation Society and Bella Vista Foundation, which contributed hugely to making it a success!high-end restaurants and hotels +
large-scale wastage of food +
We are losing fifth of world food to overeating, wastage Almost 20% of the food made available to consumers worldwide is lost through over-eating or wastage, according to a new study.
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pitch against wastage of food has prompted the government to consider askingto specify the portion size of a meal to enable customers order the right amount.Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said the hospitality industry would be asked whether it can do it "voluntarily" or or needed the government to make legal provisions for it.Paswan's remarks came nearly a fortnight after Modi expressed concern overin the country."This idea has come out of my personal experience. When we go out for eating, we see a lot of food being wasted. There are people in our country who do not get food."Paswan said the government does not fix the quantum of food that needs to be served by hotels and restaurants."We are just asking them to specify how many chapatis or idlis or chicken pieces you will serve (in a plate)," he said.In plate system, a hotel or restaurant normally does not specify how much food they serve, like the number of chapatis or the amount of rice.Asked whether the government wanted to introduce uniformity in the amount of food served in a portion, he said, "We just want them to specify and mention (in the menu card) that how much they would serve in a portion."As a company, Reddit has shown itself to be either ambivalent or complicit in abuse on the site, but users are fed up. Two new but rapidly-growing subreddits—r/esist and r/fuckthealtright—want to do something about it, and they’ve already claimed credit for getting hate speech community r/altright banned for harassment. Yesterday, they set their sights on one of the Reddit’s worst offenders.
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Last night, Gizmodo received several extremely similar tip emails in a short span of time, all containing the same screenshot of a post on r/the_donald—Reddit’s largest Trump community and the de facto meeting place for Trump fans online. The post encourages Trump opponents to kill themselves by jumping off a building, using the same #JumpAgainstTrump hashtag that recently got a New York priest in hot water. (Posts that encourage violence or incite harassment are against Reddit’s content policy.)
What set the post apart from other hateful threads on the_donald was that one of the community’s moderators “stickied” it, a mechanic that pins content to the top of a forum for maximum visibility. The post has since been un-stickied and the_donald moderators have not responded to a request for comment.
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Stickying a thread so clearly against content policy runs counter to what makes the_donald work: plausible deniability. Because Reddit’s site moderators (the paid staffers who oversee the site’s volunteers) prefer to take action against individual users rather than whole communities, the_donald mods have remained insulated from eviction—though community moderators themselves have been known to create abusive posts. The_donald and Reddit staff have reached a detente of sorts, it would appear, based leaked messages from a private Slack chat populated by the site’s highest ranking moderators:
[moderator 1]: sticky post encouraging suicide [link] [moderator 2]: seems like a poor tasted joke, but not something I would consider urgent or rule breaking [moderator 1]: if you say so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [moderator 2]: I get that that you dislike the_donald, but we really need to keep this channel reserved for actually urgent things. With regards to self-harm, we want to limit that to people what are actually at risk. [moderator 1]: fair enough [moderator 2]: thanks <3
(The moderator who sent Gizmodo the chats asked that we reprint the interaction rather than post an image of it, and that he remain anonymous. Members of the chat are kicked out for leaking screenshots, as was the case with a mod who did just that after Reddit CEO Steve Huffman was caught editing users’ posts in November.)
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How is telling people to kill themselves, even under the flimsy “lol jk” defense, not rule-breaking worthy of urgent attention? That isn’t clear and the moderators involved did not respond to requests for comment.
What is clear is that staffers let this one slide, as they’ve done many times before. It’s what makes remarks from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian that users should “come for the cats, stay for the empathy” so galling. Ohanian also did not respond to a request for comment.
Attempts at addressing Reddit users’ bad behavior through tech solutions has done little to curb abuse. There are, however, other solutions. As the mod who leaked these chats told Gizmodo, “as I’ve seen with reddit over the years, their policy tends to change... if users and the media keep contacting them about one specific mod/situation.” Users on r/esist and r/fuckthealtright seem to have figured this out.
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One of last night’s tipsters told Gizmodo that “we’ve contacted NY times and Wired basically any journalist who we thought would be interested in this.” Given Reddit leadership’s reluctance to address any issue without being pressured to do so, it’s understandable why they’d turn to carpet-bombing the inboxes of reporters.
This was apparently the first media outreach campaign made by these groups—their apparent takedown of r/altright was accomplished purely by messaging the site’s moderators—but it seems it won’t be the last. Or, in the words of one of the tipsters, “there will be more action.”
Reddit did not respond to a request for comment.Bob Nightengale has reported that the Marlins have put in a bid to host the 2017 All-Star Game and either the Marlins or San Diego Padres will be hosting.
The #Orioles are the leading contender to get the 2016 #MLB All-Star Game, while the 2017 All-Star Game will go to the #Marlins or #Padres — Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 12, 2014
The Marlins have an interesting history with the MLB All-Star game. The 2000 All-Star game was actually originally awarded to the then Florida Marlins. However, Bud Selig changed the venue to Turner Field of the Atlanta Braves, citing that hosting an All-Star game in then Dolphins Stadium was not suitable for baseball’s highlight of the summer.
Of course, hosting the All-Star game also means hosting the Home Run Derby. Can you imagine Giancarlo Stanton hitting bombs in the Home Run Derby in front of the Marlins faithful? That in itself should be reason enough to award the game to Miami.
As mentioned above, the Padres are also looking to host the mid-summer classic. The stadium opened for the 2004 season and they have not hosted an All-Star game yet. While the Marlins have a great new stadium, baseball may decide to honor the older park that has been waiting over a decade to host the game.
Major League Baseball has a new commissioner coming in to replace Bud Selig in Rob Manfred. For the first time in a long time there is a bit of a wild card as to what the higher ups may do. The Marlins commitment to its youth may help sway the game their way.
Major League Baseball is still determining who will host the 2016 All-Star game, so we may not hear who wins the 2017 bid for some time. In the meantime, if the Marlins continue to build and prove they are committed to winning, there are few reasons for the higher ups to look elsewhere.
Besides, the Marlins are still owed the game from back in 2000.Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) (Ap File Photo)
(CNSNews.com) - The world is a more dangerous place than it was when President Obama took office almost eight years ago, and "the worst of his presidency may still be yet to come," Sen. Marco Rubio said in the Republicans' Saturday radio address.
Rubio was discussing radical Islamic terrorism, which must not become "the new normal," he said. "We should not have to constantly look over our shoulder every time we visit a public place with our children or take a walk down the street."
The war on terror is a war the United States must win. But far from winning that war, President Obama "dismisses the enemy and underestimates the challenges they pose to our way of life," Rubio said.
"With just four months left in office, President Obama and his allies in Congress want to release every single terrorist from the military's custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We've already seen why this is a dangerous mistake, as many have been released to other countries, only to quickly go missing. Others have returned to the battlefield and replenished the forces of evil."The terrorists still behind bars are the worst of the worst, but President Obama and his misguided allies in Congress still want to send them to other countries, or even bring these terrorists here to U.S. soil. If Congress and the American people don't stop this terrible plan, these terrorists could join the ranks of al Qaeda or ISIS, at the same time our troops are trying to defeat them."Rubio noted that the Republican-led Congress has successfully blocked Obama from bringing terrorist detainees to American soil -- so far."But the president and his allies remain committed to getting this done, even though it helps these groups grow even stronger, and even though it increases the risks to Americans at home and abroad."
At a Sept. 8 news conference in Laos, President Obama was asked if Guantanamo -- with 60 prisoners then remaining -- would still be open when he leaves office.
"With respect to Guantanamo, I am not ready to concede that it may still remain open because we're still working diligently to continue to shrink the population," Obama said. "I continue to believe that Guantanamo is a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations, that it clouds and sours some of the counterterrorism cooperation that we need to engage in. And it's not necessary and it's hugely expensive for U.S. taxpayers."
Obama admitted there is "strong resistance" in Congress to close the prison. "But as we continue to shrink the population to the point where we're looking at 40 or 50 people and are maintaining a multimillion-dollar operation to house these handfuls of individuals, I think the American people should be asking the question, why are we spending this kind of money that could be spent on other things when it's not necessary for our safety and security."
The president said he expects to "work really hard" for the remainder of his term to close the prison, as he promised he would do when he first campaigned for president.
And as recently as last Friday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked about the possibility of additional prisoner transfers from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to third countries.
Earnest said he had nothing to announce at the moment -- "but we'll obviously keep you posted if any of those transfers take place."
Rubio on Saturday said it's not just Guantanamo that worries him. He also pointed to the "disastrous deal with Iran," which is giving a state sponsor of terrorism "billions of dollars in sanctions relief and ransom payments -- money they will use to fulfill their dreams of 'death to America' and wiping Israel off the planet," he said.
"All these challenges underscore the need to rebuild our military, to reassure our traditional allies, and reassert American leadership on the world stage. Unless we take these actions, we will be unable to leave the world more secure for future generations of Americans.
"The next four months could be President Obama's most damaging yet as he works to fulfill these last ditch legacy projects."It is now that we begin to encounter the fevered quest for novelty at any price, it is now that we see insincere and superficial cynicism and deliberate conscious bluff; we meet, in a word, the calculated exploitation of this art as a means of destroying all order. The mercenary swindle multiplies a hundredfold, as does the deceit of men themselves deceived and the brazen self-portraiture of vileness.
—Hans Sedlmayr, Art in Crisis
Some of what she said was technical, and you would have had to be a welder to appreciate it; the rest was aesthetic or generally philosophical, and to appreciate it you would have had to be an imbecile.
—Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution
L ast month, a friend telephoned and urged me to travel to Bard College to see “Wrestle,” the inaugural exhibition mounted to celebrate the opening of “CCS Bard Hessel Museum,” a 17,000-square-foot addition to the college art museum. It sounded, my friend said, spectacularly awful. She’d just had a call from her husband, a Bard alum, who had zipped through the exhibition while doing some work at the college. Huge images of body parts—yes, those body parts—floating on the walls of a darkened room, minatory videos of men doing things—yes, those things—to each other, or to themselves, all of it presented in the most pretentious fashion possible. It really was something … special.
Well, these folks are not naïfs. They’ve both been around the avant-garde block and back a few times. If they said an exhibition was ostentatiously horrible, then it was likely to be something worth taking some trouble to avoid—unless, that is, your job description includes regular stints as a cultural pathologist, in which case it is something that duty requires you to inspect, docket, and file away for the instruction and admonition of future generations.
This is my unhappy position. So, one fine May morning I motored up to lovely Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, home of the elite, super-trendy Bard College. Bard is one of those small educational institutions whose ambient wealth has allowed them to substitute avant-garde pretense for scholarly or artistic accomplishment. If your bank account is healthy (tuition and fees for first-year students: $47,730) and young Heather or Dylan is “creative,” i.e., not likely to get into a Harvard or Yale or Williams, then Bard is a place you can send them and still look your neighbor in the eye. The college is probably best known for its baton-wielding president, Leon Botstein, who conducts orchestras in his spare time and whom the music critic Tim Page once described as the sort of chap who gives pseudo-intellectuality a bad name. Bard also has the distinction of being, as far as I know, the only college in the United States to honor the memory of Alger Hiss, the perjurer and Soviet spy, by establishing a chair in his memory.
It had been a long time since I had visited Bard. Back in the early 1990s, I ventured into its sylvan purlieus to write about the opening of the Richard and Marieluise Black Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture.[1] Now here we had, attached to the old edifice, the Marieluise Hessel Museum of Art. Two Marieluises? It turned out to be like the evening star and morning star of philosophical lore, Hesperus and Phosphorus: two names but one and the same orb—in short, as William Demarest put it in The Lady Eve, “It’s the same dame.” The German-born businesswoman shed the unfortunate (or maybe not) Mr. Black somewhere along the line. Although married again, she is taking no chances and now endows her endowments with her maiden name. Marieluise has been busy. In the early 1990s, when the Black Center opened, her collection of contemporary art consisted of some 550 items. It has grown to 1,700, of which approximately 200 items are on view in “Wrestle.”
Y ou will not be able to see “Wrestle.” By the time you read this, the exhibition will have closed. But do not pine. You haven’t missed anything. Have I become jaded? Too many close encounters with Gilbert and George, Matthew Barney, and all the other exotic fauna that populate the galleries and art museums these days? Perhaps. In any event, I thought my friends overstated the awfulness of the exhibition. Don’t get me wrong: it was plenty awful. Body parts, “explicit” images, and naughty language galore. The exhibition certainly merited the warning to parents at the entrance. But it wasn’t worse than dozens of other exhibitions I’ve seen, you’ve seen, we’ve all seen.
I thought about this as I picked my way through the galleries at the Hessel Museum. A “video installation” by Bruce Nauman in which a man and a woman endlessly repeat a litany of nonsense, tinctured here and there with scatological phrases. Been there. Photographs (in four or five different places) by Robert Mapplethorpe of his S&M pals. Very 1980s. Histrionic photographs by Cindy Sherman of herself looking victimized. Been there, too. Nam June Paik and his video installations. Done that. A big pile of red, white, and blue lollipops dumped in the corner by … well, it doesn’t much matter, does it? Any more than it matters who was responsible for the room featuring images of floating genitalia or the room with the video of ritualistic homosexual bondage. Ditto the catalogue: its assault on the English language is something you can find in scores, no, hundreds of art publications today: “For Valie Export, the female Body is covered with the stigmata of codes that shape and hamper it.” Well, bully for her. “As usual with Gober, the installation is a broken allegory that both elicits and resists our interpretation; that materially nothing is quite as it seems adds to our anxious curiosity.” As usual, indeed, though whether such pathetic verbiage adds to or smothers our curiosity is another matter altogether.
No, the thing to appreciate about “Wrestle,” about the Hessel Museum and the collection of Marieluise Hessel, and about the visual arts at Bard generally is not how innovative, challenging, or unusual they are, but how pedestrian and, sad to say, conventional they are. True, there is a lot of ickiness on view at the Hessel Museum. But it is entirely predictable ickiness. It’s outrage by-the-yard, avant-garde in bulk, smugness for the masses. And this brings me to what I believe is the real significance of institutions like the art museum at Bard, the Hessel collection that fills it, and the surrounding atmosphere of pseudo-avant-garde self-satisfaction. The “arts” at Bard are notable not because they are unusual but because they are so grindingly ordinary. Leon Botstein described Marieluise Hessel as a “risk giver.” An essay in the Bardian, the college magazine, elaborates on this theme:
She was drawn to work that challenged and subverted the status quo, work that flaunted [the author means “flouted,” but, hey, this is Bard] and struggled with urgent, utopian notions of gender and identity, feminism, and the politics of AIDS, among other issues.
Mr. Botstein and the Bardian have it exactly wrong. When it comes to art, Ms. Hessel is neither a risk taker nor a risk giver. Like Bard itself, she simply mirrors the established taste of the moment. Far from “challenging” or “subverting” the status quo, the 1,700 objects she has accumulated are the status quo. And far from “struggling” with questions about gender or feminism or anything else, she has simply issued a rubber stamp endorsing the dominant clichés of today’s academic art world. “Academic,” in fact, is the mot juste: not in the sense of “scholarly,” but rather in the sense that we speak of “academic art,” stale, conventional, aesthetically nugatory. A wall full of photographs of two girls does nothing to “interrogate” (a favorite term of art- and lit-crit-speak) identity any more than a mutilated doll forces us to reconsider our usual notions of whatever-it-is those odious objects are supposed to make us reconsider. Really, the only thing exhibitions like “Wrestle,” or institutions like the Hessel Museum, challenge is the viewer’s patience.
Ms. Hessel once enthusiastically recalled her introduction to contemporary art as a young woman in Munich: “It was like entering a cult group.” That cult has long since become the new Salon where the canons of accepted taste are enforced with a rigidity that would have made Bouguereau jealous. The only difference is that instead of a pedantic mastery of perspective and modeling we have a pedantic mastery of all the accepted attitudes about race, class, sex, and politics. Since skill is no longer necessary to practice art successfully, the only things left are 1) appropriate subject matter (paradoxically, the more inappropriate the better) and 2) the right politics.
Again, my point is not to deny the repellent nature of much that was on view in “Wrestle.” It deserves its “ X ” rating, all right. But it has been a long time since shock value had the capacity to be aesthetically interesting—or even, truth be told, to shock. Decades ago, writing about Salvador Dalí, George Orwell called attention to, and criticized, the growing habit of granting a blanket moral indemnity to anything that called itself art. “The artist,” Orwell wrote,
is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is O.K. Rotting corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K. ; kicking little girls in the head is O.K. ; even a film like L’Age d’Or [which shows among other things detailed shots of a woman defecating] is O.K.
O rwell was writing in the 1940s. Already that attitude was old hat: it had definitively entered the cultural bloodstream with the Dadaists shortly after the turn of the last century. What those folks didn’t know about “challenging” and “subverting” conventional taste and attitudes wasn’t worth knowing. In essentials, they pioneered all the tricks on view in “Wrestle”—the sex, the violence, the tedium, the presentation |
ewhat absurd” resentments against free trade and take the lead in fighting economic barriers.
“It’s good to see the government coming out in favor of free trade,” he said.Apple's new Siri-powered voice-controlled TV product (right) looks incredibly futuristic. But once again, it's definitely not the first to the party. Earlier this year streaming video pioneer Roku released a new version of its flagship product (left) that includes voice search, and services from Google and Amazon have had voice control baked in for even longer. But by bringing Siri to Apple TV, Apple has cemented voice as the new standard interface for interactive television.
Even more impressive than the Apple TV demo is 3D Touch (right), which promises to add a whole new dimension to interactivity. But once again, there's a precedent for the idea. Sensel offers an interesting accessory called the Morph (left) that looks a bit like a small tablet or large touchpad, and it features a pressure-sensitive multitouch interface that sounds an awful lot like what Apple is touting. The big difference here is that Apple is building this right into the next generation of the iPhone: no accessories required.
Apple's heretical Pencil (right) isn't the only "Pencil" on the market: a company called 53 makes its own excellent stylus with the same name (left). In fact, Apple has a long history of allegedly using existing trademarks for its products. And while Apple is doing all it can to distinguish its Pencil from all the other styluses on the market, the truth is that many of its features can already be found in competing products from 53 or Wacom. We'll have to wait and see if the new product can live up to Apple's standards.
The new iOS Live Photos feature (right), which automatically captures three seconds of video when you snap a photo, isn't the high-tech marvel that 3D Touch or Siri are, but it still looks like a lot of fun. So does a little feature in the HTC One smartphone called Zoe (left), which does basically the same thing.
Just kidding. Between the new A9 processor, the 12 megapixel camera and the 3D Touch interface, the 6S (right) is actually a pretty substantial upgrade from the iPhone 6 (left). Looks can be deceiving.BUDAPEST/WARSAW (Reuters) - Eastern members of the European Union are pushing for a soft separation with Britain, hoping that this would protect the rights of millions of east Europeans living and working there.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto attends an interview with Reuters in Budapest, Hungary May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh
Top policy makers from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania have called on the EU this week not to punish Britain for leaving the bloc.
The concern is that a hard Brexit could lead to substantially diminished contributions from Britain to the EU budget, thus decreasing development funds flowing to poorer members of the former communist bloc and potentially damaging their trade links.
The emerging economies of the region rely heavily on EU funds to boost growth and help them catch up with wealthier Western European members.
“Our aim is that the... European institutions do not sit to the negotiating table with an intention to punish the British,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told the Reuters Central & Eastern Europe Investment Summit.
“So... have an intention to come to the best possible agreement which needs to have two pillars in our understanding: number one (is) the tightest possible cooperation on economy, trade and investments.”
Szijjarto said the other key element was “guarantees for the EU citizens who have been working and studying in the UK that their rights will be protected.”
The EU will offer to protect the welfare and residence rights of Britons living on the continent after Brexit when it opens talks with London next month, according to a document seen by Reuters on Thursday.
The paper will accompany another prepared on Britain paying outstanding sums into the EU budget to be discussed by officials from the other 27 member states next week. These two issues are among the most important that EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has identified in reaching a divorce treaty.
“At some stage of the negotiations, emotions will play a big part,” Krzysztof Szczerski, top foreign policy adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda said. “In Poland, there are no bad feelings in relation to the British decision.”
There are over a million Poles working in the UK, and hundreds of thousands more Romanians and Hungarians.
Romania’s foreign minister said that the deal on Brexit was important for Romania for financial reasons but also due to the contribution that the UK could bring to European security and defense policy.
“Our bid is to have a post-Brexit accord with UK that keeps them as close as possible to the European Union,” Teodor Melescanu said.
JOINT VISEGRAD POSITION?
Budapest hopes for a common position from the Visegrad four countries - Hungary, Poland, the Czech republic and Slovakia — regarding Brexit talks, led by Poland, that would aim for the “tightest possible cooperation agreement (with Britain) regarding trade and economy,” Szijjarto said.
Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka echoed his words.
“One of the things I regard as important is that V4 (Visegrad Four) should pick up some of the agendas that Britain has been pushing for,” he said.
“That means for example good functioning of the internal market, not creating barriers to it.”
Sobotka said it was also important to maintain strong security links with Britain, be it within NATO, or even within the European Union in the future.
“The biggest complication will probably be connected to setting the trade relations, because we will be ready to agree with the Brits only when our citizens’ rights issue is solved, when the British contribution to the European budget is solved,” Sobotka added.Chinese billionaire Li Hejun, chairman of solar-equipment manufacturer Hanergy Holding, is expanding his business into the auto sector.
Hanergy will launch five models of solar-powered cars in October, according to a Feb.2 post on the company’s website. The models can run up to 100 km after four hours of charging, according to the statement.
“Hanergy is working with three foreign partners and two domestic firms to develop solar-powered vehicles,” the firm says in the statement. “The market potential is huge.”
The company is also partnering with Tesla Motors in building a “supercharger network.” Hanergy in April delivered two photovoltaic charging stations for the Palo Alto, California-based electric car firm, as Elon Musk continues to invest in charging stations in China.
Li is not the only Chinese billionaire with an ambition in the country’s new-energy vehicle market. Jia Yueting, chairman and founder of Leshi Internet Information & Technology, a manufacturer of Internet televisions and set-top video boxes, is seeking license to build electric cars. Wanxiang Group, an auto parts manufacturer headed by billionaire Lu Guanqiu, in February acquired electric car pioneer Fisker Automotive for $149.2 million.
The sector is spearheaded by billionaire Wang Chuanfu, chairman of the Warren Buffett-backed electric cars company BYD. The company is planning to roll out plug-in hybrid SUVs later this year.
Li Hejun, who last year published his new book China’s New Energy Revolution, currently ranks No.5 on the China Rich List, with a wealth of $ 12.2 billion. Lu Guanqiu is No.16 with a fortune of $ 5.1 billion. Wang ranks No.22 with a net worth of $ 3.6 billion. Jia Yueting ranks No.78 on the list with a net worth of $2.2 billion.The last time we saw B.J. Penn, he was on the receiving end of a beatdown courtesy of Rory MacDonald at UFC on Fox 5 this past December.
It was Penn's fourth straight fight as a welterweight, where he has gone 1-2-1 since dropping his lightweight title (and the subsequent rematch) to Frankie Edgar back in 2010.
Many of his critics have felt that if Penn ever does fight again, he should at least return to the division where he's had his most success which is 155 pounds.
"The Prodigy" contemplated the move earlier today, debating the pros and cons of fighting at lightweight on his Facebook page.
"155? first I gotta spar and check my depth perception, LW's will eat me up with their speed if I don't judge the distance right, no weight class is easier"
The depth perception Penn is referring to likely related to the cataract he has in one of his eyes, which is going to require surgery if he ever wants his vision fully repaired.
As the former champion mentioned, speed could also be an issue. The lighter, sleeker Penn has been outpaced by bigger, stronger welterweights in his last two bouts. Dropping down a weight class won't suddenly give him turbo boosters either.
If Penn were to return to the Octagon, what weight class would be best for the 27 fight veteran?"I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincerest apologies to anyone I may have offended with my recent comment. It is wrong and inexcusable to make a comment that hurts people, and that was not my intention,'' Carroll wrote in a faxed letter to Smith.
"As a Christian, my faith guides me to love and respect all people," Carroll continued. "The false charges that have been lodged against me are no excuse for what I have said that may have been hurtful to members of your organization and to other Floridians...I hope you will accept my heartfelt apology."
Court documents recently revealed that former employee Carletha Cole, who was arrested and charged last year with leaking recordings of conversations within Carroll's office to a reporter, claims she was actually fired from Carroll's staff after walking in on the Republican Lieutenant Governor in a "compromising position" in her capitol office with her travel aide, Beatriz Ramos.
When a Tampa 10 reporter asked Carroll about the allegations July 14 at a Mitt Romney campaign office opening in Orange Park, she set off a firestorm of controversy.
"The problem is that when you have these accusations that come out, it's not just one person you're attacking, " Carroll said on-camera. "It's an entire family. My husband doesn't want to hear that. He knows the type of woman I am. I mean, my kids know the type of woman I am."
The Lieutenant Governor then began giggling as she added: "For twenty-nine years, I'm the one that's married for twenty-nine years. The accuser is the one that's been single for a long time. So usually black women that look like me don't engage in relationships like that."
Smith, a HuffPost blogger, not only received the letter of apology, but also spoke with Carroll by phone before releasing a statement of her own.
"On behalf of a Equality Florida, I want to thank Lt. Governor Carroll for taking responsibility for her words and for responding to the harm those words inflicted," Smith wrote. "Apologies by elected leaders for public mistakes are rare and it is to the Lt. Governor’s credit that she has taken this step."
Previously: in response to her words, HuffPost Gay Voices tweeted a call for lesbian women to post pictures of themselves on Twitter with the hashtag #ThisIsWhatALesbianLooksLike -- to show, as one respondent put it, that lesbians come in "all colors, all sizes, all hairstyles!" Check out the slideshow of responses below:Does Jesus Watch Me Go Poopy?
Dear Pastor, My momma tells me I had better behave myself, on account of Jesus is always watching. She says He sees EVERYTHING that I am doing. Does that mean that Jesus is even staring at me every time I pull down my pants to go poopy? Yours in Christ, - Sue Ellen Dear Sue Ellen, Yes child, your mother is right; Jesus does see all. But unlike a Peeping Tom who is only able to catch a glimpse of you on the toilet through the window, the good Lord Jesus is all over your business, sniffing out every nook and cranny of your vile, sinful little body. Praise His holy name! You see, Jesus knows that toilet time is also a dangerous time for young ladies like yourself – filled with horrid temptations of the flesh. After all, this – along with shower time – is one of the only occasions when True Christians™ have a legitimate reason to be briefly touching their filthy sex parts. This is why Jesus carefully monitors every second spent in the bathroom, to ensure that you make haste, and no fingers go lingering around and get lost in the dirty, stinky parts of your body. So yes, Jesus is watching you, sweetheart, but don’t worry; there’s nothing in your panties that He hasn’t seen before. Indeed, it was Jesus and His daddy who intelliguntly desined every contour and crevice of your little hoochie and poop chute, which He carefully sculpted in celestial wax before miniaturizing and beaming you inside the incubation chamber you might know better as “mommy.” Of course, foolish liberals and depraved sex maniacs maintain that since it was God who created us in His image, this means that every part of our bodies is Godly – including our unmentionables. This is utter nonsense, of course! For just like liquor, drugs, gambling and all the books, music, and movies that are actually entertaining, your disgusting parts were created by God to TEST you, child – which is why you would do well to always express the requisite degree of intense revulsion at the very sight of your own nakedness. Remember child, Jesus loves you, which is the reason He’s taking time out of His very busy schedule creating tornadoes and earthquakes and giving folks cancer to watch you squat down and do nature's business! If you doubt, me - just take our Bible Poop Quiz to see how obsessed the Lord is with excrement. So, young lady- the next time you’re making a doo-doo, don’t be shy. Be thankful, child! Verily, take comfort by gazing heavenward as you push and squeal like a sweet naked sow in the mud; then at the very moment you hear an audible plop in the water beneath your soft naked rump, you can give Jesus a little wave hello! God Bless You, - Pastor
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The Landover Baptist website is not intended to be viewed by anyone under 18Back in 2012, Marc Andreessen famously said “software is eating the world.” In 2014, PaaS is now poised to eat the world of Enterprise IT. While some cloud pundits continue to predict the end of PaaS, or at least it’s disappearance into the miasma that is labelled “infrastructure”, many prominent companies are building real, high-growth, high-margin, highly defensible businesses by leveraging this technology. In just the first month of 2014, OpenShift alone has seen public declarations of adoption from Cisco, FICO, Atos/Worldline, and a number of other real businesses that are delivering real value with PaaS.
PaaS Gains Momentum in 2014
According to Morgan Stanley Analyst, Jennifer Swanson Lowe:
“Morgan Stanley’s CIO Survey results point to PaaS Adoption as being poised for growth in 2014. Survey respondents expect PaaS usage to increase in 2014, with 50% more CIOs expecting to use PaaS solutions by the end of CY14 vs. those using PaaS today.”
As we come to the end of the first month of 2014, a quick google search on PaaS tallies up over 275 news articles, corporate blog posts, announcements and other SEO-enabled content that dissected PaaS as a technology and its place in the Cloud ecosystem. The vast majority of the content is overwhelmingly positive and developer focused. I take this as healthy and positive sign of the growing adoption of PaaS throughout the industry.
Developer Enablement is a Game Changer and a Cultural Shift for IT
PaaS is often perceived as a disruptive force in organizations because it enables developers to change the application life cycle. PaaS changes the nature of the development process from IT’s hardened and industrialized processes, to one of self-service on-demand abstraction that removes the rigidity and enables agility.
By abstracting away the complexity of the application lifecycle, PaaS takes “developer enablement” in the cloud to a whole new level. This change is pushing on the cultural boundaries within IT organizations. It provides the tooling and support to enable developers to accelerate and enhance the development experience – providing a range of capabilities such as standards-compliant APIs, service creation and service management tools – all designed to be used in a self-service model. PaaS enables developers to test, deploy, launch, scale, fail and iterate safely without all the past IT operations overhead. PaaS’s standardization at the API level mitigates risk and brings automation of the application life cycle to a new self-service level previously only attained by massive in-house customized scripting and virutalization efforts which only the very largest of enterprises could afford to build and maintain.
The Rise of the Internet
When the Internet reached a critical mass in the early 1990s, it brought about a fast evolution of technology allowing for a rapid global communications and networking and at the same time, re-shaping the way IT organizations delivered services. The rise of the Internet made web application development a huge part of the programming field. It also introduced a whole new level of complexity and choice in the tools that are available for developers and the IT teams charged with deploying and managing the application at scale. New concepts slipped into the programmers domain, and things like caching, load balancers, memory allocation, etc entered into our vocabularies. The ‘art’ of programming moved beyond just writing elegant, efficient code – it became more about the operations considerations which then became part of the programmer’s daily life. Coding got complex and, for some of us, became less fun.
In order to deploy a simple web application to compute stock prices, developers had to deal with configuring the entire WAMP or LAMP stack; deal with things like load balancers, web servers, security, dns configuration and basically become sysadmins themselves.
During this period of change, IT moved out from behind the firewall and into the public domain where both the risks and the stakes were higher. This brought about a change in IT culture. IT began treating internal developers as customers and created testing, QA and deployment processes that helped to mitigate the risks inherent in the New Internet World Order.
But with these new processes came a rigidity and bureaucracy that made the time to production for most applications outrageously lengthy–procuring the servers and access to resources to do testing a new application could take months.
Fast Forward to 2007
The world changes. By June 2007, Amazon claimed that more than 180,000 developers had signed up to use Amazon Web Services.
But more significantly, Heroku launches one of the first Public PaaS offerings. Ruby on Rails developers get a taste of the ease that a little automation of the application deployment and scaling process can be like; and with the swipe of a credit card the IT barriers come tumbling down.
And the era of developer entitlement begins. Over the next 7 years, developers’ expectations of the convenience, self-service, and speed with which PaaS enables them, turns into a sense of “entitlement.” When they return to their enterprises they expect the same levels of service. This is driving enterprise IT teams to bring PaaS on premise.
Developer Culture eats Corporate Strategy for breakfast – and everyone wins.
As the Morgan Stanley survey points out, 50% of CIOs recognize that PaaS is the solution and are planning on deploying PaaS in 2014. As Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats Strategy for breakfast.” This is the year that PaaS eats the world of Enterprise IT (or at least 50% of it). PaaS is clearly a case of Developer Culture moving Corporate Strategy to a new level of innovation and agility.
Next StepsMARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
The cancer of the Koch brothers' ideology is metastasizing through the body politic. (Image: DonkeyHotey)
The Koch brothers' philosophy of the consolidation of wealth by the few is spreading like a cancer. Just look at how their hand-picked governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker - who received massive financial backing from the Kochs - is now being touted in the corporate media as a Republican contender for president in 2016.
Walker, who never graduated from college (leaving Marquette University in Milwaukee for mysterious reasons), has mercilessly attacked education in Wisconsin - starting with the teachers unions and recently extending to the University of Wisconsin.
On February 22, Kevin O'Marah wrote in a Forbes op-ed:
Gov. Scott Walker plans to cut $300M from the budget of the University of Wisconsin and, if he has his way, will alter its mission from a “search for truth” to “meeting the state’s workforce needs.” These steps are so fantastically at odds with what the business community, economy and state need from its public university system that no synonym for ‘stupid’ is too strong.
It should be no surprise then that the newly inaugurated governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner - a darling of the 1% - is metastasizing the Koch brothers' attack on an educated public. As blogger Lawrence Rafferty recently noted in a piece entitled, "Gov. Bruce Rauner Declares War on Higher Education and the Poor in Illinois":
I have to give Governor Bruce Rauner credit for not taking long to show his hand and publicly attack the Higher Education system in Illinois. It has only been a few weeks since he was inaugurated and he recently unveiled his budget. A budget plan that slashes over $200 million just from the University of Illinois alone.
In a February 20 informational email, David Hatch, who heads The People's Lobby in Illinois, wrote:
Two-thirds of corporations in Illinois pay $0 in state income tax, but Rauner won’t propose one cent of new corporate revenue. Instead, he plans to balance the budget with cruel and dangerous cuts, including:
Ending support for young adults aged 18-21 who grew up as wards of the state. Many of these youth will end up homeless or in prison - guaranteed. Slashing support for public universities by 30%. Gutting Medicaid coverage for people who would otherwise be uninsured. Starving the public transit system that we rely upon to reduce congestion and carbon pollution and get to work.
Rauner's draconian proposals are an eerie echo of the Walker (i.e. Koch brothers) positions - and Rauner has wasted no time in stating his intentions, including a repeat of the Walker attack on public unions and pensions. Although Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is publicly denouncing Rauner's proposed cutbacks to the City of Chicago, there are reports that this weekend Rauner persuaded one of Emanuel's primary opponents to endorse Emanuel in the general election next month. Emanuel and Rauner are so close that the local media have taken to calling the duo "Rahm-Rauner."
The legacy of Citizens United and the unleashing of unrestricted money spent on television political campaign brainwashing is exemplified by another one of Rauner's plans to stifle higher education, as reported by The Chicago Sun-Times: "Rauner Budget Cuts Load Debt Onto Students' Backs."
Of course, there are other options for dramatically cutting the debt in Illinois. Foremost is raising taxes on the richest residents. The city of Chicago and its affluent suburbs contain a mini-Fort Knox of the 1%. Currently, Illinois has a regressive flat income tax for individuals, corporations and trusts and estates. Rich or working class, a person pays the same rate to the state.
A recent study by the Keystone Research Center proposes an alternative to the Walker-Rauner-Koch agenda: implement fair-share taxes on the wealthy to largely eliminate state deficits:
This report shows that states could generate large amounts of additional revenue to meet public needs by fixing inequities in state tax codes. The study shows that surging inequality has skewed huge amounts of income to the one percent, who pay far lower tax rates than the middle class, squeezing state budgets unnecessarily.
Taxing the top one percent at the same rate as the middle fifth of taxpayers would generate $68 billion in additional revenue, while taxing the top fifth at the same rates as the middle fifth would generate $128 billion.
Revenue lost because of rising inequality and regressive state tax codes has led states to impose years of unnecessary austerity—underfunding schools, cutting investments in higher education, and deferring maintenance of our aging infrastructure.
The analysis lays out tax increases that would hardly be a burden on the rich. As far as the wealthy, the suggested progressive taxes would be akin to pocket change. Add to that the imposition of higher - not lower - taxes on corporations, and public services might be able to be expanded instead of being cut.
As the Keystone Research Center concludes:
After 30 years of a middle-class squeeze, it’s time to restore balance through fairer taxation. Solving infrastructure deficits, restoring investments in education, community colleges and universities, and funding essential public services depend on it.
After all, the rich have enjoyed decades of tax cuts that have largely produced large state deficits. The largest redistribution of money - to the top asset holders and income earners in the US - needs to be reversed in order to enhance the well-being of our states and the country as a whole.
Copyright Truthout. May Not Be Reprinted Without Permission.People had to duck in fear to avoid the bullets in a commercial shopping center near Rainbow and Westcliff Thursday afternoon.
Metro homicide detectives say they are still searching for the suspects responsible for shooting and killing a man. Police say the murder victim got out of his car, went into the suspect's vehicle, a fight started and that's when police say shots were fired.
The shooting was reported around 12:30 p.m. in a commercial area near South Rainbow Boulevard and Westcliff Drive, according to Metro Officer Laura Meltzer.
Witnesses say they saw the man laid out in broad daylight, shot-to-death in a west valley parking lot.
"The light was red, and then I heard two pops, boom boom! And I knew those were gunshots," said Elvira Cousins, a witness to the crime.
Cousins was on her way home for lunch when she heard the gunfire.
"I started seeing people ducking down, and I knew something was wrong. Then I looked further here, and there was a silver Toyota, 4-door," she said.
Cousins says she tried to get the license plate, but everything happened to quickly. She did tell police she saw two suspects in the car.
"The only thing I could see, the door was opened a little bit and a leg was out. So they were trying to get in the car in a hurry and then they took off," she said.
Police say the murder victim got out of the car before he died, put his hands up, and was shot several more times before he fell to the ground.
Officers say they're looking for a Nissan Altima and they will be reliant on area surveillance video to help piece this crime together.Aircraft Japan - Navy
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All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.In a piece titled: "There Really Was A Liberal Media Bubble," FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver writes that a lack of diversity among news outlets has led to a progressive media echo chamber:
Much of The New York Times’s coverage, for instance, implied that Clinton’s odds were close to 100 percent. In an article on Oct. 17 — more than three weeks before Election Day — they portrayed the race as being effectively over, the only question being whether Clinton should seek a landslide or instead assist down-ballot Democrats....political experts aren’t a very diverse group and tend to place a lot of faith in the opinions of other experts and other members of the political establishment. Once a consensus view is established, it tends to reinforce itself until and unless there’s very compelling evidence for the contrary position. Social media, especially Twitter, can amplify the groupthink further. It can be an echo chamber.
Silver recalls a book by James Surowiecki, titled The Wisdom of Crowds, which claims that crowds will "make good predictions" only if they fulfill four conditions: diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization, and aggregation. While Silver writes that journalists score high on aggregation, they fail miserably in all other categories:
As of 2013, only 7 percent of them identified as Republicans (although only 28 percent called themselves Democrats with the majority saying they were independents)...
In the end, he suggests not a change in diversity of opinion, or decentralization, per se, but a change of attitude – one of independence:
Journalists should recalibrate themselves to be more skeptical of the consensus of their peers. That’s because a position that seems to have deep backing from the evidence may really just be a reflection from the echo chamber. You should be looking toward how much evidence there is for a particular position as opposed to how many people hold that position: Having 20 independent pieces of evidence that mostly point in the same direction might indeed reflect a powerful consensus, while having 20 like-minded people citing the same warmed-over evidence is much less powerful.
This is all well and good, but the question really isn't one of what journalists should do, but what they will do.
After Donald Trump's historic upset, it seemed for just a moment that the mainstream journalism world was beginning to look inward; that they were seeing their own biases, and that perhaps, they would begin to change in response to their newfound insight. However, as the months passed, the pieces settled back into their most comfortable places, and everything went back to normal.
The mainstream press have rightly called out President Trump on multiple occasions since he was elected, but they've also continued their previous habit of conjuring scandal where none exists, and opposing policy because they themselves don't agree with it.
The press should change, but as far as can be seen, they are unwilling to do so. What does this mean? Should the conservative press oppose the mainstream press at every turn simply because they refuse to diversify their thinking? No. One must not oppose something for the sake of opposition. The conservative media must make itself the press of intellectual honesty.
We must treasure and make sacred a commitment to absolute intellectual honesty and consistency. For some, that will be extraordinarily difficult. When a politician on "our team" is criticized, it may hurt, and we may want to rush to their defense, but we can't do that – not if the criticism is warranted. We must evaluate every situation fairly, even when it means members of "our team" are in the wrong.
Through a commitment to honesty, we, the antithesis of the mainstream press, can develop a following built not on cult-like devotion to a person or a political party, but on a devotion to the unambiguous, candid, and sometimes painful truth.
Such a process will take time, but in that time, it will be appreciated. The progressive media bubble will stay just as it is, so it's up to conservative media to attract an audience who come to us not because we are the opposition, but because we are intellectually honest and reliable.President Donald Trump may soon end the controversial DACA amnesty for almost 800,000 illegals, according to a new report in Axios.
President Trump is seriously considering ending DACA, the Obama-era policy that shields some illegal immigrants from deportation, before conservative state attorneys general file a court challenge to the program. Sources familiar with the deliberations tell Axios that Trump has made no final decision, and the White House continues to receive advice from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. Jeff Sessions strongly believes Trump should end DACA; DHS, however, has a more nuanced position, and Trump himself has said he’s sympathetic to the children helped by the program.
Read the entire article here.
The amnesty was created by former President Barack Obama in the run-up to the June 2012 election. Trump has continued the program since his inauguration, despite a 2016 campaign promise to quickly end the program. So far, almost 800,000 younger illegals — including many in their 30s and 40s — have gotten two-year work permits via the DACA amnesty.
A group of 10 state Attorneys General has said they will extend a successful lawsuit against Obama’s 2014 ‘DAPA’ amnesty to include the DACA amnesty on September 5. The lawsuit is likely to kill the DACA program because it has already ended the ‘DAPA’ amnesty for roughly 4 million parents of native-born children.
If Trump formally ends the DACA program, he can either cancel outright the outstanding 800,000 DACA work permits or else slowly wind the program down over the next two years by not renewing the two-year DACA work permits.
By ending the DACA program, Trump also gains more leverage to force the Democrats to accept passage of his very popular RAISE Act immigration and economic reform in 2018.
Pro-American immigration reformers worry Trump may trade his campaign-trail opposition to the DACA amnesty in exchange for a one-time appropriation of funding for his border wall in 2017. Under this “trinkets” scenario, Trump would agree to a deal in which Congress would establish a permanent amnesty for roughly 1.5 million current and future DACA recipients, in exchange for approving 2018 funds to build a small stretch of the border wall.
Reportedly, Trump’s top aides want a deal on DACA so that Democrats accept legislation offering tax cuts for major business interests.Parents of children killed by illegal immigrants attended a roundtable at the White House Wednesday and pleaded for the passage of laws that will hold sanctuary cities and illegal immigrants accountable.
The House of Representatives is expected to vote on two anti-illegal immigration bills by the end of the week. The two pieces of legislation, Kate’s Law and the No Sanctuary for Criminal Aliens Act, would target deported illegal immigrants who return to the U.S. and cities that ignore federal immigration detainers, respectively.
“You lost the people that you love because our government refused to enforce our nation’s immigration laws,” President Trump said at opening of the meeting with the victims’ families. “For years, the pundits, journalists, politicians in Washington refused to hear your voices, but on Election Day, 2016, your voices were heard all across the entire world. Right? You better believe it. Nobody died in vain, I can tell you.”
The family members at the roundtable went on to recount the stories of their loved ones’ deaths. One man, Juan Pina, told President Trump about how his 14-year old daughter was “murdered, strangled, stabbed, sodomized” and had her nude body thrown in an artichoke field in 1990 by a twice-deported illegal immigrant.
“I think what Mr. President is trying to do here is the best thing ever,” Pina said. “We got to put our people safe.” This was a message echoed by many of the family members present.
“I’m tired of our politicians not caring about their fellow Americans,” Mary Ann Mendoza said at the roundtable. Her son Brandon was a deputy sheriff who was killed in a car accident by an illegal immigrant drunk driver.
Two other mothers present made the point that not supporting these bills meant that legislators have “blood” on their hands.
“I’m telling you these congressmen and senators that don’t vote for these laws, the blood is on their hands for the next victim,” Michelle Root said. Her daughter Sarah was killed just hours after graduating college allegedly by an drunk illegal immigrant driver. The illegal immigrant, Eswin Meijia, was previously released after being caught by the Border Patrol and then after being arrested for Root’s murder was let out of jail when local law enforcement ignored an immigration detainer. Mejia remains a fugitive to this day.
Another “angel mom,” Sabine Durden, whose son Dominick was killed by a previously deported illegal immigrant in a drunk driving accident, agreed that the lives of victims are on the hands of people who don’t support these bills. Durden also stated that she had considered suicide as she had no family left until June 2015 when Trump mentioned illegal immigration in his announcement speech.
“I dropped to my knees,” Durden said. “It was my little sign from God.”
WATCH:In a conversation on Twitter with Fox News Channel (FNC) contributor Richard Grenell, Boston Globe reporter Bryan Bender continued the media’s double standard of slamming then-President George W. Bush’s international coalition for the Iraq War and President Obama’s current coalition for fighting the Islamic terrorist group ISIS.
Writing in a tweet addressed to Grenell, Bender stated that “Bush had no coalition” when going into Iraq. To that claim, Grenell cited how 48 countries were actually part of Bush’s “coalition of the willing” compared to the nine for President Obama’s ISIS coalition (as of Sunday morning).
Upon numerous retweets and responses to his inaccurate statement, Bender deleted the aforementioned tweet and replied to one individual that he was confused “what “war” you were talking about” and asked whether Grenell meant “at the start of the 2003 invasion or after 911?"
@beebobaby @RichardGrenell at the start of the 2003 invasion or after 911? Wasn't sure what "war" you were taking about. — Bryan Bender (@GlobeBender) September 14, 2014
Two hours after his statement about Bush, Bender attempted to end discussion on the topic by tweeting to Grenell:
@RichardGrenell Thanks for such an informative Sunday morning! My little experiment was more than I hoped for. Hope you are well out there. — Bryan Bender (@GlobeBender) September 14, 2014
Bender’s slamming of Bush was the latest such occurrence in the past week alone as Obama works to draw in countries that so far have been tepid toward participating in the arming and training of Syrian rebels and conducting air strikes against ISIS targets.
As the Media Research Center has reported, the mainstream media sharply criticized Bush’s decision of supposedly, in the words of NBC, “going it alone” into Iraq with a “unilateral force.” At the time that NBC made those statements, “18 European countries” were “part of the U.S. coalition |
our grand-total sales were in the vicinity of $1200. This leaves us with a net increase of $200. Obviously, once you figure in the cost of product, the show ended at a bit of a loss to the business long-term. BUT out of it we a) cycled out dead stock into spendable money, b) networked like crazy, and c) paid forward to the next convention and still ended with $200 extra in-pocket. Not a phenomenal surplus for the amount of work a convention requires, but enough that once all factors were considered it was worthwhile.
Wizard’s initial offer of $1245 for the same space was at base-line more than we’d earned at the previous show. While it is possible that our presence at this show would have earned us profits in that same multiple, but with the show direction being so shook up, and with the community’s general lack of enthusiasm (at best), it simply seemed like too big of a risk given our current financial situation.
This was, of course, deeply saddening, since we as a store have been growing increasingly proud of our ability to attend conventions like this and our growing presence in the convention circuit in general.
PoP!: So you’re basically resigned to not going due to the cost. That seems perfectly reasonable. At what point were you contacted directly by Wizard about coming to Mid-Ohio Con 2011?
Tony: On August 19th we received an email from Peter Katz, Vice President of Business Affairs and Development of Wizard World, Inc. In the email he indicated that “tickets for this show are selling at an extremely high rate and with the robust guest list and programming that we currently have we certainly don’t want you to miss out on this opportunity“ and “please note that because there are very few booths left we’ll be raising the retailer rates on August 26, 2011 by an additional $150 so it is critical that you get your registration forms in asap.”
Jared: The first contact for me was October 5th. We were getting ready to open the store when I got the call. The gentleman did say that he was with Wizard and did notice that we were not going to Mid-Ohio this year. I laid out the reasons that we weren’t going to the show. He then went into the “points”: That Mid-Ohio was under new management and that the show would be run differently this year. He then said the most amazing lie he could have told. He floated the idea that Mid-Ohio this year would “have as many people in attendance as New York Comic Con.” He backed this up by saying that “people in the mid-west area want to go to NYCC, but won’t be about to make it there, so they will end up going to Mid-Ohio.” I was offended because it’s mathematically impossible for Mid-Ohio’s attendance to have those kinds of numbers in one year. Mid-Ohio is a mid-level comic con. It’s bigger than most local and regional shows, but it’s in no way, as big as a NYCC and it’s going to be anytime in the near future, let alone in ONE YEAR of Wizard, or anyone else for that matter, taking control and organizing any show.
After that, it seemed like he was looking for a chink in my armor: “It’s a local show, so you should make it out. He talked up an alternate area for us to set up at, (in which he misinformed me about the price of said area. I didn’t find out about this until after Tony talked to the rep later) everything. He even informed me that they were allowing “booth babes” this year as a selling point. I assumed that he was trying to play on the stereotype that people involved in the comic industry doesn’t get the opportunity to see breasts often. I assured him that I, in fact, have been involved with breasts before and after my involvement in the comics industry.
PoP!: What was their initial offer?
Tony: That same email had attached forms indicating a $700/booth cost – with no indication of the price for corner booths. At this point I do have to admit that I erroneously believed until just a few days ago that this was the same amount that had been on the initial paperwork – and had been decrying that they’d not changed the pricing at all despite that they’d said they would. Apparently I was wrong about that point and I’m willing to eat some crow on that.
That point aside, this was still a substantial increase from the previous year – since the new paperwork didn’t indicate what the price increase would be for a corner booth, I’m forced to assume that it remains the $150 increase as advertised in the initial paperwork. In that case, that meant the same space we purchased last year would now cost $850 as opposed to $450. Add to that the thought that the prices would increase $150 if I didn’t respond within the week. This was also different from when the original paperwork had said the price changes would take place – and was the first time we’d actually heard the quoted prices or timetable.
PoP!: What reasoning was given for the price hike?
Tony: At this particular juncture, none was given at all; just the assumed “well, Wizard will run a better show, right?” mentality that had come with the original pitch at last year’s show. Later when we were receiving phone calls regarding the matter this exact sentiment was verbalized. They also explained that Adam West and Billy Dee Williams would be there and that the quality performance and guest list that Wizard brings to the table are expensive. Remembering my conversations with other retailers, I wasn’t completely swayed by the ‘branding sells itself’ argument – and as for my opinion regarding the celebrity guests, I’m certain that they’re great pulls for Wizard and won’t argue that they certainly increase attendance. However, in my experience, largely the people who come in for autographs most often already have the merch that they’re trying to get signed or are going to buy it directly from the aforementioned celebrity and then, given how much those folks had to pay for their own tables, will have often spent the majority of their funding with those celebrities and have that little left for my booth. Not that I begrudge the presence of celebrity presence, but I simply don’t have a lot of faith that being in the same room as Adam West is by definition going to double my sales – which is realistically what I need to see if I’m going to pay double booth prices.
As an alternative, they did offer an outlet section for $350. One of these tables would be in a different area of the show completely removed from the other vendors, and forbade the use of backdrops, fixtures, of any real signage as well as forbidding the sale of any items that cost over $25. While I do appreciate that they’re trying to provide options with that plan I also felt that biting on that deal would be useless for our purposes. We have too much stock variety to limit our sales like that and we’re too local to go to a show like this and not advertise like crazy (read: put up signage and fixtures). While I’m not saying that people who purchased these tables are stupid, I do feel like it would have been stupid for us.
PoP!: You declined the invite, and what happened next?
Tony: I wrote back to this original email inquiry that unfortunately the prices for this show had gone from last year’s ‘tight but affordable’ to a current ‘definitely not affordable.’ We received no response to this email and I figured the matter dropped. I even felt that I’d perhaps been ruder than necessary in my response – but frankly, I was a little miffed that I didn’t feel like this show was affordable anymore. Either way it seemed to be over.
PoP!: How many times were you contacted by Wizard in an effort to get you to come to Mid-Ohio con?
Tony: This month (October for those of you keeping score at home) we’ve received four phone calls and two more emails requesting our presence. Each time we ended up responding slightly more strongly.
PoP!: Why is that?
Tony: At first in the beginning of the month (knowing that the convention was on the 22nd of the month and was rapidly approaching) we were willing to listen to their pitch – and they did seem willing to negotiate prices a bit. I was asked to name what price point I’d be comfortable with in order to attend. I said that if they got get us in the vicinity of last year’s numbers I could consider it. When pressed for an exact number, I said if they could get me a corner booth for $500, then the show would be reasonable for me to attend. Otherwise, I simply didn’t have the blind faith that the Wizard branding was worth the increased risk. The caller responded the lowest he could reasonably go was $700 for an in-line booth (which would decrease my face-out space by half). We both then agreed that since that was more money than I was comfortable spending and that since it was a non-optimal booth space for us anyway and that fact that the store already had an event planned for that Saturday night – it didn’t look like a good fit. This was actually the second phone call from this caller. The previous having been the previous day when Jared had been told that this show was a) going to be as big as NYCC and b) would have chicks there (Chicks, dude, chicks! What’re you? A fag?)
A week to the day later he called again. He indicated that he was now able to drop the prices a little further, and once again stressed that booths were almost sold out and my opportunities were running slim. I told him that at that point, the convention being less than two weeks away, it simply wasn’t feasible. If he’d agreed to my price point the previous week – or had responded with a reasonable counter-offer I probably would have bit – but at this point it was simply too short notice. He began to question my motives: “What’s holding you back? Is it a staffing issue? Or–” At which point I cut him off and told him firmly that now the single biggest reason that we wouldn’t be attending was the fact the they couldn’t take “no” for an answer. They’d already been told “no” four times and I’d had enough – and I wasn’t particularly filled with confidence that the claims of being almost sold-out were true if they were being this persistent this close to the convention. After hanging up on him I again felt that perhaps I’d overreacted. Perhaps I’d been ruder than necessary. But I also didn’t really want to have to tell Wizard that we wouldn’t be going to their show every day until the show and I wanted to make sure that my position was clear.
Apparently it wasn’t because on the 17th we received another email from Peter Katz, VP etc. He said that he wanted to touch base and that in case we’d forgotten there were still a few tables left and if we wanted in we still could go. At my wits end, I drafted a four-page email explaining in great detail a) why we weren’t attending, b) their persistence was unwelcome and in fact offensive, and c) the extreme frustration I faced in feeling like I had to write this email in the first place. I explained in detail why it simply wasn’t feasible for us to attend this show, how frustrated I’d become with their sales practices, and went so far as to accuse them of greedy corporate expansionism. In short, I was thorough on every level I could think of. And I feel pretty confident that anybody who reads that particular email should be pretty clear on my stance. Seriously, misunderstanding my point in that particular email is not possible.
PoP!: Jared was kind enough to upload a dramatic reading of that email to YouTube. It seemed pretty clear.
Tony: The response I received was a short paragraph which nominally apologized for the caller’s persistence, ignored all of my other arguments and complaints, and invited me to come to the show so he could apologize in person. This point must be emphasized: I spent well over an hour writing a manifesto, a grand and bold statement proclaiming loudly and firmly that there was 0% chance of our attendance (and once again I felt that perhaps I’d gone too far, perhaps I’d been too rude and/or petty) – and the response was to invite me to the show.
Once again, in simpler terms;
Me: “I’m not going to your show, and I now kind of hate you”
Peter Katz: “That’s too bad, but I know how to fix it! Come to the show!”
The following morning while I was still in bed my cell phone rang: “Hello, this is James Henry from Mid-Ohio Con and I’m just calling because they asked me reach out to the retailers and -” This was the point where I completely snapped. It was less than twenty-four hours later and these jerks were waking me up to ask again! I cursed him out in as grand a method as I could possibly imagine. And I felt particularly bad about this because I remember James Henry from previous years. He’s one of the folks who used to organize the show that Wizard must have kept on staff. I’ve largely had positive experiences with him – and now here I am waking up screaming at him. This was altogether unpleasant. And I’d like to apologize to him, as I feel he was mostly thrown under the bus by his supervisors in this situation, but I’m not at all convinced that I’m capable of having a rational conversation with him about the matter anymore. That ship has sailed.
PoP!: At some point, it no longer became a matter of money. You’d made other arrangements for this weekend and tried to make that clear, yes?
Tony: Very. This year is the third annual Yellow Springs Zombie Walk for charity, and while we’re not the main driving business behind it (for that you can thank the folks at the Import House), we are tangentially involved. Obviously the subject matter is right in our wheelhouse, and Jared has obligations to be involved as his band is performing at the end of the event. There’s a lot of organization that goes into something like this both physically and mentally – and that added distraction of having to plan a high-risk convention in the middle of it all did not seem like an altogether glorious idea. Again, if we’d been able to negotiate a mutually beneficial price earlier it might have been a possibility, but less than two weeks away it simply wasn’t going to happen.
This was mentioned in all three of the phone calls the store received as well as the four-page treatise I’d written.
Jared: The fact that we had something else going on that weekend of Mid-Ohio kind of made it a done deal. I wasn’t sure why after hearing this, why they would continue to push for us to completely abandoning our current plans to go to their event. It seems pretty irresponsible to me. But as long as people go to Wizard shows, it’s fine.
PoP!: Have you contacted other stores in the area to see if they’ve had similar experiences?
Tony: Yes. To a very upsetting end. Again, to protect the innocent I’m not naming names but:
One store (that had not been in attendance last year) I spoke to didn’t even know the show was this weekend.
Another store (that had not been in attendance last year) knew the show was happening but had not been approached.
Another store (that had been in attendance in previous years) was not attending this year (for largely the same reasons), but had only been contacted twice. And neither of those times had been this month.
I really don’t know how to process this information. I didn’t really think I could get more upset about their blatant lack of professional respect – until I discovered that for some reason we were being singled out.
And this is a thing that I really don’t understand; while I’m very proud of Super-Fly, and what we’ve done in the four years we’ve been open, I’m also under no false illusions that we’re some mighty monolith store whose presence or lack-thereof will make or break this show. In the grand scheme, I’m afraid that we’re awfully small potatoes. So why, then, six increasingly desperate invitations/requests? We’ve speculated that it’s perhaps that we’ve been to Reed shows, or perhaps it’s our connection to PoP! (either in that it’s a comics news site or in that it’s populated by a bunch of ex-Wizard freelancers), but that’s complete speculation.
All I’ve been able to gather is that for some bizarre reason, Wizard has targeted Super-Fly for attendance at this show and is prepared to do what it takes to get us there… except offer reasonable price points or to stop harassing us when asked directly to stop harassing us.
PoP!: Well, I do legitimately hope we’re not in any way responsible for what you’re going through. But regardless, where do you stand now with Mid-Ohio con and Wizard in general, looking ahead?
Tony: It’s like this: originally I was prepared to sit this year out and consider next year based on what the numbers looked like and how accurate Wizard’s claims were. At this point, I’ve found myself in the position where I felt I had no other options than filing a Better Business Bureau complaint and threatening legal action. And this is just my experience with them trying to get me in the door – god knows what might go down on the show floor…
Added to this is the fact that we still cannot find any kind of vendors list to tell us who is going to be there (and you’d better believe that if I’m paying $700 for a booth I’m expecting you to advertise that I’m going to be there), and the fact that when talking to my customers about this ordeal almost none of them even knew the show was this weekend. Bonus points: I actively searched for ads for this show and could not find one. I looked in the local free paper. I looked on Newsarama, Bleeding Cool, Comics Alliance, and Panels on Pages and could not find a single ad. In fact, the only place online outside of Wizard’s own website that I found any mention of the convention at all (on a casual search – not a full in-depth search) was a website titled conventionscene.com
Now, if I’m paying $700 to come to your show to sell my wares, you’d better damn well expect that I expect you to advertise it at all.
I’m greatly saddened by this whole ordeal. It has forced me out of a local show that I really liked. It has forced me to be ruder than I want to be towards anybody multiple times. It has forced me to file my first ever BBB complaint. It has forced me to threaten legal action against a company that I previously had respected. And finally it has forced into a position where I feel I’ve no choice but to discuss this openly and publicly and quite possibly land myself on a Wizard blacklist for all of their future shows.
But in the end, if this is their continued attitude – I cannot think of any reason why I would want to give them any money ever.
Jared: While Tony was writing his first email response, we briefly contemplated if we were taking things too far. My stance was “What were they going to do: Ban us from going to the show they are begging us to go to? I personally don’t worry about any blackballing from Wizard, if that is in fact a real thing that happens in real life, simply because I don’t think Wizard can afford to exclude anyone from what they’ve shown me with their strong-arm tactics. Tony summed the whole thing up the best with a question we’ve been asking people in the store: “How many times do you need to be told ‘No’ before you get the picture?”
PoP!: We’re in a similar boat. We’ve had good times at Wizard shows in the past and I’d hate to think that telling this story could put us on a blacklist, but it’s a story I think people should hear about. Thanks for sharing it with us and good luck with the Zombie Walk this weekend.
Thanks again to Tony and Jared for sharing their story. If you’re at the show this weekend, we hope you had a great time. If not, check out the Zombie Walk. I hear there are some fine retailers setting up shop.
Filed Under: Features • Interviews • NewsActor Bradley Whitford, also known as Josh Lyman from "The West Wing," sent the following message to the White House email list this morning. Didn't get it? Sign up!
If you watched President Obama's final State of the Union speech last night, you may have a few questions. (If you missed it, just, you know, don’t tell anyone.)
What's next on combating climate change? Where will NASA's next mission take us? Will we finally build a highway strictly for wolves? Did anyone get that West Wing reference?
If you've got questions on what the President has planned for the fourth quarter of his presidency, today's the day to ask: It's Big Block of Cheese Day at the White House!
Don't know what that means? You're in luck -- in my gig on the show The West Wing, we hosted our very own day like this, so I've been around the cheese block a few times.
It's a day-long Q&A when members of the President's Cabinet, Members of Congress, senior White House officials, and special guests take to social media to talk about anything you're curious about -- well, almost anything.
Now, my character may have dreaded this day, but I love it! So much so, I may ask a few questions myself.
Join me, @WhitfordBradley, and a few others -- including my character's boss @Denis44 and his real-life boss @POTUS -- on Twitter.
It’s sure to be interesting. And if nothing else, this is your opportunity to roll out your best cheese puns.
So brie-ing your best questions for #BigBlockOfCheeseDay.
(You like that one? I thought it was pretty good.)
See you on the Twitters!
BradEngland Under-21s have added Ola Aina and John Swift to their squad for this week’s Euro Qualifiers with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Switzerland.
The Chelsea pair join Gareth Southgate’s group for the first time, with Aina linking up from the Under-20s squad and Swift arriving from his loan spell with Brentford.
Jordon Ibe will remain with Liverpool for assessment on an injury
Both Liverpool’s Jordon Ibe and Everton’s Tyias Browning remain part of the squad but have stayed with their clubs for treatment on injuries and ongoing assessment.
The squad will travel to Bosnia on Tuesday afternoon ahead of their their first game on Thursday, before returning to England and preparing for next Monday's match with Switzerland at the Amex Stadium in Brighton.
Tickets for that game cost just £10 and £5 and are on sale now, via the Brighton & Hove Albion ticket office or by calling 0844 327 1901.FRESH FACES: There’ll be a lot of new faces around the table when the legislative assembly meets to pick a government in the December. In 2011, there were 14 holdovers from the previous assembly; this time there will be eight. Only one incumbent was defeated in 2011, while eight went down on Monday night. As with the last assembly, there’s an unacceptably small number of woman, with two of 19 being elected in 2011 and 2015.
The Yellowknife Ridings: low turnout, shocking upsets and a shift to the left
by Mark Rendell
After an evening of nailbitingly close races, Yellowknife woke up Tuesday morning with a slightly more leftward lilt. Of the city’s five new MLAs, three are solidly from the progressive side of the political spectrum, while the two other new faces could be best described as liberals.
Kevin O’Reilly, an environmental activist, Caroline Cochrane, the CEO of a women’s shelter and Julie Green, a former CBC reporter, all ran on social and environmental justice and platforms. Any concern among Yellowknife’s progressive partisans that they might be left voiceless with the departure of Bob Bromley and Wendy Bisaro can be put to rest.
In Yellowknife North, voters opted for centrist Cory Vanthuyne over his left-wing opponents Dan Wong and Ben Nind. But Vanthuyne, who had a reputation for fiscal conservatism while a city councillor, is nonetheless a proponent of downtown revitalization and environmental stewardship.
It was always going to be a close race between Wong and Vanthuyne, who both left their city council seats to seek higher office. But ultimately Vanthuyne’s victory was something of a surprise. Wong ran a slick, creative campaign both online and on the ground, but it seems likely that the 14 votes by which he lost were Old Town progressive votes sapped away from him by Ben Nind, Bob Bromleys’ former constituency assistant.
In Yellowknife Centre, veteran pol Robert Hawkins’ loss by a 90-vote margin put an end to the three-election success of his campaign machine, despite its intense use of social media and solid get-out-the-vote groundwork. Hawkins’ campaign had been the subject of controversy in the final weeks, but in the end, it appears YK Centre voters, like many across the territory, were simply in the mood for change. At least that’s what Green chalked it up to, when speaking to the CBC: “In the end, people want change and that’s what I felt they got.”
In a night full of tight races and surprise upsets, the biggest Yellowknife shocker was probably in Kam Lake, where ITI and Justice minister Dave Ramsay fell to 30-year-old Kieron Testart by roughly 80 votes. The win seems to be the result of lacklustre campaigning on Ramsay’s part and smart tactics by Testart.
Testart’s initial federal run for the Liberal Party, and then shift to seeking territorial office, whether intentional or not, worked well. It gave him many months of additional media coverage and turned him from a complete unknown outside Liberal circles into a Yellowknife household name. His efforts to cost out his platform also likely appealed to business-minded Kam Lakers. Ultimately, though, it seems like voter turnout, the worst in the territory at only 25 percent, scuttled Ramsay. Testart was able to convince enough people to buy into his change-based platform and hit the polls, while Ramsay’s supporters, who had handed him overwhelming victories the last two elections, simply stayed home.
Daryl Dolynny’s loss by only 10 votes in Range Lake suggests a hard-fought battle that swung in Cochrane’s favour primarily due to a desire for change. Both candidates ran solid, slip-up free campaigns – but Cochrane, with both business experience and social justice credentials, may simply have appealed to a wider constituency. With such a slim victory margin, though, it would be a mistake to read too much into this.
The two YK incumbents who won, former premier Bob McLeod and former health and social services minister Glen Abernethy, were returned with solid leads of several hundred votes each. Newcomer Chris Clarke did little to dent Abernethy’s campaign. But Nigit’stil Norbert, the 30-year-old Indigenous woman who lit up debates with passionate arguments and pointed criticism of the status quo, did surprisingly well against one of the toughest opponents in the territory, garnering 179 votes in a riding that’s not particularly progressive. I doubt very much it’s the last time we’ll be hearing her name.
Still, despite the excitement of a night full of surprises, our democracy in Yellowknife was looking pretty frail. On average, across all seven ridings, only about 32 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. Even the highest number, 44 percent in Yellowknife North, isn’t something to brag about. Perhaps it was voter fatigue after a marathon election season, but Yellowknife’s numbers were noticeably lower than the rest of the territory’s. Something to give us pause.From Gardener's Supply (www.gardeners.com)
Specially designed fabrics, such as this All-Purpose Garden Fabric, are often used to protect against frost, but they're also effective in blocking insects (and birds) or reducing the intensity of the sun. It's a good idea to keep several types of fabric on hand. Use Super Hoops to support the fabric.
Garden fabric (also known as row cover or floating row cover) is a good addition to any gardener's tool shed because it can be used in so many ways:
Protect plants from cold and wind
Block insects and prevent spread of disease
Keep soil and plants from overheating
Garden fabric is easy to use: You can drape the cover right over garden plants or use hoops or a wooden frame to support it. Secure the edges of the fabric with soil or use Earth Staples.
Row Cover Options:
All-Purpose Garden Fabric Our All-Purpose Garden Fabric is a polypropylene garden cover that transmits 70 percent of available light. It keeps heat in, bugs out, and is an excellent windbreak for young transplants. It allows rain and overhead irrigation to reach plants and soil. All-Purpose Garden Fabric will protect plants from frost damage down to 28 degrees F. The fabric can be cut with scissors to fit over conventional-width rows or used as-is for wide-row plantings. When not being used, the material should be folded and stored away from sun and moisture. All-purpose garden fabric is a versatile row cover that provides 70% light transmission
Summerweight Fabric Summerweight Fabric is a lightweight garden cover that does not trap as much heat as the All-Purpose Garden Fabric and can be used all season to defend your crops against birds, insects, and the spread of insect-borne diseases. It transmits up to 85 percent of available sunlight and will not block rain or overhead irrigation. This cover should not be used for frost protection. Summerweight fabric forms a barrier between insects and susceptible plants but don't trap much heat.
GardenQuilt GardenQuilt is a thicker version of our All-Purpose Fabric, consisting of polypropylene fibers that transmit 60 percent of available light. GardenQuilt provides excellent frost protection (down to 24 degrees F.). The thick fabric is ideal for extending the growing season into early spring and late fall, or for insulating strawberries, herbs, perennials, small fruits, and other tender landscape plants all winter long. GardenQuilt provides frost protection down to 24 degrees F.
Shade Netting Hot, summer sun can affect the lush, moist flavor of homegrown lettuce, making it bitter; a few days of hot sun will make lettuce bolt to seed, ruining it for the season. These UV-stabilized polyethylene shade net cuts summer sun by 50 percent, while allowing cool air to circulate freely. Use fiberglass hoops to support the fabric; secure it with clothespins. Shade netting is especially useful when starting late-season crops at the end of the summer.
How to Use Garden Fabric in Spring Prepare the soil and seed the area or plant your transplants. Place the GardenQuilt or All-Purpose fabric directly on the ground or drape it over hoops. We recommend using support hoops for larger transplants, such as peppers or tomatoes, or when covering maturing crops later in the season. If you lay the row cover directly on the soil, do not stretch the material tight. Leave some slack in the center to allow for expansion as the plants develop. As the crop grows, it will push the cover up. Mound soil over the edges of the fabric to keep the cover in place or, fold the edges under 3″ and anchor it with Earth Staples by pushing them through the fabric and into the soil. Adjustable Super Hoops can be used to support all types of garden fabric.
If you are using support hoops, be sure to pull the cover taut over the hoops and bury the edges well to keep the fabric secure during windy days. You can also clip the fabric to the hoops with clothespins if wind is a problem.
Seedlings should be monitored for moisture and fertilizer needs. Pull back or remove the cover for thinning or weeding.
As the weather warms up, check your plants to make sure they're not overheating. This is especially important when it comes to cool-weather plants, such as lettuce and broccoli. Remove the cover if you see signs of overheating, such as wilting, leaf damage and/or blossom drop.
Once your seedlings have adapted to the outdoors and the threat of frost has passed, you may remove the All-Purpose Garden Fabric or GardenQuilt from the beds. For insect protection throughout the growing season, use Summerweight Fabric, which can be left in place until harvest.
Pollination — Don't Forget the Bees!
Crops such as peas, strawberries, beans, pumpkins and squash require pollination to produce a harvest. If these crops are still covered with fabric when they begin to flower, remove or temporarily lift fabric from the beds during the day to allow bees to do their work. Self-pollinating plants, such as tomatoes, can be left covered. However, be aware of the temperature under the covers. At temperatures above 85 degrees F., tomato pollen may become sterile and peppers will not set fruit. You may need to lift the covers during the day to release excess heat.
Insect Protection
Garden fabric will keep most insect pests away from your crops as long as plants are completely covered and the edges are securely pinned to the ground. They’ll block aphids, potato beetles, Japanese beetles, grasshoppers, leaf miners, cabbage worms, root maggots, and some vine borers.
Pest problems can still occur if insect eggs were laid before the fabric was applied, or insects emerge from the soil. Insects may also have been introduced when new seedlings were transplanted. A careful examination of the leaves' undersides will indicate insect activity. If an infestation has occurred, spray with an organic pesticide, or remove the infected plants. Replace covers to keep future insects out. Garden fabrics help break the life cycle of many insects and can help prevent re-infestation the following season.
Using Garden Fabrics in the Summer
Intense sunlight and hot temperatures can make it challenging to germinate new seeds, establish tender seedlings and keep cool-weather crops, such as salad greens, from bolting and becoming bitter. Covering parts of the garden with shade netting will keep soil and leaf temperatures cooler and will also cut moisture loss. Germination will improve, as will the growth of young plants. Shade netting works best when it's supported over plants by hoops or another type of support to maintain good air circulation around the plants.
Late-Season and Winter Crop Protection
In the fall, garden fabric can be draped over cold-sensitive crops, such as tomatoes or peppers. Unroll the fabric over the row and secure the edges with Earth Staples. For winter protection of tender perennials, we recommend GardenQuilt. Gardeners who experience mild winters should support covers with hoops or some other support device to keep new growth from coming into contact with the fabric. When covering tender perennials, wait until the first hard frost, then cut back any dead foliage and mulch around the plants with straw or grass clippings. Then cover the plants.
Reusing Garden Covers
Most covers will last one or two seasons. Some, such as GardenQuilt and Shade Netting, will last much longer. You can extend their life by keeping the edges pinned securely, and in windy areas, securing the fabrics tightly over hoops. When not in use, garden fabric should be folded and stored away from sun and moisture. After they become worn, you can repurpose them in many ways:MONTREAL – Thankfully, the Ambroise Oyongo saga is over.
At long last, Oyongo started training with the Montreal Impact first team – and met with the local media – on Friday morning. All smiles, the Cameroon international looked like a man on a mission. A mission to mend fences.
The last four months of Oyongo’s career have been tainted by acrimony. His agents – and himself, some reports said – just couldn’t believe the January 27 trade that took Oyongo to Montreal. Only two weeks ago, Afriksports quoted one of the agents as saying that the trade was a “skullduggery” that would earn the player “a catechist’s salary.”
On Friday, Oyongo insisted that, throughout the process, he hadn’t spoken publicly.
“I remained calm, because I knew that, if there was such a situation, it would get sorted out,” Oyongo told reporters. “If [my agent] had to say things that were a little mean – he was under pressure –, then, if I were him, I would apologize if, really, it hurt some people – MLS, or the Montreal or Red Bulls supporters. I’d say that I’m really sorry about that. You know, there are moments in life when you’re under pressure, and that’s not easy to manage.”
One thing’s for sure: this matter was complicated, with allegations of a void contract from the Cameroon Football Federation thrown in there for good measure. Oyongo didn’t address the details of the “situation,” nor did he address Afriksports’ claims that a wage increase facilitated his decision.
“It was tough getting here, because there was this situation with my contract that needed to be solved – not with the club, but with MLS, and I think that my agents sorted that out with them,” Oyongo said. “It took me here. Today, I’m here. The club needs me, and I’ll try to give everything I can, because now, I’m late.”
The Impact, throughout the process, argued that Oyongo was getting bad advice. Head coach Frank Klopas thus felt at ease to finally greet Oyongo at the Impact’s new training facilities.
Klopas was clement to Oyongo; he, too, once failed to report to Greece’s AEK Athens due to a contract situation during his twenties – an admission that elicited laughter from the assembled press.
“Whether the advice you’re getting is not right or whatever, he’s a young player,” Klopas said. “I think that’s all behind us right now. For sure, he has to come, and he has to prove himself here to the group, but he’s a humble kid with a good attitude.”
With ambition, as well. The Afriksports report also quoted Oyongo as saying that “playing in [MLS] is nothing but a stepping stone.” One of Oyongo's agents told various outlets that his client, convinced that he would be an important part of New York Red Bulls in 2015, had declined offers from Europe after last season.
Oyongo tried to put the matter to rest somewhat, arguing that any move to any club is a stepping stone.
“Right now, I’m coming here to be better,” Oyongo said. “For you to be seen, you have to play, you have to show your talent, you have to be the best. Now, certainly, there will be offers. You can choose to stay. It depends on your choice, on how you're welcomed. If |
has its own policy, as Mullens said Oregon has a four-strike policy, with the first two dealt with by education and support. The third leads to missed participation, and the fourth prompts dismissal from a team. Asked if Oregon’s policy could change with the law, Mullens said, “Again, it’s still federally illegal. There are campus policies against use. Our department policy will remain the same for now.”
The intention of this column isn’t to offer a pass to Carrington or Forde; both made immature mistakes that could cost their team the national title. (To be persnickety, marijuana possession isn’t legal in Oregon until July 1.) Offensive coordinator Scott Frost certainly didn’t excuse his players. “I think any time you put something in your body that doesn’t belong there it’s a bad decision,” Frost said.
Still, no one is sure how much marijuana each smoked to flag the test. As marijuana becomes more integrated in society, it’s probably wise for the NCAA to, well, roll with it.
“This is something that’s happening,” Baca said. “The momentum is very real. These conversations are only the beginning of conversations about marijuana use and sports. These leagues are either going to be forced to defend their policies or change them.”Late Night Kim Kardashian West on Kanye and Taylor Swift, What’s in O.J.’s Bag, and Understanding Caitlyn Kim Kardashian West has had the same job for a decade now—being Kim Kardashian, being a bombshell muse for mega-athletes and mad geniuses, being a goddamn physical marvel with curves dreamed up by God on a drunken bender—and she has never been better at it. GQ's Caity Weaver parachutes into the Kimye manse in Bel Air to find out how she keeps it up.
Kim Kardashian West's boob is so soft it makes velvet feel like splinters. It makes the fur on a baby bunny's tummy feel like a plastic bag of syringes. It is so soft that touching it is like scooping up the delicate pink dawn sky with your fingers, or holding a ball of lotion in your hand. It is softer than the thick, warm, all-enveloping smoothness that caresses a globule of wax as it travels up a lava lamp. I know this because Kim Kardashian West has just put down her passion-fruit iced tea and peeled back her sleeveless Adidas x Kanye West bodysuit so that I could place my hand on it (the boob) while we eat dinner under the furious early stars at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“Even though I'm an ass girl, Kanye always says my boobs don't get as much credit as they deserve,” Kim explained.
At the time that she invited me to touch the upper-left quadrant of her left breast, I was merely an unkempt person Kim Kardashian West had met one time. And yet, on just our second short meeting, I felt comfortable enough to ask her to “please describe what your boobs feel like.” That's how we got here.
“Really soft!” exclaimed Kim, seated primly in an out-of-the-way patio booth. She was eating half a salad. I was eating a hot dog and fries on her enthusiastic recommendation. (“I love the hot dog here,” she said with a sparkle, neglecting to mention I would have to order this item from the kids' menu.) (Real good hot dog.)
“You wanna feel?” she asked.
“Yup,” I said.
It is Kim Kardashian West's full-time job to make you feel privy to her secrets—that you are getting to see (or gently squeeze) a very special part of her enchanted world. She's the progenitor of a new kind of fame. While a celebrity, Kim doesn't have the luxury of an actor to request that her personal life remain private, because her personal life is what pays her bills. She deploys radical transparency about her life not just because she wants to, but because she has to; the continued viability of the Kim Kardashian West brand demands it. As a result, Kim is working wherever she is, whatever she happens to be doing, because being Kim is Kim's vocation. And she's very professional.
In recent years, she's gotten even better at being Kim. Things seemed to really take off for her around the occasion of her third marriage—this time to one of the most critically respected musicians of the modern era, a union that earned her cachet as an artist's muse. Kim's brand has always been unapologetically sexy—in an early Keeping Up with the Kardashians episode, she tells her sister Kourtney that she filmed her infamous sex tape “because I was horny and I felt like it”—but Kanye West's endorsement altered the public's perception. Her curves remained the same, but under Kanye's exuberant insistence, they transmuted from porny to arty. Her provocative selfies were no longer just attention-seeking; now they were also body positive.
At the time of her wedding to Kanye, Kim had already given birth to the couple's first child—a feat he touted in his remix of Beyoncé's 2013 single “Drunk in Love”: You will never need another lover / 'cause you a MILF and I'm a motherfucker. The rest of his verse is largely a testament to all the different ways and places he and Kim have sex, and a tribute to the furniture they have ruined while doing so.
This is the other element of Kim's new appeal: Marriage and motherhood didn't diminish her eroticism, but combined, they made it more palatable. Imbued it with a new élan, even. (It's difficult to slut-shame a 30-something mother of two when the man nuzzling her neck in photos is her husband.) It was as if, by fulfilling societal expectations of marriage and motherhood, Kim finally earned the right to take off all her clothes. Settling down allowed her to turn up.
To the outside world, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West seem very much in love. In their own private world, they seem even more so—obsessively so. Over dinner, I pressed her to describe one habit of hers that bugs her husband, and after struggling for nearly a full minute, she pulled out her phone to call him and ask. Kanye picked up immediately, as if he had been waiting for the call.
“Hey babe,” she said. “I'm doing an interview, and I just want to know what I do to drive you crazy. Because I can't think of anything that I could possibly do that drives you crazy.”
Kim and Kanye floundered for what can only be described as an excruciating amount of time, totally unable to think of one goddamn thing she does that drives him crazy. Kim offered suggestions: She moves his clothes. She chastises his messiness. She disagrees with him about what outfits she should wear. None of it drives him crazy. While Kanye tried to think of something on the other end of the line, Kim smothered a cracker with butter and popped it into her mouth. The waiting was boring. It was eerie. It was like, really? Finally, nearly two minutes into the call, a breakthrough: Sometimes a designer will e-mail Kim a sketch of an ensemble and Kanye will request to see it; on occasion Kim forgets to forward the e-mail, so Kanye must ask again and again. This drives him crazy.
“Okay,” she said. “Bye!”
According to Kim and Kanye, the only thing Kim does that drives Kanye crazy is something so over-the-top luxurious, yet oddly infinitesimal, that no one else on the planet could possibly share this problem. What did you expect them to say?
“All my friends and my sisters say, ‘You guys are so perfect for each other. There's no one that would want to sit in your closet for hours with you and try on clothes.’ ”
This winter, Kim Kardashian West's husband briefly upended her meticulously constructed tableau vivant of prosperous marital bliss by announcing to the world that he was “53 million dollars in personal debt.” He's probably not. But it is true that last year she landed the No. 33 spot on *Forbes'*s list of highest-paid celebrities, while he failed to crack the top 100. Kanye might be the artistic genius in the family, but Kim is the CEO.
I have tagged along with Kim to the part of her life most conventionally identifiable as work: a meeting. This one's for her paid app, Kim Kardashian West Official App. We are in West Hollywood, in the sunny conference room of a Lego-red office building. If you took The New York Times, made every single article, op-ed, picture, and letter to the editor about Kim Kardashian West, turned the production values up to 10,000, strained out 90 percent of the text, and sealed it behind a hermetic paywall, the result would be Kim Kardashian West Official App. Unlike her other app, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood (which is a game), or her other other app, KIMOJI (which gives customers access to more than 500 Kim-themed emojis and GIFs), Kim Kardashian West Official App is a true mobile repository of all things Kim: her beauty tips, her fashion tips, her photos, her memories, her street style, and also “Currently,” a status update-like feature in which Kim expresses herself in participle form. Together these apps generate revenue projected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars—money that dwarfs Kim's E! paycheck.
Think about that: Kim has so thoroughly monetized the very act of living that the money she earns from being filmed going about her life constitutes a relatively small sum compared with the one she generates from allowing people to see pictures and cartoon drawings of the life she has already filmed. She has figured out how to spin the mundanity of being herself—something billions of people do every day for free—into a more lucrative business than being the most famous rapper in the world.
A large portion of Kim's waking hours is spent picking things out. Is it hard? Harder than not doing it. This process is known as “approvals”; it is slightly more difficult than choosing an appetizer off a lunch menu and considerably less difficult than harnessing the neutron source californium-252 to minesweep a tract of land, yet Kim does it with the precision of someone engaged in either task.
Kim begins flipping through a binder of photos, choosing ones to include in the approximately 14 billion collages (Kim loves collages) on her app, covering every page in a rash of approval hieroglyphs. This continues for nearly an hour, her face betraying no more emotion when she scrawls a giant X on a photo of herself on her wedding day cuddling her child than when she draws one over a retail image of a one-piece swimsuit. “Not that one,” she murmurs liltingly, as if singing a song about not that one. “Not that one, not that one.”
Next it's time to review a video for the app, in which she and a group of girlfriends (including her sisters) played a game of Fuck, Marry, Kill using combos of various celebrities. (Kim would Fuck Jimmy Kimmel but Marry Jason Priestley.) Everything was going well, approved, approved, approved, until the presidential round: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush.
In the past, Kim has identified as a “liberal Republican,” fiscally conservative but socially progressive. She told me she now votes Democrat (“As I've grown up, I decided what I think is best for me instead of what my parents would have voted for”) and plans to vote for Hillary Clinton.
On-screen, we watch Kim's friend Malika: “I'm marrying Barack, I'm fucking Bill, and I'm killing George.”
“But I love George,” Kim says quietly on the video.
“OH…” Back in the conference room, every face blanches and Kim pauses the video.
“Wait, can I say that?” Kim asks, studying the expressions in the room. “I don't know if I should edit that out.”
“I think you should edit that out,” someone advises.
“With Kanye's history with George…,” Kim says, trailing off.
Solutions are offered. They could cut the president section entirely or remove just that line. “I love George, though,” Kim says sadly. “I just think he's cute. Like a cute little president.... And the [Bush] kids sent us a baby gift. Let me think about it.”
A few days later, the video goes live on Kim's app, with that line removed. The cute little president was not approved.
Because Kim Kardashian West's entire existence serves as a source of cross-platform entertainment, it might be helpful to think of those places she visits most often as “sets.” Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's 11,000-square-foot Bel Air home is the set where the bulk of her Snapchat videos are recorded. (Her mother's home, in Calabasas, is the set most recognizable to TV viewers; although Kim is frequently depicted hanging out in the kitchen, she no longer lives there.)
Kim's house is less secluded and private than you'd imagine. Rather, it's just one easily-walk-up-to-able house in a honeycomb of cul-de-sacs of easily-walk-up-to-able houses, all surrounded by a carefully guarded community gate. The neighborhood functions as a sort of free-range pen for celebrities to wander around in without hurting themselves or anyone else; within those confines, it's an absolute free-for-all. Recently, her neighbor Gordon Ramsay swung by and helped her play a prank on her chef. (They told him he was fired.) Another neighbor crashed the private baby shower she hosted for her friend, the supermodel Chrissy Teigen. (Kim said diplomatically that she believed the uninvited guest—Stevie Wonder—“wanted to stop by to say hi to John [Legend] and Chrissy.”)
Inside, the house is serene and church-like in its soft echoes, though the walls are adorned with nightmarish paintings by George Condo, the artist who made Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album art. It's also faintly sweet-smelling. The day I visited, the pink and magenta roses covering a bench that Kanye had given Kim for Mother's Day were just starting to wilt.
Kim and I sat down in the living room on one of two matching white couches, both massive enough to accommodate a giants' orgy. (“I know, right?” Kim said when I noted their preposterous size.) I wanted to know about Caitlyn Jenner—or, more specifically, how the family prepped (as a cast) to reveal her stepfather's gender transition to the world.
When Kim was 21, she told me, “I walked in on Bruce” wearing women's clothing in the family garage, “and I went over to Kourtney's, and Kourtney was the only person that I told. We had no idea what it meant. So we went and Googled stories and found this, like, Oprah episode of this girl who had gone through a transition. But we still didn't know a lot.” Ahead of season ten's “About Bruce” special, they enlisted help. “We did meet with someone a few times when Caitlyn was—[when] that was what was going to happen. A counselor that taught us terminology—explained things to us.”
Suddenly, Kim's daughter, North, almost 3, walked into the living room, back from a trip to the park, clad in a cowgirl costume worn over purple pajama pants.
“I'm making purple noodles,” explained North, mostly to herself, throwing her small body over the couch, her arms collapsed in front of her, as of someone who has spent all day making purple noodles and now is exhausted.
“What are purple noodles, silly girl?” Kim asked.
“I'm good,” said North to the cushion.
“You want to take a nap in Mommy's bed?” Kim asked, rubbing her back.
North did not. She wanted to take a nap on top of her mother.
“Okay,” said Kim. “But I still have to talk, okay?”
In one fluid motion, Kim maneuvered the floppy toddler into a sheltered cuddle, positioning North's head behind her ear.
Madonna-and-child tendencies aside, the real-life Kim has slightly sharper edges than her celebrity character. She's frighteningly organized: She tells me that before bed she deletes every single text message and e-mail from her phone, unless it's something she still needs to respond to. Her go-to sense of humor is dry irony, used sparingly.
The week I met with her was a particularly scrutinized time, even by Kardashian Panopticon standards. If you have never seen any of the 162 episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians—or watched helplessly as some combination of the eldest sisters “take” the Hamptons (Khloé and Kourtney), New York (Kim and Kourtney), or Miami (Kim—or Khloé—and Kourtney)—you probably assume the general plot is as follows: Family members ham their way through staged situations, reacting to artificial drama with the subtlety of Kabuki theater. The show is 85 percent that. But the other 15 percent deals with unusual (for TV) candor about marital cataclysms, transgender identity issues, cycles of substance abuse, and the effects of crippling depression on the self and the family. Keeping Up with the Kardashians has done much more to raise awareness of the Armenian genocide than Mad Men ever did, and Mad Men is an Emmy-winning drama no one was embarrassed to admit they watched.
A few days before Kim and I sat down, a peripheral Kardashians personage named Blac Chyna (a model, dancer, eyelash-salon owner, and former friend of Kim's, née Angela White), who had previously had a son with Tyga (a rapper, né Micheal Stevenson), who was widely believed to be the current boyfriend of Kim's youngest sibling, Kylie Jenner, had just announced she was pregnant with the child of Kim's younger brother, Rob Kardashian, making any subsequent children born between the foursome a little more than kin and less than kind. (Also, Chyna had reportedly taken steps to trademark the name “Angela Renee Kardashian,” which would insinuate her not only into the family but also into the lucrative family enterprise.)
The family's collective response to this news remained largely inscrutable—it took several days for word to bleed out that Kylie and Tyga had split weeks earlier—possibly because they wanted to preserve the reveal of their emotions for episode three of their TV show (“Significant Others and Significant Brothers”), filmed months before, in which they begin to make peace with Rob and Chyna's relationship.
Whatever the family's prior feelings about the sudden engagement of its most reclusive member—the only Y chromosome in an avalanche of X's; the only one capable of carrying on the family name—the message when we meet is clear: Family love Chyna now.
“We're all on board,” Kim declares. “We definitely see that my brother is happy and getting healthy, and whatever gets him to that place, you know, we're happy for him. Chyna's a sweet girl, and I think we all have so many things going on in our lives that we just want my brother to be happy. Has there been so many crazy things that happened? Yes. Is the whole situation, you know, just…? I think people want to feel like we're all beefing and have this crazy fight, and we're really not. I think the drama naturally follows us.”
So, at this moment in time, the Kardashians, who are very busy with a lot of things going on, are definitely allowing for the possibility that they are happy that Rob is happy, if indeed he is, despite the additional level of scrutiny his slightly incestuous choice of partner has brought upon all of them. Okay.
How does it feel, I ask Kim, to hear your husband rap about having sex with other women?
“That doesn't bother me at all,” she answers with a laugh so winning even the Russian judge would give her a 10 out of 10. “I'm usually sitting there in the studio when he's writing it. I'm not offended. I could care less.”
It's a rare brush-off, and the message is clear: Kim didn't fly all the way to Italy to stand next to a wall of flowers inside a 16th-century military fortification just to marry some guy from Chicago. She signed on to marry Kanye West, the volatile creative genius, a man famous for telling very vivid stories about his sex life in rhyme. She did that on purpose.
Which brings us to the time he rapped about Taylor Swift.
I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, West muses in the first verse of his The Life of Pablo track “Famous.” Why? I made that bitch famous.
Prior to Pablo, West and Swift appeared to have caulked up the rift in their famously fraught professional relationship. She presented him with an award at the MTV VMAs last summer. He sent her a large cube of flowers. Things remained harmonious for almost a full half year, until the release of “Famous.”
Following an Internet-borne convulsion about the song's content, West issued a series of tweets in which he stated he “called Taylor and had a hour long convo with her about the line,” that she “thought it was funny,” “gave her blessings,” and even “came up with” the lyric. A representative for Swift quickly released a statement crisply denying West's claim: “Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, ‘I made that bitch famous.’ ” A day after the album's release, Swift accepted the Grammy for album of the year for 1989, and one portion of her speech—“I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments, or your fame...”—was widely interpreted as a dig at West.
Kanye and Taylor (or Kanye and Taylor's rep) may both be telling the truth here—as they see it. Maybe the duo talked “sex” but not “bitch.” Maybe he misinterpreted her noncommittal politeness as implicit accord. Maybe they both hung up pleased they were finally on the same page.
But Kim says Taylor's deep emotional wound is nonsense—okay, she says it's a lie—and that there's video proof, because a videographer was actually filming their phone call. Why? Because Kim's husband commissions videographers to film everything when he's recording an album, for posterity (and possibly, one day, a documentary). And this is where it gets sticky.
“She totally approved that,” Kim says, shaking her head in annoyance. “She totally knew that that was coming out. She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn't. I swear, my husband gets so much shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved.” Kim is on a roll now, speaking faster and more animatedly than at any other point during our time together. “What rapper would call a girl that he was rapping a line about to get approval?”
Let's stipulate here that Kim Kardashian West is not the kind of person who forgets that the tape-recorder light is blinking. But just because a rant is carefully chosen for its audience doesn't mean it isn't genuine.
Swift, Kim insists, “totally gave the okay. Rick Rubin was there. So many respected people in the music business heard that [conversation] and knew. I mean, he's called me a bitch in his songs. That's just, like, what they say. I never once think, [gasping] ‘What a derogatory word! How dare he?’ Not in a million years. I don't know why she just, you know, flipped all of a sudden.… It was funny because [on the call with Kanye, Taylor] said, ‘When I get on the Grammy red carpet, all the media is going to think that I'm so against this, and I'll just laugh and say, ‘The joke's on you, guys. I was in on it the whole time.’ And I'm like, wait, but [in] your Grammy speech, you completely dissed my husband just to play the victim again.”
Were they in touch after that?
“No. Maybe an attorney's letter she sent saying, ‘Don't ever let that footage come out of me saying that. Destroy it.’ ”
She sent one?
“Yeah.”
I ask Kim how Taylor Swift's people could have known about the footage, if Swift didn't even realize she was being recorded in the first place. Kim tells me she isn't sure, but she thinks someone from Team Kanye might have called someone from Team Taylor.
“And then they sent an attorney's letter like, ‘Don't you dare do anything with that footage,’ and asking us to destroy it.” She pauses. “When you shoot something, you don't stop every two seconds and be like, ‘Oh wait, we're shooting this for my documentary.’ You just film everything, and whatever makes the edit, then you see, then you send out releases. It's like what we do for our show.”
GQ later contacted Kanye's reps to inquire about the possible video footage and threat of legal action from Swift's team. While Team Kanye asserted that Kanye and Taylor's conversation had been filmed and that they had heard from her lawyers, they declined to provide further proof.
A spokesperson for Taylor Swift declined to directly answer questions seeking clarification on the matter and instead provided the following statement, printed here in radiant completeness:
“Taylor does not hold anything against Kim Kardashian as she recognizes the pressure Kim must be under and that she is only repeating what she has been told by Kanye West. However, that does not change the fact that much of what Kim is saying is incorrect. Kanye West and Taylor only spoke once on the phone while she was on vacation with her family in January of 2016 and they have never spoken since. Taylor has never denied that conversation took place. It was on that phone call that Kanye West also asked her to release the song on her Twitter account, which she declined to do. Kanye West never told Taylor he was going to use the term ‘that bitch’ in referencing her. A song cannot be approved if it was never heard. Kanye West never played the song for Taylor Swift. Taylor heard it for the first time when everyone else did and was humiliated. Kim Kardashian's claim that Taylor and her team were aware of being recorded is not true, and Taylor cannot understand why Kanye West, and now Kim Kardashian, will not just leave her alone.”
In 2016, the Kardashian family received a distinction typically reserved for iconic American brands like Batman, Star Wars characters, and Abraham Lincoln: a prequel. Theirs came in the form of FX's retelling of the O. J. Simpson trial, in which Kim's father, Robert Kardashian, played a dramatic role.
For the record, Kim (and Kanye) “loved” The People v. O.J. Simpson. She was especially exuberant in her praise of Friends star David Schwimmer, who portrayed her late father.
“There were times I was watching it and I was like, ‘Oh shit, this is dead-on,’ ” said Kim. “Like, ‘That looks like my dad. It feels like my dad.’ It was eerie to watch sometimes.”
Simpson's murder trial began in the fall of Kardashian's freshman year at Marymount High, an all-girls Catholic school in Bel Air. She and her elder sister, Kourtney, once skipped class to sit in on a court session; the focus that day was the ins and outs of alarm codes and security systems. Her father, who died of esophageal cancer in 2003, was brought on to Simpson's defense team at the behest of Simpson's lawyer Robert Shapiro, even though his field was entertainment law and, at the time of O.J.'s arrest, Kardashian had not practiced for two decades; in the interim, Kardashian had launched a business called Movie Tunes, responsible for supplying theaters with the movie trivia and music that used to run on screens between films.
“I know people said at the time that he [joined Simpson's defense team] so he couldn't be called as a witness, because he had that Louis Vuitton bag that supposedly had the [murder] weapon and stuff like that,” said Kim. The day the victims' bodies were discovered, Kardashian was filmed removing what The New York Times referred to as a “bulging” garment bag from Simpson's house; the bag was later introduced into evidence empty. “But that bag was sitting at my dad's house. I remember I went through it. The news was like, ‘Where is this Louis Vuitton bag?’ And I'm like, ‘Oh, it's upstairs.’ ”
Did you really go through it?
“Totally.”
What was in it?
“Just toiletries and clothes and golf clothes. Just random stuff. I'm pretty sure it's, like, still in—probably in my dad's storage.”
Over the course of *The People v. O.J. Simpson'*s ten-episode arc, the Kardashian kids were conveniently shoehorned into a handful of scenes, their current renown apparently justifying a slight refocusing of the historical lens. (The children of prosecutor Marcia Clark, whose personal life was a vital part of the series, remained largely absent.) Kim was less enthusiastic about her and her siblings' portrayal.
“I don't think those parts were accurate,” she says. “I think our ages were off and our looks were off.” Also: “[The show] said [O.J.] tried to kill himself in my bedroom and it was Khloé's bedroom, not my bedroom.”
The thing about Kim it's ignoble to admit is that not only does she live the American Dream; she has also managed to re-invent it. Fame found her a few years shy of 30, when she lived in a modest condo and her full-time job was helping to run a small clothing store with her sisters. Less than a decade later, she's one half of one of the most famous couples on earth, a glamorous poster child for a post-racial future, an ex-club kid who's made being a teetotaling homebody aspirational. If you bristle at the designation, remember: Someone who lives the American Dream is not, strictly speaking, an American hero. They're just someone who turned less into more. And who among us could have taken Kim's tools—murder, a sex tape, spray tanner, and an ass that simply refuses to quit—and accomplished more?
As I prepared to leave her home, I joked that I hoped I'd remembered to turn on my recorder before beginning our conversation. “If you didn't, don't worry,” Kim whispered. “I remember everything.”
I believe her.
Caity Weaver is a GQ writer and editor.Snowflake wants to be bigger than Britney. She’s halfway there at least…(Picture: YouTube)
Chances are you haven’t heard of Hungarian singer Snowflake – but she’s aiming for superstardom, and she’s got Britney Spears in her sights.
In fact the 26-stone, 6ft 1 inch pop diva is so keen to emulate Ms Spears that she’s even gone so far as to don a sequinned bodystocking exactly like the one Brit wore in the Toxic video to further her bid for chart stardom.
She can be seen wearing it in the video for her new single My Mission Is You – which sees Snowflake don a series of tight, shiny and sparkly things as she beds a superhero, does a spot of twerking and sings up a storm.
Seriously. Take a look at this:
Oh and if that’s not enough Snowflake for you, then how about her 2014 single Simply Hot?:
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The 34-year-old, who hails from Budapest, has said that she hopes her size will help her to stand out from the pack.
‘I think I look like Britney after she’s had her fifteenth child,’ Snowflake said.
The singer dons a range of outfits in the video for My Mission Is You – including this striking little number (Picture: YouTube)
‘In show business everybody has a perfect body and is photoshopped to be flawless – they are so far from reality.
‘I’m something new and I think being a bigger singer will help me as it’s really hard to stand out nowadays.
‘It helps if you have a special feature that makes you easy to remember.’
She’s not wrong there.
Snowflake – who takes her stage name from the dolphin in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective – was originally discovered at a casting for a Hungarian comedy, with the director encouraging her to take singing lessons.
However her English is still limited, meaning she has to learn all of her song lyrics by heart.
Not that this has held her back, with the singer winning herself a host of new fans in the wake of her new video.
‘I’ve got some very strange mail since it came out,’ she admitted. ‘Lots of marriage proposals, some weirdos and a lot of really sweet guys and girls.
‘I also saw a lot of nasty and hostile comments as well – but I know I can be shocking to some.’
MORE: Britney Spears nixes Las Vegas shows after falling over on stage
MORE: Britney Spears is ‘slowly’ working on a new albumUC Irvine says fried chicken and waffle dinner on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was insensitive
The meal was served on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the first day of UC Irvine's three-day symposium in honor of the civil rights leader. Student organizations complained that the menu was insensitive.
UC Irvine student Ricardo Sparks, the 20-year-old co-chairman of the university's Black Student Union, lodged a formal complaint with the administration.
The culinary choices were made without any university oversight, Lawhon said.
The menu and a sign in the dining hall reading "MLK Holiday Special: Chicken and Waffles" were pulled together at the last minute by a chef and other cafeteria staff members, said UC Irvine spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon.
MLK Day menu: In the Jan. 27 LATExtra section, an article on complaints about a UC Irvine dining hall's menu of fried chicken and waffles on Martin Luther King Day incorrectly referred to "the late Dick Gregory." Gregory, 78, remains active as a commentator and performer.The meal was served at Pippin Commons on Jan. 17, the first day of UC Irvine's 28th annual Martin Luther King Jr. symposium. The theme of the three-day campus event was "Uniting Our Voice for Change." Past speakers have included Julian Bond, the late Dick Gregory and the late Yolanda King, the civil rights leader's daughter.
A last-minute decision to serve fried chicken and waffles at a campus dining hall in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. was a regrettable choice and lacked sensitivity, UC Irvine officials acknowledged Wednesday.
Sparks said the decision's insensitivity has outraged the student union and other ethnic student organizations on campus.
"It's just another in a long line of small events on our campus that aren't meant to be taken in a certain way, but are at least questionable in their cultural legitimacy," said John Murillo III, director of communications for the Black Student Union.
That the incident occurred during the symposium was especially disappointing, Murillo said.
"It takes all the radicalism and activism that we tried to do with the symposium and then [the cafeteria] serves chicken and waffles and takes away from all the stuff that we did," Murillo said.
Officials at UC Irvine agreed Wednesday that serving chicken and waffles on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was not in "good taste."
Lawhon said the menu's intention was to offer comfort food for students in conjunction with the holiday.
"But it probably wasn't the most sensitive thing," she said.
Thomas Parham, vice chancellor of student affairs, tried unsuccessfully to schedule a meeting with Sparks and another student who had filed a complaint, Lawhon said. Sparks said he had waited to respond until he rallied other students to attend to meeting.
University officials said they are trying to set up a meeting with Sparks and other critics for next week.
The chef has not been disciplined, Lawhon said, and it was unclear if any action would be taken in the future.
Officials with Aramark Corp., which provides dining services for student housing, said they would conduct cultural sensitivity training for all managers and chefs.
Sparks and other students alleged that racially inappropriate incidents have been dealt with lightly in the past.
"I understand people have prejudice and ignorance," Sparks said. "But this is out in the community and nobody is saying anything about it."
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thinly detailed plot about Duke covering the Mint 400 motorcycle in Las Vegas, but the assignment feels more like background noise than an integral part of the story. What we do get is a series of episodes filled to the brim with stunning visuals, vaudevillian antics, peculiar interactions, and drug-fueled chaos. Moreover, as we move from place to place and trip to trip, the film never stops moving and changing, making each moment different and more intense than the last. Another rule of screenwriting is that every scene should have a clear objective and obstacle for the characters, and in a weird way, we get that, though usually the obstacle is whatever drug the duo recently consumed, and the objective is sometimes just getting to the other side of the room.
"You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug."
WHY WE'RE SATISFIED:
"A drug person can learn to cope with things like seeing their dead grandmother crawling up their leg with a knife in her teeth. But no one should be asked to handle this trip."
After an upsetting descent into madness followed by a high speed race against time to get Dr. Gonzo to his flight, Raoul Duke comments on his companion. "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." Back in his shambles of a hotel room, Duke continues an earlier reflection on the high and beautiful wave of the mid-sixties, focusing now on the consequences of the aftermath. The disciples of the Acid Culture used drugs and partying to broaden their horizons and inject themselves with instant happiness, but to not consider the consequences of ignoring real life and assuming all will just work out in the end was to write one's own death warrant. As he speeds down the open highway back to Los Angeles, there's a sense that Duke is less mournful of a time long past and more relived to have survived it and optimistic to delve into the next chapter of the strange and magical human experience.
Gilliam liked that revealing Johnny Depp as bald "took away his f*ckability."
WHY WE REMEMBER:
"There was only one road back to L.A.- U.S. Interstate 15. Just a flat-out high speed burn through Baker and Barstow and Berdoo. Then onto the Hollywood Freeway and straight on into frantic oblivion. Safety. Obscurity. Just another freak in the freak kingdom."
Understandably, the chaotic nature of FEAR AND LOATHING can be a huge point against the film for first time viewers, as it just feels to some like sensory overload without a sense of direction. The real reward comes on repeat viewings, where details, jokes, and philosophies reveal themselves or come more clearly into focus. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that Terry Gilliam, along with fellow screenwriters Tony Grisoni, Alex Cox, and Tod Davies, stay true to the oblique and fantastical nature of Hunter S. Thompson's book, never giving us the satisfaction of feeling comfortable or like we really understand what the hell is going on. Gilliam and the production team even go so far as to use Ralph Steadman's original illustrations as inspiration for the look and feel of the film, adding to the undercurrent of paranoia and unease boiling beneath what- in the wrong hands- could have just been a buddy road trip stoner comedy. Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro throw everything they have into their respective roles, leaving no trace of ego or reservation on the screen, and the revolving door of cameos, including Tobey Maguire, Cameron Diaz, Christina Ricci, Gary Busey, Ellen Barkin, Craig Bierko, Michael Jeter, Mark Harmon, Penn Jillette, Flea, Harry Dean Stanton, Laraine Newman, Christopher Meloni, and Hunter S. Thompson himself help make their scenes fun and memorable. The works of Hunter S. Thompson have also been adapted into the less well-received WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM and THE RUM DIARY, but FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS will undoubtedly be the standard by which all other Thompson adaptations are judged for years to come.
Thoughts? What else worked for you? What didn't? Strike back below!
If you have any movies you'd like to see put under the microscope, let us know below or send me an email at [email protected]."Look What You Made Me Do" is a song recorded by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on August 24, 2017 by Big Machine Records as the lead single from her sixth studio album Reputation (2017). Swift wrote and produced the song with her co-producer Jack Antonoff. "Look What You Made Me Do" is an electroclash and pop song,[2] with lyrics about various issues that built Swift's reputation. Right Said Fred band members Fred Fairbrass, Richard Fairbrass, and Rob Manzoli are also credited as songwriters, as it interpolates the melody of their song "I'm Too Sexy" (1991).
The song broke a string of records, including the record for the most plays in a single day on Spotify. Commercially, "Look What You Made Me Do" has topped the charts in Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It has also received Platinum certifications in Australia, Canada, Italy, Sweden and the United States. It also received Diamond certification in Brazil.
The song received a mixed response from music critics. Its music video was directed by Joseph Kahn and upon its release on YouTube, it attained the most views in its first 24 hours of release, more than any other music video on the site at that time.[3] The record was then overtaken by BTS with their song "Idol"[4] and Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next" in 2018.
Promotion and release [ edit ]
On August 23, 2017, Swift announced that the first single from her upcoming sixth album, titled Reputation, would come out the following night.[5] The song was released to streaming services on August 24,[6] and earned over eight million streams within twenty-four hours of its Spotify release, breaking the record for the highest first-day streaming for a single track.[7] The record was surpassed in 2018 by Drake's "God's Plan".[8] "Look What You Made Me Do" was then released the next day onto iTunes for digital download through Big Machine Records[9] and onto Italian contemporary hit radio[10] before a United Kingdom radio release on August 26, 2017.[11] It impacted American contemporary hit radio three days afterwards.[12] A CD single release followed in Germany on October 27, 2017.[13]
A lyric video heavily based on the Saul Bass imagery used in the film Vertigo was released through Swift's official Vevo account on August 25, 2017.[14] The video was produced by Swift and Joseph Kahn.[15] It gained more than 19 million views during its first 24 hours on YouTube, surpassing "Something Just like This" by The Chainsmokers and Coldplay as the most viewed lyric video within that time period.[16] As of October 2018, the lyric video on YouTube has amassed over 100 million views.
Composition and lyrical interpretation [ edit ]
"Look What You Made Me Do" runs for 3 minutes and 31 seconds.[9] Music critics have described the track as a hybrid of electroclash and pop,[2] as well as a dance-pop[17] and an electro-pop song.[14] It emphasizes the blame that is placed on an enemy, in particular the line "I've got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined". The middle eight of the song features Swift saying, "I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now / Why? / Oh, 'cause she's dead!"[citation needed] "Look What You Made Me Do" is performed in the key of A minor with a tempo of 128 beats per minute.[18] Swift's vocals span from G 3 to F 5.[18]Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone noted a "nightmarish aesthetic" present in the song, and believed it to be a continuation of the "antagonistic persona" from "Bad Blood".[17] Richard Fairbrass, Fred Fairbrass and Rob Manzoli, the members of the British dance-pop group Right Said Fred, are credited as songwriters because the song interpolates the melody of their song "I'm Too Sexy".[19][20] According to Fred Fairbrass, he and his brother were contacted one week before the release of "Look What You Made Me Do" and were asked whether a "big, contemporary female artist who hasn't released anything for a while" – whose identity they were not told – would be able to use a portion of their song for her latest single.[21] Although the brothers agreed to a deal, they did not officially find out that the artist in question was Swift until the morning after the song was released, but had deduced that it was her based on the description they were given.[21] Both of the Fairbrass brothers said that they enjoyed "Look What You Made Me Do"; Fred Fairbrass told Rolling Stone, "I like the cynical aspect of the lyric, because 'I'm Too Sexy' is a cynical song, and I think she channeled that quite well."[21] A representative for Swift confirmed that the song interpolated the melody from "I'm Too Sexy", but did not include sampled audio from the earlier song.[22]
Critical reception [ edit ]
"Look What You Made Me Do" received mixed reviews from critics.[23][24][25] USA Today said that the polarizing reaction to the song illustrated Swift's position as a "ubiquitous cultural force".[26] The Telegraph Randy Lewis praised the song, deeming Swift and Antonoff's work as "blowing past the production clichés of clap tracks and hiccuped syllabic hooks that have proliferated across Top 40 fare in recent years with boldly inventive textures and fresh melodic, rhythmic and sonic accents". He also added how the track musically and sonically shifted alongside the lyrics.[27] Sarah Carson of the Los Angeles Times wrote a positive review of the song, saying: "The reverberating crescendo builds and ever more delicious is the wickedness of Swift's menacing protagonist", praising Swift for her successful embrace of the villain character the media has portrayed her as previous to the song's release.[28] Variety's Chris Willman also praised Swift's embrace of a darker-styled pop music and the stylistic conflict between the song's pre-chorus and chorus.[29] Mark Harris, in New York magazine's pop culture blog, thought of Swift's song as a pop art anthem for the Trump era in how she reappropriates her public feuds as empowering badges of honor without acknowledging her own responsibility or blame.[30]
However, the single received more criticism than her previous lead singles. Maura Johnston of The Guardian wrote a negative review of the song, faulting the "sloppy" lyrics and blaming Swift for not giving a clear context in the lyrics.[14] Lindsay Zolad of The Ringer said "Unleashed on a deeply confused public late Thursday night, the song is a strange collage of retro reference points: mid-aughts Gossip Girl placement pop, the soundtrack to Disney's live-action Maleficent, and — yes, really — Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy, except devoid of the self-effacing humor and wit. Yes, the new Taylor Swift song just made me compliment Right Said Fred." Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone believed that the song marked a continuation of the feud between Swift and rapper Kanye West; the latter had previously name-dropped Swift in his song "Famous" by using the line, "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? / I made that bitch famous". The single was noted as being a darker, angrier work than what Swift had done before.[17][31] Hugh McIntye of Forbes was critical of the change in style, saying that it "didn't sound like [Swift]" and that it "may have some kinks to work out".[2] Meaghan Garvey from Pitchfork referred to it in a review as "a hardcore self-own" track.[32]
Chart performance [ edit ]
In the United States, "Look What You Made Me Do" debuted at number seventy-seven on the Billboard Hot 100, powered by its first three days of airplay.[33] It also sold slightly under 200,000 digital copies within its first day of sales in the country, where it became the fastest selling download since Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You".[34] One week later, the song ascended from No. 77 to No. 1 on the Hot 100 after its first full week of tracking, becoming the fifth largest rise to the top position and Swift's fifth number-one single in the United States. It ended the 16-week reign of "Despacito". It also topped the nation's Streaming Songs chart with 84.4 million streams, becoming its most streamed song within a week by a female artist and second overall behind the 103 million that Baauer's "Harlem Shake" gained in 2013. The track also had more weekly streams in the US than any other song in 2017. The song stayed atop the charts for three consecutive weeks, tying with American rapper Cardi B's "Bodak Yellow" as the longest running female at the number one spot on the charts in 2017. With 353,000 copies sold in its first week, "Look What You Made Me Do" opened atop the US Digital Songs chart and had the country's biggest sales opening since Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop the Feeling!" in 2016 as well as the best weekly sales for a song by a female artist since Adele's "Hello" in 2015. The track also became the country's first number-one song with a female artist since Halsey was featured on "Closer" by The Chainsmokers and the first song with a female lead artist since Sia's "Cheap Thrills" with Sean Paul (both in 2016). It additionally was the first solo song by a female to top the US charts since Adele's "Hello".[35] It remained atop the Hot 100 and Streaming Songs charts for a second week with 114,000 copies sold and 61.2 million streams, though descended to number two on the Digital Songs chart when another Reputation track titled "...Ready for It?" debuted at number one with 135,000 digital copies sold and opened at number four on the Hot 100. As a result, Swift became the first artist to have two tracks sell over 100,000 digital copies in the nation within a week since Sheeran with "Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill". It also became the first time a female had two songs within the top five of the Hot 100 since 2015 when Swift's previous tracks "Blank Space" and "Shake It Off" respectively were at numbers four and five on the chart.[36] The single also topped the Mainstream Top 40 chart, becoming Swift's eighth single to do so.[37] However, a week after reaching number one on the Mainstream Top 40, it moved to number 7, being the largest fall from the top in the chart's history; and from number 5 to number 20 on the all-format Radio Songs chart, the biggest drop from the top five in that chart's 27-year history.[38]
In the United Kingdom, "Look What You Made Me Do" sold 20,000 copies and was streamed 2.4 million times in less than a week.[39] The song debuted at the top the UK Singles Chart on September 1, 2017 – for the week ending date September 7, 2017 – with opening sales of 30,000 copies and 5.3 million streams within the week and becoming Swift's first chart-topping song in Britain.[40] After two weeks at the top spot, it was displaced by Sam Smith's "Too Good at Goodbyes".[41]
"Look What You Made Me Do" also debuted at number one in the Republic of Ireland on September 1, 2017 and became Swift's first song to top the Irish Singles Chart. In doing so, it surpassed the number three peaks of her singles "Love Story" (in 2009) and "Shake It Off" (in 2014).
"Look What You Made Me Do" opened at number one in Australia on September 2, 2017, becoming her fifth track to top the ARIA Charts.[42] It spent another week at the nation's summit[43] before "Too Good at Goodbyes" took the top position there as well.[44] The song has been certified Platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipments of 70,000 units.[45] After debuting at number one on the Canadian Hot 100,[46] "Look What You Made Me Do" was also certified Platinum by Music Canada for shipments of 80,000 units on September 14, 2017.[47]
In New Zealand, "Look What You Made Me Do" entered at the number one spot on September 1, 2017, becoming Swift's fourth chart-topping single there.
In the Philippines, "Look What You Made Me Do" debuted at number 7 spot on the Philippine Hot 100 on its first week. A week later, it soared to the number 1 spot, ending the 10-week reign of "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber. It descended to the runner-up position the following week, as the latter song reclaimed the top spot for an 11th week.
Music video [ edit ]
Production and release [ edit ]
Preparation for the music video began in January 2017, while the shooting took place in May.[48][49] The dance was choreographed by Tyce Diorio, who had worked with Swift on "Shake It Off" before.[48] Swift's make-up as a zombie was done by Bill Corso.[49] Post-production of the video lasted until the morning of its release.[49] A 20-second music video teaser was released on Good Morning America on August 25.[50]
The song's music video premiered on August 27, 2017 at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards.[51] The video broke the record for most-watched video within 24 hours by achieving 43.2 million views on YouTube in its first day. This record was surpassed by Korean group BTS with their music video for "Idol" in August 2018.[52] It topped the 27.7 million Vevo views Adele's "Hello" attracted in that timeframe (only to be surpassed by Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next"), as well as the 36 million YouTube views of Psy's "Gentleman" video.[53][54][55] It was viewed at an average 30,000 times per minute in its first 24 hours, with views reaching over 3 million views per hour.[52] As of January 2019, it has over 1.0 billion views, making it the 90th most-viewed Vevo video of all time and has reached 8.1 million likes on YouTube, making it the 27th most-liked YouTube video of all time.
It was also reported that the diamonds used in a scene were authentic. The diamonds, loaned from celebrity jeweler Neil Lane, were said to be worth over $10 million, hence triggering tight security measures.[56] The video was named the fifth best music video by Rolling Stone and the sixth best music video by Billboard.[citation needed]
Synopsis [ edit ]
The bathtub scene in the music video. The diamonds used were authentic and worth over $10 million.
Swift has said that part of the premise of the video is rooted in the idea that, "If everything you write about me was true, this is how ridiculous it would look."[57] It is a satirical send-up of media theories about her true intentions that have little validity. The video begins with a zombie Swift crawling out of a grave, where the headstone reads "Here Lies Taylor Swift's reputation", and digging another grave for her Met Gala 2014 self. The next scene shows Swift in a bathtub filled with diamonds. She is then seen seated on a throne while snakes surround her and serve tea. Swift later crashes her golden Bugatti Veyron on a post and sings the song's chorus holding a Grammy as the paparazzi take photos. She is also seen swinging inside a cage, robbing a streaming company in a cat mask, and leading a motorcycle gang. Afterwards, she gathers a group of women at "Squad U" and dances with a group of men in another room. At the video's climax, Swift is seen standing in a T-shaped throne while clones of herself (from her past music videos), struggle and fight against each other trying to reach her. As the video concludes, the clones bicker with one another, describing each other as "so fake" and "playing the victim" while one clone of Swift in the background watches in silence. The video ends with a 2009 VMA Swift saying "I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative" and the other Swifts yelling at her to "shut up!" in unison.[58][59]
Analysis [ edit ]
The video contains numerous hidden meanings and references. In the opening scene, there is a subtle "Nils Sjöberg" tombstone shown when Swift is digging up a grave, referencing the pseudonym she used for a songwriting credit on Calvin Harris' 2016 single "This Is What You Came For".[60] Similarly, Swift—masked as a cadaveric version of herself in the "Out of the Woods" music video—was shown digging a grave for herself in a 2014 Met Gala gown, an event that characterized her first public appearance with short hair.[citation needed] A single dollar bill in the bathtub full of diamonds that she bathes in was also speculated to symbolize the dollar she was awarded for winning a sexual assault trial earlier in 2017.[60] Interpretations for the bathtub scene were contrasting. Some believe that it is a response to media statements teasing that she "cries in a marble bathtub surrounded by pearls."[61] Others speculate that the bathtub scene is a jibe at Kim Kardashian, wife of Swift's long-time feuding partner, Kanye West. Some viewers took the scene as a reference to Kardashian's 2016 robbery, in which she was robbed jewelry worth over $10 million while held at gunpoint at a hotel in Paris, France.[62][63] Others argued the claim was unfounded, as Kardashian was not in a bathtub during the robbery.[citation needed]
In a separate scene, Swift is shown sitting atop a golden throne, where a carving of a phrase "Et tu, Brute?" could be seen on the armrest, a reference to Shakespeare's drama Julius Caesar.[60] Swift's infamous title as a "snake" during her hiatus[64] was also represented when a snake slithers onto the throne to serve Swift some tea. When Swift's car crashes, some speculated that it may be a jab at Katy Perry, as Swift's hairdo is similar to Perry's in the scene and the car crash resembles one in Perry's music video for "Unconditionally" (2013). The sports car is also reminiscent of a car in Perry's "Waking Up in Vegas" (2009) video, which Kahn also directed. However, given the theme of making fun of the media, it is likely making fun of the media theory that Swift's real fall-out with Perry was simply for publicity and album material. Swift is mocking the idea that she would damage her friendships for the sake of her business, with the car crash being a metaphor for the fall out between her and Perry and her holding the Grammy Award after the crash within sight of the photographers' cameras referring to the song inspired by their feud winning awards, which the media claimed was Swift's ulterior motive. Swift's withdrawal of her entire music catalog from streaming services and the media theory that she was truly doing this to start her own streaming company were hinted when Swift and her crew robbed a streaming company in the video.[65][66]
Swift gathering at "Squad U" was also said to be a reply to the media dubbing her close "squad" friends as artificial.[60] During the second chorus, Swift can be seen with eight men, each of which revealed an "I Heart TS" crop top after unbuttoning a jacket on her commands. This scene is mocking the idea that Swift forced her then-boyfriend Tom Hiddleston to wear an "I Heart TS" tank top when they were a couple. Swift was also seen standing on a pile of clones of herself from the past, reiterating the idea that she is leaving her past self behind and mocking the idea that she was not genuine during these phases of her life. The shirt that her "You Belong with Me" clone wears is slightly different from the one in the original music video, with her close friends' names scribbled on it this time.[65][66]
In June 2016, discussing the relationship between her and Kanye West after West's song "Famous" (2016) was released, Swift wrote on Instagram, "I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative."[67] The same line is spoken by the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards Taylor clone at the end of the video.[68][69] She is wearing the same outfit Swift had worn during the actual 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when West interrupted her award-winning speech for Best Female Video.[70]
Live performances [ edit ]
Swift performed "Look What You Made Me Do" live for the first time as part of the KIIS-FM's Jingle Ball 2017 on December 1, 2017 in Inglewood, California.[71] Two days later, Swift returned onstage to perform the song again as part of 99.7 Now!'s Poptopia in San Jose, California with the same setlist.[72] The next week Swift sang the song on three other occasions; the B96 Chicago and Pepsi Jingle Bash 2017 in Chicago, the Z100 Jingle Ball 2017 in New York City and Jingle Bell Ball 2017 in London.[73][74][75]
The song is also a regular part of her setlist for the Reputation Stadium Tour, with a tilted throne and golden snakes; while there are snakes on the high screen in the back during the part, "I don't trust nobody and nobody trust me, I'll be the actress starring in your bad dreams", a big cobra floating appears on stage with the line from the bridge announcing the death of the "Old Taylor" spoken by comedian Tiffany Haddish.[76][77]
Accolades [ edit ]
Usage in media [ edit ]
ABC used the song in a promotional video for its Shonda Rhimes' Thursday line-up an hour after its release.[88] Sister network ESPN used it in its college football telecast advertisements for the season opening game between Alabama and Florida State, which was aired on ABC on September 2 along with her other song "...Ready for It?".[89] In the South Park episode "Moss Piglets" the water-bears in Timmy and Jimmy's experiment for the science fair dance to the song in response to Swift's singing.
Track listings [ edit ]
Digital download
"Look What You Made Me Do" – 3:31
German CD single[90]
"Look What You Made Me Do" – 3:31 "Look What You Made Me Do" (video) – 4:16
Credit and personnel [ edit ]
Credits are adapted from liner notes of Reputation.
Charts [ edit ]
Certifications and sales [ edit ]
Release history [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]If you don’t like EC2 you have an option to move your app to a new vendor. But if you don’t like GAE (Google app engine) there aren’t any solutions which can replace GAE easily.
AppScale might change that.
AppScale is an open-source implementation of the Google AppEngine (GAE) cloud computing interface from the RACELab at UC Santa Barbara. AppScale enables execution of GAE applications on virtualized cluster systems. In particular, AppScale enables users to execute GAE applications using their own clusters with greater scalability and reliability than the GAE SDK provides. Moreover, AppScale executes automatically and transparently over cloud infrastructures such as the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Eucalyptus, the open-source implementation of the AWS interfaces.
The list of supported infrastructures is very impressive. However the key, in my personal opinion, would be stability and compatibility with current GAE APIs.
Learn more about AppScale:President Trump’s first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which took place earlier this month at the Group of Twenty summit, naturally received a lot of media attention. However, it was recently revealed that the more than two-hour meeting that dominated the press was not the only private discussion that Putin and Trump had while they were in Hamburg.
On Tuesday, Ian Bremmer, the president of the international consulting firm, Eurasia Group, informed Bloomberg’s Charlie Rose that Trump and Putin also had a second, informal meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit.
Bremmer didn’t provide many details about the meeting, other than to say that it happened and lasted about an hour, but he did share his thoughts on the troubling closeness that is shared by Trump and Putin.
After pointing the similarities between this meeting and the one that took place between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Bremmer noted the significance of Trump spending so much time with Putin “given the extraordinary focus and attention” that the media has directed towards these two leaders.
Bremmer then went on to say that he thinks Trump’s connection with Putin is “clearly his best personal relationship” with any G-20 leader.
‘Never in my life as a political scientist have I seen two countries — major countries — with a constellation of national interests that are as dissonant, while the two leaders seem to be doing everything possible to make nice and be close to each other.’
Bremmer also pointed out the fact that, while Trump has flip flopped on a number of other important foreign policy issues, he has remained “remarkably consistent” on his desire to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
When Rose asked him why he thinks this is the case, Bremmer admitted that he doesn’t fully understand the president’s reasoning. While he noted that Trump “likes the strong man” and has a “very transactional” leadership style, he also said that he doesn’t think those factors “add up to where Trump is with Putin right now.”
Bremmer went on to tell Rose that he thinks we will learn “what’s missing” and fully understand the president’s motivations “either through leaks or through the Mueller investigation.”
‘I expect that we will learn something. ‘At this point, we can’t look at all of this…and say this is just smoke.’
Watch the discussion between Bremmer and Rose in the video below, courtesy of Bloomberg.
Featured image via Steffen Kugler /BPA via Getty Images.Dead Rising 3 certainly displays Capcom Vancover's desire to create an ambitious showcase for Microsoft's new machine, boasting a seamless open-world environment and almost three times as many enemies on screen as in Dead Rising 2. However, while the sense of scope and level of detail on offer are certainly impressive, things aren't quite so refined on a technical level, with frame-rate issues and visible texture pop-in giving the game a distinctly rough appearance when combined with the upscaled 720p presentation.
This week, a mammoth update weighing in at around 13GB went live, with the hefty download setting the stage for the next DLC while tackling a number of problems inherent in the final release of the game. Among the multitude of bug fixes and stability enhancements, the patch promises some performance upgrades in order to deliver a smoother and more refined experience than what we've seen so far. With that in mind we were curious to see what kind of improvements had been made to the game's often unruly frame-rate.
For our analysis of the update, we went back and re-captured gameplay from the first few missions of the game, with and without the update installed. As expected, pre-patch performance is variable when the engine is under stress, with explosions and complex scenery impacting the frame-rate when driving through the city at speed. Boss battles and fierce scraps in more confined locations are better handled, and in these areas the game makes a good fist of hitting 30fps on a regular basis. That said, it's hard to escape the realisation that drops in smoothness occur frequently across a general run of play.
The huge 13GB update promises to improve performance, but frame-rates appear much the same before and after the patch has been applied, and a solid 30fps is still beyond reach when the engine is under load.
Additional analysis: Dead Rising 3: Engine-driven cut-scene frame-rate tests
So, just what kind of improvement - if any - does the mammoth 13GB patch bring to the table? Initial observations during our two gameplay sessions yield few signs of any game-changing differences: we still see performance being similarly impacted in heated gameplay moments, or in locations packed with detail as we speed through zombie-filled city locations in fast cars. Our pre- and post-patch analysis video shows low frame-rates of around 22fps when alpha effects and a large number of enemies come into play both before and after we updated the game.
In some scenes we actually see the pre-patched game put out slightly higher metrics, but this simply reflects variances in gameplay between our two test runs. Overall, it's hard to see where exactly the improvements in performance have been made, suggesting that the optimisations are rather more subtle than we were hoping for. In the first two to three levels at least, there are no obviously noticeable signs of the smoother experience promised by Capcom Vancouver, and a close look at the game's real-time cinematics reveals almost completely identical frame-rates in exact like-for-like scenes, where the rendering load is very closely duplicated on repeat playthroughs. Clearly, cinematics alone won't be engaging many of the game's sub-systems, but it does suggest that the core rendering engine hasn't seen any fundamental upgrades, as sudden drops in frame-rate occur at exactly the same moments.
Overall then, the stage is set for the new Operation Broken Eagle DLC, but unless Capcom Vancouver's optimisations only extend to systems utilised further on in the game beyond the first few levels, the chances are that those downloading the 13GB patch for a smoother gameplay experience may end up disappointed.VANCOUVER – Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2 put an end to a four-game winless stretch on Sunday, earning a 3-1 victory against Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC at Thunderbird Stadium. Marco Bustos converted a first-half penalty kick, and the club strengthened in the run of play with second-half goals from Gloire Amanda and Chris Serban. The Switchbacks found a consolation goal from Sean McFarlane in the 88th minute, but the damage had been done. WFC2 posted its first regular-season win against the Switchbacks, who had been 2-0-2 against Vancouver heading into the match. Vancouver improves to 3-4-2 (11 points) overall and 2-1-1 at home. The Switchbacks fall to 3-3-4 (13 points) overall and 1-2-3 on the road.
Scoring:
24’ – VAN – Marco Bustos (penalty)
68’ – VAN – Gloire Amanda (Andy Thoma)
82’ – VAN – Chris Serban
88’ – COS – Sean McFarlane (Shane Malcolm)
Three Things That Mattered:
1. WFC2’s all-time goal scoring leader Marco Bustos added to his total Sunday. Making his second USL appearance this year, the loanee netted his second goal this season and his 16th in three USL campaigns. Bustos drew a penalty kick midway through the first half as he sustained some contact against Switchbacks defender Josh Suggs with his run into the box. Bustos took the subsequent PK, slotting into the left of the frame in the 24th minute for a 1-0 lead as Colorado Springs goalkeeper Moise Pouaty dove in the other direction on the attempt.
2. The open play in the first half was frantic at times. In the second half, Vancouver was much more controlled with its buildup. Having the lead certainly could have played a factor in WFC2 showing a bit more confidence and fluidity on the ball. Vancouver turned a Suggs free kick into a perfect buildup from the back in the 68th minute as WFC2 goalkeeper Sean Melvin’s distribution to the left started the counter. Andy Thoma crossed in to find 18-year-old Gloire Amanda making a near-post run to take a 2-0 lead. Capping things off, midfielder Chris Serban found the upper right corner of the frame in the 82nd minute for a three-goal cushion.
3. As evidenced by 15 first-half shots (and 25 for the match), Colorado Springs had the more clear-cut scoring chances as the club attempted for a strong result on the road. The strongest sequence came in the 35th minute when the Switchbacks earned a free kick several yards above the box. The free kick hit the wall, but the loose ball was up for grabs as Aaron King fired toward the right of the frame. Melvin tipped the ball, which then caromed off of the right post. Switchbacks right back Josh Burt converged for the rebound, aimed for the far left post, but WFC2’s Will Seymore made the clearance at the goal line. Sean McFarlane did get Colorado Springs on the score sheet with a low shot inside the left post and just out of reach of Melvin to wrap up the scoring as the Switchbacks have yet to be shut out this season.
USLSoccer.com Man of the Match:
Sean Melvin, Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2 – Melvin made seven saves against a Switchbacks side that generated plenty of scoring chances. Melvin also started the buildup that led to Gloire Amanda’s goal.Cancer cells seen to be targeted and killed from the inside with metal-based compound discovered by the University of Warwick
The compound - Organo-Osmium FY26 - attacks the weakest part of cancer cells.
FY26 is 50x more active than metal drugs used in |
keeping wages low in order to eek out a profit.
So far, no one has solved this riddle: how do you create MORE jobs while forcing employers to raise wages by 107%, from $7.25 to $15?
Seattle tried, without luck. Now Los Angeles is trying. But Bank of America just surveyed their small business owners and found that only 21 percent have experienced full economic recovery over the past six years. Retailers in particular are fighting for the pecuniary crumbs of price-conscious American consumers. Indeed, my Millennial peers are so frugal that Whole Foods is rolling out a cheaper version of its grocery brand in a frantic attempt to get us to even walk through their doors.
Our overall economy is floundering and no amount of arbitrary lawmaking will spur wage growth. We need organic growth, which comes from small businesses generating profits that are sizable enough to justify expanding, hiring and increasing benefits.
Entrepreneurs have and will respond to mandatory wage minimums by moving their companies; raising prices; reducing staff; deferring expansion plans; or by reducing the quantity and quality of their services.
You are left with two choices. You can enjoy tapping your foot in line at your favorite burger joint as you wait for that cheeseburger, soda and fries that used to take three minutes and now takes 15 due to staff reductions. You can accept mediocrity as the new reality of American retail service. Or, you can speak up in defense of a $0 minimum wage and an America where bureaucrats do not force entrepreneurs to over-pay burger flippers. It’s a juicy choice to ponder as you grill out on Memorial Day.Image copyright AFP Image caption The Iraqi government has urged the tens of thousands of civilians in Falluja to leave
Clashes have been reported near the Iraqi city of Falluja hours after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of a military operation to retake it from so-called Islamic State (IS).
One report said the IS "governor" in Falluja had been killed, while the jihadist group said it had inflicted casualties on government forces.
"Zero hour for the liberation of Falluja has arrived," Mr al-Abadi said.
Falluja has been held by IS longer than any other in Iraq or Syria.
The Iraqi government has urged civilians there - estimated to number between 60,000 and 90,000 - to flee or raise a white flag over their homes.
Analysis: Jim Muir, BBC News, Baghdad
Falluja has been attacked many times and bombed and shelled almost incessantly since it fell into the militants' hands in January 2014. It has withstood all that, despite huge destruction and many casualties.
Now the government has committed itself to "liberating" the city once and for all, in an operation codenamed "Break Terrorism".
But there are conflicting assessments of how tough the battle will be.
Some believe that IS has taken such a pounding in the town that its ability to resist has been sapped. Others, in touch with sources inside the beleaguered city, say the militants have long been preparing to face such an offensive and have deployed their full array of defences, including many roadside bombs and booby traps.
How tough will it be to recapture Falluja from IS?
Iraqi officials say corridors will be provided for civilians to make their way to camps outside the city, which was seized by IS militants and allied Sunni tribesmen in January 2014.
Iraqi TV said the IS wali, or "governor", in Falluja, Hejji Hamza, and some of his aides had been killed in the latest fighting. There were also reports of more than 30 IS fighters being killed outside the city.
Residents said air strikes and mortar attacks occurred overnight.
The IS-linked Amaq news agency said one of the group's suicide bombers had destroyed a tank and army bulldozer, killing 16 people.
Troops, police, militiamen and tribal fighters virtually surround the city, about 65 km (40 miles) west of Baghdad.
The Baghdad-based pro-Kurdish news website Shafaq said on Sunday that close to 20,000 police troops had arrived on the outskirts of Falluja ahead of the expected assault.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Troops, police, militiamen and tribal fighters virtually surround Falluja
Image copyright AFP Image caption Some 20,000 members of the security forces are said to be deployed
IS militants launched a sweeping offensive in June 2014, overrunning large areas north and west of Baghdad. However, security forces and allied fighters have pushed the jihadists back with support from US-led air strikes.
Iraq's military recaptured the nearby city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, from IS in December.
A former US ambassador to Iraq predicted the Falluja operation would take some time.
"I think Haider al-Abadi has taken the advice of many of his American advisers, which was not to rush into this thing," Christopher Hill told the BBC.
"So they're being very deliberate, very careful, and so I think there's some good reason for optimism that ultimately this will be successful."
A former US military adviser in Iraq, Michael Pregent, questioned the wisdom of urging civilians to raise white flags.
"The problem with them [the Iraqi military] saying, 'raise a white flag so we don't shoot you' - IS is going to shoot them when they raise a white flag."
Should IS lose Falluja, it would leave the northern city of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, as its only major stronghold in Iraq. It continues to control large parts of Syria, including the city of Raqqa.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The Iraqi government has been urged to lift the siege on Falluja, as Ahmed Maher reports
Last month, the United Nations and Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned civilians still living in Falluja were in danger of starvation.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said stocks were dwindling as government forces trying to recapture the city had cut supply routes, and IS had stopped people from leaving.
Some residents were eating grass to survive, HRW said.
One report said that a 110lb (50kg) bag of flour, which costs about $7.50 in the US, had been sold for as much as $4,166 (£2,925; €3,650).I've never been completely open about my history with being a rape victim, due to my fears of being blamed or shamed, as I have been in the past. I'm so tired of people blaming victims though and I just need to get this out there. This is not something I'm sharing for pity, it's something I'm sharing to try and change the way rape victims are treated and to expose how it really feels to those who have become willfully ignorant on rape culture. Please share if you want, it would hopefully educate more people.
To the people who say that rape or sexual assault can be prevented by clothing choices, drinking choices, location choices, etc:
YOU are part of the problem. YOU are pushing the mentality that rape or sexual assault is okay if the victim was wearing certain clothing, drinking, or whatever excuse you have today.
You say that victims could have prevented being raped by wearing less provocative clothing:
I was wearing onesie pajamas the first time I was raped. Going to tell me that I should have covered up more when I was two years old? Was I too'slutty' as a toddler?
You say that victims should be taking self defense classes in order to prevent being raped:
My last rapist was over a foot taller than me and weighed at least a hundred more pounds, most of which were muscle. There are no amount of self defense actions that could have stopped him, regardless of whether I took classes.
You say rape victims are 'asking for it' when they drink, either excessively or in a public setting:
The next two times I was raped, I was sober, as well as both of my rapists. I knew exactly what was happening and remember every last detail down to the long walk I had the next morning, as I went to get a Plan B pill. I'm positive they remember as well. Drinking had nothing to do with me getting raped. Being physically raped was what had to do with me getting raped.
You say that rape victims put themselves in harms way purposefully when they walk home alone at night:
All three of my rapists were people I knew. They were not strangers.
You rant about how you 'know' that victims could prevent rape and how you're certain that if they just would do things differently, they wouldn't be a rape victim:
Unless you have personally, and by that I mean YOU personally, been a victim of rape or sexual assault, it is impossible for you have an educated opinion on the topic. Sit down, shut up, and stop thinking you know everything about something you've never experienced. Quite frankly, you will never win that argument; your statements are willfully ignorant, completely false, and have no ground to stand on.
Come back after you've had all your dignity stripped, your body violated in ways you can't even imagine, your mind tortured and giving you constant flashbacks, and have been shamed by society because of your clothing choices or anything you've ever done in your past. Come back after that and tell me it was my fault again.The federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, better known as "vaccine court," has just awarded millions of dollars to two children with autism for "pain and suffering" and lifelong care of their injuries, which together could cost tens of millions of dollars.
The government did not admit that vaccines caused autism, at least in one of the children. Both cases were "unpublished," meaning information is limited, and access to medical records and other exhibits is blocked. Much of the information presented here comes from documents found at the vaccine court website.
Some observers will say the vaccine-induced encephalopathy (brain disease) documented in both children is unrelated to their autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Others will say there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.
What's more, these cases fit the pattern of other petitions, (i.e., Poling and Banks) in which the court ruled (or the government conceded) that vaccines had caused encephalopathy, which in turn produced permanent injury, including symptoms of autism and ultimately an ASD diagnosis.
And most of these children now have taxpayer dollars earmarked for applied behavioral analysis (ABA), an effective therapy specifically designed to treat ASD.
Meanwhile, parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors of both children testified they were developmentally normal, if not advanced for their age when they developed seizures, spiking fevers and other adverse reactions to their vaccines. According to these eyewitnesses, the children never fully recovered, and instead began losing vocabulary, eye contact and interest in others around them, all classic symptoms of regressive autism.
In the first case, involving a 10-year-old boy from Northern California named Ryan Mojabi, the parents allege that "all the vaccinations" received from 2003-2005, and "more specifically, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccinations," caused a "severe and debilitating injury to his brain, described as Autism Spectrum Disorder ('ASD')."
The parents, who did not want to be interviewed, specifically asserted that Ryan "suffered a Vaccine Table Injury, namely, an encephalopathy" as a result of his MMR vaccination on December 19, 2003." ("Table injuries" are known, compensable adverse reactions to immunizations.)
Alternatively, they claim that "as a cumulative result of his receipt of each and every vaccination between March 25, 2003 and February 22, 2005, Ryan has suffered... neuroimmunologically mediated dysfunctions in the form of asthma and ASD."
In vaccine court, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services acts as the defendant and Justice Department attorneys act as counsel.
In 2009, Ryan's case was transferred to vaccine court's Autism Omnibus Proceedings, according to the docket. A year-and-a-half later, the government conceded that MMR vaccine had indeed caused Ryan's encephalopathy.
HHS agreed that "Ryan suffered a Table injury under the Vaccine Act -- namely, an encephalitis within five to fifteen days following receipt," of MMR, records show. "This case is appropriate for compensation."
Whether HHS agreed with Ryan's parents that his vaccine-induced brain disease led to ASD is unknown. The concession document is under seal.
In December 2003, when Ryan was nearly two, he received his first MMR and hepatitis B vaccines before his family left for an extended trip overseas. That day, his mother testified, Ryan began shaking with uncontrollable tremors and "was really uncomfortable, he didn't feel well at all."
The nurse at Ryan's pediatrician said the symptoms were "pretty normal after the vaccination," and advised Tylenol. The next day, Ryan began crying, "but it's not a normal crying," his mother testified. "He didn't go to sleep, he was without energy."
The family considered postponing their holiday, but that wasn't feasible. The doctor's office said it was fine to travel. Prior to leaving, Ryan's mother said, the boy had difficulty breathing and "was without energy and sleepy." He could no longer hold his head up, something "he could do prior to the vaccinations." At the airport, Ryan began "screaming," she recalled. "He was just opening and closing his eyes so hard, he was pulling my hair."
After his shots, she added, Ryan "stopped saying those words that he had, even mommy and daddy, that he had repeated a hundred times before."
In early January, while still abroad, Ryan was rushed to the hospital with vomiting, high fever and red spots covering his body "from head to toe in a measles-like rash," the attending physician said. Ryan was diagnosed with "febrile convulsion, probably related to MMR."
The next day, another doctor diagnosed him with "high fever, skin rash, tremors, and lethargy," which were "most likely due to an adverse reaction to multiple vaccines he received earlier."
Two days later, Ryan returned to the hospital with a persistent fever of 104 or more.
Ryan's parents testified that, upon returning home, they expressed worry to their pediatrician about behavioral problems, non-responsiveness and language loss, which later produced an ASD diagnosis.
At trial, however, the government argued powerfully that written medical records, and the recollections of Ryan's doctor, were inconsistent with his parents' testimony. If Ryan had truly suffered an MMR encephalopathy, for example, his family would never have taken him overseas. And his parents' complaints of ASD symptoms were raised a full year after returning from abroad, they alleged. It looked like the family had a weak case.
But then something changed.
In October, 2010, Ryan's attorney filed four new exhibits (under seal) and proposed amending the court's "findings of fact." In January and May of 2011, several more exhibits were filed, along with a motion to further supplement the findings of fact.
A month later HHS conceded the case, which moved into the damages phase.
Award details were announced a few days ago: A lump sum of $969,474.91, to cover "lost future earnings ($648,132.74), pain and suffering ($202,040.17), and life care expenses for Year One ($119,302.00)," plus $20,000 for past expenses.
Another undisclosed sum, several millions more, will be invested in annuities to cover yearly costs for life, which could total $10 million or more, not accounting for inflation. Nearly $80,000 was earmarked for ABA in the first two years.
The second case involves a girl named Emily, whose mother, Jillian Moller, filed back in 2003 and has been fighting in vaccine court since. The docket, crammed with 188 items, documents Moller's extended but victorious struggle to win compensation for Emily, who has seizure disorder and PDD-NOS, a form of ASD.
Moller alleged that Emily was severely injured by a reaction to the DTaP vaccine at 15 months (when MMR, HiB and Prevnar were also given). "She had a vaccine reaction and she just spiraled out of control," Moller said in an interview.
Emily's fever spiked to 105.7 and she began screaming. She stared blankly and developed seizures. Before long she began "shaking episodes" at night and "repetitive behaviors, including arm flapping and spinning," court documents show. Like Ryan, she developed a measles-type rash.
Things went from bad to worse. Emily's medical record is filled with damage and suffering. One neurologist, for example, noted that Emily "had staring spells and an abnormal EEG." Another diagnosed "encephalopathy characterized by speech delay and probable global developmental delay that occurred in the setting of temporal association with immunizations as an acute encephalopathy."
Moller filed for an encephalopathy Table injury in 2003, unaware her daughter would be diagnosed with ASD.
Two hearings were held in 2005. "I was badgered and harassed for four hours on the stand," she said. "They said Emily couldn't have been that sick, or else I would've taken her to the ER. But I took her to my doctor and he said not to bring her to the hospital!"
Government lawyers insisted that Emily had suffered neither a vaccine injury nor encephalopathy. But every alternative cause they suggested "made no sense, because she showed no signs of those things before that vaccination," Moller said.
The case dragged on for years, with motions and counter-motions, status reports and expert medical reports. In 2007, Moller filed for summary judgment. That also took years, as more medical records were submitted to bolster Emily's case.
After the ASD diagnosis, the judge reportedly became convinced that Emily would prevail. "My attorney said she was angry, she felt forced into a corner with no choice but to find for us," Moller said. "She said, 'Emily has autism, and I don't want to give other families who filed autism claims any hope.'"
The government agreed to settle. Last spring the case went into mediation and, on December 3 HHS made its proffer, which was entered into the record on the 28th. Emily was awarded a lump sum of $1,030,314.22 "for lost future earnings ($739,989.57), pain and suffering ($170,499.77) and life care expenses for Year One ($119,874.88) plus $190,165.40 for past expenses." Some of that money will go to ABA therapy.
Based on the first year payout, another estimated $9 million will buy annuities for annual expenses through life, which after inflation has the potential to pay over $50 million dollars.
HHS did not admit that vaccination caused encephalopathy or autism, but merely decided not to dedicate more resources to defending the case.
"I don't understand why they fought so hard," Moller said. "We had the evidence: the EEG, the MRI, everything was consistent with encephalopathy, post-vaccination. How can government attorneys claim what our doctors said happened, didn't happen?"
Perhaps the feds were loath to concede yet another vaccine case involving autism. Four cases in the Autism Omnibus Proceedings were recently compensated. Three of those cases are marked with asterisks, indicating the government did not conclude that autism can be caused by vaccines. But the fourth autism case that was paid out in 2013 (Ryan's case? We don't know) has no such caveat.
As for Emily, she is "not too good," Moller said. "Her emotional state is fragile, at best. She has seizure problems and autoimmune issues... And it's a constant fight when you have a vaccine-injured child. It's not just the disability, it's the ignorance. The hatred from the medical community towards families like ours is intense."Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a video advising Mexican nationals living in the U.S. illegally about what to do if they are faced with immigration detention.
The Spanish-language video, titled "Recommendations in Case of Immigration Detention," was released last month.
The Center for Immigration Studies translated the video, which is divided into two sections: "How to prepare in case of immigration detention" and "How to act in case of immigration detention."
The video reminds undocumented immigrants that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents do not have permission to enter their homes.
On Friday, all 50 Mexican consulates in the U.S. launched legal assistance centers, totaling $50 million, to form partnerships with nonprofit groups and tap lawyers to help undocumented immigrants fearing President Donald Trump's immigration policies, according to The Associated Press.
The centers have opened less than two weeks after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released new guidelines to detain and deport undocumented immigrants as well as increasing the number of federal agents at the border.
WaPo Story Attempts to Invoke Sympathy for Undocumented Criminal Immigrants
Bolling: Trump's Done More in 45 Days Than Obama Did in 8 Years
'Sanctuary Courtrooms?': Judge Accused of Helping Illegal Immigrant Escape ICEPenguin has become the latest book publisher to settle federal charges of e-book price-fixing, leaving only Apple and Macmillan to fight the Justice Department allegations.
In an antitrust lawsuit filed in April, federal prosecutors accused Apple and five book publishers of conspiring to artificially hike prices. The same day, the Justice Department announced it had reached settlements with three publishers but said Apple and the other two publishers had opted to fight the charges. Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS, which publishes CNET) agreed to settle.
Penguin added its name to that group, the Justice Department announced today. As with the settlement to which the other settling publishers agreed, Penguin has agreed to terminate its existing contracts with Apple and not enter into new agreements for two years that would prevent retailers from offering discounted Penguin e-books, the Justice Department said.
The publisher issued a statement today confirming the agreement but maintained its innocence in the case:
Penguin confirms that it has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to settle claims relating to the establishment of agency pricing agreements in 2010. Penguin has always maintained, and continues to maintain, that it has done nothing wrong and has no case to answer. Penguin continues to believe that the agency pricing model has encouraged competition among distributors of both e-books and e-book readers and, in the company's view, continues to operate in the interest of consumers and authors. But it is also in everyone's interests that the proposed Penguin Random House company should begin life with a clean sheet of paper.
Penguin's agreement still requires court approval, but the Justice Department said consumers are already benefiting from the previous settlements.
"Since the department's settlement with Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster, consumers are already paying lower prices for the e-book versions of many of those publishers' new releases and bestsellers," Jamillia Ferris, chief of staff and counsel at the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, said in a statement. "If approved by the court, the proposed settlement with Penguin will be an important step toward undoing the harm caused by the publishers' anticompetitive conduct and restoring retail price competition so consumers can pay lower prices for Penguin's e-books."
CNET has contacted Apple for comment regarding Penguin's settlement and will update this report when we learn more. In a legal memo filed in August, Apple called the previous settlements "fundamentally unfair, unlawful, and unprecedented." The case against Apple and Macmillan is scheduled to begin next June.
Penguin's settlement comes a few weeks after Apple reportedly negotiated a deal with European regulators that will help the company avoid litigation for potential antitrust violations while also enabling Amazon to offer lower prices than offered at Apple's iBookstore. Terms of that alleged deal were not revealed.Collection GreenskyBluegrass
Greensky Bluegrass
11/30/2013
Bell's Brewery
Kalamazoo, MI
Taped&Uploaded by DodiLittle
**Shoutout to Everyone who helped making this recording possible**
**Dedicating this one to a true friend and his beautiful wife whose wedding reception i cut short to tape this show a 'leap year' ago. may your love for each other be forever blossoming and growing as my love for live music!
*16-bit*
44.1kHz
Source: SP C4s > TinyBox > PCM M-10 > MicroSD
Lineage: MicroSD > Audacity > SoundStudio > WAV > XLD > FLAC
Tracks:
Set 1:
01. ¡Intro!
02. Leap Year
03. I'd Probably Kill You
04. Wings for Wheels
05. 'All-1'
06. 'All-2'
07. 'All-3'
08. ¡All-4!
09. Elephant*
10. Better Off
11. Dustbowl Ovetures
12. Groundhog
13. Rift > Wheel Hoss
Set 2:
14. Windshield
15. Gumboots
16. Bottle Dry
17. Middle Mountain Towns
18. Jaywalking
19. Tarpology
20. Worried about the Weather
21. Pig in Pen
22. Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)
23. Kerosene
24. ¡crowd!
25. 3-3-4-4-3
26. One Way Out
27. ¡Outro!
notes:
*:Jason Isbell Cover
&
broke up all-4 because this weekend was all-4fun & hopefully fun-4all!
Identifier gsbg2013-11-30.m10 Lineage MicroSD > Audacity > SoundStudio > WAV > XLD > FLAC Location Kalamazoo, MI Source SP C4s > TinyBox > PCM M-10 > MicroSD Taped by DodiLittle Type sound Venue Bell's Brewery Year 2013PAWTUCKET, RI—Adopting the sagely demeanor of an all-knowing oracle, local man Jacob Rivard, 29, who is a season ahead of friends in his viewing of the television series Breaking Bad, is reportedly conferring advice about the show as if it were the sacred wisdom of ages. “Oh, you’re not to that part yet?” the august and enlightened elder said Monday, casting his clairvoyant eye to the future and cryptically alluding to what wonders lie there. “Well, just wait for the season-four finale. You have no idea. Everything is about to change, and Walt’s character will—no, I’m not going to say any more. You have to see it for yourself.” Sources indicated the learned man then grew reticent, responding to every question with an enigmatic smile and the words “You’ll find out soon enough.”
AdvertisementIf there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of many of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will…men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get.
- Fredrick DouglassThese words byhave stuck with me over the years like few others. This has been one of my favorite passages since I first read it back in high school. I find myself remembering Douglass' words whenever I am tempted to whine, feel sorry for myself, or give in to pessimism.When I find myself wishing for a different set of circumstances, these words remind me to stop and ask myself what I am doing to make it happen. What I am doing to change the world, andIt is that latter question that forces me to take a hard look at myself. It is so much easier to complain that it is to take action. But without struggle, there will be no progress.The sort of change I want, whether it is political or whether it involves attitudes toward atheists, is not going to happen on its own. It is not going to be handed to me on a platter. It is likely to require hard work, persistence, and even sacrifice.When Douglass wrote those words, he was not talking about the separation of church and state or the anti-intellectualism which afflicts the U.S. today. But his point about power conceding nothing without demand is certainly appropriate in these and many other issues with which we occupy ourselves. Christian privilege is not going to go away willingly. Anti-atheist bigotry is not going to just vanish. Nobody is going to give atheists a seat at the table. It is up to us to take it.Part of what Douglass' words mean to me is that complacency accomplishes nothing. Life is not a spectator sport meant to be viewed from the sidelines. At least, not if we care about the outcome. The sort of life worth living is going to be messy, and it will involve contact.Nonprofit Job Board
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Terms and conditions may apply.The bid to have Kim Dotcom extradited to the United States suffered a significant setback today. US authorities had insisted there was no need for them to reveal the evidence they hold against the Megaupload founder. But today a New Zealand judge upheld an earlier decision and ordered the US to reveal the evidence they are relying on to have Dotcom and his associates shipped to the United States, including details of covert operations and confidential discussions with rights holders.
Responding to a request from Megaupload’s legal team, Judge Harvey at the North Shore District Court ruled in May on whether the United States government should be forced to reveal the evidence it holds on Kim Dotcom and other defendants in the case.
Megaupload said they have a right to see the case being built against them but the United States insisted that no right to disclosure exists. Judge Harvey disagreed with the prosecution and ordered disclosure of all documents relating to the alleged crimes of the so-called Megaupload Conspiracy.
“In my view there must be fairness and the hearing and balance must be struck, otherwise the record of case becomes dominant virtually to the exclusion of everything else and places the extradition process in danger of becoming an administrative one rather than judicial,” the Judge wrote. He later stepped down after allegedly describing the United States as “the enemy”.
Refusing to concede defeat, US authorities pushed back and sought a judicial review of Judge Harvey’s ruling. In a judgment today, the High Court upheld the earlier decision handed down in the North Shore District Court.
Justice Helen Winkelmann dismissed the application for a judicial review, noting that without disclosure of the evidence, Kim Dotcom and his co-accused – Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk – would not be able to mount a full and proper defense in their extradition hearing.
“Without disclosure [Kim Dotcom and associates] will be significantly constrained in [their] ability to participate in the hearing, and the requesting state will have a significant advantage in terms of access to information,” the ruling reads.
The documents to be disclosed are significant in their scope, encompassing all elements of the case from the allegations of infringement, through to information being held on the nature of the Megaupload rewards program. Interestingly, as part of a section marked Criminal Breach of Copyright, the ruling says that US authorities must disclose:
– All records obtained or created in connection with the covert operations undertaken by agents involved in the investigations related to these proceedings in transacting and uploading/downloading data and files on the Megaupload site.
– All records or information and/or material provided to or obtained by the investigation and/or prosecuting agencies by the investigating and/or prosecuting agencies in this case from holders and/or owners of copyright interests evidencing alleged infringement of their copyright and/or complaining of such infringement.
– All records and materials related to communications between relevant copyright holders and Megaupload and/or its employees regarding their copyright interest, the direct delete access provided by Megaupload to any such copyright holders, and any communications between the copyright holders and Megaupload and/or its staff regarding take-down notices.
Today’s ruling marks a significant victory for Kim Dotcom, his associates, and their legal team. Access to the evidence against them has been ruled crucial to the defendants being able to mount a proper defense, something that the US authorities have tried to deny. Last week Dotcom promised more revelations – they are now almost certainly on their way.
The extradition hearing is currently expected sometime early 2013.Photo: Courtesy of Philadelphia Union
What a difference a week makes!
After stumbling badly in their season opener in Dallas, the Philadelphia Union picked up a big 2-1 road win against the Crew, their first-ever road win in Columbus. Union midfielder Chris Pontius, who scored both goals in the win, joins KYW’s Greg Orlandini and Kevin Kinkead of CBS3, PSP, and Philly Voice in the latest edition of the KYW Philly Soccer Show.
Pontius talks about working with the team since coming over from DC in the off season. He also talks about missing time over the last few season due to injuries and the hard work he’s put into coming back and contributing to the Union.
After that, MLSsoccer.com’s Union reporter Dave Zeitlin calls in to talk to Greg and Kevin. He had some technical issues to work through, but Dave was able to share his insight on the Union’s turnaround against the Crew.
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To listen to the pod, click on the player above or visit the Philly Soccer Show iTunes page. Follow the pod on Twitter at @KYWPhillySoccer.The last of my Pisaster ochraceus stars waited until today, three whole days after all of its conspecifics had died, to start ripping itself into pieces. This is the sight that greeted me when I checked on my animals this morning:
I spent some time examining the severed arm because it is freakishly fascinating to watch autotomized parts continue on as though they were still attached to the main body. They literally don't know that they're dead. I've seen almost completely eviscerated sea urchins lumber around a seawater table on about 10 tube feet for days before finally giving up the ghost. This arm remained very active for quite a while--at least an hour--before I gave up and threw it away.
While I had this severed arm in a bowl under the dissecting scope I thought I'd take a few photos of the surface. Beautifully complex animals, sea stars are, when you look at them up close.
Meanwhile, the remaining 4/5 of the star continued to walk around the table. It ended up behind one of the quarantine tanks in which I had sequestered the bat stars, where over the course of the next couple of hours it dropped another arm. Because of its location I wasn't able to get a decent photo of it, but here is a shot of the wound from the first autotomization:
And I'm not the only one at the lab dealing with this disease outbreak. The lab next door is losing a couple of stars, and the Seymour Center lost one of their Pycnopodia helianthoides (sunflower star) yesterday. And, I heard second-hand that a student in the Santa Cruz area saw some dying stars on a dive in the past few days. What happened in my seawater table over the past few weeks may be just the beginning of something really, really bad.Vivendi will move forward with a full takeover of Ubisoft this year, according to a new report.
Vivendi, the French conglomerate that’s been acquiring more and more of Ubisoft’s shares over the past couple of years, will finally move on to completely takeover the French publisher.
Vivendi, which currently owns just over 25% of Ubisoft’s shares, is accelerating the acquisition, according to a Reuters report.
The “second phase”, which also involves advertising group Havas, is said to begin this year. “Vivendi is moving to the second phase, everything will take place this year,” one source told Reuters.
The Ubisoft takeover bid remains unsolicited, and Ubisoft has been trying to fight it since Vivendi first made its intentions known.
When Vivendi’s shares reach 30%, the media company will be required by French law to make an offer to Ubisoft. At this rate, we may get an update about the situation before E3. It’s also worth noting that Vivendi still does not have a seat on Ubisoft’s board of directors, despite having 22% of the voting rights.Subway restaurant spokesman Jared Fogle walks to a waiting car as he leaves his home, Tuesday, July 7, 2015, in Zionsville, Ind |
API, we have received a number of inquiries from our community regarding how this new restriction will effect OPSkins. We have received no communication from Valve that OPSkins’ access to the Steam API will be blocked or limited in any way. Furthermore, based on Valve’s recent public statement, we do not anticipate any disruption in our trading services.
Should there be any change to this situation, we will promptly notify our community members. As we have done since our founding, we promise to continue exercising the utmost care in handling your valuable item inventory and deposits.
Finally, some of you have asked if there is anything you can do to ensure that OPSkins continues to provide its valuable trading services to the Steam Community. We appreciate your support and we welcome any public expressions of confidence and trust OPSkins has earned with you over the past 2 years.— CBS News contributor Bob Schieffer doesn’t believe Monday night’s presidential debate swayed many voters across the nation.
“I’ve never seen one where the decorum broke down the way that it did tonight. You almost never see audience responses like we saw tonight. We were expecting a different kind of debate and I think in that way that we saw one. I don’t think Donald Trump lost any votes tonight, I’m not sure Hillary Clinton gained any votes tonight,” the former “Face the Nation” moderator said on CBS News after the debate.
COMPLETE CAMPAIGN 2016 COVERAGE
He continued, “What we saw was an example of how deep a divide is now between Democrats and Republicans. I didn’t learn very much new tonight. I thought they started off pretty well, it was fairly businesslike, and then about 15 minutes in it broke down into name-calling, and it was back-and-forth and who can shout the loudest.”
Schieffer added that each nominee only talked to their supporters during the debate and didn’t try to reach across the aisle.
“She was preaching to her choir over here, he was preaching to his choir over here, we never saw any indication of how you can come together and form the coalitions to break the gridlock that this country finds itself in,” Schieffer said.
CBS2’s Tony Aiello was at Hofstra’s student center for the debate, as many are voting for president for the first time. Students were split on how well Trump and Clinton did.
“I think he’s doing well. I think he says a lot of things that people think in their head sometimes, but are too afraid to say out loud. I think he’s funny,” Lauren De Pinter said.
“She’s pretty calm, cool, collected. I don’t think she’s too fazed by this. I think that she has it in the bag already, to be honest,” Priya Patel said.
Student Madeline Currie said she is a frustrated registered voter.
“It’s kind of a hard election to vote in for the first time because it’s so crazy,” Currie said.
There was a strong reaction at the debate watch party when Trump commented on the state of black communities.
“I just feel as though he’s generalizing all African-American and Latino communities as if we all suffer from the same thing,” Currie said.
Monday was the first of three presidential debates.When Xi meets with President Donald Trump Thursday and Friday in Florida, expect a flurry of stories predicated on the assumption that Xi is fully in charge of the three levers of Chinese power: the Chinese Community Party, of which he is party secretary; the Chinese state, which he presides over; and the Central Military Commission (CMC), which he chairs. To be clear, it’s certainly possible, even likely, that Xi dominates all three. But doing so requires a complicated dance, beyond the view of outsiders, between him and retired leaders, regional party secretaries, princelings, CEOs, generals, top aides, and, most crucially, the Standing Committee. The various steps these men take has a great impact on Sino-U.S. relations, and on the upcoming summit. How much leeway does Xi have to make on-the-spot decisions, particularly those involving China’s support for North Korea, or the militarization of the South China Sea? Can he compromise on trade? Does he have institutional support to change China’s future? The answer to at least one of those questions may well be no, meaning that Trump will be negotiating with someone without a solid grip on the reins of power, in thrall to the top of the party.
Why is the top of the CCP so opaque? Aside from its Leninist roots, the simplest answer is that the party believes projecting a united front is crucial. Just how opaque is it? In July 2016, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Discord Between China’s Top Two Leaders Spills Into the Open.” Their main evidence for that assertion: conflicting messages Xi and China’s number two official, Premier Li Keqiang, delivered about reforming China’s state-owned sector in a private meeting. Subtle stuff indeed.
It also doesn’t help that the Standing Committee members, Xi included, rarely give interviews to Western media. When they do, they tend to offer either milquetoast remarks to sympathetic interlocutors, or send in tepid written responses.
In that way, Xi and Trump are opposites. Trump has lived in the public eye for the last three decades: The world is well aware of his personal weaknesses, the flaws in his leadership style, and, now, the contempt many in the U.S. government and bureaucracy feel for his ideas. Xi is a product of the Party, one of the world’s most secretive large organizations—and one which requires officials to be publicly modest and low key. In a 2000 interview with the magazine China Profiles, when Xi was a party official in the southern Chinese province of Fujian, he said he had rejected more than 100 interview requests. “People’s abilities are limited,” he said, explaining why top Chinese officials should eschew publicity. “If you leave the broad masses of the people, if you leave collective leadership, you will be a total failure.”
The extent to which Xi subscribes to those views today is unknown. Those who have met him often describe him as confident, charming, and comfortable speaking to foreign delegations without notes. But without further data, it is imprudent to assume he is firmly in control. In other words, just because we don’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. (Besides, it’s very unlikely these conversations touch upon the sensitivities of Xi’s relations with the top elite. Not long ago, I met an American who occasionally dines with a current member of the Standing Committee. What did that member think about Xi’s anti-corruption campaign? “I never ask him,” the American told me. “If I did, I wouldn’t be invited back to dinner.”)It doesn't matter how rich you are, poor spending habits can quickly drain even the most well-funded bank account.
Even wealthy shoppers with money to burn need to watch their spending.
"Price tags still matter," said Amy Salinger, a personal stylist who works with several multi-million-dollar clients. "It's about spending money correctly."
Many affluent people don't actually consider themselves rich, according to Tom Corley, a certified financial planner and author of "Rich Habits - The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals."
And that mentality helps keep their spending in line.
According to his data, the majority of rich people with a liquid net worth between $3.2 million and $5 million don't consider themselves wealthy. "It's not just about accumulating wealth, the bigger priority for them is accumulating and keeping their money," he said.
Related: 7 traits the rich have in common
But you can still spend like the rich and preserve your wealth, even if you don't have a seven-figure net worth.
Don't be house poor. Living in a sprawling mansion is fun, until you can't afford anything outside of the mortgage.
Corley's data shows that the wealthy (those with an annual gross income of at least $160,000 and a net worth of $3.2 million or more) don't spend more than 25% of their monthly income on housing and 10% or less goes toward entertainment. The general rule of thumb is to keep housing costs below 30% of your monthly net income.
Don't emergency shop. Whether it's a suit for a job interview, or a car to replace your old one that broke down, buying items as you need them is "your biggest nemesis," said Salinger.
Not only is deadline shopping stressful, it leaves less time to comparison shop and often leads to unnecessary overspending.
Related: 5 investing secrets of the wealthy
Learn how to splurge properly. Everyone impulse buys, but make the purchase work in your favor.
If you're mulling a major buy, make sure the item is of good quality, useful and has staying power.
"Purple heels should not be your splurge item," said Salinger. "And make sure it's returnable."
Compare cost vs. value. When it comes to deciding whether a purchase is worth it, the price tag should be divided by how often it will be used, said Salinger.
"Determine cost per wear. A less-expensive item that's rarely worn might not be such a good deal. If something's expensive, but going to be used frequently, that can be a better value."
Related: Spend like the super rich
Take the 'high-low' approach. When shopping for clothing, mix high-end pieces with less expensive wardrobe staples. Salinger recently reprimanded a client for spending $150 on a plain white tank top. "That's not worth it. Spend more on foundation items in your wardrobe and look for deals on secondary items."
She shops a wide range of stores to secure items for her clients, and many of the outfits she assembles feature items purchased at Bergdorf Goodman, paired with bargains from Nordstrom Rack.
Keep your'sin' spending in check. The wealthy limit their spending on alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. Only 6% of the rich played the lottery on a weekly basis and 16% gambled on sports, according to Corley.
Just 13% of the rich reported getting drunk in the last month, compared to 60% of the poor -- defined as those with income under $35,000, and $5,000 or less in liquid assets. When it comes to cigarettes, 21% of the rich smoke regularly compared to 47% of the poor.Utawarerumono: The Two Hakuoros adds playable Anju [Update]
The imperial princess joins battle.
Imperial princess Anju will be a playable character in Utawarerumono: The Two Hakuoros, the latest issue of Weekly Famitsu reveals.
Anju, who was poisoned in the previous game, has healed and can participate in battle as a playable unit.
Weekly Famitsu also has event CG featuring new character Fumiruiru and information on a new system called “Co-op Special Moves,” but details have yet to leak.
Utawarerumono: The Two Hakuoros is due out for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PS Vita in Japan on September 21. Read more about the game here.
Thanks, Famitsu.
Update 7:35 a.m.: A few new details have come in via Hachima Kikou. Anju is voiced by Chinatsu Akasaki. She is dubbed a “power fighter” in combat.
If you have save data from Utawarerumono: The False Faces, you’ll be able to play the game with a few useful items carried over. Details will be shared at a later date via the game’s official website.
As for the “Co-op Special Moves” system, these are co-op techniques you can use with specific characters after progressing the story a certain extent and meeting certain requirements.The hideous, gnarled Mila Kunis, stuff of nightmares, will star as the Wicked Witch of The West in Sam Raimi’s upcoming Oz, The Great And Powerful, according to Vulture—though technically Kunis will be playing the role of Theodorah, whose own transformation into the vindictive, monkey-loving firebug factors into an overall Oz back-story that also includes those of Evanorah, her sister and east-side counterpart, and Glinda, who reps the north. Vulture further reports that Kunis signing on was all that was needed to secure James Franco in the role of the Wizard, after Franco presumably considered the matter by taping a series of one-sided conversations with himself, then playing them all simultaneously at varied speeds while he watched silently from atop an unusually tall stool perched beneath a blue-gelled spotlight.
Perhaps even more interesting is what Kunis’ signing on to Oz means for the live-action remake of Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Akira, which is a project that has been kicking around for years and is somehow not dead yet. The latest version is being helmed by The Hughes Brothers, who so far have mostly just been wrestling with Warner Bros. over who should star: The Hughes just want “the best possible actors,” hence their insistence on Kunis to play Kei, but Warner Bros. wants a huge name attached to its big-budget epic so badly that they reportedly offered the role of teen protagonist Kaneda to 47-year-old Brad Pitt. Fortunately, Pitt declined, leaving the future of Akira uncertain—and sensing her opportunity, Kunis went to Oz instead. As an interesting side note, it was just a few days ago that Franco was also rumored to be a possible candidate for Akira. But of course, this could very well have just been the Internet rushing to fill a void, as we all know Franco abhors a vacuum.PRINCETON, NJ -- Minority and young voters made a significant mark on the 2008 presidential election with their high turnout; today, however, these groups appear to have reverted to previous levels of interest in voting in the context of midterm elections. Most notably, in contrast to 2008, when whites and blacks were about equally likely to say they were giving "quite a lot of" or "some" thought to the presidential election, whites are much more likely than blacks to be thinking about the 2010 elections: 42% vs. 25%, a gap exceeding those from recent midterm elections.
Gallup's "thought given to the election" question is a key determinant of "likely voters" in Gallup's multipart likely voter model. The full model will be implemented closer to Election Day; however, the "thought" question was asked as part of Gallup Daily tracking from Aug. 23-29, to get an early gauge on potential turnout among subgroups. (See full results for this question on page 2 of this report.)
Although public attention to elections is much higher in presidential than in midterm years, a comparison of the relative "thought" levels among various subgroups in 2008 versus today may be useful in determining whether the Democrats are on track to mobilize key elements of the coalition that helped them win the White House two years ago. These data suggest they are not.
Young Adults' Attention Is Low, Similar to Past Midterms
The gap between young adults (aged 18 to 29) and older adults (aged 30+) in their election attention levels was relatively narrow in 2008 -- 12 percentage points -- but the 23-point difference today (42% vs. 19%) is similar to the average 26-point gap seen in October-November of prior midterms, from 1994 through 2006. Again, this suggests that the relatively higher turnout of young voters in 2008 may not be repeated in 2010.
Men and women have had similar turnout rates in recent elections, including in 2008 -- and this is reflected in the similar percentages giving quite a lot of or some thought to the elections each year. At this point in 2010, however, women are much less likely than men to be giving this level of thought to this year's midterms, 31% vs. 45%.
Bottom Line
Earlier this year, President Obama identified women, blacks, and young voters among the groups he highlighted as critical to a voter mobilization effort designed to help the Democrats hold their congressional majority. These groups made up a good portion of the "new voters" who propelled Obama to victory in 2008. However, Gallup data suggest they are not poised to provide the same kind of boost for Democratic candidates this fall. As a result, and because of the extraordinarily keen interest in the elections that conservative Republicans currently display, Republicans overall currently enjoy a 54% to 30% lead over Democrats in "thought given to the election."
If these numbers hold, the preservation of the Democratic majority in Congress would depend on the Democrats' increasing their appeal to voters at large -- recent Gallup polling shows the Democrats trailing the Republicans among registered voters -- rather than counting on heightened turnout from their strongest backers.Seven Lions just announced some news for his fans on Twitter that made my day. The Observatory, a playlist made up of a variety of artists and cultivated by Jeff himself, has just been launched on Spotify.
fuckin right 🙏 — Trivecta (@TrivectaMusic) November 7, 2017
So, let me explain this thing. The Observatory seems to encompass a little bit of everything that is Seven Lions, including his taste in other artists. If you are into Seven Lions’ music, but also want to discover and observe other artists as well, this playlist is your ticket to the fucking chocolate factory. There are many great artists and plenty of variety included in the mix here. So far, I’ve come across artists such as San Holo, ODESZA, Kill The Noise, Above & Beyond, Yotto, The M Machine, RL Grime and Trivecta, to name a few.
This playlist is scattered with tracks from many of Seven Lions’ best works, such as Creation, Worlds Apart, and Where I Won’t Be Found. It also includes many of his remixes and newly released tracks, such as Cold Hearted. With a small but growing variety of tunes, The Observatory is an exceptional guide to keeping up with some of the best and latest in EDM.
“Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted… He lived happily ever after.” -Mr. Wonka
Favorite Tracks So Far:
Seven Lions – Creation ft. Vök
ODESZA – Higher Ground ft. Naomi Wild
Seven Lions x Jason Ross – Higher Love ft. Paul Meany (Spencer Brown Remix)
Seven Lions x Unlike Pluto – Rescue Me
San Holo – I Still See Your Face
Neelix – People
Feed Me – Without Gravity
Seven Lions x Kill The Noise – Cold Hearted
Listen To The Observatory Playlist On Spotify
What do you think of this playlist? Let us know in the comments below!
FOR MORE UPDATES ON SEVEN LIONS, SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW RESPECT MY REGION ON FACEBOOK & YOUTUBE.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.
-- A significant snowstorm took aim at Staten Island on Thursday, affecting the morning commute and making a mess of borough roads.
Mayor Bill de Blasio closed public schools; many private ones weren't open either.
And while it wasn't as bad as the 10 to 14 inches of snow that the National Weather Service had predicted, the storm was intense during the morning hours.
Here's a look at how it unfolded on Staten Island:
6 INCHES: In Dongan Hills at 2:50 p.m.
2:55 p.m. -- Snow tally: 6 inches
The snow has just about stopped falling on Staten Island, and our unofficial measurement recorded 6 inches in Dongan Hills at 2:50 p.m.
That's a far cry from the 10-14 inches that was forecast for our area, though their remains a 40 percent chance of snow until 5 p.m. or so.
Measurements may vary from community to community.
It is currently 27 degrees on the borough, according to the National Weather Service.
2:45 p.m. -- Mayor: "I like what I'm seeing so far"
During his stop on Staten Island, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was pleased with the plowing efforts here.
"I like what I'm seeing so far," de Blasio said of street conditions, while having lunch at Lee's Tavern in Dongan Hills with Borough President James Oddo.
Oddo, de Blasio and Councilman Steven Matteo each cited visible blacktop on most of the borough's main roads, including Hylan Boulevard.
But the mayor stressed that, while the storm appears to be winding down, it's important for borough residents to stay off the street as much as possible so Sanitation could continue its effort.
"The best thing you can do for Staten Island is to stay off the roads for the rest of the day, so we can really get them clear," he said.
-- Reported by Eddie D'Anna
2:21 p.m. -- Snow could end soon
When will Niko finally be over?
According to AccuWeather, the snow should stop falling around 3:30 p.m. Thursday.
However, earlier reports from AccuWeather initially indicated that the storm would end around 1:30 p.m.
2:15 p.m. -- Ferry on modified schedule for p.m. rush
The Staten Island Ferry will operate on a modified schedule during Thursday afternoon's rush hour, with service approximately every 20 minutes, according to the DOT.
1:57 p.m. -- FDNY: Snow made battling fire harder
The snowstorm made battling Thursday's fatal fire in Port Richmond more difficult, according to FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro.
Officials said a man was killed and his brother was in critical condition after a fire at 1028 Post Ave. left 14 others injured, including two firefighters.
-- Reported by Anna Sanders
1:45 p.m. -- Garbage, recycling collection suspended
Garbage, recycling and organics collection are suspended until further notice so that the Department of Sanitation can focus on snow removal.
1:29 p.m. -- Stay off the roads, Cuomo warns
Echoing a similar statement Mayor Bill de Blasio made earlier in the day, Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned residents to stay off the roads.
"Don't underestimate the potential danger," he said. "If you go out there not only do you endanger yourself, but you endanger others."
-- Reported by Rachel Shapiro
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Borough President James Oddo walk along Hylan Boulevard in Ocean Breeze, speaking with Sanitation workers.
1:05 p.m. -- Mayor visits Staten Island
Mayor Bill de Blasio visited Staten Island on Thursday afternoon to check on road conditions.
The mayor, Borough President James Oddo, Councilman Steven Matteo and DSNY Commissioner Kathryn Garcia met on Hylan Boulevard and Seaview Avenue in Ocean Breeze Boulevard and spoke with Sanitation workers about the snow removal operation.
The group said that it was pleased with how the streets looked, especially the main thoroughfares like Hylan.
The four plan to lunch together on Staten Island.
-- Reported by Eddie D'Anna
1:03 p.m. -- Watch out for wind gusts
New York City is experiencing intermittent wind gusts in excess of 40 mph, according to the city's emergency notification system. Winds that high can cause power outages or flying debris, the city said. The city urges resident to use caution while walking or driving.
12:54 p.m. -- #SILive: Tag us in your snow photos
If you are going to head outside once the snow ends, make sure to tag #SILive in whatever photos you take.
Above is a great shot from @dawnrussell10.
12:40 p.m. -- Snow to end soon?
The end of Winter Storm Niko may be in sight.
According to AccuWeather, the snow is expected to end around 1:30 p.m.
12:27 p.m. -- Ferry on regular schedule
The Staten Island Ferry is operating on a regular, 30 minute schedule.
Please be advised that the ferry may operate on a modified schedule this evening. We are closely monitoring weather conditions and will provide an update for customers in a few hours.
6 INCHES: Dongan Hill, 12:15 p.m.
12:15 p.m. -- Snow tally: 6 inches
An Advance tally in Dongan Hills measured just under six inches at 12:15 p.m.
The snow continues to fall, but at this moment not as intense as times earlier in the day.
It is currently 29 degrees on Staten Island, according to the National Weather Service.
12:08 p.m. -- More bus detours
S42
and S52 buses are detoured, due to inclement weather conditions, according to
MTA.
info.
Detours are as follows:
S42
: Service in both directions will operate via Richmond Terrace, Jersey Street, Brighton Avenue and temporary stand at Brighton Avenue/Lafayette Avenue.
S52
: Service in both directions will operate via Richmond Terrace, Jersey Street, and regular route after Jersey Street/Crescent Street.
Allow additional travel time.
11:55 a.m. -- Mayor: Stay off streets!
Mayor Bill de Blasio urged New York City residents to stay off the roads if possible Thursday during a press briefing on the storm.
"We need the people to get off the streets," de Blasio said at Office of Emergency Management headquarters. "I can't emphasize this enough: don't drive your car today. We need you off the streets."
Staten Island has a total 61 salt spreaders, 28 haulsters, 215 big plows, 32 front-end loaders, seven skid-steers and four snow melters available, according to the Sanitation Department's borough snow plan for this year.
-- Reported by Anna Sanders
11:07 a.m. -- No snow day for this pol
Count City Councilman Steven Matteo among those not afforded the luxury of a snow day on Thursday.
The Mid-Island Republican has been driving throughout his district, monitoring the conditions of roads and posting photos of his findings on Twitter.
"I'm out and about in my district and I see plows all around," Matteo said in an email to the Advance. "Main roads are pretty good. Obviously it's still snowing, so conditions are dangerous but they are definitely out and about doing a good job."
Matteo said he has been in contact with the Sanitation commissioner since early Thursday morning.
Here are some of Matteo's posts:
5 INCHES: Dongan Hills, 10:55 a.m.
10:57 a.m. -- Snow tally: 5 inches
An Advance tally in Dongan Hills at 10:55 a.m. recorded five inches of snow.
It is currently 28 degrees on Staten Island, according to the National Weather Service.
10:49 a.m. -- Niko, from a commuter's perspective
What began as freezing rain at around 4 a.m. turned into snowfall around 6, leaving commuters to battle the storm dubbed Niko as they made their way into work.
Advance multimedia specialist Anthony DePrimo caught up with them on the roads. Here is a video look of their experience:
10:20 a.m. -- Drivers are getting stranded out there
Plows are on the streets but it's snowing pretty heavy on Staten Island at the moment and many roads are getting tough to navigate.
According to Channel 7, there have been 11 buses stranded on Staten Island due to the weather on Thursday.
The messy roadways include Hylan Boulevard and even the Staten Island Expressway, where one motorist recently posted on social media to say he was stuck in the snow and awaiting a tow truck.
"Note to all Charger owners: Rear-wheel drive is not the best thing for the snow," the driver said as he sat at the side of the highway.
"I'm waiting for the tow truck to come. Roads are horrible. I thought that [the expressway] would be the best way to get into the office after getting stuck for about 45 minutes on local roads."
Some residents are already expressing displeasure with the city's snow removal efforts.
"I live about one block from Staten Island University Hospital (Ocean Breeze)," said Kevin Fair of Dongan Hills. "Just saw my first plow at 9:46 a.m. and no salt spreader....This is the worst job of snow removal all time."
-- Reported by Tracey Porpora
10:15 a.m. -- This is how it's done
Clearing snow with an actual shovel -- no bueno.
Using a snowblower: Definitely better.
But for this guy at the Grymes Hill Apartments, clearing snow is a breeze:
10:11 a.m. -- What is 'thundersnow?'
It's kind of self explanatory -- but it sure has an awesome name.
Wondering what that rumbling you are hearing Thursday is? It's probably "thundersnow."
The Advance's Diane Lore explains the condition, including when and why it occurs.
10:02 a.m. -- Hylan traffic crawling at 15 mph
Traffic along Hylan Boulevard on the East Shore was light Thursday morning, with just a sprinkling of cars along the roadway from Oakwood to Grasmere.
The roadway was passable, but still covered with snow as traffic crawled along at 15-20 mph in most spots.
Most bagel shops and gas stations were open, but foot traffic seemed light.
-- Reported by Ken Paulsen
9:53 a.m. -- Latest snow forecast: 10-14 inches
In its most recent winter storm warning, issued at 9:15 a.m., the National Weather Service is continuing to call for 10-14 inches of snow for our area.
The warning remains in place until 6 p.m.
In its latest forecast, the
NWS
says we will continue to get snow, heavy at times, until at least 1 p.m. It is not forecasting snow for Thursday night.
4 INCHES: Dongan Hills, 9:40 a.m.
9:42 a.m. -- Snow tally: 4 inches
An Advance tally in Dongan Hills recorded four inches of snow at 9:40 a.m.
It is currently 29 degrees on Staten Island, according to the National Weather Service.
9:30 a.m. -- Speed restrictions on P.A. bridges
The Port Authority has issued 25-mph speed restrictions on the Outerbridge Crossing and the Goethals Bridge, the agency announced on Twitter.
9:24 a.m. -- Heavy snow, thunder approaching
Moments ago, the National Weather Service issued the following special weather statement for our area:
"At 9:14 a.m. EST, widespread heavy snow combined with north winds of 20 to 30 mph will reduce visibilities making any outdoor activities hazardous. Maximum hourly snowfall rates will range from 1 to just over 3 inches, causing snow to rapidly accumulate as temperatures fall through the 20s. Isolated rumbles of thunder will accompany the heavy snowfall rates."
-- Reported by Frank Donnelly
9:21 a.m. -- Evening small claims court closed
Evening Small Claims Court on Staten Island has been closed Thursday due to the snowstorm, according to the state court website.
All other courts on Staten Island and the rest of the city remain open until further notice.
-- Reported by Frank Donnelly
9:08 a.m. -- 'It's a ghost town'
Advance political reporter Rachel Shapiro was out along Forest Avenue in Mariners Harbor a short time ago assessing the conditions.
"It was a ghost town," she said. "No one on the roads in my neighborhood."
Watch her Facebook Live from the roads below:
Snow day Posted by Rachel O'Brien Shapiro on Thursday, February 9, 2017
9:02 a.m. -- Schools decision made 'carefully'
Mayor Bill de Blasio urged New Yorkers to stay indoors if possible and let plows clear the roads, warning of some heavy snowfall rates on Thursday.
"We were hearing snowfall of one to two inches and hour, and three to four inches an hour as the storm intensified," he said during an interview with
NY1.
Thursday marked the seventh time in five years that the city's public school system has been closed for snow.
"We try to make these decisions very carefully," he said.
-- Reported by Diane Lore
8:57 a.m. -- Video: From the ferry
Here is video of Staten Island Ferry commuters during the snowstorm:
8:45 a.m. -- Deteriorating road conditions
Deteriorating road conditions are being reported across Staten Island, as several inches of snow has already piled up and strong winds are causing "white out" conditions. Sanitation Department plows have been dispatched.
3 INCHES: Dongan Hills, 8:25 a.m.
8:29 a.m. -- 3 inches in Dongan Hills
Snow continues to pick up in intensity, with several inches on the streets and sidewalks across the borough and "white out" conditions hampering visibility.
An unofficial measurement in Dongan Hills at 8:25 a.m. recorded three inches.
-- Reported by Eddie D'A nna
8:22 a.m. -- Sanit plows hit the street
There are 2,300 Sanitation Department plows and salt spreaders out as of 8 a.m., the agency said on Twitter.
The department is asking for motorists to yield the right of way on roads to snow-clearing vehicles so "we can keep you safe."
"I would discourage anyone from driving today -- the conditions are very dangerous," Sanit Commissioner Kathryn Garcia said on
NBC.
7:51 a.m. -- Join us on Facebook Live
Advance reporter Shane DiMaio is on Facebook Live right now giving you a first-hand look at what roads are like on Staten Island right now.
If you don't see the live stream below, click https://www.facebook.com/statenislandadvance/videos/10154146894811746/
BE CAREFUL‼️Snow leads to dangerous driving conditions in Bulls Head ❄️ Posted by Staten Island Advance on Thursday, February 9, 2017
7:45 a.m. -- Bayonne Bridge work canceled
Planned construction on the Bayonne Bridge is canceled due to adverse weather conditions, the Port Authority announced on Twitter.
-- Reported by Maura Grunlund
7:30 a.m. -- 1 1/2 inches of snow
An unofficial measurement on Coale Avenue in Westerleigh recorded one and a half inches of snow at 7:30 a.m. It is currently 30 degrees on Staten Island, according to the National Weather Service.
Winds continue to pick up in force on our borough, hampering visibility.
-- Reported by James Yates
7:25 a.m. -- Front Street closed
Officials have closed Front Street at Edgewater Street in Stapleton due to icy conditions.
An
MTA
Police vehicle with its sirens on and several traffic cones are blocking it off.
-- Reported by Jan Somma-Hammel
7:22 a.m. -- Fire in Port Richmond
The
FDNY
is battling a two-alarm fire at 1028 Post Ave. in Port Richmond, the Fire Department announced on Twitter.
More than 100 firefighters are on the scene and sirens can be heard throughout the North Shore.
-- Reported by Maura Grunlund
7:13 a.m. -- Several bus detours announced
The
S42, S66
and
S93
buses are detoured due to inclement weather, according to
MTA.
info.
The detours are as follows:
S42
: First/last stop will be made at Brighton Ave./Lafayette Ave. No service will operate along Lafayette Ave., Prospect Ave., Clyde Place, Arnold St. or Franklin Ave.
S66
: Buses will bypass the Grymes Hill area. No service along Highland Ave., Arlo, Howard Ave, Clove Road. Buses will remain straight along Victory Blvd. between Highland Ave. and Clove Road.
S93
: Service will begin and end at the main gate of the College of Staten Island. No service on the internal roadways of
CSI
due to closure of College.
Earlier Thursday, the
MTA
warned about delays to all buses running on Staten Island. Meanwhile, the Staten Island Ferry is operating on a modified schedule and there is a speed restriction in place on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
NOT FUN: Commuter Nadia waits for a bus on Bay Street in Stapleton.
7:03 a.m. -- 'This is not fun'
Not everyone has a snow day on Thursday.
While Mayor Bill de Blasio gave public school students a reprieve, and most private schools are closed as well, many of us adults still have, well, adult things to do -- which means getting ourselves to work.
Once such commuter, Nadia, was bundled up in a jacket and scarf as she endured the increasing snow and winds while she waited for a bus on Bay Street in Stapleton to get to Brooklyn.
"This is not fun," Nadia said. We believe her.
-- Reported by Jan Somma-Hammel
6:49 a.m. -- Ferry delays; bridge speed restrictions
Folks, the commute has officially become a messy one.
The Staten Island Ferry will be operating on a modified rush hour schedule with service approximately every 20 minutes due to "very low visibility in the harbor and a mechanical issue at slip 1 in Whitehall," the
DOT
posted on
.
A little while ago, the
MTA
warned about weather-related delays to all buses -- both local and express -- running on the borough.
Meanwhile, speed restrictions have been put in place on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
Be safe out there, everyone.
-- Reported by Maura Grunlund
1 INCH: Dongan Hills, 6:40 a.m.
6:40 a.m. -- Conditions are worsening; 1 inch recorded
The wintry mix of rain and sleet that greeted us when we woke Thursday morning has just about left us.
It is now snowing across Staten Island.
And it is starting to come down with an increased intensity, as well.
In Dongan Hills, we measured just under an inch of snow on streets and sidewalks. The temperature on Staten Island is now 31 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
Winds are picking up across the borough as well, decreasing visibility on the roadways.
-- Reported by Eddie D'A nna
and Anthony DePrimo
6:14 a.m. -- Bus delays reported across the borough
All Staten Island local, limited, select and express buses are running with delays "due to inclement weather conditions," according to
MTA.
info.
If you weren't planning to already, commuters are advised to allow for additional travel time.
-- Reported by Maura Grunlund
WESTERLEIGH: A thin layer of snow is on the ground at Kingsley Avenue and New York Place.
6:08 a.m. -- Layer of snow in Westerleigh
Snow and wind are picking up in Westerleigh.
There is a thin layer of snow already covering streets and cars in that community.
-- Reported by Thomas Checchi
6:01 a.m. -- Latest forecast: 10-14 inches
In its updated winter storm warning, issued at 5:34 a.m., |
. The instinct, the rather lovely habit of buying your mate a round and letting them pick up the next one is lost to memory.
The fundamental thing about the Californian ideology which I think a lot of us missed is how well it corresponds with the needs of capital. And so barriers to its spread have been low. We are being turned into singular economic actors, severed from the possibility of any kind of mutuality or human sympathy with other actors. That this has been stimulated by technological change represents the triumph of the techno-libertarian impulses of 1993 — which, by the way, I certainly endorsed and championed at the time, out of an abundance of optimism and a headlong desire to get on with tomorrow. Mea culpa.
Lawrence: I want to turn towards how the left should develop new institutions and political economies to respond to and make the best of technological change. How do you ensure technologies don’t reflect and reinforce existing logics of accumulation and exploitation, but actually generate durable, shared value? I think of someone like the late Robin Murray who would say, “Well, actually, sociality is embodied within the network. It just needs to be decoupled from accumulatory cycles of capital.” What do you think?
Greenfield: I’m agnostic on that question. As a municipalist myself, I’m honour-bound to say that local ownership of certain technical infrastructures would likely lead to more positive social structures and an interaction with those technologies that’s more fruitful than any that currently exists. But I also have a nagging suspicion that networks of links between people who are only conceived of as atomic, sovereign individuals are hard to reconcile with a shared common future. I worry about that.
I would love to think that fifty years from now, people just like the ones we can see sitting on this terrace would be part of multiple, consciously-constructed collectives — some based on residence, others based on identity, and others affinity groups based on how they spent their days, in whatever framework replaces “jobs.” People would be imbricated in multiple kinds of networked condition in the course of their lives, and that would constitute the fundamental framework out of which they emerged as social and political beings. I would love to see that happen. Do I think it’s particularly likely? It has a non-zero chance of happening, but not a very large one.
Lawrence: One of the reasons this future appears unlikely is because venture-capital models of investment are dominant in driving, and in some ways cannibalising, the source and direction of social innovation. Are there different ways of organising investment that you think could bring a more fruitful configuration of how we develop and deploy technology?
Greenfield: I definitely think that the cooperative model, with its eye on the long-term stewardship of resources, is an interesting pathway to follow. It’s definitely, without question preferable to the governance and investment structure of something like Uber, which has been able to decimate the prospects for truly public transportation and is predicated solely on the demands of its investor class. The venture-capital mania for high-multiple exits on relatively constrained timelines deforms our understanding of what technology is about and what it’s for. I regard Uber itself as something very little beyond a Ponzi scheme, and yet it’s structured in a way that has allowed it to have a remarkable influence on the way people in municipal government think about moving people around. It’s been corrosive in many places, and has presented problems even for a city where public transit is as highly developed as London, which is shocking to me.
It’s kind of weird to me, for that matter, that with all of the things that a network mode of social organisation ought to be able to facilitate, we haven’t been able to break out of these very standard models of ownership, investment and stewardship. It may be that somebody needs to conceive of cooperatives at the network scale before we have a test case, a testable proposition. I certainly don’t have the imagination or the chops to be able to articulate what that would look like. But very often, we’re limited in our ability to think our way through problems by the examples we have ready to hand. And the trouble is that right now, most of the people who are generating those hints come out of the Silicon Valley culture.
Lawrence: Many of these technologies are ultimately rooted in the capture, colonisation and monetisation of data that we create via use of the platform or the technology. How can we think differently about the governance and ownership of both data and data infrastructure? Are there different ways of conceiving of the infrastructures that sit behind these vast engines of capital accumulation?
Greenfield: Yes, there are, absolutely there are. The trouble is that so many questions that appear to be purely technical in nature present us with vexingly complicated implications socially or psychologically. I’ll give you an example. For many years, I was passionately involved in a movement calling for open municipal data. This movement started from a political and economic belief, that the power bound up in data that’s collected by municipalities can best be leveraged by citizens when it’s available to all. When it’s not held restrictively by a government entity, when it’s licensed and provided through an application programming interface that allows our devices and our systems to grab that data easily and use it for other purposes.
That to me seems so clearly preferable to the existing model where the data was held close, was restrictively licensed, and was provided only to the large corporate vendors who happened to be the municipality’s partners. I thought that it would be better off, given that each of us generated that information in the first place, that we could have access to it and make such use of it as we would. That’s a very nice notion, putting to one side for the moment that it dovetails very nicely again with this neoliberal idea about where agency lives in the world. And then Gamergate happened.
One of the things we saw in Gamergate, which - again, another mea culpa - should have been obvious in retrospect, was how trivially easy open data can be weaponised by people who do not feel themselves bound by the same social contract as the rest of us. Under our current way of doing things, if the salary or home address of a municipal worker is available through the government database, I can promise you that that same information will be weaponised and used to subject people to targeted harassment and worse. It’s just not a tenable situation, and it’s nothing that I would want to endorse. And for the moment, it’s kind of stymied my ability to think of more humane and productive arrangements. If neither the restrictive release of data to favoured partners nor its open availability produces desirable social outcomes, what’s left?
Here, ironically perhaps, is where another use case for the blockchain arises. Maybe access to municipal data is free of charge, but individual requests for data are logged in a distributed ledger so anybody can see who’s asked for what, and what they’ve done with it. But that feels a lot like a technical fix for a social problem.
Lawrence: I want to turn to the conclusion of your book. You say that there’s no unitary future waiting for us, that we shouldn’t just await our technological liberation but actually politically organise, demand it, and create institutions for that outcome. What are the key lessons we should take from your book?
Greenfield: I would break it up into two parts. The first is to always be self-critical about what we mean when we talk about using some technology “for good,” what we define as broad human benefit. Benefit for whom, and at what cost? We must be clear about that, and make arguments that indicate we understand there is a cost to our choices, and that that cost generally has to be borne by someone or -ones. To make robust arguments that we think that the collective outcome will be improved to a degree by our actions that justifies the costs that are borne. That’s the first thing.
Secondly. I find the calls that everyone should learn to code quite fatuous, but I do think that the left needs to be better at not surrendering the terrain of engineering and emergent technology. It’s almost a question of neurocognitive inclination. I will speak for those of us who got into the humanities. We were perhaps spurred toward the humanities by a disinclination to deal with numbers, or structured facts, in quite the same way that ‘the hard sciences’ do, or engineering does, or applied science. But this is something we’re going to have to overcome, because otherwise the only people who are going to develop that affinity into practice are the people who are immersed in the politics of the domains in which those practices are articulated. And broadly speaking, they split into authoritarian and techno-libertarian lobes. Those are just the rules of the game right now.
I think that we need to be braver about understanding code. Understanding what an API is, how it works — understanding network topographies, and what the implications of network topographies are for the things which flow across and between their nodes. Understanding corporate governance. Understanding all these things that so many of us who think of ourselves as being on the left prefer not to address. We need badly to develop expertise in these things so that we can contest them, because otherwise it’s black boxes all the way down. We don’t know what these technologies do or how they work. We just don’t see what politics they serve.
There are what we call in the business “weak signals,” all across the horizon. There are emergent groups and conversations that are happening, places and scenes in which people with progressive politics are developing the kind of facility with networked digital information technologies I think is so necessary. But they’re all green shoots, and they all need to be nurtured. For the rest of my life, that’s part of what I see my role as being. Helping to help these conversations identify themselves to one another so that they can join and develop greater rigour and greater purchase on the disposition of resources in the world.
Lawrence: One final question, which came from the network. I put out a request on Twitter for any questions for you, and the most popular response was, “Google, Amazon, Facebook: Snog, Marry, Avoid?” Do you know this term?
Greenfield: [laughs] We call it Fuck, Marry, Kill on my side of the pond. Well, I think Amazon is actually the most dangerous of all of these. Jeff Bezos is a dangerous, dangerous person. So far as I can tell, he has more direct operational control over the shape or the distribution of resources at Amazon than the respective governance structures do at either Facebook or Google.
Now Mark Zuckerberg terrifies me, but not in the same way that Jeff Bezos does. I’ve met Jeff Bezos. I’ve played a game called Werewolf with him, and it was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever done in my entire life. That his ambitions include space colonisation…let’s not go there.
Lawrence: Yes, the perfect example of escape.
Greenfield: The escape. Exactly. It’s like, we’re going to leave the planet irreparably befouled, and then we’re just going to fuck off to Mars. I think that, weirdly enough, Google is probably the least offensive of those three organisations. And that’s saying a lot, actually, because I don’t regard them with any particular love either.
Lawrence: Well, we can grant you a quick annulment...Adam Greenfield, thanks very much.WebGL Application Performance Optimizing the BioDigital Human Tarek Sherif BioDigital
BioDigital's Goals Use interactive 3D to make anatomical content engaging
Move beyond the anatomy atlas Tell stories Bring content to life Map data to and from 3D models
Make it all widely accessible through the Web
The BioDigital Human 3D content library 5000+ anatomy objects 500+ health conditions
Rendering engine built on SceneJS
User-created annotations and custom views
API for embedding Human content into external websites
Key Clients Medical device manufacturers
Pharmaceutical
Educational
Medical students
What is WebGL? A low-level JavaScript API that provides access to the GPU
Allows for high-performance, interactive 3D graphics on the Web
Why WebGL? Pros It's everywhere!
Use HTML/CSS/JavaScript for easy UI
Integrate into client web sites
Leverage existing web services
(Relatively) easy distribution
(Relatively) easy deployment of updates
In a nutshell... Leverage the entire infrastructure of the Web as a platform to create dynamic, high-performance 3D applications
Any downsides? Web UX expectations It should be fast It should be easy It should just work
PERFORMANCE!!!
WebGL Performance considerations Download time
JavaScript performance
Memory management
Talking to the GPU
Shader performance
Mobile considerations
Download time Our content is created in-house by a team of 3D artists
Data sets can be large All necessary geometry data Texture images Morph targets for animation
The eternal struggle Artists want it beautiful: big textures, detailed geometry Medical accurary is paramount
Engineers want it to download quickly and not crash on an iPhone
Tension between anatomical detail and usability
Solutions Make sure artists are aware of the size of their content
Visual "tricks" to compress detail e.g. Geometric detail versus normal maps
Avoid downloading data you don't need
JavaScript Performance Animation loops exacerbate performance issues
Many operations run on large geometry arrays
Prefer fast code to pretty code
Lazy evaluations
Cache results
JavaScript Performance if (transform._dirty) { transform.matrix.identityMat(); transform.matrix.mulMat4(transform.scale); transform.matrix.mulMat4(transform.rotation); transform.matrix.mulMat4(transform.translation); transform._dirty = false; }
Memory management Memory management in JavaScript is hard
Garbage collection can throttle performance
Stability also a concern, especially on mobile
WebGL Considerations Large arrays containing geometry data Don't make unnecessary copies!!!
Animation loops Any allocations will happen 60 times per second
Why is memory management hard? Common JS idioms make "hidden" allocations object.transform({ rotate: { axis: vec1.cross(vec2).normalize(), angle: Math.PI / 4 } });
Uglify for performance! Pre-allocate outside the animation loop var crossVec = new Float32Array(3); var axisVec = new Float32Array(3); var rotateParams = { axis: axisVec, angle: 0}; var tranformParams = { rotate: rotateParams };
Uglify for performance! Re-use objects and arrays in the animation loop cross(vec1, vec2, crossvec); // Note the "result" argument normalize(crossVec, axisVec); object.transform(transformParams);
Why is memory management hard? When is memory allocated? var a = new Float32Array(4 * 1024 * 1024); // Allocate 16MB. var b = a.subarray(0, 2 * 1024 * 1024); // No allocation. Reference same memory. var c = a.slice(0, 2 * 1024 * 1024); // Allocate another 8MB!!!
Why is memory management hard? An example from SceneJS
Background: How does WebGL work? Get WebGL context from a canvas element
Send geometry data to the GPU
Run the GPU pipeline
Get WebGL context from a canvas element var canvas = document.getElementById("the-canvas"); var gl = canvas.getContext("webgl");
Send scene data to the GPU Arrays of vertex information that describe the meshes
Other data describe lights, materials, etc.
Send scene data to the GPU var buffer = gl.createBuffer(); var aPosition = gl.getUniformLocation(program, "aPosition"); var positionData = new Float32Array(positions); gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, buffer); gl.bufferData(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, positionData, gl.STATIC_DRAW); gl.vertexAttribPointer(aPosition, 3, gl.FLOAT, false, 0, 0); gl.enableVertexAttribArray(aPosition); (Note the super-concise, expressive API)
The GPU pipeline Several stages that manipulate the mesh data to produce the final image Place objects into correct position relative to the camera Figure out which pixels are covered by an object Color those pixels based on available data
Some stages are programmable, others are not
The GPU pipeline
The Vertex Shader A program you write that gets compiled onto the GPU
Applied to each vertex in the mesh
Transforms vertices into "view space" then projects onto the screen attribute vec4 aPosition; uniform mat4 uMVP; void main() { gl_Position = uPerspective * uView * uModel * aPosition; }
Rasterization Non-programmable
Figure out which pixels are covered by each object
The Fragment Shader Another program you write that gets compiled onto the GPU
Applied to each pixel covered by an object
Uses mesh, material and light information to color a pixel varying vec4 vPosition; varying vec4 vNormal; varying vec4 vColor; uniform vec3 uLightPos; uniform vec3 uLightColor; void main() { vec3 lightDir = normalize(uLightPos - vPosition.xyz); float l = max(dot(normalize(vNormal), lightDir), 0.0); gl_FragColor = vec4(l * vColor.rgb * uLightColor, vColor.a); }
Now do all that 60 times per second!!!
Talking to the GPU GL calls are relatively expensive
Data has to move between system and GPU memory Bandwidth is limited
GL calls outside the browser's render cycle can be slow Always them inside a requestAnimationFrame callback
Talking to the GPU Don't make unnecessary GL calls! // BAD!!! requestAnimationFrame(function() { gl.drawElements(gl.TRIANGLES, numElements, gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); }); // GOOD!!! requestAnimationFrame(function() { if (sceneDirty) { gl.drawElements(gl.TRIANGLES, numElements, gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); sceneDirty = false; } });
Shader Performance Shader programs are invoked a lot! Vertex shader: Once per vertex Fragment shader: Potentially once per pixel (8.3M invocations on a 4k screen!)
Micro-optimizations count!
Shader programming idiosyncrasies Generally prefer calculations in the vertex shader (less invocations) BUT there's a limited amount of data that can pass from VS to FS
Looping and conditionals are very bad for shader performance
Prefer conditional compilation to runtime conditions
Example The SceneJS uber shader
Mobile considerations Rendering performance and memory can be severely limited on mobile devices
Can't make assumptions about client capabilities
Mobile considerations Possible to query some properties: Certain GL capabilities Shader precision
Not others: GPU memory
Know the Client! SceneJS.WEBGL_INFO.MAX_VARYING_VECTORS = gl.getParameter(gl.MAX_VARYING_VECTORS); SceneJS.WEBGL_INFO.MAX_TEXTURE_UNITS = gl.getParameter(gl.MAX_COMBINED_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS); if (gl.getShaderPrecisionFormat(gl.FRAGMENT_SHADER, gl.HIGH_FLOAT).precision > 0) { SceneJS.WEBGL_INFO.FS_MAX_FLOAT_PRECISION = "highp"; } else if (gl.getShaderPrecisionFormat(gl.FRAGMENT_SHADER, gl.MEDIUM_FLOAT).precision > 0) { SceneJS.WEBGL_INFO.FS_MAX_FLOAT_PRECISION = "mediump"; } else { SceneJS.WEBGL_INFO.FS_MAX_FLOAT_PRECISION = "lowp"; }Download the PDF here.
President Donald Trump is likely to follow the tradition of other Republican anti-choice administrations and reinstate the Mexico City Policy, which bans recipients of U.S. foreign aid from offering abortion-related services, as one of his first executive actions. Better known as the Global Gag Rule and first introduced in 1984 at the U.N. International Conference on Population held in Mexico City, the policy has been a barrier to comprehensive women’s health care on a global scale. Made U.S. policy through an executive order issued by President Ronald Reagan, it restricts family planning providers from offering comprehensive health care and, when in place, denies international family planning organizations the right to:
Provide abortion-related information to their patients and clients
Provide referrals to other health care providers who perform safe abortions
Provide legal abortions or legal abortion-related services
Advocate for the legalization of abortion in their country
The Mexico City Policy infringes upon women’s fundamental right to make informed decisions about their bodies and their health. It denies women access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care that includes abortion care and related information and referrals.
When former President Barack Obama assumed office in 2009, one of the first executive actions he took was to revoke the ban, which had been reinstated after George W. Bush came into office in 2001 following the Clinton administration. The end of the Obama administration brings to the forefront just how much is at stake for women if the Global Gag Rule is reinstated. Historically under Republican administrations, the policy has imposed barriers on any organization receiving U.S. international family planning funding. The policy is put into place via executive order; thus, presidential administrations can dictate family planning measures depending upon whether they support reproductive choice. This makes continuing the promotion of technical assistance to recipient countries and contraception access difficult. Shortly after the reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy in 2001, for example, shipments of donated contraceptives—including condoms—were completely stopped from the United States. This left 20 developing countries without much-needed contraceptive supplies. In addition, a 2011 Stanford University study found that organizations that refused to sign the Global Gag Rule completely lost U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, funding. As a result, abortion rates increased in countries where these organizations were working to more than twice the rate prior to the presidency of George W. Bush.
The Global Gag Rule directly affects access to women’s health care in U.S.-funded global health programs overseas, as well as the providers themselves by forcing them to decide between U.S. aid for family assistance and providing comprehensive, modern care.
The Global Gag Rule puts undue burden on U.S.-funded health care providers and women seeking their services
Since 1973, the Helms Amendment has restricted the use of U.S. foreign assistance funds for the performance of abortion “as a method of family planning.” It is a restriction that is statute and applied to all U.S. foreign assistance funding. The Global Gag Rule, on the other hand, is put into place via executive order and restricts international family planning funding only—barring U.S.-funded health care providers who work overseas from even using their own private funds to engage in any work related to abortion. Moreover, without the free speech protections afforded to U.S. organizations through the Constitution, the Global Gag Rule is used as a political football that is solely dependent upon the presidential administration’s views on abortion. This means that whoever holds the office of the president dictates the right of women overseas to access comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care. The policy has also done great harm to health care providers by making the provision of comprehensive health care for women an unnecessarily burdensome task.
If a provider refuses to sign the Global Gag Rule, it loses:
U.S. funding
Donated contraceptives—including condoms
Cutting-edge leadership and technical expertise, which is predominantly provided by the U.S. international family planning program within USAID
In the past, the abrupt cutting of funds has led to entire health care networks collapsing, with providers noting a lack of resources and resorting to higher service costs in order to maintain efficiency.
If a provider agrees to sign the Global Gag Rule, it must comply with strict guidelines. To secure USAID family planning funds, organizations often forfeit free speech and control of their services. For example, providers under the Global Gag Rule lose critical rights such as the ability to practice full consent—independent decision-making between doctor and patient. Without the right to disseminate abortion-related information, the patient-provider relationship is strained. Fearing reprimand, international family planning providers sacrifice critical, often lifesaving advice. Even permitted services, such as treatment for injuries due to unsafe abortion, are at times inaccessible to women because providers refuse to risk viable funding.
Women globally deserve the right to autonomy and comprehensive care
The Global Gag Rule is also a barrier to addressing other global health priorities such as HIV/AIDS prevention and maternal and child health. International family planning providers have the expertise and resources to advise patients about risky behaviors and safer sex practices and to screen for and treat sexually transmitted infections, or STIs, including HIV. However, when the Global Gag Rule is in place, health care providers who address global health priorities and work with at-risk populations—namely, women, young people, and those who disagree with the policy—are often unable to engage in important partnerships with the United States.
Moreover, the loss of U.S. funding contributes to the unmet need for modern contraception for more than 225 million women globally. Access to contraception is vital to the success of women, children, and their communities. By empowering women with proper health care access, their ability to help build their nations’ economies is bolstered. When given full access to U.S. international family planning funding and assistance, health care providers would be better able to help women in developing nations have safe pregnancies, avoid unsafe abortion, and have access to contraceptives. Without the burden of the Mexico City Policy, women and their health care providers have the ability to engage in autonomous, comprehensive, and life-altering care.
In the absence of the Mexico City Policy, health care providers have the ability to establish open communication with women about their family planning and overall health options. A healthy patient-provider relationship and access to U.S. governmental funds, void of draconian restrictions, means tangible change for women’s health outcomes and implements autonomous comprehensive care. Some of the key health outcomes yielded by having access to family planning services include:
Increasing the likelihood that more women gain needed access to other facets of the health care system
Decreasing women’s likelihood of attaining an unsafe abortion or dying from pregnancy-related complications
Sparing 8.4 million women from serious illness or injury from unsafe abortion complications
Saving an estimated 289,000 women from pregnancy- or childbirth-related deaths
Providing an estimated 50,000 adolescent mothers and more than 1 million infants a chance at life via measures such as contraceptives, prenatal care, and postnatal care
Ensuring that 75 percent of sexually active adolescents in developing countries have access to contraceptives
For all women and girls, the Global Gag Rule is a breach of autonomy. By taking away family planning and stigmatizing abortion, the United States is withholding women’s human right to safe and informed sexual health; reliable STI/HIV treatment; safe abortion care; safe pregnancies and childbirth; and ultimately, their ability to make substantial contributions to their communities.
Action against the Global Gag Rule under the Trump administration
If President Trump reinstates the Global Gag Rule, the global community will see increases in maternal deaths, unintended pregnancies, and rates of unsafe abortion. As the world’s largest bilateral donor of international family planning, the United States is obligated to do better by the nations it serves. The Global Democracy Promotion Act—legislation aimed at ensuring that international family planning will not be inhibited by undue governmental interference—is a first step in that direction.
This act would end the case of ineligibility for U.S. foreign aid recipients due to use of nongovernmental funds for provider-specified services, such as abortion or abortion-related care. It would also help keep U.S. presidents from unilaterally imposing the Global Gag Rule and chipping away at the human rights of women overseas. Congress must make concerted efforts to reintroduce, and ultimately pass, this bill because women and girls deserve to freely make decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.
Kiersten Gillette-Pierce is a Research Assistant for the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Jamila K. Taylor is a Senior Fellow at the Center.
EndnotesJOHN KEKIS AP Sports Writer WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (AP) — When a beaming Brad Daugherty sat down to address the media at Watkins Glen International after AJ Allmendinger had given JTG Daugherty Racing its first…
JOHN KEKIS
AP Sports Writer
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (AP) — When a beaming Brad Daugherty sat down to address the media at Watkins Glen International after AJ Allmendinger had given JTG Daugherty Racing its first Sprint Cup triumph, the former NBA star couldn’t curb his enthusiasm.
“We’re coming for you Jimmie!” Daugherty belted out, gleeful about being able to challenge six-time champion Jimmie Johnson for the season title.
Yep, an underfunded single-car team with around 40 employees has made NASCAR’s coveted 10-race Chase for the championship, and it’s not just happy to be there.
“We’ve got a shot,” said Allmendinger, whose first Cup win came in his 213th start. “It’s huge to be in the Chase. This doesn’t automatically make us a championship contender. We’re still a small team. We’re still building. To get that exposure by saying we’re a Chase team is big for us because of our sponsors. It gives them more exposure, and that’s what it’s all about.”
After Allmendinger took the checkered flag, Daugherty, who worked the race as a television analyst, began jumping up and down, grinning from ear to ear as he hugged fellow analyst Rusty Wallace. He then departed to Victory Lane and hoisted Allmendinger off the ground as a wild celebration got underway.
Allmendinger’s life changed two years ago in the hours before the July race at Daytona International Speedway. NASCAR officials had just kicked him out of the track, suspending Allmendinger indefinitely for failing a random drug test.
The failed drug test sidelined him for more than three months and cost him his job with Penske Racing. It also spurred much soul searching, and after a handful of one-off Cup rides he eventually landed a full-time Cup ride last August with JTG Daugherty Racing.
That Penske was among those to congratulate Allmendinger in Victory Lane spoke volumes.
“I knew he was the right guy for this team,” said Tad Geschickter, a co-owner of the team with wife Jodi. “We try and run it like a family, and he was looking for a home.”
Allmendinger’s victory was timely. It came just two days after the team announced that Kimberly-Clark had extended its sponsorship through the 2017 Sprint Cup season with their SCOTT, Viva, Kleenex, Cottonelle, and Huggies brands. Kimberly-Clark has been with the team for five years.
“The significance of this win goes without saying how big and how important it is to this race team,” said Allmendinger, who told his parents to make the trip because he felt good about his chances. “You know, to be able to share it with Tad and Jodi and Brad and everybody at this whole No. 47 race team, they make this team feel like such a family, like we’re their own. To be able to share that together, that was what to me rolling into Victory Lane meant, that I was pulling into Victory Lane with my family.”
In the broadcast booth, Daugherty was hesitant to pick his driver during the telecast because of the team’s three-stop pit strategy. But when a handful of cautions flew in the final third of the 90-lap race, crew chief Brian Burns looked like a genius.
Still, Allmendinger had to prove his mettle by outdriving Australian road race ace Marcos Ambrose in a fender-bending, door-slamming finish over the final laps in a desperate attempt by both drivers to make the Chase.
“He won the race today in a fashion that everyone is proud of him for doing, to beat one of the best in the world at driving these stock cars,” said third-place finisher Kurt Busch, who was poised to take the victory if the two front-runners took each other out. “He deserves the trophy, and he had to pull from within. He had to dig in deep, and he had to believe in himself all the way through this.
“He’s put himself through all those mental challenges, and today he persevered,” Busch said. “He didn’t break down and he brought home a victory, so we’re all very proud of him.”
It was just the fifth top-5 finish of the year for Allmendinger and the No. 47 Chevrolet but a step in the right direction with NASCAR’s version of a regular season winding down. Only four races remain until the Chase begins.
“I think we have more in us. I think we’ve got a chance,” Daugherty said. “If the dominoes fall correctly, we’ve got a chance. So we’ve got to put our eggs in one basket. We don’t want to just be there as a back-marker. We want to make some noise.”
Added Allmendinger: “You never know. We may go and shock the world and have a shot when it comes down to Homestead-Miami Speedway. You never know.”
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.MONTRÉAL – Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin announced Saturday a four-year contract extension for head coach Michel Therrien (2015-16 to 2018-19).
“We're very happy to have agreed to a contract extension with Michel Therrien for multiple seasons. Michel is an accomplished and experienced coach who has instilled a culture of hard work in our organization while helping develop our young players. Michel and his coaching staff work in a unique and demanding hockey market and the team's success over the last two seasons are a reflection of their excellent work. This decision reflects our desire for stability and consistency within our hockey operations department”, said Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin.
Now 50, Michel Therrien has coached close to 1,100 games in professional hockey (592 games in the NHL and 501 in the American Hockey League).
Over the past two seasons as head coach of the Canadiens, Michel Therrien has led the team to an overall record of 75-42-13, recording 163 points in 130 regular season games for a winning percentage of.627. Under his leadership, the Canadiens posted a 100-point season in 2013-14, the team's highest point total since 2007-08. Therrien led Montreal to the Eastern Conference finals this postseason, losing in six games to the New York Rangers.
In 320 career regular season games as the Canadiens head coach, he has a record of 152 wins, 119 losses and 49 ties or OTLs.Ubuntu has released a number of patches for security vulnerabilities in several versions of the OS, including some remote code execution flaws in Thunderbird, which is included with Ubuntu.
Thunderbird is Mozilla’s email client, and the company recently fixed several memory corruption vulnerabilities, along with a cross-site request forgery bug and a flaw that could lead to a session-fixation attack.
“If a user were tricked in to opening a specially crafted message with scripting enabled, an attacker could potentially exploit these to cause a denial of service via application crash, or execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking Thunderbird,” the Ubuntu advisory says, referring to the memory corruption vulnerabilities.
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The CSRF weakness in Thunderbird could be exploited if an attacker can get a user to open a malicious message while scripting is enabled. The session-fixation attack could occur under some circumstances if a user is connected to a malicious web proxy.
In addition to the Thunderbird vulnerabilities, there are also patches for several other flaws in Ubuntu. One of the patches fixes a bug in libssh that could cause a denial of service.
“It was discovered that libssh incorrectly handled certain kexinit packets. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause libssh to crash, resulting in a denial of service,” the advisory says.
There are also two vulnerabilities in the RPM package that could let a local attacker execute arbitrary code and a bug in libevent that could allow code execution in some cases.
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“Andrew Bartlett discovered that libevent incorrectly handled large inputs to the evbuffer API. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue with an application that uses libevent to cause a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code,” the Ubuntu advisory says.Pin 0 Shares
If you are at all connected to the Internet, you understand that gaming has become a vital part of our economy. Top manufacturers like EA, THQ, and Rock Star have cemented themselves in the gaming industry and procured licenses that generate a ton of revenue for clients such as the NFL, MLB, and WWE. In order to make money off of their expensive licenses, however, they have to start charging consumers more money to play the games.
What if there were ways to save money on your gaming needs instead of constantly racking up credit card bills and feeling like a consummate consumer every day? Consumers often fall into hidden traps and holes when it comes to their video game dollars. Here are some ways you can get the most entertainment out of your video game budget without raising your checking account rates:
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Buy Used Titles
If you are just getting into video games, you may be shocked that the latest titles can run you in excess of $60 a pop. In order to avoid paying these premium prices, you can visit a variety of retailers to purchase the latest titles for less money because they have been opened already. Stores like Best Buy, Gamespot, Amazon and others will sell used games at a lower price. Buy used instead!
GameFly
The worst feeling in the world is purchasing a new video game only for it to be awful. Spending any kind of money and then receiving a lackluster game can make the most die-hard gamer feel a little used. Instead of purchasing games as they come out, sign up for Gamefly. By subscribing to the service you can receive games in the mail for as little as $7.95 a month. Other services like Redbox kiosks will also allow you to rent a game at a fraction of the cost. Rent instead!
Download Emulators
One of the best eras in gaming is the original NES and Sega Genesis days. Games were simple and easy to figure out, which provided a lot of fun for everyone. Today if you want to play Super Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog, you are going to have to get a Wii or spend a bunch of money on eBay where the consoles have become collector's items. By downloading Roms and emulators you can play these classic games for free on your own computer. Play free classic games instead!
Stay Out of the Controversy
According to the Cato Institute, the government has been trying to legislate video games for the longest time, they feel like they have a right to tell parents and families what is best for their kid's safety when it comes to video games. According to many, however, video games haven't been shown to have any link towards violent or abberant behavior – in some cases the opposite is true.
No matter what political stance you take on this issue, more controversial games are going to have higher prices because of their high profile and because of supply and demand. Try playing some less controversial games!
Buy for Education!
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budget.
Skip if: You don’t want your period to disappear entirely. This device is a pharmacologic equivalent to Mirena (it has the same total amount of hormones), but was developed to be less expensive for women visiting family planning clinics who are either on Medicaid or lack health insurance. It costs providers $50 and they can pass on savings to their patients. It’s not technically a generic because it looks a little different and releases slightly less hormone on a daily basis, though there is the same amount of hormone in the device. Still, about the same number of women reported amenorrhea (no periods) with Liletta as with Mirena (Liletta’s rate is slightly higher after three years).
It’s currently approved for three years but the manufacturer will be submitting five-year data to the FDA and will continue to study the same group of women for seven years. It’s possible that Liletta could last even longer than Mirena since the daily release is lower, but only further research can prove that.
S k y l a Best for: Women who like the idea of a smaller IUD.
Skip if: You’re looking for a long-term commitment. This device is approved for three years and is specifically marketed to women who haven’t had kids. It’s smaller than Mirena, which makes it more appealing to people who haven’t had their cervix dilated, but we’re talking about the difference of a few millimeters, says Kristyn Brandi, MD, family planning fellow at Boston Medical Center.
What is different is that it releases fewer hormones on a daily basis, meaning more women keep getting their periods on Skyla versus with Mirena — which is appealing if you would prefer to keep your normal bodily function intact, Dr. Brandi says. (Only about 6 percent of Skyla users stop getting their period after one year; 12 percent of users stop after three years.) That, and it’s only approved for three years. If you want contraception for longer, you should probably get a different IUD.
K y l e e n a Best for: Women who want more than three years of use, and want to keep menstruating.
Skip if: You don’t have the patience to fight with your insurance. Bayer, which manufactures Mirena and Skyla, developed this newest IUD which became available in October. Kyleena is approved for use in women regardless of whether they’ve had kids. It releases fewer hormones than Mirena, but more than Skyla, though it lasts the same amount of time as Mirena. This device might be a better option for women who want five years of pregnancy prevention but would rather get their period than not. In the approval studies, about 12 percent of women stopped getting their periods after one year, and 20 percent did after three years. But beware: If you’re interested in Kyleena, it could be a hassle to get your insurance to pay for it for the next five to six months until the temporary billing code designated for new drugs and devices becomes a permanent one, Dr. MacIsaac says.
Here’s a handy chart with the dosing and approval length for each IUD.
*Additional studies show that the devices are effective even longer than originally approved for: 12 years for ParaGard, seven years for Mirena, and five years for Liletta.After a few months, my friends became curious about me in the same way. I was already a journalist, meeting lots of people through my profession, and I lived as part of a pack. Sometimes there were ten of us at a simple impromptu weeknight supper. And almost all of us went in pairs, so my solitude could not pass unnoticed.
One couple, Vionne and Carlos, were the most tenacious. It's incredible how much of a ruckus a couple can kick up. At first they had admired my courage; I'd been able to feel like a heroine. Those halcyon days were over. Now barely had they said hello when they'd ask if I'd found someone. I'd shake my head--and they'd pitch a fit of amazement, pressing me to explain how that was possible: Was I doing all that was necessary? They'd check out what I was wearing with a knowing air. No dress was cut deeply enough. My hair was too messy. I had to show more leg. And stop being such a pal. And the heels--why wasn't I wearing heels? Carlos had a theory that heels were the decisive index of a woman's accessibility, since no woman perched on them can take off at a run. And it's true that if I compared myself to Vionne--Vionne's long lustrous locks, Vionne's staggeringly high heels--I must admit that of the two of us, it was Vionne who attracted men, Vionne who already had one--and a Spaniard to boot.
I had noticed this when my father died: no convalescence is allowed to last too long. People tolerate your inactivity for a while, but alas, that can cease overnight. You are still grief-stricken; they have finished mourning your loss. Same thing now: my freedom had to be paired with availability, or else it became a disorder. I pleaded my cause with vigor. I certified that I was just fine, a feeble argument I attempted to shore up by alluding to Robert Redford's love for me. They were appalled.
"You're sleepwalking!" they told me, and glanced disapprovingly at my flat-heeled boots. What good would it have done me to inform Carlos that Coco Chanel had worn the same ones, that they came from Church's English Shoes (founded in 1873) in Paris, that they were bespoke (a restyling of a men's model), and that I'd waited nine months for them?
If there was a party, everyone in turn would come sit next to me to regale me with how he or she thought I should live and what I deserved to have. What it boiled down to was that I should live like them. Elvire, one half of a tightly knit couple, would forget that her husband was clinically depressed. Guillaume, married to a harpy, maintained that if one laid low and said amen to everything, things worked out. Maria, fed up to the teeth with her children, wanted me to have my own. Assia loved women but it was killing her mother. Patrizio had bruises on his shoulders from his chronically jealous wife. Not one of them could stand my singleness, because it could have been theirs. And the marginal couple, Sabine and William, doleful swingers, who absolutely had to stay together to have someone to swap--even they found me peculiar. I was discovering conventional behavior in the most liberated milieus: broad-minded people, against any form of censorship or constraint, who boasted about how they pushed boundaries. Well, I blasted them back in the other direction, and they flung their hands up. They had ingested the most useless hodgepodge of drugs, blitzing themselves so completely that they'd forgotten I'd seen them do it, whereas I was mainlining the purest of ideals, of the very highest quality--and this shocked them.
This post is adapted from Sophie Fontanel's The Art of Sleeping Alone.For many people, having suitable business wear is an essential part of their wardrobe. There’s a wide range of professions that require a specific dress code in order to be respected or accepted. Whether your career requires a formal look, with long sleeve, button down, dress shirts or a dress casual look with a polo shirt, Gotapparel.com has just what you are looking for at prices that make creating a professional wardrobe a snap. We have options from many respected brands including Port Authority, Harriton, Ultra Club, Chestnut Hill, Devon & Jones, and more.
We have a wide array of options for affordable business wear, including dress shirts, button downs, polo shirts, performance polos, sportshirts, and sweaters. We have a wide range of colors and sizes, including big and tall sizes. You can easily fill your closet with inexpensive business wear options for a variety of situations from formal office attire to casual Friday to a client meeting on the golf course with our affordable business wear selections. Whether you are just starting out or just want to refresh your existing wardrobe, our inexpensive prices and high quality business wear is a great way to stock up on the perfect office attire. Find other garments and items suitable for the office all at once with our selection of accessories outerwear, and headwearAfter two days chock full of significant trades, signings and intrigue, the 2011 NHL Entry Draft is complete. Here’s a brief breakdown and early analysis of the Boston Bruins’ six selections from St. Paul, Minnesota:
1. Dougie Hamilton, D – Niagara Ice Dogs, OHL (6’5, 195) The ninth overall selection was more than a bit of a surprise to me and several other Bruins’ draft followers. Most experts considered that Hamilton would be unavailable by then – as huge, mobile, two-way defensemen don’t exactly grow on trees. Hamilton is an excellent selection – it’s hard to find major flaws in his game. He obviously needs to put on a considerable amount of muscle, but it’s hardly something to worry about. Dougie is a plus-skater (plus-plus if you account for his size), has a great shot, excellent defensive and offensive instincts and is an above-average distributor.
His intelligence and hockey sense are what really get me – Hamilton is a guy who thinks the game at a very high level, which is encouraging not only for his speedy development, but also his eventual peak performance.
Bruins’ Grade – (A-) – While this may have been an obvious selection for GM Peter Chiarelli and Co., they could have just as easily gone with the diminutive and dynamic young stud blueliner, Ryan Murphy among a few other possibles – they deserve credit for keeping it simple. Hamilton will be a Bruins’ cornerstone for years to come.
Projection – No. 1 Shut-Down Defender, All-Star, 15-40-55 – At his very worst, Hamilton will be a solid second-pairing guy who can match up against top scorers. At his best, he could be a smaller Chara with better puck distribution and mobility. Expect him to arrive in the 2012-13 season and grow with a very steep learning curve.
2. Alex Khokhlachev, C/W – Windsor Spitfires, OHL (5’10, 183) The 40th overall selection in the 2011 NHL Draft was a shocker. I had Khokhlachev going in the first round, at 20 to Phoenix, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him go earlier. He’s easily one of the top skill guys in the draft and has the drive and desire to score and win at any cost. How he fell so far leaves me in disbelief, and seriously questioning the decision-makers on some of the late first and early second round draft boards. Possessing an excellent shot, sneaky playmaking ability, great skating and tenacious play despite his size, the young man has the tools to become a dynamic offensive threat.
Bruins’ Grade – (A+) – While this might not be the most-talked-about pick, it’s the best, even with the risk involved with drafting a Russian and someone of his dimensions. He was in my top 5 best-players-available since before pick 20.
Projection – First/Second Line C/W, Dynamic Potential (30-35-65) – Khokhlachev isn’t a sure thing, but as it stands right now, B’s fans could be catching a glimpse of Tyler Seguin’s future linemate. If he gets stronger and continues his current growth pattern, we could be looking at a very dangerous player indeed.
3. Anthony Camara, LW – Saginaw Spirit, OHL (6’0, 194) – With the 81st selection in the 2011 NHL Draft, the Boston Bruins reached a bit for a truculent middleweight from Saginaw. A relatively high pick in the OHL draft, (14th) Camara has some skill to his game that’s been underutilized in two seasons with the Spirit in which he’s totaled 14 goals and 29 points in 129 games. The Bruins hope that the still very young man will be able to increase his production while retaining the pugilistic skill that no doubt earned him this selection. His fighting technique needs refining – by technique I mean throwing wild punches with his head down – but he has the toughness to get things done.
Bruins’ Grade – (C-) – Despite arguments to the contrary, this is quite a reach for the Bruins’ Brass and will no doubt garner some raised eyebrows around the hockey community. With players like Jordan Binnington, Kale Kessy, Greg Hofmann, and Michael St. Croix available, Chia’s got some ‘splaining to do.
Projection – NHL/AHL ‘tweener, Pugilistic Grinder, (10-10-20) – The selling point on Camara is he’s a guy in the Shawn Thornton mold (which I consider high praise) and that his underlying skill and grit will power him through to NHL success. Color me skeptical, but I don’t think he’s a good enough fighter to overshadow his other deficiencies. If he displays a bit more production, he would be deserving of a NHL career.
4. Brian Ferlin, RW – Indiana Ice, USHL (6’2, 201) – The young Floridian from Indiana of the USHL was taken with Boston’s fourth-round selection (121st). Passed over in 2010, this overager erupted onto the scene with the third-highest point total in the USHL. Despite a flawed skating stride, the Bruins tapped him as a future power-forward. Boston assistant GM Jim Benning stated, “He does the things that we covet. He’s strong along the wall. He’s strong protecting the puck. He takes pucks to the net. … he had a good year… he’s a guy we see as a power forward playing in the NHL someday.”
Bruins’ Grade – (B-) – It’s hard to judge a team for taking an overager when he’s been so productive in the USHL. He’s got stuff to work through, and will be heading to Cornell next season, but he’s a smart gambit for the B’s to take on.
Projection – Borderline NHLer /Third-Liner (15-20-35) – His skating makes the situation much more questionable than it should be. He’s got the finish, grit and size sought-after by B’s management, but he doesn’t have much more than modest upside. Should he improve his skating, he would see a significant jump in his NHL potential.
5. Rob O’Gara, D – Milton Academy, USHS-MA (6’3, 185) – Milton defenseman Rob O’Gara has the size and mobility to earn him a late-round selection. Not particularly productive or talented in a puck-moving capacity, O’Gara has enough own-zone skill and physicality to earn a shot if he progresses. The future Yale collegiate is has solid hockey IQ and makes few mistakes with the puck. Efficient and disciplined, O’Gara needs to get stronger and a bit more proficient in the puck-moving department to improve his NHL chances.
Bruins’ Grade – (B) – At this point in the draft, it’s all about endgame skill and projection, and this kid has the tools to be a decent stay-at-home NHL defender in his future. Also, how can you go wrong selecting a kid from a local high school?
Projection – Final Pairing NHL Defensive Defenseman (5-10-15) – Mediocre offensive capability makes him unlikely to break into a second NHL pairing, but with the right growth and training, he has the look of a solid 6th defender and penalty-kill specialist.
6. Lars Volden, G – Espoo Blues Jr., SM-Liga Jr. (6’3, 198) – The big, athletic Norwegian netminder from the Finnish Junior leagues was selected by the B’s with the final pick in the sixth round. Excellent reflexes and a large frame make him a solid project goaltender who has some modest NHL potential. Despite a poor WJC appearance, the B’s like his lateral movement and long-term upside.
Bruins’ Grade –(C-) – While it’s inaccurate to say that that this was much of a stretch, the Bruins could have had several better goaltenders earlier in the draft if they were determined to take one. Volden’s dimensions and quickness are solid and this late in the draft should he fail it’s not much of a waste.
Projection – Starting AHL Goalie (.900-2.95) – Volden has all the ingredients of a good young goalie, but it’s difficult to confidently project him making the NHL at this point. He has a long way to go (probably more than three years) before he’ll even earn outside consideration for a NHL backup job.Philadelphia Union today announced that the club has acquired Harrisburg native and Harrisburg City Islanders academy product Alex Mendoza.
A dual United States and Mexican citizen, Mendoza spent the last three seasons with Mexico’s Pumas, one of the country’s most popular teams, competing for all levels of the club’s system. The midfielder will be eligible to play for the Union upon receipt of his ITC. Per MLS and club policy, terms of the deal will not be disclosed.
Mendoza, 22, joined Pumas in February of 2009, participating in the club’s first and second division teams, as well as the U-20 squad, for the 2009 and 2010 seasons. In the 2011 season, Mendoza added the Morelos Liga de Acenso squad to his resume.
A graduate of Red Land High School, Mendoza played his club soccer for Red Land Soccer Club and was also a member of the LDC United U-16 and U-18 teams, as well as the Central Pennsylvania Youth Soccer League U-10 and U-15 Select and Alliance teams. He also was part of the U-13 and U-17 ODP player pools.
Player: Alex Mendoza
Position: Midfielder
Number: 24
Height: 5-9
Weight: 160 lbs
Date of Birth: August 16, 1990
Age: 22
Hometown: Harrisburg, Pa.
Citizenship: USA and Mexico
Last Club: Pumas (Mexico)One of the more popular battle axes used by the Norse was the Dane Ax (Danish Ax).
It was an ax that consisted of a wide, thin blade that was ‘pronounced’ at both the toe and heel of the bit with the toe swept inward for better shearing power.
The cutting surface of the Danish battle ax varied between 20 centimeters to 30 centimeters (8 to 12 inches) and the average weight was around one kilogram to two kilograms (two to four pounds). It was lightweight and resembled more of a meat cleaver than a wood ax that had devastating cutting ability.
The half (handle) of the ax ranged from 0.9 meters to 1.2 meters (3 to 4 feet) long. This enabled a powerful and controlled swing with the edge of the blade just right to cut through whatever it hits.
The Bayeux Tapestry shows us exactly the size of a two handed Danish Ax in comparison to the size of the wielder. The battle axes were shoulder level in length with slightly curved handles giving the blade edge a better cutting angle.
The standard shield wall was the most commonly used battle formation of the day. Just about all warriors of the day used it.
When in the shield wall, most attacks against your opponent are made overhead. The overhead attack is an attempt to hit over the top of the enemy’s shield while aiming at their head and trying to bash or split them in the head, neck, or shoulders. Most thrusts while in a shield wall formation would go against the enemy’s shield and open yourself up to similar attacks as you must open a small gap in the wall to allow you to thrust.
Spears are generally used most effectively with two hands while thrusting at the enemy’s chest and waist level. But they can also be used by warriors behind the shield wall that were thrusting and targeting enemy warriors that were involved in another fight and stabbing overhead at the enemy behind the shield wall.
This was where the dane ax could be used to reach over the shield wall and be swung down upon the enemy’s heads and shoulders behind their shields. Their shields would also be shattered and split from the powerful overhead hacks by a dane ax armed viking warrior.
Using two hands in combat did expose them to similar attacks from the opposing side using spear thrusts. This went on until the shield wall was essentially shoved, hacked, and stabbed down by sheer force.
Once the shield wall was broke down, individual fights ensued and were most likely settled by using opportunistic wounding blows that left an opponent disabled but not dead – out of the fight and no longer a threat.
Quite often, legs and arms would be the only exposed targets that would be easy to hit. Obviously the limbs were the most tempting target against a warrior that was wearing a mail shirt or other body armor that would also be protected by their shield. The head was usually crowned with a helmet, so the exposed legs, arms, face and neck would be the best areas to target.
The legs were a grand target of opportunity for a dane ax armed warrior to swing at. An over-swing still allowed the dane ax wielder the opportunity to clip their opponents legs out from under them and bring them to the ground as they swung their ax down upon them with force.
Many of the fallen warriors are usually found with major leg injuries where they were incapacitated and then left behind to bleed to death on the field as the battle went on to be decided. It was a common practice of the day for the victor to return and slay the enemy’s wounded that remained.
This was considered granting mercy in lieu of a slow and painful death from their injuries.
Videos featuring the Dane Ax
Simulated combat with a Dane Ax vs. Ax and Shield.
Swing and chopping demonstrations with a Dane Ax.
Documentary re-enactments of combat with axes.
Tip the writer!Copyright © 2013-2018 Spangenhelm Publishing – All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying form without written permission of the author, Njord Kane, or the publisher, Spangenhelm Publishing.BRISTOW, Okla. – Authorities said a man walked into a Walmart, claimed to be an armored truck driver and convinced store employees to give him $75,000.
Newson6.com reported that it happened at a Walmart in Bristow, Okla. on Saturday after the man entered the store claiming to be there for a cash deposit.
The suspect was apparently disguised as an armored truck driver with a bullet proof vest and a gun.
Police said the real Loomis truck came to make a scheduled pick up about 30 minutes later, and that’s when employees realized their error.
The suspect is said to have walked off with more than $75,000 in cash. He’s said to be driving a newer model black Chevrolet Malibu.
Federal authorities are reportedly involved in the case because of the massive size of the theft. The investigation is ongoing.(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document,'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
A reasonable mind could argue that Notre Dame was the hottest team from arguably the best conference entering the tournament and it showed why for 38 minutes at Quicken Loans Arena. Thirty-eight great minutes of greatness from Notre Dame beget a 38th win for Kentucky.
Those last two minutes in the Midwest Regional final may have been the most significant two minutes in the college basketball season to date. A paradigm shift. As the regular season wound down and the postseason ramped up conventional wisdom has been that the mounting pressure to remain undefeated would be too much for the young Wildcats. Maybe it’s time for a little unconventional wisdom.
"Sometimes teams want to beat you so bad, they just can't because they're trying too hard."
The source of that unconventional wisdom was Willie Cauley-Stein, naturally. It was uttered in the aftermath of a win at Georgia in which the Cats trailed by as many as nine late in the second half, before -- stop me if you’ve heard this one -- Aaron Harrison made a clutch shot to tie the game with 3:52 left, the Cats locked down on defense, and Kentucky pulled out the win.
On March 3 the opportunity to be The Team That Beat the Team slipped through Georgia’s grasp on its own home court. That was just a regular season game. Now fast forward to March 28 in Cleveland with a Final Four berth on the line, Kentucky now fresh off an all time beating of a team in the Sweet 16 and in sole possession of the best start in the history of college basketball. The legend, the task much greater than on March 3. The opponent also much greater. Same result.
"We know what we can do, and it’s gonna be a great story."
Everyone is now familiar with the above quote from Aaron Harrison following Kentucky’s road loss to lowly South Carolina on March 1, 2014, that dropped the preseason number one team in the country to a pedestrian 21-8 on the season. At the time no one thought much of it, just a kid giving a hopeful, sports-cliched response in a postgame press conference. When the Cats found themselves still playing once the calendar had turned to April last season though, the quote took on a life of its own.
Willie and Aaron’s quotes came at the exact same point in each season, almost to the day. Both quotes came on the road and were in the midst of varying degrees of doubt produced by less than optimal results on the road, given the circumstances of the respective teams. Aaron’s quote was prescient.
This Kentucky team has reached a status that if defeated will bestow history upon the victor and each would be Pat Garrett has come to realize this. A paradigm shift. What those last two minutes in Cleveland revealed is that the pressure to be The Team That Beats the Team may have actually surpassed the pressure to finish the undefeated season.
Conventional wisdom has been that it would be undefeated Kentucky who would wilt under the pressure of the moment in a tight NCAA Tournament game with its season on the line. The Kentucky/Notre Dame boxscore tells a different tale. Nine-for-nine to finish the game. No missed field goals in the last 12 minutes of the game. Meanwhile, late in the game, Notre Dame seemingly abandoned what had been working so well for them throughout as Jerian Grant launched long jumpers -- the first a made 3, the next blocked by Cauley-Stein, and the final a desperation heave that floated harmlessly down to Devin Booker without so much as having grazed the rim.
Kentucky moved on as it always does. Next up is Wisconsin. The same Wisconsin whose season came crashing to a halt in the wake of an Aaron Harrison 3 pointer in the waning seconds of last year’s national semifinals. The same Wisconsin that has been pegged as The Team to Beat The Team for weeks now. Wisconsin is a savvy enough team to say all the right things in the press this week. Revenge? Nah. Just trying to win the next game. Trying to win a championship.
"Sometimes teams want to beat you so bad, they just can't because they're trying too hard."Read the introduction from Nick Turse’s book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
On Jan. 21, 1971, a Vietnam veteran named Charles McDuff wrote a letter to President Richard Nixon to voice his disgust with the American war in Southeast Asia. McDuff had witnessed multiple cases of Vietnamese civilians being abused and killed by American soldiers and their allies, and he had found the US military justice system to be woefully ineffective in punishing wrongdoers. “Maybe your advisors have not clued you in,” he told the president, “but the atrocities that were committed in Mylai are eclipsed by similar American actions throughout the country.” His three-page handwritten missive concluded with an impassioned plea to Nixon to end American participation in the war.
The White House forwarded the note to the Department of Defense for a reply, and within a few weeks Major General Franklin Davis Jr., the army’s director of military personnel policies, wrote back to McDuff. It was “indeed unfortunate,” said Davis, “that some incidents occur within combat zones.” He then shifted the burden of responsibility for what had happened firmly back onto the veteran. “I presume,” he wrote, “that you promptly reported such actions to the proper authorities.” Other than a paragraph of information on how to contact the US Army criminal investigators, the reply was only four sentences long and included a matter-of-fact reassurance: United States Army has never condoned wanton killing or disregard for human life.”
This was, and remains, the American military’s official position. In many ways, it remains the popular understanding in the United States as a whole. Today, histories of the Vietnam War regularly discuss war crimes or civilian suffering only in the context of a single incident: the My Lai massacre cited by McDuff. Even as that one event has become the subject of numerous books and articles, all the other atrocities perpetrated by US soldiers have essentially vanished from popular memory. The visceral horror of what happened at My Lai is undeniable.
On the evening of March 15, 1968, members of the Americal Division’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, were briefed by their commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, on a planned operation the next day in an area they knew as “Pinkville.” As unit member Harry Stanley recalled, Medina “ordered us to ‘kill everything in the village.'” Infantryman Salvatore LaMartina remembered Medina’s words only slightly differently: they were to “kill everything that breathed.” What stuck in artillery forward observer James Flynn’s mind was a question one of the other soldiers asked: “Are we supposed to kill women and children?” And Medina’s reply: “Kill everything that moves.”
Nevertheless, Medina’s orders were followed to a T. Soldiers of Charlie Company killed. They killed everything. They killed everything that moved.
The next morning, the troops clambered aboard helicopters and were airlifted into what they thought would be a “hot LZ”— a landing zone where they’d be under hostile fire. As it happened, though, instead of finding Vietnamese adversaries spoiling for a fight, the Americans entering My Lai encountered only civilians: women, children and old men. Many were still cooking their breakfast rice. Nevertheless, Medina’s orders were followed to a T. Soldiers of Charlie Company killed. They killed everything. They killed everything that moved.
Advancing in small squads, the men of the unit shot chickens as they scurried about, pigs as they bolted and cows and water buffalo lowing among the thatch-roofed houses. They gunned down old men sitting in their homes and children as they ran for cover. They tossed grenades into homes without even bothering to look inside. An officer grabbed a woman by the hair and shot her point-blank with a pistol. A woman who came out of her home with a baby in her arms was shot down on the spot. As the tiny child hit the ground, another GI opened up on the infant with his M-16 automatic rifle.
Over four hours, members of Charlie Company methodically slaughtered more than 500 unarmed victims, killing some in ones and twos, others in small groups, and collecting many more in a drainage ditch that would become an infamous killing ground.
They faced no opposition. They even took a quiet break to eat lunch in the midst of the carnage. Along the way, they also raped women and young girls, mutilated the dead, systematically burned homes and fouled the area’s drinking water.An Idaho beer with an Alaska-sounding name has entered the Anchorage market, much to the dismay of one of the oldest and largest craft breweries in the Last Frontier.
Midnight Sun Brewing Co. of Anchorage is preparing to send a cease-and-desist letter to Sockeye Brewing, based in Boise, over the company’s decision to start selling beer in Alaska.
“Hopefully we won’t have to go to court,” said Barb Miller, Midnight Sun vice president.
Sockeye Brewing recently began selling product to some Brown Jug growler bars and Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse and is working on getting its beers into Fred Meyer stores, said Lee Ellis, head brewer at Midnight Sun. Fred Meyer, owned by retail giant Kroger Co., has more than 10 locations in Alaska, according to the company’s website.
The flagship beer of Anchorage-based Midnight Sun is Sockeye Red IPA, which represents a large portion of the brewery’s overall sales. The brewery, incorporated in 1995, is concerned that an Idaho beer with an iconic name could create “brand confusion" in Alaska.
“It’s a really big deal for us. The trademark is so similar to ours that we feel if they start selling their beers in this market the consumer is not going to know what they’re buying, whether they’re buying a local, craft beer made in Alaska or another beer with a very similar name,” said Mark Staples, president and founder of Midnight Sun.
The Boise brewery expressed surprise by the strong reaction of Midnight Sun, which took to social media recently to ask its supporters shun Sockeye Brewing’s beers in Alaska as an “easy way” to drive them out of the state.
“It has caught us off guard,” said Janice Skinner, Sockeye Brewing’s business manager. “I do have my attorney looking into some of the legal ramifications.”
Sockeye reached out to Midnight Sun “multiple times before entering the market.”
“They didn’t get back to us,” Skinner said.
Miller said she’s not aware of any outreach on the part of Sockeye Brewing prior to entering the Anchorage market.
The craft brew industry is usually a collegial bunch and it’s surprising and disappointing to see a situation like this emerge, Staples said.
Staples said he and Sockeye Brewing are in touch and he is hoping they will agree to exit the Alaska market voluntarily. If not, his company is prepared to file a trademark lawsuit.
“I think one of the most ironic facts is that a brewery in Idaho is calling itself Sockeye Brewing Co. when here we are in the capital of sockeye fish in the world. I think the sockeye run was about 500 in Idaho last year and I know we probably pull better numbers than that in Potter Marsh,” said Ellis.
The green-headed salmon is an Alaska icon in Ellis' view.
“It’s not just an out-of-state company using something that people in Alaska recognize. It’s a bit of pirating something that means a lot more to us than I think it means to most people around the country and around the world,” he said.
Contact KTUU Senior Digital Reporter Paula Dobbyn at pdobbyn@ktuu.com, 907-762-9242 or @pauladobbyn,/b>Photo
UPS Stores, a subsidiary of United Parcel Service, said on Wednesday that a security breach may have led to the theft of customer credit and debit data at 51 UPS franchises in the United States.
Chelsea Lee, a UPS spokeswoman, said the company began investigating its systems for indications of a security breach on July 31, the day The New York Times reported that the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service would be issuing a bulletin warning retailers that hackers had been scanning networks for remote access capabilities, then installing so-called malware that was undetectable by antivirus products.
UPS hired an information security firm and discovered that the malware was on its in-store cash register systems at 51 of its locations in 24 states, roughly 1 percent of UPS’s 4,470 franchises throughout the United States.
In a statement, the company said that customers who had used their debit or credit cards at affected locations, which are listed on the UPS website, from Jan. 20 to Aug. 11, 2014 may have been exposed to the malware, though it said exposure began after March 26 in most cases. UPS said it had eliminated the malware as of Aug. 11.
“I understand this type of incident can be disruptive and cause frustration. I apologize for any anxiety this may have caused our customers. At The UPS Store, the trust of our customers is of utmost importance,” said Tim Davis, president of The UPS Store, in a statement. “As soon as we became aware of the potential malware intrusion, we deployed extensive resources to quickly address and eliminate this issue.”
The breach at the UPS stores is just the latest in a string of similar cyberattacks on the in-store payment systems at major American corporations, including Target, P.F. Chang’s, Neiman Marcus, Michaels, Sally Beauty, and, most recently, the Supervalu and Albertsons grocery stores.
In each case, criminals scanned for tools that typically allow employees and vendors to work remotely, then broke into them and used their foothold to install malware on retailers’ systems. That malware, in turn, fed customers’ payment details back to the hackers’ computer servers.
The same group of criminals in Eastern Europe is believed to be behind the earlier attacks, according to several people briefed on the results of forensics investigations who were not allowed to speak publicly because of nondisclosure agreements.
The entry point for each breach differed, according to one law enforcement official. At Target, it was thought to be a Pennsylvania company that provided heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration services to the retailer. Criminals were able to use the company’s login credentials to gain access to Target’s systems and eventually to its point-of-sale systems.
Studies have found that retailers, in particular, are unprepared for such attacks. A joint study by the Ponemon Institute, an independent security research firm, and DB Networks, a database security firm, found that a majority of computer security experts in the United States believed that their organizations lacked the technology and tools to quickly detect database attacks. Only one-third of those experts said they did the kind of continuous database monitoring needed to identify irregular activity in their databases, and another 22 percent admitted that they did not scan at all.
UPS said it would offer one year of free identity protection and credit monitoring services to any customer who had used a credit or debit card at any of its affected store locations.[/caption]
This image, acquired by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft on December 12, 2011, reveals the blue coloration of the 32-mile (52-km) -wide Degas crater located in Mercury’s Sobkou Planitia region.
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to enable people to use their mobile phones to access audio to the exhibits.
Changing messages in Acadia wayside exhibits over the years
Many exhibits still fulfill the traditional purpose of explaining scenic views. In a new twist, they also include colorful visuals and information about the appearance of the views in different seasons.
At a rest area off the Park Loop Road, for example, motorists can stop, roll down a window and get a spectacular panorama of 1,058-foot Champlain Mountain, 1,270-foot Dorr Mountain and 1,530-foot Cadillac Mountain, along with a new exhibit of the changing scenery, wildlife and flora in each of the four seasons.
Dominy said such exhibits are aimed at getting people to think about Acadia in a season when they might never see it.
The new exhibits show how the park’s messages have changed over the years.
In the past, a wayside would have an historic image and some simple text.
Now, the waysides attempt to tell a more comprehensive story and maybe suggest a related alternate trip in the region.
One example is “The French Connection,” located at a rest area over Frenchman Bay.
The wayside includes a copy of a map drawn by the French explorer Samuel Champlain, who gave Mount Desert Island its name during his 1604 voyage.
The exhibit explains that Cadillac Mountain was designated after Antoine de la Mothe-Cadillac, a French noble who received in 1688 a large land grant from his king that included all of Mount Desert Island.
The wayside exhibit reminds people that the British ultimately defeated the French in the wars of the 1770s and seized control of northeast America. And it proposes a visit to St. Croix Island International Historic Site on the Maine-Canada border, where another French explorer established a settlement in 1604.
Perhaps nowhere are the new wayside exhibits more prominent than on the peak of Cadillac.
One exhibit, titled “Saved for Future Generations,” shows an historic photo of key park founder George B. Dorr talking with Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane in 1917 on the peak of Cadillac Mountain.
“There are a lot of people who go to the top of Cadillac without going anywhere else in the park,” Dominy said.
With the new Acadia wayside exhibits that rim that parking lot and peak trail, visitors may get a lot more out of that stop than in the past.Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid took an intense interest in pushing through visas for dozens of shady Asian investors for a Las Vegas casino represented by his son, Rory Reid, documents and reports show.
The investors, who were flagged for “suspicious financial activity,” had initially been denied visas by the Department of Homeland Security in a process that usually does not allow for appeals.
In a Dec. 5, 2012 email to officials at the Department of Homeland Security obtained by The Washington Times, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Legislative Affairs official Miguel Rodriguez wrote, “This one is going to be a major headache for us all because Sen. Reid’s office/staff is pushing hard and I just had a long yelling match on the phone.”
The investors were interested in renovating the SLS Hotel — which was once the Sahara. SLS is represented by Sen. Reid’s son, Rory Reid, who works at the law firm Lionel, Sawyer & Collins. In their 2012 “Year in Review,” the Nevada firm hyped “the benefit of working with Rory Reid of Lionel Sawyer & Collins.”
“Mr. Reid’s previous experience as chairman of the Clark County Commission is put to good use assisting with general legal advice for the project and helping navigate through the maze of regulations required to access economic incentives offered on the state and local levels,” the article, called “Redeveloping a Classic Strip Property,” continued.
When questioned on Sen. Reid’s intervention on behalf of SLS investors, Sen. Reid spokeswoman Kristen Orthman told Ralston Reports — where Rory’s connection was first reported — that “The SLS project creates nearly 9,000 badly needed jobs and has the support of Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval.”
“That is the calculus in Sen. Reid’s support of the project,” Orthman continued. “We have a long-standing office policy that strictly bars any member of the staff’s family or the Senator’s family from lobbying our office on behalf of their clients. That policy applies in this case.”
Initial attempts by Sen. Reid’s office to expedite the visa requests were denied on Dec. 17, 2012, prompting the majority leader to personally call USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Within a few short weeks of Mr. Reid’s personal intervention, the decision not to expedite the visas was reversed, allowing the hotel to secure major funding from JP Morgan Chase,” the Times reports.
Sen. Reid “has supported and will support the SLS Las Vegas in any way he can,” a spokeswoman for the senator told the Times.
Follow Bedford on Twitter and FacebookA hungry wolf roamed into Duluth on Tuesday and killed a family’s dog that its owner had taken on a walk along a popular trail.
A state conservation officer said that such an attack is rare, but that it is becoming more common because the deer population is not as plentiful in rural areas of northeastern Minnesota, leading wolves to prowl for food in more urban surroundings.
Leo, an 11-year-old golden retriever-corgi mix, was not on a leash and was about 15 to 20 yards from its owner on a short trail near Brighton Beach when the wolf pounced about noon, said Keith Olson, a longtime conservation officer with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
The dog’s owner, Terry Irvin, of Duluth, said he didn’t see the attack.
Olson went to the scene and said “the violence” of the kill site, the bite marks and the tracks convinced him that a lone wolf was responsible.
“That poor dog, Leo, was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Olson, who described the trail as a favorite of dog owners who live near Lake Superior. “And lone wolves are a little more desperate.”
This wolf was photographed last September near Brighton Beach in Duluth. A dog on a trail near the same beach was attacked by a wolf and killed on Tuesday.
Irvin said he and Leo, whom he and his wife adopted from a shelter nine years ago, went to the park two to three times a week “and we’ve never had a problem.”
He said Tuesday’s walk was like most others. “I got a little ahead of him, and I was waiting for him. And then I waited and waited, maybe five-six minutes, and called and whistled.”
After checking areas off the quarter-mile trail, Irvin returned to where he had last seen Leo.
“I walked into the woods, and I saw him,” he said. “It was a traumatic sight. I will never forget it. … It was heartbreaking.”
Instances of wolves attacking pets in the city are “rare but getting more common,” Olson said. “Duluth is a unique community. A lot of critters roam through Duluth.”
Dogs are required by law to be on a leash in the area where Leo was attacked, said Carrie Lane, a shelter lead worker for the Police Department’s animal services division.
“I understand the [desire] to have your dog off your leash and have it get exercise,” Lane said. “But it appears that the number of wolves is growing, so it’s probably not worth the trade-off.”
Irvin said he never had Leo on a leash whenever they walked that trail. Leo’s death “is entirely my fault,” he said.
North Shore Veterinary Hospital, located near the beach, notified its clients of what had happened in a Facebook posting, explaining, “We want to share this information because many of us walk our pets in this area.”
Holly Rosendahl, the hospital’s staff manager, said the attack on Leo is the first time the facility has lost a client to a wolf, and she recalled an earlier attack that one of its dogs survived. Rosendahl said it’s more common for deer and occasionally coyotes to harm dogs.
While it’s best to keep dogs on a leash during walks, she added, that’s no guarantee against a wolf pouncing.
“Wolves are pretty brave” in populated areas, she said. “They are not as fearful as we think they are. Desperate times call for desperate measures when they are hungry.”Image caption Ivabradine lowers heart beat rates without reducing blood pressure
A pill costing less than £1.50 a day has the potential to save the lives of thousands of heart failure patients, medical trials suggest.
The drug, ivabradine, is already available in the UK to treat angina.
Prof Martin Cowie, who led the UK-based part of the study, said it could save up to 10,000 lives each year.
The trial involved more than 6,500 people in 37 countries who already used standard treatments such as beta-blocker drugs.
Over a typical study period of two years, ivabradine cut the risk of death from heart failure by 26%.
It had a similar impact on the likelihood of patients being admitted to hospital.
The research findings were presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) annual meeting in Stockholm.
It is vital that the results of this study are implemented and ivabradine is used as part of standard heart failure treatment as soon as possible Prof Martin Cowie
More than 700,000 people over the age of 45 are thought to live with heart failure, which occurs when damage to the heart leaves it too weak to pump blood efficiently round the body.
Heart failure uses up 1% to 2% of the total NHS budget and direct medical costs alone amounting to £625m each year.
Unlike other treatments, such as beta-blockers, ivabradine lowers the number of heartbeats per minute without also reducing blood pressure.
'Clinical breakthrough'
Prof Cowie, a consultant cardiologist at London's Royal Brompton Hospital, described as conservative estimates that 10,000 deaths could be prevented in the UK by prescribing the drug to eligible patients.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that one in four people in the UK could develop heart failure in some point in their lives.
The drug worked by slowing the pulse down so that it helped to take some of the strain off the heart, he said.
"For people who have heart failure, their heart is always going too fast. Even when they are sitting doing nothing, their heart rate might be going along at 80 or 90 beats per minute and this drug helps slow that down," he added.
"In the past we have been able to do that with drugs called beta blockers... but many patients can't take beta blockers because they have asthma or it drops their blood pressure.
"This drug has the advantage that it can be added to beta blockers or it can be given to people who can't take them.
"It slows the pulse rate without dropping the blood pressure or affecting any asthma, so it's a very exciting new option for doctors and patients to think about if they have heart failure."
'Further research'
He stressed the drug was not suitable for everybody, but only those who already had a serious heart condition.
He said: "The evidence represents a significant clinical breakthrough in the management of heart failure and is incredibly important information for patients with this condition."
Many unresolved questions about the generalisability of these results and applicability to a broader population of patients can only be addressed in additional clinical trials Dr John Teerlin
"It is vital that the results of this study are implemented and ivabradine is used as part of standard heart failure treatment as soon as possible."
Although ivabradine is already available in the UK for angina - the pain caused by insufficient blood reaching the heart - it is only prescribed to about 10% of patients with the condition.
But Dr John Teerlink, a cardiology expert based at the University of California in San Francisco urged caution.
In a commentary article in the medical journal The Lancet - which also published the ivabradine research - he asked if all the patients in the control group were being "optimally treated" with standard medications.
He said: "Ivabradine therapy might reduce heart-failure hospitalisations when added to contemporary heart-failure therapies.
"However, whether ivabradine can improve outcomes in addition to optimally managed heart failure therapies or its benefits relative to other therapies, especially beta blockers, remains unknown."
He said more research had to be carried out and added: "Many unresolved questions about the generalisability of these results and applicability to a broader population of patients can only be addressed in additional clinical trials."
The call for further research was echoed by British Heart Foundation medical director Prof Peter Weissberg.
He said: "The medical treatment for the condition has improved substantially over recent years, but it still has a poor outcome.
"This important study suggests that a new drug, that works by lowering heart rate, may offer improvements over currently available treatments.
"Further studies are now needed to establish its role in heart failure management."New reporting this week further exposes how Investor State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS—a legal system enshrined in thousands of global treaties and pacts, including the pending Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—empowers corporations and rich investors at the expense of citizens and democracy.
Under the ISDS framework, as Common Dreams has reported, multinationals are granted a parallel legal system through which they can sue governments, and therefore taxpayers, for loss of "expected future profit," with the power to overrule national laws and judicial systems.
"Workers, environmentalists, and human rights advocates don't get the right to use ISDS; only big corporations do," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has said. "That's a rigged system."
At the Huffington Post on Monday, journalist David Dayen outlined how "ISDS has increasingly become a way for rich investors to make money by speculating on lawsuits, winning huge awards, and forcing taxpayers to foot the bill."
"Here's how it works," he explained:
Wealthy financiers with idle cash have purchased companies that are well placed to bring an ISDS claim, seemingly for the sole purpose of using that claim to make a buck. Sometimes, they set up shell corporations to create the plaintiffs to bring ISDS cases. And some hedge funds and private equity firms bankroll ISDS cases as third parties—just like billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan in his lawsuit against Gawker Media.
A "huge number of opportunities to sue," plus the prospect of uncapped awards, "have the ISDS claim-financing industry booming," according to Dayen.
"Hedge funds, private equity firms and institutional investors are flocking to fund lawsuits as they would any other speculative asset," he said, citing experts in the field. "And the lack of transparency means that lawyers acting as arbitrators or advocates in one case could be unnamed investors in other cases, and nobody would ever know."
Indeed, he wrote: "Once a venue of last resort for corporations wronged in a foreign jurisdiction, ISDS is now a playground where investors with no connection to the initial investment can get rich."
What's more, Dayen warned:
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Giving financiers the ability to extract taxpayer dollars from around the globe transfers wealth upwards. It's another way the rich get richer by accessing tools unavailable to most citizens. That has massive follow-on effects for economic and political power worldwide, including right here in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the first part of a BuzzFeed News series published Sunday details how "[c]ompanies and executives accused or even convicted of crimes have escaped punishment by turning to" ISDS.
According to investigative journalist Chris Hamby:
Reviewing publicly available information for about 300 claims filed during the past five years, BuzzFeed News found more than 35 cases in which the company or executive seeking protection in ISDS was accused of criminal activity, including money laundering, embezzlement, stock manipulation, bribery, war profiteering, and fraud.
For example, Hamby tells the story of how battery factory owners in El Salvador, accused of aggravated environmental pollution and neglect, used the threat of ISDS to evade accountability—despite devastating lead contamination in Sitio del Niño, the town where the factory was based.
The BuzzFeed installment published Tuesday explores how "the mere threat of an ISDS claim" is often enough "to halt or roll back legitimate public-interest laws."
"It's like flashing a gun at a tense negotiation—better not to use it, but the guys across the table know it's there," Hamby writes of the threat of arbitration.
Later this week, the BuzzFeed series is also set to explore the concept of hedge funds betting on ISDS cases, as well as how the U.S. is uniquely vulnerable within such a system.
And as both Dayen and Hamby caution, pending trade agreements would dramatically expand this system—and in turn, these corporate-friendly consequences. Dayen pointed to a Public Citizen estimate that 9,000 new companies would gain ISDS rights to sue the United States under TPP alone. "That's 9,000 new opportunities for financiers to reach down into state and local coffers, in addition to the federal government, to grab cash," he wrote.
Both reporters note that countries including Indonesia, Ecuador, and India are "trying to renegotiate or nullify treaties containing ISDS," as Hamby puts it.
But perhaps, as Dayen wrote, "the easiest way to fix ISDS is to throw it out."Swope Park Rangers forward Nansel Selbol has won the USL Fans' Choice Goal of the Month for August - marking the third straight month that the Sporting KC Academy product has won the award, having also been crowned the winner in June and July.
Selbol, 20, scored the Rangers' first goal in a 2-2 draw with Real Monarchs SLC at Swope Soccer Village on Friday, August 18. He received a pass 25 yards from goal, cut inside a defender before lashing a low drive that nestled into the bottom corner. Kharlton Belmar would add an equalizing goal later in the half as SPR came back from a two-goal deficit to claim a point against the USL's top team.
The Jos, Nigeria native, who won the contest with 30 percent of the vote, now has five goals and two assists on the season and has started 14 of his 21 appearances in the Rangers' frontline.
The Rangers are back in action this Sunday when the side faces San Antonio FC at Children's Mercy Victory Field in Swope Soccer Village. Kickoff is set for 4 p.m. CT, with tickets available via SeatGeek.com and a live stream available on YouTube.com/USL.In April 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, visiting England on a diplomatic mission, took time out to visit Stratford-upon-Avon. This was a pilgrimage; they were there to pay their respects to William Shakespeare. Dutifully Bardolatrous, they toured the run-down building where the poet was born, and attempted to find New Place, the house where he died—only to discover that it had been demolished three decades previously after its owner became annoyed by the quantity of visitors. Adams noted in his diary that a mulberry tree planted by the poet had likewise been cut down, but was “carefully preserved for Sale.” Reluctant to waste money, they cut a slice from a chair where Shakespeare was reputed to have sat: free, it seems.
230 years on–and 400 years after the playwright’s death–it is harder for tourists in town to keep such a tight rein on their pocketbooks. Not only will a family pass for the five surviving Shakespearian properties set you back a cool £69.50, the town is home to the Royal Shakespeare Company, where stalls seats go for up to £67.50 (and there are even pricier “premium” seats), and whose annual turnover is now £62m. From Othello’s brasserie to the Twelfth Night guesthouse, any number of local businesses rely on Shakespeare to turn a profit. New Place is still very much demolished, but the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has just spent £5 million turning the site into a major new “heritage attraction.”
Nor is it just Stratford cashing in. Shakespeare’s Globe is doing its best to seduce visitors to London by filling the South Bank of the Thames with outdoor screens featuring excerpts from the plays. Over in Denmark, Helsingor–we know it as Elsinore–has rebranded itself the “home of Hamlet.” Wherever there’s Will, there’s a way of making money, particularly in anniversary year.
Little wonder some talk darkly of ShakesCorp or BardBiz. Making a radio documentary for the BBC World Service on the subject, I’ve come across any number of profitable Shakespearian schemes–from the great actor-impresario David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769, a three-day jamboree in honor of the playwright that enabled hoteliers to make a killing, to the early ’50s project to revive the dying industrial economy of Stratford, Ontario with a theater devoted to Shakespeare. Garrick’s Jubilee was a wash-out, but its Canadian successor now runs for nine months a year, and has become the town’s major employer—a fine example of Shakespearian trickledown economics.
One of the most intriguing business case studies is in India, where Shakespeare was first imported by the British in the 19th century. Originally employed as a form of colonial control–an English-style education system was imposed from the 1840s, in which the work of England’s National Poet figured heavily–the plays were rapidly adapted and translated into many different languages. In the 1880s and ’90s, producers in the rampantly competitive Parsi theater community of Mumbai ransacked them for material, turning copyright-free Shakespearian characters and plot points into appealing commercial formulas. As soon as movie technology came along, many of these flamboyantly inauthentic dramas became films, helping give birth to what became known as Bollywood. Shakespearian stories remain as popular as ever in Indian movies—and unlike in mainstream Hollywood, where to invoke high culture gives producers the jitters, on the subcontinent he is a reliable generator of box-office hits.
Related: Shakespeare 400: How The Bard Invented More Than Edison
Some have even tried to turn Shakespeare into business. One theater-maker we interviewed, the British-born Tina Packer, raised eyebrows back in 2001 by co-authoring a book entitled Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management, one of numerous manuals to take their cue from the playwright’s work. Based on sessions she had run for executives, Packer and her co-author, John O. Whitney, analyzed the scripts in corporate terms, praising Henry V for his inspirational leadership style and referencing Macbeth as an example of the wannabe CEO whose hunger for power hides a lack of real vision.
When I spoke to her, Packer was unrepentant about filtering immortal texts through the colorless language spoken by PowerPoint-wielding MBAs in suits. She even had a punchline: many of these Bard-loving execs then became generous donors to the theater troupe (not entirely-coincidentally entitled Shakespeare & Company) she runs. “A lot of them get turned onto Shakespeare,” she said. “Art can’t exist in an ivory tower.”
True enough; and what’s interesting is that Shakespeare may not have scorned all this grubby talk of income streams and balance sheets. Though it’s not clear how a playwright still making his name could afford to buy New Place in 1597–it was the second largest house in Stratford, and cost around four or five times as much as the average Elizabethan dwelling—in later life Shakespeare built up a substantial property portfolio in both Stratford and London, showing a sharp eye for business as well as a perhaps surprising enthusiasm for litigation. Elizabethan theater was, in addition to being hugely competitive, highly entrepreneurial; as a shareholder in his company, Shakespeare had a powerful incentive to do well at the box office as well as artistically. Though many theatermakers died dirt-poor, a canny investor could make a huge amount of profit out of the Elizabethan entertainment business: one of Shakespeare’s great rivals, the actor Edward Alleyn, became so rich from his theatrical and bear-baiting interests he founded a hospital and a school. Possibly the only thing that would scandalize William Shakespeare about the events of 2016 is that he wasn’t getting a slice of the pie.
Related: What Are the Beast Shakespeare Movies?
In recent years, scholars have tried to get to grips with the multinational, many-headed and endlessly generative industry that is 21st century Shakespeare. Influenced by economic globalization theory, some have described him as a symbol of what the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has termed “liquid modernity,” or a model of free-flowing cultural capital along the lines suggested by the anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu. Out of copyright, endlessly reinterpretable and reinventable, his plays and poems transcend languages and borders; they are owned by no one, which means that they can be owned by anyone. Much as it is impossible to estimate the cultural impact the works have had over the last four centuries, the amount of income they have generated surely defies calculation. And while some might find the notion of spinoffs in Klingon or Bardic merch (wind-up dolls, bath toys, dolls) cringeworthy, if it helps more people encounter these astonishing and piercing works of art—so what?
Anyway, it’s time to come clean: I’ve got a book out, as well as a documentary to promote. As an American academic once sighed ruefully to me, as we discussed the impossibility of escaping Shakespeare: “You know, we’re all in the belly of the beast.” We could give the beast a name: Bardonomics.
Andrew Dickson’s Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe is out now from Henry Holt. Selling Shakespeare is broadcast on the BBC World Service on April 23.
Related: The Year Shakespeare Wrote LearDaniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam
Look out! It’s another fake Islamophobia crisis.
“Huge Growth in Anti-Muslim Hate Groups During 2016: SPLC Report,” wails NBC News. “Watchdog: Number of anti-Muslim hate groups tripled since 2015,” FOX News bleats. ABC News vomits up this word salad. “Trump cited in report finding increase in US hate groups for 2nd year in a row.”
The SPLC stands for the Southern Poverty Law Center: an organization with slightly less credibility than Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, and without the academic degree in greasepaint.
And you won’t believe the shameless way the SPLC faked its latest Islamophobia crisis.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s latest “hate group” sightings claims that the “number of anti-Muslim hate groups increased almost three-fold in 2016.”
That’s a lot of folds.
And there is both bad news and good news from its “Year in Hate and Extremism.”
First the good news.
Casa D’Ice Signs, the sign outside a bar in K-Mart Plaza in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, is no longer listed as a hate group. The sign outside the bar had been listed as a hate group by the SPLC for years. The owner of Casa D’Ice had been known for putting politically incorrect signs outside his bar. So the SPLC listed the “signs” as a hate group. (Even though there was only one sign.) Not the bar. That would have made too much sense.
Since then Casa D’Ice was sold and the SPLC has celebrated the defeat of another hate group. Even if the hate group was just a plastic sign outside a bar.
But the bad news, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is that anti-Muslim hate groups shot up from only 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016.
What could possibly account for that growth? Statistical fakery so fake that a Vegas bookie would weep.
President Trump is on the cover of the SPLC’s latest Intelligence Report: a misnomer of a title from an organization whose intelligence gathering led it to list a bar sign as a hate group.
But there’s actually another phenomenon responsible for this startling rise reported by the SPLC.
The SPLC decided to count 45 chapters of Act for America as separate groups.
How do you get a sudden rise from 34 to 101 hate groups? It helps to suddenly add 45 chapters of one group. Act for America isn’t a hate group. It’s also just as obviously not 45 groups.
And it didn’t come into existence last year.
Act for America was only listed as one group in the 2015 list. It shot up to 45 now.
The SPLC this year listed the Los Angeles chapter of Act for America as a separate group. But the chapter has been around for quite a few years.
Furthermore Act for America boasts not 45, but 1,000 chapters across the country. Why list just 45 of them? Look at it from the SPLC’s perspective. Next year, it can add 200 chapters and claim that anti-Muslim hate groups once again tripled. And then it can do the same thing again the year after that.
That way the Southern Poverty Law Center can keep manufacturing an imaginary Islamophobia crisis.
Also added to the list is Altra Firearms: a gun store that ran an ad declaring that it wouldn’t sell firearms to Clinton supporters or Muslims. Like Casa D’Ice, this is another case of the SPLC demonstrating that it has no idea what distinguishes a store whose owner says politically incorrect things from a “group”.
The list has added Bosch Fawstin: an artist who was the target of the first ISIS terror attack in America during the assault on the Draw Mohammed cartoon contest. The SPLC announced that it was adding the Eisner nominated artist to its list of hate groups after he survived the attack.
The SPLC’s actions were obscene.
After the attack, Heidi Beirich, in charge of adding targets to the SPLC’s hate map, announced that she would be adding Bosch to the list because the Center now knows his location.
Indeed the SPLC makes a point of highlighting the locations of likely terrorist targets. And the Southern Poverty Law Center’s map of hate has been used by terrorists before.
Floyd Lee Corkins opened fire at the headquarters of the Family Research Council. The conservative Christian organization had been targeted by Corkins because of its appearance on the SPLC’s list.
"Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups. I found them online,” Corkins later confessed to the FBI.
When Leo Johnson, the building’s African-American manager, attempted to stop Corkins, the SPLC shooter told Johnson that he didn’t like his politics and opened fire. The SPLC gunman had planned to kill everyone in the office, but Johnson’s heroic actions saved their lives. The African-American building manager was forced to undergo painful surgeries because of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate list.
Despite its role in the terror attack, the SPLC continues to target the Family Research Council.
None of the so-called “Anti-Muslim hate groups” listed by the SPLC have shot anyone. The SPLC has.
Bosch Fawstin is a courageous activist. He’s also an individual. As am I. And the SPLC also has me up as a hate group. Other individual bloggers on the list include Atlas Shrugs, Refugee Resettlement Watch, Bare Naked Islam and Citizen Warrior.
6 of the SPLC’s “hate groups” are actually individuals. It’s understandable that the Southern Poverty Law Center is vague on the definition of hate. But you would think that it could figure out the definition of “group.”
No such luck.
The SPLC lists the David Horowitz Freedom Center as a hate group. But then again it also lists the American College of Pediatricians and the Jewish Political Action Committee as hate groups.
It doesn’t take much to be listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
You don’t need to be a group to be listed by the SPLC as a hate group. You don’t even need to have a pulse. Inanimate plastic signs can be listed too.
The rest of the SPLC’s “increase” is padded out with assorted community groups opposed to refugee resettlement, such as Treasure Valley Refugee Watch, and any Christian ministry it doesn’t like.
But there is one barrier to being listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
No amount of overt anti-Semitism from CAIR’s Nihad Awad would ever get the Islamist hate group listed as a hate group. Even CAIR’s flirtation with Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers can’t get it on the hate map. The SPLC collaborated with the Muslim Public Affairs Council despite its anti-Semitism.
Instead the SPLC lists counterterrorism organizations such as the Investigative Project on Terrorism, the Clarion Project and the David Horowitz Freedom Center which point out their terror ties as hate groups.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is greedy, cynical and dishonest. Its latest ploy to gain headlines by inflating a group it had formerly listed as 1 organization into 45 by listing each chapter separately is the sort of behavior you expect from a lazy college student, not one of the wealthiest organizations in the country. And yet no one in the media will call out the SPLC for its greed, its bigotry and its lies.
The SPLC climbs into bed with extremists and terrorists and it smears counterterrorism organizations. It helps terrorists target their critics. And it solicits money through shameless lies.
It’s easy to indict the SPLC. But every indictment of the SPLC is also an indictment of a Fake News media that repeats its absurd lies without ever checking its facts.
When the media reports that there was a huge rise in anti-Muslim groups because the Southern Poverty Law Center turned 1 group into 45, it proves that it really is in the Fake News business.Catalytic materials, which lower the energy barriers for chemical reactions, are used in everything from the commercial production of chemicals to catalytic converters in car engines. However, with current catalytic materials becoming increasingly expensive, scientists are exploring viable alternatives. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have now discovered that the sulphide material iron pyrite, commonly known as ‘Fool’s Gold’, may hold the answer. Using state-of-the-art electronic structure calculations, researchers led by Stephen Jenkins at the University’s Department of Chemistry, explored the potential catalytic activity of iron pyrite, the most abundant sulphur mineral on Earth. In their study, the Cambridge researchers focused on the reactions between iron pyrite and nitrogen oxides (NOx), an extremely poisonous class of compounds produced (among other sources) by car engines and industrial power plants.PHUKET: Heavy rain across the island yesterday afternoon (Mar 20) cut off several roads and downed power lines, causing power outages across large areas of Phuket.
weatherconstruction
By Eakkapop Thongtub
Tuesday 21 March 2017, 11:40AM
A team of cranes were called in to raise the leaning power poles while workers repacked the earth around their bases. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub
A team of cranes were called in to raise the leaning power poles while workers repacked the earth around their bases. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub
Heavy rain across Phuket yesterday afternoon (Mar 20) cut off several roads and downed power lines, causing power outages across large areas of Phuket. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub
A one hour-long downpour in central Phuket brought down power poles along Srisoonthorn Rd at about 4pm, causing traffic delays and power blackouts to Baan Manik, Cherng Talay and Kamala, on Phuket’s west coast, while workers carried out repairs.
“At least four toppled power poles reached the ground, with many more leaning dangerously over while still carrying live current,” said Boontham Jaroenphong, chief of the Provincial Electricity Authority office in Thalang.
“We shut down the supply to that section as soon as possible, but arranged for a different temporary supply for residents in Baan Manik and nearby areas,” he added.
A team of cranes were called in to raise the leaning power poles while workers repacked the earth around their bases,” Mr Boontham explained.
“Three new power poles were installed to replace poles that had snapped,” he added.
The PEA Thalang office reported at about midnight that normal power supply to the area had been restored.
As is now usual with flash downpours in the area, the section of Thepkrasattri Rd in front of the Thai Watsadu building supplies store in Thalang flooded, this time up to 50 centimetres deep.
Srisoonthorn Disaster Prevention and Mitigation officials arrived to clear the drains, and an hour later after the rain slowed, the water level fell and traffic flow was soon back to normal.Step into the boots of Grayson Hunt after a crash landing on an abandoned resort planet forces him to make a hard choice: survival or revenge. An exiled member of the elite assassin group Dead Echo, Grayson’s blind desire for vengeance finds his crew stranded on Stygia where he can finally confront the commander behind his betrayal—or get his team off the planet alive.
Battle your way through throngs of Stygia’s mutated inhabitants, performing masterful kills throughout the single-player campaign—or one of 30 competitive score-challenge or 12 co-operative multiplayer maps—using Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition’s unique “Skillshot” system that rewards you for executing the most creative and deadly kills imaginable.
Bulletstorm: Full Clip edition is the definitive Bulletstorm experience that includes all existing Bulletstorm add-ons, plus brand-new content exclusive to Full Clip!Donald Trump unveiled a new office this weekend that will have the “sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy,” the Washington Post reports. Heading this new shop is a 35-year-old man with no experience in government, politics, or public policy — Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner.
This week, Kushner will also be meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in 2016 election.
To understand Kushner’s prominence in the administration, think of Trump’s staffing as a three-legged stool. There’s the establishment represented in former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, there’s the “alt-right” in former senior counselor Steve Bannon, and then there’s a third, crucial support: the Trump leg.
That third leg includes the entire extended Trump family, but it’s not led by any of his natural children. Instead, the head of the Trump faction of the Trump movement is a true kindred spirit, Kushner.
Kushner was a crucial behind-the-scenes player in Trump’s campaign. He successfully purged Chris Christie and all of his allies from the Trump transition. After the inauguration, he became a senior adviser with authority over some of the biggest and most controversial issues in foreign policy, |
A - The One Who Painted Totoro's Forest.
Ghibli Artisan - Kazuo Oga Exhibition, A - The One Who Painted Totoro's Forest Blu-ray, News and Updates
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No related news posts for Ghibli Artisan - Kazuo Oga Exhibition, A - The One Who Painted Totoro's Forest Blu-ray yet.Bernie Worrell, the cherished keyboardist for Parliament-Funkadelic and an unofficial member of Talking Heads, has died. The musician lost his battle with stage four lung cancer at the age of 72.
Known as The Wizard of Woo, Worrell was a New Jersey native who moved to Detroit in the 1970s with doo-wop group The Parliaments, including leader George Clinton, and their backing band The Funkadelics. There, they became known together as Parliament-Funkadelic, the pioneering funk and soul group. Worrell was the second musician ever to receive the original Moog synthesizer and the Minimoog, allowing him to give P-Funk its revolutionary sound, which changed the course of R&B music. Along with the rest of P-Funk, Worrell was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
Worrell began working with Talking Heads in the early 1980s when P-Funk went on a touring hiatus. Although never officially a member of the band, he worked with David Byrne’s group throughout the ’80s until their disbandment in 1991. He’s featured on Speaking in Tongues as well as the Stop Making Sense live album and concert film. He reunited with the band when they performed during their induction into the RRHOF in 2002.
While he continued to perform with P-Funk throughout the ’90s and ’00s, he also became well known for his contributions to various genres and supergroups. He performed with Gov’t Mule; was part of Black Jack Johnson with Mos Def, Will Calhoun, Doug Wimbish, and Dr. Know; and formed Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains with Les Claypool, Buckethead, and Bryan Mantia. He also played on Fela Kuti’s 1985 album Army Arrangement, and appeared in the 2015 film Ricki and The Flash as the keyboardist in Meryl Streep’s band. In between all that, he managed to release 12 solo records between 1978’s All the Woo in the World and 2016’s Retrospectives.
Worrell was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in January of this year. His wife, Judie, had been updating his Facebook page as his health deteriorated. In a statement posted Friday afternoon, she wrote, “AT 11:54, June 24, 2016, Bernie transitioned Home to The Great Spirit. Rest in peace, my love — you definitely made the world a better place. Till we meet again, vaya con Dios.”
Below, watch highlights of Worrell’s performance prowess.At least four people were killed and six others injured in Hanoi this afternoon after a powerful blast which witnesses suspected to be an oxygen tank explosion.
The explosion at about 3.15 p.m. at a scrap metal trading business tore through several houses and left a large crater in Van Phu residential area, Ha Dong District.
According to initial reports, a worker was trying to cut open an oxygen cylinder when it exploded. The worker and three passers-by, including a 7-year-old girl, were killed immediately. Many other people were hospitalized with multiple injuries.
A report on the Vietnam Plus website quoted Colonel Vuong Tien Dung, police chief of Ha Dong District, as saying that he could confirm at least four deaths.
"It's not clear whether the explosion was caused by gas or explosive," he was quoted as saying.
The blast blew out the windows of about 20 neighboring homes and caused several fires. It could be heard from 4 kilometers away, witnesses said.Minecraft is meant to come out today, but Eurogamer already had a chance to play through the game and... beat it. That's right the retail version of Minecraft has stats, buffing and an endgame with poetic pay off. It also is a game that warrants a perfect score from the reviewer Alec Meer.
Anticipation for this full release of this game has been building for years, currently if you hop onto the Minecraft.net site you can see in real time that people are registering for the site at faster than one a second. Someone, somewhere seems to be buying a copy of the game nearly every five seconds. Already sales have topped 4 million. And it's not out yet, not until later today.
Despite the 10 out of 10 score, Meer does point out that there are some issues with the game. Its experience system and endgame both are undercooked, he says, as is its final boss battle.
But overall, Meer is a fan:
"Minecraft is a towering achievement in the very possibilities of gaming, and it does this without losing itself to either esoterica or cynicism. It is a game anyone can play and anyone can get something out of, no matter how skilled or imaginative they are. They will make something and they will have an experience that feels like theirs and theirs alone."
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Head on over to Eurogamer for the review and Minecraft to be mesmerized by the steady tick of sales, or to pick up your own copy. We'll have our gut check and review coming later this month.$114,500,000,000,000. - US unfunded liabilities
To the right you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the
WTC & Empire State Building - both at one point world's tallest buildings.
If you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty.
The 114.5 Trillion dollar super-skyscraper is the amount of money the U.S. Government
knows it does not have to fully fund the Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug Program,
Social Security, Military and civil servant pensions. It is the money USA knows it will not
have to pay all its bills.
If you live in USA this is also your personal credit card bill; you are responsible along with
everyone else to pay this back. The citizens of USA created the U.S. Government to serve
them, this is what the U.S. Government has done while serving The People.
The unfunded liability is calculated on current tax and funding inputs, and future demographic
shifts in US Population.
Note: On the above 114.5T image the size of the base of the money pile is half a trillion, not 1T as on 15T image.
The height is double. This was done to reflect the base of Empire State and WTC more closely.
Everyone needs to see this.
Source: Federal Reserve & www.USdebtclock.org - visit it to see the debt in real time and get a better grasp of this amazing number.Eric Worrall writes:
According to Breitbart, Germany’s flagship Bard 1 offshore wind farm has turned into a bottomless money pit, with stakeholders frantically lawyering up, scrambling to pin the blame and ongoing money hemorrhage onto other parties. BARD Offshore 1 is a 400 megawatt (MW) North Sea offshore wind farm encompassing 80 5-megawatt turbines. Construction was finished in July 2013 and the wind farm was officially inaugurated in August 2013. The wind farm is located 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of the isle Borkum in 40 metres (130 ft) deep water.
The magazine Windpower monthly reports that Bard Offshore 1, developed and built by Bard, is owned by project company Ocean Breeze, which in turn is owned by HypoVereinsbank. Getting it fully commissioned in August 2013 had taken more than three years, with many setbacks and cost overruns.
Breitbart reports that according to the German magazine Speigel “everything has turned to the question of who is responsible for the fiasco – and the costs.”
The project is estimated to have cost €340 million in the last year alone, as investors struggle to salvage something of value, from a deeply flawed system which has never functioned as the designers intended. Full details at Breitbart.
My thought – if even the Germans, with their legendary high precision engineering skills, can’t make offshore wind work, surely it is time to pull the plug on this technically infeasible dead end?
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After an extended wait, Beck is finally set to release his new album, Colors, on October 13th. In the year-plus lead-up to the album, we’ve heard several tracks, including “Wow”, “Dreams”, and “Up All Night”. Now, he’s unveiled another teaser in the form of “Dear Life”. Take a listen below.
Colors marks Beck’s 13th album overall and first since the Grammy Award-winning Morning Phase, which was released in February 2014. For the 10-track follow-up, Beck worked with producer Greg Kurstin. The pair played all the instruments on the album themselves, fitting in sessions while Kurstin also worked on Foo Fighters and Halsey’s new LPs. Colors actually marks a reunion for Beck and Kurstin who previously collaborated on the 2002 Sea Change tour.
The release of “Dear Life” coincides with the pre-order launch of Colors. Check out the album’s artwork and tracklist below.
Colors Artwork:
Colors Tracklist:
01. Colors
02. 7th Heaven
03. I’m So Free
04. Dear Life
05. No Distraction
06. Dreams
07. Wow
08. Up All Night
09. Square One
10. Fix MeA 17-year-old was taken into custody following a shooting in downtown Nashville.
Officials with Metro Nashville Police said the incident happened around 9:15 p.m. at the Music City Central bus station.
MTA personnel witnessed the shooting that happened near the upper level of the station and then reported it to police.
Officials said 20-year-old Louis Wrice was shot in the chest and rushed to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The victim was listed in critical condition as of Tuesday morning.
The 17-year-old, who has not been identified, was spotted by an officer walking from the immediate downtown area along Lafayette Street.
He was taken into custody, and a semi-automatic pistol was recovered from the immediate area where the teen was first spotted.
The suspect was charged early Tuesday with attempted murder at Juvenile Court.
Nashville MTA closed the upper level of Music City Central at the time of the shooting. All buses were rerouted to operate out of the lower bays of Music City Central along 4th Avenue while detectives investigated.Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - Russia is accusing Canada of causing irreparable harm to their relations after Parliament formally passed the so-called Magnitsky Act targeting the actions of gross human rights violators.
But the chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee has a simple rebuttal -- don't take it personally.
Liberal MP Bob Nault says the expansion of Canada's international sanctions law doesn't target one specific country because it is aimed at human rights violators everywhere.
However, Canada's new sanctions regime and those of other countries, including the United States, have been closely linked to the Russian whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after accusing officials of a $230-million tax fraud.
The Russian embassy has not specified any particular retaliatory action against Canada for passing bill S-226, but after the U.S. enacted its Magnitsky legislation, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded with a law that banned American citizens from adopting Russian children.Perl 6 is here and people in the Perl community seem to be excited, but I don’t understand why. Perl 6 is a bit sexier than Perl 5. It’s got quite a few whiz-bangs I’d like to use. However, I’m likely never going to use it, and I think the same is true for the other established businesses using Perl 5. Here’s why:
There is no real migration path from Perl 5 to Perl 6. If you have any significant code base in Perl 5 you’re going to keep working in Perl 5.
If you decide to up and rewrite your entire system, are you going to choose Perl 6? As amazing as Perl 6 is, I don’t think so. I think you’re going to pick Javascript and node.js. The reason is simple, Javascript has a lot of the same flexibility as Perl, it’s faster than Perl, and there’s an almost immeasurable amount of work being put into Javascript libraries.
I’ve always said, much to the dismay of my Perl community compatriots, that developers go where the jobs are. If there aren’t businesses adopting Perl 6 in a major way, it will be a major failure. So now the question is, how do you compel a new business, or an old business writing a new app to use Perl 6 instead of Perl 5 or Javascript? I’ve been searching for the answer myself as a business owner. I want to love Perl 6, but I can’t find a business case for it.
[From my blog.]The other day I was asked by an acquaintance why the tincture they were making had very little, if any, noticeable medicinal or psychoactive effect. They swore they followed the same process found in a book on making edibles and soaked the cannabis in high proof for weeks but the tincture just didn’t work.
The answer was simple but one that many in the cannabis industry don’t understand. One very important and necessary extra step had been overlooked. Cannabis used to make tinctures as well as other edible cannabis products requires decarboxylation. From asking around I have a feeling a lot of you just blurted out “Say What?”
So here is the deal. THCA (Tetrahydrocannabinolic Acid) is found in abundance in growing and harvested cannabis and is a biosynthetic precursor of THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol). Wow, this sounds scary like organic chemistry, doesn’t it? It is, so for both of our benefits, I’ll give you the dumbed down version.
Research suggests THCA has anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects but does not produce the psychoactive effect that make you feel “high”. This “high” is from the cannabinoid THC, of which little if any is found when cannabis is growing or recently harvested.
Decarboxylation is a chemical reaction that releases carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). This means a chemical reaction takes place in which carboxylic acids loose a carbon atom from a carbon chain. This process converts THCA to THC, the much loved compound with many medicinal and psychoactive effects. When the cannabis drys, it very very slowly begins to decarboxylate and converts THCA to THC.
The good news is we don’t have to wait years for cannabis to decarboxylate. We can speed things along with a process that is a lot simpler than you might expect. Simply heating dried cannabis to the correct temperature for enough time releases that carbon dioxide and creates THC. Why have so many of you never heard of this before? Decarboxylating takes place without extra effort when cannabis is heated during the act of smoking or vaporizing. It also takes place to some degree when cannabis is cooked into butter or when hash and kief are added to a favorite recipe and then cooked in the oven.
When making tinctures, cannabis is not heated or baked, it is simply soaked in high proof alcohol. Decarboxylation never takes place and you end up with a product with a lot of THCA and very little THC. This may be a good for some symptoms but will not produce the results most expect.Our correspondent reflects on her time at the 35th annual Chinese International Furniture Fair.
If you define success by size alone, then the 35th year of China International Furniture Fair (CIFF) was a giant success! The show covered over 1.1 million square feet and featured 2,120 exhibitors from 32 countries and regions. That’s a large show by anyone’s standards, but add the crowd that attends the event and it is overwhelming.
I am used to seeing some of the Chinese companies exhibit their adjustable height hardware on NeoCon‘s 8th floor. Those displays don’t do justice to what these companies produce for CIFF. While there are many small booths, the large manufacturers go all out to showcase their capabilities.
Half measure isn’t a part of the visual vocabulary. These large showrooms were built over several days. I’m not talking about a couple of furniture walls between manufacturers: I mean spaces with their own ceilings and lighting and power.
There were showrooms with balconies, sales rooms, and entertainment areas, as well as stairs, raised floors, and sunken seating areas. I can’t imagine the number of people required for construction but I’d pay to watch. Most of the showrooms are built with wood and drywall; taped, spackled, painted, powered, lit, and furnished in three days! With codes and permitting, there’s no way this could be done in other countries. Stairs and ramps without rails and two story spaces that I’m quite certain didn’t have structural review.
There are things here that you wouldn’t experience anywhere else.
There were large welded (and duct taped) showroom fronts, big screen video walls, and one showroom with real wood panels, chandeliers, and vinyl marble floors that looks like it could be a set for a TV show like Scandal.
The show’s success was also visible by the number of people that work at and who attend the show. This is an open event so there are a lot of locals present, especially on the weekend when the show opened. Many attendees work in furniture manufacturing or are sourcers for companies from around China. I heard accents from international designers and buyers from Australia to Italy, India to America, there is an ever growing international crowd.
Photo by Linda Wallack. Photo by Linda Wallack. Photo by Linda Wallack. Photo by Linda Wallack.
There are things here that you wouldn’t experience anywhere else. Like a car show, there are models posing on chairs, and girls in all types of gowns posing and walking around with matching outfits holding signs. There are really pushy people in the public area trying to give you their catalogs and collect business cards, some in costumes more suited for a Halloween party.
There were many babies and children at the show, which is unusual. Looking at the detail of a conference table while a baby is crying next to me is an experience I would prefer not to repeat.
The experience of attending the show makes more of an impression than the furniture itself. Until these manufacturers bring in more partners for design and thought leadership, their capabilities will impress by scale of production alone.
Photo by Linda Wallack. Photo by Linda Wallack. Photo by Linda Wallack. Photo by Linda Wallack. Photo by Linda Wallack. Photo by Linda Wallack.
The focus for furniture in North America and Europe in the last few years has been in merging home style and work environments, providing spaces that work how you want to work with more opportunities for personalization. I was curious to see how that mindset would be translated here. My impression is that they are a couple years behind the market. Yes, there were lounge spaces with higher acoustic surrounds, powered lounge benches, and demountable partitions but those spaces were few, and none of it was market-leading.
The showrooms with large ornate wood furniture and giant executive desks that are larger then most people’s offices in other countries still exist, and they were as busy as the showrooms that displayed benching systems and video conference lounges. There is still a big difference between the executive spaces and those for the worker bees. Several sales people told me that in China it’s important to have solid wood executive offices. They said whether in government or corporate offices it doesn’t really matter: the open areas are getting smaller, and the executive offices, are becoming more modern, but not smaller. I guess size really does define success!Australian Medical Association urges PM Tony Abbott to prevent rebate cut for short GP visits
Updated
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has launched a last-ditch bid to stop the Federal Government cutting the Medicare rebate for short GP visits.
AMA president Brian Owler has written to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, urging him to personally intervene and halt the regulation before it starts next Monday.
Doctors' groups have been furiously campaigning against the Government's pre-Christmas move to cut the rebate paid to doctors by $20 for consultations less than 10 minutes.
In a sternly-worded letter, Associate Professor Owler warned Mr Abbott that practices would not be able to absorb the cuts and costs would be passed on to patients.
"The level of anger and disbelief within the general practitioner community... is unprecedented," the letter said.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten confirmed Labor would join the Greens and several crossbench senators in moving to strike down the change in the Senate when it returns next month.
But Associate Professor Owler said he feared the disallowance motion could take weeks or months to come into effect.
"In the meantime, patients and doctors would be hit with higher charges and costs unless the Government bowed to common sense and undid the change before next Monday," he said.
Both the Prime Minister and Health Minister Sussan Ley are on annual leave.
But Associate Professor Owler said he still expected Mr Abbott to deal with the concerns raised by the AMA.
"I'm on leave myself and I offered the opportunity that I'd come back from leave to meet with him if that was necessary," Associate Professor Owler said.
"We saw the Prime Minister at the cricket and on radio trying to defend the policy yesterday... the only one that really has the power to stop the changes going ahead is the Prime Minister."
Ms Ley's office released a statement yesterday criticising Labor for opposing the rebate cut and defending the policy.
"The Abbott Government has put forward a clear plan... which ensures Medicare rebates will more accurately reflect the time a doctor spends with their patient and encourage longer GP consultations for better health outcomes," the statement said.
"Without reform, Medicare will collapse under its own weight and jeopardise the world-class, affordable health care Australians take for granted."
Rebate cuts 'bad policy'
Mr Shorten told the ABC's AM program that doctors had convinced him of the virtues of short GP consultations.
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Labor health spokesperson Catherine King speaks with the ABC (ABC News)
"When you go and talk to GPs, they make this very good point to me which I found very persuasive... these GPs say, 'Sometimes we can see people in quicker than 15 minutes but that's because we've got 10, 20, 30, 40 years' experience'.
"No-one believes this is about medicine or health care in Australia.
"They all think it's about a Government who can't get their way on their GP tax."
The Labor leader said it had become clear to him the changes were bad policy.
"We seriously consider what the Government proposes on all their issues, but there's been no doubt that any reasonable person, when examining the evidence and the submissions of the AMA and GPs all around Australia, [find] this is a terrible idea," he said.
Labor's health spokesperson Catherine King said doctors were being handed an "awful choice".
"We saw a collapse in bulk billing when Tony Abbott was health minister and that is what he wants to do in this country," she said.
"He wants to drive bulk billing down and Labor will stand against Tony Abbott's attacks on Medicare and make sure Medicare continues as the core of our healthcare system."
AMA vice-president Stephen Parnis said he questioned the Government's reasons for changing the rebate.
"Yesterday the PM said this is about improving quality. It's actually not. It's really about trying to pull back over $1 billion into the budget," he told ABC News Breakfast.
"That is their first priority, and what we are concerned about, our first priority as health care is this will undermine the provision of care."
Topics: doctors-and-medical-professionals, health, government-and-politics, australia
First postedComment count is 22 The Mothership - 2010-06-04
Something tells me this kid knows how to fucking party.
Camonk - 2010-06-04
Oh jesus getting blitzed with this guy would be some kind of fucking experience.
The bad thing is that when the evening reached the inevitable dance off over some disagreement, my loss would be assured. Damn you, agile fat kid! - 2010-06-04Oh jesus getting blitzed with this guy would be some kind of fucking experience.The bad thing is that when the evening reached the inevitable dance off over some disagreement, my loss would be assured. Damn you, agile fat kid!
You said it, man. HE ISN'T DONE WITH YOU!!! The Mothership - 2010-06-05You said it, man. HE ISN'T DONE WITH YOU!!!
freedoom - 2010-06-04
I'm not surprised. you can have infinite muscles underneath your fat.
andybrownie - 2010-06-04
^
what a fat person would say - 2010-06-04what a fat person would say
^
Doesn't understand the true power of the husk. poorwill - 2010-06-04Doesn't understand the true power of the husk.
giygusattack - 2010-06-05
This is the future of fat people, brownie. We're not done with you yet. - 2010-06-05This is the future of fat people, brownie. We're not done with you yet.
Longshot- - 2010-06-04
It's amazing he's learned to control the momentum of his fat to accomplish amazing acrobatic feats. He's like an X-Man.
Dicknuts - 2010-06-04
Once you get it moving you just hold on and let physics take over. - 2010-06-04Once you get it moving you just hold on and let physics take over.
duck&cover - 2010-06-05
Nothing can stop the Blob. - 2010-06-05Nothing can stop the Blob.
poorwill - 2010-06-04
FOR NARNIA is the best, most perfect thing he could have said. Finishing with the sip made this go on the Favourites pile.
phalsebob - 2010-06-04
Fat kids have come a long way since fupa-joggers twin swords mullet kid.
revdrew - 2010-06-04
Making us proud
split tail - 2010-06-05
"I'm not done with you", does an awesome back-flip, "now I'm done", takes a swig of beer. You go fat guy!
Camonk - 2010-06-05
I finally realized who this guy reminds me of.
He's the bizarro BigAl.
mashedtater - 2010-06-05
his belly reminds me of doctor zoidberg.
Rodents of Unusual Size - 2010-06-05
I'm just guessing this kid is in between that stage in life where he was a gymnast, and had the body of an Olympian god, and the stage in his life where he begins to morph into John Candy.
MyNameIsUnimportant - 2010-06-08
Would slo-mo have improved this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VacshgGoyg&feature=player_embedded #! Vicious - 2010-11-04http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VacshgGoyg&feature=player_embedded #!
klingerbgoode - 2010-06-09
A FAT LORD
CornOnTheCabre - 2010-06-10
a young Kevin Steen.
i predict exactly three people on this board get that reference.
none of them probably think it's very funny.
chumbucket - 2010-06-10
BRING IT!!
Register or login To Post a CommentTaqī ad-Dīn Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah (Arabic: تقي الدين أحمد ابن تيمية, January 22, 1263 - September 26, 1328), known as Ibn Taymiyyah for short, was a controversial[11][12] medieval Sunni Muslim theologian, jurisconsult, logician, and reformer. A member of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence founded by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah was also a member of the Qadiriyya Sufi order founded by the twelfth-century mystic and saint Abdul-Qadir Gilani.[3][4][5][6] A polarizing figure in his own lifetime, Ibn Taymiyyah's iconoclastic views on widely accepted Sunni doctrines such as the veneration of saints and the visitation to their tomb-shrines made him unpopular with the majority of the orthodox religious scholars of the time, under whose orders he was imprisoned several times.[13]
Often viewed as a minority figure in his own times and in the centuries that followed,[14] Ibn Taymiyyah has become one of the most influential medieval writers in contemporary Islam,[13] where his particular interpretations of the Qur'an and the Sunnah and his rejection of some aspects of classical Islamic tradition are believed to have had considerable influence on contemporary Wahhabism, Salafism, and Jihadism.[15][16][17] Indeed, particular aspects of his teachings had a profound influence on Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of the Hanbali reform movement practiced in Saudi Arabia known as Wahhabism, and on other later Wahabi scholars.[9] Moreover, Ibn Taymiyyah's controversial fatwa allowing jihad against other Muslims is referenced by al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups.[18][19]
Name [ edit ]
Ibn Taymiyyah's full name is Taqī ad-Dīn Abu 'l-`Abbās Ahmad ibn `Abd al-Ḥalīm ibn `Abd as-Salām ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Khidr ibn Muhammad ibn al-Khidr ibn `Ali ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Taymiyyah al-Ḥarrānī[10] (Arabic: تقي الدين أبو العباس أحمد بن عبد الحليم بن عبد السلام بن عبد الله بن الخضر بن محمد بن الخضر بن على بن عبد الله ابن تيمية الحراني).
Ibn Taymiyyah's name is unusual in that it is derived from a female member of his family as opposed to a male member, which was the normal custom at the time and still is now. Taymiyyah was a woman, famous for her scholarship and piety and the name Ibn Taymiyyah was taken up by many of her male descendants.[10]
Overview [ edit ]
Ibn Taymiyyah had a simple life, most of which he dedicated to learning, writing, and teaching. He never married nor did he have a female companion, throughout his years.[20][21] Al-Matroudi says that this may be why he was able to engage fully with the political affairs of his time without holding any official position such as that of a judge.[22] An offer of an official position was made to him but he never accepted.[22] His life was that of a religious scholar and a political activist.[21] In his efforts he was persecuted and imprisoned on six different occasions[23] with the total time spent inside prison coming to over six years.[21][24] Other sources say that he spent over twelve years in prison.[22] His detentions were due to certain elements of his creed and his views on some jurisprudential issues.[20] However according to Yahya Michot, "the real reasons were more trivial". Michot gives five reasons as to why Ibn Taymiyyah was imprisoned, they being: not complying with the "doctrines and practices prevalent among powerful religious and Sufi establishments, an overly outspoken personality, the jealousy of his peers, the risk to public order due to this popular appeal and political intrigues."[24] Baber Johansen, a professor at the Harvard divinity school says that the reasons for Ibn Taymiyyah's incarcerations were, "as a result of his conflicts with Muslim mystics, jurists, and theologians, who were able to persuade the political authorities of the necessity to limit Ibn Taymiyyah's range of action through political censorship and incarceration."[25]
Ibn Taymiyyah's own relationship, as a religious scholar, with the ruling apparatus, who did deviate in application of shari'a law, was not always amicable.[24] It ranged from silence to open rebellion.[24] On occasions when he shared the same views and aims as the ruling authorities, his contributions were welcomed but when Ibn Taymiyyah went against the status quo, he was seen as "uncooperative" and on occasions spent much time in prison.[26] Ibn Taymiyyah's attitude towards his own rulers, was based on the actions of the companions (sahaba) when they made an oath of allegiance to Muhammad as follows; "to obey within obedience to God, even if the one giving the order is unjust; to abstain from disputing the authority of those who exert it; and to speak out the truth, or take up its cause without fear in respect of God, of blame from anyone."[24]
Early years [ edit ]
Background [ edit ]
His father had the Hanbali chair in Harran and later at the Great mosque of Damascus (Umayyad Mosque). Harran was a city part of the Sultanate of Rum, now Harran is a small city on the border of Syria and Turkey, currently in Şanlıurfa province, a place to which Moses was reportedly sent to provide guidance.[27] Before its destruction by the Mongols, Harran was also well known since the early days of Islam for its Hanbali school and tradition,[28] to which Ibn Taymiyyah's family belonged.[27] His grandfather, Abu al-Barkat Majd ad-Din ibn Taymiyyah al-Hanbali (d. 1255) and his uncle, Fakhr al-Din (d. 1225) were reputable scholars of the Hanbali school of law.[29] Likewise, the scholarly achievements of ibn Taymiyyah's father, Shihab al-deen 'Abd al-Halim ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1284) were also well known. According to the book 'Rethinking Islamic Studies' edited by Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin, Ibn Taymiyyah believed, non-Arab Muslims are inferior to Arab Muslims.[31]
Immigration to Damascus [ edit ]
In 1269, Ibn Taymiyyah, at the age of seven together with his father and three brothers left the city of Harran which was completely destroyed by the ensuing Mongol invasion.[29] Ibn Taymiyyah's family moved and settled in Damascus, Syria, which at the time was ruled by the Mamluks of Egypt.
Education [ edit ]
In Damascus, his father served as the director of the Sukkariyya madrasa, a place where Ibn Taymiyyah also received his early education.[32] Ibn Taymiyyah acquainted himself with the religious and secular sciences of his time. His religious studies began in his early teens, when he committed the entire Qur'an to memory and later on came to learn the Islamic disciplines of the Qur'an. From his father he learnt the religious science of Fiqh (jurisprudence) and Usul al-Fiqh (principles of jurisprudence). Ibn Taymiyyah learnt the works of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Khallal, Ibn Qudamah and also the works of his grandfather, Abu al-Barakat Majd ad-Din.[29] His study of jurisprudence was not limited to the Hanbali tradition but he also learnt the other schools of jurisprudence.[29]
The number of scholars under which he studied Hadith is said to number more than two hundred,[20][33] four of whom were women.[34] Those who are known by name amount to forty hadith teachers, as recorded by Ibn Taymiyyah in his book called Arba`un Hadithan. Serajul Haque says, based on this, Ibn Taymiyyah started to hear hadith from the age of five. One of his teachers was the first Hanbali Chief Justice of Syria, Shams ud-Din Al-Maqdisi who held the newly created position instituted by Baibars as part of a reform of the judiciary.[29] Al-Maqdisi later on, came to give Ibn Taymiyyah permission to issue Fatawa (legal verdicts) when he became a mufti at the age of 17.[20][24][36]
Ibn Taymiyyah's secular studies led him to devote attention to Arabic language and Arabic literature by studying Arabic grammar and lexicography under Ali ibn `Abd al-Qawi al-Tuft.[37] He went on to master the famous book of Arabic grammar, Al-Kitab, by the Persian grammarian Sibawayhi. He also studied mathematics, algebra, calligraphy, theology (kalam), philosophy, history and heresiography.[20][24][29][38] The knowledge he gained from history and philosophy, he used to refute the prevalent philosophical discourses of his time, one of which was Aristotelian philosophy.[20] Ibn Taymiyyah learnt about Sufism and stated that he had reflected on the works of; Sahl al-Tustari, Junayd of Baghdad, Abu Talib al-Makki, Abdul-Qadir Gilani, Abu Hafs Umar al-Suhrawardi and Ibn Arabi.[29] At the age of 20 in the year 1282, Ibn Taymiyyah completed his education.
Life as a scholar [ edit ]
[24] Umayyad Mosque, a place where Ibn Taimiyya used to give lessons.
After his father died in 1284, he took up the then vacant post as the head of the Sukkariyya madrasa and began giving lessons on Hadith.[24][29][40] A year later he started giving lessons, as chair of the Hanbali Zawiya on Fridays at the Umayyad Mosque, on Fridays |
winning a piece of the prize pool.
I’m also not including ‘perfect brackets’ at all in my grading because the odds are so astronomical that someone will pick a perfect bracket that the whole ‘perfect bracket’ promotion just seems like a gimmick to me. For this reason I am not including any contests where the only prize is for a perfect bracket. That said I do include the perfect bracket prizes in the descriptions for the contests that offer winnable prizes.
**The list is not perfectly organized anymore, due to the fact that I’m constantly adding new contests as I become aware of them. But this is the most extensive list of March Madness contests you will find online.
FanDuel $25,000 Bracket Pick’em 1st Place: $5000 Score 2500+ Points: Share of $20,000 Score 400+ Points: NBA Free Play Entry Entries: Free (must have a FanDuel.com account) Eligibility: No restrictions Contest Grade: A+
Nitrogen March Madness Bracket 2018 Total Prize Pool : 0.5 Bitcoin (approximately $5000) Prize distribution : Depends on number of entries. 1st Place : Minimum of 0.1225 BTC (~$1200) Entries : Free (must have Nitrogen.eu account) Eligibility : No restrictions Contest Grade : A
Sports Betting Canadian Bracket Challenge 1st Place: $200 2nd-3rd: $75 each 4th-6th: $50 each Eligibility: No restrictions Contest Grade: B+
Action Network Bracket Challenge 1st Place: $3,000 2nd Place: $1,000 3rd Place: $500 4th-25th: 3-month subscription to the Action Network Eligibility : 18+ USA residents Contest Grade: B
Abt 2018 Bracket Challenge 1st Place: 75″ 4K Smart HDTV 2nd Place: 65″ 4K Smart HDTV 3rd Place: Wi-Fi System Bundle 4th Place: Speaker Bundle Eligibility: 18+ USA residents Contest Grade: B
Jiffy Tickets NCAA Bracket Challenge 1st Place: $1,000 in gift cards 2nd Place: $500 in gift cards 3rd Place: $300 in gift cards 4th-10th: $100 in gift cards Eligibility: 18+ USA residents + Must download Shindig App Contest Grade: C+
Bokampers Bracket Challenge 1st Place: 60″ HD Television 2nd Place: $200 Bokampers Gift Card 3rd Place: $100 Bokampers Gift Card Eligibility : 21+ USA residents Contest Grade: C+
Tommy John #QuickDrawFly Bracket Challenge 1st Place: $1000 worth of Tommy John merchandise Anyone with higher point total than CEO Tom Patterson: $15 credit on orders of $50 or more Eligibility : 21+ USA residents Contest Grade: C+
NBC Sports Washington NCAA Tournament Bracket Challenge 1st Place : Four lower bowl tickets to Wizards vs Celtics on April 10th, an autographed Bradley Beal jersey and a 60″ 4K TV. Score higher than both Tony Massenburg and Walt Williams : Coupon for a Jersey Mike’s sub Eligibility : Reside in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, DC or Delaware. Contest Grade : C+
USA Today Sports Bracket Challenge Five Winners: $1,000 Visa Gift Cards (random drawings) Eligibility : 18+ USA residents Contest Grade: C
Yahoo Best Bracket Contest Grand Prize: $25,000 Other Prizes: None Eligibility: 18+ USA residents Contest Grade: C+
Yahoo Celebrity Pools Prizes: There are 6 other “Celebrity Pools” with winner take-all prizes ranging in value from $350 to $499. Other Prizes: None Eligibility: 18+ USA residents Contest Grade: C
Reddit College Basketball Bracket Challenge Prizes: Reddit Gold Eligibility: Must have a Reddit account. Contest Grade: C
CBS Sports Bracket Challenge Grand Prize: Four 2018 Final Four Tickets + $6,000 ($10,000 ARV) Other Prizes: None Eligibility: 18+ USA and Canada residents Contest Grade: D
Tilted Kilt March Hoops Bracket Challenge Grand Prize: $1,000 Prize Pack Other Prizes: Various food items at Tilted Kilt locations Eligibility: 21+ USA residents Contest Grade: C+
Bleacher Report Bracket Challenge Grand Prize: Ultimate Sports Trip Package. Value may not exceed $10,000. Eligibility: 18+ USA residents Contest Grade: C
SR Smith March Bracket Challenge 1st Place: $500 Visa Gift Card. 2nd Place: $300 Visa Gift Card. 3rd Place: $150 Visa Gift Card. Eligibility: 21+ Contest Grade: C
Goldberg Jones Bracket Challenge 1st Place: $250 Amazon Gift Card Eligibility : No restrictions Contest Grade: C
71 Republic Bracket Challenge 1st Place: 5 NANO tokens (cryptocurrency valued at ~$50) Eligibility: 18+ USA residents and you must follow twitter account and retweet. Contest Grade: C
Value Added 2018 March Madness Brackets (Paid)
These March Madness contests are hosted by online sportsbooks. There will be some form of entry restriction for these contests, whether it be opening an account at the site, making a deposit or even just buying in for a set entry fee. That said due to the entry restrictions the amount of competitors you will be up against will be far less than any of the free brackets listed above, which greatly increases the chances of your bracket winning a prize. I personally enjoy these contests more because even if you lose a few first round games you aren’t necessarily out of the competition. But if you are only looking for free contests and aren’t interested in signing up at an online sportsbook, then just skip this section.
Bookmaker.eu Bracket Challenge Perfect Bracket: $1,000,000 cash 1st Place: $10,000 cash 2nd Place: $5,000 cash 3rd Place: $2,500 cash 4th – 100th: $100 cash 101st – Last Place: Between 7,500 and 50 BetPoints Entries: 1 entry per $100 deposited into your Bookmaker.eu account between March 1st and March 15th (5 max). Additional entries can be purchased for $10 or by redeeming BetPoints. Contest Grade: A Bookmaker Review
BetCris.com March Madness Bracket Contest Perfect Bracket: $1,000,000 cash 1st Place: $5,000 cash 2nd Place: $2,500 cash 3rd Place: $1,000 cash 4th Place: $750 free play 5th – 500th Place: $500 – $10 in free plays. Max Entries: 1 entry per $100 deposited into your BetCris account between March 1st and March 15th. Additional entries can be purchased for $7 or by redeeming $5 worth of BetPoints. Eligibility: Anyone with a new or current BetCris account Contest Grade: B BetCris ReviewTom Stuker, a Chicago-based automotive sales consultant, joined Mileage Plus in 1982 and, since then, has logged 5,962 United flights – plus or minus one or two – including more than 200 roundtrips to Australia and nearly 30 to Asia. Stuker has touched down at airports in all 50 U.S. states, including 70 trips to Hawai'i.
As United's most-frequent flyer, Stuker is the airline's first customer since the program launched in 1981 – and perhaps the first traveler ever – to fly 10 million miles. To equal his feat, a traveler could circle the globe 400 times, fly to the moon and back 20 times, or fly roundtrip between United's largest hubs in Houston and Chicago about 5,400 times.
"We are honored that Tom has chosen to fly with us for the past three decades," said Jeff Smisek, president and chief executive officer of United Continental Holdings. "We deeply appreciate his loyalty to our airline and look forward to serving him as he flies his next 10 million miles."
While averaging nearly 29,000 miles in the air each month for 29 years, what does the mega-miler do during all those flights?
"I don't sleep as much as I'd like," Stuker said. "But I have found that the quiet and solitude allow me to be my most creative. During long flights, I've come up with some of my most innovative business ideas."
More than your average road warrior, Stuker, whose frequent travel earned him an appearance on the NBC sitcom "Seinfeld," is at home on an airplane.
"I can recommend what food and wine to order and which movies to watch," he said. "I'm like the Siskel and Ebert of the plane because I have already seen every one of them."
The Next 10 Million
Upon arrival this Saturday evening at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, Stuker will join family, friends, United employees with whom he has worked over the years and United executives to celebrate his achievement.
"While flying those 10 million miles, I have collected just as many great memories, smiles, experiences and new relationships along the way," said Stuker. "The thousands of people at United have made my travels wonderful experiences."
The merger of United and Continental will enable Stuker to see even more of the world.
"From New York, I'm looking forward to nonstops to places I've never been, like Scotland, Portugal, Mumbai and a few islands in the Caribbean," he said.
Mileage Plus
United launched Mileage Plus in 1981, making it one of the world's oldest, largest and most-rewarding travel loyalty programs.
Mileage Plus received the Frequent Traveler award for best airline elite program in 2011, the second year in a row. In addition, readers of Global Traveler magazine voted Mileage Plus best frequent flyer program in 2010 for the seventh year in a row. Members can earn miles by flying United, Continental, their regional affiliates and partner carriers, including those in the Star Alliance, and by purchasing products or services from more than 100 participating partners in more than 10,000 locations worldwide. Mileage Plus offers members the most extensive selection of award travel destinations, including more than 800 cities in more than 139 countries.
About United Continental Holdings, Inc.
United Continental Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: UAL) is the holding company for both United Airlines and Continental Airlines. Together with United Express, Continental Express and Continental Connection, these airlines operate a total of approximately 5,675 flights a day to 372 airports on six continents from their hubs in Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Guam, Houston, Los Angeles, New York/Newark Liberty, San Francisco, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. United and Continental are members of Star Alliance, which offers 21,000 daily flights to 1,160 airports in 181 countries worldwide through its 27 member airlines. United and Continental's more than 80,000 employees reside in every U.S. state and in many countries around the world. For more information about United Continental Holdings, Inc., go to unitedcontinentalholdings.com. For more information about the airlines, see united.com and continental.com, and follow each company on Twitter and Facebook.
SOURCE United Continental Holdings, Inc.A couple of months ago, I found myself wondering if sunscreens really work. No, not in general, but rather whether the particular sunscreen you use work. With recent reports from the Environmental Working Group disproving the high SPF claims from established household names like Neutrogena and Coppertone, it is no longer a given to trust that our sunscreens protect as much as it says on the bottle. So I went looking for an easy, non-chemist/pro way that I could use to quickly check if the sunscreen I’m currently using really does block out UV rays the way it was supposed to.
I then stumbled upon this Science Buddies experiment that used a UV meter to test individual sunscreens. There are other ways to do it, like this Steve Spangler project that conducts testing with photosensitive beads or paper, but that seemed a little too middle school to me. I need to adult, y’know? And while I was Amazon-ing for UV meters to do this, a better option came up. SKIN ANALYSERS.
In this post:
Function 1: Analysing skin condition
Function 2: Measuring UV index
A disclaimer (and how I’d be using this)
Other than providing a UV index, skin analysers are able to read the moisture, oil, and softness levels of your skin. I chose the Beauty Signature+, a device produced by the Japan Weather Association to help lovely Japanese know when to slather on the extra powerful SPF100 PA++++ sporty sunscreen by checking the daily UV index. You can get it for USD36 on Amazon. It also comes with a case for easy carrying.
FUNCTION 1: ANALYSING SKIN CONDITION
From top to bottom: moisture, oil, and softness (or suppleness) bars.
The two functions of this egg-shaped cutie are activated in different ways. This switch on the side of the device prompts the skin-reading to start.
Both moisture and oil levels run from -7 to +4 (yeah i know it’s weird), while softness can be anywhere from -6 to +5.
Wait, but how does this little egg determine your skin bits? If you’ve ever had your body mass/fat thingy measured in gyms and gotten a piece of paper with embarrassing numbers on it, you’d be somewhat familiar with this experience. It uses the same BIA (Bio Impedance Analysis) technology, which works by sending a light electrical current (you can’t feel it) that is able to detect water and oil levels separately in your skin by measuring your body’s resistance to it. The current flows easily through fluid (water) but not oil as it’s not able to conduct it.
I’m probably doing a hideously rubbish job at explaining this measurement method employed by the healthcare/beauty industries so if you’re inclined, you can read more about it from the pros here.
So to analyse your skin, all you have to do is press the button and press the retractable prongs lightly on your skin. In 5 seconds, a reading is done.
Don’t judge, these are done impromptu after a day out. The first is a reading taken off my thigh…
… and my grimy face. I expect the moisture and softness levels to be low, but it’s intriguing that the oil reading is in the negative range too because I have oil rig class skin. This may be due to a new moisturiser prescribed by my dermatologist (I had an emergency allergy reaction two weeks back) but that’s for another post.
FUNCTION 2: MEASURING UV INDEX
The UV meter is activated upon pressing the silver button on the front, and it works by measuring the rays with the little pinhole above the logo. The five bulbs below the button means (from L to R): Low, Moderate, High, Very High, Extreme, and this is based on the Japan UV index, which is the same as the one prescribed globally by the World Health Organisation. The full explanation can be found here. I’ve stolen referenced a table below from the full guide to quickly illustrate the index range:
To translate this to the device, Low = <2, Moderate = 3 to 5, High = 6 to 7, Very High = 8 to 10, and Extreme = >11. As you can see above, the UV index on the day I measured was a 4.4, a moderate. I measured this without the cling wrap before and had the same reading, this picture is to act as the control (i.e. the cling wrap does not interfere with the analysis).
To check if my sunscreen works – in this case the Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Mousse SPF50 PA++++, which I’ve been testing for close to a month, I smeared product on cling wrap – you’re supposed to put on the same amount you use for your face, which is two milligrams per square centimetre of skin (or a nickel dollop) – but obviously I can’t measure to that precision, so I put on roughly the same amount that would have covered my skin over the size of the UV lens. I left the sunscreen sitting on the clingwrap for five minutes before testing.
And voilà, the miracles of modern sun protection. The UV reading now stands at a much more desirable 0.8, and upon multiple tries with the sun sometimes hiding behind rolling clouds, the reading remained in the same index ranging from 0.7 to 1.3.
DISCLAIMER AND USAGE
I’m not a chemist. Or a beautician. Or scientist. I’m just a regular girl (albeit very vain) who’s doing everything I can to get radiant, clear skin, and explaining technology or science stuff isn’t something I’m particularly good at or am comfortable with. I got this partly for the novelty. Do I know how the pinhole lens thingy captures and measures UV rays? No. However, it is sanctioned by a Japanese government entity and manufactured by a Japanese company, so personally I do have a fair amount of trust in the quality of the product.
To be completely transparent, I’m not so much bothered by the measurement technology behind this. Sure, it’ll be cool to know fancy shit, but I’ve never been the type to comb through heavy academic papers. That said, I do believe the method that I plan on using this device is fairly objective and likely to garner accurate results.
What is the reason for this device? To check if my products are working and if my skin’s condition is improving.
How am I going to use it? By comparison testing. This eliminates all other variables and puts trial factors on even ground. It doesn’t matter what measurement is being used, because if I control every other factor, I will be able to isolate the efficiency of a product easily.
Say, if I’m testing a moisturiser (like this Cremorlab flop), I apply it on half my face. Both sides would have gone through the same exfoliation, cleansing, acids, and essences etc prior. By comparing the two results, or by analysing my skin levels before applying the test product, I can immediately see if the product works like it should. Of course, I can’t determined the exact amount of moisture a product pumps into your skin or anything to that degree, but for an easy, compact device that costs less than $40, this skin analyser does everything I need it to do.
To illustrate how hesitant I was about this post – one, the manual was in full Japanese, Google Translate did not work and two, I wasn’t confident about explaining the exact technicality of how the device works – I received this slightly more than a month ago and am only writing about it now. I kept trying to research more because I was so afraid of posting up anything misleading or inaccurate due to my own negligence or ignorance.
With all that boo boo said and done, I’m really *quite* excited about this because reviews up till recently have been based off how my skin feels. With this device, I get to at least have a reading that either backs up my skin’s emotions or flag a need for extra testing (why does my skin feel tight and parched when moisture levels have increased?)
As with the UV guide, the skin readings act as a guide, are not intended as a medical analysis of your skin’s condition. When in doubt, always consult the experts. Everything listed here is 100% paid out of my own pocket, and the layman observations are mine alone. Links are non-affiliated.The highly secretive Bilderberg meetings are taking place in this unassuming Westfields Marriott hotel in Chantilly, Va. (Flickr / CC 2.0)
Hundreds of political and economic elites are gathering in Chantilly, Va., for a three-day summit on international geopolitics known as the Bilderberg meetings. At the top of the group’s agenda? “The Trump administration: a progress report.”
The outcome of the summit is anyone’s guess, as the infamous Bilderberg meetings are top secret (the name “Bilderberg” comes from the Dutch hotel where the first summit was held in 1954). The summit “[kicked] off on Thursday in heavily guarded seclusion at the Westfields Marriott, a luxury hotel a short distance from the Oval Office,” The Guardian reports. “The hotel was already on lockdown on Wednesday, and an army of landscapers have been busy planting fir trees around the perimeter, to protect coy billionaires and bashful bank bosses from any prying lenses.”
The Guardian continues:
According to the meeting’s agenda, “China” will be discussed at a summit attended by the Chinese ambassador, the US commerce secretary, the US national security adviser, two US senators, the governor of Virginia, two former CIA chiefs – and any number of giant US investors in the country, including the heads of the financial services firms the Carlyle Group and KKR. Oh, and the boss of Google. … All this is the kind of thing that should be headline news, but with the president of Turner International attending, we can be fairly sure Bilderberg won’t make many ripples at CNN. And British readers should not expect much coverage at the London Evening Standard either: their new editor and longtime Bilderberg attendee George Osborne is on the list, despite a general election looming in a week’s time. You could of course complain about a lack of press coverage of Bilderberg in the UK, but with the head of the media watchdog Ofcom at the conference, you may not get an immediate reply.
More than 130 participants from 21 countries are expected to attend, including top officials from the Trump administration, such as Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, strategist Chris Liddell and billionaire Peter Thiel.
In addition to these Trump administration leaders, other “big-hitters from geopolitics” will be in attendance, including Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund; Willem-Alexander, king of the Netherlands; and Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the U.S.
And it wouldn’t be a Bilderberg meeting without Henry Kissinger, whom The Guardian describes as the “gravel-throated kingpin of Bilderberg” and who has attended the summit since its inception.
In an op-ed for The Guardian, Charlie Skelton notes the lack of diversity among Bilderberg participants and mocks the agenda topics. He writes:
They’re trumpeting the diversity of a conference where less than 25% of the participants are female. Which would be a huge step forward, if it were currently 1963. And as for racial diversity, there are more senior executives of Goldman Sachs at this year’s Bilderberg than there are people of colour. Perhaps by “diverse” they mean that some of the participants own hedge funds, whereas others own vast industrial conglomerates. Some are on the board of HSBC, others are on the board of BP. Some are lobbyists, others are being lobbied. That sort of thing. Dafter still is the agenda item: “Can globalisation be slowed down?”. You think that the assembled heads of Google, AT&T, Bayer, Airbus, Deutsche Bank, Ryanair, Fiat Chrysler, and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange want to see a brake on globalisation? It’s the air that they breathe.
Other topics on the agenda include “The war on information,” “Why is populism growing?” and “Can globalization be slowed down?”
The secretive nature of the meetings is “a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists,” the BBC notes. “Some critics have accused the group—which has met every year since 1954—of plotting to impose a one-world government.”
Indeed, Bilderberg is being heavily discussed by conspiracy theorists on Twitter and is featured prominently on conspiracy sites such as InfoWars.
Although past conferences have generated protests, International Business Times reporter James Tennent reported that on Thursday, “the bangs had already fizzled out — three independent journalists and a few cops were in the sun outside.”
On its FAQ, Bilderberg states that press conferences were “stopped due to a lack of interest,” and adds that “[t]he meeting is closed to reporting journalists in order to encourage the highest level of openness and dialogue.”
“Bilderberg gave its last press conference in the mid-1970s,” Skelton says. “It’s time for them to lay down their arms, enter the 21st century, and start talking.”
Read the Bilderberg meeting agenda here and take a look at the full list of participants here.Death toll in Indonesia attack rises to 8
JAKARTA, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Another person has died from injuries sustained in last week's militant attack in Indonesia's capital, media reported on Sunday, bringing the death toll to eight.
The gun and bomb attack on Thursday, which has been claimed by Islamic State, injured around 30 in Jakarta's commercial district. Five of the attackers were among the dead.
"An employee at a nearby bank succumbed to injuries on Saturday," news website Detik.com quoted Jakarta police spokesman Mohammad Iqbal as saying.
Indonesia has the world's largest number of Muslims, the vast majority of whom practice a moderate form of Islam.
Security forces have been largely successful in stamping out homegrown militancy, but last week's attack confirms concerns about a resurgence inspired by IS.
Police arrested 12 people linked to the Jakarta attack in raids across the country at the weekend, and found evidence the group had planned further attacks targeting security officials and foreigners in other cities like Bandung.Aug 22, 2015; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Jarius Wright (17) and guard Zac Kerin (67) and guard Austin Shepherd (74) and tackle Tyrus Thompson (72) and wide receiver Adam Thielen (19) congratulate tight end Chase Ford (86) for his touchdown against the Oakland Raiders in the second quarter at TCF Bank Stadium. The Vikings win 20-12. Mandatory Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports
Here are the three Minnesota Vikings players who are most likely to be traded before Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline and some reasons why they should go.
The NFL trade deadline is tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 3:00 PM CT. While that period usually passes with more of a whimper than a roar, there are some options for players that the Minnesota Vikings could be sending packing.
For the sake of enjoyment, let’s pretend that we’re the general manager of the Minnesota Vikings. Since the team are still contenders for the playoffs and the NFC North, you wouldn’t want to trade away any essential pieces to the team, but still want to get maximum value for players that you might not use as much or will likely be releasing next season.
Here are the three players that I think are the most likely to be moved before the deadline:
Those are the three players who I see as the most likely to be traded before tomorrow’s trade deadline. Do you disagree with any of my choices? Do you have any players that you think are more likely to be moved? Let me know in the comments below.Record Store Day 2016: The Unconfirmed List of Exclusives
Published Feb 18, 2016
Though we're still trapped in the throes of winter, springtime is on the horizon. That means there will be morning dew, blooming flowers and, of course, the return of Record Store Day. We know that the annual vinyl celebration will return once again this April, and now we may have some idea of what to expect from this year's batch of exclusive releases.While this is certainly a rumour-based and unconfirmed post, some record nerds over at the Vinyl Collective message board [via Riff You ] appear to have uncovered a list of many of the exclusives set for release on RSD.Again, these releases are in no way confirmed, but the list is far from ridiculous, offering a mix of mainstream releases and indie highlights.Among the exciting potential releases are a Best Coast B-sides 7-inch, a reissue of David Bowie's I Dig Everything: The Pye Years, a brand new Hot Hot Heat single, a Shaggs 7-inch and a handful of releases from legendary soundtrack group Goblin.Other interesting soundtrack releases include music from The Guest, John Wick and The Ninth Gate, among others.Further, the list suggests we will be getting a Justin Bieber Purpose picture disc, a Five Finger Death Punch double-LP release and a Weeknd remix 12-inch featuring Eminem and Nicki Minaj.You can check out the rumoured Record Store Day releases below. Record Store Day takes place on April 16.[LP][LP][7"][10"][2LP] (limited to 3000 on orange vinyl)[LP] (limited to 3000 copies on blue vinyl)[12"] (limited to 500 copies)[5LP box set][LP]- "Sid & Nancy" / "A Eulogy For Gaia" [7"] (limited to 750 copies)[LP][LP] (limited to 2000 copies on red, white and blue swirl vinyl)[LP/CD] (1000 copies pressed on silver plastic compact disc; 1000 copies pressed on alien urine blue vinyl, 1000 copies pressed on galaxy black vinyl)- Daft Punk cover release- Le Vampire [7''] (Clear Vinyl, limited to 500, indie-retail exclusive)- Arena [LP] (highly collectible Australian rare groove album from 1975, indie-retail exclusive)- Terrorize [LP] (Clear Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Last Great Sea [7''] (Colored Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- A Night In Room 8 [LP] (White Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Cachao's Gonna Make You Dance! [2LP] (limited to 500, indie-retail exclusive)- Hmmlmmlum... [LP] (Clear Vinyl, remastered, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Fiction (Expanded Edition) [LP+7''] (Red Vinyl, 4 songs never before released on vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Schwarze Spinne [10'' EP] (indie-retail exclusive)- You've Got To Hold On/Let's Loot The Supermarket [7''] (picture sleeve, limited to 1300, indie-retail exclusive)- Reversing Into The Future [LP] (limited to 500, indie-retail exclusive)- Paura (limited to 499)- Mos Eisley/Wah Wah Wallenstein [12''] (limited to 500, indie-retail exclusive)- Dark Room [EP] (Translucent Red Vinyl, remastered, limited to 1500, indie-retail exclusive)- Epitaph [EP] (Translucent Red Vinyl, remastered, limited to 1500, indie-retail exclusive)- No Hidden Messages [LP] (Translucent Green Vinyl, remastered, limited to 1500, indie-retail exclusive)- Yesterday Is Gone [EP] (White Vinyl, 2 bonus tracks, remastered, lyrics, skate photos, limited to 1500, indie-retail exclusive)- Cityscapes [10''] (metallic silver sleeve, limited to 600, indie-retail exclusive)- Landscapes [10''] (metallic gold sleeve, limited to 600, indie-retail exclusive)- Dives To The Deep End [2LP] (limited to 700, indie-retail exclusive)- That's How Strong My Love Is/Things She Says [7''] (picture sleeve, limited to 1300, indie-retail exclusive)- Proud Youth: 1986-1991 [2LP] (download, limited to 700, indie-retail exclusive)- L'enfant Assassin Des Mouches Alternate Takes [7''] (limited to 2000, indie-retail exclusive)- Tse Tse/Westwerk 1-3 [12''] (limited to 500, indie-retail exclusive)- Chick-A-Boom/Cycles Of You [7''] (limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Foregrow [12'' EP] (limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Johnny Thunders: 1978 [LP] (unreleased studio recordings from 1978, 4-page poster insert, limited, sleeve feat. unpublished photos, indie-retail exclusive)- Somewhere Between The Wrong Is Right [LP] (limited to 700, indie-retail exclusive)- Tha Carter [2LP] (3D lenticular cover, limited to 3000, indie-retail exclusive)- Tha Carter II [2LP] (3D lenticular cover, limited to 3000, indie-retail exclusive)- My Lover The Killer [2LP] (limited to 1200, indie-retail exclusive)- This Bloods For You / Millions Of Damn Christians [LP] (Clear Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Elvis In the Rheinland (Live In Berlin) [LP] (Translucent Red Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Hey Cop!!! If I Had A Face Like Yours [LP] (Translucent Green Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Metal Devil Cokes [LP] (Translucent Gold Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Shades Of Brown [LP] (Translucent Blue Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Sniper [2LP] (bonus track, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Garden Of My Mind/Time To Start Loving You [7''] (picture sleeve, limited to 1300, indie-retail exclusive)- Children Of Tomorrow/Concerto Of Thoughts [7''] (picture sleeve, limited to 1300, indie-retail exclusive)- The Vienna Remixes [12''] (Blue Vinyl, indie-retail exclusive)- Bebe Godzilla [LP] (Transparent Blue Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- La Legge Dei Gangsters (Gangster's Law) [2LP] (Colored Vinyl, numbered/limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Got To Get Better In A Little While [10'' EP] (Clear Vinyl, Eric Clapton cover song, gatefold, limited to 1850, indie-retail exclusive)- Cyborg Sally [2LP] (Red Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Dandy/I Don't Need Your Kind [7''] (picture sleeve, limited to 1300, indie-retail exclusive)- One Foot On The Mattress, The Other On The Floor [LP] (180 Gram, download, lyric & photo booklet, each cover hand silkscreened/no two alike, indie-retail exclusive)- Save It. [LP] (Tan Vinyl, limited to 700, indie-retail exclusive)- English Songs Volume 2 [7''] (limited to 800, indie-retail exclusive)- SS Warhead [7''] (Black And White Swirl Vinyl, limited to 400, indie-retail exclusive)- Deviation [10''] (Transparent Vinyl, numbered/limited to 500, indie-retail exclusive)- So Far So Super [2LP] (180 Gram, download, limited to 2000, indie-retail exclusive)- To Ride A White Horse (Soundtrack) [LP] (modern jazz soundtrack to the 1968 Australian surf film, remastered, limited, indie-retail exclusive)- On The Horizon/Crawdaddy Simone [7''] (picture sleeve, limited to 1300, indie-retail exclusive)- Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk And Pop Music Vol. 1 [2LP] (gatefold, bonus tracks, limited to 2000, indie-retail exclusive)- Der Zeltweg: Italian Tapes Industrial Music 1982-1984 Volume 2 [LP] (160 Gram, limited to 500, indie-retail exclusive)- Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock And Roll [2LP] (gatefold, insert, download, limited to 2000, indie-retail exclusive)- Monster A Go-Go Volume 1 [LP] (180 Gram Clear Vinyl, limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Sixties Japanese Garage-Psych Sampler [LP] (180 Gram Colored Vinyl, hand-numbered/limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Big Lizard Stomp! Volume 2: Teen Trash From Psychedelic Tokyo '66-'69 [LP] (180 Gram Colored Vinyl, hand-numbered/limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Indecision Records Split Series [2LP] (400 Grey 400 Blue Colored Vinyl, download, first time on vinyl, limited to 800, indie-retail exclusive)- KlangFarBe: German Democratic Republic Tape Music 1983-1987 [2LP] (limited to 500, indie-retail exclusive)- Slitherama Volume 3: Psychedelic Tokyo 1966-1969 [LP] (180 Gram Colored Vinyl, hand-numbered/limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)- Songs The Bonzo Dog Band Taught Us: A Pre History Of The Bonzos [2LP] (180 Gram, hand-numbered/limited to 500, indie-retail exclusive)- Die Schallplatte [12''] (indie-retail exclusive)– Yours To Keep [LP] (first time on vinyl, debut solo album, indie-retail exclusive)– Move Along [LP] (Clear Vinyl with Red & Black Smoky Swirl, gatefold, numbered, indie-retail exclusive)– Follow The Yarn [10"] (2 studio tracks from the Tangle of Time album sessions and live track from TOT tour, indie-retail exclusive)– The Canyons [10"] (Gold & White Marbled Vinyl, 45RPM, indie-retail exclusive)– Animal Tracks [10" EP] (45RPM, the Animals 4th British EP, first time available in the US, indie-retail exclusive)– Live Acoustic At 11th Street Records [LP] (Clear Vinyl, download, indie-retail exclusive)– Impressions In Rhythm And Sound [LP] (200 Gram, Interspatial Blue Colored Vinyl, original reproduction front cover artwork, indie-retail exclusive)– "Black Birds Of Brittany" / "Cuckoo" [7"] (limited to 1000, indie-retail exclusive)– Colours Are Fading Fast (feat Loren Auerbach) [3LP] (casebound set, includes unreleased album, download, indie-retail exclusive)– "Late 20's" b/w "Bigger Man" |
get shipped?
Good Signs:
There’s a communicative and collaborative relationship between Product Management and UX. It’s especially important to understand whether PM’s — who own product features and manage the engineers that build them — are determining what’s ready to ship, or if Design is an equal part of that conversation.
It’s especially important to understand whether PM’s — who own product features and manage the engineers that build them — are determining what’s ready to ship, or if Design is an equal part of that conversation. Leadership is involved early in the conversation, and trusts the product team to make the best decision. What kind of input comes from leadership, marketing, or executives? If decisions depend on their feedback, which isn’t communicated until later in the process, you could end up redoing past work every time you get new information.
What kind of input comes from leadership, marketing, or executives? If decisions depend on their feedback, which isn’t communicated until later in the process, you could end up redoing past work every time you get new information. You can identify where to go for support. Learning about the decision making and approval process will give you the ability to communicate with stakeholders who can support, build, and launch your designs.
Red Flags:
User Research and analytics tools aren’t considered critical to the decision making process. Design should always be informed by data. If user research findings and metrics from analytics and A/B testing are a nice to have, but not necessary when evaluating designs, you may simply end up shipping the personal preferences of whoever is most senior.
Design should always be informed by data. If user research findings and metrics from analytics and A/B testing are a nice to have, but not necessary when evaluating designs, you may simply end up shipping the personal preferences of whoever is most senior. Design, PM, and Executives aren’t aligned. Be on the lookout for indicators that Design’s ability to create the best user experience may be easily overruled by different priorities from PM or executives. If this is the case you may stuck designing the same deliverable over and over as those groups constantly reevaluate and negotiate their priorities.
4. What part of the design process does the team spend the most time on?
Before joining you’ll want to understand where’s the company focuses its efforts. Is the most time spent on product design, or is visual design a key emphasis? How much time is spent on research and usability testing? This question gives you an idea of what’s important without directly asking what’s important.
Good Signs:
The team has a diverse set of skills and backgrounds. A healthy team has individuals who are experienced in Product Design, Visual Design, User Research, and Prototyping. Bonus points for UX teams with marketing, branding, sales, or software development experience. A small team may need only a few people to cover all these topics, but make sure they’re covered (or hiring you would fill in the gaps).
A healthy team has individuals who are experienced in Product Design, Visual Design, User Research, and Prototyping. Bonus points for UX teams with marketing, branding, sales, or software development experience. A small team may need only a few people to cover all these topics, but make sure they’re covered (or hiring you would fill in the gaps). There are others in your role. It’s unlikely any candidate is ever told their role isn’t mission critical, so look at the breakdown of the current team. If there are twice as many product designers as visual designers, and only one researcher, you may be able to presume Product Design > Visual Design > Research.
Red Flags:
Visual Design trumps all. Something is wrong if looking good is more important than solving business problems.
Something is wrong if looking good is more important than solving business problems. The role-ratio is off. One researcher or prototyper may be able to support multiple designers, while one product designer may be able to support multiple software engineers. If the ratio of researchers-to-designers or designers-to-engineers seems unusually skewed it may reveal the company’s priorities, or indicate they have difficulty attracting and retaining talent in certain roles.
5. How many projects do designers work on simultaneously?
How many projects would I work on if I joined the team? What’s the average turnaround time on new tasks? How often does Engineering or Marketing bring last-minute assignments to Design? Juggling a high volume of different product requests and focusing on a single feature are very different experiences. What works for you really depends on your personal preference and style.
Good Signs:
There are opportunities to work in a rapidly changing environment with different individuals across many teams. If you are energized and inspired by feeling highly productive — and are willing to lose sleep to learn quickly — this could work for you.
If you are energized and inspired by feeling highly productive — and are willing to lose sleep to learn quickly — this could work for you. There are opportunities to develop subject matter expertise by investing yourself in a single problem or feature set. This could be a good fit you’re happiest investigating and understanding the nuances of a complex problem over a long period of time. May only be possible at larger organizations.
Red Flags:
The role doesn’t align with your personality. Nothing’s worse than feeling stuck on a small feature, or being pulled in a million different directions, if that’s not how you want to work. Not matching responsibilities to each employee’s personality type may be an indicator that managers don’t know the employees on a personal level or aren’t able to balance the work across the team.
Nothing’s worse than feeling stuck on a small feature, or being pulled in a million different directions, if that’s not how you want to work. Not matching responsibilities to each employee’s personality type may be an indicator that managers don’t know the employees on a personal level or aren’t able to balance the work across the team. Other organizations distract Design with a lot of last-minute tasks. A core tenet of design is making sure other teams have what they need. However, if Design management doesn’t know how to 1) Negotiate realistic deadlines with other departments, or 2) Turn some tasks down, it’s easy to get inundated by a pile of other people’s priorities.
6. How do you see the design team growing?
Now that you’ve got a decent idea about the current environment, how might that environment change? Is it management’s intention to keep the team small? What’s the biggest challenge to growing the team? Is it possible for your position to grow in responsibility?
Good Signs:
There’s support from executives to grow the team if necessary. Unless your company is constantly hiring it’s good to know that the team can add new designers when an increased workload require it.
Red Flags:
Inability to increase team size. There’s a point when increased workload can’t be distributed to the current team without negative effects. Buckling down for a specific launch/event/project is part of the job, but being constantly overloaded is unhealthy if there’s no end in sight. Be on the lookout for small teams who seem trapped under a ton of work or anxious to hire new people to relieve the pressure.
7. What traits makes someone successful in this company / on this team?
This question gives you an idea of what the company’s values most in its employees. Are successful employees solely focused on the company, or do they participate in outside opportunities like volunteering or teaching? Do they work 16-hour days, or does work and life balance create more effective employees? Do they stay focused on the work, or do they bring problems to light across the organization so they can be solved?
Good Signs:
Your values align — or at least close enough. None of the options above are inherently good or bad. What’s important is that there’s alignment in the traits a company values in an employee and the traits you value in an employer.
None of the options above are inherently good or bad. What’s important is that there’s alignment in the traits a company values in an employee and the traits you value in an employer. If your values do align, ask each interviewer for examples of current employees they think are particularly good at their job. If you join, these are the people you should get to know and start learning from.
Red Flags:
If the company’s values surrounding work hours, outside experience, communication, etc don’t align with your own. Only you’ll know what does or doesn’t work for you. Write a list of areas you can’t or aren’t willing to compromise. Be honest with yourself about what you want, then stick to the list and don’t let someone sway you with salary or perks, or work your priorities into the offer negotiation.
8. What’s your management philosophy?
As a manager, what do you consider to be the most important part of your job How do you encourage the growth of your employees? How do you strike a balance between providing support and autonomy? What steps do you take to ensure your direct reports are successful inside and outside the company?
Your goal here is to evaluate who you’ll be reporting to. Your relationship with your direct manager will make or break your experience at a company more than what product you work on or how well you like your coworkers.
Good Signs:
Mentorship is a top priority. Managing others is a huge responsibility, especially when leading young designers who are just starting their careers. If mentorship is a key focus they’ll invest in getting to know who you are and what you specifically need to grow.
. Managing others is a huge responsibility, especially when leading young designers who are just starting their careers. If mentorship is a key focus they’ll invest in getting to know who you are and what you specifically need to grow. They encourage outside learning. It’s not possible to learn everything about an entire industry from inside a single company. Good managers recognize that going to meetups, taking classes, and doing additional training is good for you and the company.
Red Flags:
The company doesn’t frequently promote from within. If the company turns to external hires to fill open positions instead of promoting from within it may indicate that management isn’t actively training employees to succeed.
If the company turns to external hires to fill open positions instead of promoting from within it may indicate that management isn’t actively training employees to succeed. Who you’ll report to directly isn’t involved in your hiring process. This is the most important relationship you’ll have at the company. Not interviewing you themselves at some point during the process may be a bad sign that they’re not fully engaged with staffing their team.
9. What’s the most challenging part of leading the design team?
This question is also for your future manager. The specific answer is important, but you should also evaluate how they answer the question.
Good Signs:
They respond honestly, and the answer could reflect on them. This question is meant to be a more personal exploration than asking about the team’s weaknesses. It’s positive if their answer is honest, humble, and introspective about what challenges them personally.
This question is meant to be a more personal exploration than asking about the team’s weaknesses. It’s positive if their answer is honest, humble, and introspective about what challenges them personally. They have a lot of ideas. An experienced and engaged manager will have opinions on what they think works, doesn’t work, and could be doing better. The time they spend reading and thinking about management should come across in their answer.
Red Flags:
Challenges are primarily external. Be wary if the biggest challenges place blame on working with other teams (“Engineering doesn’t execute”, or “Marketing always needs something”).
Be wary if the biggest challenges place blame on working with other teams (“Engineering doesn’t execute”, or “Marketing always needs something”). Hiring is the biggest challenge. Everyone knows finding good talent is difficult, but if this is really the hardest part of leading a team the manager may be too focused on getting new employees versus keeping the ones they already have.
10. Pay attention to the company’s entire hiring process
This isn’t a question; it’s a practice. Often the best indication of what it’s like to work at a company is what’s not said, simply because it’s much easier to say you’re something than actually be it.
Beyond how interviewers answered your questions, was the interview process smooth and organized? Did the team seem coordinated or were questions repetitive? Did interviewers seemed rushed or impatient to take time out of their busy day? Were they on time to meet you, or were they running behind? Was the white-boarding exercise relevant to the company, or was it akin to one of Google’s infamous — and now mothballed — abstract brainteaser interview questions?
The recruiting and hiring process is complicated, often requiring input and coordination from many individuals across different organizations. Pay attention to how your interviewers conduct themselves; it’s often a good indicator of how the team and company actually functions.Dreams, if taken literally, can be very mysterious and confusing to understand and accurately decode.
Whether you're dreaming about an ex, a deceased loved one, or simply flying, falling or having your teeth fall out while riding a pink elephant (we've all had that dream, right?), your dreams are constantly communicating with you and are integral to better understanding your waking life emotions, stresses, victories and mental well-being. Dreams are the voice of your unconscious mind and are filled with important messages... especially for those paying close attention to them!
Although there are many theories about why we dream, most experts agree that keeping a dream journal is an important first step -- and valuable source of personal insight -- into your inner world.
Keeping a daily dream journal can also be an easy and fun way to help you identify recurring patterns, trends and dream symbols, as well as improving your ability to continually remember more dream details (the more you do something, the better you get at "training" your brain), and pointing you towards an aspect of your life that may need some extra attention.
According to dream educator Bobbie Ann Pimm, author of Notes from a Dreamer... on Dreaming: A Personal Journey in Dream Interpretation, "While you're sleeping, your dreams are telling you all you need to know to live a happy and fulfilling life. They deal with your emotions, relationships, career, fears, needs, desires, aspirations, spirit... they reflect everything you are and everything that you can be. Keeping a dream journal is the best way to start learning from your dreams!"
Pimm Provided the Following 12 Easy and Helpful Steps for Starting a New Dream Journal, Tonight!
Before you go to bed tonight, take a few minutes and write about your day. Who did you see or talk to? Where did you go? What did you do? What was the most emotionally charged (good or bad) event of the day?
Next, set an intention to remember a dream. If you don't normally remember your dreams, you need to convince your unconscious that you do want to remember them. Write it down in your own words. Something like: "Tonight I will dream and when I wake up, I will remember the dream and record it."
Keep something by your bedside to record your dream immediately upon waking up. This could be a physical notebook, or even a dream logging app installed on your smartphone.
When you first wake up -- don't move or open your eyes. Lie completely still and ask yourself, "What was just going through my mind?" Once you remember something, work backwards and ask yourself, "What happened before that... and before that... and before that?"
Continue to lie still and once you've remembered as much as you can, go over the dream in your head one more time before moving.
Grab your recording device and make note of a few memorable "keywords" for each scene of the dream. Even if you start recording the entire dream immediately, you can quickly begin to forget all of the details, so the keywords will help you to remember. This could include individual words like, "dog," "house," "husband," "swimming" or "floating."
While recording the dream, use first person present tense. For instance, "I am doing... I see..." etc.
Be sure to record the setting, the people, the actions and the emotions experienced in the dream. Also make note of how you felt when you woke up (i.e., happy, sad, excited, angry etc.), then give the dream a descriptive title.
Now think about what you did yesterday. Review what you had written down the night before. How might the theme, emotions or actions in the dream relate to something that happened recently in your waking life?
Look for any "day residue" in the dream -- someone or something you saw, something you did, etc. Day residue is important because the unconscious is linking the events of the day to something already stored in memory. Why is that particular event, person, or object appearing in your dreams now?
Share your dream with someone you trust, either by giving them a printed copy of it and/or by telling them about the dream yourself. They can read the dream as you tell it -- but you should recount the dream without looking at what you wrote. Oftentimes, you will leave something out or add something new -- both of these are probably important details. The other person may also help you to recall additional details, or remind you of waking life events that could be relevant.
Make a habit of recording your dreams every night. You may start to see recurring themes, emotions, people, etc., all of which are pointing to an aspect of your life that needs your attention.
Because dream symbols and their meanings are often not literal, but metaphorical, a Dream Dictionary can also be helpful for decoding and interpreting dream symbols, and how they may relate to your waking life events and emotions.
When asked about using a dream dictionary to help interpret your dreams, Pimm added, "It's important to remember that only you know what your dreams and dream symbols really mean. A dream dictionary can offer suggestions and additional food for thought to you - a starting point for you to consider. However, It should never be taken as offering the only interpretation of what the symbol means to you. Only you can decide that!"
By following these 12 easy steps, you'll be on your way towards a lifelong and fulfilling journey of understanding your dreams, and ultimately, yourself!
Have you ever kept a dream journal before? If not, let us know if you have any additional questions about getting started!I flipped past another page of transcripts and reports. Profanity after profanity littered my view. Our suspect had clearly dedicated his time to crafting original insults: I had never even heard of the Occitanian people of France before, much less know four pages of racial slurs about them. The flaming from the transcripts was hot enough to light the cigarette in my mouth, as well as the two in my left hand and one in my shoe.
“Flaxxish appeal denied,” I scrawled before tossing the folder to one side.
“Sir, we have another batch,” my secretary said gently. “I’ll leave it right here.”
The files piled up on my table faster than I could deliver judgement. It looked like a miniature skyline, framed in the gloomy light of the office. Outside my window was the real skyline, dotted with the apartment lights of beautiful women and successful men. Cars nudged each other on their scramble home, like giraffes with wheels and no neck. Tonight, the beauty of the city almost fooled me.
But I knew the city for what it truly was. The pile of transcripts on my desk — that was the real skyline, the skyline that the city hides in dark closets and whispered secrets. I knew the black heart of men wearing masks, the cruelty of humanity, and how badly each teenager wanted to defecate on each other’s mother.
These toxic scum are like ants in a desert that was as wide as the ocean, I thought to myself. Good metaphor, Allen. I’ll use that one again.
A knock came on the closed and windowless office door. I gestured for the visitor to enter.
A dame walked in with long, unending legs that reached the floor. Her hat was the size of a small island, and she sensually looked at things with her shoulder.
“Please, sit,” I said as I drew the blinds and turned on the fan to create evocative shadows.
“My name is Gem,” she said in a voice that sounded like silk dipped in honey through a stain-glass window on a foggy day. “I have come here with a matter of urgency.”
“Tell me,” I said, lighting a cigarette and bridging my fingers.
“Oh,” she hesitated, “but I can’t.”
“Don’t worry. This is as safe as a foxtrot’s den in Arkansas.”
“Very well then.” She paused, and bit her lip. “Nearly two years ago, I was in love with a man. I knew him by his codename, XJ9. He was a beautiful man, but mysterious and dangerous. I was trapped in a violent relationship and stayed in it out of fear. He hurt me badly, detective, and he was punished for his crimes. I was told that he would be locked up for life.
“But just the other day, I found out from my cousin that he was freed and is on the streets again. Detective, I fear for my life! I don’t know where or how this man is, and I suspect he was let off by a rogue officer, possibly corrupt. He may be looking for me, and as much as he claims to have reformed, he must not be trusted. Detective Allen, you must find him and bring him to justice!” Gem sighed in one breath.
At this, the door opened to reveal a tall man in a trench coat and a fedora.
“Oh, detective, I apologize for interrupting,” he said, nervously twisting his bowtie.
“Nonsense, Lyte,” I smoked. “You came in at just the right time. This girl here, Gem, is in need of our help. She was in love with a man two years ago. She knew him by his codename, XJ9. He was a beautiful man, but mysterious and dangerous. XJ9 hurt her badly and he was punished for his crimes. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but just the other day, he was freed and out on the streets. She fears for her life. He may have been let off by a rogue officer or he may have escaped himself, but one thing is certain, Lyte. No matter how much he may say he has changed, he remains a dangerous man and must be brought back to justice. Isn’t that right, Gem?”
Gem nodded, her hat causing butterflies far away to flap their wings.
She won’t tell me what XJ9 did to her, but I know exactly what that monster did. He took distasteful pictures of this fine woman here and ruined her dignity. Yes, reader, I know XJ9. We’d been hunting him down for a long time, but we were only able to nail him down about a year or so ago. He is the lego brick that appears right in the middle of the fucking kitchen when I’m frying shit. I will bring him to justice, if it is the last thing I do.
I took a puff of my cigarette and looked at Gem. “I will bring him to justice, ma’am, if it is the last thing I do.”
“Oh thank you, Detective,” Gem sighed.
“And I will see to this matter personally,” Lyte said, completely forgetting the original purpose for which he came into my office.
“There’s something you should know,” Gem said through lips that were as red as a firetruck screaming through the streets of this broken city. “There are those who say that I provoked him. I did a thing, a thing in service of my own desires… I played Lee Sin.”
The office was, for a moment, as silent as people at coffee shops get when the protagonist sees his long lost lover who he presumed to be dead walk up to his table. Slowly, I shook my head and lit another cigarette. My head was now obscured by a miniature smog front. “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ve delivered justice to all sorts of leggy dames, whether they mained Teemo or Quinn. As long as your money is good, we’ll take the case.”
——
Loud orchestral music played as a man obscured by shadow raged at his computer screen. It continued to play as the camera zoomed in to the bold text of Reddit frontpage. “XJ9 BACK,” it read.
I stood in the rain in a dark alleyway outside a bar. I knew a friend, who knew another friend, who left a note in the crevice of a manhole cover that directed me to leave a briefcase of skin codes at a nearby train station in exchange for information that led to clue after clue, all of which pointed to this one bar on this one night. The man who let XJ9 go free would be here, and he would answer to his crimes.
I entered the bar through the dilapidated wooden front door. The bar was lit by red neon lighting and a muted trumpet was playing in the background, so I knew it was a seedy establishment. I took a seat next to the player support specialist. He had a face that could knight an ordinary peanut on the fourth of July. He ordered a whiskey. I also ordered a whiskey. We drank.
“I tried contacting you earlier with a support ticket,” I mentioned, “but an automated message told me that, given the average human life expectancy, I wouldn’t ever get to see a reply in person.”
“Yeah, we’ve been pretty backlogged since Riven was released,” the specialist apologized. “You want a cigarette, Allen?”
“I’m already smoking one,” I replied, revealing the cigarette that I had on the inside of my teeth. I spun around on the bar stool and pointed a gun at the man. “Just like I’ll smoke you.”
“A-Allen, just give me a second to explain,” he stammered. “This man has changed. I’ve run all sorts of tests, and XJ9 has flipped a new leaf. He’s not a threat to the community anymore!”
“The leopard can’t change his stripes,” I snarled. “Not without paying 590 RP, at least. This man is still a danger to the entire League community, no matter what your stupid tests say. XJ9 is going back to prison, and as for you, you’d be lucky if you’re still employed by the end of the week. Your little project has failed, buddy.”
The last comment only served to enrage the specialist. Ignoring the pistol, he grabbed me by the collar and pinned me against the counter. He breathed cheap beer and sweat down my neck. “Look at you, waving your gun around and screaming about how people never change. You haven’t even read any of my fucking casefiles!” He pulled out a dossier from his coat and shoved it in my face. “I’ve spent months organizing this project, and you have the gall to tell me that I’ve failed? Tell me: do you think you’re the final judge of the human soul? Do you think you’re fucking Osiris? Did you weigh XJ9’s soul on a fucking scale?”
I shot him. The bullet hit his shoulder: a life of medical bills, shoulder pain, and tinnitus, but he’ll live. I stood up and left him writhing on the ground. I didn’t really need anything from him anyways; someone else would deal with him.
He’s wrong. I’m not Osiris or Saint Peter or Xenu. But I answer to a higher duty — Justice. I am the caretaker of these people. I cleanse the ink from the sea. I am the Grim Reaper of Rotten Fruit, the Merciless Stonecold Killer of Negative Attitudes, the Shamwow of Shittalk. I am to the playerbase what cereal is to Ashton Kutcher. This man could never understand the weight that rests on my shoulders. If the toxic players were baseballs, I would be the bat man.
Earlier, I had ordered Lyte to use any means necessary to bring XJ9 to justice. And though I didn’t “know” what I meant when I said that, I knew that he knew what I meant when I said I didn’t want to “know.” Sometimes, morality got in the way of justice.
We e-stalked the location of XJ9.
——
Back at his home, XJ9 queues up for another game. The door behind him creaks open. He freezes, then turns around slowly to come face to face with Lyte.
XJ9 jumps out of his seat, but Lyte motions for him to sit back down.
“Do you have anything to drink?” Lyte asks. “I need to kill some brain cells after reading the OCE transcripts.”
XJ9 is frozen for a few moments. “N-no,” he manages to whisper. “Alcohol is dangerous for ponies, so–”
“I’ve always wondered: why?” Lyte interrupts. “Why did you leak her nudes? She seemed like a nice gal.”
There is a brief silence. XJ9 looks away, in shame.
“I just wanted her to do the right thing,” XJ9 grimaces. “When people don’t do the right thing, it hurts me.”
“The more you know about women, the less you know about women,” Lyte say, smiling wryly. There is a subtle click as he slowly raises a gun.
“W-wait, what are you doing?” XJ9 stuttered. “I passed the tests! I’ve changed! The man said so. This isn’t fair! There was a deal!”
“Do you think I care about ‘fair’? Do you think I care about your ‘deal’? I don’t even work in player support; I don’t have to listen to anything they do,” taunts Lyte. “The truth is, I don’t even care about good and bad. I don’t even care about Justice, unlike Detective Lawful Neutral. No, the only thing that I care about is the feeling I get when I smite every last one of you bastards from existence.”
XJ9’s face does not change, until, accompanied by a flash of white and the sound of a gunshot, it does.
—-
“I heard shots,” I yell, running in. “What the hell happened?”
“He had a weapon,” Lyte said to no one in particular, perhaps to the reader. He lights a cigarette.
I looked at the deceased XJ9 and frowned. He wasn’t a good person by any means, but he didn’t deserve to die.
“Another good day’s work, I guess.”
–End Issue #1–
Riot Games does not endorse the use of tobacco products.Please note that the IRANZ Clinic being held for by the TRU is almost full. If you are an interested player or coach, email Ron Watson for further details.
The TRU is pleased to announce that it will host three High Performance camps in partnership with the International Rugby Academy of New Zealand (IRANZ). These clinics are open to male players, male & female coaches and will take place in Dallas, Austin and Houston in August.
Dallas Texas – 16 hour clinic over three days
Friday 23 August 2013 Evening Session
Saturday 24 August 2013 Day Session
Sunday 25 August 2013 Day Session
Austin Texas – 16 hours clinic over four days
Monday 26 August 2013 Evening Session
Tuesday 27 August 2013 Evening Session
Wednesday 28 August 2013 Evening Session
Thursday 29 August 2013 Evening Session
Houston Texas – 16 hour clinic over three days
Friday 30 August 2013 Evening Session
Saturday 31 August 2013 Day Session
Sunday 1 September 2013 Day Session
Total number of players and coaches at three locations 150. Clinics will be kept to 50 players each, if interested, contact Ron Watson.
Cost per player and or coach $125.00 for TRU members, $250.00 for non TRU members.
The Academy is open for all division Coaches. It is highly recommended that Coaches attend the Academy in their area. For further information, contact Ron Watson.
IRANZtoClubs [PDF]- Two weeks after a now-fired Balch Springs police officer shot and killed a 15-year old boy, the police chief is investigating who leaked video of another incident involving his officers.
The leaked body cam video is from an April 28, 2016 incident that shows a white Balch Springs officer using a taser on a handcuffed black man.
The video was mailed to FOX 4 after the shooting death of Jordan Edwards, which is a separate and unrelated investigation. The original source of the leaked video or where else it’s been distributed is unclear.
Balch Springs Police Chief Jonathan Haber says he's concerned about the timing of the video leak and how it might affect the perception of his officers.
READ MORE: Department of Justice to investigate Balch Springs PD
The body cam video starts with an officer responding to a call about a man waving a gun in a neighborhood. As the officer arrives, the video shows the suspect, 39-year-old Marco Stephenson, on his knees with his hands on his head. He appears to be complying with officer's commands.
As officers approach Stephenson, a gun is kicked away that was later determined to be a BB gun. As officers are removing his backpack, he mentions spitting out a toothpick. The situation then escalates.
“Don't pull away! You understand? You understand?” a sergeant on the video says as he’s tasing Stephenson. “Don't pull away! You get it?! You get it?! Because I ain't playing with you today! Do you understand?!"
"Yes sir,” Stephenson replied.
The sergeant using the taser is a supervisor. Chief Haber says the sergeant's actions were questioned by his own officers.
“We looked at it. At the end of the day, they did the right thing,” Haber said. “They brought it to our attention."
The police chief says the video was reviewed by the Texas Rangers, Professional Standards and the Dallas County DA’s Public Integrity Unit.
“We decided together that this was an administrative issue, not a criminal issue,” Haber said.
The chief says the sergeant was reprimanded and put on "no contact with the public" until he completed classes on conflict resolution, anti-bias and how to respond to mental health calls.
As for Stephenson, Haber says he was well known to authorities with arrests for everything from criminal trespass to aggravated assault on a public servant on one of his own officers.
"He's been handled 37 times through Dallas County — 37 offenses,” the police chief explained. “He's been arrested or booked into the Dallas County Jail 17 times. He's been booked in through our facility 19 times and I think 33 separate offenses."
Reverend Ronald Wright has publically supported the chief since the night Jordan Edwards was shot and killed.
“He was really fortunate that he didn't get gunned down,” the reverend said.
Wright was also involved in reviewing this case last year at the request of the chief.
"There was some things that were done that could have been kept quiet,” the reverend said. “But there was some officers that set an example of what all police department should do."
Chief Haber says Stephenson never did file a complaint with the department.
"We just hope people understand and realize that we're out here doing these things,” he said. “We're out here actually policing ourselves and making sure we're doing the right thing."
While the DPS investigation found no fault with the officer's actions, it is possible this incident could become part of the broader investigation of Jordan Edwards' death.
The Justice Department has been asked to look for any possible evidence of civil rights violations involving that case. That typically includes a review of all kinds of police department records, including body cam videos.Google has bought more than 1,000 technology patents from IBM as the Internet giant seeks to build up its portfolio and head off potential intellectual property suits. Google has bought more than 1,000 technology patents from IBM as the Internet giant seeks to build up its portfolio and head off potential intellectual property suits.
"Like many tech companies, at times we'll acquire patents that are relevant to our business needs," a Google spokesman said in a statement Friday. "Bad software patent litigation is a wasteful war that no one will win."
The Google spokesman declined to comment on the financial details of the transaction. IBM declined comment.
According to the blog SEO by the Sea, Google recorded with US authorities in mid-July that it had been assigned 1,030 patents from IBM on a range of topics, "from the fabrication and architecture of memory and microprocessing chips, to other areas of computer architecture, including servers and routers."
Google recently lost out on an auction for some 6,000 patents held by bankrupt Canadian firm Nortel. The winning $4.5 billion bid came from a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research in Motion and Sony.
The huge sum spent on the patents and the involvement of many of the world's top tech companies reflected the fierce battle for intellectual property in the tech industry, where firms are often hit with patent-infringement lawsuits.
Google is currently being sued by software giant Oracle over technology used in its Android smartphone operating system.
The threat of more such lawsuits spurred Google to make its $900 billion bid to buy the patent portfolio of Nortel, a once-pioneering developer of wireless and fiber-optic technology.
Explore further: Google bids $900 million for Nortel patentsProposed redevelopment of Joliet Arsenal, February 2002. Drawn with North at the top, the arsenal was bisected by Illinois Route 53 with Kankakee Ordnance Works in the west portion and Elwood Ordnance Plant on the east.
Joliet Army Ammunition Plant (JOAAP, formerly known as the Joliet Arsenal) was a United States Army arsenal located in Will County, Illinois, near Elwood, Illinois, south of Joliet, Illinois. Opened in 1940 during World War II, the facility consisted of the Elwood Ordnance Plant (EOP) and the Kankakee Ordnance Works (KNK). In 1945, the two were deactivated and combined forming the Joliet Arsenal. The plant was reactivated for the Korean War and renamed Joliet Army Ammunition Plant during the Vietnam War. Production of TNT ended in 1976, and the major plant operations closed shortly after in the late 1970s. The facility briefly revived an automated load-assemble-pack (LAP) artillery shell operation that was managed by the Honeywell Corporation during the Reagan administration in the 1980s before it was finally closed.[citation needed]
Portions of the site have been redeveloped forming the CenterPoint Intermodal Center, Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery and Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie.
Pre-World War II [ edit ]
Before the Second World War, the land in Jackson Township, Will County, Illinois, where the Joliet Arsenal was built consisted mostly of small family farms some of which were owned and managed by descendents of pioneer Illinois settlers. The federal government acquired some of the land in Jackson Township to build the Joliet Arsenal through eminent domain.[1] Prior to the plant's construction, there were 450 farms that had to be vacated by March 1, 1941. Initially there was |
credentialled boards in the whole of Australia," Fagan said. "It's got some incredibly successful, but also humble, business people who are very keen to help and do what they can. "I'm really looking forward to seeing how those guys operate."By Adam Perlmutter
An ancient folk song chronicling boating misadventures, “Sloop John B” was transformed into a chamber-pop classic when the Beach Boys recorded the tune and released it on their groundbreaking 1966 album Pet Sounds.
Before then, the song—originally called “The John B. Sails”—had traveled far and wide. It originated in the Bahamas, and the English writer Richard Le Gallienne introduced it to larger audiences when he referenced the “quaint little Nassau ditty” in his 1907 novel Pieces of Eight. He then transcribed the original version’s five verses and chorus for the article “Coral Islands and Mangrove-Trees,” which appeared in the December 1916 issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine.
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By the late 1920s, the song had become something of a national anthem in Nassau, and the writer and poet Carl Sandburg saw fit to include it in The American Songbag, his 1927 compilation of folk songs. But it wasn’t until the late 1950s that popular folk artists began to record it under a handful of alternate titles: “Sloop John B” (Kingston Trio, 1958); “I Want to Go Home” (Johnny Cash, 1959); and, though no such disaster is reported in the lyrics, “Wreck of the John B” (Jimmie Rodgers, 1960).
On Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys transformed the song into a lush pop classic, its woodwind instruments and glockenspiel mingling with more typical rock instruments such as electric guitar and drums. Not only did the Beach Boys’ version breathe new life into the old folk song, it—and the rest of Pet Sounds—provided a sonic blueprint for the arrangements of such contemporary indie acts as the High Llamas, the Decemberists and Grizzly Bear.
This arrangement brings back “The John B. Sails” in its original form, stripping the quaint little ditty to its essence, and making it very easy to play. Though the song lends itself to any 4/4 strumming pattern, try using the Calypso-approved strum included here. Or, if you’re feeling slightly adventurous, sing the lyrics while playing the basic fingerpicking pattern shown to the right of the strum.
Ahoy, mates!
CommentsArctic Ice Minimum Earliest Since 1997
By Paul Homewood
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
NSIDC seem pretty confident that Arctic sea ice extent has reached its minimum. According to them, it hit minimum on 11th September, but this is based on using the average of several days.
The actual minimum took place on 8th September:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/NH_seaice_extent_nrt.csv
This in fact is unusually early. Apart from 2011, when it also occurred on the 8th, no other year has hit bottom as early since 1997. This is an indication of just how cold conditions there are.
This year’s extent is higher than 2007, 2011 and 2012. Perhaps NSIDC’s headline should have read “4th Highest in the Last Nine Years”!
Of course, it is weather conditions that have most effect on ice extent at this time of year, as even NSIDC admit:
Research has shown that especially low September sea extent tends to occur in years when the summer atmospheric circulation over the central Arctic Ocean is dominated by high atmospheric pressure, or anticyclonic conditions. This is because anticyclonic conditions tend to bring relatively sunny and warm conditions, and a clockwise wind pattern promotes ice convergence, making for a more compact, and thus smaller ice cover. The best example of this pattern occurred during the summer of 2007, which had the second lowest September extent in the satellite record. Conversely, Septembers with high extent tend to occur when the atmospheric circulation over the central Arctic Ocean is more cyclonic (counterclockwise), meaning unusually low pressure at the surface. This pattern brings more clouds, lower temperatures, and winds that spread the ice over a larger area.
Viewed in this framework, the pattern of atmospheric circulation for summer 2015 as a whole (June through August) favored a low September extent. Sea level pressures were higher than average over the central Arctic Ocean, as well as over Greenland and the surrounding region. Pressures were below average over north-central Eurasia. This was associated with air temperatures at the 925 hPa level (about 3,000 feet above the surface) that were above average over much of the Arctic Ocean, especially along the coast of eastern Siberia, in the Laptev Sea, and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago extending to the pole. However, it was not nearly as favorable as the 2007 pattern, when the area of unusually high pressure was located further south and east (over the northern Beaufort Sea), and unusually low pressure extended along much of the coast of northern Eurasia. This led to a pattern of warm winds from the south over the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas, promoting strong melt and transport of ice away from the coast. For both 2015 and 2007, the summer pressure patterns led to winds directed down the Fram Strait, helping to transport ice out of the Arctic Ocean into the East Greenland Sea.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2015/09/2015_arctic-minimum/
Meanwhile, Peter Wadhams’ ice free North Pole is there for all to see!
AdvertisementsHermes Psykhopompos sits on a rock, preparing to lead a dead soul to the underworld. sits on a rock, preparing to lead a dead soul to the underworld. Attic white-ground lekythos, ca. 450 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 2797)
In mythology, the Greek underworld is an otherworld where souls go after death. The original Greek idea of afterlife is that, at the moment of death, the soul is separated from the corpse, taking on the shape of the former person, and is transported to the entrance of the underworld.[1] The underworld itself—sometimes known as Hades, after its patron god—is described as being either at the outer bounds of the ocean or beneath the depths or ends of the earth.[2] It is considered the dark counterpart to the brightness of Mount Olympus with the kingdom of the dead corresponding to the kingdom of the gods.[3] Hades is a realm invisible to the living, made solely for the dead.[4]
Geography [ edit ]
Rivers [ edit ]
There are six main rivers that are visible both in the living world and the underworld. Their names were meant to reflect the emotions associated with death.[5]
The Styx is generally considered to be one of the most prominent and central rivers of the underworld and is also the most widely known out of all the rivers. It's known as the river of hatred and is named after the goddess Styx. This river circles the underworld seven times. [6]
The Acheron is the river of pain. It's the one that Charon, also known as the Ferryman, rows the dead over according to many mythological accounts, though sometimes it is the river Styx or both. [7]
The Lethe is the river of forgetfulness. It is associated with the goddess Lethe, the goddess of forgetfulness and oblivion. In later accounts, a poplar branch dripping with water of the Lethe became the symbol of Hypnos, the god of sleep. [8]
The Phlegethon is the river of fire. According to Plato, this river leads to the depths of Tartarus.
The Cocytus is the river of wailing.
Oceanus is the river that encircles the world,[9] and it marks the east edge of the underworld,[10] as Erebos is west of the mortal world.
Entrance of the underworld [ edit ]
In front of the entrance to the underworld live Grief (Penthos), Anxiety (Curae), Diseases (Nosoi), and Old Age (Geras). Fear (Phobos), Hunger (Limos), Need (Aporia), Death (Thanatos), Agony (Algea), and Sleep (Hypnos) also live in front of the entrance, together with Guilty Joys (Gaudia). On the opposite threshold is War (Polemos), the Erinyes, and Discord (Eris). Close to the doors are many beasts, including Centaurs, Scylla, Briareus, Gorgons, the Lernaean Hydra, Geryon, the Chimera, and Harpies. In the midst of all this, an Elm can be seen where false Dreams (Oneiroi) cling under every leaf.[11]
The souls that enter the underworld carry a coin under their tongue to pay Charon to take them across the river. Charon may make exceptions or allowances for those visitors carrying a certain Golden Bough. Charon is appallingly filthy, with eyes like jets of fire, a bush of unkempt beard upon his chin, and a dirty cloak hanging from his shoulders. Although Charon embarks now one group now another, some souls he grimly turns away. These are the unburied which can't be taken across from bank to bank until they receive a proper burial.
Across the river, guarding the gates of the underworld is Cerberus. There is also an area where the Judges of the underworld decide where to send the souls of the person — to Elysium, the Fields of Asphodel, or Tartarus.[12]
Tartarus [ edit ]
While Tartarus is not considered to be directly a part of the underworld, it is described as being as far beneath the underworld as the earth is beneath the sky.[13] It is so dark that the "night is poured around it in three rows like a collar round the neck, while above it grows the roots of the earth and of the unharvested sea."[14] Tartarus is the place that Zeus cast the Titans along with his father Cronus after defeating them.[15] Homer wrote that Cronus then became the king of Tartarus.[16] While Odysseus does not see them himself, he mentions some of the people within the underworld who are experiencing punishment for their sins.
Asphodel Meadows [ edit ]
The Asphodel Meadows was a place for ordinary or indifferent souls who did not commit any significant crimes, but who also did not achieve any greatness or recognition that would warrant them being admitted to the Elysian Fields. It was where mortals who did not belong anywhere else in the underworld were sent.[17]
Mourning Fields [ edit ]
In the Aeneid, the Mourning Fields (Lugentes Campi) was a section of the underworld reserved for souls who wasted their lives on unrequited love. Those mentioned as residents of this place are Dido, Phaedra, Procris, Eriphyle, Pasiphaë, Evadne, Laodamia, and Caeneus.[18][19]
Elysium [ edit ]
Elysium was a place for the especially distinguished. It was ruled over by Rhadamanthus, and the souls that dwelled there had an easy afterlife and had no labors.[20] Usually, those who had proximity to the gods were granted admission, rather than those who were especially righteous or had ethical merit. Most accepted to Elysium were demigods or heroes.[13] Heroes such as Cadmus, Peleus, and Achilles also were transported here after their deaths. Normal people who lived righteous and virtuous lives could also gain entrance such as Socrates who proved his worth sufficiently through philosophy.[13]
Isles of the Blessed [ edit ]
The Fortunate Isles or Isles of the Blessed were islands in the realm of Elysium. When a soul achieved Elysium, they had a choice to either stay in Elysium or to be reborn. If a soul was reborn three times and achieved Elysium all three times, then they were sent to the Isles of the Blessed to live in eternal paradise.
Deities [ edit ]
Hades [ edit ]
Hades (Aides, Aidoneus, or Haidês), the eldest son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea; brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia, is the Greek god of the underworld.[21] When the three brothers divided the world between themselves, Zeus received the heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld; the earth itself was divided between the three. Therefore, while Hades' responsibility was in the underworld, he was allowed to have power on earth as well.[22] However, Hades himself is rarely seen outside his domain, and to those on earth his intentions and personality are a mystery.[23] In art and literature Hades is depicted as stern and dignified, but not as a fierce torturer or devil-like.[22] However, Hades was considered the enemy to all life and was hated by both the gods and men; sacrifices and prayers did not appease him so mortals rarely tried.[24] He was also not a tormenter of the dead, and sometimes considered the "Zeus of the dead" because he was hospitable to them.[25] Due to his role as lord of the underworld and ruler of the dead, he was also known as Zeus Khthonios ("the infernal Zeus" or "Zeus of the lower world"). Those who received punishment in Tartarus were assigned by the other gods seeking vengeance. In Greek society, many viewed Hades as the least liked god and many gods even had an aversion towards him, and when people would sacrifice to Hades, it would be if they wanted revenge on an enemy or something terrible to happen to them.[26]
Hades was sometimes referred to as Pluto and was represented in a lighter way – here, he was considered the giver of wealth, since the crops and the blessing of the harvest come from below the earth.[27]
Persephone [ edit ]
The Rape of Persephone : Persephone is abducted by Hades in his chariot. Persephone krater Antikensammlung Berlin 1984.40
Persephone (also known as Kore) was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, and Zeus. Persephone was abducted by Hades, who desired a wife. When Persephone was gathering flowers, she was entranced by a narcissus flower planted by Gaia (to lure her to the underworld as a favor to Hades), and when she picked it the earth suddenly opened up.[28] Hades, appearing in a golden chariot, seduced and carried Persephone into the underworld. When Demeter found out that Zeus had given Hades permission to abduct Persephone and take her as a wife, Demeter became enraged at Zeus and stopped growing harvests for the earth. To soothe her, Zeus sent Hermes to the underworld to return Persephone to her mother. However, she had eaten six pomegranate seeds in the underworld and was thus eternally tied to the underworld, since the pomegranate seed was sacred there.[29]
Persephone could then only leave the underworld when the earth was blooming, or every season except the winter. The Homeric Hymns describes the abduction of Persephone by Hades:
I sing now of the great Demeter
Of the beautiful hair,
And of her daughter Persephone
Of the lovely feet,
Whom Zeus let Hades tear away
From her mother's harvests
And friends and flowers—
Especially the Narcissus,
Grown by Gaia to entice the girl
As a favor to Hades, the gloomy one.
This was the flower that
Left all amazed,
Whose hundred buds made
The sky itself smile.
When the maiden reached out
To pluck such beauty,
The earth opened up
And out burst Hades...
The son of Kronos,
Who took her by force
On his chariot of gold,
To the place where so many
Long not to go.
Persephone screamed,
She called to her father,
All-powerful and high,...
But Zeus had allowed this.
He sat in a temple
Hearing nothing at all,
Receiving the sacrifices of
Supplicating men.[30]
Persephone herself is considered a fitting other half to Hades because of the meaning of her name which bears the Greek root for "killing" and the -phone in her name means "putting to death".[22]
Hecate [ edit ]
Triple Hecate and the Charites, Attic, 3rd century BCE ( Glyptothek, Munich)
Hecate was variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, dogs, light, the Moon, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, necromancy, and sorcery.[31][32]
The Erinyes [ edit ]
Orestes at Delphi flanked by Athena and Pylades among the Erinyes and priestesses of the oracle, perhaps including Pythia behind the tripod – Paestan red-figured bell-krater, c. 330 BC
The Erinyes (also known as the Furies) were the three goddesses associated with the souls of the dead and the avenged crimes against the natural order of the world. They consist of Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone.
They were particularly concerned with crimes done by children against their parents such as matricide, patricide, and unfilial conduct. They would inflict madness upon the living murderer, or if a nation was harboring such a criminal, the Erinyes would cause starvation and disease to the nation.[33] The Erinyes were dreaded by the living since they embodied the vengeance of the person who was wronged against the wrongdoer.[34] Often the Greeks made "soothing libations" to the Erinyes to appease them so as to not invoke the wrath of Erinyes, and overall the Erinyes received many more libations and sacrifices than other gods of the underworld.[35] The Erinyes were depicted as ugly and winged women with their bodies intertwined with serpents.[36]
Hermes [ edit ]
While Hermes did not primarily reside in the underworld and is not usually associated with the underworld, he was the one who led the souls of the dead to the underworld. In this sense, he was known as Hermes Psychopompos and with his fair golden wand he was able to lead the dead to their new home. He was also called upon by the dying to assist in their passing – some called upon him to have painless deaths or be able to die when and where they believed they were meant to die.[37]
Judges of the underworld [ edit ]
Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus are the judges of the dead. They judged the deeds of the deceased and created the laws that governed the underworld. However, none of the laws provided a true justice to the souls of the dead, and the dead did not receive rewards for following them or punishment for wicked actions.[38]
Aeacus was the guardian of the Keys of the underworld and the judge of the men of Europe. Rhadamanthys was Lord of Elysium and judge of the men of Asia. Minos was the judge of the final vote.
Charon [ edit ]
Charon is the ferryman who, after receiving a soul from Hermes, would guide them across the rivers Styx and/or Acheron to the underworld. At funerals, the deceased traditionally had an obol placed over their eye or under their tongue, so they could pay Charon to take them across. To the Etruscans, Charon was considered a fearsome being – he wielded a hammer and was hook-nosed, bearded, and had animalistic ears with teeth.[13] In other early Greek depictions, Charon was considered merely an ugly bearded man with a conical hat and tunic.[39] Later on, in more modern Greek folklore, he was considered more angelic, like the Archangel Michael. Nevertheless, Charon was considered a terrifying being since his duty was to bring these souls to the underworld and no one would persuade him to do otherwise.
Cerberus [ edit ]
Hades with Cerberus.
Cerberus (Kerberos), or the "Hell-Hound", is Hades' massive multi-headed (usually three-headed)[40][41][42] dog with some descriptions stating that it also has a snake-headed tail and snake heads on its back and as its mane. Born from Echidna and Typhon, Cerberus guards the gate that serves as the entrance of the underworld.[22] Cerberus' duty is to prevent dead people from leaving the underworld.
Heracles once borrowed Cerberus as the final part of the Labours of Heracles. Orpheus once soothed it to sleep with his music.
Thanatos [ edit ]
Thanatos is the personification of death. He guards the Doors of Death.
Melinoë [ edit ]
Melinoe is a chthonic nymph, daughter of Persephone, invoked in one of the Orphic Hymns and propitiated as a bringer of nightmares and madness.[43] She may also be the figure named in a few inscriptions from Anatolia,[44] and she appears on a bronze tablet in association with Persephone.[45] The hymns, of uncertain date but probably composed in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, are liturgical texts for the mystery religion known as Orphism. In the hymn, Melinoë has characteristics that seem similar to Hecate and the Erinyes,[46] and the name is sometimes thought to be an epithet of Hecate.[47] The terms in which Melinoë is described are typical of moon goddesses in Greek poetry.
Nyx [ edit ]
Nyx is the goddess of the Night.
Tartarus [ edit ]
A deep abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans,[48] Tartarus was also considered to be a primordial deity.
Achlys [ edit ]
Achlys is the personification of misery and sadness, sometimes represented as a daughter of Nyx, sometimes as an ancient being even older than Chaos himself.[citation needed]
Styx [ edit ]
Styx is the goddess of the river with the same name. Not much is known about her, but she is an ally of Zeus and lives in the underworld.
Eurynomos [ edit ]
Eurynomos is one of the daemons of the underworld, who eats off all the flesh of the corpses, leaving only their bones.
The dead [ edit ]
In the Greek underworld, the souls of the dead still existed but they are insubstantial and they flitted around the underworld with no sense of purpose.[49] The dead within the Homeric underworld lack menos, or strength, and therefore they cannot influence those on earth. They also lack phrenes, or wit, and are heedless of what goes on around them and on the earth above them.[50] Their lives in the underworld were very neutral, so all social statuses and political positions were eliminated and no one was able to use their previous lives to their advantage in the underworld.[38]
The idea of progress did not exist in the Greek underworld – at the moment of death, the psyche was frozen, in experience and appearance. The souls in the underworld did not age or really change in any sense. They did not lead any sort of active life in the underworld – they were exactly the same as they were in life.[51] Therefore, those who had died in battle were eternally blood-spattered in the underworld and those who had died peacefully were able to remain that way.[52]
Overall the Greek dead were considered to be irritable and unpleasant, but not dangerous or malevolent. They grew angry if they felt a hostile presence near their graves and drink offerings were given in order to appease them so as not to anger the dead.[53] Mostly blood offerings were given due to the fact that they needed the essence of life to become communicative and conscious again.[38] This is shown in Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus had to give blood in order for the souls to interact with him. While in the underworld, the dead passed the time through simple pastimes such as playing games, as shown from objects found in tombs such as dice and game-boards.[54] Grave gifts such as clothing, jewelry, and food were left by the living for use in the underworld as well since many viewed these gifts to carry over into the underworld.[51] There was not a general consensus as to whether the dead were able to consume food or not. Homer depicted the dead as unable to eat or drink unless they had been summoned; however, some reliefs portray the underworld as having many elaborate feasts.[54] While not completely clear, it is implied that the dead could still have sexual intimacy with another, although no children were produced. The Greeks also showed belief in the possibility of marriage in the underworld, which in a sense describes the Greek underworld having no difference than from their current life.[55]
Lucian described the people of the underworld as simple skeletons. They are indistinguishable from each other, and it is impossible to tell who was wealthy or important in the living world.[56] However, this view of the underworld was not universal – Homer depicts the dead keeping their familiar faces.
Hades itself was free from the concept of time. The dead are aware of both the past and the future, and in poems describing Greek heroes, the dead helped move the plot of the story by prophesying and telling truths unknown to the hero.[51] The only way for humans to communicate with the dead was to suspend time and their normal life to reach Hades, the place beyond immediate perception and human time.[51]
Greek attitudes [ edit ]
The Greeks had a definite belief that there was a journey to the afterlife or another world. They believed that death was not a complete end to life or human existence.[57] The Greeks accepted the existence of the soul after death, but saw this afterlife as meaningless.[58] In the underworld, the identity of a dead person still existed, but it had no strength or true influence. Rather, the continuation of the existence of the soul in the underworld was considered a remembrance of the fact that the dead person had existed, yet while the soul still existed, it was inactive.[59] However, the price of death was considered a great one. Homer believed that the best possible existence for humans was to never be born at all, or die soon after birth, because the greatness of life could never balance the price of death.[60] The Greek gods only rewarded heroes who were still living; heroes that died were ignored in the afterlife. However, it was considered very important to the Greeks to honor the dead and was seen as a type of piety. Those who did not respect the dead opened themselves to the punishment of the gods – for example, Odysseus ensured Ajax's burial, or the gods would be angered.[61]
Myths and stories [ edit ]
Orpheus [ edit ]
Orpheus, a poet and musician that had almost supernatural abilities to move anyone to his music, descended to the underworld as a living mortal to retrieve his dead wife Eurydice after she was bitten by a poisonous snake on their wedding day. With his lyre-playing skills, he was able to put a spell on the guardians of the underworld and move them with his music.[62] With his beautiful voice he was able to convince Hades and Persephone to allow him and his wife to return to the living. The rulers of the underworld agreed, but under one condition – Eurydice would have to follow behind Orpheus and he could not turn around to look at her. Once Orpheus reached the entrance, he turned around, longing to look at his beautiful wife, only to watch as his wife faded back into the underworld. He was forbidden to return to the underworld a second time and he spent his life playing his music to the birds and the mountains.[63]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]After taking on Ryan Murphy’s show Glee, now the American Family Association’s subgroup One Million Moms is going after a new show Murphy is producing, The New Normal. OMM blasts the show, a comedy about a gay couple and their surrogate, for “using public airwaves to continue to subject families to the decay of morals and values” and promoting content that is “harmful to our society” and “damaging to our culture.” They ask members to email NBC, threatening to contact the show’s sponsors (even though it hasn’t even aired yet) and asking NBC to “drop all plans to air the program” because it “features homosexuality in a positive light” and is “pushing sin directly into America’s living rooms”:
NBC is using public airwaves to continue to subject families to the decay of morals and values, and the sanctity of marriage in attempting to redefine marriage. These things are harmful to our society, and this program is damaging to our culture.
OMM is prepared to contact any and all sponsors of this program if it is aired. It is proven this strategy works! It was not too long ago that NBC announced “The Playboy Club” was canceled after only three episodes because of lack of advertisers!
Millions of Americans strongly believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman. NBC’s “The New Normal” is attempting to desensitize America and our children. It is the opposite of how families are designed and created. You cannot recreate the biological wheel.
…
As a mother and a member of OneMillionMoms.com, I am concerned about the proposed new NBC show called “The New Normal.” This program is degrading to families and damaging to our culture.
I am appalled that NBC network intends to air a show that features homosexuality in a positive light. I strongly encourage NBC to drop all plans to air the program “The New Normal.”
My family and I commit to contact sponsors that advertise during this program if your network follows through with this show.
I am also prepared to join thousands of other voices in urging advertisers to place it on their “do not advertise” list and consider pulling all ads from the NBC network in protest of pushing sin directly into America’s living rooms.
I look forward to your response.It has been a while since my last post, and what I have prepared for you is a monster of a post that will actually come in 2 parts and sort of be a dry yeast clinic. Part 1 will consist of a an argument for the use of dry yeast, and an overview of the major dry yeast varieties out there. Part 2 will be instructions on how to use dry yeast to it’s fullest potential.
I have been a proponent for dry yeast for a few years now, but I did concede that dry yeast was mostly just good for American Ale styles (American Amber, American Pale Ale, American IPA, and Double IPA, American Stout) and for stand English Styles (English Browns, English Pales, English IPA). But if you wanted to brew a Hefeweizen or Good Belgian beer….forget about it. However, over the past few years my favorite dry yeast producer, Fermentis has kicked it up a notch……actually they kicked it up a few notches. In Part 1 of this article I will talk about my experiences with the newer strains of dry yeast and in part 2 we will cover some of the techniques to maximize it’s usage. No longer should dry yeast just be a “backup” option in case your liquid yeast does not kick off. I also think you would be surprised at how many commercial breweries use dry yeast as well.
I won an online contest recently and part of my prize was a Hefeweizen kit, and in this kit it contained Fermentis Safbrew WB-06. I was reluctant to use it, because when it came to traditional hefeweizen, I always chose to use liquid yeast (WLP300 to be exact). But since it came with the kit, and I didn’t pay for it, I thought “what do I have to lose”? I fermented the beer at 68° and hoped for the best. The result? A beer that was very full of traditional hefeweizen character. The beer had a very nice banana and clove character, with just a bit more banana than clove (which is what I was shooting for, I prefer the banana esters to the clove phenol). The flavors were not muddled or harsh, and the beer fermented solid and was well attenuated. I was proud to serve it at my beer pot luck, and even sent it off to competition (results pending). I served it at a homebrew club meeting and asked some of the guys in attendance to try it and tell me what they think. All of them enjoyed it to some degree (what I like about our club is people are not afraid to tell you what they think of your beer). When I asked “can you believe this was brewed with a dry hefeweizen yeast?”, not a single person could believe it. I wouldn’t have either if I were asked the same. I do believe the trick to successful use of dry yeast, is proper rehydration. Too many people claim that dry yeast doesn’t work well for them, then when asked if they rehydrate they say no. What is funny is when you suggest they try rehydrating, they can look right at you and tell you it’s not necessary….wait, didn’t you say you had less than optimal results? I don’t understand the resistance to rehydration but the deep devoted following to yeast starters. Why does a starter make so much sense but rehydration seems like an unneeded step with dry yeast?
While I have zero illusions about the variety comparison between Wyeast’s and White Lab’s catalogs, a lot of the yeasts in these catalogs have subtle differences. I don’t know many brewers who absolutely will not brew a witbier because they can’t get WLP410 (Belgian Wit II) because the Homebrew shop only has WLP400 (Belgian Wit), or will not brew that lager because they prefer to use German Bock Lager yeast and they can only get German Lager Yeast. You may have a preference, but I know many brewers are able to make substitutions based on these slight variations. Same can be said for the dry yeast, except the styles are much more broad. For example (using my favorite Fermentis again), their catalog is 8 deep. You have Safale US-05, Safale S-04, Saflager S-23, Saflager W-34/70, Safbrew t-58, Safbrew S-33, Safbrew WB-06, and the very new Safbrew Abbaye which I just picked up myself. Most (not all) beer styles can be successfully and accurately brewed using these 8 yeasts. I will describe each one below. (By the way, click the name of the yeast to be taken to a place you can buy these yeasts, when possible I will use Amazon so people can take advantage of free shipping with Prime plus Amazon has some good deals on 3 packs)
Safale US-05
This is a variant of the popular American Ale yeast strain (WLP001 or Wyeast 1056). This yeast produces a fairly clean and well balanced ale with lower levels of diacetyl. Apparent attenuation is fairly high at about 81%. Flocculation is medium. The acceptable temperature range for this yeast is 53°-77°F (12°-25° C), but the optimum range is 59°-71° F (15°-22° C). This yeast is fairly versatile and can be used in many styles that require a clean profile, and can even make a pseudo-lager if you ferment near the 59° F (15°C) temperature. Some recommended styles would be American Pale Ale, American IPA, American IIPA, American Stout, American Amber/Red, American Brown, American Barleywine, American Wheat & rye, Specialty/Fruit/Veg/Spiced beers, Robust Porter*, Cream Ale*, Kolsh**, Blonde Ale, Irish Red** and Scottish shilling beers, Dry Stout, Dusseldorf Alt.
Safale S-04
This is an English style Ale yeast. This beer produces a tight compact sediment which will result in a clearer beer. It’s not quite as clean as US-05, but close. The big draw is the high flocculation which is ideal for cask or bottle conditioned beers. Its tight sediment is also good for cylindro-conical tanks. Apparent attenuation is moderate, at about 75%. The acceptable temperature range is 54°-77° F (12°-25° C), but the optimum range is 59°-68° F (15°-20° C). Some recommended styles would be English Pale Ales (including Bitters), English Milds and Browns, English IPA, Brown Porter, Robust Porter, Baltic Porter*, Foreign Extra Stout*, Dry Stout, Sweet Stout, Oatmeal Stout, English Barleywine, English Old Ale, English or American Strong Ales (Barleywines).
Saflager W-23
A dry lager yeast which originated from the VLB (Versuch- u. Lehranstalt für Brauerei ) Institute in Berlin, Germany. This lager is for producing continental lagers with some fruity, estery highlights. The apparent attenuation is listed at about 82%, but the site states that a lower attenuation gives the beers a good length on the palate. This beer is highly flocculent so you will end up with a nice clear lager. The acceptable temperature range is 48°-71° F ( 9°-22° C) but the optimal fermentation range is 53°-59° F (12°-15° C) Some recommended styles for this strain would be American Lagers, Oktoberfest/Märzen, Dark American lager, Munich Dunkel, Schwarzbier, Bocks, German Alt, Baltic Porter, almost all European lager types.
Saflager W-34/70
This is the dry version of the famous Weihenstephan lager yeast, and is one of the most popular lager strains in the world. W-34/70 offers up a good balance of floral and fruity aromas but yet good clean flavors. The end result is a very drinkable brew. Flocculation is listed as high. Apparent attenuation is listed at about 83%. The workable temperature range is 48°-71°F (9°- |
prices” button you can tap (or just say “track prices” as your next voice command to set up the feature).
You’ll get an email delivered to your Gmail inbox to confirm that price tracking has been activated, and the Assistant will pipe up whenever it finds a lowest price that’s higher or lower than the one it originally gave you. Follow the link in the email you get, or head to this link, to manage your flight tracking subscriptions.
2) It can navigate through your photos
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Actually tapping and swiping through your photos is so 2016—nowadays all the cool kids are getting are shouting their demands into their phone to bring up the right images instead. Though those images need to be stored in Google Photos first.
You might not think it sounds all that useful to begin with, but give it a try and you could be convinced. Try “show my photos of sunsets”, or “show my photos from January 2015", or “show my photos taken in San Francisco”, for example.
3) It can help you create your own memes
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This is one of Google’s new Voice Experiments, which also let you tell stories, make music, and set up quizzes with Google Assistant. The meme generator is the easiest to use
It’s called Meme Buddy and all you need to do is fire up Google Assistant on your phone and say “talk to Meme Buddy”—you then get guided through the process of creating an ultra-shareable, culturally cutting meme of your own just by describing it. You can say “change the picture to...” or “change the text to...” or just start again.
As the name of the umbrella project suggests, this is still just an experiment, so you might not get perfect results every time, but it’s a great little tool for having fun with.
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4) It can throw content to your Chromecast
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Google Assistant works seamlessly with any Chromecasts you’ve got dotted around the house, provided you’ve given them names that Assistant can understand (like “study”, “kitchen”, or “living room”, for example).
If you’re signed up for Netflix, you can say “play Orange is the New Black in Living Room”; if you’ve got Spotify, you can say “play R.E.M. on Spotify in Kitchen” (or use Google Play Music instead); saying “play Star Wars videos in Study” will fire up your study Chromecast and start streaming a selection of Star Wars-themed videos from YouTube.
You can use Google apps and services for this right out of the box, or add support for the likes of Netflix and Spotify by connecting your account through the Google Home app on your phone.
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5) It can deliver daily subscriptions
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For a while now Google Allo has had a subscriptions feature where you can get the same information delivered to you at the same time every day—examples include a funny joke, or a weather report, or a nugget of trivia.
This feature is now available in Google Assistant through the command “send me... everyday”. As per the Google support page, you can pick from the weather, a poem, a quote, a funny video, a fun fact, or a mindfulness tip, and no doubt more will be added further down the line. Confirm you want an update every day, and pick a time.
On a phone, the Assistant shows an alert when your update is ready—it doesn’t just blurt it out. Tell the Assistant to “show active subscriptions” to see the subscriptions you’ve set up and modify them if needed.
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6) It can summarize all the thoughts you’ve had during the day
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If something pops into your mind that you don’t want to forget, Google Assistant can make notes throughout the day then present you with a summary in the evening (or whenever you like). However, you need to sign up for a free IFTTT account to get this working.
Log into IFTTT on the web, head to the Google Assistant channel, and look for the applet labeled “Keep a list of notes to email yourself at the end of the day”—turn it on, connect your Google Home account, and review the settings before clicking Save.
You can then say (or type) “add hotel bookings to my digest” or “add the plays of Eugene O’Neill to my digest” and Google Assistant keeps track of everything, emailing you at the time you’ve specified with a summary. It’s a neat and useful alternative to the reminders feature in Google Assistant.
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7) It can update your Facebook and Twitter pages together
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Here’s another IFTTT one—remember you can use IFTTT applets together with Google Assistant to do pretty much anything you want, but in terms of a trick that’s useful and quick to set up try this social media one.
Turn it on and you can update both Facebook and Twitter at the same time, using your voice to create a simple line of text. The command is “tell my followers...” followed by whatever it is you want to say. Your default privacy settings will be used, so the people who see it will be whomever you allowed to see your posts the last time you did a Facebook status update.The Marmes Rockshelter (also known as (45-FR-50)) is an archaeological site first excavated in 1962,[3] near the confluence of the Snake and Palouse Rivers, in Franklin County, southeastern Washington. This rockshelter is remarkable in the level of preservation of organic materials, the depth of stratified deposits, and the apparent age of the associated Native American human remains. The site was discovered on the property of Roland Marmes, and was the site of the oldest human remains in North America at that time.[4] In 1966, the site became, along with Chinook Point and the American and English Camps on San Juan Island, the first National Historic Landmarks listed in Washington.[5] In 1969, the site was submerged in water when a levee protecting it from waters rising behind the then newly constructed Lower Monumental Dam, which was 20 miles (32 km) down the Snake River, failed to hold back water that leaked into the protected area through gravel under the soil,[4] creating Lake Herbert G. West.
The excavation [ edit ]
The existence of the site was first brought to the attention of Professor Richard Daugherty in 1952 by a rancher named John McGregor.[6] Excavations at the site were started by Daugherty and Roald Fryxell, a geologist, under the auspices of Washington State University (WSU) and the National Park Service in 1962, and continued until 1964.[3][7] In 1965, Fryxell returned to the site along with Professor Carl Gustafson and students from WSU,[8] and had Roland Marmes dig a trench in front of the rockshelter with his bulldozer, which turned up human and elk bones. Radiocarbon dating indicated that the human remains were about 10,000 years old.[9] In 1968, Fryxell returned, this time with several WSU professors (including a visiting professor from Poland) and members of the United States Geological Survey,[10] and found more human and animal remains, along with bone tools. April 29 of that year, Washington Senator Warren Magnuson made a public announcement of the finds.
Inundation of the site [ edit ]
After a bill that would have provided funds to protect the site failed, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson signed an Executive Order that authorized funding for the Army Corps of Engineers to build a levee around the site to protect it from the imminent flooding caused by construction of the Lower Monumental Dam. Late that year, Daugherty left the dig, leaving Fryxell to lead the project. Within three days of the closure of the Lower Monumental Dam in February 1969, the site was completely underwater, due to the seepage of water through thick layers of gravel that had not been accounted for.[6] However, as the site was being flooded, the excavation team laid down plastic sheeting topped with gravel in the hopes of being able to return to the dig in the future.[11]
The location of the site is still known today, and has come under some threat of erosion from the wakes of motorized vehicles on the lake. The Army Corps of Engineers considers the site to be in stable condition with a "Satisfactory" threat rating since 2004.[12]
Findings at the site [ edit ]
The creation of the Lower Monumental Dam raised the level of the Palouse River high enough to submerge the Marmes site completely under water.
The excavations at the site revealed evidence of human occupation from a period that lasted 8,000 years,[13] and that the area was home to humans as long ago as 11,230 years ago.[14] The people living at the site hunted game such as elk and deer using atlatls, and also hunted smaller mammals such as beavers, while they gathered mussels from the river.[15] The excavation turned up graves, which included beads carved from shells and spear points. One grave, that of a child, held five matching knives made of stone.[16] The excavation also turned up chalcedony and chert projectile points. Those in the upper layers were made of agate, which is not found in the area.[17] Stone tools were found as well, such as scrapers for use in tanning hides, and mortars and pestles.[18] In layers dated to 7,000 years ago, a large number of shells belonging to a snail of the genus Olivella were found, which would have been imported from the West Coast of the United States, 200 miles (322 km) away. The majority of the shells had holes drilled through them, indicating that they had adorned necklaces.[18]
In addition, one of the five known Jefferson Peace Medals was found associated with the most recent human remains at the site, evidently having been given to a local Native American leader (presumably of the Nez Perce) during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. This medal has since been returned to the Nez Perce and reburied, as per Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act regulations.[19]
Analyzing the pollen sequences at the site showed a steppe ecosystem immediately following the retreat of glaciers 13,000 years ago, which gave way to a mixed forest of pine and spruce, which led into the current sagebrush prairie ecosystem.[20]
Implications of the findings [ edit ]
Unlike many archaeological finds, the human remains at the site were able to be dated with environmental, geological, and archaeological methods.[8] Human remains at the site are the oldest that have been found in Washington, and at the time were the oldest set of remains found in North America.[21] Later radiocarbon work has confirmed the original dating of this site, indicating that these human remains, albeit very fragmentary, are still some of the oldest ever excavated in the New World.[22] This finding was useful in confirming the early chronology of the region and confirming the antiquity of the styles of associated bone tools.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Downey, Roger (2000). Riddle of the Bones: Politics, Science, Race, and the Story of Kennewick Man, Springer, ISBN 0-387-98877-7.
, Springer, ISBN 0-387-98877-7. Fiedel, Stuart J. (1992). Prehistory of the Americas, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-42544-1.
, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-42544-1. Hicks, Brent A. (2004). Marmes Rockshelter: A Final Report on 11,000 Years of Cultural Use, Pullman, Washington: Washington State University Press, ISBN 0-87422-275-3.
, Pullman, Washington: Washington State University Press, ISBN 0-87422-275-3. Kirk, Ruth (1970). The Oldest Man in America: An Adventure in Archaeology, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., ISBN 0-15-257831-5.
, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., ISBN 0-15-257831-5. Kirk, Ruth; Daugherty, Richard D. (1978). Exploring Washington Archaeology, University of Washington Press, ISBN 0-295-95630-5.
, University of Washington Press, ISBN 0-295-95630-5. LeWarne, Charles (2003). Washington State, Seattle: University of Washington Press, ISBN 0-295-97301-3.
Coordinates:It’s a good day at FX and Ryan Murphy Productions. The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story was just lauded with a huge 22 Emmy nominations this morning, including Outstanding Limited Series.
Executive producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson said in a statement, “We are so proud of The People v OJ Simpson and the amazing response it has received. The entire experience has been gratifying from start to finish. We came to television production as fans first – there is just so much incredible TV being made right now. It is thrilling to have produced a series that is now being recognized alongside so many shows that we are obsessed with. And now, to have ALL of our directors, writers and lead actors, along with so much of our crew be nominated this morning is simply overwhelming. On behalf of all of them and the teams at FX and Fox, we are so grateful for the honor.”
The series, about the iconic murder trial of O.J. Simpson, notably landed acting noms for all of its main castmembers — Cuba Gooding Jr., Sarah Paulson, Courtney B. Vance, John Travolta, David Schwimmer, and Sterling K. Brown.
Murphy shared a statement with EW: “Working on The People v. O.J. Simpson has been a career highlight and its own reward, but I am especially moved by the recognition for everyone who devoted their hearts and souls to this project—from our brilliant cast to our amazing writers and directors to the extraordinary producers. We are all incredibly grateful. It’s a happy day.”
Schwimmer, who was nominated once before for Friends, said, “I am totally surprised and thrilled to be nominated alongside my other cast mates, as well as the show’s writers, producers, and directors. I’m proud to be part of such a timely and provocative series, and hope it continues to contribute to the much-needed discussion of race and class in this country.”
First-time nominee Brown, who played prosecutor Chris Darden, released a statement as well: “So this is it! To paraphrase my favorite musical, I get to be in the room where it happens! I am beyond thrilled to be receiving my first Emmy nomination! What an incredible journey the last 15 years has been. Allow me to first recognize the village that has supported me from the very beginning. My friends & family in St. Louis, MO (Love you, Aralean Brown, aka Ma), my Stanford compatriots (#chocolatecardinal), and my friends and faculty from the 5th floor @NYU. To my agents at Innovative David Rose, and Allison Levy, I adore you both. To my manager Jennifer Wiley Stockton, I wouldn’t know what to do without you. Thanks for believing in me when I had a tough time believing in myself. And to the love of my life, Ryan Michelle Bathe Brown, thank you for saying yes, for baring two of the most gorgeous children in the world, and inspiring me with your insane talent, intelligence, and passion everyday!
Thank you to the Television Academy for this tremendous honor. Thank you to Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, 20th Century Fox & FX for allowing yours truly to be a part of this phenomenal team! Thank you to all our incredible writers, including Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski, Joe Robert Cole, and D. V. DeVincentis for creating a role that I could only dream of. Thanks to my wonderful directors (already mentioned you, Mr. Murphy) John Singleton and Anthony Hemingway for all your guidance and encouragement. And congratulations to my fellow nominees! Dr. House himself, Hugh Laurie! My extended FX family Bokeem Woodbine, and Jesse Plemmons. And of course my American Crime Story brothers in arms David Schwimmer, and Vincent Vega himself, Mr. John Travolta. Honored to be in the company of you all! And lastly, allow me to congratulate the outstanding leads in our show, Mr. Courtney Bernard Vance, and Mr. Cuba Gooding, Jr. And of course, the lovely and uber talented Ms. Sarah Katherine Paulson. Love you, Darlin’! See you on the carpet!!!!!”
Executive producer Ryan Murphy also scored a directing nod for the first episode, “From the Ashes of Tragedy,” as did writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.The Russian intelligence services discovered a bomb-making factory when they raided a secret mosque in the city of Samara. The explosives they found in the building were so unstable that they had to be detonated on the spot, leaving the mosque a little worse for the wear and tear.
Many thanks to D@rLin|{ for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for subtitling this report from Russian television:
Transcript:
00:00 The bomb, found today in an illegal prayer house in Samara, was destroyed in place.
00:04 It was too dangerous to move 2 kilograms of TNT.
00:09 For the raid’s duration the state route M-5 was closed.
00:12 A Salafist group that used this villa on the outskirts of Samara was detained early in the morning.
00:17 More than 50 cell members were arrested. One of them is known to the FSB for uploading forbidden ISIS videos;
00:22 the other one had an arsenal of weapons and ammunition.
00:27 With us Stas Natanson, welcome!
00:30 Are there any recruiters amongst the detained? According to special services, at least two of them are.
00:37 It was an ordinary two-story brick house in Samara’s suburbs, but it served
00:44 as a hiding place for a big terrorist group.
00:48 Not just extremist books were there — also several kilos of homemade explosives.
00:54 The bomb squad decided not to risk the premature explosion of an amateur bomb,
01:00 and detonated it inside the house.
01:11 The explosion’s aftermath makes it clear
01:14 how potentially destructive the terror attack planned by this group could be.
01:17 More than 50 people were arrested, two of them having been wanted by the FSB for a long time.
01:23 During the preventive operation at the Salafist cell hideout in Samara, its members were detained.
01:36 Some of them known to be members of terrorist organizations.
01:43 This cell was a home to Ruslan Kanteev and others, who are currently in Syria,
01:51 fighting for illegal militant groups.
01:59 It is still under investigation whether all those arrested are terrorists.
02:04 It could be that many of those visiting the illegal mosque,
02:08 didn’t know that they are being recruited.
02:11 This is the case with two medical students from Kabardino-Balkaria.
02:15 At first they were invited to come to illegal prayer houses and then offered to go to fight in Syria.
02:22 “As you get to Istanbul, go to such and such — gave us contacts”
02:31 A similar prayer house was discovered a year ago at the Volgograd State Medical Academy.
02:42 Recruitment there was a smoothly-running process, divided into three stages.
02:46 First, an informer found single men and passed them on to a motivator.
02:51 The motivator’s job was to brainwash the victims and only then did a recruiter step in.
02:56 Alexey Grishnin — President of “Religion and Society” analytical center. The motivator
02:59 would say that tomorrow or the day after a great guru is coming,
03:02 he will explain everything, he is very famous in Islamic circles, very prodigious scholar,
03:09 and this scholar wants to meet you, because you are an exceptionally bright young man.
03:18 This guru is in fact an agent recruiter, who gives the offer and shows how to move to the Middle East,
03:28 and how to join a militant group
03:33 The closed prayer house in the Medical Academy was, of course, not the only one in this area.
03:40 Just a few weeks ago, during a raid in Volgograd region, another terror cell was arrested
03:46 in another ordinary house. They had weapons and explosives.
03:56 Chemicals found in their possession indicated that they were in process of making a bomb.
04:00 How many such cells exist in ordinary private houses across the country, nobody can say.Richardson Police on Monday were waiting for confirmation that a body found near the home of missing 3-year-old Sherin Mathews belonged to the child. (Published Monday, Oct. 23, 2017)
Police on Monday were waiting for confirmation that a body found over the weekend was that of a 3-year-old girl who disappeared from her suburban Dallas home earlier this month.
Sgt. Kevin Perlich, a Richardson police spokesman, said investigators don't have reason to believe the body found Sunday is not that of Sherin Mathews, but they're still waiting for the medical examiner's office to confirm it and to determine a cause of death.
Sherin, who was adopted from India last year, was reported missing by her father, Wesley Mathews, on Oct. 7. He told police that he had ordered her to stand near a tree outside of their home at around 3 a.m. as punishment for not drinking her milk, and that she was gone when he went to check on her about 15 minutes later. Authorities say he waited five hours to report her missing.
Mathews, 37, is charged with abandoning or endangering a child and is free on bond. No additional charges had been filed as of Monday afternoon. According to police, Mathews said the girl was developmentally disabled and malnourished when he and his wife adopted her, and that they had to put her on a special diet that included feeding her whenever she was awake, including in the middle of the night, to help her gain weight.
Neighbors React to Body Found in Richardson
After Richardson Police announced on Sunday that they had found the body of a child not far from Sherin Mathews home, neighbors started showing up to the site to pray for the little girl. (Published Sunday, Oct. 22, 2017)
He and his wife, Sini Mathews, attended a court hearing Monday to determine whether they could regain custody of their 4-year-old biological daughter, who was placed in protective custody after her sister went missing. The judge postponed the hearing until Nov. 13 to give Wesley Mathews time to hire a civil attorney, said Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services. The girl will remain in foster care at least until that hearing or until a judge orders a change in custody.
"We do have the names of some relatives who have expressed interest in taking care of her," Gonzales said. "We can begin looking into those relatives, but it is entirely up to the judge where she is placed."
Authorities using dogs to search for Sherin found the remains Sunday in a drainage tunnel about a half-mile from the family's home.
Richardson Press Conference
(Published Sunday, Oct. 22, 2017)
Rafael De La Garza, an attorney for Wesley Mathews, told The Dallas Morning News after Monday's hearing that his client was "mourning the death of his child," but he didn't address the criminal charges. De La Garza did not immediately reply to a phone message from The Associated Press.
Wesley Mathews told police that after doing an initial search after realizing his daughter was missing, he went inside and did laundry while waiting for her to come home or for daylight so that he could continue searching.
Police said they believe Sini Mathews was sleeping when the girl went missing and was unaware of the alleged punishment.
Kent Starr, an attorney for Sini Mathews, said that as part of Wesley Mathews' bond agreement, the couple cannot live together. Starr told the Dallas Morning News that his client is seeking to regain custody of her other daughter and that she has cooperated with the police in trying to help identify Sherin's body.
Raw Video: Child's Body Found Near Home of Sherin Mathews
The body of an unidentified child has been found near the home of missing 3-year-old Sherin Mathews, Richardson police say. (Published Sunday, Oct. 22, 2017)
Police said one of their searches on Sunday led them to the open field less than half a mile from the Mathews home, where search dogs helped find the body inside a culvert that runs under East Spring Valley Road near South Bowser Road.
The field is located in a neighborhood and surrounded by homes.
William Prussack, who lives in a townhome that overlooks the field, said he walks it every day with his dogs and never noticed any sign of the missing toddler.
"It's 150 yards from my driveway. We're absolutely devastated right now," Prussack said.
He and other neighbors watched crime scene investigators, some in hazardous materials style suits, inch their way across the field looking for evidence. Police have not said what specifically brought them to this site, other than to say continuous searching for more than two weeks helped lead them to the body.
"This can happen anywhere now. I never would have dreamed anything like this would have happened by my home," said Prussack. "To know that something this evil lurks so close to your backyard, you just can't help but wonder, it's like death knocking at your door."
Check back and refresh this page for the latest update. As this story is developing, elements may change.
Copyright Associated Press / NBC 5 Dallas-Fort WorthThe health secretary is said to be lining himself up as a Brexiteer alternative to Boris Johnson DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS
The health secretary Jeremy Hunt has sounded out colleagues and party donors about a run for the Tory leadership when Theresa May stands down.
Senior Eurosceptics say Hunt is lining himself up as an alternative to Boris Johnson as the main Brexiteer candidate for prime minister after publicly switching his support from “remain” since the general election.
The foreign secretary’s gaffes have contributed to a view that a heavy hitter who supports Brexit will be needed to take on either Amber Rudd, the home secretary, or Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, when May steps down — which is expected towards the end of 2019.
One of May’s aides said Downing Street became suspicious of Hunt’s ambitions earlier this month when “briefings started appearing that…CHICAGO -- Fans of the lovable losers have something to look forward to, after all.
The city of Chicago and the Ricketts family, who owns the Chicago Cubs, are close to an agreement on a $500 million overhaul of Wrigley Field, two people with knowledge of the negotiations said Friday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal, first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, was not yet finished and they were not authorized to publicly discuss it.
The agreement is expected to include $300 million in renovations at Wrigley, more night games, a parking lot and a $200 million hotel nearby, the people said. They said the team would pick up the entire tab to renovate Wrigley, ending a negotiating process that at times was about as ugly as the way the team has played in recent years. The deal is expected to be completed by Monday, when the Cubs have their home opener for the 2013 season.
The plan calls for a video scoreboard inside the park in left field and another sign in right field, said one person close to the negotiations. The size of the video scoreboard was among the details still being worked out. Some owners of the famed rooftops across the street where fans watch games have threatened to sue if the renovation does anything to obstruct their view.
Still, the signs -- and advertising on them -- and those additional night games are significant because team chairman Tom Ricketts has said he'd be willing to pay for the entire project if the city would agree to those two moves. The Cubs are also expected to build a 300-space parking garage on the site of a gravel lot at a nearby cemetery, according to the two people. Neighbors have long complained about the lack of parking on game days.
Fans know all about the Cubs and their 105-year World Series championship drought, but the team for years has desperately wanted an update for Wrigley, saying it spends as much as $15 million a year just to keep up with the repairs on the 99-year-old stadium that trails only Fenway Park in Boston as the oldest in the major leagues.
The Ricketts family bought the Cubs in 2009 for $845 million and has made updating Wrigley a priority. It asked the city council for permission to put $150 million in city amusement taxes into the renovation and asked state lawmakers to issue $150 million in bonds. The family also asked the city to relax Wrigley's landmark status, which could bring in $150 million more from advertising, sponsorship and perhaps that video scoreboard.
Getting a deal hasn't been easy. After failing to reach an agreement when mayor Richard Daley was in office, the family kept talking to the administration of Rahm Emanuel after he took office in 2011. Emanuel the next year said city officials and the Ricketts family were in the "final stages" of talks on a renovation plan that could include public help.
Then came the news that the patriarch of the Ricketts family, which created the TD Ameritrade brokerage firm, was considering a $10 million campaign against President Barack Obama that would refer to the racially incendiary sermons delivered by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at a Chicago church Obama once attended.
Suddenly, fans who were so hopeful about the new owners -- they loved the story about how Ricketts met his wife in the bleachers years ago -- were angry at the family.
More important, the news angered Emanuel, Obama's former White House chief of staff. Emanuel, staffers said, was so livid that he simply refused to take phone calls from Ricketts. The mayor of nearby Rosemont piped up, saying the village located near O'Hare International Airport would be willing to let the Cubs have 25 acres free of charge to build a replica of Wrigley Field.
"I am not badmouthing Chicago; I understand the sentimental value of the ballpark and I don't want to get in the middle of the negotiations," Mayor Bradley Stephens said. "But I don't want to spend the rest of my career scratching my head when they become the Addison (another suburb) Cubs."
By Monday, that shouldn't be a worry.Through the modern geopolitical lens of Western categorical convenience, the world’s countries are invariably ascribed a religion, or at least identified by majority ethnic religious adherence. Hence terms like ‘Muslim world’ or ‘Islamic world’ to describe those lands where the Qur’an is preeminent, Mohammed revered, and Sharia identified as the rule of law. Little consideration is given to the variety that exists within and between those cultures: the diversity of political models, economic systems, social mores, religious differences or Sharia distinctions. A Muslim is a Muslim is a Muslim, and their countries constitute ‘the Islamic world’ because at various times in history they projected a certain Muslim power, and so today are associated with the mission of Mohammed, which is to establish the Caliphate. It’s all very simple and straightforward, really.
It ought not therefore to surprise ‘the West’ (which is itself a geopolitical construct of a shared history, common values and a dominant or primal religion) that many Muslims in ‘the Islamic world’ do exactly the same to ‘the West’, not least because many in ‘the West’ still cling to notions of Christendom, or at least to the mission of projecting certain Christian values to the world (only certain ones). So those countries whose elected leaders go to church must be populated by Christians, whom they are elected to lead to church, or at least to a land flowing with Christian values (only certain ones). Those countries where tinsel trees celebrate the birth of Christ, and Easter Eggs commemorate his crucifixion and resurrection, are simply and straightforwardly Christian. Forget repentance and transformation; forget faithfulness or discipleship or being born again: if you were born at first into a ‘Christian country’, you are a Christian. And through the lens of Wahhabi-Saudi-Salafism, that makes you an infidel or kafir. Believing without belonging has become believing without believing: you are the religion of the ground beneath your feet.
There is also, of course, Jewish Israel, Hindu India and the Sikh Punjab, not to mention Taoist China, Buddhist Tibet and Shinto Japan. But these aren’t relevant here.. well, Jewish Israel might be a bit relevant, but only if you replace ‘Jewish’ with ‘Zionist’..
And you can certainly forget the immense diversity in these geo-theological cores: we are dealing here with simplicity.
The perpetrator of the Westminster terror attack was born on Christmas Day in the nice seaside town of Rye in East Sussex, to nice Christian Afro-Caribbean parents. His Christian name was Adrian, and his surname Elms. He grew up and went to school in Kent. All very nice, English and Christian. We don’t know that he was actually christened, but it’s customary in East Sussex even for nominal Christians to be so, so he probably was, especially since his parents were Christian Afro-Caribbeans and he shared a birthday with Jesus. Islamists, incidentally, don’t care much about the tedious arguments over infant and believers’ baptism: if you have a Christian name, you’re a Christian. If you’re born in East Sussex on Christmas Day to Christian parents, you certainly are. It’s the culture, you see.
Adrian Elms had a string of criminal convictions going back to the age of 18: criminal damage, knife possession, assault, grievous bodily harm and other public order offences. No doubt he was a naughty child, as well. It appears that his capacity and propensity for violence predated his conversion to Islam, so Adrian Elms was a violent Christian before he became Muslim terrorist Khalid Masood. His character was impossible; his heart was hard and his soul deeply troubled. Islam didn’t make him an evil bastard; he was already a nasty piece of work.
Now, you may believe and argue that his adherence to Islam radicalised him, and that the example of Mohammed’s moral vision inspired his extremism. But it would be closer to the truth (and so more helpful) to say that his conversion to the Wahhabi-Saudi-Salafist strain of Islam was responsible for inculcating his simplistic “Allahu Akhbar! God curse the infidels” mentality. What is undeniable is that the violence in his struggling heart predated his conversion. Power rampage and political brutality were already his distinctive ethic and part of his identity. The Christian Adrian Elms hated before he discovered a hateful strand of Islam to sanctify the jihadi-hate of Khalid Masood. Now, you may say that wasn’t particularly Christian: millions upon millions of Sunni, Shia and Sufi Muslims will say that Wahhabi-Saudi-Salfism simply isn’t Islam.OTTAWA – Justin Trudeau is riding to the rescue of Conservative backbenchers who feel they’re being muzzled by stifling party discipline imposed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The newly minted Liberal leader intends to introduce a motion that would strip party whips of their power to decide which MPs are allowed to make members’ statements in the House of Commons.
Trudeau’s motion, to be debated and put to a vote on Monday, will put Harper’s legendary iron control over his caucus to the test, providing an outlet for restless Tory backbenchers to defy their leader.
“Members of Parliament from all parties should be community leaders, free to share the priorities and express the views of those they represent,” Trudeau said in a statement. “Canadians must have confidence that the candidates they elect will represent their views in Ottawa, not Ottawa’s views to them.”
The prime minister is already facing a rebellion by backbenchers fed up with their inability to speak their minds during the daily 15 minutes allotted for members’ statements.
The revolt was triggered last month when British Columbia MP Mark Warawa was removed from the Tory roster because he intended to talk about abortion – an explosive subject which divides Conservatives and which Harper is determined to keep a lid on.
Warawa has asked Speaker Andrew Scheer to rule that his privileges as an MP were breached; at least eight other Conservative MPs have openly backed his complaint.
The Liberals, who were in the midst of a leadership contest until last Sunday, have not so far weighed in on the issue.
Indeed, some aggrieved Conservative backbenchers have complained about the lack of support they’ve received from opposition parties.
But Trudeau, who made democratic reform the centrepiece of his successful leadership bid, intends to remedy that with his motion, notice of which is to be given later today.
According to his office, the motion will call on MPs to support changing the rules governing members’ statements.
Instead of the current practice wherein party whips supply the Speaker with the list of MPs approved to make statements on any given day, the motion would require the Speaker to recognize MPs in alphabetical order, by party. MPs would be able to trade their speaking orders, providing some flexibility for those who might be out of town when their turn comes up or who want to urgently address an issue in their ridings.
Independent MPs would be considered as a group, in alphabetical order.
A majority vote of MPs is all that is required to change the rules of procedure for the Commons so Trudeau’s motion could have real effect, pre-empting Scheer’s ruling on Warawa’s complaint, if it is passed.
The motion is consistent with Trudeau’s leadership campaign promise to empower MPs and enable them to represent their constituents’ views in the Commons.
He has said a Liberal government would allow its backbenchers to vote as they see fit on all bills and motions, other than those that involve a key element of the party’s election platform, budget or the charter of rights.
Harper loyalists have argued that the prime minister promised Canadians he would not re-open the divisive abortion debate and is, thus, within his rights to prevent Tory backbenchers from speaking on the subject.
Conservative whip Gordon O’Connor has likened MPs to members of a sports team and he maintains only the coach should decide who gets to play.
The issue erupted when an all-party committee ruled last month that Warawa’s private members’ motion – calling on the Commons to condemn the practice of sex-selective abortion – was non-votable, |
an idiosyncratically benign view of Russia that as of this writing is out of step with the views of his fellow Republicans in Congress. The policies Obama adopted and that Trump and future presidents will adopt will inevitably result from spirited domestic contestations over differing biased threat perceptions, regardless of whether they admit so in their documented correspondences.
Finally, I return to where this review began: the question of why states make formal alliances. The authors suggest that Vietnam could become a major security partner of the U.S., but would that partnership ever include a formal defense agreement? Just as Tanisha Fazal has noted that declarations of war have become a thing of the past, I wonder if the same is true of formal alliances.[9] It seems as though the bar for such commitments is rather high. Senator Arthur Vandenburg famously advised the Truman administration that if it wanted Congress to fund aid to its war-torn allies, Truman would have to “scare the hell out of the country.”[10] The subsequent fear generated allowed the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to push through several security pacts, including NATO, but the Cold War environment was uniquely suited for this. One wonders whether such conditions can be duplicated. The U.S. almost certainly does not need a formal defense pact to convince Iran that an attack on Israel or the Gulf states would elicit a fierce American counter-attack. The same could be said about a mainland Chinese attack on Taiwan. Regarding Asia, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, though explicitly an economic pact, is perhaps the closest the U.S. is going to come to a formal defense pact against China in the foreseeable future—and even this was rejected by the U.S. public.
Yarhi-Milo, Lanoszka, and Cooper’s article tells us much about past and future alliance policymaking. They not only provide a convincing and thought-provoking explanation for alliance decision-making but also engage in expert archival research to validate their claims. It is rare to find both in single article publication, and the authors are to be commended for such a contribution to the literature.
Michael McKoy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Wheaton College (IL). He received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Politics from Princeton University in 2012. His research focuses on how alliance politics effects and is effected by domestic revolutions. His published works include “The Patron’s Dilemma: The Dynamics of Foreign-Supported Democratization,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56:5 (October 2012), co-authored with Michael Miller; “Backing Out or Backing In? Commitment and Consistency in Audience Costs Theory,” American Journal of Political Science, 59:4 (October 2015), co-authored with Jack Levy, Paul Poast, and Geoffrey Wallace; and “Coalition Dynamics and the Sèvres Pact: Do Opposites Attract?” in Melissa Yeager and Charles Carter, eds., Pacts and Alliances in History: Diplomatic Strategy and the Politics of Coalitions (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012).
©2017 The Authors
Notes
[1] James D. Morrow, “Alliances: Why Write Them Down?” Annual Review of Political Science 3 (2000): 63-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.3.1.63.
[2] David Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Michael Mastanduno, “System Maker and Privilege Taker: U.S. Power and the International Political Economy,” World Politics 61:1 (January 2009): 121-154, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887109000057; Michael McKoy and Michael Miller, “The Patron’s Dilemma: The Dynamics of Foreign-Supported Democratization,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56:5 (October 2012): 904-932, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002711431795.
[3] Stephen Walt, Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); Thomas Christensen, “Perceptions and Alliances in Europe, 1865-1940,” International Organization 51:1 (Winter 1997): 65-97. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/002081897550302.
[4] Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsik, “Is Anybody Still a Realist?” International Security 24:2 (Fall 1999): 5-55.
[5] Eric Gartzke and Yonatan Lupu, “Still Looking for Audience Costs,” Security Studies 21:3 (2012): 394-395. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2012.706486.
[6] William Burr and Jeffrey Richelson, “Whether to ‘Strangle the Baby in the Cradle’: The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 1960-1964,” International Security 25:3 (Winter 2000/2001): 54-99.
[7] Richard Nixon, “Asia after Viet Nam,” Foreign Affairs 46:1 (October 1967): 114.
[8] Michael Gordon, “John Kerry Wins Gulf States’ Cautious Support for Iran Deal,” New York Times, 3 August 2015; Emma Green, “Why Does the United States Give So Much Money to Israel?” The Atlantic, 15 September 2016.
[9] Tanisha Fazal, “Why States No Longer Declare War,” Security Studies 21:4 (2012): 557-593.
[10] Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 395.Beer and arcade games are a winning combination – just go to any bar in Williamsburg, and you’ll see it’s a tried and true formula. Owen Tingle and Adam Carroll of Durham-based agency McKinney took it upon themselves to bring these two things even closer together with their latest project “Beercade.”
McKinney has an internal program called McKinney’s Ten Percent, which fosters employees’ creativity by allowing them to spend 10 percent of their time to come up with innovative projects of their own. As part of their 10 percent time, creative technologist Carroll and associate creative director Tingle came up with a bright idea after chatting about their love of gaming, old games and, of course, beer: Make two become one. Hence, “Beercade,” an arcade game that dispenses beer, was born.
The game itself is called “The Last Barfighter,” and much like the good old Street Fighter arcade games, you get to pick a character and fight your opponent with some kickass moves. But in this case, the fight takes place in a biker bar, and players can use some funky signature moves like fire throwing, unicorn-horn impaling and butt slaps. The best player of the three rounds wins, and a sample of beer is automatically dispensed via the Beercade taps, which are located where coin slots would usually be on an arcade machine.
The entire arcade machine, the machinery and the multiplayer flash game were developed and created in-house by Carroll and Tingle. As Carroll explained, everything about the “Beercade” is built to look like a classic game.
“We built everything in the old school route — the control panels are all analog,” Carroll explained. “And then we converted it to digital input and output. It feels retro but functions just like Ms. Pacman in the ’80s.”
Once the concept and design were in the works, Carroll and Tingle soon realized this project would be a great fit for Raleigh beer company Big Boss Brewery.
“We kind of rolled it into this idea to enhance the beer-sampling experience. We wanted it to feel a little nostalgic and resonate with people in their twenties and up,” Carroll said.
Each of the five characters in the game is named after Big Boss Brewery’s five year-round brews, like Angry Angel and High Roller. The beer brand intends to take the Beercade to different events and beer festivals as a way to showcase their beer and make beer tasting into a more fun and memorable experience.We have no idea how long this will last, but Prince is on Instagram.
And he kind of jumped into the deep end.
Five days ago, at 12:20 p.m. CST, he posted the first photo – and by 9:45 p.m. he'd uploaded a whopping 88 images to the verified account. That's about one every 7 minutes. (Check out this trick to see the exact time a photo was published.)
He hasn't posted anything since.
And who knows how long this will last? Last year, he abruptly deleted all his social media accounts without telling anyone why (though some, such as his Twitter, have since been restarted.)
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Most of the Instagram uploads are concert and press photos, so you've seen a lot them before. But there are a few non-commercial gems in there. Here are some highlights.
Too-much-candy Prince
https://instagram.com/p/9KHmyymLSe/?taken-by=prince
Vertical-video, spinning-desktop Prince
https://instagram.com/p/9KfC_CmLVo/?taken-by=prince
I guess he likes the show 'Scandal'? Prince
https://instagram.com/p/9J2pN8GLVf/?taken-by=prince
'Chappelle's Show' Prince
https://instagram.com/p/9J2o6QGLVY/?taken-by=prince
Merch-hawking, typo-writing Prince
https://instagram.com/p/9KDLkJmLbj/?taken-by=prince
'Bae' meme Prince
https://instagram.com/p/9KHqrwmLSm/?taken-by=prince55 SHARES Share Tweet
On Saturday millions of women — and men hoping those women would be more likely to sleep with them for marching too — marched to send an important message to our country’s leaders. That message was — DON’T TAKE OUR RIGHTS AWAY!
Considering Donald Trump isn’t going to take their rights away — indeed thanks to something called the courts, he can’t even if he wanted to — this march was akin to a bunch of Outkick readers rallying to oppose the reinstitution of slavery.
WE HATE SLAVERY MORE THAN YOU DO!
If you actually listen to Trump’s platform at his inaugural address — the part you can distinguish anyway — Trump is the most liberal Republican elected in this country since Teddy Roosevelt. Hell, he isn’t even a Republican.
But most people on the left wing are missing that because it’s more fun to be perpetually outraged.
And who are the kings of the perpetual outrage brigade in sports? Our friends at MSESPN.
Of course MSESPN, the most trusted source in left wing sports, couldn’t allow this women’s march to pass by without endorsing it. Seriously, I couldn’t believe it when I saw that ESPN sent out these Tweets. (There are many more of these Tweets if you want to click on the account. It’s stunning, really.)
FYI, MSESPN wants your women’s march stories. Must have missed their request for inauguration photos/videos. https://t.co/IZNZ8Obpt6 — Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 21, 2017
“I walked away inspired, touched and ready to keep fighting.” https://t.co/ie2cZtLw2C — espnW (@espnW) January 22, 2017
MSESPN Made this decision despite the fact that a tiny percentage of ESPN’s audience is made up of liberal women and that sports fans are overwhelmingly conservative. It’s like ESPN has a death wish. At some point in the past two years, commencing with the Caitlyn Jenner ESPY, a network that once existed just for sports became yet another arm of liberal left wing propaganda.
And it’s not just me saying it either.
I’m actually speaking out on behalf of a substantial group of ESPN employees that are terrified to publicly say anything about the network’s left wing cheerleading. You would be stunned by the number of people who vote Republican at ESPN, many of whom you regularly see on air, and are terrified to even mention that fact for fear of career consequences. They contact me all the time and secretly thank me for speaking out on their behalf. And the wildest thing about this is I’m just a middle of the road guy, I just pass for right wing because sports media has become so far left wing. There’s lots of talk about the political media being left wing, but the sports media is WAY more left wing relative to its audience than the political media is.
Is that a healthy environment for our democracy? When millions of people, including some of the most talented people in our industry, live in fear of saying what they actually think about political issues for fear of losing their jobs? The left wing doesn’t understand it, but they are the reason Donald Trump got elected. It wasn’t racist Trump supporters — election data shows that in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, the three Big Ten states that Donald Trump flipped this year to win the election, Trump actually flipped Obama voters to his side — it was middle of the road people, voters who supported Obama but switched to Trump, fed up with the left wing’s intolerance of ideas or thoughts or Tweets or Facebook posts that aren’t also left wing. That’s what won the election for Trump.
In an amazing about face, the left wing has become intolerant of the first amendment. Amazingly, ESPN, which used to be many people’s respite from politics, has fallen victim to this same liberal echo chamber as well. Only one opinion is allowed or you’re racist, sexist, insert the -ist of your choice.
Leading to Tweets like these.
“Women’s rights are human rights.” We spoke with people at the #WomensMarch to see how they are #MovingForward: https://t.co/oNA1k3sfSX — espnW (@espnW) January 22, 2017
Did you know that 42% of all women voted for Donald Trump in this country? How do you think they reacted when a website designed to promote women in sports is rallying left wing protesters instead? I didn’t see any similar Tweets seeking women’s stories from the Trump inauguration. And what the hell is ESPN thinking alienating the majority of its audience with left wing politics that don’t reflect the political views of sports fans? It’s like the company, which has recently lost ten million subscribers, is hell bent on destroying itself.
I guess I should say thanks because the audience they lose increasingly comes to Outkick, which in a few short years has become the most trusted source in sports media. (And we’re still the best at dick jokes. Which is a hell of a combo, honestly.)
The women’s march was a broken gathering led by a bedraggled cast of leftist losers in pink hats who are desperately searching for a reason for social justice warriors to still exist even when there is none. Stop with your Roe v. Wade arguments. First, Roe v. Wade isn’t being overturned. And if it were overturned, individual states would still be able to allow abortions. Abortion, meanwhile, continues to decline each year — 2016 saw the fewest abortions of any year since 1973 — because birth control is becoming more effective and widely available. (For the record, I’m pro choice. But the histrionics over abortion in this country are hopelessly outdated.) Second, if Roe v. Wade were ever overturned do you know who would really be to blame? Probably Ruth Bader Ginsburg since the 83 year old multiple cancer surviver and oldest Supreme Court justice eschewed fervent pleas to step down and allow her seat to be replaced by another liberal jurist during Barack Obama’s two terms. Given her age and less than stellar health she’s now is in danger of being replaced by a conservative jurist during Trump’s term.
So if you’re a left winger and you want to march against someone for endangering reproductive rights, you should march against Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not Donald Trump.
These marches and social justice fights are getting increasingly pathetic. The left wing has moved so far left that its biggest battles in this country are over bathroom bills for transgender people. That’s despite the fact that there has been no issue with people using whichever bathroom they want to use for multiple generations all over this country.
The left has what I like to call, protest envy.
They’re so envious of the times when legitimate wrongs existed in this country that they’re desperately thirsty for controversy. To wit, we’ve got millions of people who spent their Saturday marching not to combat any actual rights issues, but just to let you know that if there are rights issues that arise in the future they’re going to be there to ensure that their rights remain there.
If you really want to fight for women’s rights, the United States shouldn’t be your battlefield. Women are free and equal here. Travel overseas and start fighting in countries where women really don’t have rights. But, you know, that’s dangerous. Bad things might happen to you there. If you’re a protester and you aren’t risking your life or your liberty, guess what, you aren’t really a protester. You’re just someone who wants a good selfie background for social media.
The simple truth is this, there isn’t anything worth protesting in America today. America has never been freer and less dangerous for women. In fact, no women have ever been safer and had more rights in the history of the human race than women in America today.
We’ve reached the point in time where tolerance has reached its legal limit in American life.
Gay marriage? Okay, I’m fine with it.
Transgender people choosing their own sex? Okay, I’m fine with it.
So are most people.
What’s next?
Polygamist marital rights? (I’m actually fine with this too if you can afford to support multiple spouses. See, I’m a radical moderate. If you’re a consenting adult, you can do anything you damn well please). The point is pretty simple, there are no great progressive battles left to fight in America today. So with the stakes less significant the battles have somehow become more intense.
Guys and girls, do y’all realize that we just had millions of people show up for a protest to make you aware that YOU WEREN’T GOING TO TAKE THE RIGHTS THEY ALREADY HAVE.
And that the left wing, including ESPN, actually praised these protesters for their bravery? Holy shit, this is the participation trophy of protest marches.
Hell, if I were Donald Trump, I’d call a press conference today and say this:
“I appreciate the women’s protesters who marched on Saturday. In one day on the job I mobilized more women to get out and exercise than Michelle Obama did in eight years. But that’s not good enough. I was so motivated by this women’s march that I instructed my staff to scour all federal legislation to find any laws that treat men and women differently. Our goal was simple, ensure complete equality between the sexes and in our country.
And do you know what we found? Those women were right. We found some laws that aren’t treating everyone equally.
To that end I am forwarding legislation to Congress today that will end a decades long requirement that only men register for the draft at the age of 18. Henceforth all women will be eligible for the draft as well and they will be required to register at the age of 18 too. Furthermore, I have also instructed my staff to forward legislation to Congress removing all affirmative action in federal spending bills. Henceforth we will not be allowing people to receive preferential treatment based on the color of their skin. That’s called racism.
Thank you to the women’s marchers for bringing these important issues to my attention and allowing me to help make America great again.”
Mic drop.Motorcycle helmet use
Motorcycle helmet laws vary widely among the states and have changed a lot in the past half a century. Currently, 19 states and the District of Columbia have laws requiring all riders (operators and passengers) to wear a helmet, known as universal helmet laws. Laws requiring only some motorcyclists to wear a helmet are in place in 28 states. There is no motorcycle helmet use law in three states (Illinois, Iowa and New Hampshire).
In the past, many more states had universal helmet laws, thanks to pressure from the federal government. In 1967, states were required to enact helmet use laws in order to qualify for certain federal safety programs and highway construction funds. The federal incentive worked. By the early 1970s, almost all the states had universal motorcycle helmet laws. However, in 1976, states successfully lobbied Congress to stop the Department of Transportation from assessing financial penalties on states without helmet laws.
Low-power cycle is a generic term used by IIHS to cover motor-driven cycles, mopeds, scooters, and various other 2-wheeled cycles excluded from the motorcycle definition. While state laws vary, a cycle with an engine displacement of 50 cubic centimeters or less, brake horsepower of 2 or less, and top speeds of 30 mph or less typically is considered an low-power cycle. Twenty-three states have motorcycle helmet laws that cover all low-power cycles. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have laws that cover some low-power cycles.
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There has never been such an outrageous manager as Brian Clough - nor one capable of such startling success at small-town clubs like Nottingham Forest and Derby County.
Frank Clark, who won the championship and European Cup under Cloughie at Forest, admits he'd never have dared try to emulate his old boss when he himself became a top-flight manager.
And it's hardly surprising, given Clough's penchant for going against all the rules.
This was a man, Clark told me, who stopped Forest's coach on the M62 motorway en route to Liverpool for a European Cup tie that very night to get a crate of beer out of the boot so his players could have a drink.
The same man who, the night before a showpiece Wembley appearance in the League Cup final, locked the players in a hotel room and insisted they downed champagne and ate sandwiches.
Hardly out of the book of soccer management, forcing liquor upon athletes, but Clark insists it was typical of Cloughie.
"When we won the European Cup in 1979 our big victory was over Liverpool who were the holders," recalled Frank. "We drew them in the very first round and were expected to get stuffed.
"I didn't play in the first leg at our place which we won 2-0, but I was back for the return. We travelled on the day of the match - unthinkable - and on the way up the M62 Cloughie instructed the driver to pull over so that he could get out a crate of beer for the players!
"That was too much for me. I was meticulous in my pre-match preparation and couldn't get my head round swigging a beer before facing Liverpool's great names.
"They targeted me in the match - I ended up with a few bruises from my old mate Jimmy Case - but we drew 0-0 so the beer did no damage, did it?
"It was typical Cloughie. Before we played Southampton in our second League Cup final he locked us in a room and insisted we got champagne down our necks. It seemed crazy but it was his way of releasing tension. He was a great believer that if your mind was right so were you.
"But I didn't dare do it when I was manager. He was a one-off and nobody really knew him - certainly not the players. Not even John McGovern, who he took all over with him. He didn't like players to get too close.
"Brian could be rude, arrogant and uncouth one moment and charm the birds out of the trees the next. He was an amazing man - but a wonderful manager."
Clough recommended to the Forest board that Clark should succeed him as boss, which he did - a thankless task given the legacy left behind.
"Brian actually helped me by keeping a low profile," said Frank. "Of course, there were photographs of him all over the place depicting his successes, which were a reminder of what I was up against, but I was on a lot of them so I wasn't going to take them down, was I?
"In any case, I'm a great believer in history, in recognising the past. What was the trouble was that Forest fans had got used to success under Cloughie and continued to expect it, even though we weren't a big club. They thought it would go on for ever.
"They expected me to take Forest back up in my first season, which I did. Then we finished third behind Blackburn Rovers and Manchester United in my first term in the top flight, which these days would have put us in the Champions League.
"Instead, we went into the UEFA Cup and reached the quarter-finals, playing Bayern Munich. But when we finished ninth in the Premier League the fans and media thought we'd had a bad season!
"Following a legend is a thankless task. Whoever eventually takes over from Alex Ferguson at Manchester United will find that out."TL;DR - ISSUE 21118
The long Story
Josh Rosenberg found out that the str.translate() function is very slow compared to the bytes.translate, he raised an issue, stating that:
In Python 3, str.translate() is usually a performance pessimization, not optimization.
Why was str.translate() slow?
The main reason for str.translate() to be very slow was that the lookup used to be in a Python dictionary.
The usage of maketrans made this problem worse. The similar approach using bytes builds a C array of 256 items to fast table lookup. Hence the usage of higher level Python dict makes the str.translate() in Python 3.4 very slow.
What happened now?
The first approach was to add a small patch, translate_writer, However the speed increase was not that pleasing. Soon another patch fast_translate was tested and it yielded very nice results of up to 55% speedup.
The main change as can be seen from the file is that the Python dictionary lookup is changed into a C level lookup.
The speeds now are almost the same as bytes
unpatched patched str.translate 4.55125927699919 0.7898181750006188 str.translate from bytes trans 1.8910855210015143 0.779950579000797
A small note here is that the performance enhancement is only prominent in ASCII strings.
As J.F.Sebastian mentions in a comment below, Before 3.5, translate used to work in the same way for both ASCII and non-ASCII cases. However from 3.5 ASCII case is much faster.
Earlier ASCII vs non-ascii used to be almost same, however now we can see a great change in the performance.
It can be an improvement from 71.6μs to 2.33μs as seen in this answer.
The following code demonstrates this
python3.5 -m timeit -s "text ='mJssissippi'*100; d=dict(J='i')" "text.translate(d)" 100000 loops, best of 3: 2.3 usec per loop python3.5 -m timeit -s "text ='m\U0001F602ssissippi'*100; d={'\U0001F602': 'i'}" "text.translate(d)" 10000 loops, best of 3: 117 usec per loop python3 -m timeit -s "text ='m\U0001F602ssissippi'*100; d={'\U0001F602': 'i'}" "text.translate(d)" 10000 loops, best of 3: 91.2 usec per loop python3 -m timeit -s "text ='mJssissippi'*100; d=dict(J='i')" "text.translate(d)" 10000 loops, best of 3: 101 usec per loop
Tabulation of the results:A time traveller from Jesus’s day would be shocked at what has happened to the discipline of astrology. Once ranked as a serious science, it is now associated with tawdry horoscopes and bogus, “mystical” forecasting.
As British philosopher and author Martin Cohen points out, “astrology is one of the few things that religious folk and irreligious scientists can agree on”. Yet the writer, whose latest book, Paradigm Shift: How Expert Opinions Keep Changing on Life, the Universe and Everything, believes astrology shouldn’t be dispatched to the rubbish dump.
He points out that Isaac Newton became interested in maths only after buying an astrology book at a fair in Cambridge, and “considered the subject one of the great studies of mankind”. Cohen stresses that astrology is about “divination” rather than prediction. There is nothing in astrology that approaches the normal level of scientific “proof”, but there are intriguing patterns in the data that reveal something about the way we handle complex ideas and information.
He highlights, for example, the “spooky coincidence” that the four so-called “Horsemen of New Atheism” – Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett – were all born under Aries, a star sign associated with “rude energy”.
Consider too, he says, the coincidence that each astrological sign has a motto, and the motto for Aries is: “I am.” And Aries, it turns out, is also the sign of René Descartes, the great rationalist philosopher whose motto was “I think, therefore I am.”
Cohen is a Capricorn, which is said to be “nimble and stubborn”, while I’m a Libra, conventionally said to be about “balance and stability”. Disagreement, then, is perhaps inevitable. As Cohen playfully informs me: “Librans like everything ‘just so’ and can be too fussy – for example, querying authors’ submissions.”
Cohen provides today’s idea: “By presenting ambiguous, vague answers, astrology pushes the seeker to extract information that is really not so much there in the answer but in their own subconscious. It unblocks our minds and frees them to see things in a new way.”
Given astrology is a poor predictor, has it any value?
Martin Cohen: “Actually, I’m not sure that I do want to give the nod to the description of astrology as a poor predictor, as that reinforces the stereotype image of the subject as given in newspaper columns. My suggestion is to see it as a tool for interpreting the world, and in particular each individual’s relationship to it – I mean, in psychological terms. This way, I think, astrology is full of rich and subtle insights. How it arrives at them is of little importance.
“But yes, astrology is easy – laughably easy – to debunk using conventional methods and ideas. On the other hand – and this is really the subtext of the entire social science debate over Paradigm Shift – convention is a poor guide to anything.
“Mainstream science regularly rules definitively on things about which, in fact, the state of knowledge really only allows tentative opinions. In science, the measure is usefulness; we should give astrology the same chance.”
Has your star sign shaped who you are?
“My sign is Capricorn, which I am pleased say is a very interesting one. Not, I hasten to add, that I’m an expert or a strict believer.
“Most quick summaries of the sign call Capricorn ‘the goat’ and relate its adherents to that animal: nimble, stubborn, trying to climb to the top of the mountain. But the traditional sign is a mystical creature – a goat with a fish’s tail – which exists in two worlds. One is very practical and day-to-day, and the other is a more interesting, mysterious world of the imagination.
“In fact, every sign has, to a greater or lesser extent, two sides, which are essentially in contradiction. This could be taken as making the descriptions ‘meaningless’; indeed it often is taken that way. But philosophers should remember that through contradictions knowledge can be found.”
Has quantum physics given astrology an accidental shot in the arm by showing that all matter is connected? “I don’t really think so. Although occasionally astrologers mutter about possible physical mechanisms for planetary influence, be they changes in the Earth’s magnetic fields or be they still more mystical ‘quantum’ ones, to my way of thinking astrology is not about that. It is about mystical correspondences.”
Can you predict the future?
“Up to a point, yes. For example, I can be quite good at predicting my own next actions. I can have a crack at guessing that the government will next year put up taxes, hire more police and nibble away at civil liberties.
“I suppose my predictions are not very impressive though. Nor are astrologers’ ones, it has to be said.
“Why should they be, though? The world changes in innumerable ways at every instant. So what might have been going to happen in one possible world no longer needs to happen in the next.
“If astrological predictions really were true, then they would be useless. The conceit is that we can both benefit from a prediction and still be free to change the future.”
philosophy@irishtimes.com
Twitter @JoeHumphreys42
Ask a sage
Question: Can we read our future in the stars?
Arthur C Clarke replies: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”well… looks like my stay here in miami just got extended for a couple more days 😉 — deadmau5 (@deadmau5) March 28, 2014
The Miami madness continues into Ultra Music Festival aswill be replacing, who was rushed to the hospital yesterday after not feeling well. Mr. Mau5 is now slated to close out the Main Stage on Saturday night in place of Avicii. We will surely keep you posted on all Ultra news and the health status of the Swedish music icon.
UPDATE:
Avicii woke up Wednesday morning with serious pancreatic pain that continued throughout the day. Doctors will be operating and removing his gall bladder Saturday morning. He plans to be fully recovered for his US True Tour.
My fans know that I have had issues in the past with my stomach and pancreatitis… — Tim Bergling (@Avicii) March 29, 2014
My doctors have decided to operate and remove my gall bladder tomorrow morning. — Tim Bergling (@Avicii) March 29, 2014
It's a routine procedure and all going well, I expect to be fully recovered and back on my feet in time for my US True Tour. — Tim Bergling (@Avicii) March 29, 2014
SECOND UPDATE:
Avicii had a ruptured appendix on top of his gallbladder. He is now on the road to recovery.
Turns out i had a ruptured appendix on top of my sick gallbladder…both were removed during the operation pic.twitter.com/4VsSPrJEug — Tim Bergling (@Avicii) March 30, 2014An International Drive pub owner was arrested last weekend after holding a young black couple at gunpoint and making racist comments while threatening to shoot them, Orlando police records show.
Kim Bruns, who owns the Orlando George & Dragon British Pub, is charged with pulling a gun on Kayla Davis, 21, and her boyfriend Darian Elwin after they arrived to celebrate his 20th birthday, records state.
"It's all false accusations," said Bruns, 51, when reached Wednesday afternoon. "I have black people who work for me. I have never used a racial slur."
Bruns' attorney Rose Feller said, "It is too early in the investigation to determine what has happened.... I am sure all parties' interests and motives will come to light."
The incident happened shortly before 6:30 p.m. Saturday inside the pub next to the Wet 'n Wild Orlando water park, records state.
Davis and Elwin decided to stop at the pub after receiving an online discount for dinner.
In an interview Wednesday, Davis said the trouble began when she asked Bruns for a drink recommendation, as she had just turned 21 two months earlier. Bruns made her a Kamikaze cocktail, Davis said.
"As soon as she gave it to me, she said, 'I'm watching you, and you better not give any drinks to minors,'" Davis said. "It felt weird and racist a little bit."
Davis said that comment and another bar employee asking her whether she was OK bothered Davis enough that she returned the untouched drink and told Bruns she and her boyfriend were leaving. But the bar owner told other customers, "Don't let that [multiple profanities] leave," the arrest report states.
That's when Bruns is accused with stepping out of the barroom and returning with a large black revolver police later confiscated and identified as a.357-caliber Magnum Colt Python, according to the arrest report.
"Bruns pointed the firearm at her and stated, "I will shoot you [profanity]," according to the arrest report. "Bruns then picked up a drinking glass from the bar, throwing it at Davis. The glass missed and shattered against the wall."
After the glass-throwing incident, Elwin told police he offered to pay for the drink so they could leave, but Bruns started swearing at him.
"I'll shoot you too if I have to. It's legal," Bruns said, according to the arrest report. "Call Jesse Jackson, [profanity]."
That's when police arrived, according to the report.
Bruns refused to allow police to view a surveillance-camera video of the confrontation after first claiming she never threatened Davis and Elwin with a gun.
After being charged with aggravated assault with a firearm and aggravated assault, Bruns was handcuffed and then told an officer, "I can't believe you would take those [racist profanity] side over mine," records state.
It was Bruns' 10th arrest in Florida since 1984. She served 62 days in the Orange County Jail after a 2011 fight at the Blue Jeans Bar in Apopka.
Charged with battery in that case, she pleaded no contest, and adjudication was withheld.
Davis works at an Orlando cellphone store and is enrolling to study business management in the fall at Valencia College. Elwin works in an Orlando sports-shoe store and plans to attend Valencia in the fall, she said.
hcurtis@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5257CBC's the fifth estate has awarded 10 hospitals across the country top grades as part of a Canadian national hospital performance report card.
A range of facilities in small |
donate one deal. Ruby Cup does in fact do the same, buy one, donate one type of program.
But I also found there may also be reasons why cups seem like a great idea but aren’t necessarily that great for women in developing countries.
If you want to help the enviromentment and save some money, I still think cups are the best product. They’re easier than you think but you have to be very comfortable with your ladyparts to use them and even then they are not for everyone.
If you’re interested in the different kinds this is a fantastic video comparing the different brands.
If you want to stick with your current products but like the idea of helping women around the world, there are many places you can donate through:
AFRIpads – which donates reusable pads and holders
FEMMEInternational – which does use cups in their menstrual kits
Like this: Like Loading...Neil Gaiman’s Sandman gets an intense spotlight this week at Comic-Con International with a silver anniversary celebration and new details about Sandman: Overture No. 1, the October release that marks Gaiman’s first Morpheus story since 1996.
We’ve got two First Look images from that first issue below — the Dave McKean cover and the page one interior art by J.H. Williams III — but first a bit of background.
A whisper can be louder than a shout in the right setting at that was the case back in 1988 when Sandman No. 1 hit shelves and spinner racks with a Dave McKean cover that showed mixed-media ambitions, cryptic images, and a muted approach to color and text — all very strange in an era when the average DC Comics cover was about as subtle as an air-raid siren.
The story inside was worthy of the special treatment. In it writer Neil Gaiman introduced a pale, otherworldly figure: Morpheus, an imprisoned dream lord who yearns to break free and return to his kingdom.
Escape he did and that issue began the landmark 75-issue run that left fans dizzy with it’s breadth and imagination. Now Gaiman is the one returning to his kingdom of imagination and McKean has another compelling cover to herald it. (Mouse over the image to get a magnified look.)
Gaiman was preparing for his San Diego trip on Tuesday when he heard that EW would be premiering the McKean cover above, one of the two versions that will be on sale in October. (The art for other cover, by Williams, was previously released but you can see it below as well.)
“There is something special about Dave McKean that makes it feel real,” Gaiman said of the unique style of the artist. “I get the same thrill I got 25 years ago seeing his covers…”
McKean also conjured up a new vision of Sandman for the cover of the official Comic-Con souvenir booklet and official T-shirts, a nod to the stature of the character in comic book circles.
Gaiman, McKean and former Sandman artist Sam Keith will be part of Saturday’s 25th anniversary panel (at 3:15 p.m. in Room 6DE) and they’ll be joined by the newest arrival in The Dreaming, the talented Williams (Batwoman) who does all the interior art on the upcoming bimonthly limited series. Here’s the first of those pages and, again, use your mouse to get a magnified view.
The first page doesn’t give away too much but there are some images in its mix that will instantly tantalize readers who know the original series well. Those readers were cheering like mad last year at Comic-Con when Gaiman surprised them and announced the new series. The ovation was welcome that day but echoed in a different way when he was working alone weeks later.
“The biggest surprise was the nervousness of knowing people are watching,” Gaiman said Tuesday as he prepared for the San Diego trip. “When I wrote [the original story about] Sandman nobody was watching.”
Gaiman earned his shot at the Sandman series with the Black Orchid mini-series but was still an unknown factor when the first issue arrived. That changed as the seasons passed and the misted epic pulled readers in.
After the 75-issue run came to a close in 1996 he would go on to great success with traditional prose novels: Feature films were adapted from Stardust (1999) and Coraline (2002); with 2008’s The Graveyard Book he became the first author to win the Carnegie and the Newbery medals with the same work; and his just a few weeks ago his newest, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, claimed the No 1 spot on the New York Times Bestsellers list.
With the din from the crowds of characters in his imagination, was it hard to hear the whisper of Morpheus? Not at all, he said with some relief. “The second biggest surprise was discovering that all the voices were still there in my head.”
Follow @geoffboucherIn my Keto journey there are days, when I crave for textures that break the monotony of normal Keto food. So in my quest for treating myself to something new, I made #Keto Multigrain Bread. And before you start frowning and fretting with the usual reactions, let me clarify
No, it does not taste eggy.
Yes, it can be toasted.
Yes, it is easy to make.
There, now that I have calmed your nerves, I highly recommend this #Keto Multi-grain Bread, as it is very filling, it can be toasted like normal bread, and you can also cut it into decent slices. And more than anything, it is full of nutrition and fibre. Make it today and you can enjoy a buttered toast with your eggs, for a week or so.
Prep time: 15 mins
Bake time: 45 mins
Cool time: Overnight
Makes: 1 loaf with 20 decent size slices
Ingredients
5 Medium Eggs
3 Tablespoon Olive Oil (1 tbsp for oiling the Baking Dish )
3/4th Cup Full Fat Yogurt
100gms Grounded Flax Seeds
30gms desiccated Coconut / Coconut Flour
200gms Whole Almonds
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 cup Stevia
1/4th tsp Pink Salt
1/4th tsp White Salt
Procedure
1.Measure out all the wet and dry ingredients and keep them ready. 2. Start by breaking the eggs in a cup. Please ensure that you have a cup full of eggs.
3. In the blender start by whisking the eggs.
4. Next add the 2 tbsp Olive oil and keep blending. 5. Add the yogurt next, followed by the apple cider vinegar.
6. Start adding the dry ingredients. Start by adding the coconut flour. Followed by both the salts. 7. Add the grounded flax seeds and keep blending. 8. Now freshly grind the whole almonds, untill you get a fine flour.
9. Add the almond flour to the batter and blend some more.
10. Now add the stevia, followed by the baking powder and the baking soda. Do not skip the stevia as it gives the bread the perfect amount of sweetness. 11. By now the batter will be nice and thick and will resemble a cake batter, 12. Keep a baking dish ready, oiled with the reamining Olive oil. 13. Pour the batter in the dish and even it out with a flat knife or with your hands.
14, I baked my bread at 180 degrees Celcius, for forty five minutes.
15. The bread will get a nice golden crust. Allow it to cool overnight, before you slice it in the morning.
Nutrition Break up per slice-
Cals- 135
Net Carbs- 1 g
Proteins- 5 g
Fats- 11gBen Radford/Getty Images
I’ve been alongside him before, during and after some tense matches over the years, but I’ve never seen Steven Gerrard as emotional as he was after the 3-2 win against Manchester City last weekend.
He knows that, for the first time since he has been at the club, Liverpool are now in the position where they are probably the favourites to win the Premier League. It’s not just fans at Anfield hoping they can do it—people around the country expect them to go on and lift the title.
That’s a different pressure, a different emotion.
Other times in the past, when we won quarter-finals or semi-finals in cup competitions, we were still considered outsiders going into the finals. We always went into those games with a chance—and more often than not we went on to win them—but we were very rarely considered favourites.
If Steven were to win the league this season, it would mean he has pretty much won every single trophy it is possible to win in club football—and there are not too many players who have done that, especially at Liverpool.
I think he showed how much that achievement would mean to him after the final whistle at Anfield. It would be a fitting tribute to an outstanding career.
Clint Hughes
It was always obvious that he was going to be a great player.
When I arrived at Liverpool in 1999 he’d only made a few senior appearances for the club but everyone told me what a special talent he was and that became clear to me pretty much immediately.
He was a very quiet, humble kid but always 100 percent committed in training. It’s one thing doing it behind closed doors at Melwood and quite another doing it in front of 40,000 on matchdays, but he started playing regularly after a few weeks and soon began scoring goals—and just like that he was settled in the first team.
You can never be certain how young players will progress—injuries can derail them, or the early success can go to their heads and lead them into bad habits—but there were never any worries of that happening to Steven.
He was always grounded, he always worked on his game, and it became an honour to play alongside him.
You always try to help the younger players in training, but I never really needed to guide Steven or advise him in any meaningful way. Mostly my advice came on the pitch—trying to point out little details about where he should be positioned, things like that.
Even so, Steven was not really a player who cared much about what people told him, because he was so naturally gifted. After a while you realised that even when he was out of position (which was more than once!) you just had to cover him as much as possible, because that rampaging element was a key part of his game and made him better.
If you restrict players like that too much, such powerful players, then they can easily lose a lot of their edge.
I always wanted to keep him as far away from our own goal because I knew how good he was in the opposing half. It became about balance—you try to guide him and tell him about positioning and discipline, but you also want him to impose his natural gifts on matches as much as possible.
Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
We played against each other a few times during that period, for England and Germany, but I’m not sure he quite had the same balance with the Three Lions. He seemed a bit more disciplined for England, a bit more cautious. Perhaps where the runs he made for Liverpool were covered by others, for England he could not be so confident.
Playing against him was never easy, though—I far preferred to play alongside him! For me, during that time at Liverpool he was probably the most influential attacking midfielder in the league (and possibly in Europe).
He was once kind enough to say that, when I was alongside him, he was able to focus on bursting forward and effecting things in attack because I was always there to cover him. Well, I did what I could do, but I was never able to do what he did—otherwise I would have done it!
What makes it especially amazing is that now he is the one performing my old role, allowing other players to go forward and express themselves like he once did. It takes a truly special player to evolve like that.
He had a slightly uncertain start at the beginning of the season but, since he’s settled in a bit further back, he has really blossomed in that role.
Philippe Coutinho, Raheem Sterling and Jordan Henderson have helped in that regard; Gerrard clearly has belief in the qualities of those players and so he can relax and concentrate on what he is meant to do in front of the back four.
I was not too sure when Brendan Rodgers first made that move because it is almost exactly the opposite to what he has done over the last 12-15 years and to change your game to a completely different role, especially within a few weeks or month, is not easy.
Yet the way he has taken to it has been absolutely beautiful.
He gives the team balance; Liverpool are a very attacking side and, while he’s got all these flair players around him going forward, his task of balancing the side is probably the most important one.
That’s what impresses me most—they score so many goals, they create so many chances, they commit so many players forward, yet they never look unbalanced at the other end.
Very rarely do they get caught on the counter-attack and that is down to Steven.
Alex Livesey/Getty Images
In a way he has had to cut out everything he has done in the last 10 years and remodel his game completely. In that position the most important thing is to be disciplined, you have to play that role exactly the same regardless of the score and that must have been a big test for him.
Fortunately Liverpool have not been behind too often this season, but when you are 1-0 down or 2-1 behind the temptation is to think, “I should try something now.” That can be disastrous though, because you might concede another goal because you are desperately running into the final third when you are still supposed to be providing the defensive solidity and stability.
It probably makes it easier that he has a lot of faith in the players ahead of him, and rightly so because they have all been absolutely outstanding over the course of the season.
The change in role will enhance and extend his career because he won’t have as many high-intensity sprints and runs as he would further forward, but in that position you still rely on the players ahead of you.
In that position you try to get team-mates into areas where they can cause damage, but then it is down to them. Most of the season Gerrard has seen his team-mates deliver.
Alex Livesey/Getty Images
I always saw the role as about giving team-mates the ball as soon as possible. You have to both see the pass and be able to play it, and if you can give a team-mate the ball half a second earlier than someone else would have done, then you’ve done your job. That gives them that extra time to turn and create something.
If you delay half a second, then an opponent closes them down and they can’t do anything. Gerrard has always ensured he distributes the ball to players quickly and efficiently.
Even so, sometimes in that role you can be a bit helpless; You can give players the best service to turn and do something, but if they still don’t, then they can make you look average as well.
So in a way, you make them and they make you.
Fortunately for Liverpool, Gerrard has been majestic in that role for the last few months—and his team-mates have risen to the challenge and matched him.
If they continue to, the title would be a fitting reward.The hours I spent imagining happily-ever-afters for me and my favorite pop star as a preteen taught me more than I realized about how to tell a story.
Simone Noronha for BuzzFeed News
At 13 years old, there was one thing I knew for sure: If ever I were to meet Justin Timberlake, it would have to be under the pretense that I wasn’t a fan.
Trust, I’d given it a lot of thought. Imagining all of the possible ways I could end up in the same room as JT was at the top of my list of favorite pastimes, right next to listening to NSYNC. I knew the most likely way to meet him would be in the capacity of a fan, maybe at a meet-and-greet or by winning backstage passes, but I also understood that if I wanted Justin to take me seriously — and that was key, if we were going to fall in love — I couldn’t come across as some embarrassing, giddy, fawning fan. Which, of course, I was. So I spent hours imagining our possible love stories — as I was falling asleep, when I was daydreaming in class, wherever. These were PG-rated rom-coms, starring future me and (somehow) 1998-era Justin Timberlake. The scenarios were convoluted; they had dialogue; I knew what I’d be wearing and exactly how I’d win him over. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was creating fanfic — more than a decade before I knew there was such a thing.
I fell hard for NSYNC, and Justin, in 1998, right around when the “Tearin’ Up My Heart” video came out. Before that, I’d been dismissive of boy bands. I was raised primarily on rap and R&B, my parents hailing from what my dad called, to my great embarrassment, the “Boogie-Down Bronx.” So I knew what good music was, and this pretty-boy stuff was not it. But then TRL became a thing, and these boys were unavoidable. And then I saw the video. More specifically, I saw Justin’s arm in a tank top, bent over his glossy blonde curls and pouting lips — just so. I am not hyperbolizing when I say something deep within me shifted in that moment. I’d had celebrity crushes before, but I was mostly too embarrassed to even admit them to myself. (In a fill-in-the-blank journal from when I was 8, I’d crossed out an “I have a crush on ____” prompt and substituted in tiny letters above it, “I sort of think the Fresh Prince is cute.”) Those were the fleeting interests of an amateur; this crush — this passion — settled into my core. As a chubby, bespectacled middle schooler who had heavy bangs long past the time everyone else had grown them out, I was scared of people in general and terrified especially of boys. But man, those biceps sure seemed like they’d be fun to touch.
Part of loving a famous icon is the acute agony of knowing he is unreachable.
Within months, I was all in. I owned approximately 40 pieces of NSYNC merchandise: multiple posters, pins, one giant pencil, a journal, a folder, pens, stickers, patches, every magazine with the band on the cover, lip balm, their official book, textbook covers, dolls, shirts, and, of course, CDs. I recorded (on actual VHS tapes!) every music video and MTV appearance, as well as their HBO special, and I watched a random segment from those tapes with a bowl of cereal every morning before school. I went to two concerts and cried both times. I read every bit of trivia. I memorized Justin’s birthday (Jan. 31) and favorite movie (The Usual Suspects). And when MTV linked up with Star Wars for a trivia sweepstakes, the prize for which involved a one-on-five date with the boys, I saw The Phantom Menace in theaters four times to try to answer their list of questions. I didn’t win. People who’ve never experienced this specific brand of boy-idol love might be baffled by the fact that it often brings millions of girls to tears. What they don’t understand is that part of loving a famous icon is the acute agony of knowing he is unreachable. I loved Justin Timberlake so much, just like millions of other girls in the world, and not only would I never be with him, but I’d never be able to appreciate a real relationship, because I’d know the person I ended up with would not be the man I loved the most. [Quick note to say hi to my boyfriend, whom — I want to be clear — I love much more than I love Justin Timberlake.] I felt this massive injustice as a true, powerful, physical pain. The only way I was able to mitigate it was to distract myself with stories that placed me and JT in a universe where we could be together.
By the time I was fully under siege by NSYNC obsession, I’d begun writing, and abandoned, three novels. I loved reading, I wrote in my journal every day, and I knew I wanted to be a writer when I grew up — either that or a singer (still on the fence, to be honest). But when I tried to write fiction, I hated what came out. I’d suddenly lose any imagination I had. The dialogue didn’t make sense. Nothing sounded as real or natural as the stuff I was reading. I didn’t know how people got ideas, and, if they were lucky enough to come up with one, how they didn’t get bored with it. But love stories about me and JT? Those came easy. One of my favorites: I’m 18, finally, and super hot (finally). NSYNC is still touring because they will never ever break up, and they’re holding a contest (a singing contest), and the winner gets to sing a song with them onstage. I’m not planning on trying out, but I go with a friend who is. When we get to the audition room, after my friend sings well but not too well, Justin (who is, obviously, judging) asks what I’ll be singing. And I say, Oh me? No, no, I’m just here for support, I couldn’t possibly. And then my friend says, She actually has a great voice. And Justin smiles wryly, and I’m like, Well, if you insist, though I’m hardly prepared! Justin, the rest of the boys, and my friend needle me until finally I close my eyes and just go for it, belting (usually, though, this detail changed from time to time) some vintage Mariah Carey. I nail it, a cappella, and everyone — especially Justin — is blown away. And then I win, and then we fall in love.
In these imagined futures, Justin played an important role, but the real star was future me.
Or: I bring my younger cousin to a concert, and we wait outside afterward because she wants to meet the guys. When they come by to say hello (because of course they do) I kind of smirk and shrug and say, I’m sorry to bother you guys — she’s just such a fan. And Justin, who is floored by the fact that this cool (and hot, so frickin’ hot) chick isn’t remotely impressed by him, says, And you’re not? And I say something so chill, like, Pop music isn’t really my speed. And then he asks if I want to hang out. And then we fall in love. The fantasies were many and varied and provided a vital, immersive respite from the life I was actually living — one consisting mainly of wondering what made the popular kids popular, how people mustered the courage to speak up in large groups, and why I’d gotten stuck with a body all plump and wrong, so unlike all the others I saw on TV. In these imagined futures, Justin played an important role, but the real star was future me. And she was everything I needed to believe I’d become — attractive, witty, and, above all, bold. If I could trust that self was waiting for me, those in-between years seemed a little more manageable.
There is a name for what I was doing, though I didn’t know it at the time. I was creating fanfiction — those amateur, fan-written, oft-mocked stories featuring characters created by other writers (or real pop stars) as well as first- or second-person narration, which have found vibrant communities on websites like Tumblr and Wattpad. But I kept mine to myself. The stories I actually wrote down, and eventually showed to other people, never starred dreamy pop idols. It didn’t seem like something a "Real Writer" would do, as if “good” writing and joy were mutually exclusive. But I now find kinship among those who contribute to these platforms. To say fanfiction stories are nothing but personalized soft porn for horny girls (which, to be very clear, is an important part of what they are, and which I’m 100% for) is to greatly underestimate their power. That fanfiction has real commercial power is now well-acknowledged; Fifty Shades of Grey, originally written as Twilight fanfic, is probably the most mainstream, but Anna Todd also turned her One Direction fanfic After into a six-figure book deal and a wildly successful trilogy. Then there are the “retellings,” i.e. fanfic approved by the literati: Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, the series and musical about Frank L. Baum’s Oz witches, or Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, an imagined prequel to Jane Eyre. Which is to say, writers pull inspiration from all manner of sources; sometimes the result is a love story that asserts the validity of a young woman’s (often dismissed) desire. Sometimes it is a channel through which a burgeoning writer can deliver and refine her talent.
My stories, like those of many fanfic writers, were as much about building a narrative as they were about enacting a fantasy.
My stories, like those of many fanfic writers, were as much about building a narrative as they were about enacting a fantasy. I can remember how problems of character motivation seemed so much less abstract when they were considered through the lens of an imagined, but possible, future — Justin Timberlake was a real (if mythic) person, and structuring the narrative became a sort of problem-solving. What could a person like me do to meet a person like him? I struggled to figure out what an 8-year-old would do if she found a secret portal to a fantasy world (my second abandoned novel), but I loved putting myself in conversation with my ultimate crush and asking, What next? What next? There is a simple, dizzying joy in writing (or reading!) a story in which you and your dream crush are the stars, but also intrinsic to that setup is the understanding that you — the writer, the reader — deserve the star treatment you’re receiving. If this is something you don’t believe (and certainly, when I was imagining my own love stories, I didn’t believe it), it can be comfort enough to pretend you do, to indulge the notion that you might be good enough to be the protagonist of your own story for long enough that it no longer feels that far-fetched. I didn’t meet Justin Timberlake (and haven't yet). But I did grow into my confidence and my voice — a voice which I know was honed by the stories I told myself. Without those stories, there would be no writing career, no novel, no unrepentant gushing over the things (and people) that drive my creativity. There’s probably a lot more of 13-year-old Arianna in me now than 13-year-old Arianna would have wanted. But, at 30, I can see she was always cooler than she believed, anyway. I like to think, had Justin met me then, he would have at least been kind of charmed. ●As a follow up to my previous post detailing what goes into making a 13 page indie RPG game and giving it away, along with a 19 page not-free version, here are some new numbers.
Something Went Wrong has been available to the public for two weeks and 1 day. In that time I’ve updated the product 5 times to fix niggling bugs and numerical inaccuracies, not to mention a few spelling mistakes. Since it’s release, SWW Free has been downloaded 580 times, not counting folks who downloaded updated versions. That’s a number I’m very happy with!
SWW-Gold, the version with graphics, formatting, character sheet and other goodies has been downloaded 56 times and garnered me a total of $29.90 in total earnings. After DTRPG takes their cut, that leaves me with $19.94. Not bad all in all! A number of folks earned themselves free copies, and downloaded them. A few also went out to reviewers – downloads which often vanish into the ether as I seldom see actual reviews from Featured Reviewers.
There’s the numbers, now here are my thoughts.
From folks in and around the internet communities I hang out on I’ve gotten fairly positive feedback, and enormous help in tracking down bugs and problems. From DriveThruRPG and affiliate sites, I’ve gotten pretty much empty silence. This often puzzles me. Did the 580 people who downloaded the free version hate it so vehemently that they just can’t be bothered to comment? Are the loving it so much they haven’t stopped playing it long enough to rate it? Or do they just not care to rate things in general? I’d love to get some solid feedback on the site I’m selling/giving these from but that just doesn’t happen as often as I (or I suspect other creators) would like.
All in all I’m quite pleased with this. For a short project with no lead-up time, quick development and a public beta/writing phase I think it’s doing quite well.
There you have it, two weeks and a day in and lots of people have grabbed the free version, a bunch of people have grabbed the paid version and some of those folks actually paid for it.Since Donald Trump’s surprise election one month ago, there’s been a bubbling conversation about the mammoth conflicts of interest he will have if he is running or even owning his far flung business enterprises while serving as the head of state. I’ve suggested that the whole notion of ‘conflicts of interest’ doesn’t really capture what we’re dealing with here, which is really a pretty open effort to leverage the presidency to expand his family business. But a couple things came together for me today which make me think we’ve all missed the real issue.
Maybe he can’t divest because he’s too underwater to do so or more likely he’s too dependent on current and expanding cash flow to divest or even turn the reins over to someone else.
Late this afternoon we got news that Trump will remain as executive producer of The Apprentice, now starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is, quite simply, weird. The presidency is time consuming and complicated, even for the lazier presidents. Does Trump really need to do this? Can he do it, just in terms of hours in the day? Of course, it may simply be a title that entitles him to draw a check. But does he need the check that bad?
The idea that Trump is heavily leveraged and reliant on on-going cash flow to keep his business empire from coming apart and collapsing into bankruptcy was frequently discussed during the campaign. But it’s gotten pretty little attention since he was elected.
Here’s something else.
After Trump got into that scuffle with Boeing, reporters asked about his ownership of Boeing stock. Trump replied that he’d already sold that stock. So there was no problem. But there’s a bit more to it than that.
According to his spokesman, Trump sold all of his stock back in June, a portfolio which his disclosures suggest was worth as much as $38 million. Trump told Matt Lauer that he sold the stock because he was confident he’d win and “would have a tremendous … conflict of interest owning all of these different companies” while serving as President.
Now, c’mon. Donald Trump sold off all his equities more than six months before he could become president because he was concerned about conflicts of interest? Please. That doesn’t pass the laugh test.
But consider this. During the primaries Donald Trump loaned his campaign roughly $50 million. Over the course of the spring, as it became increasingly likely he’d be the nominee, that loan became increasingly conspicuous. Donors were wary of donating big money because they didn’t want him to use it to pay himself back for that loan. Many suggested that he might not actually be able to part with that money. It became a big issue and Trump refused to forgive the loans.
It was only in June that Trump finally gave in and forgave the loan; this was confirmed in the June FEC disclosure that came out in late July. Who knows why Trump sold off all his stock holdings? Maybe he just had a feeling. Maybe he thought the market was too hot. Maybe he just had a spasm of prospective ethical concern. But let’s be honest. The most obvious explanation is that forgiving that debt from his campaign required him — through whatever mix of contingencies — to free up more cash, either for the campaign or personal expenses or perhaps to have a certain amount of cash on hand because of terms of other debts. It does not seem plausible at all that the timing is coincidental.
Since we don’t have Trump’s tax returns, there’s just a huge amount we don’t know about his businesses. What we do know is that Trump appears to wildly exaggerate the scale of his wealth and exhibit a stinginess that is very hard to square with a man of the kinds of means he claims. A heavily leveraged business, one that is indebted and dependent on cash flow to keep everything moving forward, can be kind of like a shark. It has to keep moving forward or it dies.
Perhaps Trump simply doesn’t feel like he can trust anyone else to keep the whole shambling enterprise afloat. More plausibly, and consistent with Trump’s history over the last couple decades, Trump’s business is dependent on an ever expanding number of deals not just to grow but to stay afloat at all. It is certainly plausible that if Trump simply sold off his company in toto, he’d be in debt. Maybe there wouldn’t be anything left to put in a blind trust.
This is all necessarily speculative because Trump has kept the details of his business empire hidden from the public. But behavior, circumstantial evidence and lots of evidence of tight reliance on cash flow to service debts of various sorts suggest that Trump may not be able to divest or separate himself from his business. Why doesn’t he? Why does he court all this controversy? Because he can’t.
If all this is true, the peril of Trump’s foreign deals is larger than we may realize. It’s not just a matter of hitting the billionaire big time. It could be a matter of staying afloat at all.A year after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office deemed the term “Redskin” offensive, and therefore not eligible for a trademark, the Washington NFL team has been dealt another blow in its attempt to protect its brand. This morning, a federal court agreed with the USPTO and ordered the agency to cancel the team’s trademark.
In his ruling [PDF], the U.S. District Court judge denied the team’s claim that canceling the Redskins trademarks would take away the organization’s First Amendment right to free expression, as the team can continue to use the Redskins name without any penalty; it just can’t trademark it.
Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act prohibits registering trademarks if they “may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute,” but it does not prevent anyone from using that mark.
“Cancelling the registration of a mark under Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act does not restrict the public debate on public issues as the mark owner is still able to use the mark in commerce,” writes the judge.
The Redskins, whose ownership has remained resolute in retaining the name, can and will undoubtedly appeal today’s ruling, meaning the free-for-all on unlicensed Redskins merchandise will have to wait. It’s likely that this case will ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, though that could be a year or more from now.
When the USPTO first canceled the trademark in 2014, the folks at South Park took the opportunity to poke fun at the team (while also promoting its new season) with this ad that ran in the D.C. area:
The Washington Post was first to report on today’s ruling.Story Editing to Prevent a Downward Spiral
by Susan Gregory Thomas
My oldest daughter was usually quiet and exhausted on the hour-long ride home from seventh grade. Not this day. She slammed the car door shut and spat that a classmate had been "incredibly rude" to her. She veered into a rant on hypocritical teachers and finally inventoried the despicable qualities of nearly every girl in her class.
I asked her what was really going on, and she answered truthfully: For the past six months, my daughter, who is mixed-race, had been viciously bullied in racist attacks by girls at her Philadelphia school, often in classrooms, while teachers seemingly took no notice.
I pulled over and began calling every teacher and administrator involved. They would hear every detail of my daughter's story, and then this story was going to end because she needed to know that it was over.
The next morning, as we met with school officials who pressed her for specific names and incidents, I asked them to withdraw so I could talk to my daughter alone for a moment. There she sat, crumpled, shaking, terrified of retribution. But if she did or said nothing, those past few months would stay forever lodged, ruinously, in her psyche. She needed a victory, to feel her own power. So I put it to her: Today, she, an ordinary girl, could decide to be a hero and change the story for every nonwhite student at that school forever. And she did.
Now 15, my oldest is back to her, hilarious, sparkly self (and we are living in Brooklyn). The experience is melded to her core, and she's tougher, but also more compassionate. She changed her story.
The experience was an exercise in narrative theory, a model for human thought and behavior so flexible that its applications extend across disciplines from psychological and social science to medicine, therapy, and beyond. The premise: We are the stories we tell—and we are compelled to create stories to understand ourselves.
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion famously observed in The White Album, and we live "by the imposition of a narrative line, upon disparate images" because of a critical need "to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."
There is something intrinsic in our drive to explain, order, and extract meaning from the chaos of our lives. Storytelling is, after all, an adaptive behavior back as far as 40,000 years. The stories we tell ourselves don't get fact-checked, but they do have to feel authentic to our personal experience. Our ability to make sense of, and create meaning from, defines how we feel about ourselves and shapes the identity we create throughout our lives.
"There is a very powerful impulse for us to take |
every American yearly with income taxes, yet there are no laws saying an income tax is to be paid.
The CIA is involved in everything from global drug trafficking and covert military missions, to assassinations around the world and including U.S. Soil. Look at JFK for instance. It did not take long after JFK announced that he was going disband the CIA that he was shot in Texas. America’s new StasiThe Department Of Homeland Security is and has been slowly eradicating our rights for a few years now. based organization called
House Bill H.R. 1955/S-1959 was read by the senate and then sent to DHS for some reason, but is now back and sure to pass. Once passed, this bill introduced by Jane Harman (D/CA), will be the proverbial last nail hammered into every American patriots coffin. H.R. 4279 or the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, will give the government draconian powers to do just this. This legislation gives the government the power to seize property that facilitates the violation of intellectual property laws. The legislation also mandates the formation of a formal Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General to enforce this insanity…
It has been revealed that F.E.M.A. has been building internment camps all over America granting Halliburton a massive $385 million dollar construction contract to make this happen. Most of these sites only need refurbished because they are mostly closed prisons, old WW2 internment camps still intact and other facilities taken over by the government. Some people have referred to them as F.E.M.A. Death Camps where the infamous Red list/Blue Lists will be used to decide who goes where.
Whether you believe that The NWO/Illuminati/Globalization is real or not, there is a lot of proof that exposes definite plans or plots by the rich, political and religious elite to bring on an era of the end times. It is almost like some individuals are trying to make bible prophecy come true in their own sick and twisted ways. Not to mention that the world only has about 10 to 15 years of drinking water left before the wars fought for oil today will be fought for water in the near future. It has been said that these powers want to depopulate the planet of over 30% of it’s human inhabitants in the coming years. Examine all of the executive orders that have been signed into place allowing the president to basically become dictator in control of all government from tribal to federal in the event of any national emergency.
If you did not know, In late 2006, Congress revised the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act to make it far easier for a president to declare martial law. Those changes were repealed at the end of this January as part of Public Law 110-181 (HR 4986), the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (signed into law by President Bush on January 28, 2008). Unfortunately it is not the great victory in which one might think because of the total militarization of all local and State police forces all across America.
Will there be martial law? Is martial law coming soon to America? When you see law enforcement being armed with automatic weapons, bullet proof vests and riot gear in small towns that have not had a murder or crime in years, then you have to ask yourself why.
The United States has more people locked up in prisons today than Russia and China combined. It comes out to one in every hundred Americans is behind bars. Our once great country that our ancestors fought and died for has become exactly the tyrants they were fighting. Fascists! When has America ever used words like Homeland? Never!
If you spend a few weeks reading all the info, watching the videos and following the links at Dprogram.net, you will then have a better understanding of what has led to ‘The Decline And Fall Of America’. Remember that Knowledge is power! Learn, look, listen, read, share, prepare, train, stock up on food and water supply for one year.
Fill your pantry with non perishable foods, medicines, cooking oils, tinned meats and veggies. Flour, oats dried corn peas, beans and lentils.. Teach your self how to preserve food for storage. Check out your local potable/ drinking water supplies, non perfumed chlorine bleach is a good sterilizer for water, about 2 teaspoons full per 2 gallon bucket, stirred well and allowed to stand for at least 24 hours with a lid on it or until it no longer smells of bleach. Boiling water helps but it is not always enough to kill off the bacteria which can resist high temperatures.
Americans have been warned for years of the things to come, but have blindly looked away from the truth, which has been available for all to see. There are no more excuses not to prepare for the possible future. The time to act is now before it is too late. Check Dprogram.net for daily updates and news you won’t see in the mainstream media.
Source: B.A. Brooks
http://www.uaff.usPatrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, speaks during a news conference at Woodhull Medical Center on Saturday. AP/John Minchillo
Two NYPD officers were killed Saturday in what a tearful New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio described as “execution style” as they sat in a patrol car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.
The man identified as the gunman, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, shot and killed himself after shooting officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. The Guardian quoted NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, whose voice cracked with emotion during a news conference at Woodhull Medical Center, as saying that Brinsley had made “very anti-police” postings on the social media site Instagram.
Observers partial to police were already blaming the recent uprising against police racism and violence in response to the killings this year of black American men Eric Garner and Michael Brown. The Guardian reported Sunday:
The killings sparked an angry outburst from the leader of the city’s main police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. Pat Lynch, president of the PBA, appeared to blame the deaths on the protesters who have taken to the streets of New York in recent weeks and on de Blasio, the mayor. In a fiery press conference outside the hospital doors, Lynch said there was “blood on their hands [of] those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protest … [blood] on the steps of city hall, in the office of the mayor”. “When these funerals are over,” said Lynch, “those responsible will be called on to the carpet and held accountable.”
Earlier this month, Lynch blamed the death of Garner, who died from a heart attack after being seized in what legal experts described as an illegal chokehold by NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo, on Garner’s resistance to arrest.
The Sergeants Benevolent Association, a sibling organization of the PBA, echoed Lynch’s statements on Twitter.
The blood of 2 executed police officers is on the hands of Mayor de Blasio. May God bless their families and may they rest in peace. — SBA (@SBANYPD) December 21, 2014
Local television news showed police officers apparently turning their back on the mayor, The Guardian reported.
Liu and Ramos were killed shortly before 3 p.m. in their parked patrol car near the Tompkins Houses public housing development. De Blasio told reporters, “Our city is in mourning. … Our hearts are heavy. We lost two good men who devoted their lives to protect the city they loved. Our hearts go out to their families, to their comrades in arms at the 84th Precinct, to the family of the NYPD.”
Bratton said that earlier in the day in Baltimore County, Md., Brinsley had shot and wounded a woman thought to have been his girlfriend.
Read more here.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.When longtime Aspinwall resident and entrepreneur Susan Crookston found out about plans to put a 650-car parking lot on the site of the former Aspinwall Marina, she went down to the site to take a look.
What she saw was the potential that has now become Aspinwall Riverfront Park, an 11-acre community resource with riverside walking and biking trails, an amphitheater and stage, gardens and a wetlands area, and a playground.
“It really is like a dream come true,” Crookston says. “The community rallied and we had 3,000 people get involved, including kids. It was amazing.”
Cynthia Tuthill, 9, and her sister Edie, 6, raised $144 through sales at their lemonade stand. Glenna Van Dyke, 13, made dog scarves to sell along with glow sticks. Che Esch, 15, mowed $5,000 worth of lawns.
All told, the combination volunteer-community-corporate effort raised $2.2 million for the project, including a $150,000 grant from Allegheny County, and donation matching funds from the Colcom and Hillman Foundations, Crookston says.
The site needed a fair amount of work, which included removing about 100,000 pounds of debris, tearing up concrete, planting bulbs and shrubs, and razing dilapidated buildings on the site.
But Crookston said the driving goal was to turn the project around quickly enough so that the children who had donated their efforts were still young enough to enjoy it, noting that the average municipal park project takes 10 years to complete.
She started writing a business plan for the project late in 2010, and it was purchased in October 2011. And she notes that Riverfront is a community park, not a municipal one.
The borough of Aspinwall was not able to take on the project financially, and the park drew volunteers from outside the borough’s borders.
“Two-thirds of our volunteers don’t live in Aspinwall,” Crookston says, with most coming from the neighboring communities of O’Hara, Fox Chapel and Sharpsburg.
With so many people giving their time, Crookston was adamant about getting input from the community about what they wanted, and reached 1,800 people with a survey. The majority were very clear about wanting a playground and trail access, she says.
Aspinwall Riverfront Park will hold its grand opening this weekend, with the River Rock fundraiser on Saturday night, which raises $100,000 each year for the park, and a family-friendly event on Sunday.
“I have hundreds of pairs of scissors so everyone can be involved in the ribbon-cutting,” Crookston says. The playground includes a much-celebrated giant bronze statue sculpture—created by internationally renowned contemporary artist Tom Ottnerness—of a reclining figure, which children can climb and play on. The weekend festivities will incorporate this “tin man” sculpture in a Wizard of Oz theme, including a hot air balloon and a 40-foot tall rainbow.
Crookston says her long-term goal for the park is to see it become a catalyst for riverfront trail expansion. The fundraising will continue after the grand opening, with future plans for a welcome center with restrooms, and river access. About $1.15 million has been raised toward a planned $2 million endowment for upkeep of the park.
“While we’ve built a wonderful base park, our dream is to create public river access and a fully-funded endowment to ensure that Aspinwall Riverfront Park is as beautiful the day it opens as it will be when our grandchildren enjoy it,” Crookston says.Berkeley senior and ASUC Executive Vice President Lavanya Jawaharlal and her sister Melissa, both mechanical engineers, walked away from TV’s investment reality show “Shark Tank” with a $200,000 deal that they will put toward taking their STEM robotics education concept nationwide.
The two, who founded STEM Center USA to use robotics and other hands-on creative methods to teach science, technology, engineering and math to more diverse students, inspired an all-out war between two of the high-profile investors on the ABC show’s panel of “sharks.” Their pitch for funding, which aired Friday, ended up pitting veteran shark Lori Greiner, a retail giant on the QVC channel, against show newbie Chris Sacca, the Silicon Valley billionaire.
“So, two sisters who are mech engineers have built orbiting satellites and commercialized their own robot? An investor’s dream,” gushed Sacca on Twitter. He told Business Insider that they were “some of the best pitchers I’ve seen anywhere.”
But in the end, Greiner offered the better deal, Lavanya Jawaharlal said this morning.
“We walked in there wanting a valuation of $1 million, and that’s what she gave us. She had the best offer, and she also has the expertise we need as far as products and entrepreneurial background,” Jawaharlal told Berkeley News.
For her $200,000 investment, Greiner will get a 20 percent share of the company. Greiner originally wanted to team up with Sacca, but he refused. But she topped his offer of $200,000 for 22.5 percent. The sisters went with Greiner.
Jawaharlal says that most of the show’s pitching actually goes on behind the scenes. Pitch sessions can take 90 minutes, Sacca said on Twitter; only six minutes of the STEM Center’s pitch was shown.
She had to sit on the news “quite a while” after the show was filmed, she says; the network won’t let her say how long. “All my friends have been asking!”
But when it came time for the episode to air, STEM Center USA threw a viewing party for 60 to 70 of its students, their parents and friends, with champagne, soda and lots of pizza.
The STEM Center works with kids of all ages designing, building and programming robots. It has already outgrown its original space, and the sisters have launched school programs, too. They also sell their own product line, including the affordable Pi-Bot robot kit, The Technical Alphabet and the Fiat Lux Wearable Electronics Kit, which went up on Kickstarter Friday.
The new investment money will let them start franchising paperwork and documentation, Jawaharlal says.
“Our goal is to expand to cities countrywide,” she says.
The cash infusion also means more work, and Lavanya still has one semester to go to complete her degree. She’ll take her final two courses this spring, stacking them on Mondays and Wednesdays so she can devote Thursday through Sunday to STEM Center work. She plans to work full-time for the company after that.
“I’m itching to graduate,” she says, “but I’m also going to be sad to leave Berkeley.”
See previous Berkeley News coverage of the story, and watch a video of a Pi-Bot demo at Berkeley’s Girls in Engineering camp.Microsoft has sued the U.S. government in an attempt to strike down a law allowing judges to gag tech companies when law enforcement agencies want access to their users' data.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, argues that a section of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is unconstitutional for requiring tech companies to keep requests for data under wraps.
Microsoft argued the law is unconstitutional under the First Amendment, by limiting the company's freedom of speech, as well as under the Fourth Amendment's due process protections.
Under one section of ECPA, judges can order a request for data to be kept secret if they believe knowledge of its existence will endanger life, allow criminals to flee, or otherwise jeopardize an investigation.
Courts have issued almost 2,576 secrecy orders to Microsoft over the past 18 months, with more than two-thirds containing no fixed end date, Brad Smith, the company's president and chief legal officer, said in a blog post. That presents a problem for the burgeoning cloud computing industry, the company said.
"These twin developments — the increase in government demands for online data and the simultaneous increase in secrecy — have combined to undermine confidence in the privacy of the cloud and have impaired Microsoft's right to be transparent with its customers, a right guaranteed by the First Amendment," the company said in its lawsuit.
The transparency is important for Microsoft, as more and more of its business is focused on enticing customers to move their data to the cloud. If the U.S. government can secretly request data from Microsoft when the company is asking more people and companies to entrust it with their data, that might slow adoption.
The company isn't opposed to secret government requests in situations where they are necessary, but Microsoft wants that authority limited.
Smith suggested that the government could sidestep the lawsuit with new policies or laws. The Department of Justice could adopt new policies limiting how it uses the authority it's given under ECPA, or Congress could amend the law to restrict what the government can do.
Howver, it's unclear how Microsoft's lawsuit will fare. It would be "premature to guess" how successful Microsoft is likely to be, Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, said in an email.
What's more, this case could take a while. Lawsuits frequently take years to work their way through the courts, and a case of this nature is likely to go through several layers of appeals. Don't expect the issue to be settled soon.
A representative for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.The Australian had looked on course to triumph at Monte Carlo but a botched pitstop by his Red Bull team allowed Lewis Hamilton to grab the lead and take the win.
Red Bull's pace has improved since then and the team is heading to the next phase of the championship upbeat about the potential of its chassis on downforce-demanding tracks like Singapore and Suzuka.
When asked by Motorsport.com if he believed he had a race win in him before the end of the year, Ricciardo said: "I think so. I don't believe in much, but if there is a little bit of Karma or whatever, I'd like to think I will get my Monaco win back somewhere.
"Singapore is a track which I will look to. I don't expect to be handed a victory, absolutely not, but I feel if I work very well across that weekend then it should provide me with a chance. So Singapore is the one I am looking at."
Good balance
Although Red Bull has pushed hard on the aerodynamic front this year, Ricciardo believes tweaks made to the car have not just been about adding speed.
Instead, he thinks just as much progress has come from making the car work in a wider operating window.
"We do have little bits and pieces nearly at every race, which come and they make small differences," he said.
"What some of these updates bring, if it is a little small wing on the front wing, like a little Gurney or something like that, even if it doesn't give you speed, doesn't give you any laptime, sometimes these things help make the set-up of the car easier.
"It expands the window and it is easier to then be comfortable with the car. Even if it doesn't give you more downforce or something, it can maybe make the opportunity greater to get the right set-up and be happier: and then you will find a bit of speed. I think that is what it is. Which is nice.
"On Fridays we are not doing that much work any more in terms of normally what car we are bringing. We change a few things but we are not reinventing the wheel.
"When you start reinventing the wheel, and we found ourselves in that position last year, it is very hard to get lucky and find a set-up that works for the rest of the weekend."In 1773 British explorer James Cook visited the Tongan islands and described them as the “friendly islands.” Settled by Polynesian mariners long before Cook landed on their shores, Tongans are indeed friendly but the warrior spirit that enabled them to defend their land against invaders lives on, a tradition carried on by former Gator offensive guard Jon Halapio.
A proud Tongan who grew up in the United States, Halapio didn’t embrace his Tongan spirit as a child because his parents were more concerned with raising their family as Americans. Still, the Tongan culture was always in the background.
“It’s something that was always around when I was younger, growing up,” Halapio said. “My parents didn’t really harp on it until we were a little older and we began to realize what our culture was.”
Halapio focused on learning English and doing well in the classroom but as he grew older his family began to immerse him in their culture. As he grew older and learned more about Tongan culture, Halapio wanted to honor it in the most permanent way possible — with a tattoo.
Halapio had already gotten tattoos on the inside of his biceps and his chest but wanted to get a bigger, more meaningful piece honoring his heritage.
“I talked to my parents and I talked to my uncle who’s a tattoo artist in Tampa, he owns a shop,” Halapio said of the process that led up to him getting the tattoo. “I just asked them what I should get and just sat down with them and decided to get some Tongan culture symbols for my arm.”
After consulting with his parents and his uncle. Halapio laid out a plan to decorate his arm in Tongan culture. The symbols are traditional Tongan art, patterns that are worn for big events like weddings or funerals. Like in Samoan culture, the patterns are often tattooed on the body to broadcast ones heritage and worn as a symbol of pride.
The traditional method is a long, painstaking process of tapping a single needle repeatedly over and over, adding ink to the body. The big 6-3, 320-pound Halapio opted for the more modern method and had his uncle sped over 13 hours tattooing his entire left arm in traditional patterns.
The tattoo, coupled with his long hair and beard give Halapio a distinguishing look, but the story behind the hair is less about culture and more about love
Halapio began growing his hair in high school but it wasn’t until he committed and signed his letter of intent that he made a decision to continue growing his hair. That decision was made due to his mother and grandmother
“When I committed to Florida, my mom came to me one day and said ‘please don’t cut your hair while you’re playing at Florida. I need to spot you when you’re on the field.’ Ever since then it’s been helping them, especially my grandmother,” he explained. “She can’t really see that well but she can see me on TV because of my hair.”
With his playing days at Florida done and a wedding less than two weeks away, Halapio is thinking about finally cutting off the hair that helped not only his family but Gator fans across the country identify him the last five years.
“I’ve been talking to my fiancé a lot,” he said. “I don’t know I’ve been thinking about cutting my hair when my daughter comes. I’m not too sure.”
While the hair may stay for his upcoming nuptials, he will be shaving his beard before the wedding.
“She’s a fan of the long hair but not the beard,” Halapio said. “I haven’t seen her since I left home so that’s why I’m growing it out. I’m pretty sure when I go back for the wedding I’m going to have to shave.”
He’s a man beyond his years. He already knows the old axiom “a happy wife is a happy life.”
“I wanna keep her happy so I can be happy,” he said with a chuckle.There has been a lot of speculation about why the polling from the Michigan Democratic Primary was inaccurate, but there hasn't been an adequate data driven explanation. The following is our attempt to explain the discrepancies between the polling in Michigan and the actual outcome.
Eight polls were included in our Michigan pollster rankings; of those, six were partially conducted within the week preceding the election. Of those six, five released sub-sample information. Michigan State University, our winner, released sub-sample results, but did not provide the total number of participants in each sub-group; for this reason the MSU poll was excluded from this analysis.
Of the four remaining polls, a cursory look at each sub-sample reveals universal inaccuracy; so where to begin? We're going to start with the turnout by age group revealed by exit polling; the forward assumption is that exit polling is accurate. The figure and table below depict the percentage of each age group that participated in the primary and the candidate margin within each group:
As you expected, Bernie did well among voters less than 40 years of age.
MI Primary Results [2, 1] Sanders (D) Clinton (D) Total All 49.75%
593,563 48.23%
575,512 1,193,169 Age 18-24 85% 15% 11% Age 25-29 75% 24% 8% Age 30-39 59% 36% 17% Age 40-49 41% 55% 17% Age 50-64 41% 57% 27% Age 65+ 30% 69% 20%
A repeated reason cited for the inaccuracy [3] of this cycle's polling in Michigan is the lack of historical data; Michigan was stripped of their delegates by the DNC for violating scheduling rules in 2008. Comparing the 2008 exit polling [4] to 2016 shows that Males represented 2% more of the electorate this year, Whites 2% less, Blacks 2% more, Ages 18-29 2% more and Ages 45+ 2% less. So while there may not have been an officially contested primary since 1992, the most recent primary in 2008 was generally predictive, and as we'll see below, was more predictive than the age distributions used in 2016 polling, but not the main problem.
In order to effectively analyze the age distributions of our four 2016 polls it is first necessary to normalize the groups into common ranges. This requires a little bit of math as each pollster uses different groups. We've explored a number of different algorithms for normalizing the groups such that they can be compared. For the purposes of this analysis, we're using a simple algorithm that subdivides each group into one year increments and assigns a uniform value to each of these subdivisions. Using the 18-24 group in the graph above as an example, the 1 year subdivisions would include {18,19,20,21,22,23,24} and each would have a value of (11%/(24-18+1)=) 1.57%.
The math used to re-adjust these one year increments into the desired ranges was a simple local regression with the same values we use for our polling projections; a 2nd degree polynomial with an 80% nearest neighbor parameter. The intent of using the local regression was to smooth out any spikes which may have occurred on range boundaries; in practice the local regression had very little affect because the polled ranges were largely smooth already.
There is one undefined parameter which affects how our extrapolation behaves. The upper bound on the oldest age group is not defined, it's generally an unbounded value like 65 and older. This complicates our uniform calculation which requires knowing the span of a given group. We experimented with several methods to compensate for this unknown; we settled on hard-coding the upper limit at 80 for three reasons. First, the upper bound made very little difference on any of the groups other than the two oldest groups, and the affect was at worse a deviation of 2% within the two oldest groups. Secondly, the overall sum of all subdivisions was nearest to 100%. Finally, the basic demographic acknowledgement that just 3.5% of the whole US population is 80 or older [5]. We're exploring more robust means to extrapolate the upper age group using population modeling, but we're not there yet; for now there is a procedural human element.
The figure below depicts the outcome of the range re-adjustment from the samples across each of our four polls. On the right, we then compare the sampled frequency in each age group using values from the left, to those observed in the exit poll from the first figure above:
Figure 2: Turnout By Age: Pre-Election Sample by Age & Pre-Election vs. Exit Polling
The general takeaway of the above figure is that pollsters underestimated younger voters and overestimated older turnout. Voters under the age of 40 were under represented by about 8% on average and those over 40 were over represented by about 8%. The data is sparse, for example, American Research Group only released two age groups, so an average is not the most rigorous measurement but there also isn't enough data to do anything more complicated. If we remove Mitchell Research which visually appears to be the outlier, the error drops from 8% to 3% which is worse than 2008's exit polling. The weighting was less accurate than it could have been, but it wasn't the biggest problem with Michigan polling.
Our final figure extrapolates a candidate's support, by margin, into the common age groups and then compares those figures with the margins observed in exit polling:
Figure 3: Candidate Support By Age: Pre-Election Support by Age & Pre-Election vs. Exit Polling | Edit: Original
Young voters were underrepresented and their loyalty skewed. A correlation between increased youth participation and polling inaccuracy may exist, but further analysis is required.
Update [April 12]: We were were performing a similar age grouping analysis in New York and realized that the final graphic incorrectly depicts one of the alternative algorithms not described within the preceding text. The image has been corrected and the original preserved for reference in the figure caption. As one further note of clarification, the margin extrapolation makes no attempt to intelligently guess at groups in which there is no data, a uniform assumption is made; this is apparent in the ARG bars given they only released data in two age groups.
Updated on April 12, 2016 at 10:37:03 PM CTJanine Jackson: National Mama’s Bailout Day aimed, successfully, to get dozens of incarcerated black women home for Mother’s Day. The action could be supported with data: Black women are 44 percent of the US jail population, 80 percent of women in jail have young children, 82 percent are in custody for nonviolent offenses, and many are not convicted of anything at all. Or we could ask philosophically: Given that our society predicates a great deal on the idea of law as an equalizer, is it acceptable that anyone is jailed for an inability to pay a cash amount?
Well, Mama’s Bailout Day was about data and ideas, but first and foremost, it was about mamas. Our next guest was one of the organizers behind it. Arissa Hall is project manager at the National Bail Fund Network, which is housed at Brooklyn Community Bail Fund. She joins us now by phone from Brooklyn. Welcome to CounterSpin, Arissa Hall.
Arissa Hall: Thank you for having me.
JJ: One of the things I appreciate about this action, about Mama’s Bailout Day, is that it’s lateral. It’s about a system, the bail system, but it’s not an action that simply says, hey, look at this bad system. It’s person to person. What can you tell us about how Mama’s Bailout Day came to happen?
AH: It came to happen at a convening that about 25 people attended, hosted by the Movement for Black Lives Policy Table, and also Color of Change, in Atlanta at the end of January. And this convening was specifically about bail. We were in a brainstorming session, and folks were just bringing up ideas—interventions in the bail system, or how we can highlight that bail system. Mary Hooks, who is the co-director of SONG, Southerners On New Ground, offered up the idea of a national bailout, which then was accepted by the larger group, and specified as, we should do it around Mother’s Day, and highlight how we celebrate mothers, but how all mothers are not celebrated, specifically marginalized black moms who find themselves detained.
JJ: Brandon Patterson at Mother Jones quoted Mary Hooks from SONG saying, “Black people have a tradition of using our collective resources to buy each other’s freedom.” And she also said, “The sooner we can get folks out, the ability for them to mitigate their cases increases and the less collateral damage they are likely to incur.” And again, that point, that this action looked at the bail system from a communal perspective—what’s the impact on communities—I think that’s one of the other interesting things about it.
AH: Yeah. I work at National Bail Fund Network. Bail funds have always been a community thing, and whether that has been at the church, where folks have collected their resources to bail out a member of the congregation, or someone kin to someone at the congregation, it always has been communal and it always has been basically a form of resistance, resisting the system which imposes these fines on us for our freedom. Unfortunately, as Mary says, black folks are very familiar with that sort of communal gathering, and communal gathering of resources for liberation, as it goes back to during slavery, when black folks also had to buy their freedom. So this is a long tradition of purchasing our freedom, and we’ve seen this evolve. And here we are for Mama’s Bailout Day…recognizing this has always happened—at smaller scales, but definitely happened before.
JJ: Right. Well, the harm is communal and the help is communal, in this case.
AH: Yes.
JJ: But it also has a special relevance with bail. I read an op-ed in the Washington Post by a law professor named Jocelyn Simonson, who was saying that the modern conception of setting bail is that a judge is weighing the interests of an individual defendant against those of a larger community. And so when the judge sets bail, they’re saying they’re doing it on behalf of the community. And so bail funds like you work with are saying: not in our name.
AH: Right. And that’s the fallacy, one of the many fallacies of bail. A lot of judges and magistrates and bail commissioners say things such as, these people pose a risk to the community. And the way that they measure this risk is usually from risk assessment tools, which ask these very standardized questions that we’ve seen to be very biased, and based on the score that you get, bail will be set. So that’s how the system is basically determining who’s a risk to our community, and the community has no say-so in that. So yes, we are saying, not in our name.
People are so used to “that’s just the way it goes,” that a lot of us haven’t just sat down—even people that are mostly impacted by the bail system—haven’t had an opportunity to just sit down and reflect on, just why does this system exist, and what’s the point of this system?
JJ: Right.
AH: I remember talking to a friend about bail before we went down to Atlanta, and I was telling him, bail is supposed to just be a guarantee. You know, the reason that bail is set up is so it’s the guarantee that you come back to court. And he was like, I had no idea. That’s the theory behind bail, is that, hey, if Arissa gets arrested, if she pays $100 to the court, because she wants her money back (because bail is supposed to resolve once the case is resolved), she’ll come back. And what we know is that that’s not true, because when we pay bail through bail funds, these folks have no financial risk, as they haven’t put up their own money, and they do come back to court.
The main barriers to coming back to court are usually that there’s no interest in the defendant, in their lives; so you can have a doctor’s appointment or your mother’s birthday or you have to work, and they don’t care about that when they set court dates, right? Or they don’t care about if $3 or $2.75 to get to court is a financial barrier, and you have children and…. So it’s just real-life factors that create barriers for you to go back to court, but it’s not the money of bail that creates barriers. And what bail does is it coerces guilty pleas, and it makes you…. Yeah, you don’t fight. In 90 percent [of cases] in our country, people plead guilty, instead of actually having to go to court and fight for trial.
And another thing that I find is, if you are in jail—and again, you are supposed to be innocent, right, innocent until proven guilty—these folks have not been proven guilty, which is very important to remember. Being in jail is harmful on so many different levels, but another way that it causes harm is that you can also get more charges on you while you are in jail for various different reasons, which also then creates a larger barrier for you to be released.
JJ: And listeners may remember the case of Kalief Browder; that was just a bail story. That was years that a young man spent on Rikers Island not convicted of anything.
AH: Right. Right. And Kalief was an anomaly, in the sense that he didn’t plead guilty, because he wasn’t guilty, and he wouldn’t do what most people do, which is plead guilty just to get out, right? He wanted the system to do as they say, which is give a fair trial.
JJ: Well, media talk about inequality, and they talk about talking about inequality, but I’m always struck at how little interest they can muster when an actual mechanism of inequality is laid before them. And I was actually thinking about the federal appeals court ruling that said that if a person has suffered wage discrimination in the past, has been paid less due to sexism or racism or their intersection, that it’s okay for that inequity to be reproduced and perpetuated forever, because employers can base your pay on your previous pay.
AH: Right.
JJ: And I thought, well, here’s a chance—we’re actually seeing inequality be reproduced. And the media reaction was like, eh, you know, what are you gonna do? So I have to say that I was surprised a little bit to see a kind of earnest reaction to Mama’s Bailout Day.
AH: Yeah.
JJ: I expected a lot more cynicism. What did you make of the media, and how can reporting help, do you think, on this issue?
AH: Yeah, the media was definitely surprisingly gracious about Mama’s Bailout Day, and I’m not sure why. I think that it touched a lot of people, because mothers.
JJ: Right.
AH: Right? Because of that sort of familial connection—we all have mothers, regardless of what our relationships to them are. So that was a good thing, and part of the strategy with the Bailout, a good thing that all of us could connect to. But then also recognizing that people’s lives should not be contingent on their familial ties, and having |
The United Nations flag may also be flown as a garrison flag with other country flags. Garrison size is 10 feet by 30 feet.
Derived flags
Agencies and organizations
The flag of the World Food Programme has the olive leaves of the UN flag, with a hand clutching grains in the centre, in place of the globe. The white/blue colours of the UN flag are reversed in the WFP flag.
Country flags
The flag of Somalia, with central symbol a five-pointed star, uses the UN's blue colour in honour of the UN's help in gaining Somalia's independence. [10] [11]
The UNTAC UN administration of Cambodia used UN colours.[12]
Proposed flags
Use outside UN
The UN flag is depicted in the background of former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld on Sweden's 1,000 SEK banknote, the currency's highest denomination. The banknotes have been in circulation since October 2015.[15]Financial transaction network SWIFT has renewed its warning to customers to be on their guard following the discovery of malware at another bank using its services.
The bank first asked customers to take steps to secure their systems in the wake of an attempt to steal US$951 million from Bangladesh Bank in February. Attackers there appear to have used custom malware installed on computers at the bank to send fraudulent messages over the SWIFT network seeking to transfer money from the bank's account with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
That attack appears not to have been an isolated incident, as SWIFT said Friday it has now learnt more about a second instance in which malware was used.
While SWIFT did not name the target, a report from security researchers at BAE Systems, also published Friday, pointed to a commercial bank in Vietnam as the latest victim.
The malware attacks were not directly on the transaction network or core messaging system, but instead were targeted at customer banks' secondary security controls, SWIFT said.
With its ability to transfer billions of dollars to accounts around the world in a few keystrokes, the SWIFT financial transaction network is increasingly being instrumentalized in cyber attacks on financial institutions.
While the number of cases of fraud at its customers is so far small, forensic experts believe the new discovery is part of a wider and highly adaptive campaign targeting banks, SWIFT said.
Posting on the BAE Systems threat research blog, researchers Sergei Shevchenko and Adrian Nish said what ties together the cases discovered so far is the use of an unusual file wipe function the malware uses to make deleted files unrecoverable. The function first fills the file with random characters to ensure nothing can be recovered from the sectors it occupies on disk, then changes its name to a random string before deleting it.
In both cases, SWIFT said in its latest warning, the attackers have exploited vulnerabilities in the systems banks use to initiate fund transfers, stealing banks' credentials and using them to send irrevocable fund transfer orders over the SWIFT network.
In addition, the attackers have tampered with secondary controls such as records of statements and confirmations that the banks use to recognize fraud. For example, SWIFT said, in the latest case the attackers targeted the bank's PDF reader, using malices software to modify it so as to hide traces of the fraudulent transactions in PDF reports of payment confirmations.
SWIFT asked its customers to review security controls across all their payment systems, from employee checks to cyber defenses. Banks using PDF reader applications to review confirmation messages should take particular care, it said. The asked banks to help track down the fraudsters by advising it if any incidents were discovered.On Thursday gun control proponent Gabby Giffords praised Rep. Dan Donovan (R-NY) for introducing a bill to expand the number of people prohibited from firearm possession.
Donovan is sponsoring the gun control along with Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.).
According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Donovan’s gun control bill “seeks to close loopholes in gun laws to prevent people convicted of domestic violence or stalking from buying firearms.” It is called the “Zero Tolerance for Domestic Abusers Act.”
Giffords praised the bill and endorsed it, but she hedged her bets by admitting the bill “won’t stop every act of violence.” In truth, the bill will not stop any determined attacker–no amount of gun control does–and the success of this particular gun control bill is predicated on the belief that a ban on buying or possessing a gun will keep a determined attacker from buying or possessing gun. Felons in possession of guns prove the fallacy of such a predication daily.
One thing bill will is expand gun control even further that its present reach, adding to the cumbersome set of hoops law-abiding citizens must already jump through to acquire a gun at retail.
The viability of a particular gun control law has never hindered Giffords, who pushes background checks as a solution to crime even though her attacker passed a background check to acquire the gun with which he attacked her.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed on Thursday in a southern Israeli border town that U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned in a speech on his arrival in Israel a day earlier.
U.S. President Barack Obama hugs Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport Airport in Tel Aviv March 20, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Reed
Police said there were no casualties but some damage in the attack on Sderot near the Gaza frontier.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike, the second time rockets launched from Gaza have hit Israel since a truce ended an eight-day cross-border war in November.
As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama visited Sderot, meeting locals and viewing an exhibit of rocket remnants from frequent attacks by Gaza-based militants.
“I’ve stood in Sderot, and met with children who simply want to grow up free from fear. And flying in today, I saw again how Israel’s security can be measured in mere miles and minutes,” Obama told a news conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
Obama is on a three-day visit to Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jordan. He will not travel to Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, a group sworn to Israel’s destruction.
The president was in Jerusalem, some 80 km (50 miles) from Sderot, when the rockets struck several hours before his visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with Hamas’s rival, Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
“We condemn violence against civilians regardless of its source, including rocket firing,” Abbas was quoted as saying by the official Palestinian Wafa news agency.
“We are in favor of maintaining mutual and comprehensive calm in Gaza,” he added.
At Tel Aviv airport on Wednesday, Obama inspected an Iron Dome anti-missile battery, a partially U.S.-funded system that has been used to shoot down rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.Manti Te'o will miss extensive time due to the latest foot injury.
The Chargers inside linebacker suffered a foot fracture during Sunday's game against the Bills, sources said Monday. The severity is not such where he is expected to be placed on injured reserve, but he will miss multiple weeks.
It is a blow to San Diego's defense.
Te'o has a team-high 19 tackles in three games. He was credited Sunday with 10, tied for most in his career.
Foot injuries, however, have proven problematic. This is his third in two seasons.
The 2013 second-round pick injured his right foot during the exhibition opener of his rookie year. It cost him the first three regular-season games and required offseason surgery after he played the year out with a stress fracture. Sunday's fracture is to the same foot but not considered a re-injury.
On Aug. 15, he sprained his left foot in an exhibition game versus Seattle. He rested and returned to practice Sept. 1. He started one week later in the season opener.
The Chargers seem more prepared to handle his absence this year than last.
They made a prudent move in March, upgrading their depth by signing inside linebacker Kavell Conner. He already has made an impact on special teams. On Sept. 14, he forced a fumble on a kickoff against the Seahawks. The Chargers recovered and scored a touchdown on the ensuing drive of a 30-21 win.
The team hosts the Jaguars on Sunday.
Conner is expected to start for Te'o, who walked in a protective boot Monday. Conner spent the previous four years with the Colts. He started 36 games there, including 15 in 2011.View photos
Photo: Nike
Let’s address the obvious immediately, since this is what so many people see in WNBA star Skylar Diggins: she’s gorgeous. So gorgeous that Drake writes poetry about her. Gorgeous enough to land a pictorial in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. You get the idea: she is an extraordinarily pretty lady.
Can we get that out of the way? Great, because there’s so much more to Diggins. A five-time USA Basketball gold medalist, she smashed records during her years shooting hoops at the University of Notre Dame (where she simultaneously kept her GPA above 3.0). After college, she landed with the Tulsa Shock; this year, during her second season, she set a new franchise record for most points in a single season. No wonder Nike snapped her up early and Jay-Z signed her as the first female athlete to join the Roc Nation Sports roster—she’s a superstar in the making.
She’s fierce on the court, but in day-to-day life, Diggins is down-to-earth and warm. We caught up with her to talk motivation, style, and nerding out.
You won this year’s WNBA Most Improved Player award. How did you work to improve your game?
I learned a lot from my first season in the WNBA, and I took that experience to the offseason. Coming from college straight to the league was a huge learning curve—to play at that level where everyone is so much better! My first year was the most I’ve ever struggled playing basketball before. I looked at my film and my numbers and focused on my struggle areas.
View photos
Diggins on the court this year.
What motivates you?
I’ve always wanted to do my best at everything. So I’m competitive with myself; I’m always challenging myself to do one more rep or to last one more minute or shoot one more shot. I want to discover a new level of myself in every workout.
Related: Teamwork is the Secret to Alex Morgan’s Success
Speaking of pushing yourself, let’s talk about the Zoom in 5 workout you made for Nike. Be honest: Is this something we non-pros can really do?
Absolutely. That’s who it was made for! It’s quick—it targets your legs and core. No matter if you’re a beginner or someone who works out five times a week, you can work your way into it. Go at your own pace and push yourself. As you get more comfortable, you can do it a few more times a week. It’s definitely a workout you can jump into and feel the results right away.Bien-pensant green types - that is, people like me - often think that, because UKIP types (and the BNP, and the Tory Right) hate large-scale immigration into this country, we should love it.
But that's like saying: because Hitler was a vegetarian, we should be voracious meat-eaters.
By the way: next time someone trots out this canard, do please also point out that Hitler wasn't a vegetarian - or if he was, he was one with a particular relish for sausage, and turtle soup.
No compromise on humanity
Of course it right to attack UKIP victim-blaming strongly. I have done so myself, tackling Patrick O'Flynn (now an MEP), who is Farage's spin-doctor, over UKIP's xenophobia against Romanians. But that does not mean we should love large-scale immigration.
There must be absolutely no compromise whatsoever on the humanity and rights of immigrants, and on our responsibility to welcome and help to integrate those who are here.
But we ought to accept the power of the reasoning that shows that a high level of immigration leads to significant problems - here, abroad, and in the future. It
puts downward pressure on wages for the poorest - multiple studies have shown this;
increases wealth differentials - and inequality in a society is the worst thing for health and wellbeing, as Wilkinson and Pickett have taught us;
increases GDP / 'economic growth' - something distinctly ungreen!
reduces social cohesion - bad news because to create a more progressive / redistributive economy we need a sense of that we are all citizens working together on a common project: this is 'the progressive's dilemma';
increases net environmental footprint - people migrating here whether from Estonia or East Africa suddenly jump their footprint dramatically: this is bad news of course for all things ecological / for future generations;
puts pressure on public services, housing, schools, infrastructure, food supplies - and this country is far (and getting further) from being able to feed itself; and, last but certainly not least,
strips the countries that migrants are coming from of their brightest and best - which is why many African countries desperately want us to reduce our imports of medical staff, etc.
Getting serious
If we do not rein in immigration, that means that we are not taking a host of important issues seriously, like: being on the side of working-class Britons; equality; limits to growth; building a sense of society and community; future generations - who depend on us to halt the pressure of our ever-growing ecological footprint; reining in over-'development' in this country; helping 'Third World' countries.
But we must insist that in reducing levels of immigration we offer genuine solutions, humanely. For example,
tackling dangerous climate change - and other 'push'-factor environmental problems, that are hitting 'Third World' countries particularly hard;
reducing war and oppression - again, obvious 'push' factors about which we can, usually, do something;
increasing, and improving, foreign aid - opposing the pathetically short-sighted, selfish, irrational UKIP / Daily Mail opposition to foreign aid;
raising standards elsewhere - for example, a European living wage or Euro-level citizens income; and
tackling exploitative employers - controlling gangmasters who exploit migrant labour, and stopping the abuse of migrant workers, who in some cases only the wages or conditions of their home country even while they are working here.
And we should seek to implement these policies jointly with as many other countries as possible, starting with our EU colleagues: as is obvious, the more buy-in there is to such policies, the more effective they will be.
We need, especially, collectively to reduce bad 'push' factors that lie behind the wish or need to migrate, including low wages in other European countries.
A new, fairer, more democratic global order
We ought also to be clear that resisting large-scale immigration is only one part of a larger picture of resisting neo-liberal growthist globalisation, and of regaining the ability to protect ourselves against rootless international capital.
As already implied above, a more general point is that we need to actually mean the talk about'subsidiarity' that is supposedly so crucial to Brussels.
We have to get serious about re-localising our economies and societies, about allowing power to be exercised at the lowest possible and appropriate level for it to be exercised. This is what democracy in the 21st century would be.
And - as is already implicit in what I suggested above - another key part of the picture is to tackle the power and wealth of the rich. We have to reverse the tide of economic inequality that has engulfed our societies over the past 40 years.
What's the relationship between immigration and GDP?
So, we all know that GDP is a farrago, and GDP-growth a disastrous goal for a society to have. We all know that being eco-minded requires thinking beyond growth, to a post-growth society.
But we also all know that the'mainstream' thinking in our society remains madly trapped within the obsessive desire for 'growth'. Immigration plays two roles in this.
First it helps Britain's oligarchy to bypass social concerns about what our economy, and our government, are doing to us as a society - and instead just pile ahead with seeking to 'grow' the economy.
Brits demanding better wages for agricultural labour or work in care-homes? Don't worry: get foreigners to do the work instead. Don't want to spend the money to train and educate young people for productive employment? Simple: steal foreign workers to do the jobs for you.
Need to 'discipline' your home-grown workers to stop them demanding wage-rises and threatening to go on strike? Same solution. This, incidentally, is why Gordon Brown was so keen on New Labour's high-immigration policy.
Our neoliberal elites just love it
Governments are still, madly, judged on whether or not they are raising the nation's GDP. Immigration plays an even simpler role in this, in the following way: the more people who get added to our country, the larger GDP gets, simply by the country having more people and thus more economic activity within it.
Large-scale immigration doesn't necessarily raise GDP-per-capita, mind you: but GDP per capita isn't what the BBC et al fixate on. They simply look at the overall GDP figures. You see how simple and how mad this is? You see how attractive it is for mainstream politicians to find reasons and ways, on the sly, to let more people into this country?
That means more people working, producing, consuming, doing all the things that our capitalist growthist economy wants - things that are gradually undermining our ecology, fatefully.
The more our population grows, the more GDP goes up. And the happier, until pretty recently, our'main' neo-liberal parties are.
Mass immigration is about economic power, not wellbeing
Immigration makes countries 'economically more powerful' - so long as your economy is judged by the unbelievably-crude, destructive conventional standards: like GDP.
It is slightly reminiscent of fascism: remember how Mussolini and Hitler liked to increase the size of their populations, so that they could become economic powerhouses? And have plenty of future soldiers to swell the ranks of the military.
Yes: just because Hitler liked something doesn't mean it was necessarily bad. But there is a genuine similarity between why governments now secretly like mass immigration, and why fascism openly encouraged population growth. In both cases, it's about building 'economic strength', as conventionally understood.
We need to move beyond thinking of real economic strength as having anything to do with GDP growth. High levels of immigration create a more divided society, socially and economically, and ecologically weaker and less resilient.
We Greens need to be absolutely and resolutely pro-immigrant - while turning against large-scale immigration.
Rupert Read is Green Party Transport Spokesperson. He narrowly missed being elected an MEP for the East of England in the 2014 European Elections.
Website: www.rupertread.net
Twitter: @GreenRupertRead (political) or @RupertRead (personal).
See Rupert's report: 'Post-growth Common Sense: Political Communications for the Future', published by the Green House Think Tank.It can be hard to get a start in any industry. But launching a career as an ad creative can sometimes feel like mission: impossible. That’s why in recent years there has been a spike in the number of aspiring ad creatives who have resorted to wild stunts in order to get noticed. The latest young creative to go above and beyond is Tom Pascoe-Williams, who has launched a Twitter campaign aimed at getting interviews at top agencies.
Pascoe-Wiliams, 23, is about to graduate from Manchester Metropolitan University in the U.K. In an effort to get ahead of the pack and line up a job for himself before he graduates, Pascoe-Williams decided to buy promoted tweets, like this one:
Soon to be graduate looking for an account management internship in the London advertising/digital marketing scene. https://t.co/f7aD6JebPs — Tom Pascoe-Williams (@tompascoew) February 11, 2014
Pascoe-Williams said he spent £ 370 (about $616) on the promoted tweets, money which he took from his student loan.
Pascoe-Williams took time out of his job hunt to chat with Digiday about how he came up with the idea for his job campaign, whether it’s paying off and why he wants to go into advertising in the first place. Some excerpts:
Why did you decide to study advertising?
There’s not been a lot to smile about in recent years. I love the way advertising can produce debate. Ads can make people laugh and brighten their day, as we saw with Grey’s British Heart Foundation with Vinnie Jones; they can even save lives. Advertising can be the shining light on an otherwise dull existence. There are so many different brands, and no two campaigns are alike. I never wanted a repetitive daily routine; I learnt that from coding in college.
How did you get the idea to buy a promoted tweet to advertise yourself?
What can I sell if not myself? It’s so tough to get noticed, especially when graduating from university and applying for an entry-level position. The only distinguishing factor between yourself and fellow candidates is the aesthetics on the paper. I needed to prove that I have the ability to think differently.
Whom did you target? Any agencies that you have your eye on?
Basically, I rounded up a list of around 40 agencies; then I chose other industry pages such as Creative Review, AdAge and Cannes Lions. I chose to target all their followers, then narrowed it to London. There are a lot I would give anything to work for! I want to contribute to great work with exciting brands and learn from the best in the industry so as to further my education and better myself. I suppose it’s similar to driving: You only really begin to learn when you’ve passed the test.
Has the promoted tweet campaign paid off?
I ran separate campaigns so as to monitor my spending on set days, but collectively, there were 84,079 impressions, 8,940 engagements, 8,555 clicks,144 retweets and 131 follows. My LinkedIn registered 535 views since Monday, and I gained 70-80 or so connections. Many people have been in touch; in fact, I’ve lost count. It’s really quite overwhelming. A few interviews have been conducted, two tomorrow, three are in the next few weeks, and I have been offered quite a bit of work experience. One big one, which I am overjoyed about, is currently being negotiated.
So many people pull creative stunts these days to break in to the ad industry — did you feel that pressure to pull a stunt? Do you think that’s necessary these days to get hired?
Not necessarily, but from experience, it’s tough. I have sent out over 200 applications in the past three months and probably only received four or five replies. Unless you have a contact or are incomprehensibly gifted in other ways, you’re just competing against everybody else. I never had the greatest education, so it was necessary for me to be creative in my approach in order to get noticed and begin that initial conversation.
What are you most excited about when it comes to working in advertising?
Great brands and great people. There are some marvelous things being achieved within the industry; I’m excited to witness the creation of these innovations first hand.
Image via FlickrDendralene hydrocarbons have a reputation for being difficult — it seemed that these molecules couldn't easily be made. A practical synthesis of dendralenes opens them up for study, and reveals some surprises.
The presence of unsaturation — double or triple bonds — in molecules often largely determines their structural properties and chemical behaviour. Unsaturated hydrocarbons are well known to chemists, but one class, known as dendralenes, has been neglected, in part because the compounds were thought to be unstable. In Angewandte Chemie, Payne et al.1 report a practical synthesis of dendralenes, and find that they are stable after all. Intriguingly, the physical and chemical properties of the compounds depend on whether there is an odd or even number of double bonds in the molecules.
There are six different ways in which carbon–carbon double bonds (C=C bonds) can be assembled to form unsaturated hydrocarbons2. The simplest is to connect these C=C bonds using carbon–carbon single bonds, to produce chain-like molecules known as acyclic conjugated polyolefins (Fig. 1a). Some crucial naturally occurring compounds, such as vitamin A and β-carotene, are derivatives of this class, whereas polymeric versions are familiar to materials scientists as 'organic metals' — so-called because of their conducting properties.
Figure 1: Six varieties of unsaturation. a–f, Carbon–carbon double bonds can be assembled in six different ways to construct distinct families of unsaturated hydrocarbons, examples of which are shown. In f, the first member of the family is known as allene, whereas the others are known as cumulenes. Carbon atoms shared by two double bonds are represented as bold dots. Full size image
Alternatively, C=C bonds may be connected together using single bonds to form ring-shaped, or cyclic, molecules (Fig. 1b). The resulting hydrocarbons, known as annulenes, are either aromatic (for those with an odd number of C=C bonds), or antiaromatic (for flat molecules that have an even number of C=C bonds). Annulenes have had pivotal roles in the development of theories of the structure and reactivity of organic molecules. More practically, the aromatic hydrocarbons benzene, toluene and xylene are important feedstocks for the chemical industry.
Then there are the radialene3 and fulvene2 classes of hydrocarbons, which have more exotic-looking structures. In radialenes, C=C bonds 'radiate' from a central ring of carbon atoms that is formed from carbon–carbon single bonds (Fig. 1c), whereas, in fulvenes, C=C bonds radiate from annulene-like rings (Fig. 1d). Dendralenes4 (Fig. 1e) are chain-like versions of radialenes — on paper, dendralene structures look like radialenes in which a single bond has been broken (although it isn't actually possible to convert a radialene to a dendralene). The final structural arrangement of hydrocarbons occurs when two or more C=C bonds share a common carbon atom; allenes contain two C=C bonds, whereas cumulenes contain three or more5 (Fig. 1f).
Although dendralenes exhibit a curious electronic phenomenon known as cross-conjugation — a feature also found in numerous organic dyestuffs — they have long been neglected by organic chemists. The reason is simple: the compounds could not be made readily in sufficient amounts for further study, and were assumed to be too unstable to handle under normal laboratory conditions (on the basis of what was known from the few reported examples of dendralenes4). Payne et al.1 show that this assumption is wrong. They devised a general method for the preparation of dendralenes, and used it to make the first six members of the family. Their synthetic route provides more than enough material for further studies of the reactivity and structures of these mysterious compounds.
Payne et al. constructed their compounds from molecular building blocks that already contained one or more C=C bonds. For example, they used a magnesium-containing reagent (easily made from a commercially available compound) as the source of a diene fragment, which contains two C=C bonds connected by a single bond (Fig. 2a). They reacted this with other double-bond-containing compounds — various vinyl halides — in a nickel-catalysed process6,7 that'stitched' together the unsaturated hydrocarbon groups. In this way, Payne and colleagues prepared dendralenes containing three to five C=C bonds in good yields. The authors prepared higher oligomers (containing up to eight C=C bonds) using similar processes, providing each member of the series in gram quantities and as analytically pure substances. Previously, only milligram quantities could be made.
Figure 2: Preparation and reactions of selected dendralenes. Payne et al.1 have prepared dendralenes by stitching together unsaturated hydrocarbon fragments from other compounds. a, In these examples, the diene fragment (red) of a magnesium-containing compound is coupled in nickelcatalysed reactions to hydrocarbon fragments (various colours) of halogen-containing compounds, to make the first three members of the dendralene family. b, The authors also investigated the reactivities of dendralenes in Diels–Alder additions. In these reactions, a diene fragment (red) reacts to form a six-membered ring. Another diene is formed in the product, which can, in principle, take part in another Diels–Alder reaction. The cycle continues until no more dienes are formed. Full size image
Like annulenes, the physical and chemical properties of the newly prepared dendralenes depend on the number of C=C bonds in the molecule: the properties of the even-numbered members of the series are distinctly different from those of its odd-numbered members. A good example is the thermal stability of the compounds. Dendralenes that have an even number of C=C bonds can be kept at room temperature for weeks without any significant decomposition, whereas their odd analogues have much shorter half-lives. A similar dichotomy occurs for the electronic spectra of these compounds, and in their chemical behaviour.
Perhaps the most likely initial use of dendralenes will be in organic synthesis, acting as sources of dienes in 'cycloaddition' reactions. The most widely used cycloaddition reaction is the Diels–Alder addition, because this is the best method for preparing rings of six carbon atoms. When dendralenes are used in Diels–Alder additions, the reaction product will contain a new diene fragment, which can in principle undergo another Diels–Alder addition, and so on, until no more diene units can be generated (Fig. 2b). Such 'diene-transmissive Diels–Alder processes'8 allow the rapid generation of molecular complexity from relatively simple starting materials in a one-pot operation.
Payne et al.1 found that the reactivity of dendralenes in Diels–Alder additions again depends on the number of C=C bonds in the molecule: odd-numbered dendralenes react faster than their even-numbered counterparts. Furthermore, only the endmost dienes of odd-numbered dendralenes take part in reactions, whereas diene subunits throughout the even-numbered dendralenes react. The authors rationalized this surprising chemical effect using quantum mechanical calculations, which suggest that the geometries of the bonds in the dendralenes are at least partly responsible. In the odd-numbered dendralenes, the endmost diene subunits adopt a conformation that has long been known to be optimal for Diels–Alder reactions. These subunits therefore react quickly, and preferentially to the other diene subunits. But all of the diene subunits in the even–numbered dendralenes adopt an unfavourable conformation for Diels–Alder additions; their reactions are therefore slower than in the odd-numbered dendralenes, and no particular diene subunit reacts preferentially to the others.
With the dendralenes now available in sufficient amounts for further study, we can expect the discovery of many new reactions. The resulting products should show interesting chemical and structural properties, and would not have been available using conventional methods of synthesis.
References 1. Payne, A. D., Bojase, G., Paddon-Row, M. N. & Sherburn, M. S. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn 48, 4836–4839 (2009). 2. Hopf, H. Classics in Hydrocarbon Chemistry (Wiley-VCH, 2000). 3. Maas, G. & Hopf, H. Chemistry of Dienes and Polyenes Vol. 1 (Ed. Rappoport, Z.) 927–977 (Wiley, 1997). 4. Hopf, H. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn 23, 948–960 (1984). 5. Krause, N. & Hashmi, A. S. K. (Eds) Modern Allene Chemistry Vol. 1 & 2 (Wiley-VCH, 2004). 6. Corriu, R. J. P. & Masse, J. P. J. Chem. Soc. Chem. Commun. 144a (1972). 7. Tamao, K., Sumitani, K. & Kumada, M. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 94, 4374–4376 (1972). 8. Tsuge, O., Wada, E. & Kanemasa, S. Chem. Lett. 12, 1525–1528 (1983). Download references
Author information Affiliations Henning Hopf is at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Technical University Braunschweig, Hagenring 30, D-38106 Braunschweig, Germany. h.hopf@tu-bs.de Henning Hopf Authors Search for Henning Hopf in: Nature Research journals •
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Rights and permissions To obtain permission to re-use content from this article visit RightsLink.Teenager who killed herself after her parents banned her from Facebook left note saying she 'couldn't live without the site'
Father describes family's 'deep shock' after daughter takes own life
Parents told her she needed to focus more on school work than socialising
Police have opened an investigation into the teenager's tragic death
A teenager who killed herself after her parents banned her from Facebook left a note for a devastated family saying she couldn't live without the site.
Aiswarya Dahiwal, a second year college student from Parbhani, in the Maharashtra state of India, had asked her parents for permission to log on to the site on Wednesday, but they said no.
The teenager then got into an argument with the couple who told her that she should pay more attention to school work, and spend less time on Facebook.
The parents of a 17-year-old girl who killed herself after being banned from Facebook have described their 'deep shock' (picture posed by model)
The family also argued about Miss Dahiwal making long mobile phone calls to her friends.
Her body was found on Thursday morning, and police said that she had hanged herself.
A note found in Miss Dahiwal's bedroom said that she had taken her own life because she was not allowed to go on the social networking site.
Police said that in the note the teenager had said that she couldn't stay in a home with the restrictions she felt she was being placed under, and that she couldn't live without Facebook.
In India 92 per cent of high school pupils prefer using the site to talking on a phone (posed by model)
Speaking the Wall Street Journal in India her father Sunil said the family was in 'deep shock' and that he 'never thought she would ever take such a harsh step.'
A case of accidental death has been registered by Indian officials and an investigation is underway.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a recent survey found that nearly 92 percent of India's high school students prefer to use Facebook rather than make calls to communicate.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that 16,112 people killed themselves in the state last year, making it the state with the second highest suicide rate in the country.
For confidential support call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see www.samaritans.org for details.Ram Naresh Yadav’s son Shailesh Yadav is an accused in the Vyapam scam. (Source: Express Archive)
Madhya Pradesh Governor Ram Naresh Yadav’s son Shailesh Yadav, wanted by the Madhya Pradesh Special Task Force in connection with the Vyapam scam, was found dead under mysterious circumstances at the governor’s residence at Mall Avenue area in Lucknow on Wednesday morning. The staff and domestic help at the bungalow allotted to the Ram Naresh, who was former UP chief minister, claimed that Shailesh had died on Tuesday night itself.
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The family members, however, informed police around 2 pm on Wednesday, Gautam Palli police station in charge S K Katiyar said. Shailesh’s wife, his youngest son and the wives of his two brothers were present in the bungalow when he died.
Family members claimed Shailesh was diabetic and died of brain haemorrhage, but they did not share the exact time of his death, maintaining that they came to know about it around 6 am when he did not get up. A domestic help, however, told The Indian Express that Shailesh’s condition deteriorated on Tuesday night and a doctor, called for a check-up, declared him dead.
Both the governor and his son were accused in the scam that was exposed nearly two years ago. The investigating agency was reportedly preparing grounds to attach the properties owned by Shailesh. Veerpal Singh, an accused in the scam arrested in November 2014, had alleged that Rs 3 lakh in cash was given to Shailesh in the Raj Bhavan to ensure that 10 candidates from Bhind cleared the examination for contractual teachers. None of the 10 candidates were eventually appointed because they did not hold either a diploma or a degree in education.
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Shailesh used to regularly visit Raj Bhavan ever since his father was made the governor in September 2011. Veerpal, who hails from UP’s Mainpuri district, had alleged that his friend Vijaypal was close to Shailesh and had given him names and roll numbers of the 10 candidates more than two-and-a-half years ago. Since the candidates were not selected, a part of the money was returned, Veerpal claimed.
Ram Naresh’s former officer on special duty (OSD) Dhanraj Yadav was arrested in 2013 by the STF in connection with the scam. The governor had immediately sacked Dhanraj, claiming that he was not aware of his alleged involvement in the scam.
On Wednesday, police and mediapersons were not allowed to enter the Lucknow bungalow as family members claimed there were only women inside the house and they were waiting for Shailesh’s brothers to return. Both brothers, Kamlesh and Ajai, were with Ram Naresh in Bhopal at the time of the incident.
Shailesh had not been questioned so far and the notices to his addresses in Uttar Pradesh were not served on him because |
ian, an old language more or less out of use by this time, and they consist mostly of standardised lists of obscure words for metals or stones or animals. These exercises were pretty useless in practical terms, rather like schoolchildren copying out ancient Greek verse. One tablet was simply rows of the same big wedge shape practiced over and over again. It’s highly significant that scribal training was going on in the public building, because school texts have only ever been found in domestic houses. Tell Khaiber is the only known Mesopotamian public building where they kept their training in-house.
In fact, an awful lot seems to have been going on inside the Tell Khaiber building. We found reception rooms, accommodation blocks, cooking areas, an administrative wing and storage rooms all inside the formidable fortifications. It doesn’t fit the usual models of temple, palace or barracks. This unusual multi-functionality may in fact be the key to understanding Tell Khaiber.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An area of mudbrick paving (left) with archaeologists trying to define the walls of the room next door. Photograph: Courtesy of the Ur Region Archaeology Project
All the important functions of the settlement were inside the main building’s walls and towers. In short, the Tell Khaiber building seems to have been set up to withstand attack, the likelihood of which must have been high to warrant the construction of such a heavily fortified complex. The relatively small population which seems to have lived outside the walls could have easily fit inside the building for short periods, and with such big walls and just a single entrance the building could have been defended with just a small body of soldiers. The tablets list two groups of ten “royal auxiliary troops” drawing rations.
Tell Khaiber seems to have acted almost like a medieval castle. In the good times the land was farmed and revenues sent to the King. When enemies arrived everything and everyone could retreat inside the ‘keep’, safe behind its walls and towers. This is not the way Bronze Age Mesopotamian settlements usually worked. The Sealand state was a kingdom which clearly had to protect itself to survive, and in response, it built a castle.
Work at Tell Khaiber was made possible through the generous funding of Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza at the Augustus Foundation. The project has also been supported by Kirintec, SKA International Group, the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, the FCO and many others. Many thanks go to our colleagues at the SBAH and the Iraq Museum.Last week in this space I posted an attack on the "new atheists" that got me--predictably, I guess--attacked by new atheists.
My complaint wasn't the usual complaint about them (that they're counterproductively arrogant or zealous), but rather that they exert a right-wing influence on foreign policy. By depicting religion as a prime mover of conflict--especially in the Middle East--they discourage us from addressing the grievances of, for example, Palestinians. They give aid and comfort to those on the right who believe (but generally have the tact not to quite say): "What's the point of trying to reason with those crazy Muslims? They'll hate us no matter what we do, because hate is what their religion teaches them."
I've weighed the counter-arguments that have been arrayed against me and--surprise!--found them wanting (though in one case--see point 2 below--I admit that I did a very bad job of presenting my argument, pretty much begging to be misunderstood). Let me revisit a couple of key points.
1. Is religion at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Richard Dawkins had said yes, and I said no; the conflict between Arabs and Jews started as a basically secular dispute over land and only later got wrapped up in religious fervor. Blogger Paul Fidalgo replied that the reason the Israelis thought they deserved the land was because "it says so in their holy book," and John Snider at americanfreethought.com also emhasized the power of the Bible's "cosmic claims about the Promised Land." I think the words "holy" and "cosmic" are misleading here. The leaders of the Zionist movement were secular (as Snider acknowledges). To the extent that they cited the Bible, they cited it not as a religious text, but as an historical text--to establish that their people had been on the land before the Arabs were. (Just as native Americans might point to evidence that they were in America before Europeans.) Whereas the American Declaration of Independence invokes God, the closest the Israeli Declaration of Independence comes to a religious appeal is the phrase "with trust in the rock of Israel." (That's what it says in Hebrew, though it's often translated into English as "trust in the Almighty".)
I'm not denying that the conflict has become religious, both for some Jews and some Muslims. And I'm not denying that this complicates the solution. My point is just that the prime mover is the conflict over land, and if that conflict is resolved, religious zealotry will start to subside--because, in my view, ever since ancient times [http://evolutionofgod.net/time], it's been material circumstances, not religion, that has driven "religious" conflict. Richard Dawkins, in asserting that there would be no Israel-Palestine conflict whatsoever if it weren't for religion, is not just wrong but dangerously wrong, because such claims discourage us from working hard to change those circumstances.
Speaking of Dawkins:
2. Is Richard Dawkins right wing on foreign policy? Here is where I'm at fault--not for asserting that Dawkins has right-wing views on foreign policy, but for failing to make clear that I wasn't asserting this. My point was that the new atheists' depiction of religion as the root of evil, by discouraging attention to deeper root causes, furthers a right-wing agenda whether these atheists subscribe to that agenda or not. What I should have said is that they are objectively right-wing (after Orwell's famous assertion that pacificists were objectively pro-fascist regardless of their views about fascism). And I should have thought twice before titling the piece "Why the New Atheists are Right Wing on Foreign Policy"--a title that PZ Myers at Pharyngula amusingly used as an excuse to reject my thesis without reading my defense of it. (My sloppiness of expression notwithstanding, it wasn't quite impossible to grasp my meaning, as my new friend Bonzai showed over at richarddawkins.net.)
Still, of the three people I discussed--Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens--Dawkins is the only one I would say doesn't have specifically right-wing views that I know of. (Harris, as I noted, explicitly discourages looking for non-religious root causes of terrorism.)
3. And, by the way, what of Daniel Dennett? He's the only one of the "four horsemen" I didn't mention. Like Dawkins, he's never struck me as right-wing on foreign policy, but as for the question of whether he's "objectively" right wing: Though he doesn't go around attributing evils to religion as recklessly as Hitchens and Harris, he does something that is the rough generic equivalent: Like Dawkins, he refers to religious beliefs as "viruses" of the mind.
Now, viruses, generally speaking, are parasites; when they have a discernible effect on their host it is almost always negative. And, more to the point, the popular understanding of the word virus is that it implies parasitism. Would Dawkins and Dennett say that religious belief is always, or even usually, parasitic in the Darwinian sense--bad for the reproductive prospects of the host? If so, how do you explain the number of Catholics in the world? In light of the fact that sometimes religious belief (however mistaken it may be) manifestly helps people flourish (and even helps them preserve their mental health), while other times it gets them killed or makes them crazy, the proper term for the God meme isn't "virus" or "parasite" but the neutral "symbiont." (When a symbiotic relationship is good for the host, it is "mutualistic" and if it's bad for the host, then it deserves the label "parasitic".) That Dawkins and Dennett have so casually used the term "virus" would seem to reflect an intellectual sloppiness that neither of them practices very often. It's almost enough to make you wonder whether the new atheism, like religion, might sometimes be parasitic on the reasoning power of its hosts.In the wake of UCLA's 38-20 triumph over Southern Cal earlier tonight, there has already been criticism of Steve Sarkisian's leadership of the USC football program coming from alums and beat writers. But now even rappers are coming down on the team. Noted Southern Cal footfall fan Snoop Dogg was dispirited by the trojans' weak performance at the Rose Bowl, recording the above clip on his instagram account at the end of the game.
The opening line: Well SC Fans... We fu@*ing suck! Is worth the price of admission itself, before he goes on to criticize the play of the trogans and finishes up by noting how hard it will be to get anyone to play for them now. The fact that Snoop's son is an elite HS senior WR with a Southern Cal offer can't have been too far out of his mind tonight...
And to his credit, Snoop later uploaded another video congratulating Coach Mora and the Bruins on their victory.
A video posted by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg) on Nov 11, 2014 at 8:26pm PST
GO BRUINS!
WOTT!With the 2017 French Open just days away, join Tennis-Pulse as we relive the greatest clay court matches of all time. Today, we look back at our #1 pick – the 2006 Rome Final between two of the greats of the game.
6-7 (0), 7-6 (5), 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (5)
You can watch extended highlights of this epic battle here:
Rafael Nadal is a name that will forever be ingrained in the history of clay court tennis. With his high-kicking topspin groundstrokes and superior court coverage, Nadal’s style of play is a game tailor-made for the dirt. Throughout his career, Rafa has snared a record amount of titles on the surface, and is now a living legend of the sport. Today, however, we roll back the years to a sunny May afternoon in Rome. By the time the 2006 Italian Open final rolled around, Nadal boasted an astounding 52 match winning streak on clay, and was eager to secure his sixth Masters title. The only obstacle left in his way? His biggest rival, Roger Federer. The Swiss had been the dominant force in tennis for the previous two years during the grass and hard-court seasons, but Nadal was a puzzle the world No. 1 was struggling to solve. Exhibit A? The pair’s Monte-Carlo final just weeks prior to their Rome clash, in which Nadal wriggled his way out of a tight four-set tussle. The lopsided head-to-head record in favour of the Spaniard had become one of the many cornerstones of the blossoming “Fedal” rivalry.
So, the stage was set. Two of the most formidable titans in the sporting world would lock horns in a rematch lined with hype and intrigue. What followed exceeded all expectations. It was a match that started as a clay court clinic and ended as a hard-fought slugfest. Every baseline rally was a battle of wills, and every venture to the net was precise and calculated. This final was an epic in all meanings of the word.
The atmosphere was electric as early as the first game, as the feisty Italian crowd made Campo Centrale feel more like a bullfighting ring than a tennis court. Both players cruised on serve through the first three games – weaving drop shots and volleys into their already vast array of shots. The first half-chance presented itself with the Spaniard serving at 1-2, 30-15. Just three games in, it was clear that both men had already established a battle strategy. Federer would attempt to take the ball early, while Nadal would plant himself behind the baseline and belt top-spinning bombs back over the net. On this occasion, however, Federer refused to allow himself to be dominated by Nadal’s monstrous groundstrokes, skipping around his backhand side and blasting a vicious forehand inside-in. This imperious point propelled Federer to the first break point of the match, as a scuffed forehand from Nadal at 30-30 soared long. Feeling the pressure for the first time on serve, the Majorcan found himself on the back foot after a strong backhand return from the Swiss. With Federer stepping deeper into the court after every shot, Nadal, in an attempt to whip an acutely angled backhand winner cross-court, sprayed the ball wide. Despite showing few signs of emotion, Federer was firmly in the driver’s seat.
Because of Federer’s ability to consistently dictate points off his first serve, anyone would have expected the world No. 1 to comfortably polish off the set. The Swiss had a plan, and he was executing it well. But this is Rafael Nadal we’re talking about, a man immune to the thought of surrender. Almost out of nowhere, the second seed found himself with two break-back opportunities in the following game. Always the opportunist, Nadal produced his best tennis when he needed it most. The two rallied from the baseline, before a punishing backhand from the Spaniard forced a short ball from Federer. Nadal honed in and unleashed a backhand winner down the line, letting loose in triumph. Nadal’s ruthlessness and determination whilst trailing would become a recurring theme throughout the match, and would be an obstacle that Federer would have to be at his very best to overcome.
After breaks were traded in the early proceedings, both players managed to hold relatively comfortably. However, at 5-6, Federer launched an offensive on the Nadal serve once again. A huge inside-out forehand drove his opponent’s service game to deuce, prompting a roar from the crowd. The combatants continued to jostle for control of the game, trading the following two points to level the score at 40-40 once again. Even at such a crucial juncture, Nadal was not afraid to stray from his routine style. After bullying Federer behind the baseline, the second seed showcased his dexterity with a drop shot. Federer and his quick wheels scampered towards the ball and sliced a deep backhand down the line. Now it was the Swiss who was the aggressor in the rally. Nadal managed to claw a backhand back into play, but Federer was poised and ready, stepping in and punching a killer forehand volley into the open court. Despite devising and executing an excellent plan on the previous point, Federer’s genius proved to be in vain, as his one-handed backhand deserted him on set point. This time, Nadal seemed to feed off his opponent’s disappointment, striking two thunderous forehand winners to send the set into a tie-break.
The body language of both players indicated that Nadal had the momentum swinging in his favour, but the breaker painted a different picture. Federer played with unchecked aggression throughout its entirety. Whether it was a brilliantly angled backhand winner or a perfectly constructed net advance, Federer was “looking every bit the world number one”. The Maestro raced out to a domineering 6-0 lead, and capped off a flawless breaker with a lunging backhand volley winner.
The two players settled into a groove on serve in the second set, denying each other any half-chance to break through. The only moment of uncertainty came with Federer serving at 4-5. After a framed forehand surrendered a set point, the Swiss responded with a marvelous leaping backhand – the same shot that had won him the first set. There were a number of select shots that would go on to abandon Federer as the match continued, but his trusty net game remained consistent throughout.
Another tie-break awaited. It appeared as if the second set’s climax was destined to continue along a similar path as the first’s, as Nadal conceded an early mini-break with a careless netted forehand. However, Federer returned the favour with a mishit forehand of his own on the following point. With the score tied at 1-1, Nadal was desperate to pull ahead, throwing down deep groundstroke after deep groundstroke. After shoveling back a looping forehand from Nadal, Federer’s ball clipped the net, forcing the Spaniard to slice a dubious backhand short. Federer seized control of the rally, placing the cherry on top with a remarkable forehand drive volley. “That is absolutely world class” said Mark Petchey in rapt awe. Federer’s flowing form seemed to unsettle Nadal, as a missed overhead volley on the subsequent point widened the gap between the two.
Federer extended his lead to 4-2, but a wide forehand allowed Nadal a chance to grapple his way back into the contest. After a few more costly forehand errors off the Federer racquet, Nadal edged ahead 6-5. The Spaniard, with his fastidious routines and habits, took his time preparing himself physically and mentally for the upcoming point. Following a mishit return from the Swiss, Nadal laid down a brutal forehand, forcing Federer to cough up a short ball. Nadal stumbled as he tracked it down, and awkwardly pushed a questionable approach shot right into Federer’s hitting zone. With Nadal unable to establish a firm position at the net, Federer had numerous options, but walloped the backhand pass attempt into the net. Just like that, the championship match was level.
The Spaniard was in peak form in the third, as Federer had no answer to the ever-increasing barrage of winners raining down on him. It appeared as if this match was destined to fall into the same category as their previous meetings; the Monte-Carlo encounter was surely lingering on the world No. 1’s mind. At 2-2, 30-30, a mentally scrambled Federer overcooked a wild forehand miles long, offering up a break point. With a chance to crack the match wide open, Nadal shot a rocket-like backhand passing shot by an advancing Federer. This proved to be the decisive moment of the set, as Federer’s body language began to show signs of dejection and discomfort. Nadal had no problems serving it out, and was once again the heavy favourite to take the match.
“It’s one thing to have a game plan that works against the world number one, it’s another thing to be able to execute it” said Leif Shiras as he discussed Nadal’s tactic of grinding down the Federer backhand. Nadal continued to implement his strategy as the fourth set commenced, drawing break points in the first game. However, Federer’s fortitude on the forehand wing halted the Nadal onslaught, as the first seed managed to hold for 1-0.
Federer’s fearlessness on those early break points seemed to give him some much needed inspiration. With Nadal’s momentum all but elapsed, this was a fresh start for Federer – a chance to veer the match away from another four set defeat. At 30-30 in the following game, the first seed struck a feather-like backhand drop shot into the ad court, baiting his opponent into the net. The commentators knew it, the crowd knew it and the players knew it – this was a crucial exchange. Despite losing his balance, Federer managed to guide a forehand passing shot into the open court with pin-point precision. This was the Roger Federer that fans had come to know and love. Was the tide beginning to shift? A big first serve staved off the initial break point, but on the second, the Spaniard had no answer to Federer’s assertive forehand winner down the line.
At this time, the enormous significance of the set’s early skirmishes became apparent. The crowd was restless, Federer was flaring his wizardry and the “King of Clay” was looking novice-like in comparison. The world No. 1 rubbed salt into his rival’s wound with another break to end the set, and the momentum shift was complete. With the score all tied up at two sets apiece, many questions emerged to the forefront of the match. Would the winning streak be snapped? Did Federer have what it takes to dethrone his nemesis? Or would this match just end up as an exclamation point, further proof of Nadal’s invincibility on clay?
The one set shootout commenced. Federer attained an early opportunity on the Nadal serve, forcing the score to deuce with a superb backhand volley struck down near his shoelaces. After Federer snatched the advantage, Nadal floated a forehand long. The Swiss led, 3-1. This, however, was when Nadal began to exhibit the fighting qualities that would go on to define his character. Every short ball Federer offered, Nadal would pounce on. The Spaniard’s persistence finally earned him break-back point at 3-4, on which he forced a error with his unwavering defence.
The beginning of the fifth set summarised much of the final, as it saw Federer storm ahead early only for Nadal to wrestle his way back into contention with brute force. With the Spaniard serving at 5-6, the match was still very much up for grabs. It was Federer who first sensed the finish line. Using his aggressive counter-punching to its full extent, he outlasted Nadal in a marathon rally, bringing up a double match point. After a near five-hour classic, the epic culmination had finally arrived… or so we thought. The first championship point was squandered after a brief rally, with Federer’s nerve slipping on a routine forehand. Another rally took place on the ensuing point, seeing both players skidding to each ball that came back their way. With a Nadal backhand landing perfectly in his hitting-zone, Federer unleashed on a forehand down the line. A massive winner would have been a fitting conclusion to the final, but alas, the ball landed wide. “I pulled the trigger too early” said Federer after the match, as he contemplated his missed opportunities.
Nadal hastily wrapped up his service game with a one-two-punch combo, and a fifth-set tie-break was initiated. Perhaps déjà vu for Nadal, as the Spaniard had survived a brutal deciding breaker in the Rome final one year prior. Would lightning strike twice in the same place? The early exchanges suggested it would not, as Federer, despite quarreling with the umpire, snagged an early mini-break with an explosive forehand. “That forehand’s gonna win or lose the match for him” commented Shiras as Federer pulled ahead, 2-1. A perfectly placed forehand approach shot followed by a bread-and-butter backhand volley winner seemed to drill yet another nail into Nadal’s coffin.
A wave of excitement swept the crowd as day faded into night over the Foro Italico. The contest was beginning to crescendo in intensity. In the shade of the previous point, Federer attacked the net with a massive forehand inside-in. Nadal responded with near-perfection, scooping a topspin-laden backhand passing shot crosscourt. Federer managed to bat another ferocious forehand down the line, but Nadal – who appeared to have anticipated Federer’s every move – delivered a wrong-footing passing shot down the line. Nadal leapt into the air as the spellbound crowd stood in applause.
It was Federer’s turn to bounce back. A courageous inside-out forehand saw the Swiss edge ahead once again, 4-2. His forehand had looked as rhythmic as ever throughout the tie-break, but his elbow, once again, began to tighten. At 5-3, and then again at 5-4, he misfired two routine forehands. The choking gods had Federer locked in their stranglehold, as the world No. 1’s forehand had failed him in the clutch once again. A misfired backhand return from Federer at 5-5 presented Nadal with his first match point. By this time, both players were smeared with patches of red clay – perhaps battle scars, signifying the grueling war in which both had doggedly fought. This, however, was indeed checkmate. Trailing 6-5, another overcooked forehand was the final punch from Federer. Nadal collapsed onto the dirt in ecstasy, engulfed by the eruption of noise from the crowd. He had cemented his legacy as one of the all-time greats on clay.
This match was a crucial juncture in the Federer-Nadal rivalry, as the Swiss admitted that the defeat, as well as others like it, “scarred” him. Nevertheless, the two continued to duel for control over the sport in the following years in further epic clay encounters. However, it was their 2006 Rome final that will live on as one of the – if not the – greatest clay court matches of all time.The ARU’s trophy cabinet hasn’t been refreshed in a while, and the Wallabies fan-base is dwindling. It’s time for Australian rugby to get back to basics
In August last year, at a well-tended oval on Sydney’s affluent north shore, an undeniably significant moment for the game of rugby union came to pass. There was little fanfare, no reporters or camera teams present, yet when the Northbridge No1 Oval at the Shore School – a blue-ribbon nursery for rugby talent – was reconfigured to host Australian rules football matches, it was a sign the goalposts had, quite literally, shifted.
For many, the incursion of AFL into this rugby heartland was emblematic of the current state of the code. Battles are being lost on so many fronts, from the Wallabies all the way down to the grassroots and some believe the game in this country should start from scratch.
“We have to get a blank sheet of paper and redesign the game from the ground up,” says Brett Papworth, the former Wallabies centre and now president of Sydney club Eastwood. “How would we want it to look if we had a chance to do it again.
“I keep saying, tip it on its head, start again, you’ve got to do long-term work. And it starts with kids playing the game in schools and junior clubs and you get a critical mass playing the game. Winning certainly helps, but there is no light at the end of the tunnel on that score. You’ve got to go back to basics.”
As the legendary former Wallabies coach Rod McQueen says, it’s not rocket science.
Golden era loses its shine
The problems in Australian rugby run deep. The Wallabies have not held the Bledisloe Cup – the symbol of trans-Tasman dominance – since 2002. In the just completed June Test series Australia recorded unconvincing wins against lowly Fiji and Italy and lost to Scotland. The 13,583 crowd for the Fiji game in Melbourne was a record low attendance.
Compared to the All Blacks’ brutal and brilliant 30-15 win against the British and Irish Lions in Auckland last Saturday the trans-Tasman gap appears to be widening to canyon-like proportions.
The standard of Australia’s five Super Rugby teams has also dropped alarmingly, failing to win a single game against New Zealand opposition so far this year with the competition nearly completed. And then there is the off-field drama. Australian rugby is suffering a financial crisis and the ARU is looking to eat their own by axing one of the five Super Rugby teams, either the Western Force or Melbourne Rebels.
Andrew Pridham (@Pridhamhq) The posts at The Shore School No. 1 oval. Great for more boys to have the opportunity to play @AFL for their school. pic.twitter.com/hyT5wimOrb
It is a far cry from Australia’s golden era from 1998 to 2001, which was marked by World Cup victories, Bledisloe Cup triumphs and Super Rugby titles. Then there was more money in the coffers than the newly-professional game had ever seen. It seemed like the champagne corks would never stop popping, but the party is over and the hangover severe.
How did it come to this? Former ARU chief-executive John O’Neill, who presided over rugby’s transition from amateurism to professionalism in the mid-1990s, provided an insight in a recent keynote address to the Australian Institute of Company Directors in Brisbane. He suggested Australian rugby had become the victim of its own success, a classic corporate dilemma.
“We needed to crystalise a vision that everyone could rally around,” O’Neill said. “The main elements of that vision were for Australia to be a real world power in rugby on an ongoing basis, rugby having a much larger mass entertainment presence in Australia and a large increase in its playing population.
“The vision covered the gamut of rugby as a whole. It guided development for the first decade or more of the professional era with success on all aspects of the vision. Eventually, Australian rugby experienced one of the problems that besets many organisations when success enables ill-discipline.”
One of the first signs of this ill-discipline came after Australia hosted the 2003 World Cup in the afterglow of the Wallabies’ golden era. The ARU received a $44m windfall from hosting the showpiece event, a treasure chest the game had never possessed before.
Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates advised O’Neill to invest the money in a future fund as he had done with the $100m windfall the AOC received from the Sydney Olympics in 2000, but the stakeholders in rugby wanted their slice of the pie. Investing the windfall would have created a financial buffer that would have protected Australian rugby in times of a downturn, but no one felt the headwinds coming.
O’Neill always regarded the Wallabies as the “rainmakers” of Australian rugby. The national team would generate the majority of the revenue which would fund the rest of the game in a kind of trickle-down economic model. But post-2003, the Wallabies were unable to recapture the success of the glory days, particularly against the All Blacks.
Embracing organised chaos
During the golden era, the Wallabies and Australia’s top Super Rugby team, the Brumbies, played a patterned style of multiphase rugby in which the field was divided into imaginary grids and players were programmed to perform according to where they were positioned.
This gave Australia’s teams a tremendous tactical advantage because the players knew in advance what they were going to do, depending where they were on the field, which meant they were always one step ahead of the opposition. But eventually the opposition worked out what the Australians were doing and their game became predictable.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Beauden Barrett of the All Blacks breaks out of the tackle of Dane Haylett-Petty of the Wallabies during the Bledisloe Cup match on 27 August 2016. Photograph: Martin Hunter/Getty Images
Around the same time there was a seismic shift in the way the game was interpreted by referees, which adversely affected the Australian way of playing. In the first years of professionalism referees favoured the attacking team, particularly at the breakdown, but World Rugby became concerned the multiphase game was turning rugby into unlimited tackle rugby league and instructed the whistle-blowers to ensure there was competition for possession at every phase.
While Australian teams continued to play their pre-programmed style, the New Zealanders focused their attack on turnover ball and counter-attack in broken play. Initially, this type of organised chaos was dismissed as “parasitic”, but the parasites kept winning.
All Blacks-lite: Wallabies take inspiration from across the Tasman | Bret Harris Read more
After establishing the A-League and steering the Socceroos to the 2006 World Cup, O’Neill returned to the ARU from 2007 to 2012, but the situation was far more challenging the second time around. He recruited the highly successful coach of New Zealand’s top team, the Crusaders, and Robbie Deans kept the Wallabies at No2 in the world for about three years. Still, he could not bring back the Bledisloe Cup or win the World Cup. Australia, O’Neill surmised, needed more than New Zealand’s best coach. They had to adopt the Kiwi model.
In New Zealand the All Blacks jersey always comes first. O’Neill decided to copy the Kiwis’ centralised system of contracting coaches and players, which he believed gave the All Blacks a competitive advantage, but his policy was rejected and he departed the ARU a second time, replaced by international business executive – and Shore old boy – Bill Pulver.
“In 2012 we could see that problems were going to start to arise,” says Matt Carroll, the former ARU deputy chief executive and current AOC chief executive. “We were going to become uncompetitive unless we made change. Part of that change was to look at the New Zealand model and start to centralise player management, coach management, to ensure the quality of the coaching standards of the Super Rugby teams and the management of our talent.
“That was put to the ARU board in 2012 and for their reasons they decided to go a different direction and made the Super Rugby teams even more autonomous. To me that’s wherein lies the problem.”
Not such a Super idea?
With the ARU’s trophy cabinet becoming barer and barer, interest in the game began to wane with falling TV ratings, crowds and sponsorship. It is believed the ARU is set to lose another two or three major sponsors this year.
A payment system focusing on leading Wallabies has also seen increasing numbers of good national and Super Rugby players heading overseas in their prime, depleting the strength in depth of Australian rugby.
The ARU strained its financial and playing resources even further by ambitiously expanding into the AFL-dominated cities of Perth (2006) and Melbourne (2011). Compared to the AFL’s clever expansion into Greater Western Sydney with a young playing list designed for long-term growth, the Force and Rebels sought instant success, went belly-up and cost the ARU a small fortune to keep them afloat.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Empty seats at the Australia v Italy match at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on 24 June.
Photograph: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images
ARU chairman Cameron Clyne recently revealed that $28m was spent propping up Super Rugby over the last four years, a staggering amount for an organisation that was already suffering financial distress. The situation was compounded by Sanzaar’s decision to increase Super Rugby from 15 to 18 teams last year, bringing in a sixth South African side as well as Argentina and Japan, to create a four-conference competition. It was confusing for fans and reduced the number of money-making local derbies.
Leading figures in the game warned the ARU the 18-team format would be detrimental to Australian rugby, but they agreed to it anyway, tempted by the lure of increased broadcast dollars, which vanished in propping up teams.
“It broke all the rules of expansion of competitions,” Carroll says. “Expanding across latitudes, disruptive time-zones, adds expense and travel to the teams, adds stress to the players and makes it difficult for broadcasters. That to me has been the fatal mistake because it took away the home and aways for our Super Rugby teams.
“That affects gate receipts, its affects sponsorship, it affects fan engagement. When you have issues around coaching and playing talent, which has been compounding itself, and then you introduce a disastrous competition structure, which didn’t allow the teams to prosper financially, it’s a perfect storm.”
Sanzaar has decided to abandon the 18-team format and go back to 15 teams next year with South Africa culling two teams and Australia one, although the ARU has run into a legal minefield and is currently in arbitration with the Force.
While the ARU poured money into failing Super Rugby franchises and created a third-tier competition, the National Rugby Championship, it stopped funding premier club rugby in Sydney and Brisbane. Not only that, a national participation levy was imposed on all club players, ranging from $11.25 for minis, $28.25 for juniors and $33.75 for seniors. The levy is similar to the GST, imposed by the national body, but distributed directly to the states.
“I wrote a letter to Bill Pulver saying it wasn’t the responsibility of the amateur game to fund the professional game,” says former Queensland and Wallabies centre Anthony Herbert, who is the chief executive of Brisbane club GPS. “It’s just fallen on deaf ears. We have moved on. We can’t sit there and whinge. We’ve just got to work.
“Premier rugby is in great shape. All the clubs are professionally administered. Everyone has got on with the job. Not relying on any funding from anybody. From the club point of view the most disappointing thing is we put in all this money and effort but we don’t get a return.”
One step forward, two steps back
When Michael Cheika guided the Wallabies to the World Cup final in 2015 there was a sense that Australia had finally turned the corner. World Rugby named Cheika coach of the year for turning the Wallabies around so quickly, but that unexpected achievement seems more and more like an aberration.
The Wallabies have won only eight of their last 18 Tests. They lost three times to both England and the All Blacks last year, and have struggled against opposition of any real quality.
Australian rugby currently languishing about 10 years behind New Zealand | Bret Harris Read more
To arrest the decline, Cheika has looked “across the ditch” for inspiration. He recruited the former All Blacks skills coach, Australian-born Mick Byrne, to upskill the Wallabies and has borrowed ideas from New Zealand, notably attacking from turnover ball. But all this is playing catch-up. When the Wallabies dominated world rugby in the late 1990s and early 2000s they were always one step ahead.
“We have lost a lot of our IP [intellectual property],” says the former Wallabies coach, Rod Macqueen, who guided the team through the golden era. “For whatever reason, I don’t know why, we don’t have an operational system in place that allows us to develop our IP and take it further.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rod McQueen the coach of the Australia rugby team, 23 Nov 1998 Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images
“You have to have a structure that looks to the future and puts a number of instigations in place to have a form direction as to where you want to go and where you think the game is going and look to develop those skills where |
over and over again because “that’s how I’ve always done it and that’s how it’s done.” If a DM is constantly procrastinating instead of preparing sessions, then it’s very likely he or she is not enjoying preparing sessions.
Wall, Meet Head
One clear way to eliminate procrastination is to stop engaging in the task altogether. If preparing for a gaming session is becoming too aversive, then there is no reason to continue punishing yourself with the activity – even if it is considered a leisurely endeavor by others. Take a break. Cancel a session. Change the way in which you prepare to eliminate the tasks that are not enjoyable.
In recent months, I have done all of those things to increase enjoyment during DM preparation and reduce procrastination. I canceled a session because I “wasn’t feeling it” and now rely more heavily on published materials instead of creating a homebrew world from scratch for each session. Preparing for sessions was beginning to feel like work, and I have enough work through my day-to-day occupation, thank you very much! While conjuring up new NPCs, locations and encounters was enjoyable at first, it started to take on a toll on me. At first, I figured this was my standard procrastinating behavior that I’ve engaged in since grade school. Now I realize that I simply wasn’t enjoying the process.
Most DMs probably do not want to cut DMing out of their life because it is likely not that unpleasant all the time! When DM finds a task appealing but is still delaying the completion of the tasks, these are suggestions to combat procrastination:
Keep a to-do list, and update it often.
Set your priorities, and tackle the most urgent matters first.
After the most pressing tasks, do the worst jobs next. Putting them off will just make your whole workload seem more impossible.
Set realistic goals and deadlines.
Pick your projects carefully, and fight the impulse to get involved in too many activities even if they seem pleasant and interesting.
Last, I’m a firm believer that our behavior is influenced by rewards or perceived rewards. An individual should explore their reasoning for delaying task completion and ask, “What are the benefits of procrastinating? How am I rewarded for this behavior?” The answer to such questions may be surprising and can bolster a strategy to overcome procrastination.If you enjoy trading you should definitely check out Bitshares, OpenLedger, and start picking up some opportunities to profit. Here's one of them we just came across in the bitBTC market:
bitBTC is one of Bitshares's "smartcoins", which are essentially market-pegged assets controlled by a price feed and smart contract with collateral linking the underlying pair. In this case, we're looking at a synthetic BTC contract that consists of a constantly adjusting bundle of BTS that equate to 1 BTC. The settlement amount listed up top is the feed exchange rate and means that at this point in time each 1 bitBTC contract consisted of 169,315.40342 BTS.
OK with that out of the way, how to profit from this situation? Well, what we can see going on in the market at this point in time is that someone who had previously shorted bitBTC had a margin call; the amount of collateral they have bucketed against the contract(s) fell below the call amount and their position was dumped onto the market at an automatic execution at price feed + 10%.
If you have some bitBTC sitting around in your wallet, then you can go ahead and sell at the 186,246.94377 price listed in yellow in the order book to the left. Yellow bids are orders triggered by margin calls. You'd be earning a 10% premium over the exchange rate.
If you're new to this and don't have any bitBTC sitting in inventory for just such an auspicious occasion, you can click the "Borrow BTC" button and enter the "Debt" amount you'd like to borrow, then move the "collateral ratio" slider to something over 2 (2.15 seems to be a safe collateral amount without being called).
Voila, the system will lock up some of your BTS as collateral against the contract and you'll have your bitBTC to sell to the guy getting margin called.
At some point you can reverse the transaction by buying bitBTC and then zeroing out the Debt amount in that Margin window. You've at least made 10% selling to the margin called position, but you're taking on the short exposure from borrowing the bitBTC. There's also the opportunity cost of locking up BTS in collateral when you could be doing other productive things with it, like investing in STEEM.
By the way, you can also buy STEEM (often at discounts) via the same OpenLedger platform in the OPEN.STEEM : BTS market, but that's the subject of another story...Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The issue of immigration sparked a fiery exchange - Courtesy LBC/Global TV
Nigel Farage has stood by his claim that the EU has "blood on its hands" for "destabilising" Ukraine.
The UKIP leader rejected claims by Nick Clegg that he was "siding" with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But he stepped up his attack on EU foreign policy, saying it had been "disastrous".
Lib Dem leader Mr Clegg said he was "shocked" by Mr Farage's comments on Ukraine in the first of their two debates on Britain's place in Europe.
Speaking on his weekly LBC radio phone-in the day after the debate, Mr Clegg said he was "extraordinarily surprised and shocked to find he (Mr Farage) agrees with Vladimir Putin".
He said it was "insulting" to people in Kiev who were "simply standing up for values that we should share and support, of democracy, of autonomy".
"It shows quite how extreme people can be, like Nigel Farage, when their loathing of the European Union becomes so all-consuming that they even end up siding with Vladimir Putin," he added.
'Imperialist'
The two party leaders locked horns for an hour on whether Britain should remain in the EU - trading verbal blows on immigration, jobs and trade among other issues.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mr Farage and Mr Clegg each had one minute to set out their position as the debate began - Courtesy LBC/Global TV
Most pundits said Mr Farage had won the debate after a YouGov poll for the Sun put him on 57% to Mr Clegg's 36%.
Asked by an audience member why Ukraine wanted to join what he had called a "failed" institution, Mr Farage attacked the EU's "imperialist, expansionist" ambitions, saying it had "blood on its hands" for encouraging Ukrainians to topple their president.
Expanding on the theme in a written statement after Mr Clegg's criticisms, he said: "We are seeing vanity take the place of reason in foreign policy and the result is to destabilise a whole series of countries to no positive effect that I can discern. It is not just the Ukraine.
"The civil war in Syria was made worse by EU leaders stoking the expectation of western forces helping to topple the Assad dictatorship despite the increasing dominance of militant Islamists in the rebellion."
'Ungovernable'
He added: "I do not support what Putin has done - of course I don't.
"But the approach of David Cameron, William Hague, Nick Clegg and other EU leaders has been disastrous.
"If you poke the Russian bear with a stick he will respond. And if you have neither the means nor the political will to face him down that is very obviously not a good idea."
He also attacked David Cameron over his intervention in Libya, claiming the country had been left "ungovernable, unstable, divided and very, very dangerous".
He said the British public were sick of being "dragged into conflicts where no pressing national interest was at stake".
He said European leaders should not allow the expectation to grow that countries such as Britain "will always side with uprisings in the naive belief that benevolent liberal democracy is bound to replace existing regimes, fundamentally imperfect as they are".
"That is not the way the world works. So I repeat the charge: the EU has blood on its hands," he added.
Speaking on BBC One's Question Time, Conservative International Development Secretary Justine Greening said her party was the only one of the main Westminster parties to offer a referendum on staying within the EU.
Mr Cameron has promised the public a vote by the end of 2017 if he wins an outright majority at next year's general election.
Ms Greening said: "We have to allow people in our country, for the first time in decades, a choice on this."
Meanwhile, in a joint article in the Financial Times, Chancellor George Osborne and his German counterpart Wolfgang Schauble say that any future EU treaty change must "guarantee fairness" to countries, including the UK, that stay outside the eurozone.
Mr Farage and Mr Clegg are due to take part in a second debate - when the subject of the EU's foreign policy is likely to be near the top of the agenda - on 2 April on BBC Two.REPORTING FROM CAIRO -- A new political era began in Egypt on Saturday as Islamist parties won nearly three-quarters of the seats in parliamentary elections to inherit a nation mired in economic crisis and desperate to move beyond military rule and the corrupt legacy of deposed President Hosni Mubarak.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s dominate political and religious force, won 47% of the 498 seats in the lower house of parliament, according to official final results. The ultraconservative Salafi Islamist party Al Nour won nearly 25%, followed by the secular parties New Wafd and the Egyptian Bloc, with about 9% each.
The results confirm the dramatic transformation of the Brotherhood, which for decades was banned from politics and endured the mass arrests and torture of its members. The victory by the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is a potent sign that political Islam is emerging from a year of uprisings to replace secular autocrats across the Middle East and North Africa.
A new parliament “would not have seen the light if it wasn't for the pure blood of the martyrs who triggered this revolution,” Freedom and Justice Party said in a statement. “The party believes that Egypt's renaissance and development demands participation of all sects of this nation to fulfill this great responsibility.”
The elections were a sobering lesson for young activists whose nascent parties were no match for the grassroots networks and entwined religious and political message of the Islamists. The liberal activists helped ignite the revolution that brought down Mubarak but, winning only seven seats, they have been surpassed by more formidable political powers.
The Brotherhood’s euphoria will quickly confront the nation’s troubles. The new Parliament –- expected to hold its first session Monday –- faces enormous problems: unemployment, inflation, shrinking foreign investment, labor strikes, declining tourism and foreign currency reserves that have tumbled from $36 billion to about $10 billion.
The relatively moderate Brotherhood and the puritanical Salafis will likely battle over how deeply Islam should shape the constitution and be ingrained in public life. Both parties have said social and economic challenges are the most pressing concerns, but the Salafis, who receive funding from Persian Gulf nations, are certain to push for an Egypt more rooted in sharia, or Islamic law.
ALSO:
Hamas Leader may step down
Obama speaks to Egypt leader over crackdown on democracy groups
A figure in Egypt religious party says focus must be economy
-- Jeffrey Fleishman and Amro Hassan
Photo: A woman holds a placard that reads, in Arabic, "If it wasn't for the revolution, the National Democratic Party would still be there," during a protest in Cairo on Friday, nearly a year after the beginning of the uprising that ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his party. Credit: Maya Alleruzzo / Associated PressFederal Judge Ann Donnelly appointed by @BarackObama confirmed by US Senate 95-2 in 2015 temporarily blocks Trumps ex order #MuslimBan pic.twitter.com/fcr0ewsn5P — Dorothys Daughter (@HlLLARY) January 29, 2017
The federal judge who granted an emergency stay of part of President Donald Trump’s immigration ban is a former prosecutor nominated to the bench by Barack Obama on the recommendation of Chuck Schumer.
Schumer, the high-profile Democratic Senator, is a family friend of the judge, Ann Donnelly, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Schumer had called for the executive order’s reversal.
The order for a stay came down on January 28 from Donnelly, a judge based in Brooklyn, according to The New York Times.
Trump’s executive order had created a 90-day ban on all immigration from a series of Muslim majority countries: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. Syrian immigration was banned indefinitely and the order created a 120-day moratorium on all refugees to the United States. Trump denied the immigration ban was a “Muslim ban,” and said he thought it was working well, The New York Times reported. He has said he feels the ban is necessary to review the vetting process and protect the United States from radical Islamic terrorists.
However, the ban was affecting everyone from an Iraqi man who served the U.S. military as an interpreter to people with green cards as protests erupted at airports around the country, where people from the impacted countries were detained.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Donnelly Found That Trump’s Executive Order Would Cause Detainees ‘Irreparable Injury’
Nationwide stay has been granted. Applies to everyone nationwide, immigrants and non-immigrants, refugees, etc. affected by EO. #NoBanNoWall pic.twitter.com/vjGkdJkg8a — Nat'l Imm Law Center (@NILC_org) January 29, 2017
According to the Washington Times, the judge ruled that implementing Trump’s order would cause “irreparable injury” to some people if they were sent back.
Reported NBC News: “The stay blocks anyone with a valid visa being held at airports from being deported…They do not have to be released from detention.”
The ruling says, in part:
The petitioners have a strong likelihood of success in establishing that the removal of the petitioner and others similarly situated violates their rights to Due Process and Equal Protection guaranteed by the United States Constitution… There is imminent danger that, absent the stay of removal, there will be substantial and irreparable injury to refugees, visa-holders, and other individuals from nations subject to the January 27, 2017 Executive Order
According to The New York Times, Donnelly’s ruling means that detainees can’t be sent back to their home countries but she “stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s actions.”
The judge also ordered the government to provide a list of all of those detained, NBC News reported.
According to the Hill, the judge’s ruling “affects those who have arrived in the U.S. with previously approved refugee applications or were in transit with valid visas” not those still overseas.
2. Judge Donnelly Is a Former Prosecutor Who Was Born in Michigan
According to her judicial profile, Donnelly is a United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
She was born in 1959 in Royal Oak, Michigan. Donnelly has a B.A. from the University of Michigan, B.A., 1981, and a law degree from Ohio State University College of Law, 1984, the New York court website says. Her father was “Vice President of A.O. Smith Corporation and chairman of their electric motor division. A graduate of Notre Dame University, he served as an adjunct professor at Wright State University for over ten years,” his obituary says.
Before becoming a federal judge, she worked for the New York County District Attorney’s Office from 1984-2009. She was an assistant district attorney from 1984-1997; senior trial counsel, 1997-2005; and the bureau chief in the Family Violence Child Abuse Bureau, 2005-2009.
She served as a judge on the New York State Court of Claims from 2009-2015 and in the following positions: “Supreme Court of Bronx County [New York], criminal term, 2009-2013; Special Term for Election Matters, 2013; Supreme Court of Kings County [New York], criminal term, 2013-2014; Supreme Court of New York County [New York], criminal term, 2014-2015.”
She is married to Michael Toth and has two daughters.
3. Barack Obama Nominated the Judge to the Federal Bench on Schumer’s Advice
The New York courts website says that Donnelly was “nominated by Barack Obama on January 7, 2015, to a seat vacated by Sandra L. Townes.”
She was “confirmed by the Senate on October 20, 2015, and received commission on October 21, 2015,” the site says.
The U.S. Senate confirmed her appointment on a 95-2 vote, according to the New York Law Journal.
“Donnelly was nominated to be a federal judge by President Barack Obama on the recommendation of Sen. Charles Schumer,” reported the Brooklyn Eagle.
The newspaper quoted the chief judge as saying after giving Donnelly the oath of office, “We are indebted to Sen. Schumer for recommending Ann Donnelly and all of the other outstanding recent appointments.”
When Donnelly was confirmed, Schumer called her “fair, open-minded” in a news release.
4. Schumer Has Described Himself as a ‘Family Friend’ of Donnelly
Hameed Darweesh freed after being detained 18 hours at JFK. He was an interpreter in Iraq for the U.S. military. pic.twitter.com/5ZPsgE44SA — Anne Thompson (@annenbcnews) January 28, 2017
According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, when Donnelly was sworn in to the federal bench, Schumer spoke at her oath of office, “described himself as a family friend of the Donnelly’s and noted that his daughter played basketball with one of Donnelly’s daughters at St. Savior.”
He said of Donnelly, “I’m so pleased to be here and celebrate this moment in the journey of an exceptionally talented and well-respected jurist, Judge Ann Donnelly,” the newspaper reported.
On Twitter, a few hours before Donnelly’s order, Schumer urged the reversal of Trump’s executive orders. Schumer had attempted to get Donnelly confirmed on “unanimous consent,” according to Law360.com.
These Exec Orders will only serve to embolden & inspire those around the globe who would do us harm. They must be reversed, immediately. — Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) January 29, 2017
The lawsuit that Donnelly heard was filed on behalf of two Iraqi man who were detained under the executive order, although one was released before her ruling.
Hameed Khalid Darweesh, an Iraqi man who put his life on the line as an interpreter for the U.S. military, praised America as the “land of freedom” after being released from airport detention.
Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration and visas had resulted in the detainment on American soil of Darweesh, 53, and another Iraqi man, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi.
Darweesh was later released on an exemption in the executive order. Alshawi is an accountant whose wife worked for a U.S. contractor; members of his extended family were killed by insurgents. The lawyers are asking for the suit to be broadened into a class action.
Read more about the men and read the lawsuit here:
5. Protests Erupted Outside JFK Airport in New York
Major protests ignited at John F. Kennedy airport in New York, as well as at other airports around the country, as word spread that Trump’s immigration ban was leading to the detaining of people with visas.
The protests at JFK focused at Terminal 4. The executive order roped in people who already had visas, including students and professors traveling overseas and blocked businessmen from coming to the United States for planned meetings.
You can read more about those affected by the order here:A Georgia teenager in dire need of a new heart was denied a transplant after doctors determined that his history of poor grades and prior issues with the law did not provide “evidence” that he would attend doctor’s appointments or take his medication.
Physicians told Anthony Stokes’ family that although he likely has less than six months to live due to an enlarged heart condition, the 15-year-old will not be placed on a transplant list due to concerns that he would not attend necessary medical appointments or take his medication.
“They said they don’t have any evidence that he would take his medicine or that he would go to his follow-ups,” Anthony’s mother, Melencia Hamilton, told ABC affiliate WSB-TV.
Stokes is currently being treated at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston hospital and has been there since July 14.
“The non-compliance is fabricating, because they don’t want to give him a heart,” said Stokes’ mentor and family friend, Mack Major. “This is unacceptable because he must lose his life because of a non-compliance.”
Civil rights organizations have taken note of Anthony Stokes’s case, stating that an individual’s past should not impact the quality of medical care that they receive.
“He’s been given a death sentence because of a broad and vague excuse of non-compliance,” said Christine Young Brown, president of the Newton-Rockdale chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
The seemingly vague determination that the teen is in “non-compliance” seems to be related to the hospital’s stringent guidelines for individuals placed on life-saving transplant lists.
The hospital’s inability to cite specific reasons for its decision has been a source of the family’s growing indignation. The facility has so far only cited generic internal rules which have disqualified Stokes from receiving a transplant.
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta spokeswoman Patty Gregory said in a statement, “The well-being of our patients is always our first priority. We are continuing to work with this family and looking at all options regarding this patient's health care. We follow very specific criteria in determining eligibility for a transplant of any kind.”
The current lack of donors for procedures such as heart transplants means that hospitals follow strict guidelines as to who can receive a life-saving organ. But the hospital’s declaration has not deterred the teen’s family and loved ones from pushing back on his behalf.
“We must save Anthony’s life,” Major told CBS Atlanta. “We don’t have a lot of time to do it, but it’s something that must be done.”Va. bill would fine drivers for ‘dooring’ bicyclists 01/07/2013 03:30pm By wtopstaff Share
There's a move in Virginia to help protect bicyclists from a dangerous hazard -- open car doors.
State Senator Chap Peterson, D-Fairfax, wants to change that.
“It’s incumbent on the automobile owner when they exit on that side of the vehicle, adjacent to a bike lane, to before they open their door to just look and make sure it’s clear”.
Peterson says he’s introducing a bill (SB736) that would fine the occupant of the car as much as $100 for what some call “dooring.”
Depending on circumstances, the car occupant might also be liable for medical costs if the cyclist is injured. There would be no points placed on the driver’s license for a violation.
Peterson says he’s responding to an issue brought to him by the public.
The bill makes it a traffic offense for opening a door “on the side adjacent to moving traffic unless and until it is reasonable safe to do so.”
It also says the vehicle occupant can leave that door open no longer than is “reasonably necessary to load or unload passengers.”
Police and emergency vehicles are exempt.
Follow @hsilverbergwtop and @WTOP on Twitter.
(Copyright 2013 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)This article is over 2 years old
• Footage appears to show supporters smashing up urinals • City and United fans clashed earlier this season after league match
Manchester City fans appear to have been filmed causing significant damage to toilets at Old Trafford after Wednesday night’s derby in the EFL Cup.
‘Who would subject their kids to that kind of atmosphere?’ West Ham fans’ view of crowd trouble Read more
A video posted online showed supporters kicking urinals and sinks from the wall after United’s 1-0 victory. They can be heard chanting “City, City, City” in the video, which was posted on Twitter by the @footyawayday account.
“Man City fans smashing up the toilets at Old Trafford last night,” read the accompanying message.
Football Away Days (@footyawayday) Man City fans smashing up the toilets at Old Trafford last night #MCFC #MUFCvMCFC #mufc pic.twitter.com/erXmHSraVR
The two sets of supporters clashed in the streets after City’s win in the Premier League match in September. Pep Guardiola’s side saw their winless run extended to six matches after Juan Mata’s goal booked United’s place in the next round.
The incident occurred on the same night as West Ham United and Chelsea supporters clashed at the London Stadium. The FA has launched an investigation after fans were seen attempting to break through segregation, with allegations that coins were thrown from the home end.Image copyright Reuters Image caption The theft has forced the first Bitcoin bank to close its doors
Flexcoin, the Canada-based Bitcoin bank, is to close after losing $600,000 in a hacker attack.
Its entire stock of Bitcoins stored on-line, in its so-called "hot wallet", were stolen.
Coins held in "cold storage" or in servers not connected to the internet were not taken.
Last week, the world's biggest Bitcoin exchange, Mt Gox, filed for bankruptcy protection after it suffered a $500m theft.
Bitcoin is a digital or crypto-currency which is bought and sold online, but not backed by any country's central bank or government.
As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately Flexcoin statement
Flexcoin called itself the first Bitcoin bank. It provided centralised storage and enabled instant free transfers between Flexcoin customers.
It said in a statement: "On 2 March 2014, Flexcoin was attacked and robbed of all coins in the hot wallet. The attacker made off with 896 [Bitcoins].
"As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mt Gox and Flexcoin are not the only ones to lose money
"Users who put their coins into cold storage will be contacted by Flexcoin and asked to verify their identity. Once identified, cold storage coins will be transferred out free of charge."
Flexcoin and Mt Gox are not the only casualties in Bitcoin's battle with security. On Tuesday, Poloniex, another exchange, also admitted that 12.3% of its reserves had been stolen by hackers.
The Slovenia-based Bitstamp had to halt business temporarily after a cyber-attack in February.
Hacked
The payment processor Inputs.io was hacked in October to the tune of $1m.
The Bitcoin market has shrugged off the latest thefts. Since the beginning of March, the value of a Bitcoin has risen from $561 to $668.
There are plans by several governments to regulate Bitcoins. A Japanese government spokesman said talks on Bitcoin guidelines were in progress.
The Nikkei Business Daily reported on Wednesday that the government would tax Bitcoin transactions and ban banks and securities firms from handling the digital currency.
US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said last week the US Congress should look into legal options for regulating virtual currencies such as Bitcoin.
But in the UK, tax authorities published a briefing on the taxing of Bitcoins, dropping plans to charge value added tax (VAT), or sales tax, on Bitcoin trading.Image caption Police seized computer equipment containing images of minors
Police in Argentina say they have broken up an international network of paedophiles who swapped pornographic images and videos of children.
More than 60 addresses across Argentina were raided.
Police seized computer equipment they allege was used to spread and sell the images via social media sites.
The investigation launched almost two years ago, when Interpol traced the pictures from London-based websites to internet servers located in Argentina.
Officials said dozens of people had been charged.
Deputy Security Secretary Dario Ruiz said members of the ring used pseudonyms to link up with other paedophiles via social networks.
Mr Ruiz said some of the computers contained images of children younger than 10.
He said the Argentine police had been alerted to the existence of the ring by Interpol, who in February 2011 had become aware of the existence of websites based in London which were used for sharing the images.OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- Dozens of police in riot gear and hundreds of protesters supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse in downtown Oakland on Tuesday, with authorities using tear gas to respond to demonstrators' repeated agitations.
The latest such skirmish came around 11:15 PDT in front of City Hall, where a haze of chemical smoke still hung in the air following several similar clashes at the site over the course of the night.
It was the fifth time in about three hours that police a fired a volley of tear gas to disperse a crowd at the scene where ongoing tension has erupted into conflict throughout the day.
The number of protesters has diminished with each round of gas. About 200 remained late Tuesday, mostly young adults, some riding bicycles, protecting themselves from the noxious fumes with bandanas and scarves wrapped around their faces.
Police have established a presence in a plaza where a pre-dawn raid Tuesday dismantled an encampment of Occupy Wall Street protesters that had dominated the area for more than two weeks.
Authorities removed about 170 demonstrators who had been staying in the area overnight after repeatedly being warned that such a camp was illegal and they faced arrest by remaining. City officials said 97 people were arrested in the morning raid.
The first evening scuffle broke out after several hundred people made their way back to City Hall in an attempt to re-establish a presence in the area of the disbanded camp.
The protesters had gathered at a downtown library, marched toward City Hall and ultimately were met by police officers in riot gear. Several small skirmishes broke out and officers cleared the area by firing tear gas.
The scene has repeated itself several times since. But each time officers move to disperse the crowd, protesters quickly gather again in assemblies that authorities have declared illegal. Tensions rise as protesters edge closer to police line and climax when someone throws a bottle or rock and authorities response with volleys of gas.
Police have denied reports that they used flash bang canisters to help break up the crowds, saying the loud noises came from large firecrackers thrown at police by protesters.
Helicopters scanned the area late Tuesday and scores of officers wearing helmets and carrying clubs patrolled the streets. Fire crews responded to small blazes in trash containers.
Protesters moved about uneasily even as one used a bull horn to express his resolve.
"This movement is more than just the people versus the police," Mario Fernandez said. "It's about the people trying to have their rights to basic services."
He added, "This crowd isn't going anywhere anytime soon."
Acting Police Chief Howard Jordan told reporters at a late night news conference that authorities had no other choice, saying the protesters were throwing rocks and bottles at officers.
"We had to deploy gas to stop the crowd," he said, according to a KCBS report.
City officials say that two officers were injured. At least five protesters were arrested and several others injured in the evening clashes.
The Oakland site was among numerous camps that have sprung up around the country, as protesters rally against what they see as corporate greed and a wide range of other economic issues. The protests have attracted a wide range of people, including college students looking for work and the homeless.
In Oakland, tensions between the city and protesters have been escalating since last week as officials complained about what they described as deteriorating safety, sanitation and health issues at the site of the dismantled camp.
____
Associated Press reporter Marcus Wohlsen contributed to this report.
Take a look at images from the scene in Oakland below:This article is over 6 years old
Gordon Thompson, 34, jailed for eleven and a half years for arson that caused blaze at Reeves furniture shop in 2011 riots
A looter has been jailed for 11 and a half years for starting a huge fire that destroyed an 140-year-old furniture shop during last summer's riots.
Gordon Thompson, 34, was sentenced at the Old Bailey for arson being reckless as to whether life was endangered at House of Reeves in Croydon, south London, and burglary.
The blaze was so fierce that buildings on the other side of the street and tramlines in the road caught alight.
Gordon Thompson. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images
Thompson, of Croydon, went on a rampage through the town on 8 August, looting Iceland and House of Fraser before turning on Reeves.
He was given 11 and a half years for the arson, two years each for two counts of burglary, and three years for a third count of burglary, to run concurrently.
Judge Peter Thornton told him: "This day was a bad day for Croydon and the people of Croydon.
"Perhaps the most shocking event was that the House of Reeves was set alight and burned to the ground, putting lives at risk."
He said the shop "had stood on the site for over 140 years, proudly giving its name to its location, Reeves Corner". "You were about to bring all that to an end," he added.
"This was a deliberate, wilful act of shocking, dangerous vandalism."
Thornton continued: "The Reeves family lost their historic business, something they and generations before had lived and worked for all their lives. Their loss is priceless. The trauma they have suffered is inestimable."
Thompson followed other looters into Reeves and stole a laptop, before deciding to set fire to a sofa in the shop window.
As the blaze caught hold it spread to buildings on the opposite side of the road, forcing residents to flee.
One woman, Monika Konczyk, had to throw herself from the building where she lived to escape the flames.
Thompson admitted starting the fire on 24 February – shortly after the start of his trial. He had been filmed on mobile phones and by CCTV cameras as he attacked the shop.Clinton repeatedly puts Trump on defensive, accusing him of perpetrating a ‘racist lie’ with birther movement and ‘stiffing thousands’ of blue-collar workers
Donald Trump’s freewheeling approach spun wildly out of control in the first presidential debate as he was forced on the defensive during a chaotic clash with Hillary Clinton.
Goaded by Clinton and pressed hard by moderator Lester Holt, the Republican nominee angrily defended his record against charges of racism, sexism and tax avoidance for much of the 90-minute debate at Hofstra University, outside New York City.
Trump hit Clinton on trade and her political record – issues that have helped him draw level in recent polls and may yet dominate the election – but appeared thin-skinned and under-prepared as he sniffled his way through the debate.
Clinton shows strength over Trump in one of history's most significant debates Read more
“It’s all words, it’s all soundbites,” he retorted after a particularly one-sided exchange, adding that Clinton was a “typical politician: all talk, no action”.
But the Democratic nominee seized on Trump’s meandering responses and apparent loss of focus as their long-anticipated meeting wore on.
“Words matter when you run for president, and they really do matter when you are president,” said Clinton.
“I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate. And yes I did. You know what else I did? I prepared to be president,” she added.
In her sharpest exchanges, the former secretary of state accused Trump of racism for questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship.
“He has a long record of engaging in racist behavior. And the birther lie was a very hurtful one,” said Clinton.
She also accused him of “stiffing thousands” of contractors by declaring bankruptcy as a businessman. And in a powerful closing argument she highlighted Trump’s record of sexism, noted that he had called women pigs and slobs and, in one case, called a beauty contest Miss Housekeeping “because she was Latina”.
In turn, Trump attacked Clinton’s suitability as president in blunt terms. “She doesn’t have the look and she doesn’t have the stamina,” he said. “I’ve been all over the place. You decided to stay home,” he added.
But after rattling off her record of visiting 112 countries in four years as secretary of state, Clinton shot back: “When Donald Trump spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.”
Questions of stamina and temperament were levelled instead at Trump as he appeared to lose concentration during the uninterrupted appearance – his first one-on-one appearance on a political debate stage.
Some of his responses seemed little more than free-associative non-sequiturs. “I have a son who’s 10, he’s so good with computers,” said Trump when asked about US cybersecurity weaknesses.
Trump took to the media spin room immediately after his debate to defend his performance. Boris Epsheteyn, a Trump campaign spokesman, criticized the moderator: “Lester Holt interrupted Mr Trump more. He followed up with Mr Trump more. He was much harder on Mr Trump.” However, Trump himself said that he thought Holt did “a great job”.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s campaign basked in a victory lap – declaring that the debate had underscored Trump was both “unhinged and unfit to be president” – but was cautious not to bolster expectations on its impact.
“He came in unprepared and what we saw was kind of a meltdown,” said Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
“We’ll have to see how the voters judge this,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters.
“But I think the consensus of this entire debate was that Secretary Clinton was the only one on that stage prepared to be president, and I think the totality of the debate proved how deeply unfit he was.”
Aides to Clinton said they had expected Trump to showcase a more subdued demeanor, citing his efforts in recent weeks to stick to a teleprompter on the campaign trail and tone down his bombast.
“We thought we’d see a more disciplined Trump tonight – maybe someone who’d try to steal an early headline with a gesture of grace and show some magnanimity,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon.
“Instead, this was the same Donald Trump in the primary. Which, of course, is the true Trump.”
'Clinton weaponized Trump’s words': the reaction to the presidential debate Read more
Trump had participated in a pre-debate walk-through of the venue at Hofstra University, 20 miles outside New York City in the densely populated suburbs of Nassau County, while Clinton spent the afternoon preparing with aides at the nearby Garden City Hotel.
Afterwards, while Trump was filmed hastily disappearing in his car, Clinton told supporters at a debate |
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